Benblog

Living life shortly

We woke up to snow today, and more coming down.

With all the work to do, all the stress of the weeks gone, and the weeks to come, I thank Loki for giving me pause enough to breathe in this one day of winter.

By the afternoon, the snow was gone.

We went out when the branches were still white, the breeze blowing fingers off into the fluffy flakes floating down, almost as if in play.

This is the dilemma of living in this world now, so full of abundance, so frought with possibilities, ensnared with prosperity.

Catching myself in the moment is many times the path of least resistence, when my belief system is still oriented towards that which is so hard, or hardest.

The challenge is always remaining true to the quest, without being attached to the quest.

I can smell the koan over the hill, perhaps down in the valley, amidst the snow covered trees, do by doing nothing.

Be a snow finger
Blowing from the tree branches
Borne on Loki's back

The Comforts

Loki has settled in here, sleeping on his bed for the first time in the bed's history, climbing downstairs to slumber by the door, now padded in luxuriuos silk, sometimes even sleeping on the futon, too tired, too old to bother climbing off. Or perhaps just too deaf now to hear.

I sometimes massage his hips these days, and he will piroutte around to get the other hip, seeming faster with every turn, the spin cycle of youth underway.

It's hard to imagine, but not too long off in our history we were the lucky ones, the few, the wise to make it to 84. More recently, dogs learned to live among those who had learned to live longer, and so lived longer, in greater domestic accord, as a result. But it's within relatives I've met lifetimes that the life of humans were hard ones, dogs harder. Even then, our relative comfort and civility was the rival of the world.

And now even our pets are overweight.

Michael had the best analysis of why Americans are fat - means we have a lot of food to eat.

And that, even for most of the world, is still a luxury.

The Beast of Winter

Loki in winter is like a child in summer, relentless in his attempts to stay outside, go outside, stay up late, keep being out among the air and smells and, most importantly, freedom from discomfort, the world a perfect air for his fur.

He will curl up in the wind, perhaps dreaming of Siberian tundra, connecting, meditating on his ancestors, and look puzzled at the very question of coming in. Sometimes he'll rouse himself to barkingly cajole me into play. I sometimes feel as if he knows my kindred spirit, sees some blood from the cold steppes of eastern asia in my blood, which, as far back as Siberians go, could be a remote possibility.

One thing we forget, in all our archeaological suppositions, is that the ocean giveth, and the ocean taketh away. I suspect that the same migrations humans made across the glaciers were made across oceans, seafaring people following fish along the fish migration. Perhaps even a strain or two of homo sapien sapiens erupted themselves from the sea, or evolved into sea mammals, or vice versa.

Evolution also teaches us that similar species can evolve in similar conditions. That we can in fact predict it, like predicted elements in the periodic table. I sometimes wonder, in the evolutionary scheme, if sinuses are not, in fact, some vestigial gill. It makes me wonder the mechanism by which sea mammals hold their breath for so long. Can they get small amounts of oxygen from the sea itself, prolonging their dives, or are they simply keeping air in incredibly inflated lungs? Having inflated lungs itself likely balances the pressure underwater, but I still wonder if their are other interactions going on.

I love the argument I read today in The New Yorker on the Dover Intelligent Design case. Apparently, one of the arguments presented by the plaintiff attorneys, Rothchild (God, the Freemen and Evangelicals and general nut cases are going to love THAT name. Why couldn't they have gotten an attorney named Jeremiah Johnson, someone who sounds God-fearing, like Clarence Darrow.), is that with 99% of all species who have ever existed extinct, it doesn't sound like intelligent design.

Of course, the tautology here, that I'm sure some crazy preacher is presenting, is that the dinosaurs were sinners. That dodo bird. EVIL. Giant Sloth? Demonic and crazed, if a bit on the slow side.

I just can't believe that we are actually moving TOWARDS a world ruled by greedy, fearful, uneducated (by CHOICE for Godsake, in this country), rather than away from Barbarism. In the same article, they talk about a situation in which the janitor tore down and burned a depiction of the ape-into-man evolutionary idea.

The thing that people fail to understand, is that even God is a common ancestor. We all came from something, right? In each of our belief systems, even if it is the chaotic miasma atheists feel no need to even ponder further, outside the science of biographical, logical positivist mind, and into the realm of faith, we came from some source, somewhere, along the line, in the circle, on the turtle's back - which is, for obvious reasons, my favorite creation myth.

Why then is it so hard to think that the most awesomist thing you could ever imagine, a being that transcends time and space and all things we can comprehend, exists outside of our sense of time? Our sense of space? If your God can't even do that, if your God is so little that he requires such control, that's not even the same God who would sacrifice his Son, or send a ram for Isaac (actually, that was a pretty fucked up thing for even an idea of God to do, but chalk it up to just trying to enter the God market, let alone such a bold assertion of mono-theism.), then you need to go God shopping.

That's the other thing that irks me about intelligent design. The only thing that we have learned to use to communicate across generations, across cultural boundaries, in lasting ways from century to century is math and physics, which helps us understand one another in logical ways, information compressed for consumption and unraveling by future generations. Stopping with language itself, removing scientific method and, by extension, mathematical learning, which also relies on testable theories, sends us hurtling backwards, away from any chance of encountering the God so many evangelicals and extremists all over the world seek by rejecting the very path to divinity prescribed in the teachings of the great faith.

Anyone who follows the evolution even of dogs, Loki out in the cold, should be able to comprehend that intelligent design is a fools errand. Find the first thing your creator made. The first what? Are you saying man evolved from flagellum (which I would agree with, at some point down the line)? How about we agree that life begins at carbon. Could we all agree to let the evangelicals have that point? LIfe begins at carbon. And so, hold all things precious, dating back to that magical creation. And so love the world.

Human's best friend

In the evolution of humans and dogs, I'm sure there were points where something beyond practical convenience was recognized. That there was a bond beyond utility, sensed even in massaging Loki tonight. I can picture some hunter keeping his favorite dog better fed and protected than other dogs, just based on an emotional bond between the two. That is the bond that transcends the real and becomes its own idea in the world of mind.

Dog walkers

The domestication of animals fascinates me. I imagine tens of thousands of years ago some lone dog and lone human encountering one another in the wild and forming a pack of two. That dog and human find their ways home together, and end up establishing some common understanding, among their respective  tribes, that they live symbiotically.

That's the thing that puzzles me so much about the idea of intelligent design. Is it not even more wondrous, intelligent even, to set up systems so that they can evolve together? That was the first mover instilled in Creation is the idea of working towards sustainable togetherness? That the Creator embued this universe with a love that should unite us, not divide us? Irreducibly complex makes a mouse trap, quite literally, based on some of the lame-brained "scientific" examples intelligent design proponents use to demonstrate how if a mouse trap is so complex that if you remove one spring, it fails to work, our of the brilliance of an unfolding universe, a universe so irreducibly complex, it took a being with the security of complete unity to breathe freedom into the multiverse. And let the world unfold in that loving cradle. A being so caught up in the minutiae of being that it requires control over a mouse trap is not a being capable of creating a complex universe. It would be like someone trying to perform equations in quantum mechanics using algebra. We show our own frailty and blasphemous self worship when we are so caught up in God in our own image that we forget that God is representative of the difference between where we are and where we should be, until we are unified with God, and the individuated level, while it is real, doesn't count for species.

For the love of frailty

Loki is getting old. A little deaf now even. I sometimes have to clap or stomp to give him some directional bearings. He can sense my presence, perhaps by smell, but he sometimes instinctively assumes I'm inside the door. He doesn't come for breakfast any more, sometimes he doesn't even realize there is already food in his bowl when he finally rouses. His eyes have the murkiness that comes with age. He has white now showing in places that were orange or tan before, along his face. He will turn around and lean into mean again and again when I am trying to channel energy into his hip, giving him a healing ultrasound of reiki.

Snack has become more compliant, more gelationously affectionate. He never fusses when he is picked up, even to move him from a place of rest, but purrs, dropping his weight into my cradle, without even a meow of protest.

And I am amazed at how much more I love them for their growing fragility, and the life represented still in each arthritic step, the ear perk after the event, the interest there, if late. Puppies and kittens are full of what is only furtive delight. The aging pets, even when they're a little grumpier, have a patina, a wisdom, comfortable sharing that makes me long for, rather than regret, what life will be like wrinkled, a little worse for wear, frailty worn with neither resignation nor too much pride, but honorably.

If dogs could drive

We would have no windshields.

Tracy took this shot on a ferry tour this Saturday, up the Great River Road, across the Illinois river, over to Calhoun County, amidst rolling hills that make you feel as if you should be driving on the left hand side of the road, looking for sheep, and then over the Missouri river into St. Charles.

I think the abundance of smell in early spring compensates for the coming heat, at least for dogs who'd rather be sleeping in the snow.

Universality of Love

As we were waiting to cross the street tonight, I stroked Loki on the cheek and told him to wait, that there was still traffic coming. He seemed to understand that most basic instinct of love and protection and leaned into me a little. We may indeed experience a greater myriad of thoughts and emotions, but there is something universal about the feeling of safety, of protection.

Siberian summer

It's tragic that on nights that Loki most wants to be out, especially when the park is dark and empty, I am most chilly, waiting to get inside. Other than those amazing runs we took in Forest Park. I remember on one of those super cold days in 96 or 97, the park empty, the only other person out on the street was a television camera man. It was so cold, in fact, that as much as I thought this might be a moment for posterity, me with my windshell literally a shell of ice, my beard full of icicles, ears covered, hands and head exposed, I did not want to stop and suggest it for fear that I might actually lose production of that tremendous body heat.

Coincidence, actualized

As I was heading to bed, I realized I hadn't seen Snack since I got home. I asked Loki where Snack was, and he was very anxious to head outside. I called for Snack, and didn't hear him coming, so turned around to go back in, but Loki wouldn't budge. He cocked his head, and I couldn't tell what he was hearing or seeing, and as I saw his ears adjust and Snack finally coming within my ear shot, it seemed as if he knew immediately when I was aware, and turned with a confirmation look before heading back towards the door.

It could have been coincidence. I suspect it was a mix of causality, intent, and pure coincidence, but by reinforcing the event, for all of us, with food for Loki and Snack begins a process of turning coincidence into reliable causality - when I ask Loki in future where Snack is and the reward is food, even if they connection is random, he'll start figuring out what I mean if he continues to be motivated. I wonder to what extent we can reprogram ourselves in this way, for good or ill. Or how much we can create intent in the universe around us.