Ashes

Ashes denote the Fire that was–

Redbird’s ashes wait.  I will pick them up when I take Wiggie in for the vet to recheck.  We will open the box and touch the ashes–, put them in the ground of the little cemetery we created for the critters when they die.  The children have placed logs and stones and notes and other objects to protect and feed what they feel are the spirits of the dead pets.

They like to sit in that space and play games with the dead.

Revere the Grayest Pile

Anyway.  I will not bore you with a discussion of mourning.

For the Departed Creature’ sake

that hovered there awhile–

*&*&*&*&*&

What I will bore you with is this: Parrots Should Not Be Pets.  I have, of course, stated this in an earlier post.  But I feel compelled to write about it again, because of the youtube videos and the bird store I’ve exposed myself to in the last week.

My antagonism towards the idea of parrots as pets arises first, of course, out of the abuses that these animals suffer through commodification, including illegal trapping and transport, poor breeding practices and unfortunate pet store situations. The long life-spans of these animals (30-100 years) and the difficult aspects of their care means that many many people who purchase them mistreat, neglect, and abandon them (which is why we now have 3 previously discarded cockatiels).

These problems with the parrot pet trade are all a given.

What has been bothering me lately, probably because I am only now able to reflect upon my inability to really connect with Redbird (or at least make a narrative for myself that would suggest we connected, in the way I do for other creatures living with us), are the folks with good intentions–the people that love their parrots enough to put their videos on youtube.

With the nonhuman animals with which we live, we create empathetic stories about their internal lives.  We base these narratives on the creature’s visible/auditory behavior and our own experiences of the world.  These mesh and become what we see/hear/feel when we experience these creatures.

This narrative is inevitably flawed, however, because it emerges out of our consciousness.   It makes assumptions about the way the other/the animal lives in the world (exists, perceives, etc.)  It is not, in truth, a blueprint for the animal’s actual experience.

What you will notice in the youtube videos is the typical infantilizing of the pet birds.   The infantilization of pets is not a new observation on my part–folks have discussed this for centuries.  It is a logical extension of the human-dependent nonhuman animal relationship.   However, to me there is something profoundly different about this behavior when it is directed towards domesticated animals (who are already, in some ways, infantilized in form and behavior–selected for those behaviors that will make them more amenable to us) and when directed towards animals such as parrots.  Parrots are by no means true domesticated animals  They are not, for example, like animals who actively choose to live with us (the many stray cats that have shown up at our various residences across the country, for example)

The parrots:  we can not fulfill them.

So these videos disturb me–it is clever for a parrot to mimic–a clever parlor trick.  But where did this mimicry come from and what does it mean?  Few seem to ever consider this.    This behavior comes from the parrot’s own ability to process, interpret and generate auditory signals as well as the incredible importance of these signals in the complex social life of these creatures.  The parlor trick is nothing–try the parrot in the wild navigating the rainforest across various social ranges with through regions of varying vocal dialects.

And envision the amount of physical space a parrot traverses–from the smallest budgerigars flying across Australia to the largest Macaw traveling across South American.  Their flight is something clipped, curtailed, destroyed, removed when they become our pets.  A dental technician told me once about her pet bird, whom she loves truly and honestly.  The bird was bred in captivity and has never flown. “He does not know that he could fly so he does not miss it,” she said to me.   Even if she hadn’t been poking my mouth with sharp objects, I wouldn’t have told her how said that is.

Ironically (or not so…), I stopped at her bird store–(looking for gifts for my infantilized birds)–with the kids.  We encountered rows of parrots, stacked upon each other in small cages.  This is a “good” bird store–they do not buy illegally trapped birds, they babysit birds when people go on trips…blah blah. The large birds are housed alone–a macaw caught my eye and reached his bill through the cage–he wanted to touch me with it gently.

He will live 80 to 100 years if he is not overly neglected.  He will be passed from person to person and cage to cage.  Someone will make him talk.  Someone will love him.  Someone will die or move.

There was a rainforest.

——

Quotes are from Emily Dickinson (as usual).

My Wild Parrots–An Obituary

I borrowed a tear from the water
And wept it again and again

Redbird or Reddie, our cherry crowned conure, our Aratinga erythrogenys died last week.

And the heart is all in shadow
And the heart has almost stopped

He was not a young bird.

I cannot see that you are not me

He died of kidney or heart disease. I was in bed, sick, when he died. I heard him yell for supper, as he did every evening, and fell back asleep.

Willie found him dead some time later. And Wiggie, his housemate–I would say his partner–there on the perch they shared on the top of their cage must have known. When we took Reddie away, he did not yell.

I have written about these birds before, here. Go there if you want to know more about them. This is just a little remembrance.

Redbird lived with us since I was eighteen (for more than 21 years). In no such intimate relationship with any other creature have I felt so distant and helpless. Redbird did not like me. He did not like my husband nor did he like my parents. He did not like people. He liked/loved Wiggie. We introduced him to Wiggie as I was leaving for college and could not take Wiggie into the dorms. He and Wiggie bonded, but Wiggie always retained a fondness for me and other humans.

Redbird did not like this and because their relationship was more important than our relationship to either of them, I never did what I might have to tame Redbird–separate them. Keep them isolated from each other and force Redbird to accept me or my husband or some human, as a surrogate mate.

If you want your bird to bond with you you should not allow him/her to have a close avian friend.

So, Redbird lived and died disliking and, to some extent fearing, everyone except Wiggie. This sense of him as a cipher haunts me as does my inability to grieve over him in the way I would with another creature to whom I had bonded. My grief is about the sense I have that his life was so diminished by his being turned from a wild creature into a pet–and my complicity in this, ignorant as I was in 1988, diminishment.

This is how I soothe myself. He may have been a cipher to me but he was not alone. He and Wiggie loved each other and they had each other, from outdoor aviaries in warm California to a heated aviary in Washington, to, when they became too old to be outside, a cage inside our house.

It was on the perch on top of this cage that he and Wiggie played out their last days together, like two old men rocking on a porch watching the world go by and periodically making comments.

Is this sentimentality on my part? Anthropomorphism? Of course, but I have nothing else except this with which to comfort myself. It is pathetic, I suppose.

the fool steps out of his image

But I have to tell myself something because I have to create something for Wiggie now. What he has is an absence–though his is less horrible than Reddie’s would have been, had Wiggie gone first. Wiggie can spend time with us and seem to enjoy it and the only way it works is if I create stories and assumptions–trying to read him but filling the spaces I cannot interpret with something of Homo rather than Aratinga.

lights a candle in bright sunlight.

What Reddie brought–what I stole–was this deep sense of other that I could not penetrate. The other of a wildness robbed–deep time and space in one little bird. Wiggie has this too. So do they all

desire to see the invisible

Reddie
RedBird
before 1988 to 2009
RIP

*********

quotes (except for “if you want your bird) are from Inger Christensen

Currently posting The Quail Diaries Cuarto

Head over to The Quail Diaries for the next few days as I will be posting entries while I am trapping and observing the sweetly beautiful Callipepla californica.

Revision to my earlier naive secessionist stance

I no longer want to secede from the union–I am no longer a social anarchist. I admit, that sentiment, voiced earlier on this blog, was very naive. It also dismissed the hard won maintenance of a union of states–what was the civil war.

I apologize–

I may be frustrated by the leviathan that this country is–the squandering of beauty, the unwillingness to educate or be educated…. Rather than stop there, my misanthropic streak should have taken one step further and recognized that the problems of the whole would be reproduced in the pieces, only with borders. It is the horror of those additional borders and of the potential for attempts at takeovers, at land grabs–wars between states because they are no longer one country but several little countries.

It would probably be horrific.

My Twitter Writing

I am writing fiction on Twitter and if you are interested you may follow me at jdcalkins2001. Here is a sampling from the very beginning

I do not like this basement. It makes me uncomfortable. These are my hands, arms legs feet. But I won’t describe them to you.

I am not being obstructive. No. It is just that the shape of my body is obscured by the darkness. And why are you here anyway?

Billy she calls. The cat is here. Someone cries More weight. I am in the basement. I’d rather a carriage in any weather.

Someone cries More weight. I can’t smell the sweet white flowers on the trees outside. That is why I’m climbing out the window.

Out I go. I’ve covered the broken edge on the bottom with the rough sacking that lay in a pile. I am not careful enough. It cuts.

Like the kitten’s tiny claws & I’ve left them in that place. The mistress of the house calls, Billy. But I am on the dark street.

Cobblestones.

5 tools for reinvention 1Belief in a new you! 2 Focus on the goal! 3 A new name! 4 Money! 5 Our book:on sale for a limited time

Buzz

Do say the bees will return,
And with them, seasons.

This bee was trembling. Can you see it–it is all of a blur…

Admittedly, the camera (my iphone) is not the best equipment…but I tell you, it was truly trembling.

Below and behind it, the tide was coming in on the lake, and little waves were splashing, making it feel, if I closed my eyes, like I was near the sea.

Stars about my head I felt
About my Feet the Sea–

Except that it did not smell like the sea. The lake has a clearer scent, less salt and rot, and does not smell nearly as translucent to me as the ocean.

(Can you tell how much I miss it?)

There is something to Sina Queyras’ fear about the bees–recently, whole colonies of bees have been dying off. This has been named “colony collapse syndrome” and has caused considerable concern. Recently, a primary cause of this in honeybees has been identified–the parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia). Researchers were even able to cure a colony of infection which is good news.

One clover, and a bee.

of course.

Except that honey bees are not the only bees–and the Franklin’s bumble bee (Bombus franklini) is now, perhaps, extinct. And many other native bees are threatened. And less you complacently suggested that the Franklin’s bumble bee was never particularly common–take note. Dr. Robbin Thorp, an entomologist professor (emeritus) at UC Davis regularly censused bees, and the Franklin’s bees were among the 10-20 most common species. (Though perhaps you might not be convinced by that, had you not known that there were upwards of 20,000 species of bees across the globe).

Last time Dr. Thorp saw a Franklin’s bumble bee was in 2006, when he saw a lone worker at Mt. Ashland.

Blip.

Another species vanished and I bet you didn’t see it coming.

Where man is, nature is bereft.

A Political Interlude

I am following Iranian Student @Change_for_Iran on Twitter. The last post was:
“we have to leave, it’s not safe here anymore! wish us luck!”

I am one of Iranian Student’s 24478 followers.

Everything is superimposed upon everything else.

my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass,
that the Guest leaves—

I really appreciate being able to read Iranian Student’s posts—it is the experience that I always feel I miss with things happening elsewhere when I read the news. I feel as though something of the inside is out. I do not feel very useful. I am worried about Iranian Student.

We’re fearing that their Hearts will drop—
And crush our pretty play—

I am reading the protests, the marches and the repression from people “on the ground” and deeply inside of it. I can read the anxiety, confusion and excitement. It, at some level, resists synthesis and evaluation because it is immediate.

I am also, of course, reading our country’s recent history as well. Part of this is searching for a direct connection—how is what is happening there related to what is happening/happened here. A clear attempt to reflect back to the self—and to blame. (Like how the label “Axis of Evil” created the environment for Ahmadinejad to push more repression).

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly

I am not the only person—many people have pointed out that things might have been different in this country if folks had had the cajones to rise up in protest in 2000.

My first reaction to this was—yeah—what a lot of cowards we are. But my second reaction brings out the social anarchist in met—the election was not stolen in the way that people suspect Admenijad of stealing Iran’s election. It was robbed through the action of the Supreme Court—and institution that was built up directly out of manner in which the citizens of this country voted over the thirty years prior. And Bush was re-elected. His presidency was not directly the result of repressive tactics (although, there were some arguably dubious moves made…) in the way that would invite a mass uprising.

(I am full of shit…a moral coward—I am just too comfortable to put myself at risk.)

I am, apparently, a social anarchist. I believe our country is too big for true democracy. I am tired as hell of paying the price in environmental degradation, poverty, and lack of education, because of other peoples ignorance and unwillingness to do the hard work of learning.

Perhaps I am just an insular piece of work.

And when I think of the Civil War, I must remind myself what the threat of succession did to this part of the world.

I know it is more complicated that I imagine.

At any rate. I am still getting Tweets from Iranian Student—and I am getting more nervous for all of the people demonstrating because the Ayatollah is essentially threatening to crackdown. He has clearly decided to throw his cards in with Ahmadinejad.

So I’ll keep checking up and hoping that something shifts and we don’t have to watch a lot of people hurt over the next days and weeks.

If you are annoyed by my overthinking yoga, then skip this

I have fifteen minutes to write this.

Other things, dear, other things call.

The other day I was practicing yoga and all the voices of all the teachers I’ve had or read were inside my head. I turned them into a river.

But it was not enough. I had to give it up—my husband and children’s bodies and faces floated up in my mind and I could not help but grieve over time. Over that moment that I was not with them.

And isn’t it nice there is such a gorgeous metaphor available for me to steal—Kali, come on over here and sit with me awhile.

Since that interrupted practice, I’ve been busy.

There’s a start…you like that? Who isn’t busy, inside and out?

Again…since that interrupted practice I’ve been angry.

I have, as I’ve said, hard nut of anger. Sometimes it is (to extend the metaphor to beyond its natural range) cracked and the anger comes out and wraps all over me.

Luckily, I am better at not letting it swallow me, as much as bathe me, so I am able to move about some.

Not very “yoga” of you.

I want to practice a great generosity of spirit.

I want to move with grace on every level, instead of with this physical and emotional clumsiness. I want to use fewer words, not more.

But I cannot help myself.

I do not know of any other practice that allows me to balance myself physically, cognitively and emotionally (as well as other ways…). I thought for a little while that I’d give it up, start training for ultra marathons again—and maybe I will. But probably not. That kind of training doesn’t cut it, fabulous as it is in many ways, doesn’t get at what I need.

And this pisses me off.

Here is a specific: reading a recently acquired text on yoga practice I stumbled upon yet another list of things that a woman should not do when menstruating—no vigorous practice for 3 days, no practice at all for the first day. (The other suggestions: no inversions, no backbends….) And of course, sequester yourself in the menstrual hut so that the menfolk in your life do not risk coming in contact with you. You are unclean.

Perhaps this is unfair—underlying much of the talk about yoga during menstruation is based on the idea of the direction of energy: of apana. During one’s flow, one wants the energy going down (based upon Ayurvedic theoretical considerations) and inversions, for example, impede this.

I suppose I am not knowledgeable enough to really debate this—but reading this in yet another text written by a man made me put the book down. I feel as though things like this are said, recommended, become part of the discussion about yoga because people are unwilling to really dig and ask, where did this come from? What we receive from teachers and text are culturally inscribed and originated out of some form of cultural context, and honestly, I suspect the ideas about menstruation were inscribed by men speaking theoretically rather than by women speaking experientially. Whether or not the theory was emerging out of menstrual taboos or simply out of the Ayurvedic schematic of energy flow, I am loathe to accept any rules in this area. I want to make my own discoveries.

(I should admit that added to this basic experiential versus theoretical concern arises my cursory readings of academic texts about tantra—including David Gordon White’s somewhat controversial suggestion that the fluids of the yogini were the ultimate goal of tantric practice—)

But really, what am I resisting here? It is not these discussions about menstruation. In fact, it might be obvious to you that that little bit above is a diversion.

For me all sorts of things are laid bare.

It is easy for me to create diversions because I read a lot. And I overthink things. If I go back and read seminal texts—The Yoga Sutras, The Bhagavad Gita—all of the other elements slip away. I miss much, I am sure, in these readings—my cultural context is different, I am reading translations, I am missing all of those things that at the time were weaving through these texts. But I suppose, this is the same thing that happens when I read anyone’s work, Emily Dickinson for one, living in a context very different than my own.

That doesn’t mean Dickinson’s work is out of my reach, it just means that I will read it in a different way. I will also discover different things as I read her work after reading about her, about her context and the texts she read.

So, I suppose with the Sutras and the Gita.

Acheronta movebo

Yoga is a way for me to move the deep. Dig into upwellings. Burn through…burn through what? Burning is what I visualize during meditation. Burning to ash, then wind, then integration, and nothing.

Move the deep

What does it mean to lay bare in a communal space? What is necessary for safe passage?

I began with the voices of my teachers–and that is where I’ll end, because that is part of what I’m trying to understand. I am not ready to practice entirely upon my own, but I have become a little bit afraid of the space between teacher and student. I am arrogant and resistant and uncomfortable (STILL) in my own skin and this is part of the problem.

Whatever. I am out of time, or more than that.