DEALING WITH JUDGMENT

ernest trova

Very strange experience today. The day's film was Rust And Bone, a French film by Jacques Audiard, the story of three people. The film amounted to character development of the three and a fairly intense story that uncovered the character of all three. One of the characters was a woman who worked at the French version of Sea World as a trainer with Orcas. She was the target of an Orca attack that took both her legs. She's left to herself to deal with it. At the same time we meet a guy who doesn't pay much attention, has a boy about ten with him, in a French city moving in with the guy's sister and her husband. Things go round and round, he and the Orca trainer start a casual affair with complications. He is an underground mixed martial arts fighter. These are not the ones that fight on tv that play by the rules. A crowd of twenty or thirty men bet on the fighters who go by no rules, no referee. It was brutal in a super-testosterone brain-dead way. She falls in love with he, but he is unable to commit. It goes round and round from there. I don't recall many films where three characters share the lead role. Beautifully made French film using dynamic photography like I've not seen before. All the way through it, the editing and the workings of the camera were new. All three were dealing with real world issues, all of them living without affection and needing it. After much physical, emotional, mental pain, they came together to lean on each other and begin their healing.

 

rene magritte

 

I'm at the end of the film and Justin drove up to the barn to throw some hay bales on the back of his truck to bring to the place I feed the donkeys. I saw him go by, put the movie on hold and threw on jacket, outdoor shoes, hat and gloves, picked up a couple of carrots. I gave carrots to the donkeys and calf over the fence. We stacked the hay bales and covered them with the tarp. Justin came in for a few minutes to smoke a cigarette. I'd mentioned the film I was seeing about the underground fighter. He told me a little bit about the world of underground fighting like that. It's every place. He told me about a fight he had in his wild-thang time with a Mexican over money. The Mexican owed him money and wouldn't give it to him until Justin stuck the barrel of a 9 in his mouth. He told about a guy that had him down with a choke hold and Justin was stuck. He couldn't move and he was losing oxygen starting to fade. The guy put his hand over Justin's mouth and Justin bit a chunk out of the palm of the guy's hand. He let go. He told episode after episode, and I'm sitting here thinking: what's going on? I'm seeing this movie about guys fighting to near death, then Justin comes in telling me of his fights to near death, it's a new moon, and I'm wondering what the hell is happening. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed by stories of the very hardest kind of fighting. It made me ask myself what is going on inside me that needed to hear these stories today. I used to be really put off by such "masculine" behavior. For one thing, it misrepresents the masculine in the same way junkie whores in big cities misrepresent the feminine.  

 

marino marini

 

It caused me to look within. I saw that over my years living in mountain culture, I had to change a great deal of my thinking. Right away I had to get used to men who kill casually, talk about it with excitement the way teenagers talk about rock stars. I have spent my time among my mountain friends controlling my face when they tell me about some of their killing adventures, shooting squirrels and crows for target practice. My friend Jr Maxwell was good with a gun. I think he got a kick out of telling me stories about shooting an owl out of a tree or shooting flocks of crows with a shotgun, just to watch me control my face. Inside, I squirm up into a knot feeling for my friends living happy lives ending up as target practice. All these years later, it still tears me up to hear their kill stories. I've told myself many times it is the culture and if I want to accept the culture as it is, this is the chance to really practice acceptance. It's been a good practice. It has been responsible for much thought, not to justify, but to accept. If I object to these stories, then I inhibit my friends from talking freely around me and I don't want that. I learn to accept. By now I can watch mixed martial arts fighting on tv at Justin's house and enjoy it. First, I know the guys doing it love it. They like getting hurt and they like hurting somebody. It's just how they're wired. I figure they're on their own when they step into the ring, doing what they love doing. I'm not here to deprive them of what they love doing just because I'm squeamish. I can get some appreciation for the sport of what they're doing by acceptance that it's ok for them to do what they want to do, a whole lot better than I can by disapproval. Again, the only thing my disapproval could achieve would be to inhibit my friends from talking freely when I'm around.

 

robert ryman

 

I don't think like them and they know it. They know it better than I do. I accept and appreciate their way of thinking and they allow me mine. Even though they know I'm not a racist and don't kill anything, they feel free in my company. I don't judge them and don't attempt to make them think like I think. I don't want to give any kind of impression that I want them to think like I think. They all know in their hearts that in my heart is no feeling that I am better than any of them in any way. We have totally different experience. I come from another culture and continue to carry much of it with me. I don't object. I like much of both cultures and live with what I take for the best of both. I believe my mountain friends have a certain affection for me because I do not judge them. They don't know anybody that doesn't judge them. I'm remembering how refreshed I felt in the company of the first person I'd ever met I didn't feel was judging me. It was unforgettable. All we did was sit on a screen porch with cups of tea and talk for an hour. It was an unforgettable experience because I felt I could tell or say anything and it would be ok. I can still feel it. Kitty Davy was her name. She was 88 at the time. I knew her for a little over a year, maybe two. She became for me a model of how I wanted to be as a human being, to be a refreshing spirit who simply does not judge. I can't lay claim to that as who I am, but am able somewhat. I want the people in my company uninhibited by perceived judgment. It frees me as much as it frees the other. I'm thinking that today's learning has to do with seeing that I have not "steeled" myself against behavior in others I don't want for myself, but have accepted, allowed, adjusted to their culture such that I am doing all right where understanding is concerned. 

 

robert rauschenberg

 

I'm glad, grateful too, to see I have come into living by non-judgment. I'm thinking the film and Justin today at the same time were measures of how far I have come on my spiritual path. I never dreamed I'd come to a time when I wasn't judging others and self. It just crept up on me. I didn't know that's what was going on. I have become curious to have a glimpse of who it is I'm interacting with conversationally, coffee shop, mancave with friends, hardware store, drugstore, any place, anybody. I've learned to find other people really interesting. There came a time when I tuned in to my own inner spirit and now want to find the inner spirit in the other. I've found that non-judgment soon becomes apparent. Then the other drops judgment and we flow freely without apprehension of being taken for a nerd or thought stupid for having a valid feeling. I'm remembering in Women's Liberation times thinking liberation for women is equally liberation for men. I never understood why other men didn't get it. I was thinking women freeing themselves of stereotypes would free men of stereotypes too. Men of the newer generations are getting it. Please don't misunderstand and suspect I mean I am free of judgment. I am not. I can tell you a lot I'm judgmental about, but the judgment is weaker now. It has no conviction. I don't believe my own judgments. I suppose they drift away because I don't believe them. Friend Jr Maxwell said one evening at the table over drinks, "Don't believe what you think." This from a man I came to assess wise without hesitation. I have a lot of opinions, but don't believe them. I can talk about them, but can't argue about them because I don't believe them. I have zero conviction for any of my opinions. I tend to think of opinions as dots to draw lines between to make sense of the world I live in the best I know how. It's not even a sketchy understanding, but makes a kind of map to give self at least a little bit of an idea of context.

 

robert indiana

 

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BLACKFISH THE MOVIE

Last night's movie was an eye-opener, in a way an awakener. It held my interest every minute, at the same time had such great sorrow as to wound my heart. I was pulled through the hour and a half by interest in what I was learning and grieved seeing, again, the human indifference to consciousness. I'd seen an ad while watching football for the film Blackfish, a documentary concerning Orcas, killer whales, in captivity performing at Sea World. I checked netflix and they had it. It largely involved interviews with trainers, the people you see fly up out of the water standing on the Orca's nose; a couple of them had been killed over a period of years by one of the killer whales, and it was "the best" of the trainers in those and other cases. The Sea World corporation blamed the trainers, said they made mistakes. The makers of the documentary found video and eye witnesses of the Orca attacks. Analysis of what triggered the attack was not trainer error, but came to a twist in the brain from living in a bathtub in solitary confinement for so many years. The behavior was attributed to frustration. In captivity they have half the life expectancy as in the ocean with their pod of extended family. Decades of research reveal that Orcas are family-oriented, like crows, live in their families and are never weaned from the mother; they don't continue dependence, though the bond is for a lifetime. They learned, too, that the dorsal fin in captivity tends to droop over to one side. In the ocean, the dorsal fin stands straight up all the time. All the signs of the whales' despair in captivity were showing, but who noticed? The Sea World corporation made billions off of them. The corporation doesn't care how the Orcas feel, redundant as it may be to say it.

 

 

It took me back to a moment in childhood standing in front of a black leopard's cage in the Kansas City Zoo, watching the beautiful black cat pace back and forth, about three of its body lengths each way. It was kidnapped from life with its family, probably taken as a kitten after its mother was killed. The kitten was boxed, sold, bought, and ended up with a life sentence in solitary confinement being stared at and taunted by shrieking humans. I couldn't stand it for the cat. I felt the same about the tigers and lions. My trained mind said this is good, they're kept in cages so we're safe from them, and it's a zoo where this is what they do. Who ever thought about how the animals got there, esp in the late Forties and early Fifties? I read adventure comic books about a well-known African safari hunter of the time, who captured animals for zoos. He was a hero. I had been trained up in the mind that animals don't feel, don't think, don't love, only exist. Mr Big Game Hunter was brave. He went up against water buffalo and lions. Killed them with one shot. If he'd missed, they'd have killed him. Big man. I also watched Marlin Perkins' Zoo Parade, which later became Wild Kingdom. I saw that show every time it was on. A few weeks ago, I saw on YouTube a Wild Kingdom show about the Kalahari bush people in southern Africa. It took me into realizing I had forgotten Marlin Perkins as an influence in my early life, a daddy figure who knew something, who appreciated the world around him, who appeared to care, who wasn't bragging and berating when he spoke. Watching the show, I was thinking he was one of the great unacknowledged influences on who I am. While I went to a church where the preacher said animals have no souls, I listened to Marlin Perkins tell me and show me that animals are at least sentient beings. I refused to believe animals had no souls. It didn't make a lick of sense. The deal is, they can't get saved because they don't know right from wrong. I laugh at that now.    

 

 

The blurb advertising the film said the Orcas were a danger to the trainers. All I could see through the course of the film was the danger the whales were in. The Orcas are gregarious, fun-loving people who live their lives closely knit with their families. They need the affection in the family circle. Like donkeys, they are herd animals. Circled by their families, the Orcas flourish. Separated from their families, they decline and fade into despair. They do the tricks for a snack at a time, the trainers get to know them personally, become attached to them like we do with a dog when we get to know one. I was seeing the intelligence in these water people and thinking about the intelligence in donkeys. Every morning taking hay to them, I look into their eyes and talk to them. The intelligence in their eyes is on the order of what the trainers see in Orca eyes. Like donkeys, the Orcas are conscious, have intelligent minds and complex behavior. They feel, are animated by love, and respond to respect with respect. I am confident that the donkeys will never attack me. By now, I have the trust of both of them. I give them only gentle, loving behavior and they return the same. If I were to keep each of them in solitary confinement for several years, I could anticipate waxing frustration to the point that one day I might be attacked by surprise, out of the blue, me saying, "What got into you? I didn't do nothin." Some of the Orca researchers in the film said that in the open sea they have never been known to kill a human. Another researcher who knew they'd never hurt anybody, said he is not jumping into the water with them. He said the old belief about them is they are sacred, not to be meddled with.

The film caused me to reflect on a lifetime of living in a world, the entire world, that regarded the sentient beings that live around and among us as no more than a rock or a fencepost that could walk. In early childhood I believe it because the grownups taught it to me. It never seemed right, but all the adults knew different. Even though it did not make sense, I questioned myself instead of everyone around me. Then I came to the mountains, completely changed from the cosmology I grew up in. My first dog, Sadie, was my teacher. She came to me when she was 3 and already named. I did not want to make her have to learn to go by a new name. She taught me that I was the dense one. She understood me in everything I said and did. I understood very little of her attempts to communicate. By the time I lost her, I felt I was just getting to know her. Next dog was Aster, came to me about six months old, starved unto unable to walk. I took her in and she never needed training. She was the second one to teach me that the soul is the life force in us, what Dylan Thomas calls "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower." I can't say, When is the world going to wake up and understand the animal people are driven by the same fire within that we are, love? Maybe "the world" is unable to understand love animates us. We are dominated by belief that love, spirit, God is out there, not in here, despite the Bible saying in red letters it is within, our very life force that drives the flower through the fuse. As long as we believe God and heaven are the other side of the clouds or beyond the universe, or wherever in the beyond, we'll never get it that the squirrels and snowbirds are people too. Killing animals and destroying their lives without conscience will go on. I always come back to my responsibility is my own behavior. I see them sentient beings like myself, respect them as I respect another human. Makes it difficult to see Orca suffering in corporate hands and just as much the world of humans out of sight in desperate poverty in slums around the dumps in third world cities, that get their fuel from leaks in pipelines. I was heartened in the film to see so many people care.

 

 

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