A curtain of brook-soaked lambs wool beads the size of diatom welcomed by pores with open arms.
A man from Fishamble Street whose voice seeps through the floorboards swollen with tears.
A sand cast bottle of evolutionary perfume that causes the nose of a specter to run.
A gold mining pan fueled by Robert Fludd’s water screw perpetual motion machine.
A wave pattern of auburn curls encouraged barometrically and darkening.
A cockled scarf with matching ice cube earmuffs in goose feather gray.
A primordial hammock pendulumed by a polar bear’s bellows.
A scaly aroma of moss rot emanating from Cox’s timepiece.
A cradle rocked by the thermodynamic foot of an osprey.
A marble lined tin corset tied with seaweed braids.
A manatee named Eidolon’s claw-footed enamel tub.
A chilled ancestor and her tadpole scented hoop.
A liquid crow wing poured into a time crystal.
A latitudinal helmet filled with coal jelly.
A slate bed sheeted in a cellar’s cloak.
A dewdrop’s third cousin.
A tomb for a sunbeam.
A soul’s compass.
A planet’s love.

by Karen Jo Vennes

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Writing at Anaverna

Iago’s whispers shouted to Othello. He swiped at the web spun by the harem of Iago’s spider colony in an attempt to free himself. The filaments were airy and had hardly any weight to them. Yet, they were pliable and clingy, making them more of a challenge to remove than one might initially realize.

His fingers combed through his hair. He held them in front of him to asses how many he had caught; only to see his hands empty. He could still feel the netting in his curls and pulled with greater intention, but they would not release. He washed his face with imaginary water and checked his web free hands again.

Her lavender tea tinged breath floated over their bed and he siphoned it into his lungs. The stabs, produced by the slurs from the arachnids, animated his hands once more. They shook as they formed the shape of her neck. They would choke the lavender breath  out of her until the voices of the spiders subsided.

She’d pulled the duvet up to her chin in subconscious protection from the cold and smell of fly carcasses. Her fingertips gripped the damask even as she slept and pinned the amulet of hardened bread crumbs that Othello had given her for their anniversary.

A hard shelled seed buried deep within Othello’s ventricle popped at the seam as a memory of her holding his head in her lap surfaced. The spider web filaments knitted around the memory as he stood over her. Othello’s hands cradled her neck and his thumbs gently stroked a comforting rhythm before pressing in so hard that his lips curled back and he grunted with the effort of pushing a cork into a wine bottle.

The amulet bounced and crumbled to the floor. She writhed with effort to free his hands from her neck and left moon shaped fingernail prints on his wrists. His eyes blurred with fly guts merged with her struggle and spurred his attempt to focus as he tried to make the circle smaller. Her eyes opened wide and a spark from her lash flew onto his forehead burning a hole through his smear cloaked third eye.

Her face appeared to turn upside down. Or had he turned upside down? Othello shook his head violently; the spider webs still gripped his hair and the fly entrails still held to his eyeballs. The burned hole seemed a portal and a thousand disconnected dots appeared in his mind. They came alive and sounded like houseflies. He cupped his hands to his ears. Desdemona gasped a full breath and rolled out of the birch wood bed and began to crawl away only to run smack into Iago who’d hidden behind  her dressing screen.

As the seed in Othello’s aorta sprouted open and the net fell away, a whisper escaped from it’s husk. A whisper so loud that it drowned out the lies of the spiders and their feast of flies and his hands came away from his ears. He studied them once more.  This time in horror regarding what he had just done.

He turned to find Iago grasping Desdemona’s braids with the proud smile of having duped Othello. Iago offered her up to him. Othello paused, his vision still dotted, and he tried to connect them all.  His third eye tried adding them up.

One dot for the deceiver who’d spat in her face. When she’d anguished over the assault, Othello recalled how he’d left her crying in the bed and gone off to play music with the perpetrator. The shock of the cruel treatment had sent her packing and he felt nauseous as he recalled how he’d helped her load her cases onto her mount before grabbing his guitar. After three days, he’d missed her nurturing and weakly apologized. She’d forgiven him; seeing only the buried seed in his heart.

One dot for the warlock who she’d begged him to protect her from;  fearing some calamity to come. Othello had belittled her fears until she thought she was mad and sought counsel from a gypsy woman deep in the forest. Once he had her convinced that she was merely paranoid and broken, he forced her to spend her birthday celebration with the frightening dot. And when the warlock dot burned their house down and killed her black wolf, Othello never admitted to wrong.

She’d choked back the harm until the toxic fluid it produced plugged her veins and she retreated to her ancestral land. He’d defended the dot rather than Desdemona. For, having seen them together, the warlock dot knew that Othello had secretly abandoned Desdemona  for a spider with the mind of an abacus, the breath of a dead fly, and a spawn for whom Othello diverted funds from Desdemona to support.

She’d battled the many dots of his harem on her own and had lived with the swords in her back and roses in her eyes for a decade as the blood seeped out drip by drip.

One dot for his old friend Iago whose ego boosting campaign convinced Othello to strip Desdemona of her wings. Othello’s need for admiration was further satisfied by the attention from the spider girl and her offspring. Iago; the warlock dot, the spitting dot, the spider dot and her progeny had worked in tandem to fracture Othello’s devotion to Desdemona.

Desdemona supported Othello with love, devotion and true admiration; which were no match for the emotional manipulation employed by the rotten dots.  It had worked so well that it had finally pressed the seed so far down into Othello’s heart, that he hatched a plan to throw Desdemona away. He became addicted to the dark cloak and low frequency vibrations of the surrounding the dots.

For a long time, the seed’s existence had kept him from having the courage to get rid of Desdemona. Her constant supply of love kept him buoyed and he sucked up hers
as well as that of the sycophants. As Desdemona isolated herself further, he built a secret empire with Iago, his spider girl, her spiderling, and the other dots in the harem.

Othello moved towards Iago, the skin of Desdemona’s face stretched back from the force of Iago’s grip upon her braids. The thousand dots lifted their eyelids and the eyes peered at Othello as he stumbled towards them. Desdemona observed a mask of Othello’s face, still attached by one ribbon. The mask slipped all of the way off and hung at his neck by the other ribbon. Othello grabbed it and tried to tie it back on.

The whisper of the seed; the spark from Desdemona’s eyelash, the whole in his third eye that it had left, Iago’s stench-y smirk, the foul breath of the spider-girl when she laughed at him, and the thousand eyeball dots symphonized until Othello was on his head.

He lunged for Iago. Iago released Desdemona’s braids and scrambled out the door with strands of her hair tickling his arms. Looking over his shoulder, he ran straight into a stone monolith that had just been wheeled into the alley for placement at the temple. The workers, resting temporarily, watched in horror as Iago’s forehead split wide open with the force of his attempt to escape.

Othello dragged Iago’s unconscious body to the river and finished him off. He’d secretly hoped that ending Iago would convince Desdemona to stay with him until he’d consumed her every drop of blood. Once in the water he tried to wash himself clean. The grating voice of his spider girl drilled pinholes into his head and could not be drowned out even under the water.

Desdemona pulled herself up from the floor using Iago’s left behind staff to steady herself. Once upright, she wobbled forth to her table and dressed her wounded throat with myrrh. It’s astringent sting released a floodgate of tears and the swords in her back clattered to the floor.

Her intuition had told her to be ready to defend herself after she’d seen Othello’s mask tip to the side on the night of the full moon.  That night she’d awakened from a nightmare and confronted him about the spider girl from her dream. He scoffed at her ridiculous accusation. She picked up the bone handled knife, a gift from her father, that she’d hidden behind the dressing table after the dream. With it, her hands still slippery with oil, she cut the name tags from her garments. Crafted by her mother, embroidered with her daughter’s name: Desdemona. She sawed through them with the blade.  Then dipped her hands into a bowl of gold leaf flakes left by the scribe and the shards stuck to the remaining oil of myrrh.

When Othello returned from the river, he kneeled at her doorstep sobbing. His recognition of the damage the twisted dots had achieved in his life, the cascading feelings of how he’d been blinded by those intent to tear him from his love made his head fall heavily from his shoulders. She placed her left hand on the top of his head and her right hand over his heart. He welcomed her gentleness and realized the value it had given him through the decades. The seed blossomed and it’s foliage flooded the corners of his body, soul and mind.

His robe was soaked and the gold flecks that still clung to her hands were transferred onto it leaving a wing-shaped imprints over his heart and a gold crown on his head. With the strength of a wounded bird, she pushed him backwards into the sandy street.

Othello landed on a nest of scorpions. The mother and her pups all stung him multiple times until their venom paralyzed him. His hands had gone to her handprints as he’d fallen. He was unable to move them in order to clear the bile that had collected in his throat and now seeped out of the sides of his trembling mouth. As flies collected on his vomit, his hands remained on the golden hand prints. The flies crawled into his mouth and nose and filled him with their offspring until he could no longer breathe.

Desdemona turned from him, pulled her door to and locked it.  She pulled on her nameless garb and removed the key from the locked door. She placed the key on a carved wooden chain and hung it from her waist. Her butterfly wings pulsed themselves back into existence and she opened her window and flew. When she finally reached the sea, her wounds were nursed with seaweed by the nymphs. The gulls shared their fish with her, the crabs pushed the sand into the shape of a pillow for her head. She slept with her feet in the sea and a pair of newborn dolphin calves covered them with their bodies to keep her warm. Mother earth held her for forty days and nights until she grew strong enough to love again.

She stands at the rim of the Western side and I stand at the rim of the Eastern one. We give one another the signal to plunge. I’ll not jump to the Western side in order to bridge our gap and she’ll not jump to the Eastern precipice. Instead we both jump into the heart of the chasm.

Like the macrame trimming a Brazilian hammock, our veins protude from our toes, fingers, and belly-buttons and form a fringe that spans the Grand Canyon. They weave together in a basket pattern where they meet. The ones from our belly buttons form a matrix so dense that it’s more like a cord than a basket and it wraps around our waists. The veins are so long however, that we are able to move about as far as we like independently.

We embrace tightly as we reach the center with benign nothingness below us and descend. A cape made of catclaw acacia and stream orchid appears around our shoulders. Both of our heads fit through the neck hole of the cape and it falls around our shoulders. It fills with air from the velocity of our fall but it does not blow up to cover our faces. Rather, it forms a parachute and buffers our entry into the water.

We float down with the current until we are finally washed upon the rocky, sandy banks of the Colorado River. We stay in the embrace for a while with the wet cape clinging to us. We don’t check the cord for we know that it is intact. With our fingernails we pry pebbles and reeds from our dangling networks of veins and bounce the ends of one another’s canyon-lake-water soaked hair in the other’s palms as we slosh along dragging the veins behind us. We switch from from hair bouncing to vegetation cape pulling to encourage the water to let go.

We emerge from the canyon and are lying in the hallway of the house that dad built every night and weekend for three years after working forty hours a week at the Air Force base. We didn’t live there as toddlers but in this moment we are three and four and a half. Giggling and awake at 5 am on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa Claus. The shag carpet itches our cheeks. The canyon flower cape has dried and we play with it.  She puts it on her head and pretends that it is her very long hair and flings it over her shoulder and cocks her hip out to say, “Look at my fabulously long hair.”  She takes it off for my turn and I put it around my waist pretending that it is a poodle-skirt and we subconsciously reach for a jitterbug twirl position. When our fingers are secured, we twirl one another like the grown ups do.

We distract ourselves from the anticipation of opening our gifts for as long as we can. Finally Mom calls us trying to sound happy.  But, she is wringing her hands in her night gown. The anxiety of what cruelty Dad has planned to ruin our joy courses through the cord. Our heads go back into the neck hole of the cape and we shuffle towards our stockings hanging above the brick fireplace that Dad built.

Any joy experienced by anyone for any reason other than his exhaulted greatness is a threat to his existence. Any autonomy cannot be tolerated by the pathological jealousy of the narcisisst. He takes the Christmas Candy from the coffee table and places it on the counter just out of reach of our tiny hands.

We look at Dad asking permission to take down the stockings. He doesn’t see the riparian cape and shoves our shoulders apart so that we can dump our stockings out without tripping on one another. We dump out the oranges, lip gloss, pecans and macadamean nuts and kiddles. We are 8 and 9 1/2 now. We immediately turn to the giant boxes that are under the tree and Mom gathers up the stocking stuffers and smiles but I hear her voice crying in my head and associate it to this particular smile. I had prayed a hedge
of thorns around her before school a few days earlier as the Bible says to do. I hadn’t heard the preacher mention that it was for those whose spouse needs protection from straying.  I had only heard the protection part.

We are excited to open the large boxes but notice that Dad is especially excited about it and become suspicious. His joy is never celebrating our joy so we know something is up.  We hope that we are wrong and imagine they contain go carts or a accordians or giant puppies or a canopy bed.

They instead contain another large box that has been nested inside and so on and so on like Russian Babushka dolls. We finally reach the smallest box and it is the size of a watch box.  We look at each other thinking, “Oh my Gosh, he bought us some beautiful jewelry!”

We open that box and each find a newspaper pouch. We unfold the layers of newspaper forever until we finally reach the middle. Each middle contains one nickle and five pennies.  Dad howls with glee and we look at one another confused and throw them on the ground turning to the other gifts. Mom exhales.

We open the Lincoln-Logs and Lite-Brite set. Mom is waiting for Dad’s cue to tell us to go to the carport for one more gift. We find our bicycles with banana seats and Monkey handle bars.  Hers is pink and white, mine green and silver. We hike up our gowns and ride them in the front yard until Mom makes us go in and get dressed.

In my forties, one day after therapy I was able to piece together some of an old memory that had sent me there. But it was my sister, Kim, who named the culprit. I called her to discuss the memory from my session. I asked if she remembered when I was three and Mom and Dad went to Memphis for the weekend.

They left me with Dad’s mom at the second family farm in Mena, Arkansas. They left Kim at Grandma Irby’s in Morgan; near Mayflower, Arkansas.

I recounted my memory. “I am floating above myself and see the back of my hair. I see the geckos on the screen door and I see myself walking past a man who is smiling at me but his smile makes me feel afraid.” Kim says, “It’s Carl.” Grandmother Davis’ abusive boyfriend. She describes him just as I see him in my memory. We talk about the hole Dad still had in his chest from where Carl had kicked him with his turkey toed boot for trying to pull him off of his sister when he was about seventeen.

Kim begins to describe my memory as if it were hers. She sees Grandmother Davis’ house. Sees her funnel me past Carl’s creepily smiling face and into her bedroom. She sees her hoist me high upon her bed with the flowered bedspread. She describes her opening the giant filigree box filled with every colored rhinestone imaginable adorning her costume jewelry collection.

I take over narrating my memory of how she allowed me to play with the jewelry and how it seemed that soon after I must’ve passed out. We wonder aloud if they’d drugged me and we recount how Grandmother Davis always gave Dad tranquilizers when we were growing up.

“Honey,” I say, “that is not your memory.” “How do you know this?” “I have never spoken of it, the geckos, the jewelry, the bedspread, Carl, and you were never there.” “I never knew who the man was.”  “How did you know this?” “You were at Grandma Irby’s house. You were eighteen months old.”

We become confused and try to figure out what just happened. She recounts it again and this time remembers seeing Mom and Dad drive off and leaving me there.  So small.  She sees the memory too as if she is floating.  She can see the back of my head and describes
me walking past Carl just as I see it in my memory. I see them removing the clothes from my limp body and Kim throwing her head back and wailing as Grandmother Irby tries to find the source of her fit. I see a concrete floored structure that I don’t recognize, then my three year old self alone and peering into a bucket of water.

It was as if she’d astro-projected there.  The chord of veins had reached for 140 miles that weekend.

We pieced together that must’ve been the time when she would not allow Grandma Irby to remove her clothes to bathe her that night while Mom and Dad were away. Grandma Irby was distraught that she’d had to put her to bed without a bath and recounted
the story many times over the years. She would say that Kim had a temper and would explain how she had become unglued the moment grandma had attempted to remove her dress for a bath. She had to let her sleep in the dress that night because Kim
had screamed  herself purple. Grandma Irby said she snubbed (her word for sniffling as a toddler does after a long cry) afterwards for almost an hour and there was no explanation for her behavior.

On the contrary, Grandma Davis had not even attempted to bathe me before returning me to my parents. My mother told me many years later that when they’d come to pick me up, the top of my hair was caked with mud as if I’d been ground into the dirt head first. They took me to the doctor. Not long after, Grandmother Davis shot Carl fourteen times for trying to rape her and she was sent to the Benton State Hospital for shock therapy.

I’ve sold the stratavarius; the one that belonged to Carl and that Dad had sworn to be the valuable kind. I’ve burned the flowered bedspread that I found in the chink-log cabin at the farm in Paris, Arkansas. I’ve stomped the rhinestones from their casings.

My sister’s veins are black and white and filled with stained glass windows, Bibles and church pews. Mine are gray and filled with tree branches, moonstones and feathers. But where they weave, both sets are iridescent.

Back at the shore of the canyon we see a turtle with a tiny bird on it’s back.  The bird has a twig of mesquite in it’s mouth and does not fly away when we simultaneously bend down to look at them.  The sun warms our naked butts peeking out beneath the cape. The sand cakes our vein fringe. I am the turtle with my home on my back.  She is the bird with the twig for her nest. I carry her now. I scream purple now. I astro-project through the iridescent vein cord now.

We notice some stained patches on the pile of veins behind us. Splotches, the color of congealed blood.  We don’t want the stained pieces any more and pierce them with tiny straws. She pierces the Western edge of each stain and I pierce the Eastern edge and we
both blow bubbles through them with so much force that they finally become iridescent again and sparkle like the Eiffel Tower does for five minutes every hour on the hour when it is lit with golden glittery lights in the Paris night.

Golden Viking Boat Irish National Museum

Prior to my divorce on February 13th and my arrival in Ireland on February 21st, I had  felt the constant anxiety one experiences while living in the same sphere with someone who is hiding something. When it lifted, it was very noticeable. I had not been anxious on the airplane, in the airport, or, riding from Dublin to Dundalk. Strangely calm; I tell my sister in a text.

When I cast out the sailor to whom I was no longer of value, he quickly discarded me, began a smear campaign (as narcissists do), and waded into the shallows where he belongs. I continue to cut out those who engage in such treachery; those who have enjoyed my loving support but can not give it in return, those who feel they have a right to flim-flamery without being called out for it, those who flatter me to my face while degrading me behind my back. Each time I pluck out a backstabber, three champions spring forth in their place.  

I have sold Bohemian Farm. My inheritance from my father’s mother: my grandmother Davis. I have rehomed my animals and am freed from all that chained me to America. And yet I have moments where I miss my chains. They were at least familiar.  I knew where to go and what to do and how the hob (stove) works.  And I knew people and creatures who’ve known me for many years and could stand up their daily encounters with me against the sailor’s seemingly loving and manipulative slights.

Now I am all at sea. Untethered and tossed about as flotsam and jetsam. A floating bull. I float down the Arkansas river and join the great Mississippi. I tread water on through Louisiana and out into the gulf of Mexico.  Cleaving for terra firma on the one hand and enjoying the uncharted scenery on the other.

Some sea cows befriend me as I bump along the coast of Florida. I am dumped into the Atlantic and then pushed down into the Celtic Sea, past St. George’s Channel and finally into the Irish Sea where there are no manatee.

I wash up along the Cooley Peninsula and land in County Louth. Like Coco Chanel; I am orphaned and taken in by eccentric aristocrats in Ravensdale. I go into the kitchen of the Georgian house. It is familiar like the houses in the garden district of New Orleans. There are giant wooden shudders on the inside like the ones in my home in Barcelona.  They control the temperature in the house.

There is a coffee press and a percolator but they are rarely used. Instead, boiling water is poured over instant coffee crystals like my grandmother Irby did. A holdover, I imagine, from her Irish granny; whom she worshipped. Hers was the only house in America where I’d ever seen instant coffee. She called it snuff coffee. Her Appalachian spin.

The people at Anaverna read poems and plays rather than watching television. The water that fills the bathtub comes from a river and leaves its silt after bathing. Daffodils are as abundant as they were at Bohemian Farm. Their commonplace numbers, however, in this land, do not diminish their stature. They are sold at country markets and fancy shops and given as thank you’s for donating to charity. They are appreciated for their sunny glow, sturdiness in bouquets, and ability to beautify the homes they live in front of.

I go into the “yard” (the word for stables) to place a flower arrangement. It has been converted into a concert hall and must be readied for the guests. I discover a set of dishes of the same pattern as my mother’s.  The same English pattern.  It’s as if my mother imagined this for me even before I imagined it for me.

Many things in this new land are confusing to me; including the way people show love. But, they are helping me to gain a better understanding of my grandmother Irby (The English surname of my grandfather). I wish I hadn’t tried to put the way she loved me in a box.  Her love was unspoken and mostly non-demonstrative. Other than when we were sick or hurt. She was the first on the scene and stayed by the bedside until we were well. The profundity did not rely on kind words to build me up. Our connection existed, and does to this day, on a plane that cannot be walked upon.

I imagine her a tree with long sinewy roots escaping from her feet. They travel above ground like a forsythia does and turn gold.  The gilded tendrils pierce the bottoms of my feet, root themselves through my veins, and shoot out the top of my head.  They are metallic and thin and in long strands and they weave themselves into a crown and tangle in my hair. A hurricane could not tear us apart.

The people here drink tea to solve problems and fight the rainy cold. It rains most every day and they complain about the weather most every day.  Which makes me so happy.  They don’t shy away from gloomy ballads or pretend that the weather is something that it isn’t.  They are not easily manipulated. They make me feel calm.

When I get into a cab I am reminded of the backward way that grandmother Irby showed me love. (“Benign neglect is what they call it.” An Irish friend explains.) I ask the driver if I can sit in the front seat.  “I don’t care if you sit on the roof.” he responds. Or when I go into a cafe and ask the lady at the counter if I can sit outside.  “I don’t care if you freeze to death.” she says as she follows me out and fusses over me, sits down at the table with me, and asks me where in America I’m from. And when I ask Thomas if I can eat one of the teacakes on the table, “I don’t care if you eat the whole lot.” he says.

My writing teacher, who is Irish, explains “This is meant to put you at ease when they see you stressed out about what to do”.  It is different from the response “Of course ya can!” that is commonly said when I ask a question but do not seem stressed about it. “Can I get a pint of Murphy’s?”  “Of course ya can.”

At this moment I am in Kenmare.  On the Western side of the Island. There is bright shiny sun with a hail shower, a rainbow, and lashing, gale force winds all at the same time. I pour a cup of tea. I walk out into it in my bed-clothes. The cold fills me up. I ask grandmother Davis to hold onto my left ankle and grandmother Irby to hold onto my right one so that I won’t float away.

Tá mé go léir ar muir = I’m all at sea.

I was trying to help Misses Poe. I worried that nobody had ever told her that she was mis-pronouncing the word. I thought she’d be glad to learn the correct pronunciation. I was four and it didn’t occur to me that I might embarrass her by pointing out a mistake.

Our dachshund had escaped, pulled her clean laundry off of the line, and trampled it leaving muddy paw prints. Mom and I put the dog away, gathered Misses Poe’s laundry up on the porch for re-washing and she’d offered us a “cheer.” As I explained that the word was pronounced “chayer, not cheeyer.” I remember how my mother’s body stiffened. She inhaled; nose rising, looked at Misses Poe and me through the lacy screen of her cigarette smoke and her eyes said, “I have no idea who this is” as they searched for a secret port-hole beneath the boards.

The consequences of my having voiced what I thought to be the benign truth included being unplugged from a love source. Pronouncing words in her dialect was a part of Misses Poe’s identity and I had dishonored her identity. I hadn’t come off as helpful, rather as a toddler with a superiority complex.

My suffer-battered relationship with the truth came up in my psychic reading with  renowned guru; Prince Hirindra Singh. He wore a white holy man pagri and plastic sandals. He had given up his family fortune in pursuit of learning and teaching  from the world’s religions . He lectured to Fortune 500 companies and gave past life, numerology, and psychic readings.

His guidance from my session was: “Do Not Be Your Face.” “Your face says you are in love with the truth.” “The truth gets you into trouble.” “Nobody cares about your truth.” “The saints lie all the time.” “When you expose a truth to someone before they are ready, it’s like a cruelty.” ”

Their hearts cannot take it, so they blame anything that goes wrong on you.” “You will not win at this.” “If you want to succeed; do not be your face.”

I’d seen a mountain lion at the edge of our fenced area this past August. She was the color of the crate of rusty chains by the tool shed and the size of a buck. She was panting from the suffocating humidity. The dogs must’ve chased her around. They were panting too. After carrying a bull horn and big stick wherever I went for a few days, I stopped looking at her as a bodily threat and began to think of her significance on a mystical level.

Such an anomaly; seeing a mountain lion. They are so private that local game wardens get away with refusing to admit they exist. I searched mountain lion on SpiritAnimal.com. It said “If you see a mountain lion, the message from the universe is to lead without expecting anyone to follow and to love the sacred knowledge that only solitude can bring.”

I often go for days at Bohemian Farm without seeing another human. Alan works out-of-town; I stay home writing and mucking stalls. We don’t have television and our mailbox is at the main road. My initial fears of solitude have been exceeded. My unaddressed wounds have worked their way back up into the epidermis all at the same time.

The sacred knowledge has revealed to me how often I do not show up for my own life. I constantly cede my rightful power in so many little ways. A wounded child survival skill no longer needed.

A stocky man, his stocky father, and a stocky friend drove over from Oklahoma to buy our tractor. When it came time to pay for my father’s tractor, he handed Alan a check. I said, “excuse me, you plan to pay for this item with an out-of-state check?” This was terrifying for me; knowing I’d committed some cruelty for speaking a benign truth and would be instantly unplugged from any support system. I viewed him from Misses Poes’ front porch. The other men kicked the dirt and the buyer explained, “Oh yeah, it’s fine. I’m a teacher and a youth pastor, and I drive the school bus.”

I explained that I did not want to have to drive to Oklahoma if his check bounced in order to retrieve my property. “You’ll have my father’s tractor and I won’t be paid for it
for three days, as this is an out-of-state check.” I looked at Alan as if to say, “is this what you agreed on?” He mouthed an “I’m sorry.” They had not discussed payment. Why should they? Any option they decide will work best for them is the only one considered.

What’s mine is his and what’s his is mine, so, I trust Alan to handle these things. But, I would’ve clarified payment instructions knowing someone was gonna drive from Oklahoma on a Sunday when the banks are closed. Had I handled it we would not be in this position right now. But I hadn’t. And now, in order to circumvent taking a risk, I have to speak the cruel truth to someone. My honest question, aside from caring for myself, implies that he is self centered, thoughtless, and thinks the world revolves around him.

The amount of energy needed to deflect the pain and anger that gets projected onto you as you as you rightfully defend yourself while being a woman is just too much for me most of the time. My caring for myself causes others pain, anger, and terrifying self-reflection; like it did for my father. My knowing that  these others have no regard for me causes me exhaustion and crushing self doubt.

Alan hadn’t tried to walk over me; I’d shrunk into the back ground of my own life. And when I’d spoken up I had been completely dismissed while standing on my own land, and handling my own business.

As a result of shrinking from inevitable pain; I’ve stuffed my soul into a tiny hole at the base of a juniper tree. I’ve broken my own jaw in order to keep my voice from eking out. I’ve compressed my spirit down into a flat sheet of paper. I’ve put myself inside a secluded garden surrounded by a fence of swords. I’ve allowed so much of my blood to flow out that my arms are too weak for embrace.

I wait for someone to find my sacred knowledge of interest. I listen carefully. Someone is there struggling to free themselves from a thicket of thorny vines growing up into a chinaberry tree. I hear them straining to escape. Last night I thought I heard them splash across the wet weather creek.

I woke up at midnight and sat on the porch crying over some long repressed wound. I hoped that the owl hooting close by would land on the railing and drop the keys to my life on the front porch. I told Alan over breakfast about having heard it and looked up its spirit meaning. “Death and new beginnings.” “The ability to see through the darkness.” I thought of the owl that fixed his eyes on us the day that our house burned to the ground over a decade ago.

I went out to feed Catalunya at 6:00am and the same owl swooped right in front of me and landed on a branch. I dropped the crate of hay and stared at it. A blue-jay attacked it’s left wing. The raptor brushed the jay away dismissively then flew to a branch of one of the giant oaks. The wingspan was like a giant kite made from a chinchilla fringed cape. I moved quickly towards it to get a better look. It sat perfectly still and allowed me to suck in its wild serenity; its eyes so perfectly round and black like ebony buttons.
Tears escaped and I no longer felt alone. I felt immense gratitude for nature’s willingness to interact with me. This owl sees me. Wants to be with me. Wants to bring me a message. He is unafraid of my truth. Something is dying. Something is being born. Something is coming.

Being in solitude has given me the space to be able to learn to care for myself. To walk in my own truth is becoming important for my well-being. If I continue to stuff back my soul she’ll disappear beneath the hot tub to be gobbled by frogs and moles. Cutting myself off from those who do not value me is not a loss. It’s a gain. Even if my only friends are owls and mountain lions, donkeys, goats, and dogs.

Now that I finally choose to be my face; the face that trusts her body for important messages, the face the animals come to see, the face that guards her own jaw, the face that sets how transactions are handled; now that I can finally be my face, I am no longer afraid of the mountain lion. I am the mountain lion.

Catalunya watching over Archibald

Alan hadn’t slept. I asked him what had kept him up and he couldn’t articulate it yet.  Later in the day we trundled down our long driveway past the neighbor’s house at the end. Alan pointed out a pit bull puppy lying on an old lawn chair at the neighbor’s back door. I asked “the culprit of your bad night?” His head turned towards me, eyebrows raised to say “bingo.”

The neighbor had flagged Alan down the day before and told him he was headed out again.  Driving a truck for an oil company in Texas.  The little dog had followed his pit bull home the day before.  They’d hung out in Petey’s very nice pen together and were fed and loved on. He called several friends who said they’d come take care of the puppy while he was away at work. He could only take Petey. He knew those friends would not. He was very concerned and hoped that Alan would.  Alan had not mentioned this until now.

We drove past the abandoned, emaciated puppy whose heart had been broken when Petey left him.  He didn’t even raise his head.  We discussed strategies.  We could put him on Facebook and find him a home.  Maybe so-and-so would take him.  We certainly can’t.  Zippy would have a personality crisis and Brucie would simply dominate the dog as he does all of the animals including Catalunya.

We returned with puppy food and gave him a bowl along with fresh water and took some video.  We drove past him again trying to avoid taking on another responsibility. We  subconsciously gathered cast off food bowls, collars, leashes and bedding. We gave in and went back for him; deciding that sleep was important. Neither Petey’s dad nor us would get any knowing he’s out there with nobody to look after him and coyotes howling all around.

“We’ll put him in the barn in the pen that used to be Florentina’s, right next to Abba.” I said. Abba cries every time Catalunya leaves the barn. So, we hoped she’d be comforted by the newbie, and he by her. We fluffed up his digs with some cast off blankets and pillows with flannel pillowcases.

When we entered the barn with the chocolate faced chap, Catalunya tippy-toed and bucked around the pen a bit trying to manage this new element.  He seemed naturally concerned that there was a canine near his goat.

The next morning I’d expected the foam filled pillow to be destroyed by his puppy teeth but found them neatly arranged. Humble as is was, he seemed so happy and grateful to have spent the night with companions in a place of his own .  He did not want to leave his pen or the barn just yet.  He seemed so afraid that no more food would come and that he may be discarded again.  He’d slept since 4 pm the day before. I’d kept waiting for crying and barking but it never came.

When we introduced the puppy to Abba she was very curious and seemed brightened by a potential new playmate.  They sniffed noses and rears and hopped around sweetly towards one another.  They chased around a bit, he on a leash, and Abba jumped towards him when he went too far away.  She seemed to want to be near him.  He ate grass and tried to model her behaviors.  When his puppy teeth or claws hurt, Abba did not hesitate to raise her ears like helicopter flaps and lower her head and butt him good.  Before she was constantly forced to subdue her will to that of Buckminster and Florentina. Now she is confident in defending her territory and he seems to aim to please.  I wondered if Abba remembered being cast aside by her former herd mates? Did that experience breed empathy in her towards the puppy?

The hard knock beginning seems to have heightened this little guy’s awareness of the behaviors of others around him. He learned down and sit after just a few tries to win a biscuit. He tries to adjust his natural ebullient responses into ones more subdued.  Ones that please in case he’d been too bold. His self-worth having been called into question by those who are charged with supporting it’s development.  Which is heart breaking to realize. But, his attempts to make keeping him easy on us has been very helpful for managing all the animal dynamics through the course of our day. It will be some time before we introduce him to the dogs who live in the house.

The puppy is soft and brindled and crouches and crawls on the ground when Alan approaches.  He is focused constantly on Alan’s approval and Alan generously gives it to him.  He seems to favor lying on his back with Alan rubbing beneath his chin. With me, he seems to especially love being kissed on the forehead and running towards me from a ways away as fast as he can until he smashes into me and melts into a ball in my lap. He gets a little bolder each day. Catalunya watches all of this interaction closely and paws at the fence.

The third day he became more nervy about coming out of the barn for sunshine, potty breaks and walks. Catalunya was focused on him like a laser beam. The dancing around and head shaking had ceased and he lowered his nose to the ground at the fence hoping to make contact . Maybe he remembers the smell of his own physiology after having been cast aside? Floods of adrenaline, hormones, imbalance in the diet, all have odiferous outcomes.  Catalunya notices when I wear fragrant oils or if I’ve just washed my hair.  After his initial alarm, he certainly showed empathy and curiosity  rather than aggression. Donkeys can be trained to become good guardian animals.  Catalunya takes his job of guarding Abba seriously.   He is maturing and learning to tolerate her in his area for longer periods of time each day.  His physiology is changing as his testosterone has dropped off. He is learning to enjoy her company when sharing his space more than his need to act out out when he feels territorial emotions. He seems to be easing up a bit.

The puppy, however, was intensely focused on the new-girl-next-door; me, and Alan.  He seemed either completely disinterested in Catalunya, or a little afraid of him.

Later in the day, we took him up to the outdoor goat pen and put Abba in the barren garden.  Catalunya’s pen shared a fence-line with Abba and one with puppy. Catalunya put his nose to the ground and finally the puppy felt brave enough to play and gave him some ear sniffs and puppy bites to the forehead through the fence. The donkey pressed his butt to the fence as he does when he wants Abba to groom him.  His tail stuck through the fence and the puppy played tug of war with it. He then found a small opening in the side of the fence and tried to crawl through to follow me as I walked away from the pen.  Catalunya ran to the spot and herded him away with his jaw. The puppy ran to the other side and tried and Catalunya had to run all the way around the outer edge quickly in order to corral him there. A new baby to herd.

It’s Easter now and a few weeks prior we had several waves of visitors to the farm for Spring Break.   Abba and Cat seemed to enjoy their company and one of our visitors noticed a marked difference from his visit exactly one year prior. Catalunya no longer seemed  defensive or anxious but inquisitive and soothed by the engagement. He even seemed to favor a friend’s nine-year old son; pointing his ears straight at him, walking up to him, unruffled by the normal nine year old fidgets and jerks. They’d come to boyscout camp and visit Brucie.  We’d adopted Brucie from them when my college chum’s boy was three and Brucie enjoyed hanging out with them again after all this time.

We’ve all come so far.  From Catalunya roaming free in the front yard, chasing the mailman down the driveway bawling, to my being able to enter his pen unprotected and walk around him without fear of him suddenly putting his head into my space and possibly biting me or bucking out when I’m near him.

The needy puppy has had a calming effect and the barn has never been so quiet.  And, if you’ve read my blog, you know that a quiet barn is a happy barn in my book. The pit bull is a breed that we are somewhat new to and this little fella seems a breed ambassador. 

The skills needed to survive abandonment come from trying to answer the questions “Am I not worthy of companionship, care, attention, inclusion, kisses?”  The solution becomes:  “I can arrange my personality in a way that you favor.  I can mold my natural impulses into actions crafted to please you. I will not do anything to make you or anyone want to give me up.” Helping Abba, Catalunya, Zippy, and now, Archibald move from low self-esteem to high causes me to reflect on my own self-esteem issues. I have to fix my own so that I may be whole enough to give them what my very young parents could not give me. It’s okay, they were good in other areas. And, my friends must have done a great job of fostering self esteem in Brucie. For a dog that had to be rescued from the highway, adopted from the pet store’s shelter dog drive, then rehomed to us, he certainly is not lacking in self-esteem.  I try and model his unerring belief in himself.

Alan has named the rescued puppy Archibald. I looked up the meaning of Archibald.  The word has Medieval and German elements meaning “genuine”, or, “precious” and bald meaning “bold”. (This reminds me of describing a gem)  A perfect description of  the brindled pit bull puppy in the barn. The subconscious mind holds so much knowledge and is achingly accurate. One mans trash can be another’s treasure.

It is time to decide whether or not Buckminster will be allowed to grow into a buck or have to be castrated and become a wether. Having your own buck is handy come Thanksgiving when your girls are in heat.  Otherwise, you have to take the girls on a date with the buck, wherever he is, in November or December. Right during the holidays.

But, keeping a buck can be a real pain.  They pee and slobber on themselves and stink to high heaven and have to be separated.  A wether is less  valuable, when it comes to earning his keep, but much easier to manage.

Buckminster and Me

I posted for vet recommendations on goat oriented Facebook groups and watched a million goat-centric Youtube videos. One way of castrating a baby goat is by banding.  It’s so simple that 4H youth can do it.  It is considered acceptable and humane. I watch a video of a woman and young child banding a baby goat. The baby stiffens as if it’s made of glass and falls over as if it’s dead.  After a little while it gets up and bounds off.

A stiffening body that falls straight over is a body that is trying to deal with severe trauma in my perception. The word shattered comes to mind. There has to be another way. What is an accepatble standard of animal treatment by others has always been problematic for me.  Especially growing up.

Some of my research reveals threads of people discussing taking their buckling to a city vet for castration only to have the baby die from anesthesia. A rural vet, accustomed to livestock, would know better than to administer anesthesia.  A good vet with very fast hands seems to be the method that will spare him the most trauma.

Asking a vet in a rural area to leave his practice to drive out to the middle of nowhere to castrate a baby goat shows how little I know.  I may as well have asked them if they had any massage appointments open for a buffalo.

I called Dr. Moon and his office said he can simply perform the procedure in the back of the truck. His practice works mostly with livestock. But, he was the first vet that I took our rescue bird dog, Zippy, to. I found Zippy in a ditch in 14 degree weather with a cluster of tumors on his head and a bad back leg. I’ve met almost every vet within a 3 hour radius and Dr. Moon correctly diagnosed the cause of the leg and honestly said he did not know what was on his head.  Neither did the surgeon, Dr. Dew, who did the procedure.  So, while I didn’t exactly connect with Dr. Moon, I trusted him and easily recognized him as having some sort of special talent for what he does.

I took Florentina along so that Buckminster could remain calm on the ride. They have never been apart.  I was so upset about the pain that hewould have to endure but I sucked it up and continued on. I remembered how I had looked exactly like  Melissa Gilbert’s Laura Ingalls Wilder depicted in the television show Little House on the Prairie when I was in the 6th grade. Same pigtails, buck teeth with a split and homemade clothes. I hoped to muster her prairie girl courage. “Buck up half pint”.  “Yes sir, pa.”

Dr. Moon came out to the truck with two nurses.  He gave the baby a deadening shot to the area.  Then, in two fast razor slices it was over.  The baby let out two cries and Florentina lowered her head at one of the nurses holding him, presenting her full rack. “That Mamma goat’s about to put a whoopin’ on you” said one of them. The nurses had already drawn blood and taken fecal samples from both of them.

Dr. Moon reminds me of Sam Shephard when he plays a character in one of his own plays or films. (Shepard was still alive at this time) His precision and speed made for the least amount of trauma for my boy. I drove home with the two goats in the back of the 4-runner feeling grateful and relieved; the theme to Little House On The Prairie playing in my head. “Good job half pint” my imaginary father says.  “Thanks pa.” I say in Melissa Gilbert’s voice.

The next day while I was cleaning out the back of the 4 -runner I found what looked like a little piece of rabbit fur. Alan walked up as I realized it belonged to Buckminster.  I cried again and felt queasy at the thought of his pain ridden groin. Alan hugged me until I was better. It was tough on him too. He grew up with cats.