Day 45

Twenty-seven degrees outside, it is 6:30 am, and it is first light. I wrap my purple Shiva scarf around my neck twice, over that I add my snowboarder sweatshirt, and top my head with a stocking cap as I go for a run. I top the first hill, and I start laughing. I am experiencing joy. I am having a hard time believing that I am running this early in the morning and this cold in the morning, and I am feeling joyful for it. I plan on jogging the long route today. I am feeling good, not like yesterday when leg cramps cut my run to a mile instead of the longer two point five mile route. My breath is strong and my body is in a good rhythm and pace. Everything is going great! I circle around Bellevue Road at about seven tenths of a mile in to my plan, and then I had to pee. I realize my morning run would not be the two point five miles, and I would be lucky to make it home without wetting my pants. With every jarring step, I feel a splosh in my lower abdomen. I push my way back up the hill, making my steps even, concentrating on grace, not to swash my bladder too much. I thought I could go a little farther, but the urgent call of nature is too great to ignore. I sprint for home.

Domestication

People ask me, "Do you have any pets?" Often when a new guest is in my home eventually the question arises, "Where's the cat?" When I get asked the question about the cat, I ask back,"Does it smell like a cat?" People just assume I fit the stereotype. Single woman, into the healing arts, with a bookish air, earth-motherly type of woman should automatically have at least one cat on premises. Not so. Not in my house. I have allergies. Asthma to be exact. Constant breathing problems would plague me if I were to have a cat or a dog. Everyone deserves to breathe. I choose not to have fish. I do not want to clean the tanks out. I do not want a turtle. No to reptiles. No to rodents of any flavor. Basically, I do not want to clean up someone else's shit. I think about a bird, and then I look outside. Seven doves perch on the ground under my patio table and chair set. A chipmunk sits on the round of wood and cleans his face in the morning sun. A red male cardinal and his tawny mate frolic as their two beaks meet in a kiss. Mocking birds land on the umbrella as they jump to the fence and feeder. Jays circle in, and sometimes the woodpeckers poke around my back yard. I sit at my dining table and watch squirrels move in death defying contortions in order to reach the suet and meal cakes that hang in a green mesh cage. Goldfinches and purple finches flock at the feeder with their families a few hours before dusk. Innocent titmouse twins peck away at the millet looking for peanuts. Junkos, sparrows, wrens, and thrashers scratch the dirt border between the golden oregano and the muscadine vines. I buy the birdseed and keep the feeder stocked. I keep fresh water in a copper dish set on the aggregate patio. I watch the cardinals drink from it, not to mention the chipmunks, squirrels, doves and red wasps. I sweep the sidewalk clean, and I pick up the empty sunflower shells. I tend to these wild creatures. If I have neglected to supply the feeder, the birds squawk in a relentless banter. Once the feeder is full, the twitter changes. The birds song becomes a charge of revelry. One more thing about feeding the wild birds and animals...I still have to clean up the droppings.

ravens on the ground

While running outside, I like to notice the animals. One early dawn, an opossum saw me. I noticed the squint in the eyes, the holding of breath, the stance of this opossum screamed, "Don't look at me!" I scanned the trees nearby and knew the nocturnal creature was heading home for the end of his night. Today, all the ravens were on the ground. Dozens of ravens sat on the ground this afternoon while I ran my 2.5 miles. My pace slower today, it was more like a plod. The ravens watched me lumber down the road foot in front of the other. I watched the ravens waddle and strut in the grass. Block after block, foot plod after foot plod, ravens squatted in yard after yard, block after block. Sometimes, when I have enough spittle in the back of my throat, I can talk with the ravens. Today, my mouth dry, my caw did not have enough raw in it. The ravens turned their heads scoffed. Look, I am the first one to laugh at humans who attribute emotions to animals, but in this case, it is true. These ravens scoffed at me, the silly human who thinks she can talk with us. One raven, alone on a yard a block away from the first group, looked at me with narrow eyes and sullen sneer of the beak. "He is an evil one," I tell myself as I trudge by the black as soot bird. I imagined the bird cawing grouchily with his neighbors, flying into the doves on purpose, and raiding the nests of unsuspecting finches. His threatening look kept me from moving closer, and I ran instead towards the middle of the road. Watching the ravens walk around the lawns made me think of the day, oh gosh, back in 1996 or 1997 when sitting at a park in West Covina, California. I sat under a redwood tree with my boyfriend. We both felt sorry for the redwood trying to breathe in the smoggy haze. A raven walked with a halted gait in our direction and stopped right in front of us. We sat stunned as the raven looked directly at us, and then the raven grunted. Its face grimaced, as if constipated, and the raven shed one feather and waddled away. I still have the feather. Raven known as the messenger of Odin, the creator, the trickster, the originator of death, the bringer of light. Raven the wondrous, raven the rapturous, Poe did you no justice. Nevermore, nevermore.

The SAYINGS of MANDELL LOVEMAN CYPRESS “Well now let me tell you something…” “Everyone knows the right thing to do… whether or not they do it is another thing.” “The easiest money you’ll ever make is the money you don’t spend.” “You haven’t made any money until you button the button.” “In business, when you have to kiss somebody’s ass, just give it a little peck, you don’t have to hug it.” “Everybody should read The Richest Man in Babylon.” “If you don’t ask, you are lazy.” “You got to be a friend to have a friend.” “You know, I get more pleasure out of giving than I do receiving.” “We’ve had a good run.” “I love you. Thanks for coming.” These sayings were on a placard at Mandell’s funeral. He used to coach me on how to talk to people. Often, he reminded me to do one thing when in conversations with people who are boorish or selling me a line of bullshit. Mandell told me the secret to all conversations: when someone is speaking, shake your head up and down as if you are listening and just say, “Uh-Huh? Is that right?” No more needs to be said. If the person you are talking to is an idiot, let him be an idiot, you don’t have to point it out.

Thanksgiving 2009

A clear early dawn sky, the sun approaching in the southern part of the east, the day seemed as if it would be just like last year. However, by mid-morning the clouds gathered like gray chopped drop biscuits. With the incoming low pressure front, the sky turned and mimicked my emotions the day of Thanksgiving 2008, the day I fell in love, felt abandoned, and stung from a cold back-hand slap from Madame Karma. All at the same time, all at once, all converging at high noon. A year ago, I dropped off a fellow traveler at the beginning of the Natchez Trace with his bicycle and a seventy-five pound external frame backpack. Crouched over the handle bars, the pack heavy on his frame, my friend could not look back. Literally, he could not look back. He was off to pedal past his demons, face his fears of mortality, and create his own identity. An artist, life itself is his medium. My friend was off to prepare his next installation. After watching him pedal up the steep exit and disappear, I went on with my Thanksgiving Day by dining at the table of one of my spiritual advisors with multiple friends sharing stories, laughter, and our vices. A year later, I am attending Thanksgiving dinner with the same beloved friends and making the same pies with everyone's favorite crust. I just don't tell them that an egg and vinegar are the secret components. While running this afternoon, I watched the wind carry an oak leaf falling from a nearby tree. I stopped moving forward and ran in place as the leaf stalled and fell, dropped and spun. Headed for asphalt, the leaf lilted and limped as it finally changed course. I watched the leaf tumble to the side of the road. The leaf's curled points landed on the softness of grass and a lawn. I thought about how my friend on his bike landed not on the asphalt, but Austin, Texas. I wondered if he was like the leaf floating haphazard. Or, I wondered if the leaf was more like my friend, it saw a nice place to land.

Good Art = Conflict and Resolution

Conflict and Resolution Makes for Great Drama Tension Builds Creating Solutions Solves the Problems Cringing Subdued Rise and Fall Cycles Return Like a Cyclone One more Obstacle Added Tension Another Collision Calls for Conclusion This the Danger Decision to Reside As a Wanderer Art as Life Bound to Interface Within the Constructs Casting Contrasts In the Light

thirty-four days

October 22, a big day for me, I stood less than ten feet away from a red tail hawk. This was the closest I had ever been to a wild hawk. Right outside my house, the scraggly young male bird's eyes met mine in a gaze that lasted the length of time it took for him to finish eating the small rabbit lunch. I thought about the Medicine Cards that Jamie Sams did years ago, the hawk as the messenger and the rabbit as our fear. The symbolism penetrated my psyche and I started to run. Not a conscious choice, not a reaction, not a mapped-out decision that today I would start running, but the action of moving my legs faster than they have moved in a few years arose in a spontaneous moment. I missed day eighteen out of leg cramping, and day day twenty-seven out of an emotional upheaval that left me wrung out of options other than bed. Here I am at day thirty-four, and I continue to run. Though, I have picked up the pace, experienced a posture shift as I gained in strength, I continue to let the third dimensional distractions melt away through the bottoms of my feet, into the earth, grounding out the outdated, the outmoded, outside of me fear that no longer serves me and my time left on earth. I am accenting my ascent each time my foot, bound in new balance running shoes, touches down.