Day: December 19, 2011

 

Our culture trivializes and diminishes the aging, ignoring them in the popular culture because they don’t have too many years to buy things, mailing them silly magazines with stories of GPS sneakers to track down Grandma and urging them to have friendly talks with our doctor to  have artificial sex and make love to pharmaceutical companies so they can stay alive to be stuffed into nursing homes and sold  more pills and procedures and entitlement programs. Should I be saying “us” instead of “them?”

I’m not in the mood for that, honestly. I ran into a man I barely knew who started in with what I call “Dumb Guy Talk,” slapping me on the back, yelled out that I was the “dog guy” and asking me if I was raking in big bucks with my books. I asked him how he was, and he said, “oh, you know, old boy, I am still upright!'” and he laughed and laughed, and then he added, “and I’m still buying Green Bananas,” and laughed some more. I have to confess to an urge to make him less upright, and when I told him I didn’t get the joke, he elbowed me and said, “you know, you know…you’re getting up there! We’re afraid to buy green bananas because we won’t live to see them get yellow!” He wanted so badly for me to be in there with him, laughing about standing up and buying produce that wasn’t quite ripe. What a sad joke, I thought.

I wanted to say, friend, I hate to hear you talk about yourself that way, please don’t. And please don’t try and pull me in with you. But I didn’t. I just walked away. I’m collecting phrases I hope vanish from the earth: In This Economy. My Dog Was Abused. In This Market. From Day One. At Our Age.

 

“Self-Portrait”

“I wish I was twenty and in love with life

and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!

There are the long, pale dunes, on the other side

the roses are blooming and finding their labor

no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea

shining like a song, like a body

I want to touch

though I’m not twenty

and won’t be again but ah! seventy. And still

in love with life. And still

full of beans.”

Perhaps I’ll read that to this man if I see him again.

I love Mary Oliver’s poem, “Self-Portrait” which is good to read when people who don’t respect themselves and are not respected talk that way.

Took this shot through the living room window, the Christmas lights inside the house reflected on this side, Lulu peering in at us from the other. Mystical donkeys.

In meditation this morning, I saw this:

If you keep a simpler head, you will live in a simpler world.

If you keep an easier head, you will live in a simpler world.

What you are, inside your head, is what you will be in the world.

Is what will be drawn to you.

Is what you will mirror and believe.

If you head is  frantic, you will live a frantic life.

If your head is in chaos, then chaos will stalk you

every day of your life.

If your mind runs to fear, then fear will find you,

in one form or another, and hug you close.

It your head is filled with love, then love

will find you, and fill your life.

Such a simple thing,

a simpler head.

So difficult to see.

Rose has been gone more than a week now, and the messages have begun to subside, although they still come in throughout the day and people are still ordering books in her honor from Battenkill. But there is some distance now, and the raw and open experience of grief has softened. One woman e-mailed me to say she was upset that I seemed to be moving on, and that she weeps every day for Rose, and into the night and will never get over her death, and I suggested to her that if she loves Rose more than me, she ought to grieve as much as she needs.

I’ve thought a lot about why Rose touched so many hearts and one reason, I think, is that she conveyed both strength and vulnerability. This is, I think, the drama of the modern woman. This was very true of her – she was almost equal parts of both. I never was certain about where she slept, until I realized that she found a bed in the guest room by a window where she could look out all night at the pasture. Unlike the other dogs, she never came into my bedroom, now our bedroom, and was often in a dark corner of the house by herself. She would show affection tentatively, coming up to shower my hand with  few licks, and then darting off. The other dogs always rushed to get treats, to get attention, Rose never begged for a thing. Most days, she would refuse to walk with Maria in the woods unless I was there, and I know how much she loved to walk in the woods.

I know many strong women who are like Rose, very efficient, brave and focused, yet also vulnerable, covering up their emotions to make their way in what is still largely a man’s world with a man’s angry and topsy-turvy values. People admire and fear tough women, but I think many, like Rose, need to put on some armor when they go out into the world. When she was working, Rose was nearly invincible, taking on dogs, rams, herds of recalcitrant sheep. She never gave up or backed down, and never, in my memory, failed to get it done. And yet she seemed alone to me sometimes, always apart. She was never quite one of the pack, never comfortable in the role of a pet. She watched over me as zealously as any Secret Service Agent guarded a President. She was always around me, shadowing me, nearby.  Whenever I got up to move, outside or anywhere in the farmhouse, she would appear, ready to answer the call, “Rosie, Let’s Get To Work.”

I got a thousand photos of her working in the fields, but only a few that captured what was, in many ways, the beauty of her soul, her special place, her nightime post, where she was only a few feet from me, unseen, but always keeping an eye on her work. Rosie rarely allowed this side of her to be seen.

I got up one day just before dawn, and grabbed my camera, by the bed, and walked down the hall and into the next room, and snapped the shutter. I love this shot, but before I could take another, she was gone. When I look at it, a vein of grief opens, and the spirit of Rose flows, so cleansing, through my soul. Miss you, girl. Good work.