Tag: Recycle

The Ways We Use the Frontal Lobe

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

Even the most obvious instructions for being happy, healthy, and wise are routinely ignored, ridiculed, and explained away. Physicians, therapists, pastors, scientists, Jesus, the Dali Lama, Taylor Swift, and a vast array of poets and philosophers past and present shake their heads, mystified, and discouraged.

For instance, though cheap and easy, fossil fuels are finite and poisonous, but who doesn’t like well-paid extractive industry jobs, entertainment, warm houses, and nice vacations?

In the long run, we’d be happier (and less likely to go extinct) if we fed the hungry, welcomed strangers, exercised, turned down the thermostat, stopped bombing, and reduced our fat and sugar intake. Instead, we use our astounding intellect to invent complex rationalizations for less-than-helpful choices.

Me: Admit it, God. Your frontal lobe design has failed. Abstract reasoning is a bust.

God: Yeah. Science and compassion shot to hell by fear and feigned ignorance.

Me: I know. We strive to be avenged, satisfied, pain-free and immortal.

Meanwhile, there’s fire. I let the morning blaze die down because the sun is taking over, beaming radiant energy into the thermal mass I call home. Earthly fires are a triangle: Oxygen, fuel, and heat. Existence is a triangle enabled by fire: Birth, life, and death.

God: And I’m a triangle: Creator, Recycler, and Evolver. I don’t give up.

Me: Well, if I were you, I’d call it quits on earth. Lots of flops and botches.

God: I know you would, and I know you’re afraid, but I’ll never not be around.

The glow of the sun is not fire. It’s nuclear fusion, which involves protons smashing into each other so hard that they stick together and become something new. This transformation produces a tremendous amount of light and heat.

Me: That’s like us, God. When we smash together, good energy is released, right?

God: Cute. But no. You’re a willy nilly smasher. Mostly, you bounce. I help with repairs.

Me: But sometimes, I smash into something vaguely like you. I’m sure of it.

God is chuckling. As usual.

We are all willy nilly smashers. We take a hard run at something, crash, pick ourselves up, dust off our boots, gulp some coffee, tea, whiskey or kombucha, and take another run. Sometimes, fusion occurs, and we’re changed. But mostly, we bounce and remain unchanged.

God: Essentially unchanged, but not unfazed. Shed the defeatist attitude. Keep smashing.

Me: Ah ha! You’re still working on the frontal lobe, aren’t you?

God: Well, I may be deluded, but I believe even total failures have redemptive value.

The sky has clouded up and blocked the sun. I smile at the Eternal Delusion and get my matches. It’s time to start another fire.

Where Things Break Down

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

“Do you mind if I call you Allah for a while?” I asked my old friend often referred to as God.

“Of course not,” she said. “I’ve been called worse.”

I was hoping Allah might ask me why so I could explain my longing for humans to be more forgiving and inclusive, but she just sat at the edge of my peripheral vision grooming and preening, completely self-absorbed. This irritated me, but then I thought, why not be self-absorbed if the Self you are absorbed in is the energy behind DNA, the Big Bang, dark matter, the molecular miracles of sperm, egg, tastebuds, vision, synapses, light, friendship, sacrifice, and transformation. Why not?

“I’ll tell you why not,” Allah interjected. “Absorbed is the wrong verb. I’m self-expulsive. I have self beyond self. I wear more hats, circle more stars, shape myself into more curvilinear spaces than you can possibly imagine. But I like it when you open your mind and try. Keep up the imagining. Climb high.

“When I was younger, I had no fear of heights,” I said. “But now I get vertigo.”

“I know,” Allah said. “And it’s wise to be cautious. I can’t promise to catch you when you fall.”

“I’m already falling,” I said.

“Me, too,” Allah said.

“Why?” I asked. “You’re falling voluntarily, aren’t you?

“Of course. But I’m lonely. Misunderstood. And…”

I held up my hand, signaling Allah to stop talking. I was feeling sick. Vertigo does that to me.

“Do you mind if I call you duckling for a while?” Allah asked, kindly changing the subject. “Or maybe cuddle-buddy?

“Do you mind if I call you Absurd instead of Allah?” I responded, smiling a little through the haze of my human frailties and foibles. The vertigo settled.

Then without warning, Absurd grabbed my arm and pulled me into a headfirst dive. The speed of our descent peeled back the skin on our faces.

“See?” she shouted.

“See what?” I shouted back.

“Falling together isn’t that bad,” she answered with a thin-lipped grin.

“Stop this nonsense,” I pleaded.

“Can’t,” Absurd said. “It is what it is.”

She pulled the cord, the chute opened, and the moments of the coming day rolled out beneath us. We landed on a spongy, rotting heap of bad intentions, false hopes and broken promises.

“What’s this?” I asked, trying to scrape the sticky substance off my shoes.

“Compost,” she said. “Where things break down and get another chance.”

The Constant is Change

Rita Sommers-Flanagan1 Comment

“A kennel is different than a fenced yard,” I explained to God last evening as we problem-solved the nature of limits, dogs, and human frailties. Dogs naturally dig, bark, jump, protect, chase, growl, and express exuberant affection. This presents problems to the elderly, newly planted marigolds, and other tender things. God seems to think containment should include flow.

“I know the difference,” God said with a twinge of disdain. “But I want to be able to open the door and be done with it. I like things simple.”

What a lie! I risked looking straight at God who then splintered into a hungry blackbird, a broken bike, unearthed seedlings, an abandoned fawn, an icy river, and hops vines using last year’s growth to climb heavenward. A teaspoon of topsoil, a glance at sky–this is all the evidence anyone needs; God does not like things simple.

“Fine. So we’re not that simple,” God admitted, fading into the late-blooming lilacs. I filled the bird feeder, replanted snapdragons, marigolds, and basil, and imagined how I could upcycle the bike. It has a kickstand. That gave me hope. Even though the river is high and noisy, I slept well.

But an intrusive idea about yet another way to rearrange the living room occurred to me this morning, and a Paul Simon tune is on replay in my head. The bike is still broken and I need to build a fence. I’m trying to focus, but distractions take root like invasive weeds—they have no natural enemies. Possibilities plague me. What should I transform next?

The angelic face of change is often made of plastic and other petroleum products designed to enslave and deplete. And yet…

Change is what we are made of.

What would we do without rust and mildew, the molding peach, the dry rot spreading through brick and mortar? Should we bow down to the power of deterioration and thank the gods of decline? I think not, but I suspect it’s all the same to the Many-Sided God; unlike me, they are free and untethered.

“Ah, but you are free to choose your tethers.” God intrudes midsentence–appearing as punctuation and grammar, a parenthetical phrase gone rogue, coauthoring away, as unbidden as Paul Simon, as pernicious as bindweed. And as dangerous as an unruly dog who is way too happy to see me.

“Get down!” I yell. This is not an ideal way to interact with God, but I have no treats or tennis balls to throw, so I drop to my knees where it’s safer and tell myself it’s not a bad thing to be adored.