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.”