Dogs

On Dogs

I grew up with dogs.  I loved my childhood dogs; especially Splicer, the little black mutt who despite his strange name was very smart.  He was special.  But I grew up in the country.  You didn’t have to walk your dog, you just opened the door and it went outside.  It came back when it was ready to come inside.  I first lost my affinity for dogs when I moved to the city and my roommates had a little devil of a dog, who nipped at people’s ankles.  He loved to stalk you under the table and latch on to your ankle with a quick snip.  He got me a few times before one weekend when my roommates had to go out of town.  I stayed behind.  It was Thanksgiving and the weather had turned bitter and cold.  I had to walk the dog and pick up its poop with a plastic bag.  I thought, I would never like to have a dog in the city.   I decided that since I was stuck with the dog, I’d win it over by showing my dominance.  So I took an oven mitt and played a game with the dog by grabbing his mouth.  He tried to bite me but couldn’t break through the mitt.  I simply held on until he relented and stopped fighting me.  It became a thing we did the entire weekend.  When he’d growl at me, I’d get the mitt out and grab his snout and hold on until he stopped fighting.  By the end of the weekend he was seated by my side on the couch, panting and obedient.  He never tried to snip my ankles again after that.  I grew fond of the little critter but I never grew fond of walking him outside in the freezing cold.

So it can be said that I never wanted a dog of my own, since becoming an adult.  I married someone who felt the same way.

But when you have kids they reach a certain age and they start begging to get a dog.  One of my daughters in particular is an avid animal lover.  She cries about not having a dog.

Recently my father came to visit.  He started in on how good it is for kids to have a dog. He worked my three children into a dog frenzy by taking them to a local pet store to look at puppies.  I was like, “Dad, we’re not getting a dog.  You’re only going to upset them.”  They have a picture of a sweet little puppy from the pet store as a screen saver.  At about this time a guy who works with my wife was planning to go out of town.  He has a puppy.  She’s about a year old.   She’s on a special diet and has all this medicine.  She chews up everything she can get a hold of.  So my wife, with a stroke of genius, tells me about how they are going to have to put the dog in a place while they go out of town.  She asked me if we should agree to watch the dog for the weekend and make our kids do all the work.  I knew it would be a challenge but I agreed it was a good idea.

We got the dog on a Thursday night.  It came with a long list of instructions.  The owners were very apologetic and kept asking if we were sure about this.   We had committed.  We could survive one weekend.  The kids went around the house picking everything up that could fit into the dog’s mouth, or so they said they did.  Stuffed animals were bagged and put away.  Small toys were put into bins.   The dog jumped up on me, trying to lick my face.  I pet her behind the ears and kept her from licking me on the lips. At first the dog was a nervous wreck, running all around, checking everything out.  The kids were all excited.  The time came for them kids to walk the dog.   “Keep him in the backyard,” said my wife.   Five minutes later, she looked out the back door and didn’t see them.

“Trav, where are they?  You’d better go out and look for them.”  So I threw on a coat and shoes and headed out.  I found them in the front.  We live in a cul-de-sac and the neighbor kids were playing on the huge snow mountain the plowers had pushed together in the center.  The dog was pulling my daughter around from kid to kid.  Everyone was worked into a whirl of new doggy excitement.  “What happened to staying in the backyard?” I asked.

“I tried,” said my daughter, looking near tears.

“If you can’t walk the dog without it pulling you all around the place, then we need to call (the owners) and have them come and get her.  Because that’s part of it,” I said.

“I know,” she said in her whiney voice.  My other daughter helped her and they brought the dog into the garage.  But it was soaked and muddy from the filthy snow pile.  I found some old towels and made them dry her off. 

My wife had tickets to a concert and I stayed with the kids and the dog.  I had the kids take the dog out one more time before starting our bedtime rituals.  They managed to keep her in the backyard this time.  But the bedtime rituals, which are already a pain in the ass, were wildly interrupted by the dog.  The kids fought over which room she would sleep in.  They kept calling her into their rooms. 

“Go to bed!  No one’s getting the dog tonight, if you all keep calling her.  Trust me, she’ll go where she wants to go.  Get in bed.  I will close your doors.  Now get to sleep!”  I tried to keep cool but I find bedtime makes me very cranky even without a new dog in the house.  With the added stress of the dog distraction, bedtime had become infuriating.  But I imagined that once the house settled down the dog would too and I could have some peace and quiet to maybe get some writing done.  But that was not to happen.  The dog whined at my door.  I finally opened the door and let her in and she kept jumping up on me while I was trying to write and licking my ear and head.  It barked at me. Then it left the room.  Five minutes later I heard my daughters calling me.

“Dad! Dad!” I came out of my room to hear.  “She peed all over the floor, Dad. I told you we should have taken her out one more time.”

I had them throw on some boots and coats and take her out again, while I cleaned up the pee.  At this point I had a clear thought. While this sucked, it was going according to plan. A devious smile crept over me, while I was on my knees soaking dog piss out of my carpet.  I went downstairs to watch TV after the kids settled back into bed.  The dog followed me.  She jumped on me and started to lick me.  I pushed her off and dried my head with my sleeve.  Finally the dog settled on the couch beside me. But when my wife got home and we went to bed, the dog jumped into our bed with us.  We got horrible sleep.  The dog moaned and whined all night long.  The next day it was just me and the dog.  I tried to write in the morning, but she came and jumped on me.  She then brought her toy ball and dropped it by me.  She barked, meaning she wanted to play.  I went downstairs and found wads of paper everywhere.  She found my son’s art supplies and ripped up some of his drawings.  The owners said to crate her if she didn’t let me write, so I put her in her cage downstairs.  She barked the entire time.  I let her out and she followed me everywhere I went.  Always under foot.  I decided to take her for a walk.  My dad happened to call when I was out with her.  He found it hysterical.  I was not laughing.  I kept thinking this was all his fault. That night, I settled down to watch TV after the kids went to bed and the dog was with me.  After a while I heard her climbing the stairs.  I hoped maybe she’d go and sleep with the kids.  But a few minutes later I heard the sound of plastic being chewed on.  I ran up the stairs.

“What have you got?  Spit it out!”  I grabbed her by the mouth and struggled until finally a small Lego piece fell out.  I put it on a ledge she couldn’t reach and returned to my stories.  A minute later there came the same sound of dog teeth working plastic.  I thought we’d done a thorough sweep of the house.   I stormed into the girls’ room and flipped on the lights.   They were both asleep. I shook my daughter on the bottom bunk.

“Get up.  Get up.  We need to get everything up.” I was purposefully being loud and abrupt.  They got drowsily out of their beds and half-assed an attempt to dig under their bed for any loose items.  After a moment of watching this, I got on my knees and dug under their dresser, pulling out item after item of loose plastic toys.  I piled them on the bed. “Find spots for all of this stuff.”

“I’m tired, Dad,” said my daughter.

“Yep. Having a dog sure is tiring, huh, kids?” I said, basking in victory. 

By the third night, my son was the first to admit he no longer wanted a dog.  “When’s this thing going home?” he asked.  By the last day even my animal loving, motherly little daughter admitted it was too much work to have a dog.  They stopped asking for one.  For now, anyway. 

Indigo a'go go

On Indigo Children

As mentioned before, I met a very interesting woman who claimed to have one foot in the fifth dimension.  She was very fascinating.  I refer to her as the “highly spiritual” lady.   She could see through her “third eye.”  She holds seminars on the subject.  We had a very interesting conversation as you can imagine. 

This “highly spiritual” lady I spoke to mentioned Indigo Children.  I’d perhaps heard of it, but hadn’t given it much credence before.  But I decided to look it up.  It’s the idea that a large number of unique children are being born into the world with much more frequency.  They are said to be vibrating at a higher level.   These children are said to have indigo auras and to be much more in touch with the universe and to possess special, unusual and sometimes almost supernatural qualities; such as psychic abilities. Many of them are misdiagnosed with autism, ADD and ADHD.  The fact is children are different these days.  Yes, I know it has a lot to do with the parents.  But even then there’s something going on that isn’t quite right; mass autism, and wide spread gluten and peanut allergies?  The wheat hasn’t changed nor has the peanut.  It’s us.  It is believed by some people that our DNA is changing.  There is no proof of this and the evidence is sketchy at best, but I always like to play the “what if” game.  So, according to some New Age parents, it is said these children are coming to earth to help us and to teach us things; to help guide humanity into the next age.  Coming to earth?  From where?  I don’t know.  The lady alluded to another planet, as if they were older souls from another part of the universe, from a society more advanced spiritually than ours, incarnating into human bodies, but that’s getting into another bag all together.  For me though, it’s a wonderful concept if anything.  As a storyteller, I love this kind of thing.

The qualities listed for these children are interesting.  Some are born with what the old folks call a sense of entitlement, because they feel they are special.  They almost expect you to realize how important they are.  They have more confidence than most children today but way more than all children from the past.  They despise authority for the sake of authority, for they believe we are all equal.  Rules almost seem silly to them.  They don’t like school because they know that school is going about teaching them in the wrong ways, not giving them real-life experiences, but instead instilling a worker slave mentality upon them.  They feel removed from the rigidity of the structured world, for they see past structure.  They are spontaneous.  One huge problem with their feelings of alienation is they often turn to drugs in their teens and early adolescence.  They first seek them for mind expansion but easily become ensnared in the void of addiction.   It’s a snare put in place by the forces working against the better good.  The Indigos are considered systems busters.  And they believe the systems were put in place to hold us back and to control us.  That’s especially true of economic systems.  Most of them despise money but some have figured out how to use the system to acquire wealth in order to remove themselves from its burden.  They do things completely different than how it’s been done for years and years.  They break traditions, for they see them as trivial and superstitious.  They don’t read books from cover to cover anymore, but they are usually smarter than most people for they seek out their knowledge through a more precise method.   They have the internet at their finger tips and they know how to use it.  They prefer to guide their own education and while they don’t do well in school, later in life, if they can stay focused and not distracted by their own self-destructive pursuits, they will be the wisest among us.  They can be seen as anti-social unless they are with other Indigos.   They refuse to be ruled by fear.  They act out because of this.  They are rebelling against a system that doesn’t make sense to them.  They are usually highly creative and headstrong. And they are inheriting the earth soon. So say the New Age parents of Indigo Children.   Okay.  That’s interesting.  A bit much to digest but I thought it was worth a look.

Skeptics of the Indigo Child Theory, and that includes most people, claim parents who believe their children are Indigo are doing so as a way to avoid considering psychiatric or pediatric diagnosis.  “There’s nothing wrong with my child!  She’s special!”  It could be argued that it is wrong and dangerous to justify disruptive and rebellious behavior from a child as being symptoms of a higher consciousness.  Sure and that’s living in reality.  But I’m a fiction writer at heart, remember. I get to live outside of the system of reality.  Maybe I’m an Indigo Child?  I can definitely identify with some of the supposed qualities of the Indigos.  That’s why I found it most interesting, I suppose.  I don’t know…

The “highly spiritual” lady told me that when the age of ego dies and the age of Christ-like consciousness emerges, that is when we are ready to move forward and to seek a more harmonious existence.  And that age has begun, she told me.  Perhaps our brains will start producing more oxytocin, the chemical responsible for our feelings of love, trust and compassion.  Oxytocin is exclusive to humans alone.

But there are those who seek to divide us.  They benefit from us warring with each other.  They created dogmas and politics.  They are the ones who are purely ego driven.  They have to be in control and they will do anything it takes to keep it.  We should realize we’re all truly equal.  No human should have dominion over another human.  The only real tool they have is money, influence and fear.  But as I’ve said before, we are born knowing right from wrong.  That’s been proven by years of study at Yale and other institutions.  We all intuitively know it, despite what the world has thrown down on us to alter our realities. We began to “think” instead of “feel” and confused ourselves.  Our egos have gotten in the way of our instinctual understanding of morality.   If a newborn baby is a clean slate, how could it understand morality? Where does that knowledge come from if not from the universe itself? 

 

 

Human Development

On Human Development

What if the Mayans were right?  What if in 2013 we entered into a new phase of human development?  A New Age.  It takes millions and millions of years for selective breeding and mutations to create subtle changes in a creature.   Homo sapiens went from walking upright to making tools to speaking logically and thinking abstractly in a relative blink of an eye in terms of evolutionary time scales.  Why don’t other animals speak logically to each other?  No other animal does it.  Whales and dolphins are close, and we don’t really know how smart they are, but they aren’t building cities and they have no real technology.  They’re not exploring space.  But why would they?  They don’t need to.  They get along just fine.  It’s the need to survive or be wiped out of existence that drives a species forward in evolutionary terms.

Early humans were screwed if not for their advanced brains.  They had few if any defenses out there in Africa against saber tooth cats and enormous lions.   Selective breeding took such a gamble on humanity.  It doesn’t make sense how it even worked out for us.  What sort of random, chaotic, accidental process leads to the channeling of energy away from the physical body in favor of a more complex brain, in an ecosystem that relied on speed and brawn to survive?  There is a real disconnect in logic when imagining the millions of years it took while the early human brain was first developing and the body was losing physical strength.  It seems like we shouldn’t have been able to make it out of that epoch alive as a species. We shouldn’t be here.   We were too easy to catch and eat.

Imagine that energy is currency.  So in order to pay for more complex brains we needed to divert payment away from the physical strength first before it could be paid to the brain, leaving weak animals that are just starting to develop a smart brain out in the middle of Africa to fend for themselves.  Not yet smart enough to make a fire to ward off predators and not fast enough to run away from them, and definitely not strong enough to stand and fight.  The only thing I can imagine is that there was a time when the tribe of early humans found refuge near the coastline.  We lived off of fish primarily and avoided the savannahs and its predators.  This could also be where we lost our body hair.  It’s called the Aquatic Ape Theory.  The humans who could swim the fastest caught the most fish and therefore had the most children.  The ones with the least amount of body hair could swim the fastest.  Okay. And all that fish protein helped improve our brains.  That works. But that had to have happened at a crucial point in our development.  The timing had to be perfect.  Is that the answer?  Or was something else influencing our development.  Protecting and guiding us?  Angels?  Aliens? Who really knows?  That’s up to faith for some people and future scientific discoveries for others.

The fact that the result of the evolutionary gamble created beings who could look up into the sky and speculate, seek to unlock the mysteries of the universe and to explore it, makes me wonder about the question of why evolution would favor brain for brawn.  We are manifestations of the universe, products of it, having been made aware of the universe.  The universe became conscious through us; at least in this tiny spec of someone else’s sky.

We made a huge leap forward in a way that’s never been done before.  So, are huge mental leaps aspects of being human?

Are we undergoing one of these major leaps in human understanding and progress?  Most people would probably say no.  We are probably going in the other direction.  Media is definitely dumbing us down.   But let’s hear from the ones who say yes.  Just for the fun of it.

In the last hundred and fifty years we’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the space age, the internet, the smart phone and Google Glass.  What happened?  And now here we are, sharing ideas like never before.  I had a very interesting conversation with a lady last week about what she called the “awakening” taking place in our world right now.  The lady was very interesting.  I’ll refer to her as the “highly spiritual” lady.  She holds seminars on spirituality.  She said things that I too have contemplated.  And the more people I talk to, the more I come across people who surprise me and say things that you never heard before about religion and the universe, things I thought only I thought about.  The old literal interpretation of the Bible and history are changing.  The fastest growing religious affiliation is “Non-affiliated.”  By current projections, by 2050 Non-Affiliated will be the box checked off the most of all other religions upon survey.  Many fundamentalist would say that’s what’s wrong with our world.  But I don’t know.  The fact is, more and more people I talk to seem to see the world in a complete new and different way.  They don’t accept the old models of what their grandparents believed in.  Are we ready for more information?  Are we ready to wake up to a new reality? 

It could be argued that thanks to modern media we have all been indoctrinated by the same sources.  We all watch the same shows and therefore ask the same questions.  Maybe so.  But isn’t that a form of global collective consciousness then? 

The earth is developing a nervous system through our smart phones and devices. We’re creating, with technology, a digital collective consciousness surrounding the planet that is connecting us all in a global web.   If done right, the internet could lead to real, honest, global democracy.  “Yeah, right,” says the CEO, coughing on his cigar smoke.  “There’s no money in it.”  “There will never be harmony among humankind due to human ego and greed,” says a friend of mine. I agree with him, most of the time, but sometimes I like to think otherwise.  Sure, it appears that way now, based on the old models of society.   But there have been enormous shifts in the way humans think, recently and in the past.

It’s like the first time a cave dwelling ancestor of ours decided to paint a picture on a cave wall.  We suddenly began to think abstractly.  No other creature had ever done that on this planet before.  And it wasn’t exclusive to one human being in one cave.  There are hundreds of caves that they’ve discovered throughout the world that have abstract paintings in them that go back as far as forty thousand years.  I wonder who was the first human to do that?  Did cave art develop slowly over a long period of time?  They don’t really know.  There’s evidence that one of the oldest cave paintings discovered is just as sophisticated as art that was discovered from periods twenty thousand years later.  Did it start by accident?  An early human blew red ochre onto the wall and thought it looked cool.   It seems that eventually it became part of their religion.  At some point we developed art and the creation of that art became a spiritual experience.  Something happened, rather suddenly by evolutionary standards, that can’t be easily explained.  I’m certainly not going to try to explain it.  But the fact is, we suddenly began to think abstractly and to represent that abstract thinking in art.  By evolutionary terms that happened VERY recently; a major shift in the human brain, almost like an upgrade took place.  Is it happening again?  Are we on the cusp of another leap?  I’m on the look out for it.  But then again, who knows?  Amen.  Or better yet, I don’t know. 

 

 

What ever happend to being Humble?

On Humility

What ever happened to being humble?  Don’t people realize that you earn more respect when you are good at something and also humble about it?  I’m not talking about false humility.  “Oh, now, you’re just saying that.”  Is it better to be good at something, like a sport, and instead of dancing around after you score, you simply nod your head and jog back to your side of the field to start again?  Wouldn’t you rather see that?  In the olden days people were humble when they did something amazing.  Einstein didn’t go around saying, “In your face, Newtonian science!”  What happened to our world where that’s acceptable behavior?  Don’t you realize how foolish a cocky person looks when they fail?  It’s the basis for good physical comedy.  The high brow person who falls down is much funnier than the good hearted, humble guy falling down.  But why do people feel the need to celebrate and parade their accomplishments to everyone else?  It’s like we’re all clamoring for attention.  Much like writing a blog about yourself.  Yes.

I think part of it stems from the inability to see how we look from other people’s perspective.  It must be harder than I think, to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.  People say they do, but they usually don’t.  Really think through the scenario, and imagine you’re them.  How would you really feel about it?  Some people, it seems to me, live in the moment, on the edge of being offended, unable to take the split second required to imagine another more rational explanation for a comment or an action.

When I was starting out as a young writer, I had some extraordinary luck.  I mistook this luck for my own immense talent.  I was part of a group of comedians that put on a sketch comedy television show for the college station.  We had a blast doing it.  The director of the station submitted two of our sketches to a short film festival in Kansas City.  We won first and third place in the contest for sketches that turned out to be short films.  One of the judges was a Hollywood producer who we spoke to after the ceremony.  He really enjoyed our work.  I had written my first screenplay and he said he’d read it.  A few weeks later, I finished another screenplay. Around that time, I received a letter from the producer that turned out to be a very positive rejection, stating that he saw something special in me.  He said I had a unique voice and he’d love to read more of my work.  So I sent him the next screenplay.  He really liked it, but...  We worked on draft after draft of the screenplay until eventually he took it to Fox Search Light to see if they’d be interested in making the film.  I was twenty-one years old. It was my second attempt at writing a screenplay.  During this period, I was hanging out with my new artist friends and I had become quite full of myself and enamored with my abilities.  Fox Search Light rejected the screenplay, or I should say they “passed” on it.  But by that time I’d moved to Chicago and was wrapped up in the Second City world.  I was arrogant in those days and I fumbled several opportunities by my own hubris.  Over the next several years I was slowly but surely humbled.  Though, painful, it was the best thing for me as far as my personality goes. It’s important to mention that I say I was cocky, I don’t mean outwardly cocky.  Mine was a more internal arrogance that affected many bad decisions I made over the years.  Had I been more humble and willing to put in the extra work and diligence needed, who knows, my life could be very different than it is today.  But that’s not the point I’m trying to make.  It’s about humility. I think this happens to everyone in some capacity.  People who are good at things when they are too young and cocky to realize it often find painful humility in later life.  It’s those guys who weren’t arrogant to begin with are the ones that people are drawn to.  Those are the people, other people want to see succeed.    

So I look at Jimmy Fallon and think, what a good person he must be because he’s a humble guy.  He seems that way anyway.  People seem to generally like him.  I look at Leo Messi, the soccer star, arguably and potentially the greatest of all time, and add even more respect for him by the way he carries himself.  He doesn’t slide across the ground when he scores.  He’s low key.  He’s good and he knows it and doesn’t need to hype himself even more.  Being arrogant is a huge indicator of insecurity. 

My uncle Tom is a living legend in his corner of the state.   He was the football coach for a small town called Seneca.  His record for State Championships is staggering.  Year after year he took a new group of kids far into the state tournament.   He inspired kids to play at the top of their game and to reach inside themselves, to push themselves, to give their complete best.  The football stadium is named after him now.  But also what’s made him such a revered legend in the town is the way in which he carries himself.  He’s quiet.  He’s an extremely deep thinker.  That’s the first thing most people would say about him.  He listens and watches instead of idly making small talk.  And when he does speak there’s usually a kernel of wisdom in his words.  He has a unique way of speaking which my brother Josh can impersonate perfectly, but that only adds to his legend.  He’s funny and extremely dry as well.  You’d never hear him brag about any of his accomplishments, he usually down plays them.  But what makes him an even greater legend is how he and my aunt Merlene adopted three kids with high needs and rescued them from horrible situations.   They did it once their children were grown, when most people were settling down to start the next phase of their lives and retire.  They are selfless people and it amazes me.   Its people like this we should have our children immolate, not some arrogant, over paid professional athlete who dances around the end-zone. 

Children are growing up today to think its okay to be cocky and to celebrate themselves.  I fear it’s the wrong message.   But then again, life has a funny way of humbling us.  And maybe that’s the point of living.  Eventually someday, in some remote future, we’ll all be humbled.  Could it be said that in order for there to be harmony on earth, we’d all need to be humble? That’s going to take some time, though, I’d imagine.  But we have time according to the theory I keep alluding to.    Be patient with those who struggle with their egos, they’ve taken the wrong path and will need more time to find their way back to the right one.  But when they get there, it is believed it will be firmly taught and for them the humbling process will be a powerful one.

“Humble thy self in the sight of the Lord.”  Remember?

In order for complex systems to work, each part must be in harmony with the rest.  Could humanity eventually come together to form a truly complex system, in say a thousand years?  Most people would say no.  That’s ridiculous.  Maybe it is.  But you know me, I like to imagine.

What is a complex system?  Anything with smaller parts that come together to make something greater.  Atoms make cells which make up our entire bodies.  How is it that each atom knows it’s a part of the complex system and what its job in said system is?  That’s a good question, but they do at some level because without this knowledge we’d fall apart.  Imagination alert: Could each human be like an atom inside of a more complex system that has yet to come on-line at its fullest capacity?  What could we do once we came on-line?  We know that by a few people coming together working in harmony for the same end goal, forming a small version of a complex system, that we can go to the moon and fathom quantum mechanics.  In nature complex systems are every where.  What if that’s what we were meant to do?  Could the concept of a global consciousness be such a complex system?  If we got rid of all the things keeping us apart and at odds with each other, then what?  But that’ll never happen!  I know, but it’s okay to Imagine, Mr. John Lennon.  Imagine indeed.