Avoiding the dreaded dissection of frogs in junior high school science class was one of my first coup d'etats in the educational system. The first was winning a smile contest in fifth grade despite my excessive overbite. It was truly a lesson in turning a perceived liability into an asset. But, back to dissection...
College Anatomy and Physiology affords no such evasions of requirements. Last night, dreaded dissection became a reality for this duck-the-gross-stuff-at-all-costs kind of woman. After singing every song I could think of about cats - The Cat Came Back, El Gato, What's New Pussycat, The Siamese Cat Song - and making dancing motions with her feet (yes, she was female), we finished the skinning process and bagged her for next week's procedures. Then, I broke down.
The next two hours were spent either on the phone talking it out or just in shock. I had done something I had been avoiding my entire life. I became a vegetarian at 19 years of age because of the inhumane and unhealthy way animals were treated and processed for mass food production. Now, here I was skinning a cat who had been euthanized by the SPCA because it was either stray or feral. She was thin. All the other cats on the other lab tables were fat. They had been taken care of, loved by someone in their lives. Our cat lived close to her truest instincts, undomesticated, living a life of freedom and survival.
How ironic. Our cat was a nonconformist. Part of the horror of the experience for me is knowing she is one of my own kind.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
This Morning 10/10/12 The Bird Man
My friend, T---, is a bit of a mystic. Not the self-proclaimed kind, but the type that doesn't know it, yet revels in the reality of the mystery.
His mom died yesterday and today, he found a hawk in the middle of the road. He thought it was dead, but it wasn't. He picked it up, cradled it like a baby and took it home to a large birdcage he keeps upstairs. Don't ask why he has a large birdcage hanging around his house. Its sentimental, I think.
So he calls me and texts me all excited about this large hawk that lets him pet it and is watching him like....you guessed it...a hawk, as he walks around the cage. This is T---'s spirit animal (he calls it). He thinks it's his mom come to be with him for another day.
I say he's grieving, but the ironic and mystical nature of the entire experience is a bit exciting.
Tonight I go over and see the hawk and T---. It's amazing - before long, I'm singing songs to the hawk and picking up the guitar and the bird is watching me like....you guessed it....a hawk. Eye to eye. Winking at me every few seconds. It's all mystical in the upstairs room where the hawk is. I reach in and touch it and our eyes are on each other's eyes. I'm singing and somehow, this feels normal.
This is T---'s life. Mystical. Completely normal to him, but utterly mystical.
He tells me a story of finding a pigeon when he was 15 in the icing water of the creek. He grabs it and wraps it in his wool hat, takes it home and for the next week, nurses it back to health. Everyday for months on end after he finally lets the bird free, it would greet him, land on his shoulder and stay there as he walked to the bus stop to go to school. When he returned from school, the bird was there and again, greeted him as he got off the bus. How can you believe this stuff? But then again, it's T---, so you know it's true. The pigeon eventually was found dead in the road, run over by a truck. It didn't meet him anymore, but it's a typical story of T---'s.
I can't be around normal people anymore. Maybe I never could. But life just doesn't seem like it's living if it isn't in some kind of mystical motion. I try to deny the mystery sometimes. It's a lot more work when you have to live that way - this way - in the mystery. The mystical mystery world of acknowledging something beyond what our brains discern. To live in the mystical is to live in the sensory world beyond the brain's interpretation and proceed into the soul zone.
So what feeds the soul zone?
Trusting the mystery. It's just that simple.
His mom died yesterday and today, he found a hawk in the middle of the road. He thought it was dead, but it wasn't. He picked it up, cradled it like a baby and took it home to a large birdcage he keeps upstairs. Don't ask why he has a large birdcage hanging around his house. Its sentimental, I think.
So he calls me and texts me all excited about this large hawk that lets him pet it and is watching him like....you guessed it...a hawk, as he walks around the cage. This is T---'s spirit animal (he calls it). He thinks it's his mom come to be with him for another day.
I say he's grieving, but the ironic and mystical nature of the entire experience is a bit exciting.
Tonight I go over and see the hawk and T---. It's amazing - before long, I'm singing songs to the hawk and picking up the guitar and the bird is watching me like....you guessed it....a hawk. Eye to eye. Winking at me every few seconds. It's all mystical in the upstairs room where the hawk is. I reach in and touch it and our eyes are on each other's eyes. I'm singing and somehow, this feels normal.
This is T---'s life. Mystical. Completely normal to him, but utterly mystical.
He tells me a story of finding a pigeon when he was 15 in the icing water of the creek. He grabs it and wraps it in his wool hat, takes it home and for the next week, nurses it back to health. Everyday for months on end after he finally lets the bird free, it would greet him, land on his shoulder and stay there as he walked to the bus stop to go to school. When he returned from school, the bird was there and again, greeted him as he got off the bus. How can you believe this stuff? But then again, it's T---, so you know it's true. The pigeon eventually was found dead in the road, run over by a truck. It didn't meet him anymore, but it's a typical story of T---'s.
I can't be around normal people anymore. Maybe I never could. But life just doesn't seem like it's living if it isn't in some kind of mystical motion. I try to deny the mystery sometimes. It's a lot more work when you have to live that way - this way - in the mystery. The mystical mystery world of acknowledging something beyond what our brains discern. To live in the mystical is to live in the sensory world beyond the brain's interpretation and proceed into the soul zone.
So what feeds the soul zone?
Trusting the mystery. It's just that simple.
This Morning 10/9/12 200
Today is the 200th post. My daily routine has changed and writing each and every morning has changed. There is no less need or desire, just priority.
What It Is
When K passed
She left the strong scent of
Potpourri and damp floorboards
Behind
She held on so long
It seemed
But two weeks of morphine
Pushes
The bedroom door sits closed
Place of anger, fear, departure
Purgatory for the living
Resistor
Potted plants shocked by her absence
New caretakers know nothing after all
Her song and theirs was one harmonious
Solo
What is known or not
The whys and what ifs
Serve the mind, but never the
Heart
Ask the chubby, low rider
Four legged who worried with her
Ask the grandchildren and the soil turned by
Hands
Never idling, but instead
Crocheting another hat
To give away, to keep me
Warm
What dreams we dream
For ourselves
Never imagining the end as it
Is
copyright 2012 SajaMaka Publishing
What It Is
When K passed
She left the strong scent of
Potpourri and damp floorboards
Behind
She held on so long
It seemed
But two weeks of morphine
Pushes
The bedroom door sits closed
Place of anger, fear, departure
Purgatory for the living
Resistor
Potted plants shocked by her absence
New caretakers know nothing after all
Her song and theirs was one harmonious
Solo
What is known or not
The whys and what ifs
Serve the mind, but never the
Heart
Ask the chubby, low rider
Four legged who worried with her
Ask the grandchildren and the soil turned by
Hands
Never idling, but instead
Crocheting another hat
To give away, to keep me
Warm
What dreams we dream
For ourselves
Never imagining the end as it
Is
copyright 2012 SajaMaka Publishing
Sunday, October 7, 2012
This Morning 10/7/12 Part III: OSQ and WW
This new plan required the Spoiled Queen to do something she was unaccustomed to: the Spoiled Queen had to, for the first time in decades, actually listen. (continuing to part 3)
To listen requires two very important attributes - patience and interest. The Spoiled Queen gave her full attention to the Poetic Gardener as he pointed out Podophylum, Artemisia vulgaris, Symphytum, Taraxicum officianale, and many other plants along their walks. The Poetic Gardener recited their uses and important healing properties and the Spoiled Queen repeated those to herself as they walked. She never interrupted him.
After 16 Saturdays of new plants and old plants and a full season winding into the next, the Poetic Gardener saw something he had never seen before. At the very moment he recognized the plant which he remembered from his own childhood walks with his mother, the White Witch appeared next to the plant.
Glancing back at the Spoiled Queen, he noticed she hadn't yet seen the White Witch and as he walked nearer to the plant, the White Witch spoke with words to the Poetic Gardener for the first time. She simply said, "Here, Gardener. This is what she needs." At that, she disappeared.
The Spoiled Queen recognized the plant now and its beautiful violet-edged flower drew her to it. As if enchanted, she asked the Poetic Gardener what it was. He responded carefully, "This is the medicine." As she fell to her knees and pulled a knife from her hidden sheath, the Spoiled Queen quickly lopped off some of her hair and put it next to the waiting medicine. As if by design, all of the servants had turned away at the moment she dropped, hearing a noise in the distance. None witnessed her on her knees except the Poetic Gardener. As the servants turned back around, the Spoiled Queen was on her feet again and the Poetic Gardener had gathered the medicine.
They began their long walk toward home; the healing had already begun.
To listen requires two very important attributes - patience and interest. The Spoiled Queen gave her full attention to the Poetic Gardener as he pointed out Podophylum, Artemisia vulgaris, Symphytum, Taraxicum officianale, and many other plants along their walks. The Poetic Gardener recited their uses and important healing properties and the Spoiled Queen repeated those to herself as they walked. She never interrupted him.
After 16 Saturdays of new plants and old plants and a full season winding into the next, the Poetic Gardener saw something he had never seen before. At the very moment he recognized the plant which he remembered from his own childhood walks with his mother, the White Witch appeared next to the plant.
Glancing back at the Spoiled Queen, he noticed she hadn't yet seen the White Witch and as he walked nearer to the plant, the White Witch spoke with words to the Poetic Gardener for the first time. She simply said, "Here, Gardener. This is what she needs." At that, she disappeared.
The Spoiled Queen recognized the plant now and its beautiful violet-edged flower drew her to it. As if enchanted, she asked the Poetic Gardener what it was. He responded carefully, "This is the medicine." As she fell to her knees and pulled a knife from her hidden sheath, the Spoiled Queen quickly lopped off some of her hair and put it next to the waiting medicine. As if by design, all of the servants had turned away at the moment she dropped, hearing a noise in the distance. None witnessed her on her knees except the Poetic Gardener. As the servants turned back around, the Spoiled Queen was on her feet again and the Poetic Gardener had gathered the medicine.
They began their long walk toward home; the healing had already begun.
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