Barnett Weekly

In New York, where I grew up, the differences between the seasons were dramatic and obvious, each bringing sweeping changes in temperature and color. The whiteness of winter was broken by early spring crocus flowers poking yellow heads through the snow; verdant summer green yielded to fall’s palette of vivid yellow, red, purple and gold.

Here in Northern California our two-cycle seasons are less distinct, shifting gradually from dry to wet. Amidst our drought, lying in bed listening to raindrops on the skylight is dreamily reassuring, offering natural comfort in these otherwise turbulent times.

Before the advent of the calendar and clock natural cycles dominated narratives about time. The seasonal cycles of birth and death were honored and reenacted in social dramas that engaged entire societies in rites and ritual. Some of these were none to pleasant to our modern tastes, ritualized human sacrifice among them. The more peaceful engaged in ceremonies that gave thanks for the generosity of heaven and earth, and made appeals to the great spirits to bless the land and its creatures. It is not without cause that we speak reverently of Mother Earth; the earth and its seasons reflect our own natural coming and going.

Cycles transcend yet include individual components. They are greater than each component, but without them cycles cannot exist. We can observe cycles yet cannot separate ourselves from them, much as the sun cannot be separated from the phases of the moon.

This is not to say that we don’t make attempts at separation. Waking up by alarm and going to bed long after midnight breaks our diurnal rhythm. Working for eight hours straight despite the body’s need for rest breaks another cycle. Something as ordinary as electric light illumination disrupts the natural cycle of nightly hormone release. In short, while we have created new cycles within our lives, their imposition is social in origin – derived from the need for efficient labor within an economic system – not natural biological or physical need.

Despite whatever we impose, however, the natural cycles of existence are so profound that there is no way to escape them. All created things are subject to change, no matter how solid and permanent they may appear to be. If this were not so, the universe would be static, fixed, unchanging and would prohibit the arising of living creatures like ourselves. Everything is in a universal, continuous and dynamic state of flux, and the changes people notice produce both happiness and sorrow. Upon this continually shifting totality of experience we attempt to impose fixed points of reference and stability, and it is the impossibility of this task which often causes our distress.

The events of the world attract our attention, then our attachments and desires fuel happiness or sadness as things change. We can love, but because we have loving hearts, they can be broken. Such experience is what makes us uniquely human and the sheer act of living is a mixed, bittersweet experience, like catching sun-struck magnolia trees blooming in radiant shades of pink outlined against steel gray clouds in a darkening sky.

The spring cycle of renewal is upon us. This is not because we have behaved well or badly, said prayers or cursed heaven. Gratefully, it’s beyond all that – simply the world as it is.

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Possession, so they say, is nine-tenths of the law, and this law is well understood by dogs.

Pedro, my daughter’s gregarious two-year-old black lab retriever, is a full member of the family, but he’s 100% dog, which means not only does he claim his space, but also his possessions. As to possessions, he has few, but among them are cherished objects he can fetch: a squeeze bulb from an old turkey-baster, a chewed-up tennis ball, and a chewable yellow ring of heavy rubber designed for tossing. Our granddaughter, Isabelle, now 13 months old, has watched Pedro play fetch for her entire life, and during our last visit I realized that Pedro has taught her all about possession. 

Infants naturally progress from selflessness towards self, and with awareness of self arises the recognition of other. As external objects are recognized and as dexterity improves, these objects are then reintegrated into a developing internal brain/body map of self, which flexibly extends and contracts as needs and desires require. As awareness grows, a spoon becomes an extension of the hand, and any object possessed – even temporarily – can be used as a tool. Isabelle is now excitedly playing with the world, identifying objects and determining the ways in which they can be put to use by her brain/body map.

From watching Pedro, Isabelle has learned that objects can be possessed and released, Pedro’s greatest passion. He will repeatedly chase a tennis ball I toss across the yard, return it and drop it at my feet – unless I reach for it. If I attempt to take it from him, he sets himself up and we begin a tug of war, which he always wins. But he also understands that in order for the fetch game to go on, he must release the ball, and so he always does.

Observant and intelligent, Isabelle totally gets it. Accordingly, she’ll play fetch with Pedro as best she can, which means releasing the ball and letting it roll away a foot or two. But her favorite game is to play possess and release with other people. In some perfectly reasonable way, she now fully understands that humans like to possess objects, just like Pedro. If she can get her hands on my wife’s cell phone, she holds it tightly, walks a few feet away and coyly looks over her shoulder with a small smile as if to say, “I have fetched what you possessed, and now I possess it.” 

Identifying an object as someone else’s possession is in and of itself a fairly sophisticated mental construct; knowing that an object can be stealthily extracted from the possessive brain/body map of someone else is yet a higher order of sophistication. Thus it is that clever Pedro swipes Isabelle’s favorite rubber ducky from time to time. To Isabelle, the fetch and release game now extends to any and all objects. And more; she also understands that objects she releases, such as green beans dropped over the edge of her high-chair food tray, are fair game for others to possess, specifically Pedro. Not only possession and release she understands, but gravity as well!

It needs to be said; though our granddaughter Isabelle is obviously brilliant and a genius, we owe a debt of gratitude to her first teacher, Pedro.

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Congratulations!
The earth is hiring, dear one,
And you got the job.

What is the job of being human? The job of being squirrel seems quite straightforward: climb trees, find nuts, bury nuts, and make baby squirrels that can find and bury nuts. Ants seem to have a pretty clear job too: dig holes, crawl around and find this and that to eat, and make baby ants. So it goes in the animal world, except for one unusual case: people.

People, it seems, are the only ones who don’t show up on earth with ready made jobs and the inherited talents to do them. Accordingly, we make up jobs as suits our individual needs and the needs of others.
 
All animals display basic awareness and instinct, but the unique quality of being human is that we are fully self-conscious; we think therefore we are (we think). And because we think, we think about what to do and find ourselves confronting choice. Because they are as plentiful as our imaginations, which are plentiful indeed, we are faced daily with a great many choices. Accordingly, as we accept or reject the options constantly before us our great challenge is in understanding exactly what each situation demands of us; what is best and what is not. The nature of our moral and ethical framework in large part determines our actions, and our actions then create new choices for us and others. This is why what we choose to do matters.

For people in modern society accepting and rejecting is the basis of our economy, and to many it appears that nowadays our primary job has been to shop. Our other jobs, the ones we use to make money, support our shopping job. Yet whatever satisfaction we gain from shopping is short-lived; we must keep shopping for our pleasure inducing endorphins to flow. Like eager squirrels, we search out new treasures to hoard, even though we will lose interest in them quickly. The media tries to pump us up of course, to keep us hooked on shopping, but in tough economic times like these, we have no choice but to go cold-turkey while we break our shopping habit.

Deprived of shopping, what will we choose to do? We can become depressed, angry and bitter, blame others for our problems – increase our self-centeredness and greed. It’s a choice. But greed, as we all can plainly see, is a lousy organizing principle in society or in one’s personal life. Like shopping, it too can become an addiction, something done for its own sake.  Gratefully, we are human and we can choose otherwise. We can choose to be generous, even far more generous than we have ever been before.

The earth and its inhabitants need an awful lot of help, in ways too numerous to mention. If you are looking for a simple way to be generous, begin in your kitchen. If you’re like me you have cans and packages of food that have been sitting around forever. Donate them to Meals on Wheels or some other group that feeds the hungry. It’s a small start, but a good choice.

If there is any surefire way to help soothe our withdrawal from shopping, it is to choose to help others.

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It’s been 36 long years since tiny feet pressed against my back in bed in the middle of the night, to say nothing of little arms wrapped ‘round my neck and kisses planted on my cheek for absolutely no reason whatsoever. There is nothing like a 13-month-old granddaughter to crack open your heart. Watching Isabelle falling in love with the world, I just feel like crying all the time; her innocence is heartbreakingly beautiful.

And then there is the Cinderella-like never-been-kissed 47-year-old, dowdy-looking Scottish Susan Boyle who turns out to have the voice of an angel. What can I say that would even come close to the beautiful heart-break of seeing the cynical and cool Simon Cowell melt in the presence of such splendid innocence? My eyes fill with tears every time I watch the video.

Add to these the poetic songs of 75 year-old Leonard Cohen, whose recent performance at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland left me wet-cheeked for three hours. I first fell in love with Cohen’s heart-breaking music when just 18, over 40 years ago, and we’ve grown gray together. “I last performed onstage 15 years ago,” he said, “just another 60-year-old with a crazy dream.” I laughed, I cried, I’ve been humming his songs for days. As he left the stage, he lightly skipped into the wings.

All these tears, I wonder; just matter of getting older? To be sure, I cried often as a child; my older brother was not exactly the Wally Cleaver type – much to the contrary – he was cruel. I desperately wanted him to be my very best friend, to protect me and play with me, but he preferred to be alone. And when he was in my company and out of earshot of my parents, he used the moment to torment me.

In time I stopped crying. Like the Maasai warrior boys of the Ngorogoro crater in Tanzania, Africa for whom crying is a family disgrace, I stopped the tears, choked them back, and as I grew older I left crying far behind. Habits of sarcasm and deflection replaced it. The sarcasm served to transfer my pain and longing to others using humor, but sarcasm is just masked aggression derived from suffering. As I’ve written before, I am a recovering sarcastic. Deflection was effective too, so I cultivated glibness and quick wit.

Sarcasm does me no good and it hurts others, thus I try to set it aside. Deflection is mostly about avoiding strong emotions, like sadness or overwhelming empathy. So my current approach is to slow down and create some space, a gap wherein I need not be sarcastic or glib and I can take the time to feel what’s really going on inside. Leonard Cohen says this gap is the “crack in everything…that’s how the light gets in.”

Broken habits, broken hearts; between them I’m easily brought to tears. Perhaps after a while, I will cry less. Or, perhaps I will cry more; I can’t be sure where all this is headed. Nowadays I sense the larger fabric of my life; the rich strands of color and varied textures added by family, friends, and feelings. At times scratchy and irritating, right now life feels soft, warm and sweet. And if adorable Isabelle keeps giving me hugs and kisses, I’m a total goner for sure.

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