BLESSINGS THESE DAYS

donkey jen's blessing miss ed

Day after day I see on facebook people posting an announcement of being blessed by having some feel-good experience. Most of the time I feel like barfing because it drips with oozing sentiment like fart putty. Sometimes I agree, it was indeed a blessing. Then I question what the word blessing means and why I never say it. It's like the word luck. We make our own luck. In like manner, we make our own blessings. I think about times I've called something a blessing, I find that I feel more blessed having whatever it is that makes it possible to notice a given experience as a blessing. It's there whether or not I receive it a blessing. My friends Crystal and Justin had their baby girl, who I consider a major blessing in my life. I've slowed way down and lost interest in an awful lot, become so disappointed by civilization, I've indrawn to the world of my home, my mountain glen in the beautiful Blue Ridge among my four-legged friends. I only see people I care about who care about me. I've let go of associations with toxic people. It really makes a difference when they're gone. And it makes a difference when a vibrant baby enters.

 

miss ed's fifth day in a donkey body

 

Over the last few years I've alienated three people I thought of as friends, because they wore me out. Constantly telling me what to do, what to read, what to, what to, sentences all starting with you needta, you gotta, you oughta, you should. Can't we just sit still and talk about something, like have a conversation about something having to do with something besides measuring how deficient I am as a model of you. They got on my last nerve to the point I had to shake them off, never felt a pixel of guilt. I hear Patti Smith in my head in her Babelogue intro to Rock n Roll Nigger, "I'm an aMERican artist, I feel NO guilt." So Patti Smith. The times I see tv, this is what I see, continuous you-oughta. I amuse my friends talking back to commercials, saying things like, "No, I don't think I will." Nationwide is on your side. "Not." It's a blessing not to have so-called friends in my face missionarizing empiricism to me, what's right.

 

miss ed one ear up

 

I used to think it cynical of men my age laughing at me thinking principles important in my youth. It wasn't many years ago I came to I don't give a shit about what's right, it's so subjective. Because it works for me is no reason it would work for somebody else. Our karmic make-up must be at least as complex and specific as our DNA. I'm of a mind that it's ok guys have long hair, girls have blue hair, both have tattoos and dress imaginatively. Somebody says to me, "the kids these days," in a disgusted tone of voice, I make a case for the kids these days by telling a little bit of what I've seen getting in among the kids these days and finding they are incredible people. I like all the kids-these-days I know, like them a lot. I don't bore them too badly because I'd rather listen to them tell me what they have to say than be the one talking. I'm a good listener because I really do want to hear what they have to say. They're good people. They have beautiful things to say. Going by the kids these days I've known, I feel like their generation is closer to the heart than my generation

 

jenny and her five day old baby

 

The day after going to a show of Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, waking up next morning, taking carrots to donkeys, I feel blessed. The experience of a small place playing rock n roll the way I want to hear it feels to me like a blessing. The blessing part in it, in my subjective case, is that I am able to receive an experience as a blessing. It is, indeed, a blessing that I have three babies in my life that I love with all my heart, and one long-distance. A kitten, a donkey, Vada and Teddy. I feel buoyed up by the new energy right here, one inside the house, the other just out the door. Kids these days. I pay attention to all the kids I know, from babies on up, find them, every one, interesting people. I value their humanity, their lives. It's been known about me for years in a big group of people they can find me among the kids, listening to them and watching them play. I just sit in a chair or on a step and watch. I've watched Weird Al videos with a roomful of kids laughing, all of them kids I'd known since they were born. I feel the same among the animals I've learned to know. Sometimes I stand at the fence and watch the donkeys in their lives together, sometimes go out and sit in the meadow among them, listen to them graze, tell them I'm happy they're in my life.  

 

miss ed watches mama eat her grain

 

 

 

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