Day: March 21, 2013

There is absolutely no point to writing if you cannot be honest and every day I sit down at my computer and before I write, I ask myself if I am being honest. I took this photo of Minnie the barn cat and Maria this morning, Maria was holding Minnie in the Pole Barn and Minnie was transported to a place of love and connection. Minnie is somewhat miscast as a barn cat, she really ought to be a house cat. Flo is a barn cat, independent, tough and territorial. She is loving, but not needy. Minnie, I think, is needy and perhaps ought to be a house cat. She will not be a house cat with us.

I have to confess that I do not love Minnie, although I am fond of her. My wife has the gift of loving all things with a great openness and passion, she is a Buddhist at heart, she re-homes spiders and bugs rather than kill them. I do not love all of our animals equally. Dogs are not donkeys, donkeys are not chickens, chickens are not barn cats. I have a problem with needy animals, they make me uncomfortable, and I know one of the reasons I love Flo is that she loves me when she feels like it, and doesn’t feel like it all that much. I understand that intimacy is frightening to me and it comes into play with animals all of the time.

I love border collies because as much as they love me, they love work more, and if something happened to me, Red would be happy in a flash on another farm with sheep. This is as it should be in my mind, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I have little to do with Minnie, even though she comes around every now and then, purring at me and wanting to be picked up. I don’t do it. I am glad that Maria does. Even so, I make sure Minnie is well cared for, as does Maria and I wonder if one day I can open myself up to her. Animals mirror us, they reveal us in so many ways. That is their gift.

When I was a producer at  CBS News, my boss took my aside and gave me some advice on how to survive in the corporate world. He said you basically have two choices. You can either eat lunch or be lunch. You can order from the menu or be on the menus. Ultimately, I gave up on the corporate world just as the corporate world gave up on me. We were not for one another. I think of this advice often as I go through life and I always think of it when I watch Red work with the sheep. The sheep are lunch, and Red is not. The border collie eats lunch, the sheep are lunch.

Yes, this is a metaphor for life. Red’s projects this attitude every minute of his work. He weights about 60 lbs and is telling about 700 lbs of sheep what to do and they do it. Why?, I wonder, when any one of them could knock him down. Because when you look in this eyes, you see confidence focus and determination. I am in charge, you will do as I say. I don’t want to be in charge, but I don’t want to be on the menu either. Red minds me to eat lunch, not be lunch.

And yes, to get this shot you have to lie down in the snow on your belly. Cold but worth it.