THE EXECUTIONER'S LOVE SONG TO RUBBER TREES

What is belonging?  If I lose it, can I ever get it back?

Belonging to a human is big.  It is crack.

In a memory, there is Rigdon Road Elementary in Columbus, Georgia.  In 1963, we are studying rubber.  There is the Goodyear Company and a picture of a rubber tree plant in South America.   Somebody foreign is tapping it.   

My father was the agronomist at Fort Benning, adjacent to Columbus. He purchased a great many plants and landscaping services as part of his job on base.  He purchased from Mr. Cargill, the owner of Cargill Nursery.  There I am, there my parents are -- we're looking up rubber in the  World Book Encyclopedia.  My father said he could get Mr. Cargill to give my class a rubber tree plant.  I instantly knew such an event would put me at the head of the belonging food chain in my class.  I wanted it to happen something fierce.

I belonged in a family.  I belonged in a class.  I was hoping to belong to the teacher, like a pet. 

“A sense of belonging,” writes Dr. Kenneth Pelletier of the Stanford Center for Research and Disease Prevention, “appears to be a basic human need – as basic as food and shelter.  In fact, social support may be one of the critical elements distinguishing those who remain healthy from those who become ill.”

This pronouncement rings true to me.  It has red plastic hearts floating above. 

The Goodyear Company and rubber = one and the same.  In second grade, all I knew about manufacturing was the local cotton factory that transformed tufts of billowy white cotton into towels and sheets for the world.  I imagined manufactured rubber as flat white sheets that flowed out of trees in South America like paper from the school's mimeograph machine.  I imagined rubber manufacturing smelled like the sulfated castor oil that wafted through my school on the day the lunch menus were printed.

My second grade self didn't know there was a rubber boom in early twentieth century that had a significant negative effect on the indigenous population across Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia.  Labor shortages led to rubber barons rounding up indigenous people to tap rubber out of the trees -- just like in the picture.  Ninety percent of indigenous poplulations were wiped out.  The World Book Encyclopedia of the 1960's made no mention of this.

Un-belonging someone is serious business.  It's an ancient form of the death penalty.  It's called banishment. 

In modern times, when two teenagers robbed and beat a pizza delivery man with a baseball bat in the state of Washington, the Tlingit nation banished them to separate islands. In 1994, the Council of Chiefs of the Onondaga Nation in New York formally banished three members for gross violations of tribal laws. The men were formally stripped of their citizenship in the Onondaga Nation; were severed from their community and families; and had their rights, property, and protection under the ancient Iroquois Law of Onondaga territory extinguished. A tribal government near Fairbanks, Alaska, punishes offenders who are caught drinking alcohol with a $50 fine. Repeat offenders are subject to banishment from the village. 

Not all who are banished survive. 

I remember looking through the panes of glass that gave view to the school parking lot.  There strode my tall, strong and handsome father with his yellow Banlon shirt and khaki pants, toting a rubber tree plant in a five gallon tub.  I nearly vomited with excitement.  Mrs. McWhirter didn't know he was coming to my class with a bone fide rubber tree plant he got from Mr. Cargill's nursery.  But I did.  Sometimes knowing a secret tightens the hold of belonging.

Today I am voting, and it occurs to me that there are two views of belonging on the ballot.  On one side, we have the locking off of the borders around our belonging, and the banishment of many already here.  On the other side, we have the vague notion that all who are here and some who want to be here belong, and somehow we are going to figure out how to feed everyone and stay safe.  So where do you belong, the ballot asks.  Make your mark. 

I read in Psychology Today that some seek belonging through excluding others. That reflects the idea that there must be those who don't belong in order for there to be those who do.   Groucho Marx said that he wouldn't want to be in a club that would have him as a member.

My humanity craves belonging.  On the other hand, I couldn't wait to move out of second and into third grade.  As soon as I could, I voluntarily left Georgia.  I had little to do with my family of origin after I began raising my own family. When Ted died, I gave away most of my belongings and left my community.  I didn't feel I belonged anymore in the place where he and I had belonged together.  A few months ago, I bought a teardrop camper to escape from where I belong.  I am discovering that my present day belonging is either so small or so big that I tow it around with me, wherever I go. 

I banish myself.  I have executed belonging to find belonging.  I am in a club that is asking me to choose where I belong.  My childhood view of rubber trees is wider, sadder, sweeter, residing in Georgia, ensconced in my heart.  Rubber tires have carried me everywhere I have been thus far.  Rubber trees, belonging, banishment, voting.  A rubber tree can be a thing in a pot that exalts a child and casts her father in a temporary glow.    

I sing of love to rubber trees with both red plastic hearts and question marks, floating.

DON'T PEE ON AN ARMY OF FROGS WHILE CAMPING

A big gathering of frogs is called an army.  I had never seen an army of frogs before, let alone become involved on a personal level with such a gathering.  That happened to me three days ago, while I was camping.  It was memorable.

My mind strolls a lot while I'm camping.  I have little experiences that happen in big detail.  I feel alive.  I think I'm doing the best I can with my life, even though my heart is broken. Maybe I'll get some credit for that on the mystical day of reckoning.  When camping, I make decisions and have a project to tend to.  I like it.  Those reasons are enough to take me down new roads. 

This week, I camped in salty Grayland/Westport Washington, with no boundary between my state park spot and the Pacific Ocean.  Yesterday was just my second day, and I was faced with the question as to whether to bail on a four-day trip.  The alternative was to ride out a dangerous storm coming my way. 

The low pressure front approaching caused a mixed lot of fishing and sightseeing boats back to Westport marina earlier than usual.  I happened to be there, and I saw the resulting boat traffic.  It was an unexpected and stirring sight that made me think of things like peril and bravery.  I took photos of rusty boats for an artist friend, and thought about leaving V staying.  I watched the water rising, trembling. 

While towing to the coast, I had put off making a potty stop when I was about a half-hour from my destination.  By the time I parked my trailer in site 99, my bladder was in dictator mode.  I chose to go in the woods behind my spot, rather than try to unlock my trailer, or run to the camp bathroom.  For everyone over sixty, I know you're with me on not fumbling for keys or running when you have to really, really go.

How was I supposed to know the woods would be carpeted with an army of traveling frogs?  I noticed this a little too late to shoo them.  Maybe I peed on some, I thought.  I had no idea if I had murdered frog(s) in the woods.  I never was a natural at grasping chemistry.  I located a bowl inside my camper, filled it with water, and offered it to the frog world as a complimentary decontamination site.   Still, I wish I could erase the thought of innocent and unsuspecting frogs, a surprise attack.  Casualties of me. 

What causes an army of frogs to sojourn through one particular area versus another?  It must be a food source.  Or a water source.  I wonder if they were traveling because of the approaching storm, which I knew nothing about at the time of my inadvertent frog defilement.

Any going-in-the-woods experience is iffy at a state park no matter how forested it might be.  Hiding behind a tree only helps the goer on one or two fronts.  There is always the element of a surprise camper out for a hike.  And why do campers congregate in places called campgrounds?  Safety, mostly.  That thought made me feel even more guilty about the frogs.  What if my frogs were trying to get away from something dangerous only to.....

I ran over a large toad with a push mower fifty years ago.  This is still a vivid memory.  It wasn't dead, but it was bleeding.  I ran into the house and got my father's styptic pencil from his shaving kit and raced outside to try and stop the bleeding.  After doctoring the wounded, I returned to the house again.  I had to replace the pencil and straighten the kit, and I wanted to fetch a bandage.  When I came back to the toad, bandage in my hand, my large and bloody patient was gone.  Hopped off, I hoped then.  I still hope.  The guilt I felt at the time was like a new layer of hot skin.  As I mentioned earlier, it's a vivid memory.  

Because I was a child, I worried for a long time if my father would be able to detect essence of toad on his blood pencil, as I called the anti-hemorrhagic pencil back then.  So I had guilt and I had fear. 

I also regret something I did at Lindsey Creek when I was eleven or twelve.  From the creek, I would launch clay rockets into outer space.  I poked pockets in clay balls and inserted a little creek water and a tadpole into each of the pockets.  I wanted to see if tadpoles could live in space capsules, the way Russian monkeys were doing at the time.  I vaguely remember giving up my space program with enough data to demonstrate that, no, they cannot. 

I didn't want anyone to know I was conducting these experiments.  I knew what I was doing wasn't right, but I did it anyway.  I realized later in life that I was objectifying the tadpoles and robbing them of their future.  I can't remember how old I was when I awakened to feelings like regret, the responsibility of humans for innocent creatures, empathy, and shame.  A curious child unsupervised can be a danger to others. 

I saw a movie once called "Magnolia".  It was a critical success and the characters were memorable, especially the grief-wracked wife of a dying man and a fumbling police officer who misplaced his weapon.  At the end of the movie, not a lot was reconciled in the story line.  It ended with huge frogs falling from the heavens above onto car windshields, grass and pavement .  It was a gruesome raining of frogs.  I think the same thing happens in the King James Version of the Holy Bible.  This, and other parts of that popular book, are not comforting at all if you ask me. 

With the storm approaching Westport, seeing the boats and thinking of bravery made me want to ride out whatever was on its way.  A friend was also camping at this park, and she was leaving early.  I told her I was going to stay one more night.  Once I made that decision, I envisioned my dogs, Oliver and Miss Kitty, floundering in the 30 to 40 foot waves predicted for the next few nights.  I saw myself driving home in strong winds, my little teardrop camper swaying uncontrollably into a Volvo station wagon filled with pre-schoolers.   Frogs raining from heaven.  I decamped and towed myself, the dogs and my gear back to Edmonds that day, which was yesterday afternoon.  As it happens, wind gusts reached forty-miles an hour not too long after I left.

Today:  Thoughts of a raging storm that I reluctantly decided to miss.  Thoughts of biblical events that defied the laws of physics.  Thoughts of the chemistry of human urine and its effect on frogs of the northwest.  Of the efficacy of styptic pencil on bleeding amphibians.  Of tadpoles in space.  Of guilt and empathy.  Of risk avoidance related to the well-being of others. 

How many details of one's life will be raked over on that mystical day of reckoning? 

Will I get any credit at all for trying to make the best of things, and do no harm?

   

LIST CRAVINGS

NOTE:  There will be no mental heavy lifting of conceptualizing, categorizing, and analysis required to read my blog today.  

I attended a writing class with a prestigious and talented instructor.  (Mind:  This guy is going to straighten you out!)  I was eager. 
He was talking about the elastic boundaries between non-fiction prose, essay, poetry.  He used a term I had never heard before: 
A Collage Essay.
This named what I do.  All my senses and I were instantly exalted.  I needed to sit still, however, because the chairs were very close together and it was a full house. 
(Mind:  You are going to be this guy's favorite and most insightful student today!)

He referenced numerous well-regarded works that involved lists.  He gave the class five minutes to make a list of lists.  I came up with the best list of lists ever created:

Apology narratives
Explanations of why
What's wrong with tonight's moon
How clouds ought to behave for maximum enjoyment by children
Possible outcomes of my 60's
Possible DNA paternity events and how they might affect me personally
Ways in which the sun could be redesigned for world-wide benefit
Ways in which my life is already perfect

"Does anyone want to read what lists you came up with?"  said Prestigious Instructor.

As students read and the instructor commented, it became apparent to me that I was supposed to come up with universal lists already out there for me to just find and record, or draw conclusions about.  I was incorrect in making a list of personal lists.

The lists I was supposed to come up with were lists such as:  Liner notes from old record albums, Tools you will need to put together this shelf, Wedding Registry lists, Lists of war dead, Lists of medical names of sexually transmitted diseases. (FYI: Instructor made the comment that medical names are among the most beautiful words available to our ears.)

Instructor Approved List Example

Thank you right arm, for not thrusting yourself to the ceiling, thus volunteering me to read aloud my personal list, leading to gentle correction from Prestigious Instructor. 

Fine.  I can make my personal list work for me in some other context.  But first, I need to understand list, lists, making lists, reading lists. 

1.  Read New Yorker article, A List of Reasons Why Our Brains Love Lists.
New Yorker: a-list-of-reasons-why-our-brains-love-lists
From this I learned the brain craves effortless data.  I gleaned names, Claude Messner and Michaela Wanke, as well as Walter Kintsch.

2.  From the internet word search "Claude Messner and Michaela Wanke: 
Paradox of Choice: The more information and choices, the worse we feel.
Unconscious information processing reduces information overload and increases product satisfaction.
Genealogy affiliates.com  We would love to show you a description here but the site won't allow us.
Good Weather for Schwarz and Clore: This article is a tribute to the "mood as information" paradigm in general.   (This article thickly makes the obvious point that our mood determines how we process information.) 

3.  From the internet word search "Walter Kintsch" I determined he is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at University of Colorado.  http://psych.colorado.edu/~wkintsch/
He writes about things such as "Construction of Meaning" and "Metaphor Comprehension". 
Whoa.
 
4.  Internet:  "Lists": 
Witnesses to historical events
Wives who set their husbands on fire
Celebrities who went on to commit homicide
Things that would happen if prostitution were legalized
Known gangs
Kidnapped and missing persons

5.  From the crossword dictionary "A list of things to do":
agenda
donts
items
catalog
errata
saint
todo
affair
MDSE

I have no idea why the word "saint" appears on such a list.  I looked up "saint" and got no clue.  I think it was put there to make the reader do some mental heavy lifting.

I stumbled upon one page during my research that reported studies have shown shopping without a list but after having made a list increases retention of what to buy while shopping. 

Back to my original, personal list that was a one-off from what Prestigious Instructor was aiming for.

I put my list under my pillow last night and slept on it.  This morning, I could plainly see that my list was merely a list of how I feel most of the time:

Ways I feel guilt.
Times I want to know why.
Ways I want to reorder nature.
Ways I am a little anxious about my future.
Entreaties about Who am I really?
What is there to be grateful for?

Ah. 

The Widow Lessons.

Shindler's List