Salmagundi (noun)
1. a mixed salad of many ingredients, such as meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables, arranged in rows on a platter.
2. a mixture or miscellany
I love this word. The first time I came into its company was through the name of a restaurant, a high end soup kitchen really, in San Francisco right across the street from the Geary and Curran Theatres and adjacent to the building that housed the ACT Acting Conservatory which I attended from 1976 through 1978. Most every day I’d visit Salmagundis and I’d be at a table or booth going over a scene while I feasted on one of their 3 soup selections of the day (English Country Cheddar Cheese was one of my faves!) or I could be very spare and Bohemian and just have an apple with a thick slice of cheese. (Cheese often factors heavily in my diet. What can I say, I’m from the Midwest.) It was a warm, welcoming, clattery place, lots of bustle and traffic. Years later I discovered that it wasn’t just a restaurant name, but a fantasticly colorful word in its own right. Salmagundi. It sounds like an Italian street festival to me. I conjured it up from my memory because its second definition embraces the spirit of today’s blog.
Dusk thoughts
Just down from a walk up our hill where the wild strawberries are in bloom along the path and all through the meadow. It reminds me of long ago hot spring days in Fort Wayne walking to elementary school and feasting on the wild strawberries that grew in abundance in the fields along the way, fields that year by year would disappear for new houses being built in our development. Oh! I just remembered it was summer solstice tonight. (Or is it tomorrow night? I can never get that straight.) Either way its still cool. Very New England. At the top of the rise, surrounded by tall meadow grass that looked flocked, I looked out on the gorgeous view of the Green Mountains at the top and it looked almost exactly like the book cover for “Cold Mountain.” A little less blue, though. Much much more green.
The frogs are making cartoon gulping noises across the road on the pond and way off in the woods there’s the sad song of a thrush. He sound so alone and lost. Someone’s mowing their lawn Again, memories of Indiana suburbs on weekends in the summer when everyone decided to mow their lawns as the light started to fade from the day.
The Geese
Ginger, Mary Ann, and the 6 Canadians. 8 More Reasons I Love Living in Vermont. That must bring the Official count up to around 26. Counting them in has all been inspired by Ginger and Mary Ann’s dogged efforts to be let into the fold, the “inner goose” circle and I think they’ve succeeded. This odd and motley salmagundi of geese go everywhere together – swimming out on the pond, promenading up our driveway, out munching together in the orchard. I watch it and I almost tear up; my lower lip literally protrudes. Our sweet geese have melted the hearts of those stoic, wild Canadian Geese. The adults even let Ginger and Mary Ann lie right next to their goslings. Amazing.
Ginger and Mary Ann are a trip. If we haven’t been outside in awhile, they will come up on our porch or side door and honk for us to come out and play and the second we come out they scurry away “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” They’re big teases. They can also leave big green surprises on our porch, but that’s another story. But speaking of that story I have found a new technique to zap away the goose droppings around the yard and side of the pond! I turn on the hose full blast and use the “jet” stream nozzle to pulverize the poop to kingdom come. It disappears right into the grass. Now isn’t that interesting? I sound like I’m in a commercial, a spokesperson for a brand new fertilizer: Goose Green.
1979 Bike Ride – The Best Man
I haven’t checked in for awhile on the 30 years ago trek. A lot had happened. I had visited relatives in Owensboro and Beaver Dam, Kentucky, had camped a couple other places and was now in the damp humidity of Trenton, Tennessee where I was visiting my great Aunt Nona and Uncle Jim, my favorite of my dad’s aunts and uncles. Aunt Nona and Uncle Jim would always have the liquor at family get togethers which often came in handy in the south because many times events would take place in “dry counties.” Aunt Nona and Uncle Jim were never deterred. Aunt Nona was genteel, a southern purr to her voice, and Uncle Jim was raucous, one of the best joke tellers I’ve ever come across. His were the stories that would wind on forever with ever interesting side roads along the way. It was the journey not the punch line that was the highlight to these off color delights. He’d tell these stories and then he and Aunt Nona would group around their piano and sing hymns. An interesting juxtaposition. It was a slower pace there, things lingered. You’d never eat before 8 which was unheard of for my family. This would be the last time I would see them. They were most hospitable and so happy I’d wanted to stop by in the midst of my adventure. They had both recently had heart bypass surgery and were on the mend and doing well. Uncle Jim claimed that they hadn’t sewn him up correctly and he laughed long and hard when he told me to give him my hand and placed it on his sternum. Every time he took a breath the bones in the middle front of his rib cage would click-clack apart. I pulled my hand back as if I’d had an electrical shock and Uncle Jim cracked up.
While visiting there it came time, as I mentioned earlier, for me to be Best Man at the wedding of the first man I ever slept with. The wedding wasto be in Champagne, Illinois, so I caught a Greyhound bus in Trenton and traveled north. It felt like stepping out of “Roughing It” and into the pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Right off the bus, I was whisked into tuxedo fittings (I’d sent my measurements in May when I had agreed to take part in the ceremony). There followed quick introductions, rehearsals, etc, closely followed by drinking, drugging, and all around Great Gatsby hedonism with old and new friends. Most of it was great fun, but there was some careful maneuvering around a minefield of weird behavior. The night before the wedding – a big Jewish affair – the bride to be went off to spend one last night at her parent’s house and I stayed with the “first man” – we’ll call him “Jeffrey.” Jeffrey surprised me by saying he wanted to sleep together one last time. Now, this was the ‘70’s and I was 24 and frisky and still attracted to him, but still, it was just too bizarre. The night before? “Why are you getting married, Jeffrey” I asked. No answer; he just smiled an inscrutable smile. We managed to get through the night without going to bed with one another and without a huge amount of uncomfortability, but still it was strange. And sad because I felt in some way, arrangement or no arrangement, Jeffrey was denying he was gay. I think both he and his wife were well aware of the fact and they were going along with it anyway. It smacked of another time. And Jeffrey - so beautiful in an androgynous kind of way I’ve always been a sucker for - was starting to gain weight. At that time it was hardly noticeable, just the beginnings of a paunch, but the last I heard of him he was very heavy. Strange, strange, strange.
Despite all this bit of sturm und drang, the wedding turned out to be a blast. Both families welcomed me wholeheartedly and everyone was treated like royalty. By this time in the ride I’d grown a beard, my hair (I had MUCH more hair then) was bleached out from the sun, and I was ruddy tan. It was surreal going from shorts and sneakers and no shirt to a fitted grey tuxedo and cravat, gallivanting over country club golf course in golf carts filled with champagne, having a joint or two on the 17th Hole, but it was wicked fun.
Soon, all too soon, I was back on the bus headed back south having to pinch myself and ask if that all had really happened. It had and it had been a fantastic break from the pedaling. I spent one more day with Aunt Nona and Uncle Jim. The next day thunderstorms were predicted, but I wanted to get back on the road unless it was really horrible. I planned to take off at daybreak around 5 or so and Aunt Nona said that was a little too early for her, so I bid farewell and much love to both of them, giving them a hug good night. The next morning I looked outside and lightning was lacing the sky, but no rain. I got myself together and tip-toed through the house, heading out through the kitchen to the garage where my bike was waiting, fully packed. When I got to the kitchen, though, there was Uncle Jim in his bath robe at the stove, spatula in hand, frying me up a couple eggs. I almost burst out crying. It was so dear of him. He said something about me having to have a good breakfast for the road. He was spry and good humored, a warm smile, so caring. I wonder if he knew we wouldn’t see one another again? After the breakfast, he walked me out to the front. The sky had an eerie light to it, completely clouded over, but bright, bright, with periodic flashes of lightning. Very theatrical. And it was so still, the air thick with moisture. He might’ve asked me if I was sure I wanted to leave, that I was welcome to stay. I thanked him, but said I wanted to give it a try. He wished me God speed and I took off. I remember him standing there in his bathrobe in that bright, eeire light, waving. The day would hold a lot of rain and delays that day, but the memory of him in the kitchen fixing me breakfast kept a smile on my face and a warmth in my heart.
Back to now on the porch.
It’s dark, peepers going to town. Sofia’s been grappling up the screens after moths on the outside of the screened-in porch. She doesn’t quite get that they seem to be there, but there not when she leaps up to get them. I had to banish her to the inside before she clawed holes. All the birds are “cooped up.” Did I tell you that Nanna, our broody hen, just hatched 7 chicks? Yes. Richard had an exotic mix of eggs mailed to him a while back and Nanna sat on them and warmed them to life. They all have the coloring of chipmunks, too cute for words peeping out the bottom of Nanna’s feathers as if she were putting on a tiny puppet show.
Just as the light was beginning to fade tonight, I got a loud honk from over at the pond from either Ginger or Mary Ann. Their chirpy voices are changing and the honks can be quite loud. This one echoed off the fir trees. They were out on the pond with the Canadians, having a nice swim round, but I swear the honk was “It’s getting dark, isn’t it?! It’s time you put us in our shelter, right? Get with the program.” (Yes, all that in one honk.) So I got up and walked out to the break in the stone wall where they like to waddle up the bank from the pond and when they got to the top, we all raced across the front lawn together, me laughing, and the 2 of them close behind with their wings flapping and their little webbed feet going flat-footed for all they were worth. They’re fast now! Royce was out in his garden tending to his peonies (which are gorgeous and which he generously and often gives us) and he saw our wild goose chase and chimed in “That looks like fun.” It was.
Good night. I hope your day was a miscellany of wonderful things.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Disappearing Acts
Richard and I returned home Sunday from a weekend trip to find Canadian goose feathers – both adult and gosling – strewn along the side of our pond, showing obvious signs of a struggle. Our search turned up no further sign of the geese as it had last year after a predator attack - a full goose wing near the pond, the last vestige of a father having defended his mate and offspring to the death and through his sacrifice creating a diversion for them to get away to safety. I wondered if there’d been any survivors of this year’s attack. The pond seemed so sad and lifeless without them, a few of their feathers floating on the water’s surface near the shore. I felt a little bit guilty because during the last leg of our journey home I’d been manifesting an empty pond in the future, a pond devoid of geese and their prodigious amounts of feces. But I hadn’t intended it to happen so soon or so violently. I just wanted them to move on eventually.
“Well, you got your wish,” Richard said. Had he been reading my mind?
‘I feel bad too,” I said. And I did feel glum about the whole thing.
“You got your wish,” Richard repeated and walked back toward the house, hopscotching around the newly memorialized piles of goose poop. Now it would be their monument.
Richard and I have had heated debates over the geese and their excrement. Lately, though, these have turned into civilized discussions. We both agree on the waste removal aspect of the discussion; we only diverge when the topic turns to whether or not we should allow Canadian geese to roost on our pond in the future. I am for discouraging them and Richard is for letting nature be nature.
“Who are we to come here and buy a house and expect all nature to change around us?” Richard said. He can get very impassioned about it.
‘ALL nature?’ I think to myself … loudly.
“The animals were here before us, we should adapt ourselves to them.”
This discussion had been in the car earlier and we, well I, had suggested tabling it until October when we had experienced the third year with them around. Now their vanishing had made the issue moot.
I kept conjecturing about the animal that had scoped them out, lain in wait. Had it been a fox or fisher cat? Maybe an owl? No, not an owl. Why hadn’t there been any sign of blood? No bones, no carcass.
“They get them by the neck and then drag them into the woods,” Richard said, right out of an old Dragnet episode.
“You got your wish.”
I began thinking of Ginger and Mary Ann and how they were taking the disappearance of their new found friends. It had been odd and wonderful lately watching the 8 of them warm to one another. The Canadian parents would hiss a bit if our geese would get a little too close to their kids, but other than that there had been tolerance, curiosity, and an easy kind of cohabitation. I’d see all 8 go swimming off together in our pond, our girls slightly separated from the family, giving them their space while chomping at the bit to be included as full members of the team. Had Ginger and Mary Ann heard the struggle when the predator pounced? Had their been any sound? Could they sense something was wrong? Were they scared? Would they miss them?
Last week one night I had come home late when it had been my responsibility to lock up all the birds that night. I raced from my last appointment miles away, but by the time I pulled into our driveway it was dark. I quickly checked both coops and found all the hens and chickens perched and safe, but Ginger and Mary Ann were nowhere to be seen. I went into a mild panic, murmuring “oh, no; oh, no; oh no” over and over again. I checked everywhere I could think, I called their names, nothing. Finally, I had the sense to pause, stop still, breathe, let some other options in and I thought “the pond.” I went over there with the flashlight and yelled out their names. After the second or third time I heard their high cheeps way off in the distance, coming ever closer. They’d gone out onto the pond naturally, for safety. And hearing my voice they immediately came, waddling joyfully up the pond’s bank, their wings spread like kids playing airplane, their feet making those hilarious flatfooted flip-flop sound on the ground. I was so happy to see them. I made them an extra warm hay bed to sleep on and some good feed and water. If something had happened to them I don’t know what I would’ve done.
The feathers on the ground. I couldn’t get the sight of those feathers on the ground out of my mind. They were like the chalk outline of a body at a murder scene in a film noir detective movie. They were gone. The Canadian Geese were gone. (Humphrey Bogart voice: “And I’m not talkin’ south for the winter, sweetheart”) And I’d wanted them gone, sure, I admit it, but that was next year, not now. I was willing to put up with them for this year. But now it was too late, literally and figuratively. It was midnight as these thoughts kept bouncing around in my head and both Richard and I were wiped from an 8 hour drive, lying back in bed, fading fast.
‘Sweet dreams,’ I said.
“You got your wish.”
The next day Richard and I did an Isagenix cleanse which is just this side of fasting. I get punchy on cleanse days, especially by midday. Everything begins taking a surreal turn. So when I looked out the window and saw the Canadian Goose family lounging by the side of the pond, all 6 of them, alive, unhurt, looking as if nothing had happened, I thought I was seeing a hallucination. I alerted Richard and both of us had to step outside and stand in our front lawn and just let the whole turn of events sink in. When I explained the phenomenon to our neighbor Royce he said that he had seen the feathers too and thought the same thing had happened that we had thought. But then he thought that they must have molted.
‘But that many feathers? And all those different sizes of feathers?’
Royce smiled and shrugged. What more was there to say? There they were.
Lots of disappearing acts go on up here. Some literal – like Lucy, our orange cat that rode cross country with us from LA disappeared less than a month after we got here never to be seen again. Some are symbolic (to me) - like the old stone walls hidden in the woods now, covered with moss and leaves and fallen trees, still in the same location where once they were out in the open serving as the divider of cleared farmland. Other disappearing acts are not so evident. For instance, I’m sure aspects of the me that arrived here three years ago have disappeared, aspects that maybe had outlived their usefulness and needed to disappear – showing obvious signs of a struggle - to be replaced by who knows what. We shall see.
There are days I can feel like I’m disappearing. Lots of things are disappearing all around us. It’s in the air, you can feel it, like a predator coming. Ways of life, ways of doing things. I choose to see it as molting. I just looked up the definition of “molt” and this is what I got:
“Molt (verb transitive/intransitive) – to shed feathers, hair, or skin periodically, especially seasonally, to allow replacement of what is lost with new growth.”
I like that. I like molting. I only hope I can do it as gracefully as a Canadian Goose.
“Well, you got your wish,” Richard said. Had he been reading my mind?
‘I feel bad too,” I said. And I did feel glum about the whole thing.
“You got your wish,” Richard repeated and walked back toward the house, hopscotching around the newly memorialized piles of goose poop. Now it would be their monument.
Richard and I have had heated debates over the geese and their excrement. Lately, though, these have turned into civilized discussions. We both agree on the waste removal aspect of the discussion; we only diverge when the topic turns to whether or not we should allow Canadian geese to roost on our pond in the future. I am for discouraging them and Richard is for letting nature be nature.
“Who are we to come here and buy a house and expect all nature to change around us?” Richard said. He can get very impassioned about it.
‘ALL nature?’ I think to myself … loudly.
“The animals were here before us, we should adapt ourselves to them.”
This discussion had been in the car earlier and we, well I, had suggested tabling it until October when we had experienced the third year with them around. Now their vanishing had made the issue moot.
I kept conjecturing about the animal that had scoped them out, lain in wait. Had it been a fox or fisher cat? Maybe an owl? No, not an owl. Why hadn’t there been any sign of blood? No bones, no carcass.
“They get them by the neck and then drag them into the woods,” Richard said, right out of an old Dragnet episode.
“You got your wish.”
I began thinking of Ginger and Mary Ann and how they were taking the disappearance of their new found friends. It had been odd and wonderful lately watching the 8 of them warm to one another. The Canadian parents would hiss a bit if our geese would get a little too close to their kids, but other than that there had been tolerance, curiosity, and an easy kind of cohabitation. I’d see all 8 go swimming off together in our pond, our girls slightly separated from the family, giving them their space while chomping at the bit to be included as full members of the team. Had Ginger and Mary Ann heard the struggle when the predator pounced? Had their been any sound? Could they sense something was wrong? Were they scared? Would they miss them?
Last week one night I had come home late when it had been my responsibility to lock up all the birds that night. I raced from my last appointment miles away, but by the time I pulled into our driveway it was dark. I quickly checked both coops and found all the hens and chickens perched and safe, but Ginger and Mary Ann were nowhere to be seen. I went into a mild panic, murmuring “oh, no; oh, no; oh no” over and over again. I checked everywhere I could think, I called their names, nothing. Finally, I had the sense to pause, stop still, breathe, let some other options in and I thought “the pond.” I went over there with the flashlight and yelled out their names. After the second or third time I heard their high cheeps way off in the distance, coming ever closer. They’d gone out onto the pond naturally, for safety. And hearing my voice they immediately came, waddling joyfully up the pond’s bank, their wings spread like kids playing airplane, their feet making those hilarious flatfooted flip-flop sound on the ground. I was so happy to see them. I made them an extra warm hay bed to sleep on and some good feed and water. If something had happened to them I don’t know what I would’ve done.
The feathers on the ground. I couldn’t get the sight of those feathers on the ground out of my mind. They were like the chalk outline of a body at a murder scene in a film noir detective movie. They were gone. The Canadian Geese were gone. (Humphrey Bogart voice: “And I’m not talkin’ south for the winter, sweetheart”) And I’d wanted them gone, sure, I admit it, but that was next year, not now. I was willing to put up with them for this year. But now it was too late, literally and figuratively. It was midnight as these thoughts kept bouncing around in my head and both Richard and I were wiped from an 8 hour drive, lying back in bed, fading fast.
‘Sweet dreams,’ I said.
“You got your wish.”
The next day Richard and I did an Isagenix cleanse which is just this side of fasting. I get punchy on cleanse days, especially by midday. Everything begins taking a surreal turn. So when I looked out the window and saw the Canadian Goose family lounging by the side of the pond, all 6 of them, alive, unhurt, looking as if nothing had happened, I thought I was seeing a hallucination. I alerted Richard and both of us had to step outside and stand in our front lawn and just let the whole turn of events sink in. When I explained the phenomenon to our neighbor Royce he said that he had seen the feathers too and thought the same thing had happened that we had thought. But then he thought that they must have molted.
‘But that many feathers? And all those different sizes of feathers?’
Royce smiled and shrugged. What more was there to say? There they were.
Lots of disappearing acts go on up here. Some literal – like Lucy, our orange cat that rode cross country with us from LA disappeared less than a month after we got here never to be seen again. Some are symbolic (to me) - like the old stone walls hidden in the woods now, covered with moss and leaves and fallen trees, still in the same location where once they were out in the open serving as the divider of cleared farmland. Other disappearing acts are not so evident. For instance, I’m sure aspects of the me that arrived here three years ago have disappeared, aspects that maybe had outlived their usefulness and needed to disappear – showing obvious signs of a struggle - to be replaced by who knows what. We shall see.
There are days I can feel like I’m disappearing. Lots of things are disappearing all around us. It’s in the air, you can feel it, like a predator coming. Ways of life, ways of doing things. I choose to see it as molting. I just looked up the definition of “molt” and this is what I got:
“Molt (verb transitive/intransitive) – to shed feathers, hair, or skin periodically, especially seasonally, to allow replacement of what is lost with new growth.”
I like that. I like molting. I only hope I can do it as gracefully as a Canadian Goose.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Processing
The scene is dusk, Friday night. Richard and I are meandering our way down the green rise of meadow behind our house, empty beer bottles in our hands. There’s a glorious light in the sky, the last bit of sunlight cutting a shaft across to a far hill and the amber glow makes it look as if the leaves have started their autumn color change (Perish the thought!) We’re mid-conversation:
Richard: “You’ve noticed Ron and Tabitha’s white chickens?”
Me: ‘Yes.’
Richard: “Those are meat birds.”
Me: ‘Oh, right.’
A few weeks before we’d spoken about “meat birds” being especially bred to mature quickly.
Me: ‘So do you want to go in with them when the processor comes?’
Richard: “Mm.” (Yes.)
Me: ‘I see.’
Richard: “Their chickens’ll be ready in 8 weeks.”
Me: ‘8 weeks?!’
Richard: “We could get rid of a bunch of our roosters. Napoleon’s going to go, that’s for sure.”
Napoleon’s a big bully. He’s taken to clamping down hard on the necks of Buff Orpington hens – and anyone else not to his liking - until they wrench free, squawking, leaving him standing there with a few of their feathers hanging out of his beak. I’ve begun noticing a special glee that warms Richard’s voice whenever he speaks of Napoleon’s upcoming Waterloo. No exile for this warmonger, more like a guillotine and a plate.
Me: ‘Okay, who else goes?’
Richard: “Well … the laying hens.”
Our Rhode Island Red and Barred Rock sex links, all of whom I’ve grown quite fond.
Richard: “They’re a year and a half old, they’re reaching the end of their prime egg laying time, and we’ll have others to take their place.”
Me: ‘It’s sad thinking of them going.’
No response from Richard. We take a few silent steps.
Me: ‘Don’t you think?’
Richard: “Not really.”
Figures. I turn into ole softy while Richard can’t wait for the beheadings to begin.
Richard: “We’ve given them a good life, they’ve run free AND they’re nice and plump.”
Dan: ‘What about Nanna?’
One of our favorite routines now is to shout out with a shrill Appalachian dialect: “Nanna’s gone broody!” Broody hens are hens that will sit and hatch eggs, anyone’s eggs. They’ll sit for hours upon hours without food or water without leaving the nest. It’s been said they won’t even leave the nest were a predator to invade the coop and start attacking them. Amazing. After Nanna’s been sitting for a spell she gets this meditative glaze to her eyes like some sort of feathered swami. Maybe she’s an oracle. Maybe people and poultry will come from miles around for advice and guidance. That would save her butt for years to come.
Richard: “No, we’ll keep Nanna. A broody hen’s worth its weight in gold.”
With Nanna safe from the block, we continue going over the others, deciding who will get the axe and who’ll make the pick. I feel like we’re hovering somewhere between “A Chorus Line” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” I wonder if that was set in a New England town?
NOTE: I just checked out wikipedia and Shirley Jackson was living in BENNINGTON, VERMONT when she wrote “The Lottery” and she modeled the small American town in the short story on Bennington! Whataya know? There’s an order to the universe.
Richard: “I’m still on the fence about Laura; I don’t know whether we should keep her or let her go. She’s so sweet.”
Laura IS sweet, and slightly lame and thus her name inspired by “The Glass Menagerie.”
Richard: “Royce (our next door neighbor, a chicken raiser from way back) recommended she be the first to get processed BECAUSE she’s lame. That made me want to keep her. When I told Royce this he sighed and said “Well, maybe a hawk will get her.””
Me: (A gasp!)
Richard: (Laughing) He was joking!
Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. All this talk about “Processing” – which I’m sure you’ve picked up is the euphemism for butchering and slaughtering around here – makes me think of concentration camps. Let’s all concentrate on “Processing”, shall we?
It’s later. I’m upstairs on our bed processing this whole thing. A THOUGHT processing, mind you; our bedroom is not dripping with chicken blood. I’m looking over at a smiling picture of Richard and me taken a few years back and, as I’ve mentioned before, Richard gives off an air of being this sweet softie; handsome, a good guy, kind heart. And me? I’m nice looking, very mid-western, maybe a little tough. The point is appearances can be deceiving. I can be a big pushover, a cream puff while Richard can be surprisingly tough, coldly practical, even bloodthirsty. Okay, that’s a big character judgment, a huge leap, but these birds he cooed over when they were babies he’s ready to chop into without blinking an eye. (With the exception of lame Laura and broody Nanna, of course. But, knowing what I know, if I were they I wouldn’t turn my back on Richard for any long period of time, especially if he were carrying a sharp object. And most especially around dinner time.)
Me: ‘Will you have trouble eating birds you’ve raised?’
Richard: “Not really.”
Me: ‘Hmm.’
Me? I don’t know. Will I be able to eat something that I’ve helped name, that I’ve held and petted, that I’ve peered at and that’s peered peripherally back at me? I’m going to kill this living thing, so it can feed me? I’m flashing on that Bill Moyers series where he interviews Joseph Campbell in which one of the episodes deals with Sacrifice and Bliss. They’re focusing on the nature religions and there’s a hunter killing a giraffe and he’s singing, chanting, and praising the animal that he’s killing, thanking it for the life its giving to the hunter and his family so that they may sustain themselves. Granted, Richard and I are not on a plain in Africa eking out our survival, but there’s something so right about that hunter’s ritual, so honoring of life, of its natural cycles, of coming full circle, being part of a larger process, all intertwined and connected. So maybe Richard’s not cold-blooded afterall, maybe he sees this cycle naturally without help from African hunters and Bill Moyers and Joseph ‘follow your bliss” Campbell. Maybe Richard is raising his chickens with his eyes open wide, knowing why they’re being raised and where they’re going. And along the way - and at the time of their killing - we will treat them with honor and respect and kindness; we will thank them daily for what they give us – now eggs and later meat -- not to mention the gifts of their clucking company, the curiosity and delight they awaken within us, and the opportunity of seeing things from a bird’s perspective. Hmmm?
Okay, Laura and Nanna, I take back my parenthetical about Richard.
But Napoleon, you’ve got a death wish that is about to come true.
BIKE RIDE CHECK IN: 30 years ago today, June 8, 1979, my fuji cross-country bike was parked at my Aunt Sis and Uncle Prentis’s deep in gravel dusty southern Indiana farm country, close to the nearly non-existent town of Epsom. It was hot and humid – I can hear the cicadas droning buzzsaws in the trees right now – and there had been a terrific series of thunderstorms cascading through, darkening the skies and putting on quite a show. It was a good visit filled with fantastic food – strawberries were ripe and full and tasty. Aunt Sis had made up some homemade shortcake. Yum.
The next day I set off despite threatening rain and my cousin Howard came and picked me up to give me a lift in his truck for a few miles because he had heard a big banger was on its way. The rain never arrived, but when we got to the main road we came upon a section of low lying highway where a torrent of water was washing across from one farm field to another, as if a river had been newly carved out. Traffic was backed up on either side of the flow. We waited for awhile, some vehicles turned around and went off in search of an alternate route. Finally, Howard decided to take a chance for though the current looked swift, the depth seemed a foot at the most, no problem at all. We were sadly mistaken. We began creeping across and soon realized that it was much deeper than we had anticipated. And the flow was fearsome. Suddenly we lost control and the back of the truck began swerving away with the current, headed down the ditch into the muddy flowing field to our right. Howard and I looked at one another, helplessly. In desperation, Howard gunned the motor and slowly, in whirring jerks, the tires began gaining purchase and finally sucked us back onto dry pavement and away from the swirling waters. We parked and breathed heavily, going back over all the details of “can you believe what just happened?” That incident would become fodder for a great story for years to come.
Within a mile, the sky broke and the sun came out, acting as if nothing had happened, no threatening rain, no flood. We decided to drive down to Lincoln’s Indiana home which was very close and we got out there and walked around the grounds, relaxed, saw Nancy Hanks, Lincoln’s mother’s, gravesite. And then we hugged each other goodbye, laughed once more about our close shave and wondered when we’d see each other again. Then he took off back home and I pedaled south to my next destination - Owensboro, Kentucky, and my cousins, Sonny and Linda.
Richard: “You’ve noticed Ron and Tabitha’s white chickens?”
Me: ‘Yes.’
Richard: “Those are meat birds.”
Me: ‘Oh, right.’
A few weeks before we’d spoken about “meat birds” being especially bred to mature quickly.
Me: ‘So do you want to go in with them when the processor comes?’
Richard: “Mm.” (Yes.)
Me: ‘I see.’
Richard: “Their chickens’ll be ready in 8 weeks.”
Me: ‘8 weeks?!’
Richard: “We could get rid of a bunch of our roosters. Napoleon’s going to go, that’s for sure.”
Napoleon’s a big bully. He’s taken to clamping down hard on the necks of Buff Orpington hens – and anyone else not to his liking - until they wrench free, squawking, leaving him standing there with a few of their feathers hanging out of his beak. I’ve begun noticing a special glee that warms Richard’s voice whenever he speaks of Napoleon’s upcoming Waterloo. No exile for this warmonger, more like a guillotine and a plate.
Me: ‘Okay, who else goes?’
Richard: “Well … the laying hens.”
Our Rhode Island Red and Barred Rock sex links, all of whom I’ve grown quite fond.
Richard: “They’re a year and a half old, they’re reaching the end of their prime egg laying time, and we’ll have others to take their place.”
Me: ‘It’s sad thinking of them going.’
No response from Richard. We take a few silent steps.
Me: ‘Don’t you think?’
Richard: “Not really.”
Figures. I turn into ole softy while Richard can’t wait for the beheadings to begin.
Richard: “We’ve given them a good life, they’ve run free AND they’re nice and plump.”
Dan: ‘What about Nanna?’
One of our favorite routines now is to shout out with a shrill Appalachian dialect: “Nanna’s gone broody!” Broody hens are hens that will sit and hatch eggs, anyone’s eggs. They’ll sit for hours upon hours without food or water without leaving the nest. It’s been said they won’t even leave the nest were a predator to invade the coop and start attacking them. Amazing. After Nanna’s been sitting for a spell she gets this meditative glaze to her eyes like some sort of feathered swami. Maybe she’s an oracle. Maybe people and poultry will come from miles around for advice and guidance. That would save her butt for years to come.
Richard: “No, we’ll keep Nanna. A broody hen’s worth its weight in gold.”
With Nanna safe from the block, we continue going over the others, deciding who will get the axe and who’ll make the pick. I feel like we’re hovering somewhere between “A Chorus Line” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” I wonder if that was set in a New England town?
NOTE: I just checked out wikipedia and Shirley Jackson was living in BENNINGTON, VERMONT when she wrote “The Lottery” and she modeled the small American town in the short story on Bennington! Whataya know? There’s an order to the universe.
Richard: “I’m still on the fence about Laura; I don’t know whether we should keep her or let her go. She’s so sweet.”
Laura IS sweet, and slightly lame and thus her name inspired by “The Glass Menagerie.”
Richard: “Royce (our next door neighbor, a chicken raiser from way back) recommended she be the first to get processed BECAUSE she’s lame. That made me want to keep her. When I told Royce this he sighed and said “Well, maybe a hawk will get her.””
Me: (A gasp!)
Richard: (Laughing) He was joking!
Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. All this talk about “Processing” – which I’m sure you’ve picked up is the euphemism for butchering and slaughtering around here – makes me think of concentration camps. Let’s all concentrate on “Processing”, shall we?
It’s later. I’m upstairs on our bed processing this whole thing. A THOUGHT processing, mind you; our bedroom is not dripping with chicken blood. I’m looking over at a smiling picture of Richard and me taken a few years back and, as I’ve mentioned before, Richard gives off an air of being this sweet softie; handsome, a good guy, kind heart. And me? I’m nice looking, very mid-western, maybe a little tough. The point is appearances can be deceiving. I can be a big pushover, a cream puff while Richard can be surprisingly tough, coldly practical, even bloodthirsty. Okay, that’s a big character judgment, a huge leap, but these birds he cooed over when they were babies he’s ready to chop into without blinking an eye. (With the exception of lame Laura and broody Nanna, of course. But, knowing what I know, if I were they I wouldn’t turn my back on Richard for any long period of time, especially if he were carrying a sharp object. And most especially around dinner time.)
Me: ‘Will you have trouble eating birds you’ve raised?’
Richard: “Not really.”
Me: ‘Hmm.’
Me? I don’t know. Will I be able to eat something that I’ve helped name, that I’ve held and petted, that I’ve peered at and that’s peered peripherally back at me? I’m going to kill this living thing, so it can feed me? I’m flashing on that Bill Moyers series where he interviews Joseph Campbell in which one of the episodes deals with Sacrifice and Bliss. They’re focusing on the nature religions and there’s a hunter killing a giraffe and he’s singing, chanting, and praising the animal that he’s killing, thanking it for the life its giving to the hunter and his family so that they may sustain themselves. Granted, Richard and I are not on a plain in Africa eking out our survival, but there’s something so right about that hunter’s ritual, so honoring of life, of its natural cycles, of coming full circle, being part of a larger process, all intertwined and connected. So maybe Richard’s not cold-blooded afterall, maybe he sees this cycle naturally without help from African hunters and Bill Moyers and Joseph ‘follow your bliss” Campbell. Maybe Richard is raising his chickens with his eyes open wide, knowing why they’re being raised and where they’re going. And along the way - and at the time of their killing - we will treat them with honor and respect and kindness; we will thank them daily for what they give us – now eggs and later meat -- not to mention the gifts of their clucking company, the curiosity and delight they awaken within us, and the opportunity of seeing things from a bird’s perspective. Hmmm?
Okay, Laura and Nanna, I take back my parenthetical about Richard.
But Napoleon, you’ve got a death wish that is about to come true.
BIKE RIDE CHECK IN: 30 years ago today, June 8, 1979, my fuji cross-country bike was parked at my Aunt Sis and Uncle Prentis’s deep in gravel dusty southern Indiana farm country, close to the nearly non-existent town of Epsom. It was hot and humid – I can hear the cicadas droning buzzsaws in the trees right now – and there had been a terrific series of thunderstorms cascading through, darkening the skies and putting on quite a show. It was a good visit filled with fantastic food – strawberries were ripe and full and tasty. Aunt Sis had made up some homemade shortcake. Yum.
The next day I set off despite threatening rain and my cousin Howard came and picked me up to give me a lift in his truck for a few miles because he had heard a big banger was on its way. The rain never arrived, but when we got to the main road we came upon a section of low lying highway where a torrent of water was washing across from one farm field to another, as if a river had been newly carved out. Traffic was backed up on either side of the flow. We waited for awhile, some vehicles turned around and went off in search of an alternate route. Finally, Howard decided to take a chance for though the current looked swift, the depth seemed a foot at the most, no problem at all. We were sadly mistaken. We began creeping across and soon realized that it was much deeper than we had anticipated. And the flow was fearsome. Suddenly we lost control and the back of the truck began swerving away with the current, headed down the ditch into the muddy flowing field to our right. Howard and I looked at one another, helplessly. In desperation, Howard gunned the motor and slowly, in whirring jerks, the tires began gaining purchase and finally sucked us back onto dry pavement and away from the swirling waters. We parked and breathed heavily, going back over all the details of “can you believe what just happened?” That incident would become fodder for a great story for years to come.
Within a mile, the sky broke and the sun came out, acting as if nothing had happened, no threatening rain, no flood. We decided to drive down to Lincoln’s Indiana home which was very close and we got out there and walked around the grounds, relaxed, saw Nancy Hanks, Lincoln’s mother’s, gravesite. And then we hugged each other goodbye, laughed once more about our close shave and wondered when we’d see each other again. Then he took off back home and I pedaled south to my next destination - Owensboro, Kentucky, and my cousins, Sonny and Linda.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Letting my inner goose loose
I had the pleasure of letting our 2 geese, Ginger and Mary Ann, out this morning. They saw me coming through the mesh front of their house, and their rapid fire high squeaks greeted me and coaxed me closer. I opened the door and they tried clanging awkwardly past their overturned food bucket, Ginger first, squeaking all the time, down the tiny ramp onto terra firma. Ginger turned and squeak/speaked directly to me, bending low and stretching her neck out to its full length. This usually betokens scolding of some sort, but in this instance I took it as “hello, hello, hello! It’s morning and I don’t quite know what to do with myself yet!” Being the protective, slightly older sister to Mary Ann, who at the moment was still trying to maneuver herself out the door (Mary Ann’s cute, but not summa cum laude), Ginger may have been alerting me that sis needed help, now that I think about it. A moment later and Mary Ann flatfooted her way down the ramp and all was well again. Then came my favorite moment, when they both extend their wings and flap them as they STREEEEETCH to greet the morning. A goose version of salutation to the sun. I don’t know what about that brings me such delight, but it does. And as I headed up hill to let our Rhode Island Red and Barred Rock sex links out, Ginger and Mary Ann came waddle-running after me, their wings stretched out to their sides. I know this is very un-PC, but when they do that that they look like happy parapelegics who’ve been training for the 100 yard dash and it cracks me up. They were the essence of freedom. And in the background, as if in trumpet celebration of this little goose race, several of our young roosters-in-training let loose with their best version of cock-a-doodle do. They’ve got a ways to go.
So I’ve been wondering, if I were to set my inner goose free, what would it look like? Well, to be quite literal it might include the following, in no order of importance:
I would glory in gaining weight and showing off my ever growing ass more.
I would enjoy walks in the rain and letting the wetness just flow off my back.
I would swim a lot more, take more baths, dive in our pond daily with lots of dunking and splashing. I’d probably wear flippers.
I would understand more fully the positive side of flat-footedness.
I would probably have to wear Depends or do away with clothes altogether. (These are the advantages of living in the country in Vermont, one could do that if one wanted to. The “doing away with clothes altogether” I was talking about, not the Depends.)
I would probably indulge in wheat grass and greens and forego meat completely.
I would enjoy the company of others more fully.
I would let the day take me.
I would probably have to watch that I don’t jabber on endlessly about everything just for the sake of jabbering.
I would take the time to rest in a meadow.
I would see life from a different perspective, more peripherally perhaps.
I would imagine my world surrounded by feathers.
I would build up great neck muscles.
I would imagine myself having the lithe and sensuous neck of Audrey Hepburn. (Did she have an inner goose, I wonder?)
I would take flying lessons from my Canadian cousins across the road on the pond and honk and honk with delight while I sailed over the tree lines.
I would learn the wonders of waddling.
I would observe “humans” with curiosity and gratitude, thanking them for life, for shelter, for food and recreation and company and love.
I might ponder about my parentage.
I would take all forms of weather in stride.
I would live more innocently.
I would let myself be more silly, embodying, without embarrassment, my own special version of “you silly goose!.”
I would learn not to fly into panic at every loud noise or the intrusion of every new “animal.” I would have faith that I am being protected from “predators”, real or imagined, by powers greater than me. And I would know when “my time comes” I will become another part of the natural cycle and that that is good and I need not worry about its coming.
I would learn how to lay an egg. Not as in “a bad joke” or a faulty idea. No. Laying an egg in its most inspired sense. And since laying an egg would be an impossibility literally, I will replace literal laying with imaginative laying and start with what an egg means to me and go from there. An egg is a form of nourishment - it holds protein, it holds calcium; the laying of it is a creative act; it could mean new life; it holds brilliant yellows; it’s filled with fluid, much like our skin, much like the earth; I’m going beyond goose here, but with some birds laying an egg is a daily occurrence; an egg connects one to the cycles and seasons of nature; it shows the beauty of an oval, the beauty of shadow and light on an oval; it reminds me of an idea ready to be hatched, it is possibility in a shell. And of course there’s the goose that laid the golden egg. I like that one especially.
So let’s see, we’ve got nourishment, color, possibility, creation, new life, oval-shaped, playing with light and shadow, ready to be hatched, potential daily occurence, natural, and golden. What a list, what a start, what a leaping off place! I’ll put it all in the feedbag and see what my inner goose comes up with. Taking it all into play, I expect a major hatching.
Set your inner goose free today!!
PS 30 years ago on the ride, June 5, 1979, I pedaled my Fuji south from Indianapolis through beautiful, bucolic Brown County, home of the towns of Nashville and Bean Blossom and site of a famed annual Bluegrass Festival. The county is much heralded in Indiana, but up until that moment I’d never visited it. It seemed to have been a gorgeous day with challenging hills and wonderful vistas after the climbs to congratulate me for my effort. I had happened upon a new way of gauging my ride so I wouldn’t over exert myself and I was enjoying this newfound knowledge very much. The theme of the day was gratitude. I down hilled into Bloomington, home of Indiana University, and spent the night in a trailer once home to Bill and Emily Harris of SLA fame; they both had attended IU. We Hoosiers are a varied and rebellious lot. We get a good education in the corn belt and have an over riding desire to go off and kidnap heirs of newspaper dynasties. The next morning I would breakfast at Gables, a hallowed eaterie near campus built by a classmate of mine from conservatory at ACT in San Francisco. Now that I think of it, this friend was an old pal of Bill Harris’s and would visit Harris at San Quentin periodically during our conservatory stay in the late 70’s. Ironically, this friend would later have a stint in prison himself after taking part in a botched marijuana transport in Arizona. He had linked up with a stranger, the “brains” of the operation, for an easy $10,000. And the stranger’s name? “Lucky Pierre.”
So I’ve been wondering, if I were to set my inner goose free, what would it look like? Well, to be quite literal it might include the following, in no order of importance:
I would glory in gaining weight and showing off my ever growing ass more.
I would enjoy walks in the rain and letting the wetness just flow off my back.
I would swim a lot more, take more baths, dive in our pond daily with lots of dunking and splashing. I’d probably wear flippers.
I would understand more fully the positive side of flat-footedness.
I would probably have to wear Depends or do away with clothes altogether. (These are the advantages of living in the country in Vermont, one could do that if one wanted to. The “doing away with clothes altogether” I was talking about, not the Depends.)
I would probably indulge in wheat grass and greens and forego meat completely.
I would enjoy the company of others more fully.
I would let the day take me.
I would probably have to watch that I don’t jabber on endlessly about everything just for the sake of jabbering.
I would take the time to rest in a meadow.
I would see life from a different perspective, more peripherally perhaps.
I would imagine my world surrounded by feathers.
I would build up great neck muscles.
I would imagine myself having the lithe and sensuous neck of Audrey Hepburn. (Did she have an inner goose, I wonder?)
I would take flying lessons from my Canadian cousins across the road on the pond and honk and honk with delight while I sailed over the tree lines.
I would learn the wonders of waddling.
I would observe “humans” with curiosity and gratitude, thanking them for life, for shelter, for food and recreation and company and love.
I might ponder about my parentage.
I would take all forms of weather in stride.
I would live more innocently.
I would let myself be more silly, embodying, without embarrassment, my own special version of “you silly goose!.”
I would learn not to fly into panic at every loud noise or the intrusion of every new “animal.” I would have faith that I am being protected from “predators”, real or imagined, by powers greater than me. And I would know when “my time comes” I will become another part of the natural cycle and that that is good and I need not worry about its coming.
I would learn how to lay an egg. Not as in “a bad joke” or a faulty idea. No. Laying an egg in its most inspired sense. And since laying an egg would be an impossibility literally, I will replace literal laying with imaginative laying and start with what an egg means to me and go from there. An egg is a form of nourishment - it holds protein, it holds calcium; the laying of it is a creative act; it could mean new life; it holds brilliant yellows; it’s filled with fluid, much like our skin, much like the earth; I’m going beyond goose here, but with some birds laying an egg is a daily occurrence; an egg connects one to the cycles and seasons of nature; it shows the beauty of an oval, the beauty of shadow and light on an oval; it reminds me of an idea ready to be hatched, it is possibility in a shell. And of course there’s the goose that laid the golden egg. I like that one especially.
So let’s see, we’ve got nourishment, color, possibility, creation, new life, oval-shaped, playing with light and shadow, ready to be hatched, potential daily occurence, natural, and golden. What a list, what a start, what a leaping off place! I’ll put it all in the feedbag and see what my inner goose comes up with. Taking it all into play, I expect a major hatching.
Set your inner goose free today!!
PS 30 years ago on the ride, June 5, 1979, I pedaled my Fuji south from Indianapolis through beautiful, bucolic Brown County, home of the towns of Nashville and Bean Blossom and site of a famed annual Bluegrass Festival. The county is much heralded in Indiana, but up until that moment I’d never visited it. It seemed to have been a gorgeous day with challenging hills and wonderful vistas after the climbs to congratulate me for my effort. I had happened upon a new way of gauging my ride so I wouldn’t over exert myself and I was enjoying this newfound knowledge very much. The theme of the day was gratitude. I down hilled into Bloomington, home of Indiana University, and spent the night in a trailer once home to Bill and Emily Harris of SLA fame; they both had attended IU. We Hoosiers are a varied and rebellious lot. We get a good education in the corn belt and have an over riding desire to go off and kidnap heirs of newspaper dynasties. The next morning I would breakfast at Gables, a hallowed eaterie near campus built by a classmate of mine from conservatory at ACT in San Francisco. Now that I think of it, this friend was an old pal of Bill Harris’s and would visit Harris at San Quentin periodically during our conservatory stay in the late 70’s. Ironically, this friend would later have a stint in prison himself after taking part in a botched marijuana transport in Arizona. He had linked up with a stranger, the “brains” of the operation, for an easy $10,000. And the stranger’s name? “Lucky Pierre.”
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Thoughts at dusk
Out on the front porch with Astrid. It’s nearing 9, finally getting dark, and the peepers are going to town over around the pond. We had a quick rain shower a moment ago and I went out to finish battening down the hatches and get all the birds snugged into their coops and shelters and boxes. On my way back to the house I looked up the hill and was treated to an exquisite light in the sky as the grey clouds scudded across the silhouetted tree line. It was as if the earth were breathing out light and the sky was reflecting it back. Everything shimmered. There’s no place I’ve ever lived that makes me smile like this place does.
Dusk helps. There’s always been something magical for me about that time of day since I was a little kid. And in late spring and summer the magic time seems to stretch on forever. I can never tell what time it is, there is no time. Reading journal entries from 30 years ago on my bike ride I remember so well how all the frustrations of the day, whether they’d been real or imagined, would evaporate at the end of day. Everything that seemed so important wasn’t and that that was truly important took its place naturally, effortlessly, things like gratitude, peace, a job well done, simply being present for the close of a day. The exhaustion from the physical effort helped the Jericho walls of resistance tumble down and just enjoy life. This was (and is) a good lesson for someone who has been programmed to add a little suffering, much like a spice, to most every endeavor, to distrust anything that comes easy, to suffer for one’s art or it isn’t worth it. Bizarre that I may have chosen that for my life. To learn what, I wonder? Besides the obvious. Ah well, it’s on it’s way out, this way of thinking and living and I’m on for the ride.
Speaking of ride - 30 years ago tonight on my cross-country bicycle ride I was at my cousin Tim’s in Indianapolis after having spent several days in Fort Wayne. I’d had a tearful goodbye with my mother in the morning and then a surprisingly exhausting day pedaling south in the Hoosier humidity. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake, after all, wasn’t it just going to be flat farmland? Wrong. Off the bike for several days switched me back into thinking of traveling in car miles rather than bicycle miles and I had to reacclimate to the slower pace.
What’s been going on here in the present in Vermont you may well ask? Besides gorgeous days, green bursting out, big blows bringing down branches and electrical wires? Our garden is planted – brussel sprouts; sugar snap peas; various varieties of lettuce, spinach, arugala, and chard; radishes and turnips (our neighbor Royce has urged us to plant plenty of radishes to lure the pests away from the other crops. I think our biggest pests this year may be moles for I see their holes all over our fields and Sofia has brought in a couple babies of late); acorn squash; tomatoes; bush beans; beets; red and green cabbage. Our sweet potatoes were decimated by the 2 nights of frost that hit last week. Also our regular potatoes don’t seem to be germinating. In the up hill garden Richard has planted corn and pumpkins (many varieties) and butternut squash. I find myself talking to my grandpa when I plant the garden. Oddly enough, it’s not with my farmer grandpa that I converse, but to my railroad engineer grandpa, Papaw, who prided himself on his tomato plants and beans, even when he was at his retirement home. I let him know that I’m probably not planting them as perfectly as he did or would, probably not going to take as good of care of them, probably let nature take it’s natural course more then he would allow, but if he could spare some good energy for these plants and watch over them a little, then I’d be obliged.
Our geese keep filling out. And their voices keep changing, like adolescents going through puberty, their soprano squeaks can suddenly descend into an alto honk. They are feathering out into a pleasant grey white, both of them growing quite big below. But they carry it well, they seem happy with their lot, they’re cute. And sometimes they’ll cuddle with me. But you really have to sneak up on them slowly and trick them, otherwise they’ll dash away in a scream of terror. Such dramatics. And the sound their padded feet make on the gravel – slap, slap, slap, slap/flap-flap-flap-flap – just cracks me up. They look like mad Japanese Shinto priests running late for whatever services Shintos have, an Asian version of Maria late for mass from having been up in the mountains singing. (In their case, it would be out in the meadow munching. No, wait, they’re not geese anymore, they’re Shinto priests. Oh forget it.)
The Canadian geese family are co-habiting quite nicely, spending the days going back and forth from the pond and its surrounding shoreline to our orchard and front lawn, well, everywhere really. No dramatics, no hissing, just blissful co-existence. Parents and offspring eating away then promenading off somewhere else in orderly fashion.
Life goes on here. Morning walks, chores, writing, looking for jobs, creating jobs. Looking forward to visitors coming to visit. Taking in the days as fully as possible, being glad for them, sharing them with one another, getting focused on the things we want to change here, alter, nurture.
There are times I don’t know what we’re doing here in Vermont, but I could phrase that idea or question around life itself really – What are we doing here? - and get lost in the question. Richard and I spend ample time posing the question to one another, asking ourselves whether its working, whether we’re removing ourselves too much from the world, whether we’re actively pursuing what we feel we’re supposed to be contributing to the world. There’s a lot of thought given the topic, the difference being now, most of the time, it’s not fraught thought. It’s not “there’s a big problem, we made a mistake” thought. No. Vermont has taught us a new way. Maybe it’s objectivity. Maybe when set against the backdrop of where we live - the expanse of nature and all we’re experiencing here - any problem, perceived or otherwise, doesn’t have a chance. It vanishes – presto chango – as if it were dusk. And there’s no problem. Maybe there never was, never has been.
We chose to come here. And I love that the choice was a little bit crazy, a little bit instinctive, that it was about both of us wanting adventure and change in our lives and choosing to dive in the deep end together. And look what we’re experiencing, the people we’re meeting, the poultry we’re raising. If we have to ponder “where are we going?” how great that we get to do it here and how great that we’ve been graced with the means to do it. And how great to imagine what’s coming next.
Well, this turned into a pep talk. Have a great day.
Dusk helps. There’s always been something magical for me about that time of day since I was a little kid. And in late spring and summer the magic time seems to stretch on forever. I can never tell what time it is, there is no time. Reading journal entries from 30 years ago on my bike ride I remember so well how all the frustrations of the day, whether they’d been real or imagined, would evaporate at the end of day. Everything that seemed so important wasn’t and that that was truly important took its place naturally, effortlessly, things like gratitude, peace, a job well done, simply being present for the close of a day. The exhaustion from the physical effort helped the Jericho walls of resistance tumble down and just enjoy life. This was (and is) a good lesson for someone who has been programmed to add a little suffering, much like a spice, to most every endeavor, to distrust anything that comes easy, to suffer for one’s art or it isn’t worth it. Bizarre that I may have chosen that for my life. To learn what, I wonder? Besides the obvious. Ah well, it’s on it’s way out, this way of thinking and living and I’m on for the ride.
Speaking of ride - 30 years ago tonight on my cross-country bicycle ride I was at my cousin Tim’s in Indianapolis after having spent several days in Fort Wayne. I’d had a tearful goodbye with my mother in the morning and then a surprisingly exhausting day pedaling south in the Hoosier humidity. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake, after all, wasn’t it just going to be flat farmland? Wrong. Off the bike for several days switched me back into thinking of traveling in car miles rather than bicycle miles and I had to reacclimate to the slower pace.
What’s been going on here in the present in Vermont you may well ask? Besides gorgeous days, green bursting out, big blows bringing down branches and electrical wires? Our garden is planted – brussel sprouts; sugar snap peas; various varieties of lettuce, spinach, arugala, and chard; radishes and turnips (our neighbor Royce has urged us to plant plenty of radishes to lure the pests away from the other crops. I think our biggest pests this year may be moles for I see their holes all over our fields and Sofia has brought in a couple babies of late); acorn squash; tomatoes; bush beans; beets; red and green cabbage. Our sweet potatoes were decimated by the 2 nights of frost that hit last week. Also our regular potatoes don’t seem to be germinating. In the up hill garden Richard has planted corn and pumpkins (many varieties) and butternut squash. I find myself talking to my grandpa when I plant the garden. Oddly enough, it’s not with my farmer grandpa that I converse, but to my railroad engineer grandpa, Papaw, who prided himself on his tomato plants and beans, even when he was at his retirement home. I let him know that I’m probably not planting them as perfectly as he did or would, probably not going to take as good of care of them, probably let nature take it’s natural course more then he would allow, but if he could spare some good energy for these plants and watch over them a little, then I’d be obliged.
Our geese keep filling out. And their voices keep changing, like adolescents going through puberty, their soprano squeaks can suddenly descend into an alto honk. They are feathering out into a pleasant grey white, both of them growing quite big below. But they carry it well, they seem happy with their lot, they’re cute. And sometimes they’ll cuddle with me. But you really have to sneak up on them slowly and trick them, otherwise they’ll dash away in a scream of terror. Such dramatics. And the sound their padded feet make on the gravel – slap, slap, slap, slap/flap-flap-flap-flap – just cracks me up. They look like mad Japanese Shinto priests running late for whatever services Shintos have, an Asian version of Maria late for mass from having been up in the mountains singing. (In their case, it would be out in the meadow munching. No, wait, they’re not geese anymore, they’re Shinto priests. Oh forget it.)
The Canadian geese family are co-habiting quite nicely, spending the days going back and forth from the pond and its surrounding shoreline to our orchard and front lawn, well, everywhere really. No dramatics, no hissing, just blissful co-existence. Parents and offspring eating away then promenading off somewhere else in orderly fashion.
Life goes on here. Morning walks, chores, writing, looking for jobs, creating jobs. Looking forward to visitors coming to visit. Taking in the days as fully as possible, being glad for them, sharing them with one another, getting focused on the things we want to change here, alter, nurture.
There are times I don’t know what we’re doing here in Vermont, but I could phrase that idea or question around life itself really – What are we doing here? - and get lost in the question. Richard and I spend ample time posing the question to one another, asking ourselves whether its working, whether we’re removing ourselves too much from the world, whether we’re actively pursuing what we feel we’re supposed to be contributing to the world. There’s a lot of thought given the topic, the difference being now, most of the time, it’s not fraught thought. It’s not “there’s a big problem, we made a mistake” thought. No. Vermont has taught us a new way. Maybe it’s objectivity. Maybe when set against the backdrop of where we live - the expanse of nature and all we’re experiencing here - any problem, perceived or otherwise, doesn’t have a chance. It vanishes – presto chango – as if it were dusk. And there’s no problem. Maybe there never was, never has been.
We chose to come here. And I love that the choice was a little bit crazy, a little bit instinctive, that it was about both of us wanting adventure and change in our lives and choosing to dive in the deep end together. And look what we’re experiencing, the people we’re meeting, the poultry we’re raising. If we have to ponder “where are we going?” how great that we get to do it here and how great that we’ve been graced with the means to do it. And how great to imagine what’s coming next.
Well, this turned into a pep talk. Have a great day.
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