Too many hours spent longing to live in a mansion overrun by wild ones
just like Elly Mae Clampett
no doubt did this to me,
but so it goes.
I don't dare walk near my semi-feral Bear-boy with so much as the tie to my robe hanging loose. No ribbon-dangling for my Boy: no sirree; he immediately goes extreme, from play to prey before i can move away. After hand-raising him from orphanhood, before he was eating solid food, i had great hopes for him becoming the kontented hauskitty of my dreams.
Dream on. Wild roots run deep and it is arrogance or lapse in judgment that denies their existence.
A trifling ignore-ance of .1% is bowing to nature for only 99.9; not enuf in Coconino County where animals rule, or anywhere outside of Disneyland.
Ask any cat owner how it goes. In less than an instant, eyes turn to
saucers and ears pin back like he's facing a half-pipe booter.
Energy of the game shifts and i'm not in charge any more, and this ain't
Kansas. Fun turns to teeth sinking deep into calf muscle real fast.
Admittedly, the Bear-man is like other cats and also not. Extremely instinctual, independent and very easily bored, constantly inventing games to entertain himself. He appears, disappears and reappears as a bridge from the wild to the domesticated and back again about a hundred times a day.
In the case of Tilikum and trainer Dawn, it went in a heartbeat from life to death.
Cat = 17 pounds, whale = 12,000.
The yin and yang, totally tragic.
Watching the swooshing ponytail was extremely distracting to my amygdala,
like a kid swinging their legs as hard as they can in my classroom, as if to launch themselves backwards or even into outerspace if possible.
It made me want to reach out and grab hold.
The reptilian part of my brain doesn't know whether it wants to grab the annoyance in order to shut it down or to join the party. Now that's a frightening instinctual dilemma.
Is redemption of the death possible? Absolutely, if it turns toward the light by making us look hard at the practice of capturing for captivity. Didn't we stop that with the slave trade?
While vibrating at lower levels of consciousness back in the day, i visited Seaworld to be awestruck by the beauty and majesty of the orcas.
Disgusted as far back as i can remember by animals trained to perform tricks, the show sure felt condescending to the performers. The argument is of course, the whales are "happy and eager" to perform.
If i were confined to a series of at best, interconnecting jacuzzis (several analogies of "bathtub" have been cited; i'm giving Seaworld the benefit of the doubt) for most of my life, I sure would jump high if someone came by and threw me a bar of 70% Dagoba chocolate.
Too bad animals continue to lose.
Are purposes of "education" worth what is taken away from these highly attuned powerhouses.
Just watch a video of them really performing in their own space at sea.
The contrast of real vs. fake existence makes me embarrassed to be human.
Keeping them in tubs doesn't seem to make us understand them any better; quite the contrary, even without considering that some of what we see is no doubt aberrant behavior due to captivity.
The impatience with and frustration of not completely comprehending the fourfoots i live with were surrendered to the universe some years ago when I heard someone really brilliant say:
"They exist at a different level of consciousness than we do, that's all."
Higher or lower, no matter; those words don't include the multi-dimensionality of possibilities, anyway. Perceptual differences and energy are what art and culture are all about.
All i know is once i opened my mind to this new reality, i began to see some things as they do. I felt the alignment of all of us with each other and my own internal alignment to my self. I became aware of the gift of allowing nature's consciousness to permeate my truth, and it has been life-alteringly priceless.
Tilikum gives notice: as diverse as the sea that birthed him, he's no one trick pony.
As I write the last sentence, Bear-boy enters the room with great stealth as usual. For the first time in his life, he crosses the room to jump up on the couch and lies down next to me. We are 1/2 inch apart. He maintains stillness, staying for several minutes; a new world's record. Then he jumps down, runs off like a flash to flee to freedom through his cat door, as if it were all a ruse.
For me, it is a miracle to witness the wildness subside even temporarily, and to watch as he slides back into his bigger world of rhythm and instinct as quickly as he chose contact with mine.
Thanks, boy. Duh.
