Hawaiian breakfast buddies

I miss sharing fresh pineapple on the lanai every morning.

hello darkness my old friend

It's confession time. I'm ashamed, but I'm going to tell my story anyway. It has to do with writing. I promise.

This is Tiger. He's our shy kitty; seven-and-a-half years old and we got him when he was 6 months old, a rescue from the Humane Society. As a kitten, we were told, he was trapped under a porch--his mama and siblings let themselves be rescued, but he was the runt and too scared to come out. And the longer he stayed under the porch, the more the old lady who lived there tried to shoo him out with a broom. And so whether constitutionally or because of the trauma, he's always been a little skittish. We adopted him at the same time as Molly, who'd already adopted Tiger as her baby in the foster home they shared.

Molly

Andrew and I knew we'd be a good forever home for Tiger because we're so patient and quiet and give him room and lend him affection on his own terms. In the six years we've had him, he's been our darling. Our "special cat." He loves to get on the back of the couch when we're reading or watching a movie and rub up against the backs of our heads. When we pet him he gets overexcited and won't sit still. He'll stand up and tuck his head to the ground between his front paws, like he's going to do a somersault. He doesn't like to be held or sit in our laps, but he loves to get petted. As long as there's an "out." And we never force him past his comfort zone.

***

Tiger has a bad cold. Or at least what we think is a cold. For the last five days he's been sneezing a lot and his nose runs and all he does is sleep and--delightfully--want to cuddle. (He sat in my lap Saturday for a whole hour while I read.) But we're concerned. He seems to have a hard time breathing. He snorts and wheezes. He doesn't seem to be improving, and while we've seen him nibble once or twice at the dry food, Sunday night he wouldn't even accept the wet food I set in front of him. He'd sniff it then turn his back and walk away. When he sat down I'd place his bowl beneath him again. And once again he'd sniff and walk away. [Repeat several times.] I worried that I hadn't seen him eat all day and I remembered hearing something like if cats don't eat in a 24- or 48- or 36-hour time period, they can do serious damage to their kidneys and even die. That's what the voice in my head said. I'm not even sure it's true.

Then I got the bright idea to try to force-feed him. We have a dropper/syringe thing specifically for water and liquid medicine, so I thought I'd try to get nutrition in him that way. I got a little wet food in the dropper, sequestered the two of us in my study, and picked him up and laid him upside down on my lap. Since he'd been so lax lately I thought I could get away with this.

He was okay at first, but as soon as the dropper came near his mouth, he flailed. Kicked my hands with his back claws. Ripped at my shirt and my pants with his front claws. I let him go, then tried again. Worse. I tried again. This time I didn't let go when he flailed. I held him tighter, even though my mind was telling me--this is making it worse! I let him go. I petted him a little, but only with a show of tenderness. I don't normally lose my temper--I'm an even-keeled person--but I wanted to shout "I'm doing this for your own good!"

I picked him up again and tried to restrain him, overpower him, keep him from clawing me up so I could get a little food down his throat. In a flurry of failed attempts, his feral-fear, and my feral-frustration, I wanted to yell and grab him and make him let me feed him. At one point, after I let him go to prevent him from tearing my hands to shreds with his back claws, I had to stifle the urge to throw something at him. I'm glad I resisted, but it felt like I was one variable away from doing serious harm. What was the variable? Food? Sleep? Would I have acted out if I knew Andrew wasn't in the next room?

I wanted so desperately for him to eat--"please, don't waste away!"--that I took my frustration out on him . . . as backwards as that logic is for any situation. I know I can't expect him to understand. I know I can't hold him responsible for the scratches he gave me. I know that the first time force-feeding didn't work I should have quit. But I forged ahead anyway, and when I finally let him out of the room, he headed straight for the bed and didn't come out from under it for two hours.

And I had time to consider the dark possibilities inside me. I hated myself for those 15 minutes of futile anger. I'm an animal lover. A vegan. A proponent of treating all living things with care and compassion. Who was this person with the fury and the desire to bear down on another creature to impose my will?

***

I make this part of myself public because I just read in From Where You Dream that true artists are those who acknowledge this nasty, chaotic nature, who allow their unconscious to go to those dark places, those white-hot centers, searching for the truths that can only be reached by acknowledging the whole spectrum of human experience. Chapter one of the book starts with a quote by Akira Kurosawa: "To be an artist means never to avert your eyes." And chapter two starts with this quote: "All good novelists have bad memories" -Graham Greene. These statements describe the artist more than they prescribe what someone who wants to be an artist should try to manufacture. But there is an element of intention in this way of seeing.

"Artists are intensely aware of the chaos implied by the moment-to-moment sensual experience of human beings on this planet. But they also, paradoxically, have an intuition that behind the chaos there is meaning; behind the flux of moment-to-moment experience there is a deep and abiding order. ... If the artist sees the chaos of experience and feels order behind it and creates objects to express that order, surely that is reassuring, right? Well, at some point maybe. But what do you have to do first? And why is it so hard? This is why--and this is why virtually all inexperienced writers end up in their heads instead of the unconscious: because the unconscious is scary as hell. It is hell for many of us. ... But this is the tough part: for those two hours a day when you write, you cannot flinch. You have to go down into that deepest, darkest, most roiling, white-hot place...whatever scared the hell out of you down there--and there's plenty--you have to go in there...and you can't flinch, can't walk away." *

We all--for survival--have learned to stuff, ignore, avoid, those places in our psyche. We want to believe we are smarter than they. We are kinder than they. We are better than they. But if I as a writer hold myself at arm's length (or further) from those real or imagined people who most need to be shown, and shown within, the meaning and the order behind the chaos, then I cannot empathize with them. I cannot reach them. I cannot love them. I cannot write about them.

I see now that I could write about a character who goes all the way--who abuses an animal. And I hope I wouldn't lose this simmering empathy, that I wouldn't be the judgmental, moralistic author. That I could see the humanity even in the inhumane.

*from From Where You Dream, by Robert Olen Butler, pp. 11, 18.

Birthday!!

I spent yesterday wandering around the farm with a camera...

Then my parents took us out for dinner at Bombay Indian Grill...

S'wonderful

Wildlife

American Green Tree Frog: Hyla cinerea | Untamed Science

This is the second time one of these tiny green beauties has hung out on our patio door. Apparently they're getting ready for mating season around this time of year. Sorry for the fuzzy picture. It was dark out and I didn't want the flash to scare the frog away.

Kindesalter

Lately in my free time I've gotten a kick out of looking through all the old family photos I happen to have and scanning them into the computer. I'm a little obsessed with looking at myself and my family back in the 80s and early 90s. Some pictures are hilarious and I have to wonder what's going through my mind. Some pictures recall sweet memories.

This one I have no memory of, but I love our hats and I love the way my dad is looking at me as I am clearly enjoying that candy cane. This was Christmas of '85, at my aunt's house. I didn't get candy very often. I still have that hat in my closet. Dad looks like an early incarnation of a hipster.

Next up is a little number I like to call "Why the --- did you get rid of that guitar? I would have gotten better eventually." I remember improvising my own songs. I was a child hippie.

Last but not least, puppy love. Or puppy and kitten love. Whatever. First pets. Happy dog and Pippi Longstockings. Happy existed before I was born, and Pippi came into my life around the summer after second grade.

Happy

Pippi--I had always wanted to do this when I got a cat

Oh, childhood.

I love everything Madeleine L'Engle writes, but this is particularly apropos:

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. ... I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be. ... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide. ... Far too many people misunderstand what "putting away childish things" means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and "be" fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.

Eine kleine Nachtmusik:* 
Our next door neighbors have a girl, about age 4, who tags around after her brother all the time. Today he and some friends tossed wiffle balls off the side of their house, just outside our kitchen window. We were fixing dinner and laughed to hear them playing. "Do you think every generation of kids thinks they're the first to come up with that idea?" I asked Andrew. He had been one of those kids, too. We usually keep the kitchen blinds slanted closed but pulled up enough for the cats to sit in the windowsill and watch "kitty cable." Sally, our new foster cat, sneaked over to check out the ruckus, and the little girl saw her. She plopped down next to the window and smashed her nose right up against the screen. "Hi kitty cat," she said. She didn't see Andrew and I, even though we stood less than ten feet away frozen and silent, watching her talk to Sally. The girl pressed her whole mouth against the screen, "Hello, kitty cat." Soon Sally wandered off (ADD kitten) and Molly came to investigate. As soon as the little girl saw Molly (3x bigger than Sally), she jumped back, clambered up and ran off, apparently startled by the huge hairy beast that had appeared in place of the kitten. Too cute.

Sally

Molly--fluffy, not fat

*Apologies to Mozart. In fact, to all of you. Any German on this page has been figured out via Google Translator-bot.

Fostering

I've written about our foster cats before, but I've never explained why we started fostering, and I never got to write about Robin before he got adopted.

Last October, on our magnificent two-week tour of Utah's national parks, we stopped for a day in Kanab, UT, home of Best Friends Animal Society, where the show DogTown was filmed (it aired a couple seasons on the National Geographic channel).

We spent the afternoon hanging out with the cats, specifically the FIV and special health needs cats. The idea  is, all of these cats are adoptable--friendly, affectionate, will live long happy lives--but in many eyes, they're damaged goods, unlovable. So the sanctuary takes them in and provides them with a great environment until somebody comes along or visits the website and adopts them.

Sometimes all a cat needs is for someone to just sit with him or her, so on their terms they can approach you and feel safe enough to receive affection. Some of these cats aren't shy at all about giving and receiving affection.

Anyway, we loved the idea of saving perfectly adoptable pets from being euthanized in overcrowded shelters, so when we came home we hooked up with our local Humane Society as cat fosters. This means we choose to rescue up to two cats at a time from the county animal control shelter and keep them in our home. We get to know their personalities, introduce them to our three other cats, and eventually take them to PetSmart on Sundays for adoption days.

First we fostered Art/Dodge. Rather than moving to the sanctuary in Florida as I wrote earlier, he found employment as a barn cat for a woman who works with the local Humane Society. He's got a nice cushy barn, ever-plenty food, and lots of nooks and crannies to play in.

Next we got Carson. He's a big hunk o' love if I ever met one. We have conversations about everything from his litterbox to what I should wear that day, and he loves to sit at my feet or be cuddled. His favorite pastime is to lick our cat Dawson's ears. We say they have a bromance going on; and on top of that, I'm a little smitten with him. He's going to be hard to give up.

Then we got Robin. He chirps when he purrs and loves to play with anything that moves, including, when we introduced him to the other cats, Carson. At first he was shy with Carson, but before long he was treating him like a jungle gym. He weighs probably a third of what Carson weighs, but when he pounced on Carson, the big teddy bear would yowl and run off as fast as he could. On my very first day taking any of our cats to PetSmart, within a half-hour of arriving and getting Robin in his display crate, a young couple came in looking for a playmate for their young female cat. Someone pointed them to Robin, and they fell in love. It was hard to see him go, and I had been dreading that moment. On the way to PetSmart, I had called Andrew, crying, wondering if he'd be OK not getting to say goodbye if Robin got adopted. Andrew's not as dramatic as I am--he's fine. But as for me, once I met the couple and saw how they handled him, I knew Robin had found a good home.

To replace Robin, a week ago we rescued Sally, a tiny one-year-old girl who mixes up her play and her affection. She loves to be loved on, but all of a sudden she'll flop on her side and try to wrestle your hand. We're teaching her appropriate boundaries. Play with toys, Sally. Hands are not toys. But her face just screams cuteness, and she loves to "make biscuits" with her paws. I'm sure she'll get adopted fast, too.

What I learned about "evangelism" when I stopped eating animals

Last July, I stopped eating animal meat. About a month and a half ago, I started to phase out of my diet anything that comes from an animal. I don't advertise. I try not to label myself or accept labels. At the office when someone raves about the brownies someone brought in, I don't say, "Well, I can't eat them. I'm vegan." At church potlucks, when someone says, "Mmmm, these mini-wieners are delicious!" I don't reply with, "Gross, do you realize what you're eating?" I usually smile and say something like, "They look really good!" Because, in reality, the brownies and the wieners probably are very tasty.

Unless someone passes me a plate and I have to say "no thank you," and then again, more emphatically, "No, really. Thank you, but I'll pass," and then they ask "Why?", I don't bring it up. Why? Because going around telling Southerners I don't eat animals usually makes them feel uncomfortable. To be fair, not everybody feels uncomfortable, just more people than would if I were in Massachusetts or Oregon, say. It's just not as receptive an audience here.

From The Vegan Traveler

But if they ask, I tell them. I start with my own journey. "I want to live consistently with my conscience, to be as compassionate to all creation as I can be. I felt like in our culture we arbitrarily chose some animals like cats and dogs to make parts of our families and some animals like chickens and pigs to treat as a product." If they ask about milk and eggs, I share some of what I know about how they treat the cows and chickens and how they end up when they stop producing their cash crop. 

I tell them my reasons are not only for animal welfare, but also for our health. I don't feel confident in the health value of eggs from unhealthy chickens that don't get any exercise and get pooped on from the hens in cages above them. It's also not good for the environment to have heaps of methane-producing manure from the dairy farms. I know people need to make a living, and I know there are farmers who are just doing the best they can to feed their families. But in my opinion, industrialized animal farming seems overwhelmingly unhealthy--in other words, any good that an individual farmer tries to do is offset by the farmers who go with the status quo. And as a consumer, I can never tell who's being honest, healthy, humane, and who's posing, or who's doing it the way they've just always done it. So it's easier not to buy into the industry at all.

Even if I know the animal was raised in a healthy way, I've decided "If I wouldn't kill this animal for food unless (maybe) I was absolutely starving and needed it to survive, I won't make someone else do the dirty deed for me." The only thing I would consent to eat is my parents' chickens' eggs. They live out their full days, they are not starved and forced into molting to produce more eggs, they are not kept awake with artificial lighting to produce more eggs, they are not killed when they stop laying as many eggs. They wander through the yard, scratching in the dirt, dust-bathing, eating insects, playing (yes, chickens play!), and looking forward to when my dad comes out with the scrap pail from the kitchen. But alas, my parents live states away from me.

From Unity College Maine

So back to my point: When people ask, I tell them my story. I have realized that it doesn't matter how much a person knows or doesn't know about the process, or how compassionate they are at heart; each person must come to a realization for themselves. Obviously, I wish everybody would choose not to eat animal products. But that's not anything I can convince anyone to do. 

From Animal Blawg

I knew "the facts" for years and I have always been a tender-hearted animal lover (who even at a not-so-young age cried when one of my parents accidentally ran over a squirrel). Yet I didn't change until some invisible spark ignited the passion in me to go all the way in following my conscience, to stop "not thinking about" the whole journey an animal with intelligence and personality was forced to take to end up on my plate. I had to come to that on my own. I'm sure if someone had tried to argue me into it, I would have resisted and it might have taken me longer to get here, if at all.

Usually, when they ask and I share my story in this way, people are gracious about my choice not to eat meat. This will not always be the case.

Take a recent Facebook "conversation." A sweet friend of mine, who doesn't know (I don't think) that I'm vegan, joked, "If we're not supposed to eat animals, how come they're made out of meat?" I laughed. I commented. "I'm made out of meat, too, and yet you wouldn't eat me... Or would you?" I may have even thrown in one of those sideways-wink emoticons. She responded, "not unless I was starving to death... then I might consider it. lol!!" I was enjoying our half-serious but respectful light-hearted banter.

But a mutual acquaintance took the whole meat-eating agenda and ran with it. He practically had a cow (pun intended) that I said what I said. "Oh Sarah, PLEASE! Really?" He posted other jokes about eating animals. "There is a place for all of God's animals. On my plate right next to the potatoes." "I'm a member of PETA--people for the eating of tasty animals." A few more people chimed in with lols and other meat-jokes.

I can take a joke, like my friend's about animals being made out of meat. I know her, and she knows me, and we respect each other. But that someone else would respond with mockery at the mere hint that I may choose not to eat meat--I felt like I was doing someone grievous wrong by not taking advantage of all the tasty critters out there. 

I chose not to respond to the guy at all. I could have gone all pedantic, or worse, polemical, and tried to use Facebook as a platform to "educate" (or "witness to") people on why eating meat is not necessarily a given in our diets and to consider the harm it does. That was certainly my temptation (and maybe I'm using this blog as the outlet). I wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to raise awareness of the benefits of going meat-free. The good news of vegetarianism! But it wouldn't have been received. Not by someone who has clear and strong opinions on the matter, from an acquaintance with whom he has little background on which to base any respect. 

What it comes down to--in any kind of "evangelism" whether it's about religion, politics, sports, or TV shows--is not to respond with incredulity at someone else's opinions: "Really? I can't believe you think that!" Or, "If people only knew..." (implying people are dumb). Don't flaunt your convictions in other people's faces like a martyr, "I can't eat that cake. I'm vegan." 

But rather lay low, go with the flow, act (gasp!) normal, and if people ask, tell your own story in ways that won't make your listeners feel like you think you're better than them or know more. Frame things positively, in terms of your lightbulb moments, your revelations, your hope that through these you are becoming a better you.

The New Nature Writing - Lydia Peelle

The following is an interview with Lydia Peelle which I found on the Evanston (Illinois) Public Library blog from a year ago January. I recently read her collection of short stories, Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, which came out from Harper Perennial in 2009, as part of my school work for my essay on nature in fiction. From the very first story, I fell in love with her writing, with her love for her characters and the land they live in, for the animals they share it with. I kept turning to Andrew (I was reading on a long road trip), and saying "This is how I want to write someday." 

I will include excerpts of the interview here. Please visit the EPL blog site for the whole interview. She's my writing soul sister!

Many of your stories seem to deal (if not always explicitly) with history. It seems like in this country we’re constantly in the process of erasing our past. One of the things that struck me so deeply in your stories was this underlying sense of the past continually being paved over with strip malls and Wal-marts. What we end up with is a strange sort of limbo where we have few real reminders of our past, yet we live every day with the legacy of the past. Why do you think we’re so willing and able in this country to eliminate our past? Do you find this to be the case more or less in the South than in New England or other parts of the country?

I was in Ireland once and the old man I was staying with really enjoyed making the point that there was an outhouse on his property that was older than my country.  It is amazing, when you think about it, how young our country actually is – and yes, how much we’ve managed to plunder and pave over and cut down in that short amount of time, but also how recent our past is.  And what a great opportunity that gives us to connect to it. 

Another powerful aspect of your stories deals with people and our growing disconnect from nature and land, soil and animals. ... These issues seem more relevant today than ever. We, as a collective people, have very little connection to the earth, very little in the way of skills or knowledge of how to grow our own food and survive or even to step out into nature and feel at home. What do you think of our current relationship in this country to the natural world?

In two words, not good. We seem to think we exist physically separate of it, forgetting where the basic elements of our lives – food, water, air – come from. We also seem to think we can exist morally and spiritually separate from it, and in a deep way, I think we as a culture are suffering from a spiritual malaise caused by our disconnection from place and land.

For me, the natural world is where I go to seek mystery. I believe that we, as human beings, need mystery in our lives. Because only in mystery can we couch hope. And hope is essential to our survival as individuals, and as a species, and as a world. We need the unknowable places, and yes – the dangerous places – both physical and spiritual.

But modern-day life really beats the mystery out of things. You’ve got to search that much harder for it and find it any way you can – for me that’s out in the woods – or even just in a scrubby open lot behind the grocery store where I can watch a possum lumber up a tree and disappear in a hole. I think we’ve all got to search it out: whether in the woods, or the mountains, or in church, in temple, in private meditation – anywhere you can get in touch with that sense of the unknowable, and be a part of something much bigger than your own life.

Several of the stories in your book feature animals prominently, and in most of these cases the emotional power of the story is derived from a human-animal interaction. Most of the animals featured in your stories are used by humans (as farm machinery, as scientific research tool, as food source, as art, as plaything) to one end or the other, yet somehow transcend this role and end up emotionally, or even spiritually moving the humans who come in contact with them incredibly deeply. What do you think about how our society treats and interacts with animals? Why is it that our bonds with our animals are often deeper than our bonds with other human beings?

I am very interested in our relationship with animals, and, for that reason, I am drawn to the culture of agriculture, where animals are not only companions but partners in work and sources of food. I am interested in the culture (mostly disappearing in this country) where that husbandry is a noble and whole enterprise, rather than the (unsustainable and inhumane) current practice of factory farming and monoculture.

I agree that relationships with animals can be so much purer than the relationships we have with one another. Our domestic animals put ultimate trust in us (they have no choice), so there is great potential there for ultimate betrayal – as Charlie betrays the crippled kid in “Kidding Season.” For me, that signifies all the weight and responsibility of any human relationship. How we relate (or don’t relate) to animals can represent a lot about our failure to communicate well other humans.

I think about the time, ages ago – before agriculture and domestication – that we were much more in tune with all the other living beings we share the earth with. A time when we saw ourselves as part of that larger family, and therefore treated the land, other creatures, and each other with more respect. If we can do whatever we can to get back in touch with the non-human – with the consciousness that surrounds us, right down to the squirrel on the sidewalk – I believe it will make us better humans. It will be a step towards healing the planet we’ve so far ravaged. I also believe it will make us more compassionate about all the human suffering around us. Seeing things as a whole. Not to say we should go out and try to talk to trees. But that we should try to be still, and aware, and in touch with all that surrounds us. It’s a hard thing to do, in this day and age, but ultimately, we’ve got to fundamentally change our view of our place here on earth, get rid of this idea of utter entitlement. Becoming more compassionate towards the fellows we share it with is the first step. [emphasis mine]