In the summer, we have a big unheated plastic bucket for the animals, it is almost always kept full and fresh. At the edge of the other pasture, we keep a low plastic kid’s pool for her to wallow in to cool off, border collies blood runs pretty hot after working, especially in the sun. When Fate is done with her sheep herding, she often stops at the bucket for a drink, and being an enthusiastic and impulsive creature, she sometimes sticks her head in, she blows bubbles and gets cool.
Yesterday, when I was not looking, she dove into the tank head first – a crazy thing, but a border collie puppy thing, a Fate thing. Her head and shoulders were way down in the water, her butt sticking out. And when I turned the corner, I saw that she was trapped there, she couldn’t get out, she was struggling to keep her head up, fighting for breath.
I came over quickly and pulled her out, but I also saw that if someone hadn’t been there, she might have drowned. I don’t think there was any way she could have gotten herself out of the tub, her front paws, head and shoulders were down so low, her rear legs sticking out. I dropped the camera – a first for me – and ran over.
When Fate is in the herding zone, she is not always rational or focused. This is one of those things that Red would never do in a million years, and it reminded me once again that life can happen at anytime, we can never be so vigilant or alert that we can keep life at bay at all times, surely not on a farm in the country.
Imagine, I thought, if I had paused to work with Red, or take some photos – this often happens – or shovel out the barn or talk to Maria. Could Fate have drowned? I suppose so. That is not a blog post I ever want to write, or a scene I ever want to see. There are several low tubs of water, Fate could have gone to any one of them, but I think she liked the idea of diving in, she was probably very warm. Border collie puppies often put their instincts ahead of their allegedly highly developed brains.
Border collie people love those stories about how many words their dogs can understand, I think it’s up to 800 now in the annual count but why is it, I wonder, if they are so smart, that they do not understand that diesel trucks are not sheep and cannot be herded? Or that they can’t dive headfirst into big tubs of water with no purchase to get out? Or run into stone walls trying to get ahead of the sheep? Or lie down in front of charging horses? You don’t hear people bragging about that.
I imagine I will get quite a few ideas and recommendations for keeping Fate out of the water and away from the happenings of life. I am not likely to consider any of them. Life happens and I will not surrender to the conceit that we can keep all of it at bay. I cannot count the times Rose nearly killed herself chasing after coyotes, running into barn walls, diving under barbed wire, battling rams.
Maria and I will keep an eye on Fate when we come out of that side of the pasture and I will also hope that she learns the words “common sense” and “memory” as she grows up.
On the windowsill, a fiber fairy has put a Dahlia in a small jar, how beautiful to see it. Every morning, a fresh flower on my windowsill, how lucky am I.
A few days ago, at the end of a long and hard-working and productive day, I got curious about Donald Trump and read a long and detailed profile of him in a national magazine. It took the better part of an hour, and then, at the end of that hour, I realized that I will be seeing and hearing about Donald Trump for a long time, perhaps as long as a year or so. Maybe longer. Lord, I thought.
This unnerved me, and I decided not to read anymore about Donald Trump or American politics for a good long while, it is early in the game and I don’t think I can bear a year of this. So I promised myself that I would organize a spiritual hour for myself, when the day’s work is done, I would go to the Round House Cafe, around 4 or 4:30 (I get up very early to write). I would bring my Iphone 6, some ear phones, two or three books, and a notepad.
I would call it the Trump Hour, the start of a new tradition, a spiritual hour to cap the day. I have always wanted this, never quite mustered the discipline to do it on a workday.
I would disconnect myself from the distractions of the world. The next day I went to the Round House. I ordered a medium iced decaf coffee, a ginger scone, and a brownie to take to Maria. I sat down in a corner of the cafe. I love the Round House, but I have never hung out in cafes. Back when I lived in Greenwich Village, there were cafes all over the place, but I got the idea that the people in them had nothing much to do, otherwise they would have been at work.
I was always at work, I had no time or money to sit in cafes and no one to go with. I think I resented cafes. I never understood why they were always full of people drinking coffee and talking.
Somehow, the notion of hanging out in a cafe seemed lazy to me, almost cowardly. Thomas Merton says that laziness and cowardice are the enemies of the spiritual life, so I got that into my head too. I always think I should be working, I always have work I need t do. I couldn’t be hanging around in cafes. So as much as I love the Round House, and as often as I eat there, it was all business. I never once, in my whole life, hung out in a cafe. I came across a video of Donald Trump’s hair in a windstorm somewhere in Iowa, and this mesmerized me. It convinced me that it was a good idea to to a cafe every day and never watch the news. I admit to being uneasy that it would stand up in the wind and we would all see what was under there.
You see, when I was a reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News, my editor made me go to wig school for three weeks so i could go around town and out all of the celebrities and politicians who were wearing wigs and pretending to have hair. My editor, a boozy Calvinist, if you can imagine, thought it was deceptive of people to wear wigs, he thought it was unnatural and hypocritical. So my job was to piss off all of these well known people by checking out their hair and exposing them. This changed my life, I can still spot a wig or a wave on TV or blocks away.
I wrote a long series about well known Philadelphia personalities who had wigs, I manged to tick off most of the politicians and celebrities in town. One of them took of his weave and tried to slap me with it.
I know what goes on under that hair, I remembered the scene in Star Wars where Darth Vader has his mask taken off and that scared the wits out of me, I didn’t want to see it. I think Trump’s hair has polish and super glue on it, it barely moved in a 50 mile-an-hour wind. I’ve never seen that.
I’ll be honest with you, I could easily have become obsessed with this, it could have messed me up and distracted me, and for months. I got to the Round House at talked to Ashley, the counter girl, about her plans for college in September. My friend Margaret came over to ask me what I was doing in a cafe in the afternoon, I had never been seen there. at that time A short, stocky woman from New Mexico with a big smile came over to say she hoped she wasn’t intruding, but she was visiting her sister in Vermont, she had read my books and the blog every day, and what were the chances of coming over to see Fate herd the sheep? Not good, I said, I was having my Trump Hour, my spiritual time. She looked at me in an odd way, and went quickly back to her table.
I squirmed a bit, I missed my big soft reading chair. I read three pages of a novel on my Iphone, then picked up a paper book. Time passed slowly. My butt got a bit sore, my back stiffened on the wooden chairs. I ate one of the flowers, Scott said I could. I couldn’t stop wondering what I was doing there.
I felt as if people were looking at me, wondering why I had so much time on my hands, why I had nothing better to do than hang out in a cafe with my books? I expected one of the elderly women at the next table – they were looking at me and whispering – to get up and ask me if I was still writing.
Why was this better than my house? Maria was back home, and I can always sucker Maria into taking a walk or visiting the donkeys, especially late in the day when she was usually bleary from hours on her sewing machine. At home, Red would sit by my feet and sigh. If Fate was in the house, she would come over to my chair, maybe bite my knee or my hand or bring me some strange thing she had pulled out of the wastebasket in the bathroom.
Why couldn’t I lean back in my chair at home and plug in my earphones and listen to Stevie Wonder or Bonnie Raitt or Bob Marley or Kanye West in my phone? I couldn’t really justify it. There were a lot of distractions in the cafe, the espresso machine, dishes clanking in the kitchen, the door coming and going (I have to see who’s coming in.)
So I couldn’t do i t, I couldn’t settle quietly in the cafe and have my spiritual hour. I gathered my things and my fake iced coffee came home and took Fate and Red out to herd the sheep. I listened to Bob Marley for a half an hour. I sat in my chair and rocked back and forth and meditated. It was quiet, I could hear the sheep baaahing softly and hear the pony whinny every now and then. Red did come and sit by my feet and Fate did come and bring me one of Maria’s socks she had liberated from the clothes hamper.
I did snooker Maria into taking a walk with me, we sat and ate some melon together. Fate jumped into the animal’s water bucket and nearly drowned, we pulled her out in time. I had my Trump Hour, and it was good. He is going to be around a long time, he will not drive me from my home. One day that hair will come off, and I do not want to see it.
Horse people are much like dog people, they all have stories to tell and fixed ideas about their animals. We have a pony now, her name is Chloe. Maria loves her, and Chloe seems to love Maria back, but ponies are not dogs, and sometimes Chloe drives Maria crazy.
Sometimes Chloe feels like riding or being brushed, sometimes not. When she sees Maria, she whinnies and comes running, she loves Maria to groom her in the morning, she is happy to be a leaning place, these two are connected in ways that I think Maria cannot yet really see.
Horses are different from dogs, they raise a number of different issues in people, especially women, I think. I hope to write more about this in the coming months as Maria figures out this complex and sometimes frustrating relationship. Chloe is intensely aware of Maria. Maria is learning not to take her individuality personally.
She is learning what all good trainers learn, the way to get a better animal is to be a better human. Ponies cannot be trained like dogs, they are not as rational or predictable. Every pony person has been thrown, defied, ignored, challenged. Well trained dogs reach the point where they generally obey you. Well trained ponies sometimes obey you. One day Maria and Chloe will go riding around the pasture, the next Chloe just doesn’t want to go, walking backwards, going in circles, refusing to move.
At first, this was deeply troubling to Maria. She blamed herself. What is wrong with me? The pony was tapping into deep and old issues of fear and self-esteem. Maria came to see what I have come to see training dogs. You have to be the leader, you have to set the tone, you have to be in charge, and really mean it, and you have to really mean it in a positive way.
Maria was so frustrated that she went and bought a crop, she meant to give Chloe some direction when she wouldn’t move forward. But she has never used it. Now, when Chloe gets obstinate, Maria just has her go in a circle, and Chloe seems to think she has gotten her way, and goes where she is supposed to go.
A breakthrough idea. There is always a way for the human to get what he or she wants, if they are creative and committed. We are, after all, smarter than they are. I’m not sure about Fate. My hat is off to Maria, she is strong and smart and determined, and I have been fascinated to watch these two strong and loving women come to terms with one another.
For sure, it is a love affair, Maria thinks nothing of leaning on her pony to rest, Chloe thinks nothing of letting her.
Half of the earth is under 30, Mithra Katalunga is 24. When he speaks of leaving college next year to go home to Sri Lanka and start a “soil revolution,” he says he will look to speak to the young there, they are, he says, more open to change. We need to think differently about the world. While Old Fartism rages around the earth, healing the earth isn’t something Mirtha and most people his age need to debate. They know it, in their hearts and souls.
When he says older people are resistant to change, this stings me a bit to hear, as I am 68 and I am open to change. I want to tell him my life really began at 61, but I doubt he can understand that. Older people remember what it is like to be young, but younger people have no idea what it is like to be old. And I know what he means. I understand that I am not the future of the earth, not really, I am the past. I have much more time behind me than ahead of me.
Mithra does not need to be politicized. He has decided not to live only for money and for things.
He is a Buddhist, not especially political. He doesn’t dwell in the land of the “left” or the “right.” The Blue Star Equiculture garden he lives in and loves and nurtures does not have a label. But when I watch the news or see stories about the political campaigns, I don’t see Mithra anywhere in these images or stories or machinations. The young, like the old, seem to be missing from the dialogue.
The young, in fact, seem invisible in our political process, yet I imagine they will be heard soon enough, and powerfully. I am counting on it. The world is depending on it. Mithra and his peers will be everywhere, they will soon be running the earth.
Mithra doesn’t need to change to support the rights of people to marry who they wish to marry. There is no hatred in his politics, no ugly slurs or insults, no bigotry, no wars, no vengeance or posturing or angry judgment. He doesn’t need to be told about the earth either, he is one of those people Pope Francis is talking about when he says we need to create an “ecological citizenship” of the earth. Mithra is there.
While we were talking, he showed me where he works out in the garden. I thought of what a telling symbol that is. He will never be on cable news, his revolution will most likely not make it to New York Times or Washington Post. But he is big news I think.
Tens of millions of Americans drive to hi-tech gyms with monthly fees and memberships, rows of expensive equipment, fancy sneakers and shirts, power drinks, stereo systems and banks of TV monitors, Iphones and earphones. This is how we stay fit. Mithra goes to the big old pine tree where Paul Moshimer, my friend and the co-director of Blue Star Equiculture, hung himself a few months ago.
He brings nothing but his own body.
Paul’s death makes the garden a more spiritual place, Mithra is at ease there. And he is aware of the time, money, gasoline, energy and electricity he is saving by doing his pull-ups by the big tree, his sit-ups on the ground, his run along the dirt trail. He doesn’t need a fancy gym, he says, the world is a gym, the garden is a gym.
This is what the Pope is talking about when he says we need to let go of our ideas of live and think differently.
Mithra does pull-ups and sit-ups in the shade of the beautiful old tree, he is healthy and fit. With each pull-up, he kisses the tree. When I think of him and those gyms, I think of the future. Mithra thinks about it very differently, he uses what he needs, we can learn much from him. His desk is a camping chair and a slab of wood, he eats the vegetables in his garden, he showers in the nearby stream, he goes into the farmhouse when he gets hungry for some bread and fruit.
His friends get angry at him because his cell phone isn’t always on. I have a phone, he tells them, I answer I when I please. I want to be an ecological citizen, Maria already is one. She only buys what she needs, she wastes nothing, she preserves everything she can. She has taught me much about doing that.
Maria and I are talking a lot about the next phase of our lives, I think big change is upon is. Mithra is one of the many things that inspire me – us- to embrace the great change coming in the world. Mithra has moved beyond hate, labels, argument. He is moving forward with his life, and if he is representative of the billions of people under 30 who are coming of age in the world, there is much to be hopeful about. The time of the hoary and angry old men on cable news every night – most of them hoary and angry old white men – is coming to an end.
I know in a sense I am one of those men, however different I seek to be. I am proud to make room for the young.
Mithra comes from another world, he represents another way of living.
