B is for Bat and for Brilliant Judy Grahn - by Nan Brooks

                                                                        Judy Grahn

You know how it is when you hear someone absolutely brilliant and they articulate ideas that change your thinking in huge ways and you, in turn, can articulate extraordinarily little of it?  It happens to me often, probably because I need time to digest, to ponder, and to turn big concepts into my own inadequate vocabulary. This week I attended an online salon courtesy of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (www.womenandmyth.org )  Check out that website, especially if you are interested in feminist scholarship and spirituality, new research, intelligent writing and such.

The salon I attended was a teaching by Judy Grahn, who is a lesbian feminist poet, philosopher, novelist, and self-identified divergent thinker.  “The world needs divergent thinkers,” a fine educator told me years ago. She was encouraging me to honor my younger sons’ brilliant minds. The world needs thinkers like Judy Grahn.  Check her out at www.judygrahn.org  and read her work. Prepare to be dazzled and to think, really think.

So, the salon was on the topic, “Living in a Sentient World” and she talked about communicating with other beings, as in animals, birds, even insects. Her new book, coming in March, I think, is titled, Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit: Living a Sentient World. Grahn talked about how it is possible (and I would say, wonder-full) to communicate with other species. She suggests ways to set aside our conceptions about whether it is possible and about how to connect with non-humans.  After all, I’m thinking, we know about how trees communicate though their roots, it seems to me we humans could catch up and catch on to what happens in the natural world around us.

Grahn suggests the Inductive Science method – setting aside preconceived ideas, desires, sentiments, ways of speaking about other species. We tend to anthropomorphize and we tend to assume humans are superior. So we speak to and about our companion animals as pets and we infantilize:  “He’s a good boy,” we say about our wise old dog.

I won’t attempt to re-state what Grahn said, it’s too likely I’ll not be of much service.  Just get the book or join ASWM (see above) and check out the recording of her talk.  However, I will do one thing, which is tell a story about how I communicated (I think) with a bat. At the end of her talk, Grahn suggested we all tell these stories – it’s a way to let others with the same experience know they aren’t “crazy”.  If you think I am, that’s your business. Carry on.

So – my adventure with the bat.  First off, I must admit I anthropomorphized her and I assumed her gender, all in an effort to become more comfortable. It worked to calm me, so there’s that. I was home alone in our eighth-floor apartment and cleaning house to prepare for guests. I tucked in the flimsy cotton throw that hid our ugly plaid second-hand couch and touched something furry. It started clicking, the furry thing did, and I shrieked.

I knew in an instant how the bat had arrived between the cushions of the couch -- the sliding door onto the balcony had been left open about 2” the night before. I had heard clicking in the night and investigated but found nothing.  The unfortunate bat had probably flown in through the opening and then couldn’t find the way out. I heard my mother’s voice repeating her mantra when I was afraid of a bug, “You are bigger than it is; it’s probably afraid of you.”  So I apologized to the bat.

It did occur to me to take the cloth and the bat onto the balcony and let her fly off, but there wasn’t much room among the bicycle and other items and the ceiling was low. So I determined I had to take her down eight floors in the elevator and then let her fly free.

I kept talking but realized that a) she was highly attuned to sound, relying on her own sonar to navigate the world if what I remembered about bats was even true and b) she probably did not speak English. So I started picturing things to her and then I started hearing sounds in my head and sending those to her. She settled down quickly, or at least I thought she did because she became quiet and stopped flapping her wings.

I slowly gathered up the four corners of the cloth, big enough for a queen-sized bedspread, until I had a bundle about the size of a basketball with bat inside and a Lot of extra yardage hanging off my arm. I explained to her via pictures and sounds that we were going to walk down the long hallway and get into the elevator. In my head, I heard the echo my footsteps would make in the hall, the ding of the elevator bell when it arrived on our floor, the sound of the doors opening and closing. I imaged the sounds of other people in the elevator and warned her to be quiet. I said, silently and in English, “If you start clicking, people will ask what I have in this bundle and I can’t lie, so I will say you are a bat and they are likely to freak out and start screeching. It will probably be awful sound to you. So if you can not click and trust me to be your sonar-less guide who sees in another way, that would be good.”  The bat made not one sound or move as we went down the hall and descended in an empty elevator to the ground floor.

Why the elevator was empty was a mystery - it was always full and on Saturdays it was usually full of children headed out to play. But it was peaceful, as was the lobby on our way outdoors.

I set the bundle down very slowly and gently, then gradually opened out all four corners. There was the bat in the center, not moving. I was afraid I had somehow killed her or she had died of fright. But she began to tremble. And I realized she knew she was in danger there on the ground. I put myself in her shoes – well, you know what I mean. I made another connection with her in a different way, I let myself remember being terrified of an abusive human. My insides began to quiver, my heartbeat raced, my knees threatened to buckle entirely. Then slowly, I began to strengthen from the inside. I sent the feelings of growing stronger to her and sent the knowledge that I/she could fly. I may have flapped my arms.

Suddenly, she took off. She flew – I swear it – three circles around my head and I knew she was thanking me. The she flew straight up and joined the large bat colony under the eaves just one floor above my balcony. The bat colony I had never noticed.

She taught me a lot, did the bat I later named Batrice. At the bedside of dying loved ones, I have communicated by sending, or rather, sharing visions, sounds, emotions, not with words always (though yes,  I know that we humans hearing until the very end). I do it sometimes when I am attempting to communicate or negotiate with someone who is blustering and even threatening because they are afraid. I hook into – or I imagine – what they are feeling and join them there; then I grow calmer in myself and send that feeling to them. It often works. It’s just another way to communicate.

So, my thanks to the bat and my thanks to Judy Grahn for all she does and all she is. The world is the better for their presence.