Day: January 7, 2014

The animals of the world exist for their own purposes, they were not created to meet the needs of humans any more than women were created to serve the purposes of men. Our relation with animals is increasingly emotionalized and patronizing, we see them as dependent and piteous creatures whose primary purpose is to help us feel loved, needed and connected in a fragmented and sometimes frightening world.

Henry Beston, the author and naturalist, wrote nearly a half-century ago that we need another and a wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of animals. If those words were true when he wrote them, they are more so now. “Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

I also believe we need a new paradigm for seeing animals, and it is urgent now, before their reasons for being and identity is completely subsumed in our selfishness and growing need. It is imperative that we find a way to communicate with animals that is not a one-sided effort to force our words and thoughts into their consciousness, but is a true communication. I have been considering this for the 15 years I have been living with animals, with dogs, barn cats, chickens, goats, sheep, donkeys and cows. I have been watching the way they respond to my moods, my words, my movement, the food I bring and when I bring it, I have been considering what they do when their ears move a certain way, when their tails are up.

I have watched my wife, an empath and an intuitive, talk to animals, I have photographed it, captured it in memory, images and words. I have seen the power of emotion in animals, their sensing it in people, their showing it in so many ways, their responses to it in us. I talk to the animals on the farm all the time, wordlessly, through my eyes, the sounds I make, the way my body moves, the food I bring to them. So does Maria. I think they are powerfully intuitive spirits, resourceful and strong given the chance, miraculously adaptable and quite alien, Beston is quite right, we need a new language with which to communicate.

And clearly, they need our love and mercy and empathy. Harriett Beecher Stowe wrote that the best people in the world have always taken the side of the weak against the strong, and in our world, the animals are weak and we are strong. The people who love animals have always been among the best people in the world, and for me, loving them means respecting them and listening to them, something I often see being washed away by our unthinking need and arrogance. This is my next project, perhaps my most ambitious one, sharing what I have learned about talking to animals, about listening to them.

Joseph Campbell says the role of the artist has always been seeking to make sense of the light and images of the world. I see through my photography that there is so much emotion in me,  waiting to come out, spilling out, it comes out in my photographs, in the process of taking them. How strange it is so difficult for me to feel emotion and show it in other ways. Maria has brought out much emotion in me, and I began taking photographs as messages and love letters to her, that is still the truth.

Every photo I take stirs some emotion in me, few things more so than the grace and history and symmetry and meaning of the old farms sitting proudly on their roads and hills. I honestly don’t know why old farms would strike so deep into the soul of an urban Jewish kid from Providence who lived in cities almost all of his life before coming home to upstate New York, to Washington County.

I am glad my emotions can rise so often, I am surprised my camera hasn’t melted, I look at photographs like this, standing out in the cold wind on a deserted road and I have to keep myself from crying. I wish I could tell you why, but I don’t know,  perhaps I will never know, I  am awed by this gracious old farm sitting up on it’s hill, the winter pasture, the brittle and cold sky.

I like to say that life happens, just about every day. Today we had three crises going at once, and I was reminded why I am living in the right place for me, I love my town – Cambridge, N.Y. –  more in small ways than in big ones, I think, but I am grateful to be here, especially on a day like today. As a perpetual loner and outsider, I understand I am a refugee, I will never be a native, I have no great desire to be. All the more remarkable how much I feel I belong.

Our trip to New York was in some danger in my mind today, but not any longer. Life happens in all kinds of ways.

First, my car window blew out during last week’s storm, it wouldn’t open or close.

Then, today, a warning light came on about one of the tires – we are driving to New York tomorrow.

Then, this afternoon, we became alarmed about Red and were wondering if we could leave as planned for our trip.

When the window went out last week it was storming, we couldn’t make it up the road to a dealer or our usual mechanic, I remembered there was a small business called “Mr. Auto Glass” just down the road, in sight of our house.  I drove there and the nicest man came out and waved me into his small and spotless garage.

Eduardo, who is from the Dominican Republic, brought the car into his garage, he said he needed a part from Boston, it was delayed because of all the storms and ice. He taped up the window so I could drive it, offered to drive me home and back if necessary,  sent his father-in-law off to Vermont to pick up the part, spent this morning fixing it. I loved his story, he met his wife in the Dominican some years ago, they got married, had a child and moved upstate to her home. We talked baseball, the bill for the window repairs and parts was a little over $300, about half of what it would have cost at a dealer’s. Eduardo and Leah are coming to visit the farm when it warms up.

Then, there was the tire. When I picked up the car from Eduardo,  Maria and I drove it up to Matthews Automotive where Adam Matthews, the owner, put on his ski hat and gloves, took a look and found the spare tire was sending off the warning signal, he fixed it, wouldn’t charge us. I took this photo of Maria in the waiting room, it looked Norman Rockwell’ish to me, Tom, the office assistant,  was at his desk.

On the way back, we picked up Red at the groomer’s and she told us about his water gulping and we became further alarmed and I called the vet, they said bring him right in, right now, and we did, and Dr. Flaherty came right out to see Red instantly, the vet techs ran around with him outside in the cold until he peed and they got a sample, and they drew blood and told me to come back in a half hour – they are just down the road – and they gave me the test results and send more urine off for further testing, they said they would bill me later.

The Cambridge Valley Vet feels like family to me, there is nothing but trust and efficiency there.

We did all of these things in a couple of hours, we felt comfortable with everyone we saw, everything we spent was reasonable and beyond fair. I do not live in paradise, there is no perfect life, no place is without it’s problems and issues, I love where I live you get as good as you give here, I feel I am always dealing with neighbors, I am surrounded in a cocoon of community. People love to help people here, it happens again and again. They are business transactions, yet they are not, they are more.  I told Maria I couldn’t help but think of what this afternoon would have been like in  Washington or New Jersey or New York or Philadelphia, places I have lived.

 

So far, all the tests on Red have come back negative (I see he has many fans out there). He does not have a urinary infection, his kidneys are normal, we haven’t found a cause yet for the sudden weight gain or for his gulping enormous amounts of water. We did a full blood screen – all negative. So we’ll wait and see, perhaps it’s related to the cold or some other behavioral issue we haven’t identified, Red has some strange quirks and ticks as many border collies do.

We’re going to New York and leaving him in the good care of Deb Foster, who has been briefed on the day’s happenings. Red has been working every day, but the work has been curtailed due to the bitter cold. I can’t quite imagine what’s going on, the weight gain bugs me more than anything, there must be some reason for the gulping of so much water. We’ll have to figure it out, I’m sure it will either get better or reveal itself. Going to New York in the morning, Maria will be blogging from the city, I’m leaving everything at home but the camera.

Melissa is new to the Cambridge Valley Vet Service, she had never met Red, they got connected when she helped Dr. Colleen Flaherty draw blood.