Life As Performance Art 115

This is turning into a very gentle summer, so far. We haven't had any really hot days, no cruel heat. It hasn't been all sunshine, and the opening weeks of July, as they often are, have been a bit cool, often cloudy and sometimes damp. Yesterday in the early morning it rained a bit. We seem to be averaging a bit of rain maybe once a week. This is wonderful. I have never understood those who like it to be hot, sunny and dry forever. You know, with temperatures up perpetually at around thirty, and bright blinding sunlight day after day and all of nature languishes and becomes parched and dying around us. If that's what you really want, then maybe you should go live in Death Valley or anywhere in the Sahara or in the Atacama Desert in Peru, also known as the driest spot on earth. If that's what you really want. But people often have a shallow, knee jerk reaction to rain. It is as though their own inner sadness and dreariness just gets summoned to the surface by inclement weather. I have often heard Canadians tell me that they would prefer a winter of snow and temperatures of minus twenty with lots of bright sunny days than have to endure a balmy but grey and damp west coast December and January of up to plus ten with maybe rain five days a week and the bonus of early daffodils and crocuses appearing in January (if we're good!) So that really, our shadow selves, our sad, lonely and frightened dark little troll selves, are often never that far away, never that well-concealed underneath the good-natured and positive Canadian bonhomie for which we are all, perhaps a bit undeservedly well-known. It is rather sad to think this, and I don't think it's true for everyone, but it still appears true enough, unfortunately. Most of us are not really that happy. We are afraid of our own shadows, it would seem. Yes, we scare easy. And instead of just getting on with a positive and healthy rhythm of life, most of us just opt to hide behind our little tech screens, with perhaps young male idiots (is there any other kind?) often resorting to extreme sports in order to justify their precarious manhood. I am thinking here of my assigned physician at the clinic where I a a patient. I have met him but once. Somewhere in his early thirties, I suspect. And, I don't like him. I think he's an idiot, or at least based on our limited conversation I think he's an idiot. We were talking about Costa Rica, and especially the Monteverde area where I have been six times and happen to know rather well. So what did young Doctor Twit have to say about his great experience of Monteverde? Nothing about the majestic mountains, the incredible biodiversity and absolutely nothing about the beautiful dense and tangled cloud forest. Nor was there mention made about the lovely warm and welcoming people who live there, and are so easily overlooked by dumb tourists. Neither did he apparently know anything about the resplendent quetzal, the toucans and other wonderful birds. Why, even the hummingbirds are enough to cure almost anyone of their indifference towards things with feathers. Young Doctor Twit's great and memorable experience of his less than forty-eight hours in one of the most beautiful places on earth? He claims that there he bungee-jumped from the highest place in the Americas. He repeated it, telling me, I mean, three times. (I didn't know that the Andes ranged as far as Costa Rica) I think I am going to fire him as my physician, just for being an idiot. But I also suspect that like a lot of stupid young men (Okay, he made it through medical school, so maybe he's not that stupid. Or maybe not! I know a lot of doctors) But really, those guys are all snivelling little cowards, so they will try extreme sports just to prove they are not. Uh-huh. I have never felt attracted to bungee jumping. Nor even to sky-diving. Am I scared? You betcha! This is a natural and what I call a good fear of self-preservation, and this has helped keep our species alive. Right now there is a manhunt going on throughout Canada for the two teenagers, boys really, wanted for murder, though there is only circumstantial evidence connecting them to the crimes, but everyone seems to do trial by public opinion. To me, they are innocent till proven guilty. It is so much easier to simply assume their guilt and already hang them in our minds, than actually trying to think critically. And the folks in a certain northern community are so frightened and hysterical that there might be two murderers nearby that everyone appears to be shitting themselves about it. Are we really such cowards? Unfortunately, yes. Like last week, when I was the only one in the park with the courage to scare off a marauding coyote, while dog owners trembled with their pooches held so tight and dear (finally on leashes!). I simply approached the coyote and calmly said in Spanish, "¡Vaya, Coyote!", or, get lost, coyote. No one else thought of doing anything. They were too scared. And I don't think of myself as particularly courageous, though if something needs to be done, I will usually try to do my part to get it done. So, this is how tied and connected we are to the weather. It really tends to act on our mood, and on our shadow side. The shadow, by the way, is really just internalized fear. And there is no fear in love.