Spider webs

Perhaps it's all the decorative spider webs around or the fact that it is spider season and there are actual spider webs all over right now, but then again maybe it's just that I ran through one today which has me thinking about them. My first thought was that there was a statistic that came out in the 90's saying that the average person swallows 8 spiders a year in their sleep. It turned out to be an experiment to demonstrate how gullible people are, and it worked as the statistic spread and is still widely promulgated. The reality is that we don't swallow in our sleep so it's not very likely we would swallow anything much less a spider (to answer your question, "no I did not swallow a spider while running today." Though that does not mean I haven't before). My next thought however was about how the web is such a great metaphor for so many things. Nets and webs inspired things like the Native American dream catchers and they are a common image that we relate to situations we are stuck in, to the things that bind us together, to the hope that as we cast our net we might catch something, to "the tangled web we weave" which might come apart or get us stuck and any number of other things.

There is something beautiful and fascinating, while at the same time sinister about a web. If you have ever watched the graceful dance of a spider as it spins on a web glistening in the morning dew, the form and function are incredible to behold as the spider launches itself further and further to place it's anchors then slowly binds the intricate parts (if you don't have the patience or the fortune to watch it live there plenty you can find a time-lapse of on YouTube). It's not hard to create an image of Charlotte's Web building the mystique of Wilbur (aka Zuckerman's famous pig). There is a spider in my garage however who dispels the beauty a bit and demonstrates the sinister reality of the web's purpose with the pile of beetle carcasses underneath conjuring more an image of Shelob from The Lord of the Rings than of Charlotte. Maybe that's part of their metaphor too in the juxtaposition of beauty and fear-inducing function. Spiders themselves run a fine line between graceful and creepy so I guess it all comes together. Whatever emotion they might elicit or metaphor they may conjure for us, there is something special about a spiders web and for me it's one of the many things in nature with a lesson to teach us.

No Sleep

It is a gift that I have never needed much sleep. The thing of it lately and the last couple of nights in particular is that I really do appreciate those four to five hours and I haven't even been getting those. I might have gotten an hour total last night and maybe two the night before so it's been a challenge to get going. My mantra has always been that "there are twenty-four usable hours in every day." My cure is the same as the one I use when I travel to avoid jet lag, which is to simply keep going. I go for a run often in the morning anyway, but when I have had no sleep I always run and most of the time it keeps me from crashing.

I was thinking this morning as I ran (my best thinking time is often while running or walking so many of my blogs come after a good long run) about how using more hours really is freeing. It's not just that you can get more done, and I am certainly not advocating everyone replace sleep with a morning run, but it's like you take control of time instead of letting it take control of you. Often it's easy to feel like there is just too much to do, and maybe there is, so there is a lot to be said for giving ourselves permission not to do things, but when you don't see time as so confining things can feel a little less overwhelming. We fit our lives into a schedule, whether it's for school or for work or whatever else we do our calendars are so full we need electronic devises to keep track of what we ourselves are doing. Maybe it would be nice if everyone required less sleep, but really it comes down to attitude and priority. If you want to make time to do something you figure it out. If there are multiple "important" things you may have to decide or you may have to shuffle and sacrifice something else (like sleep), but you are in control even if you don't feel like you are. Maybe it's easy to say coming from someone who doesn't sleep much and who has a job where I set my own hours, but I have plenty of demands on my time and I choose to make work what I feel like I need to make work. I can give a night to my teething one year old and not begrudge her partly because I don't need as much sleep, but also because I decided that she needed me more than I needed sleep. Plenty of parent's might have closed doors and let her cry and that may not do her any real harm and I know great parent's who choose that method, but chose to comfort her because that was my greater priority and I own that. I suppose ultimately that is my point; we have to own our own time. We make choices and we live them. I am all for finding ways to give control away and simply let things happen, but you can't do that either if you don't take control of your time and give yourself the freedom to choose.

Networking

You never know when you might have a chance to make a connection and you never know when that connection might bring you something good. A simple show of appreciation for a restaurant manager who donated his proceeds to the schools turned into a connection that brought free naan (Indian bread) for my church and business to a restaurant that really just needs people to try it. I have written about it before, but it really is as simple as acknowledging every person as a person. I don't know where people learned to ignore others so completely simply because of a role that they are serving at the time. You never know when one connection might lead to another making the world a little smaller. My family was talking the other night about people who had signed on to my mom's guestbook on her webpage who ha known each other for years, but didn't know that they both knew my mom.

When I was in high school I never paid to go to the movies or to rent one. I bowled for free. I got pizza for free, ice cream for free, sub-sandwhiches for free, I even managed to get a few free shirts right of their backs from people I didn't even know for free and I won some free shoes a couple of times. Several years after high school I went to rent a movie from the place I used to as a kid and I was told, "your money's no good here." Apparently my legend persisted though I had no idea who the person behind the counter was or what I had really done to deserve that treatment. I found out that fall when I did a teaching practicum that there was a day named after me at my high school and students in the language arts department got extra credit for dressing up on Thursdays (something I did while a student). I suppose it's what celebrities must feel, but the thing is it wasn't so much that I was especially popular, it was that I made good connections. The people who got me free things where they worked did it for the most part because they knew that if I could do the same for them I would and more.

It's been a while since I was getting all sorts of things for free, but when I was doing youth ministry I managed to get things donated to the group at a prodigious rate for retreats, creating a haunted house, for mission projects and all it took was reaching out and asking (admittedly how you ask does matter). Recently I was reminded of my past connections when for the tenth time or so I received a free nimbu pani (it's a lime and soda Indian drink) and this time from a new manager that I hadn't met until that moment, but who I struck up a conversation with. It wasn't a big deal for him to give me the drink, but the point is that he did it because I spent some time genuinely asking about his day. Connections are huge in life and you never know when a network you create may give you the opportunity to do something for someone else or to receive an act of kindness. I feel very fortunate to have people I call friend all over the world. They may not get me free stuff, but it means something knowing there are people out there you can call on when you are in need.

ape house by Sara Gruen

I liked Gruen's first book "Water for Elephants," so when I saw that she had written a new book I would have gotten it anyway, but the fact that she was writing about apes gave it a special significance for me. Before I can talk about the book I have to give a background for why this book has a deeper connection for me. The first stuffed animal I can remember having was a bright orange spider monkey named Motor. As it turned out orange has always been my favorite color and monkeys and apes my favorite animals, so I guess Motor left an impression on me. Every year for as long as I can remember my parents gave me a stuffed monkey or gorilla for every birthday, every Christmas and even on other holidays like Valentines I got another one until my collection grew so much that I had to add a net near the ceiling in my room to hold them all. They were more than toys to me, they were a symbol of something deeper that was calling me off to jungles to learn more about the real animals. For a long time my hope was to be like Jane Goodall or Dian Fossey spending my time sitting on some far of mountain communing, studying, learning about the great apes. My senior year in high school I as fortunate to have a biology teacher who had done her doctoral work at the Woodland Park Zoo and who encouraged me to do an independent study there. I spent over 120 hours of observation plus research and writing time and all the hours driving back and forth to the zoo every other day for most of that year studying the zoos two Siamangs, Simon and Sia Buri. Sia Buri had just one arm, but she was amazing the way she could still fly from limb to limb. Simon was and is still the curious one and used to come up the the glass and sit opposite me, sometimes moving around so he could look in my bag and other times just sitting there. Sometimes, now years later, when I take my daughter to the zoo I could swear that Simon recognizes me and just once I sat in my old spot and he came right up and sat opposite me again. It was a behavior that I never saw him do on the days that I would watch from other spots where he couldn't see me. You could see the intelligence in that interaction and his curiosity and it only strengthened my love for apes. I chose my first college because it was one of only four in the country that advertised specific degrees in both zoology and theater; my two great passions at the time. Though I didn't end up pursuing zoology the affinity still remains and always visit zoos when I travel seeking out the apes. I have to admit that it was quite a thrill to see the wild monkeys wandering around the temples in Nepal. This is a really long explanation for why the book was meaningful to me, but I think the background is important.

The book does a marvelous job of illustrating the intelligence and the bond that comes from spending time with our closest cousins. I remember sitting and listening to parent's say, "look at the monkeys!" to their children and muttering every time, "they are not monkeys, they are apes." It amazed me how people can come to the zoo and not even truly see the animals. They walk through approximating what they know in terms of generalities and they miss the unique differences between species much less the differences between the individuals within the species. I don't want to be too harsh because at least those parents are exposing their kids to the zoo and many would eventually read the plaques to their kids. What it shows though is exactly what Gruen does in the book, illustrating how people don't really see the apes, they see the antics or they see an animal and they miss the incredible connections and similarities. She also does a great job illustrating the bond that can form between the researcher and the apes. My hope is that people who read it will get not just a well told story, but that it will make them want to know more so they can feel just a little of what I did in all those hours sitting with Simon. There are still times when I think of at the very least volunteering for some short term research project, but for now I am content to take my daughters to the zoo and read every plaque adding whatever else I might know so they will never see them as just animals to be looked at.

Coloring outside the lines

People often remind me that I never do things the way I am "supposed to." I don't tend to follow the prescribed course and even when it's one that has requirements along the way I tend to find alternative ways to satisfy them. I don't believe there is such a thing as a normal way of doing things because every person's experience even of the same thing is unique, but I was reflecting last night on the fact that I can't even follow a simple recipe exactly. Never mind things like testing out of requirements or making my own path to a mountain summit. Following a recipe should be simple, but instead I have to add things, use less or more of things and make it my own. Last night it was gorgonzola cream sauce, my version of which turned out great and last week it was snickerdoodles, which I thought were pretty good too. I was thinking about it in terms of architecture vs building. A builder takes a plan and builds it as exactly as they can and it's good, it's consistent, they know that it works and we need builders. An architect looks at plans, understands the foundational elements and then creates something new. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I think for some we just can't help trying. We need both builders and architects, cooks and chefs, it's not about one being better than the other it's about acknowledging that we don't all fit in the lines and for some there is a creative fire and a refusal to conform even if we wanted to. There is nothing wrong with the lines and beautiful things come within them, but for me I am thankful for the confidence to color outside them even when I fail.

The push we needed

There are plenty of times in our lives when we know what we need and we know what we really want, but we are unwilling, unable, unmotivated, afraid to go out and do it, get it, be it. What we need is a push. We need that something to happen, that someone, that opportunity to knock that pushes past knowing into doing and being. There are special people or in some cases things that happen to special people in our lives which help us to realize that we can't just wait . Their are those people who give us the strength to act and there are the circumstances that reminds us of life's fragile nature, and what ever it is we need it sometimes even if it's hard, perhaps especially when it's hard. We need a push. We need that thing to get us over whatever fear we have, whatever inadequacy we feel, so that we will take the plunge and dive deeper into life. These pushes often come when we don't expect them and from places we didn't even know existed, but they can't be ignored. Even when the push comes from tragedy we have to see it as a gift because otherwise it can overwhelm us. I guess that's part of the deal in that if we can find the gift in even a tragedy then nothing can truly overwhelm us and the gift is often the motivation to do something positive. It may not always feel like it's so positive at first and it's way easier to intellectualize it than to do it, but the good is out there and so are the things to push us even if it feels like they are a long time in coming.

We all get stuck and we all need a push sometimes (maybe even an underdog as my daughter calls for). It's good to be pushed.

We need a cake

Today was my daughters first birthday and my older daughter decided that we needed a cake. We didn't really celebrate and we hadn't planned on doing anything because we just didn't feel like she was ready for it. When my three year said, "we need a cake and we need the party hats from your office daddy," it was hard to say no and I think it reminded me that even though she won't remember and maybe she isn't ready for cake, we have something to celebrate and we need to acknowledge it. I have always felt like first birthday parties are silly. I get that people have fun watching a one year old eat cake for the first time, rubbing it in their hair and making a fun and sticky mess, but it's a ritual that doesn't really resonate with me. What my three year old reminded me of though was that there are sacred conventions to our celebrations and cake at birthdays is one of them (I still think the hats are optional). At one she can't really handle dairy much yet and most cakes have milk in them so we searched for a non-dairy cake and ended up with a lemon cake with lemon glaze. The batter and the glaze tasted good and it was fun making it with my three year old, but the funny part is that she fell asleep so we haven't even tried it yet. Somehow making the cake made the day feel more like it was her birthday and we were acknowledging it more properly. Especially for this little girl making it to one is an accomplishment and we needed a cake. I am thankful for both my little girls who remind constantly of all that I have to celebrate. There are times when it just doesn't feel right without a cake.