Day: December 8, 2011

I love this photo of Izzy and Rose, taken a little over a year ago, in summer. Rose seemed especially radiant. I was thinking of the impact it has when a dog changes your life, even saves it.

I recall the night when I fell dragging water to one of the barns, and I slipped and went backwards onto my head and was knocked unconscious. It was bitter cold and windy, well below zero, and I don’t know how long I lay on the ground, but I was awakened by the sensation of something nipping at my ear – painfully – and barking, and it was Rose, making me wake up and get up, which I did. From the feeling of my hands and feet then, I don’t know how long I might have lasted. She did this more than once.

I remember the night when a dozen or so wild pigs – having escaped earlier from a farm – came charging out of the woods, startling me, and I underestimated pigs and their teeth, and Rose charged at them, circling them, nipping at them, eventually frightening and confusing them and driving them off.

And I remember the afternoon when a ram I’d purchased for breeding came up behind me and rammed me into a fencepost, knocking me into it and breaking my glasses and opening a wound in my forehead that spewed blood, and I couldn’t see or move well and the sheep and donkeys were panicking and stampeding and Rose, still a puppy, came over or under the kennel fence and grabbed the ram by the testicles until he shrieked and ran off, and she rounded up the sheep and chased the donkeys into the barn. There were other things, other nights. There was much drama in my life, in the farm, in my work, then. She contained it, managed it, took as much of it off of me as she could.

Having Rose around always made me feel safe on the farm, even when I should have known better. Rose is all business, still, waiting for work and accomplishing it. Always near me, always watching out for me. This is her work, her life. Every now and then,  I owe her the memory of that.

Sometimes, life breaks your heart. That is the nature of things. Sometimes life lifts your heart. When my heart is broken, I await a sign, a photo, an image that heals me and lifts me up again.After darkness light, after loss gain, after struggle, peace.

So  how, then, do you keep your spirits up, in a world where bad news lines up like Super Bowl fans outside of a stadium to greet you and discourage you? I think you find affirmations of beauty, points of light, and clear your head to welcome and celebrate them, and allow yourself to be reminded that the world is filled with beauty, love, hope and light.

Dogs on the path, finding their stories.

As a writer, I’m especially conscious of words, and the way they move through out consciousness. Some words – journey, “in this economy,”, awakening – are used so often and in so many different ways I don’t really know what they mean.

Storms suggest awakenings to me. In our culture, and especially in this era of climate change, storms mean a lot of different things, some of them ugly and frightening. To me, they suggest awakenings, they pull me out of myself, challenge me to interact with the world around me, to care for animals, to breathe in the fearsome beauty of the natural world.

What does awakening mean to me? The great minds I love – Arendt, Aquinas, Buddha, Thoreau, Merton – all say the same thing, in one form or another. Awakening begins when I control my thoughts, my mind, and not live by the thoughts, fears and expectations  and experiences of others. Every day I am called upon to present my words, my ideas, my photos to the world and as they evolve, the question is not what others think but what I think. Controlling thoughts is difficult, painful, painstaking. In my 60’s, I have been challenged to change the way I think, the tracks on which my mind and thoughts have run. To separate myself from the ideas and conventions of the overwhelming majority of people around me, as regards to safety, security, money, work and health.

As I have worked to control my mind, my thoughts, my life has evolved. My work has become more creative, more joyous, I have discovered photography. I have found love, connection and direction. It is not a perfect life, it is a meaningful life. I am learning to be honest, authentic, to separate myself from conflict, drama and a culture of epidemic warning and terror. I am learning to imagine the life I wish to have, and learning that it will come to me, find me, guide me. This involves a great letting go, sometimes frightening leaps of faith, a different way of reacting to the world and seeing it.

This is, to me, an awakening, or the beginning of it, the emergence of something I have wanted my whole life: a spiritual life.