JENNY ALPHA DONKEY

jenny

 

Things have changed in the barnyard. Today their second day together, Jack is shy of Jenny, who stands over him, Big Mama in charge. She looks at him like she dares him to take one step toward her, he turns and walks away. He steps too close to her, she whirls around and lets him have it with he back feet perfectly aimed. Jenny is frisky, the woman in charge of the situation, on guard all the time, keeping that teenage sex maniac off her back. She's had to slap him down and put him in his place. She's in the phase today of keeping it fresh in his understanding that she is bigger than him and he already knows she can kick his ass. Jack is sore all over. He lopes along with head down. He didn't want me touch his body today. He liked me to rub his legs, but he was sore everywhere else. Jenny did not want me giving Jack attention, would interrupt us and run him off by turning her rear end to him like she was going to kick. They did kick. Jack was kicking her when she came near him and even the threat of coming near him. Standing between two donkeys kick-boxing turned uncomfortable in a hurry. I had to get out of there, just step aside and give them a chance to cuss each other with their back feet until they were satisfied they'd got it said. I don't know Jenny well enough yet to have any certainty she won't kick me. I knew Jack would not kick me, unless he missed a lick at Jenny, but they don't miss. They are aware of their back legs like I am aware of my arms.

 

jack a-walkin

 

 It's been something like a month or more I've known Jack. In our first days I told him I wanted to learn Donkey nature and asked him to teach me Donkey. And he did. He has been aware of teaching me his ways. I've learned that humility is as much donkey nature as forgiveness is in a dog. I don't mean they are inert. Humility is active in a donkey, not passive. My bluegrass banjo picking friend, Jr Maxwell, had a donkey's humility. It took a long time knowing him to see that he may have been the most humble man I've ever known. He didn't show it. It was automatic in him as it is in a donkey. It was a major part of his nature. His wisdom was the same way. He did not know he had wisdom and would laugh if told he was a model of humility. He'd say you need your head examined. A donkey's humility is like Jr's in that they don't need to advertise it and tell you all about it, it's just part of who they are. They don't even know they have humility. Especially when they start kicking each other. A donkey is a powerful being. They look like ponies with a full-sized horse's head and long ears. Spindly legs with knees that look like a knot in a rope don't appear to have much power. But they do. The muscles of the upper back legs is where a donkey's power is centered. Rubbing Jack's legs I feel a sense of power in them. I talk with him and say things like, "Powerful donkey legs," and sometimes I call him a big powerful donkey. I'm not exaggerating or fantasizing. He likes to hear me tell him he's powerful.

 

donkey rumps

 

I learned very early with Jack that he understood what I said to him. The first learning was the first day I spent time with him, feeding him carrots, rubbing his back and neck. Jack's dinger started swelling up. I backed away from him saying, "We're not going there Jack. That is not what this is about." I would not touch his hind quarters for several days because I did not want to stimulate him sexually. He kept telling me with body language he wanted me to rub his rump. I said Ok and rubbed his rump the same as I rubbed his front shoulders. It did not stimulate him. This was my first learning that to a donkey their rear end is equally important as their front end. They are their full body, not just the front half, is what he was telling me. Rubbing his rump I learned that is where their power is. Big muscles. Seeing Jenny kick and seeing Jack kick, standing on their front feet and using those rump muscles all the way to the knee, snapping those hooves into the target with measured force, I was able to see how good they are with their kicks. Their kicks today were not power kicks. Jack was intimidated, sore everywhere on his body. He kicked Jenny to say, Stay away from me! She kicked him to say, Stay away from me! Like kids in the car's back seat. I have a feeling she hurt his neck; an attempt to bray ends abruptly in pain. She has him beat down in full understanding that Big Mama Donkey rules. She hurt him and she's proud of it. She looks at him with an eye that says: I can kick your ass all over this meadow and you know it. I'm about to start right now. It is a look I have seen between cats. Dogs do it too. Humans do it. Today Jack made a sound I'd never heard before when Jenny approached him in a way that could be taken for aggressive. The sound was a grunt and a groan. I took it for something like a growl in a dog.  

 

jenny

 

In town today, I stopped by CJ Hardware for a 50 pound bag of sweet grain for horses. The woman I bought Jenny from said she gave her sweet grain by hand. I watched her show her granddaughter to put the grain on her hand and let the donkey pick it up with her lips. I took a plastic bowl of the grain and three carrots to the field. I like walking out in the field among them. I like having them around me, touching, close. A memory of an old boy I knew years ago surfaced. He died so long ago I don't remember, around twenty years ago, Sherman Scott. He grew up on the next farm up the road from me. In his later years he lived on a small farm in Pine Swamp, a nice spot. Lived in a little house, lived simply, half a century of grime on everything in the house. No problem. Wood stove and bed in one room. All the other rooms just happened to be connected to the room he stayed in. He was somewhat simple minded, something like a child, though easy to talk with. A round-faced man who wore bib overalls and a plaid shirt, who could not drive a car, could not pass a driving test, but it was legal in NC to drive a tractor without a license. He made a small wooden box, maybe about the holding capacity of a five gallon bucket, but square. He fixed it behind the seat on his red-belly Ford tractor. He drove the tractor to the grocery store, the bank and whatever else business he had in town. Always about half a mile of cars would be following him down Hwy 21 toward Sparta, all the drivers cussing, even the preachers. Sherman had a herd of about twenty cows. One day he took me to show me his cattle. He walked among them in the herd packed together fairly tight in the place they were standing, talking to them individually, petting them as he passed between them, pushing them just enough to let him by, gentle as a child with them. I could feel the joy in the cows that their human was walking among them. It was one of the more memorable moments of my life seeing Sherman walk through his herd, all of them his pets, all of them loving him like faithful dogs.  

 

jack / jenny

 

It felt a little testy going out into the field today with Jenny a frisky Alpha Donkey on full alert, but I also knew she was as gentle as Jack with humans. The day before, we became acquainted. I get down with her and with Jack, eye to eye, when I talk to them, looking into their eyes and them looking at my eyes. They read eyes and I wanted to show Jenny that my eyes have only affection for her. By now, Jack and I know each other very well through the eyes. I have found it important, more than I imagined the first time I thought to bend down a bit and look at him eye-to-eye, as equals, not as me with power over him that he has to look up to. I don't want my relationship with them to be a power-over issue. I don't kick them, they don't kick me. I ask no more than that. Jenny is in a new place, misses her goat friends and the loving people she was taken from by force, is suddenly in a strange meadow with good grass and a teenage boy with nothing but sex on his mind. When she gets haughty with Jack, I think: Honey, there is coming a day you will be backing up to Jack and it won't be to kick him. Today was not that day. Jack has taught me donkey nature well. On sight when I saw Jenny I had a feeling for knowing an awful lot about her. She has a personality difference, but that's about it. Both are African herd animals, well-tuned, and each has it's own personality, like every living entity. Marsha Wagoner, who knows horses awfully well told me they will be friends inside a couple weeks. She said Jack will come back as an assertive male and they will live happily ever after. I believe it because I can see it. Jenny is in a strange place with a donkey she doesn't know that is single-mindedly wanting to hump her. It's like Jenny is saying, Slow down, dude, I don't even know if I like you. And Jack is a man, liking has nothing to do with it.

 

jenny found a scratching post

 

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NEW DONKEY IN THE MEADOW

jenny



 



Here is the new donkey. Brought her yesterday from Traphill, just below the mountain. Air Bellows Gap Road used to run all the way down to Traphill Road. The Parkway came through and it's now National Park land the other side of the Parkway all the way down the side of the mountain to Traphill. We took hwy 21 and Oklahoma Road from Roaring Gap post office to Stone Mountain state park and to Traphill road with a white horse trailer on the back of Jesse's mud-splattered gold 4-door Chevy pickup. He'd got mired down in mud in a tobacco field earlier in the day. Justin called the people I was buying Jenny from when we turned onto Traphill road and she guided us by cell phone to the turn that leads to their driveway. Good country people, good-natured country people. They had a big pen of beautiful goats, all of them pets, at least twenty, and a small pen with two baby goats. They had a gigantic lawn, a couple of acres. He took care of the mowing. She took care of the goats, with his help. Their pen was cleaner than a professional goat-raising pen. Her goats were her pets. She loved them every one, kept them clean and their pen clean, knew them individually. She said one of the goats was the donkey's friend, they were together all the time. The donkey's name was Daisy. I hated to separate friends so casually, felt a longing to bring the goat along, too. However, I'd need woven-wire fence all the way around the 2-acre meadow. It aint gonna happen.

 

jenny

 

 

She told me she brushed the donkey, told me she fed her horse grain by hand. Two of her granddaughters were visiting. I saw her let one of the girls feed the donkey from her open hand. Donkey picked it up with her lips. I saw the new donkey was as tame as Jack. Glad to see it. She said they bought the donkey with a bunch of goats, didn't really want a donkey and decided to sell it. Justin and Jesse had a time muscling the donkey into the horse trailer. Donkey did not want to take the step up. She did the stubborn donkey routine with all four feet rooted into the ground. It made her so mad she reared up, giving them the chance to push her forward so her front feet came down inside the trailer. They lifted her back legs into the trailer. It wasn't as easy as it sounds. I had my camera in pocket and never thought one time to make some pictures of donkey with goats, the ordeal coaxing her into the trailer, the people. Not one picture. I gave myself a mental donkey kick in the hind end when I realized I'd missed a chance for some documentary images. Donkey hated going into the trailer, but rode very well through all the winding curves coming up the mountain. Likely her attention was focused on maintaining balance. Jesse has driven horses and cattle so much he's good with the trailer. All the way home, I was aware of how donkey might be riding, impressed by Jesse's handling of truck and trailer in all the tight curves and the highway. I've driven the roads enough to appreciate a driver who can handle truck and trailer so well.  

 

jenny

 

 

We stopped at the upper gate to put Jenny in the field to meet Jack and the calf. She did not want to step off the end of the trailer backwards. I was impressed again watching Justin and Jesse work the donkey backwards out of the trailer. Both have extensive experience with horses, loading them into trailers and unloading them. Both know horse nature very well. I stayed out of the way. They knew what they were doing and I did not. I've had no experience with horses. Horses intimidate me. I'm unable to convince myself a horse believes it has to obey me. It could kill me inside half a minute. I would need a .45 against such a beast. But I'm not going to do that, so I stay away from horses. It's not really fear as much as apprehension, a milder form of fear. I felt this way the first week getting to know Jack. I knew this donkey allowed me near it by his own will. It could knock me down and kill me with its front feet if it took a notion. A donkey is not controlled by rule of law. I heard a statistic on NPR some time ago that more people around the world are killed by donkeys in a year than die in plane crashes. I gather from it that donkeys will take much abuse, but they have a limit. I can hear the donkey, "You don't even know what all I've done for you," and took the last whip lash. "That's it, you damn human. I could have done this at any time. You have abused the right my humility gave you to whip me." It tells me the wild is not completely gone from donkey nature. I like that. The African Wild Ass.   

jenny

jenny

At first, I thought I'd go on calling her Daisy. I have a rule of thumb that I don't like to change an animal's name when it is transferred to me. No real reason. It's about the same as not liking to turn the jukebox off mid song. Justin was calling her Jenny, so I brought up my liking to keep Daisy. He said she's Jenny to him and he'll always call her Jenny. I could call her whatever I want. I'd been aiming to name her Jenny until told her name was Daisy. If Jenny is so automatic to Justin, whose donkey she will be for many years after I'm gone, Jenny it is. Last night in the bed, Little Richard's song, JENNY JENNY, came to mind and I had a rock n roll show in my mind's eye. Richard banging on the piano screaming Jenny Jenny Jenny, won't you come along with me, Jenny Jenny, Oh Jenny Jenny. Spinnin spinnin spinnin, spinnin like a spinnin top, spinnin spinnin, Oh spinnin spinnin. Crazy little partner, y'oughta see her reel and rock.  Jenny Jenny, Aaa-aa-aah. One of my favorite Little Richard songs. Now I've got my own Jenny. She is a little bit bigger than Jack and her hair is longer than his. Her tail looks like it's about a foot longer than Jack's. She is a Bethlehem Cross donkey, like Jack, same colors, same orange and black ears, similar patterns around their eyes. Jenny has been handled with affection. We let Jenny into the field across the creek from the field Jack stays in. He won't cross the creek. They walked back and forth, either side of the creek, squealing to each other.

jenny

Justin and Jesse muscled Jack into the creek. They said once he had his feet in the water he was fine. He came out of the creek and went straight to Jenny and tried to mount her. She let him have it in the chest with both back hooves. He tried again and she scooted out from under him. He went after her with his chin on her rump. She ran and he ran behind her like they were attached, terrific synchronized running. About every four or five gallops she let him have it in the chest with a loud slap. It didn't slow Jack at all. He caught on to run a little to the side and raise his chin when she kicked, but she still connected with him. They ran around and around in the meadow, his chin on her rump and her kicking him. We laughed like we were at a Rodney Carrington show. It was too dark to use the camera. I wanted video of them running, but it was way too dark. We could barely see. We had to stop watching when it turned so dark we could only see two shadows in the night, running, running. We could hear her hooves slap Jack's chest. We knew he was taking a beating. A donkey's kick with two hind feet can send a big man through the air. Jack ran like the kicking made him feel like he's a man. She was getting his respect, however, telling him she wasn't no tramp.

 

jenny and jack

 

They said she was three years old, about time for her to be going into heat. Maybe the presence of testosterone in the meadow could set her biological clock in motion. Whatever. This morning I took a couple of carrots with me into the meadow. The donkeys were grazing in the distance, three or four donkey lengths apart. I called to Jack and he came walking, happy to see me, though not enough to gambol in his usual show of delight. I gave him the carrot and he chewed. He was indeed glad to see me, but he wasn't feeling right. I could see it in his walking. Jenny came walking up for a carrot and Jack darted away. He stayed about a donkey length from her, outside kicking range if she were to whirl around and kick him in the face. Next time Jack came near her, she made a pretend lunge at him and Jack bolted, ready to run. I was seeing by morning Jenny is in charge. They came to some kind of understanding in the night. Jack's chest surely must be so sore he doesn't want kicked there again any time soon. It is no telling how much kicking he received in the night. Today, he is cowed by a donkey of superior might. His relentless assaults evidently didn't work out like he hoped.  Jack started to bray as he approached me, but it seemed like it was too agonizing for him to attempt it. She kicked his neck too. He will be several days recovering from last night's ass kicking.

 

jenny

 

 

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HOODWINKED

Can't help but laugh today at the two "senators," Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, seen with Sarah Palin at a rally of men angry about national park monuments closed. The two so-called senators were drawing attention to themselves in protest against the government for shutting down. These were the republican tools that created the situation, first degree, with pre-meditated intent in the service of the pipeline billionaires funneling money to republican politicians to make chaos of our democracy, sweep it out of the way for a one-party police state. And the white-haired republican telling the woman working for park service to be ashamed of herself for closing the WW2 memorial. It is beyond redundant to note he was one of the lockstep marionettes that created the situation. The monkeys didn't even know what they did. Cruz's ignorance is popular among republicans. He's the only one considered for a presidential run. He will lose worse than McCain-Palin. This is the Reaganista generation. Dan Quayle was just the beginning. It is alarming to see that these knuckleheads are popular. Even Romney. They could run him again next time as VP with Cruz. These people are showing us that money does not equal intelligence. They are showing us that money equals self-centered ego. Their public spectacle of ignorance makes everybody not a republican laugh. The people of Europe must be considering ways to separate themselves from associations with the American stooges. They are empirical evidence of the dumbing down of America.

 

 

 

Why do I go on concerning myself with these two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs from the dark side? Maybe it's for the drama. The dark side makes good drama. Everything they say is spoken with intent to deceive. Their own personal lives are deceptions too. They lie as freely as somebody else eats potato chips. They don't even respond when called on their lies. Good training from Karl Rove. The pathological lying a Rove signature. This so-called government shut-down is looking more every day like a coup. The republican politicians who cheered the shut-down are obviously not in the market for votes. They're evidently being paid so well by Koch brothers' under the table methods, their loyalty is set. The republican party has abandoned its voters. Of course they would in a police state coup. Who knows how that will manifest? It's weird and getting weirder. The weirdest part is knowing this is planned strategy. This is a takeover of our government by white man. In white man way of thinking, he's taking it back. It's looking bad for a 2014 election. The American Empire is over. From here on, we'll be watching it fall apart. We've been seeing it fall apart over the last 30+ years, the time of the Reagan Revolution, another name for the decline and fall of the American Empire. The downhill run is gaining momentum.

 

 

 

American politics has always been corrupt, crooked and about money only. We the people are the last consideration, not even that. We are the masses to be manipulated by the best propaganda that's ever been in this world. The expanse of American people are plugged into propaganda central, so used to being told what to do by way of subliminal symbols, it's pointless to speak to somebody who believes television is the truth. My mother, "I know it for a fact. I heard it on television." It made my heart ache for her. At the same time, I can't help but think so what if she's hoodwinked. I'm hoodwinked too. I have a different version of reality than she does, but mine is illusion too. So what if I'm right and she's wrong; so what if she's right and I'm wrong. It's the same either way. Nothing. Responding to illusion in our own karmic ways makes for very complex human behavior. The stuff of the forebrain, trying to figure out abstractions, connecting the dots to make constellations in the sky called the heavens. Where we go when we die. Another star in the firmament. In Neolithic times, I imagine the stars in the sky at night were thick. I have seen a few nights where the starlight was so bright I could see without a moon. I'm of the illusion that paying attention to the current events I'll have a better understanding than otherwise. I still believe I do. But don't want to give too much attention to it. Am wanting now to withdraw my attention from it. But won't. It's like paying attention to weather forecasts.    

 

 

 

 

 

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LEGACY

marcel duchamp

Paying attention to the news in this time is too ominously boring. I believe I see where it is headed, at least the direction. I don't want it to go there, but it will, already has in spirit. It's looking like the push is to go all the way now. It looks like one thing, while actually it's quite another. The ignorance level of the people in our government making laws we have to go by has become so obvious in this time. Equally horrid is that the most ignorant ones are the most popular. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. The ignorance behind the law is excused. The strategists use ignorance to disarm us, keeping us in the realm of the irrational where surprise attack is the game. It is very well paid master propagandists having a ball. We stay preoccupied with smokescreen, corporate news. I've been questioning my own intelligence paying attention to the likes of these people, attention given to ignorance. What do I want to do that for? That's not what's going on. I tell myself to let go of interest in stupid. It is not amusing. They're corny cartoons. I pay attention out of curiosity concerning the strategy behind their ignorance front and center. Every time we call Sarah Palin Caribou Barbie, she rises another notch in name recognition. Composer, Jean-Carlo Menotti told college president Ted Stern, "I don't care what they think of me as long as they remember my name." I see video clips of interviews with celebrities of a wide variety. The ones that pretend they're not playing the celebrity ego game, Bob Dylan, took the step beyond of playing the role by not playing, one-upping the other players.

 

marcel duchamp

 

Ted Stern told me what Menotti had said without passing any judgment on it even in tone of voice, though I knew  it struck him extraordinary or he wouldn't have said anything. Stern, himself, was a celebrity in his world, felt at home with other celebrities, and my feeling was he took what Menotti said to heart, something like, Confucius say. The celebrity's creed. When Stern told me, I was new in years on my spiritual path, aware of ego as ultimately self-defeating. In the world of people I live among in this time, I can't think of anyone who would say that of themselves. Surely somebody in the county is thinking it, I don't know who it would be, but maybe a teenage girl dancing with a Christina Aguilera video when mom and dad are not at home, longing to be on American Idol. To my ear, Menotti's proclamation of indifference to what others thought of him went radically against my school system education where popularity was number one. Unpopular, you were nowhere. In the Fifties you were square. Even if you couldn't be popular, being liked a little bit was at least something. Even though I don't have that motivation now, it remains underground within. Initially, his saying shocked my sensibility as a reckless thing to say, or as an Old Baptist might call it, a bold thing to say. Simultaneous with the minor shock wave that ran through my mind, I got it. He's an artist, he's busy. Like it or don't, he composes his music and lives his life. It's what he is about. Somebody doesn't like something he said at a cocktail party, oh well.  

 

marcel duchamp

 

The part of me that got it was interested to note Ted Stern tucking it into one of his memory drawers like where a cow keeps its cud to bring up for a good chew when he has the time. One of his maxims he lived by, by his telling, "Hesitate and you're lost." He lived it for so many years it was automatic. He never lost time to hesitation. He would take time to think something through, and when he saw it, he saw it. Jean-Carlo Menotti was an internationally known composer in his later years with legacy on his mind. Remember the artist's name, carry it into the next generation, remember his name five hundred years from now, the maestro Menotti of Italia. He wanted his name remembered, meaning his music, not his reputation. He knew reputation faded quickly with time and he was thinking of his music's place in the canon down through time. It told me Ted Stern was in the time of his life when awareness of his legacy comes into play. He lived long enough to see his influence fade, called himself a once-was. By his hundredth birthday, he saw his legacy and found it to his satisfaction, publicly affirmed. He would be remembered. He could not be flippant as an artist with his reputation. Ted Stern wanted everybody to like him, everybody. He could turn his bitterest enemies to devoted friends and keep them there. It was a talent. The good man part of Ted Stern was not fake. Often his heart influenced his mind and vice versa. He had a good connection between heart and mind. Like Menotti, he wanted his legacy to be the continuation of his name down through time, in Stern's case the man who walked Charleston through the transition from Old South to New South. His role in the history of Charleston is substantial, as well as in the state history. His legacy, like Menotti's, sez: this man's lifetime contributed in a beneficial way.

 

marcel duchamp

 

I like living in the rural working class where a legacy amounts to a tombstone. It could be called "rural romantic" living outside of society, though from the inside I don't see it like that. Underachiever I can identify with. I've worked hard and know the hopelessness of day after day labor all one's working life toward making ends meet. The romantic part would apply better to an empathy for more than half the people on earth, way more than half, living very sparingly, who don't have the irony or the luxury to imagine what it would be like to think about a legacy. This is where I chose to live out my days, where self-important behavior is frowned upon. I don't want to need to worry over a legacy other than he didn't hurt little kids. I don't like it when somebody hurts little kids in any kind of way. But who needs to be remembered for longer than the lifetime of the last person to remember you? What does it matter how long a man's obituary is? Same as what does it matter how long his wiener is? But it matters a great deal. According to Freud, the biggest deal. OK. It matters. I'm glad every day of my life, am satisfied and grateful not to be a star. Oh yeah, I remember him from when I was little. I think I heard somebody say they cremated him. Aint no grave that nobody knows nothin about. You ever heared about him havin a grave, Honey? No, I aint heared nothin about him in no ground. They said the thought of his body layin in the cold grave for thousands and thousands of years give him the shivers somethin terrible. He said he'd rather go up in a puff of smoke. That's what I heard he said. There won't be no grave for nothing to raise out of when the trumpet sounds. What's the poor soul gonna do? Reckon he'll be left behind? Far as I know. Wonder if he was saved? How would I know? I heard he was weird. Yeah, I heard that too.

marcel duchamp

 

 

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