Day: May 4, 2014

My wife, friend, lover and beloved partner is leaving in the morning for four days in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, a journey of the heart for her – she is pursuing the origins of her art – and for me, the first time I have been alone in our home, not the first time I have been alone in my life.

People often confuse loneliness with aloneness, and I have studied and felt and lived both all of my life. They are very different.

Loneliness is a lacking, a feeling that something important is missing, a pain or sadness, a need, an incompleteness or an absence.

Aloneness is the opposite. It is the embodiment of presence, fullness, of being alive, of the joy of being. You are complete. You are whole, you are enough.

For me, true love is not a way of ending loneliness. Real love transforms loneliness into aloneness, it means the help of the other. If I love a person, I must not try to complete them and fulfill them by my presence, by their need for me. My wish is that they not be in need of me, that they can find aloneness in their life, a sense of completeness.

And  that is the experience of Maria’s trip. We’ll get up at 3 a.m. and I will take Maria to the airport. Only when she is free to go, free to follow her heart, free to feel her art is as important as me, as us, will true love be possible, will a genuine sharing of lives occur. Love needs freedom to breathe and grow. We are there.

When I met Maria I was lonely.  Loneliness drove me to madness, nearly to destruction. There was a great hole in my life, in my heart. I was almost always in pain or sadness, I cared nothing for my life, I took no responsibility for it, I had given up on life. I was in great need, my life was incomplete, there was an absence of meaning, intimacy, purpose.

Five years later, I am coming to a place of aloneness, one I think I will experience very deeply this week, much as I will miss Maria. But I will not need her, and she will not need me. There is a difference. My life, thanks to Maria, is filled with presence. There is a fullness to me, a sense of being alive, every day I experience the joy of being. Together or apart, we are complete, I am whole, I am enough.

Tonight she asked me why it was that we both decided I ought not to come. Because, I said, this is not a vacation, not a tour, it is a journey of the soul, you are heading out in search of your roots, your art, your fullness and presence. It is not something we are doing, it is something you are doing.  It is about learning, growing, understanding, creating. For you to be free, I need not to be there. You do not need me there, and I could see in her eyes that she knew that.

Maria has always seen that she needs to make this trip alone, agreed to it. Today, there is so much going on at the farm – changes in my work life, chores, book negotiations, lambing – she felt guilty about going. But this is the very time to go, I said, Leave this behind, turn you back on it,  find you joy in learning who you are, where you come from, where you want to go. Come back and tell me about it. I will be here.

I thought today that my whole life is getting on that plane in the morning, and it feels like that, but that would not be love, that is something else, a place I have left behind, not a destination.

I will not be lonely, I have come from the experience of loneliness to aloneness, that is very much what we are about. Geography has little to do with true love. I look forward to this feeling, this experience, it will be a great measure of how far we both have come, of where we are. Loneliness was a terrible state for me, aloneness is a powerful spiritual experience, a place I have always longed and worked to be.

Maria I wish you a great journey, joy and fulfillment, presence. You will bathe in the most creative waters, come back bursting and sparkling with wonderful ideas and, generously and gently and graciously as always, you will return them to the world, you are such a gift to so many people.

 

I see that Liam has a large following out there, and Maria and I just went out to the barn to check on him, and I’m happy to report that he seems to be doing well, he is nursing, up on his feet, curious and alert. I think he is still moving a bit stiffly, but that is to be expected. I have to play detective about what happened.

Another chapter in the real, unpredictable and surprising life of animals.

Liam is three days old, the age when lambs are released from their stalls in good weather. He spent several hours with the donkeys, who sniffed him and checked him out as we watched and then went off to graze. Our donkeys, including Simon,  have always been around sheep and often been around lambs. Simon can get grumpy around food, but has never bothered a ewe or lamb.

Simon is a guard animal and he has challenged almost all of our animals when he first meets them – Lenore, Red, Minnie the barn cat, and certainly Rocky the pony, although that was different. He usually tries to nip them and they skitter away and that’s that. He has never harmed any of them.

Liam and his mother were up near the Pole Barn and we went inside to have lunch. When we came out to check on them, the donkeys looked agitated, Lulu and Fanny were trying to get Susie away from the lamb and Simon was off grazing. We chased the donkeys off and Liam and Susie walked back to the Pole Barn. Maria noticed blood on Liam’s back and I saw feces smeared along his side, as if he had been pushed down in it. I know those symptoms, they are the signs of a donkey nip or stomp. Liam was hyperventilating and stumbling, he looked exhausted. He must have been, I imagined he was running around quite a bit.

Not really sure which one tangled with him, I’d have to guess Simon. If he wanted to kill Liam, he could have done in a flash, he might have gotten annoyed with him, or Lulu and Fanny (or Simon) may not, for some reason, have recognized Liam as a sheep. That’s my best guess, we have never had a lamp as white as that, one who stands out as he does.

But the truth is we will never know for sure.  Animals are never completely predictable, and life on a farm is not as cute as photographs of life on a farm. We separated Simon and Lulu and Fanny in their own pasture with their own hay and water and they will be kept apart for a week or so. Tomorrow I’m releasing both Liam and Pumpkin from their barn stalls, the weather looks warm and dry and the donkeys will be able to see them through the fence and get used to seeing them with the sheep. That should do it.

There was, as there always is, some of the usual obnoxious second-guessing from a few people, but I do not argue my life or decisions with armchair diagnosticians on the Internet, they are digital pests, the price of openness. This was a first in nearly 100 lambings. Simon, I should say, is by no means an aggressive donkey, he is just a donkey and he is very protective of Lulu and Fanny and the sheep. In a few months, he will be protecting Liam just as fiercely as he was protecting the sheep today. He does not tolerate outsiders near the sheep. He is just doing his job, as he was when he tried to drive Rocky, the blind pony away. This is how male equines protect their herd, they keep prey away.

Animals do not live in paradise or no-kill shelters, they are our partners on the earth, they share our joys and travails, they deserve to be respected for what they are, not for what we might wish them to be.

Anyway, I know there is concern and I wanted to explain what happened as best I can. He’s looking good, I think he’s fine, and thanks for the caring.

The New York Carriage Controversy is one of the most dramatic and inevitable outcomes of the growing schism in America between people who have pets and people who have animals.  People who view animals as pets are predominantly urban, people who view them as animals are rural and agricultural, as it is difficult to have animals in the city – look at the furor over the horses. The ideology of the animal rights movement is based on the notion that all animals needed to be treated like pets, protected from work, any possibility of accident or discomfort. This is special subject for me, as I have animals that are both pets and farm animals, and I am constantly being reminded of the great differences between the two things, even as so many of my readers find it confusing.

Maria is learning this lesson this week, she has found the past 24 hours wrenching and sometimes, in her own words, “too much.” She can speak for herself, she has begun to write about this on her blog and is thinking about it.  We’ve had several life and death dramas and lots of blood in the past 24 hours.. Socks and Pumpkin both nearly died during a difficult birth, Liam bled all over the barn when I docked his tail with my shiny new heated tail docker, and cut a vessel. This morning, he was stomped and bitten by Simon in the pasture and bloodied.

I was going to wait to dock Pumpkin’s tail until Maria had left for Alabama tomorrow morning, but she wanted to do it with me, I think she is trying hard to get everything done so that I won’t have to do it. I urged her to wait – she did not care for all the blood during Liam’s docking, but she insisted, so we did it. It went well, but afterwards, she said again she is not sure she would do this again.

I get a lot of messages about how cute the lambs are, how adorable, how much people love them. I have learned through many episodes – euthanizing Orson, shooting dying lambs, putting Rocky down, not to romanticize our lives with animals. Lambs are cute, but there is nothing cute about bringing them into the world, or their lives once they are in it.

There are several ways to dock tails – many people use elastic bands to tie off the blood in the tail and shrivel it – but I believe that is the longest and most painful method for the animals. I have a heated electric tail docker, I plug the clipper into a socket and it gets very hot. In the first week or so of life, lambs do not have nerves in their tails, so while the docking might make them uncomfortable it is easier for them if it is done right away, in the first two or three days of life.

It is important to cut the tail off slowly – this needs to be done because this is where the sheep defecates and it is both unpleasant and unhealthy to let feces build up under a tail that is not cut. Infections can easily spring up.

If it is done slowly, as the right pace, the wound will be almost instantly cauterized as well as cut, there will be little blood. There is considerable smell, but most of it is the would smoldering on the hot docker. The lamb must be held firmly and in the right position, Maria held the lamb I hold the tail in my left hand, the docker in my right. Then, I find a spot about two inches from the end, place the docker then and squeeze. The lamb is not in pain, but is uncomfortable and anxious and screams bloody murder.  The docker cuts right the tail, and when I did Liam I moved too quickly and the wound didn’t cauterize and held to be closed with a compress, but I did it right today and there was virtually no blood at all.

After the tail is cut, we apply various ointments and disinfectants. The mother cleans up the wound, and by the next morning there is usually no trace of it.

I should say I don’t like it, it is no fun, the lambs have had idyllic hours getting milk from their mothers and lying around in cozy barn stalls under heat lamps. I get nervous clipping dog’s nails, I worry I will go too far and hurt them. I worry about the same thing with my tail docking. It is my job to bring them into the real world, it is my docker that generally ends paradise for them.

I understand that  was upsetting for Maria. She hates to see her animals bleed, and worries that they might die or suffer. I’ve done it about 75 times, I know it is not a complex procedure, and I know it doesn’t hurt much if done well. It is a powerful moment though, and it always reminds me that lambing is not really cute or pretty, not for the farmer, not for the lamb. Lambs are one of those animals that touches buttons for many people there is the image of them frolicking and dancing, people love to say “awwwww,” how cute.  I am already getting scores of messages telling me how much people love Liam or Pumpkin. And when you name an animal Pumpkin, what can you expect?

Maria is learning what I know, which is that the process is not cute, it is difficult, painful and often frightening. And more to come, our first two lambs are males, and soon will need to be castrated. That is not very cute or fun either. The New York Carriage Horse reminds me that the emotionalizing of the animal world and it’s processes can be dangerous. The horses in New York face banning, removal to rescue farms or slaughter because there are people in the city who believe hauling a carriage for giant draft horse is cruel and abusive. No one who knows or loves draft horses believes that or even understands it, but in New York it is a widely held view and it may cost the horses their lives.

So I wanted to write about tail docking because it is part of the real life of real animals. Lambs, like puppies, are cute things, but they have some hard times ahead of them, and in a few months they will just be sheep. I take a lot of cute photos of animals, so I need to be sure to be honest about the process, so that people understand that animals are not pets, and treating them as if they are can mean the end of our lives with them.

It is great fun to see photos of cute animals, it is also important to help people understand basic things about them. Lambs are not really cute, and not for long, and working horses love to work.

Went over to the Ginofor Gallery to check out George Forss’s new wheels, I’ve been hearing about this car for a week or so but just got to see it today. It is quite a boat, a Mercury Marquis, it’s 14 years old with 78,000 miles on it, soft leather seats and check out those snazzy hubcaps. George loves it, I told him he could put a sail on it and head for Europe. He claims it gets 24 miles to gallon, I told George that sounded optimistic.

He he is very happy with the car, he says  Donna loves it and it literally came from a little old lady in Pensacola, Florida. George’s smelly old gasbag Mercury is gone, but he still has his U.F.O. Investigations Vehicle, which has 320,000 miles on it.

The sun was fleeting today, in and out, hide and seek, I waited for it to touch the windowsill gallery in my study, and it did.