Contemplating Your Navel

(I presented the following humorous bit of philosophy as a monologue/ skit live at No Shame Eugene, Friday, June 5, 2009)

I had an odd thought a while back while contemplating my navel. I know “contemplating one’s navel” is a cliché-- a synonym for wasting time on meaningless philosophical speculation. Have you ever done that? You know, just stick your finger in your navel, close your eyes, and just let your mind wander?

Well, I often wonder about strange things, particularly the origins of things, and I’m always searching for meaning of some sort—why are things as they are?
Now, let’s assume you are just as curious as I am. Lets do a thought experiment together.

(NOTE: I PROMPTED THE AUDIENCE TO PARTICIPATE WHILE JESSE MODELED WITH HIS SHIRT OFF, FINGER IN NAVEL, A SLEEPING MASK OVER HIS EYES)

Good. Now, with your eyes closed, listen to my words and just let your mind flow along.
So the question occurred to me, why is my navel as it is? You know, like a little round scar in the center of my body. And of course that opened up a wide universe of deeper thought. Why do navels exist at all? What is the origin of navels? Why do some creatures have them and others do not?

First, a little background: philosophically and by schooling I am an evolutionist. In the 150 years since Darwin, it has become apparent that all creatures descended from common ancestors.
But the more I look into the science of origins, the more convinced I am that someone, something, or some “essence” gave this universe a nudge at the beginning of time. But after that, everything evolved gradually. I accept that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, life began on this rocky planet about 3.5 billion years ago, and life big enough to see without a microscope goes back a little more than 500 million years.

So, as I contemplated my navel, I closed my eyes and furrowed my brow, because that is how deep thinking is done. I remembered that the scar I call my navel is the remains of where my umbilical cord attached to my mother’s placenta. Then I saw that my mother had earned her navel in the same manner – she was connected to Grandma, and in turn, Grandma had been connected to her mother. By logical extension, I realized my navel is physical evidence of a connectedness that goes all the way back—but back to what?

All humans have navels, but so do chimpanzees. That means I can easily trace my connection back to the split between hominids and chimps, maybe five to eight million years ago. But since all primates have navels, it goes back much farther. But how much? Then it struck me – the connection goes all the way back to the origin of mammals that have placentas.
When I opened my eyes, I realized I was touching a spot on my own body that was physical evidence of a connectedness that goes back 120 million years! Millions and millions of generations of my maternal ancestors, all linked in an unbroken chain, every-one of them successful. Not one of them died before giving birth, or I wouldn’t be here!
Now that was quite a mind-trip.

O.K. open your eyes, and think about the navel of the person next to you. All the navels in the room. All the navels in the world that now exist or have every existed. Each of us bears a scar that shows we are connected to each other, not just in a philosophical way, but in a very real way.

Now, for a very interesting experiment, I want each of you to close your eyes again, reach over and stick your finger in your neighbor’s belly button …… Maybe we should save that experiment for next month..

No Shame in sharing ideas

A creative idea worth its salt is neither carved in stone nor owned. As soon as you share it with someone else, it begins to change. It will crumble and dissolve like a pillar of salt in front of an ocean wave. But once it enters the sea of shared ideas, it becomes eternal.

Therefore it is both useless and undesirable to cling to your best ideas. Share them. Spread them about. Watch them wash away and return to you, forever changed, forever yours.

Put Your Mind 2 It

We parked the jeep at the base of Skinner’s Butte and peered up at the rock climbers. It was a real spring day, a welcome break after a soggy gray March that dripped into April. Adrian leaned forward from the backseat and stuck his head between Katherine and me, cranking his neck to see out the windshield. From our viewpoint the basalt columns didn’t look all that tall, maybe fifty to sixty feet max.

In my mind I flashed back to twelve summers ago, seeing myself looking down from above while a scared eight year-old climber froze about half way up.

“Remember?” I asked my granddaughter, placing two fingers against my forehead.

“Put your mind to it,” Katherine said, raising two fingers to her forehead. She turned to Adrian. “And I got four dollars.”

Adrian and Katherine have been a couple for about a year now and it looks as if this relationship is going to last. They are moving together to Albuquerque next week, seeking work in this tough economy, and Katherine will be transferring her scholarship from the University of Oregon to the University of New Mexico. My feelings have been mixed: I rejoice that they have the ambition and fortitude to step out into the world, and I worry that they are not prepared for the challenges ahead. But the memory of the day she climbed that rock column gives me reassurance.

“Four dollars?” Adrian asked. He is always eager to hear stories about Katherine growing up. And I am always eager to tell them.
When Katherine was little, we went on “adventures.” That is what she called our outings. My goal was to have fun together while building on her natural self-confidence. When she was just six months old, we started swimming lessons together. I took her on hikes riding on my shoulders. We went camping. We explored anything that took her interest.
And when she was ready, she chose our adventures and wanted to be the leader. She led the way while we explored tide-pools and climbed sand dunes. The training wheels came off her bicycle. She wanted bigger adventures.

In the summer after second grade, she was ready for a summer camp at the Crux Rock Climbing gym. At least, she seemed ready.

For the first few days she did fine. The kids group consisted of three boys and two girls. She was the youngest. And the boys were intimidating, particularly one older boy who was a bit of a bully. She began to fear them and the climbing wall. Then one day there was an incident of some kind.

The next day, I took some time off from work and came to the gym to talk to the staff and watch her lessons. Another incident happened: Katherine froze about ten feet off the ground and cried hysterically. Although the trainer was gentle and coached her from below, she was not responding. He climbed up and brought her back down.

Her confidence was destroyed and she wanted to quit. We took a break and got a banana smoothie. As we talked, I realized that part of her problem was that she had learned how to climb up, but whenever she wanted to come down, she would slip against the wall and struggle in her harness. Like a cat in a tree, she knew how to go up but not down.

I told the trainer I would work with her, and managed to coax her back into her harness. But she froze immediately and began to cry again. No amount of talking could persuade her to move off the ground.

So we sat on the floor at the base of the wall and talked, not about climbing, but about her confidence. Whenever she had had confidence issues in the past, we talked about the power of mind over matter, about putting your mind to it. And that is when I came up with the hand signal of putting two fingers to my forehead, and saying, “Remember, just put your mind 2 it.” We looked at each other, and held our fingers to our foreheads.

Then I showed her that to walk down the wall, she had to lean back in her harness and trust the harness to hold her. We sat on the floor with our feet against the wall, while I slowly pulled tension on the belaying line. When she was ready, she went six inches off the ground and hung back in her harness. Then we raised it to a foot. She learned that she could walk back and forth across the wall like Spiderman. When her confidence was strong, she went up two or three feet, and climbed back down.

She returned to her class and had no more problems.

At the end of the week, the kids were ready to take it outdoors, and the class went on a field trip to the Skinner Butte rock columns. I came to watch.

The instructors set up the climbing gear and ran their ropes through the anchors at the top of the columns. The plan was to have the kids go one at a time.

“Who’s first?” an instructor asked.

The bully boy grabbed a helmet and confidently strode to the base of the rock cliff, and put on his harness. Then he climbed while all the kids watched. As he climbed, I circled around the columns and made my way to the top to watch from above. I could see Katherine below, and gave her the two-finger hand signal. She nodded, and I knew she was ready.

The boy got about thirty feet off the ground and suddenly froze. The instructors coaxed, but he wouldn’t budge. Then he began to cry and begged to come down. They let him down, and another boy took the helmet, with a pasty look on his face. Sure enough, he got about twenty feet off the ground and he began to cry.

He returned to the ground, and the third boy refused the helmet. That’s when Katherine stepped forward. I just sat at the top of the column and watched.

She put on her harness and started up, carefully finding hand-holds in the cracks of the columns. Half way up she stopped, and looked up at me. I put my fingers to my forehead, and said, “If you come all the way up and give me a high-five, I’ll give you two dollars.” She hesitated for moment then started to climb.

After successfully climbing to the top and back down, she offered the helmet to the kids but nobody took it. I looked down and called, “Do it again for another two-bucks?”
That was twelve years and many adventures ago. Now my little angel is twenty years old and ready for new adventures living on her own in a city a long way from home. And I have the confidence to know she will do fine.

All she has to do is put her mind 2 it.

Beady Eyed Bob -- Chapter One

Beady-eyed Bob
Chapter One

I did not choose this conflict, nor did he. But conflict it is, and only one of us can win. Perhaps he is simply following his nature, for it is said that nature is red of tooth and claw, and only the fittest survive. I wish him no harm, but his aggression knows no bounds.

Nature gave him the physical advantage. He is quick and agile and much younger than I. If he chose a direct attack, I would be forced to turn and run. But there is nothing direct about him—he is sneaky, and he will not make his move until I am distracted. To win, I must stay focused, and I’ve got the advantage of brains. I estimate his brain must be the size of a walnut, confined beneath his dingy brown sloping forehead, just behind those beady-eyes that gleam with malice. I call him Beady-eyed Bob.

As I said, I wish him no harm. To the contrary, I wish him true happiness and a long life. But I am not sure what would make him happy. Nothing that I do seems to be enough. He always wants more. He wants it all, and that is the source of the problem. Nuts!

Did I mention that Bob is a squirrel? Perhaps I did anthropomorphize a little too much, but he is a worth adversary. Bob is a fox squirrel, an introduced species from the Eastern United States. That makes him an outlaw as far as the Audubon Society is concerned. They say humans should not feed them and if one is injured they will not accept this invasive species for treatment. But aren’t we all invaders from the East?

Anyway, it’s not up to me. As I say, I did not choose this battle. Bonnie did. Well, that’s not fair either. She did not choose the battle; rather she simply set the stage for conflict. “Oh, they are sooooo cute!” my sweet wife says.
So we buy nuts. Lots of nuts. It started with peanuts, then hazelnuts, walnuts, sunflower seeds, and now she even gives them almonds. We drive out into the countryside once each year to visit a commercial dryer for hazelnuts. We get a 50 kilogram sack. And every time we go to Costco, we buy five pound bags of unsalted peanuts. Never mind that humans won’t eat them anymore, for fear of salmonella. And at the feed store, we buy sunflower seeds, “For a special treat, they need some variety, you know.”

But it is never enough. Like I said, Bob wants it all.

His lifestyle is in subtle contrast to his mate, a gentle sweet girl we call Hazel. Bonnie gave her that name because of her preference for the hazelnuts. Hazel comes to the glass patio door on the south side of the living room, sits up on her hind legs and peers into the room. When she sees one of us, she cups a front paw over her heart, and wags her tail. She will gently take a nut from my hand. “She’s soooo cute!” Bonnie coos.

Beady-eyed Bob, on the other hand, tends to come to the glass door on the north patio. He does not sit up and beg like Hazel. If he sits up at all, he doubles both of his paws like fists, looking more like a kangaroo ready for a boxing match. And he tilts his head down to the right, glaring at us with Os sinister. When I open the door to toss a nut, he runs up the maple tree, spins and gives the evil eye. After the door is shut, he scurries down for the treat.

The problem with Bob is the handouts are never enough. No, he has to raid the bird feeders, and that is the true source or our conflict.

As I write this story, it is early March. Today is gray and wet, and only the moss and ferns are happy. Nevertheless there are signs of life. Purple and white crocuses struggle to hold their heads above puddles and the Christmas poinsettia is rejuvenating on the patio table. A few pink camellias are unfurling. And the bird-feeders are swarmed with dozens of finches, bush tits and other perching birds. We feed all year round, but the last few days have brought larger crowds.

Controlling the crowds and keeping everybody fat and full is a challenge. We use hanging tube feeders with small perches to separate the small songbirds from the aggressive jays and bigger birds. They hang in a row sheltered at the edge of the main patio, along with a humming bird feeder that has attracted a pair of Anna’s.

But the real challenge is separating ground-feeding birds from the jays and the squirrels. If we put feed on the ground, the squirrels just munch all day and the possums munch by night.

So the solution seemed to be a hanging platform feeder. These feeders are like a flat box with wood sides and a screen mesh bottom. They have wires rising from the four corners and meeting in a loop for hanging, like a flower basket. To keep the seed dry, I decided to hang the feeder under the eave on the north patio. I knew this was Beady-eyed Bobs territory, but I figured he couldn’t get at it seven feet off the ground.

To be continued--