Dog Rescue—The Dark Side
In a rational world, Emily and I would’ve been a match made right up there with raspberries and cream. Instead we both got sucked into the tornado and it was a long, surreal ride till we touched down back in Kansas. Or thereabouts.
After months of trolling dog rescue websites, I spot Emily on one and submit an application. A few days later I get an e-mail from Carla, the woman who runs the rescue, telling me to call Emily’s foster family and set up a meeting. Carla’s e-mail makes me uneasy. It reads like gibberish—unfinished sentences, misspellings. Like it was written, and forgive me if I’m wrong, by somebody who didn’t take her meds.
Oh well. We’ve adopted rescue dogs for the past thirty years and never had a problem. We’ll adopt Emily and move on. What’s the worst that can happen anyway?
Let me tell you about the dog who scooped up my heart and trotted off with it. Emily is a young Lab-Sharpei mix. Looks like a Black Lab except for the smallish floppy ears. Got a white star on her chest and a sprinkle of white on her toes and chin. A shelter picked her up on the street with a couple of puppies. Her past is unknown. You can only guess—hadn’t been spayed, doesn’t know basic commands and—the heartbreaker—doesn’t know how to play with toys.
She’s got an abundance of puppy energy, but there’s also a serene elegance about her. The combination is irresistible. Emily’s a tad wary at our first meeting, but after checking me out she warms up. Later, while I’m chatting with Jane, her foster mom, she’s snoozing on my feet.
My husband Max meets her a few days later. I send Carla an e-mail saying we’d love to adopt Emily. The e-mail we get back makes the previous one look like Shakespeare. From what we can glean she seems to be stalling. Bizarre. I thought she wanted to find a good home for Emily. Well she’s found one, damn it. I go from being merely put off by Carla to being ticked off.
Clearly, Jane and her partner have been providing a positive environment for Emily. They’re doing everything they can to facilitate the adoption. I tell Jane I’m feeling nervous about Carla. She confides that she’s had her own disturbing encounters with her. Suddenly, our relationship shifts from foster mom and potential adopter to allies against some weird gnarly antagonist.
Emily has an infected tooth. It looks awful. Jane says she thinks Emily broke it trying to chew her way out of a crate. Carla’s big on crates. Emily isn’t. Carla tells us that her vet, the one who had spayed Emily to get her ready for adoption, extracted the tooth.
??#%@+??&/%$???
I’m not a veterinarian but even an aging rhino could see that the tooth hasn’t been extracted. Jane can see it. Jane’s own vet can see it, the one who removed Emily’s spay stitches a few days ago. So while Carla’s jerking us around, Emily’s medical needs get stuck on hold.
Jane and I decide to wait a few days before trying to figure out what to do next. Carla may be a dicey character and we don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize the adoption. Then Jane gets an e-mail from Carla. Now she says the tooth hasn’t been extracted after all—she’ll have her vet take care of it.
What’s that line from The Wizard of Oz? “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” But one thing is clear. I don’t trust Carla or her shady vet. I don’t want him touching Emily. Why hasn’t the guy been de-frocked or whatever it is they do to hack vets? Carla lies. What else is she capable of? Now we’re really scared for Emily’s safety.
I e-mail Carla again, say that Max and I are completely committed to adopting Emily but we’re worried about her tooth. Would she mind if we have our vet, Dr. Brown, examine Emily at our own expense? Dr. Brown has been treating our dogs for over ten years and we have absolute trust in her.
Carla says she doesn’t want Dr. Brown to examine Emily. My concern for Emily soars. I’m totally creeped out by Carla. Is she unscrupulous and irrational? Does a bear poop in the woods? And isn’t “poop” the operative word?
Emily’s in pain. I decide to go ahead and have Dr. Brown check her anyway. I don’t bother to tell Carla. I make an appointment and ask Jane to bring Emily to Dr. Brown’s clinic. We tell Dr. Brown the whole story. She’s says she’s run into characters like Carla more than a few times. They can do bad things. She agrees the tooth needs to be extracted.
It’s crazy to wait around for Carla. In three seconds I to decide to ask Dr. Brown if she’ll do the surgery. She agrees. We all realize at this moment that I’m crossing a line. I don’t have any legal rights to Emily. And Dr. Brown’s crossing a line. I’m grateful beyond words. Jane’s in, too.
The surgery is scheduled for next week. We all sense Carla is somebody you don’t want to cross. We even consider boarding Emily at Dr. Brown’s until the surgery to make certain she’s kept out of harm’s way. But, hey, isn’t that more paranoid than a couple of reasonably sane people need to be? We decide against it.
Jane and I write an e-mail to Carla telling her what we’re going to do. Max and I will cover all Emily’s medical costs and will pay her $250 fee in full. (We don’t say, “Even though your inflated fee presumably includes providing a ‘medically sound’ dog.”) Then something like thank you for your dedication to the dogs blah blah blah. Please don’t contact us again, best wishes.
The night before Emily’s surgery, Jane calls us. Her voice is almost unintelligible. Carla and a sheriff pal showed up at their house and seized Emily. The sheriff was a bully, just like Carla. They felt blindsided and violated.
I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. My shock, rage, grief, and fear for Emily shoot off the charts.
Oh I get it. Welcome to dog rescue—The Dark Side.
If Carla cared a rat’s tail about Emily she could at least have waited till after the surgery. I can’t stop crying. I drink a glass of wine. Then a second glass. I look out the window. A pale half moon floats amid a sea of stars. Shiloh, our Golden Retriever, ambles over to me. He’s a rescue, too. He leans against my legs. I hug him hard and long. His stillness is extraordinary.
I try not to think about Emily with Carla, stuck into a crate in the back of some grimy truck, trying desperately to chew her way out.
I can’t think of anything else.
All I want to do is hold Emily. Take her someplace lovely and green where she can bop till she drops. Teach her silly tricks. Teach her how to play. Dogs are the ones who usually remind us to play. It’s one of their gifts. I want her to see that life is good, that not all the world is a dark scary place. Where’s that Yellow Brick Road when you really need it?
Next day Jane and I turn into a pair of manic researchers. We hit the Internet, send e-mails, make phone calls. We contact Animal Rights organizations, try to find a local animal rights attorney. Maybe it’s not in the cards for Max and me to adopt Emily, but we’ll do whatever we can to make her safe.
The consensus is that our only recourse is the humane society or law enforcement. After Carla’s sheriff stunt, law enforcement is a wash. And Jane thinks Carla may have some kind of connection to the local humane department, but she files a complaint anyway. Can they check up on her? The supervisor acknowledges that they’ve had run-ins with her for years, he’ll do what he can. We’re heartened. Carla’s shrewd and devious, but we’re on a mission—warriors for justice, beauty, and all things dog.
A few days later we learn that the humane society has done what they call a “Welfare Check.” Without even bothering to investigate Carla in person, they scanned some paperwork on her and concluded “All is well.”
And the ruby shoes. Where are the ruby shoes?
I call a friend for guidance. She's had decades of experience doing animal rescue. She says I have to do the unthinkable. I have to let go. I have to let go of even the hope of keeping Emily safe. She says people like Carla are treacherous—nobody wins against them. And once they target you the harassment might never stop.
How do I let go of Emily?
I hug Shiloh again and again. I’ve got to stay positive or this anger will eat me up. Tagore wrote, “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while it’s still dark.” A mantra my mind can latch onto every time it starts veering off into that swamp of fear and rage.
I miss Emily. I’ll probably never see her again. Never see that soulful little being who appeared in my life for such a short time and then was violently yanked out of it. “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while it’s still dark.”
Next day Jane and I talk options. We can’t let go. Not yet. What if we could find someone else to adopt Emily? Someone with no connection to any of us so Carla and her sheriff crony wouldn’t have any excuse to harass them. Or maybe someone else could adopt her on paper then down the line turn her over to Max and me. Okay, I’m a dreamer.
“Somewhere over the rainbow…troubles melt like lemon drops….”
We check Carla’s website. She put Emily back up for adoption. Seeing her picture makes me melt—and seethe again. There’s got to be a way to get Emily away from Carla. And soon. Please God, Buddha, Wakan Tanka, the Unified Field Theory….
Just in time an angel appears. Jane called her friend Sally who runs a ranch nearby. Sally’s outraged by the story and agrees to try to adopt Emily. She’s already got more animals than she can handle and won’t be able to keep her for long, but it can buy us some time.
Sally immediately writes Carla asking to adopt Emily. She understands completely—the urgency, the kind of person we’re dealing with. Her letter is a work of art. Within days Carla agrees to let Sally adopt Emily.
I write Sally a check to cover Carla’s absurd fee (while holding my nose) and her son goes to pick up Emily. He’s appalled by what he sees. Carla’s place is filthy, dogs are in tiny cages, Carla looks strung out on who knows what. And Emily’s collar was fastened outrageously tight.
But she’s home safe with Sally! Amazing. I can breathe again. Maybe once we recover from this saga we might be able to do something to shut down Carla’s sleazy operation before she does more damage to the dogs. At best she’s a case of good intentions gone terribly terribly bad. Maybe drugs blew some of her circuits. But people make choices. All that counts now is that Emily’s safe.
Last week she had the surgery to remove her bad tooth—like two months overdue. Thank you doesn’t begin to say it. Max and I had to jump through a few more technical hoops, but Sally legally transferred Emily over to us. Not even the Pope can take her away now. Emily belongs to us. And we belong to her.
Somewhere over the rainbow? Shiloh and Emily are asleep at my feet—that somewhere is right here.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Friday, January 25, 2008
Anywhere But Here
Anywhere But Here
I met Houdini. Right on the corner of DeLaVina and Mission Street on a hot afternoon. There was a haunting loneliness about him, as I’d always imagined. He’d escaped again, only he appeared more bewildered than triumphant.
He resembled a small Doberman Pinscher. Burnt sienna, lean and lithe. I’m driving home when I spot him in the middle of the street, cars whizzing all around. I pull over but there’s a ton of traffic and I have to wait before I can open my door. When I reach out to grab him, he doesn’t resist. The blue metal tag on his collar has an ID number, but no name.
I lead Houdini to the back of my station wagon. He doesn’t want to go in. Odd, I think. He looks so agile. Maybe this is one of those artist’s contradictions, like Hemingway’s macho image and his reputed sexual ambivalence. The dog seems docile, but I hesitate to pick him up—something about that predatory Doberman aura, with the physical power to back it up. I do it anyway.
In the rearview mirror I see him squirming around like a worm on a hook. “Did you catch the new Ralph Fiennes movie? Sexy guy, huh?” I ask, trying to pacify him. In a flash, he scrambles from the cargo area into the back seat then over and into the passenger seat. Gangly, all legs. Bet he could do zero to sixty in five seconds.
The passenger seat is piled with so much stuff from errands I’d been running that Houdini can’t find a place to sit down. He ambles over the emergency brake onto my lap. I take one hand off the wheel and sort of shove him back into the passenger seat, trying to communicate suggestion rather than control. This is a Doberman.
I stroke him. He’s turning in circles on the seat, searching for a place to settle in. What the hey—I dump the mountain of junk that’s on the passenger seat onto the floor. Everything that can possibly spill out of the bags does—fruits and veggies, lightbulbs, a package of fresh cod fillet—but the seat is now a reasonably civilized place to hang.
Instead of settling in, Houdini jumps down on top of the stuff I just dumped onto the floor to make room for him. I’m ticked off but pat the seat beside me, inviting him back up. A grape oozes between his toes. Juice from the cod trickles onto a magazine. He decides it’s too cramped on the floor amidst the parsley and shampoo after all. Maybe even undignified. He clambers back up and sits down on the seat beside me. Seconds later, he springs up. Now he’s down again. And he’s up. I feel like I’m sitting next to some guy who just did a line of cocaine.
Only ten minutes ago my life had at least the illusion of calm, I’m thinking between long, deep breaths. I keep driving, stroking Houdini, trying to reassure both of us now that life really isn’t the lunatic, whirligig ride it seems to be most of the time. It doesn’t help that the drive home is along winding foothill roads so that Houdini, whose slender build verges on the ethereal, keeps losing his balance, tumbles, rights himself, tumbles again. He’s doing all the moving around and I’m exhausted.
When we arrive home, my own two dogs run out to meet us. Not wanting to take a chance of a dogfight, I stick Houdini in the dog run and ask my husband to take our dogs into the house. The run is a spacious grassy area with trees and water, completely ringed with a five-foot chain-link fence. What’s not to like?
I phone the Animal Shelter and they trace Houdini’s tag number. “The dog was adopted a few days ago by a Mr. Ventano,” a woman tells me. “He doesn’t have much money, drives a school bus, lives in a trailer park.” She gives me his work number. I’m about to dial when I glance out the window. Houdini has materialized in the unfenced part of the yard. He’s strolling around the lawn, looking guileless. I dash outside. Again, he doesn’t try to run away. I don’t understand his m.o. He escapes, doesn’t evade capture, escapes, then doesn’t evade capture. Is this a game? A compulsion? Mental pathology?
My husband takes Houdini in the house while I call the school bus company. They radio Mr. Ventano who’s out on his bus run, tell me he’ll be over in half an hour. Dying of curiosity, I check the dog run to see if Houdini jumped over the fence or dug out. There’s an awesome hole by the gate he must have dug in seconds.
I go back in the house. My husband says Houdini started whimpering as soon as I left the room. Weird. He bonds fast, then bails. Fear of intimacy? Shameless manipulation? What, I wonder, makes him so obsessed with freedom one minute, then indifferent to it the next? There’s a bedeviled energy about him, as though he was wired the minute he shot out of the womb. I have the feeling that if he were left alone in a room he couldn’t escape from he’d implode.
Houdini crawls into my lap, looks like he’s going to kick back, then hops off and sucks up to my husband. I like him, but he unnerves me. He relates, but no matter how affectionate or needy he seems, it’s like there’s an invisible bubble around him. His isolation makes me sad.
Half an hour later, Mr. Ventano drives up in an ancient Chevy. He’s about 70, very Old World Italian, has slick black hair, speaks fast with a heavy accent. He’s still wearing his bus driver’s cap. I walk down the path to meet him. He shows me the dog halter that he repaired with candle wax after Houdini chewed through it in four places to escape. “I tied him up because he chewed my chairs, my cassette tapes, my portable radio,” Mr. Ventano says without a trace of anger. He named the dog Rusty, refers to him now, tenderly, as Rascal.
As we walk up to the house, Mr. Ventano hands me a brown paper bag. It’s a bottle of fine Italian wine. I’m so touched I can hardly speak. I know I can’t refuse his gift. Before we’re halfway to the house I’ve learned that Mr. Ventano is a widower—he still wears his wedding band— and that he got Rusty because he was lonely. Eyes moist, in a whoosh he tells me about his late Springer Spaniel who he had to put to sleep after 15 years and even though it was on the advice of others he still feels guilty and he used to take the dog trout fishing with him and his grandson. By the last stair I’m in love with Mr. Ventano.
He sees Houdini, scoops him up in his arms, scratches the dog’s ear, then gently lowers him to the ground. In Italian-crusted English, Mr. Ventano repeats to my husband everything he told me. I assure him that if he thinks he can’t manage the dog, the Shelter will take him back and find another home for him. “Our local Pound is a no-kill Shelter,” I say. “Sometimes a person and a dog just don’t fit. If this one isn’t right for you, I’m sure there’s one out there who is.”
Mr. Ventano hooks the dog up to his leash and we walk back to his car. “I had to put my Springer Spaniel to sleep who I had for 15 years and I was lonely and that’s why I adopted Rusty,” he reminds me. “God bless you,” he says, closing the door. As they drive off, I watch the dog turning his familiar, edgy circles on the seat, still looking for that consummate destination. The one that’s always somewhere else.
God bless you, Mr. Ventano. And, Houdini, wherever you are.
©Lucy Aron, The Santa Barbara Independent 1999
I met Houdini. Right on the corner of DeLaVina and Mission Street on a hot afternoon. There was a haunting loneliness about him, as I’d always imagined. He’d escaped again, only he appeared more bewildered than triumphant.
He resembled a small Doberman Pinscher. Burnt sienna, lean and lithe. I’m driving home when I spot him in the middle of the street, cars whizzing all around. I pull over but there’s a ton of traffic and I have to wait before I can open my door. When I reach out to grab him, he doesn’t resist. The blue metal tag on his collar has an ID number, but no name.
I lead Houdini to the back of my station wagon. He doesn’t want to go in. Odd, I think. He looks so agile. Maybe this is one of those artist’s contradictions, like Hemingway’s macho image and his reputed sexual ambivalence. The dog seems docile, but I hesitate to pick him up—something about that predatory Doberman aura, with the physical power to back it up. I do it anyway.
In the rearview mirror I see him squirming around like a worm on a hook. “Did you catch the new Ralph Fiennes movie? Sexy guy, huh?” I ask, trying to pacify him. In a flash, he scrambles from the cargo area into the back seat then over and into the passenger seat. Gangly, all legs. Bet he could do zero to sixty in five seconds.
The passenger seat is piled with so much stuff from errands I’d been running that Houdini can’t find a place to sit down. He ambles over the emergency brake onto my lap. I take one hand off the wheel and sort of shove him back into the passenger seat, trying to communicate suggestion rather than control. This is a Doberman.
I stroke him. He’s turning in circles on the seat, searching for a place to settle in. What the hey—I dump the mountain of junk that’s on the passenger seat onto the floor. Everything that can possibly spill out of the bags does—fruits and veggies, lightbulbs, a package of fresh cod fillet—but the seat is now a reasonably civilized place to hang.
Instead of settling in, Houdini jumps down on top of the stuff I just dumped onto the floor to make room for him. I’m ticked off but pat the seat beside me, inviting him back up. A grape oozes between his toes. Juice from the cod trickles onto a magazine. He decides it’s too cramped on the floor amidst the parsley and shampoo after all. Maybe even undignified. He clambers back up and sits down on the seat beside me. Seconds later, he springs up. Now he’s down again. And he’s up. I feel like I’m sitting next to some guy who just did a line of cocaine.
Only ten minutes ago my life had at least the illusion of calm, I’m thinking between long, deep breaths. I keep driving, stroking Houdini, trying to reassure both of us now that life really isn’t the lunatic, whirligig ride it seems to be most of the time. It doesn’t help that the drive home is along winding foothill roads so that Houdini, whose slender build verges on the ethereal, keeps losing his balance, tumbles, rights himself, tumbles again. He’s doing all the moving around and I’m exhausted.
When we arrive home, my own two dogs run out to meet us. Not wanting to take a chance of a dogfight, I stick Houdini in the dog run and ask my husband to take our dogs into the house. The run is a spacious grassy area with trees and water, completely ringed with a five-foot chain-link fence. What’s not to like?
I phone the Animal Shelter and they trace Houdini’s tag number. “The dog was adopted a few days ago by a Mr. Ventano,” a woman tells me. “He doesn’t have much money, drives a school bus, lives in a trailer park.” She gives me his work number. I’m about to dial when I glance out the window. Houdini has materialized in the unfenced part of the yard. He’s strolling around the lawn, looking guileless. I dash outside. Again, he doesn’t try to run away. I don’t understand his m.o. He escapes, doesn’t evade capture, escapes, then doesn’t evade capture. Is this a game? A compulsion? Mental pathology?
My husband takes Houdini in the house while I call the school bus company. They radio Mr. Ventano who’s out on his bus run, tell me he’ll be over in half an hour. Dying of curiosity, I check the dog run to see if Houdini jumped over the fence or dug out. There’s an awesome hole by the gate he must have dug in seconds.
I go back in the house. My husband says Houdini started whimpering as soon as I left the room. Weird. He bonds fast, then bails. Fear of intimacy? Shameless manipulation? What, I wonder, makes him so obsessed with freedom one minute, then indifferent to it the next? There’s a bedeviled energy about him, as though he was wired the minute he shot out of the womb. I have the feeling that if he were left alone in a room he couldn’t escape from he’d implode.
Houdini crawls into my lap, looks like he’s going to kick back, then hops off and sucks up to my husband. I like him, but he unnerves me. He relates, but no matter how affectionate or needy he seems, it’s like there’s an invisible bubble around him. His isolation makes me sad.
Half an hour later, Mr. Ventano drives up in an ancient Chevy. He’s about 70, very Old World Italian, has slick black hair, speaks fast with a heavy accent. He’s still wearing his bus driver’s cap. I walk down the path to meet him. He shows me the dog halter that he repaired with candle wax after Houdini chewed through it in four places to escape. “I tied him up because he chewed my chairs, my cassette tapes, my portable radio,” Mr. Ventano says without a trace of anger. He named the dog Rusty, refers to him now, tenderly, as Rascal.
As we walk up to the house, Mr. Ventano hands me a brown paper bag. It’s a bottle of fine Italian wine. I’m so touched I can hardly speak. I know I can’t refuse his gift. Before we’re halfway to the house I’ve learned that Mr. Ventano is a widower—he still wears his wedding band— and that he got Rusty because he was lonely. Eyes moist, in a whoosh he tells me about his late Springer Spaniel who he had to put to sleep after 15 years and even though it was on the advice of others he still feels guilty and he used to take the dog trout fishing with him and his grandson. By the last stair I’m in love with Mr. Ventano.
He sees Houdini, scoops him up in his arms, scratches the dog’s ear, then gently lowers him to the ground. In Italian-crusted English, Mr. Ventano repeats to my husband everything he told me. I assure him that if he thinks he can’t manage the dog, the Shelter will take him back and find another home for him. “Our local Pound is a no-kill Shelter,” I say. “Sometimes a person and a dog just don’t fit. If this one isn’t right for you, I’m sure there’s one out there who is.”
Mr. Ventano hooks the dog up to his leash and we walk back to his car. “I had to put my Springer Spaniel to sleep who I had for 15 years and I was lonely and that’s why I adopted Rusty,” he reminds me. “God bless you,” he says, closing the door. As they drive off, I watch the dog turning his familiar, edgy circles on the seat, still looking for that consummate destination. The one that’s always somewhere else.
God bless you, Mr. Ventano. And, Houdini, wherever you are.
©Lucy Aron, The Santa Barbara Independent 1999
The Neighbors
The Neighbors
I’d always been a city woman with a country heart so when we moved to the foothills of a mountain fifteen years ago I was eager to get up close and personal with the creatures. What poet and naturalist Gary Snyder calls “getting to know the neighbors.” I envisioned our yard an enchanted place where astonishing birds and butterflies would be jostling each other for a chance to hang out. We planted pyracantha, Mexican sage, and grevillea to augment the profusion of nesting sites and food sources already on the hill. We built a pond with a birdbath, hung up a birdhouse, did everything but serve them cabernet and truffles.
And they came, they came. Red-tailed hawks, mockingbirds, the elusive canyon wren with its singular call like a descending scale. Kestrels perch on the railing of our deck. Swallowtails, ladybugs, dragonflies flutter by. We’re crooned to sleep by frogs, crickets, great-horned owls.
But to make certain life didn’t become unbearably idyllic, others came too. The ants gave us our first taste of how uncivil the locals could be. I remember in particular one sweltering weekend when a coursing river of ants had surrounded the entire perimeter of the house. Then they stormed the parapets and partied inside, dancing on the ceilings, gorging themselves in the cupboards, streaming up and down walls.
Two of our rowdiest visitors were a pair of red-shafted flickers who kept insisting on using the redwood siding of our house to build their nest. We finally placed a birdhouse next to the gashes they’d pecked. They moved in, then on, after breeding season. I think I heard one of them mutter as it wheeled off into the sky, “And they call us birdbrains.”
Not long after the flickers, a thundering, seething swarm of bees took up residence in the birdhouse. Joe, a local apiarist came and, with devastating calm, removed the birdhouse replete with queen, a battalion of bees, and a mantle of impeccable honeycombs on its interior walls.
But rats were our grossest neighbors. Meeting one in the hall at two in the morning when you’re barefoot and bleary-eyed can jump-start your heart. It took months to get the greasy little beasts out. Then, as if to stick it to us for evicting them, one built a nest in the air filter box under the hood of my car. “It got in through your grille,” my mechanic told me, so thrilled by his find that he took a photograph of it. “Brought leaves, shredded paper, acorns, the works. A regular living room.” I was not thrilled.
The coyotes, another incredibly adaptable species, weren’t a surprise. We live adjacent to a canyon near the aptly named Coyote Drive. I enjoy them, especially their haunting howls. Even after one killed our cat. I respect their role as predators, many of them displaced by people like us. And their dauntlessness. Once I spotted a coyote at midday in the yard standing about ten feet away from our dog. They almost looked like a couple of pals chatting about the weather, but I became unglued, ran toward the coyote, waving my arms and yelling to chase it away. Shamelessly cool, the coyote ambled off ever so slowly down the driveway.
Then there was the scorpion that stung me. And the cone nose beetle that bit my husband. Its bite can trigger anaphylactic shock. And the black widow in our bedroom that killed the kitten we had adopted just weeks earlier. And the leg of a deer our next door neighbors found in their yard the morning after we’d sighted a mountain lion. And the rattlesnake in our next door neighbor’s studio.
Still, I wouldn’t dream of exchanging our cherished corner of the cosmos, neighbors and all, for the most chi-chi high rise in Manhattan overlooking Central Park. I don’t love all the neighbors. I do admire them. Apart from the biodiversity essential to our planet’s health and survival, they’re integral to what makes this place breathtaking. The loss of any species—the less-than-genteel as well as the cuddly and endearing—would, I know, diminish us and this mountain that’s a joy, and adventure, to call home.
©Lucy Aron, October 1997, The Santa Barbara Independent
I’d always been a city woman with a country heart so when we moved to the foothills of a mountain fifteen years ago I was eager to get up close and personal with the creatures. What poet and naturalist Gary Snyder calls “getting to know the neighbors.” I envisioned our yard an enchanted place where astonishing birds and butterflies would be jostling each other for a chance to hang out. We planted pyracantha, Mexican sage, and grevillea to augment the profusion of nesting sites and food sources already on the hill. We built a pond with a birdbath, hung up a birdhouse, did everything but serve them cabernet and truffles.
And they came, they came. Red-tailed hawks, mockingbirds, the elusive canyon wren with its singular call like a descending scale. Kestrels perch on the railing of our deck. Swallowtails, ladybugs, dragonflies flutter by. We’re crooned to sleep by frogs, crickets, great-horned owls.
But to make certain life didn’t become unbearably idyllic, others came too. The ants gave us our first taste of how uncivil the locals could be. I remember in particular one sweltering weekend when a coursing river of ants had surrounded the entire perimeter of the house. Then they stormed the parapets and partied inside, dancing on the ceilings, gorging themselves in the cupboards, streaming up and down walls.
Two of our rowdiest visitors were a pair of red-shafted flickers who kept insisting on using the redwood siding of our house to build their nest. We finally placed a birdhouse next to the gashes they’d pecked. They moved in, then on, after breeding season. I think I heard one of them mutter as it wheeled off into the sky, “And they call us birdbrains.”
Not long after the flickers, a thundering, seething swarm of bees took up residence in the birdhouse. Joe, a local apiarist came and, with devastating calm, removed the birdhouse replete with queen, a battalion of bees, and a mantle of impeccable honeycombs on its interior walls.
But rats were our grossest neighbors. Meeting one in the hall at two in the morning when you’re barefoot and bleary-eyed can jump-start your heart. It took months to get the greasy little beasts out. Then, as if to stick it to us for evicting them, one built a nest in the air filter box under the hood of my car. “It got in through your grille,” my mechanic told me, so thrilled by his find that he took a photograph of it. “Brought leaves, shredded paper, acorns, the works. A regular living room.” I was not thrilled.
The coyotes, another incredibly adaptable species, weren’t a surprise. We live adjacent to a canyon near the aptly named Coyote Drive. I enjoy them, especially their haunting howls. Even after one killed our cat. I respect their role as predators, many of them displaced by people like us. And their dauntlessness. Once I spotted a coyote at midday in the yard standing about ten feet away from our dog. They almost looked like a couple of pals chatting about the weather, but I became unglued, ran toward the coyote, waving my arms and yelling to chase it away. Shamelessly cool, the coyote ambled off ever so slowly down the driveway.
Then there was the scorpion that stung me. And the cone nose beetle that bit my husband. Its bite can trigger anaphylactic shock. And the black widow in our bedroom that killed the kitten we had adopted just weeks earlier. And the leg of a deer our next door neighbors found in their yard the morning after we’d sighted a mountain lion. And the rattlesnake in our next door neighbor’s studio.
Still, I wouldn’t dream of exchanging our cherished corner of the cosmos, neighbors and all, for the most chi-chi high rise in Manhattan overlooking Central Park. I don’t love all the neighbors. I do admire them. Apart from the biodiversity essential to our planet’s health and survival, they’re integral to what makes this place breathtaking. The loss of any species—the less-than-genteel as well as the cuddly and endearing—would, I know, diminish us and this mountain that’s a joy, and adventure, to call home.
©Lucy Aron, October 1997, The Santa Barbara Independent
Buddha, The Learning Curve, and a Dog
Buddha, The Learning Curve, and a Dog
I never had a guru. Not that I didn’t yearn for one, especially during those golden years of the early sixties when the blush of the East was bright on the rose. Like many of my peers, I devoured the literature—The Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Siddartha, Be Here Now—that enticed us, so we thought, with the promise of that sweet, perpetual high we sought in drugs and didn’t quite find.
Though there was many a dark night when I would have renounced chocolate for someone who could provide infallible answers to my endless, urgent questions, someone on whose shoulders I could have shifted the burden of will, I felt constitutionally unable to surrender that kind of power to anyone. No matter how exalted the reputation, how seductive the goodies, nor how frayed the rope from which I frequently found myself dangling.
Primed from childhood by parents who were oppressive and heavy-handed, I distrusted authority. Whether it was school teachers, preachers, or cops, control by others became anathema, an attitude intensified into a virtual ideology when I became a college student in Berkeley in 1962. Besides, I’d heard too many stories about false gods, beguilers, and charlatans.
When I was a kid, teachers were old people whose classes I had to sit through. Except for Mr. Major, my high school English teacher, most of their names and faces have become a blur. Mr. Major was charmless and caustic, and bequeathed to his students an uncompromising knowledge of the principles of good writing. It wasn’t till years later that I realized what a gift his classes were.
There were some memorable teachers in college, but the most influential ones were those I encountered outside of academia. From ex-lovers I learned about my tendency to see what I wanted to see and about my fear of being alone. Anyone I got burned by became a mirror for my pridefulness, lack of discernment, or extravagant expectations. From my parents I learned what I did not want to become. And from friends I discovered generosity and constancy.
But spiritually I was on my own, or so I believed. I studied Buddhism, Sufism, Native American culture. At 28, I joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). I was attracted by its non-hierarchical structure—each member is considered a minister—and the mystical silence at the heart of Meeting for worship.
In my early forties, illness knocked me off my feet with such an emphatic thud that there were times I was sure I’d never stand up again. Helpless in a way I had never been before, I realized that my own relentless inner control, or attempts to control my life, had been as restrictive as the outer controls I had always feared. More so actually because I had the illusion of freedom. With illness, surrender was no longer an option but a reality.
Propelled now by desperation rather than curiosity, I looked for more answers. Finding them was no longer some intellectual exercise of the cocky college kid I used to be. It was survival. The journey was arduous, but I did find answers. They were in those books I’d read all along, only, in the brutal light of hindsight, I saw that I had been looking for another high rather than wisdom on how to live. Not until I became seriously ill did I get it, experientially. I learned that I wasn’t on my own. The Universe—what Native Americans call Great Mystery, Buddhists the Void, Christians the Divine—was my ally. That’s the real source of power. That’s where my absolute faith belonged, not in some trendy spiritual leader-of-the-week after all.
I didn’t become suddenly less responsible for my choices, but felt immeasurably less alone in making them. I realized it’s not about accretion, but about letting go and emptying, not about finding answers to questions, but living the questions. It’s mystery, too—“don’t-know” mind. And I saw that the source is many. It’s the wind and ocean and stars, it’s the creatures and, yes, people. I began to see teachers everywhere, could glean gems from the seemingly dullest.
I understood that no matter how hard you fall—if your house burns down, if you get dumped by your lover, if you lose your shirt, your head, your heart—there are jewels in the ashes. I was learning where to look. Indeed, to look, rather than writing those ashes off as useless trash.
Still, despite the plethora of lovingkindess in my life, for which I’m ineffably grateful, I had become distrustful and cynical. Writers I revered, particularly Buddhist writers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Shunryu Suzuki, and Jack Kornfield, consistently articulated the spiritually lethal effect of holding on to negativity. But my anger, fear, and despair had always seemed so compelling I’d had trouble letting go of them. Now, without the physical reserves I used to have, my body was confirming with startling clarity the transformative power of letting go. Exquisitely aware of the internal pull between my perceived need for self-preservation—the ultimate act of holding on—and a more healing receptivity, I knew that the qualities I needed to cultivate most were trust, non-judgment, and joy, no matter how dark the night or long the day.
Along comes Zachariah.
Zach’s my dog, a gangly sweetheart of a Golden Retriever I found through a breed rescue group. Long in the back and leggy, he was teeming with fleas, had sores on his feet, and favored his right shoulder. He’s afraid of loud noises and manhole covers, and has a tendency to try to rescue swimmers at the beach who are not drowning.
Other than that Zach is the soul of mellow. It took him five minutes to adapt to his new home—different environment, our other Golden Retriever, and us. He settled in as though he had been with us forever. It was awesome, a creature totally at home wherever he found himself—and with whomever.
That was how I wanted to do life, and found so difficult. Zach assumes the absolute goodwill of everyone he encounters. He expects the best and that’s what he gets. Gentle to a fault and friendly but not in-your-face, he’s an extraordinary magnet for people. Zach doesn’t sit zazen, practice vipassana, or burn incense, but he has become an incomparable spiritual adviser. Without words or intent, that 85-pound package of gold teaches by the sheer power of his presence. He’s open, spontaneous, delighted, responsive, forgiving, expressive. If only I could begin to achieve that kind of emotional suppleness.
He smiles a lot and is, above all, playful. He doesn’t attach to things or brood. If he chases a squirrel and it runs up a tree, he doesn’t spend hours trying to bark it down. He moves on. To Zach, life is a romp.
And he has no ego. He’s not invested in looking good or scoring points. I’m getting better, but the traps are everywhere. Each time I think I’ve avoided another one I start to congratulate myself on my skill and, whoops, I’ve fallen into another trap.
Maybe Zach’s cerebral cortex lacks the capacity pundits require to designate a creature as super-conscious. And maybe his behavior reflects little more than a biological mandate rather than an evolved spirit. I don’t believe it for a second—I’ve met too many dogs who make algae look evolved—but who cares anyway? If, as the Buddhists believe, consciousness is as much a function of heart as mind, Zach’s is up there with the highest of them.
I never had a guru, but I found some terrific teachers—including one who can balance a biscuit on his nose then flip it in the air and catch it in his mouth, and who doubles as a foot warmer on cold nights. Like a bumper sticker I saw recently says, “May I always be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”
©Lucy Aron, The Santa Barbara Independent, January 1998
I never had a guru. Not that I didn’t yearn for one, especially during those golden years of the early sixties when the blush of the East was bright on the rose. Like many of my peers, I devoured the literature—The Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Siddartha, Be Here Now—that enticed us, so we thought, with the promise of that sweet, perpetual high we sought in drugs and didn’t quite find.
Though there was many a dark night when I would have renounced chocolate for someone who could provide infallible answers to my endless, urgent questions, someone on whose shoulders I could have shifted the burden of will, I felt constitutionally unable to surrender that kind of power to anyone. No matter how exalted the reputation, how seductive the goodies, nor how frayed the rope from which I frequently found myself dangling.
Primed from childhood by parents who were oppressive and heavy-handed, I distrusted authority. Whether it was school teachers, preachers, or cops, control by others became anathema, an attitude intensified into a virtual ideology when I became a college student in Berkeley in 1962. Besides, I’d heard too many stories about false gods, beguilers, and charlatans.
When I was a kid, teachers were old people whose classes I had to sit through. Except for Mr. Major, my high school English teacher, most of their names and faces have become a blur. Mr. Major was charmless and caustic, and bequeathed to his students an uncompromising knowledge of the principles of good writing. It wasn’t till years later that I realized what a gift his classes were.
There were some memorable teachers in college, but the most influential ones were those I encountered outside of academia. From ex-lovers I learned about my tendency to see what I wanted to see and about my fear of being alone. Anyone I got burned by became a mirror for my pridefulness, lack of discernment, or extravagant expectations. From my parents I learned what I did not want to become. And from friends I discovered generosity and constancy.
But spiritually I was on my own, or so I believed. I studied Buddhism, Sufism, Native American culture. At 28, I joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). I was attracted by its non-hierarchical structure—each member is considered a minister—and the mystical silence at the heart of Meeting for worship.
In my early forties, illness knocked me off my feet with such an emphatic thud that there were times I was sure I’d never stand up again. Helpless in a way I had never been before, I realized that my own relentless inner control, or attempts to control my life, had been as restrictive as the outer controls I had always feared. More so actually because I had the illusion of freedom. With illness, surrender was no longer an option but a reality.
Propelled now by desperation rather than curiosity, I looked for more answers. Finding them was no longer some intellectual exercise of the cocky college kid I used to be. It was survival. The journey was arduous, but I did find answers. They were in those books I’d read all along, only, in the brutal light of hindsight, I saw that I had been looking for another high rather than wisdom on how to live. Not until I became seriously ill did I get it, experientially. I learned that I wasn’t on my own. The Universe—what Native Americans call Great Mystery, Buddhists the Void, Christians the Divine—was my ally. That’s the real source of power. That’s where my absolute faith belonged, not in some trendy spiritual leader-of-the-week after all.
I didn’t become suddenly less responsible for my choices, but felt immeasurably less alone in making them. I realized it’s not about accretion, but about letting go and emptying, not about finding answers to questions, but living the questions. It’s mystery, too—“don’t-know” mind. And I saw that the source is many. It’s the wind and ocean and stars, it’s the creatures and, yes, people. I began to see teachers everywhere, could glean gems from the seemingly dullest.
I understood that no matter how hard you fall—if your house burns down, if you get dumped by your lover, if you lose your shirt, your head, your heart—there are jewels in the ashes. I was learning where to look. Indeed, to look, rather than writing those ashes off as useless trash.
Still, despite the plethora of lovingkindess in my life, for which I’m ineffably grateful, I had become distrustful and cynical. Writers I revered, particularly Buddhist writers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Shunryu Suzuki, and Jack Kornfield, consistently articulated the spiritually lethal effect of holding on to negativity. But my anger, fear, and despair had always seemed so compelling I’d had trouble letting go of them. Now, without the physical reserves I used to have, my body was confirming with startling clarity the transformative power of letting go. Exquisitely aware of the internal pull between my perceived need for self-preservation—the ultimate act of holding on—and a more healing receptivity, I knew that the qualities I needed to cultivate most were trust, non-judgment, and joy, no matter how dark the night or long the day.
Along comes Zachariah.
Zach’s my dog, a gangly sweetheart of a Golden Retriever I found through a breed rescue group. Long in the back and leggy, he was teeming with fleas, had sores on his feet, and favored his right shoulder. He’s afraid of loud noises and manhole covers, and has a tendency to try to rescue swimmers at the beach who are not drowning.
Other than that Zach is the soul of mellow. It took him five minutes to adapt to his new home—different environment, our other Golden Retriever, and us. He settled in as though he had been with us forever. It was awesome, a creature totally at home wherever he found himself—and with whomever.
That was how I wanted to do life, and found so difficult. Zach assumes the absolute goodwill of everyone he encounters. He expects the best and that’s what he gets. Gentle to a fault and friendly but not in-your-face, he’s an extraordinary magnet for people. Zach doesn’t sit zazen, practice vipassana, or burn incense, but he has become an incomparable spiritual adviser. Without words or intent, that 85-pound package of gold teaches by the sheer power of his presence. He’s open, spontaneous, delighted, responsive, forgiving, expressive. If only I could begin to achieve that kind of emotional suppleness.
He smiles a lot and is, above all, playful. He doesn’t attach to things or brood. If he chases a squirrel and it runs up a tree, he doesn’t spend hours trying to bark it down. He moves on. To Zach, life is a romp.
And he has no ego. He’s not invested in looking good or scoring points. I’m getting better, but the traps are everywhere. Each time I think I’ve avoided another one I start to congratulate myself on my skill and, whoops, I’ve fallen into another trap.
Maybe Zach’s cerebral cortex lacks the capacity pundits require to designate a creature as super-conscious. And maybe his behavior reflects little more than a biological mandate rather than an evolved spirit. I don’t believe it for a second—I’ve met too many dogs who make algae look evolved—but who cares anyway? If, as the Buddhists believe, consciousness is as much a function of heart as mind, Zach’s is up there with the highest of them.
I never had a guru, but I found some terrific teachers—including one who can balance a biscuit on his nose then flip it in the air and catch it in his mouth, and who doubles as a foot warmer on cold nights. Like a bumper sticker I saw recently says, “May I always be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”
©Lucy Aron, The Santa Barbara Independent, January 1998
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Yes
Yes
for Chris & Bruce
I could have been dancing tonight,
night of bubbles, noisemakers, paper hats,
and faux good cheer. But here I am,
shoeless and sober as a cobblestone,
sipping the champagne of contemplation.
Four hours to midnight. The spirits of Tara,
Jizo, and Avalokitesvara shimmer
in the air like moonlight on snow. Here
in the spangled silence of this house, I inhale
clarity. On this foggy last day of 2002—
year of the warrior women of Nigeria
armed only with courage and dignity
who said no to Chevron—
year that Bali, land of people who dance
when they walk, was bombed—
year of the burgeoning battle drums—
I exhale ill-will. Witnessed by these sisters
and brothers on the cushion who sit steadfast
as oaks despite sore knees and sleepiness,
I intend “a cup o’ kindness” for the noisy
neighbor, the tailgater, faithless lover,
the ignorant and the gnarly, for fat cat
corporate profiteers, hatemongers and hawks,
for my own magnum of fissures and failures.
Before these candle flames that flicker like doubt,
like waving so long to the old and hello
to the wild and hallowed new—I resolve not
to marry my opinions, not to turn away
from the dragons at my doorstep, not to covet
dark Belgian chocolate, except once in awhile.
And “should auld acquaintance be forgot”
I vow to remember and cherish the luminous
bell of here and now
and yes.
©Lucy Aron, 2003
for Chris & Bruce
I could have been dancing tonight,
night of bubbles, noisemakers, paper hats,
and faux good cheer. But here I am,
shoeless and sober as a cobblestone,
sipping the champagne of contemplation.
Four hours to midnight. The spirits of Tara,
Jizo, and Avalokitesvara shimmer
in the air like moonlight on snow. Here
in the spangled silence of this house, I inhale
clarity. On this foggy last day of 2002—
year of the warrior women of Nigeria
armed only with courage and dignity
who said no to Chevron—
year that Bali, land of people who dance
when they walk, was bombed—
year of the burgeoning battle drums—
I exhale ill-will. Witnessed by these sisters
and brothers on the cushion who sit steadfast
as oaks despite sore knees and sleepiness,
I intend “a cup o’ kindness” for the noisy
neighbor, the tailgater, faithless lover,
the ignorant and the gnarly, for fat cat
corporate profiteers, hatemongers and hawks,
for my own magnum of fissures and failures.
Before these candle flames that flicker like doubt,
like waving so long to the old and hello
to the wild and hallowed new—I resolve not
to marry my opinions, not to turn away
from the dragons at my doorstep, not to covet
dark Belgian chocolate, except once in awhile.
And “should auld acquaintance be forgot”
I vow to remember and cherish the luminous
bell of here and now
and yes.
©Lucy Aron, 2003
Wild Turkey Shine
Wild Turkey Shine
If he were a city he’d be Las Vegas,
this pachuco of the pasture with his neon
blue and hot pink head held high and
that baroque theater of tail feathers. Bronze-
tipped yet, they flare then fold then flare
like a stageful of Busby Berkeley showgirls.
Usually clunky, now he puts the “oo”
in smooth the way he struts so cool, all but
glides across the grass towards her as if something
bigger even than himself depends on wowing
this chic-as-a-brown-paper-bag audience of one.
So what if he’s subtle as a traffic light?
You’ve got to love the James Brown blare
of him. And despite the stupidity, he knows
that when the stakes are high, bet on extravaganza.
©Lucy Aron, Birmingham Poetry Review, Winter/Spring 2005
If he were a city he’d be Las Vegas,
this pachuco of the pasture with his neon
blue and hot pink head held high and
that baroque theater of tail feathers. Bronze-
tipped yet, they flare then fold then flare
like a stageful of Busby Berkeley showgirls.
Usually clunky, now he puts the “oo”
in smooth the way he struts so cool, all but
glides across the grass towards her as if something
bigger even than himself depends on wowing
this chic-as-a-brown-paper-bag audience of one.
So what if he’s subtle as a traffic light?
You’ve got to love the James Brown blare
of him. And despite the stupidity, he knows
that when the stakes are high, bet on extravaganza.
©Lucy Aron, Birmingham Poetry Review, Winter/Spring 2005
Butterfly Love
Butterfly Love
The fritillary, a pale orange butterfly with dull black spots, fluttered and flailed in the web outside my window as the spider watched from an upper corner. A moment later, a second fritillary appeared and began darting frantically around the periphery of the web. It charged towards the web, then wheeled off, back towards it, and away again. Its dance of indecision suggested a creature suspended between the conflicting impulses of self-preservation and self-sacrifice.
Was the second butterfly the mate of the first? And did the display reflect concern? Empathy? Love? Butterfly love. Yet entomologists assure us that invertebrates do not love. They lack the complex attachments of the more highly evolved species. Their bonding has no emotional content.
But if the behavior of the second butterfly was not a demonstration of caring, why didn't it simply fly away as soon as it sensed peril? Why did it keep gravitating back towards the captured butterfly, as though wanting to rescue it?
I was torn between my own contradictory impulses. Should I just watch, dismayed, or demolish the web and liberate the butterfly? Though I knew the spider was merely fulfilling its biological imperative, I identified with the butterfly as it struggled against the lethal strands—with weak against strong, prey against predator.
Yet I am a predator. I don’t eat red meat or fowl, but I do eat fish. I don’t kill fish, but the act of consumption renders me a co-conspirator in their demise. I destroy snails in my garden. I kill fleas and ticks on my dog.
Why, then, was I disturbed at the prospect of a butterfly’s death? Was I responding not to death, but to the dying process, a reflection of my own anxieties? Or to the butterfly’s gossamer beauty? And which considerations ought to determine such life and death decisions—here and elsewhere? Aesthetics, evolutionary status, abundance, size, charm, service, entertainment value?
I don’t know. I’ve sought a philosophy which would teach me how to make peace with life’s contradictions, to cherish rather than allow them to bedevil me. Appalled by the arrogance and rapacity of Western culture, I have chosen an eclectic blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and Native American thought. Their cosmologies are disparate, yet I’m inspired by the balance they embody—between head and heart, yin and yang—and by their fierce reverence for life.
Still, facile answers elude me. What does reverence for life mean in the crucible of day-to-day existence? All inanimate stuff of the planet, according to many non-Western belief systems, is as alive as any finch or daffodil. We must destroy in order to provide food, clothing, shelter. But destroy what, and how much? Which animals? Which plants?
In many Native Americans traditions, one takes from the earth only with a profound sense of gratitude, and always gives back to it. When picking herbs to use medicinally or ceremonially, the Mohawks never remove the largest or healthiest members—those that are essential to the perpetuation of the plant community. And when possible they sow seeds back into the ground from which they were removed. My existence affects the natural world. I can only hope to affect it as consciously and tenderly.
The second butterfly seemed to understand that there was a critical line. If crossed, there would be no crossing back. Ultimately, it was unwilling to take that final step. And I, too, was unwilling to interfere. My role wasn’t to judge but to acknowledge, with awe, the spider as vital a player as the butterfly in the cosmic drama.
Despite my biases. Despite my unease. Despite my butterfly love.
©Lucy Aron, Cune Press 1997
The fritillary, a pale orange butterfly with dull black spots, fluttered and flailed in the web outside my window as the spider watched from an upper corner. A moment later, a second fritillary appeared and began darting frantically around the periphery of the web. It charged towards the web, then wheeled off, back towards it, and away again. Its dance of indecision suggested a creature suspended between the conflicting impulses of self-preservation and self-sacrifice.
Was the second butterfly the mate of the first? And did the display reflect concern? Empathy? Love? Butterfly love. Yet entomologists assure us that invertebrates do not love. They lack the complex attachments of the more highly evolved species. Their bonding has no emotional content.
But if the behavior of the second butterfly was not a demonstration of caring, why didn't it simply fly away as soon as it sensed peril? Why did it keep gravitating back towards the captured butterfly, as though wanting to rescue it?
I was torn between my own contradictory impulses. Should I just watch, dismayed, or demolish the web and liberate the butterfly? Though I knew the spider was merely fulfilling its biological imperative, I identified with the butterfly as it struggled against the lethal strands—with weak against strong, prey against predator.
Yet I am a predator. I don’t eat red meat or fowl, but I do eat fish. I don’t kill fish, but the act of consumption renders me a co-conspirator in their demise. I destroy snails in my garden. I kill fleas and ticks on my dog.
Why, then, was I disturbed at the prospect of a butterfly’s death? Was I responding not to death, but to the dying process, a reflection of my own anxieties? Or to the butterfly’s gossamer beauty? And which considerations ought to determine such life and death decisions—here and elsewhere? Aesthetics, evolutionary status, abundance, size, charm, service, entertainment value?
I don’t know. I’ve sought a philosophy which would teach me how to make peace with life’s contradictions, to cherish rather than allow them to bedevil me. Appalled by the arrogance and rapacity of Western culture, I have chosen an eclectic blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and Native American thought. Their cosmologies are disparate, yet I’m inspired by the balance they embody—between head and heart, yin and yang—and by their fierce reverence for life.
Still, facile answers elude me. What does reverence for life mean in the crucible of day-to-day existence? All inanimate stuff of the planet, according to many non-Western belief systems, is as alive as any finch or daffodil. We must destroy in order to provide food, clothing, shelter. But destroy what, and how much? Which animals? Which plants?
In many Native Americans traditions, one takes from the earth only with a profound sense of gratitude, and always gives back to it. When picking herbs to use medicinally or ceremonially, the Mohawks never remove the largest or healthiest members—those that are essential to the perpetuation of the plant community. And when possible they sow seeds back into the ground from which they were removed. My existence affects the natural world. I can only hope to affect it as consciously and tenderly.
The second butterfly seemed to understand that there was a critical line. If crossed, there would be no crossing back. Ultimately, it was unwilling to take that final step. And I, too, was unwilling to interfere. My role wasn’t to judge but to acknowledge, with awe, the spider as vital a player as the butterfly in the cosmic drama.
Despite my biases. Despite my unease. Despite my butterfly love.
©Lucy Aron, Cune Press 1997
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