ThisLife

If I could sit down with Herr Nietzsche in a comfortable pub with a glass of beer, I would quizzically raise my eyebrows, point to myself, and say,... "There is awareness here." And wait for him to point out the non-factual interpretation in that observation.

. Just Sit There Just sit there right now Don’t do a thing. Just rest. For your separation from God Is the hardest thing in the world. Let me bring you trays of food And something That you like to drink. You can use my words As a cushion For your head. Hafiz

. I wish I could show you When you are lonely or in darkness The Astonishing Light Of your own Being. Hafiz .

. The story below has been extracted from the first three chapters of an absolute ‘gem’ of a book. It was first published in 1957 and has so continuously charmed readers that this simple, straight-forward telling of a magical life experience, has rarely been out of print ever since. Rather than go on about it too much, this time I’ll simply try to encourage you to immerse yourself in this author’s world by providing the Introduction taken from the original dust jacket, plus, a well-written Review from Amazon’s description of their latest re-print. With Christmas rapidly approaching, there’s many a reader who would appreciate receiving a rare, little-known ‘jewel’ like this once all the excesses of our biggest annual Bacchanalian romp finally begin to die down. * Introduction : “Take my camel, dear, said my Aunt.'' These, the opening words of Miss Macaulay's "The Towers of Trebizond," are already in a fair way to becoming a classic, and this fictional aunt a classic aunt. But Miss Farre's Aunt Miriam was a real aunt. She had saved enough money as a country school teacher in England to bring her in an income of £75 a year, bought a croft in Sutherland, and went there to live with her niece Rowena, then aged ten. True to the timelessness of the Highlands, Miss Farre does not tell us how long ago this was: not very long, one deduces. It will come as a shock to many to discover how remote and how simply it is still possible to live on this island. Once a fortnight in summer they drove in a pony-trap to an unnamed town to buy supplies; their only neighbours, (and they distant), were a shepherd and a crofter and his wife. Yet far from being alone they had their two pet squirrels, their two pet otters, their pet rat, other occasional or ephemeral birds and beasts, and above all Lora the Common Seal. Yet Lora was Common only in the nomenclature of the naturalist. This is a book of real and rare enchantment, simply written about simple and primitive things – a withdrawal from civilisation into nature, but without any touch of affectation. * Amazon Review : If you have enjoyed Gavin Maxwell's "Ring of Bright Water" you will enjoy this book! I first read “Seal Morning” as a child and have read it since as an adult. It is one of the most perfect "small" Scottish books; the setting is the living wilderness landscape of the north-west of Scotland, evoked by prose that is sparse and highly effective. Rowena and her aunt leave the Home Counties to live in Sutherland in a remote croft with their assorted pets and, of course, Lora the seal who could (after a fashion) play the xylophone, the mouth organ and even sing. The book tells of their lives (human, furred and feathered), joys and inevitable hardships while living there. * * * SEAL MORNING by Rowena Farre * CHAPTER ONE : THE WILDERNESS The county of Sutherland is composed for the greater of moor, bog, and water. Trees are a rarity; birch and pine scatter the moors singly or in small groups. Outcrops of rock, often weathered to strange shapes, are strewn over the landscape. When a storm is approaching, or in the half-light, the effect of this boulder-strewn landscape is eerie and to some people even frightening. After twenty years as a teacher in one of the Home Counties my Aunt Miriam, with whom I lived, decided to give up her career and return to her native Scotland. Her original plan had been to buy a small house near Inverness, where she had lived as a girl, but on hearing of a croft for sale at a moderate price in a particularly remote and barren part of Sutherland her pioneering spirit got the better of her, and, against the advice of friends and relations, she bought the place. The croft possessed no conveniences ancient or modern. Lighting was by paraffin lamps. Water had to be carried in buckets from a stream. There was, of course, no telephone. To get medical aid entailed a journey on foot or by trap to the nearest clachan, or village, some nine miles away, to put through a call to a township, for no doctor or nurse lived in the clachan. A path, little better than a sheep-track, wound from our door over the moors. It gradually merged into an unsurfaced road and for the last four miles, before entering the clachan, there was actually a coating of tarmac on it. During winter, stretches of this road would be covered in deep snowdrifts making travel along it impossible for weeks at a time. In late autumn we would get in a good supply of stores to tide us over the bad patches when we were snowbound. Behind us we left a countryside of trim fields and tall elms under which drowsed placid cattle, and we installed ourselves in an area where to ignore the white heads of cottongrass which sway over the bogs, or to fail to take one's bearings in an oncoming mist, could mean death. The move to our new abode took three weeks to accomplish. Every stick of furniture and piece of baggage, including an upright piano, had to be transported over the last six miles in a farm wagon. Besides the baggage and furniture, we also brought with us two grey squirrels and a weakly specimen of rattus norvegicus, i.e. a common brown rat. This latter had been presented to Aunt Miriam just before we left our snug, orchard-bound cottage by one of her former pupils. "I do hope you won't take his gift the wrong way, Miss Farre. He knows you are very fond of animals," the anxious father of the donator had thought well to explain. Aunt accepted Rodney in the spirit in which he was given, and passed him on to me. Of all the animals I have reared I can think of none which has given me more trouble than this ratling. His mouth being too tiny for the insertion of an old-fashioned pen-dipper, I was compelled to administer milk at all hours of the day and night by means of a piece of screwed up cottonwool, making sure that in his efforts to suck out the milk he did not swallow any of the wool. By the time we had settled into the croft his health, somewhat to my pride, was less precarious, and the natural energy and inquisitiveness possessed to a greater or lesser degree by all healthy animals were beginning to animate his behaviour. He soon became adept at climbing the parlour curtains and showed much interest in going over the contents of the sewing basket. Indeed, Rodney came near to being a full day's work. An ardent lover in any sphere of life cannot go long undetected, and within a week of arriving at the croft we received a visit from our nearest neighbour - a shepherd who lived four miles away. He carried in his arms a pair of otter cubs as a present for Aunt. The news had already reached him that she was 'fond of animals'. As well as the feeding of ourselves, which we found quite a problem at first in these remote parts, we also had to satisfy the voracious appetites of the animals. It was almost frightening to watch the otter cubs race through their meal of homemade brown bread and milk laced with oil, and, having licked clean the plate, look round for more. Rodney too, having started life with a negligible appetite, began to develop an alarming one for so small a creature. His main dish consisted of the same fare as the otters without the addition of oil, but fruit, vegetables, cakes, chocolates and biscuits went down equally well. To stave off the pangs of hunger between meals he took to climbing into the wastepaper basket and chewing up old envelopes. Fortunately for us, as they grew older all our animals became largely self-supporting where food was concerned the otters catching fish in the numerous streams and the nearby lochan (small loch). Our days began to run to a pattern of rising tending the animals, breakfast, my lessons - I was ten when I went to live in the croft - carrying in the day's supply of water, cooking, walks over the magnificent countryside during summer, a trip to the clachan once a fortnight to collect provisions in the small pony trap we had bought, and in the evenings strumming on the piano and reading. When I first came to these wild parts there was one thing which impressed itself most forcibly on my consciousness, and which still remains my most potent memory of them. That was the silence. It was a permanent, living silence. Thunder, driving rain, and keening wind were sounds which seemed to emanate from it and fade back into it. Sometimes, particularly on a hot summer's day, it could be sensed in its profundity for the space of a few seconds, unbroken by so much as a crepitation or stirring of wind. At other moments the sudden bark of a deer or cry of a whaup only served to emphasise its depth. It was a vast, unseen but ever present reality. The croft consisted of a kitchen-cum-parlour, a small bedroom apiece, and a tiny room which was used as a workroom, or a guest room when we had visitors. All the rooms were on the ground floor, there being no upper storey. Outside, within a few yards of the croft, was a partitioned byre. One side was the pony's quarters and the other was used for storing drums of paraffin, bins of grain, tinned food, and the animals' biscuits and fodder. Strangely enough, one of the things we had to do without during the first months of our arrival was fresh milk. The shepherd, Mr. McNairn, kept a cow and would have been willing to sell us a measure of milk each day, but to walk eight miles a day for a can of milk seemed a somewhat extravagant waste of time, so we made do with skimmed and condensed. Later on two goats were added to the livestock and thenceforth we did not lack for fresh milk. Though when we first acquired them, inexpert milker that I was, it struck me not infrequently that perhaps after all it would have been quicker to walk to our neighbour's croft to collect it. Gradually we and the animals began to adapt ourselves to the new surroundings. It had seemed likely that, with streams and the lochan so close, the otter cubs on growing older would quickly return to their natural life. We made it a rule not to keep an animal if it wished to leave us, unless it had received some injury or was sickly. Otters are great wanderers and travel for miles over the countryside, swimming and on foot. They prefer, though, to travel long distances at night. Hansel and Gretel, however, as I had inappropriately named them, seldom wandered far from the croft that first summer, and always returned dutifully each evening. At nights they slept in a straw-lined box in the parlour. The squirrels, Cuthbert and Sara, took quite a while to adapt themselves to this strange wilderness to which we had brought them. The sight of the wide open spaces filled them with alarm and sent them bolting through the door and into their wicker cage on the slightest provocation. Gradually they became bolder and took to climbing on to the thatched roof of the croft, which soon became their favourite playground. Here they were often joined by Rodney. Cuthbert, the male squirrel, developed an unfortunate habit of sitting on the chimney. We kept a fire in the range day and night, winter and summer. As he peered down the hole or warmed himself in chill weather on the heated bricks he would become drugged by the smoke, topple over, and come hurtling on to the range. Although he singed his coat badly on two occasions and sustained minor shocks, it took an even bitterer experience than these before he lived and learnt to avoid the chimney. On this third occasion he landed slap into a saucepan of porridge which, though hot, had luckily not come to the boil. He was a sorry mess when I plucked him out and my ministrations on his behalf in the form of a bath and brisk rub-down were not appreciated. But after that tumble he left the chimney severely alone. The first winter in our new home was a particularly exhausting one. For days at a time we were unable to leave the croft because of the heavy falls of snow. Then the fuel ran out and for close on a week we had no fires or hot meals. The snow was succeeded by fierce winds and heavy downpours. The hours of daylight were brief. Often the darkness extended past noon and we were cooking the lunch by lamplight. By half-past four it was growing dark again. In June of the following year I left to spend a holiday with friends on the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The weather throughout my stay was very rough. Walking along the beach one morning to collect pieces of driftwood, I saw a fisherman coming towards me carrying an oddly shaped creature in his arms. He told me it was a young seal which had probably got washed off its rock during the night by the gale and separated from its mother. Many young seals are lost in this manner. What was a little unusual was the fact that it was a Common Seal, a species more often found on the East Coast, the Hebrides being the breeding ground of the larger, less intelligent Atlantic Seal. Although my knowledge of seal upbringing was of the scantiest, I promptly asked the fisherman if I might have it, and, greatly to my joy, he placed the seal in my arms. A bottle was presented to me by a kindly woman and I was instructed how to fill it with warmed milk mixed with a little oil. Seals' milk is very rich, containing almost ten times more fat than cows' milk. Lora, as I had named her, took to the bottle without fuss and showed every prospect of thriving. She became very tame almost from the start and enjoyed being handled and stroked. Animal lover though I knew Aunt Miriam to be, I decided after some thought not to inform her in my letter that I had become the owner of a young Common Seal, but to take my pet back unannounced as a 'surprise', trusting that Lora's affectionate nature would win Aunt over to the realisation that a home without a seal lacks a vital member of the family party. A fortnight later I set off on the two days' journey home with Lora, a somewhat bulky parcel weighing over thirty-eight pounds, wrapped up in a tartan rug. CHAPTER TWO : BRINGING UP A SEAL "There are few eyes in the orbits of men and women which suggest more pleasantly the ancient thought of their being windows of the soul. The lids of the eyes are fringed with long, perfect lashes. The mothers' eyes are large, lustrous, blue-blackish and are humid and soft with the tenderest expressions. . . In the case of the adult males, the light framework of the skull supports an expressive pair of large, bluish-hazel eyes; alternately burning with revengeful passionate light, then suddenly changing to the tones of tenderness and good nature." This piece of flattery was not penned in admiration of the eyes of a section of the human race, as might be supposed, but in admiration of those of the seal tribe, and was written by a 19th century American naturalist, Henry Wood Elliott, who was a great lover of seals and devoted most of his life to their study. That short extract is typical of his writing much of which is devoted to extolling the seals' virtues. It is a fact that seals have most beautiful and expressive eyes. Even as a pup Lora learnt to use hers with telling effect. A look from her was enough to send me running to fill her bottle or make me aware that she wished to be picked up. Aunt Miriam too, having stated categorically on my arrival home that the pup must be taken back to the sea directly she was able to fend for herself, was won over by Lora in a few days, and much to my relief the subject of her eventual departure from our midst was not mentioned again. But already, though we were unaware of it then, we had left her return to her natural element too late to be accomplished satisfactorily, even had we wished it, for seals, when adopted and reared by hand, become devoted to their human owners and more affectionate than dogs. If taken out to sea in a boat and dropped over the side a seal will follow the vessel or, if the owners manage to make a getaway unnoticed, the deserted creature, in spite of its slow gait, will often travel miles overland in an attempt to find its old home. Bringing up a seal was no light task, as I was soon to discover. Left on her own for a while Lora would start the curious baaing sound that young seals make, and should no one hasten to her this would change to plaintive whining interspersed with angry barks, which would be kept up until she was given attention. As a pup she had a bottle four times a day. My first mistake in seal upbringing was to allow her to have it on my lap. This privilege once accorded she had no intention of relinquishing it without a tussle. Even when fully grown, measuring some three-and-a-half feet and tipping the scales at over three hundredweight she would still try and scramble up on to a stranger's lap should he or she be weak enough to allow her to do so. Once on my return from a walk I went into the parlour to find Lora entrenched on a breathless and terrified lady visitor. "She started to bark each time I tried to make her get down and . . . I wasn't sure if seals bit, so I didn't push her too hard," I was informed. I promptly ordered a reluctant Lora on to the floor. Allowing her to sleep at the bottom of my bed was another mistake. A seal pup on one's feet is one thing but a fully-grown seal quite another. It took me several weeks to train her to lie on a low bamboo couch at nights and to refrain from surreptitiously trying to clamber back on to the bed. When on dry land seals move by pulling themselves along on their flippers. No sooner was she past infancy than Lora started to waddle after me round the croft and trail me over to the byre. If I set out on a walk her wails of protest at being left behind would pursue me into the distance. I decided that I must train her to become more independent and capable of amusing herself. We possessed a small rowboat which was kept in a sheltered inlet of the lochan. One day, seeing that the weather was not likely to turn squally I took her out in it and dropped her over the side. In a moment, she was swimming vigorously, diving twisting, and circling the boat with incredible swiftness. From a slow-moving awkward creature she had turned into one of the utmost grace and speed. Each day henceforth she spent many hours swimming with the otters in the lochan. Should we want her, a call from us would usually bring her to the shore. Seals have no ear conches yet they possess very acute hearing. Now that she had discovered her true element and was growing older our food problem was eased considerably, for she hunted her own fish. The natural diet of seals is crustaceans and fish. But, like most domesticated animals, Lora's taste ranged beyond the natural and she was not averse to a raw carrot, porridge, and, as an occasional treat, a spoonful of oil from a sardine tin. At nights she had a supper consisting of dog biscuits soaked in milk and oil. Training animals who live in one’s own home is somewhat akin to training children; each individual must learn to fit into the life of the household, scope must be given for particular talents to develop, and allowances made for varying degrees of intelligence. In the case of a highly intelligent animal like the Common Seal elementary training is quick and easy. Lora soon learnt that her mackintosh was kept on a lower shelf of the dresser and that when she came in from the lochan she must sit on it. When still a pup she would bark for one of us to lay it out for her. As she grew older she taught herself to pull it off the shelf and to spread it out fairly adequately on the floor. As seals have stiff, shiny hairs most of the water pours off them directly they emerge and the drying process is comparatively short. Obedient in many ways and quick to learn, Lora's inquisitive nature got her into trouble more than once. Anything a little strange or new had to be investigated. Thus she would pull at the tablecloth and bring down a shower of cutlery and glasses. The squirrel's cage had eventually to be hung up out of her reach, for she was always pushing her nose through the small door, which was kept tied back, and the squirrels until they had got used to her presence, would be driven into a frenzy of alarm. During a particularly good relay of an opera she knocked over the battery wireless set, and before Aunt Miriam could reach it a knob was almost torn from its socket. This meant five weeks for us without a set. These sort of misdeeds had to be stopped. We tried to steer her avid curiosity into more fruitful channels. I am against teaching animals tricks, but I see no reason why domestic animals should not be taught to be useful in ways which do not go contrary to their natures. I began teaching Lora to fetch and carry different objects and to take the mail from the postman. The post was delivered twice a week. There was a box set on a short pole about two miles on the track from us. Here we were supposed to collect it, but the postman being a sociable soul, as are most in these parts, generally walked the odd two miles to the croft for a chat and a cup of tea. It was not long before Lora learnt to know on what days he arrived and at approximately what time. Directly she caught sight of his figure coming up the hill she would start towards him. On meeting, he would place the letters in her mouth and she would follow after in his wake. Delivery was apt to be a little tardy over the last lap. There was one unfortunate occasion when, busy over the teacups we did not notice her progress, and halfway to the croft, she decided to go for a swim in the lochan taking the mail with her. Needless to mention, that bundle of letters was lost for ever and aye. What gave her especial delight was to be allowed to unpack the shopping basket when we returned from a trip to the clachan or township. Tins would be lifted out carefully and if round, rolled across the floor; exciting looking packages would be shaken hard. Even such mundane objects as dusters and washing-up mops would be sniffed and closely inspected. The basket emptied at last, she would carry it to its place by the kitchen cupboard. The croft stood in a little oasis of emerald grass. This greenery extended for about five yards in front before meeting with the heather. To the rear of the croft was a clearing of earth for the growing of a few vegetables, and this was ringed with the grass which acted as a slight barrier against the moorland. Stones seemed to grow like weeds in this tiny patch of ground wrested from the wilderness. Every so often we went over it with hoe and spade to clear it of yet more stones. In the 'garden' we started to grow quite a variety of vegetables; radishes, lettuce, spinach, cabbages and leeks. Potatoes did not do well, seldom reaching a worthwhile size and remaining green. Perhaps the earth did not go deep enough for them. So we gave up planting these. They became a subsidiary item of our meals, bread and oats being our mainstay. A kindly and valiant friend came to stay with us for a week bringing with her a quantity of roots and herb cuttings, together with a stack of heavy flower pots to plant them in. Unfortunately there was no earth to spare from the garden so we had to dig for it on the moors. Hard labour with a vengeance. When there was a tidy mound, the earth was sieved through a coarse sieve to get rid of the ubiquitous stones. The cuttings meanwhile were being kept alive - we hoped - in a bowl of water. When there was a sufficient quantity of sieved earth we potted them and trusted they would 'take'. Surprisingly enough, several sprigs and roots did take, and later on we were able to vary our somewhat monotonous diet by adding herbs and herb sauces. In winter we brought the pots in and ranged them against the sill. No matter what the weather might get up to outside we could still pick parsley to make a savoury porridge, and a sprig of thyme and leaf or two of lemon verbena for an oatmeal sweet. During our first summer we began to collect large stones in order to make a wall round the garden to act as a break from the winds and as an obstruction to the rabbits. We piled the stones one on top of another until the wall was about three feet in height and two feet thick. Inside this barricade we fixed wire-netting as an additional protection against the rabbits. We soon found that the wall itself, which completely enclosed the garden was no good at all as a means of keeping the pests at bay. Apart from their burrowing skill, the rabbits were also expert climbers and would have made worthy members of the Alpine Club. They thought nothing of scrambling up the loosely laid wall and springing down to the other side. When we had the netting fixed we believed that that would foil them, as it was cunningly placed several feet away from the wall, leaving a gap of no man's land in between. Any rabbit which jumped down now would find itself in the run, cut off from the vegetables, or so we thought. But a few worthy members of the rabbit tribe managed to prove us wrong. One morning we were nonplussed on seeing a rabbit devouring a young lettuce. We gave chase at once but our quarry escaped through the back door, which we had thoughtlessly left open, and out via the front. A thorough search revealed no holes under the wire and despairingly we reached the conclusion that as well as scaling the wall it must have scaled the wire too. That being so we agreed it would be as well not to waste our energy planting vegetables, but to admit that the rabbits had beaten us. The following morning on getting up I happened to glance through my window and I noticed one sitting on the wall. I began watching it in the hope of discovering how it set about clearing the last fence. And that was literally what it did do. For a moment it seemed to be measuring with its eye the distance between the wall and the netting. Then, with a leap, it was across and had landed in the garden. In the past my only close acquaintanceship with rabbits had been with a couple of pet angoras whose intelligence had always struck me as being singularly low. But these Sutherland bunnies, I realised, were of a superior order, and not to be compared with the nitwitted, woolly angoras. As I watched the little all-round sportsman take a preliminary nibble at a radish leaf I felt almost willing to let him continue the feast. Then I remembered the many days of hard labour I had spent digging up stones and sowing rows of seeds, and I decided otherwise. Having summoned Aunt Miriam, we once more gave chase, this time with the back door closed. Many minutes of running and jumping over the vegetables - now beginning to look as though a sirocco had blown over them - left us exhausted and angry but the rabbit unconcerned, with its vitality apparently unimpaired. Whilst we debated the next move it sat cleaning its face by a cabbage. "Fetch the landing net," said Aunt Miriam curtly. This net was used by us to land fish but I supposed there was no reason why it should not land a rabbit as well. More minutes followed of hectic running and jumping. Eventually the rabbit was cornered and bolted into the net. What now? "I can't kill him," said Aunt promptly. Certainly, I could not. We rarely ate meat in spite of being surrounded by game, and a rabbit hot-pot would have been welcome. But not, I believe, a hot-pot made from this rabbit. Even had we been able to bring ourselves to put an end to its life it would have been unlikely that either of us would have relished eating so worthy a foe. Yet it seemed ridiculous to free him after all the trouble he had given us, and allow him the opportunity to make a return visit to the garden. But that is what we did do, tipping him over the wall whence he disappeared into the heather. As we were both too squeamish to twist his neck there seemed nothing else to be done. Mr. McNairn called later on in the day, and our confession that we had given the rabbit his freedom made him slap his hand on the table with anger. "A wee twist of its neck or a tap on the head would hae done it - let him loose! If only I'd arrived a while sooner. It's a dog you are wanting, Miss Farre. Rabbits smell a dog same as mice smell a cat and keep away." "No," said Aunt firmly, "we can't have any more animals. As it is -" "There's no point in wearing yourselves out over a patch of garden unless you hae a dog to keep the varmints from snitching the greens, is there now ? You make him sleep over in the byre and never let him put a foot in the croft. Kept like that he'll be nae trouble to ye.” In due course a yellow mongrel pup, called Ben, arrived. He stood low on the ground, had flop ears, and was barrel chested. But in spite of a somewhat heavy and ungainly build he was fleet of foot. For minutes at a time he would sit on the wall watching for a slight movement in the heather, at which he would spring off and investigate. He proved an excellent deterrent to the rabbits. After his arrival we began to have rabbit on the menu frequently, for whenever he caught one he would bring it back, dead but never badly mauled, and in return for one of its paws and a biscuit he would give up the booty. As well as catching rabbits he became adept at catching the vicious little weasels, and once he returned home with a stoat. His love of the chase eventually proved his undoing. Having no dog companion, Ben took up with the otters who were about the same size as himself. His habits became quite aquatic. He would swim considerable distances after them in the lochan, and when I threw the ball out to them from the boat, he would try to reach it before they did. As a cat and dog will learn to live peaceably together in a house so will other species of animals. After a week over in the byre Ben had managed without much difficulty, to become a permanent member of the croft, sleeping at nights on the matting in front of the range. During the evenings there would be quite a gathering in the parlour. The larger animals, Lora, Ben and the otters, would put up with the smaller fry with fairly good grace. But during the day, when out in the open, Rodney and the squirrels had to look sharp when the otters or Ben were around. The sight of a rat or squirrel streaking past the croft invariably proved too big a temptation for them to resist, and in spite of our admonishments we were never able to train them not to chase these small creatures. We had not been long at the croft before I had an experience which made me wary in future of the burns after there had been heavy falls of rain. To the west of us was the mountainous district of the Ben Armine range, dominated by the peak of Ben Armine. To the east were the Knockfin Heights and Cnoc Coirena Fearna. Large tracts of the Ben Armine country and the country to the north consist of deer forest. A forest up here does not mean an area covered by trees, but uncultivated, usually hilly or mountainous country, given over to deer and other game. Rivers and burns criss-cross this countryside. Through the Ben Armine area run the rivers Skinsdale and Blackwater and their many tributaries. To the north the Borrabal Forest is watered by the River Free. Farther north again is a string of lochs, including the beautiful Loch a'Chlair and Baddanloch. A glance at a map of this area will show that the only names here are those of loch, river and hill; it is completely devoid of name of township or clachan. The rain had fallen steadily throughout the night and the following morning. After lunch the sky cleared and it looked as if the weather had set in for a few hours sunshine. I decided to go fishing for trout in one of the burns. Brown trout were plentiful round here. Taking Ben with me, I started off westwards, climbing steadily. The burn for which I was making was only a yard or so wide and the water, a deep russet through running over peat hags, barely reached my knees. On past occasions I had been fortunate in that more than once a trout had flipped into the landing net. I have never fished for 'sport', only for food, and this being so I had no qualms about using the net instead of the rod and line favoured by sportsmen. The burn when I reached it looked the same as usual. Removing my shoes, I stood in the water, the net held out hopefully. Ben, momentarily tired of hunting was lying on the bank. Fishing gives ample time for reflection, and my thoughts as I stood there were soon concerned with other matters than the possibility of a catch. Perhaps ten minutes passed then glancing up at the heights I saw to my astonishment and terror a great mass of water, like a brown avalanche, coming towards me. In an instant, before there was a chance of getting out of its course, I was knocked down and hurtled forwards. The sky was blotted out and I was tossed and buffeted as though I were a twig. Suddenly I was flung up against a flat rock with a tremendous bump which knocked the little remaining air from my lungs. But my hands instinctively gripped the top of the rock and I began pulling myself upwards. When I had recovered somewhat I stared below at the raging torrent which a moment or two ago had been a gently flowing burn. I looked round for Ben but could not see him and I presumed he must have been drowned in the flood. Over to one side of the rock was high ground, and I managed to jump across the waters to it and reach safety. On the way homewards Ben caught up with me, panting and much excited, his coat wet from the ducking. Somehow he too had got clear of the deluge and reached safety. Apart from the loss of the net and a severe bruising I had got off lightly. Soon after this incident I began keeping a small book in which I wrote down words which held a definite meaning for various members of our animal fraternity. I excluded only the goats and the pony. Under the heading 'Rodney' I find six words; basket, out, raisins, nuts, roof, and Rodney. When any of these words were spoken to him he would, if in the right mood act in a definite manner. 'Basket !' for instance, would send him, generally at a snail's pace, into his box filled with dry grass. 'Nuts !', however, would send him running towards the left-hand side of the dresser in which was kept a tin of nuts. 'Raisins!' would have him running eagerly over to the right-hand side in which was kept the tin of raisins. Although the words 'nuts' and 'raisins' sent the squirrels scampering to the dresser in anticipation they were never able to distinguish, as could Rodney, between the two words. On either being spoken they would keep up a brisk scamper, back and forth in front of the dresser, squeaking excitedly, until duly rewarded. So under the separate headings of Cuthbert and Sara the two words are tied and counted as one. Looking through the booklet I find that Lora, as was usual in little tests of this kind, comes off best by a very long way. The total number of words under her column is thirty-five. Here are a few of them: basket (her own bamboo couch); in; out; here; Lora; aunt; Rowena; Ben; Hansel; Gretel; Mr. Dobbie (the postman); boat; swim (this word had the same effect on her as 'walk' has on most dogs and had to be used with discretion); ball; sing; mouth organ; trumpet; stick (a drumstick with which she used to play the xylophone); biscuits; plate, (her own plate); mackintosh. Of course, as with the other animals too, there were several words and phrases which held a vague meaning for her and to which she sometimes reacted, but these I did not list. Here are the totals of the rest in order of merit; Gretel, the female otter-eighteen words. Hansel, the male otter - sixteen. Ben-twelve. Cuthbert and Sara - five apiece. Amongst other things that Lora learnt in her early days was never to leave the boat till told she might do so, for there was a danger of its being overturned, unless Aunt Miriam or I were sitting in the right spot to counter-balance her dive. And she also learnt never to touch the boat whilst swimming under it for the same reason. Before this lesson was firmly instilled, though, she had overturned the boat twice, on both occasions fortunately on a hot summer's day when I was wearing a bathing costume. The lochan was relatively free of weeds but neither Aunt nor I ever swam in it unless the other one was in the boat ready to row over should the swimmer find herself in difficulties. Sometimes Lora would surface holding a stone in her mouth. Gradually she came to learn that when I said 'Stone!' and pointed with a finger down at the water she was expected to dive for one. Unlike Ben with the rabbits, and regrettably where our larder was concerned, Lora never brought back any fish she had caught. All her catches were gulped down on the spot or else taken on to the shore and eaten there. Not once was I able to extract a fish from her in exchange for a biscuit. CHAPTER THREE LORA AND MUSIC Since ancient times it has been known that seals are attracted by music and singing and this fact has been woven into many a legend. And Man has known too of the Common Seal's ability to learn to play different instruments. I have in my possession an eighteenth century book in which there is an engraving of a Common Seal playing the bagpipes. Lora's musical talent came out early. Whenever Aunt Miriam or I struck up on the piano the other animals would take no notice. Not so Lora. She would wriggle over to the instrument, lean against it or (more inconveniently) the player's legs, and listen with an expression of intense concentration and joy which was quite flattering, swaying now and then with her whole body to the music. When the music stopped she would sit quietly for several minutes, still under its spell. Her reactions to my singing however, can only be described as humiliating. A relation had sent me a mouth organ and book of songs for a birthday present. Thumbing through the book, I decided that I would do a little singing practice each day. For the first session I chose a time when Aunt was out picking wild raspberries and there was not an animal within sight. After a preliminary scale or two, I started off on 'Men of Harlech'. To my annoyance, I heard a loud groan beside me. Looking down, I saw Lora and continued singing. Whereupon she broke into a roar. Seals have perhaps the largest vocal range among mammals. Their repertoire includes grunts, snorts, barks, peculiar mewing, hisses, and a wail which often rises from a deep bass to a treble. The roar turned to a hiss. I still took no notice but my reedy efforts were soon outclassed. Then I had the idea of letting her sing on her own to my accompaniment. During the practice sessions which followed when I played a simple tune at a fairly slow pace with bars of steadily ascending and descending notes, she made valiant efforts to follow the music in a tuneless wail. A sudden high or low note, or a piece played too quickly plainly annoyed her, for she would start to grunt and beat about with her fore-flippers - a habit of hers when angry. Within a week she was able to get through 'Baa - baa Black Sheep' and 'Danny Boy' without a break, and was beginning to learn, 'Where my Caravan has Rested'. She began to pester me for the mouth organ. I was playing it outside the croft one afternoon and, growing weary of the grunts and whines and a heavily whiskered nose pressed against my face every so often as she attempted to wrest it from me, I finally acknowledged defeat and placed it in her mouth. From that moment she considered the mouth organ to be hers. Having gained possession of it, she found to her annoyance that it emitted no sound in spite of being gnawed with vigour. So she started tossing it up into the air and catching it as though it were the ball, and then, her annoyance increasing, rolling on it. All to no effect. Taking the instrument in her mouth once again she gave a loud sigh of desperation. This produced a blast of noise from the mouth organ and galvanised Lora to fresh efforts. I set off for a walk. When I returned in about an hour there were most curious sounds coming from the rear of the croft. Lora had learnt the blow-suck method and there she was, blowing and sucking feebly, in a state of almost complete exhaustion, for she had been doing this, apparently, ever since I had left her. She made no protest when I took the mouth organ from her. From that day onwards it became her favourite toy replacing in her affections the rubber ball which she shared with the dog and otters. I do not think Mr. Larry Adler would have approved of her playing, but it certainly gave her a great deal of pleasure. I happened to mention in a letter to an elderly relation of mine that Lora was developing into a remarkable seal and could sing and play the mouth organ. Aunt Felicity was a staunch defender of all animals, wild and domesticated, and sat on numerous committees which saw to their protection and well-being. The merest suspicion in her mind that an animal was being badly treated roused her fighting spirit. Her letter in reply to my own left me in no doubt that she considered I was committing heinous crimes against the hapless Lora. "Dear Rowena, I was shocked and ashamed to learn from your letter that you of all people, whom I have always considered to be a lover of animals, should be capable of mistreating one so," she began. Then her, anger increasing, she continued - "Zoos are an abomination, circuses are worse. . . yet by keeping that seal confined to a croft and only allowing it brief swims in a small loch you prove yourself to be no better than a zoo keeper; and by training it in such unnatural antics as singing and playing on a mouth organ you have sunk to the level of an animal trainer at a circus . . . Don't go telling me in your next letter that you teach the creature by kindness as I know for a fact that only long hours of forced practice could make it perform such tricks." I did not mention Lora in my next letter, writing only about such safe subjects as the weather - variable as ever up in these parts - and our amateur attempts at making raspberry jam. Aunt Felicity, though facts were against me no doubt, was quite wide of the mark where Lora's freedom and musical practice were concerned. At nights Lora slept on her couch in my room. The door of the bedroom was left ajar and the front door was also kept open during the summer so that an animal could get out should it wish to. Most mornings, when breakfast had been eaten and cleared away, and the other animals had long since been out and about, Lora, a late riser, was still dozing on the couch. So it was a surprise when I was woken up very early one morning - it could not have been much later than half-past five-by her flopping off the couch and going into the parlour. The silence was shattered a moment later by hideous blow-suck noises. Her mouth organ had been left on the carpet the night before and it seemed she had decided to put in a little practice on it. Snarls and growls from Ben and the otters proved that they were finding early morning music as uncongenial as I was. "Take that thing away from her at once!" shouted Aunt Miriam. I did as I was bidden and placed the mouth organ on the mantelpiece. The whines which followed at having her plaything taken from her were almost as aggravating as the previous cacophony. Eventually she took herself off to the lochan. By then it was time to get up anyway. A young friend of mine, after visiting us, sent her a toy trumpet. Lora soon learnt to render ear-splitting blasts on this when it was held for her. Another admirer sent her a small xylophone complete with beater. She would hold the beater in her front teeth and bang any note to which I pointed. Her self-imposed practising on these various instruments drove us almost to distraction at times. It became necessary to put them out of her reach and allow her to play them only for short periods in the evenings. An unfortunate result of the singing lessons I had given her was that now, whenever Aunt or I began to play the piano, Lora, were she in the vicinity, would immediately lift her head and wail fortissimo. It is well nigh impossible to struggle through a Brahms' sonata with a seal singing at the top of its voice. So most of our playing had to be done when she was in the lochan. Pessimistic friends and relations had all predicted that our stay at the croft would be a short one. "Mind you come and see us directly you get back to civilisation" was the tone of the letters we received on arrival at the croft. When a year had passed and it became evident that we were in no hurry to return to civilisation the tone of the letters changed, and many a harried, town-dwelling friend wrote saying she envied us the peace and quiet of our lives. Peace we had certainly found, but a musical seal, two boisterous otters and other fauna do not make for the quietest of lives even in remote Sutherland. Birds are comparatively tame up here, though not so numerous or varied in species as in the coastal areas. Among those which visited the vicinity of the croft were ring ouzels, stonechats, blackbirds, thrushes, twites, and meadow-pipits. Close by the byre grew a rowan tree and two silver birches and this tiny glade drew a number of temporary and semi-permanent bird visitors. A cuckoo was a regular visitor during the summer months. We missed its haunting two-note song when it migrated. This bird grew so tame that it would perch on an out-stretched arm and fly on to our shoulders when we were working in the garden. However isolated the area in which one lives there is always the chance of rats eventually catching up with one, particularly when livestock is kept so that grain and fodder have to be stored. Rats were the cause of thirty people, the entire population of North Rona, starving to death on that island in 1686. They came ashore off a wreck and ate up the barley which was the inhabitants' chief food supply. When visiting the township we used to be in half a mind whether to acquire a kitten in order to ward off this possible menace. But the knowledge that a kitten would also be a deterrent to the birds decided us against getting one. Rodney apart, we were fortunate in never being troubled by rats whilst at the croft. More and more birds came to haunt our patch of land and old friends returned year after year, the cuckoo amongst them. There was one species of bird whose absence we would have welcomed, and that was the hoodie crow, perhaps the worst pest of the highlands. It does enormous damage to crops, sucks the eggs of other birds, including the grouse, thus earning the opprobrium of game-keepers, and it attempts to drive other birds away from its vicinity. Our problem was how to drive off the hoodies without scaring away the more welcome visitors. Whenever we found a maimed bird or animal, or - during the winter - one suffering from the effects of a severe spell of weather, we would bring it in and attempt to heal or revive it. Aunt Miriam was an amateur, though not inconsiderable, vet. Our first victim up here chanced to be one of these hoodies. I found it in a dip of the moors with a badly torn wing. It was put into a wire cage and its injury attended to. When it had fully recovered it was released. For those who genuinely love birds and animals it is no easy task deciding where to draw the line between rank sentimentalism and unnecessary slaughter. The word "vermin" as used by some would include every creature which deprived mankind of the merest jot of his own foodstuffs. At the other extreme are those who say we have no right to take any creature's life and are erring when we imbibe a glass of milk - milk belonging, according to their lights, solely to the calf. But these extremists have been unforthcoming in putting forward suggestions as to how they would solve the rat and hoodie problem, among others. Animals are killed for their leather as well as for meat, but the most saintly vegetarian seems to think nothing of wearing leather shoes and carrying a leather wallet, while he is ever ready to shout with disgust - “dead flesh !" - when confronted with the meat-eating fraternity. Having written a little on what seem to me flaws in the ethics of others where bird, beast and fish are concerned, let me expose an anomaly in my own ethics, if I have not already done so. Of recent years I have brought myself to kill any creature whose malady or injuries I have felt uncertain of being able to heal reasonably quickly and painlessly, even though the act of killing invariably fills me with repulsion. I take home any ailing creature which I believe I shall be able to heal, whether it be rat or hoodie, and try to do what I can for it. Yet I would not hesitate to kill rats which invaded my premises, nor to join with those who say the numbers of certain species, including the beautiful red deer, should be kept within definite limits. Red deer can be a real menace to the croft dweller, as we were later to discover. But all killing, I believe, should be as swift and painless as possible, and those who have to kill should make sure that they use methods which are so. A person who has the inborn quality of being able to attract wild creatures is a rarity - these days, at any rate. I have known only two people who possess this faculty, one of whom was Aunt Miriam. Her mother noticed when she was quite a small child that if she were left alone in the garden birds would hop round her and flit on to her shoulders. At the approach of anyone else they would fly off. For a long while Aunt was unaware that this attraction birds felt for her was in any way unusual. Animals were drawn to her too. She never had any fear of them. For a number of years I believed that wild creatures perhaps sensed in her a lack of the urge to kill and this partially accounted for their behaviour towards her. Later, when I met an elderly Eskimo trapper in Iceland who also had this unusual gift I was compelled to discount such a theory. I have seen this man sitting in open country with as many as five rabbits cropping the grass round him. And he was able to pick one up and fondle it as though it were a pet without the rabbit evincing the slightest alarm. Yet had he felt inclined for a rabbit supper he would not have hesitated to wring its neck. Needless to say, this man had been a highly successful trapper and had seldom lacked for meat. If he walked through a spinney of birch scrub a whistle would bring birds fluttering to him. Though he never scrupled to use his power over wild creatures to his own advantage, this Eskimo would carry a small leather pochet on his person filled with grain and bits of fat to feed the birds, which flew to him as if to a magnet. Like Aunt, he could offer no explanation as to why he should possess this rare gift except that his father had likewise possessed it, and his grandfather also. So it seems probable that it can be inherited. In Aunt Miriam’s case this was not so; neither of her parents was gifted in this way. Although I did not have the good fortune to possess the gift either, I did discover a very useful means whereby I could hold the attention of wild seals - and a tame one - when I came to study them later. It also had the effect of largely dispelling their fear of my person. Man is and ever has been the seal's greatest enemy. At my school down south I had made and learnt to play a simple bamboo finger pipe. The tone was pleasant, but the range of notes only extended an octave so the number of tunes which could be played on it was limited. We had been at the croft well over a year before I troubled to unpack it. On hearing the sound of pipe music Lora - who was sitting outside shaking a tin which a thoughtful guest had filled with pebbles for her - came in, dropped the tin on the floor, and sat herself in front of me. Though I have no knowledge of séances, it appeared to me that she went into a light trance; her eyes had a far-away look and she seemed quite oblivious of everything except the music. As long as I continued to play she sat there, still and absorbed, never attempting to sing. And this was the way pipe music always affected her. Again, as with the piano, it made no impression on the other animals. Whenever I took one of her instruments from her Lora would start a rumpus of whining and barking which could be sorely trying to the nerves. Having seen the effect piping had on her I began to use subtler methods. While Lora was going over the National Anthem for the umpteenth time on the xylophone, whacking each note with verve if not always with accuracy, I would start playing the pipe. She would glance up, the beater would drop from her mouth, and in a moment she would be spellbound, sitting quietly with her eyes half closed. Still playing, with never a let up, I would sneak away her toy and place it on a shelf. When the music stopped and she opened her eyes and gazed about her, she would look mildly surprised at finding her plaything gone but on these occasions she never whined for its return. The piping had fulfilled its purpose - for ten minutes or so at any rate. Visitors to the croft could never understand why we would not let Lora play and sing for hours on end, which she would have been perfectly happy to do if given the chance. Although they would tell us in their letters that they were looking forward immensely to the quiet of the wilderness, the rude shattering of this quiet by Lora in one of her recitals did not appear to worry them in the least. On the contrary, they enjoyed every minute of them and were as disappointed as she was when they were brought to an abrupt close by Aunt or myself. But a week of listening to Lora running through her repertoire was not the same thing as hearing it month after month and eventually, year after year. After a time we were forced to the rather humiliating conclusion that friends came on visits mainly to get acquainted with Lora; our company, peace and quiet, the beauties of the countryside were little more than sidelights. "'Where is she ?" a guest would ask, the moment he had dumped down his suitcase and gulped a cup of tea to revive himself after the rigours of the journey. "Out in the lochan." The guest would take a quick look at the rolling sea of hills, rocks and pockets of water stretching in every direction to the far horizon, and then - "Well … can't she be got in ?" We would stroll down to the lochan, the guest carrying the trumpet in readiness, and we would stare across the sheet of water, devoid of any sign of animal life. I would call and presently we would see the small, dark speck of her head coming towards us, with perhaps a smaller one nearby belonging to an otter. In less than a minute she would be ashore and, the trumpet pressed against her mouth, giving a rendering of 'Danny Boy'. Her boisterous good nature and love of showing off before visitors made her ever ready to play. A certain uncle of mine took a great fancy to her. At his home outside Aberdeen he used to hold monthly ceilidhs (musical evenings) at which local talent used to perform. Uncle Andrew became obsessed with the idea that Lora should be a guest at one of these ceilidhs. He felt sure his musical friends would appreciate her gifts and delight in a performance from her. Ever one to make light of difficulties, he assured Aunt Miriam that the lengthy journey to Aberdeen with a seal could be easily accomplished. Shortly after he had visited us he arrived one evening in his brake to collect Lora and me. We set off early the following morning. I had packed two suitcases, one containing my belongings, the other Lora's instruments and her mackintosh. Uncle informed me that he had got in a large supply of fish, biscuits and oil. When he had left home his wife had been busy catching the goldfish in their pond and putting them into a wooden rain butt. Any that refused to be caught would have to take a chance with Lora. The pond was hers for the duration of our visit. As Uncle had predicted, the journey was accomplished without mishap. The brake bounced over the track and several times came perilously rear to sliding down a hillside. Lora took the bumps and jolts calmly and appeared to enjoy the ride. On the evening of the ceilidh I led her into the drawing room where it was to be held. My feelings about the forthcoming proceedings were dubious. A well known singer of mouth music (unaccompanied singing) was coming and had consented to start the evening with a song. A melodeon player was to take the platform next, followed by Lora giving an exhibition of xylophone playing. That was to comprise the first half of the evening. There would be a break for supper. During the second half, amongst other attractions, Lora was to sing to my piano accompaniment. So far so good. The guests started to arrive. Lora, the most sociable and extroverted of creatures, greeted them warmly. I suggested to Uncle, as the first artist took her place at the far end of the room, that I should shut Lora into his study until it was her turn to perform. But he and several of the guests vetoed this suggestion at once. She must stay. The singer smiled charmingly and started off with the assurance of a professional. She managed to sing a few notes of an old Hebridean air before the inevitable happened; Lora raised her head and roared her way from a deep bass to a seal top C. Even a full Covent Garden chorus would not have been able to compete with that, and the singer wisely gave up there and then. The audience were hysterical with laughter. They had not heard anything as good as that for a long while. When a certain amount of calm had been restored someone suggested that Lora be allowed to perform first and the human faction later; thus she would get her little act off her chest and be willing to listen to others. It was blatantly apparent that he had no knowledge of seals whatsoever, but by then she was out of my hands and being stage-managed by others. She was lifted bodily on to the top of the piano by two stalwart males so that the audience would get a good view of her, and the xylophone was placed before her. I stood by her side ready to point to the notes in case she should be overcome by a sudden fit of nerves at the sight of so large an audience and momentarily forget her piece. My presence proved unnecessary. She took the beater from me and started off with aplomb on 'Baa-baa Black Sheep'. The audience strained forward. I caught murmurs of - "Yes, I recognised that bit." "Quite incredible . . ." and "Isn't she playing 'Danny Boy' now ?" "No, I'm sure she isn't. Oh, perhaps she might be …" Loud applause greeted the final slither of the beater along the length of the instrument which denoted the end of 'Danny Boy' and was followed by vociferous calls for an encore. "Carry on," said Uncle, beaming at me. I thought the front row, consisting of the other prospective performers looked a trifle discouraged at the way things were going. I announced 'Where my Caravan has Rested'. "I used to sing that as a subaltern in the First World War," a charming grey-haired gentleman confessed to the room at large. “My wife always ...." We never heard what. Lora got off to a speedy start, whacking notes left, right and centre. The caravan had apparently got loose from its moorings and was rushing towards a head-on collision. There was a loud crash as the xylophone fell to the floor, pushed off by Lora's exuberant playing. The audience rose to its feet. After a short pause in which to recover their breath, people uttered more fulsome exclamations of delight: "Marvellous, isn't she ?" "Yes, brilliant. I didn't happen to know the tune myself but I'm sure she played it superbly - encore!" The turn ended somewhat more soberly with a rendering of the National Anthem. The melodeon player got up. He did not appear too happy at having to follow such a popular performer. I began to realise why professional actors so heartily dislike children and animals taking part in a play; when they are around nobody else gets a look in. His misgivings proved to be correct. He failed as lamentably to make an impression in competition with the loudly singing Lora as had the first performer. With great good humour he walked back to his seat defeated and Lora again took the platform, this time to play the mouth organ. After supper I made up my mind to take things in hand a little. For my part, I very much wanted to hear the melodeon player in action, but if the second half of the evening followed the trend of the first that pleasure seemed unlikely to be fulfilled. While the rest were busy eating and talking I managed to inveigle Lora into Uncle Andrew's study and close the door on her. The study most unfortunately was not soundproof and when the music started her piteous wails at being excluded from the proceedings drew the attention of the guests. Someone went along at once to let her out. In a final attempt to keep order I made her sit by my side and told her severely to be quiet. The result was no less disastrous. Seals have free-flowing tear ducts and the patch of skin immediately below the eyes is continually moist. Lora, overcome with frustration at not being allowed to take part, sat with tears pouring down her face. Whereupon the sympathetic guests pleaded on her behalf and the other performers generously allowed her to take the platform yet again. The evening finished with a singsong in which, I need hardly say, Lora out-sang the rest of us. But I was assured by Uncle that the ceilidh had been a great success. *

. At death there is only liberation. It's just more chic to see liberation while you're alive. Max Furlaud

. Whenever I come across great chunks of 'sacred' scripture it makes me think of Brother Maynard's wonderful sermon. I'm afraid Michael Palin has destroyed forever my ability to walk the dry path of solemn readings from holy books. .

. That's because he said it in Chinese. English hadn't been invented yet. (But seriously, I have no idea if he said something like that or not. Someone quoted it in an email they wrote to me, and I liked the 'sense' of it. In the end, I think it's only the connection made that matters. The source is simply intellectual baggage - like the label on the bottom of a painting in an art gallery.) .

. “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” Lao Tzu

.. When young, I knew not the taste of sorrow, But loved to mount the high towers; I loved to mount the high towers To compose a new song, urging myself to talk about sorrow. Now that I have known the taste of sorrow, I would like to talk about it, but refrain; I would like to talk about it, but refrain, And say merely: "It is chilly; what a fine autumn !" Yue Fei .

Did you hear about the self help group for compulsive talkers? It's called On & On Anon.

. Here's a pair of quotes on this train of thought that seem to compliment each other well. Sometimes I think that seeing how so many other people have contemplated the same ideas quite deeply, over thousands of years of man's history,... kind of adds a useful perspective. In our own wondering, we're part of a long, long lineage, (and sadly, the fact that we're still asking the same question two thousand years later, does seem to indicate that there really are no definite answers. Only personal opinions) But that, too, can be a helpful realization : * * (1) "The secret of happiness is not doing what one likes, but in liking what one does." * (2) "He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have." Socrates .

. I know all to well the frustration that underlies your post. Basically it's the torment that comes when a person begins to suspect that we are a slave of our own personality,... and the natural response is to intensely want to escape from this prison of 'ourself.' Like you I used to, (and still do), ask myself exactly the same questions -- with the same underlying anger and sense of righteous indignation at the injustice of my predicament. In my own searching for some kind of answer - some way out, I came across Non-Duality teachings. It's a very different way of looking at the same problems that drive probably the vast majority of us seekers to engage in all the multitude of boring studies, questionably queer practices, searching for gurus in far-off countries, etc., etc. These teachings certainly haven't solved my problems and frustrations, but hearing explanations which were radically different from the usual round I was familiar with helped me in that, sometimes, recalling them managed to calm the rising sense of hopelessness. They acted like a mantra, ..."Nothing could possibly be any different than precisely what it is now - at THIS moment." Our root motivation, of course, is that we are NOT happy with who we are and what our life appears to be. I know it doesn't sound very romantic, ( and 'romance' is the aura all seekers prefer to dress up their quests in),... but basically, if we're spiritual seekers it's simply because we want : (1) to be happy (2) to be free from suffering (3) and then, to never ever be separated from our happiness, or from our freedom from suffering. A 'rock-solid' guarantee for eternity. Pretty basic stuff, isn't it ? Anyway, your path is your own and I do not know you, or have any way of knowing what will work for you. But since we clearly do have this connection here due to my empathy with your post,... I thought I would throw in an excerpt from a talk on exactly the topic you raised, given by a teacher that resonated for me. Who knows what, or even if, there will be any connection with you. Still, for myself, I think that I probably come to this forum to experience these periodic feelings of 'shared bonds' with people such as yourself. I don't know why I find this reassuring. Perhaps because humans are social animals, and this spiritual seeking treadmill we're all trapped on, is very often a lonely and isolating occupation. Very often I'm convinced that if I were to take up Latin-American dancing it would be a far more beneficial use of my time in finding genuine happiness. I suspect that somehow this much-coveted 'peace' happens as a by-product,... when, by some means, we are able to forget completely about this 'self' that we're striving so hard to liberate : * * * "I had always maintained that I was basically the centre of the universe with enormous power, and that pretty much anything I set my mind to do, I could do. This was the principle upon which I operated for most of my life. I felt that God was for weaklings, and was a concept that people had created just to make life more bearable for themselves, and that I certainly didn’t need anything like that because,…. “I’m ME !” Now I find that after this experience of ‘awakening’, I find myself aware that true powerlessness carries with it no frustration whatsoever. It is the feeling of quasi-powerfulness that carries the frustration. The idea that you have limited power causes frustration. The conviction that you can truly do nothing, brings with it a sense of enormous peace and contentment if it’s purely understood. You rest easily and comfortably in the knowledge that everything is happening precisely the way it’s supposed to, and could not be happening any differently. But if there is not pure understanding, then there is a sense that what is happening now is not right, and you need to ‘DO’ something about that. And if ‘you’ are not sufficiently powerful by your own unaided effort, then you need to invoke a more powerful source to take care of it. And so you say, “God, do my bidding.! Help me out here ! This has gotten a little bit beyond me.” Now, that movement towards acknowledging the power of God is positive to the extent that you are at least acknowledging some kind of limitation to your own power. The difficulty with this idea of ‘personal power’ is that it continuously proves to be false. The fact is that the power is never yours. It flows through you and controls you. Deep investigation may even reveal that this power not only flows through you and controls you but it IS you. One of the surprising gifts of Non-Duality teachings is to discover your own personal powerlessness. Personal powerlessness may not seem like a gift on the surface, in fact if you Google the term "powerlessness" you will quickly see that the world-at-large considers powerlessness to be a condition requiring treatment. It is another of the paradoxes of these teachings that personal strength is to be discovered in the realization of your own personal powerlessness. Personal strength comes from the relief of the burden of trying to exert power and control that is not yours to begin with. Suddenly you find yourself with all the extra energy that was formerly being poured into the fruitless attempt to make things go your way. As with all aspects of Non-Duality teachings, what I am pointing to has to be seen to be believed. Consider what I am saying and test it for yourself. Look within, and perhaps you will discover this truth that is as close to you as your breath." Wayne Liquorman .

. For those who love reading there’s a joy that sometimes arrives 'out-of-the-blue, when you unexpectedly come across a previously unknown gem on the book shelves of a Charity Shop. After a recent experience of that two weeks ago I suddenly realised that I hadn't felt that particular glow for quite a long time now, whereas a few years ago the ‘thrill of the hunt’ used to happen quite frequently. On wondering why, I decided that it was probably down to one of those unforeseen losses which arose out of our modern-day ease in finding virtually any book we want on the internet, via Amazon. Anyway, we can’t turn back the clock, and shelf-loads of that experience still lie free and waiting for any ‘Oxfam explorer’ on a rainy Saturday afternoon. This time, as good luck would have it, the unexpected gem, (both book AND author), was a fascinating autobiography called “Here Comes Trouble : Stories From My Life”, by Michael Moore. Of course I had heard of him previously. His extraordinary courage in single-handedly taking on some of the most powerful ‘demons’ in today’s American society are almost legendary. Moore’s written and cinematic works criticize globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism. The extract below is taken from the story of his life. I found it fascinating to read how all the interweaving events of his childhood could so closely parallel my own in time and venue,… yet produce a modern-day hero in his case, versus a mere ‘book worm’ in my own. But man – can this guy tell a story !! Without further ado, I’ll let the man entertain you himself : * * * Michael Moore wrote : Chapter 8 : The Exorcism "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers !" I shouted up the stairwell. O'Malley, my bully of a roommate, slapped me hard across the face. "Shut the fuck up! Father Waczeski is right there !" I turned quickly around to see if the priest had heard me, but there was no priest anywhere to be found. O'Malley, who was a year older than me, just wanted to slap me. He laughed his usual sinister laugh, and hit me again. "Stop it," I said. "I was just singing that new MC5 song." "Then sing the clean version, the one they play on the radio - 'Kick out the jams, brothers and sisters."' What the fuck did he care about a "clean" version? O'Malley was the opposite of anything clean. He was more a version of every mother's nightmare. What was a thug like him doing at the seminary ? When I was fourteen I decided it was time to leave home. Mostly bored with school since the first grade, but politely biding my time to keep everybody happy, I realized I could do more good for myself and the world (wherever that was) if I became a Catholic priest. I'm not sure of the day when I got "the calling," but I can guarantee you there was no vision or voice from above, no burning bush or Virgin sighting. Most likely I was just watching the news, probably saw one or both of the Berrigan brothers, the radical Catholic priests, breaking into a draft office and destroying the records of young men who were to be sent to Vietnam, and I said to myself, "Now, that's what I wanna do when I grow up !" I liked the idea of the Action Hero Priest, and I thought I could do that. I liked seeing priests marching with Rev. King and getting arrested. I liked priests helping Cesar Chavez organize the farmworkers. I wasn't completely sure what it all meant; it just seemed like a decent thing to do. It was pretty basic: you had a responsibility to help those worse off than you. I was never going to play for the Pistons or the Red Wings, so the priesthood seemed like a good second choice. But first I had to convince my parents to let me leave home. They did not like this idea. These were the people who wouldn't let me skip first grade, and they were definitely less inclined to let me skip town. But I told them I had "a calling," and if you were a devout Catholic in those days and your kid told you he had "a calling," you had better not risk getting in between the Holy Spirit and your only begotten son. They consented, reluctantly. The seminary training would take twelve years before I could be ordained a priest. Four years of high school, four years of college, and four years of theological training. The high school part was optional, but for those who had the calling, there were two seminaries in Michigan for high school students: Sacred Heart in Detroit and St. Paul's in Saginaw. It was less than a year after the Detroit riots, so Sacred Heart was out of the question for my parents. St. Paul's it was. On the first night after my mother and father dropped me off at the seminary in September 1968, I instantly began to question the wisdom of my decision. My doubts were not driven by the strict rules I had to follow: Up at 5:00 a.m. for prayers, long periods of enforced silence, barred from your room from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., difficult studies (nine weeks spent dissecting just one Shakespeare play), hard labour and chores, and severe punishment for violating any of the rules. Freshmen were prohibited from watching any television or listening to the radio for an entire year. You were strictly confined to the campus - with the exception of 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays, during which time you could walk two miles to the strip mall, grab a Whopper, and rush back. But I was OK with all of that. My trouble was not with the system (at least not at first). It was with the two roommates I had been assigned to share a room with. Mickey Bader and Dickie O'Malley. Mickey and Dickie. "The Ickies," as I called them (but only to myself). The problem with them being there at the seminary was that neither of them wanted to be a priest. No way. They were into girls, and partying, and smoking and sneaking off campus whenever they could. And pushing me around. They were what the adults referred to as ‘juvenile delinquents.’ They were rich kids, the sons of important men in their communities, and it seemed as if at least Dickie had already had a number of run-ins with the law. Their parents decided that perhaps the seminary could straighten them out, and how they got through the intense interview process I had to go through to get into this place was beyond me. I came to the realization that their fathers had probably bought their way in, and the priests were obviously in need of any ‘charity,’ wherever they could find it. Discovering that this was both a seminary and a reform school did not sit well with me, and it was clear to me that I was going to have to endure the constant harassment of Mickey and Dickie if I wanted to be a priest. When they found out I really believed in all this ‘religion crap’, they were relentless in mocking me as I said my prayers, did my chores, practiced my Latin. They smeared applesauce over my sheets, placed Playboy centrefolds in the toilet bowl, and entertained themselves by seeing if a pair of scissors could alter the length of my pants. Although I was bigger than them, I did not want to resort to violence in order to have some peace and quiet, so I kept my distance from them. There were two rules I decided early on that I just couldn't follow at the seminary, and I knew God would forgive me. In October 1968, the Detroit Tigers were headed to the world Series, and as part of our penance for being freshmen, we were not allowed to watch or listen to the games. I was convinced that this edict did nor come from the Almighty, and so I snuck a transistor radio into my room and hid it inside my pillowcase. At night I would lie in bed and listen to the games, muffled as they were, through the pillow’s duck feathers. The day games I missed. The other rule was that you could not have any food in your room. As they were more interested in feeding our souls than our bodies, I decided to take care of the latter. That year, science had invented the Frosted Pop-Tart (“Proof of God's existence,” I would say). I smuggled in boxes of these heavenly items and I would toast them by placing a sheet of paper on top of my lamp and sitting the Pop-Tart on it. I was eventually discovered by a priest who caught a whiff of burnt strawberry out in the hallway. I was given extra kitchen duties for a week and lost my Saturday afternoon escape privileges for a month. The other thing I enjoyed doing was hanging out with the senior boys. They had a knack for coming up with ingenious pranks that they loved to play on the holy hierarchy. My contribution to this club was to concoct a powder that replaced the chapel's incense. It was called a "stink bomb," and when the altar boy put a scoop of this "incense" onto the hot coal in the censer, it let off the most god-awful stench, a combination of rotten egg odour and a locker room fungus. It cleared the church within minutes. The other prank, for which I became legendary (but only as "Anonymous," as I was never discovered), involved an "entry" of mine in the school's annual science fair. Of course, I had no interest in science (unless science could make a chocolate fudge Pop-Tart, which it eventually did), but I did have an interest in pulling off the best stunt ever. About an hour before the doors to the seminary's science fair were to be opened to the public, I quietly entered the exhibit hall and placed my "science project" on one of the tables. It was a simple, plain test tube that contained a clear liquid (in reality, cooking oil). I set it on its stand and placed a placard in front of it. It read: NITROGLYCERINE: DO NOT TOUCH OR WILL EXPLODE It was five minutes before the opening, and I hid nearby so I could watch people's expressions when they saw the test tube of danger. At that moment, the science teacher, a short nun with thick glasses and in her seventies, came in to make a final pass through the fair to make sure everything was in place and all set to go. She came upon my addition to the fair and was surprised to see something on the table that she hadn't placed there. She took her glasses off and cleaned them, not exactly sure what this was she was looking at. As she bent over to read the card, she let out a scream and quickly waddled over to the fire alarm box, broke the glass, and pulled the lever. I was mortified. [* Yes, in the more violent future that lay ahead of us, this sort of thing would have resulted in my expulsion and jail time. But in 1969, it was just funny.] This had gone too far. I got out of there as fast as I could, and as the fire trucks arrived I watched the firemen go inside and retrieve the tube which they could tell was not nitroglycerine. The nuns and the priests apologized - and issued a fatwa on whoever was responsible for this. They never caught the culprit. There are two types of fear: normal fears that are primal (fear of pain, fear of death), and then there is the fear of Father Ogg. Ogg taught Latin and German at the seminary. The Church had also christened him with special powers, and he was the only one at the seminary to hold these powers. One night, he gathered together a few of us boys and asked us if we would like to see how these powers could be used. We were already scared of Father Ogg, but no one was going to admit that, and so we all agreed to let him show us. He took us down into the "catacombs" of the seminary (a series of tunnels under the building) to perform a ceremony only he was allowed to perform. It was called the Rite of Exorcism. Father Ogg was an exorcist. It would be another three years before Hollywood would make Linda Blair's head spin in the William Friedkin film, so all we knew of exorcism was that it was a series of prayers and rituals performed over the body of someone whom Satan had possessed. The devil would be cast out and the victim would be saved. We were told by Father Ogg that he had a "one thousand percent batting average" when confronting Lucifer. "I always win," he said. He told us that he would show us the ceremony but it would only be "pretend," as none of us had shown any signs of being consumed by evil. Yes, but wouldn't this be better, I thought, if there were someone here at St. Paul's who actually was evil ? Of course it would! And of course there was. "Father," I said with fake sincerity, "before you start, I think Dickie O'Malley is going to be really upset that we left him out of this. He keeps saying he doesn't believe you're an exorcist and that he'd like to see you try it out on him: Can I go get him ?" "Sure," Ogg said, somewhat miffed that anyone would question his devil-disappearing powers. "But make it quick." I ran back upstairs and found Dickie where I thought he would be - outside the gym door having a smoke. "Dickie !" "Yeah, fuckface, whaddaya want?" "Father Ogg says he wants you right now!" "Yeah, well, tell him you couldn't find me." "He said he saw you come out here to smoke, and that if you came now he wouldn't turn you in." Dickie considered the offer of leniency carefully, took his last couple of drags, gave me a tap across the face, and followed me inside and down into the catacombs. "Welcome, Dickie," Father Ogg said with a sly grin. "Thank you for volunteering." Dickie looked at him with smug-filled puzzlement, but sensing that he was not going to be in trouble if he went along, he stepped forward, unaware of what was to happen next. I could only hope that in about twenty minutes from now there was going to be a new Dickie. Father Ogg had brought an ominous black duffel bag with a red coat of arms on it and words embossed in Latin that I didn't understand. He reached down in it and pulled out a shaker filled with holy water, some holy oil, about a half-dozen dried-out olive branches and, um, a leather rope. "Now, normally, Dickie, I would tie you down so you wouldn't be able to hurt me," Father Ogg said to the snickers of those present. "I ain't gonna hurt you, Father !" Dickie protested. “And you ain't gonna tie me up. I was only smoking." "Yes, sometimes smoke comes out of the possessed," Ogg said. "A few have caught on fire. But I don't think you have to worry about that tonight." The exorcist then launched into a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, words and language I had never heard. To see this jabber coming out of his mouth a mile a minute gave me goosebumps. This was the real deal ! It scared Dickie, too, and he stood there dumbfounded at what he was witnessing. "Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris onmipotentis, et in nomine Jesu Christi Fitili ejus, Domini et Judicis nostri, et in virtute Spiritus Sancti, ut descedas ab hoc plasmate Dei Dickie O’Malley, quod Dominus noster ad templum, sanctum suum vocare dignatus est !” FatherOgg continued, spraying holy water all over Dickie. Dickie did not like that. "C'mon, Father ! What is this ?!” "Be still. I am casting Satan out of you!” I thought, with that, Dickie would bolt. Priest or no priest, he was not going to stand there in front of a bunch of other students and be humiliated. Or have it implied he was in cahoots with the devil. Instead, Dickie didn't move. He was intrigued with the possibility that his accomplice was the mother of all hoodlums, Beelzebub himself A sinister smile came across his face. Father Ogg took the cap off the holy oil and smeared it on Dickie's forehead, cheeks, chin. He then took Dickie’s head and placed it between his two hands and pressed it like he was in a vice. "Oowww!" Dickie screamed. “That hurts.” It was nice to see Dickie hurt. "Silence !" shouted Ogg in a voice that I swear wasn’t human. "Ephpheta, quod est, Adaperire. In odorem suavitatis. Tu autem effugare, diabole; appropinquabit enim judicium Dei !” he continued in some ancient tongue, or perhaps no tongue at all. I'm not even supposed to be sharing this with you, and to commit these words to paper makes me want to go and check the lock on my door (I’ll be right back). It was time for the olive branches. We were each given one and told to hold them out over Dickie - but not to touch him. Ogg then took his branch and started to wail on poor Dickie, careful not to whip him anywhere that might hurt. "Christo Sancti !" Ogg yelled, causing Dickie to turn to me - the one who brought him into this - and scream, "Fuckin' moron ! I'm gonna kill you!" "Don't make me have to tie you down !" Ogg shouted. “Abrenuntias Satanae ? Et omnibus operibus ejus ?" And at this moment, Dickie started to cry. Father Ogg, a bit surprised, stopped. "Hey, hey, it's OK," the exorcist said in a comforting tone. "This isn't real. It was just a demonstration. You don't have the devil in you." At least not now, I thought. I prayed that this exorcism, albeit a "practice" one, would have a real effect on this miserable bully. But, alas, such was not the case. The next day I found my transistor radio in the toilet and my underwear all gone. One of the nuns would find them later that night in her own drawer, with the words, in magic marker, on each waistband: PROPERTY OF MICHAEL MOORE. I did not want to take the punishment for finking on Dickie, so I took the extra week of garbage duty instead and said nothing. Frankly, it was worth it just to have the extra time to myself so I could replay in my head Dickie being whacked with an olive branch, olive oil dripping from his face, and the Devil departing his miserable body. Not all the time at the seminary was spent on my knees or observing strange rituals or playing pranks. I actually had one of the best and most challenging years of education I would ever have. The priests and nuns loved to teach literature and history and foreign languages. The class I had the toughest time with was Religion. I had a lot of questions. "Why don't we let women be priests ?" I asked one day, one of the many times that everyone in the class would turn around and stare at me as if I were some freak. "You don't see any women among the apostles, do you ?" Father Jenkins would respond. "Well, it looks like there were always women around - Mary Magdalene, Mary, Jesus's mother, and his cousin what's-her-name." "It's just not allowed !" was the end-of-discussion answer he would give to most of my questions-which included: * Jesus never said he was here to start the 'Catholic Church’, but rather that his job was to bring Judaism into a new era. So where did we get the idea of the Catholic Church?" * "The only time Jesus loses his temper is when he sees all these guys loaning money in the Temple and he smashes up their operation. What lesson are we to draw from this ?" * "Do you think Jesus would send soldiers to Vietnam if he were here right now?" * "In the Bible, there's no mention of Jesus from age twelve to age thirty. Where do you think he went ? I have some theories..." On the first day of English Lit class, Father Ferrer announced that we would spend nine weeks dissecting Romeo and Juliet, word by word, line by line-and he promised us that by the end of it, we would understand the structure and language of Shakespeare so well that for the rest of our lives we would be able to enjoy the genius of all his works (a promise that turned out to be true). I have to say that, in retrospect, the choice of a heterosexual love story with characters who were our age and who were having sex was a bold move by this good priest. Or it was sadism. Because if we were to become priests, there would be no Juliet (or Romeo) allowed in our lives. I devoured every line of Romeo and Juliet, and it spun my head and hormones into a wondrous web of excitement. Unfortunately, I had not read the rulebook before signing up for the seminary, and here's what it said: YOU CAN NEVER HAVE SEX, NOT EVEN ONCE IN YOUR LIFE. ESPECIALLY WITH A WOMAN. Now, had I read that in eighth grade, I'm not sure I would have understood all the ramifications of agreeing to this prohibition. By the time it was explained to me in ninth grade at the seminary, something seemed oddly wrong with this rule. Call me crazy, but I kept hearing voices in my head: Mmmmmm . . . girls . . . gooooood . . . penis . . . haaaaappy. The voices intensified on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. That was when they bused the few of us seminarians who played a musical instrument into the Catholic high school in nearby Bay City to play with their school band. There were not enough of us to make up our own orchestra at the seminary, and the priests, who enjoyed culture and the arts and would often sit around and have conversations with each other in Italian, did not want those of us who were musically inclined to miss our "other callings." I was placed in the clarinet section next to a girl named Lynn. Did I mention she was a girl? At the seminary I spent 1,676 hours of every week around only boys. But for these two glorious hours, I was in the vicinity of the other gender. Lynn's long, deft fingers that she used on her clarinet were a beauty to behold (as were her breasts and legs and smile - but I only wrote smile just in case one of the priests is still alive and reads this story because, truth be told, while her smile was pleasant, I have no recollection of it as it was obscured by her breasts and legs and anything else that didn't resemble a seminarian). Being in a co-ed Catholic high school band literally drove me insane. I tried my best to think about The Rule and to offer up this desire as penance for even wondering what might exist under her Catholic schoolgirl uniform. But there is just so much penance a now fifteen-year-old can do, and one day I asked one of the other seminarians on the band bus "Who the hell made up this rule ?!" He said he didn't know and that "it was probably God." Right. One weekend, I reread all four gospels and nowhere – nowhere ! - did it say that the apostles couldn't have sex, or get married, or be happy with their penises. As my after-school job was working as an assistant in the library, I did my own research. And here's what I found: The priests of the Catholic Church for the first one thousand years were married ! They had sex ! Peter, chosen by Jesus to be the first Pope, was married, as were most of the apostles. As were thirty-nine Popes ! But then some Pope in the eleventh century got it in his head that sex sucked and wives sucked worse, and so he banned priests from marrying or having sex. It makes you wonder how all the other great twisted ideas throughout history got their start (like who came up with the card game Bridge?). They might as well have made it a sin to scratch when you have an itch. I began spending a lot of time on the job in the library going into the basement level where all the old magazines were stored. The cultured priests subscribed to Paris Match, and let's just say that in France in 1969, women were inclined to "stay cool" in the summertime. All my first loves could be found right there, in the periodical archives of St. Paul's Seminary. As we drew near to the end of our study of Romeo and Juliet, Father Ferrer announced that there was a new movie in the theatres based on the play and that we would be taking a field trip to see it. This version was by the Italian director Franco Zefferelli, and little did the priest know (or did he?) that his group of fifteen-year-old boys would be exposed for the first time to fifteen-year-old breasts, namely those on the body of the actress playing Juliet, Olivia Hussey. That night, after seeing Romeo and Juliet, the freshmen moaning up and down the hallway sounded like a cross between a lost coyote and a choir trying to tune itself. I will only say that I became on that night a grateful fan of Miss Hussey's - and a former seminarian to the Catholic priesthood. Thank you, Shakespeare. Thank you, Father Ferrer. To Dickie's and Mickey's credit, they had no interest in using Shakespeare to inspire their male hormones as they were already "in country." They had little interest in wasting their seed on a cheap seminary bedsheet. Not when there were so many available girls in the greater Tri-City area. I'm not sure when they began sneaking out at night, or when they found time to sneak the girls in, but these two Montagues obviously were in much demand. On the upside, this did give me the room to myself on a number of occasions. On the downside, once the priests were on to them, they thought I, too, was in on the sex ring. How little they knew me ! I was far too busy trying to keep my focus on Vespers and Vietnam rather than Lynn the clarinet player, who was doing just fine in an imaginary state with me, the two of us, frolicking, on the Cote d'Azur. On this particular night, I decided to take the suggestion of fellow seminarian Fred Orr and try some Noxzema Original Deep Cleansing Cream to help get rid of a few teenage zits. I rubbed the white cream all over my face and went to sleep facing the wall, not wanting Mickey and Dickie to ever catch me with this girl-stuff on my face. "WAKE UP ! I SAID, WAKE UP !!" Father Jenkins shouted, forcing me to tell Lynn in my dream that I'd be right back. I awakened from this pleasant sleep and saw two priests, Father Jenkins and Father Shank, shining police-size flashlights directly into my eyes. “WHERE ARE THEY ?!'' Obviously it was a raid, a surprise assault on the two active and public penises on my floor. I looked over at their beds and saw that they were made up to look like someone was sleeping in them. Clearly, neither of the Ickies was home. “Uh, I dunno," I replied, trying to sound awake. "When did they leave?" Father Shank asked. "How long have they been gone ?" Father Jenkins added. "I dunno," I repeated. “Are you sure ?" Jenkins asked pointedly. "There's no good that can come from you covering for them." "The last thing I would do would be to cover for those two punks," I said, surprised at my un-Christian-like language. "You've never left here with them?" Jenkins continued with his interrogation. "No. I don't do what they do. I'm guessing they don't go to Burger King." "How many times would you say they've done this?" "Father, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but if you're only busting in here tonight for the first time, you clearly have no idea what's been going on." "I don't like your tone," Jenkins replied. "I'm sorry. It's my middle-of-the-night tone." "What in God's name is that stuff on your face ?" Oh. Damn. “Just something the nurse told me to try." "Where do you think they are ?" Father Jenkins asked. "You can follow their scent to the nearest place where girls are known to exist." Giving the priests this much lip was not wise, but I didn't care. I, too, had discovered girls, and there was now a part of me that admired Mickey and Dickie for acting on their very normal feelings. Though I did feel sorry for whatever girls they were with. By this time they had turned their flashlights off- and that one act would end up doing the Ickies in. Not able to see from the outside hallway that I had visitors, the boys quietly opened the door to our room - and were instantly startled, not just by the sight of the priests, but by the mass of white goo covering my entire face. They tried to run, but the priests quickly grabbed them and dragged them down the hall and out of my life forever. The next morning the parents of my two roommates came to my room and cleaned out their sons' belongings. When I returned that evening I had the privilege that only a senior had - my own room ! There was only a month left in the school year, but it was sublime. I held parties. I began to grow my hair longer for the first time. I acquired a peace sign and put it on my door. I had made the decision that the seminary wasn't for me, although I had learned much that would remain with me for a long while. Three days before the semester ended, I made an appointment with my class dean, Father Duewicke, so I could go in and tell him of my decision to not pursue the priesthood. I walked in and sat down in a chair in front of his desk. "Soooo," Father Duewicke said in a strange, sarcastic tone. "Michael Moore. I have some unpleasant news for you. We have decided to ask you not to return for your sophomore year." Excuse me ? Did he just say what I thought he said ? Did he just say they were ... kicking me out ?! "Wait a minute," I said, agitated and upset. "I came in here to tell you that I was quitting !" "Well, good," he said with a smarmy tone. "Then we're in agreement." "You can't kick me out of here ! I quit ! That's why I wanted to talk to you." "Well, either way, you won't be gracing us with your presence in the fall." "I don't understand," I said, still hurting from the rug being pulled out from under me. "Why would you ask me not to come back? I've gotten straight A's, I do all my work, I haven’t been in any serious trouble, and I’ve been forced to endure living in the juvie room with those two delinquents for most of this year. What grounds do you have to expel me ?" "Oh, that's simple," Father Duewicke said. "We don't want you here because you upset the other boys by asking too many questions." "Too many questions about what ? What does that mean ? How can you say such a thing ?" "That's three questions right there in less than five seconds, thus proving my point," he said, while giving a mock look at his nonexistent watch. "You do not accept the rules or the teachings of our institution on the basis of faith. You always have a question. Why's that ? What's that for ? Who Said ? After a while, Mr. Moore, it gets tiring. You either have to accept things, or not. There's no in-between." "So, you're saying - and, sorry, I'm asking another question, but I don't know any other way to phrase this - that I'm somehow a nuisance just because I want to know something?" "Michael, listen-this is never going to work for you, being a priest..." "I don't want to be a priest." "Well, if you did want to be a priest, you would cause a lot of trouble for both yourself and for whatever church you'd be assigned to. We have ways of doing things that go back two thousand years. And we don't have to answer to anybody about anything, certainly not to you." I sat and glared at him. I felt indignant and deeply hurt. This must be what it feels like to be excommunicated, I thought. Abandoned by the very people who are here on earth representing Jesus Christ and telling me that Jesus would want nothing to do with me. Because I asked some stupid questions ? Like the one that was passing through my head, supplanting the fleeting thought of choking the smug out of Father Duewicke. "You mean like why does this institution hate women and not let them be priests ?" "Yeeeesss !" Father Duewicke said with a knife of a smile. "Like that one! Good day, Mr. Moore. I wish you well with whatever you do with your life, and I pray for those who have to endure you." He got up, and I got up, and I turned around and walked the long walk back to my room. I shut the door, lay down, and thought about my life - and when that became pointless I reached under the bed and consoled myself for the next hour with the latest issue of Paris Match. .

. Those who believe in levitation, raise my hand. Kurt Vonnegut

. We're not 'derailing'. Parallel tracks are still allowed to exist side-by-side in this tiny subset of the world called 'TaoBums Forum'. The day they become forbidden will be the day I head for the hills. .

. If you think that book was an extraordinary step of imagination for supposedly Buddhists to write, they published one that utterly trumped that when they recently wrote : "The False Dalai Lama: The Worst Dictator in the Modern World." If that title isn't the ultimate stretch of credibility for the spiritually inclined to take on board, then I'd like to see anybody top it ! If you were to ask any normal person that you might find walking the streets of any Western country what their impressions about the Dalai Lama were,... well, the answers would undoubtedly be so complimentary that it would be an embarrassment to write them all down here. Yet the members of this group have become so conditioned by years of training themselves to suppress all questions and accept without hesitation whatever their guru says, that the insanity of equating one of the most loved winners of the Nobel Peace Prize ( !) with the likes of Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, and Pol Potts -- doesn't even register with them ! Of course, someone high up in their publishing office is aware and suitably cautious, since they take great care to dissociate themselves from the stuff they write by creating a false name for the supposed author. On the cover it claims to be written by the "International Shugden Community." This group does not exist anywhere. Yet if you check Youtube for any videos, (like the one below), of their demonstrations trying to prevent the Dala Lama from teaching, you will see nothing but angry-faced monks, nuns and lay members of the NKT, raising clenched fists and shouting. Any thinking person could only say that the behaviour of this group is just about as far removed from what most people would describe as 'resembling how the Buddha himself would behave', as is possible in our society. After having watched from the inside this whole, sad transmogrification unfold, I still cannot begin to grasp how such beautiful ideals could nose-dive into becoming the antithesis of Buddha's teachings in just these few short years. However, I guess we do have had the example of what happened to the organisation led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as a recent template of spirituality descending into paranoia and increasingly insane actions. I suppose it's just that when your own life has been caught up for many years in a delusion, the fall to earth is much harder when the hypnotist snaps his fingers to suddenly reveal that the dream carriage you thought you were riding in,... is actually nothing more than a rapidly decaying Halloween pumpkin. *

. Rara, I didn't realise you spent time with "the new kadampa guys" as well. I was part of that organisation for many years. To say that my experiences there were personally eye-opening and life-modifying, would be to make much more than a simple understatement. From initially being a joyful member of an energetic, hard-working group of people intensely focussed on the Boddhisattva's ideal of 'becoming a Buddha for the benefit of all living beings',.... I watched the hierarchy transform the direction of the entire organisation until eventually, its only focus was expansion. "An NKT temple in every major city of the world" became the organisation's actual mantra. Awareness of what was happening was so curtailed by strict adherence to a twisted form of guru devotion, that right now they are sending their monks out in their hundreds to stalk the Dalai Lama's talks and shout out hurtful speech, divisive speech, and try to make so much noise with loud hailers that his Tibetan devotees cannot hear his teachings. All done under the smokescreen of a false, non-existent organisation's name created to protect their reputation as supposedly 'practising Buddhists.' This whole slide from Boddhisattva ideal to guru cult, took place in less than twenty years. I was so profoundly disillusioned by my experience of this subverting of peoples' faith that I found myself drawn to a completely different view in hopes of understanding and rectifying the self-evident flaws in this Western interpretation of 'guru devotion'. For me, Non-Duality teachings that I came across from Richard Sylvester, did that job the best for me. I'll copy and paste an extract from one of his Question and Answer talks below, which for me seemed to be the best explanation of what I saw and experienced during my many years with this group. * * {Q} : Your book says that there is no method for becoming enlightened. In that case, could it be said that every so-called 'master' who claims to be enlightened and who gives people a method to become enlightened, is not really enlightened himself? Or if they are enlightened, why do they give people these methods? {A} : Enlightenment, or liberation as I prefer to call it, is only seen when the person falls away. It is seen impersonally, and this impersonal seeing can never have anything to do with any person. Therefore there can be no such thing as an enlightened master. Anyone who describes himself in this way is automatically disqualifying himself from having anything authentic to say on the subject. However, people who think or believe that they are enlightened are often tempted to give methods to others. There are several reasons for this. For example, some so-called enlightenment methods are very helpful to people psychologically and are taught out of goodwill. Some methods may be given simply as a response to so many people desiring a method and requesting one because it can be very difficult to disappoint people and send them away empty-handed. It can be much easier to fulfil people's desire for help, hope and meaning. If the master runs an ashram or other community, giving techniques for people to practise can also be an effective form of crowd control. Groups of people living together without enough to do tend to get up to all kinds of shenanigans. Devotees who are kept busy meditating, chanting and performing voluntary work for the guru for many hours a day while being fed a diet of rice and lentils are unlikely to have much time or energy for making mischief. And let's not ignore the fact that selling people methods for becoming enlightened can sometimes be a very good business, as a brief time spent on the internet will show. *

. Life can only be understood looking backwards, but alas, it must be lived looking forwards. Albert Camus .

. The following extract was taken from one of my very favourite books. Published in a very different environment in Canada during the early 1960’s, it tells the story of a young author’s first job after graduating from university as a Biologist. The Canadian Wildlife Service at the time was extremely concerned about the rapidly dwindling caribou population, (a species which once migrated in such vast numbers that it took days, or even weeks, for the entire herd to pass.) It was then the almost universal belief that the cause was most likely increased predation by growing number of wolf packs. Thus, as a scientific precursor to a systematic culling and possible eradication of wolves from the Canadian Arctic, the author, (Farley Mowat), was sent into the remote, frozen tundra, to do a several year study of the 'wolf – caribou' relationship. However, after two years of closely observing a family of wolves in the wild, he came to realise that mankind’s age-old fear and hatred of wolves had created a myth that no longer bore much relation to reality. And that this myth was never challenged. It was simply passed down from generation to generation, unquestioned. Mowat’s findings in the report he wrote was not welcomed by his employers, and it not only cost him his job but also any hopes of a further career as a Biologist working for the government. The positive side was that, as a result, he felt pushed to make his startling discoveries available to the wider public in this book, “Never Cry Wolf.” The effect at the time was like a literary bombshell. It remains to this day one of the most widely-loved books ever published in Canada, and the resulting change in public opinion almost single-handedly caused an outcry which stopped the government’s planned eradication of wolves. I’ll leave this introduction here with a section taken from the preface to the 1963 first edition which includes a press statement by the author,… and my fullest recommendation that, if you enjoy reading this short extract, you find a copy of his recently re-published book and read for yourself this rare and wonderful account of a deeply noble animal that has been unjustly maligned by man from our earliest days as cave dwellers. It is a true gem of literature. * “Never Cry Wolf “is one of the brilliant narratives on the myth and magical world of wild wolves and man's true place among the creatures of nature. "We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be -- the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer -- which is, in reality, no more than the reflected image of ourself." * NOTE : The author gave names to the wolf family he studied which you will come across without lead-up, (since this extract is taken from chapters near the middle of the book). The mother he calls Angeline, the father, George, and an unattached male wolf living with them, Uncle Albert. * * * Farley Mowat Writes : * Chapter 10 After some weeks of study I still seemed to be as far as ever from solving the salient problem of how the wolves made a living. This was a vital problem, since solving it in a way satisfactory to my employers was the reason for my expedition. Caribou are the only large herbivores to be found in any numbers in the arctic Barren Lands. Although once as numerous as the plains buffalo, they had shown a catastrophic decrease during the three or four decades preceding my trip to the Barrens. Evidence obtained by various Government agencies from hunters, trappers and traders seemed to prove that the plunge of the caribou toward extinction was primarily due to the depredations of the wolf. It therefore must have seemed a safe bet, to the politicians-cum-scientists who had employed me, that a research study of wolf-caribou relationships in the Barrens would uncover incontrovertible proof with which to damn the wolf wherever he might be found, and provide a more than sufficient excuse for the adoption of a general campaign for his extirpation. I did my duty, but although I had searched diligently for evidence which would please my superiors, I had so far found none. Nor did it appear I was likely to. Toward the end of June, the last of the migrating caribou herds had passed Wolf House Bay heading for the high Barrens some two or three hundred miles to the north, where they would spend the summer. Whatever my wolves were going to eat during those long months, and whatever they were going to feed their hungry pups, it would not be caribou, for the caribou were gone. But if not caribou, what was it to be? I canvassed all the other possibilities I could think of, but there seemed to be no source of food available which would be adequate to satisfy the appetites of three adult and four young wolves. Apart from myself (and the thought recurred several times) there was hardly an animal left in the country which could be considered suitable prey for a wolf. Arctic hares were present; but they were very scarce and so fleet of foot that a wolf could not hope to catch one unless he was extremely lucky. Ptarmigan and other birds were numerous; but they could fly, and the wolves could not. Lake trout, arctic grayling and whitefish filled the lakes and rivers; but wolves are not otters. The days passed and the mystery deepened. To make the problem even more inscrutable, the wolves seemed reasonably well fed; and to baffle me to the point of near insanity, the two male wolves went off hunting every night and returned every morning, but never appeared to bring anything home. As far as I could tell, the whole lot of them seemed to be existing on a diet of air and water. Once, moved by a growing concern for their well-being, I went back to the cabin and baked five loaves of bread, which I then took to Wolf House Bay and left beside one of the hunting paths. My gift was rejected. It was even scorned. Or perhaps Uncle Albert, who discovered them, simply thought the loaves were some new sort of boundary posts which I had erected, and that they were to be treated accordingly. * About this time I began having trouble with mice. The vast expanses of spongy sphagnum bog provided an ideal milieu for several species of small rodents who could burrow and nest-build to their hearts' content in the ready-made mattress of moss. They did other things too, and they must have done them with great frequency, for as June waned into July the country seemed to become alive with little rodents. The most numerous species were the lemmings, which are famed in literature for their reputedly suicidal instincts, but which, instead, ought to be hymned for their unbelievable reproductive capabilities. Red-backed mice and meadow mice began invading Mike's cabin in such numbers that it looked as if I would soon be starving unless I could thwart their appetites for my supplies. They did not scorn my bread. They did not scorn my bed, either; and when I awoke one morning to find that a meadow mouse had given birth to eleven naked offspring inside the pillow of my sleeping bag, I began to know how Pharaoh must have felt when he antagonized the God of the Israelites. I suppose it was only because my own wolf indoctrination had been so complete, and of such a staggeringly inaccurate nature, that it took me so long to account for the healthy state of the wolves in the apparent absence of any game worthy of their reputation and physical abilities. The idea of wolves not only eating, but actually thriving and raising their families on a diet of mice was so at odds with the character of the mythical wolf that it was really too ludicrous to consider. And yet, it was the answer to the problem of how my wolves were keeping the larder full. Angeline tipped me off. Late one afternoon, while the male wolves were still resting in preparation for the night's labours, she emerged from the den and nuzzled Uncle Albert until he yawned, stretched and got laboriously to his feet. Then she left the den site at a trot, heading directly for me across a broad expanse of grassy muskeg, and leaving Albert to entertain the pups as best he could. There was nothing particularly new in this. I had several times seen her conscript Albert (and on rare occasions even George) to do duty as a babysitter while she went down to the bay for a drink or, as I mistakenly thought, simply went for a walk to stretch her legs. Usually her peregrinations took her to the point of the bay farthest from my tent where she was hidden from sight by a low gravel ridge; but this time she came my way in full view and so I swung my telescope to keep an eye on her. She went directly to the rocky foreshore, waded out until the icy water was up to her shoulders, and had a long drink. As she was doing so, a small flock of Old Squaw ducks flew around the point of the Bay and pitched only a hundred yards or so away from her. She raised her head and eyed them speculatively for a moment, then waded back to shore, where she proceeded to act as if she had suddenly become demented. Yipping like a puppy, she began to chase her tail; to roll over and over among the rocks; to lie on her back; to wave all four feet furiously in the air; and in general to behave as if she were clean out of her mind. I swung the glasses back to where Albert was sitting amidst a gaggle of pups to see if he, too, had observed this mad display, and, if so, what his reaction to it was. He had seen it all right, in fact he was watching Angeline with keen interest but without the slightest indication of alarm. By this time Angeline appeared to be in the throes of a manic paroxysm, leaping wildly into the air and snapping at nothing, the while uttering shrill squeals. It was an awe-inspiring sight, and I realized that Albert and I were not the only ones who were watching it with fascination. The ducks seemed hypnotized by curiosity. So interested were they that they swam in for a closer view of this apparition on the shore. Closer and closer they came, necks out-stretched, and gabbling incredulously among themselves. And the closer they came, the crazier grew Angeline's behaviour. When the leading duck was not more than fifteen feet from shore, Angeline gave one gigantic leap towards it. There was a vast splash, a panic-stricken whacking of wings, and then all the ducks were up and away. Angeline had missed a dinner by no more than inches. This incident was an eye-opener since it suggested a versatility at food-getting which I would hardly have credited to a human being, let alone to a mere wolf. However, Angeline soon demonstrated that the charming of ducks was a mere side line. Having dried herself with a series of energetic shakes which momentarily hid her in a blue mist of water droplets, she padded back across the grassy swale. But now her movements were quite different from what they had been when she passed through the swale on the way to the bay. Angeline was of a rangy build, anyway, but by stretching herself so that she literally seemed to be walking on tiptoe, and by elevating her neck like a camel, she seemed to gain several inches in height. She began to move infinitely slowly upwind across the swale, and I had the impression that both ears were cocked for the faintest sound, while I could see her nose wrinkling as she sifted the breeze for the most ephemeral scents. Suddenly she pounced. Flinging herself up on her hind legs like a horse trying to throw its rider, she came down again with driving force, both forelegs held stiffly out in front of her. Instantly her head dropped; she snapped once, swallowed, and returned to her peculiar mincing ballet across the swale. Six times in ten minutes she repeated the straight-armed pounce, and six times she swallowed - without my having caught a glimpse of what it was that she had eaten. The seventh time she missed her aim, spun around, and began snapping frenziedly in a tangle of cotton grasses. This time when she raised her head I saw, quite unmistakably, the tail and hind quarters of a mouse quivering in her jaws. One gulp, and it too was gone. Although I was much entertained by the spectacle of one of this continent's most powerful carnivores hunting mice, I did not really take it seriously. I thought Angeline was only having fun; snacking, as it were. But when she had eaten some twenty-three mice I began to wonder. Mice are small, but twenty-three of them add up to a fair-sized meal, even for a wolf. It was only later, by putting two and two together, that I was able to bring myself to an acceptance of the obvious. The wolves of Wolf House Bay, and, by inference at least, all the Barren Land wolves who were raising families outside the summer caribou range, were living largely, if not almost entirely, on mice. * Only one point remained obscure, and. that was how they transported the catch of mice (which in the course of an entire night must have amounted to a formidable number of individuals) back to the dens to feed the pups. I never did solve this problem until I met some of Mike’s relations. One of them, a charming fellow named Ootek, who became a close friend (and who was a first-rate, if untrained, naturalist), explained the mystery. Since it was impossible for the wolves to carry the mice home externally, they did the next best thing and brought them home in their bellies. I had already noticed that when either George or Albert returned from a hunt they went straight to the den and crawled into it. Though I did not suspect it at the time, they were regurgitating the day's rations, already partially digested. Later in the summer, when the pups had abandoned the den in the esker, I several times saw one of the adult wolves regurgitating a meal for them. However, if I had not known what they were doing I probably would have misconstrued the action and still been no whit the wiser as to how the wolves carried home their spoils. The discovery that mice constituted the major item in the wolves' diet gave me a new interest in the mice themselves. I at once began a mouse-survey. The preliminary operation consisted of setting some hundred and fifty mousetraps in a nearby bog in order to obtain a representative sample of the mouse population in terms of sex, age, density and species. I chose an area of bog not far from my tent, on the theory that it would be typical of one of the bogs hunted over by the wolves, and also because it was close at hand and would therefore allow me to tend my traps frequently. This choice was a mistake. The second day my trap line was set, George happened in that direction. I saw him coming and was undecided what to do. Since we were still scrupulously observing our mutual boundaries, I did not feel like dashing outside my enclave in an effort to head him off. On the other hand, I had no idea how he would react when he discovered that I had been poaching on his preserves. When he reached the edge of the bog he snuffed about for a while, then cast a suspicious glance in my direction. Obviously he knew I had been trespassing but was at a loss to understand why. Making no attempt to hunt, he began walking through the cotton grass at the edge of the bog and I saw, to my horror, that he was heading straight for a cluster of ten traps set near the burrows of a lemming colony. I had an instant flash of foreknowledge of what was going to happen, and without thought I leaped to my feet and yelled at the top of my voice: "George! For God's sake HOLD IT !" It was too late. My shout only startled him and he broke into a trot. He went about ten paces on the level and then he began climbing an unseen ladder to the skies. When, sometime later, I went over to examine the site, I found he had scored six traps out of the possible ten. They could have done him no real harm, of course, but the shock and pain of having a number of his toes nipped simultaneously by an unknown antagonist must have been considerable. For the first and only time that I knew him, George lost his dignity. Yipping like a dog who has caught his tail in a door, he streaked for home, shedding mouse-traps like confetti as he went. I felt very badly about the incident. It might easily have resulted in a serious rupture in our relations. That it did not do so I can only attribute to the fact that George's sense of humour, which was well developed, led him to accept the affair as a crude practical joke - of the kind to be expected from a human being. Chapter 11 The realization that the wolves' summer diet consisted chiefly of mice did not conclude my work in the field of dietetics. I knew that the mouse-wolf relationship was a revolutionary one to science and would be treated with suspicion, and possibly with ridicule, unless it could be so thoroughly substantiated that there would be no room to doubt its validity. I had already established two major points: 1. That wolves caught and ate mice. 2. That the small rodents were sufficiently numerous to support the wolf population. There remained, however, a third point vital to the proof of my contention. This concerned the nutritional value of mice. It was imperative for me to prove that a diet of small rodents would suffice to maintain a large carnivore in good condition. I recognized that this was not going to be an easy task. Only a controlled experiment would do, and since I could not exert the necessary control over the wolves, I was at a loss how to proceed. Had Mike still been in the vicinity I might have borrowed two of his Huskies and, by feeding one of them on mice alone and the other on caribou meat (if and when this became obtainable), and then subjecting both dogs to similar tests, I would have been able to adduce the proof for or against the validity of the mouse-wolf concept. But Mike was gone, and I had no idea when he might return. For some days I pondered the problem, and then one morning, while I was preparing some lemmings and meadow mice as specimens, inspiration struck me. Despite the fact that man is not wholly carnivorous, I could see no valid reason why I should not use myself as a test subject. It was true that there was only one of me; but the difficulty this posed could be met by setting up two timed intervals, during one of which I would confine myself to a mouse diet while during a second period of equal length I would eat canned meat and fresh fish. At the end of each period I would run a series of physiological tests upon myself and finally compare the two sets of results. While not absolutely conclusive as far as wolves were concerned, evidence that my metabolic functions remained unimpaired under a mouse regimen would strongly indicate that wolves, too, could survive and function normally on the same diet. * There being no time like the present, I resolved to begin the experiment at once, Having cleaned the basinful of small corpses which remained from my morning session of mouse skinning, I placed them in a pot and hung it over my primus stove. The pot gave off a most delicate and delicious odour as the water boiled, and I was in excellent appetite by the time the stew was done. Eating these small mammals presented something of a problem at first because of the numerous minute bones; however, I found that the bones could be chewed and swallowed without much difficulty. The taste of the mice - a purely subjective factor and not in the least relevant to the experiment - was pleasing, if rather bland. As the experiment progressed, this blandness led to a degree of boredom and a consequent loss of appetite and I was forced to seek variety in my methods of preparation. Of the several recipes which I developed, the finest by far was Creamed Mouse, and in the event that any of my readers may be interested in personally exploiting this hitherto overlooked source of excellent animal protein, I give the recipe in full. Souris A La Crème Ingredients: One dozen fat mice One cup white four One piece sowbelly Salt and pepper Cloves Ethyl alcohol [i should perhaps note that sowbelly is normally only available in the arctic, but ordinary salt pork can be substituted.] Skin and gut the mice, but do not remove the heads; wash, then place in a pot with enough alcohol to cover the carcasses. Allow to marinate for about two hours. Cut sowbelly into small cubes and fry slowly until most of the fat has been rendered. Now remove the carcasses from the alcohol and roll them in a mixture of salt, pepper and flour; then place in frying pan and sauté for about five minutes (being careful not to allow the pan to get too hot, or the delicate meat will dry out and become tough and stringy). Now add a cup of alcohol and six or eight cloves. Cover the pan and allow to simmer slowly for fifteen minutes. The cream sauce can be made according to any standard recipe. When the sauce is ready, drench the carcasses with it, cover and allow to rest in a warm place for ten minutes before serving. During the first week of the mouse diet I found that my vigour remained unimpaired, and that I suffered no apparent ill effects. However, I did begin to develop a craving for fats. It was this which made me realize that my experiment, up to this point, had been rendered partly invalid by an oversight – and one, moreover, which did my scientific training no credit. The wolves, as I should have remembered, ate the whole mouse; and my dissections had shown that these small rodents stored most of their fat in the abdominal cavity, adhering to the intestinal mesenteries, rather than subcutaneously or in the muscular tissue. It was an inexcusable error I had made, and I hastened to rectify it. From this time to the end of the experimental period I too ate the whole mouse, without the skin of course, and I found that my fat craving was considerably eased. It was during the final stages of my mouse diet that Mike returned to his cabin. He brought with him a cousin of his, the young Eskimo, Ootek, who was to become my boon companion and who was to prove invaluable to me in my wolf researches. However, on my first encounter with Ootek I found him almost as reserved and difficult of approach as Mike had been, and in fact still remained. I had made a trip back to the cabin to fetch some additional supplies and the sight of smoke rising from the chimney cheered me greatly, for, to tell the truth, there had been times when I would have enjoyed a little human companionship. When I entered the cabin Mike was frying a panful of venison steak, while Ootek looked on. They had been lucky enough to kill a stray animal some sixty miles to the north. After a somewhat awkward few minutes, during which Mike seemed to be hopefully trying to ignore my existence, I managed to break the ice and achieve an introduction to Ootek, who responded by sidling around to the other side of the table and putting as much distance between us as possible. These two then sat down to their dinner, and Mike eventually offered me a plate of fried steak too. I would have enjoyed eating it, but I was still conducting my experiment, and so I had to refuse, after having first explained my reasons to Mike. He accepted my excuses with the inscrutable silence of his Eskimo ancestors, but he evidently passed on my explanation to Ootek, who, whatever he may have thought about it and me, reacted in a typical Eskimoan way. Late that evening when I was about to return to my observation tent, Ootek waylaid me outside the cabin. With a shy but charming smile he held out a small parcel wrapped in deerskin. Graciously I undid the sinew binding and examined the present; for such it was. It consisted of a clutch of five small blue eggs, undoubtedly belonging to one of the thrush species, though I could not be certain of the identification. Grateful, but at a loss to understand the implications of the gift, I returned to the cabin and asked Mike. "Eskimo thinks if man eat mice his parts get small like mice," he explained reluctantly. “But if man eat eggs everything comes out all right. Ootek scared for you." I was in no position - lacking sufficient evidence - to know whether or not this was a mere superstition, but there is never any harm in taking precautions. Reasoning that the eggs (which weighed less than an ounce in toto) could not affect the validity of my mouse experiment, I broke them into a frying pan and made a minute omelette. The nesting season was well advanced by this time, and so were the eggs, but I ate them anyway and, since Ootek was watching keenly, I showed every evidence of relishing them. Delight and relief were written large upon the broad and now smiling face of the Eskimo, who was probably convinced that he had saved me from a fate worse than death. * Though I never did manage to make Mike understand the importance and nature of my scientific work, I had no such difficulty with Ootek. Or rather, perhaps I should say that though he may not have understood it, he seemed from the first to share my conviction that it was important. Much later I discovered that Ootek was a minor shaman, or magic priest, in his own tribe; and he had assumed, from the tales told him by Mike and from what he saw with his own eyes, that I must be a shaman too: if of a somewhat unfamiliar variety. From his point of view this assumption provided an adequate explanation for most of my otherwise inexplicable activities, and it is just possible - though I hesitate to attribute any such selfish motives to Ootek - that by associating with me he hoped to enlarge his own knowledge of the esoteric practices of his vocation. In any event, Ootek decided to attach himself to me; and the very next day he appeared at the wolf observation tent bringing with him his sleeping robe, and obviously prepared for a long visit. My fears that he would prove to be an encumbrance and a nuisance were soon dispelled. Ootek had been taught a few words of English by Mike, and his perceptivity was so excellent that we were soon able to establish rudimentary communications. He showed no surprise when he understood that I was devoting my time to studying wolves. In fact, he conveyed to me the information that he too was keenly interested in wolves, partly because his personal totem, or helping spirit, was Amarok, the Wolf Being. Ootek turned out to be a tremendous help. He had none of the misconceptions about wolves which, taken en masse, comprise the body of accepted writ in our society. In fact he was so close to the beasts that he considered them his actual relations. Later, when I had learned some of his language and he had improved in his knowledge of mine, he told me that as a child of about five years he had been taken to a wolf den by his father, a shaman of repute, and had been left there for twenty-four hours, during which time he made friends with and played on terms of equality with the wolf pups, and was sniffed at but otherwise unmolested by the adult wolves. It would have been unscientific for me to have accepted all the things he told me about wolves without auxiliary proof, but I found that when such proof was obtainable he was invariably right. Chapter 12 Ootek’s acceptance of me had an ameliorating effect upon Mike's attitude. Although Mike continued to harbour a deep-rooted suspicion that I was not quite right in the head and might yet prove dangerous unless closely watched, he loosened up as much as his taciturn nature would permit and tried to be co-operative. This was a great boon to me, for I was able to enlist his aid as an interpreter between Ootek and myself. Ootek had a great deal to add to my knowledge of wolves' food habits. Having confirmed what I had already discovered about the role mice played in their diet, he told me that wolves also ate great numbers of ground squirrels and at times even seemed to prefer them to caribou. These ground squirrels are abundant throughout most of the arctic, although Wolf House Bay lies just south of their range. They are close relatives of the common gopher of the western plains, but unlike the gopher they have a very poor sense of self-preservation. Consequently they fall easy prey to wolves and foxes. In summer, when they are well fed and fat, they may weigh as much as two pounds, so that a wolf can often kill enough of them to make a good meal with only a fraction of the energy expenditure involved in hunting caribou. I had assumed that fishes could hardly enter largely into the wolves' diet, but Ootek assured me I was wrong. He told me he had several times watched wolves fishing for jackfish or Northern pike. At spawning time in the spring these big fish, which sometimes weigh as much as forty pounds, invade the intricate network of narrow channels in boggy marshes along the lake shores. When a wolf decides to go after them he jumps into one of the larger channels and wades upstream, splashing mightily as he goes, and driving the pike ahead of him into progressively narrower and shallower channels. Eventually the fish realizes its danger and turns to make a dash for open water; but the wolf stands in its way and one quick chop of those great jaws is enough to break the back of even the largest pike. Ootek told me he once watched a wolf catch seven large pike in less than an hour. Wolves also caught suckers when these sluggish fish were making their spawning runs up the tundra streams, he said; but the wolf’s technique in this case was to crouch on a rock in a shallow section of the stream and snatch up the suckers as they passed - a method rather similar to that employed by bears when they are catching salmon. Another although minor source of food consisted of arctic sculpins: small fishes which lurk under rocks in shoal water. The wolves caught these by wading along the shore and turning over the rocks with paws or nose, snapping up the exposed sculpins before they could escape. Later in the summer I was able to confirm Ootek’s account of the sculpin fishery when I watched Uncle Albert spend part of an afternoon engaged in it. Unfortunately, I never did see wolves catch pike; but, having heard how they did it from Ootek, I tried it myself with considerable success, imitating the reported actions of the wolves in all respects, except that I used a short spear, instead of my teeth, with which to administer the coup de grace. These sidelights on the lupine character were fascinating, but it was when we came to a discussion of the role played by caribou in the life of the wolf that Ootek really opened my eyes. The wolf and the caribou were so closely linked, he told me, that they were almost a single entity. He explained what he meant by telling me a story which sounded a little like something out of the Old Testament; but which, so Mike assured me, was a part of the semi-religious folklore of the inland Eskimos, who, alas for their immortal souls, were still happily heathen. Here, paraphrased, is Ootek s tale. "In the beginning there was a Woman and a Man, and nothing else walked or swam or flew in the world until one day the Woman dug a great hole in the ground and began fishing in it. One by one she pulled out all the animals, and the last one she pulled out of the hole was the caribou. Then Kaila, who is the God of the Sky, told the woman the caribou was the greatest gift of all, for the caribou would be the sustenance of man. "The Woman set the caribou free and ordered it to go out over the land and multiply, and the caribou did as the Woman said; and in time the land was filled with caribou, so the sons of the Woman hunted well, and they were fed and clothed and had good skin tents to live in, all from the caribou. "The sons of the Woman hunted only the big, fat caribou, for they had no wish to kill the weak and the small and the sick, since these were no good to eat, nor were their skins much good. And, after a time, it happened that the sick and the weak came to outnumber the fat and the strong, and when the sons saw this they were dismayed and they complained to the Woman. "Then the Woman made magic and spoke to Kaila and said: 'Your work is no good, for the caribou grow weak and sick, and if we eat them we must grow weak and sick also.' "Kaila heard, and he said 'My work is good. I shall tell Amorak [the spirit of the Wolf], and he shall tell his children, and they will eat the sick and the weak and the small caribou, so that the land will be left for the fat and the good ones.' "And this is what happened, and this is why the caribou and the wolf are one; for the caribou feeds the wolf, but it is the wolf who keeps the caribou strong." * I was slightly stunned by this story, for I was not prepared to have an unlettered and untutored Eskimo give me a lecture, even in parable form, illustrating the theory of survival of the fittest through the agency of natural selection. In any event, I was sceptical about the happy relationship which Ootek postulated as existing between caribou and wolf. Although I had already been disabused of the truth of a good many scientifically established beliefs about wolves by my own recent experiences, I could hardly believe that the all-powerful and intelligent wolf would limit his predation on the caribou herds to culling the sick and the infirm when he could, presumably, take his choice of the fattest and most succulent individuals. Furthermore, I had what I thought was excellent ammunition with which to demolish Ootek's thesis. “Ask him then," I told Mike, “how come there are so many skeletons of big and evidently healthy caribou scattered around the cabin and all over the tundra for miles to the north of here." "Don't need to ask him that," Mike replied with unabashed candour. "It was me killed those deer. I got fourteen dogs to feed and it takes maybe two, three caribou a week for that. I got to feed myself too. And then, I got to kill lots of deer everywhere all over the trapping country. I set four, five traps around each deer like that and get plenty foxes when they come to feed. It is no use for me to shoot skinny caribou. What I got to have is the big fat ones.” I was staggered. "How many do you think you kill in a year?" I asked. Mike grinned proudly. “I’m pretty damn good shot. Kill maybe two, three hundred, maybe more.” When I had partially recovered from that one, I asked him if this was the usual thing for trappers. "Every trapper got to do the same,” he said. “Indians, white men, all the way down south far as caribou go in the wintertime, they got to kill lots of them or they can't trap no good. Of course they not all the time lucky to get enough caribou; then they got to feed the dogs on fish. But dogs can’t work good on fish - get weak and sick and can’t haul no loads. Caribou is better." I knew from having studied the files at Ottawa that there were eighteen hundred trappers in those portions of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and southern Keewatin which composed the winter range of the Keewatin caribou herd. I also knew that many of these trappers had been polled by Ottawa, through the agency of the fur trading companies, for information which might help explain the rapid decline in the size of the Keewatin caribou herd. I had read the results of this poll. To a man, the trappers and traders denied that they killed more than one or two caribou a year; and to a man they had insisted that wolves slaughtered the deer in untold thousands. Although mathematics has never been my strong point, I tried to work out some totals from the information at hand. Being a naturally conservative fellow, I cut the number of trappers in half, and then cut Mike's annual caribou kill in half, before multiplying the two. No matter how many times I multiplied, I kept coming up with the fantastic figure of 112,ooo animals killed by trappers in this area every year. I realized it was not a figure I could use in my reports - not unless I wished to be posted to the Galapagos Islands to conduct a ten-year study on tortoise ticks. In any event, what Mike and Ootek had told me was largely hearsay evidence, and this was not what I was employed to gather. Resolutely I put these disturbing revelations out of mind, and went back to learning the truth the hard way. Chapter 13 Ootek had many singular attributes as a naturalist, not the least of which was his apparent ability to understand wolf language. Before I met Ootek I had already noted that the variety and range of the vocal noises made by George, Angeline and Uncle Albert far surpassed the ability of any other animals I knew about save man alone. In my notebooks I had recorded the following categories of sounds: Howls, wails, quavers, whines, grunts, growls, yips and barks. Within each of these categories I had recognized, but had been unable adequately to describe, innumerable variations. I was also aware that canines in general are able to hear, and presumably to make, noises both above and below the range of human registry; the so-called "soundless" dog-whistle which is commercially available being a case in point. I knew too that individual wolves from my family group appeared to react in an intelligent manner to sounds made by other wolves; although I had no certain evidence that these sounds were anything more than simple signals. My real education in lupine linguistics began a few days after Ootek's arrival. The two of us had been observing the wolf den for several hours without seeing anything of note. It was a dead-calm day, so that the flies had reached plague proportions, and Angeline and the pups had retired to the den to escape while both males, exhausted after a hunt which had lasted into mid-morning, were sleeping nearby. I was getting bored and sleepy myself when Ootek suddenly cupped his hands to his ears and began to listen intently. I could hear nothing, and I had no idea what had caught his attention until he said: "Listen, the wolves are talking !" and pointed toward a range of hills some five miles to the north of us. * [*During the two-year period that I knew Ootek, his English improved considerably, and I learned quite a lot of Eskimo, so that we were able to converse freely. I have therefore converted our earlier conversations, which tended to be complicated, into a form more understandable to the reader.] I listened, but if a wolf was broadcasting from those hills he was not on my wavelength. I heard nothing except the baleful buzzing of mosquitoes; but George, who had been sleeping on the crest of the esker, suddenly sat up, cocked his ears forward and pointed his long muzzle toward the north. After a minute or two he threw back his head and howled; a long, quavering howl which started low and ended on the highest note my ears would register. Ootek grabbed my arm and broke into a delighted grin. "Caribou are coming; the wolf says so!" I got the gist of this, but not much more than the gist, and it was not until we returned to the cabin and I again had Mike's services as an interpreter that I learned the full story. According to Ootek, a wolf living in the next territory to the north had not only informed our wolves that the long-awaited caribou had started to move south, but had even indicated where they were at the moment. To make the story even more improbable, this wolf had not actually seen the caribou himself, but had simply been passing on a report received from a still more distant wolf. George, having heard and understood, had then passed on the good news in his turn. I am incredulous by nature and by training, and I made no secret of my amusement at the naïveté of Ootek's attempt to impress me with this fantastic yarn. But if I was incredulous, Mike was not. Without more ado he began packing up for a hunting trip. I was not surprised at his anxiety to kill a deer, for I had learned one truth by now, that he, as well as every other human being on the Barrens, was a meat eater who lived almost exclusively on caribou when they were available; but I was amazed that he should be willing to make a two- or three-day hike over the tundra on evidence as wild as that which Ootek offered. I said as much, but Mike went taciturn and left without another word. Three days later, when I saw him again, he offered me a haunch of venison and a pot of caribou tongues. He also told me he had found the caribou exactly where Ootek, interpreting the wolf message, had said they would be - on the shores of a lake called Kooiak some forty miles northeast of the cabin. I knew this had to be coincidence. But being curious as to how far Mike would go, to pull my leg, I feigned conversion and asked him to tell me more about Ootek's uncanny skill. Mike obliged. He explained that the wolves not only possessed the ability to communicate over great distances but, so he insisted, could "talk" almost as well as we could. He admitted that he himself could neither hear all the sounds they made, not understand most of them, but he said some Eskimos, and Ootek in particular, could hear and understand so well that they could quite literally converse with wolves. I mulled this information over for a while and concluded that anything this pair told me from then on would have to be recorded with a heavy sprinkling of question marks. However, the niggling idea kept recurring that there just might be something in it all, so I asked Mike to tell Ootek to keep track of what our wolves said in future, and, through Mike, to keep me informed. * The next morning when we arrived at the den there was no sign of either of the male wolves. Angeline and the pups were up and about, but Angeline seemed ill at ease. She kept making short trips to the crest of the den ridge, where she stood in a listening attitude for a few minutes before returning to the pups. Time passed, and George and Uncle Albert were considerably overdue. Then, on her fifth trip to the ridge, Angeline appeared to hear something. So did Ootek. Once more he went through his theatrical performance of cupping both ears. After listening a moment he proceeded to try to give me an explanation of what was going on. Alas, we were not yet sufficiently en rapport, and this time I did not even get the gist of what he was saying. I went back to my observing routine, while Ootek crawled into the tent for a sleep. I noted in my log that George and Uncle Albert arrived back at the den together, obviously exhausted, at 12:17 P.M. About 2:00 P.M. Ootek woke up and made amends for his dereliction of duty by brewing me a pot of tea. The next time we encountered Mike I recalled him to his promise and he began to interrogate Ootek. "Yesterday," he told me, "Ootek says that wolf you call George, he send a message to his wife. Ootek hear it good. He tell his wife the hunting is pretty bad and he going to stay out longer. Maybe not get home until the middle of the day." I remembered that Ootek could not have known at what time the male wolves returned home, for he was then fast asleep inside the tent. And 12:27 is close enough to the middle of the day for any practical purpose. Nevertheless, for two more days my scepticism ruled - until the afternoon when once again George appeared on the crest and cocked his ears toward the north. Whatever he heard, if he heard anything, did not seem to interest him much this time, for he did not howl, but went off to the den to sniff noses with Angeline. Ootek, on the other hand, was definitely interested. Excitement filled his face. He fairly gabbled at me, but I caught only a few words. Innuit (Eskimos) and kiyai (come) were repeated several times, as he tried passionately to make me understand. When I still looked dense he gave me an exasperated glance and, without so much as a by-your-leave, headed off across the tundra in a direction which would have taken him to the northwest of Mike’s cabin. I was a little annoyed by his cavalier departure, but I soon forgot about it, for it was now late afternoon and all the wolves were becoming restless as the time approached for the males to set off on the evening hunt. There was a definite ritual about these preparations. George usually began them by making a visit to the den. If Angeline and the pups were inside, his visit brought them out. If they were already outside, Angeline’s behaviour changed from that of domestic boredom to one of excitement. She would begin to romp; leaping in front of George, charging him with her shoulder, and embracing him with her forelegs. George seemed at his most amiable during these playful moments, and would sometimes respond by engaging in a mock battle with his mate. From where I sat these battles looked rather ferocious, but the steadily wagging tails of both wolves showed it was all well meant. No doubt alerted by the sounds of play, Uncle Albert would appear on the scene and join the group. He often chose to sleep away the daylight hours some distance from the den site, perhaps in order to reduce the possibility of being dragooned into the role of babysitter at too frequent intervals. With his arrival, all three adult wolves would stand in a circle, sniff noses, wag their tails hard, and make noises. "Make noises" is not very descriptive, but it is the best I can do. I was too far off to hear more than the louder sounds, and these appeared to be more like grunts than anything else. Their meaning was obscure to me, but they were certainly connected with a general feeling of good will, anticipation and high spirits. After anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour of conviviality (in which the pups took part, getting under everyone's feet and nipping promiscuously at any adult tail they might encounter) the three adults would adjourn to the crest of the den, usually led by Angeline. Once more they would form a circle and then, lifting their heads high, would "sing" for a few minutes. This was one of the high points of their day, and it was certainly the high point of mine. The first few times the three wolves sang, the old ingrained fear set my back hairs tingling, and I cannot claim to having really enjoyed the chorus. However, with the passage of sufficient time I not only came to enjoy it, but to anticipate it with acute pleasure. And yet I find it almost impossible to describe, for the only terms at my disposal are those relating to human music and these are inadequate if not actually misleading. The best I can do is to say that this full-throated and great-hearted chorus moved me as I have very occasionally been moved by the bowel- shaking throb and thunder of a superb organ played by a man who had transcended his mere manhood. The impassionata never lasted long enough for me. In three or four minutes it would come to an end and the circle would break up; once more with much tail wagging, nose sniffing and general evidence of good will and high content. Then, reluctantly, Angeline would move toward the den, often looking back to watch as George and Albert trotted off along one of the hunting trails. She made it clear that she wished desperately to join them; but in the end she would rejoin the pups instead, and once more submit to their ebullient demands, either for dinner or for play. On this particular night the male wolves made a break from their usual routine. Instead of taking one of the trails leading north, or northwest, they headed off toward the east, in the opposite direction from Mike's cabin and me. I thought no more about this variation until sometime later when a human shout made me turn around. Ootek had returned - but he was not alone. With him were three bashful friends, all grinning, and all shy at this first meeting with the strange kablunak who was interested in wolves. The arrival of such a mob made further observations that night likely to be unproductive, so I joined the four Eskimos in the trek to the cabin. Mike was home, and greeted the new visitors as old friends. Eventually I found a chance to ask him a few questions. Yes, he told me, Ootek had indeed known that these men were on their way, and would soon arrive. How did he know? A foolish question. He knew because he had heard the wolf on the Five Mile Hills reporting the passage of the Eskimos through his territory. He had tried to tell me about it; but then, when I failed to understand, he had felt obliged to leave me in order to intercept and greet his friends. And that was that. * * *

A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. Maharishi Groucho Marx

. I don't trust atoms. They make up everything .

Are you a disciple of that famous, (but anonymous) teacher who first set the spiritual world rocking with his statement,... "Sometimes I sits and thinks. And sometimes I just sits" ?? .

Last night I dreamed that I was having dinner in a restaurant with an old friend. We asked for the bill but before it came I woke up. Did my friend have to pay my share of the bill ? It is easy to see that the question about my dream is absurd. It is the same with the question "What happens to me after death ?" The question dissolves when it is seen that I am a dreamed character. Then it is seen that there is no `me' who dies; no `after' because time is created only in the dreamed mind; and no `death' because death is simply the awakening from the dream. The mind cannot imagine its own annihilation. Faced with the appearance of death in the dream, the mind creates stories about its own continued existence after death. All of these stories are like answers to the question "Who pays the restaurant bill of the dreamer who wakes up before the bill arrives ?" We are all familiar with so many of these stories. Most offer some variation of reward for a life well-lived, (however that is conceived), and punishment for evil doing. They are both seductive and intimidating, alternately promising us spiritual riches and threatening us with dire consequences. In fact there are billions of these stories because each one is unique to the particular dreamed character who holds it. My version of salvation through the blood of the lamb will be different to yours. Your version of taking rebirth as a god, a human, an animal, a hungry ghost or a demon will be different to that of the Buddhist meditator sitting next to you. Richard Sylvester

Whose point ? Wikepedia's ? You feel they were created to be unreliable ? My point was that a straight forward, factual / historical question like this - "Is Sikhism an off shoot of Islam? or Hinduism? Or both?" ,...... is what Google or Wikepedia excels in. Details and minutiae. Where this forum has a purpose is in providing a venue for people who have 'experimented', (as it were), with these dried husks of religions and philosophies, and are willing to share their experiences as to how reliable, effective, socially comforting,... whatever,... they were when the experimentor tried to bring them into their own life. In short, I think that forums like this work best when all of us members help each other by treating this meeting place as one would if we were writing a review, or rating, for Spiritual Trip Advisor. Google, on the other hand, is the place to go for background minutiae. .

Wikepedia was created for questions precisely like this.