"Howl": But Is It Art?

Didn't see the movie, having met the man in the flesh, in the 1960s at Duke, wolfing down Oreo cookies at a classmate's off-campus kitchen table. (Allen Ginsberg, not me, eating the Oreos.) Made a nice change from all the narcotics and hallucinogens, I suppose.

I always thought it was a pity Ginsberg was expelled from Columbia [for writing an ironic rude message in the grime of his unwashed dorm window, addressed to his "slatternly" maid, yet], before he read James Joyce. Well, I assume he hadn't read Joyce, or else he wouldn't have taken credit for "inventing" stream-of-consciousness prosody. Nar'mean?

Consider the social contract, concerning listening to the non-linear musings of another. If you forked over whatever the admission price was, to see Howl in an art film house, it'd get right up your nose if the projector broke down in the middle of reel 2, and the rest was silence. But if, on the subway ride to the art cinema, a raving loony inflicted his own brand of stream-of-consciousness "performance art" on you and your fellow straphangers, you'd be likely to regard it as a bloody intrusion, and to wish he would shut up, already.

How come? Possibly, because [unless you mistakenly thought the James Franco vehicle was yet another werewolf flick] you were expecting to hear poetry, and therefore perceived it as such. [Poetic speech: the "just kidding; don't take this literally" speech function.] Whereas, the unknown [if not uncommon] loony on the subway might be spouting Referential [fact-giving] speech ("The aliens are coming!"), or even Conative [orders-giving] speech ("Get on your tinfoil hat!"), either of which could trigger the "Fear!" message in our amygdala, since this guy might not be "just kidding"; and he just might get up in our grille for emphasis.

Same sounds; different attribution, as to what they betoken. Sometime over the holidays, I just bet you were in a public place where you heard the howl of a young child. How did your amygdala process that? Merely intrusion? [Not my kid, not my job, man.] Vicarious pain & suffering? [Ah, the poor wee mite! Or, perhaps, those poor parents!] If you sense that the howl is strategic [a Poetic simulation of distress to manipulate the public], and you initially "fell for it," you might even feel humiliated at having been schmized.

We pay for, and expect, to be "deceived" by the artistry of professional performers. Not by the artifice of amateurs, whether they be cunning children, subway soliloquists, or even that "difficult" family member, who always seems to tune up for a long, loud howl, just as the entree is taken out of the oven. Nar'mean?

"A cat may look on a king, ye know."

The earliest citation for this egalitarian proverb is 1546 [Oxford English Dictionary], when the king in question was Henry VIII. I was going to apply it to the case, a couple of weeks ago, of the Bishop of Willesden's snarky Twitter response to the engagement of Prince William [heir to the throne and therefore this cleric's eventual boss]: to paraphrase,"I give it seven years. The Royal Family are all philanderers. When the wedding date is announced, I'll be booking my republican day trip to France." The next day, the Bishop issued a pro forma "No offense intended" statement; but by the end of the week he had been relieved of his public duties.

But that puny piece of lese majesty has since been overshadowed by last week's riotous assault [by disgruntled students] on Prince Charles' official car and his current wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, who may actually have been "poked with a stick" through the broken window of their Rolls. [All of us curious cats may look at the now-famous photo of Camilla and the future king, wearing matching WTF facial expressions, under siege.] 182 protesters had been arrested by the following Tuesday, on the basis of CCTV footage.

Can you hear the hoofbeats of my hobbyhorse approaching? Det. Chief Superintendent Horne had this to say about the alleged perpetrators: "There was a stark contrast between scenes in Westminster and homes with crying parents and shocked young people when the police turned up. When they are shown footage of their actions that day some are shocked by the impact of their behavior." Or to put words in their slack-jawed mouths, "I have no idea what got into me! I'm just not like that!"

To use another of my favorite Mancunian expressions, then "What are you like?" [It means "Your behavior is so bad, that similes fail me."]

My own answer, to the Bishop and to the revolting students, is "You are like anyone else who ever got a snootfull of one or more of the Big Four Precursors: angry." Was it intrusion? The tuition fees are set to treble in the next few years, meaning that almost all "Uni" grads will incur significant debt. Fear? "How will I ever find a job, if I can't afford an education?" Pain & suffering? "If the government cuts back on 'the dole,' [unemployment benefits], I may not even be able to afford food & shelter!"

But consider the targets of their [and the Bishop's] anger: the Royals. The ostentatiously wealthy, "Bow-to-me-when-you-address-me," unelected, Ruling Class.

I'm thinking it was humiliation, that got up their noses. It usually is, when revolution is in the air.

"Dig it"

"...like the FBI, and the CIA, and the BBC." So goes the Beatles' shortest song, from the 1970 Let It Be album (now available for legal download on iTunes). Beat musicians had been saying "Can you dig it?" or "Ya dig?" for decades [the American version of "nar'mean?"], to ask "Do you understand what I just said?" but by the time the Beatles used it, the phrase had morphed from the Metalingual [message clarification] speech function to the Phatic. It had come to mean "Listen" [as in "do you want to know a secret?"]

Well, do ya? [Want to know a secret, that is.] In the 60s, Daniel Ellsberg was convinced that we all wanted to know the contents of secret briefing papers on strategies for vanquishing North Vietnam [thereafter known as The Pentagon Papers]. So he dug up some classified information and gave it to the press, for all us quidnuncs to read.

La plus ca change, la plus ca meme chose. Nar'mean? Julian Assange? WikiLeaks? Ya dig?

Guess who thinks Mr. Assange is a swell guy for sharing with the whole [cyber-linked] world the classified information he was able to dig up? Why, Mr. Ellsberg, of course.

Whether you do, too, depends on your reference group. Are you more "The truth will set you free"; or more "Loose lips sink ships"? Far be it from me, to try to get you to switch groups. None of us can predict the effect of the WikiLeaks disclosures on global security. I'm more curious about the precursors. [As in, what got up Assange's nose, that he decided to crack the code of encrypted websites and report his findings?] Mind you, that's the basic mission statement of those who work for the FBI, and the CIA, and the BBC.

Our [often fear-based] Need to Know What's Happening is the key to our individual and collective survival. Curiosity saved the cat, the dog, and us. We all "want to know a secret," but we don't all "promise not to tell."

"Softly, softly..."

"...catchee monkey," goes a proverb so old that its origin is anybody's guess. Early 20th Century Britons assumed it came from somewhere in Asia [China or India, somewhere with free range monkeys, don't you know]. It means, "You are more likely to catch a fugitive (thought or creature) by guile, than by charging at it directly, all guns blazing."

My absolutely fave UK telly show in the early 60s was Z Cars, a cop show, wherein the Baddies were pursued by pairs of what are now called "gavvers" in unmarked Ford Zephyrs [whence the show's name]. Car chases took a back seat to good character acting, some of it undoubtedly improvised, since the shows were broadcast live. By 1966, our heroes had been promoted to detective status, and appeared in a new show, Softly, Softly. All subsequent cat & mouse, "I'll trick the truth out of you, Clever Clogs," police procedural shows owe a debt to these 2 series.

One of these, The Bill, ran from the 80s right up until this year, when its producers decided (gasp!) that the story lines were becoming repetitive and predictable! Give over! That's part of what we all loved about it. In its first decade there was a dour young Scottish detective who, in every episode, to signify that the villain was now ready to "cough" (confess), intoned, "In your own time..."

Which is the point of this post. "Ticking bomb" scenario or not, centuries of clinical experience and modern neuroscience agree: "You can't hurry truth. You just have to wait." Remember how Ronald Reagan excused his filmography of grade-B movies: "The studio had us on a tight schedule. They could have it good, or they could have it Tuesday." Same thing when it comes to actionable intel. We can, by word or deed, exhort the (putative) Bad Guy to "Spit it out!" and get a quick (possibly false) confession; or we can "go all round Robin Hood's barn" and catch him up in his own tangled web of lies.

The same choice of strategies applies to our own attempts to recover a fugitive thought. No matter how vital a piece of information may be, if we "rack" our brains for it [as in "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"], we redirect blood away from the hippocampus [the site of memory & problem-solving] to the amygdala [site of "OMG!"]. In academic settings, this is called "brain freeze," or "an attack of stupid." Like coaxing a skittish monkey [or dog] across a rickety footbridge to our side, we are likely to get better results with a "softly, softly" approach. Like the Scottish detective, we might try acting less humiliatingly desperate to get our uncooperative brain to "cough" the crucial but elusive intel, and instead intone, "In your own time..."

"Dai-jo-bu!" ["Everbody cut footloose"]

Where would the business based rom-com [from The Pajama Game to MadMen, which, don't kid yourself, is a comedy, whatever its Emmy category] be, without the office party, or better yet, the off-site office picnic? Nowheresville, that's where! (Hold that thought.)

How do drug/bomb/corpse-sniffing dogs learn their trade? Through rewards for accurate scent detection, sure; but what's the most commonly used reward? Why, play time with the "Boss."

In the Navy, we mice learned at "salute school," there are 3 basic postures, in the presence of the Boss Cats: "Attention on deck" [stand up straight, "eyes in the boat," and don't move]; "At ease" or "Fall out" [you are free to mill about smartly]; and (for me) a useless middle-ground position, because it was less comfortable than standing to attention [hands folded at the small of one's back, as if handcuffed] "Parade rest."

Lili's trainer [a former Marine] taught us to tell her "Zen-zen" [literal translation, "Never"] for the "Don't move" command, which we were encouraged to extend, for distance and duration, as we left her in the "Down/stay" position in an open space. The release command, "Dai-jo-bu!" [literally, "All right!"] is more festive than merely "At ease," or "Fall out." It means "Party time!" It's an exhortation to "cut footloose," to do a little dance of joy, to "play with the Boss Cat," not just to follow orders.

And therein lies the conundrum. In the Navy, a junior officer used to parse a "command performance" [an "invitation" to a social event that one could not refuse, without negative consequences], using a Germanic funny voice, "You will come! You will enjoy it!" So, too, do some reluctant attendees to the company party/picnic mutter to themselves, "Aye, aye, sir. Three bags full, sir. It's not 'play' if it's required, no matter how much booze is on offer." The well-meant but ham-fisted proclamation of the Boss Cat(s), "Let the revelries begin!" is experienced as an intrusion into one's private time off. Worse, if one "befriends Ethyl" [gets drunk] to get through the event, one risks humiliation or even the fear of the Boss Cats' displeasure.

So, what's the upside of such jollifications? Well, believe it or not, they work best if the captive merry-makers are divided [randomly] into teams, to compete in a bit of low-stakes zero-sum-gaming [ranging from silly, pseudo-athletic events to charades and Trivial Pursuit]. To promote the "We're all in this together" spirit, the Boss Cats have to muck in with the mice [at least one per team], thereby showing what Jolly Good Eggs they are, really. To encourage reference group cohesion, each team should devise a clever name for itself [not necessarily by democratic means]. If all goes well, the use of the Poetic Speech function [jokes, plays on words, mimicry, and general Mick-taking] will increase, and laughter will follow. Stress will decrease. Cortisol production will be slowed.

The "play drive" in dogs has long been recognized and used strategically by their Boss Cats, to increase on-duty "productivity." ["All work and no play makes Jack a burnt-out, distracted dog."] It is also a powerful motivator in humans, as taught in Management Courses for Boss Cats. No matter how deadly serious the mission we're on, inside of each of us there is a Party Animal, waiting for a moment of comic relief. Waiting for the release command, "Dai-jo-bu!"

A Pot & Kettle Situation

Our theme today is Freud's charging horses, back at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. They of his hypothetical question, "Would you rather be pulled apart by two horses, or charged by two horses?" To be less Poetic and more Metaligual about it, we're talking the defense mechanism of projection. Here are some of Ray Corsini's definitions [in The Dictionary of Psychology, 2002]: "attributing to others what is actually true of the self, often used to justify prejudice...the process by which impulses, wishes, or aspects of the self are imagined to be located in some external object."

Thus, the premise behind Projective Tests is that the subject will see in ambiguous visual stimuli, unconscious aspects of himself. You may recall from an earlier post that, unlike most "subjects" who think Lili looks like a wolf, a municipal workman thought she looked like a bat. Two more recent "responses" [as they are called on the Rorschach]: this summer a general contractor for the school, taking smoke breaks in a shady passage to the playing fields, would routinely greet Lili with, "There's my bear!" More bizarrely, a middle school boy, rambling in the woods with his science class to collect leaf specimens, asked "Is that a mountain lion?"

Instead of the deadpan "yes" I gave him, I could have said [in my best Cockney accent], "Oooh! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!" but that archaic expression has long since been shortened to the title idiom. It would have been an obscure joke, anyway, like the recurrent SNL sketch where two dorky Bostonians keep saying, "No, you ah" to each other. But that's what projection is: saying "No, you ah" to the "charging horse," rather than owning the "wolfish" aspects of oneself. Remember the middle school retort, to being called something negative [like a bat, or a bear, or a wolf, or a mountain lion]? "Takes one to know one."

Well, precisely. That was Freud's point. Well spotted, you middle schoolers and SNLers! Be a detective of human nature with me, and notice, on any given day, who is screaming the loudest imprecations against the "despicable" behavior of his/her foes. Wait one news cycle, and behold the hideous portrait [or skeleton] hidden in said screamer's own closet.

Less fun, but more to the point, we might ask ourselves why a friend's or relative's Highly Inconvenient behavior is Driving Us Howling Mad. Whatever else is "up our nose" about their shenanigans, there might just be a whiff of humiliation, as we grudgingly recognize in our own sweet selves a similar impulse to be beastly.

That "Frenemies" Thing

Well, stone the crows, all these years I have been attributing this zero-sum-gaming motto to Gore Vidal; but now I find it, in a 1966 TIME magazine article, falling out of the gob of the hugely successful Broadway producer, David Merrick: "It is not enough for me to succeed; all others must also fail." How humiliating, to have gotten it wrong! (Although I'm not alone. Others have credited Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan. Do I hear a nomination for Machiavelli?) The article, incidentally, in that halcyon, less in-your-face-snarky era of journalism, was called "The Be(a)st of Broadway," geddit? Cuz, Mr. Merrick was (ahem) ambivalently regarded by the theatrical community.

Now, a short diatribe on the clinical meaning of "ambivalence" (as opposed to the "street" meaning, of "I hate his guts!"): "simultaneous conflicting feelings toward a person or thing, as love and hate" [Webster's, 1988 ed.] Not, "as fear and loathing," nar'mean? To illustrate this point in therapy sessions, I hold out my hands in the "supplicant palms" position, and intone, "On the one hand, ya-dah-ya-dah. On the other hand, la-di-dah." I then say, "There are very few things or individuals in our lives, about which we humans are not ambivalent."

Oh, but how we hate to admit it! Even to ourselves. So, hurrah for the new portmanteau word, "frenemy," which captures the both-hands [simultaneously positive & negative] feelings which we can sense in others [but only bald-faced truth-tellers, like Merrick & Vidal, will acknowledge in themselves]. We'll know that this brave willingness to admit to ambivalent feelings, about even our Nearest & Dearest, has made it into mainstream consciousness, when "to frenemy" someone becomes a transitive verb in Facebook parlance.

The next post will deal with the ways people avoid Owning their Inner Wolf [as in, acknowledging that another's success can stir feelings of humiliation that they got the "prize" we wanted, and even fear that there won't be enough "prizes" to go around].

Meanwhile, here are Seamus & Finn, locked in some sort of close contact. Is it a hug or combat? That's easy. It's both.

Working on a Clear Round

Those of us who have watched our share of televised equestrian events tend to put the sound on "mute," to avoid hearing this inane, now-you've-jinxed-it phrase, which seems to guarantee that horse & rider will knock over the next fence. In the first place [where this "doomed" equine/human team are now not likely to finish], why state the obvious? It's not a radio broadcast. Anyone who cares about the outcome of the event will be able to work out if all the jumps have remained up so far, or if some rails have fallen. It's not a judgment call. As for time penalties, there is usually a graphic in the corner of the TV screen, keeping track for the viewers [but not the rider, who has to make an elaborate, on-the-hoof compromise between haste & accuracy, to win this zero-sum game].

Okay, so horse people are "a breed apart," notoriously superstitious; but so are theater folk. It's bad luck to wish an actor "good luck" before a performance: hence, the Poetic [as in, "I mean the opposite of what I'm saying"] phrase "Break a leg." In the UK it's bad luck to say "Macbeth" [especially if that's the show you're in]: hence, "the Scottish play." My favorite line from the 1947 musical comedy send-up of Irish-American folkways, Finian's Rainbow, is "Don't be superstitious! It's bad luck!"

So, that's my excuse. I'm a horse-loving, theatrical, Irish-American. What's yours? Cuz everyone is superstitious about something or other. Black cats? Friday the 13th? Announcing that you're expecting a baby before all & sundry have guessed, anyway? This latter, culturally supported taboo falls squarely in the "working on a clear round" category. It avoids an air of hubris; of "pride goeth before a fall"; of "counting your chickens before they've hatched" [as it were]. We all remember that obnoxious student in high school, usually [not always] a girl, who after every test would set up a caterwaul of doom: "Oh, I just know I failed it!" And the rest of us just knew s/he got an A, maybe even the highest grade in the class, and were less than sympathetic with this ritual of "needless" worry. Ah! But it does not seem needless to the hand-wringer [any more than compulsive hand-washing seems optional, to the compulsive hand-washer]. It is a magical, albeit Highly Inconvenient, attempt to counter the fear of Bad Outcome. Sometimes, as in the post-test-hand-wringer scenario, it is an attempt to counter the anticipated humiliation of getting anything less than a perfect score.

However, and this is the point, these little anti-hubristic peregrinations most of us indulge in are the lesser of two evils, compared with not trying at all. One summer day, while riding hired horses through the Vienna woods, my elder daughter & I overheard our guide ask her young son, "Max, bist du brav? " [which we took to mean, "Are you brave?" but Cassell's dictionary translates as "Are you well-behaved, a good boy?"]. Then she directed him & his mount to jump a newly-fallen tree trunk, which they did, after a few false starts, much to everyone's delight [and our relief]. Now, when we are facing a daunting challenge, where the odds of success seem long, we ask each other "Bist du brav?" If what it takes, to be brav enough to put all our effort on the line, is a bit of "aw, shucks, I probably will make a dog's dinner of this" lowering of expectations, than so be it.

Whatever helps you to take that leap. [Incidentally, this is the fallen tree described in the "Timber Wolf" post.]

The Hoon Report

Thanks to the personable young British Formula One racer, Lewis Hamilton [whose shenanigans in his Mercedes-Benz AMG C63 "road car" two days before the Australian Grand Prix cost him a slap-on-the-wrist fine of "just under 300 pounds" for "acting like a hoon"], those of us in the Northern Hemisphere have learned a new epithet, that we can hurl at "aggressive drivers" who set off our limbic system alarms with their risky moves. Mystery shrouds the derivation of this Antipodean term [which originally referred to any "young person who engages in loutish, antisocial behavior," but has more recently become a "semi-official term" for street drag-racers, as in "Australia considers anti-hoon legislation"]. I have two theories. One, that "hoon" is merely a contraction of "hooligan." Two, that it comes from the objective case of the Gaelic word toin [as in the Irish imprecation, Pog ma hoin], and so originally meant "ass." [As in "Quit acting like a hoon, you silly ass!"] Not all that farfetched, considering that the First Wave of "immigrants" to the Land Downunder were predominantly Irish. [If you don't get the quotation marks in the previous sentence, look up meaning 4 of "transportation" in Webster's, innit.]

Anyway, here is Fionbharr [Finn to his friends], a San Francisco rescue, to keep not-so-solipsistic-Seamus company in the new place. If Finn were, indeed, writing a blog, it would seem to be coming right out of his hoin, now, do you see?

Back to Hamilton, though, who serves as Formula One's "ambassador for [its] global road safety campaign and has given speeches in Westminster [Parliament] on the subject." Through his lawyer, he issued a statement to the Australian court [and the rest of us], that he had suffered "embarrassment, humiliation and distress as a result of the episode." We're going to consider if Hamilton has truly "owned his wolf" in a moment; but here's how it played in court. "Magistrate Clive Alsop said he would not convict the 25-year-old because he was ashamed and remorseful. However, he added that Hamilton's behavior was unacceptable. 'This isn't about somebody's character, this about somebody in a responsible position behaving like a hoon.'"

But, do yah see, now, Magistrate Alsop, in my book [well, blog], "character" is exactly what this is about? It's all very well to acknowledge that having one's car impounded two days before the Oz Grand Prix is "embarrassing, humiliating, and distressing." That's being sorry you were caught. It does not address the question: "What got up my nose, that I decided to violate the rules of the road [and the core values of the road safety campaign for which I am a high-profile spokesman]?" As with all the grabbed-from-the-headlines cases I cite, I realize that once the accused has "lawyered up," the odds of such public self-disclosure lengthen considerably. But we, the mere readers of the story, can ask the up-your-nose question on their behalf [and vicariously, on ours]. For unless "out-of-character" behavior is understood, it is likely to recur.

As with the ponytaail-yanking soccer player in the post "In Hindsight," perhaps the question does get asked and answered, in private, after the news media have cleared off. Having served a 2-game suspension, that young lady is back playing for the Lobos. Maybe she has done her "wolf work," and has figured out how, in that aggressive sport, to avoid acting like a Red-Card-level hoon.

As for my boy Hamilton, he won the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday, by "driving safely and keeping out of trouble." Even though Chris Rock laments that "There is no rehab for stupid," there may be rehab for acting like a hoon. Let's hope so, anyway, since we've all been there, if we're honest with ourselves.

Feeling Threatened?

Back in the day, before the advent of the Homeland Security Advisory System [as in "A day without Orange is like a day without sunshine."], there were other semiotics for indicating that it was time to "Be afraid. Be very afraid." There were the DefCon levels, whereby [counter-intuitively], DefConOne betokened Doomsday, whereas DefConFive was the Peaceable Kingdom. Since most non-combatants thought it was the other way round, it wasn't all that useful as a civil defense advisory. In my Naval family of origin, we used the traditional "Go to General Quarters" to signify that we were in crisis mode.

But, whatever you call it, your limbic system usually gets there way ahead of your pre-frontal cortex; and you are already engaging in a [possibly ill-advised] Fight, Flight, or Freeze response, "before you can say knife" [as the English measure it, as compared to the American "say Jack Robinson" unit of time]. Absent an airport Tannoy announcement, what cues the threat response? For most of us warmblooded creatures [including, as usual, Lili the dog], it's the fur on the back of our neck standing on end. This is most amusingly obvious with cats' tails puffing out, of course. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. In the dualistic parlance of the Mind/Body dance of anxiety, it's usually the body that leads. [You can search-engine iconic studies from the 60s involving the IV administration of adrenaline, the physical effects of which "undergraduate volunteers" (an oxymoron) were "contextually manipulated" to interpret as either fear or excitement.]

Other physical changes include pulse and respiration rate, as well as increased muscle tension. Those of us in the business of devising ways to "smooth ruffled feathers" often resort to reverse-engineering tactics. Big Pharma, and brewers before them, recommend skeletal muscle relaxants: "How dire can things be, if I'm feeling this loosey-goosey?" Despite the risk of inconvenient side-effects [DUIs, addiction, or respiratory collapse], ya gotta admit, the euphoria that comes with chemically-induced muscle relaxation really beats being told, "Oh, relax!" by an unsympathetic companion. We Mental Health providers try to suggest alternative routes to tranquility: yoga, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation exercises, hypnotic trance induction... "Too New Age-y" complain the uptight. "I can never remember my mantra in a crisis." So, I try to reverse-engineer the shallow breathing: "Sing!" I command. "Whistle, if you know how!" [Remember my post on Bridge on the River Kwai? The ditty the POWs whistled in the face of their implacable captors, "Colonel Bogey's March"?] Besides sublimating fear with an inside joke against the enemy, whistling (like singing and humming) normalizes breathing. It is what Behaviorists call an Incompatible Behavior (with the panting that accompanies anxiety).

Recently I have found that singing to Lili is as effective for "standing her down from General Quarters" as the Freeze commands to "Lie down" and "Stay down" are. She just can't resist coming over and singing along. [It may have to do with the overtones I produce.] Another explanation is that my carefree singing lowers her level of perceived threat: "How dire can things be, if my Pack Leader is so loosey-goosey?"

So, in this picture, is Lili a threat, or threatened? [Well, in the event, neither, since the shadow is cast by her trusted Pack Leader.] But if she were confronting a stranger, the correct answer would be "both." Next time you encounter a dog who's "going to General Quarters" [or find that the Wolf in Your Head is howling], you might try a little musical reverse-engineering, yourself.

"Wild horses..."

What? "...couldn't drag me away" [Richards & Jagger, 1971]? Well, of course they couldn't, or more accurately, wouldn't, you City Slickers, cuz they is wild, innit? They neither bear weight on their backs, nor pull it via harness. Their theme song is, "I'll Never Be Your Beast of Burden" [Richards & Jagger, 1978]. What they will do, if you intrude into their established territory, however, is charge you and possibly trample you.

Which is not to say that they run amok, or obey no Code of Conduct, according to the equine ethologists who study them, particularly the band of 250 [wild horses, not ethologists] who live on Cumberland Island, Georgia. The observers note that the horses tend to organize themselves into Family Groups [a stud, his mares, and their offspring], who rotate through the various grazing venues on the island: meadows, marshes, woods, and beach dunes. An anthropomorphic explanation of this nomadic behavior might be that the families are altruistically sharing the nutritional wealth of the island with their equine brethren. There are two flies in that Utopian ointment, though. One is, well, flies. Inland, where the grass is lush and plentiful, the horses are tormented by flesh-eating flies; whereas on the shore, where the sparse, tough dune grass grows, the constant sea breeze blows the flies away. So perhaps [as Harris opined in Cows, Pigs, Wars & Witches] local geography shapes what is considered to be The Right Thing to Do. [In this case, to keep hoofing it, to the next ambivalent stand-off between eating well and being "eaten alive."]

Also, as in most human cultures, there is an Out Group, who are forcibly excluded from the Happy Families scenario: bands of Bachelor Horses. The observers offer an illustrative vignette, in which a bold Bachelor Horse put just one hoof onto the territory of a Family Group, which was marked by what is euphemistically called a Stud Pile [of dung], and was immediately charged by the stallion and "shown off the property." Insert your own current human example of such behavior here. It is not clear [Is it ever?] how the hapless members of the Out Group drew the short straw. What is inspiring is that, every so often, a pariah horse bravely challenges the authority of the humiliating and/or fearsome studs.

Speaking of inspiring, this photo of two Bachelor Horses was taken by my [90-ish] mother-in-law, who trudged 10 miles down the beach to find them, yet [uncharacteristically, for her] heeded the warnings of the island guides, to keep a respectful distance away from her subjects, lest they "pass on the pain" and trample her. Having got what she came for, she trudged the 10 miles back to rejoin the Band of Ecotourists, of whom she & my father-in-law were the oldest by several decades, though not made to feel like members of an Out Group, for all that.

Who Says?

Not only is this a song title from John Mayer's latest musings on interpersonal ambivalence, Battle Studies, it's what all and sundry are asking and/or acting out, these days. "The peasants are revolting!" goes the old double-entendre, and so are Army generals, Hollywood starlets, and all the drivers who blow past me daily, on a narrow road clearly marked 40 mph and crawling with police. Sheesh!

In Ireland these days, such behavior would be labeled "bold" [as in "...as brass"], which no longer means brave, but just impudent, shameless, feckless, or insouciant. Is there more of this about, or am I just an old stick-in-the-mud? I blame reality TV, ya know, which gives viewers a false sense that the risk of legal sanction is outweighed by the prospect of fame [and, occasionally, fortune]. Back the the 70s in Manhattan, some of my acting school friends who didn't have day jobs would audition to be contestants on a quiz show called Jackpot! To make the otherwise boring show watchable, the talent-spotter rewarded the most over-the-top, crazed members of the studio audience by choosing them to [the uncopyrighted equivalent of] Come On Down, and play the game. They shot 5 "episodes" of the show in one day, so the semper paratus acting student bought a hold-all with 4 other shirts, just in case. One of our friends got selected for bellowing "Crackpot!" instead of the show's catchphrase. He used the video of his 5-show "performance" [during which he "chewed the scenery" shamelessly] as a cheap & cheerful audition tape for the consideration of various theatrical agents; and it got him work.

These days, in the lyrics of the Scouting for Girls song, "Everybody wants to be on TV." As an erstwhile student of Sociology, I could make a connection between the dearth of actual Day Jobs, and the fantasy of "quitting [one's] Day Job" (to become rich & famous); but it's belaboring the obvious. My actual point is a more universal, psychological one. If virtue [observing the speed limit, graduating from college, obeying one's Code of Conduct] is not rewarded, it is less likely to occur. In situations where the fear of punishment for Engaging in Shenanigans is outweighed by the humiliation of having Done the Right Thing and still gotten a Bad Outcome, stand by for more Shenanigans.

This is Lili, boldly ignoring my command to jump over a barrel to my right. Although it is high summer again, the picture is from 2 years ago, before we had truly appreciated that You Get What You Reward, and You Reward Disobedience by Letting It Slide. Silence gives consent. These days, this seemingly trivial moment of noncompliance would be met with, "Oooy! Ali Oop!" followed by a heartfelt "Yosh! Ichibon Inu!" [Good! Number One Dog!] as she completed the jump. Not a contract for her own reality show, mind, or even a high-value treat. What Lili and the rest of us need, to keep on doing the dorky Right Thing, is for our masters to notice, and acknowledge, our efforts.

Are You Gaslighting Me?

By 1994, when Victor Santor published his creepily serious book, Gaslighting: How to Drive Your Enemies Crazy, the term had come to mean "a form of intimidation or psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory and perception." Most Americans will associate this with the 1944 film Gaslight, starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman & Joseph Cotton, which was a remake of a 1940 UK film of that name [later released in the States as The Murder in Thornton Square], based on the 1939 West End play Gas Light, which opened on Broadway in 1941 as Angel Street, starring Vincent Price in his debut role as a Baddie, where it ran for a record-setting 1,293 performances. In a real-life attempt to gaslight American movie-goers ["British version? There was never a British version."], MGM arranged to have the negative & all the prints of Thorold Dickinson's 1940 film destroyed [but he surreptitiously made a print for himself and squirreled it away].

In all the versions, our heroine notices that the gaslights on the lower floor of the house intermittently go dim [indicating that someone has lit up a gaslight in the attic]; but the complicit housemaid [Angela Lansbury in the MGM flick] denies that anyone is upstairs and she denies that she notices the downstairs lights dimming, at all. It's another case of, "Who ya gonna believe? Me, or your lyin' eyes?"

Apparently, humans can't resist this form of Poetic deception, often rationalizing it as "just a bit of fun." According to my Dad, each Junior Officer, upon arrival at his first Pacific port of call, was gaslighted in the Officers' Club, thusly. The Newbie would spy his first gecko, peering down at him from one of the corners of the room, point to it and say, "Oh, look! A lizard!" As one, the Old Hands would turn variously to every other corner of the room and say, soothingly, "Yes. I see it. Of course I do." "No! Really! Over here!" the Newbie would insist; at which the Old Hands would all switch their gazes to another [gecko-free] corner and reiterate, "A lizard. Yes." Of course, the wheeze would only work if there was only one gecko in the room. A log was kept, of how long it took for "the penny to drop." And don't you just know, the ex-Newbie was the most enthusiastic gaslighter, when the next Junior Officer arrived.

Why do we humans feel the urge to deceive? Probably, for the usual reason we resort to Poetic communication: because we reckon that the truth will get us in trouble. The Baddie in Gaslight fears his wife will dime him out as the murderer, so he seeks to turn her into an unreliable witness. The Old Hands seek to assuage the humiliation of their own Newbie cluelessness, so they ritually pass on the pain to the new Newbies. This is especially likely to happen if there is the perception of scarce resources [such as available females, or supplies, or even space] in the area, into which the Newbie has unwittingly intruded.

Turns out, we're not the only creatures who engage in intra-species deception, as Jakob Bro-Jorgensen reports in his recent article, "Male Topi Antelopes Alarm Snort Deceptively to Retain Females for Mating." [First of all, that title is far too high-concept to get green-lighted as an MGM film. I'm thinking, Don't Be That Schmized Gazelle!] Quoting here, "male antelopes snort and look intently ahead if an ovulating female begins to stray from their territory [which] suggests to the female that there is danger ahead...[such as] lions, cheetahs, leopards [or] humans...the snort and intent look were a false call...and there was no danger nearby." The article asserts, "This type of intentional deception of a sexual partner has not been documented before in animals. Previous studies have shown that animals do deceive each other but mainly in hostile situations or to protect themselves." Bro-Jorgesen ponders "why females keep responding to alarms at all"; and concludes that "females are better off erring on the side of caution, because failing to react to a true alarm could easily mean death in a place...full of predators."

So, here's my suggestion, whatever your species happens to be. If you begin to suspect that you are being gaslighted, ask yourself, "How might the [would-be] gaslighter benefit from the deception? What's up his [or her, let's not forget Angela Lansbury's shenanigans] nose, anyway?" If you come up clueless, you always have the option of reading the power subtext back to the other party: "Are you gaslighting me?"

Looking for Dr. Dolittle

On Mother's Day, no less, this expectant squirrel appeared on the "Juliet balcony" of my daughter's Chicago apartment, and chose it as her nesting site, despite the presence of a fascinated ginger cat, right on the other side of the screen. Her babies arrived, and lively visits from other mother squirrels with their slightly older offspring ensued.

All very Beatrix Potter meets David Attenborough, eh? But how did this urban Mrs. Nutkin negotiate an understanding with my daughter, that the not-always-sleeping-Seamus would be kept securely on his side of the window? Don't kid yourself for a minute, that All Creatures Great and Small inhabit a Peaceable Kingdom these days, especially in cities. There is a chilling news story from last night, of 9-month-old twin girls in East London, attacked in their cribs by an urban fox who apparently came in through the bedroom window. It was "so bold," reports their horrified mother, that it didn't immediately scurry away when she turned on the light. [Assuming it wasn't neurologically impaired with rabies--which would be my first guess about a Maryland fox behaving so bizarrely--its startled limbic system probably chose "freeze" as a first response, followed by "flee."]

The authorities partially blame the careless [or naively sentimental] humans who leave out food for the foxes, the semiotics of which betoken: "Won't you be my neighbor?" As of today, in that district of London at least, each little back garden has a baited Have-a-Heart trap, beckoning: "Step into this parlour."

Apart from the obvious carrot & stick methods of trans-species communication, how do most of us talk to the animals? Often, we give them to understand what's on our minds by teaching them our "secret code" of words and gestures. When they guess our thoughts correctly [and obey our command], they get a reward.

Yeah, yeah, but what if we want to guess their thoughts? If the animal in question is right in front of us [like the balcony squirrel], we can go all Jane Goodall, and observe it closely for subtle changes in limbic arousal: pitch variation in vocalizations, fur standing on end, and so on. Even so, we may not understand just what got up its nose. So, we do what we do with what Piaget termed "cognitive aliens," pre-verbal babies: we make it up. We attribute a plausible subtext to their howling or chortling. "He's hungry." "She loves her Uncle Neddy." After all, who's going to contradict us?

The NYTimes ran a pre-Preakness article about two high-priced "psychic diagnosticians" [also known as "animal communicators"], both ladies, as it happens, who will tell you what's up your horse's nose from "anywhere in the world." A consultation costs $500. Once again, who's going to contradict the Doctors Dolittle? The horse?

A brief digression, for an apocryphal anecdote, attributed to Henry VIII: "A king once commanded his farrier, 'Make this horse talk in a year's time, or I'll have you killed.' The farrier comforted his distraught family, 'A year is a long time. Anything might happen. The king may die, or the horse may die, or the horse may talk.'" My kids were so taken with this vignette, that whenever an improbably wonderful thing seems on the verge of happening, we say, "The horse is clearing his throat."

Wanna know the relevance of animal telepathy, to those of us who haven't hung out our equine psychic shingle? Couldn't be clearer. It's about communicating with the Wolf in Our Head, to figure out what's up its [our] nose. If you feel confident that you can "read" your baby [or your beloved pet, or the squirrel on your deck] "like an open book," so, too, might you venture to "read your inner Wolf."

Go on, have a go. The alternative is to spend $500 on a long-distance "reading" from a total stranger.

"A Penny for Your Thoughts"

In 1966, a year after the Rhine Research Center [more commonly known as the Institute for Parapsychology] decamped from the East Duke campus [and curriculum] to a semi-spooky-looking house across Buchanan Street in town, I paid a visit and had my psi [telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis] tested. Guess how I did? [Feeble parapsychological joke.] Tell you later.

Incidentally, the first citation for the penny-for-your-thoughts idiom was in Sir Thomas More's book, Four Last Things. [He, who naively believed that "you can't go to jail for what you're thinking"; yet he not only went to the Tower, but lost his head, for what Henry VIII thought More was thinking.]

Mind reading is not the exclusive domain of professional psychics, ya know [or do ya know?]. Except for the truly solipsistic [and/or autistic], all of us behave as if we had "the second sight." We blithely attribute thoughts and motives to others, quite often accurately, on the basis of subtle [or even subliminal] cues. That's why when a 20th Century psi subject had to pick which card the examiner was holding [square, star, circle, cross, or squiggle], the two people had to be in separate rooms. [Now, it's ever-so-much-more high-tech, don't ya know.] My own low-tech "research" suggests that the ability to "receive" such "messages" diminishes with age. To while away long car trips with my kids and their various friends, I made up a game called "Gypsy," using an ordinary deck of cards, thoroughly shuffled. Each girl in turn had to guess whether the next card would be red or black; and if she was right, she collected the card. The one with the most cards at the end of the game was the "Gypsy." It was always the youngest kid in the car. "Ooh!" the others would predict, "You're going to clean up at the Windsor Casino!" This was back in Detroit, in the early '90s.

Speaking of which, back in the day, on the crosstown drive from our house to our horse's house, we would pass Madame Rosa's Psychic Parlor, with a neon sign saying "Call [a telephone number] for an appointment." My already skeptical older daughter would quibble, "Why would you have to call? Wouldn't she just know when you were coming in?"

For most of us, success at mind-reading is a sometime thing. But, as casino operators know, nothing is more compelling than Intermittent Reinforcement. One wonders how often the punter's Beginner's Luck at a game of chance is contrived by the "house." One even might wonder how many of my fellow subjects were found to have "significantly high psi," as I was. Bet you already guessed that, eh?

Almost 40 years of trying to "guess what's on the mind" of my clients has convinced me that I do not have "significantly high psi" [anymore, one might say]. What I do have is a Miss-Marple-like tendency to pick up on subtle [even subliminal] cues, from which I try to "get a clue" as to "what the deal is." In my line of work, the chilling motto is "You don't know what you don't know." Talk about fear of the unknown...you don't know the half of it.

Next time, telepathic communication with animals.

"Keep a Civil Tongue in Your Head!"

Did you hear about the [latest] set-to between the Australian actor Russell Crowe and a member of the media [Mark Lawson of BBC 4]? There's an audio clip, if you're interested, with expletives prissily deleted. During an interview @ the Cannes Film Festival, the mercurial actor took great umbrage at Lawson's [repeated] observation that he heard "a hint of an Irish accent" in Crowe's Robin Hood, and ultimately walked out, in medias res. Apart from mild [Poetic] sarcasm, when Lawson asked him if the accent had been "more northern English," [to which Crowe retorted, "No. I was going for an Italian, yeah. Missed it? F@#k me. Anyway..."], he used the Referential speech function. Nothing went airborne except a few Emotive phrases. Wolf held in check, compared to past form.

More to the point, what do we think got up Crowe's nose, about the attribution that he sounded slightly Irish? Humiliation of some sort, one gathers. His bio says he spent his youth pinging between New Zealand & Oz; and that apart from one indigenous ancestor, his heritage is [like most Anglo-Antipodeans] Welsh, Scottish, English and (ahem) Irish. Much was made of the film's efforts to be more historically accurate than previous versions, and a dialect coach was mentioned. Was there an implied slur on that person's accuracy or efficacy? Or on Crowe's capacity for mimicry? Or was the presenter insinuating that the actor was playing Robin Hood as a crypto-Fenian [out to overthrow the English monarchy]? I'd go see that film, now.

"Anyway..." [to quote Crowe], here's the point of this post. Which would you prefer: to be told something offensive, or to be told a lie? The Indigenous American expression for the latter, is [for a European incomer] "to speak with forked tongue." After several incidents in which East Coast tribes of Indians were schmized into "peace talks" with colonists, only to be massacred, they came to fear them, having before only resented their intrusion.

For my part, as much as it angers [humiliates] me to "get panned by the critics," it is far more infuriating [as in, frightening] to be deceived. When a dog is barking at you, or a horse is pinning its ears, you know just where you stand with them [if possible, out of strike range, until their limbic system has chilled]. When poor old Russell was being interviewed by a presenter "notorious for being oleaginous and obsequious," how could he tell if the guy loved the movie or hated it? Especially if, rather than just giving him a thumbs up or down, Lawson made himself obscure, with a forked-tongued, passive-aggressive. a propos of nothing "question" about "a hint of Irish." Like Lili would have, Crowe rose to the bait and barked. But he didn't bite. He chose to disengage, to leave the field; but as he departed he was still trying to clarify whether Lawson had intentionally dissed him or not: "I don't get the Irish thing, by the way," he murmured, as he left the room. Now, that was civil enough, wasn't it?

"What Was I Thinking?"

My currently fave BBC 1 radio presenter, the young-but-sage Dubliner Annie Mac, was hosting a Bank Holiday Weekend show, reading texts from listeners recounting their shenanigans. "Annie, I woke up in a wheelie bin [trash can on wheels] this morning," wrote one reveler. Annie deadpanned this response: "Now, what made you think that was a good idea? Surely, you would have been more comfortable, lying face-down on the lawn. Ah, well, you've survived it; and now it's an anecdote."

Brilliant! Here's why I love what she's done there. Without appearing to be goody-two-shoes preach-y about the perils of demon drink, she has deftly imputed internal locus of control to the texter-in. Rather than focusing on how he came to be so "trashed" that [presumably] his so-called friends decided to "bin" him, she [Poetically] implies that the decision to pass the night in a garbage can was his; and questions the wisdom of that. Under the rubric of "If you can't be good, be careful," she points out that he could have lessened his pain & suffering by stretching out, in the recommended Recovery Position, on some soft grass. [Coincidentally, last week the Manchester Guardian ran a feature on 10 common, potentially lethal, misconceptions about rendering first aid; and one was to "lay a drunk person on his/her back." Several show-biz fatalities were cited, as evidence that this is a Bad Idea.]

By implication, she suggests that the reveler might now be having a bit of retroactive fear [as in, "Bloody hell! I could have died from that!"] and humiliation [as in "Bloody hell! I just told an audience of millions how stupid I am!"]; but she reframes his shenanigans as a Lucky Escape: an event not to be repressed or dissociated [as in, "That was not me, I'm not like that."], but to be told and retold, until the ostensibly Crazy Fox's behavior is understood well enough to answer the question: "What was I thinking?"

Rx: "Waldspaziergang" (A Walk in the Woods)

Another case of Pseudo-scientific Over-reach, brought to you by the BBC this week: "'Green' exercise quickly 'boosts mental health.'" This, (loosely) based on a paper by Jo Barton & Jules Pretty of the University of Essex [published in Environmental Science & Technology, under the catchy title, "What is the Best Dose of Nature and Green Exercise for Improving Mental Health? A Multi-Study Analysis"]. The authors did a statistical meta-analysis of 10 completely unrelated studies involving people of various ages engaging in various outdoor activities, and answering questionnaires purporting to measure changes in their self-esteem and mood, at the intervals of 5 minutes into the exercise, 10 to 60 minutes, "half a day," and/or "a whole day."

The groups studied ranged in age from "youths" to " the elderly." The activities they engaged in ranged from walking [apparently, not part of all 10 studies] to cycling, horse-riding, fishing, sailing, gardening, and "farming activities." All the studies took place near Essex in England, at some time over the past 6 years; and the 1252 participants were "self-selecting using an opportunistic sampling method." [I think that means, these were the ones who completed their questionnaires.]

Before we get to the "data," let's ponder how on earth one "completes" 2 questionnaires after 5 minutes of horse-riding. Is it like the Kentucky Derby, where a lady with a wireless microphone rides up beside you and interviews you? Is there a staggered start to the pony trek, so she can interview each participant exactly at their 5-minute mark? Wouldn't it take longer than 5 minutes per participant, to ask & answer the 20 questions? How about the cyclists? Is it like the Tour de France, with an interviewer in a chase car? These intriguing logistical problems were not addressed in the "Materials and Methods" section of the paper.

Anyway, now for their "Results." For both self-esteem and mood, the "greatest changes come from 5 minutes of activity, and thus suggest that these psychological measures are immediately increased by green exercise." They go on to report that "the changes are lower for 10-60 min and half-day, but rise again after a whole day duration." Looking at the many data charts in the article, unless the same chipper 5-min subjects bum out @ the 10-60 min and half-day point, and then perk up a bit after the whole day, it appears that each participant was assessed at only one point. There's a clue in the "Discussion" section: "Whole-day activities are likely to be qualitatively different activities, involving in some cases camping overnight and in others significant conservation achievements."

Hmm, wouldn't it be useful to know just which Green Activities yielded "The 5-minute Fix"? I'm thinking, unless you're a professional jockey, not horse-riding. Not fishing, either. Nor, indeed, sailing. I'm thinking, probably walking. So, why not try that first? Take yourself [and any handy companion, 2- or 4-footed] on a little walk among the trees, and just see if it doesn't "boost [your] mental health." That's what the Austrians were doing to lift their spirits, decades before Freud had them lying on his couch: Waldspaziergang in the Vienna Woods. [I hear a waltz...]

Many Happy Returns

I first heard this British expression for "Happy Birthday" in 1960, upon turning 12, in London's answer to FAO Schwartz, Hamley's, while being bought a life-sized [plush-toy] parrot, who is still with me. Two months into our English sojourn, I was stuck in my homesick-for-the-States phase; and my two associations to the shop assistant's remark were: "Yankee, go home," and "Keep your receipt, in case you want to bring the toy back."

This Sunday was both Lili's and my husband Chris' birthday. [I am authorized to say that Lili turned 6.] It was, indeed, a happy day, except for my having so recently returned from a California visit to the "other daughters" [and therefore missing them all the more], and our having lost both phone & Internet connectivity, so the birthday boy & girl could not receive "Many happy returns of the day" messages from their Loved Ones. Normal service returned by the evening, though; and greetings were duly exchanged.

How sentimental we humans are about observing the anniversary of our birth! A young & trendy BBC 1 presenter was offering to send [by ground post] Birthday cards, on behalf of stranded Brits in the States [whom she dubbed VAVs: Volcanic Ash Victims] to their sweethearts back in Blighty. Not enough, apparently, just to pass on a "shout out" over the airwaves. A timely, mailed & received, piece of festive stationery was required. We're just as soppy over here. No less than 5 times during one fair-to-middling meal at a "family-style" Italian restaurant in oh-so-cool LA, my girls & I were "strongly encouraged" by the management to sing a song of Birthday greetings to total strangers at other tables. In the spirit of Casablanca, we stalwartly demurred [although we didn't bust loose with The Marseillaise in counterpoint, either].

Here's my point. Lili the dog [who is blissfully unaware of the AKC registration of her date of birth] probably had a happier day [sans cards, calls & cake], than her human owners, because all she expected [and received] was her food, her walk-in-the-woods and our love. She avoided all the potential for humiliation that custom & Hallmark imposes on the rest of us: "You're nobody til somebody fetes you...in a timely manner, on the very date of your birth." That was the entire plot of Sixteen Candles, remember?

My own birthday often falls on Labor Day weekend, which is Highly Inconvenient, if one has just had one's purse snatched and all one's friends who could have lent one money are out-of-town [which happened twice in NYC in the 70s]. So, I have a lower bar than many for what I consider a Good Enough Birthday: something to eat, the liberty to walk about outside, and the knowledge that my Loved Ones wish me well, wherever they might be.

Although, I must say, that 40th in Vienna was pretty swell...

Slip Slidin' Away

"You know the nearer your destination the more you're slip slidin' away," said the Bard of New York, Paul Simon. I first heard the song on my car radio in 1978, driving out of Gate 8 of the Naval Academy, having just paid off my [for those times] staggering grad school loan debt, feeling a great sense of relief and accomplishment...only to realize that I, like the woman in the song, was still "think(ing) of things that might have been." I advise against dwelling on the road(s) not taken, since, as the song says, it is highly correlated with having a "bad day."

This morning's woodland adventure featured the more literal form of slip slidin' away, since it had bucketed rain last night, and I had chosen the least non-slip of my 3 pairs of Wellington boots. I was reminded of a walk two years ago, just before flying off to Detroit [long story] to take the California Board of Psychology licensing exam, and thinking, "Boy, this would be a highly inconvenient day to take a serious tumble in these unfrequented woods." Didn't fall, made the flight, passed the test, got the license, still no nearer the destination of living on the Other Coast. This afternoon, I am flying Over There, to see not one but two daughters [since the Chicago-based one is moving to San Francisco this summer]; and the same thought occurred to me, in a particularly steep & muddy patch of the path: "What if I fall down [and brake my crown, with Lili tumbling after]?"

See, this is a Locus of Control meditation. To what degree are we destined to fall, move West, have kids, join the Navy? [You know, whatever.] My own limbic system is pre-set to fear that I will take the "wrong" road, get lost, wind up at a deadend. So, I often choose to believe that I have no choice [to cut down on all that anger-mediated-cortisol, nar'mean?]. The price I pay, though, is to endure the intrusion of An External Plan-Maker's Agenda on me. What am I, Fate's plaything? [Oops! Cortisol.]

Got to dash, now [Southwest and tide wait for no person, as it were]; but ponder a bit on the next Big Fork in the Road you're facing, and notice whether you attempt to shift the onus of the decision onto Someone Else. [You car's SatNav, your horoscope, the I Ching, what your Loved Ones really want you to do without actually telling you point blank...]

Incidentally, this picture was taken on the first day after the big snow melted, and doesn't really look like the inches of oozing mud we slogged through today. "But what was I to do? It was the only picture I had with any mud in it." [She said, externalizing the locus of control again...]

Snakes & Ladders

David Lodge [one of my fave English authors] begins his 1980 novel How Far Can You Go? with a 1950s university student weighing the pros & cons of attending a mid-week evening church service. Aside from the expenditure of Therbligs, and forgoing more frivolous diversions with less conscientious college friends, there is the danger that holier-than-thou self-congratulation will result in a Net Guilt Gain! The author likens this hazard to the children's game of Snakes & Ladders. Just when you think you're ascending to the Moral High Ground, oopsie-daisy, your Pride occasions a Fall from Grace. Nar'mean?

When he chose this metaphor, I wonder, did David Lodge know that Snakes & Ladders is based on the 11th-century Hindu game Moksha-Patamu, devised to teach children how to express the 5 Virtues (while avoiding the 12 Vices), in order to reach Nirvana? [No, not the band.] Note that in the original game, there are more than twice as many "snakes" [ways to fall] as "ladders"; whereas in the UK and American versions, the ratio of "snakes[or "chutes"] to "ladders" is 1:1. [Think 7 Virtues & 7 Deadly Sins.] Wanna know the Vices the Hindu version features? [They are listed in this order in several sources. Could it be, from venial to mortal?] "Disobedience, Vanity, Vulgarity, Theft, Lying, Drunkenness, Debt, Rage, Greed, Pride, Murder, Lust." Guess you wanna hear the Virtues now, innit? "Faith, Reliability, Generosity, Knowledge, Asceticism." [Reminiscent, somehow, of Jonathan Haidt's 5 Moral Spheres model, from the post, "Crime & Punishment."]

Now, back to real snakes. In the Fall of 1984 we were living in Holden, Massachusetts [near Worcester, about which, don't get me started; talk about ambivalence (mine), talk about a sense of moral superiority (theirs)]. "We" being self, husband Chris, 9-month-old Baby Girl, and the gifted hunters, Stella [Ciotogach-looking one] & Stanley [with the white goatee]. Chris was off being a [jolly good] Fellow @ UMass Med Center; Baby Girl was napping; and I was doing laundry in the basement on a rainy day, with Nobody's Fool Stella keeping me company. I gathered that Sodden Stanley had popped through the catflap, because I heard a dong! as he landed on the dryer. Also, I felt his wet tail wrapping around my bare ankles. Hang on. There he sat, staring into middle distance, on the dryer...while the black snake he had brought in ascended my leg.

So, limbic system on Full Alert, I screamed, shook the serpent off, ran upstairs and donned my Wellies, ran back downstairs brandishing a golf club [no, I am not Swedish], onto which I "charmed" the snake, and thence threw it into a wicker basket, which I deftly flipped over, thereby trapping it. Unabashed Stanley was clawing at the basket, wanting to play with his "prey," so I grabbed him and ran back upstairs to call Chris, "insisting" that he come home "right then" and "deal with" the snake. "But, you've already dealt with it," he quibbled. "Just keep the cats out of the basement, and you'll be fine." "Nooo!" I wailed. "I'm afraid the snake is going to get out, climb up the stairs, and hurt [the baby]!" [I may be part horse.]

Having clearly exceeded the speed limit, Chris arrived shortly, flipped the basket over, bashed the snake with the golf club, saying "There!"; hopped back in his car, and returned to the hospital.

Poor old snake! Wrong place at the wrong time. [In Stanley's line of sight on a wet Wednesday.]

Chris and I both lost many karmic points that day. Yet, search as I may, I can't find my crime on the Hindu list of 12 Vices. I can identify what Got Up My Nose, though. Intrusion of an unexpected creature [not even a furry one] into my home and onto my person. Fairly far-fetched fear, that the snake would glide up the basement stairs and under a closed door, to strike at my baby [even though it had been so gentle with me, that I mistook it for my cat]. But, most shame-making, the humiliation of not being taken seriously by my husband. As if I were some [gasp!] Drama Queen, or something.

Chris would no doubt say that he displaced his Rage [at my intrusion on his workday, and possibly the humiliation of being regarded as a hen-pecked husband by his fellow Fellows] from me, onto the hapless snake. No wonder, 25 years later, he helped the young snake on our driveway to live another day. After all, if reincarnation is true, that could be you or I, Next Time.

A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

Early last Fall Mahmood, our termite "experimenter" [as my NYC reference group ironically referred to exterminators] came up to my husband, holding a medium-sized black snake which he had just killed in our yard, saying "I know I'm here to see to the insects; but in Morocco, where I come from, all snakes are bad." [Ooh! Maybe he comes from Casablanca! How Poetic would that be?]

A few months later, over Thanksgiving, Chris encountered this spiffy-looking young specimen on our driveway, took its picture, and gently placed it back in the leafy undergrowth. Unlike Ireland [which is snake-free, t'anks to St. Padraig, so the legend goes], Maryland has its fair share of venomous serpents; and our visiting daughters were Not At All Happy with their father's sudden display of ahimsa. After all, this is the guy who routinely [if inadvertently] trampled-while-pursuing the skittering chipmunks and similar fauna, with which our cats stocked our basement in Michigan, like a small wildlife preserve. So, why spare this snake?

He gave them two reasons. Because it was outside [not in our basement]; and because it "looked so little and harmless." Thus, it did not provoke an aggressive response through intrusion or fear. This snake, it could be said, had Benign Semiotics...at least, to Chris.

Now, having grown up with Burrack, and Dusk and Owen, our girls knew that Benign Semiotics are in the eye [and species] of the beholder. All horses regard all snakes [even little ones] as alarming predators, and will often spook in a "highly inconvenient" way, if they are the first to spot one nearby, before the rider can redirect their attention. Indeed, many horses [including my uncle's Arab gelding...hmm...a desert dweller, like Mahmood] tend to err on the side of caution, and spook histrionically at undulating garden hoses, lead-lines being gathered up, or even long cloth banners fluttering in the wind. If you are the rider, taken by surprise [and possibly thrown] by your horse's sudden shying away from a snake-like "threat," you are more likely to fear & loathe snakes [even little ones], through Classical Conditioning [or even One-Trial Learning]. This is how Malign Semiotics get started, nar'mean?

Chris e-mailed his snake picture to the University of Maryland Extension Program, and was informed that it was a juvenile Black Rat Snake, not venomous, and actually quite useful for natural rodent control around rural property. Mother Nature outfits the young ones in a camouflage motif, which gradually darkens to a solid black at maturity, like the one which Mahmood killed. [Yes, it might well have been "Bambi's mother."]

Next time you find yourself [or your horse] recoiling in alarm from a creature whose Semiotics are Malign, why not do a bit of psychological detective work? "Is the threat real, or is that outlandishly coiffed, dressed, bedizened, or named individual only the signifier of a potential threat?" To make this exercise a bit more real-world, imagine that you are standing in the security line @ BWI, behind Mahmood the Exterminator, who is trying to fly back to Morocco to see the folks from his "home place," over Thanksgiving.

The Holy Ground

True, full-time Hibernians [not youse who are bein' Irish just for today, to honor St. Padraig] will know that the so-called "Holy Ground" of the old song [also referenced in a second song on Mary Black's album of de same name] is not a religious place at all [like, God-save-us-all, East Jerusalem, or Mecca], but the red-light district in the port town of Cobh, in County Cork, from whence set sail many of our immigrant forebears, from the land of green fields and not enough food, to the land of green beer and food galore.

It is, thus, an ironic [Poetic] figure of speech, capturing both halves of the ambivalence which the Irish diaspora feel for their country of origin. For centuries, Eire was [as Dr. Samuel Johnson said of Scotland], "a grand place to be from." In Mary Black's song, "The Loving Time," [the first line of which is, "Reads like a fairytale, cuz that's what it was."] it connotes the power of sentimental, romantic love to [temporarily] blind a couple to their [possibly irreconcilable] differences: "...and the Holy Ground took care of everything." Spoiler alert. The last verse of this bravely wolf-acknowledging song begins, "It didn't come true in the end. They went their separate ways." Rather like Old Mother Ireland and Her then desperately hungry, later desperately nostalgic, children.

Suggested reading: Tom Hayden's [yes, that Tom Hayden] historical and autobiographical book, Irish On the Inside.

So, here's the point of this post. Any piece of real estate which holds powerful intimations [both sweet and bitter] of actual or legendary happenings, can become "the holy ground" for an individual, a couple, a family, or a tribe. In the Fall of 1957 my father drove through Gate 3 of his alma mater, the Naval Academy, and parked [illegally] in front of the Chapel for long enough to run into the Admin building and report for duty. My usually Stoic mother burst into tears. Was she afraid the Jimmy Legs [the Yard police] were going to ticket our car? Or was she overcome by the sight of the Chapel, where she & Rosie were married in a tiny, wartime service? Turns out the Chapel was a mere synecdoche for the whole USNA mystique, which, to one degree or another, our whole family [along with many others] have come to regard as "the holy ground." In 1958 my mother dramatically fell ill with MS while walking on the Academy grounds; yet I found myself inexorably drawn back to live and work there, in 1976 and in 2000. And it's not because of all the rollicking fun to be had there [especially, this last time round]. It's because of the memories of the good and bad times I had there with The Now Departed [my parents], whose presence [I believed] would feel more palpable there, than anywhere else on earth.

It was, do you see, a Transitional Object [like a Teddy bear, or Alfred the dog, or Ciotogach the cat], that helps one to feel closer to "the ones that we love true," to paraphrase the song.

How randomly can a place become "the holy ground"! Not for its intrinsic beauty, or bounty, or balmy weather, or enlightened folkways; but because it is the repository of memories, of Us interacting with [ambivalently] loved Others. When you're in it [as I learned early, in my peripatetic Navy childhood] it's often hard to believe that you're going to look back on a place with nostalgia. I spent my first two months in England [now, the holiest of my "holy grounds"] squinting at ViewMaster reels of the Naval Academy and weeping for what was lost. Who could have imagined that, one day, I would be using Google Maps to take virtual rambles round my beloved English "home place" [as the Irish say] of Stoke D'Abernon, where Ying Tong the cat was regarded with such ambivalence [mostly, negative] by all the neighbors.

Speaking of rambles, I am wise enough to know that the South River woods [in which Lili once again warned me of a suddenly-falling-but-this-time-without-audible-warning, 30-foot tree trunk, not 20 yards ahead of us, on today's walk] will be added to my list of "holy grounds" [if I am not struck down by falling lumber first].

Laissez-passer

In NYC in the 70s I had not one, but two, reference groups so devoted to the 1942 film Casablanca, that they [we] had memorized every line of dialogue. Start me anywhere. If you have even a passing acquaintance with the storyline, you will recall that it's all about which two lucky people in the Nazi-controlled city of Casablanca will ultimately get to use these travel documents [les deux laissez-passers], permitting them to hop a DC-2 to Lisbon [and thence, escape to America, which was still officially a neutral country during the filming of this movie, which is regarded by some historians as the most persuasive piece of anti-Nazi propaganda ever made].

So, anyway, all these decades on, laissez-passer [literally, "Let (to) pass."] means a "guarantee" of a safe passage, through a perilous time or place. A get-out-of-jail-free-card, as it were. Or, in my case [I hope], a respite from the freakish weather that has made trekking through the woods "highly inconvenient." I know, I keep banging on about this as if it were as onerous as this season's earthquakes, tsunamis and lethal flooding elsewhere in the world. It's just a metaphor. A synecdoche, even. The Poetic use of a small, particular thing to represent the bigger thing. Nar'mean?

And now, to my point. With regard to the weather, or tectonics, or "unexpected" acts of aggression carried out by individuals who were [inevitably, reportedly] held in high esteem by their neighbors and/or colleagues, there are no guarantees. Some major irritant seems of have gotten up Mother Nature's nose, and she is smacking Earthlings on the snout, Big Time. Also, as you know, civil servants, just trying to do their lawfully mandated duties, have come under attack. Talk about synecdoche! The [attributed] on-line ramblings of these domestic terrorists seek to justify their lethal assaults on individuals, who, they believed, represented disagreed-with government policies. In a much milder form, as a Naval officer in the 70s, I experienced this part-whole confusion at the hands of brick- and bottle-hurling young Townies, when walking the the streets of Annapolis in uniform. The ridiculously simple laissez-passer that I "wrote" for myself was to change into civvies and take my hair down, as soon as I got home [2 whole blocks outside of Gate 1, big whoop]. It taught me to resist judging human "books" by their "covers," as well as to be hyper-aware of the semiotics [subtext] of my dress and behavior, as perceived by others.

So, what gauntlets do you have to run this week, without the guarantee of a safe passage? I'm not trying to scare anyone. I'm giving you credit for your bravery; and encouraging you to notice what steps you take, to "write" yourself your own "laissez-passer," that increases your sense of security.

I find, prosaically, that practical footwear helps me feel safer. Note the state-of-the-art "Bogs" boots, plus "Yak-Trax." I only slipped once Saturday [the day this photo was taken]. To paraphrase Casablanca, "I came here [to Annapolis] for the [mild winters]. I was misinformed."

"Stuck in a Moment"

This meditation on the U2 song, which David ["Bono Vox"] Hewson has called an after-the-fact, imagined suicide intervention for his late friend, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, is dedicated to everyone who has developed a de novo case of Seasonal Affective Disorder this winter. [More snow forecast for this evening in the DC area, tra-la.] It is also about the Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker's concept of functional fixity, which Corsini defines [in The Dictionary of Psychology, 2002 ed.] as "the opposite of...creative thinking."

Consider the not-awful-just-highly-inconvenient intrusion of this prolonged spate of foul weather on Lili's customary, daily ramble-in-the-woods. Until this weekend, the snow in the forest has been up to 3 feet deep, swallowing up the feet [and legs] of all but the snow-show-clad. The first time this happened to me, I was alone with Lili, who was off-leash but skittered over on the frozen surface, merely to bark her encouragement [impatience?] at me; and I began to fear that I would be Stuck in the Moment until the Spring thaw.

Resisting a $100 investment in snowshoes, I began searching for alternative venues for Lili to run, which were both [relatively] safe & legal. When school was canceled, the plowed parking lots were viable, except for some tricky, hard-to-see patches of ice. A couple of days we slogged through 2 feet of slush on the paved path in a local recreational park. [By the way, why all the empty parked cars in the lot? Surveillance or shenanigans?] One day we bored ourselves silly, running up & down our own cul-de-sac street, incensing all the neighbors' penned-up dogs.

A few brilliant, but not-really-legal venues occurred to me, such as the covered parking lots @ work, the Mall, or Whole Foods. I reconnoitered them with Lili in the car; but the hostile semiotics of the security guards were discouraging. One evening at the almost deserted medical center parking structure, the golf-cart dude pulled up and asked me, "Is there a bomb scare, or something?" [Lili's semiotics aren't all that benign, either.] To avoid further humiliation, if not actual arrest, I loaded her up and drove slowly away.

So, there you have it, from one who prides herself on her non-linear, out-of-the-box problem-solving skills. Apparently, my amygdala has been so freaked out by the logistical challenges of this unprecedented spate of snowy weather, that it has hog-tied my hippocampus. [Note the paucity of posts in February.] Finally, this weekend, with a partial thaw and Chris at my side, we ventured into our beloved woods again. It wasn't easy or pretty, but it was a necessary journey. It restored limbic balance, as well as hope, that "this time will pass."

And even if Bono didn't get to save his friend's life with this song's belated argument against despair, he has helped me "get myself together" this winter. Now there's a guy not much given to functional fixity, d'ya know?