Turtles Guns Rings

"he got down on his knees in the crowded lobby of the Guggenheim Museum. And I am now wearing the ring his grandfather gave to his grandmother"

This was the sweetest, most beautiful thing to read. It happened to someone I think is an absolutely wonderful person, someone who is close to my age and has not been married before. A neat, cute, creative person with a great big heart. Not everybody hopes for this, but to me, (I am being distracted by a disc in my cd drive sounding like an aging tractor going up a hill. It is disconcerting. I should fix it.) to me, this is the sweetest thing in the world. I hope she doesn't mind me making something so sweet and personal so public. I needed something nice today, and I thought I might not be the only one.

A touching finale to an emotionally fraught 24 hours. Last night, we watched another of the Planet Earth series. I am disappointed by this series. I find Sigourney Weaver too detached and serious a narrator. The images are definitely stirring, but the mood is somber and foreboding when it should be joyful and full of wonder. It seems a little bit empty, too focused on the images to worry about substance, unless it is depressing substance. In the first installment, penguins were murdered by seals, baby penguins died of starvation, and polar bears drowned and died. It left me weeping. I hoped for better in the next few episodes. Things were looking up, but there still seemed to be an excess focus on dead baby animals. The arctic fox was forgiven for trying to steal all the baby goslings at once (and killing most of them in the process) because of the fact that she had her own starving babies to feed. I don't know if I'll continue to watch these, though the images are magnificent. It seems as though they tried so hard to get some things on film that they felt they had to show it all, no matter how brutal. Last night, a bunch of wild chimpanzees killed and ate another chimpanzee. What happened to the happy, MutualOvOmaha (that's how it sounded to me) endings of my youth? Has reality TV toughened people to these things and influenced nature television? Have I just been too sheltered?

Later in the evening, we watched what appeared at first to be an "old school" nature program, about a thirty-year-old Loggerhead turtle that travels from Mexico to the islands of its birth to lay its eggs. Things started out well, with a kind-voiced narrator, and manufactured scenes of the turtle doing happy turtle things. But on the way, bad things started to happen to other turtles, mainly green turtles, which are less rare.

I have been in the water with turtles. I was somewhat enthralled, somewhat reluctant to go near, because I didn't want to disturb them. They have a sad expression, as though they are wise and incapable of ever frolicking. Slightly disapproving of our very presence. Turtles, unlike dolphins, do not smile. To know that if they are big, they are very, very old, and that this might be the end of their existence, is heavy stuff. Turtles need protecting.

So this is where it all started to pile up on me. If a turtle is eaten by a shark (which it was) I can deal with it. Sharks and turtles coexist, sharks gotta eat, and sometimes a turtle is the unfortunate meal. What I cannot abide is fishing boats going out to catch tuna with nets or long lines (don't let anyone tell you that line-caught tuna is ok) and catching beautiful 8-foot manta rays and 75-year-old turtles AND NOT CHECKING THEIR LINES UNTIL THESE MOTHERFUCKING BEAUTIFUL CREATURES ARE DEAD AND JUST THROWING THEM AWAY. I cannot abide the waste of lives. Have you ever heard of "bycatch"? That is the acceptable term for the MILLIONS OF TONS of animals, like baby octopus, fish, and turtles, that are swept up in shrimp nets and not thrown back until it's too late and they are dead. The "acceptable" quantity of bycatch per ton of shrimp is like 4/1. Don't get me started there. (I think I already am.)

When I was somewhere at or under 8 years old, my class went on a field trip to the Humane Society. In one sense, it was a good idea, because kindness to animals has been important to me my entire life. I don't even kill spiders. In another, it was not a good idea. There was a donation box there which had pictures of animals which had been treated cruelly. Puppies and kittens and horses with gruesome gashes and misshapen limbs. I came home, wrote a note to my family about how horrible it all was, and crawled to the bottom of a sleeping bag, where I hoped to suffocate and die. Eventually I came out, but the way I felt that day is a lot like the way I feel today. It is all so enormous, so widespread and seemingly unstoppable, the killing of beauty, and one person is so small. Is it within our powers, within our lives, to stop at least some of it?

I eat meat. I can deal with the fact that we raise some animals and kill them for food. Thank god I don't have to do it myself. I can handle Peruvians skewering soft, furry guinea pigs and even Chinese people eating dogs. What I can't handle is cruelty and waste. By the end of the turtle show, I was weeping. If fishing for tuna necessarily kills beautiful turtles and rays, if humans can't think of any more improved methods in their big human brains for doing this, then I don't need to eat tuna. Ever. It's just not necessary. Actually, on that sleeping bag day when I was 8, I also gave up veal, and I never ate it again except by accident.

So on top of this today, all those young people were killed in Virginia. Not exactly on topic, but adding to the weight on my shoulders. Fingers were pointed about ways they could have handled it differently. Angry, sad people pointing fingers because that is what angry sad people do. Try to think of reasons why it happened, who should be blamed, because it shouldn't have happened at all, but it did. There is a well of sadness, and bucket after bucket is being brought up as people find out who the victims are.

It's all too much for one person, too overwhelming. There are so many beautiful, precious things in the world worth treasuring and taking care of. Including people, the people we love. I'm looking at their faces above my computer right now, a collection of the people I love and who love me. I'm hoping to find a way to do my part for the animals for whom I feel this heavy compassion. Sometimes the only thing to do is be tender to those closest to you when the world gets heavy like this. Tomorrow I can find a way to contribute to the turtles, or the rays (who is helping the RAYS?!) but right now I think I'll go curl up next to my husband and just be sweet to him for a little while.