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Elevated Apes

Elevated Apes

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“It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.”  — William Winwood Reade

I thought of this quotation while on a recent walk with Copper. The little guy is old now and seems to have lost most of his hearing and much of his sight. But there’s nothing wrong with his nose. He must retain most of the 300 million olfactory receptors dogs are reputed to have because he seems to enjoy sniffing now more than ever.

But he’s not the only one. Every day on our strolls together (and on my solo walks), I take a deep whiff of lilac. Say what you will about stopping to smell the roses, it’s the lilacs I walk across the street to inhale.

Savoring their delicious aroma gives me a hint of the pleasure dogs take in their own frequent sniffing. It is, then, a unifying activity, one that reminds me that we are “elevated apes” rather than “degenerated angels.”


(I first read this quotation in the book Love, Sunrise and Elevated Apes, by Nina Leen, a volume I treasure for its wisdom and photography.) 

Adventure Stories

Adventure Stories

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Maybe it’s because I just read a book about exploring caves and catacombs, but I’m finding myself drawn to adventure stories these days.

Which is why Into Thin Air is on my nightstand and in my backpack. Jon Krakauer’s tale of the 1996 climbing disaster on Mount Everest is nothing if not gripping. Even though I’ve read it before, even though it’s dedicated to the ones who didn’t make it, I’m still pulled along by the power of a good story well told.

Adventure books are good for pandemics, inspiring in their accounts of adversity overcome. Some day, people will be writing stories about this time. They will know by then how the virus behaves, how long it lasts on surfaces and why (thank God) it spares children. They will know how we handled it here in this country, what we did wrong and what we did right. They will know how it all turns out. But for us, right here, right now, the adventure story is still being written.

Underland

Underland

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Like the underworlds Robert Macfarlane plumbs in his book Underland: A Deep Time Journey, there is much going on beneath the surface in this marvelous new offering by one of my favorite authors. 

And there would have to be to combine prehistoric cave art, Parisian catacombs, the “wood wide web” (the fungal and rooted connectedness of trees in the forest), underground rivers, sweating icebergs and burial sites for nuclear waste — all in one book.

One theme that ties them together, besides Macfarlane’s exploration of them (no one is better than he at describing fear) is a growing recognition of the Anthropocene, the geologic age that experts have come to accept we are living through, one defined by human influence on the environment.

To comprehend the enormity of this designation, Macfarlane brings many tools to bear — literature, myth, science, philosophy and language, always language. “Words are world-makers — and language is one of the great geologic forces of the Anthropocene,” Macfarlane writes. But of the many terms for this “ugly epoch,” only one seems right with Macfarlane — “species loneliness, the intense solitude that we are fashioning for ourselves as we strip the Earth of the other life with which we share it.” 


“If there is human meaning to be made of the wood wide web,” he continues, “it is surely that what might save us as we move forwards into the precarious, unsettled centuries ahead is collaboration: mutualism, symbiosis, the inclusive human work of collective decision-making extended to more-than-human communities.”


And so the image at the heart of these pages, he explains, is that of an opened hand — extended in greeting, compassion, art — the prehistoric hand prints in ancient cave paintings and the touch of his young son’s hand. 


I know I will write more about this wonderful book; this is a start.

The Plague

The Plague

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And so it begins. The averted handshake at this morning’s Ash Wednesday service. The shunning on Metro of anyone who’s coughing or sniffling. The headlines and newscasts and public health warnings.

It will worsen, no doubt. There will be closures and restrictions, dire predictions. There will be confusion and panic. Truth will be elusive.

It’s no less than what other eras have had to bear, but for us it will be novel (in more ways than one).  Because we were raised with vaccines not quarantines.

I’m reminded of the ending of one of my favorite novels, Albert Camus’ The Plague:

He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city. 

Walking the Way

Walking the Way

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I picked up Walking the Way, by Robert Meikyo Rosenbaum, because I was browsing the library and liked the title. (It was no doubt the word “walking” that did it.) I almost didn’t check it out when I saw the subtitle, 81 Zen Encounters with the Tao Te Ching, which sounded too esoteric for me. But I brought it home anyway — and now may have to buy it, so wise and calming do I find its words.

Walking the Way is a series of reflections on 81 poems from the Tao Te Ching, a book of wisdom and fundamental text for the Chinese religious and philosophical system of Taoism. It is, as the foreword describes, like an “ancient, weathered, solitary pine that exists above the tree line that whistles the tunes of the wind on a high mountain.” Reading these words reawakens my desire to meditate, or at least to sit quietly for a while each day.

Here’s a passage that speaks to me:

It is easy to fall into the tyranny of doing. The feeling that you should do more is a tyrant worse than any dictator. It will wear you out and bring not just an early demise but the daily death of a thousand stressful cuts. If you do not free yourself from this tyranny you’ll die early, or daily, or both.



(Illustration, Wikipedia: Laozi, reputed author of the Tao Te Ching.) 

ISO Good Books

ISO Good Books

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Sometimes when the world doesn’t seem quite right, I realize it’s because I’m not reading a good book. I might be flipping through a volume I picked up at the library or trudging through a tome that’s been on my nightstand too long, but I’m not caught up with a new idea, not taking notes on the little slips of paper that pass for bookmarks in my reading life.

Instead I’m reading the newspaper on public transportation and falling asleep too quickly when I read in bed.

What to do? Usually I turn to book lists I’ve kept, the recommendations of others, or even Goodreads — although I am suspicious of any booklist which also tries to sell me lipstick.

One thing I know: This book-less state won’t last long. Soon enough I will be halfway through something I can’t put down. And once again, all will be right with the world.

The Art of Grace

The Art of Grace

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Sarah Kaufman’s book The Art of Grace begins with a paean to Cary Grant. I like Grant as much as the next person. I especially like to watch him on screen. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read a whole book about him, but that was just fine, because The Art of Grace is about much more than Cary Grant, although it holds up his charm and ease as a visual representation of the topic at hand.

Cary Grant was not only pleasing to look at, he was also easy to be with. He made others feel good — even when they spilled a glass of red wine in his lap. He was one of those people.

But we can have what those people have. Even the klutziest and most awkward among us can become graceful, Kaufman says. And while the best way to understand what she means is to read her book, there is a cheat sheet at the end. I’ve been referring to it often:

1  Slow down and plan, there’s no way to be graceful when you’re rushing.
2  Practice tolerance and compassion, take time to listen and understand.
3  Make room for others—on the sidewalk, at the bus stop, etc.
4  Strive to make things easy for people, even in small ways.
5  Make things easy for yourself. Be easily pleased. Accept compliments, take a seat on the bus, embrace any kindness. This is graciousness and is a gift for someone else.
6  Lighten your load, shed painful shoes, heavy backpacks, etc.
7 Take care of your body, the more you move the better you’ll move and better you’ll feel.
8  Practice extreme noticing. Look for grace where you least expect it.
9  Be generous. It’s a lovely thing to anticipate and fulfill someone’s hopes.
10 Enjoy, raise a glass, as Lionel Barrymore did in “Grand Hotel,” “to our magnificent, brief, dangerous life – and the courage to live it.”
Travel On!

Travel On!

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This morning on the way to work I opened yesterday’s New York Times travel section with its cover story on 52 places to visit in 2020. It’s a wonder I made it into the office. I could totally have seen myself looking up at National Airport or Eisenhower Avenue, having sailed past my stop, salivating over a double-page spread photograph of the Lake District.

I’m not a bucket-list kind of person. I love to travel but am more of an “I’ll-take-whatever-I-can-get” kind of person, and when reading a luscious travel section, as I was this morning, I pretty much want to go to everyplace I see — except, maybe, Richmond, Va., — it’s too close!

But articles like these do us a great service, I think. They simulate the imagination, they lead us to research the spots that look interesting, and, who knows, they might even be the first nudge that gets us to Tajikistan or Slovenia or the British Virgin Islands.

It’s a brand new year, a brand new decade. Travel on!

(If you’d told me in 2010 that I would visit Bangladesh, above, in 2017 … I wouldn’t have believed it!)

Walking Tall

Walking Tall

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It was an aha moment made possible by a liberal arts education, and it happened in the biology lab. While dissecting the brain of a fetal pig I came across the pineal gland, located between the two hemispheres and thought by some (including Descartes) to be the seat of the soul. I had just been reading Descartes in my philosophy class, and the fact that I was now seeing that very gland (albeit a tiny porcine version of it) made my heart skip a beat.

I still pay attention to things like this, strange connections and coincidences when the fates seem to be saying, listen up … this is important.

What I’ve been noting lately — both from Becca, the physical therapist I’ve been seeing, and reading in Sarah Kaufamn’s The Art of Grace (more later about this fine book) — is the importance of good posture.

Posture is a foundation for moving gracefully, Kaufman writes, and good posture provides an uplifting feeling. This was seconded by Becca, who tells me that in the process of tightening my core I should concentrate on being pulled up, that this will counteract a tendency to collapse in the midsection that can irritate the spine and cause sciatic flare-ups.

“If you watch people walk,” Kaufman writes, “most of us sink into our hips. … There should be a comfortable tension in the torso, lifting the abdomen and hips against gravity while helping relax and easing shoulders down slightly.”

The fates have spoken  — and I’m trying to walk tall.

The Salt Path

The Salt Path

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My first book of 2020 is one I began in 2019, The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. The author and her husband, both in their 50s, suddenly find themselves homeless and decide to walk the South West Coast Path in England.

It’s not what one usually decides to do in such a situation, so right from the start I was hooked. And the further I read (I’m less than 50 pages from the end), the more I know that if I were to find myself homeless, walking the South West Coast Path would be something that I would want to do, too.

It’s about how to survive when nothing is going your way, about taking control when it would be far easier to left fate roll you over. It’s about the couple finding the “strip of wildness that was ours” between the rocks and the sea, about feeling both “confined and set free.”

“Drawn to the edge, a strip of wilderness where we could be free to let the answers come, or not, to find a way of accepting life, our life, whatever that was. Were we searching this narrow margin between the land and sea for another way of being, becoming edgelanders along the way? Stuck between one world and the next. Walking a thin line between tame and wild, lost and found, life and death. At the edge of existence.”

Winn may not know the answers (yet), but she certainly has figured out the questions.