Epiphanies

This is a news segment from Fox News Toledo covering a Neo-Nazi rally. This is Floyd Cochran's response. Begin at 2:14. 

Carnism

 We like the foods we've learned we're supposed to like." (552)

(And I'm a rabbit, so I like carrots.)  

I was informed this weekend that there are three types of people in the world, those that are ignorant, those that know the truth but choose not to do anything about it, and those that know and act. I became acquainted with this life lesson when I made the mistake of saying, " You can just leave the meat out and give me more beans, Honey. I'm sort of working on being a vegetarian." At this point, my sister, who is one of those high moralists who has no problem calling me, in particular out, said, "Oh, you're kind of a vegetarian now, huh? Like I'm kind of pregnant?! That's not how it works, Mariah. You either are or your'e not. You can't label yourself "sort of" something like that whenever it's convenient."

"We can change our values to match our behaviors, we can change our behavior to match our values, or we can change perception of our behaviors so that they appear to match our values." (553)

My "'face on the plate' moment" in Trujillo, Honduras. (582)

At this point, I went into "defense mode." I cited how my heart is in the right place, and that I just slip and regress sometimes-- that I'm human. (Ironic, isn't it that we use that phrase to explain away shortcomings.) To this she told me that "willed ignorance" is no better than the real kind. It's not as if I have some particular commitment to meat, after all. It's not necessarily something I can't live without, but even I can find my excuses. I cited many of Masson's examples. For example, I'm an extremely non-confrontational person and "don't want to offend people" or because I can be easily swayed one way or the other to make decisions I'll later regret when other diners are "showing impatience."(583) None of these arguments really mollified her. After much fruitless debate, in which I countered by calling her an enabler because she still serves meat to her husband, we moved on to the more abstract idea of vegeatarianism as practice vs. philosophy. It is clear that my analytical, righteous sister clearly sees her vegetarianism as part of her purpose-driven life, which makes me wonder. Almost all of my friends who are vegetarians are notorious, even chronic, do-gooders. You name a cause to advocate-- and they're probably involved. Is there something to be said of people who question literally every choice they make in life? Is this level of purpose in everything they do something learned or something natural?

People make choices. Choices make people. ~Random guy who used to come and tell us not to do drugs in jr. high 

Certainly, vegetarians don't take the easy way out. They get scrutinized and judged by meat eating family members at every holiday. (*Gasp* You're not eating the turkey on Thanksgiving?! Sacrilege! Why don't you just slap our forebears, the pilgrims, in the face?) They are accused of poor health (and in my sister's case, also endangering the health of her baby.) They deal with people whining that their veggie burger doesn't taste like a real burger. (Heaven forbid!)

Tyson dinosaur chicken nuggets.
"What?!?!?! Chicken?!?!?! You mean I'm not eating real dinosaur!!! I' feel betrayed!"

Furthermore, they get to be bombarded by advertisements that make even me feel uncomfortable. Case in point, the new commercial for Burger King's Beef Steakhouse Burger:

Even I found this all a bit munch. It somehow fetishizes meat in a way that made my stomach queasy.

"What you know you can't explain, but you feel it." (575)

Then I am reminded of the last time meat made my stomach turn. It was in summer of 2010, in Peru.

Cuy in Cusco, Peru. To this day, I still don't find it appetizing.
It must be true."When it comes to animal foods,
all taste may be acquired taste." (552) . 

Feelings are your internal compass to tell you when we're doing something right--- or wrong, I suppose.

How we feel about an animal and how we treat it... has much less to do with what kind of animal it is than about what our perception of it is." (552) 

It's about our minds. then. Which brings me to this point:
Our position as superior beings is a fallacy.

 "A chain, by definition, doesn't have a top, and if it did, it would be inhabited by carnivores, not omnivores." (567) Or zombies.

And they, especially want your brains--- kind've like advertisers. Hold onto your brains people. You need those, because coming up next is... 

The Power of the Mind: A.K.A Death by "-ation"

Denial, Avoidance, Routinization, Justification, Objectification, Deindividualization, Dichotomization, Rationalization, and Dissociation

BE AWARE.

Yet somehow we've agreed to it. We've literally "bought" into it. "Inherent in violent ideologies is an implicit contract between producer and consumer to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil." (571)

If the best reason we can come up with is because it's the way things are, clearly something is amiss" (555)

We don't think about it because it is one of our basest human needs? Really? Aren't we trying to overcome our baseness-- to become self-actualized individuals? 

Think For Yourself, and Think About Yourself
A Case Study

When Masson was discussing how Aristotle had made an "us" and "them" of animals and slaves and justified making them property because "both animals and slaves lack logos, that is, speech, as opposed to noise,"(585) I thought of something I read about epiphanies in my ALD class this semester. 

Consider  people who are mute or deaf or that have Downs Syndrome. They do not communicate in a conventional way, either. Yet we do not kill them or eat them or try to subject them to our utility-- not nowadays anyway. 

For this class we read J Davis Smith's book "In Search of Better Angels:"

Floyd Cochran, the early 1990's, the head recruiter for the Aryan brotherhood was told that his child, who has a cleft palate, "He's a genetic defect. When we come to power, he'll have to be euthanized." (Hochschild, 1994, p34) Cochran walked away and never went back. 

Wolf Wolfensberger, too, described individuals with severe mental disabilities as possessing the following positive traits associated with their lack of communication: 

• a natural and positive spontaneity
• a tendency to respond to others generously and warmly 
• a tendency to respond honestly to others
• the capacity to call forth gentleness, patience, and tolerance from others
• a tendency to be trusting of others (pp 63-70)

This sounds a bit like animals, right? There is a correlation, and it can be applied across all individuals who we somehow can rationalize protecting and putting on our level. 

"To be fair, we must acknowledge that infanticide, murder, rape, and cannibalism are at least as old as meat eating, and are therefore arguably as "natural"---  and yet we don't invoke teh history of these acts as justification for them." (566)  

Didn't your Mama ever tell you that "just because you can do something doesn't make it right"... or  "just because it's legal, that doesn't make it moral?" 

So what now?

Now, I work towards bettering myself. I become more aware to what I wear, what I eat, and what I buy. 

It's time to change things.

And it's not just my lifestyle. It's time that, and I've said it before, I embrace the child in me. I mean, I remember being one of those kids that was so easy-going but asked an awful lot of questions, which earned me a reputation with some adults as being "willful."

"But why?
Because dah dah dah dah.
Yes, but that's just the way you and everybody else do it... that still doesn't answer why?
Well, [insert logical statement here, replete with scientific evidence]. 
Sure, but even if that's efficient and convenient, I still don't understand why we do it that way. Is it right because we do it? Or do we do it because it's right? I don't ever want to just do something for the mere fact that I was told to or that's what I saw others do. I want to do it because I believe in it. "

It's time to ask questions

. 

"If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you've always got." ~ W.L. Bateman

What does what I buy, what I wear, or what I eat say about me?

I'm not sure if it's true that when "we no longer feel entitled to kill and consume animals, our identity as human beings comes into question," but my habits certainly are changed.

It's time to figure out who I am--- to talk the talk and walk the walk.

Days since last act of carnism: 8 (and counting)

A Look at Bolivia: 

More coming soon!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/03/bolivia-bans-all-circus-a_n_250303.html

Feral Children

 Naturalism in Literature:

Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. It was depicted as a literary movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment. Naturalism is the outgrowth of literary realism, a prominent literary movement in mid-19th-century France and elsewhere. Naturalistic writers were influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.^[1] They believed that one's heredity and social environment determine one's character. Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism also attempts to determine "scientifically" the underlying forces (e.g. the environment or heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects. Naturalistic works often include uncouth or sordid subject matter; for example, Émile Zola's works had a frankness about sexuality along with a pervasive pessimism. Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, sex, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution, and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for being too blunt.

*according to wikipedia

Elizabeth Costello: Parte Deux

     Is poetry not meant to stir you? To make you feel an entire spectrum of emotions: the most elating of joys, the deepest anguish of despair, etc. I mean, that was the argument they were touting to me back in high school literature classes-- thus the weeks dedicated to poring over Yeats, Shelley, Byron, Bradstreet, and the like. We were all going to become one with the masters and learn to see the world through new senses. Right? In today's collections of Cooetzee, Hughes, and Kafka, for example, our senses are assaulted on several fronts. Jaguar is fraught with very masculine, (I would say), seething, bottled up, hot energy just boiling under the pages. The intro mentioned a primal, natural world unfettered by ‘industrial servitude.’ "Primitive" is just one word to describe it, but one cannot help but feel slightly uninhibited when reading it, themself--- and a little tight in the stomach as well.  It reminds me just how humble I must be, for no matter how hard I try to describe the emotions and feelings evoked in a poem, I always find myself searching for words. (It's all quite frustrating for an English Major to be evaded by the language she loves, but I find myself unable to really capture the depth of the connotations and craftsmanship of a poem concisely; thus, it's a little difficult for me to encapsulate in a short blog, with its powerful imagery and appeal to the senses: all that talk of blood, being enraged, "prison darkness," “his stride is wildernesses of freedom.” Sorry, guys, I have a hard time being that eloquent under a time constraint.)

William Blake can display it much better than I, in something most of you have probably been exposed to, The Tyger.

Then there is Coetzee in both Elizabeth Costello and Disgrace, who (particularly in Disgrace) seems to unpack and make various comments on human nature as much as animal nature. Yet, nothing about these situations are simple or pristine or uncomplicated (or even harmonious). We are constantly reminded of the difficult relationships, the human shortcomings, and just generally that life is a bit of a brutal struggle-- for everyone--- animal or human. These are by no means "happy endings." They are not really endings at all, honestly. They leave something to be said, something to be lived beyond when we leave these characters, and perhaps something to bother us as we go about our daily lives from thereon. 

Savage cartoon. Seriously, google "poems" and "death" and "nature"--- you will have reading material from not until eternity. But let us consider how relevant death, life, and just existence are to these readings. 

              Now,  I’m not trying to be macabre here, but think about death as it pertains to Red Peter for instance, or the thousands of dogs helped along in Disgrace. You get to a point when you do actually start wondering if "death would be better" as Elizabeth Costello had proposed in an earlier reading.  It’s all a bit disturbing, in some visceral way, as it should be. Art should make us uncomfortable (especially if it hits home to reality a little too closely). We should squirm a bit in our skin. No use being too comfortable. How many references to "enduring," rather than "living" life were made:

“Forgive me, Lucy… For being one of the two mortals assigned to usher you into the world and for not turning out to be a better guide.” (536) 

“I’m not sure. I don’t think we are ready to die, any of us, not without being escorted.” (539) 

“I do mind. I mind deeply. I wouldn’t want someone doing it for me who didn’t mind. Would you?” (539) 

 “[of her perhaps pregnancy] At least it won’t be forever, my dearest…at least you will be spared that.” (541)

 Death is Fine, but Dying by e.e. cummings. It is interesting to think that the great equalizers and only 2 absolutes about ourselves in this existence is that we are born and someday die. Huh... that's the same for animals, too, isn't it-- be they sentient beings or creatures without two brain cells to rub together? My point is that we should stop dividing ourselves along classifications and utilities and worth-- it's exhausting, and in the end, pointless. I can honestly say this. It's not too late for me to change my ways, (I'm working on my eating habits, promise.) but I can tell you that my kids probably just won't eat meat at home or at restaurants, and that's just the way it'll be, and they won't know any different. Yay! Hope for the future generations. But I've rambled.

The impressions left above, talking of birth and death is very interesting when juxtaposed with ideas that humans have a much too complicated/fearful look at death and our own self-importance, and how animals do not think of life or death like us at all-- that it is just a reality somehow embedded and accepted in them. 

But that seems to be part of the problem, doesn't it, how we overcomplicate the issue with all of these opposing sides-- each with their own ideas? We are not like Red Peter just increasing the knowledge--- we're fighting. We're displayed in all our vainglory and mean-spiritedness. 

“I don’t know what I want to do. I just don’t want to sit silent.” Cooetzee(104)

Now I know that this could be potentially confusing, because it is in trying to "overcome" the problem that we set ourselves against each other and end up fighting. To that, I say, adopt some of Red Peter's genius and learn to be 

   Now let's talk about human nature. What do we see from these writers? Humans are brutal, we're inherently a bit vindictive and all confrontational (taught from a young age to be fans of schaddenfreude).

“Are you not expecting too much of humankind when you ask us to live without species exploitation, without cruelty? Is it not more human to accept our own humanity – even if it means embracing the carnivorous Yahoo within ourselves – than to end up like Gulliver, pining for a state he can never attain, and for good reason: it is not in his nature, which is a human nature?” Elizabeth Costello(100-101)

It is only since victory became absolute that we have been able to afford to cultivate compassion. But our compassion is very thinly spread. Beneath it is a more primitive attitude.“(104) 

“It’s admirable… but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.” (534) 

“ They [pets] are part of the furniture, part of the alarm system. They do us the honour of treating us like gods, and we respond by treating them like things.” (536) 

 “Yes, we eat up a lot of animals in this country… It doesn’t seem to do us much good.” (538) 

Above, the video is slightly creepy, slightly off-putting, very British, and a real song. Apparently we were not any more open-minded about animals in the 1950's, when this song was performed for a BBC radioshow. Shocker!

Still, there are those in art and other expressive areas of thought who literally focus their entire life around trying to embody another, to envelop themselves in their thoughts and feelings and mannerisms--- lovely people called actors. Here are a few promotions for "Kafka's Monkey," based on Report, that were performed at the Vic Theatre. You have to wonder what kind of preparation this woman did for her part.

“As long as one tries to fit the three actors [gods, beasts, and men] into just two categories – which are the beasts, which are the men? – one can’t make sense of the fable… Is he a god or a beast? They feel it is the appropriate test. We, instinctively, don’t.” (102)

Is this what humans are like? Are we sympathetically imaginative? Are we not, as a whole? What IS our nature? 

“If I were asked what the general attitude is towards the animals we eat, I would say: contempt. We treat them badly because we despise them; we despise them because they don’t fight back.” (104)

 I can’t necessarily say that I agree with this. We are often more apathetic than violent, but that is what I would like to think at least, and it is a learned trait. 

“And of course children all over the world consort quite naturally with animals. They don’t see any dividing line. That is something they have to be taught, just as they have to be taught it is all right to kill and eat them.” (106)

I can't help but feel like we (all of us) are just looking for a little happiness-- so says "Happy Hoffman. "

Or perhaps we just need to learn to be poets, ourselves, and exercise senses of feeling that go beyond sight or hearing or taste or touch. 

Is that what we were supposed to get from this? I feel very idealistic thinking so.

“Without the greatest inner calm I would never have been able to get out.” (523) Red Peter speaks of the tranquility within that has saved him from going mad. He has found his "happy place."
“On the whole, at any rate, I have achieved what I wished to achieve. You shouldn’t say it wasn’t worth the effort. In any case, I don’t want any man’s judgment. I only want to expand knowledge.” (526)

“Think comforting thoughts, thing strong thoughts. They can smell what you are thinking.” (537)“How does she get it right, this communion with animals? … One has to be a certain kind of person, perhaps, with fewer complications.” (542) “When his daughter is moving off and says. “I agree, it is humiliating… Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start out at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity… like a dog.” (543)

I look up to those who can be positive in a somewhat brutal world, the idealists, the ones who have hope for the future:

I still believe, in spite of everything, people are truly good at heart.”  —Anne Frank

 “They are good people, in spite of everything.” ~Kafka, A Report to an Academy (523)

Elizabeth Costello

“To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.”

Auguste Rodin quotes "What is it like to be a bat?"  "I've been brain-fried, electrified Infected and injectified Vivosectified And fed pesticides My face is all cut up 'Cause my radar's all shut up!" ~ Batty in Fern Gully               Coetzee argues that we will never know what it it is like to be a bat, that in the end, no matter how hard we might try, we would merely be able to describe how one behaves.  I remember getting inspired by seeing an okapi or a kinkaju in the magazines and on television as a child and rushing for the encyclopedia or dictionary for more information, looking at the way things were defined, and yet I always left feeling so unsatisfied. I'll admit, I was one of those children who watched incredibly too much National Geographic as a child. I would have vivid, exhilarating, unexplainable dreams about "being" one animal or another, and I would try to explain them to my Mom, but all I could give her were images and feelings. I was somehow at a loss for words (Shocking for a precocious child like me). The "magic" of it was somehow gone when one tried to put words that just somehow did not hold any resonance. Then there were the times when I would proudly proclaim to my mom, "No, Mom! Scooter doesn't like it when you do that. If you're going to *blah blah blah*" I have no idea how I was so in tune with him, but it would seem that I could read him better than I could my brothers, and we fought far less.   What animals would say if they spoke our language... if they happened to all be British comics. "What is so special about the form of consciousness that we recognize....?" Elizabeth Costello(90)             In fact, much of the "magic" of my life was taken away as I got older, which is something I found an oddly appropriate question in Elizabeth Costello. Perhaps this is all attached to imagination (but that is debatable). Honestly, though, my childhood was filled with questioning what right we had over dominion in animals. I was willing to consider them my friend and equals with very little question asked, even facing off with my dad on the issue. It was not necessarily something I learned (or was taught) but rather instinctual. Perhaps children are just naturally more in touch with the things we would call our "hearts" and "souls" before they have been taught otherwise. For example, the aging Elizabeth says " I do not have the time any longer to say things I do not mean." (62) "No, I don't think so... It [her attitude towards animals] comes out of a desire to save my soul." (89) But "he [her son]does not want to hear his mother talking about death. Furthermore, he has a strong sense that her audience -- which consists, after all, mainly of young people--- wants death-talk even less." (63) Is it a question of age? Of, as Cosby put it-- trying to get into Heaven now? Old people... and why they are do-gooders. What is it about our age that dicatates our feelings on this issue. Isn't that interesting, though? "Whether or not we can prove that animals suffer as we do, or know that they are going to die, we might take... the very wise argument that we know that they are going to die, and that that makes it bad for us to kill them." (507) That makes me question my own childhood. I only ate beef because as a child,  my father forced me to recognize where my food came from, and to respect the one who gave it to me. He told me if I wanted to eat meat, I had a responsibility to know the process and know that I had earned it, and look into the eyes of the one who was going to nourish me and thank them. (Thus his idea that the only way he could repay that debt was to give his life to them--- and thus his workaholic tendencies. But that is beside the point.) Needless to say, it was actively traumatic, and I squeezed my eyes closed when the act actually happened, but it certainly did make a very personal, intimate relationship between myself and that cow (as a matter of fact, Seraphina was her name--- I had bottle-fed her about 8 years earlier as a calf.) And I still eat meat today, though, I am on the brink of nearly giving it up altogether, though I hardly think that is the issue here, as Elizabeth, herself so philosophically maneuvers around the question of meat consumption So perhaps vegetarianism and compassion for animals are not the same thing at all. (506)

“I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart.”

Pope John XXIII quotes

"The heart, says Costello, is "the seat of a faculty, sympathy, that allows us to share... the being of another."

But consider the characters of the novel. The young have such petty excuses as wanting to avoid conflict, or more specifically, "his wife's disparaging commentary." (61) or writing off those of an idealistic nature as "jejune and sentimental"--- this from the PhD in philosophy-- ironic! (61) It would seem I'm a "jejune and sentimental" fool who believes that animals communicate within their own format, and that we can coexist, if we (as humans) but learn to open the channel of communication (and even in some cases, trust our instinctual animal side), because let's face it--- animals are more about the survival and the love than dominance or exertion of their understanding of reason upon the world. Case in point---- bonobos--- one of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. Never before has the idea of "lover" vs. "fighter" been more relevant. 
Disclaimer: If you are in any way opposed to or insulted by sex (specifically of animals) DO NOT WATCH THIS CLIP!!!!
This is just one way that one species handles conflict resolution and communication within their community. Just food for thought. 

Bonne Saint-Valentin!

 

There's a special connection between a child and their dog. 

"Children are the only ones who can tell us apart. They know things: we like being in their company." (457)

          Ok, folks. I'm going to keep this as succinct as Mariah-ly possible. I'm really going to try.

        First of all, may I just admit that "Blue" pretty much encapsulated my childhood exposure to/dilemma in all things "dog"?  That "plague of feral housecats at the place, strayed outward from the city or dumped along the roads by the kind of people who do that sort of thing" (429) that he described--- that would be my home. People don't buy pets where I come from. We acquire via dump-offs. Moreover, much like Graves' Blue, my childhood pet, Scooter, along with the motley crew of mutts, shepherds, and hounds at my grandparents' home---"fond of the whole family and loved by all"-- together we  would go "swim at the creek or on horseback jaunts across the hills." (443) That was the reality of my formative years. We all terrorized the countryside as one big, happy family. In that way, I really connected not only with Blue, but with Graves' idea of what his upbringing was.

Brownie and Spot--- my Granny and Papa's "farm dogs" that I ran around with as a child. I will say this, though: they are part of why I am who I am today, a little freer and uninhibited than most, and for that I thank them. 

          Moreover, that means that I experienced those less-than-attractive qualities and some of the overly-"pragmatic" cruelty Graves hinted at, as well-- where "my residual kid sentimentality" was knocked hard by "living in the country where realism is forced upon you." (436) However, luckily, I never let it go. My dad used to tell me to not get too attached to any of our dogs, because you never knew when a crazy driver or a farmer was going to help them meet their end. Yet I still brought every stray home, and piled them into my bed at night. Even worse, I was traumatized by my godfather's stories about how his dad would drown kittens in the old cistern. Needless to say I hope that my kids are raised in a world in which they will not be exposed to such stories. Then again, I remember classmates having puppies at their house one week that we'd all go play with... and then inexplicably not having them the next. Those kids never had the heart to tell me what had actually happened.

"He took one pup after another, and right there, before his children and my poor distracted mother, put an end to their lives.... My mother never seemed the same after this." (481)

 This is what should happen to you if you try to drown cats. Just saying.

May those who love us love us,
And those who don't love us,
May God turn their hearts,
And if He doesn't turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles, (or make them fall in pools)
So we'll know them by their limping. (or bruises from aforementioned cement side of pool)
An Irish Blessing

Note: I do not condone this either. I'm not really "for" pain of anybody, but I think the kid's ok, so we'll call this a learning experience he is better off for having had. 

 

        The dogs mother "never seemed the same after this." The  point that I thought I should make that Graves had ended with is the idea of how human and animal lives dovetail. Do we experience life the same? And if not-- how is it different? Does it matter that it's different? He describes his various pets' smiles, their antics, their senses of humor and joy, their neuroses, but by no means does he put them on the same plane.

"And dogs are nothing but dogs and I know it better than most... Nor was there anything humanly unique about the loss, or about the emptiness that came in the searching's wake, which comes sooner or later to all people foolish enough to give an animal space in their lives. But if you are built to be such a fool, you are, and if the animal is to you what Blue was to me the space he leaves empty is big." (450)

What I am saying here is that animals are not humans. They are, well, each of their own nature and have different needs. Therefore, you should probably not do this to your pet:

 It's cute, yes, and probably not mentally demoralizing or morally wrong or anything-- I just think it might make one forget what an animal needs (which usually isn't clothes or people up in their face or someone touching them all the time). Some people do not care enough. Some people identify and care perhaps too much (or at least act upon that care in unhelpful ways.) Perhaps this article has swayed me: The Human Dog.
Or perhaps I'm just thinking about the fact that I'm having to retrain my roommates to accept that they should not, (for their own well-being and out of respect for my bunny) under any circumstances,taunt my rabbit when she is cornered in her cage. Just like you don't look a dog who might see you as a threat in the eye, you just respect that an animal has a body language all it's own. Anyways, I digress. The point is:

         Dogs are dogs. Cats are cats. Horses are horses. Do you see where I am going with this? Animals deserve to be treated not only as individuals for their various personalities and likes/dislikes, but as their breed, their species, and their particular locale would denote. Still, I'm not saying at all that animals are somehow incapable of feeling things in some way that we can identify with. I mean, in various selections here, told from the 1st person, we place ourselves in the mind of an animal narrator, probably with the intent to "enter the animal world, and... to see as animals see, and to feel as animals feel... "how to live in sympathy with the animal world; how to understand the languages of the creatures." (475) Still, maybe as a human and someone who has some kind of personal stance against making animals fit into our definitions, I have to point out that we really haven't quite been able to find a forum or medium to explain animal emotions other than in human descriptions and words of emotion. So where do I think animals fit in the grand scheme of things? My idea of the world looks a little something like these:

 Disney Animal Kingdom's Tree of Life, with over 325 animals intertwined and supporting each other (yes, I know that that is nowhere near a representation of life, but I'll get over it. The tree in my mind is much bigger and does.) to form the trunk.



 Why do I at once find myself cringing with real pain and compassion as if I feel the emotions of the animals in this story, but at the same time have that human voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I am not truly experiencing it as they do? Just as animals differ from us in ways as diverse as--- well, the flora and fauna--- they still experience many, many things that we do, living in the same world.





M.C. Escher and an interwoven existence of man and animal

From these readings, for example, animals feel hatred for what they call "murder" of their parents. They attempt to understand us and our language, for example when it was said of the dog Jim that a "hard word hurt him more than a blow" (491) (debatable, but since I met my brother's dog Bud, I have seen that this is the truth.)

 My brother's ex-girlfriend with their dog, Bud. This, I think, was after I told him that he was being mean and that he should go to "Mommy" because I didn't want to play with him anymore. He did, and as you can see, he was still pouting. That's 200 pounds of over-sensitivity right there.

Elephants mourn the loss of dead friends and family members. Animals of different species will take in the young of another in some inherent gesture of maternal instinct. Animals feel loneliness and abandonment members of their family leave (for example, in "Devotion). Story after story recounts how animals experience the world and rationalize what is going on around them.

"Devotion" by Susan Minot

"You left. One by one there were less of you. Less bicycles tipping off their stands. Less leftovers I would get... Less and less shouts and then fewer hands to pull back my ears and smooth at my head... Some of you changed tastes, slept with cats instead... You went, not I, with a suitcase shut... I could only stray so far. What I was attached to in you would not stretch or bend." (465)

 This is all I could think of when I read these lines, my baby Scooter.This face just breaks my heart. This was the last picture I took of him before I left for my post-grad trip. In fact, it is the last picture I have of him at all. He got sick while I was gone and passed 2 weeks after I got back.

But rather than just dwell on the negatives, it should be said that animals celebrate life, too.

"All of these things are life. All of these things are a gift from him to us, and from us back to him. Someone has to be alive to see all this... It's said that dogs can't see color, but we can feel it, like leaves, like heat, like cool drafts, and warm scents." (460)

This sounds a bit like King Lear again, doesn't it? This is such a motto for the class. "How do you see the world? I see it feelingly."

"I was made to experience this world. It was created for me--- I was meant to move across it. Not forever and ever, but for a few years. A few good sweet years; I will not be denied this life." (462)

"Buster's Visitation" by Stephen Dunn 

"But clarities come when the body goes. For whatever it's worth you should know-- you who think so much--- only what's been smelled or felt gets remembered." (471)

            Perhaps we should learn something from these stories. Perhaps we should remember to stop and experience life for what it is--- its smells, feelings, and ephemeralness. Kids certainly know how to do this. Maybe that's why I always felt more like a dog or a cheetah or a wild brumby (or fill in the blank here) when I was younger. I identified with that sentiment-- the one of just being alive. Maybe that's why I still want to be a kid.

 Still, I loved Saunder's following sentiment, as a human being, an aunt, and a possible teacher:

"We're thinking too much about educating the mind, and forgetting about the heart and soul... So I say now, let us try to slip in something between the geography, and history, and grammar that will go a little deeper, and touch them so much, that when they are grown up and go out in the world, they will carry with them lessons of love and good-will to men." (493)

"I have heard her say that if all the boys and girls in the world were to rise up and say that there should be no more cruelty to animals, they could put a stop to it." (479) 

Books like these can change the world: (Hoot, The Rats of Nimh stories, Charlotte's Web, anything by Brian Jacques)
You can bet that if I'm ever a teacher, they will be in the curriculum.

Alright, I've put you through enough. I leave you with these:

"People pull their punches, refer to dogs' love with words such as loyalty, obedience, or even submissiveness, but it is love." (463) I have to agree. The feeling of love goes beyond species. It is life at its highest form. Or so sayeth the dreamers of the world like me.

Chaucer (c. 1382/2383) 

from "The Parliament of Fowls", perhaps the 1st Valentines poem ever written (lines 183-203)

    A garden saw I, full of blossomy boughs
    Upon a river, in a green mead,
    There as sweetness evermore enough is,
    With flowers white, blue, yellow, and red,
    And cold well-streams, nothing dead,
    That swimming full of small fishes light,
    With fins red and scales silver bright.

    On every bough the birds heard I sing,
    With voice of angels in their harmony;
    Some busied themselves birds forth to bring;
    The little coneys to here play did hie.
    And further all about I could see
    The dread filled roe, the buck, the hart and hind,
    Squirrels, and beasts small of gentle kind.

    Of instruments of strings in accord
    Heard I so play a ravishing sweetness,
    That God, that maker is of all and lord,
    Had heard never better, as I guess.
    Therewith a wind, scarcely it might be less,
    Made in the leaves green a noise soft
    Accordant to the fowls' song aloft.

Have a wonderful, wonderful Valentine's Day, dearies. 

EL FIN