The chickens play a big artistic role at the farm, their synchronistic food ballet inspiring and uplifting. Strut has emerged as a major presence on the farm, a pompous and officious but gentle and protective creature. I have several chicken photos in the art show.
The three surviving chickens look quite natural. Fran was never hardy enough to fit in there.
I was trying to count today how many animals have died here since I moved to the farm in 2003. There was Orson, Rose, Izzy. Lambs, Winston the I, II and III. Carol the donkey. Sheep in the pasture, dead in childbirth, taken by disease, caught in wires, choked to death on weeds. Two steers send to slaughter, a cow sent to Vermont. .A dozen chickens, at least. One goat dead, two sent to other farms. Mother the barn cat and Lenore the oldest veterans on the farm, now that I think about it. Rabid and feral cats, raccoons, possums, skunks, stalked and shot.
Some animals injected, shot, dead of natural causes. Vets, large and small animal, syringes, pills, gauze pads, prolapses. Boxes of syringes and disinfectants. Each time I write about it, each time there is this flood of understanding, this gap of confusion and perspective, all so familiar to me now. The advice, questions, suggestions. Why say “killing Fran?” Why not call it something else, something pretty? I seem to always be explaining it, when from this end, nothing could be more natural or more obvious. Even today, with Fran. Get a guard dog, shoot the fox, higher fences, more voltage. We love animals so much, but we sometimes seem such strangers to their lives, as if we can spare them the reality of the world.
But the donkeys are guard animals, I think. The foxes don’t come into the pasture, they attack well outside of it, no dopes. The barn cats will not be confined to pastures or barns, they would, I suspect, be more comfortable dying, these freest and most independent of creatures. And do I want a killer guard dog waiting for Red to come in and herd the sheep? Or Lenore to wander into the pasture? Or Frieda to get loose and plunge into battle with him. Or some farmer’s kid wandering into the pasture to say hello to Simon?
I know these thoughts are all well meaning, and thanks for them – sincerely. But I don’t need or want advice, or help from the outside. I’ve been through this many times, and it is not a drama or crisis here, just the way life works. I’m sorry to say I know it all too well. I need help understanding banks and politics, not foxes and hens. The ballet of life, I call it. I have now been on the farm long enough to not be able to remember all of the animals who have died here. And long enough not to want to. Animals die, animals come. Rose and Izzy gone, Red on the way. Two donkeys, then three. No chickens, now four.
It is the ballet and the parade. Let’s say the dance of life.
I’m hoping for a quiet weekend. Rainy day today, we are driving around distributing invitations to the Farewell Bedlam Farm Pig Barn Art Gallery Show – “Anointing The Goddess” to be held here at the farm June 23-24. Looks like Red will be arriving the day after the show, so probably won’t be here. The rest of us will, though. We dropped the price of the farm by $50,000 Friday and that will probably stir some activity. Got the galleys for “Dancing Dogs” my short story collection, due out in September. Going to visit George Forss in his gallery this afternoon. Getting a surprise for Maria there. Going to visit Rocky as well.
We live in a world of complaint. The Internet. Banks. Airlines. Insurance companies. Politicians, government. Corporate entities that are hard to reach, unresponsive, and sometimes uncaring. Tech Support. Phone Trees. Forms and laws, liabilities and hidden fees. Customer Service and Passwords. For me, each one of these dealings has become a spiritual opportunity, a lesson, an insight. My car hit a deer Sunday and was badly damaged. I needed to deal with the police, who kept trying to shuffle me to another jurisdiction. The insurance company required forms, documents, records. I needed to talk to an adjuster, find a tow truck, get an auto body shop. I had to get an auto rental. As crises go, there are many worse than this one, but in America, life is complex, challenging. Systems are built on mistrust, liability, regulations and record keeping. There are always complications – deductibles, the discovery that I would only be reimbursed for $20 a day in rental car fees. Few of us ever know quite what we agreed to until we need to know. And we are often surprised.
All of these different stops had their own issues, requirements, confusions. All are worried about lawsuits and protect themselves. Corporations are constantly adding small fees and charges in response to the recession. The rental car company warned of a dozen fees if they found dog hair, scratches, smelled smoke or saw stains. I resolved at the beginning to not do these things:
– Complain of my bad luck.
– Complain of how “they” nickel and dime us.
– Lament the difficulty in reaching people.
– Miss the old days when you knew your insurance agent and he came to the house and took care of things.
– Wonder why deer run into cars. Say I didn’t need all of this.
– Panic about the cost and disruption.
– Lose my temper at all of the poor people caught in the system with too much work to do.
– Be discourteous to anyone.
Everyone is doing their best, I reminded myself, everyone living in their own reality. Everyone has it worse than me. I am nothing but lucky, my life is crammed with blessings.
I knew at the end of the week that I would pull it all together. At each of these places, I took a breath and chose to remain calm, courteous, open to a successful experience. In the middle of the night, I found a young police officer willing to take a few extra minutes to get me my report. After a few tries, I got someone from the insurance company on the phone, and she was helpful. I reached the insurance adjuster and told him where the car was. I called a neighbor, a mechanic, for advice. I got all the forms and filled them out. I found Maria at Performance Auto Body and she told me they would fix my car in three days once they got the parts. And then she called me up this morning and told me I could watch my car being repaired on the Web, at the gallery in their website. So it did come together, and did all work out. I have my police report. The insurance company is paying all but $200 of the $4,000 in damage. I will have my car by the end of next week.
And this morning, Maria (from the auto body shop) called me up to say I could go onto their website and see the car’s progress every day. You can come and see it too, if you wish, here. Look for the Highlander at the bottom of the page. See what a deer can do.
How nice that they thought to do this, how nice of her to call. I love my car and miss it. I will check in on it every day. In our world, patience and courtesy still works, still means something. I did not get angry, I did not get frustrated, I am not sorry in any way to be in this world, and everywhere I went on this peculiar journey I found someone I liked, someone to laugh with me and help me. Each connection, each act of courtesy and understanding is a point of light. I am getting there.
Saturday begins with my favorite dance of the day, the chicken dance over some birdseed. A quiet day. Still looking around for Izzy. We are working this morning. I am wring a story about the Fox and The Farmer for Slate.com and Maria is in the Studio Barn working on a streaming piece. Lenore and Frieda are getting some sun in the front yard. Things are settling here. I finished a new Jim Lynch novel, “Truth Like The Sun,” and I love Jim Lynch’s writing but not this book so much. I am increasingly unsettled by the almost bigoted portrayals of aging by writers, mostly younger writers. Older people are sexless, health-obsessed, cranky, withering and unappetizing spirits. The literary novelists are tiring of lengthy portrayals of dying cancer victims, so they seem to be turning more and more to agonizing delineations of Lou Gehrig’s disease, and lately, strokes and aneurisms. (On to Denis Johnson’s “Magical Dream.”)
No older person is ever seen as having sex, finding love, peace or achievement. In literary fiction, there are no happy endings for the old. Death looms around every new chapter. And the hoary AARP magazine runs features on buying GPS anklets for Grandma so she won’t get lost. I’d cancel my subscription if I could reach them on the phone.
I sometimes feel that the elderly are the last safe targets in American culture. Gays, blacks, women are all speaking up for themselves in the loudest possible way, but the elderly often seem voiceless and dispirited, expected to take their pills, talk to their doctors about Viagra and topple over from strokes and heart attacks. Portrayals of the elderly in Lynch’s new novel were almost vicious, dried up people reading obits, whining and complaining, and falling apart.
This is not my experience of getting older. I am her to tell you that getting older, just like being younger, is a mixed bag. One thing or another hurts almost every day, but the riches and rewards for me – love, photography, writing good books, finding a life with animals on a farm, making real friendships are just beginning to pour in. I will move along to new openings, new experiences, letting go of some of the struggles of life, understanding spirituality, compassion and growth and eager to pass along some of the few things I have learned in life. I always learn things from younger people, and hopefully, they can learn from me. I am pleased that so many of the readers of my books and the blogs are young as well as older.
To those who would see people like me as relentlessly downsizing, shriveling up, talking all day about prostate cancer and kidney trouble, nuts to you. A failure of creativity, imagination, and empathy. Being young is no better an excuse for bigotry than being dumb.
