GENTLENESS WORKS

jenny chews a carrot

 

The chill of winter creeps in the open door after sunset. It approaches in the gloaming. The gloaming is the time of day between sunset and dark. No distinct shadows, the entire sky the source of light. The clouds change colors, make a slow light show in the sky. I looked up gloaming in the dictionary and found it to be Old English from the word glom for twilight, akin to Old English glowan, to glow. This is what I like about the gloaming, it's glowing quality. I looked at synonyms and found most of them had to do with dark and shadows, shade. Not my association at all. I had to think about it and remember the latter part of the gloaming fades into dark, but it is a short time. The glowing sky appeals to me about the gloaming. Outside that time of day, a pink cloud will catch my eye and I'll think, the gloaming. Edgar Allan Poe liked the sound of murmur. I like gloaming. It has a similar feel, less French, more English. The g's at both ends are very soft.

 

jack chews a carrot

 

I continue to feel sorrow over the family of sister's boy. Inside myself, I see no constructive purpose in hitting a child, despite all the justifications. The kids I've seen grow up who were never hit by parents have no anger in them as adults. They're gentle, sensitive, intelligent people with unlimited potential. One went through Berkeley's PhD program. Another is in Philadelphia doing her internship with two more years to go. Two of the most balanced, intelligent people I know. Others I know whose parents vented their frustrations on them, calling it discipline, have high blood pressure from anger, an out of balance life full of conflict drama. I have raised several dogs and cats without hitting them or scolding them. They were more obedient than obedience training could accomplish. I treat them right and they want to please me. Kids want to please parents that treat them right, and kids want to annoy parents that don't treat them right. It's karma. You get what you give. It's also a basic law of physics, action > reaction. 

jenny's Cleopatra eye

I never hit, scold or talk down to my donkey friends. I feed them snacks, talk to them in a friendly way, touch them gently with no intent to control. They regard me the same. I have no concern about either one of them kicking me. They would not kick me, because I am only gentle with them, because I am their friend. I have disproven everyone who has told me the donkeys will kick me, I need to carry a stick. Maybe with donkeys I don't know, but not my donkey friends. I would be hesitant around a donkey I don't know. They're fast. They react quick as a cat. With a donkey I don't know, I'd approach it with arms down at my sides, not moving them. I'd want some carrots. Without carrots, I'd talk to the donkey. I have found with animals I don't know that they listen when I tell them they have beautiful eyes, beautiful fur, beautiful ears, beautiful nose. Donkey Jenny melts when I tell her she has beautiful Cleopatra eyes. They are groomers. They're vain about their appearance. I tell them they're beautiful, that I adore their eyes, their smooth fur, their tails. I become for them a human who notices them as they want to be seen. They don't forget. Next time I see them, we know each other.

 

caterpillar's eye

 

The four-leggeds seldom meet a human who connects with them as conscious beings. They want this connection so desperately that when they get it, they cherish it. It's how I instantly become friends with dogs and cats I meet. Years ago, one day walking in the woods on a snowy day, a tan and white pit bull came bounding through the trees at me, barking furiously. I had no gun, no stick. Against a dog, I was totally defenseless. By then I knew dogs well enough not to be anxious. Dog stopped about ten feet away, to check me out, smell, measure and weigh me, assess whether I was a threat or a friendly. I spoke to the dog. How you doin, dog? Told him I liked his colors, said he looked like a big, powerful dog. Dog walked toward me. I didn't move. I let the dog sniff legs and feet, hands. I talked, told him I was impressed by how fast he could run. Next, he was asking me to pet him. I pet him some, talked some more and the dog proceeded to walk with me. Some new people moved into a house nearby, dog was out exploring its new territory. The dog and I were friends from then on.

 

jenny's beautiful nose

 

 

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OF DONKEYS AND HUMANS

I see Jack through the window resting on the hay he has been eating this morning. He is in a quiet mind meditation, ears up, soaking warm sunlight in air a degree or two below freezing. Just before I wrote this first sentence I thanked God for the donkeys, realizing I actually do treat them and talk to them as gifts from God. Jack is standing up now. The sunlight has warmed him like sitting by the fire. His dinger is hanging down. He's sunning it too. Jenny stepped around behind him to the place she drops her biscuits beside where Jack is standing. Now she's back to grazing her morning hay. I put the hay down for them separately. Jenny is always first. Jack has learned of his lifetime mate that she will be first. It's cool with Jack. After a year and a few months together, he steps aside and lets her have her way. She will anyway, he knows well. Jack stands on his hay grazing. Jenny walked out to the dogwood tree to rub her neck in the tree's fork. It's a good place for them to rub and get out of the sun in summer. I have trepidation they will rub the bark down so far they kill the tree, because it's so handy for them. If it dies, I'll leave it in place for them to rub on as long as the wood holds, several years. A branch of a small maple broke in a wind storm and leaned over to the ground. The branch is still connected to the tree. I don't have a chainsaw now, so I leave it for the donkeys. They are chewing the bark off the branches that hang down to the ground. Along the fence runs a row of multi-flora, an invasive thorny shrub with some of the last flowers in existence to actually have a scent as radiant as a gardenia's. When they're in flower you smell them walking by. A long row of them took up along the fence after the road was paved. The donkeys like them. They start chewing when the first shoots of green begin. By fall, they're chewed clean all the way back to the fence. Jack walked over to be where Jenny was. They both walked back to the hay, both grazing the same spread. It's only at the beginning I have to feed them separately. Bellies full, they graze together.

Several hours later, after a nap, fetching some water and a shower, I look out the window at the full moon rising above the trees. The donkeys are resting in their den. All is quiet in the donkey meadow swallowed up by the dark, the unknown, the place owls know. The woods are alive now with roaming inhabitants. The humans are asleep, the four-leggeds move about freely, graze where they will, do their own hunting, explore, live their family lives teaching their babies to avoid humans. All the wild animals in the forest are not near as dangerous as one human. The windows are black. And out in what I perceive to be black, the four-leggeds live openly like we humans live during the day. The field-camera images I've seen from a short distance into the trees show an active life in the night, deer, fox, coyote, bear. Big cats pass through here, too, though fail to have their pictures taken for lack of interest in apples and corn. The four-leggeds walk about in silence. An image came to mind of a time many years ago walking with a friend through forest the other side of the Parkway, going to see a couple of waterfalls an hour an a half walk in, downhill, and two hours walking out, uphill. Whatever the case or the situation, he's the superior one. I learned to let it flow like Jack lets Jenny be first, she needs it so much and he doesn't need it at all. I like to step on sticks, make them go snap, let the snakes all around know humans are coming through, run for it. I want all the animals in the forest to know I'm out for a walk. They will see me first and move on out of sight. I don't want to walk up on a bobcat stalking a rabbit. Or anything. Friend thinks it's gross of me to step on sticks. I was lectured that he walks in silence like the Indians, not like a stupid white man. I said, I was not blessed to be born Indian this lifetime. I'm not hunting. I'm a white man tourista. I was so tired of his superior mouth I wanted to shut him down. Change the subject. I don't give a shit. I can step between the branches too, but when I'm deep in the forest, I'm not at home, I don't know the rules, don't know any of it. I want snakes to see me and move out of the way before I see them. Anyway, that's my reasoning. My rule number one: do not step on a snake.

Earlier today I was thinking about giving him a call and suggesting lunch one day this week or next. Then thought, Why? Didn't have an answer. It was about three years ago he got on my last nerve and disrespected me the last time. I said to self then, I have control; I have a choice to be around him or not. I choose not to, I live in peace. I know in advance I will kick myself in the ass all the way home telling self, You knew better. What does it take for you to get it? I stop self in advance. I know the rules: keep quiet, he talks. I speak past a few phrases, I am interrupted and he takes off on something more important. I saw him a moment last summer, a reminder that I really don't give a shit. For example, he believes mountain people are ignorant. They're not as politically astute as he, have different opinions from his; therefore, they're not worth knowing. He's of the PC mind, you agree with him or you're out. I'm out. And intend to stay out. Don't care about being nice anymore. I'd so much rather Vada show me her new toys. I'd rather listen to Marsha talk about horses. I find women much more enjoyable to know than men, I've learned in my adult life to see women are so much more intelligent than men it can't be measured. The women know it. The men are too preoccupied with their dicks to notice much of anything else. Brings to mind another man I know. He wears me out with is concern about my dick. Every time I see him, Gettin any pussy lately? Every time, I decide next time I'm going to call him on his interest in my dick, though never do, like it's none of his business. I'm not asking about his. He has three subjects, pussy, liquor and niggers. And he's older than me. Most other men I know have three subjects, pussy, beer and guns. I'd rather listen to somebody talk about a new hunting rifle he bought with a certain kind of scope, how far it will shoot and whatever else, than hear somebody go on about wanting other people to think like him. I want to say something like I've learned to allow others themselves, and consequently live in peace. But it sounds too much like playing the superior game, one upmanship, when I don't want to play any game. Can't we just talk? Does it always have to be a psychological test of superiority?

The human mind is so complex, it's refreshing to be around the animals missing the forebrain. The donkeys don't worry about calendars, schedules, time, value, They do, however, take exception to disrespect. I don't ever disrespect the donkeys and they don't disrespect me. I like knowing that a donkey can kill me easily inside five seconds if it takes a notion. They can also be my dearest friends and protectors. It's all in how I treat them. I treat them as my friends, they treat me as friend. Sometimes walking hay out into the meadow, Jack will walk beside me and push me sideways, pushing me off the trail I'm walking. A few days ago he pushed me and kept on until I had to walk around him. Jack laughed. He has taken to liking me to rub my chin hair on his nose. It tickles him, He curls his upper lip like he does after sniffing one of Jenny's fresh steaming biscuits. My chin hair fascinates both donkeys. Both have taken hold of it with their lips to get a sense for what it is. The human has hair on his face too. Jack has become comic at grain time in the afternoon. Jack loves the grain so much he squeals and groans. Jenny will have it first, though Jack wants it so much he goes for it anyway. Jenny grunts at him, pushing him away from it with her nose. Jack grunts and whines, backs away from Jenny. I walk along the other side of the fence saying, C'mon Jack, and he follows with his nose at the fence smelling the container I carry the grain in. I put it down for him and he's eating before it's finished pouring. He doesn't care. I don't even think about carrying the grain container out into the meadow for them. They'd be tussling at each other with me in the middle as soon as I stepped inside the gate. I give it to them over the fence. They get so excited, both want to be first, and both want it now, they lose sense that I am not as stout as they are. And eight donkey hooves stomping around my feet is not a secure feeling. It's not that they scare me. I get out of their way fast as I can go. I know they don't want to hurt me. The worst that could happen would be to get knocked down. That wouldn't hurt anything. They'd stop their antics seeing me on the ground. They'd both look away repentant. I'd laugh and say that was a good donkey trick.

photos by tj worthington

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DONKEY FRIEND

horse and rider by marino marini

 



Went to the meadow today to take Jack a couple of carrots. He heard the clanging chain on the metal gate, walked a little bit toward me, curious, ears up, and then at the point I guess to be about a hundred feet, which could be anywhere between fifty and a hundred and fifty. At this distance I see the sparkle in his eye when he recognizes me. Today he charged me before I had the gate latched. He set out in a wild gallop, head extended all the way forward, mouth open, squealing and braying. I was seeing a living image of a work by Italian sculptor Marino Marini, who made horse images, often with the horse's head extended forward or upward. I saw Jack a Marini horse burst into life. It really was a mild rush seeing Jack as a Marini sculpture come to life suddenly and charge me in a playful gallop on the verge of  breaking into dance. The bray started with a squeal that went louder, then into a full bray, hee-haw, two long syllables. It was a beautiful expression of joy. I hadn't even finished fastening the gate when I let the latch go and turned to receive Jack. It felt a little odd to be standing expectantly in front of an African Wild Ass bearing down in full gallop and full bray, mouth open, lips curled back, teeth showing, hee-haw. The rush I felt was humility and joy. I saw clear as anything can be seen that I am important to Jack. The wide open spontaneous expression of joy when he recognized me sent a wave of humility over my soul.

 

 

 

It was like a dog I lived with after I'd been gone for two weeks. So excited to be touched it can't stop squirming and jumping enough to be touched. What a sight it was seeing a donkey head pointed straight forward and lowered toward the ground like a dog about to attack. If I had walked into a field with a donkey I didn't know and this happened, I would not have had a chance to get back out the gate. For one thing, he was fast. He had purpose. He stopped in front of me with a dance and did the sound equines make fluttering their lips. Overwhelmed by seeing that I am now Jack's friend from Jack's point of view as well as mine, I saw a friendship like with a dog, and reminded myself never forget that we now have a bond as friends. I know in advance that I will never be betrayed by this friend, unlike with human friends. And being a human, fallible in the department of loyalty, I noted to myself that I must never forget this moment, never forget that Jack is now my friend. He is not stock. I never understood people who could buy and sell dogs. Somebody offers you a good price for your hunting dog, you sell it and buy another, train it into a good dog and sell it. I can't do that. I've seen books on how to train dogs, esp the ones by the monks purported to be so good, and I wouldn't do any of it to one of my dogs. I love my dogs. I can't treat them like stock. I don't require obedience, yet my dogs have obeyed to the letter. I can't do things to them that are about dominance and submission. I don't want submission from my friends. I want them to be themselves. The connection I make with my pets is love. I love them, they love me. They want to please me, so I don't have to train them. I want to please them, so they don't have to train me.

 

 

With every one of my dogs and cats that have lived out their lives with me and are buried outside my windows, I remember the moment of their first expression of love. It's a sparkle in the eyes, a smile few can see, visible joy. It's the same as I feel when I see them. Donkey Jack is responding to my love for him. I'm good to him. I don't treat him like stock. I take him a treat every day, carrots to crunch on, call him my friend when I talk to him. He's Jack when I'm calling him, and he's Friend talking to him. I tell him I am happy he's here, I like having Donkey Jack for my friend. I talk to him in sentences with certainty he understands my meaning through telepathy, how the four-leggeds communicate with each other. When I talk, he reads the images in my mind of what I'm talking about. I'm guessing it's about like the Chinese language, images. I know he doesn't understand the words except for words he hears over and over like Jack, friend, donkey, love. I tell him I love him and want to give him a good life here on my meadow. While he was doing his little quick-step dance in front of me, his nose went to my face, we touched nose to nose, I put my hands on the sides of his neck and put my forehead to his forehead and we held there a couple of seconds. I've learned with the four-leggeds that a gesture, when it's done it's done. We humans like to make things last a long time and dwell. My human inclination is to put foreheads together and hold for several seconds. A donkey, like a cat, like a dog, once the gesture is made it's meaning is communicated and it's over. No big deal made of it. I've asked him to teach me donkey and he is. Every day he gives me a new insight into donkey nature. Part of why I'm writing it here is so I won't forget, a memory aid, as well as to share it with you.

 

 

 

Jack's delight when he saw me was so ecstatic he humbled me to see my donkey friend act out his meaning. The way I see him, we have the same brain, except I have the curse of the forebrain that created all the confusion we call human. I see him fortunate to have a mind not burdened with questions, belief systems, traditions. I want to learn the language of silence, how the four-leggeds communicate with each other in silence. They have their language of sounds their tongues allow them to make, which is quite expressive. When I open the door for Caterpillar to come in the house, I say, "Hey, Pillar," and she mutters a barely audible sound that says Hi. She steps over beside her scratch pad and looks up at me, meaning pick me up and tell me you love me. In a short time she's had the experience she wanted and is ready for me to put her down. A moment of connecting heart-to-heart. She only needs it once a day. No matter what I'm doing, I do have time to take a moment to hold Caterpillar and connect with her. Today I saw I have bonded with Donkey Jack and from now on we are friends, the real deal. After today, instead of going to the meadow to give carrots to the donkey, I'll be going to see my friend with carrots. Now that we've made the heart connection, we can have a good time. He'll teach me donkey all the faster. When I sit with him in the meadow, it will no longer be me apprehensive of him turning his back to me and kicking, and Jack will no longer be watching me apprehensive of what I might do to him by surprise. From here on, we'll be more relaxed together. Our meetings will be characterized by a quiet comfort, feeling protected in the presence of the other. It is a thrill for me to befriend an African herd animal. Gives me insight into the individual minds of the zebra, the wildebeest, the antelopes when I see them in National Geographic videos.. They're people too.  

 





 



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TO HUNT OR NOT TO HUNT

tantric painting

Driving on the Parkway after dark is an interesting challenge concerning the deer that see headlights and think they're two floating lights, not imagining it is a ton of steel, plastic and glass in motion. Yet dogs get it and cats get it. Bobcats get it. Possums don't appear to get it. I used to drive like these critters were in the way. That has changed. I finally got it that I'm driving through their world. They know those smelly, noisy four-footed gigantic beetles stay on that track where nothing grows. They stay off it during the day. But at night, it doesn't register that those lights are the same as the giant beetles that zoom by during the day. Deer in the headlights makes a good metaphor for the look in the eyes of people working in Japanese and Chinese restaurants when you say something to them not from the menu. It makes me want to leave Japanese and Chinese-to-English phrase books with them. Somebody says, "What time does the bus depart?" and they can see it written in dancing chicken footprints. Maybe cell phones do that now. It's not annoying. It's just dazed people from a culture entirely different from ours, languages entirely different from ours. I'd be dazed in the same way working at a Hardees in some Chinese mountain town too small for a dot in atlases. Somebody say to me, "What time does the bus depart?" I'd probably say, "Ohio gozymas," that poorly. I can't help but be sympathetic with these people making a living in a place where everybody looks down on them, and they're proud people, just like we are.

There is so much to be sympathetic about, I'm wondering if sympathetic concern might be an affectation we learned somewhere along the way thinking it was real. I think it might have been "real" in a tribal setting where everyone is intimately connected with everyone else, where nobody has their own business. Sympathy seems like it is right for people nearby we know well, but to hear about an earthquake in China where a school caves in on the kids, the grief of the parents, I feel for everyone concerned; sympathy is what I feel. Then the Japanese tsunami nuclear disaster. It messed up a lot of people, dogs and cats. I'm sympathetic. Every day on the news children shattered by landmines, "smart bombs" killing indiscriminately, tormenting twice that many with pain, grief and agony. I see pictures of little black refugee kids like skeletons and I feel sympathetic. I want to help. I can't do anything. Don't have money to send, can't go volunteer in a refugee camp, and if I did have the time and money, there'd be no end to it, running from one rescue mission to the next, all of them too late.

It's hard to pull in from not feeling a twang when I hear news stories about other people's misfortunes. But I also need my energy here where I am, in the world I live in, with the people I live among. That's where my sympathy belongs, where I need it first. It's hard not to avoid being wrenched every day by somebody's agony someplace in the world. It seems like paying too much attention to the agonies out in the world on tv, in other countries, albeit artificially, diminishes attention that is needed at home. It's a narrow line to walk, a razor's edge even, finding how to be aware, even prayerful, of what is happening around, but with the dispassion of knowing it is outside my jurisdiction. That's somebody else's immediate concern. I have plenty of immediate concern here at home. In my spiritual path I've come to see that everyday life is where it's at. I have learned I find much more interesting people in the ones I already know, the people who live nearby, the people I see wherever I go in my world. I'd rather know the people I know of these mountains than somebody famous in NY or LA or anywhere I am not. The pop world keeps us believing that wherever we are is not where It is at. It is always somewhere I am not.

Yesterday, talking with my friend Justin about the thrill I had from a full week of focus on one theme, writing wide-open, four straight days from getting up to turning in, fingers dancing on the keyboard, Caterpillar frustrated because she couldn't hold my attention for more than a few seconds at a time, a touch on top of her head that says I'd love to pet you, but I'm involved in the part of the human mind that cats don't have, the forebrain, thinking abstractly, putting thoughts together to tell a story. I believe she reads me telepathically, which makes me wonder what she sees when I'm thinking about a fiddler I've never met in a time I didn't know first-hand. She went off to her bed seeing there was no penetrating the peasoup fog. Four straight days of total focus on one theme and a full day of rewriting, writing new paragraphs to fill in blanks, then two more days of rereading and clarifying sentences that needed it, changing words, even nit picky words, like changing an in to a with. These sorts of details matter. I'm still in the charm of that fixation. Heard five minutes of news once a day to keep abreast of Syria and Turkey. Finally, today I've reached the place that rereading as editor has become boring. I want to do something else.

Justin told me I get the same thrill out of writing and painting that he gets out of hunting. He said, "Hunting is better than sex. Sex is the same over and over. Hunting is different every time." We talked about the thrill of attention focused absolutely for a period of time. He sits in a deer blind or in a stand in a tree for hours without moving or making a sound. He takes his four year old boy with him, teaches him silence and patience. He takes his five year old girl, too, and teachers her the same. Justin hunts to eat. He gets Welter Ham in Whitehead to butcher his kills like beef and keeps it in the freezer. At the moment he has the head of the last buck he shot with a nice rack in the freezer waiting to be mounted. Justin also takes Crystal hunting. She's good. He aims to put both kids through gun safety courses where they can learn more than he could teach them. He could teach them plenty, but the course does it better. Also, like in learning to drive from somebody besides parents, there is no parental tension in the way. I cannot allow myself to kill even the spiders in the window corners. Yet I know they're about killing to eat. Everything living kills to eat. Chickens eat grasshoppers. Cats eat mice. Coyotes eat cats. We eat lunchmeat from the grocery store, steaks, hotdogs, bacon, chicken nuggets, and we don't kill anything. No dragging in a dead squirrel, peeling the skin off, etc. Justin was taught to hunt before he started school. I said of the baby, Vada, "She'll have her first buck when she's six." Justin said, "Before that."

In my own Way, I have no problem with killing for food. I don't even have a problem with somebody making a kill and leaving it for the coyotes. Who has a problem with road kill? Same difference. I will slow down to a stop if necessary to avoid hitting a critter of the night. I've had raccoons, possums, cats, dogs, squirrels, rabbits dart under the tire from the side, no time to even lift foot from gas pedal. I don't like it, but remind myself in God's way of seeing that it is a blink of an eye leaving the body suddenly. I say a prayer for the being's soul every time I nail one or see one on the road. I can't help but see them people like us, consciousness in a particular form. They're in the same realm of consciousness as our dogs and cats. If they were tame, we could connect with them like we do with our pets. I do enough killing without intent just from living in the world as it is now, driving everywhere we go. It's because I see the four-leggeds as my friends I haven't met yet. I think of them as the true Innocents in our world. Humanity mows over them like they're nothing. I have a hard time seeing a deer hanging by back feet, guts tumbling out on the floor. I can't do that. It has surely come to me from previous lifetimes, my never wanting to hurt anybody or anything. I never learned to want to hurt somebody in a fight and never learned to want to see one of God's baby's die by my intent. I don't believe I have the right when I'm not needing the food. That's when I join the food chain, saying a prayer of gratitude for the soul of each one killed. I make sure my hunter friends understand my reticence about killing is for myself and does not extend beyond myself. I admire their skills and enjoy hearing their hunting stories. I can't help but think there is enough killing going around; I don't need to participate in it just because it's going around. And deer aren't going to get overpopulated because I'm not killing them.

I'll go on feeding my friend the possum that lives under the house. I put out extra seeds on the ground by the feeders for the red squirrels that came marauding. I feed them and they leave the bird feeders alone. I decided when I put the feeders out that I would accept whoever in the neighborhood came in to the food kitchen. It's a good shelter for the small birds out of sight of the hawks and in such a thicket the hawks are unable to maneuver. Chipmunks dart through the leaves on the ground and become invisible when they're still. I have a small peaceable kingdom inside my circle of trees around the house. The gray squirrel that lives across the road drops in from time to time. Putting out enough for the bluejays too, they don't bully the other birds. This is the world I want to live in. Can't do anything about it beyond my property line. Out there in the rest of the world it is going to be what it is going to be. In here, in my circle of trees the critters have a free food kitchen with seeds they like. It's unrealistic to want the peace I want for myself for everybody else in the world. That's their choice, and their business. In my world the birds sing and the pair of red squirrels chase each other round and round like kittens.


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