Octopi & other living things…

I admit it.  I have a visceral fear of creepy, crawly, slimy, slithery, many-legged, or unusually-shaped body things.  I’m talking centipedes, spiders, snakes, scorpions, eels, squid, octopi.  It probably didn’t help that my brother,  joking around one day, pretended to drop a ten inch long earthworm down the back of my dress. I felt it writhing down my back. But I never found the worm, despite a frenzied dance to shake it out. I was ten.  Before that, earthworms fascinated me; I would dig them out of the ground and have a good long look at their amazing strangeness.  I wondered about them.  After that day, they repulsed me.

The goings-on at Girl Scout camp each summer probably didn’t help either.  The black widow spiders in the latrines we had to clean.  Some mischievous girls putting centipedes in the sleeping bags of other girls.  I don't recall counselors ever helping us appreciate the creatures we were co-existing with.  The counselors were 18-ish, and as former campers, were probably squeamishly averse as well.

I remember finding  a spider in my bedroom when I was about 15. I screamed, in that over-the-top-girly way I’d taken on, for my father to come and kill it. He did come in my room and killed it, but also called me an “idiot” for my dramatic expression of fear.  He might have said some other things, but “idiot” is all I heard.

I always wished I wasn’t afraid.  It’s a visceral thing for me, ever since the earthworm incident. But even before that I was deeply afraid of spiders.  I do love animals. It’s not like I can’t see their beauty and worth, even in the ones I would consider terrifying in a one-on-one encounter.

I’m a great admirer of the late Steve Irwin, who was such a great, if unusual, example of how we might be in relationship with animals. How we might love, value, appreciate them, work on their behalf. I follow with interest his daughter Bindi’s lack of fear and real affection for wildlife, her blossoming into a young woman with a strong sense of interconnectedness, kindness and respect for living things, her confidence and ease in the world, her desire to serve.

   

The U.S. kills over 10 billion land animals every year to feed people, and another 20 billion marine animals.  World-wide, close to 59 billion animals are killed in slaughter houses each year.(This doesn't include animals killed in laboratory experiments (100 million/year), the fashion industry (50 million/year), and the list goes on. The numbers are so large, so appalling, I can’t really fathom the concept, let alone the reality under which these animals live and die.  I’m a vegan wannabe. It was my daughter, Anna, who got me thinking about animals as sentient beings we shouldn’t kill.  She was a vegetarian for twenty years (starting at age 14) before becoming a vegan a couple of years ago.

I’m a pescatarian.  This morning I discovered that Maria Popova of the very wonderful “Brain Pickings” is also a pescatarian.  That made me happy.  I felt in good company.  She did a little piece on octopi. In it she wrote about the octopus:  “More than one of our planet’s most breathtaking creatures, it is a life form a biologist [said]… is ‘probably the closest we’ll get to meeting an intelligent alien’ — and yet… one we murder with such devastating inhumanity that I couldn’t help but cringe at the very thought of having once considered it a favorite food.” See the whole Brain Picking post here. 

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/29/luiz-eating-animals-octopus/

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/29/luiz-eating-animals-octopus/

And this article in the New Yorker, which is both fascinating and,  induced in me the “ethical heartburn” it mentions.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/eating-octopus

There was an awesome short video on Facebook last week (which sadly I can't find now).  The octopus was walking on the beach, not slithering, walking!  And carrying a little coconut shell boat that when he reached the water, he set down and climbed in. The video was amazing, and if I can find it, I'll post it here. Seeing the octopus  walk blew me away.  I mean, who knew?  It makes me want to take another look at all my assumptions, of which I'm sure there are many. Even though I’m 67, I still have my “issues” -- personal and political, foremost of which is worry about how people treat each other (and the other animals) and the planet. 

Still it seems I have hope.  Hope that I can become a vegan, hope that I can be more curious and brave than I am fearful, hope that we humans can treat each other and the animals so much better than we too often have. This is a lot of hope to hold in the face of a lot of odds. I feed myself inspiration as often as I can to nurture that hope (and its manifested results) along. Some of that inspiration comes from people I don't know.  Some of it comes from people I do.  Friends, who inspire me with their care and love for this world.

In the late 60s, in the Women’s Liberation Movement, we used to say that “the personal is political”.  What I’m talking about here is personal; it’s also political.  How we treat octopi, each other, and ourselves. How we might do it all creatively, respectfully, compassionately.   Every bit of all of it, down to the last earthworm. It would probably be a good idea to re-consider many of our long-held assumptions ~ about earthworms, octopi, all of the various "others" we fear. 
   

xo,

Gayle

ps. Though I would love to hear your comments, this comment section does not seem to be working right. Several people have told me they wrote something and posted it, then it never showed up.  So, if you would like to respond, for now, please do email me, or post to my FB page.  Thanks!  

As we are... on seeing ourselves & others

As I was straightening up my kitchen a few days ago and about to toss out the vase of dying Peonies, I decided to snap a few pictures first.  What delighted me, what felt like an insight, is that the closer I got, the more apparent the beauty.  It got me to thinking. 

As we (especially human females) age, we want the lighting to be softer, we want the gaze limited,  and perhaps from a distance.  We fear being seen for our physical (and moral?) “imperfections”.  We end up not being seen much at all as we walk down the street,  sit in a restaurant,  try to speak up in one venue or another.

As humans, we are lazy in our looking. We hold close our preconceptions of what is there, what we would see if we did look.  A more nuanced perception requires more energy, and time — to not see the pre-conceived, but rather to take in, consider, take full measure of what is before us.  If a smooth skin fits your idea of beauty,  you might think you know the story of the young woman too, the ingenue. But even with a young woman, you don’t necessarily know what lies below the surface.  A wrinkled, spotted, craggy skin holds physical and emotional information of decades. We easily see the beauty in variations of bark on an old tree, but resist transferring that appreciative eye to our own reflection or the appearance of other old ones.  

We think we don’t have time to look, or we’ll embarrass the person being seen.  We feel the need to flatter.  Oh, you don’t look (however many years old you are!)   You look great for (whatever age you are!)  And the person being appraised feels the thinness of the compliment. She has learned over time to feel it’s probably best not to be seen.  That she (or he) is not enough, physically, emotionally, intellectually.  So, we make ourselves smaller, hide ourselves, take up minimal space.  A few actually accept this “lot in life”.  Others feel sad, rejected, resentful, jealous of the young, blaming of society and advertising.  And there are some (the ones I  want to be) who thrive as they are, despite societal circumstances.

 We’re living longer than ever. We want to look and feel well.  We want to be seen for who we are, or who we take ourselves to be.  We don’t want to be ignored or patronized simply for being older. I don’t think it’s wrong to want to look well, whatever that means for each of us.  But there is so much energy, time, and money spent in this way.  And so often it doesn’t end up making us happy.

Helen Mirren is a great actress and a strong, confident person.  I want to be happy she got hired by L’Oreal.  I want to go “Yay! Us!”  But instead, I have mixed feelings about Ms. Mirren’s latest gig.


 

The cosmetic industry is obviously reaching out to the demographic of aging baby boomers who have money to spend and a desire to remain youthful. Is this a good thing?  I’m not against make-up.  I use skin creams myself.  I use a little blush, a little lip gloss because I consider myself "too pale”.  I "like" myself better when I don't look so pale.  But I hate that I feel society "likes" me better in make-up. It's not unusual for me to hold contradictory viewpoints about things in this world.  I'm ok with whatever anyone wants to do (or not do) vis a vis "skin care", make-up, etc.  I just wish the messages weren't so strong that we're only acceptable ( and then, barely) when we do what we can to hide our age.  

My aged Peonies did not in the least mind sitting for a portrait session.  They did not say, I look like shit today.  They did not ask me to "freshen" them with a spritz.  They were beautiful despite not  gussying up, not pretending to be “other” -- younger, Dahlia, or Orchid.   In that doorway of perception, I was able to walk through into the beauty, not of an aged Peony, though it was that,  but no, just into the beauty of the Peonies as they were, aged, near death, beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, here’s a poem by New Zealand poet, Fleur Adcock, perhaps another way to think about "doing old”.

Weathering

My face catches

the wind

from the snow line

and flushes with a flush

that will never wholly settle.

Well, that was a metropolitan vanity,

wanting to look young forever, to pass.

I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty

and only pretty enough to be seen

with a man who wanted to be seen

with a passable woman.

But now that I am in love

with a place that doesn’t care

how I look and if I am happy,

happy is how I look and that’s all.

My hair will grow grey in any case,

my nails chip and flake,

my waist thicken, and the years

work all their usual changes.

If my face is to be weather beaten as well,

it’s little enough lost

for a year among the lakes and vales

where simply to look out my window

at the high pass

makes me indifferent to mirrors

and to what my soul may wear

over its new complexion.

I would love to hear your comments, questions, feedback. Thanks!
xo,
Gayle

beginner’s mind, wise women — Michelle, Krista, and Maria, and one really smart guy named Neil

So sorry I've been "gone" for the last 3 weeks -- technical difficulties!!  Glad to be back.

Two weeks ago, I attended my nephew Harrison’s  graduation from NAU in Flagstaff.   Commencement ceremonies mark both endings and beginnings.  In Zen Buddhism, there is a phrase — Beginner’s Mind.  It means coming at life fresh in each moment, letting go of the past in order to move fully into this moment, with your curiosity about life still burning (whether you’re 23 or 67 or 95), open to new possibilities and new understandings.  You can do this as a graduating college student. You can also do it on any day of your life.  To let go; to begin anew. Beginner’s Mind is the opposite of cynical mind, been-there-done-that mind, know-it-all mind, fear-filled mind, stick-your-head-in-the-sand-like-an-ostrich mind.  Beginner’s Mind is Don’t Know mind, open-to-new-possibilities mind.  It’s not just for kids or college grads.

Here’s a couple of  great commencement speeches I heard this last week. You can listen as part of your own commencement ceremony today, celebrating your own letting go of the past/starting out.

First, Michelle Obama at Tuskegee University.  

And Neil DeGrasse Tyson at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This is an excerpt. In it he talks about Earth killing 97% of the species that ever existed. (Beginner’s Mind doesn’t mean romanticized mind.)

I love DeGrasse Tyson and totally trust his intelligence and still, this was hard to listen to, to take in.  We know the Earth also supports life.  It’s not personal when Earth kills her species, not even the human species.  She doesn’t take our bad behavior personally. Duh. She’s not a person.  Her shifting her tectonic plates around, causing earthquakes and tsunamis, and the work of viruses and bacteria are really just part of the mix of life.  It’s not personal.  Though some of our bad behaviors (as a species) can hurry “species-killing” along, so we definitely need to have a look at that too. 

The poets and philosophers don’t call this life a mystery for nothing.    I’ve been reading/listening to two awesome blogs that absolutely bring out the Beginner’s Mind in me.  In the realms of Science, Spirituality, the Arts, and Understanding the Human Mind, and how all these arenas of knowledge interconnect, there are a lot of awfully smart people around!

On my front burner these days are these two blogs! 

 Maria Popova’s “Brainpickings”   and Krista Tippet’s “On Being”.

Here Krista Tippet interviews Maria Popova on “On Being”. 

I am so grateful for all this wisdom arriving in my laptop every day! It's like a little commencement ceremony each morning!

xo,

Gayle