Day: May 9, 2014

I’d guess you’d call it a vigil. Maria and I sat out in the pasture for much of the afternoon, Red was off to the side keeping an eye on things, the sheep are getting very used to us now, they lay down all around, chewing their cuds, very still, the strong winds blowing across the pasture, down the road.

It was a beautiful experience in many ways, a deeply spiritual one, we were literally in the middle of the block, we have done this often with the donkeys but never the sheep. And of course, the dogs. The lambing crisis this week has drawn me much closer to the sheep, as crises will. I have spent many hours sitting with them.

I tried to communicate with the lambs inside of Zelda, urged them to come out, welcomed them to the world. We’ve decided to leave things to Mother Nature for now, give Ma and Zelda the opportunity to have lambs when they are ready. We’ve done everything we can do for Ma right now, the only other choice would be a C-section, I am not comfortable with that option, at least not yet, perhaps not ever.

Maria thinks she should skip the New York City trip with me on Sunday and Monday, she feels there is too much going on at the farm. I’m not sure, I will leave it up to her. I hope she comes. We haven’t yet taken a real vacation in our marriage or time together, these shorter trips are important, but I leave it to her. She has great judgment.

I felt closer to the sheep than ever, I admired their calm, their ability to center down together. Ma came over to Maria several times to have her back scratched. The wind was strong, but warm, there is something timeless about a flock of sheep.

Ma looked active and busy, she is eating and drinking now. I’ll give her another antibiotic shot tomorrow. Still no signs of labor.

One tumultuous week into his life on the earth, Liam has taken on the role of official greeter, he goes from ewe to ewe saying hello, sniffing them. Today he came across Pumpkin and the two seemed to bond, Liam lay down next to Pumpkin for a nap. Liam does not seem to understand the meaning of shyness or caution, and he has plenty of good reasons.

I have the best lighting available in any gallery for my windowsill exhibit, the lighting moves constantly, shows the light on the flowers and bottles differently each time, changes the reflection on the windows and the screens, sometimes even on the red barn in the background.

The windowsill gallery has its own lighting system, every time I look at it, the colors and the window reflections are different. I think I’m going to continue curating for a bit, each bottle tells a different story, strikes a different chord.

For nearly two decades, I have been working on wiser and more mystical ways of communicating with animals, including visualizations that have  been remarkably successful for me, with my dogs, donkeys, barn cats and this week, with the sheep. I believe that animals communicate much as some autists, they talk and think in images, not words. People arrogantly project human words and narratives onto animals, but they are alien creatures, they do not think the way we do, or the way we would like them to.

Visual is not like training or issuing commands, it is a process of speaking to animals in a way they can understand. I did it with Frieda, with Red, with Rose, with Simon, and with astonishing and wonderful results. Yesterday afternoon, I sat in the Pole Barn for three hours and I did it with Ma. I concentrated in quiet, I cleared my mind, I watched her and listened to her, I projected movement, health, I projected the process of birth and life.

Ma settled, she lay down a few feet from me. Visualization is something Maria does almost intuitively, but I believe it is a seminal part of talking to animals, that is why I am excited to be doing a book on “Talking To Animals.” I don’t want to write about it too much on the blog, I want to save it for my book, I hope this will be my great and lasting work.

But I am using this today to communicate with the lambs inside of Ma, to imagine them deciding  to come out, to open up the birthing canal and begin their journey into the world. I have been doing this all morning and will do it this afternoon, I will write about it as it unfolds. I believe it was critical in helping Ma come back to life, along with the veterinary care she received. The vet and I both saw it happen.