Listening to Animals, and My Heart

Communicating across the divide. Also: Huckleberry

Jul 17, 2021

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In this issue

I confess to believing in psychics
The Writer’s Dog #3: Huckleberry and his writer Yi Shun Lai
Another book needs a home: A Dog’s Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

But first, a couple of questions

Am I alone with this or do you believe in the ability of psychics to commune with animals, the dead, or both?
If you’ve ever successfully communicated with an animal, alive or dead, what do you remember from that conversation?

Listening to Animals, and the Heart

I was driving east on I-15, somewhere around Baker when I heard animal communicator Penelope Smith describe her conversation with a cat. She was a guest on an old late-night radio show called Coast to Coast hosted by George Noory. My sister, who had taped and saved the show for the trip, snored next to me in the passenger seat.

I’d rolled my eyes when my sister popped the recording into the cassette player of her Toyota for the drive from CA to CO. That was my job in our relationship - to roll my eyes whenever she introduced the latest notion that captured her attention or imagination. I was the “why”, she was the “why not?” She was the dreamer, the improv artist, the fearless flyer. I was the one who wanted to drive and make sure all the hatches were battened down and we had enough gas.

We both love our animals deeply, though, and this has forged a bond between us. And the fact was, my eye-rolling was basically a performance. In my heart of hearts, even then, I longed to communicate with my pets. My biggest takeaway from that long, hot trip with Penelope and my sister: communication is really about listening, even when the being you are trying to reach is a dog. Or dead. Or both.

I confess that since losing Rina last January, I feel stranded. The conversation we started when she was just five weeks old was interrupted way too soon. I have so much more I want to say to her and even more I want to understand. I know a lot of the things I’m thinking and feeling are tied up in the grief, residual anger, and a lingering, nagging guilt that all hit me when I least expect it, usually when I think I have finally achieved a level of acceptance if not peace. It doesn’t help that I feel many of the same things about the death of my dad which followed so soon after hers.

For the past few months, I’ve zoomed with a pet loss group hosted by the San Diego Humane Society. I’m struck over and over again by the way love endures long after the object of that love is gone. We know that bodies don’t last forever but we don’t all share the same understanding of what happens afterwards. One of the group members shyly confessed that she had made an appointment with an animal communicator to try to find out if her dog was okay and to see if there was a possibility of the forgiveness the woman wanted.

I found myself telling her to go ahead and do it. I told her that I had taken Chloe, the dog who preceded Rina and shared most of her 16 years with us, to an animal communicator named Brigitte Noel. Even though the skeptic in me was primed to take everything she told me with a pound of salt, I had to admit that something special happened. A minute or so after we entered Brigitte’s house, Chloe’s normally tense body relaxed. She sniffed the area around the table where I sat across from Brigitte and then lay down in what I think of her “lion” pose, facing away from each of us. After explaining that she would be communicating with Chloe silently, Brigitte began to focus on Chloe. She began to write on the paper in front of her. At one point, Chloe snapped her head around quickly and barked once, emphatically and then she settled her chin on her paws and Brigitte continued to take notes.

Did Brigitte ask the questions I wanted her to ask? Yes. Did I get the answers I expected? Yes. But here’s what I didn’t expect. In that silence, I sensed the current of communication traveling between Brigitte and Chloe. And when we left, my old dog stepped lighter, and projected a calm I had not felt from her in a long time. If I had to put words to it, I’d say she felt heard. I learned to speak far less to her and to observe and listen to her more. It was nicer for both of us and when she died, we were both a little readier. Since then, I’ve paid more attention to nonverbal communication and when Rina was in my life, the closest I ever felt to any living being was when we just walked or sat together without any sound at all.

My father loved animals. They brought him peace that eluded him in his dealings with many people. He insisted he knew what his dogs were thinking and feeling but, in all honesty, his interpretations seemed to have a lot more to do with what he was thinking and feeling. I suspect that is true for many of us, even when we are dealing with other humans. Yet it was my dad who has made it possible for me to believe that I might be able to communicate with Rina wherever she is.

Back in the Eighties, he’d called me just to say hello one morning, not realizing that I was having a very difficult moment. It was a quick conversation and then he signed off. Right after we hung up Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony came on the kitchen radio and I heard my dad’s mother’s voice clearly in my head even though she’d died a few months earlier.

“Dreadful, isn’t it?” she said to me. “Boom, boom, boom.” She hated Beethoven. Her voice was clear and I felt her right there in the kitchen with me. I just kept saying her name over and over again so she would stay. Then the phone rang again. It was my dad. He’d pulled over his car and found a phone to call me again. “I don’t know why I’m calling,” he said. “I just felt I should.” Then he said, “I was thinking of your grandmother.”

We talked for about twenty minutes then and when I hung up, I didn’t know what to make of it except that I felt better, much better. I recognized the same aura around Chloe that surrounded me that day: I’d been heard. Love had crossed the border from death to life and back again.

I admit, I want to feel that again. I need to.

Talking to the Animals

Short Reads

Placebo? Imagination? Radio frequencies? This piece in The Guardian explores animal communicators from the perspective of skeptics and believers alike.

Books

If you are looking for a DIY approach to animal communication, check this list of books that aim to teach us how it’s done. I own two: Penelope Smith’s Animal Talk: Interspecies Telepathic Communication which I bought not long after that road trip I took with my sister, and, Straight From the Horse’s Mouth: How to Talk to Animals and Get Answers by Amelia Kinkade which I ordered the other day and am awaiting breathlessly. Well, not breathlessly. I pretty much know what’s in it but I liked the down-to-earth voice and approach and thought it might be a good idea to compare how Kinkade and Smith approach animal communication. I found Smith’s book to be completely absorbing one minute only to find myself cringing with disbelief the next. She is given to sweeping statements that may feel a little out of reach for the novices among us:

“Sigh like the wind--open your arms, your chest, your heart--and all creatures will hum to you.” - Penelope Smith, Animal Talk: Interspecies Telepathic Communication

Still, I read her book and will read Kinkade’s from cover to cover. Without necessarily setting out to do so, both books provide insights not only to communication with animals but to how we can communicate better with our own species. The core insight — and one I need to remember daily — is this: shut up and listen.

I also found this list of novels and stories with animal communicators in them (or you can wait until mine is ready - I’m writing as fast as I can ).

And while we are on the subject of psychics

Olivia, a character in my novel-in-progress, now receives daily emails from California Psychics. This is because, a few weeks ago, in one of those flashes of panic disguised as inspiration, I found myself plugging in the birthdate and other pertinent data for her into a form at California Psychic. In return, I received a free and very detailed birth chart that confirmed some of the things I knew about her and provided a lot of fun details I’d not considered. She’d been a source of frustration for me but now she is living and breathing in the pages of my WIP -- and taking up an awful lot of space in my inbox.

If you are a writer looking to waste -- excuse me -- invest some time in character research, give it a try. Or, if you’re just plain curious, here is the link for you to try it yourself.

The Writer’s Dog: Huckleberry

One writer’s dog leads to another. I heard about Yi Shun Lai and her extremely photogenic canine, Huckleberry, from a previous interviewee: Lenny and her writer Kristen Tsetsi. A deeper look revealed a novelist, memoirist, columnist, and freelance editor and writer who -- even better -- happens to be a fellow San Diegan. I love a writer who wants to help other writers get better, make readers laugh, and wrote a novel I really want to read because I love the title: Not A Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu. Yi Shun Lai wrote this helpful piece about dealing with the “self-doubt toad” that lives in every writer and many other non-writing folks and this even more helpful piece about how to eat a stroopwafel ( I had no idea!). More about Yi Shun ( pronounced yeeshun" for her first name; "lie" for her last) in a minute. First...

Meet Huckleberry

I’m Known for... eating paperwork, ferns, Kleenex (harbors cat aspirations); various vocal stylings; soft armpits; big mouth, looooong legs that distract from nefarious deeds of upper body.

I’m Expert at... using paws to rattle booze bottles and making that sproingy thing that keeps doors from banging into walls go. Punching other dogs in the face as an invitation to play. What, I'm a boxer mix, what'd you expect?

I live for... yelling at people.

How I met my writer... Not sure. I was doing my speed-bump imitation at the monthly Labs and More mixer in San Diego. I actually think I was bamboozled, because when I woke up a guy had me IN HIS ARMS and the paparazzi was out, and then I was being hustled into a car.

Joke's on them, though. That speed bump thing was just a front. Guess they've figured it out by now.

How it’s been going so far... Good. Bi-peds have been working around my schedule and needs.

Something you should know about my writer...Fan of nuclear-orange colored cheese-flavored snacks and stroopwafels. Does not share these with me. This is all you need to know.

Meet Huckleberry's Writer Yi Shun Lai

Known for... her novel, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, a Thurber Prize semi-finalist; and her memoir, Pin Ups. Her column "From the Front Lines" runs monthly at The Writer magazine. Read more at thegooddirt.org

What folks are saying about Pin Ups…

..."a powerful, moving reflection on race and identity as told through sport." —Mike Copperman, author, Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta
..."Yi Shun Lai asks herself, us, and Mother Nature, 'Who belongs outdoors?' Her exploration of these questions is packed with both insight and humor. Like a good hike, Pin Ups challenges and awes the reader, leaving us filled with gratitude at the summit." —Dolly Chugh, author, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias.

How Huckleberry helps Yi Shun to do her job...Does speed-bump imitation until 7, when it is time to walk; and 4, when it is time to play soccer. Rings bell when it is time to eat. Rattles booze bottles at convenient cocktail hours.

What Yi Shun when not engaged with Huckleberry... Pens ditties on Bruce Springsteen, professional jealousy, and more at various Medium publications. Writes and delivers diversity, equity, inclusion, and access workshops for CanIPlayThat.com. She is also a ShelterBox Response Team member. Learn more about what we do at www.shelterboxusa.org.

Where to find us:

Twitter

Instagram and #huckleberrydiego

Website

Links to Everything

Adopt this Book: A Dog’s Purpose: A Novel for Humans by W. Bruce Cameron

Alice Walker loved this book. I both loved and hated it. A friend gave it to me years ago. I laughed, I cried, and when I was done I felt a little like I’d been worked over by a master manipulator. Cameron knows all the ways to jerk those heartstrings but his concept here works -- a wonderful dog that keeps reincarnating until we see all the ways that dogs give to us and all the ways we make their lives harder. Fine literature? No. A good story? Yes. It’s also cathartic in a good way.

If you’ve got room for this paperback version in good condition on your bookshelf, let me know. I’ll be drawing a winner from all those who hit the like button, leave a comment, or respond by email to this letter.

P.S. And Now, your moment of Zen…Chloe

..in the days after our appointment with the animal communicator when every little bone in her body relaxed…

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.

I can’t wait to see what you send!

(And if you’ve gotten here, liked something, and still haven’t hit the heart below, now’s your chance! )