Empathy is a Hard Master

I am sure I hate spiders. Really, it is their fault. They move silently and ever so quickly, even though they have no thoughts of eating us, no animosity toward us, and with no real concern for us at all, they will if given the opportunity, lay eggs in ear holes and under the skin. I think the ear-hole thing is justification enough.

I am not a Jainist who refuse to kill any living creature to the extent they carry a little fine brush to scoot away insects. There are special classes on how not slap a mosquito. It is about self-control and prevention. Admirable but a little kooky. I am ok with killing animals for food and even the existential killing of insects during the production of food. Temple Grandin said it succinctly, “Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth.” I do not like any method of killing anything that is not quick and in our best effort, attempts to be humane. After all we are human and we have a choice how we treat the world and that includes our enemies.

I was inspecting the tennis court for imperfections that could be easily corrected when I noticed a spider just hanging out in the middle of the court. In Florida on a hot day, a dry concrete surface is no place for any living thing and especially insects. They can dry out in minutes. Since the spider was in a bad spot for survival, I decided to flick the quarter-sized creature off of the courts playing surface. To my horror, when I did the flick, “she” landed off the playing surface safely but she was carrying about 150 babies which I did not notice. They are dispersed as the flicking was in progress. I literally gasped out loud. What happened next further horrified me. Now, I am a grown person and I tried to rationalize that they probably all would not survive to adulthood anyway, blah, blah, and blah. I tried to get a closer look at the babies which were mere specks. The mother turned from what I now know was trying to round up her babies and charged at me. She was defending her family at the risk of attacking a foe several thousand times larger than her. That alone caught my attention and my heart in a big way.

The person I was to play with on the court just arrived and I said to him. “Can we play on the other court and I am not going to tell you why we cannot use this court. Maybe after a few beers I can tell you!” I felt flush and a little weak and he said, “Ok, whatever.” With a brief glimpse back over my shoulder toward the spider, I could see she was in the middle of her baby roundup. All I could think of as I walked to the other court was the screaming, scared babies looking for their mamma. For warm-ups, I placed myself as far away from them as I could to avoid hearing the screams. My playing partner was oblivious of course and I felt like I had responsibility as an older person, I should explain the empathy I felt for this living creature. My distorted pride would not allow it and I was still in a mild state of shock. I had to push the spider gathering out of my mind and concentrate on tennis, specifically destroying this young person’s self-esteem by losing to a man nearly 40 years his senior.

It may take more than a few drinks to re-tell this story. That is why I wrote it down.

The Year of Matt

Since the declaration of this, "The year of Matt", I have a bunch of plans and responsibilities. 

Part of the Year of Matt is my attempt to be more social, in social situations but also to be responsible for being a friend worth having.  I guess it is taking responsibility for not having any friends.  I have basically a whole lifetime of not giving  a crap what people think ( most likely a defense mechanism from childhood) and winding up at 60 years old without much of an understanding of friendship. 

My brothers and sisters have all these friends from schools and life and I have almost nothing in the way of friends, certainly not good friends.  I take responsibility for that so in this year that is mine, I will work to change that.  Not that at this point do I want anyone invading my space like a bunch of cheerleaders, but with exploration comes understanding, then intelligent change can occur.

It is a plan anyway.

 

Sixteen Tons

This is a song written by Merle Travis about a coal miner, based on life in coal mines in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.^[1] Travis first recorded the song at the Radio Recorders Studio B in Hollywood, California, on August 8, 1946.

 I remember the version by Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded in 1955.  Of course I did not hear it until the 60's but I was fascinated by his voice and the song.  My cousin Vince got hooked on Fords music on a visit to my parent's place in Ohio.  While there he heard one of Ford's gospel records and flipped out.  He was like a kid in a candy store.  He listened and listened.  We still had records (LP) in those days.  It was good times.  He had never heard such listenings.

It went along with the John Henry was a steel driving man song by somebody, maybe Johnny Cash. 

We had lots of music styles in our house.

Pets, feelings and other stuff

First thing, my pets are suffering from the evils of capitalism just like the rest of us.
Second thing, I am beginning to dislike pets more than children.
Third thing, and there is always a third thing, I am on the precipice of my new life and I am listing. 

Ok, lets detail these things.

Pets have become substitutes for humans to interact with.  They are peoples "children" I hear said.  I have young friends that treat pets like people.  My da was very specific about pets not being treated like people.  Do not feed them from the table and don;t let them sleep in your bed with you.    I had a cat that loved to sleep under the covers.  He would sneak into the room, climb under the covers, migrated down to my feet and deposit all of his fleas under the sheets.  I thought I was with a cheap hooker in the Angolan jungle.  I scratched for three days.  One cat is very, very skinny and his fur fell off the back half of his body.  It grew back without stripes, well now the stripes are coming back. Anyway, I feed him extra little smokey hot dogs every night in hopes that he gains some weight.  He is an asshole so we cannot let him in the house.  That is the the thing about cats, they just expect us to provide everything for them, I mean, if you leave them outside, they will do just fine except when they are road crossers.  Road crossers will eventually get killed by a car, it is sort of Darwinian. 

I raised 5 children, not including myself.  I give my wife credit for that.  Fortunately, she was an adult when I met her.  She did not know much about raising children though.  She is a great nurturer of the babies and invalids.  Thinking, conniving, trecherous children above the age of two were pretty much out of her wheelhouse.  I was ready and willing to pick things up from there.  A child is like a bike wheel with loose spokes, It will wobble and break down, you just need to help it get straight and keep nudging them down the road, sometimes with a stick.  I did not dislike any of my kids, there were two kids from little league softball, Alysa and Malysa, I think they were the two twins from "The Shinning".  They gave me the evil eye because I they did not want to stand out in the sun and heat, they were ten years old and I am sure they have ruined many a life since I exorcised them from my team.  They scared me with that look. 
I think children are just too much work, never ending.  I mean even now they are grown, I worry about them, help them out in ways of guidance and guilt.  I am old and tired, I want the children to cook and clean for me and do all the things I am tired of doing.  I am tired of doing most things.  Nobody is going to do all those things for me.  Raising them was mostly chaos and pain, very little smiling, even less joy, but the joy was enormous when it came.  The sheet is not balanced though.  That is why I am listing. 

This precipice I talk about, I just lost a bunch of weight, finally see the end of the mortgage, have a decent idea about what I want to do with the last part of my life but there is that listing.  Listing from the old english meaning of " the edge".  Precipice should translate to"listing" but whatever.  I wander while I list.  If I am going to act drunk, I may as well be drunk.  I came to that conclusion and my daughter bought me one of those cute little pocket flasks.  I do not imagine I could take it on a plane but everywhere else I have a flask of vodka in case I need it. 

I need to sum this up, Pets get fat, unhealthey and unruly, children destroy vaginas, spines and order, precipices lead to change, and uncertain growth as well ass hard landings.

Not working

I have been trying to report on a phenomenon that has been part of my life for many years, the random generation of songs in my head when I wake up in the morning.  Well, I have been trying to report on the songs and some insights into my day with that song. 

Several problems have cropped up.  I am not sleeping well lately and songs are not popping into my head like they used to do.  Also, I sort of figured I could expound on memories of those songs and have a decent conversation with myself about my life related to me.  Fairly self-concentric I know.  I am bored with it and the entire shooting match.  The songs are not coming, due in part to lack of good sleep and probably also to early dimensional drift.

I had hoped to invigorate my writing and lead me to a new understanding of myself.  Nope, the four guys in the Ukraine that are following me will most likely be even more disappointed with me and my site.  This capitalist dog will no longer be in the hunt.  I am going to try to go back to school and get my major in "slacker" or something similar.  That should challenge me and my writing.  Conversely, inversely or reversely I really don't care anymore what I am saying.