Roundabouts and I aint talking right now.

Well, the big curvaceous, rotundas ones….Ok, I’ll engage in a little blah blah conversation. Just to be, like, polite. You know…to avoid a scene.
But those uptight little circumferential, self centered ones? Forget it.

You see, we had this wee falling out a ways back, after I rode Thumper¹ in to one just a little too fast and just a little too flippantly.
Another motorcyclist giving way to me just shook his head as I performed a few most uncool corrective manoeuvres² to stay on line. This was not much helped by the fact that I was watching him shake his head instead of looking over where I needed to go.
I ended up riding off in a huff.

Since then I have this thing with tight, pert roundabouts.
OK here we go. This ones a small one, but its not so bad. Slow down. Select the right gear. Look over at the exit point and lean gently into it. Breathe. Its just a circle man. Go around it. Go around about it.

Alas, as I said, we are not talking right now, and my brain just wants to send my body off on this very un-around trajectory. Like payback. That’ll teach it, stupid roundy thing.
I start looking over at where I definitely do not want to go, and of course, thats were I head off to. Then I have to slow right down and be uncool all over again.

Roundabouts were first developed by the UK Transport Research Laboratory in the late 1960’s
Their introduction resulted in a reduction in intersection accidents for both drivers and pedestrians ( although there is a higher incidence of accidents involving cyclists) due both to the lower speeds required to negotiate them, and the fact that all the traffic is all moving in the same direction.

For me, however, they are this little annoying thing that has gotten under my skin, and whenever I see a roundabout sign I can feel myself tense up in anticipation. I sit outside my favorite cafe on Sundays sipping coffee and watching all forms of two wheeled transport dance around the small roundabout located across the way. From grey-ponytailed old men on their stretched out cruisers, to spunky leather clad girls on their Ducati’s. Roundabouts are but a blip on their journey. Sometimes they even go right around 360 in-your-face degrees just to show how easy it is.

So after my coffee. When I’m sure all the motorcyclists have left, I spend some time going around the block and doing battle with the multiple roundabouts in the area. Facing my fears³.
No doubt there is my problem. Right there.
Its not a battle. Its a path.

Its just a roundabout man. Build a bridge!

1. Thumper is my BMW G650GS motorcycle
2. which mainly involved me flailing my arms and legs like some autistic gyroscope
3. Im sure the people at Tilley’s Cafe think that Im some sort of poser going around and around the block — if only they knew.

Up early this morning to sit zazen¹, then outside to play with Smudge. Trying to get back into the routine of sitting every morning. Which has slipped of late.
In fact I was having so much fun tooling around with the dog that I totally forgot breakfast.

Then sit down again, this time to write. Its interesting to note my feelings around this new space. Whilst before, I had over a thousand visits on a given day, and most days I would look forward to some tasty comment yumnificence left in response.
When I sat down to write over there, I could really feel people were going to read my words.
Wow.

But here, a handful of visitors on the most busy day. When I sit down to write in this space, it feels totally quiet.
Like a seed.

I push through any discouragement. When I sit zazen, there is nobody watching. No comments are made, yet is this very emptiness that brackets my day and provides ground from which to flourish.
If people were watching me sit, it would be very difficult to practice with any authenticity.

Perhaps that is the lesson. That my writing can be like this. A container, a bracket, a space to listen to my breath, settle on my authentic voice, and see where it leads.

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford

1. this is a Japanese word that means: your leg has gone to sleep and your nose is itching like crazy

Self image is a force that is both compellingly powerful and deceptively fragile. A while ago a friend of mine lost all her hair during chemotherapy and was inconsolable. Thing is, to many of us she really did look far more beautiful without hair. But we could not convince her of this. Eventually she began to wear these fantastic wigs¹ out in public. And the change in her self confidence was immediate.

Anyway, whilst engaged in pandering to the complexities of my own self image, and searching online for some quality head shaving accoutrement, I have come across this 2007 thesis by Kirsten Hansen titled: Hair or Bare?: The History of American Women and Hair Removal, 1914-1934.

I came to write this thesis because of a personal curiosity about hair removal and its origins. Among my female friends hair removal is considered an annoying, arduous, often painful, but necessary ritual. Most insist on removing leg hair before putting on a skirt or shorts, and balk at the thought of wearing a bathing suit without shaving or waxing the bikini line. Hair removal is considered so essential to some of these women that they refuse to participate in daily activities such as exercising or going on a date if they have not paid proper attention to removing their body hair. Furthermore, hair removal is generally considered to be a timeless ritual, or at least one that all American women have always practiced. Through my research, however, I discovered that hair removal is not an ancient tradition, nor is it an isolated behavior. Hair removal was introduced first in the nineteen teens and twenties, and coincided with a momentous change in the definition of the American feminine ideal.

Turns out no-one is exactly sure when we first began the practice of hair removal although there are cave paintings from prehistoric times that depicted men without beards or facial hair. 
No mean feat in those days,  as any attempt at shaving would have involved some form of flint axe or sharpened animal teeth.

You may think we have come a long way since then, but if you catch me cleaning the blood spatters off the mirror after a rushed morning shave,  you might swear I had used some sort of sharpened animal teeth…. and the forensics would suggest the animal was still attached.

By Egyptian times the production of flint razors became more sophisticated. Soldiers were known to shave their face and head to deprive the enemy of a good hand hold during attempted beheadings.
Even though beards were symbolic of manhood, fear of loosing ones head during battle lead to a trend in shaving during times of war by the Romans and Greeks. 
This seemed to have caught on to the point where a clean shaven man represented civility and became more attractive to the females,  whilst the bearded were seen as barbarians.

There is also some evidence that females of the time would remove all the hair (including pubic) from their bodies using beeswax as it was also considered ‘uncivilised’.
Today, your letterbox may get a drop of leaflets from a local beauty clinic offering a wide ( and expensive) variety of waxings  to remove hair from any number of body crevices and plateaus.
Everything from the exotic sounding Brazilian, for the females to the somewhat less exotic back, crack and sack for the men.

In western culture shaving went in and out of style, and up until the invention of the Gillette disposable blade in 1885, razors remained crude and hazardous implements.
By developing a market for a clean shaven face, and then producing a blade that would have to be replaced by a new one after a few shaves, a continuous flow of product was guaranteed.
By its second year of sale Gillette had sold over 91,000 sets of razor blades.
It was onto something here.

In 1915 Gillette decided it could increase its sales by producing a razor for women. The timing was perfect, as women’s fashion was beginning to get shorter, with hemlines creeping up and shorter sleeves becoming more common. Hooking into some intensive and  persuasive advertising campaigns in the now flourishing women’s magazines, shaving  took its place in the marketing of the female ideal body image.

“…other behaviors centering around body image and self-improvement including the use of make-up and the practice of dieting caught on during the same era. Thus hair removal, at first glance, seems to be an inane, isolated habit, but was in fact part of a marked shift in the American feminine ideal. Understanding how and why the practice of hair removal was introduced and disseminated in the 1920s brings us one step closer to understanding how the modern feminine ideal came to be. It is also a step towards understanding why females today organize their sense of self around their bodies, and why they believe the body to be “the ultimate expression of self.”

Like I said, most of us have been willing participants as our self image, has been crafted and manipulated into a complex and fragile beast.

You cant help but wonder that if all the mirrors in the world were suddenly to vaporize into morning mist…we would all wake up happier, healthier and more able to spend a little more time looking at each other instead.

On the main road, right in front of the hospital, a kangaroo lay across the median strip.
At first I though he was dead. Hit by some car in the dawn gloom.

But as I pulled alongside, he lifted his head and looked up at me forlornly.

I pulled over, dismounted and walked back to see if there was anything to be done.

He didn’t look that old. His breath was steaming in rapid short puffs. He lay amongst a scattering of headlight diamonds. His legs were broken and twisted back on themselves. Bright blood bubbled at his mouth.

Every now and again he would try to get up, stumbling over his fractured legs and flopping over to one side.
Kangaroos are not capable of expression, but never the less, he looked frightened and in pain and strangely confused as to why he could not get up.

He was suffering, and obviously beyond any salvation.
I have been privileged the intimacy of being with the dying on many occasions. But  the glimpse of this kind of wild death was, to me, awkward and unsettling.

Looking around, I sought for something blunt and heavy that I could use to quickly….and I could use words like dispatch or end his suffering, or euthanise, but the only word thumping against my chest was…  kill  him.

I was thankful that there was nothing to be found. For I was afraid that if there was, I would have failed the task.

So instead, I called for a ranger to come and assist.
He would be a while.
I moved in close as I dare, knelt down,  not wanting to have him spook and stumble out into the road.
And I waited with the young roo that lay dying in front of a hospital.

It was nothing. It was something.

When it comes to juggling…I suck lemons.

In an attempt to improve my hand eye coordination skills, I’m trying to teach myself the oh so cool art of juggling.
And whilst I don’t have a set of actual juggling balls, I do have access to my parents fruit laden lemon tree.

Its simple.
Take a deep breath and center yourself. Throw the first lemon gently up in a tight loop so it lands in your other hand.
But just as it reaches the apex of its trajectory, launch the lemon in your other hand in a similar arc back towards your first hand.
As this lemon reaches the top of its arc, release the final lemon.
This occurs just as the first lemon smacks into your glasses, sending them skewing across your face.
Immediately squint over the frame of your specs so as not to miss the large colour of lemoness rappidly filling your visual field.
Ducking down stupidly to avoid ocular impact with the final inbound lemon, stand on the first lemon with your right foot and loose traction on the resulting pulp.
Lay on your back for a considerable length of time embracing the terminal velocity of fruit. Once certain a) your spinal cord is not transected, and b) the snoopy next door neighbor did not see that you are a klutz: Reset with new lemons and repeat.

Actually, I have looked around for a useful instructional video to help me out.
Despite the intimidating picture leading the vid, the one below seems to be quite useful.

Do not let your dog sleep on the bed.
Advice well known to all dog owners.
Supposedly it is all about leadership power within the pack. Letting your dog sleep at the same level as you is said to be signaling an equal position in the pack hierarchy.

And for a short time I enjoyed ranking as alpha male status in the bedroom domain. That was, until one cold winter night when Kelly was away and Smudge was still a pup, I felt sorry for the little guy and lifted him up onto the bed.

He embraced his new-found promotion by ecstatically stretching out onto his back, splaying his legs to occupy maximum bed real-estate, and releasing a long ludibrious yawn.
Scrunching over to one side of the bed I had first inkling of my error.

Several hours later, the snoring and farting (his, not mine ), and getting pushed to the outer lip of the mattress put the matter beyond question.

15,000 years ago, somewhere in central Asia, man began interacting very closely with Smudges distant forebearers, the Grey Wolf (Canis Lupus). The long process of this domestication remains controversial but these first ancestors of today’s estimated 400 million dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) were probably used as combination hunting and herding aids, companions, warning alarms, sled pullers and even food sources.
The nature of 15,000 years of close interaction has produced a special close relationship between man and dog that probably does not exist between any other two species.

But as this close bond developed between the species, is there any evidence that we have actually slept with our dogs?

Emily Toffe wrote in an article for Slate magazine:

There is historical evidence that sleeping with pets is not necessarily aberrant behavior. According to The International Encyclopedia of Dogs, the xoloitzquintli, or Mexican hairless, was used in pre-Aztec Mexico as both pet and bed warmer (and dinner—let’s not talk about that here). An account from a 19th-century explorer in Australia, as quoted in The Domestic Dog, describes how Aborigines were so devoted to their dingoes that the dogs were treated as members of the family and allowed to sleep in the hut. (The rock group Three Dog Night takes its name from the supposed Aboriginal practice of judging the coldness of an evening by the number of dogs required to keep warm.)

Ever since that first invitation to join us, Smudge has spent almost every night on our bed. Except for those mid summer heatwaves when he seeks the coolness of the bathroom tiles.
Each evening he follows his well ensconced routine.
Just after 7PM, he gets up form the couch, goes over to his bowl and scoffs down the remainder of his biscuits (which he routinely sets aside for just this snack).
Next, he noisily drinks his fill, and spends a few minutes in a snorting contemplation of each of his soft toys he will choose to bed.
And off he trots. Without so much as a “goodnight guys”.
Later, we will find him asleep, just like a human, under the covers with his little head on one of our pillows and his paw across his green caterpillar. Simply way too cute to assert my evolutionary superiority over.

For Smudge, there is absolutely no issue with nocturnal altitude and hierarchy. He will lose no sleep contemplating issues of family dominance.
For him, its just another Two Human Night.

With Augusts end I can almost taste the sweet tease of spring.
Like old underpants elastic, winter has been washed and worn till its end. Now, it loosens its once snug fit and begins to slip….slowly at first, but with the sensed certainty of a full reveal.
I feel it as I walk barefoot across  the dawn-lit silver clover.
Spring opens new space to the heart.  And the balls.

The sun is waking earlier now. Light streams in as I fix my oats to ignite the swirling steam. Beyond, the skeletal trees wait patiently for the first cue to burst with flesh.

Later, bag over shoulder, out behind the garage, I note that I no longer need to set Thumpers grip heaters to high in order to keep my fingers defrosted enough to undo my helmet when I arrive at work.
And the seat is warm as I straddle it. And I smell honeysuckle on the air once more.

For a short while these small things come to mind. For in a few precious weeks,  winter  will be well shed, and such amazement’s will be diluted by hot sweaty nights and grasshopper drone.

Well, I could tap on about the pain and suffering inflicted during the production and slaughtering of factory farmed foods, or the ecological impact resulting from the voluminous water and land resources  required to produce meat, or proselytise the  health benefits of a meat free life ….but hey,  there are plenty of sites you can google yourself if you feel so inclined that will give you information with far greater authority and conviction that I can muster.

I have absolutely no inclination to try and convince anyone else to become vegetarian. And I doubt I could anyway.

So why don’t I eat meat?
Well, every meal I ask myself two questions:

1. Could I kill the animal that is on the menu if it was before me right now?
2. Would I want to kill that animal to feed me right now……or, would I be happy enough with any other food that is available.

There are plenty of people who enjoy their meat who will be quick to point out a multitude of complexities and hypocrisy in my reasoning. What about your leather shoes? Dont you feed your dog meat? Shouldnt you go Vegan then? Gee, you do look a little pale and pasty….not enough iron perhaps?
But for me, it is as simple as that. A pause before each meal to ask those two questions. 
And after a little reflection I make my choice….I almost never eat meat.
As I said, I’m not going to get up on a pedestal and start proclaiming the virtues of vegetarianism. I am no Vegan. I still eat chocolate (which usually contains animal product).
I often wear leather products (no, not what you’re thinking).
And I do not like to fuss about it. If I am visiting someone who doesn’t know my preferences and serves a meat or fish dish, I will eat it up without hesitation.
As Walt Whitman wrote: Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

As a nurse, suffering and death poke my soft spots. The taking of a life to satisfy my transient desire for some particular taste satisfaction is something I feel deserves to be pondered before proceeding.
So for me, the decision not to eat meat is made on a case by case basis. Perhaps tomorrow I will eat steak. Perhaps not.
I guess that makes me a sort of serial vegetarian.

“Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and they answer is: ‘Because animals are like us.’
“Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: ‘Because the animals are not like us.’
“Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.”
:: Prof. Charles R. Magel ::

Animal testing falls into three broad categories:

• Product testing of safety for human consumption. Most often this is linked to cosmetic testing such as makeup and soaps.
• Research used to advance medical science and test new drugs.
• Education and training ranging from dissection of frogs in high school science labs to training medical staff in invasive procedures.

There is little doubt that the use of animals in medical research has lead to important advances in the science.
But this has not come without a cost.
We should be reminded that countless animals have suffered in poorly conducted research that has added absolutely nothing to our body knowledge or skills.

In one state of Australia alone (New South Wales), it has been estimated that one animal is killed every hour in the testing of medicines and cosmetic products.  Many of these kept conscious, and subjected to “a moderate or large degree of pain/distress that is not effectively alleviated”¹.

A great deal of medical research involving animals involves invertebrates that are not considered capable of experiencing suffering such as fruit flies or nematode worms and these sorts of experiments are largely unregulated by laws.
But, for other types of medical research it is often deemed necessary to use more complex animals with an adaptive immune system, or animals that are more closely related to humans².

Worldwide, rabbits are chosen for eye irritancy tests because their eye pigments make any effects of the chemicals easier to detect, they also have less tear flow than other animals.
Cats are often used in neurological research and dogs are widely used in biomedical research.
Beagles are a particularly popular choice amongst researchers as they have a gentle nature and are easy to handle.
Non-human primates such as Rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and owl monkeys as well as chimpanzees and baboons are used for toxicology testing as well as conducting studies in AIDS, hepatitis, genetics and behavioural responses.

Experimentation in Australia:

The Australian Code of Practice for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes states: “The scientific validity of animal models of human disease rests in part on how closely a given model resembles a particular disease, which may include the animals experiencing the attendant pain
or distress of the human disease state.”

Australia does not publish national statistics on this sort of thing, but to give you some idea of the numbers, here is some collective data published separately by individual states on just a few of the animals used in experimentation in Australia back in 2005:

• Mouse: 660,924
• Rabbit: 91,435
• Cat: 1,692
• Dog: 4,613
• Sheep: 184,833
• Native animals: 63,352

This experimentation covered a range of purposes including:

• Understanding of human or animal biology: 604, 043
• Production of biological products: 36,186
• Diagnostic procedures: 2,221
• Educational objectives: 710,485

And these experimentation’s varied in severity of procedure from:

• Minor interference: 1,835,952
  Through to
• Major physiological challenge: 116,852
  And
• Death as endpoint: 50,098³.

Suffering. Is it a means to an ends?

Now call me a softie if you must, but the one thing that upsets me more than human suffering is animal suffering.
The big issue for me is, do these animals experience unnecessary suffering during medical experimentation and educational demonstrations?
Do we really gain much scientific value from such experimentation⁴.
And is there such a thing as necessary suffering anyway?

Well according to the US department of Agriculture, in the USA in 2006, 84,000 animals (not including the invertebrates or mice) were involved in studies designed to cause pain or distress that would not be relieved⁵.

In Australia, there is a Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (POCTA) Act as well as the Australian Code of Practice for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes. In addition to this, any research involving animals must first be approved by an Animal Ethics Committee consisting of a Veterinarian, a researcher, an animal welfare representative and a layperson. Unfortunately, all information on protocols and the process surrounding how exactly theses decisions are made remain confidential.
There are also more specific guidelines published to assist AEC’s in considering applications for the use of animals in scientific purposes, for example the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) have a guidelines on the care of dogs, many of which are sourced from pounds.
The guidelines cover the general wellbeing, transport and disposal of dogs and although comprehensive, seem ( to me at least) to have a disturbing subtext.

Lets take a look at the guidelines for the dogs mental wellbeing:

Dogs are gregarious, social animals and contact with people and other dogs is crucial for their mental well-being and, ultimately, their physical wellbeing. This applies especially to animals used for research where adaptive responses to behavioural stressors may do detriment to observations. It is known that dogs used for medical research are generally better adapted to their holding conditions if they receive frequent and regular contact with people.

Sounds pretty good. But the guidelines only recommend “ at least 20-30 minutes of daily contact between dogs and at least one attendant, even when dogs are group housed…. Some dogs will demand more attention than others and some dogs may require less than 20 minutes contact.”

Gee, 20 minutes of contact a day. No doubt that occurs during the experimentation.
And even more telling, the guidelines also hint at some of the effects on humans participating in such experimentation:

Inappropriate respect for dogs, the management of their death and the manner of their disposal can lead to considerable distress in those involved in an institution and should be avoided strenuously. Dog handlers, veterinary students and researchers should be prepared for the emotional difficulties that may result from their use of the dogs. Access to trained counsellors or mentors should be made available (but optional) before, during and after the euthanasia event.

Such guidelines and codes are largely self regulated. There is little information available on independent or even internal auditing or quality control assessments taking place on such practices.

When it all goes very wrong:

The breeding of animals for scientific experimentation and the provision of facilities to house and undertake such experimentation is big business.
It is a multi-billion dollar industry with close links to those exemplars of ethical business practice, the pharmaceutical industry and the chemical industry.

An example of what can go very wrong is the Huntington Life Sciences facility in the UK. This is one of the largest testing laboratories in Europe, carrying out research on everything from drugs to food additives.
In 1997 undercover footage was obtained of researchers hitting puppies whilst taking blood samples ( you can watch the original 1997 footage here. As well as a follow up report in 2005. Warning: both highly disturbing ).
As a result several employees were prosecuted. Despite this reports of animal suffering at the laboratory continue to circulate including assaulting animals, rough treatment, poor living conditions and falsification of data.

The fact is that today, with the availability of computer modeling, tissue culture stocks, simulation technology and other alternatives, a large proportion this suffering and overt cruelty is totally needless.
Perhaps it is time to ask ourselves how we feel about this issue.
Have you been involved in medical training involving interventions on animals? Do you contribute to a medical cause that might involve animal experimentation?

Perhaps what is needed is some sort of independent evaluation as to the evidence that medical experimentation leading to animal suffering (conducted by universities and research bodies, many of which receive substantial government and public funding) actually has any proven benefit at all.

1. Article: One animal killed every hour in NSW for scientific testing
2. the lab rat is considered a good practice model as it shares 99% of its genes with humans
3. Source: Animal Experimentation – a necessary evil? 
Author: Helen Rosser Published by: AAHR Inc. Printed: November 2007 ww.aahr.org.au
4. for example: in the 1960′s thalidomide was tested extensively on animals and found to be safe before being given to pregnant mothers as a sedative
5. 2005 Report on enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act 

Quite some time ago there was a series of  these photos doing the rounds on the work emails.

The email contained some amazing photos of a group of dogs and a Polar Bear. I suspected that the brief story that accompanied the slides was bogus, and that the animals were from some zoo, or had been domesticated¹
Well for those not yet familiar with this story,  it turns out the whole event was in fact quite true….

German photographer Norbert Rosing and Hunter/Trapper Brian Ladoon were out taking some sunset photographs of his Huskies near the shore of Canada’s Hudson bay mid-November 1992.
Without warning they were interrupted by a 1200 pound Polar Bear which was moving in quickly on one of the dogs named Hudson. 
Polar Bears in the area had not eaten in over four months as  the Hudson bay had yet to freeze over, preventing them from hunting their usual diet of seal.
As Hudson was chained to a stake, Norbert, fully expected that he was about to witness the dog’s death.

What happened next was quite remarkable:

The bear closed in. Did Hudson howl in terror and try to flee? On the contrary. He wagged his tail, grinned, and actually bowed to the bear, as if in invitation. The bear responded with enthusiastic body language and non-aggressive facial signals. These two normally antagonistic species were speaking the same language: “Let’s play!”
The romp was on. For several minutes dog and bear wrestled and cavorted. Once the bear completely wrapped himself around the dog like a friendly white cloud. Bear and dog then embraced, as if in sheer abandon. Overheated by his smaller playmate’s shenanigans, the bear lay down and called for a time-out.
Every evening for more than a week the bear returned to play with one of the dogs. Finally the ice formed, and he set off for his winter habitat.

This behavior has been witnessed repeatedly in Churchill but has not been reported elsewhere in the Arctic. Throughout the region, polar bears occasionally kill and eat sled dogs.
Why should the Churchill bears behave so differently? Although he has not seen the phenomenon, biologist Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service says that the fall fasting of these Hudson Bay bears slows their metabolism so much that “they can almost be hibernating on their feet.” Perhaps that saved the dog’s life. But why would the bear play rather than attack?
This is an open question, and it fascinates me.

:: Stuart L Brown; Animals At Play, 1994 issue of National Geographic ::

You can check out the amazing photos for yourself, along with commentary by Stuart Brown:

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1. a domesticated Polar Bear? Yeah, right.  But Ian, he just looks so cute and cuddly…cant we have one pleeease?