10 September 2012

CHAPTER FIVE  - inspiration taken from  'women who run with the wolves' by clarrisa estes.

WEEK THREE. conversation by clair and J.C

"..this story represents the indestructable aspect of the wild self, the instinctual nature...dedicated to freedom and the unspoiled, that which will never accept the rigors and the requirments of a dead ot overly civilizing culture. " Clarissa pinkola estes

~ ~ ~

my life lives closely in line with the rights and freedoms of other animals.  my diet is vegan and thus is animal- free(dom).

i am aware that i am also an animal.  and, if you are reading this,  you are too.  we are not penned up like animals in the bleak factory farms, but in some way, society is penning me up and pinning me down.

where is my land?  i remember once doing a calculation with a friend of mine to work out how much land each one of us would have (discounting  desserts) if it was divided up equally and it came to about 3 and a half acres.

thats what i need.  i need it to build my home.  i want to spend my time building it.  the rents and the mortgages are too high for freedom.  and life is too short - and capable of such beauty - to stiffle it and cut it off at the edges which are supposed to grow wild roses and geraniums ....
clair

I only need a square meter. A square meter of intimacy; a square meter of respect;  a square meter of dignity. It’s not much, and yet, we hardly ever have it, and we almost always deny it to those we capture, to those we breed, and to those we keep.

If you see a lion in a safari park, in a big enclosure with hundreds of trees and plants, you will find him, sooner or later, pacing by the fence that separates his golden cage from the real world. If you see a chimp in a “habitat” with thousands of bars, swings, ropes and huts, you will find him, sooner or later, sitting by the locked door pulling his hair out of desperation. If you see a tropical fish in an relaxing aquarium with millions of rocks, shells and caves, you will find her, sooner or later, by the glass, hoping for help from her own reflection.

We are all animals and we all need freedom, but a house will not give it to us. A cave will not give it to us. A pool will not give it to us. A field will not give it to us. But a key will. A key to our own dignity, forged from the respect and intimacy we all ask for but never give to others.

J.C.
im guessing if you add up all you square meters of needs -  respect and intimacy and all,  they would come  to a decent sized home....;)  hee hee.  .but what youre saying....and i agree, is that you dont only need a suitable home, you need the other stuff... the invisable stuff, which places us in love and lessenes us to fear.  

and thats what im talking about....

i want to live the dream! (my dream of course).  i dreamt last night of snap shots of love.  It was Nice like Mice. .)
clair

 The invisible stuff should not be invisible. The fact that we all need intimacy, and its cusin privacy, should be written in our foreheads, in our bills, in our horns. The fact we all need respect, and its cusin tolerance, should be written in our faces, in our snouts, in our feathers. The fact we all need dignity, and its cusin  integrity, should be written in our chests, in our flippers, in our shells.

It is not written there, because these invisible imperatives are intrinsic in all wildlife, and have evolved in all directions untill they become the common sense of Nature. Untill we came along and decided to forget them, to ignore them, to block them from our minds. But the common sense of Nature is a melody that is still being played...if  only we listened more.

J.C.

How closely do your own needs get met in the life you wear?
Clair

I wear several lives, according to my mood, but specially according to
whom I am relating to. Hence, I meet all the needs I have if I choose
the right life. It is up to me, really, and up to my skill in life
wearing, which is something that, as in any craft, you get better at it
with age.

We often assume we have control of things we do not -such as our
behaviour, often directed by instincts rather than conscience - and
that we do not have it for things we actually do -such as the kind of
life we want to wear. Some lives may be reluctant to be worn by you,
and you may need to persuade them or, if no progress is made, to tame
them. Others may be too heavy for you, or may not feel they are there.
In the end, though, it is up to us to change them, if we feel they do
not suit us.

J.C.

you do not feel that we have control over our own behaviour? but you do belive that we can change other peoples behaviour.... if i understand you correctly? ....i feel it is easier to change myself than to change another.....obviously there are limits in self change too....

i believe my behaviour does or can effect and change anothers behaviour, a certain degree, but not as significantly as is always needed, for the relationship to live in enough harmony....i find....

clair

We do have control of our behaviour, but less than we think. I believe the we are more instinctive that we are credited for, and non- human animals are less instinctive -and therefore more "cultural" - that we give them credit for.  Nobody is only nurture or only nature. We are all a mix of both, but over the years we have overplayed our nurture and underestimated our nature. Bizarrely, we tend to judge others, especially those others we do not even feel they deserve rights, the other way around.

We can indeed change other people's behaviour -and I would say in many cases we must- but we may be more successfull appealing to their instincts rather than to their learned routines.

I believe in natural morals, those that are modelled from the natural melodies of Nature's Common Sense, which operate in us more from our instincts than from anything our elders have taught us. For instance, empathy. We are all born with empathy, from which compassion can be woven, from which political rights can be built. We can of course erase such good instincts with misguided doctrines and destructive desensibilization. We do that all the time, such as when we take a living pig and transform it into a pack of pork rolls. But if we awake the masked instinct of empathy to those that are not us, the forgotten instinct of respect to those that look different, and the hidden instinct of compassion for those that need help, we awake the best of us, which was imbedded millions of years ago in our genes, and not molded by a few teachers or priests who naively thought they had figured out what this world is all about.
J.C   

our compassion and empathy abilities are weakened when we cannot see someone/something elses fear and something elses pain.  

the distance between me and the children and adults across the world dying because they have no safe water to drink allows me to forget about that and get on and enjoy my chocolate cake, even if it is vegan.  the distance between the isolation/pain and fear in the eyes of the animals at the factory farms or the slaughter houses allows pepole to pick up their dead bodies of super market shelves and enjoy frying them up and ingesting them later that day or week.

society is a greedy bastard. and very good persuasive one at that.

where do you find your source of nature?
clair

Nature is everywhere. Sometimes buried under a thick pile of artifice. Sometimes covered by a thin layer of human produce. Sometimes mixed up with a kaleidoscopic cocktail of architecture...but it is there, somewhere.

yes, i remember when i first realised that everything is nature - in that, everything must have been made by raw materials which have simply become more and more out of tune with their original source...

You do not need to go to the great outdoors to experience it face to face. I am fascinated by the way fungus take over old bread, by the way spiders decorate our home's ceilings, by the way leaves decide to abandon their tree behind in autumn. And I am equally fascinated by the way my woulds heal up remembering what fingerprints use to be behind them, or my eyes open up in the dark after a while and give me images when I could not see any at first.
yes, every cell in the body is behaving like magic.  it surprises me to realise that my body does things that i do not know how to do...that  it is independent of 'me'.  i can study biology and eventually understand it a little.  but our bodies need no study and performs immaculately.

Nature is so prolific inside our own minds, that we sometimes do not seem to find it...as when you are trying to find the woods from the treas. I trust much more my hunches and intuitions than my conclusions and assessments. The former do come from a sub-conscience deep fried in pure Nature, while the latter tend to be rushed and poorly built from a conscience that has not fully grown yet, and it is more interested in explanations than in truth.  

indeed, i like it when i feel to do something before i have thought it through...like i put lots of little cushions next to my french door, and i didnt know why i was doing it, and then i realised that i put them there to made an inside place to gaze at the outside world... so i felt that action was born in intuition.   my boyfirend at the time said that was a load of bollocks.  (not an excellent move on his part because it is a special talent and easy to lose if you belive people who say that sort of thing).

And, of course, I love to let myself loose looking deep into the eyes of the animals I encounter, because in them I see my true reflexion.  There is nothing more powerful and transcendent than looking at Nature while Nature is looking back at you.

how do you feel when you look in human animal eyes?
clair

When I look into an adult human animal's eyes I often see confusion, anxiety, blindness and fear. When I look into an adult non-human animal's eyes I see answers. When I look into human animal's eyes I see questions. They know without asking, we ask without knowing. So this, most of the time, make me feel disappointed, to say the least.
However, in a very few occasions, I have seen something different, that has made me feel something different. I have seen myself, looking in. My own reflexion, in all its dimensions. And when the other person also seems to see herself in me, then is when it feels as if something new has just germinated; some ancient seed that had been kept dormant begins to sprout. What that actually is, it's quite a mystery, but many people would say that this is the elusive, but yet unmistakable, feeling of love.

Therefore, it seems to me that what people call "love" is ultimately a selfish feeling. It's when the distance between two people gets reduced, but the distance between that couple and the rest of the world gets increased. The distinction between the two lovers becomes blurred, their intimacy loses its borders, and their privacy merge. The rest of the creatures move away from them, and all that remains around them is a bubble inside which everything seems sufficient and independent.

Pleasing that may feel for a while, I rather experience the opposite feeling. When everyone else seems to get closer to you, to approach you in friendliness. When the bubble that keeps you apart from them bursts. When  you cannot tell who is "I", who is "you", and who is "them". When everybody is "we", in union, in unison, in harmony.The feeling that nobody matters more than anybody else. Nobody means more than everybody else. That you belong to Nature, and that Nature has taken you back, without resentment or judgement, without expectations or conditions. That is what poets should be writing about.

J.C.

actually i have noticed in myself that when i experience love with reference to another, i feel more loving to everyone and other animals around me.  i do things more carefully and i hug everyone a bit more fully.  when my self is filled with lovestuff i can give a bit more out...so i think its all good, love reproduces into more love (and so does fear, if that is the emotion being nurtured, reproduce.....)

it has been a pleasure to write with you J.C
clair

This is why love is such a mystery. It seems simple and straight forward to you when you are feeling in, but it seems complicated and very difficult to explain when you try to describe it to others, because they all seem to feel it differently, and it does different things to every one. It's universal and yet utterly individual and unique. It follows the laws of Nature and yet often comes out of the blue. It's unpredictable and yet we all feel it at some point. It gives plain and pleasure at the same time; it makes you remember and forget; it opens your eyes and yet it mkles you blind; It confuses you, and it makes you wiser. It takes you back to your infancy, but also makes you grow up.
I think that, in a way, love it's like a sneeze.

It was nice to talk to you Clair

J.C.
     

1 comment:

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