Day: January 15, 2014

Goodbye Napoleon, please look away,

and cover your eyes,

and be saved,

from your studded bridle,

so your white carriage,

can give way so the shiny new

electric carts can take your spot.

Carts have no worries,

no need for rights, no plumed bridles

or old blankets.

Soon you will be saved from work,

but not from the good intentions of human beings,

who love righteousness and judgement,

but are murders of romance.

Napoleon, can you say a last goodbye

to the eager people,

to the lovers and visitors,

who have always loved to ride behind you,

to hold hands and see the magic

in their children’s eyes?

Will you miss the gentle

tingle of your bells,

echoing

through the park?

They mean for you to be gone, these soulless

people, who say  the modern world is no place for you,

is too crowded and dangerous for you,

but they will keep the trucks that make it so,

and exile you, so you can wither and die

in safety in your no-kill preserve.

For what is a working horse to do

when his work is to be pitied and preserved,

but die?

No one will ever hear your big hooves clop-clopping

on the cobblestones of a great park,

or see the sun flash off of your studded bridle,

replaced by the trucks

and the whine of the electric carts.

Napoleon, you can grow old in silence

and uselessness,

and safety.

You will be saved from pride,

and purpose,

and admiration now.

You have rights now,

you are saved,

you can vanish from our world,

from a real life of work and risk, from the life of horses,

that horses have lived among people

for thousands of years,

pulled carts and humans in crowded places,

in all weather, in streets lined with mud and manure.

You will have no use for your

studded bridle now, on your rescue

farm, where you will have the right

to be piteous and dependent and without purpose.

No need to ever preen and strut again,

to pose for the camera.

Just leave your studded bridle there,

where you stand,

a memory of you.

The moon over the park covers her eyes,

with both hands,

and can’t bear to look.

It is fascinating to consider what animals are saying to us, even more riveting to consider what they are saying to one another. Here, I imagine Red communicating this to the sheep: stay where you are, eat your food in peace, I will keep you there and protect you there, you have nothing to fear from me now.

Attachment theory is one theory most people don’t want to know about, I know, I’ve tried discussing it with thousands of animal lovers and owners. Attachment theory studies why people attach themselves to certain animals – cats or dogs, large or small, docile or aggressive, rescue or purebred. People like to say their dogs and cats choose them, but it is almost never true, any more than dogs can tell us when it is time for them to die. That is the province of humans, our relationships with animals are windows into our own attachment issues with our parents, the ways in which we were loved – or not. We get the animals we need, we chose them for all kinds of reasons, most having to do with our own emotions, emotional histories, needs and values. People love to talk about their pets, but rarely want to delve too deeply into the emotions and motives they bring to the relationship.

Attachment theorists believe our relationships with animals are replays, videos almost, of our earliest interactions with our parents, the pre-verbal development of our emotional lives. People who love large guard dogs are always dealing with security issues, so are people who have lapdogs and can’t be apart from them. Why do we choose the dogs we love?

Minnie and Flo offer me a rare chance to observe attachment theory right at home. Maria is very attached to Minnie, I am very attached to Flo. Minnie is Maria’s cat, Flo is mine, Minnie sits on Maria’s lap, Flo on mine. Maria has little to do with Flo, I have little to do with Minnie. How come? What is it about Flo that draws me to her, the first cat I have ever let get close to me? And what it is about Minnie that has  drawn Maria’s emotions into the relationship? Maria is Minnie’s protector, she watches out for her, seeks her out in the evenings to sit with her on the couch. Minnie is happy to be there with her.

I asked Maria yesterday why she thought she was drawn to Flo, and she said it was because I wasn’t drawn to her. Minnie seemed lonely and needy, all the more so when her leg was amputated. Maria loves to talk about me and Flo, but gets uneasy when she is talking about herself and  Minnie. This is typical, it is hard for us to look at our own pain and struggles sometimes. Maria identifies with need, she is acutely aware of what it means to be needy, to be neglected or pushed aside. With Minnie, she is re-enacting one of the great dramas in her life, and I am (unconsciously on both sides) playing the role of the neglector, the person who wasn’t there, wasn’t empathetic.

With Flo, it is almost the exact opposite. I’ve always found Minnie intrusive, loud, ungainly, strange, even before she lost her leg.  Minnie is very verbal, she seems to be complaining all the time, although I rarely spoke as a child. This is precisely the way my father viewed me, and almost entirely in those exact terms. Flo is cool and poised, she is not intrusive, she takes her time, she is quiet, patient, affectionate without being needy or pushy. She always comes to find me if she can, always makes her way to my chair, my lap. I see her as preferring me, Maria always says Flo and I are crazy about each other, I think it is what we need to see, it is the story that works, Minnie and Maria, Jon and Flo.

I am someone with a lot of the intimacy issues that come with some kinds of abuse, and when people or animals get too close to me, it was often very frightening to me. Maria has breached this gap, but it was hard for me. Flo does not threaten me in that way (neither does a dog like Red, we are never closer than when he is herding sheep.) Flo does not get too close, she is the cool cat, happy to gaze out of the window for hours from her stand.

Attachment theories are flexible, people change and grow, animals adapt. I have gotten much more comfortable with Minnie since her adaptation, I find her quirks appealing and fun. I too identify with the outcast, though in a different way than Maria. Flo was an “orphan” in her own right, living secretly under the porch and in the woodshed. So I am helping give her a good home, the rescue impulse again. Animals are intuitive, they read emotions in people well, and Minnie is at ease around Maria, they communicate in terms of emotions and empathy.

Flo and I have connected in similar ways, I am at ease with her coolness and independence, I see her as being intelligent and strategic, I admire the ways in which I perceive her as having launched a brilliant campaign to enter our home. Because I study this and write about it, I recognize many of these feelings as projections, even as I make them. Animals are windows into our psyches and our pasts. If we can muster our courage and get past our discomfort we can learn so much about ourselves.

That is the beauty of attachment theory, the reason most people don’t want to know too much about it. I’ll keep on it.

On New Year’s Eve, Athene Burke, a friend, musician and card reader read my cards. It would be an important time for me, she said. I would be going my own way with my work, trusting myself, going out on some limbs. It would not be easy, she said, pulling the “Warrior Card.” She said I was a “warrior for my work, for my creativity.” She said I needed to really trust this direction,  trust myself and the directions in which I wanted to go, and believe in it, they were the right things for me.

This, she said, was coming from me, not a publisher, an agent, an editor or anyone else. It would be challenging and difficult at times, but I would be successful. I didn’t think all that much of the reading at the time, but her words keeps coming back to haunt me. This past year, I have chosen to break away, to take responsibility for my creative life. I shocked my writer friends by asking Random House to forego a conventional book tour in favor of one led by my blog and social media outlets. The tour was successful, the “Second Chance Dog” has had three printings, my local bookstore sold more than 1,000 copies for me to sign.

I decided last year that the blog was the focal point of my creative life, not something to sandwich in between “important work.” I began a subscription program that gave my readers an opportunity to pay me for my work and photography if they could and if they wished. I published my own e-book original, “Listening To Dogs.” I began a podcast series. I have recorded a “Ted Talk” which will be published online in the next few weeks.

And now, my instincts have taken me in a completely new and profoundly significant direction: To Kickstarter.com where I have raised more than $9,000 in 48 hours to buy me a sophisticated and expensive new camera to record images of the animals I live with and more time to work on my 15-year project, “Talking To Animals.”

My project has been funded, pledges continue to come in to support my work, they will be coming in for 27 more days.

Kickstarter has provided a powerful affirmation and launch of this project, it promises to transform many of my notions of creativity and generating money for my work. I am humbled by the enthusiastic and generous response to my idea, I am gaining strength as I seek to redefine my creativity, my relationship to my readers and new community. To be honest, Athena was almost shockingly perceptive. I hope I am a warrior for my work, I have strong instincts about it, I am following my instincts and they are working for me.

Creativity is about putting oneself out there in the most literal sense of the world, about opening yourself up to the world, standing almost naked before the universe and declaring, “I am worth something, I have something to say, I will gather the strength to say it.”  There is always risk, always danger. It could have been very difficult for me to have seen this idea rejected so publicly, yet I knew I had to take the risk. The result has been an affirmation, not a rejection. So the New Year’s eve predictions seem to be coming true.  I am going my own way, re-building a creative life nearly shattered by storms beyond my control – the recession, a divorce, the revolution in publishing. I  have never stopped fighting for my creative life, I never will, it is God’s greatest gift to me, and to Maria also, she is a fellow warrior for her life and work, we stand beside one another every day in this determination.

This year will take me to new and challenging places. It already has, and I am grateful so many of you are coming along with me.

I am a bit numb, but I am very happy to share with you the news that my “Talking To Animals” Project on Kickstarter.com has been 100 % funded, the total reached the $9,000 goal at 1:55, just 48 hours after I launched the project. Wow.

Kickstarter says the project will continue to be open to accept funding until February 12, 27 days from now. I am told that many projects that fund early exceed their goals, and that is exciting news as well, something I never expected, but I will certainly put any additional money to good use – I will apply all of it to “Talking To Animals,” a dream of mine for a number of years, a project 15 years in the making, my next book and e-book. And I can use it.

I sought Kickstarter funding to help me buy a new camera, a Canon of power and speed, one used by combat photographers and sports journalists, it will help me capture movement and emotion in the animals I am studying. I am overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and generosity this project is drawing, I am affirmed and humbled and grateful. Thank you. Many of you have asked if you can pledge money after the funding goal is reached, yes you certainly can, it will help.

I will be sharing research, photos, some books and e-books with my backers, I appreciate their support and faith in me. I am moving to take control of my own creative life, to be relevant as an author, to change as my readers are changing. This is a landmark change for me, a significant one – it feels huge. To those who have contributed, thank you. To those who wish to, your support is welcome and important. I didn’t quite dare ask for more than $9,000, I didn’t expect to get that, but I am hoping this project money will give me the time and equipment to make this project first-rate. It is now a community venture, just like the blog, and I feel as if I am being moved forward by forces much larger than me.

Interactivity is about sharing, and this project will be shared. More later, I want to absorb the moment. A long creative dream is now possible for me. I can’t wait to get going.