Namaste, Bitches

During my last class on Ecology, I learned that certain parasites can affect the behavior of their hosts in order to further the parasites ability to breed and complete its lifecycle. The most notable affects fish - the parasite causes the infected fish to behave in ways that make the fish more vulnerable to predatory birds. The parasite needs the birds to host its final developmental stage.

I just read an article (Return of the Puppet Masters about the toxoplasma virus transmitted by cats. It's estimated that approximately half the human population is infected with it. It tends to make an infected person, male or female, more self-reproaching and insecure. However, men become jealous & paranoid and defensive while women become more open-hearted and outgoing. If a person is badly infected - usually an infant whose pregnant mother passed the toxoplasma to them or someone w/a compromised immune system, they can develop schizophrenia. Now, rats w/a toxoplama infection become less sensitive to the scent of cats - and rats are an important host for the toxoplasma's life cycle. The cat passes the virus into its feces, a rat ends up eating something infected from the cat, the rat becomes less wary of cats, the cat eats the infected rat and the toxoplasma life cycle continues.

But why would this virus initiate changes in humans? In women I can understand - a more warm-hearted woman would be more likely to be a cat person. So are suspicious, jealous men more likely to have warm-hearted and outgoing women in their lives, who are also cat people? Therefore providing the toxoplasma host with a warm bed & plenty of food and kitty litter? I just don't see suspicious jealous men being more cat-people than normal guys. Most guys I know are jealous, suspicious and self-reproaching, which makes me wonder if all the men I know have been infected by toxoplasma.

Apparently, many drugs used to treat schizophrenia can push the toxoplasma virus into submission - and a drug used to treat a toxoplasma infection can alleviate the symptoms of schizophrenia.

This whole thing was started by me wondering what else a Burmese python could eat besides rats and its owners. I went from the Burmese python diet (small rodents to large mammals, fish, lizards, other snakes, birds, small children) to wondering if ball pythons could be safely fed other types of meat - which yes, they eat birds, lizards and small mammals. However, a ball python fed chicken would be more likely to carry and transmit salmonella. A lot of zoos feed their big pythons road kill. Nice, huh?

Oh, and I was also trying to determine if in Buddhism, animals could be reincarnated as humans. They can, and humans can end up as animals. In the Tibetan Buddhism cosmology, a human soul is more desirable than an animal soul. Personally, I think otters have it easy. They crack open seafood on their bellies. I would so like to come back as an otter. I'm just not sure how badly I need to fuck up my karma to just end up as an otter and not, say, a cockroach. I'd say I'd like to come back as a pet dog or cat, but with my luck I'd end up a pit bull being used for dog fights, or a stray cat with no tail or something. Used to think I'd like to be a dolphin in another life, but the oceans are so polluted... ugh. I really wish there were some decent Buddhist resources here in Las Vegas to answer questions like this for me. "Pardon me, revered Master - how bad do I need to screw up to come back as an otter and not, say, a pit bull used in dog fighting?"

(Ok, an aside from Cash Cab - all the inside numbers on the roulette wheel add up to 666)

Silly, I know. I feel kind of self-conscious about doing it, but what is a journal for? It's a record, right? Some kind of log of everyday events, dreams, memories, hopes. So I'm hoping maybe the 'Net will still be around & I'll have a connection across time w/the new me, whoever I may be. My biggest beef w/dying isn't the death itself, it's the forgetting.

Fer instance, I think something bad happened to me in an old prison. I've been to Alcatraz, I've seen photos & old b/w movies of old prisons, places like Leavenworth & recently there was one in Florida they were showing on the History Channel or CourtTV. To me, all prisons pretty much look the same - institutional, w/bare concrete floors & solid bars. But older prisons creep me out. Looking at that one from Florida on t.v. gave me chills - and it was on the television. And when I was very little...

My dad was an o.t.r. truck driver. He went everywhere. And in the Summers when I was out of school, my mom & I went everywhere w/him. One Summer he had a run to Arizona. Why, I don't know. What he was carrying, I have no clue. But I do remember it was hot. Damn hot. I remember, vaguely, whining about "I'll never be cool again." I remember, also, how in the middle of a desert night, clearest stars anyone could ever hope to see, the sky deepened to a bizarre green & the world's nastiest hail storm commenced to fall on us. Desert weather - you either love it or keep away from deserts. So my dad had a layover in Yuma, AZ for a day or two, & there was the ever-exciting prospect of a historical monument to visit. The AZ State Yuma Prison. Yuma Prison At first, I was not afraid. Fascinated, maybe a little bored, hot. It felt good just to be out exploring w/my parents. Listening to the tour guide, wandering here & there. But there was a cell. It was basically chipped into the side of the hill, made of solid stone. It was designed for solitary confinement or confinement, & called the 'dark cell'. No lights. In a huge vault in the side of a mountain, a cage w/in a cage was built w/a raised concrete platform in the middle, w/shackles at each corner. The unruly prisoner would be shackled to that slab, all by themselves. Except of course, for the rats. The cockroaches. The scorpions & spiders. Maybe a random rattlesnake looking for food or to escape the elements. At least during the day, because the cell was in the hill, the heat wouldn't be too bad, but the temperature at night can drop to below freezing.

The attraction of that particular day in my life was to stand behind the door of the dark cell, looking out, & getting your picture taken. I was ok all day right up until then. I flipped the hell out. Had a hysterical screaming fit. Because when I walked into the cell & they shut the door, it was so dark. A smell like old sweat & fear & defeat washed over me, a rank, old animal smell, and I could almost hear someone behind me, on that slab, the shuffle of an arm or leg sweeping across it, maybe to flinch away a fly, the rattle of a shackle, and I knew, even at 4 or 5 years old, that the prisoners were left for days at a time w/out food or water, subsisting on the roaches & fighting off rats. Later that afternoon, getting ready to get back on the road, listening to my mom & dad bicker in the heat, we stopped at a truckstop & I got a barbecued beef sandwich. A couple of bites into it, I found that I couldn't stop thinking about the long-gone prisoner in the dark cell, that odor & the sounds, & I was sick to my stomach. To this day, whenever I smell a certain type of barbecue sauce in food, it still turns my belly. But I can't say exactly why I had those feelings, what set them off, the imagery, the sounds... these are the things one should be able to remember. Why do old prisons bother me so much? Was I actually so traumatized that day in Yuma that I can't shake it off, or did something really bad actually happen to me in a long-ago life?

So, I unintentionally made my husband shed a few tears last night... Next Monday I go to get this wisdom tooth pulled. I feel a little weird about it because it's the first time anything that normally belongs in my body is being taken out. Will I miss my tooth? Will my tooth miss me? But Rob is bothered because one of the potential side effects is, well, death. For some unknown reason, as we're taking me to work last night, we started talking about the procedure, and next thing I know he's got tears rolling down his cheeks & he tells me "Don't leave me!" I was touched.
I guess because most of my family died when I was still young & impressionable, instead of looking upon death as the great enemy, to me it seemed like something that just happened. Whenever a pet died, we went out later that week, sometimes the next day, sometimes the same day, and got a new one. My relatives, to me, seemed equally replaceable. Funerals for us weren't long drawn out ordeals, but more like an afternoon for the grown-ups to get together, drink & talk shit about the deceased. One time I was stuck babysitting & inadvertently ended up bringing the kid I was babysitting to an aunt's funeral. She started playing w/my nieces & younger cousins in the graveyard, and I don't think she was too traumatized by the whole thing. Her parents were like, "Well, did the event bother you?" & she was like, "No, but I've got a bunch of new friends now!" I've also got some very backwoods relatives living in Tennessee who still bury their own kinfolk out behind the stills & the outhouses... They sit up with their dead folk & sometimes their dead folk sit up... (I ran about 5 miles that night - had to walk back home, too.)
One of my penpals recently suggested to me that my fascination w/dead people is because I'm really afraid of death, but I have to disagree. If anything, I'm intensely curious. I want to know. Death is the great Unknowable. We can surmise, we can theorize, we can hope, we can wonder, we can fear... but until we die, we won't know for certain what actually happens. I mean, the mechanics of death are pretty straight-forward and can be quite gooshy. (I couldn't eat any fatty-looking meat after I found out about adipose tissue) But it's knowable. It's what happens to the soul that is the Mystery. I'm not afraid of death - I've died 4 times, but I didn't get very far (obviously!) I also had my bouts of attempted suicide when I was an alcoholic angst-filled teenager, but all that ever happened was the standard out-of-body, hovering over yourself watching the resuscitation events unfold. How boring. I want to know what's past that... beyond the Veil, what's behind door #3... the big score.
My only problem with death is this: I don't want to come back all unknowing again. I've learned so much so quickly in this lifetime that I don't want to forget it all over again, have to start from the beginning. Fresh new brain cells w/no foreknowledge of what's gonna happen. I don't care if the river of Nepenthe makes me forget what happens when you die, but I don't want to forget the rest of the stuff - like reincarnation itself, the notion that there may be more than one god, that everything in the Universe is a reflection of the Divine Source... I don't want to have to relearn all the social skills, the ancient stories, the personal mythology, I don't want to forget all the people I know. I don't want to forget my coyote magic or my snakeskin soul. I don't want to forget that music is made to be played with the heart and dancing uses more than your feet.

A word from Rumi...

Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance, in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.