I keep my misanthropy from overwhelming me because of love. No, No, No, I will not nauseate you with pop therapy or language about how love will unite all of us, blah, blah, retch, blah. No, I mean real love of specific creatures and of the living presence of others out there beyond Washington, beyond your news feed, beyond all the banal and enraging dung that appears on your screens.
I love my wife and family. Yes. What else? I love birds, children and dogs.
For me, birds are the embodiment of all that is innocent and fragile and beautiful. I feed them, sketch them, observe them endlessly — in flight, on the ground, hunting, singing. I have their bodies in the freezer, bones on my bookcase, the skull cap of a crow in front of me as I write. If I am the last to go, I shall try to make it so the vultures will own my body and everything that implies. Crows are welcome to come for a taste. Foxes too. All of this makes me happy. My atoms in the eye of a black vulture riding the thermals. Ecstasy.
But away with dreams of the end and back to this buoyant living.
At work, I do a story time for young children (babies to 4) where I sing, make my voice waver and grow loud but never frightening (I hope), take on badly done accents, sing, improvise, read stories I change all the time (veggie eating sharks, fruit loving grizzlies). We often host over 20 children and their parents and grandparents. I always end the hour with the song Wheels On The Bus. The children allow all manner of passengers to ride that bus — the Hulk, cows, sisters, the Queen, etc. A few weeks ago we needed one more passenger to begin our ride and I shouted, “One more. Who shall come onto the bus? A 4 year old boy, Nicholas, took on a very serious expression, paused and said, “Mick Jagger”. Silence. Puzzled faces on the other children. Delight among the mothers. “What will Mick say,” I asked. A mother shouted, “I love Keef.” Oh, oh, oh, most wonderful — and so we all rode on, the wheels going round and round and all of us singing Mick’s words, “I love Keef,” until, I swear, it felt as if gravity had begun to lose its power over us and we began to rise.
Rising is what this is all about, of course, keeping one’s spirits up, as opposed to falling down daily, throwing ashes upon one’s hair and taking up residence on dung hills. My dogs, border collies named wolfie and luna, help me levitate each day in all the ways dogs do — by making me move, by reminding me to love even if I am in no mood to do so, by walking up and down hills and trails with me, by having said yes to being yoked to me.
And this is what I do in return.
The pink rags are the remains of their piggies, long since dismantled. I have trained them to let the piggies rest upon their heads until I say OK, at which point they complete the game by tossing their heads back and snatching them out of the air. I laugh. Their eyes brighten. My day lightens.
Birds, children and dogs are all of a type — the innocent if not quite virtuous, the uncorrupted, the ones in whom we can still believe in promises of goodness or at least a absence of malice. The ones who make our days not only bearable but sometimes joyous. Hurrah for all we love.
What do you do to try to maintain a clear mind and open heart during this debased moment in our history? I want to know. Please. Leave comments here on or the FB page where this will also be posted.
