It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Ass-U-Me

Q: “What happens when you assume?”

A: “You make an ass out of u and me.”

Ok, yes, I know, this is an ancient joke, growing mold and pink slimy tentacles, but there is a point.  Yesterday afternoon, I gelded a donkey.  Now, anyone who has spent any time around the ass end of an ass knows that assumption is literally dangerous.  Taking a donkey for granted is a sure way to get one’s brains liberated from one’s skull.  However, even the most prudent of us often forget to extend the same courtesy and caution toward our fellow humans.

Recently, an essay I wrote on the closure of our large animal practice was published on Salon.com.  Now, here’s the thing with me and pieces I publish on-line, particularly essays.  I don’t read comments.  (By the way, that is not true of comments posted on this blog or at my website – those I read.)  I don’t read comments because, to me, essay writing is deeply personal, and while I may be able to make myself walk outside naked (it’s a metaphor, people!), I am not willing to stick around and listen to analysis of my cellulite.  However, by accident, I happened to glance at one of the comments on this essay, and while it was fairly obvious that the commenter is one of those mean-spirited people who crop up on the web, determined to make themselves feel better by haranguing others, something he said stuck with me. 

This commenter began by stating that he found it “interesting” that nowhere in my essay nor on my blog did I write anything about my love of animals.  The conclusion that was apparently reached was that I must not care about animals and thus went into veterinary medicine for all of the wrong reasons and “good riddance” to me.  My first reaction was that this line of reasoning was so preposterous as to be laughable.  After all, this person knows nothing about me, or the path of my life.  But then, I started to ponder the net of assumptions that led to this comment.

He wasn’t wrong.  I haven’t done a careful search of my archives, but it is quite possible that I have never written that I love animals.  For that matter, I’m not sure that I’ve ever explicitly written that I love my husband or my children.  This is assumption number one: I have assumed that these are conditions that are self evident.  It no more would have occurred to me to write any of these statements than it would have to type the phrase “I breathe.”  I assumed that anyone should understand that no sane person would endure the amount of education required to become a veterinarian, or the physical labor, long hours, and punishing weather inherent to large animal medicine without a love of animals.  This is neither glamorous nor particularly lucrative work, and I assumed that everyone knew that. 

My assumptions were in their own way just as callous and self-centered as those of the commenter.  Why should anyone know what I feel or what my motives are if I don’t express them?  It is my right to keep those thoughts to myself, but if I choose that route, I don’t have the right to be outraged when someone misunderstands me.  It may go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, this logic extends to more than passing internet remarks.  How often do we get offended with others for misjudging or misunderstanding us, or for failing to meet our needs when we have not let those people into our minds, when we have never expressed our needs or feelings?

Conversely, how often are we guilty of the same “piece of the elephant” logic as my commenter, assuming that we understand the entire picture from a fragmentary snapshot?  The most obvious contributor to this error in judgment is our abundance of social media.  With Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates, blogs, and texts, it is easy to make the error of assuming that we know the whole story, that we understand everyone from our dearest friends to complete strangers.  How often do we pass judgment based on what we assume that we know?  Even in person, how often do we assume that we understand the motivation for someone else’s comments or actions?  Do we bother to ask that person’s intent?  Do we bother to find out what else is happening in that person’s life, if they are hurt, frightened or stressed?

Assumption is easy.  It allows us to feel knowledgeable without ever having to venture beyond the walls of our own anxieties and concerns.  Reaching past that bubble is terrifying.  We might learn that we aren’t as smart as we think we are.  We might learn secrets about ourselves, or we might discover the humanity of others.  Dropping assumption means that we have to accept the black hole of uncertainty and ignorance.  We might find that the elephant is neither snake, nor fan, nor blade, but a giant and dangerous animal.

I don’t write about some of the things most basic to my life because like breathing, they are complex, deep, and essential to my existence.  And like with breathing, if I analyze them too closely, I might forget how they work.  However, and it does not go without saying, I love the animals that have been my livelihood for over a decade, I love my husband, I love my children, I love my parents, my sister, my brother-in-law, the few dear friends I have let past my barriers…Ok, you get the point.

 

iPhone Amnesia

At the close of one of the early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – forgive me for not knowing exactly which one; the DVDs are boxed away – we see Buffy trudging down a dark street, leaving Sunnydale behind.  Everything she valued is lost to her in that moment: friends, love, family.  In the commentary, creator – and mad genius – Joss Whedon states that he wanted to see how his creation would react with everything taken from her; he felt that complete loss would define her character.

My iPhone suffered a similar loss of resources yesterday.  During its first backup onto my computer, it had what can best be described as a massive brain injury.  My phone has complete amnesia; apps, e-mails, notes, calendar items, phone numbers -- everything was obliterated with the unwitting click of my mouse.  In the moments surrounding the concurrent thoughts of ‘huh, that’s funny; the wallpaper changed’ and ‘oh my God, where did everything go?’I realized how unreasonably dependent I have become on technology – not only for data storage, but more insidiously for a form of validation.  My contact lists, my e-mails, my Twitter feeds, my Facebook updates, even the silly Words With Friends app: all of these link me to others, give me a perception (sometimes valid, more often false) of being loved, of being that holy grail of my introverted youth – popular.

While much of my phone’s neurological trauma is annoying and certainly inconvenient, catastrophe is unlikely to ensue.  My husband reminds me that everything important that was put onto the phone can be re-entered.  Still, I find myself unnerved and, in a strange sense, grieving.  As I scrolled through the now-empty contacts list, I realized that what I had lost was not data, it was the adult version of a security blanket.  Like a child toting a blanket or stuffie from room to room, I carry my phone everywhere, and check it incessantly.  Yes, it even sleeps by my bed at night.  I tell myself that I need my phone to check for e-mails or other “important” messages.  What I am really checking is myself.  Mike is right; the contacts that I need, I can find through the network of friends and family, old e-mails, etc.  But, there is a category that probably won’t make it back onto my phone, the group of numbers and e-mail addresses that gave me the greatest feeling of “belonging.”  From conducting numerous interviews over the past year, I had amassed a collection of author phone numbers and e-mails.  These contacts were for the sole purpose of the interview, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of imposing upon any of these people again, but the numbers stayed in my list.  They were my membership card, the secret password allowing me entry into the clubhouse of writers.  What I have known all along, but pushed aside, is that the password changes, the membership was a guest card, and that speaking to authors does not make me one of them.  My writing career, successes and failures, has to stand on its own.  No security blanket will change it, or me.

Whedon wanted to see what Buffy was made of.  Of course, it turns out, she was made of pretty good stuff.  In properly edited fashion, and with the intervention of a few monsters, she was able to pick up the pieces of her life one by one and return, wiser for the experience to her place in Sunnydale.  Even as I spent an hour with Apple tech support yesterday, my brain began formulating plans for reconstructing the life of my phone.  This is what we do when faced with loss.  Even as our brains process and grieve, some deeper portion of us rises to the surface and begins outlining steps for reconstruction.  As I made mental notes to Facebook message friends for their information, to download my apps, my mind saw boxes.

Recently, our family has been forced to cope with the real loss of much that we know.  Our home is in foreclosure; one day soon we will leave our version of Sunnydale behind for good.  Yet, even as we read the nearly incomprehensible legalese on the letter taped to our door (yes, they really do that), plans began to form.  The checklist started: find rental house, get boxes, donate large/unused toys, sell trailer, sell Nordic Track, move horse.  As we box up our lives, we are reconstructing them.  The towers of cardboard forming along the walls of the dining room, entryway and living room are the pillars that will support our new lives.  As I am not defined by the contents of my iPhone, my family is not defined by our address.  The boxes hold more than books, china, and DVDs; they contain our past and the proof of our resilience as we move into the future.

"Through a Glass."

We look through narrow windows.  On the countertop we see the detritus of a long day: eggshells, a drift of flour, crumpled paper, the slithering drip of candlewax.  We draw a conclusion; the room is a mess, the life is a mess.  We forget the restrictions of our view.  Our window doesn’t show us the well-laid table: the golden tower of a soufflé, the gleaming crystal and china, the glowing candles.  Someone else peers in through the dining room window; he sees only the feast, none of the labour.  He surmises a life of privilege and elegance.  Neither view is whole.

I forget this sometimes.  I forget that we only see into the lives of others through small windows.  Sometimes the other person restricts the view, sometimes we forget to walk around to see if another window is open.  I forget that even with the people closest to me, those whom I believe I know best, I am granted only a limited view.

I think that as a society, we’ve been fooled into believing that the window through which we peer represents the entire view.  A tabloid photograph, the image of a moment, has come to represent an entire person, as though we could distill a complete and complex life into one frozen millisecond.  The thirty second sound-bite purports to give us all the information we need.  One sentence becomes emblematic of an entire career.  I wonder how much this problem is exacerbated by our constant, yet cursory feed of information.  How do text messages, Facebook, Tweets, and blogs influence our views into the rooms of others?

I am an admitted text junkie, have a mild Facebook problem, and obviously I blog.  I haven’t found a use for my Twitter account yet.  As much as I find these methods of communication compelling and addictive, I wonder about the effect on my relationships.  I know firsthand how easy it is to narrow the window to an arrow-slit via text message.  I wonder what anyone would conclude about my life by reading my Facebook status – probably that some form of medication is definitely in order.  I use these media regularly, and I enjoy their use by others, but I know that I manipulate my windows to suit my needs and I’m sure others do as well.  I think the danger lies when we are seduced into believing that the fragment we see is the whole.

The danger is real.  For too long now, as a collective, we have been far to willing to be fed the picture.  We don’t walk around the house, look for the other view, check to see what’s hiding in the corner.  As long as we stay glued to our narrow window, those with designs on power, or interest in manipulating a situation can feed us whatever picture they desire.  Look at recent events:  senators, entrusted with selection of a Supreme Court Justice, base arguments not upon her record, but upon one sentence in a speech; town hall debates on health care are disrupted by cries of "SOCIALISM!"– insurance companies claim that they are sending “talking points”; senators cleared of any ethics violation are admonished by the Senate for failure to avoid the appearance of misconduct.  In high school, I had a history teacher who used to tell us “perception is more important than reality.”  Perception has become the all.  Even when presented with the reality, people cling to an initial perception.  Seriously, are folks still debating President Obama’s citizenship and religion??

“Talking points,” bullet points, slogans, and rallying cries have supplanted informed debate.  In California, a cry of “no new taxes” has snarled the budget into a hairball of previously unseen dimensions.  Now, I will admit that I do not love giving chunks of my paycheck to the government.  I don’t know anyone who looks at the withholdings on a paystub and smiles.  (If someone is out there who does this, get help, get help now.)  However, I recognize that an economy is like a biological system.  Each component depends upon the function of the others for survival.  In a body, a deficit – of red blood cells for instance—results from two factors: increased consumption and decreased production, basically from the inability of the supply to meet the demand.  The fix for a low red cell count is two-fold:  find the source of the loss and stop/slow it, increase production.  Now, if I were to look only through my own window at the state budget, I might see a place of excessive spending, where more of my income than I would like is diverted to services that I will never use.  I hope.  And this is why I walk to the next window.  How far are my worries about giving more of my income to the government removed from worries about not having an income with which to feed, house, or clothe my family and thus relying upon the government?  The distance between views is shorter than we would like to think.  Additionally, when services are cut to the most vulnerable, the overall economy suffers.  If a family receiving medical assistance is suddenly forced to divert a greater percentage of their income to medical care, that money will not be spent in the larger economy:  they won’t buy those back-to-school clothes, forget eating out.  In turn, the store clerk loses a job, the restaurant loses income, and the server loses tips.  The government loses sales tax revenue.  And the health care system?  The family will pay what they can; when they can pay no more, hospitals will be forced to eat the bill, and the burden on emergency rooms will increase.  For a system to function whether it is a body, a society, or a government, all organs must be healthy.  We can’t afford to narrow our view to our own interests.  John Donne had it right.  We are “each a part of the whole a piece of the main.”

What can we do?  For my part, whenever I catch myself thinking, ‘why would anyone do that?’ I’m going to try to remember that that person has portions of his or her room that I cannot see.  When I listen to a news article, I will ask myself what lies in the corners of the room.  I will try to look through even the windows that make me uncomfortable, that may prove me wrong.  And, I will try to pay more attention to the views that I give to others.  Maybe I’ll pick up some glass cleaner and new curtains.

In Praise of Print

Will no one speak for the book?  Since the release of Amazon’s Kindle, I have followed discussions of features, e-book pricing, piracy, and the Orwellian weirdness saga.  Yet, I have seen nothing that touches on my primary concern.  Books – I love books.  I love the feel, the smell, the sound of pages flipping, the thump of a closed cover.  I like to hold them, to feel the comforting heft of a hardcover or the breezy frivolity of a paperback. 

From a rational standpoint, I would be the ideal Kindle owner.  I read compulsively, eclectically, and with disturbing speed.  My purse doesn’t leave the house without a journal, pen, and a book.  (My wallet has been known to remain at home on the desk under a book.)  A landscape without trees is pointless; I have been known to literally hug a tree.  I recycle everything, yet every flat surface in our house holds a potential avalanche of paper-wasting books.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Granted, packing for trips or even a “me time” run into the City would no longer require the use of a pack donkey or llama.  (At least I could carry a smaller purse.)  And, I would no longer be forced to cart home kilos of “absolutely necessary” volumes.  Though, this isn’t as much of a problem as it used to be.  What happened to Stacey’s books??

But, I love books and bookstores.  Shelves of books intoxicate me in a way that on-line catalogues never will.  How can I know what titles attract me without picking them up, fondling them a bit, taking them out for that first drink?  Selecting a book electronically has all of the romance of picking a hooker out of a database.  (No, I do not speak from personal experience here.  Hyperbole, people, hyperbole.)  Amazon gets my business only when searches of mainstream, independent, and used bookstores fail.

We live in a world where the use of our senses is becoming increasingly (and to my mind dangerously) obsolete.  Once, children played with Legos as basic sets.  You remember -- the little interlocking bricks that could be made into castles, airplanes, boats, or dragons.  Then, the sets became specialized; yes, my children can make a realistic Millennium Falcon, but heaven forbid one piece crawls beneath the bookcase, or the pre-schooler colors on the instructions.  The next, and apparently obvious step, was the invention of Lego video games -- all of the joy of Legos without the hassle of those little pieces.  Right.  This is where I step off of the ride; I don’t understand the attraction of moving Lego shaped characters around a video screen.  My techno-geek, gamer husband points out that the fun of Lego video games has nothing to do with construction.  I counter with the notion that since we used to build the Legos and then play with them, a vital step is being lost.  Where is the satisfying click of assembly?  Where, for that matter, is the pride of assembly?  Where is the cooperative search for the long, skinny blue piece?  I can’t help wondering if books are going the way of Legos. 

A Google search of the effects of electronic media on the brain produced 1,520,000 hits.  Most of these hits involved visual media such as movies and television, and the effects on the developing brain.  I was unable to find (in a short time and with a lap inhabited by a 4 year old) a perfect reference to support this point, but I think the mind interprets words differently on screen than on paper.  I know that I cannot adequately edit my own work without printing it out in hard copy.  If truly stuck, I will shut down the computer and break out the pen and paper.  I know that I read the news in more depth in a print form than from an online version of the same periodical.  I can’t put aside the feeling that the electronic format robs us of the essence of the book experience.  We are not all visual learners.  Personally, I tend to be a kinesthetic learner.  My brain processes information better when I use my hands as well as my eyes.  What provides the more complete kinesthetic experience:  flipping through pages or scrolling?

I may be a victim of early conditioning.  My mother was a school librarian.  Thanks to her frequent trips to author signings and sales events, I treasure autographed copies of books by Avi, Beverly Cleary, Gordan Korman, and others.  How can an author sign a Kindle?

The internet may house the definition of every word ever coined, but when dinner table linguistic debates arise, we trek to the living room and heave the appropriate volume of the out of date OED from its case, and delightedly break out the magnifying glass.  The sense of treasure hunt through the OED’s irritatingly miniscule type cannot be replaced with a quick electronic search.

I will be the first to admit that my relationship with books is messy and imperfect.  I leave them on tables, chairs, desks, bed, and floor.  They overflow the shelves and block the entrance to my closet.  Bookmarks in my house disappear into the void that houses paperclips, matching socks, and pens.  As a result, books in my care are often dog-eared and occasionally (don’t tell my mom) propped open face down.  I post-it note, highlight, underline, and write intermittent notes.  Pages of my favorite books are smeared with samples of my favorite foods.  I am a book slob.  Yet, I wouldn’t trade my messy, imperfect house for a sterile white-walled, stainless steel habitat.  I wouldn’t trade my messy, imperfect family for a Stepford husband and children.  We may be dysfunctional, but my family and my books understand and love me.

So, I’ll leave it to others to debate e-book pricing and sales, to agonize over privacy and copyright implications.  I’m going to the bookstore.  And when I finally fill the house with books, well, I’m sure we can find somewhere to put the kids.  They like their grandparents.