(5)

It's a hot, muggy day today; typical weather for July.  I'm sitting out on the steps of a small porch on the side my apartment house, slowly withering in the heat as I wait for my mother to come pick me up in her car.  She's late:  probably my nieces have slowed her down.  Carrie and Lisa have been coming in to stay at their grandparent's house a couple of days each week ever since school vacation started, and on Tuesday mornings they usually get taken to the playground; then they have lunch; later in the afternoon they'll go to the local animal shelter to do an hour's volunteer work – which is to say, they'll walk a couple of dogs and play with the cats.  This is their "summer project."  After the first week or two of this, my mother asked if I'd be willing to take over the job of accompanying them there; knowing of my interest in animals, she thought I might even enjoy it.  And it would give her a break from the girls and allow her time to get the house back in order.  I said I'd be glad to help.

By the time my mother arrives the sweat that's been prickling up from my scalp has started dribbling down the sides of my face; my back is damp with perspiration.  "Hi!" she calls to me from the car.  "Hop in – I've got the air conditioner going."

The cool air feels delicious.  "That's better," I sigh.  "Whew!  It's hot out there."  I turn round to see who's in the backseat.  "Hiya, Carrie!" I say.  No Lisa today.

"Hiya!" says Carrie.

"So . . .  How is everyone?"

"Fine," my mother replies – though she looks, in fact, a bit harried.  She glances at the clock on the dashboard and frowns.

"I'm good," says Carrie.  "How're you?"

"Me?  Well, I guess I'm good too," I tell her.

"I need to make a quick stop at the grocery store before we go home," my mother says, "so we need to hurry.  Buckle up, everyone!"

"Buckle up, Uncle Simon!" chimes Carrie.

"Well, but if we're just going to the grocery store . . ."

"Buckle Up for Safety's Sake!" my mother sings out brightly, repeating an oft-quoted jingle first heard on television years and years ago.  Her cheerfulness sounds a bit forced; I can tell she just wants me to do what she says and not make a fuss.  I shrug my shoulders and fasten the strap across my chest and over my waist.  "Seat Belts Save Lives," I intone.  "Say, do you remember that commercial they used to show on TV when I was a kid?"

"Here we go!" sings my mother, ignoring me.  She eases the car on down the alleyway towards the nearest main street.

"A mother and her little girl get into their car," I say.  "They're going to the grocery store, which is only a couple of blocks away –"

"I hate this corner," my mother mutters.  "It's nearly impossible to see past all these parked cars."  She leans forward in her seat, peering first to the left, then to the right, checking for oncoming traffic.  "What I really wanted was to go downtown to Kresler's Market, but unless there's a break in this traffic I'm going to have to go up to the Mini Mart –"

"Uh-huh," I say.  "Anyhow, this little girl and her mother get into their car, and since they're only going to the grocery store they don't bother to buckle their seat belts –"

"Darn it!" my mother says, scowling out at the street.  "I really hate shopping at the Mini Mart.  The clerks are so rude there.  And the prices are higher too.  Why's the traffic so heavy today?"

"I dunno," I shrug, wishing she'd just make up her mind and go.  Go left, go right, who cares – just go.  "Anyhow," I continue, "this little girl and her mother –"

"My turn!" my mother cries, stamping her foot down on the gas.  The car gives a lurch and swings round the corner into traffic.  She heaves a great sigh of relief:  she hates to drive.  Which I can understand, though personally I think that if she were just a little less anxious about it –

"So?" asks Carrie.

"So . . . what?" I ask back.

"So what happens to the little girl and her mother?"

"Oh!" I say.  "Umm . . .  They get killed in a car wreck."

"Ick," says Carrie.  My mother gives me a sharp look out of the corner of her eye.  I wince.  That hadn't been the point I'd wanted to make.  In fact, I hadn't really wanted to make any point at all.  I was just taking a little trip down memory lane, remembering how, when I was a kid –

"Won't be a minute!" my mother cries, having pulled into the parking lot of the Mini Mart and brought the car to a lurching halt.  "I just need to pick up a couple of things for dinner."  She hops out the door and takes off at a trot.

I sigh hopelessly, then turn round to face Carrie.  "So, what happened to Lisa?" I ask her.

"Don't you remember, Uncle Simon?  She went to Horse Camp this week."

"Oh, that's right.  But weren't you were both planning to go there?"

"Yeah.  I changed my mind," she says.

"Oh?  How's come?"

"I dunno.  I guess I decided I don't really like horses."

"Huh,"  I say.  "I thought you did."

"Well, I like them but . . .  They scare me.  Horses are so big."

I consider this.  "Yeah," I say, "I guess that's true.  I guess big animals like that can be scary sometimes.  So . . . it'll just be you and me going to the shelter today?"

"Uh-huh."

"Hmm," I say thoughtfully.  "Maybe I can walk some of the dogs myself this time instead of just helping you and Lisa.  Or instead of helping you, I mean.  Or, along with helping you –"

"Maybe.  But you'll have to ask.  I think you need to have signed up first.  You didn't sign up or anything, like we did."

"That's true.  But I'm sure they won't mind," I say.  "At least, I hope they won't mind.  I can't see why they would mind –"

"Prob'ly they won't," says Carrie.  "But you'll have to ask."

We fall silent a moment.

"Uncle Simon?"

"Hmm?"

"How's come you and Grandma don't like each other?"

"Huh?" I exclaim.  "But we do like each other.  Of course we like each other –"

"You don't act like it."

"Oh?  Well . . .  We just get on each other's nerves sometimes.  That happens with people – like with you and Lisa.  You get on each other's nerves sometimes, right?"

"Yeah."

"But you still like each other, right?"

"I guess so."

"Lemme put it to you another way.  You don't always like each other – but you still love each other, right?"

"Yeah . . ." she says, looking at me doubtfully.  "So, you and Grandma love each other, but you just don't like each other?"

"Uhh . . .  Well, we get on each other's nerves sometimes," I say.  "Hey look, here she comes."

"How 'bout if you drive the rest of the way home?" my mother says, tossing a small bag of groceries into the back seat beside Carrie.

"Sure thing," I say, and get out of the car to take over the driver's seat.

"Not much time," my mother reminds me.  "Okay!  Buckle up, everyone!"

We all fasten our seat belts, and then we're off.  My mother checks for traffic at every turn, every light, every intersection.  "Okay this way!" she calls out to me, or "No cars coming over here!" as if I couldn't see this for myself.  It gets on my nerves.  As a result, my driving is off:  I take the corners too sharply, too fast, too hard.  My mother throws me a couple of dirty looks and then makes a big show of clutching at the car's door handle every time we go round a bend like she's afraid of being thrown through the windshield or something.  But soon enough I've gotten us out of town; a few minutes later and we're turning down the road that leads to my parent's house.

"Check out the ducks, Carrie!" my mother calls.  "See them?  Over there.  Aren't they cute?"

She's points out the window, not at live ducks but to pair of plaster ones set out as lawn ornaments in front of one of the houses we're passing.  The people who own the house dress the ducks up in costumes, changing them every couple of months to match the seasons.  I take a quick glance as I drive by.  Today they're dressed in tank tops, one pink, one blue.  They have on straw sunbonnets too, with ribbons tied round the brims.  I roll my eyes, then notice in the rearview mirror that Carrie's watching me

"Did you see them, Carrie?" my mother asks.

"Yeah," she says distractedly.  "I saw."

"Weren't they cute?"

"Yeah," she says.

As we get closer to my parent's house I notice that miniature American flags have been stuck into the ground on either side of the road, one every thirty feet or so.  Some nut's gone overboard with Fourth of July zealousness, I suppose.

"Notice the flags?" my mother asks, as if reading my mind.

"Uh-huh."

"Tim put those up," she says proudly.  Tim's my eldest brother, the one who moved back in with my parents several years ago because of financial difficulties.  He's since become a real-estate agent, but, this being a hard way to earn a steady income, shows no signs of being in a position to move out on his own again anytime soon.  "Aren't they nice?"

Unfortunately, the idea that it's one of my own relatives who's succumbed to this patriotic fever is just too much for me.  I try to hold the words back, but can't seem to stop myself:  "No," I snap.  "I don't like them.  I don't like them at all."

I pull into the driveway, noting with irritation that still more miniature flags have been planted up and down both sides of it; there's a regular flurry of red, white, and blue.  I glare at them scornfully.

"Well then!  See you later," my mother chirps, grabbing her grocery bag off the back seat and fairly leaping from the car.  "Have fun, you two!"

Now I feel guilty.  I've either really pissed her off, or worse, hurt her feelings.

"That wasn't very nice," Carrie says.

I groan and start to back the car out of the drive again.  "Sorry," I mutter.

"Why don't you like the flags?" she asks.

I stop the car a moment and try to think.  "Oh, I don't know," I say.  "I suppose they're just too 'rah-rah' for me."

"Too 'rah-rah'?  What's that mean?"

"They're too conformist.  Too . . ."  How do I explain to a child?  "Too much about trying to get everyone to color inside the lines.  Too much about trying to make everyone the same.  Act the same, think the same –"

"But they're working," she tells me.

"Huh?  What d'you mean?"

She hops out of the back of the car and climbs into the front seat beside me, then taps my arm and points over at the yard.  There, I see, a sign has been put up, advertising my brother's real-estate firm.  "Call Tim Ott for All Your Housing Needs!" it proclaims.  Two more miniature American flags have been stuck into the wooden posts that hold the sign up.

"He's gotten five calls already."

"Oh," I say, a bit nonplussed.

"Now what do you think?" she asks.

"Well . . ." I mumble.  "I guess I think that Tim is one pretty smart cookie."

Carrie grins.

"Alrighty, then!" I say.  "Uhh . . . buckle up, everybody!"

"It's okay," she tells me.  "We don't have to if you don't want to."

"No fair!" I cry.  "I'm already buckled.  Anyhow, we do have to.  For Safety's Sake!"

Carrie grins again and fastens her seat belt.  I glance at the clock, back the car out onto the road and chug off towards the animal shelter, pressing hard on the gas.  Not much time, not much time . . .

"Uncle Simon?" says Carrie.

"Hmm?"

"Lisa and I decided we wanted to tell you something.  I was supposed to wait until Lisa got back from camp, but . . ."

"Oooh – is it a secret?" I ask.

"Sort of.  It's just something we kinda figured out."

"Really?  What's that?"

"Well, we decided that there must be some kind of virus that floats around in the air up where grownup people's heads are."

"Oh?"

"Yeah.  And it makes them angry all the time."

"Oh."

"Yeah.  And we decided we better tell you, cuz we know that you're really still just a kid.  So don't catch it.  Okay?"

"Okay," I say.  "I'll try not to."

Carrie looks at me sharply.  "Try hard," she says.

The animal shelter is a small, one-story building made of cinder blocks painted grey.  The three or four acres of woods which lie beside and behind it help give it a more bucolic feel, but the shelter itself is not a pretty place:  it's merely functional.  Inside there is a front office, several holding rooms for incoming animals, a cat room, a kennel, a prep room, and a laundry room.  This is where the stray animals of the town I live in are brought to stay, in hopes that they'll be adopted.  This is where all the dogs and cats who are no longer wanted are kept until, either because there is no longer room to house new arrivals, or because the stress and boredom of being kept in cages causes anti-social behaviors to develop, they must be euthanized – killed by the state – just as their human counterparts are kept in cages and sometimes killed by the state.  The obvious difference being, of course, that these animals have committed no crime.  They simply exist.

Carrie and I arrive in plenty of time for our hour's worth of volunteer work.  We aren't allowed to stay any longer than that because, during school vacation, there are so many children who offer their services that limits must be set with regard to number and time permitted.  Usually I do little more than supervise my nieces, but for today at least I'm told that in Lisa's absence I'm more than welcome to help exercise the animals.

We go into the cat room first.  There are about twenty cages in this room, housing about thirty cats, kittens being kept together two or three to a cage.  We check to see which cats are new and which of the cats we'd seen during previous visits have disappeared – hopefully into new homes.  I note with surprise that two of the new arrivals look like they could be twins of my own cats.

"Don't worry," Carrie tells me, checking the signs on the cages.  "They're both female, so they can't be yours."

It's so warm today that most of the adult cats look drugged with the heat and are content to be left alone to sleep.  Carrie and I use our time by taking out some of the kittens, snuggling them for a few minutes, then setting them down on the tile floor to scramble about and play.  We don't have much time, so we only spend about twenty minutes doing this, then head over to the kennel to walk some of the dogs.  In the forty minutes left to us, we'll be able to walk perhaps two or three dogs each.

The kennel consists of a long corridor with about twenty pens on either side.  The pens themselves consist of nothing more than an area of space about three feet wide by six feet deep; the floor is cement, the doors of the pens made of thick wire mesh.  When we first enter the kennel most of the dogs are silent.  They've heard us coming and seem to know what we're here for; each one's standing poised and alert in his or her cage, noses pointed in our direction, eyes watchful.  Their suspense is almost palpable:  Which one of them will we choose?  As we walk down the central aisle the dogs all begin barking, each one hoping to claim our attention; soon the air is filled with a cacophonous din.  Carrie picks out a beagle to walk first; realizing what's about to happen the animal grows wild with excitement.  Getting the leash over the dog's head is a tricky affair; you have to wedge your body just far enough inside the cage door to catch the dog without letting him escape.  Once we've got her dog leashed, Carrie takes him outside and puts him inside one of the two dog-runs provided, letting him use up some of his excess energy.  I go back inside.

I pick out a medium-sized dog, a rather sorry looking hound-mix with a tiny, bobbed tail.  She's nervous, but thrilled by the opportunity to get out of her cage; once I've got the leash on her it's all I can do to get the door shut again before she's pulling me out towards the open air.  Paws scrabbling against the concrete floor, she strains against the leash, choking and hacking.  The other dogs as I pass them set to howling and race madly round inside their pens.  "Why not me?  Why not me?" they seem to ask.  Once outside, I put my dog into the run for awhile; then we take off for a quick walk.  All too soon, she must be returned to her cage; these few minute's freedom are all I am able to give.  It seems a poor enough gift . . .

"But you've made some difference," my mother says to me later, when I'm telling her how it went that day.  I've betrayed some of the anger and depression I feel because of the sense of futility I have about these trips to the shelter, and she's anxious to reassure me.  "At any rate, you've done all you could.  And I think it's really good of you to provide an example to Carrie and Lisa, to show them how a caring person acts."

This is all true, of course.  I have done all that I could, or all that I know how to do at any rate.  But it does not seem enough.  It will never, I think, seem enough . . .

It does not seem enough.  It will never seem enough.  The trouble is, I know too well how those dogs feel, for I feel precisely the same.  There is an animal inside me, and that animal is wild, frantic with a yearning to be set free.  He wants to be free of all constraints, free of all the social constructs that have been set up in an attempt to control him, to direct his energy into the service of the state.  But how do I achieve this freedom?  Again and again I have asked myself that question.  One facet of knowledge alone is certain:  there is no one who can help me but myself.  Freedom depends on power, and the only power that counts is the power one finds within.

Freedom depends on power:  but I do not mean by this a power over others.  Rather, I mean the power that is inherent to the fulfillment of one's own organic being:  its self-recognition, and the self-mastery which, if it's to be found at all, can only be found in concurrence with this self-recognition.  The caveat is that the self-recognition must be genuine; if it's been abridged by any constraint derived from a source other than nature, self-mastery has been thwarted, and the power available to the individual thereby decreased.  This is as true for humans as it is for any other animal.  Any constraint which derives from other than natural law is by definition contrary to natural law, and thus becomes a form of oppression.  Oppression is that which abridges natural law for a purpose other than that of the individual pursuit for freedom, as defined under natural law.  Oppression is contrary to the right of each individual living being to fulfill itself via the self-mastery born out of self-recognition, and thus must be fought.  Oppression against other living beings leads to the oppression of oneself, for it betrays a belief in a hierarchical chain of being.  This is against natural law, and therefore it too must be fought . . .

But it is late now, very late – and I am weary to death of all these mental constructs I use to measure the value of my own behavior.  They partake, in methodology at least, too much of the social constraint I long to abjure.  It's late, and I am sitting here in my apartment alone.  I'm sitting here in my apartment alone and I'm looking out my window into the darkness – that great unknown.  Like a dog inside its pen, like a monkey inside its cage, I'm looking out the window of my apartment with a gaze that is attentive, watchful, and full of suspense . . .

PATIENT EYES