Of Mania, Miracles, Mice, Men and the Mundane
I have been hesitant to post since beginning this smokeless Odyssey. I've always been one of those people who do well with word association games or stream of consciousness musings, but as one of my friends has mentioned, the absence of smoke is allowing so much oxygen to get to my brain that I'll either overload my intellect or my third eye will draw a diagnonal line between the other two and I'll end up paranoid about tic tac toe.
I'm also not much on coincidence. That doesn't mean that I see conspiracies behind every tree, but it does mean I take note of everything that's going on so as to come to a reasonable reaction as to 'why' things happen with an open possibility as to what will occur next and what it all means. So, my story begins a few days ago when I was in my seventh day without a cigarette.
Using food as a substitute meant a nerve exposed trip to the local supermarket where I encountered an older gentleman from Trinidad who has become a good friend. He is the unofficial greeter at the market, primarily because he has a wonderful smile, eyes that twinkle and the manner of having never encountered a stranger. Over the last few years, we have had conversations on every possible topic: politics, crime, Elvis, education, his children, and as he is a religious man, that day we talked of miracles. I happened to mention a line from Emerson's Song of Myself, "and the miracle of a mouse is enough for any infidel." Initially perplexed, he did arrive at the ultimate conclusion I hinted at.
The following day, which was no less manic in terms of my desire for soothing nicotine, I noticed that all my cats kept congregating in the same area of the house - a rather unusual occurrence since, like people, they have their own societal lines of like and dislike, insult, appreciation and amusement. When learning that I share my home with a group of female felines, most people automatically assume I'm either a cliche, crazy or am a 'cat' person. In my own defense, I admit to being all those things at times, but I am foremost an animal person - any animal - preferring their company to that of humans simply because there is no subterfuge or pretension in animals. What you see and experience is exactly what you get. They are themselves at all times, and no one, least of all the animals themselves, can have any illusions about that.
Being excellent hunters with amazing eyes and reflexes, my cats had discovered a mouse. No doubt one of the girls had first made the catch in the basement (there's a small opening around one of the vent pipes that let's them come in during the winter, I think), but since they are not above displaying their prowess for others to see, she had carried it up to the main floor where there is much more room to run, play, hide, tempt and pounce. Six cats all attempting to herd that mouse in different directions at the same time was a wee bit like watching the Keystone cops in furry coats. Without going into a play by play, it was over eight hours of agitation for me, entertainment for them, and horror for the mouse. The cats fell over each other, bumped into each other and the furniture, bickered, complained, and frequently lost the terrified rodent behind the furniture, bookcases, doors, and each other. Everytime I tried to intervene or capture the poor creature myself, he got away, the cats got in my way, or I was far too slow and not nearly agile enough. It was bedlam.
It was natural to put their unnatural setting within a human context, and the cats started reminding me of the way too many single focus humans run roughshod over everything in their path to get their way. That mouse was every 'small' person whose ever been ignored, stepped on, pushed aside, or harmed by government edicts that come too late or not at all, or corporate malfeasant that puts human health at constant risk. Most people see a mouse and think vermin, which is also what a great many people with money or prospects see when they think of the poor or disabled or disenfranchised or ill educated. That mouse was being terrorized by masters of the technique who had no hope of thinking differently. And isn't that exactly what terror is? A weapon in the hands of those who hate, or covet, or dismiss others as unimportant, and who have no hope of thinking differently? The mouse would be harmed and the cats would be disappointed to lose their toy, merely walking away and thinking nothing of it. Sounds like every day human life to me.
Humanity gives little thought to the small things like that mouse, but a mouse is very much a 'miracle' whether you think in religious terms or not. Mice are the plankton of the mammalian world, like rabbits, reproducing at a phenomenal rate because they, also like rabbits, are preyed upon as food by just about every other animal. They are a very big and important cog in the entire system of a balanced Nature, and thus a planet in balance, and none of us could survive long without them...even as we ignore or curse their existence.
They are also a very essential cog in the human world of beauty, health and greed, but again, humans give them little thought and less value. Mice are highly favored as research 'assistants' and experiment results. Many of them live their lives in human constructed cages, tanks or mazes before being dissected and fed to other mice to see if they can learn new tricks that way. Mice have been used to test cosmetics before they are ever released for use in a public that is more concerned with the softness, glow, unwrinkled appearance of themselves than they are about what goes on in their own minds or what function they serve for mankind other than as adornments or fluff or mindless entertainment.
How many mice should we thank each time we take a pill that lowers our blood pressure or cholesterol, or regulates the beat of our hearts, or allows a surgeon to adjust something wrong in our bodies or brains? How many mice died to allow our Veep to have all those heart surgeries and pace makers? How many mice were sacrificed to the cosmetic surgery of Joan Rivers or Brittany Spears or any of the other over paid denizens of the vacuous world of entertainment? Did mice die so our illustrious sports heroes could take steroids? Shouldn't the drug and cosmetic industries have monuments to mice in their boardroom?
If you really think about it, mice have built a lot more in this world than just Disneyland.
I have been hesitant to post since beginning this smokeless Odyssey. I've always been one of those people who do well with word association games or stream of consciousness musings, but as one of my friends has mentioned, the absence of smoke is allowing so much oxygen to get to my brain that I'll either overload my intellect or my third eye will draw a diagnonal line between the other two and I'll end up paranoid about tic tac toe.
I'm also not much on coincidence. That doesn't mean that I see conspiracies behind every tree, but it does mean I take note of everything that's going on so as to come to a reasonable reaction as to 'why' things happen with an open possibility as to what will occur next and what it all means. So, my story begins a few days ago when I was in my seventh day without a cigarette.
Using food as a substitute meant a nerve exposed trip to the local supermarket where I encountered an older gentleman from Trinidad who has become a good friend. He is the unofficial greeter at the market, primarily because he has a wonderful smile, eyes that twinkle and the manner of having never encountered a stranger. Over the last few years, we have had conversations on every possible topic: politics, crime, Elvis, education, his children, and as he is a religious man, that day we talked of miracles. I happened to mention a line from Emerson's Song of Myself, "and the miracle of a mouse is enough for any infidel." Initially perplexed, he did arrive at the ultimate conclusion I hinted at.
The following day, which was no less manic in terms of my desire for soothing nicotine, I noticed that all my cats kept congregating in the same area of the house - a rather unusual occurrence since, like people, they have their own societal lines of like and dislike, insult, appreciation and amusement. When learning that I share my home with a group of female felines, most people automatically assume I'm either a cliche, crazy or am a 'cat' person. In my own defense, I admit to being all those things at times, but I am foremost an animal person - any animal - preferring their company to that of humans simply because there is no subterfuge or pretension in animals. What you see and experience is exactly what you get. They are themselves at all times, and no one, least of all the animals themselves, can have any illusions about that.
Being excellent hunters with amazing eyes and reflexes, my cats had discovered a mouse. No doubt one of the girls had first made the catch in the basement (there's a small opening around one of the vent pipes that let's them come in during the winter, I think), but since they are not above displaying their prowess for others to see, she had carried it up to the main floor where there is much more room to run, play, hide, tempt and pounce. Six cats all attempting to herd that mouse in different directions at the same time was a wee bit like watching the Keystone cops in furry coats. Without going into a play by play, it was over eight hours of agitation for me, entertainment for them, and horror for the mouse. The cats fell over each other, bumped into each other and the furniture, bickered, complained, and frequently lost the terrified rodent behind the furniture, bookcases, doors, and each other. Everytime I tried to intervene or capture the poor creature myself, he got away, the cats got in my way, or I was far too slow and not nearly agile enough. It was bedlam.
It was natural to put their unnatural setting within a human context, and the cats started reminding me of the way too many single focus humans run roughshod over everything in their path to get their way. That mouse was every 'small' person whose ever been ignored, stepped on, pushed aside, or harmed by government edicts that come too late or not at all, or corporate malfeasant that puts human health at constant risk. Most people see a mouse and think vermin, which is also what a great many people with money or prospects see when they think of the poor or disabled or disenfranchised or ill educated. That mouse was being terrorized by masters of the technique who had no hope of thinking differently. And isn't that exactly what terror is? A weapon in the hands of those who hate, or covet, or dismiss others as unimportant, and who have no hope of thinking differently? The mouse would be harmed and the cats would be disappointed to lose their toy, merely walking away and thinking nothing of it. Sounds like every day human life to me.
Humanity gives little thought to the small things like that mouse, but a mouse is very much a 'miracle' whether you think in religious terms or not. Mice are the plankton of the mammalian world, like rabbits, reproducing at a phenomenal rate because they, also like rabbits, are preyed upon as food by just about every other animal. They are a very big and important cog in the entire system of a balanced Nature, and thus a planet in balance, and none of us could survive long without them...even as we ignore or curse their existence.
They are also a very essential cog in the human world of beauty, health and greed, but again, humans give them little thought and less value. Mice are highly favored as research 'assistants' and experiment results. Many of them live their lives in human constructed cages, tanks or mazes before being dissected and fed to other mice to see if they can learn new tricks that way. Mice have been used to test cosmetics before they are ever released for use in a public that is more concerned with the softness, glow, unwrinkled appearance of themselves than they are about what goes on in their own minds or what function they serve for mankind other than as adornments or fluff or mindless entertainment.
How many mice should we thank each time we take a pill that lowers our blood pressure or cholesterol, or regulates the beat of our hearts, or allows a surgeon to adjust something wrong in our bodies or brains? How many mice died to allow our Veep to have all those heart surgeries and pace makers? How many mice were sacrificed to the cosmetic surgery of Joan Rivers or Brittany Spears or any of the other over paid denizens of the vacuous world of entertainment? Did mice die so our illustrious sports heroes could take steroids? Shouldn't the drug and cosmetic industries have monuments to mice in their boardroom?
If you really think about it, mice have built a lot more in this world than just Disneyland.
posted by kaz at 7:12 PM
1 Comments:
I must correct and inadvertant and silly mistake in my original post. "Song of Myself" was written by Walt Whitman - not Emerson. I'm also an Emerson fan, believing that it is unfortunate that his Treatise on Self Reliance" is not still required reading. If it were, perhaps more people would understand the benefit of taking responsibility for themselves and their actions.
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