He Who

     Has every piece of this earth been recorded, stepped on? By "we" I mean human beings and animals, all the mammals together, so I wonder if we as a collective being have touched every millimeter over the millions of years, over the trillions of days. I'd hike over every mountain, wade through every lake, and trudge through every desert- I'd make my life with the earth a way of life, my purpose. A step would land on every inch of earth... but I question the practical worth, and that keeps me from even trying this.

     So as I'm looking at these lizards, in their five by ten foot tank, and I'm wondering, what's the point of all my thoughts? These lizards have certainly slid across every millimeter of  their man-made fifty square feet, and now there's no land left to explore. Maybe we were given so much land because we weren't meant to see it all. We were meant to be able to still wonder, to imagine.

     The Mexican bearded lizard, known for it's colorful, bumpy and beaded skin, was formerly found through the Southwestern U.S., but now it is only found from Mexico to Northern Guatemala. The lizard has glands in its lower jaw which release venom by capillary action along its grooved lower teeth, in effect, chewing venom into its prey. There is no anti-venom for the bite of this lizard, though human death is rare.

     They no longer appear through the Southwestern U.S. It is a CITES protected animal, protected under the same Animal Welfare Act, as it is endangered by its collection and habitat loss and careless murder. The bearded lizard has a plethora of superstition and myth. It is incorrectly believed to be the most venomous animal, and that it can create lightning strikes with its tail. Stranger still, the lizard is believed to be able to make a pregnant woman miscarry at it's gaze, as many things with scales in myths cause harm just by eye contact.

     For this reason, locals have killed the lizard

on the spot.

Also, the rare lizard is poached through animal trade. We kill the animal and sell its corpse for our own profit, for pieces of paper which make us richer. The animal does not reproduce well in captivity, so it very likely doesn't reproduce well in the zoo either. It's scarcity means a very high price for collectors. Though it is too late for the United States, this lizard is protected in Mexico by law of category A (very endangered) and it lives within several dedicated protected areas.

As I look into the face of this beaded "monster" it's incredible to me to imagine the men and women who believed and still believe it to be able to terminate pregnancies and cause bad weather. I'm busy being curious about the steps, about the land, because I want to know. Nothing more. Why didn't anyone want to really know this animal before they kill it? I have no reason to think stepping and walking is an injustice to the earth. I have no reason to think a calamity will fall from the stars if I pick a plant. I'm not inclined to get behind the philosophy of how we sometimes believe we own things simply by touching or living alongside them, but sometimes it's fun to pretend. My curiosity's nature is that of physical evidence and matter. Of mattering and the physical matter. Somehow a footprint in the sand is a solidifying action to me, as silly as that seems, even if it is blown away in a sandstorm, melted in the snow, the print is still there. I'm sorry, science, but this is what I believe. A mammal's steps are somehow deeper than the first and second layers of the earth, the crust, deeper than magma in the core, and I have no science to back that up, I have no reason to feel a certain way, and I have no scientific reason to feel sad about what we've done to these lizards, but this is the science of emotion.

We've headed to Seattle, and while I'd love to reflect on the awful flight experience or coming to terms with my interpersonal relationships, I can only reflect in this way:

He who journeyed through the airport.

He who arrives two hours and thirty minutes early- he feels only on time.

He who realizes his expectations don't frequent reality.

He who journeys and feels so sad about the beauty in this world. Of people and animals and their expressions alone which could reduce him to tears.

     Why tears?

     Why sadness?

     Why is it that he who speaks freely of ills and ignorance of this world can feel so restricted?

He who notices strong hair follicles, the strong tissues or scales holding a skeleton covering, a woman

     SH

         SH

             SH

                Sh

                   Sh

                      sh

                         h

                            her crying infant as he can only

                                                            B

                                               Ba

                                   Bac

            Back away.

He who journeys the world in such small ways.

He who loves this world so much he hates it.

He who refuses to enjoy himself for fear of seeming strange.

He who notices all the beauty until it turns ugly.

Justice For All

The Pittsburgh Zoo has been open to the public since 1898 thanks to the generous donation of $125,000.00. I'm sure real Pittsburgh buffs know or at least might have heard the name Christopher Magee, the founder of the zoo. A refresher for the yinzers who haven't caught up and we foreigners:

One man halves the debt of an entire Pittsburgh. 

One man generates thousands of jobs. 

One man then controls a city with his partner. 

One man takes piles of human being currency and ravages entire plots of land, uses materials from the earth to construct automobiles and building sites. 

How does one single man or one woman ever have such a giant impact on this earth? 

How do we consider what is "earned" and "fought for" when the question of ownership is so one-sided? 

A little boy named Maddox was mauled and eaten by a pack of African dogs in 2012 at the Pittsburgh Zoo. He was leaning over the rails, his mother trying to help him get a better view of the dogs. In terms of ownership, and devoid of our moralities, the dogs had this piece of meat fall into their hands. They had chance fall into their laps, just like luck falls into the hands of a human being. Just as a bloody medium rare steak splats onto our plates when we have enough money to order it. Who is to say what property is and what ownership is?

Obviously, we are.

And we've since removed those dogs from the settlement, only to replace them with cheetahs. It's just another motion we've got for handling iffy situations. The parents sued the zoo, which I truly don't understand, given the liability of holding your child over a banister. And the zoo just reached another part of a settlement last week, in which the zoo will pay the U. S. Department of Agriculture $4,550.00. 

Why?

Under the Animal Welfare Act, the only Federal law to protect the treatment of animals, we have decided that the USDA is due these finances. Statute §2157 section (d) states: "Any person, including any research facility, injured in its business or property by reason of a violation of this section may recover all actual and consequential damages sustained by such person and the cost of the suit including a reasonable attorney's fee." As my class has learned from our Eden Hall adventure, what the attorneys do with this lawsuit money in terms of agriculture is really up in the air.

What exactly does all this legislation do for the animals? I'm not entirely sure, though I'd like to think that the rationale behind this decision is: human beings fear losing money. And the fear of that loss prevents (most) people from harming animals, if not for just common human decency. Hurting an animal means losing money, simple.

I wonder then, if the animals would like more. They don't exactly see any part of this settlement, do they? Sometimes they get relocated rather than executed, so I guess that can be considered a small victory. 

I see Otis the alligator in his best tux, ready for court over being put in such a small bathtub of an exhibit for so many years. He's adorned with black shimmery satin on the lapels, a stripe of the same material sewn into a stripe on the pants, should he choose to be so decent to wear pants, too. He's holding an Alligator Welfare Act 2013 copyright LexisNexis in his right arm. A Venti cup of Starbucks caramel machiatto and a yellow legal pad in his right.

But that is probably not at all what any animal would like to see.

They're not into all the pageantry of the human world.

All this snow, do I even want to talk about it right now? There are stronger minds who have already written pages and books on it. I can't stomach it to consider snow again this week. I'm standing on a snowy bridge, nobody's bridge, and considering the legality, not the morality, of my previous blog thoughts of throwing a kid over the ropes to Otis. I have very unpopular opinions sometimes, but I think neither I nor the Animal Welfare Act have it right when it comes to justice for the animals. If that's even what we're really after.

A Revisitation of Snow's Livelihood; A Not-So-Meditation

I wait for Otis. I wait. Even if the alligator doesn't show his face until after the course is over, I will write about him. This is my goal and this is something I'm looking forward to, something I have great anticipation toward. I hope I can do it justice when the snow melts and the alligator comes out to play.

My human buddies at the visitor's office,

who now know me by name (or probably 

when I'm not around they know me by 

"that alligator/biology weirdo"), say

this plant is called a "funeral flower" though 

I'm not entirely convinced they're so 

worried to be correct. A search of "funeral 

flower" yields exactly what you think it 

would. More search soon, must buy guide.

My little buddies, whatever they are, are holding on for dear life. Let's see, they're not: Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, rye grass, cheat grass, rescue grass, quaking grass, oat grass, orchard grass, nut grass, bermuda grass, picklegrass (thought they resemble each other), clubawn grass, saw grass, windmill grass, mosquito grass, rosette grass, western panic grass, crab grass, cockspur grass, barnyard grass, billion-dollar grass, Indian goosegrass, fall witchgrass, bottlebrush grass, quackgrass, wheatgrass, lovegrass, lace grass, stinkgrass, cupgrass, finegrass, mannagrass, skeletongrass, limpograss, porcupinegrass, mudplantain, velvetgrass, orangegrass, Junegrass, rice cutgrass, whitegrass, moorgrass, dunegrass, melicgrass, miletgrass, Chinese silvergrass, scratchgrass, bent grass or zoysia.

I literally just clicked through all of those on the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service website, first overwhelmed by all the grasses (currently existing in PA) I don't know, secondly worried these buddies are actually flowers with the petals missing. What's scarier still, how could I not know any of these grasses by name? Now I have all these images floating in my head, and I must try to place them, one by one, over the course of my life. I have to figure out what this "plant of action" is called, or at least name a plant before I finish the semester.

As for the other people out here, there's one older man at the zoo scraping at the snow. He hasn't asked me why I'm past the barrier and hanging out on the bridge. He's not interested in the police work, I assume, busy scratching at the earth, taking some snow and some history from the paths of this zoo.

From what I can only assume is man-made, the snow today is pinched firmly along the edge of blacktop filling in mounds. This would allow people to walk along his clearing if there were any people visiting the zoo today. He turns into a baker in my eyes, the hours before the bakery is open in the morning. The snow looks like crust, crumbly and green, brown, grey, flecks of salt which look like sugar powered along the edges. The zoo becomes a giant white pie with tough black filling. A bakery.

The way I see a pie like this in the snow makes me feel embarrassed yet I have nothing to fear but myself. I immediately think, "people will think this is a stupid analogy" when really it's my own demons who think this is stupid. It's my own demons holding me back from simple metaphor. Seeing this pie, this southern home-cooking image of a pie, makes me think of how I feel so ashamed of nature.

When I think of conventional nature, stopping to smell the flowers and grass, identifying a plant, thinking of ownership of land and crops and an intimate relationship with the "mother" Herself, I think of the countryside nature from which I was born. I say I'm from "Charleston, West Virginia" but I'm really from Alum Creek, thirty minutes out, the countryside of Charleston, the trees, sticks, grass and forest of Charleston. This home and having to write about nature now makes me think of an overpowering estrangement I must mend. I think of getting as far from trees and plants as possible. I think of all the West Virginia stereotypes (as if you needed a link). I think of how people like Dick Cheney can joke freely about how we are an inbred group of people. I think about how Jon Stewart, bless him and his humor, can make people laugh about fracking, how we shouldn't drink our poisoned water from a chemical spill ("Freedom Industries"- you can't write this shit). "Nature" makes me think of my family's natural southern twang and how I changed my own accent when I was seven because I'd noticed instances of people in person and on the national news who thought that innately people from my area are stupid, inbred, redneck farmers and hillbillies who frequent racism, bestiality, incest, and most other Neanderthal-like behavior city-folk shan't touch upon.

But fuck all that noise, Jonny.

The snow looks like pie crust. My parents speak with a music, a beautiful banjo to their voices, that I can never get back. As for nature, I'm doing my best to just accept it.

And what about the snow? Can I find some excitement in it?

Snow makes me think of whiteness. It makes me think of purity, boredom, of sadness. If I'm being serious and unafraid of inhibition, whiteness makes me think of white skin and the horrible history that comes with it. It makes me think of privilege. It makes me immediately think of Morgantown, WV's student-run newspaper, Daily Atheneum, and how they just allowed a young man to post an article about how it's hard out there for a white dude. I'm serious. They really did that.

I'll try to think otherwise, less dark and cynical, and think of this snowy whiteness in terms of light.

The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. Most of us know that in art mixing blue and yellow makes green, red and yellow makes orange, red and blue makes purple, etc. But in terms of light, it can be strange and doesn't seem to make sense that all the colors equal something different, and combined they equal white. White reflects all colors. We can look at snow and see its sparkle, its plainness, and not realize that it actually contains every color from the spectrum. Snow is vibrant. Snowflakes are alive. In life, they are full of connections, they've compacted together and befriended other snowflakes to make a blizzard. The light blinds me. In the same way I often don't wear my prescribed glasses to avoid seeing people, to feel more brave when staring at a blob of color rather than into the eyes and soul of another being, the glare of this snow reminds me of not wanting to make too deep, too personal, too vulnerable a connection. Then again, maybe I'm projecting my emotions onto the poor pure snow. It's just my nature estrangement blinding me again.

The snow prints I can see near the goats' area look like a pulse. A dotted line. A Pulse. Snow alive, snow being alive. What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to have a pulse? Is there a hiccup in the pulse when there's a dirt or browning of the clear, full of color, white? I don't think so. I love the focus on browns. Maybe they're considered hiccups but I like to think of smudges in the white as a break in formalities. An ease and a relaxation from all this "trying to be perfect all the time." Relax, snow. No one is judging you, snow.

I say hello to Sea Kitty Maggie before I leave the zoo.

Sea Kitty Maggie

An enchantment cast upon Pittsburgh made it warmer around here these last couple of days.

The lighter layer of snow melted and melded into the thicker colder layer of snow, forging that compact icy crisp- the kind of snow we use for snow forts and battles. I pine for at least one more snowball fight before I turn thirty. I've got a couple years, and I don't fear getting older at all. I've chosen thirty as it's a socially constructed landmark of "aging." I've chosen thirty because you can reverse all the damage you do only unto hitting thirty, then science says it's permanent.

I do fear surrendering to age and getting more and more accustomed to acting according to it. In a dozen more seasons, when it's the perfectly packed snow like this, will I be guarded and too mature to ask the frozen water to assemble the battalions, too brittle to lift it all up into one perfectly healthy sphere? 

My guess is for everyone to watch for snowballs this season as well as the next twelve. No one is safe. Snowballs are the white fluff of enchantment.

The maximum temperature this past week probably wasn't above 40°. I'm jealous of how much warmer it feels when you're around 220-660 pounds with a coarse, short fur coat. Once again, there are no people. I won't get to hit anyone with a snowball today, which I guess is better for everyone involved.

The mid-winter spell has temporarily fizzled out and this city's starting to dip back down into colder temperatures. There has been another dusting of snow along the paths and plants. Another batch of white-out to correct all our history. All our footprints erased, our daring sculptures censored, snow angels now with their wings clipped, as if they never flew in the first place. 

The first known zoo was just discovered in 2009. In Hierakonpolis, Egypt, a discovery of an ancient zoo, called a menagerie, dated 3,500 B.C., was found to have contained skeletons of hippos, hartebeests, elephants, baboons and wildcats. It's hard to believe we've been doing this for so long, through all these winters. Through King Ashur-bel-kala, Empress Tanki and King Wen of Zho, Solomon, Semiramis, Ashurbanipal, Alexander the Great and many more after that, we've trapped animals in cages and watched over them for more than 5,000 years. A menagerie symbolized power in aristocrats who kept wild expensive animals captive, and it wasn't until the 19th century that we decided calling something zoological in the name of science was perhaps somehow a nice form of public entertainment.

Just think, all those fucking winters.

I really hate hate hate the cold, and I could complain so much we'd run out of the earth's oxygen from all the hot air, but jump through all those years and the California sea lions seem to have never minded it. 

(Annoying the visitor's office has become 

a regular culture of my visits. The clerk told 

me the friendliest sea lions are Selina and 

Maggie, so out of guesswork and the sake 

of my people friend Maggie (and fun), I'll 

assume this sea lion was the one who 

shares the name.)

Sea Lion Maggie pauses again and again and I lean in forward a bit, just to get to know her a little better. I get as close as I can to the scratched glass wary of catching germs from the baby hand residue. I want to feel nearer Maggie. I want to share the same water so I can know and understand her even closer. I'd run my hand along her forehead, the color of my grandmother's grey hair, to see whether she's slimy or smooth. I'd tell her how jealous I am of those strong wiry whiskers, being outgrown by a beautiful bearded lady. Sea Lion Maggie's got the friendliest eyes with a yellowish brown tint. They remind me of a drop of the natural honey, the dark honey I buy from West Virginia hives, plopped on a ceramic plate. She blows bubbles out of her nose to help her swim around just as we do. I consider her mortality. I consider that she and I wouldn't be so different from each other swimming side by side, blowing bubbles from the same body of water. We sea kitties would live just about the same as large land kitties. We'd travel in packs called harems. Just like land lions, there'd be a male, a bull, who heads a groups of females, or cows. I'd have to fight a 660 pound sea lion to stick around. I could take him, or I could convince him to compromise. They work as a pack just as I work best as a pack, though I wish I were strong enough to be alone. We're both so utterly codependent. I understand too well the need for a tribe, for a colony. 

I imagine Sea Lion Maggie feels like those ultra-Mormon tribes, all those women packed around one husband, but she's blissfully ignorant of all that. She has no need for a religion. She might pray for more fish or a shiny red ball to play with. She might pray that her family stays safe and maybe she prays that life gets a little more exciting than swimming around that little pool all day. But she doesn't need it. I don't need it either. All we need is the love of meeting and knowing other beings. Our lifeblood is connection.

Maggie seems young, she seems to have a young spirit and I think we share that, too. I hope she doesn't change any of her behavior as she gets older and more cynical about it all. She's not trying to judge my actions or win me over, she's just watching, curious, and I wish I could ask her, if nothing else, to not let her curiosity fade away.

I wished I could ask or talk to Sea Lion Maggie about our history. I wanted to tell her what my beings have done to her beings and come to some sort of understanding. She'd learn about the zoological societies and the oldest zoo still in existence, Tiergarten Schöbrunn, in Vienna, Austria. I'd tell her about Ota Benga, a Mbuti pygmy part of the extensive list of human exhibits, and we'd philosophize about why keeping humans contained was suddenly not okay, yet containing animals presses forward in the name of "science." Maybe she wouldn't care, but I wanted to talk to her about anything at all, really, and maybe the feeling was mutual, as she swam to and fro returning to watch me every couple of minutes.

I stood there staring back at her, until it seemed inhuman to stay there any longer.