What I’ve learned from the dung beetle

I've been missing self-imposed blog deadlines. This is usually a sign that there is too much else going on and that I've lost some focus. For me, the stuff that ‘goes on’ is managing health issues, family, working and well…in general… life. When I reflect on this, I realise that not writing, even in small amounts, impacts my mood in a negative way. It’s like there is damming up of ideas, a kind of creative constipation. So when I happened across Entomologist Marcus Bryne’s short video ‘The Dance of the Dung Beetle’, I had an epiphany of sorts. The video is a humorous and fascinating look at this intrepid and persistent creature’s effort to ‘scoop the poop’ in the midst of strong competition and the harsh desert environments.

Most of this bug’s life is conducted in backwards motion (we all know that feeling). But here’s the difference: when he’s thrown off course or disoriented in some way (like by the experimenters who deliberately thwart his route), he climbs to the top of his dung ball, does a little dance using the sun as a point of reference, reorients himself, climbs down and goes on. He knows exactly where he has to go. He keeps the goal in sight even though he’s heading towards it with his butt in the air. It was kind of humbling to realise that here is a creature that lives its whole life in excrement yet it doesn’t sit by bemoaning that fact that life is…well… full of s#*t.

In the video, Byrne explains that the dung beetle uses a complex set of visual clues to keep him life on track. He wonders if it can teach humans how to solve complex visual problems. While I was interested in that aspect, I took a different lesson from the bug's behavior, which was this: it’s possible for life to be full of poop but I can still get on with it. So, I figured that next time I feel like the s#*t is piling up, I can climb to the top of the dung, look to the warmth and nurture of the sun, do a dance (dancing on the inside is acceptable for humans) then push the crap along and just keep going. Persistent pays and every time, the beetle managed to reach his goal regardless of obstructions and distractions.

After that realization, my creative constipation seemed to resolve. I don’t doubt it will come back from time to time but for now I've managed one more blog, which is a start.  

Waste not, want not

As the New Year gets underway I'm thinking about the things I plan to do in 2013. I don't make resolutions; they are usually enthusiastic but unrealistic. Invariably I fail which causes me to be hard on myself. The danger is then that I stop trying because, well…what’s the point? Not a great question to ruminate upon if you want to stay motivated. So, this year as well as making my annual Treasure Map (visual goal setting map), I've been focusing on the idiom waste not, want not which came to mind after spending a few weeks with my visiting aunt who had traveled from Italy to spend Christmas with the family. One of the things I observed in our time together was how frugal she was. Not in a miserly way but she is from the generation that recycled, made or made-do and lived by wasting not, primarily out of necessity. They didn’t call it ‘recycling’ or ‘artisan crafted’, they simply did what was economically and ecologically sound.She did it in small ways but she was consisted and committed to not wasting anything.

It occurred to me that the idea of wasting not could apply to other things as well as general recycling, leftover food, managing money or those items of no longer required clothing. It could also apply to concepts. So this year I'm planning to waste not, want not on key areas: energy, time, creativity and peace.

Energy: personal drama hits us all from time-to-time. I'm will aim to keep it contained, do what I can about the elements over which I have control and not get involved if it’s not my business. If I don’t waste energy it will be available to for the things that are important such as my writing, my family and  friends.

Time: do I really need to watch this TV show? That might be an extra half hour of time I can spend in ways that fit with my waste not, want not approach. I will allocate my time in manageable chunks for my writing; a word, a sentence, a paragraph and a page at a time.  

Creativity: while I primarily create through words, I will also employ my other creative skills, such as drawing and painting, which help me to think differently and feed my word output. I will try to harness those elements.

Peace: it’s easy to get caught up in the chaos of the everyday and start to worry about every little thing that is going on in my life and in that of others around me. Again I will focus on what I can act on and let go of what I can’t.  

I'm aware that the above will mean myriad decisions made in the face of every event. But that’s okay. One decision at a time, one day at a time, I can conserve the things I value most and have them available for what is fundamental to my life. I've come to realise that it’s the small things we waste that accumulate into the biggest wanting.

That’s sure to get my wise aunt’s approval.

Hanging onto every word

There’s a mountain of paperwork on my desk; mainly bills, filing and any piece of paper that looks like it requires action. I don’t understand the physics behind it, but the pile grows at an exponential rate. No matter how much zealous attention I apply to scaling it down, it mocks me with its size. Every week or so, I steel myself to tackle the task of whittling it down to manageable proportions. In my history of whittling, I’ve only managed to disperse it entirely on about two occasions. Sad.

The bills and filing are easy to deal with. They are the mundane aspects of an orderly life. But, in my excavations, I also regularly uncover scraps of paper on which I've written story ideas or lines that have come to me at odd hours–usually in the middle of the night or after a dream. In those instances I write the note in the dark. I figure that after getting my ‘pen license’ decades ago in primary school, I would know how to form the letters without the benefit of light. Yet the next day when I look at the page, not only is the writing hard to read, I have no understanding of what it was that at 2 am seemed to be my life’s greatest discovery.

Occasionally the line alone makes sense, but my 2am brain hasn’t allowed for context so the words have nowhere to go. Here’s a few example of my more recent erudite offerings and in parentheses my reactive thoughts on reading them later:

·  You have to have a cymbal bash at the end of a drum roll (No idea what I meant)

·  Blue apples (unlikely in nature, maybe I was nursing a sci-fi moment)

·  Groovy sponge (No idea)

·  What is the link to Monty? (… and Monty would be…who?)

·  Need to make it more expansive (Er…make what more expansive?)

·  He’s not the coolest dude (There’s heaps of them around so I'm none the wiser)

·  House (?)

·  With the extra money (??)

·  Call it the guilt room (???)

You get the general idea.

Despite being unable to decipher my coded insights I can’t bring myself to throw them out just in case by some miracle of linguistics or graphology, the meaning becomes clear at some later point and the moment of ‘great understanding’ returns. So the bits of paper go back in the pile. It brings a whole new meaning to hanging on to every word.

Given that the alarming growth rate of my paper pile, when the scraps of paper have been in residence for some months, I’m forced to find them alternative accommodation so I paste them into an ‘ideas’ book. Anyone trying to read the ideas book would be forgiven for thinking it was compiled in moments of delusion. There is no sense or logic to it at all. Yet something in me won’t let me waste the words.

I consult the ideas book regularly even if it’s just to laugh at myself.  

One night I dreamed that I was in conversation with someone (no idea who) and during that conversation I had a revelation about life’s meaning. In the dream I felt elated. I had the answer! It’s a pity it wasn’t at 2 am and I didn’t rouse to write it down. If I had, instead of waking and remembering the dream but not the revelation, I could have found the answer in my jottings. Based on my above list it might have gone something like this:

If Monty was linked to a more expansive house, even though he’s not the coolest dude, with the extra money he could buy the blue apples and the groovy sponge and keep them in the guilt room. Drum roll, cymbal bash.

Yep, a bit like that. Can’t waste the words!

 

Small moments of everything

This afternoon I took advantage of the sun in my back garden. I'm trying to be more in the moment and doing that requires me to stop the clamour of musts, have-tos, shoulds and shouldn’ts in my head. Since I've been keeping my creative anxiety awareness journal I've realised that those racing thoughts are like rubbish strewn across the road. My thoughts can't travel straight and they collide with one another, tripping me over my own thinking. Instead, I choose to sit with a faint sting of heat on my arms and despite dark sunnies, my eyes narrowing slightly against the sun’s intensity. The water I sip is tart with a generous squeeze of lemon juice. It only takes a few minutes for a pleasant drowsiness to come over me. I want to lean back against the outdoor chair and enter into the relaxation—the thing that goes missing most often in this frantic thought world. I sense the tension draining away from my neck and shoulders. In a dreamlike state, the warmth soaks though my flesh and bone until the even the anxious thoughts in my head melt away. 

In the stillness I become aware of sounds: a distant broom scraping a neighbour’s concrete driveway; the grunt of trucks straining against the speed limit and the spirited debate of birds. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can hear the rhythm of the ocean waves just a few blocks away from home. A hint of fresh paint glides past with the breeze; there’s the scent of the local burger joint and freshly cut grass from the adjacent school oval. My drift into that safe zone continues; into the place where I'm not asleep yet far from awake. Time becomes shapeless.

There is nowhere else I need to be in this moment. In this moment, there is everything I need. It's full of thoughts of my family and friends and stories I want to write. That’s what matters to me. Even an indignant car horn and the high-pitched shouts of children leaving the school grounds across the way, don’t break my calm. I remain in the stillness until my body, alerted by the breeze stroking my forehead, says it’s time to move. The peace of the moment accompanies me as I enter the dull light of the house. The remnants of the outside brightness blur my vision but I can see where I'm going. I'm taking those moments to my desk. To the empty page that’s been waiting to be fed.