ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL

“… according to their equality,” to finish the phrase. The operative word here is of course “equality” and what it means. A very private and discrete encounter at home, in the wee hours of the night, on my porch, brings the politics of fairness front and center.

I have some new friends I’d like to introduce. They visit every night, though I don’t always see them. They’re denizens of the night, keepers of the nocturne, protectors of the realm patrolling the grounds like praetorian guards. Ninja-like and quick on their feet, they don masks in the true warrior spirit.

One I’ve named Boudica, after the 1^st century Celtic warrior queen who led a revolt against Roman occupation – always out front, indomitable and unstoppable. The second (whose gender isn’t certain yet) I’ve named Saladin because he’s not just a conqueror but gentle, kind, merciful and chivalrous. I almost opted for Spartacus instead, because, like the warrior-slave, he’s fearless and doesn’t make a very good slave – to anything. But his gentle demeanor tipped the scales to Saladin – “Sali” for short.

Depending on the time of night, weather, food found (or not found), and of course human interference, Boudica and Sali surface as if from out of nowhere. They curl themselves around my legs. They know me, they trust me. Somehow I’m different to them. I’ve been chosen.

We met quite by accident, or should I say by an accident of mis-identification. Two years ago it was “Rocky” foraging in my backyard during difficult times. I gave him some old scraps of bread and crackers and we became friends. He never abused his boundaries with me and never asked for more than what I offered. Then one evening it was time to say hello again. When I opened the door five babies converged on me, too young to know fear and all apparently looking for a father-figure. All five rushed me with a flurry of instinct and hunger, and before I knew it three of them ran over my feet and into my house. The reaction from “Monkey,” my Chihuahua-Jack Russell mix, was the classic “Kodak moment” – bewilderment mixed with one-part fear and two-parts “elder.”

In other words, at that instant I discovered that “Rocky” (taken from the Beatles’ song Rocky Raccoon) was actually “Adrienne” (Rocky’s girlfriend in the film Rocky). How stupid of me! Here was a trusting mother introducing her new arrivals to a protectorate, a human willing to offer his backyard (and space under the shed) as a safe sanctuary in a very unfriendly and unsafe city. I have to say, her intuition about me was spot on. She read me like a book. And now I had a “family” on my hands.

At first it was touch-and-go, a perilous learning process of “fathering” – that old institution of drawing up rules while protecting and providing. Children listen to nothing, and as raccoons grow up very quickly, the “terrible twos” were upon me before I could say “stop!” Raccoons are distant cousins to bears. They have the same personalities and talent for getting into trouble. What I had were five small bears.

They were everywhere and into everything. At least I finally managed to keep them out of my house. When entering my fenced-in yard under the cover of night they knew they were safe – they were home – and it was play time! Meanwhile, mom transferred “motherhood” over to “fatherhood” like a baton, as she then allowed herself a rest. Five banshees – climbing, scratching, and begging, while she did nothing except watch me with an annoying Cheshire cat-like grin.

Fortunately, the summer saw the children grow up like kudzu. Nature is formidable in readying her critters for the seasons. And before long they were already nearly the size of their mother, and I began confusing them. Fortunately, at this time I also discovered a wonderful chemical in a spray-bottle, called “critter repellent” – a concoction of rotten eggs and garlic – simply awful. A cocktail so odoriferous it promises to offend even skunks. The principle is based on the scent, once sniffed, getting into the victim’s nostrils and not going away for several hours. It convinces it that this is not a place it wants to be.

Each night I took my repellent and laid down a perimeter, a DMZ, around my house. Beyond the house, nearer the shed, I offered my fatherly protection and old bread which through trial and error I learned was their food of choice – cheap and abundant. The plan worked. They now come around to the authorized middle-distance between the alley and house and remain there. The house has been saved.

I’ve been Uncle Rick now for the entire summer. Alas, my storm door suffered damage from the days prior to the DMZ and it requires fixing. But I remind myself that it’s the price of “family,” no differently than my neighbor’s backyard after his grandkids’ weekend stay – all’s fair in love and war. And should I ever forget (heaven forbid) to reinforce the perimeter with repellent, my own new nieces & nephews are sure to attack the house again, in addition to other places they shouldn’t be. They’re inquisitive nature is unbound and rapacious. On the other hand, they are also creatures of habit and learn rules quickly. We’re fairly comfortable with the status quo now. I carry my spray bottle at night like a trusty sidearm.

I go out in the late hours because Monkey needs to pee before we retire to bed – another situation which required quick thinking and improvising. What’s interesting here is that both canines and “coons” have for centuries learned who was the pursuer and who was the pursued. Horrible “coon hunts” more or less determined this role-playing long ago. And today it doesn’t matter that the dog is half the size of the coon, or that the coon could actually, if cornered, turn around and probably kill the dog. The dog always chases, the coon always runs. And my 13-pound chihuahua chases Boudica, Sali, and the other four around the yard – until they stop and figure out the absurdity of this charade. Then everyone stops on a dime, freezing in their confusion and uncertainty, waiting for the other to make the next move. Time stands still and everyone is in an unfamiliar and unsettling kind of wilderness. This is my cue to step in.

It’s almost as if they learn “self-consciousness” for the first time, a human trait. If it weren’t slightly dangerous for Monkey, the scene would be hilarious. But it isn’t funny since this all takes place at or around 3 AM. Neighbors are sleeping, and I’m chasing a dog chasing a raccoon around in circles in my yard. We’re the Key Stone Cops.

Finally, in time we reached yet another modus vivendi which helped calm things down. Before my eyes, Monkey, Adrienne and the kids stopped chasing altogether and have begun to simply to sniff each other out with great mutual curiosity. Again, another Kodak moment. Except for occasional paroxysms of canine adrenaline, the chase has ended, and everyone gets along – guardedly. It’s a convergence of learning and instinct. Animals, more than humans, know the meaning of mutual accommodation. For myself, the process is simply too precious to interrupt.

We still have our minor relapses, spats, hissing, moments of uncertainty. Instinct never rests. Monkey still gets scared, but with five noses sniffing her from all sides who can blame her? When this happens then I intervene. She wants inside, and I immediately oblige. I redirect the situation and “the family” seems to understand. There is what feels like an inscrutable kind of animal empathy here. My masked friends are very patient. I don’t wish to push it, and I’m very aware of anthropomorphizing this entire scene, but I sometimes fantasize these two unlikely bedfellows actually playing together, like distant cousins. I don’t hold my breath, but I play with these thoughts.

Needless to say, I’m a doting uncle. I’m also stuck between worrying about property destruction – children forgetting the rules – and missing their company at the same time when they’re not around. They are quite aggressive which requires some getting used to. But they are also quite lovely and soft in their ways with me.

I didn’t mention the other “three” nieces/nephews who are the siblings of Boudica and Sali. For some reason they’ve chosen to stay close to mom. They never venture far from her, establishing their own safe perimeter with me, not feeling quite safe enough, while by now also exploring their own independence. It’s a wonder of nature why things turn out the way they do.

This is a very private, unique, and discrete relationship. I tell no one about it, knowing the kind of lectures I’d get about “feeding wild animals.” Here in the city I worry about them all the time. And as Fall approaches I’m sure conditions are going to shift with the temperatures in terms of needs, behaviors, and their instinct to hibernate (intermittently). This I know is going to require additional accommodating and improvising. I remember the coldest nights of winter in years past when a raccoon would show up at my door desperately cold and hungry – again at 3 AM. I must prepare for a similar eventuality. I want to be available should conditions become dire.

By sheer coincidence, or synchronicity, I happened upon an old used copy of The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris, at my favorite used bookstore. I then stumbled into the following words: “The naked ape is essentially an exploratory species and any society that has failed to advance has in some sense failed, ‘gone wrong.’ Something has happened to hold it back, something that is working against the natural tendencies of the species to explore and investigate the world around it. The characteristics that the early anthropologists studied in these tribes may well be the very features that have interfered with the progress of the groups concerned.”

In the final chapter entitled “Animals,” Morris writes, “Up to this point we have been considering the naked ape’s behavior towards himself and towards his own species – his intra-specific behavior. It now remains to examine his activities in relation to other animals – his inter-specific behavior.” He then lists five different ways in how we relate to other species: “as prey, symbionts, competitors, parasites, or predators.”

Knowing this book was written in 1967, I could understand how limited in scope this was. And yet Morris did drop the suggestion that, just perhaps, there was a kind of relationship we were missing: “The second category … is that of the symbiont. Symbiosis is defined as the association of two different species to their mutual benefit…. Where we ourselves are one of the members of a symbiotic pair, the mutual benefit tends to become biased rather heavily in our favor…. because we are in control of the situation and our animal partners usually have little or no choice in the matter.”

Enough said. Alas, not much, if anything, has changed substantively with regard to the meaning of “mutual.” All is fair it seems as long as the bias is clearly on our side. And yet Morris reminds us that the only mutuality between two “inter-specific” species which is fair and sustaining involves no unfair advantages at all. Otherwise, it simply isn’t “mutual,” is it?! – This I think is the relationship we wish finally to establish between ourselves and all species. It is, to put it in context, the final step of humans returning to nature.

I think about this constantly when Boudica and Sali visit me on my porch late at night. It seems like they are “calling me over” to their side of the ledger, their world, in an overture of mutual trust and love. I’m invited to their level.

In my training as a psychotherapist I ran into two schools of thought when it came to what we (or Carl Rogers) called “client-centered therapy” (Rogerian therapy). It required the therapist to basically “lose himself” in his client’s experience – to “come down” to his level and feel his traumas and emotions along with him. Many therapists refuse to do this, even today, fearing they will lose their therapeutic “edge,” their objectivity, and thus their ability to counsel. They claim it’s a matter of boundaries and ethics. To me, it’s bullshit. It’s simply “fear” and not trusting themselves enough. This is a fear, by the way, which harkens all the way back to the infamous Freudian couch – the therapist sitting “behind and above” his patient as an authority figure, in complete control, with all the answers.

Another school of thought echoes my personal response. The therapist never forgets where he is or what he knows. He always comes back to himself and the ability to counsel and offer objective advice. It’s a matter of trusting, not so much the client, but himself.

Needless to say, I came from the latter group. I never lost sense of my role in that process, and my clients never lost their respect and appreciation for “getting on the floor” with them. To do it the “old fashioned way” was not just “spinning our wheels” and a waste of time, I could almost sense that it insulted them as well, at some level – especially at a critical moment when an imminent breakdown could become a “breakthrough.” The experience/therapy was always “we” together. (For the record, I never forced this technique on anyone. For other clients more traditional approaches were needed).

This is the overture always being offered to me by my furry friends. They are my therapist every single time they surface from the underbrush. These are simply amazing little bears, intelligent, inquisitive, adaptable, clever, always communicating, and always risking in order to bond. They go beyond the “half-way mark” just to draw me to it. And I have to say, we humans are the ones always requiring an “unfair bias.” They comply but patiently await for us to let go of our fear. They tell us, “don’t worry, you’ll always come back.”

In the heat of the late night, beneath the city lights and changing moon, Boudica leans into me and whispers:

[Y]ou do not know me, you preserve me, you are my ineffable continuance; your treasure is my secret. Silence, my silence! Absence, my absence, O my closed form, all other thought I abandon, to contemplate you with full heart. You have made yourself an island of time…. My love toward you is without limit…. You await me without knowing me and I am what you lack that you may desire me. You are without defense. What ill you do me with the noise of your breathing! Through this castoff mask you exhale the murmur of stationary existence…. Man lost in your own roads, a stranger in your own mansion, furnished with alien hands that fetter your actions, cumbered with arms and legs that shackle your movements, you do not even know the number of your members and ramble astray in their remoteness. Your very eyes have arranged their own darknesses…. Alas, how you yield to your matter, conforming, dear thing of life, to the weight of what you are…. I am your emanation and your angel. We are nothing without one another and yet between us is pure abyss…. And now this Thing stirs… a declaration of love, a begging, a mumble, all isolated in the universe, without connections, with no one and no other….

—- from ABC, a poem by Paul Valery

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