WDL 20 How Otter Learned to Dance Part III

Part III of a convention paper delivered in the late 90s. . . 

 

She was finally brought into the community of scholarly animals and received the special ancient skin which marked her maturation.

So Otter left Utah for the Deschutes River country of Central Oregon, where the trout grow to twenty pounds.  There she made a new burrow and became part of another colony of learned animals.  But something still tugged at her mind and heart.  One night, she sent up another prayer to her Spirit Guide.  He appeared in a cloud of smoke, coughing and wheezing.  

“My doctor says I gotta cut down.  So, what’s your question?  It’s Otter, right?”

“Right.  How come I’ve completed my original task and still feel like I’ve got to complete the quest?  Wasn’t the quest a way for me to stay and finish becoming a learned mammal?  Shouldn’t that mental tug be gone by now?”

“Let’s see.  I’m in the wrong program here.  Since I’m a new guide they give me the stuff with no multitasking.  So I’m having trouble with my RAM.  Let’s see.”  He looked at the screen.  
 “Says here your quest program is still running.  Did you get the ears?”

“No, but I finished my . . . “

“Are you meshugah?  Ears, baby, gotta be ears.”

“But I’ve left Utah.  I moved to Oregon.  My family has its own burrow now.”

“Burrow, shmurrow.  Are you telling me you don’t know your ears from a hole in the ground?  Bud a bing, bud a boom.  Look, I warned you – even showed you the fine print.  the quest program links your amygdala to the visual cortex by an electro-chemical pulse.  Can’t be stopped till the quest is finished.  Get those ears, bubalah.  Then you can relax.”

“But . . .”

“No buts.  You agreed to the contract.”  He looked down at his wrist.   “Yikes.  there’s a camel in Germany wondering if it should be racing for the United Arab Emirates.  Gotta go, kid.”

And he was gone.

Otter was disturbed.  The quest hunger was no longer helping her.   What should she do?  She decided to try once more and, if she failed, just learn to live with the energy that kept turning her thoughts east.  So Otter started strengthening her jaw and sharpening her teeth in hopes that the fates would bring her face to face with Cougar once again.

And, as all prayers are answered, so was this one.  Otter and Cougar met at a great gathering of learned beasts.  Otter surveyed the territory for a body of water.  She thought that if she could just get Cougar into her element, she would be able to remove his ears as he flailed his way to dry land.  and so she invited him walking.  She kept the conversation on the work that he was doing to limit his awareness.  Then she led him along the banks of a white-capped river.   As he walked, he dropped his head lower and lower so that she could see the sunlight glowing pinkly through the membranes of his ears.

She paused.  He paused.  His heavy head extended out over the chasm.  Then Otter leapt.  Her jaw slammed onto one of the ears, he forepaws grabbed the other, and she dropped like a stone to the water below.  Cougar, caught off balance, also fell, scrambling through brush and pebbles, slipping into the air.  And the two bodies, the great gray one and the small brown one, tumbled over and over each other toward the water.

They hit with a great splash.  But Cougar’s ears did not come off in Otter’s teeth.  the impact of the water broke her hold.  Instantly, he gripped her spine between his jaws and threw her at the bank.  He came cat-paddling after.

They sat there coughing, spitting water, and staring at each other.

Finally, Cougar spoke.  “So, we’re still dancing.”

“What?” said Otter.

“We’re still dancing.  I thought that you had given up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Our dance.  You try to get my ear.  I toss you into a tree.  You ignore me.  I tempt you.  You forget your irritation.  You try and get my ear.  Our dance.”

She stared at him.  “You mean it was all an act?”

Cougar laughed, his cat’s face caught between anger and hilarity.  “Not an act.  A dance.  A co-constructed improvisation on shared themes, if you will.  Play.  You’re a clever mammal.  I thought you recognized the pattern.”

“But, but . . . I was really on a quest ot get your ears.”

Cougar licked the thick fur on his paws and smiled.  then he growled.  “You silly weasel.  Would you think metaphorically for just a moment?  Hmmmm?  Then you’d realize that you finished your quest a long time ago.”

Otter bit her lip, surprising herself with the sharp prick of her own teeth.  Then she smiled.  “You mean I’ve always had your ears.”

He put his great head down between his paws and turned it upside down, looking for all the world like a giant sleepy kitten.

“MMMMM.  but that doesn’t mean we have to quit dancing.”

WDL 20 How Otter Learned to Dance Part II

Part 2 of a convention paper presented in the late 90s.

 Jackie turned the screen of his PC toward Otter.  She saw a rolling blur of small print.

“What, what . . .”  she stuttered.

“The usual.  Look.  Don’t worry about it.  It’s Microsoft’s Quest program with typical quest requirements.  Basically, the program can only be terminated with completion of the tasks, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Get it.  Geez.  I mean, what else?   It’s a motivational tool comes free with the software.  Kind of a guarantee.  So, you ready for the quest?”

Otter thought.  It seemed like the only option she had, so she agreed by saying, “Then tell me, oh Spirit Guide, what is my quest?”

“He turned the screen back.  “Your quest . . .”

“Oh, please, could you do it more dramatically?”

“Sure, sure.  Anything to please.”  The vision billowed with heavy smoke and the voice grew deeper.  “Your quest, should you decide to accept it, is to capture Cougar’s ears.  What?  Yeah.  that what it says, capture cougar’s ears.  Do you accept?”

Otter sat, thinking.

“Look, bubalah.  Tempus fugits, know what I’m sayin’?  I got folks to see.  You in or out?”

Otter decided to accept.  “I’m in.  I mean, yes, I shall accept the quest.”

“Great.  I’m outa here.”  And spirit Guide Jackie disappeared leaving the smell of a Cuban cigar hanging in the air.

When Otter woke the next morning she felt a pull in the back of her mind.  She knew that she had to get Cougar’s ears.  She visualized the pair of stiff triangles of gray fur which stood on either side of threat fierce head and saw herself pouncing on them.

So Otter devised a plan.  That day she joined Cougar in his daily exercises.  She began to meet with him regularly.  At first she was a bit nervous.  while they were both predators, she knew who was more likely to feast on crayfish and who was more likely to bring down an antelope.  Yet, even so, the two mammals, from the cat and weasel families, developed an odd friendship.  Finally, one day in early spring, as the wild flowers were beginning to fill the mountain meadows, Otter made her move.  As she and Cougar galloped through the scented air, she jumped at her friend’s head and sank her sharp little teeth into his left ear, using all of her thirty five pounds to try and yank it from his body.

Cougar felt the bite and swung his great head.  Otter held on for a few seconds.  Then she was flung into a tree and knocked senseless.  Cougar walked over to her and put two toes of his heavy right paw on her neck.  When Otter woke, she looked into his eyes and knew she was breakfast.  Then he laughed – that wild roaring bark of the big cat.  Starlings and jays flew up from the trees.

“What were you trying to do?” he asked as tears of mirth dripped from his golden eyes. 

Otter figured that she might as well tell the truth since who knew how long she had left to live.  “A quest, Oh Great Pumatic One.  My Spirit Guide told me that I had to get your ears to finish my quest.  but I can see that you have need of your ears so, if you’ll let me get up again I promise I’ll never bother you about this again.”

Cougar laughed.  “All right.  I do need my ears, for now.  You never know.  Maybe I’ll get new ears. Maybe an eagle will tear one off and drop it in front of you.  Vertegrate behavior cannot be predicted.  After all, relationships are not in a state of being but in a state of becoming.  who knows what’s going to happen?”

With that, they got back on the path.  For a while Otter neglected her quest.  Perhaps, since she wasn’t a bird, she didn’t want to risk the flight that another attack on Cougar would bring.  But Cougar had other ideas.  After some time, he began lowering his head when he talked with Otter.  It seemed that one of his ears was always waving in her dark eyes.  so, finally, thinking that Cougar no longer had need for his ear, she leapt again.  And again she wound up in a sugar pine.

And so it went, as long as she stayed in Utah.  She would try to forget her quest.  Then her friend Cougar, through some twist or turn, would remind her.  She would forget.  She would leap.  then she would fly.   Somehow, this game helped her ignore her weaselesque alienation.  She completed her studies and survived her committee meetings with Bear, Eagle, bison, Bobcat, and Toad (who was later replaced by Wolf.)  She was finally brought into the community of scholarly animals and received the special ancient skin which marked her maturation.

Continued with final episode Sunday night . . .

WDL 20 How Otter Learned to Dance Part I

Back in the late 90s a friend and former Utah classmate invited me to be on a panel celebrating Professor Fox's many years as an internationally recognized scholar and teacher.  I was deep in the throws of my first commitment to creative writing and asked if I could do what I wanted on the panel.  She said yes.  So I wrote a highly academic introduction of about 600 words with thirty endnotes and attached it to the following story.  I'll take the next three nights to share the story as part of my "20 Working Days Left"

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How Otter Learned to Dance

Once upon a time in the foothills of the Wasatch Range in Utah, there was a community of learned animals.  These animals were charged with analyzing the way their fellows shared meaning with each other.  Bipeds and quadrupeds came from miles around to work with the wise minds in this colony.

Among the brightest of the mammals was a powerful gray cougar.  The color of his heavy coat was not a sign that he was old, as he would be the first to tell you.  but neither was Cougar a spring kitten, though he could run rings around the younger cats, bears and wolves.  He was simply in his prime.

Cougar was a cat of many talents.  He could concentrate so intensely that rabbits, rockchucks, and ferrets could run by him and get not a sniff.  But when roused, no one was a better hunter.  He could climb nimbly, leap over twenty feet in a ingle bound, and stop and turn so suddenly you’d swear he weighed less than two hundred pounds.  But that’s what he weighed, if not a bit more.  He was a big cat. 

Strangely enough, Cougar himself didn’t always remember how much heavy muscle packed his soft pelt.  Sometimes, when he looked into the mirrored surface of a mountain pool, he saw not the face of the forest’s most fearsome predator, but the snout of Coyote, the trickster.  Then he would go off to play.  This caused no problems for his buddies the bears and wolves.  But a friendly cougar who thinks that it weighs the same as a forty-pound coyote can be a handful if you’re merely a bobcat.

And a playful cougar is an even bigger challenge if you’re an otter.  At the time of my story there was an otter living among the learned.  She had traveled south from her home on a tributary of the Snake River.  She wanted to grow, become self-actualized and self-sufficient, so she went to live among the learned animals in Utah:  these included many wild creatures of forest and plains, but only one other otter.  among these beasts she sought to understand the ways of the wise, so that she too could go forth and transmit learning.  That was her task.  But, after two years, it wasn’t working out.

She did not fit in.  She would search for sunlight peaking through the valley fog and sigh, “Ah, me.  They don’t play enough here.  They’re too fierce and serious.  If only I’d never left the Snake River.  If only my friends were here.  If only I could play a game of tag.    Or nose-biting.  Or dip deep devil diving.  Ah, me.”

For two years she lived as an outsider with one friend who understood her fears and delights.  Then one day, her friend, the only other otter, disappeared.  That did it.  Her learning task was no longer compelling.  It was too hard to do alone.  She was convinced she would have to leave.  But she wasn’t sure.  She was confused.  So one night, as she curled up in her burrow, she said a prayer to The Powers That Be for an answer to her question:  should she continue in this strange place or should she give up and go home? 

That’s when Otter’s totem human appeared to her.  (You know, humans have totem animals so it’s only fair that animals have totem humans.) 

As the fog cleared from her vision, Otter saw a small man with outrageous eyebrows and a shiny suit seated at a computer terminal.  She just stared.

“Hey, wake up, bubalah.  You had a question?”

“You’re my Spirit Guide?” Otter asked in amazement.

“You were expecting maybe Chief Seattle?  Yes, I’m your guide.  And the guide of about a thousand other mammals.  You should see my Filofax.  Oy Vey.  So, I haven’t got all night.  I’ve got to get to, hmmmm, let’s see . . .” the Spirit Guide tapped the keys and stared at the screen.  “California.  There’s a penguin who’s wondering what it’s doing in San Diego.”

“Well, oh Spirit Guide,” Otter intoned.

“Jackie.  Call me Jackie.  Jackie is fine.”

“Well, Spirit Guide Jackie.  I’m wondering if I should stay here in the mountains of Utah and finish my studies or go back home to the Snake River?”

“And you are .. . .?”

“Otter?”

“OK. OK.”  He tapped the keys.  “Otter in Utah, Otter in Utah.  Nope.  Nothing for you there.  But I do have another answer.  But it’s to a different question.  Do you want to guess what the question is?”

Otter was distraught.  She started to cry.  The tears rolled off her slick fur and began making the floor of her furrow salty.   The Spirit Guide looked at his Timex.

To be continued . . .

38 Working Days Left: Truth and Power

I entered the doctoral program at Utah already studied in Foucauldian analysis and an undergirding of scepticism about the nature of the academy.  While at Utah I'd sometimes scribble bits of Elvis Costello pop on the blackboard in the "mail room:"  "I wanta bite the hand that feeds me, I wanta bite that hand so badly, I wanta make them wish they'd never seen me!"

My attitude was enhanced by my conversations with Professor Fox who, even though he was a star in the world of research and teaching had many caustic things to say about the institution for which he labored so constantly.  He encouraged me in my critical analysis of the naturalized practices we both inhabited.

Because of Foucault and Fox and others I came to the understanding that if I didn't owe truth to power, neither did anyone else.  That includes my students.  To the extent that I have full economic power in the classroom, they have no duty to be honest with that power.  It is only when classroom power is shared through clear, fair grading policies and transparent guidelines on redress of grievances that it is appropriate to expect honesty from students. 

Because I know that various surveys have shown that between 50 - 80 percent of American college students have admitted to cheating, I have various rules and systems in place to discourage that behavior.  I sometimes even say that I felt "sad" when I was betrayed by some students I liked a few years ago.  But I'm not, really.  My expression of personal concern is a rhetoric to encourage commitment to standards of academic honesty by making any betrayal seem like a personal affront to a teacher who is trying so hard to help everyone get a good grade in the class.  But really, my ego isn't that involved. 

I believe that teachers, like Arjuna, should be passionately committed to the practice but not to the identity they construct while engaged in the practice.

LY #102 February is the Cruelest Month

 This Saturday marks the start of the second February in a row that I have not been enjoying the lift I once got from anti-depressants.  A lift I enjoyed for most of 20 years (and, off and on, many years before).   February is a good time of year in many ways as it contains the many gifts of Black History Month and marks the annual return of the Western States Communication Association convention.  But it's also an "anniversary" month for me.

The "anniversary reaction" or "anniversary effect" is a well-documented psychological experience involving a cluster of uncomfortable responses to dates or times of year that mark the anniversary of traumatic events.  Jessica Hamblen, PhD, Matt Friedman, MD, PhD, and Paula P. Schnurr, PhD writing for the National Center for PTSD (part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) say, "An increase in distress around the anniversary of a traumatic event is commonly known as an 'anniversary reaction' and can range from feeling mildly upset for a day or two to a more extreme reaction in which an individual experiences significant psychiatric or medical symptoms."

It was Professor Fox who, during one of our three mile runs at Utah back in the mid-80s, first noticed that I was most likely to collapse into despair in February.  No one had ever noticed that before.  At that time the anniversaries were already at the decade mark.  Yet "getting over it" is a long process, longer for some than for others.

What can those who have experienced trauma do about the troubles that arise with the anniversary?  Well, we can take drugs, as I've done over the decades (fluoxetine and sertraline the most recent), or get EMDR which is new enough that I've never tried it, though I've heard it has great benefits.  Dr.s Matthew Erlich and Lloyd Sederer, writing for the Huff Post suggest a combination of foresight (be prepared), rituals (commemorating losses) and the presence of friends.   Deborah Serani, Psy.D., author of the book Living With Depression, writing in Psychology Today, also suggests being aware of the date and notes that self care, support and comfort are helpful in the relief of the stress.  She also suggests what this year I'm going to do:  "4. Express your memories and feelings when an Anniversary Effect happens. You can do this by talking with a family member or friend, journaling, blogging, or finding creative ways to express your inner experiences."

So regular readers should be prepared for a journey into darkness over next week or two.

LY #95 Graduation Parties

So I spent too much time thinking about my retirement party today, especially since I'm not organizing it.  I met with my boss, Maestro Michale Gesme, and later sent him and my pal Stacey Donohue an overview of my ideas.  Basically, I want food and alcohol and pleasant companions -- just what Ecclesiastes says are good things to have.

It got me thinking about previous graduation parties.  My favorite was the one thrown by my Aunt Huldah Bell and my dad for my B.A. graduation from Idaho State.  Huldah offered her house for the space and invited folks.  My dad bought a bathtub full of wine. Now, just in case that gave you a picture of someone bathing in fermented grape juice, I should explain that he filled up my aunt's claw foot tub with bottles of wine.  The four members of the department of journalism were in attendance as were a variety of other faculty members and friends.  It was pretty darn awesome and I got pretty darn tiddly toasted.

I don't remember a party after my eighth grade graduation, though there might have been one, and I didn't celebrate the completion of my masters degree.  That was a hard and dark time in my life as I was leaving home and plunging into a future destination unknown.

 I've celebrated two other graduations with smaller, more private affairs.  The night after the 1971 Los Gatos High School graduation, while most of my class went to a bowling alley for a supervised overnight, my friend Leland and I also drove over to San Jose to see a double feature:  Bananas and Take the Money and Run.  The next day we spent the day together at the beach between La Selva and the cement boat at Seacliff.

I celebrated the short walk I took for my 1993 PhD with a dinner party at Lambs in Salt Lake City.  Present were Dad and step-mother Jean, Rosemary Cesarone Tanner, a good friend from my later Pocatello days who had moved to Salt Lake years before I did,  my spouse, and Professor Fox.  I thought of it as a dinner with my three dads -- biological, academic, and "spousal."  You know that my sweet spouse is two decades older than I and people think he's my father and frankly it's true that he did a lot of "raising" of me the first years of our marriage. Anyway, I remember that I ordered the lamb chops but don't recall a bite of their taste.  I was so happy sitting within what I perceived as a circle of protective, fatherly masculine energy all directed toward ME.  (I do love those moments when it's all about me!) 

Nor do I remember a syllable of the conversation that night but I do remember the ritual I wanted and had performed at the table.  Since the beginning year of my time as a graduate student, I'd worn a "rat tail."  I had it when I was hired at COCC.  At the dinner that night I had Professor Fox cut off this symbol of my student status. (I still have it in a box somewhere.)  This was a sign that I had become a "member of the profession."  The academic equivalent of, "Today I am a man," except I didn't recite the Torah.  All the reciting I needed to do was completed that winter at my dissertation defense.

Of course I also remember that I wore a hot pink tailored suit with green piping and green heels that by evening were pinching the heck out of my feet.

While I'm not going to wear hot pink for this next graduation party, I am looking forward to a similarly de-hirsutizing ritual.