awake

A writer is a professional observer.
~Susan Sontag

When you get groups of people together, even writers, you get the talkers, and the listeners.
The talkers tend to gab, I think, to dissipate some of their nervous energy, from being with a group of people they don’t know – instead of chain smoking or stuffing their faces with donuts.

They want to appear engaged and engaging, which can only be accomplished on a full moon, at low tide, on a Thursday in November.

In other words…NEVER.

I do that, except I ramble on while smoking AND eating sweets.
It is my default setting.

Lately, like maybe the last couple of years, I’ve tried to override my hard wiring, and let someone else talk for a change.

Life is funny that way, it’s a bit like musical chairs.
When you get up from your assigned seat, others will rush in to sit there and take your space. There seems to be no shortage of nervous talkers.

I like to be polite and introduce myself, but I don’t speak until spoken to for awhile, I let other people come to me. That is unless several of us are just standing around in uncomfortable silence, then I will start the conversation.

Someone like me cannot tolerate a looooooooong silence. It hurts our ears.

I once burped to cut the tension. Everyone laughed and then we started a conversation about food that makes us burp.
It was riveting.

Listening isn’t passive, the best listeners aren’t thinking ahead to their response, they’re using their observation skills, like a reporter, taking mental notes about their conversation partner.
Who is this person? Why are they here? How can I find out more about THEM? All the while listening, because what the other person is saying will lead to the next question, and the next, and the next, so…you can throw away your notes.

Are you the talker in a group or the listener? When someone is talking, are you thinking ahead to what you’re going to say? (That’s a hard one to break)

Much love,
Xox

Last night on the bike path I passed a well-dressed citizen, walking along with a bottle of water. I was stunned to see him finish his water and hurl the bottle into the woods.
I stopped and said, “Hey, please don’t do that.”

He looked at me with complete surprise and said, “what?” as if he didn’t understand what ‘that’ was. His conception of the world seemed to be that there was two kinds of stuff… his and not-his. The park wasn’t his, so it was just fine to throw trash, in fact, why not?

The challenge we have in the connection economy, in a world built on ever more shared resources and public digital spaces is that some people persist in acting like it belongs to someone else. When they spit in the pool or troll anonymously, when they spam or break things, it’s as if they’re doing it to someone else, or to the man.

Too often, we accept this vandalism as if it’s a law of nature, like dealing with the termites that will inevitably chew exposed wood on a house’s foundation. It doesn’t have to be this way. Over and over, we see that tribes and communities and organizations are able to teach people that this is ours, that it’s worth taking care of and most of all, that people like us care for things like this.

Seth Godin, whom I love, and also has the audacity to blog EVERY DAY, wrote this today, and as usual he hit the nail on the head about what I was sitting and stewing about this morning.

He was articulate. 

I’m REALLY hoping this doesn’t turn into a rant.

I wrote yesterday, in a humorous way, about someone in the neighborhood choosing to put out rodent poison, and the consequences. By this morning I was finding it as funny as a root canal.

I get it – I REALLY do. But here’s the deal.

The Eco system in our neighborhood is out of balance.

Since California has been suffering through its worst drought ever, the wildlife in the hills above our neighborhood has taken to the streets. The coyotes have come down and have been feasting on our free range cats. I lost my two Siamese in the space of a week a few years back.

About a month ago a couple of people in the hood pulled out sixty years worth of mature trees along with tons of ivy. Apparently the ivy had provided a lovely home for these rodents, and has for the sixty years it’s been there. 

They now find themselves on the move.

Since the coyotes have finished off most of the neighborhood cats that were keeping the rodents in check, their population has exploded this summer and we’ve seen and heard them in our Bougainvillea.
They’re not near the house, but the yuck factor in the evenings when you can hear and catch a glimpse of them is high.

Like I said – I get it.

We have contacted pest control who basically will come out and poison them. The other options are just as heinous; sticky tape that traps them (they either stay stuck and starve or you have to kill them; or traps, which often aren’t a quick kill. 
I hate killing anything. I carry spiders outside.

Anyway, they’re suffering.
Again, I am not a lover of rats and when they’ve gotten into the house we’ve resorted to killing them with a trap that electrocutes them instantly. We took the time to research our decision.
Still awful, but fast.
They never know what hits them and I’m okay with that if they’re eating my insulation and wiring and making a nest in my kitchen towel drawer, and in fifteen years we’ve had to kill maybe six. Previous to my cats dying, they did the dirty work for us. 

Here’s the parallel with Seth’s tale:
When I do that, it only affects ME and The RAT.

Whoever poisoned the rodents, took the easiest, cheapest, way AND they have started a chain reaction of collateral damage that will push the neighborhood that much further out of balance.
Not to mention the now FOUR suffering mice that we’ve found in our yard the last 24 hrs and have had to put out of their misery. They were dying a long, drawn out death, while my puppy played with them, and contemplated eating them.

We have owls and hawks who will eat the poisoned rats, so will the few feral cats that are left, and a couple of dogs that don’t know better. The squirrels and possums and raccoons will eat the poison and die horrible deaths too.

That poison doesn’t discriminate, and the wildlife is hungry this long, hot summer.

All because someone didn’t care about anyone or ANYTHING else.
They wanted the rodents to go away. Just like that guy didn’t want to carry around an empty plastic bottle.

I get it. I really do.

What I’m getting at is this: there are those of us that give careful consideration to others and the affect our actions will have on those around us. It is more than just MY rodent problem, it is OURS. Your decision has now affected the neighborhood, everyone’s pets, the wildlife and general peace of mind. 
Waking up to suffering animals and having to be hyper vigilant with my dogs is a pain in the ass.

Please, please, please my darling people, don’t throw your plastic bottle in the woods and don’t throw poison down and leave a mess for everyone else to clean up.

Be concious. Look around.

It screws up the balance.

It’s OURS not just yours.

I ranted huh? I’m Sorry……Thanks for indulging me.

Xox

If life is a dance, I have two left feet.
Which of course makes it hard to buy shoes! Ha!
But if you’ve seen me dance, or do Zoomba, or even Tai Chi, you know what I mean.

Everyone else is moving in sync to the right, I’m moving, always with great conviction…to the left.
It’s just my nature.
Always has been. 
As much as I desperately want to avoid embarrassment, it is next to impossible for me to just blend in, to stay inside the lines, to behave and “dance” like everyone else. But, I really have tried, and it has been exhausting.

Just like I play my own soundtrack in my head, as it runs through my life (don’t you?)
I have my own unique, sometimes awkward and clumsy choreography; which I often dance alone. 
It may not be pretty, but it has gotten me here.

Every once in a great while, I’m supremely graceful; like the Prima Ballerina in Swan Lake.
I’m dancing around, up on pointed toes, with my neck long, and my arms fluttering slightly.
The only problem is, the rest of the world is doing a tap routine, and I look like an ass!

So, here’s the thing: I had a humongous epiphany after catching The Dead Poet’s Society on HBO a couple of weeks back. Damn! I had forgotten what a great movie that is, OR, I didn’t have the depth of character in 1989 to fully grasp it’s meaning. Probably the latter.

In case you don’t know, or can’t remember, it takes place in an elite all boys prep school, in the 1950’s. There’s a new, unorthodox English professor, Mr. Keating, who, among other things, has them stand on top of their desks to see the world in a different way. He also challenges them to call him “O Captain, My Captain.”

John Keating: “O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It’s from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating, or if you’re slightly more daring, O Captain my Captain.”

He is pushing these boy-men to embrace great literature and poetry, to become free thinkers, to question authority and buck convention. In other words, my Holy Grail!

Bear with me here, because it was this next scene that really got me.
He has his class assemble in the school courtyard, where, as an exercise in self-expression, he has them walk in a circle. A couple swing their arms, several stomp their feet, but soon they are all marching perfectly in time. Although they find it funny, Mr. Keating is proving a point.

We may start off marching to our own beat, but we soon succumb to the herd mentality. We all fall in step, conform, becoming part of that herd.
It’s encoded in our DNA.
Mr. Keating wants them to break that code, to consider being another way.
Perhaps, to even entertain the idea that it might be okay to go left, instead of right, to dance to their own untamed choreography.
Hmmmmmm. Maybe my feet aren’t broken after all.

John Keating: Now we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go,
John Keating: “That’s baaaaad.” [imitating a goat] Frost said, “Two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Amen, Captain, My Captain.
XoxJanet

I’m going to print this and put it up everywhere!!