Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Six
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Anyone who doesn’t understand this is simply stupid. Some other time I will discuss the distinction between ignorance and stupidity. Not now. Or maybe I already have. Why should I remember things like that?
Animals are intelligent. They can communicate with us and do, all the time they are in our presence. They speak to us directly and clearly, using their own languages, telling us things of importance to them and, when we have established a significant enough relationship with them, things of importance to us as well. These may be pets or “wild animals” with whom we meet on a regular or irregular basis in the woods or around our houses. Rural or urban. It makes no difference. Even birds will recognize us, even from a distance. In fact, that is what they do.
The blue jay bounces up and down when it produces that squeaky-wheel sound. Apparently, it has to bounce in order to produce that sound; this isn’t some dance with a detached or ulterior purpose. All the other birds around know exactly what this dancing and song mean, and so should you: “Get the fuck out of my space!” He wouldn’t be there, singing and dancing otherwise. He’d be somewhere else. Not around you.
It’s simple, and you are simple: simply stupid if you don’t understand it.
Watch a squirrel, sitting still, flick its tail. An animal’s tail is not some superfluous appendage. The squirrel does not flick its tail to be cute and entertaining. When in motion, climbing, the tail is a critical limb, necessary for maintaining balance. But, when sitting still, level on some surface, why would a squirrel, or any other animal use its tail? Out of nervousness? Anxiety? Like a human, stressed by the problems witnessed on television or traversing its subconscious? Don’t be an idiot. It’s communicating. The way you might use your hands to speak when you aren’t using them to eat a hamburger.
And it may be communicating with you.
I had a childhood. Everybody does, I suppose. Mine wasn’t much. As it turned out mine certainly wasn’t much of what I needed. In the end it wasn’t what I expected it to be. At least in terms of the books I read, what they taught, what I saw on television and in the movies. And it got cut short, in great part because I cut it short. I wanted to parachute out of it. I wasn’t getting what I wanted from it. I wasn’t getting what I needed from it. So, I didn’t want childhood any longer.
Maybe that’s what happens in life. Forget all the psychological hobby-gobby. It’s as simple as that. You are supposed to get X. From your parents, your siblings, the people around you, the environment. You are supposed to get certain things you require. Some people do. Some people don’t. Some people are supposed to get certain things, some people other things. I guess. The people around you, the environment, they don’t know what those things are, they only give what they have to give. So, you get what they have to give, and if it isn’t what you need, you are screwed.
Sometimes because the environment is bad and sometimes the people suck and sometimes someone is at fault and sometimes not and sometimes history is a bitch, war, famine, climate change. If you end up not getting whatever X was, you are going to go through life either burdened by that void or trying constantly to fill it. Or some combination of the two.
Myself, I have always been some hoary combination of the two. Lucky that way, I think. People who just have a void and try to fill it, they are maniacal, they are much worse than people who only feel the burden, who walk around moody and morose, whimpering all the time. I know, because I have been both ways at times. Best to avoid either extreme as much as possible. Best to be out there trying to fill that hole some days. Not sobbing and dependent, hanging onto others, begging for mercy constantly. But, then, also, better that than being some narcissistic maniac, trying to be a superhero, a billionaire. Or President.
As for me I wasn’t even aware of what I didn’t get—although I knew something had been missing; affection, that was obvious—but more. As I made my way further from the City, I felt a difference taking place inside. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Sometimes it felt like fear, a sort of anxiety. I didn’t feel comfortable outside the City at first. Of course. Many times I lived with a state of anxiety within the City, but that was a different anxiety, the kind most city-dwellers learn, the defensiveness, protectiveness, self-awareness. The looking over the shoulder at night.
This all changed when I left the City. Not on vacation. You don’t really build this sense on vacation, cadets. You have to be out there in the dark woods a few months, or at least understand that you are going to be there, like, for a long, long time. The strangeness of open spaces. The different sounds you hear when there is nothing but trees and crickets. Oddness of noise, wind in trees, the night creatures, when the only thing you used to be hearing at night is automobiles and people screaming, crashes, strange laughter and sirens.
When I first settled in South Carolina I lived in a relatively suburban situation, in a sense, comfortable…but not too far removed from city life, from the environment I’d known growing up, only a few blocks away from concrete and traffic, congestion, noise, people milling about, in one of the state’s largest cities. But it still far enough to attain difference.
There was a brook—a brook—next to my cottage—a cottage—and I could hear it at night and hear the woodland creatures—woodland creatures—crawling around it and swimming through it.
One morning soon after arriving I woke and while drinking my coffee, I saw a duck leading a line of four ducklings along that brook outside my bedroom window. This was a transformational moment. Neither a New York City moment nor a San Francisco moment. Neither a Kansas City nor even a Liberty moment—because I hadn’t been there long enough. I had never seen little baby ducks waddling in a line before. Not in real life. Watching baby birds being fed by their parents before. Right outside my window. While I drank coffee and unglazed my eyes. These were messages being sent to me. But were they actually new?
For years I ignored the messages, buried my head in books and booze and women, but the messages kept coming, like a kind of Morse code, like ducks in a line, like birds sitting on a fence.
When I arrived in Tennessee, and could not find a city home because I wasn’t in a city of any size; found a job teaching at an all-black college; white landlords would not rent to me because of this; when I found someone who would rent to me because of her tolerance for white boys who were brave enough to teach at the historically black college, I found myself in the middle of the woods with raccoons and otters, deer and mice, skunk and foxes, coyotes and all manner of birds including herons who would preen in front of my bedroom window, this menagerie would appear all day and night like a kaleidoscope.
The anxiety of country and woods flew away. Not all at once. It molted, a feather a day. But I finally understood that anxiety and could trace it back to its roots.
Roots in New York City’s Central park and a squirrel named Ian.
I was a troublesome lad in grade school. As Bonnie recollected, as all my old childhood friends knew, the trouble had well-defined roots. So much so that my teachers insisted I be sent to therapy. That’s right. Me, at seven, sent to therapy. When I wasn’t getting into fights, I was lying my way into or out of truancy—as when I would blame not going to class on someone telling me class had been cancelled—or stealing things, or simply spending class time telling jokes and making my classmates laugh while lessons—if anything in first or second grade could be called such—were taking place.
So, mother had to take me on two connecting buses into Jackson Heights or maybe Jamaica for the City’s services building, tucked under the elevated tracks, noisy and busy and dirty and exciting, where the juvenile psychologists were housed (fortunately for both of us, a nice Chinese restaurant was across the street; where, when I had to blow my nose, mother insisted I slip under the table for discretion’s sake). It was a ratty place, smelling of urine and disinfectant, and I had to play with some ratty dolls for some nice South Asian fellow in plastic glasses who seemed to be smiling and not the whole time. Why would he do that? And how?
Anyway, the result of that, what turned out to be pre-test of my psychological makeup, was a referral to the prestigious Adler Clinic on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and a meeting with Mrs. Doctor Adler herself, who smiled a lot, unlike the South Asian fellow, and didn’t ask me to play with dolls, and spent only a few minutes with me but quite some time with both my parents—oh, dad had to come along on this ride, and it was a Saturday, which meant a pain in the ass for him, too—and brother did they lie out both sides of each others’ mouths about nearly everything, covering but mostly for him. So, I ended up in group therapy with Dr. G, and Dr. G would have us spend the last half of each two-hour Saturday session in Central Park, each week, weather permitting, spending an extra hour with one of us boys in the park individually. I, by myself, began spending Saturdays by myself alone in the City, once dad gave up on driving me in, which caused him to hang out in Manhattan, something he hated.
That’s when I met Ian.
I love James Bond. Always have. And so, being precocious, something you may have noticed, I went straight to the source and understood who Ian Fleming was, read all about him, and he, soon, in addition to Bond, became a hero. So, when I met this little squirrel who was so brave it was a natural.
I sat on a bench and he walked right up to me, stood on his hind legs and looked at me. I was ten years old. I don’t know how old he was. The connection was immediate. Ineffable. As though I had been struck by lightning.
So…
And then Robin came. To Tennessee. That was the moment. She put her hand out into the environment. It all became real. Suddenly I knew I was in the right place. She was there and she was with me. And when I saw a squirrel hop, when I was with her, it spoke with me and said, You are in the right place, now. This is where you were supposed to be all along. As hateful as the place was at times the tree stumps spoke to me, the blades of grass, every leaf of every tree, green in the spring and brown in the fall, sang to me, and said you are part of us now as you always were meant to be. This is what I was missing growing up. This was what was absent from my childhood. I felt my childhood reemerging. It was Robin, I hate to say it, who became both my wife and my absent affectionate parent, at the same time, and she knew it, too, and she loved me all the more for it, because she knew that was what I had missed so long ago. And when we left Tennessee, because we had to, she knew what it did.
Of course, Robin wasn’t the only one who saw this childlike essence, this need in me. I had this girlfriend once in South Carolina who picked up on it. She had me scoped out for marriage. Apparently, she told her momma about it and momma worked out a little scheme. Momma and daddy and girlfriend picked me up one day and took me to the movie theater on Two Notch Road in Columbia where they were showing “The Neverending Story” and we sat there where they were showing this kiddie movie. They had a wonderful time imagining I was having a wonderful time and all I could think was, these people are cookaraches. Of course, they probably weren’t cookaraches, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them as a result after that. Now, she picked up this childlike essence but misread it and momma went one step too far.
And how many times does that happen?
Anyone who doesn’t understand this is simply stupid. Some other time I will discuss the distinction between ignorance and stupidity. Not now. Or maybe I already have. Why should I remember things like that?
Animals are intelligent. They can communicate with us and do, all the time they are in our presence. They speak to us directly and clearly, using their own languages, telling us things of importance to them and, when we have established a significant enough relationship with them, things of importance to us as well. These may be pets or “wild animals” with whom we meet on a regular or irregular basis in the woods or around our houses. Rural or urban. It makes no difference. Even birds will recognize us, even from a distance. In fact, that is what they do.
The blue jay bounces up and down when it produces that squeaky-wheel sound. Apparently, it has to bounce in order to produce that sound; this isn’t some dance with a detached or ulterior purpose. All the other birds around know exactly what this dancing and song mean, and so should you: “Get the fuck out of my space!” He wouldn’t be there, singing and dancing otherwise. He’d be somewhere else. Not around you.
It’s simple, and you are simple: simply stupid if you don’t understand it.
Watch a squirrel, sitting still, flick its tail. An animal’s tail is not some superfluous appendage. The squirrel does not flick its tail to be cute and entertaining. When in motion, climbing, the tail is a critical limb, necessary for maintaining balance. But, when sitting still, level on some surface, why would a squirrel, or any other animal use its tail? Out of nervousness? Anxiety? Like a human, stressed by the problems witnessed on television or traversing its subconscious? Don’t be an idiot. It’s communicating. The way you might use your hands to speak when you aren’t using them to eat a hamburger.
And it may be communicating with you.
I had a childhood. Everybody does, I suppose. Mine wasn’t much. As it turned out mine certainly wasn’t much of what I needed. In the end it wasn’t what I expected it to be. At least in terms of the books I read, what they taught, what I saw on television and in the movies. And it got cut short, in great part because I cut it short. I wanted to parachute out of it. I wasn’t getting what I wanted from it. I wasn’t getting what I needed from it. So, I didn’t want childhood any longer.
Maybe that’s what happens in life. Forget all the psychological hobby-gobby. It’s as simple as that. You are supposed to get X. From your parents, your siblings, the people around you, the environment. You are supposed to get certain things you require. Some people do. Some people don’t. Some people are supposed to get certain things, some people other things. I guess. The people around you, the environment, they don’t know what those things are, they only give what they have to give. So, you get what they have to give, and if it isn’t what you need, you are screwed.
Sometimes because the environment is bad and sometimes the people suck and sometimes someone is at fault and sometimes not and sometimes history is a bitch, war, famine, climate change. If you end up not getting whatever X was, you are going to go through life either burdened by that void or trying constantly to fill it. Or some combination of the two.
Myself, I have always been some hoary combination of the two. Lucky that way, I think. People who just have a void and try to fill it, they are maniacal, they are much worse than people who only feel the burden, who walk around moody and morose, whimpering all the time. I know, because I have been both ways at times. Best to avoid either extreme as much as possible. Best to be out there trying to fill that hole some days. Not sobbing and dependent, hanging onto others, begging for mercy constantly. But, then, also, better that than being some narcissistic maniac, trying to be a superhero, a billionaire. Or President.
As for me I wasn’t even aware of what I didn’t get—although I knew something had been missing; affection, that was obvious—but more. As I made my way further from the City, I felt a difference taking place inside. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Sometimes it felt like fear, a sort of anxiety. I didn’t feel comfortable outside the City at first. Of course. Many times I lived with a state of anxiety within the City, but that was a different anxiety, the kind most city-dwellers learn, the defensiveness, protectiveness, self-awareness. The looking over the shoulder at night.
This all changed when I left the City. Not on vacation. You don’t really build this sense on vacation, cadets. You have to be out there in the dark woods a few months, or at least understand that you are going to be there, like, for a long, long time. The strangeness of open spaces. The different sounds you hear when there is nothing but trees and crickets. Oddness of noise, wind in trees, the night creatures, when the only thing you used to be hearing at night is automobiles and people screaming, crashes, strange laughter and sirens.
When I first settled in South Carolina I lived in a relatively suburban situation, in a sense, comfortable…but not too far removed from city life, from the environment I’d known growing up, only a few blocks away from concrete and traffic, congestion, noise, people milling about, in one of the state’s largest cities. But it still far enough to attain difference.
There was a brook—a brook—next to my cottage—a cottage—and I could hear it at night and hear the woodland creatures—woodland creatures—crawling around it and swimming through it.
One morning soon after arriving I woke and while drinking my coffee, I saw a duck leading a line of four ducklings along that brook outside my bedroom window. This was a transformational moment. Neither a New York City moment nor a San Francisco moment. Neither a Kansas City nor even a Liberty moment—because I hadn’t been there long enough. I had never seen little baby ducks waddling in a line before. Not in real life. Watching baby birds being fed by their parents before. Right outside my window. While I drank coffee and unglazed my eyes. These were messages being sent to me. But were they actually new?
For years I ignored the messages, buried my head in books and booze and women, but the messages kept coming, like a kind of Morse code, like ducks in a line, like birds sitting on a fence.
When I arrived in Tennessee, and could not find a city home because I wasn’t in a city of any size; found a job teaching at an all-black college; white landlords would not rent to me because of this; when I found someone who would rent to me because of her tolerance for white boys who were brave enough to teach at the historically black college, I found myself in the middle of the woods with raccoons and otters, deer and mice, skunk and foxes, coyotes and all manner of birds including herons who would preen in front of my bedroom window, this menagerie would appear all day and night like a kaleidoscope.
The anxiety of country and woods flew away. Not all at once. It molted, a feather a day. But I finally understood that anxiety and could trace it back to its roots.
Roots in New York City’s Central park and a squirrel named Ian.
I was a troublesome lad in grade school. As Bonnie recollected, as all my old childhood friends knew, the trouble had well-defined roots. So much so that my teachers insisted I be sent to therapy. That’s right. Me, at seven, sent to therapy. When I wasn’t getting into fights, I was lying my way into or out of truancy—as when I would blame not going to class on someone telling me class had been cancelled—or stealing things, or simply spending class time telling jokes and making my classmates laugh while lessons—if anything in first or second grade could be called such—were taking place.
So, mother had to take me on two connecting buses into Jackson Heights or maybe Jamaica for the City’s services building, tucked under the elevated tracks, noisy and busy and dirty and exciting, where the juvenile psychologists were housed (fortunately for both of us, a nice Chinese restaurant was across the street; where, when I had to blow my nose, mother insisted I slip under the table for discretion’s sake). It was a ratty place, smelling of urine and disinfectant, and I had to play with some ratty dolls for some nice South Asian fellow in plastic glasses who seemed to be smiling and not the whole time. Why would he do that? And how?
Anyway, the result of that, what turned out to be pre-test of my psychological makeup, was a referral to the prestigious Adler Clinic on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and a meeting with Mrs. Doctor Adler herself, who smiled a lot, unlike the South Asian fellow, and didn’t ask me to play with dolls, and spent only a few minutes with me but quite some time with both my parents—oh, dad had to come along on this ride, and it was a Saturday, which meant a pain in the ass for him, too—and brother did they lie out both sides of each others’ mouths about nearly everything, covering but mostly for him. So, I ended up in group therapy with Dr. G, and Dr. G would have us spend the last half of each two-hour Saturday session in Central Park, each week, weather permitting, spending an extra hour with one of us boys in the park individually. I, by myself, began spending Saturdays by myself alone in the City, once dad gave up on driving me in, which caused him to hang out in Manhattan, something he hated.
That’s when I met Ian.
I love James Bond. Always have. And so, being precocious, something you may have noticed, I went straight to the source and understood who Ian Fleming was, read all about him, and he, soon, in addition to Bond, became a hero. So, when I met this little squirrel who was so brave it was a natural.
I sat on a bench and he walked right up to me, stood on his hind legs and looked at me. I was ten years old. I don’t know how old he was. The connection was immediate. Ineffable. As though I had been struck by lightning.
So…
And then Robin came. To Tennessee. That was the moment. She put her hand out into the environment. It all became real. Suddenly I knew I was in the right place. She was there and she was with me. And when I saw a squirrel hop, when I was with her, it spoke with me and said, You are in the right place, now. This is where you were supposed to be all along. As hateful as the place was at times the tree stumps spoke to me, the blades of grass, every leaf of every tree, green in the spring and brown in the fall, sang to me, and said you are part of us now as you always were meant to be. This is what I was missing growing up. This was what was absent from my childhood. I felt my childhood reemerging. It was Robin, I hate to say it, who became both my wife and my absent affectionate parent, at the same time, and she knew it, too, and she loved me all the more for it, because she knew that was what I had missed so long ago. And when we left Tennessee, because we had to, she knew what it did.
Of course, Robin wasn’t the only one who saw this childlike essence, this need in me. I had this girlfriend once in South Carolina who picked up on it. She had me scoped out for marriage. Apparently, she told her momma about it and momma worked out a little scheme. Momma and daddy and girlfriend picked me up one day and took me to the movie theater on Two Notch Road in Columbia where they were showing “The Neverending Story” and we sat there where they were showing this kiddie movie. They had a wonderful time imagining I was having a wonderful time and all I could think was, these people are cookaraches. Of course, they probably weren’t cookaraches, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them as a result after that. Now, she picked up this childlike essence but misread it and momma went one step too far.
And how many times does that happen?
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