Minnie spent her second morning out in the barn and the pasture, she seems very comfortable in the barn, she hangs out by the hole in the back and gazes out at her territory, she can jump down, but she can’t jump up yet, she digs her front claws into the wood and pulls herself up, we would not be comfortable leaving her outside at night yet, maybe not for weeks. She is no trouble inside now, the dogs are used to her, Frieda sometimes stares at her incredulously, as if she can’t quite believe Minnie’s gall at standing in front of her and meeowing., but I believe Frieda is grasping that Minnie lives here, and soon she will protect her, as she protects everything else here.
Minnie is determined, she is getting around, she can only learn these things outside of the house, not hanging around inside. When I went out to get her this afternoon, she was sitting on a sheepskin (Maria, no doubt) and was happy to be picked up and brought inside. We don’t need to confine her in a crate at night, she sleeps on the dog beds, often next to one of the dogs. We will continue this pattern for the next week or so and see if she gets stronger or more agile. The dogs have really been great with Minnie, Frieda is curious about her, Lenore loves to nap next to her, Red mostly completely ignores her but is willing to sit down next to her.
Minnie’s stump is healing, but she has a good ways to go before she can really maneuver well, and she is exhausted from her morning walk-a-rounds. In the meantime, the hole in the barn is her headquarters, her vantage point, her safe spot. Like most cats, Minnie is good at finding a safe spot.
Letters from Post Office Box 502, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
Connie Jones writes from Portland, Maine, that she is sending along one of her “coloring sessions” as a thank you for many years of following my life through my books, photos and blog. Over the years, Connie has done cross stitch pictures, but her eyesight and hands are not quite what they were, so she finally bought some artist grade colored pencils and bought “oodles” of coloring books online.
“I color while catching up with my sisters on the phone,” writes Connie, “or when I need to really let the day go, headset on, music from my phone, I color away. I sit at our dining room table, facing the street, I have a good view of our front garden, the bird feeder, and who ever walks by. This space is often filled with the sun, warming me as I choose the next color.”
There is a lot in Connie’s message, a passion for creativity, respect for the creative spark, generosity and writing so vivid I feel as if I am sitting at the table with her, warmed by the sun, buoyed by her music, talking to her sisters, watching people go by. She wanted to send me a “little token of thanks” for my words, and how precious and thoughtful a gift is that. I will hang it on the wall. I will write Connie and urge her to get a blog going, she has the gift.
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Lisa also sits at a table every morning, drinking coffee, reading my blog, but she sends a different kind of message, the news from Washington has frightened her in recent months and years. She is a local government worker in Maryland, “I am trying hard to hold on and not be afraid. Will I be able to pay my mortgage? Will I end up on the street? Thoughts of financial disaster and ruin worry at me and circle around my brain.”
But then, she writes, “I read your blog and see a picture of a donkey staring into the lens and I smile, or I see a picture of the window art that Maria composes and you capture with your camera. It is the small details of a vintage handkerchief blowing in the breeze that allow me to see the beauty in the ordinary things…It helps me knowing that someone is out there, with similar struggles, keeping it real.”
I want to talk to Lisa, sit at her table, tell her not to be afraid, the abyss is mostly an invention of the Fear Machine, it is necessary for them to frighten us so they can pursue their greed for money and power and make us think we need so much more to live happily than we really do. They want us frightened, it seems, I want to remind Lisa that fear is a geography, a space to cross, we are all guerrilla warriors in the land of the Fear Machine, we will not bend our knees to them, they are not real. Lisa knows, I see, that God is in the details, revealed in the ordinary things, not in their angry and fearful arguments and accusations and so-called news. If any details of my life keep you grounded Lisa, that is a gift to me.
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Colleen went to Ireland recently on a business trip, she likes to look at the blog for my photos – not necessarily the words – and since she was in Ireland, she bought a pack of note cards for me and Red. They are watercolor sketches of scenes in Ireland, I will use them to write back to some of the people sending me letters to P.O. Box 205 (Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.) Thank you, Colleen.
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Veronica writes me from California that my poem “Last Leaf” brought her to tears, she is a passionate gardener (she enclosed a beautiful wildflower in her card.) “I walk around my yard like a crazy woman, talking to each thing I’ve planted (tended?) and watched grow…and I thank them for their beauty, your poem really resonated with me, as do so many of your reflections, right to my heart and soul. Most days are begun by sitting down at the computer, with my cup of tea, looking forward to the gold in your words – to the hard and sweet truth of daily life.”
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In the night, I sit at my table, I light some candles, the dogs are at my feet, my fresh stack of these divine messages and letters piled up in a stack, my farm knife open and doubling as a letter opener, I sort them into piles – read, opened, a pile to be answered, those with gifts or money to ponder, some for the dogs or Minnie or Maria. I pick out a dozen or so and I read them one by one, looking for the gold in the words, for the hard and sweet truth of daily life, for the messages that resonate with me, the ones that show me who I am, who I might be. These letters tell me something I never really knew for certain or much grasped – that my words and stories – I call them my shining angels, sometimes my worker bees, and I send them out in the world to live or die – find homes, and people and coffee pots and dining room tables and windows with a view, and they live and kiss the souls of good and good-hearted people.
Red and I went out to explore the winter pasture together this morning, and the sheep scattered and Red moved to get them together, the morning brought winter and it’s particular beauty to my mind, a cold austere but still eerily beautiful color, or perhaps, absence of color. I love the paths that the donkeys make wherever they go, donkey paths are an art form all their own.
We had our first deep frost this morning, and I set out early to try and capture it, there was a ghostly white mist hanging over the pasture, the first intimations of the winter pasture that will come, winter can be an extraordinarily beautiful time of year, but challenging, as it is devoid of what we think of as color, I get drunk on color in the summer,
The first deep frost is a signal of change, time for the grass and flowers to die, time for us to put out hay for the animals. A transition from one time to another.
If you had asked me even a few months ago if I would ever take a photo of a three-legged barn cat two weeks from surgery, a Rottweiler-Shepherd mix, a border collie, and a Labrador Retriever all napping together in one corner of our living room, I would have simply laughed at the impossible idea of it. Barn cats do not hang around with dogs, they avoid them at all costs, Rottweiler-Shepherds like Frieda has runaway prey drive and chase cats whenever they can, border collies are notoriously restless and edgy and Lenore, of course, might take a nap with anything, although still, three dogs and a barn cat in a tight space..well, I just didn’t think it could happen.
Minnie was out all morning, she did some exploring, she holed up in the barn, we brought her in for the afternoon and the night and she went to sleep on Frieda’s bed. One by one, the dogs came in and lay down around her, almost in a circle. I am often forced to acknowledge that I do not know what animals are thinking, they surprise me all of the time, they have an enormous capacity for adaptation, and I am glad I give my dogs a chance to succeed as well as fail. Maria was nervous about letting Frieda near Minnie, who cannot run, but Frieda has never failed to rise to the moment when given the chance.
The photo will remain a symbol to me of how much I can learn from animals and how little I really understand them.
