| “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.” | |
"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.” | |
"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.
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