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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SNOW ON DONKEY EARS

 

jenny's icicles

 

It's a foot of snow outside. Walking in it, it doesn't feel like it's an inch deep. The snow is dry and powdery. It offers no resistance. It's a beautiful, pure snow. I don't go out in it except to feed the donkeys and the birds. The snow was not the problem outdoors. It's the cold that bites. I button my jacket at the neck and still the snow finds a way to crawl down the back of my neck. My first impulse seeing the icicles over Jenny's eyes was to break them off, but I knew she would not like me reaching my hand toward her eye. She wouldn't like that at all. She didn't seem to be bothered by them, so I left them alone. We humans are fussy. The animals are not. I didn't get the impression that Jenny minded having a minor glacier between her eyes. I took hay to them twice. Didn't want the portion they couldn't eat right away to be snowed on all day. Took more carrots to Jenny the second time. She's become so jealous of the carrots that she pushes Jack away from me and the calf knows by now to stay away from Jenny at carrot time. I don't know what to do to teach her sharing, so I don't do anything. It's their natures that they understand better than I do. I don't want to train them to human ways of thinking. So Jenny has become the carrot hog. I make it a point to hand carrot to Jack over to the side away from Jenny. I throw one to the calf, but today with a foot of snow, the carrot would have gone to the bottom of the snow and the calf would not have found it. Jenny's mood this morning was gentle. I had the feeling she was too cold to act up. Jack was the usual Jack. He's easy going with reggae playing in ear plugs, going along with few necessities, a good-natured donkey all the time. Jack's humility is remarkable. 

 

jenny's whiskers



 

I took camera on the afternoon feeding run and walked around behind the house to get some pictures of the creek that runs through here, Spring Lizard Creek, with the rocks in it piled high with snow. In front around the birdfeeders, snowbirds were hopping about looking for something to eat. I took two big paper cups of sunflower seeds and threw one in the direction of one birdfeeder and the other at the other feeder. Thirty or so snowbirds were out there. The birdfeeder serves one at a time. On days like today when the birds are desperately hungry, I spread the seeds over the ground so they can all eat at once. The birds, too, have their comical interactive behavior. Jack had been having a drink of water when I went out this morning. It was one of those moments that I regretted not having the camera set on video and ready. He came running and the snow flying in small clouds from his hooves, and him braying. He was on me before I could even lift the camera to start pushing buttons. I let the thinking about the camera go, and watched him bray while he ran in the snow. It was too beautiful not to watch. He came up to me braying, his pink tongue flat in his mouth. Jenny let out some squeals meant to be brays. I don't think Jenny gets it yet that a bray takes a full physical commitment. It's not just mouth and throat. It is the whole body. Jack looks like he's in a trance when he brays. He has to twist is neck just right. Once the bray starts, it's like it takes a life of its own and won't set him free until he sang every verse. She'll figure it out. I'm more convinced daily that Jenny is pregnant. The baby already has its name, Sherpa. Jenny keeps her ears back while she's eating, very jealous about her food. But that's only at the beginning. Later, after everybody's hunger from the night is satisfied and they're munching because that's what they do, Jenny shows no jealousy.

 

jenny, calf and jack

  

Jack has his ears back in this picture, though it's because the calf's head and ears are so close he doesn't want them touching. Jenny's left ear she holds back tight to keep from connecting with the calf's ear, again, not wanting to touch. I see more and more subtle behavior the closer I study donkeys. I mourn for all the donkeys down through time that have been hit and yelled at because humans didn't have what it took to notice they are sentient beings. I'm sure, however, that many people who dealt with donkeys learned their ways and appreciated them. Not all men are cement heads, but enough are that a cement headed nature appears to be a side-effect of testosterone poisoning. It pains me to see guys of my generation become cement heads in their later years. I've felt the cultural tug to go that direction, but refuse to go. I will not do that. It's my inspiration for going to rock concerts in my later years and mixing with hundreds of "the kids these days," to keep myself reminded that old-man thinking is bullshit. It's cultural. It's not natural. Like racism, it's learned. I stay out of that mind. Its easy to generalize about the kids these days; television, computers, cell phones, facebook, twitter, google. Seen from the inside, it's quite another story. I know several kids these days. A couple of them got PhDs from Berkeley. I couldn't even fantasize being accepted at Berkeley. And one of them I've known since she was a baby. The kids these days I know, a fairly random sampling, are brilliant people, conscientious people, given a few exceptions. Also, none of the kids these days I know suffer from Affluenza. They're only different from the kids of my days because the culture today is different from what it was then. School isn't much different, but everything else is. Our politicians don't support education because an educated public costs more to manipulate. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina relies on ignorance. He's not going to do anything for education, like the other remote-control robots.

 

frosty donkey jack

 

A Rolling Stones song is in my head, Beast of Burden. I took a break and went to YouTube to review the words. They're funny. It is Jack's song to Jenny. He's had enough, and he is spilling to her his issues; Am I not hard enough, am I not tough enough, am I not rich enough? In the song, he's frustrated because nothing he does can please his woman. Mick Jagger writes a song of simple lyrics, though they have their something special that makes them Rolling Stones songs. Beast of Burden is simple, simple lyrics, but they tell a living story. Tumbling Dice, Brown Sugar, Wild Horses. Jack is Jenny's beast of burden. I'd better not tell him. He knows it too well. I suppose this is Jack's fate to have a woman he can never be good enough for. I don't believe it will always be that way. She keeps her ears back much of the time when he's nearby. It's her body language for, Don't do what you're thinking. Jack says, What am I thinking? I didn't think nothin Baby. Jenny says, I know you better than you think I do. Jack, at the same time, is Mr Cool. He knows he's Mr Cool and it doesn't rock his self-esteem at all that Jenny doesn't get it. He'd just like her to settle down and let him hump her all the time. Since she won't let him do that, he hangs around close enough to smell her. She likes having him around, though it would be better if he could let her rest. Yet, she likes the attention. Over a period of time they'll fall in tune with each other's rhythms and flow together. She would not be his pick, and he would not be her pick. But they're beasts of burden. They're subject to the luck of the draw. Seems like they're flowing together very well by now. Jack is not as demanding as he once was, and Jenny is not as aloof to him now as she used to be. Where one is, the other is close by.     

    

 

jenny says

she's satisfied with jack

 

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