Carbon Dating

Where's the beef?

2011-08-02T13:28:00.001-07:00

It's my final summer before applying to vet school. I've got to be a competitive applicant. So I did what I had to do, and started shadowing with Doc at the cattle sale barn, to get my requisite food animal experience.

What to say, really? It's been an eye-opener. We've got an assembly line. Cattle come through the chute with a number glued to their back. We look up the number to find out what to do with the animal. If it's a cow, it must be a pair (meaning she has a calf which will sell with her) or a preg (Doc sticks his arm up her ass, fiddles around, and declares either that she is in a certain trimester, or else open) or a killer (which is sent to be sold for slaughter, of course). Bulls are primarily killers, but some are being marketed as breeders, and thus must be semen tested. In the clean laboratory where I first shadowed, this was a calm and simple affair, involving collecting a bull off of a tame and docile steer trained for the purpose. A bit odd to the uninitiated, no doubt, but not the least bit distressing. Here, we do rectal stimulation with a giant electric probe. It is perhaps even more unsettling than it sounds—and yes, I would liken it to rape and sodomy, as there is no other comparison. Each time, it reduces the big, bulky bulls to quivering masses, falling to their knees after first bellowing in shock.

Everything that comes through the chutes is either a "dumb bitch" or a "sonofabitch" or both—gender is irrelevant when it comes to mumbling curses. Each one must be aged and tagged, which involves tightening it into the squeeze chute, catching it by the nose with metal pinchers, wrestling its head to the side, tying it there by the nostrils, checking its teeth, and punching a metal tag through its ear. My oh-so-very-important job is to select a tag labeled with the proper age (1-7; "short and solid" meaning the teeth are worn but still useful; or "broken mouth" meaning the teeth aren't much good and so grazing, and thus weight maintenance, will be difficult) and color, designating whether the cow is a killer, open, or in a certain trimester of pregnancy. And that's all there is to it.

But there is, of course, occasional excitement. There was the steer who got so spooked he ran into a panel and broke his neck. There was the cow who'd had the blood vessels in her eyes burst because someone had roped her and dragged her by the noose into the trailer. She was literally seeing red, and charged dangerously at any human she saw, out to kill. Even Doc didn't blame her for that. There was another cow—thankfully I was not present that day—who broke her leg in the chute and had to be lifted out with chains and a Bobcat. They deposited her outside in the sun, to wait all day for someone to come and shoot her and take her off to the rendering plant. Because that's the rule: "non-ambulatory" animals can't be sold or slaughtered, just boiled down for fat. But so long as they can rise and walk—or hobble or drag—themselves through the ring, they're good to go. There are plenty in that category.

Anything that balks, and most do, is encouraged along by the electric cattle prod. I now quite willingly assist in this endeavor, zapping the beasts on the rump if they hesitate for even a second. I must say in my defense, though, that I always first try to move them verbally (by hissing, as I've been told that cattle have a limited auditory range and cannot hear deep shouting) or by more gentle physical means, such as a swat on to butt with an open palm. I won't hit the skeletal Holsteins, though. These gaunt milk cows, ancient by age five from being used so very hard (when the lifespan of a typical cow, unhindered, can reach past 20 years), terrify me. Their roach-backed ridged spines jut like a mountainous landscape and their pointy pelvises are stretched, tight as a drum, with nothing but hide. These gals will soon make it into Grade D school lunches—ground beef. By the pens, the lowing, mooing, and bellowing of cattle is deafening. Temple Grandin, the autistic woman who revolutionized slaughterhouses and feedlots with her ability to see and think like an animal and thus design more humane protocol, says that only upset and frightened cattle vocalize. She also says that the cattle prod is almost completely unnecessary when cows are handled properly. But Dr. Grandin is not here.

I've helped in more ways than just jolting cows and gluing stickers, though. I've also learned, at Doc's urging, how to castrate. A bull calf, just weaned and still pretty small, comes into the chute. It squeezes around him, locking him in place. Doc enters stage left through a gate in the chute and grabs the scrotum. He takes a sharp tool, pinches it through the sac, and rips backward, exposing the testicles. Sometimes the calf is stoic; sometimes it struggles and bellows in pain. Meanwhile, Doc runs his hand up along the fleshy, purple, and venous structures, tearing the connective tissue as he goes, separating everything that holds the testicles in place…and then he pulls, slowly, steadily, waiting for the distinctive "pop" as each muscle layer gives way. And then a last snap and they're free, to be put in a filthy bucket for some starving sale barn employee to take home for a gourmet Rocky Mountain dinner.

Doc asked me if I wanted to try my hand at it. I thought he was joking. He wasn't. Like the Pontius Pilate I've been channeling these past few weeks, I grimaced, and preemptively washed my hands of the matter. "Forgive me, Lord, for what I am about to do." I refused to perform the initial slice—the most painful part—but I allowed Doc's hands to guide mine up the slippery tube, separating the two testicles, using my thumb to pull back the connective tissue, riding up, and pulling, pulling…

They snapped free (with a little help from Doc's knife) and I did the next one all by myself, again after the first cut. Rip, pull, snap, toss. Nothing to it. My calf collapsed in the chute. "Aw God, I killed it." But they gave him a jolt with the prod, and he stood up, eyes rolling, and ran off with the rest of his brethren.

Hot, sticky blood, on the 102-degree day, congealed under and behind my nails. It took all day to wash away. "Out, damned spot…" Guilt.

Last time, Doc's son, Junior, was helping his pop. Though he's two years younger than me, it looks as though there is a fair chance we will end up in the same veterinary class. Now there's a sobering thought.

One cow, a big yellow Charolais, came charging down the alley and into the squeeze chute, crazed and mostly wild, hurtling through at breakneck speed. Afraid of losing her, Junior slammed the head gate shut, narrowing it even as she came rushing toward it—the space was too small by the time she reached it. There was a jolt and a pop…and flying through the air went the cow's left horn, settling in a cloud of dust on the filthy footing. The exterior keratin had separated completely from bone and flesh, leaving the heavy other shell unattached; raw nerve over bone was now exposed, pink and sinister, and spurting blood at the broken end, rhythmically with the terrified animal's pounding heartbeat. Blood spattered across her eye and to the ground. Her eyes rolled.

"Huh. Knocked her horn off."

I was appalled, though less than I could have been given that I had witnessed a dehorning the week before, a gruesome and painfully horrific procedure if ever there was one.

"Should we, maybe, spray that? You know, with the blood-stop stuff? She's not gonna bleed out, is she?"

"Nah, it won't matter. It'll stop. She's gonna be hamburger soon, anyway! Won't matter."

"You sure? I mean, shouldn't we spray it? That's quite a lot of blood…"

As if I hadn't heard the first time, he repeated: "Heck, she's gonna be hamburger soon, anyway. Gonna be ground into hamburger. Won't matter!"

So he grabbed the cow's nose, pinched and tied, stabbed the pronged tag through her ear, and turned her loose to the kill pen, dribbling a red trail behind her.

I picked up the horn, hid it in my pocket, and brought it home as a souvenir.

Namesake

2011-07-10T20:24:00.001-07:00

I guess I was like an anion, a halogen maybe, constantly carrying my negative energy along with me, an extra electron, baggage. And with this curse I found myself attracted, electrically pulled, toward those with radiant positive energy. Of course it looked appealing from a distance, their apparent freedom from the constrains usually put upon us all, the way they burned, burned, burned, bright sparks and flames when exposed to air, completely consumed in an instant, exhausted, but living fully and passionately. So that when I came into contact with one of these alkali fellows, an instant attraction held us fixated, a bond so strong we clung together maddened by the very thought of separation. But it was a polar relationship, unequal, one-sided, unhealthy. Ah, and the pain was unbearable so we clung tighter still in some desperate effort to avoid the inevitable. But then all it would take was something so commonplace, so simple as water, to break the bond and send us apart, repulsed, and gone. So I would return to my former state, overloaded, spinning extra, negative, lonely.

Echelons

2011-06-04T23:57:00.001-07:00

The horse I'm riding is fleabitten gray in technical terms, but white with dark freckles to the layman's eye. She glows in the ten o'clock crescent moonlit night. Moonshine. A name I might have given her after a young girl, seeing the mare, exclaimed, "She's beautiful! You should call her Moonshine!" Of course what she meant was something far too girlish and immature for my tastes—the white horse shines like the moon, I get it. Given a palomino, she'd have called it Sundance or something equally obvious and cliché. But I was thinking liquor. Why not? I already had a Brandy, and knew a Whiskey….but the mare already had a name, a tough, unrefined, unsentimental name more in line with my ideals, so Bones she remains.

Bones. Gritty, tough-as-nails, sinewy Bones. The one whose tendons and ligaments always seem to fail her. Perhaps the anatomical name was a poor choice after all. I've wrestled with her lameness issues for two years and counting now, and it looks like the battle to have a competitive horse is finally reaching its end. I can enjoy her for light riding only. The realization stings, but tonight I have other things on my mind.

It was too hot to ride during the day—and I was too busy—but now that the sun has long since sunk I hop on bareback for muggy summer night's ride. We start off slow at an ambling walk, but I can feel Bones tensing beneath me. Her glowing white hide (about the only thing I can make out in the darkness) ripples with the muscles beneath it. She spooks at a clump of weeds, the fence, a shadow. We make our way back to the woods in the marshy wet ground and listen to the sounds. There's a barred owl off in the distance. Many insects closer, grating and grinding and humming. And speaking of insects, all around us dart hundreds of fireflies, those harbingers of summer (and reminders of childhood).

Oh, how we all used to chase and hunt those things. Lightning bugs, I called them then, but surely fireflies is the far more romantic name. We'd catch 'em, put 'em in jars, feed 'em to toads and observe the glowing through the thin pulsating throat skin. The neighbor kids would smash the bugs on their driveways to observe the slowly-fading smear of luminescence. I hated them for these acts of waste and cruelty.

These memories come back now as I watch the surreal display of tiny blinking lights. They look like a glittery surface where the locations of pinpointed shine change whenever you move your head in the slightest. I've just got to relive that childhood experience. I spur my horse in pursuit.

Mounted firefly hunting! What a novel concept. We chase after the lights, Bones chomping the bit and jolting beneath me. I soon discern that there are at least two different types of the insects. One flashes quickly, then disappears in the darkness for a long while before appearing again elsewhere, teleported. The other kind blinks far more rapidly ("frequent flashers," I quickly name them) and is thus much more visible. I pursue the latter kind, eagle-eyed, keeping my horse in check.

I soon find that these frequent flashers have the annoying habit of flying lower and lower, then alighting on the ground and staying there. No way to catch them on horseback that way. The third time's the charm, though, and with a lucky grab I snag one between two fingers just as it attempts to navigate around Bones' neck. I've got to be careful and gentle now, though, as I recall from those childhood lessons. Just a tiny squeeze too hard and you'll puncture them, allowing their Elmer's glue insides to spill out amidst a sour odor. This one seems uninjured, though, while its flashing speeds up to a fever pitch. It's a yellow-green strobe light now, almost blinding at such a close proximity. I open my hand and the firefly crawls a ways up my arm before spreading its wings and once again taking off in flight.

My "task" now satisfactorily completed—and my bred-to-be-cowpony now an official firefly wrangler—we do a little trotting and loping on the black grass, then there's nothing left but to return to the barn to be cooled off, fed a treat, and put to bed.

For both of us, really.

[unedited photo from sky soon after the nearby (and horribly devastating) Joplin tornado]

On the Road Again

2011-01-09T00:06:00.001-08:00

Would that I had something fascinating to say—some revelation that would rock the world or a funny little anecdote, at least. Alas, I come up lacking anything remotely noteworthy, but rather felt that I should type up a post lest I trod the path of spiritual oblivion. I haven't done a whole lot of soul-searching over the past few weeks. Instead it's been hard work at a rough but interesting job, a smidge of cold labor outside, far too much Internet trolling, partially self-induced and awful sleep deprivation, and a stressful and frustrating and miserable New Year. Blah. The lethargy of a stalling winter.

I've been reading, and have almost finished, a book I was given awhile back by a boss, my flatterer and the source of so much of this current malcontentment. The gift, however, was in earnest, and the book is M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled. There are good parts and bad; interesting and mind-numbingly boring; true nuggets of wisdom and obnoxious psychobabble about the unconscious. I've skimmed a lot of it, mostly due to reading while tired and bored. Maybe I'm missing something extremely valuable.

But the part that has most jumped out at me is the author's assessment of evil and human nature. People, he says, are inherently lazy, and this is the root of all problems. An excerpt:

Why this failure? Why was no step taken between the temptation and the action? It is this missing step that is the essence of sin. The step missing is the step of debate….Our failure to conduct—or to conduct fully and wholeheartedly—this internal debate between good and evil is the cause of those evil actions that constitute sin. In debating the wisdom of a proposed course of action, human beings routinely fail to obtain God's side of the issue. They fail to consult or listen to the God within them, the knowledge of rightness which inherently resides within the minds of all mankind. We make this failure because we are lazy. It is work to hold these internal debates. They require time and energy just to conduct them. And if we take them seriously—if we seriously listen to this "God within us"—we usually find ourselves being urged to take the more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less. To conduct the debate is to open ourselves to suffering and struggle. Each and every one of us, more or less frequently, will hold back from this work, will also seek to avoid this painful step. Like Adam and Eve, and every one of our ancestors before us, we are all lazy.

So original sin does exist; it is our laziness. It is very real. It exists in each and every one of us—infants, children, adolescents, mature adults, the elderly; the wise or the stupid; the lame or the whole. Some of us may be less lazy than others, but we are all lazy to some extent. No matter how energetic, ambitious, or even wise we may be, if we truly look into ourselves we will find laziness lurking at some level. It is the force of entropy within us, pushing us down and holding us all back from our spiritual evolution.

Wow. The above passage, I must admit, really resonates with me. And it's not even that it's all that original or profound, as I came to the same conclusion myself a long time ago. It's just a hard thing to admit, though I'm guilty as charged.

The goal, naturally, is to confront and control this tendency; to circumvent the knee-jerk reflex of apathy, indifference, and cowardly comfortable laziness, so that, as Dr. Peck says, we can assimilate and assume the role of the benevolent and omnipotent godhead within ourselves. But as Dr. Peck also says, it's a lifelong struggle. So much easier to simply give in to temptation.

Good things are never come cheap, and they're never easy….

Just some thoughts to ponder, and maybe an additional resolution for the New Year. Or maybe "resolution" isn't the right work. A new mindset, perhaps, to slowly adopt and hopefully foster….

Out with the old, in with the new...

2010-12-31T23:48:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve morning started with some pretty apocalyptic and worrisome weather. Tornado sightings, unseasonably warm temperatures, pouring rain, hail, wicked lightning, crazy wind, and an eerie red sunrise punching through ominously heavy black clouds. But the nastiness had cleared up by afternoon and the temperature plummeted, so we'll probably be in the freezing range tomorrow. It certainly beats twisters, though.

2010 was a much better year than 2009. Nothing dramatically amazing happened, but hell, I like the monotony of my secure, boring routine. I'll keep on keepin' on like Bob Dylan for as long as I can.

Let's hope 2011 is just as solid or even better. And in the mindset of positive change, I've got a pair of New Year's resolutions:

1. Ride better. Sounds simple, but it's far easier said than done. I'm having some issues with a couple of my horses, and most of the problem stems from the fact that I haven't taken the time to address the root causes. Horse riding and training really is an accurate metaphor for the path through life, and well, I've been rushing through the important parts that need a slower, more sensitive approach, and lingering on the fun aspects that more often than not do more harm than good. If I just focus, I'll be more effective, more humane, and better overall. Now to put that into practice....

2. Let it be. I'll admit it, I can be a tenacious, self-righteous bitch at times, when moral, ethical, or factual issues come to light. Usually, I think it's justified. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Regardless, some times are worth fighting for, and some things just aren't. May I have the wisdom to differentiate and choose my battles, the humility to admit the possibility that I might be incorrect, and the diplomacy to make a point without excess.

I've got my work cut out for me.

And to everyone else, family, friends, and strangers worldwide--may the new year bring you hope, peace, and happiness.

The Giver and the Taker

2010-12-27T23:45:00.001-08:00

I'm home on break now, after an exhausting but productive and swift semester. Finally, a moment to gather my thoughts. Time to slip from strenuous student to the profound lethargy of apathy and laziness. I'm not particularly motivated to do much of anything but sit around, complain about the cold weather, and stuff my face with leftover Christmas goodies. Which is why, for the sake of intellectual and spiritual development, it's a good thing I've found a new job to whip me into shape.

I'm at another vet clinic for a very short winter stint, working as an impromptu veterinary assistant at a hospital which specializes in avian and exotic pet medicine, in addition to the standard canine and feline treatment. It's a good gig—except for the commute and 8 a.m. starting time—and I've already learned a bunch about birds. Parrots and their kin are amazing animals; an untapped world of intelligence. And tricky as hell to treat.

But I've witnessed something else at the clinic in the past week, something that I've experienced before but never from this perspective: Euthanasia.

I know of no other position where a professional is in charge of both bestowing life and taking it away. Birth, preservation, care, and supportive medicine are coupled with the termination of life. First, do no harm is the doctor's oath, and yet the animal doctor quite willingly (and kindly) gives the ultimate harm and the final gift of release. Two sides of the same coin. Yin and yang.

Whether human doctors should provide end-of-life options for suffering patients is another issue. The fact is that they do not, and any talk to the contrary is frowned upon anddismissed as unethical or worse. Yet for non-human patients, the expected outcome is "good death," assisted by a pink barbiturate deftly injected into a vein.

Thus the paradox. Human(e) compassion against cold medical/scientific practice. The veterinarian loves animals, chose this job because of this love, and yet every killing is just another day at work. For the animal owner, however, this is usually a heart-wrenching, emotional, and horrific decision. I know. I've been on that end. The veterinarian's job, however, is last-rites giver, counselor, friend, doctor, and executioner—quite the mix of skills.

It's a bizarre snapshot into someone else's life. The first death last week was that of an ailing cockatiel. The elderly owner was in utter hysterics. She left the bird because she could not bear to stay. The crotchety vet was touched; sad. She stalled. She said, "I do not want to kill this bird"—but how many birds has she killed in her career? But the time came, and she put the animal in place, administered gas until she slowed and dropped, shot her up, and pronounced her dead. I watched. I am yet working on desensitization; I was moved by the owner's tears and saddened by the bird's limp body (the bird who had, minutes before, sat on her perch and squawked at me with head feathers raised in indignation). But still, I was not particularly affected. Perhaps I'm already turned the cold scientist. Perhaps "it was just a bird." Perhaps I knew it was for the best. Perhaps I've already mastered the art of disassociation. Regardless, the bird was dead, and we cleaned up, forgot, and moved on.

The next euthanasia was that of a little old dog in the midst of a shuddering seizure. There wasn't anything to be done but put her to sleep (what a euphemism, that, but perhaps it's more correct than we know). It was the day before Christmas Eve. This owner elected to stay, crying and stroking her tremoring pet's head as the vet explained the procedure, explained brain death and the cessation of heartbeat and the possibility of the reflexes of a dying body. Observing passively, with literally no dog in this fight, no emotional attachments, and no particular care for whether the animal lived or died, I felt like an interloper. I was intruding on such an intimate affair and I felt conspicuous and out of place. Of course there was compassion for the poor red-eyed woman who was losing her beloved friend—stroking the head and calling her name even after death—and even a sense of loss for the dog. And of course, empathy for the whole situation (as I said, I've been there). But this, too, passed, as did the dog. And after exchanging sad glances and sighing for the gravity of the situation, we packaged the body up in a trash bag and carted it off to the freezer.

And so, snapshots of lives and deaths. I don't know the people (they are merely clients) except for what I have seen in their time of intense grief. I never knew the animals until their final moments. It's simply a bizarre phenomenon.

I haven't any particularly profound thoughts on the topic, expect that I'm beginning to understand why veterinary medicine is one of the professions with the highest suicide rate. It's not that vets are miserably depressed and self-loathing. Rather, they just understand life and death better than most people. It's a different conception. Live as well as you can as long as you can, but terminal suffering is senseless.

Better to just move on.

(the opening image, by the way, is the accidental capture of a firefly's trail against a summer night sky)

A Morbid Little Update

2010-11-23T00:09:00.001-08:00

But nothing too profound.

Well, I've been quite the irresponsible little blogger. More than five months since my last post. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing (shame on me for abandoning my online journal, for which so many countless eager people are on tenterhooks just dying to read) or a good thing (does this mean I actually have, like, a real life now?). But I had to pop in, at least for a moment, and update on Almost, Finally's (now Carbon Dating's) two-year anniversary. Who brought the cake?

Brief synopsis and catch-up with my life: still lame and boring, still lovin' it. Continuing to work, cranking along through school, shadowing more jobs…

That's a funny little anecdote, though not for the faint of heart. I saw my first leg amputation a few weeks ago. Golden retriever with cancer. I arrived just as they were slicing into the skin, the area prepped and shaved. Promised myself I wouldn't faint this time. Grimaced as the serrated bone wire sawed through the femur. Winced as the thin bone remnants snapped in two. Jumped back in shock as an artery was nicked and a geyser of blood shot three feet in the air, splattering the walls and landing at boots. Gripped my own legs as the dog's leg turned at an increasingly bizarre and grotesquely impossible angle from the rest of the body. But when the veterinarian, without thinking, severed the last flap of skin and unceremoniously handed me the heavy dripping stump, I was surprisingly rational about it, and not the least bit queasy. Mission Desensitization accomplished.

So, that's where I'm at right now. Transporting disembodied dog legs on the road to those eventual far-off-but-every-so-scarily-approaching goals, jumping through all of the appropriate hoops on the way. This semester is almost over (just two more papers to write and three finals to take), then a break, more school, then even more school, then, then, then….

But I'll remain in the present for now. It's plenty occupying as it is. Happy Thanksgiving, ya'll.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

2010-06-07T23:12:00.000-07:00

It’s late. After ten, anyway, maybe pushing eleven. The sky is as dark as it gets out here on a night like this. West, where the sun set long ago, a faint purple emanates only to be snuffed out by the oppressive night air. Far off to the south you can catch the distant glow of the Big City of Springfield; to the north above the black trees, it’s a dulled haze that must be Buffalo. I face this way. Behind me, if I crane my head, a bare bulb in the barn catches the heads of the sleepy horses as they poke out of the stalls to eye me with lazy curiosity. It’s past their bedtime, too—I’m keeping them up.

I squat on the grass; my legs tire and so I sit down, Indian style, in the dew. I look up. Stars everywhere, dizzying millions of stars. Didn’t I, once, in elementary school, make a mock planetarium, or did I dream that? I, or the I in my dream, took a piece of stiff black paper and pricked a hundred holes in it with the sharp point of a compass. And then I folded it round, and held it over my head, and looked through it at the long buzzing fluorescent bulbs. Behold, I am the LORD. Let there be light. And I have created the heavens and the firmament, go forth and multiply, be fruitful and prosper.

There’s Venus over there, hanging heavy in the sky, the brightest light of all. The compass must have slipped and punctured too far; too much light comes in.

“But here there is no light,” wrote Keats, “Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown / Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.”

And what are those green and yellow flickers? I reposition myself in the damp grass. My eyes have adjusted to the dimness by now. Fireflies. An eerie stillness. The only motion I can see are the flittings of the luminescent insects. They are different species, different shades, different patterns of glowing abdomens. It’s invertebrate Morse code. I’m here, and here, and fertile, and free. Let’s sanctify this dark night and consummate our union.

Beyond the lightning bugs there is real lighting on the horizon, out Buffalo way. Sometimes there are fireworks over the trees back there, and this has the same pinkish cast. There are no bolts, and no thunder, just silent flashes and brief illuminations. Static electricity. The power of heat. It’s humid and sticky; the clouds approach, pulsating with energy as they come. But there will be no rain tonight.

I would sit out here forever, now that I am entranced in the moment, but still, reluctantly, I rise and head back to the house, taking care not to disturb the now-slumbering horses. The lights outside the garage are on, and the driveway is littered with tiny black beetles. I can’t take a step without crunching a dozen obsidian carapaces. Meanwhile, the larger June bugs and big brown moths are dive-bombing my head and falling dumbly to the concrete. There’s even a huge dung beetle stuck on its back, clawing helplessly at the air above it. And there are a couple of wise fat old toads sitting there at the buffet.

I pick one up; he’s got a slight yellowish cast to him, and he’s medium in size. This one’s a talker. He starts chirping immediately, pushing against me with his powerful hind legs, glaring at me through beautiful gold-flecked eyes. I remember a favorite pastime of my childhood. Carefully scooping the toad up in one hand, I rush back out the pasture. I wait for my eyes to readjust to the dark, then I follow the seemingly random motion of one of the small green lights. I zero in on my target. I can’t see the firefly, but I move closer with each flash until I can reach out and swat with an open palm to knock the insect to the ground. Then, gently, I reach down with a soft thumb and forefinger to collect my prize as it climbs up a blade of grass. Now I retreat once again to the light.

I place the squirming toad on the ground and he stays put. Then I lightly toss the bug in front of him. He turns to face it. The bug spreads its wings, starts to walk off. Hop, hop, a lunge and gaping fast mouth, and it's over. The amphibian is quite the warty little lion. I snatch him up and hold him in the dark, hoping to catch the faint glow of the still-live firefly as it slides down his throat, but I am disappointed. Ten or more years ago, this used to work wonderfully, and provided many nights of diversion for the neighborhood children. Oh well.

And now I must snap out of the moment, of the trip down memory lane, of the perfect sticky dark night. There are things to do. I’m tired.

I leave toads and beetles and lightning behind and come inside, to the laptop and the TV and my parents and dogs and a cold shower and a warm bed.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?

--John Keats

Of Enchiladas and Encephalitis

2010-05-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

A couple nights ago I met up with some old friends from high school. Our numbers are dwindling, and the groups get smaller with each successive reunion. We’ve scattered, dispersed, changed. It’s the inevitable fact of life that people leave—you yourself leave—you move on. When I was younger, this bothered me immensely. Now I’ve accepted it for what it is and instead look forward to new meetings and encounters, and cherish all the more strongly the relationships that really last.

Anyway, the six of us met downtown for some good Mexican food and chattered on with our requisite catching up on the past semester’s activities. We’re a science-heavy group, and all but one of us are Biology majors, so despite our differences in curriculum and locales we had a lot in common to compare and contrast our “shared” experiences.

Afterwards, we tromped off to a nearby park as twilight fell, passing on the way an odd production of Shakespeare. The play was A Comedy of Errors, but the set was clearly St. Louis, and the actors were all wearing Cardinals uniforms. I’m not sure how well Shakespeare translates to modern-day Missouri, and I’ll never know since I couldn’t hear their words through their overly-exaggerated but poorly enunciated hick-British accents and lack of microphones. We walked on.

If I thought up a list of the most dangerous things for children to play with, gigantic rocks might be up there, following piranhas and machetes. But apparently playground designers beg to differ, for in the middle of the park sat a giant fake rock. “Fake” in the sense that it was obviously not naturally occurring (unless a meteoroid had struck the center of Springfield, MO but forgotten to leave a crater), and if you tapped on it hard enough it sounded hollow, but you would also cut and bruise your hand for it looked and felt very rock-like. It was probably about eight feet tall at the highest point, and had crude “natural” steps coming up one side. All the other sides, however, were either vertical drops or actually slanted backwards, probably to discourage climbing but really having the exact opposite effect. There were, of course, no warning signs anywhere about parental supervision. A tiny plaque on the side of the rock said that it was recommended for children aged five to 12 and might cause death if installed over concrete. Luckily, the park directors had installed it over shredded tires. Safe! Painful on the feet! Enough to cushion a landing, but not enough to prevent a neck from being broken if someone tumbled down headfirst from the slippery precipice!

So, of course, we climbed it. Including the backwards-slanted side, which had neither handholds nor footholds, and which I completely failed to summit after nearly mooning everyone else in the party and destroying a day’s worth of upper body strength. There were also a handful of young children—no parents in sight—who fearlessly joined us strangers and catapulted themselves from the sides while I winced. The guys in our group attempted jumping and rolling from the top (success) and doing a back flip off the walls (repeated complete failure, accompanied by multiple pathetic sprays of tire shreds).

Afterwards, we sat and talked in the dark. A baseball game at the nearby stadium ended, and there was a pretty cool fireworks display. We ooh-ed and ah-ed appropriately.

Topics of discussion ranged from the extraordinarily efficient microflora in cattle stomachs (did you know that you can cut a hole in a cow’s side entering the digestive system, leaving it permanently open to the outside world, and everything will be hunky-dory?) to the ruthlessly cutthroat and competitive industry of apple farming and copyrighted fruits (those hybridization laws are intense) to whether or not you could kill someone with a Taser if you first dipped them in salt water and them positioned the probes far enough apart. Yeah, we’re nerds, I guess.

Eventually we parted, this time for at least another year. It had been a nice meeting, with good food and good old friends. Some of us were going off to summer classes, others to continuing research products, some to jobs.

We’ve all entered the real world.

We’re grown up.

I’m grown up.

When the hell did that happen?

That am a Proverbial Chicken

2010-05-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

As sunsets go, the one Sunday evening wasn’t particularly impressive. There were no vibrant red hues and no striking purple clouds to sear fire-orange for a split second as the haloed orb sunk behind the leafy hills. Instead, the sun was a rather nondescript shade with dulled, hazy edges that crept lazily across the sky. But there were, however, rays of light emanating from the drowsy star that shot out across the paling blue. The rays were so numerous, and so defined, and so large and long and bright, that I found myself unconsciously reaching for them. I could have plucked them like the chords of a harp….and released sweet music. But I couldn’t reach, so instead I snapped a few quick pictures.

Later, I went on Facebook and noticed that one of my friends had also taken photos of the sunrays on his phone and uploaded them to his wall. He had different clouds that I—he’s in a different town, after all—and of course a different house and different hills. But it was the same sun, and the same majestic rays streaming from the center. Funny how we’d unwittingly shared a moment.

And I almost didn’t spare that moment to stop and gaze at the lyrical strings of the sun. Since school let out (and of course before), I’ve been running around like mad trying to tie up loose ends. Why? Now that’s a good question. First, I’ve got my two jobs. Those are legitimate concerns. Gotta go on call with the vet and do all the “fun” reproduction work—collect stallions, cool and package semen, clean and inseminate mares—in short, it’s a paycheck and good experience for the ol’ résumé. Then I’ve got the other job, where I ride and train the horses and help out with any odds and ends on the farm, assisting with marketing and such. It keeps me pretty occupied, that’s for sure.

[Side note: I’m typing this in MS Word, and the grammar check is insisting that “that’s” should be replaced with “that am.” I’s pretty sure that am wrong.]

Beyond my ~30 hours a week of jobs, however, I have few pressing commitments. Yes, there are the daily chore responsibilities around the farm. Stalls need to be picked, waters changed, horses fed. The latter need to be ridden, too, and exercised occasionally, tuned up, and practiced. If the gray mare stays sound I’d like to start back up barrel racing her again. I do miss it.

But in between important engagements, I frantically scramble to do….noting. Putz around on the Internet, for one, but also slightly more noble tasks like creating a big hardbound book/ photo album and beading some tack for sale or personal use. And reading. I’m so intimidated by my stack of To Read books that I hardly dare to pick one up. I started out strong, racing through An American Childhood. It was good, but not as great as I’d hoped. Since then, I’ve stalled. I’ve got a half-completed volume of Jack Kerouac novels—started a year ago and still not finished—but I’m procrastinating because, quite frankly, I don’t much care for Jack Kerouac. His road-ready bum and devil-may-care persona are so far removed from my own way of living that I can hardly relate. Still, I do enjoy his stream-of-conscious prose (and find myself imitating it after reading a bit too long), and there’s that whole “cultural exposure” deal, and that whole “can’t start something without finishing it deal,” so I forge ahead, making myself miserable with my own self-imposed agenda, as we are all wont to do.

The past two days it’s just been too damn hot. It went up to 87 degrees Fahrenheit today, with high humidity, and I was dying. Never mind that we’ve got at least another 10 degrees to go. And I thought this was the sublimation point. The heat bakes me into an unproductive lethargy. Alas.

The Endless Round

2010-05-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

“Spring is when there are new babies in the meadow.” This was a line from a beloved childhood story, I think, perhaps told by an anthropomorphized animal. The circumstances are forgotten. The words surface out of context. New babies in the meadow….and new nests in the birdhouses. And in this particular nesting box, there were five speckled brown eggs, from which five wrinkled and pink aliens emerged—bulbous-headed, jerky, reptilian, blind, and hideous. I found the first one shortly after it hatched, before its siblings has chipped their way into the bright blue world, and held its tiny limp and wobbling form cradled in the palm of my hand. New babies…new life. Everywhere.

The birds are the most obvious examples, in their lively courtship rituals and rowdy fights and poorly concealed hidey holes (beneath the lid of the propane tank, for one, or along the back walls of the horse stalls, where I watched transfixed as a tiny few-day-old chick moved too close to the edge, faltered, frantically flapped its budding ineffectual wings, and tumbled haphazardly down the gap behind the wall; alas, rescue efforts were in vain and the mice—themselves teeming with offspring—must have feasted well that night). Trees and shrubs bud, the voles in the field build their endless network of dens and hide their litters safe below, and the music of the frogs at twilight is deafening. And everywhere, everywhere at night, beetles and moths and craneflies blanket the ground, crunch underfoot, slam stupidly into buildings and cars and ricochet down, cluster around light fixtures, get tangled in hair.

But this outstanding fecundity comes at a high price. Of the five chicks in the northern birdhouse, the first one jumped out of its own accord—free at last!—proceeded to hop and scuffle into the garage, and was quickly dispatched by my mother’s curious and brain-dead dachshund, who carried her prize triumphantly around, clamped tightly in her vise-like jaws. The last bird to remain in the nest seemed healthy enough when I checked a couple of days ago; this morning, it was a crumpled and ant-riddled sack of feathers. I fished it out with a long piece of pasture grass and dumped it unceremoniously in the field so that nature could continue to take its course. Its parent squawked angrily at me from the roof of the house. “Your child is dead,” I wanted to tell her. Instead, I retired inside. I don’t know what happened to the other three chicks.

An old professor saw me sitting vacantly in a campus computer lab the other day and decided it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on things. We discussed polite social subjects: my schedule for next semester, my summer plans. I asked him what he had been up to. Hadn’t he been on sabbatical? And then he got so excited to tell me his story that he glowed like a boy and stuttered and fumbled in his rush to get the words out fast enough.

Yes, he had been on sabbatical. He had gone to Africa. He had seen Tanzania, the Serengeti. He had been close enough to a bachelor band of giant elephants that he had heard the beating and whooshing of their ears as they lazily fanned themselves. He had seen a leopard crouched low in the tall grass, stalking an antelope. He had heard the noises of night life on the African plains, the fighting and dying and bleeding and breeding that went on under cover of darkness, that world into which tourists like American Chemistry professors were forbidden to enter, lest they become victims of the night.

But, he lamented, there was one thing he had not seen, and one thing that he wanted to go back so that he could experience: the great wildebeest and zebra migration. He told me, through his tripping tongue and brilliant eyes, that millions upon millions of the herbivores make the trek across the river annually, and here they calve and foal, millions upon millions of gangly-legged babies cavorting through the rich green grass of spring, before the oppressive summer heat burns it down to yellow desert. There are so many of the young wildebeests and zebras that the predators are sated. The lions have all they care to eat, and after gorging, they laze in the shade and watch, eyes complacent, tails idly flicking. The crocodiles eat their fill, and the hyenas, and the giant black African vultures—in turn fueling their own reproductive success. Yet, by sheer mass of numbers, the wildebeests and zebras preserve, nay, thrive. It’s a brilliant strategy.

Elton John had it right:

From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round

It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

Let us all jump from the nest and ford the river—dare to do, or die. Take our chances. Stretch our legs and spread our wings—full of vivacity—let’s go!

An Empty Chair

2010-05-14T16:10:00.000-07:00

I return from my little lapse in blogging, Semester-From-Hell ended, just in time for the commencement of graduates. It’s a funny occasion. All Pomp and Circumstance and a few long boring speeches and cheers and then waltz outside for a photo opportunity with parents and siblings, go party or whatever, and then move on, and forget the past four years. Another chapter completed. One door closes, one door opens. I myself am halfway there!

I wrote the following poem when I was 13 years old; I have seldom written poetry since. I’m no Whitman or Keats, let’s put it that way, but this one little piece, for some reason, sticks out as the highlight of my poetic literary achievements. I penned it to commemorate and lament the high school graduation of a friend of mine, and her subsequent departure from the concert band we both enjoyed. Now, as I prepare to watch some new(er) friends graduate from college, the words of my younger self rise and beg to be remembered:

We sat with horns to lips and eyes ahead
As the magical scene before us unfolded
And we watched, caught in the joy of the moment
A single day to be cherished for a lifetime
And yet with bittersweet regret
There was a silent lonely place
Amidst us all
Its hapless grace
Was all alone:
An empty chair

We could see him sitting in the ranks
Of all the young who met their future that day
Who thought, or joked, or cried, or prayed
All present there, waiting their turn
But as the bold, brassy music we played
There was a quiet spot
All but forlorn
Left there, forgot:
A vacant chair

And loudly Pomp and Circumstance we played
Our tapping feet and blissful smiles belied
That inside we laughed and cried
As we watched them step up to receive
An honor, yet
Our eyes wandered
To the left
That forgotten token:
That empty chair

We lost them that day, and they left us behind
They went forth, for futures must be made!
Their diplomas taken, and new levels reached
But remembered the band where memories were made!
Sorrowfully we watched them go
The five seniors
And five seats
Unoccupied there:
Five vacant chairs

One day the rest of us will follow them, away
We too shall proudly step up to take the honor
And go forth into our worldly conquest
Our destinies to find; our futures to mold
And leave behind us memories and friends
Who sadly gaze
At the lonely spots
We have forgot:
Our empty chairs

Classified Information

2010-03-06T18:13:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a fellow I had gone to high school with, asking me if I would serve as a reference for him and give a good report of his character. Apparently he had been accepted to a highly prestigious government intelligence internship, pending security clearance. He needed people who still lived in southwest Missouri, he said, so of course I agreed to speak to the representative for the government agency. I did not realize until later that this would entail actually meeting with the guy, but by the time I learned that little fact, it was too late to say no and I couldn't leave my friend in the lurch.

That week, I wondered how the meeting would go. My imagination, I must say, ran wild. I secretly hoped that the super secret spy would be some version of James Bond. He would sneak up behind me unannounced while I looked blindly about in the other direction—then, before I could make a move, stifle my surprised scream with a gag and blindfold, stuff me into his spymobile, and whisk me away to some hidden location. There, I would be informed that I had been chosen to fulfill some Very Important Mission. The cover story about the internship reference was simply a ruse. I would be obligated and bound by duty and honor to serve my country…or die trying. And I would accept this Magnificent Task (would I have a choice?) and become a legendary secret agent / super sleuth / incognito spy. Etc. It was quite dramatic.

The evening before the appointed interview, I received a call from Mr. Bond. He asked me when and where we could meet, and I told him where I went to school. There was a pause on the other end, and then he replied that he did not know where that was, as he was not from this area. I named the streets and cross-streets and general direction, then added, "But I'm sure you can Mapquest it on the Internet and find it much easier." To which he replied, "But I'm traveling and don't have my computer with me."

Oh.

Hmmmmm.

So…so much for accosting an unsuspecting me in a crowd. He couldn't even find a big well-known college campus in the middle of town with a bunch of signs pointing to it.

We finally agreed to meet in the parking lot of a nearby credit union, so that he wouldn't have to worry about on-campus parking (you mean your car doesn't fold up to the size of a briefcase? can't fly to land on roofs? isn't equipped with anti-security measures and a pass-all parking permit?). The interview itself was a touch awkward. Mr. Bonds was aging, beer-bellied, and gold-toothed, but pleasant. He flashed his badge when I got out of my car without skipping a beat of his introduction. Then it was straight into grilling me about, my business at the college (sir, student, sir!), my major (is Biology satisfactory?), and so on. It was a bit intimidating. Then on to questions about the prospective intern (mentally stable? loyal to the US government? would he ever do anything to harm the US government or put it in jeopardy? good at keeping secrets?), followed by random chitchat. Seems he used to breed PMU horses in Canada. Sounds suspicious, Mr. Ulterior Motive.

Then we parted, me feeling as though I had just passed an examination. Egads. All I know is that the safety of our country is in semi-incompetent hands—the sort of hands who are just as likely to find a big ol' university as they are to find bin Laden.

…or maybe I'll be caught posting this, and suffer the consequences. If I disappear, kindly check the ditches for my remains, but whatever you do, don't notify the authorities unless you want to be next.

Back in the Saddle Again

2010-02-26T21:54:00.001-08:00

I wish by golly I could spread my wings and fly
And let my grounded soul be free for just a little while
To be like eagles when they ride upon the wind
And taste the sweetest taste of freedom for my soul

To let my feelings lie where harm can not come by
And hurt this always hurtin' heart
That needs to rest awhile
I wish by golly I could spread my wings and fly
And taste the sweetest taste of freedom for my soul

Then I'd be free at last, free at last
Great God Almighty I'd be free at last
I'd be free at last, free at last
Great God Almighty I'd be free at last

--Spiritual

The recent tragic incident involving the death of a SeaWorld trainer at the flippers of a captive killer whale has inspired a flurry of debates about the ethics and practicality of confining dangerous wild animals. There are no easy answers, of course. On the one hand, the animal is probably happier and healthier out in its natural environment—and people are safer. On the other, perhaps science can benefit from studying these creatures, and we can preserve and protect threatened species, and we can find ways to mentally stimulate and entertain them so that they have perfectly content lives.

I think the whole overemphasis on a "natural" environment can get a bit silly. Who defines what is and is not "natural?" There are no corners of the globe which have not in some way been influenced or even "tamed" by human intervention, so it's a bit of a moot point if human tampering is supposed to be the deciding factor.

Most zoo animals take quite well to captivity. The majority of them aren't particularly intelligent. So long as their basic needs are met, they're thrilled with their safety and routine. It's a security blanket, and they settle into a happy complacency, although they might be cramped for space to roam.

It's a different story for the truly smart animals. Things like macaws and yes, orcas, require far more than iron bars or the concrete sides of an aquarium can provide. I don't think it's impossible to keep them humanely, but I think it's exceedingly difficult, requiring a lot of extra work on the part of their human caregivers. And it really bothers me to see the great apes, like gorillas and chimpanzees, on display for gawking crowds. To me, it might as well be a Down Syndrome child down there. Not much difference in principle. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Some people, like the rabid PETA activists, believe that domestic animals are inherently abused. True, many are maltreated, or kept in less than stellar living arrangements. Horses, for example, need plenty of room to roam, but sadly few receive this basic life requirement, leading to severe mental and physical implications. But at the same time, I can look at my spoiled and pampered half-dozen and know without a doubt that they are happy in their posh lives. Sure, they enjoy frolicking in the fields when the weather's nice, but the first hint of rain or cold and they're standing at the barn door, begging to come into warms stalls, to have their soft blankets put on, to sleep in the cushy shavings, to eat their sweet food mixed with their myriad of costly supplements. Yeah.

My good mare, Bones, was injured last May. I'm sure I blogged a few snippets about it in the past, but for a quick summary she turned up lame and unridable, and after months of waiting and failed diagnostics, I buckled down to have her taken to the big equine hospital in Oklahoma. The diagnosis was a badly torn tendon. Apparently the mare was even more steadfast than I realized, for the injury was severe although she hardly limped or seemed to care. Treatment was costly and cutting-edge, involving the cultivation and injections of stem cell-like proteins from the horse's own blood plasma and applications of shockwave therapy. It also included a strict stall rest regimen: first three months of 12-foot by 12-foot confinement, with little to no hand-walking a day, followed of two more months limited to a 30-foot round pen. Bones took in all in stride, which is surprising given her very high strung and reactive nature and her relatively young age. She would gaze longingly at her friends as they cavorted about the pasture or ate the grass she so desperately wanted but could not reach. Many a time I saw her leap in the air and pivot mid-buck to avoid slamming into the metal panels that hedged her in. Most of the day, however, she stood with her head lowered, her eyes half-closed, her hindquarters to the cold wind and snow, depressed and unmoving, perhaps resigned to her fate which she could not affect.

And then, on Tuesday, freedom. Time, according to the doctors' instructions, to turn the horse loose. And you've never seen a happier animal. She flexed her atrophied muscles (to look at her frail frame now, and compare it to her previous bulked-up Schwarzenegger appearance, is quite the juxtaposition) and bolted across the pasture, slid in the mud, leapt up, pivoted, charged another horse, spun around and dashed hell-bent the other way. She's the very picture of athleticism. I cringed to see her fly and slide, because the fibers of the tendon, even if they are healed, are still weak and prone to reinjury—but what can I do?

And so, with trepidation, I saddled her up for the first time in nearly 10 months. She watched me with a cautious eye. Everything fit differently. Her whole conformation has changed. She chomped the bit, perplexed. And I slid into the saddle, adjusting my weight, scared. She balanced beneath me. I asked her to move out. She responded, an easy walk. And then she remembered that she had a reputation to fulfill, that of Crazy, and she gladly reassumed her role, attempting to bolt, throwing her head, prancing sideways. This is the Bones I know!

I was only allowed a few minutes, as the leg and weak muscles can not be overstressed. And I thought she might have limped again, which would mean that all the time and money would have been for naught. But I can't say for sure, so I'll hold off on judgment and pessimism until later. For now, I'm just glad to have my horse back. And I'm sure the horse is glad for her freedom.

I'm back in the saddle again
Out where a friend is a friend
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly gypsum weed
Back in the saddle again

Ridin' the range once more
Totin' my old .44
Where you sleep out every night
And the only law is right
Back in the saddle again

Whoopi-ty-aye-oh
Rockin' to and fro
Back in the saddle again
Whoopi-ty-aye-yay
I go my way
Back in the saddle again

--Gene Autry

The Knack to Vivify

2010-02-15T19:29:00.001-08:00

There's a swale ditch that runs through the pasture, and in times of heavy precipitation such as these, it fills with flowing runoff water and there's a veritable creek that cuts the field in half and trickles down through the muddy woods before joining up with other small tributaries and meeting the Pomme de Terre River. It's frozen now with a sludgy kind of snowy ice so that when you try to walk across it bends and moans and stretches down before giving way and setting your feet down gently on the muddy bottom. Stuck out there today, in the oppressively bitter cold with a few casual snow flurries carried on the whipping wind, once again shackled to a grazing horse, bundled up in Carhartt coveralls, earmuffs, and scarf, I entertained myself by trying to balance myself on the ice without breaking it. Good practice, I thought, in case I ever found myself stranded in the middle of a patch of slushy thin ice and had to safely maneuver to solid land. My efforts, unfortunately, were unsuccessful, as time and time again my thankfully waterproof boots splashed through and stirred up murky eddies. Having failed at this objective, I next diverted myself by picking up glassy shards and observed their clarity and ripples. In breaking the ice and peeling it back, I suddenly thought about the microcosm in the cold water below. Was I disturbing it in my thoughtless destruction? Would the cold kill the organisms that lived inside?

And so, in the mud of the woods in the pasture, while my horse nudged the frozen grass halfheartedly and gave me a look like I was crazy, I bent down on my knees and peered into the icy water.

Instant gratification.

For what did I see almost immediately, crawling and sliding among strands of filamentous algae, but a tiny turbellarian flatworm? Yes, less than a centimeter long and a millimeter wide, the tiny paper-thin form reared its head and searched along the bottom of the muddy still water. I leaned and stared and observed its life.

We studied these things in a Zoology course I took last year. They truly are fascinating creatures, if you're into that invertebrate sort of thing. Like many of the so-called "lower" animals, they possess remarkable capabilities of regeneration. We performed an experiment on them once—"surgery," the professor called it, but "butchery" would have been more appropriate. My partner and I cut off our worm's head with a fine razor blade, then split the body halfway down. The head should have grown a new stunted body, while the bisected remains should have sprouted two new heads. Alas, some contaminant killed our unfortunate fellow(s) within a week, just as they were starting to heal and regrow. Another one makes the ultimate sacrifice in the quest for scientific knowledge.

If I was a planarian, what would my world view be? I try to recall knowledge from the class. Turbellarians cannot "see" in our sense of the word, but they can detect light through ocelli which look like nothing but the eyes of a comical cartoon character. What else? They can feel touch, and they don't much like it. They feed through a "mouth" on their ventral surface which rather resembles a penis, yet they are hermaphroditic.

And what if someone lopped off my head and cleaved my neck? Would I split in three? What would my new heads say? Would they share my memory? Would they act and talk and think like the original "me?" Would I curse the person who cut me, or thank them for allowing me to grow to this new wonderful form?

So I sat and stared and pondered until the horse urged me on up the creek to another spot, where she contentedly stopped to graze. I peeled back the ice here, too, and got right to work just looking. And oh God, what have I been missing all these years when I didn't know to see?

There's a story about the Native Americans; whether it's true I don't know. As the tale goes, the Indians, when the first European ships sailed to the New World bearing White Man, could not see them. For days they gazed right through the slowly growing blots on the horizon. Without comprehension, without a point of reference for comparison, the ships simply did not exist. Only when a shaman stared down the clouds did he realize the truth, which he then shared with the people, and their eyes were opened.

Yes. And here, down in the murk, my newly-sighted eyes spied one, two, no, seven, eight planarians creeping and feeding in a five square inch plot of mud. But they've been there all along! And around them little tiny aquatic plants released little tiny bubbles to the surface—oxygen!—the product of their photosynthesis, light- and carbon-fixing. And that's been happening all this time!

I'm reduced to a simpleton, a child, finding fascination in the most mundane things. But they aren't mundane. They are remarkably complex, intricate, complicated, important, and even in the midst of this bitter winter—the worst I've ever known—they continue on.

There's hope there. As the flatworm regenerates its severed head, so too will the trees put forth new buds and leaves, and the ground will thaw, and the air will warm.

Spring is around the bend, bringing whispered promises and hope.

Another Depressing Death

2010-02-03T22:52:00.000-08:00

Yep, poor Frosty. Didn’t stand a chance against six horses who gathered their collective courage and banded together to neutralize the threat. After losing his ears and eyebrows to a hungry Buddy, the beleaguered snowman was deprived of his arms by a smug Rebel. Bones and Mack knocked his head off while Brandy hung back apprehensively. Then Sawyer moved in and with a few powerful pawing kicks toppled the whole thing over. All the horses seemed a little too proud of themselves as they clustered together to sniff and lick the battered mound of snow.

I thoroughly enjoyed the snow (look how much!)—but the aftermath of mud is a different story. Today, while tromping through the pasture, horse in tow, I walked clear out of my sole. The rubber bottom of one of my nice boots simply stuck firm in the slop and pulled completely away. It was a pitiful one-legged hop back to the house to change footwear.

So—is it Spring yet? I’ve seen a few robins, those happy harbingers of the fairest season, but if Punxsutawney Phil’s predictions hold true, we’ve still got a lot of cold ahead of us. Which might explain the freezing fog this morning and the eerie frosty landscape. Oh well. I’ll crawl back under the covers for another six weeks of hibernation and bide my time ‘til rebirth and renewal.

Fragility and Futility

2010-01-30T23:49:00.001-08:00

Yesterday while meandering through the winding country roads (blanketed in a treacherous layer of slick snow, as I had found out earlier that morning in an enlightening incident involving a tight curve, a barbed wire fence, and a punctured tire), I passed another vehicle which was stopped blocking the lane. The motorist was not experiencing mechanical difficulty, however; he had his digital camera out and was delightedly snapping pictures of something. I looked to the field ahead and saw the object of his focus: six light-footed agile deer bounding through the sparsely wooded creek bed, then out into open grass, sailing effortlessly over the barbed cattle fence, loping across the road ahead, clearing the fence on the other side, flying off, gone like snowy specters. The fluidity of their movement and apparent nonchalance was enviable—a real visual treat.

But several nights ago this picturesque scene turned a little more sinister. My father had been walking the dogs shortly after dark when I received a panicky call from him: “There’s a deer caught in the neighbor’s fence and the dogs are attacking it and biting it and would you please come help me get it out now.” So I assembled a flashlight and beach towel and wire cutters and after securing the dogs we both drove down to the deer’s location. It was a small, young buck—the buds of tiny antlers were just starting to appear on its head. When he saw us approaching, he started bellowing and bouncing, but I quickly covered his eyes with the towel and he stopped all movement. He was caught from the left hind leg—apparently he had cleared the top of the fence with trademark cervid grace, but had kicked back after the vertex of the leap in a freak accident that caught his hoof between the top two wires of the Red Brand fence. And the hoof was neatly caught, squeezed tightly at the very base with bright red blood pooling around the wire. The deer hung vertically down, front legs swinging, head pointing at the ground. As he was rather small, I was able to support the majority of his weight, and I lifted his body up to ease the strain on the injured leg. He struggled slightly; not knowing what else to do, I rhythmically stroked his sides and spoke calmly. The legs were slender as twigs, the cloven obsidian hooves were sharply pointed. The fur, I noticed, was not a uniform tan at all but rather a gradient of gray and brown and black going down each hair shaft—the color that in mice is called agouti. I ran by gloved hands through it, caressed the heaving sides, felt the ridges of the ribs, the tight muscling—and the echoed pulsing of the beating heart.

I insisted, at this point, that my dad call the neighbor to inform him of the situation. After assessing the severity of the deer’s plight, I wanted someone on hand with a gun lest the leg be badly broken and the animal attempt to hobble off into the night mortally crippled. He acquiesced reluctantly, and soon the neighbor arrived. I supported the deer’s weight while the two men worked at the wire and freed the foot. It only took a minute, and then we were lowering the animal down to the ground. I half expected him to jump up and charge me in an irrational wild terror, but he stayed lying prostrate. My heart sank a little. The neighbor gave him a gentle boot. He attempted an awkward crawl, all four legs splayed spider-like until he slid haphazardly into a shallow freezing rivulet in the ditch. The men pulled him back out and checked his legs for any obvious signs of injury. There were no apparent broken bones, and the wire cut on the injured hind, while deep, was by no means life-threatening. The back didn’t seem to be broken, either, as the deer could move his hind feet somewhat, although dragging seemed the preferred means of locomotion. And now he drug himself off a few more yards and stopped to look at us, only the head upright and alert, trademark soft liquid black eyes staring, ears pricked, nervously licking his lips.

We debated the best course of action and decided that, since the deer had probably been hanging there in a most awkward and unnatural position for quite some time, and was undoubtedly in shock, that perhaps a wait-and-see approach was the best course of action. Half an hour, the neighbor said, and he’d come back. If the deer was still incapacitated, he’d put it out of its misery.

That evening, I hoped the coyotes wouldn’t come and I listened for the gunshot. I pretended that it’d be all right; but I found out the next day that it wasn’t—the deer had been shot after all. Better than the alternative, still, and at least we gave the little buck a chance.

It was a sad event, but I wasn’t affected nearly as much as I thought I’d be. Just a humdrum “oh well, that’s a pity” when I heard the news before I turned back to devouring my sandwich. Emotional detachment, surprisingly, wasn’t all that hard, even as I held the wild animal in my hands and felt his frightened heartbeat through my glove and knew he would probably die.

And that emotional detachment will certainly serve me well in my chosen future profession. I read a touching essay on this very subject last week, and the other day a favorite professor accosted me in the hallway for a chat. In our conversation, she brought up how she had originally been a nursing student, but she had gladly given up on it when she discovered how easily affected she was by the misfortune of others. She’s not the kind of person, she said, who can shrug that kind of thing off lightly. She doesn’t know how doctors can deal with it, then come home and eat dinner with their families and talk and laugh about trivial matters. No, for her, plants are much safer and far less personal—and so now she teaches botany and is writing the first-ever field guide to Romanian plants.

Something odd: Thursday night, while taking a shower, I suddenly had a rather vivid flashback to the day when we noticed, out of the blue and icy-cold day, that Shorty was sick and thus started on our tragic six month journey with the cancer-stricken horse. It’s not that I don’t think about him often, because I do—that little charcoal-colored pony meant a hell of a lot to me. But it was strange how a perfect image of that fateful day suddenly tumbled across my consciousness. Curious, I turned to my blog archives to look it up. And sure enough—thanks to coincidence or subconscious memory or divine interference—it was exactly one year from the discovery. But I still have to say that, one month in, 2010 is looking a whole lot better than 2009.

Nose to the Grindstone

2010-01-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

I am a student. Not a “professional student,” I guess, though it sometimes feels that way, given my laborious hours of studying and paper-writing and the daunting prospect of at least another six and a half years of formal university and graduate education to go. I try to take my classes seriously; I fret about my grades and worry about my knowledge retention; I remind myself that I’m here because I want to be here and not because I have to be here. I’m lucky to have this opportunity, after all. Now I’ve got to take advantage of it and make the most of its potential.

I’m getting back into the swing of things, finally, slowly, reluctantly. It’s a short but intense schedule this semester: only 15 credit hours, but that includes three four-hour core Biology/Chemistry classes. Not exactly easy or fun stuff. (But again I’m here because I want to be here and not because I have to be here! The end result, a decade away, will be worth it.)

But while I’m working as hard as I can on my education, I find that others are less than impressed. I was recently confronted with a scathingly derisive description “[someone who] still lives at home…still ‘wet behind the ears,’ who has yet to leave the safety of the ‘nest.’” Ouch. And this coming from a person who has never met me and knows nothing whatsoever about me aside from the minimal info discussed in a few online exchanges. Wow.

One of my new professors this semester has tried, on three occasions already, to get me to drop his class. The reason? I’m a sophomore. The class is designed for juniors, apparently. I have all of the prerequisites and the grades to attest to my proficiency in the subject. No matter. He’s convinced that because I have a year (or two semesters) less experience than the other students enrolled, I’m destined for a crash-and-burn in the course. Thanks, sir, and maybe you’re right, but that’s my concern, not your problem.

Age. Life experience. Knowledge is compiled and wisdom is earned throughout the years, it’s very true. At my youthful age, I know I should—I must—remain humble and attentive. I’ve got volumes and volumes to learn…but we all do. Not that I would want to compare with someone much my senior, lest I fall far short in the “life experience” and “hard-earned wisdom” categories. But if said senior isn’t also humble and attentive, then there’s a problem. Because you don’t magically turn into a grown-up one day, having amassed all the answers in the universe. Nope. It’s a constant, eternal refrain of looking, watching, learning, internalizing, developing, evolving. Otherwise you’re stagnant—set in your ways, unable to change, stubborn as hell, lumpy—and your knowledge is useless. So please don’t discount someone’s opinion based solely on the holder’s age. Although the years in their life may not be numerous, that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been packed with meaningful experience.

And while I’m on a somewhat-related subject, I’ve noticed an odd phenomenon among my peers: fierce inter-discipline competition and resentment. Chemistry majors scorn Biology majors for taking an “easy, overdone” route, while the latter think the former is too uptight, overly analytical, and lacking an appreciation for the big picture of things. All science majors are lumped together and treated with suspicion by the more artistically-minded students, while math majors are discounted entirely for being just plain weird). After all, science is just memorization and how hard is that? But the science majors fire back, yelping that they’re doing real meaningful work with real-world applications and results, dammit, while everyone else is puttering away in theoretical la-la land. And the Architecture majors whine too much, and the English majors are slackers, the Philosophy students are conceited and egotistical, the Music majors are delusional, the Business majors are stupid, and so on and so on.

Absurd. What’s up with this competitive drive and one-up-manship? I don’t think I’m being naïve when I say that we really can all learn a lot from each other.

Viva La Revolución

2010-01-18T22:43:00.000-08:00

Comparative physiology, assisted by the biogenetic law and paleontology, gradually traced the evolution of man from the common ancestor of man and primates down through some primitive species of lemurs (night monkeys), thence on through marsupials, duckbills, saurians, fishes, to ascidians. Then Haeckel advanced his gastrula theory and divided the lowest organisms into unicellular protozoa and protophyta, and multicellular metazoan and metaphyta, bringing the descent of man down to some primordial common protist ancestor of animals and plants….

--Ernest Untermann

One day last semester, I was kicking along the sidewalk with some time to kill between classes. I noticed a benefit bake sale on the steps of the library and was unable to resist. I exchanged 50 cents for a cookie, dispatched the latter quickly, and proceeded into the library to fool around in the computer lab. The remaining two quarters were clicking together most irksomely in my pocket, however, and wouldn’t you know but the first thing I saw when I entered the building was a sign saying “Books for sale - $0.50 each” propped up on a few shelves of tired old volumes. How serendipitous.

So I shuffled through the stacks of books trying to find something worthwhile. A crappy 90’s play. A book of nature photography with poor-quality grainy images. Numerous biographies of people I’d never heard of. Histories of some literary movement or other, hundreds of pages long and unbelievably dry. I had almost resigned myself to an ugly book about American Realism when I spied a tiny hardcover with the provocative title Science and Revolution. I pried it from the row and looked it over. It was dirty, a pale blue in color that was rapidly fading to gray. The pages were yellow and brittle. The cover was embossed with the insignia of the Library of Science for the Workers. The original owner had penciled his(?) name on the first page: Illegible Scribble Ph.D. 1905.

Dr. Scribble annotated several other pages of the book, living up to his name each time. On the back he listed the taxonomy of kingdoms, including amoeba, gastrula, amphibians, and other things that I think might say peninsula, symphony, carbonform, ice aye. Or maybe not. Perhaps he was a medical doctor as well.

But to hold this book in my hands I feel the history there; I feel some inexplicable connection with the late professor. When he read these words they were undoubtedly new and controversial. They were written in an age before “socialism” was a swear word, or an insult, or a synonym for communism and fascism. Untermann, in fact, proudly declares his Marxist ties. The very purpose of the work, as near as I can tell, is to show that the march of time and human history is leading up to the ultimate inevitable triumph of evolution—a socialist society. This is pre-WWII, pre-atom bomb, pre-Holocaust and pre-environmental crisis and pre-War on Terror. How naïve. How quaint.

Today, the words are stuffy, outdated, archaic. Old news. Boring. So boring, in fact, that after trudging through the first 40-odd pages on a long bus ride during a worthless music trip (and reading the words “proletarian” and “bourgeois” so many times I began to hate the Romans and the French), I grew so tired of Untermann’s history of philosophical thought that I nearly discarded the whole thing. Recently, however, I picked it back up, turned to a random page, and found the excerpts quoted here.

And there’s some good stuff:

Once that the unity of all organisms in the world had been established, two questions immediately required an answer. One of them concerned the unity of psychological phenomena, the other that of life.

If the physiological development of mankind, animals, and plants knows no line of demarcation, but only degrees of organization, and if psychology is in reality a branch of physiology, why should there be a line of demarcation between the psychological development of man, animals, and plants? And if all organisms are descended from some common primordial protoplasmatic form, then the discovery of the origin of the vital processes of that form, or of any form, would solve the question of all organic life in the universe….

(Here Dr. Scribble writes a tentative question mark in the margins. I, too, had trouble understanding the author’s meaning. But then, skipping a few paragraphs ahead, comes a technical essay that suddenly flowers into intricate prose.)

The quest after the origin of life compelled science to penetrate far beyond so-called living organisms. It led on into the inorganic, and wiped out the line of demarcation between organic and inorganic, living and dead matter. It showed that organic life arose through the mechanical evolution of inorganic life. It revealed that life and death are but two poles of the same universe, that the distinction can no longer be between life and death, but only between different degrees of organization and intensity of life, between positive and negative life.

Personal immortality now resolves itself into personal evolution. Life and consciousness are now revealed as attributes of all matter, going through as many different stages of evolution as the various material forms in the universe. The personal immortality of any definite form would involve the control of all evolutionary processes which endanger the persistence of that form. So long as such control is not established, there is a ‘transmigration of the soul,’ but not in the way that the mystics use this term. The physiological processes of a certain positive consciousness, or ‘soul,’ are converted by the process of ‘death,’ into negative consciousness, which in turn becomes the positive consciousness of some other form.

One hundred and five years later—after the discovery of DNA and inheritance and penicillin and nuclear energy and radiation—we’re still at this same spiritual threshold. We’ve got a lot to learn and, it seems, a lot of lifetimes to do it.

I guess it’s a good thing I’m going back to school tomorrow.

A Sore Spot

2010-01-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

A couple hours ago, I chanced upon a link tonight of a video stream portraying a mare actively foaling. They had a camera set up in the stall that fed to a popular website whose only purpose is to post such videos. The mare was obviously agitated and in extreme discomfort. She paced and turned and shook and trembled, lay down, stood up, looked around, backed into the corner of her stall, sweated, quivered. And then, as I watched with rapt attention: the miracle of life. Two tiny white feet enclosed in a membranous sac. They would appear for a moment, and then recede from view. People bustled about the tiny stall, interfering all too much as humans are wont to do. They bothered the mare and someone grabbed at the little hooves and pulled and pulled while the mare pushed and pushed. Slowly a form emerged from some alien void. And then—new life, a little wet misshapen thing that looked around in total squinty-eyed shock. A tiny head wobbled on an unsteady neck. Four spidery legs stuck out haphazardly. Vet and owner dried the thing and cleared it of its casing. Oxygen was administered, for it seemed a little weak. Someone held up a sign to the web cam: “FILLY.” So she was a girl, a little red sorrel, the much anticipated result of a breeding 11 months before. She was naturally unsure of herself, and for a while she simply gazed stupidly at the hustle and bustle that surrounded her as her exhausted mother periodically snuck a peek behind. Then the mare rose to lick her new baby, and the foal attempted to sort out her uncoordinated and unresponsive feet. The front ones seemed to work all right, but the two in the back flailed around and fought vainly for a purchase. She flopped on her side again and again. And then, finally, about a half hour after her unceremonious entrance to the world, success! She rose and wobbled over to her dam, looking for the life-giving milk that she instinctively knew she needed. She soon found that it was not located between the front legs, as overly helpful people ushered her to the correct end. Here I stopped watching.

I’ve never seen the live birth of a horse before, either in the flesh or on a screen. It was a touching experience. But at the same time, it makes me think of the overbreeding problem….

Let me preface the following by saying that you probably shouldn’t read it. If you aren’t involved in the horse industry, it won’t make a lot of sense because I leave many important facts and arguments out, both in support of and opposing the current slaughter ban. If you are involved, you’ve heard it all a million times. It’s old news. An d it's all packaged in the wonderful format of an unorganized tirade. *Ahem.*

I don’t generally comment on current events, usually because I’m sadly uninformed and pathetically apathetic. There is one issue, however, that I feel the need to address because it’s such a hot-button one in the agricultural community. Two years ago, Congress banned the slaughter of horses for human consumption on US soil. This was after a huge public campaign by animal rights activists and celebrities who decried the murder of Trigger. Prior to this, 100,000 equines per year were processed in the States, with many more being shipped out of the country for the same intent. The closing of the kill plants created an even greater surplus of horses, with even greater numbers being shipped, often crowded into inappropriate trailers and hauled for obscene distances with no food or water, to Canada or Mexico, where conditions are, to say the least, appalling. But quite frankly the conditions in the US plants hadn’t been much better.

There’s a whole lot to get into here, so I won’t even bother with the details. Suffice it to say that there are good arguments for each side. Neglect, abandonment, and starvation do increase when there is a surplus, and a surplus results from a lack of disposal method (slaughter). But there are currently no regulations in place to ensure a humane method of killing. The industry is corrupt.

They’re now talking about bypassing federal regulations and opening up a slaughter facility in Missouri. I don’t think it will happen; the public outcry is too strong and the legalities are formidable. But it reopens this tired old debate. I don’t know what side of the fence I’m on. It depends on the day and the facts being presented….and the facts are so often twisted. I’m for the welfare and the best interest of the animals. That is all.

We can’t force our moralities on other cultures, obviously. Just because we in America find the idea of a Trigger burger appalling doesn’t mean that other people feel the same way. It's not wrong to eat horsemeat. It is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering to animals.

We’ve got a problem here. It’s called “irresponsibility.” There are too many damn horses in the US, and it’s because of breeders who overproduced subpar stock with no plans for their future use, training, or marketability. Many perfectly useful horses end up on a plate in France after enduring a stressful transport and a painful death simply because no one wanted them, or no one saw their potential, or no one had time to train them, or, simply put, someone decided to buck responsibility. If we’re going to have slaughter, find a humane way to do it. Regulate it better. Have vets and inspectors at every step in the process. But until that day comes, it’s an entirely inappropriate and greedy means of getting rid of excess (which should have never been created in the first place!). Dammit.

I apologize for the ramble, but I’ve got to type this out somewhere. I’d give more facts and information about euthanasia and carcass disposal if only I had the room and time….

[Anecdote: When asked to write about a controversial national issue for a scholarship essay, I chose this very topic, arguing that the slaughter plants should be reopened with the appropriate safeguards and regulations in place to ensure the humane treatment of horses on American soil and to prevent export to Mexico or large scale neglect and abandonment. They apparently assigned interviewers based on the topic of the paper, and I was paired with a French professor who just so happened to be a radical animal rights activist. She is heavily involved with an animal advocacy club at the university and is currently working with Bob Barker to develop the nation’s first Animal Ethics minor. I, unfortunately, did not know this at the time. I imagine that my seemingly cold pro-slaughter viewpoint did not impress. Oops.]

January

2010-01-08T23:24:00.000-08:00

There’s a -18ᵒ windchill outside. This cold is insane. Perhaps other places get colder—much colder—but we Missourians can’t handle this relentless wind, the heavy snow, the icy roads, or the intense chill (“frigid,” says the weatherman, while warning of frostbite). Even the horses, though hardy creatures, are suffering the effects of the inclement weather. They can hardly wait to come into the warm barn at night, and when the snow comes down and melts into their downy underfur, they shiver beneath their turnout blankets and turn their backs to the wind. When I, stupidly, tried to ride the other day in 6ᵒ weather (“It’s not really all that bad once you get moving!”) I didn’t make it more than five minutes before my frozen-lunged mount was panting beneath me, and my extremities were numb, and my face was burned from the wind.

It’s beautiful, but it’s a cruel beauty. Dry crunchy snow is blown and whipped by wily winds, drifting into thick piles, exposing frozen rutted ground. Turn towards the wind and your face is blasted; eyes freeze; frigid air whistles through ears until it sears the brain; nose goes numb and dribbles like a faulty faucet. Turn away and the wind seeps through the neckline of your jacket to tousle your hair and make you shiver.

I hold my horse steady. The vet mandated 10 minutes of hand-walking a day for her rehabilitation, so 10 minutes a day is what I shall do, braving the bitterness. The cold and wind make the mare crazy; she plunges at the end of her lead line, pulls away from me, turns again, swivels and bucks and rears and paws. She flattens her ears and shakes her head at me, blaming me for her confinement, then vents her aggression on the snow, striking it with exaggerated motions until she finds some buried grass, then tearing violently at the hidden green blades. She stops to roll in the powder, and I urge her on. We repeat the whole process as she grows more agitated and I grow weaker. I’m panting from exertion by the time I’m done, but I’m still awfully cold with dulled senses and slowed reactions as I drag her back to the only marginally warmer barn.

I chose to go into town the other day to meet some old friends before we once again parted our separate ways. It was a bad decision because the snow was heaping down and the roads were slick with ice. On the way home, the highway was unrecognizable. I crept along at 35 miles per hour and felt reckless at that speed. The lanes were gone, and it was impossible to tell where the edge of the road met the shoulder or median. Soft whiteness enveloped all, and fat flakes marred by windshield as my wipers slashed to clear it. Everyone was driving smack dab in the center, straddling the place where we presumed the lane lines would be. A few fools tried to pass me, but quickly gave up once their tires hit a slick spot and their cars lurched. My headlights showed the paths that many before me had taken—sliding off the road and into ditches, over hills, into woods, out of sight. I’ve made that mistake once and, knock on wood, don’t intend to do it again. Something about having your car sliding backwards down the highway, slicing through a reflective road marker, and coming to rest just feet from an imposing wall of rock has a sobering experience that one doesn’t soon forget, let me assure you.

But at the end of the day, the consolation prize is a warm house. Even during the worst of it—even when I’m carrying an eight gallon bucket full of freezing water over uneven terrain, and even when I trip on a snowdrift and spill the whole damn thing all over myself (and it instantly freezes on my coveralls and gloves and my already-slow movement becomes even more impeded) and I utter things not worth repeating and bury my face below my collar when confounded by the futility of it all—even then I know that there’s a fire to go sit by, and good food, and a comfy bed. And I can gaze out the window as a simple spectator to the sullen beauty of the snow.

And then it will be all right.

2010

2010-01-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

--Charles Dickens

Ten years ago, I was asleep in bed, but I would have certainly stayed up until midnight watching replays of the ball drop in NYC on a news station and gulping sparkling cider to match my parents cheap wine as we celebrated—in our muted fashion—the new year and the new millennium. We probably laughed and joked as others breathed sizes of relief that the whole Y2K thing had been blown horribly out of proportion. There was no apocalypse, no world collapse, and no need for stockpiles of bottled water and canned goods, despite many widespread dire predictions to the contrary. It was a fairly exciting time for a nine-year-old, full of promise and anticipation.

One year ago, I was climbing a tree, seized by one of my insane impulses (and wasn’t I just complaining that my life lacks spontaneity?!), nearly oblivious to the bitter cold as I cavorted about in the chilly windy pasture in nothing but my pajamas and a pair of muck boots.

It’s even colder now, and it would be foolhardy to attempt a repeat of that stunt. This despite a magnificent full moon and a clear sky. Everything, as Jonathan Safran Foer says, is illuminated.

Supertramp was on the radio on my drive back from town at 10 this evening, urging me to take the long way home. So I did, wishing I could cut the headlights and drive only by the soft aura of pale blue moonlight. There were a couple of deer in the road, a pair of does, one on each side. I stopped and they sailed over the barbed wire fence only to wait patiently just on the other side for me to leave so they could resume their nocturnal browsing. In a halo of wooded moonbeams they were still clearly visible.

And 2009. It’s over. Just like that—a tick of the second hand, and the powers that be (the ones who set our clocks and number our years and govern our concept of time) declare a new decade.

This year, as referenced in the opening snippet of Dickens, has been a turbulent one. How optimistic I was, perched in the boughs of a dormant persimmon, surveying my infinite prospects! So much has changed, so many tragedies, such lovelorn pining, such pain and failure and sorrow and futility. But on the other hand, glimmers of hope, small successes that built upon one another, the building of a solid foundation, the branching of strong support and friendship, a strengthening of resolve and willpower.

This doesn’t feel like a transition, but I’m hoping it is. Here’s to a change in the winds of fortune, to self-made success, to happiness, to friendship, to goodwill, to peace, to harmony and camaraderie, to blessings and goodness and a better life for all.

I’ll drink to that….care to join me?

Rant and Sleep-Deprived Musings

2009-12-28T23:31:00.001-08:00

I’m a practical person. It’s that old cliché—a blessing and a curse.

I’m safe. I act safely. I carefully survey each course of action, each possible outcome, before embarking. Spontaneity is not in my vocabulary (obviously, since I just had to use spell check in order to get it down right). In my perfectly ordered and planned world, there’s no room for detours, for concessions to whims, for transient enjoyment, for trips or late-night runs or improvisation.

A professor took me to lunch—she insisted on driving me across town and spending an embarrassing amount of money on fine food for my rather nondiscriminatory college palate. Then she spent the next hour lecturing me on how I need to sign up for study abroad before it’s too late. I need to get out, apparently, see the world, experience other cultures, do something different. She’s right, but how? I have responsibilities, I explained, I’ve already overburdened my parents and I can’t ask them to take on any more, plus, how will I stay on track with core classes for my major? I can’t just step out of the country for a semester and expect that everything’s going to be hunky-dory. She dismissed my concerns as though they were mere trifles, easily solved, not worth worrying about. Surely I had a friend, she said to emphasize a point, surely I had a city-bred friend who was itching for the opportunity to spend time in the country, care for horses, enjoy the simple life for awhile. Really? Because I don’t think I know anyone willing to muck shit for six months time for no pay or reward. I think I made the professor sorry she asked me to go out to eat in the first place.

But people are wired differently (obviously!), and I’m a one track mind, homebody type, I guess. I could have gone to any college across the nation, like my pals at Cornell and UChicago, but I chose instead to stay right here in the place where I’d grown up to pursue with relentless, steadfast determination a goal I’d set for myself long before. Is this a character flaw on my part? Sometimes I think so. I look at friends of mine who embrace the moment, who are out their living their lives with gusto and nary a care. They flit from place to place, opportunity to opportunity, shape-shifting to suit the occasion and laughing all the while. I feel a twinge of jealousy and regret before I shake myself and return to present matters.

But there’s the other side of the coin. Like it or not, life is a series of hoops that need to be jumped through if one is to make it in Society. Planning for the future, making careful preparations, not allowing subtle but dangerous distractions to turn the course….these things are all important.

I know many people—kids of 18, 19, and 20 years—friends and classmates and peers of mine—who are married, having children of their own. Frankly, it scares me a little bit. Are they making a terrible mistake by committing to something so permanent at such a young age, or, a more frightening prospect, am I hopelessly behind? Should I, too, be “settling down?” Egads, no. I’m not ready; I don’t want it. I’ve got other plans.

I also known many people—adults of 18, 19, and 20 years—friends and classmates and peers of mine—who have no idea what it is they want to do with their lives. If you asked them, jokingly, as you would a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” they’d either stare at you blankly, comprehension failing, or instead rattle off a list of possibilities, none of which they have any real plans or means to pursue. Now is not the time for saying, “I want to be a princess or an astronaut or a trombonist or a surgeon.” That time has passed. You don’t have to know your life’s course, for crying out loud, but you need to have a definite plan. You need to be heading somewhere, even if you decide to change your destination along the way. You’ve got to grow up and snap out of it and work at something.

A happy medium between all extremes is what’s needed. Live now, but plan ahead. Be smart and careful. And so, a New Year’s resolution for me and a reminder for us all: Live a little more for today, learn to spell ‘spontaneity’ and then act on its principles. Don’t sacrifice the present for the tantalizing but all-too-distant future.

/end rant and sleep-deprived musings

Pay It Forward

2009-12-23T23:31:00.000-08:00

This winter break has already been a much-needed relief from external pressures. I’ve been putting in quite a few hours at work, but I’ve also turned to some old abandoned projects to keep myself entertained. I decided to try my hand at watercolor painting to make my mom a Christmas present—a combined portrait of all of our horses. I haven’t dabbled in art since my junior year of high school, so I was a bit rusty, although pleased with the end result. I still haven’t figured out how to mount all the heads together on the matboard I bought, but I’m working on it. You can see other pictures here, and here, and here.

Today was my employer’s 26th annual ‘White and Bizarre Elephant Christmas Party,’ but my first year attending. I was unsure of what to expect; I knew some of the people, but not very well, and others were complete strangers—and of an utterly different social stratum than that with which I am accustomed. The food (all home-cooked) was quite good, though I craftily hid the lack of turkey on my plate, as my boss isn’t particularly fond of vegetarians. The gift exchange was interesting, to put it nicely. The gift I had brought was the hit of the afternoon and was “stolen” multiple times. A hand-crocheted mini-afghan my father won in a charity raffle, it was most popular and I was glad to see it go somewhere where it would be appreciated. A few raucous individuals, however, had found it most amusing to bring gag gifts to the party. One respectable older woman innocently plucked one of these nicely-wrapped beauties from the table only to uncover a plastic donkey which, when its ears were pulled, crapped out cigarettes. My loot was better, but only marginally—a set of nineties Wacky Fav-O-Rites tapes. Funny, I guess, but even if I had a cassette player, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be rockin’ out to Hot Rod Lincoln.

As I was helping with clean-up following the festivities, the farm foreman, a kind-hearted man who’s lived a bit of a hard life, came up to me and offered me his gift, a box of nice chocolates. Surely he wanted them, I said, or at least his kids or grandkids would eat them. But he was insistent—said he had too much candy as it was and didn’t need any more. I thanked him profusely and we wished each other a merry Christmas.

It was a small thing, but it got me thinking. I’m not by any means a bad person (I think!), but I am self-centered, self-absorbed, and, at times, greedy. I think we all are. If we could all be instead perhaps a bit more generous, a bit more concerned about others….

But it’s an old argument, one we all know and believe in yet at the same time, in our mocking cynicism, dismiss as hopelessly naïve and ridiculous. Human nature is too cruel, we say, this is the way things are. Yeah, it’s great if you’re a good person, but dammit, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.

I’m not one to preach The Reason for the Season. Given my glaring lack of religious convictions, that would be rather hypocritical. But still, Christmas is a time of family, coming together, charity, love, joy, peace on Earth and goodwill to men. So, a challenge for us all—one we should already do daily, yet all too often forget: this holiday season, pay it forward. Drop the cynicism (so what if no good deed goes unpunished?) and instead act not for reward, not for karma, but out of genuine, pure, unadulterated love.

Now What?

2009-12-16T21:06:00.000-08:00

Yes, that is the question: Now what? My idle hands are anxious. This semester was, undoubtedly, the hardest I’ve ever worked for a class. Organic I was brutal, and now I sit on tenterhooks waiting for the final grade postings. If I pulled an A on the final, I’ll have an A in the class; if not, I’ll have to settle for the first B of my life. Which is a bit ridiculous, when you think about it, and the sooner this perfectionist streak is broken, the better for my health, but still—it’s the principle of the thing.

What did I learn? Hard work. Hours. Patience. Practice. Teamwork. All things that should have been obvious from the get-go, but apparently not so much for me. A D on the first test sobered me up quick. It’s not about Organic, though, it’s about the sort of mindset I should have. Don’t sweat the trivial, but don’t give up in the face of adversity—all lessons far bigger than some stupid class I’ll have completely forgotten in a few years’ time.

I’m exhausted. My sentences are short, choppy, barely coherent. I feel like I’ve run a marathon. I’ve beaten myself down unnecessarily over the past few months, a foolish decision that’s led to nothing but severe back pain. Gah. John Keats: “Oh soothest Sleep, if so it please thee, close, in the midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes.” Why do we make ourselves so miserable?

But now is a time of rest, relaxation, and recharging. A month of pause, with no scholastic obligations (save prepping for Organic II). I’ll work some, make a little money to pay off the horse, get caught back up with Jack Kerouac and Kahlil Gibran (how I’ve missed them!), enjoy the holidays, contemplate the New Year, eat until I bust my casing….

Thinking back to Thanksgiving, now, a week that I spent in cien horas de soledad. My parents were out of state visiting family; I was alone with the horses. On Thanksgiving Day I didn’t see a single other human being. I went a little crazy, just that fast in isolation—had some nice conversations with a few Red Tailed Hawks before I shook myself awake. Got up at five each morning to tend to the horses, then did a few hours of chores, turned my attention to paper-writing and studying for a few more hours, went to work, then back to chores, back to studying, sleep a few hours, repeat.

Five-thirty in the morning, pitch black. Cold, too, breath freezing in panted wisps. Cracking the slivered pointed shards of ice, plunging hand into water until it burns so cold that intense pain and dull numbness ensue. And, from all around, a chorus of coyotes in surround sound. Two packs, east and west, yipping and howling, all too near, an eerie, primal sound that stops me with instinctive fear, adrenaline. Some nearby dogs start up, too, and the neighbor’s rooster, predicting dawn, a symphony with a half-mile radius. How’s that for an experience?

Gave my zebra finches, whom I’ve had since third grade, to a favorite professor today for her daughter. I’ll miss their constant singing and cute little perch-hopping, but I guess they’ll make some little animal-crazy but mammal-allergic five-year-old happy. Got a new dog this weekend, too. Went on Petfinder and searched for an Adorable Beloved Dachshund for my parents. Found a shelter with 100 dogs and 22 cats all in need of homes, so happy to see us, barking and purring and jumping in their cages. Poor castaways. Picked out Suki fka Frances, and the rest is history. Cute little bugger, but pretty much devoid of personality. All she wants to do is curl up in a lap and sleep all day long.

Last night I set a few books and assorted paraphernalia out to study one last time, then shuffled off to find something to eat. I returned in time to snatch the above picture. That ain’t gonna fly, pooch.

On Life and Death

2009-12-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

I’m farm-sitting again. This morning, after finishing chores and feeding the menagerie, I pulled out of my employer’s drive and headed for home. Almost immediately I was confronted with a foreign unidentifiable object in the road; I braked and swerved. Perplexed, I slowed to look as I drove by. Was it a dead bloated calico cat? A bundled package of tattered papers? The world’s oddest-shaped piece of petrified driftwood?

The reality proved more sinister and more depressing. A great horned owl, full grown and large, lay spread-eagled on the ground, facedown over a young disemboweled possum. Both were stiff and cold. Rarely do I have the opportunity to see an owl, living or dead, and the sight of this majestic creature stirred me enough to bend down, pick it up, and move it off the ground. And what a beautiful thing it was, even in the stillness of death. One eye was closed, a papery opaque lid shut forever, but the other was cracked open, striking yellow, still staring solemnly. The beak was short, hooked, and powerful. The feathers were unbelievably soft and in varying shades of browns and earthtones. The puffy “horns” blew in the faint breeze, almost comical. Leathery gripping pads covered the bottoms of the feet, harsh talons still covered in sacrificial blood of the owl’s last supper. I could have sworn that at any moment the bird would wake, shake itself, give me a wicked look, rise, and fly away. I laid it reverently in the grass beside the road, gathered my composure, shivered in the cold, and resumed my drive.

Oddly enough, I had little sympathy for the possum and left it lying frozen to the pavement. Perhaps this was because it was common vermin, an everyday sort of roadkill. But more likely it was because it was the victim only of nature and so-called natural order—the food chain, The Way It Has Always Been. Its predator, however, had been snuffed out by something unnatural, a careless driver, a man-made folly, a tragedy, whether accidental or intentional, cold unfeeling machinery, hard pavement, eminent domain.

The day passed. I made the return trip in the black night. I passed the place where I had left the owl and peered into the darkness, but couldn’t make out the exact spot. And then—something in the road. Again, I braked and swerved. And lo and behold, there, on top of the very same possum, was another owl, this one very much alive. A barred owl this time, also large, white and black and gray. I stopped right beside it, as it showed no signs of moving out of my way. We exchanged a Look. “Fucking owls!” I said, a little more loudly than I had intended, despite my lack of an audience. “Stay out of the fucking road!” And, as though understanding, the raptor grabbed its meal in one clawed foot and hopped awkwardly to the grass, leaving the possum behind (presumably for later) before flying off irritably into the night. Silent wings. Another beautiful bird.

I can’t help but feel that there was some sort of lesson I was supposed to pick up on today. The impermanence of life, or the beauty of it? The give-and-take of it all?

And yesterday my family’s dog, Keaton the redbone coonhound, had to be euthanized. Sigh.

Out of Words

2009-11-23T17:12:00.001-08:00

Was it you who spoke the words that things would happen, but not to me?
Oh, things are going to happen naturally
And I’m taking your advice, and looking on the bright side
And balancing the whole thing
But often times those words get tangled up in lines
And the bright light turns to night
Until the dawn it brings
Another day to sing about the magic that was you and me
‘Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just read of
Others only dream of the love—the love that I love

--Jason Mraz

This is another current favorite song. I don’t know much about Jason Mraz (except that he seems to be another Sexy Modern Artist that scads of teenage girls enjoy swooning over), but I love every song of his that I’ve heard on the radio. He’s got a great voice and he’s obviously extremely talented, and his works are exceedingly creative and simultaneously meaningful, intellectual, and humorous. Great stuff to sing along with—albeit badly and at the top of my lungs—on a long drive.

See I’m all about them words
Over numbers, unencumbered, numbered words
Hundreds of pages, pages, pages for words
More words than I had ever heard and I feel so alive

It’s funny how the individual listener can interpret a song (or a work of art or a dance or anything, really) into something personally meaningful that may have nothing to do with the intent of its creator. This is the basis of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” And in my hearing the refrain of this song, I was of course at once reminded of the title of this blog, my personal, globally public journal. I did not, as might be suspected, name it after the lyrics, which I had never heard until a few weeks ago. Still, the small coincidence was not insignificant to me.

You and I, you and I
Not so little, you and I, anymore
And with this silence brings a moral story
More importantly evolving is the glory of a boy
‘Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just dream of
And if you could see me now
Well I’m almost finally, finally
Well I’m free

I’m also a bit obsessive compulsive in that I like things a very certain, specific, consistent way. I like symbolism and such, too. And this in the one-hundredth blog post, and today is the one-year anniversary of the first. Yes, I planned it that way.

And it’s okay if you have to go away
Just remember the telephone, well it works in both ways
But if I never ever hear them ring
If nothing else I think the bells inside
Have finally found you someone else and that’s okay
‘Cause I’ll remember everything you sang

A lot has changed for me in the past year, some for the better, and some for the worse. For one thing, I’m not longer a pathetic, skeered, antisocial freshman yearning for the long-lost glories of high school. Rather, I’ve developed into a confident, well-adjusted Biology major with a good job and a strong support network. I can’t complain a bit about work or school (excepting that blasted Orgo class). My equine life, on the other hand, has changed drastically. Of the five healthy, rideable, nice horses I had last year, one is dead of cancer, another is permanently crippled despite multiple treatments by multiple vets, and another is lame and unusable with a “fair” chance of recovery—but requiring very costly, involved procedures that leave her ill, swollen from allergies, and confined to a tiny pen, maddened by inactivity. With all of these setbacks, I’ve decided to call it quits on the barrel racing I once loved. A new chapter in my riding life is opening, and for the moment I don’t know where it will take me. Bring it on, whatever it is. And so last week I decided to buy another horse—a foolish choice that will leave me in debt for over a year—but I couldn’t let the guy go to an unknown fate. He deserved a good retirement, and I deserved the companionship of another equine friend. So.

Oh, you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just read of
And if you could see me now,
Well, I’m almost finally out of
Finally out of
Well, I’m almost finally, finally out of words.

Well, I’m not exactly out of words, but I am almost finally out of Almost, Finally. Given the circumstances, I think the blog is due its second incarnation. And so, voila! I give you Carbon Dating.

As I said before, I wanted to do something “special” for the 100th post, 1-year landmark. So I looked about for a way to update the layout—skin, it’s called, apparently—and I went on a search around the Internet for a suitable background to download. Whenever possible, I like to use my own images and be as original as possibly so I’m not stealing others’ creativity. I tried to commission a new skin from some bored anime-obsessed Australian kids, but they seemed to think my specifications were too restricting and ignored me. So I scoured the Web for a substitute and, to make a long story short, eventually figured out how to program my own. Not the best, by any means, but considering that I have exactly 0 knowledge of HTML and the only image programs I have to work with are Windows Photo Gallery and MS Paint, well, I’m a little proud. But I do ask for any help with suggestions or in modifying it. I think the background works best on computers with larger monitors, and there’s not much I can do the change the size there. How do the colors of the font work? Is it legible? Too hard on the eyes? I’ll take any feedback or criticism, and if you subscribe in a reader, I’d appreciate it if you’d trot on over to the actual page and look it over to let me know if it works or not. You’ll be missing out on awesomeness if you don’t. ;)

A Song of Praise

2009-11-15T15:50:00.000-08:00

On a trail ride the other day I spooked up a few deer. They retreated into the woods, and I followed, mounted. The few does that reside in that pasture are accustomed to seeing horses, so while they remained wary and alert, they allowed me to approach them slightly so long as I didn’t make any fast moves and kept a reasonable distance. I pulled out my camera and tried to focus it on the doe closest to me, then snapped away several times before she disappeared in the undergrowth. But truly she had vanished long before she turned and trotted off, for her coloration was so perfectly matched to that of the mud and decaying leaves and dull gray bark of trees that, had I not kept my eye focused on her movements from the start, I would have never known she was there. I attempted to find the deer in the pictures later when I loaded them on my computer. I knew they were there, since I had taken the photographs, yet I honestly could not find them in several of the images. I wish I had the ability to evaporate into thin air like that—poof, you’re gone; now you see it, now you don’t.

I spent the past week studying relentlessly (or, rather, in short sporadic but intense intervals punctuated by various complete wastes of time) for five tests, ranging from incredibly easy to insanely difficult. The class that corresponded to the latter category was Organic Chemistry, a real doozie of a course with an exam nearly every week covering comprehensive, complicated material. I practiced for hours doing and redoing mechanism problems, tracing the paths of electrons from one orbital to another, forming new products by reacting with other reagents, acids and bases and salts and cyclic molecules and conjugated dienes and halohydrins and substituted alkynes all invading my dreams at night, spinning and combining and decomposing and adding and combusting….

It’s a frustrating process, predicting what will happen or completing a challenging multi-step synthesis problem, but hugely rewarding and invigorating when you accomplish it successfully. And, really, as much as I hate to admit it I find myself quoting the claims of the textbook—it’s “beautiful.” But not so much for the reasons given by the authors, though they are certainly valid and improving productivity in industry is undoubtedly important, but more for the paradoxical complex simplicity of it all. For in tracing an electron, a comparison can easily be drawn that extends to one’s own life.

An electron, by itself, is virtually nothing. Infinitesimally small, it carries a negative electric charge arbitrarily given the value of -1. Electrons are in constant rapid orbit around the nucleus of every atom, and they are endlessly being lost and gained and shared in the game of chemical reactions, bonding molecules together, forming new compounds, transmitting electric currents, vibrating furiously as they reach new “excited” states, jumping out of orbitals, free, charged, loose, wild. Individually insignificant, one of countless googolplexes in existence in a concept so massive we could never hope to comprehend, yet, when acting in synchronism, they are the very stuff that makes and moves the world.

And so are we.

If I were to write a memoir today about the first nineteen and a half years of my life, I would call it Carbon Dating: The Secret Love Lives of Molecules. And I would try to express this beautiful concept in words that wouldn’t do the subject justice For these tiny shreds of matter are the driving force for everything we know. Break down everything into some 100+ elements and categorize them on the periodic table, then turn them loose to smash into one another. What happened on that first day—that “let there be light” moment, the Big Bang, the spontaneous generation of the cosmos? Ever since then those elements have been synthesizing and creating and…here we are.

From the simple yet innovative attachment of two hydrogens bonded to an oxygen, to the hydrocarbon methane that then branches into alkanes and from there accumulates nitrogen and such until it folds and pleats into amino acids, proteins, tissues, organs, a leaf, a tree, a deer, and us. You and I are made of the stuff of stars, as they say—we’re all stardust.

And so it is. Unbelievable, inconceivable, all explanations completely implausible and illogical. Whether or not the metaphysical “exists” is no longer the question: it must, it does, eternal, permeating all. Call it a deity or a divine spark or a flash of pure magic energy or an instantaneous combustion and pop! there’s the first proton, something from nothing. A few billion years later, and look what’s happened. Everything.

And what is left?

Everything else.

Lift every voice and sing.

Oh, to be a Work of Art

2009-11-03T20:22:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It's only life after all

Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I'm crawling on your shores

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine

--Emily Saliers

I listen to the radio all the time these days on my daily commutes to and from school and home and work and rehearsal. And late at night when I was secluded out in Nowheresville during my house-sitting stint, when I had nothing but homework and the Internet to keep me company, I tuned into the local variety station. During those late late hours, stretching sometimes ‘til 2 in the morning, I discovered the radio show Delilah. The title deejay serves as a psychologist/mentor/mother-figure/marriage counselor/role model/friend to her listeners, who call in with requests for love songs and anecdotes about their children and uncles and estranged boyfriends. Across the country, working overtime in cramped cubicles or driving through winding roads with a lover or tucking children into bed after a bath and a story, we all heard these personal stories and empathized. Then Delilah would select a tune and the waves would fill the room and I’d snuggle down deeper into bed. Music is a powerful thing. This tune by the Indigo Girls is a current favorite, both for its melodic qualities and overall catchiness and for its powerfully compelling lyrics.

And I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
And I went in seeking clarity

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
Yeah we go to the doctor, we go to the mountains
We look to the children, we drink from the fountains
Yeah we go to the Bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine

“Yeah,” I say in my best British accent à la Rupert Grint, “I’ve got to get my priorities straightened.”

And that’s what it comes down to. What we learn from our parents or from professors doesn’t always line up with what we learn in the School of Hard Knocks. The idealism of philosophy and religion doesn’t exactly jive with Real Life. So what do we choose? Do we toss aside our quest for a “definitive” as unattainable foolishness, and go on about our merry ways, forgetting the enthusiasm with which we once embraced our ideals? Do we, instead, live completely impractically, refusing to sacrifice our beliefs, even at the sake of happiness and worldly success?

When we’re young we set our hearts upon some beautiful idea
Maybe something from a holy book or French philosophia
Upon the thoughts of better men than us we swear by and decree a
Perfect way to end the war, a perfect way to be
A work of art. Oh, to be a work of art

But in time a thought comes tugging on the sleeve edge of our minds
Perhaps no perfect way exists at all, just many different kinds
Oh, but if it’s just a thing of taste then everything unwinds
For without an absolute how can the absolute define
A work of art? Oh, to be a work of art

--The Guggenheim Grotto

Or, instead, do we strive for what is Right, doing only the best we can, looking for inspiration wherever we can find it, taking our happiness as opportunities present themselves, but never forgetting our origins and the ideas of our youths, and always searching for excellence, goodness, and the best thing we know how to do?

No matter what, we’ve got to decide for ourselves and come to terms with our decisions. Limbo is no place for the living.

Buck!

2009-10-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

Argh. My right hip aches and my left calf keeps seizing up on me and there’s a jagged burning between my shoulder blades. I’ll be lucky if I can walk tomorrow.

See, I showed up at work today and figured I needed to catch up with a few of the horses-in-training that I’d been neglecting due to my school schedule and general laziness. After momentary deliberation, I selected the four-year-old who hadn't been ridden in over two months. No big deal—there was a lot of commotion going on around the barn because they were hosting a driving clinic on the property, but while the horse (whom we shall call "Poseidon" to make his rather unique real name less googleable) seemed a little spooky, he wasn't too bad. I tacked him up and turned him loose to trot in the arena a little bit. No problem.

I've seen him buck before, both out in the pasture feeling fresh and the first time he felt a flank cinch. Let me tell you, that pony can buck. I've read notes in the log from the previous trainer, detailing how Poseidon trashed her. Once, after watching his antics, I made a pact with myself that if he ever tried it with me, I'd do my best to ride it out as a sort of personal challenge. Normally my first instinct is to safely bail so the dismount is on my terms, but I thought that it would show some real skill and ‘cowgirlitude’ if I was able to stick through one of his fits.

Of course, I had completely forgotten this little internal agreement, and that promise was the last thing on my mind today. All I really remember is fiddling with my jean leg, hitching up the knee so I could bend and swing and push up with the stirrup....

...and then I was looking at the suede of the saddle seat far below me, and I was coming down, but far off center, perhaps behind the cantle, and what the fu—

—and then up again, thrown skyward, slam down, repeat. I figured out what was happening by the third jump, but that didn't help me situate myself all that much as I flopped haphazardly in suspended motion.

I took the mental time to note that Poseidon had that peculiar bucking style that you see in a lot of rodeo broncs: head pointed to the ground, back humped, legs straight. He didn't buck so much as launch himself mightily, huge leaps punctuated by tiny hesitations as he caught his breath and coiled up again (and in retrospect, these split-second pauses must have been what saved me).

I realized at this point that I was riding sans stirrups and sans saddle horn. Both of my hands had a death grip on the reins, which were my sole handhold and sole contact with the horse. I had been carrying a wood stick for a crop, and I felt it crush into the horn and snap in two as the roiling animal plummeted earthward. My legs flapped stupidly to the side, plenty of air clearance between them and the fenders. I readjusted myself the best I could in an attempt to gain some centered gravity, as I was tilting dangerously from side to side. Meanwhile, I was desperately looking for an opportunity to throw myself clear of the raging beast, but alas, I found that my safest position was to stay aboard unless I wanted to land underneath pounding hooves.

In five or so of these mighty leaps (no, I didn't count), the gelding made it clear across the arena. He was heading for the fence, now, and I was certain that he would run into it, scrape me against it, break my leg, toss me off, and leave me tangled in a heap of splintered wood. I braced myself for impact, but the horse, realizing that he was about to slam head-first into the gate, slowed momentarily, and that was just the pause I needed to take control of the situation. I unhooked my jacket from the horn (where it had been trapped, pulling me forward and preventing me from grabbing my safety handle) and fumbled for my stirrups. Then, as Poseidon prepared to pivot and start the whole thing all over again in the other direction, I choked up on one of the reins, pulling his head to the side and preventing future bucking.

He stopped.

I breathed.

And looked around. A crowd of people had just been walking past on the way back from their lunch break. Only one straggler remained near the arena, however.

"Nobody saw that, right?" I asked her.

"Nope, didn't see a thing." She smiled and winked and walked on.

After replaying the whole event in my head, I honestly don't know how I stayed on. My boss said that it must have been because of my first-rate seat. Um, sure, except I was airborne most of the time. My seat was flying through the air a foot above the saddle, thankyouverymuch. No horn, no stirrups, no nothin'. And the hardest-bucking horse I’ve ever ridden. Guess I got lucky today. Thank God for instinct and reflexes.

Well, there’s an adrenaline rush for you. Good to have those every once in a while—keeps you alive, I guess. I’m just grateful that I’m able to type this and have neither a broken arm nor a broken head….even if my back is sore….

[The opening image, by the way, is an actual photograph of the incident. It looks black and white only because Poseidon is a white fewspot leopard and because I became rather blanched as all the color ran out of my face due to shock and horror. The edges are a smidge blurry because it was happening that fast.]

Let's Overanalyze a Bit, Shall We?

2009-10-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

--John Keats

I remember having to analyze this piece for a high school IB English class. It was one of my favorites of the dozens we covered for the sheer lyricism of its verses. It brings a whole new level to “poetry.”

There was a time when my training was so finely tuned that I could automatically break apart a poem like this line by line, pointing out assonance and alliteration, personification, metaphor, hyperbole, synaesthetic imagery. I could tell you whether the verses were written with iambic, trochaic, or dactylic meter, and what type of poem it was (sonnet or quatrain or lyric ballad), and recite the author’s biography, and give various interpretations for reoccurring motifs and themes. All of this came almost without thought, for I had practiced so many times that writing a paper became simply second nature. Critical analysis essays flow rapidly from the buttons on my keyboard, churning out paragraph after paragraph, closing in on the elusive Meaning of the Literature.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Ah, a personified season, given physical, anthropomorphic characteristics! Ah, the wildly winsome alliteration of “winnowing wind!” How artistic! How poetic! How romantic!

…but maybe there’s more to it than that. Perhaps I got too caught up in the literary devices at the expense of the actual essence of the poem. For works such as this are meant to be read, and understood, and enjoyed—they are meant to be interpreted, not as critical, stuffy works of literature, but by each unique reader. They are meant to speak to the psyche of every individual.

I saw that a new movie just came out about John Keats called Bright Star. It tells the story of his doomed affair with the love of his life. Sad story—particularly sad, since the poet died at age 25 of tuberculosis—but so fitting with the tragic romance of the time period.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Yes, Keats is simultaneously lamenting and revering the autumn of his days, as he dies a slow death while he should still be in the figurative spring of his youth. Metaphor! I say, but a metaphor that extends far beyond the dead poet’s self-pity and personal reflection.

It is autumn now, and the leaves are dying, the chloroplasts decaying to be recycled later, the leaves shining gold and vermillion, bright beauty, and then fading, crumpling, tearing away, falling, crispy, crunched beneath feet, rotting, turned to soil and detritus, which is aerated by earthworms, broken down, reused, nutrient-rich, obtained by the infinite root hairs of the great tree, incorporated, green leaf again. No life without death, no joy without sorrow, no triumph without failure. It’s the great paradox. And here is beauty. Enjoy it while it lasts.

puddle-wonderful

2009-10-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

Two Fridays ago, my parents took my injured mare, Bones, for her long-overdue MRI in Oklahoma. I wanted badly to go so I could care for my horse and tour the facilities at the veterinary hospital, but was unable to miss class and needed to stay home to care for the other animals. The news wasn’t particularly good: her digital flexor tendon is torn in three places. With protein injections, shockwave therapy, and at least four or five months of confinement to a 12’x12’ pen (aka hell on earth for a herd animal), she has a “fair” (~70%) chance of recovery. Oh, and it’s going to cost $3500. Yeah, I’m completely broke. Now, as I type this, she’s colicking and having some reactions to the shots and treatments she received earlier today. Lovely.

Later, last Tuesday, I took the long way home to enjoy a particularly vibrant sunset. I pulled over at my favorite bridge and peered out over the water of the swollen creek to catch the last glimpses of reflected pink clouds. I returned to my car as the sky went navy and passed the slumped form of a dead black dog by the side of the road. Pity, I thought, and that was all, until I saw its two live companions. That necessitated another stop. The big spotted one ran off terrified, but the little limping black one with the chewed up face, droopy tail, and obvious leg injuries was all too happy to be hoisted into my backseat. Now she won’t leave. Who wants a puppy?

And then the rain came. A torrential downpour that turned the parking lots into lakes; the streets into rivers; the campus grounds into marshes. My umbrella couldn’t protect me from the monsoon as I slogged through a literal three-inches of flowing water on the sidewalk (ruining my favorite shoes, I might add—a beloved pair of suede Rocketdogs, the cool kind that fasten with Velcro). The eeriest thing, however, was the presence of the earthworms. I didn’t realize what they were, at first, the tiny pink squiggles lining the pavement at regular several-inch intervals. Pale lines, floating and sinking and writhing under the rippling surface of the water. How many tens of thousands of had emerged from their soppy earthen tunnels only to drown on the sidewalk or be smashed underneath my feet? A martyrdom of annelids.

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

--ee cummings

While the heavens poured down, I made a realization—nay, admission—that I hope in time will prove cathartic. Let it rain.

I Dreamt a Dream

2009-10-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

I Dreamt a Dream! what can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen:
Guarded by an Angel mild;
Witless woe was ne’er beguil'd!
And I wept both night and day
And he wip'd my tears away
And I wept both day and night
And hid from him my hearts delight
So he took his wings and fled:
Then the morn blush'd rosy red:
I dried my tears & arm’d my fears,
With ten thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was arm'd, he came in vain:
For the time of youth was fled
And grey hairs were on my head

--William Blake

Last night I had the strangest dream. Rarely do I remember my dreams, but this one came back to me in my early waking moments and I hastened to scribble down notes so I wouldn’t forget. It involved people I had known in high school, at least one college professor, my parents, my employer, and others whom I didn’t know. We were all engaged in some kind of activity—some learning or personal growth exercise. The beginning is murky. Something about…leaning over a barrel of water, with a gleaming horse eye staring back at me and the reflections of hideous caricatures and cruel faces bouncing on and off the surface, with what explanation I cannot fathom.

The culmination of these activities involved a high platform overlooking a creek. The point, as I understood it, was to jump in the water, observe the ecosystem (huge alligator snapping turtles lurked everywhere, but they were totally benign unless provoked), and estimate the volume of the flowing water in gallons. This value would then be compared with the volume of one’s own blood to show how utterly small and insignificant the individual was. I was the first to go, and as I crept down the rocky bank, a cold burst of water spurted out from a dam system underneath the bridge. I whined about the temperature; my friends laughed and splashed cold water at me. Then I waded into the creek and soon the others followed suit.

Following along the creek bed, there was a large building that somewhat resembled a cross between a sunroom and a planetarium. (In fact, I believe the whole thing, creek included, may have been enclosed in a huge warehouse of sorts.) I entered the structure, which was incredibly dark inside. It was surrounded on three sides by windows, and through these was a gorgeous winter scene fit to grace a Christmas card. Silver-blue light shone on a frozen lake, glistening on the tops of show-covered evergreens, bounced from the smooth surfaces of gently sloping white hills. I stood in awe of the beauty for a while, then returned “outside” to the creek. Before, it had been spring or fall, with cool weather but greenery all around. Now snow lay on the ground, although the trees were uncovered and still sported vibrant green leaves. Additionally, the banks were now studded with suburban houses, neatly arranged and looking as though they had always been there. The juxtaposition between the soft blanket of snow and summery foliage and unmarred houses was quite odd, but of course in the sense of the dream it was easily accepted.

I returned to the observation window room. The scene had changed to one of horror. Now a huge building resembling an airport was in view, with what appeared to be a parking lot stretching out before me. Fragments of a broken plane lay in pieces out among a few abandoned cars. Everything was covered in layers of thick ice, solid, inches deep, coating every surface, icicles draping down throughout the deserted carnage scene. What tragedy befell this place? I mused. What disaster occured here; what happened to the people?

Again I went outside; the snow was gone, as was the creek. Now there were simply houses arranged neatly along a plain yellow-lined road.

One final trip to the winter room: The terminal had vanished, replaced by a sea of slushy melting ice. Antarctica, perhaps? The melting of polar ice caps? The coming of summer? The ocean was cold; the ice was broken and floating eerily; night was falling while tiny stars twinkled in the black sky.

I turned to a companion and commented on the changes, the strange disparity between the snow and summer outside, the oddness of the lake/airport/ocean room.

And then my boss the mystic was beside me, and she repeated a snipped of a conversation that we had just yesterday. “Time is not linear, as we imagine it to be. Instead, it is multidimensional.”

And then I was awake, and the snippets of memory were fleeting.

Weather

2009-09-29T19:32:00.000-07:00

Fall is fast approaching, and through some innate intuition (or, perhaps, because the trees are turning brown, the days are getting shorter, and the nights are getting colder—and because the weatherman and the calendar say so) I can sense the impending season.

This also means that an inexplicable and unavoidable humor change accompanies the shift in temperature. The other day I shuddered from a bad case of the chills and drew myself up tight inside my warm hoodie, thinking that I was coming down with a cold or swine flu, until I realized that the cause of my suffering was entirely external and environmental. The sky was gray; the air was gray; the mood was gray. Fat droplets of foggy mist condensed on every available surface and the ground was soggy; the roads slick. I was irritable and depressed with no good reason, the ill medieval vapors apparently possessing my subconscious. Even the realization of this fact did little to improve my foul mood.

The horses, however, are affected quite differently. Despite a relatively mild summer, they still welcome the cooler shift from hot days. Last week a front came through, bringing with it wild breezes, dark clouds, and torrential rains that flooded the creeks, washed out the roads, shut down traffic and left me confined to my home, unable to pass over the bridges which roiled with dark frothy river water. Before the storm arrived, however, the horses sensed the impending event and perked up, excited. They charged and reeled in the mud, galloping madly from one end of the pasture to the other, bucking and rearing and wheeling like colts. Even Rebel, my retired cripple who generally hobbles pitifully despite a plethora of pain meds, decided to get in on the action and loped about, carrying his head and tail regally like the great horse he once was.

I laughed and watched them play for a while, their antics effectively brightening my mood. Lather, though, as the storm hit and all-too-close flashes of electricity split the sky, I was less than impressed. The rain was pouring down (four inches in as many hours) and I dashed about through the field trying to lure the horses in so they wouldn’t get struck by lightning. This, of course, entailed putting myself at risk as I stomped and slid in the standing water, brandishing a bucket of grain and a leadrope, begging the disgruntled sopping ponies to follow me to safety. They wouldn’t budge except to avoid my grasp, and then they’d return to their standard head-drooping, butt-to-wind posture. Then a bolt struck the ground not a few hundred yards away with a sickening crack, we all jumped and spooked, and I retreated to the safety of the barn post haste.

[This reminds me of the only time in my memory when I can recall truly being scared for my life. It was a night with a storm of twice this magnitude, with wild flashes of bright branching bolts illuminating the inky sky at frequent intervals. The rain was falling so fiercely that all other sounds were drowned out save for the loud crashes and deep rumblings of thunder. Again, I stupidly ran out, blind in the blackness, attempting to jingle in the scared horses. Lightning flashed all around me, but I had made it nearly all the way to my destination when a particularly violent and close bolt pierced the sky, accompanied by an ear-splitting boom and then nothing. The light in the barn I had been using to guide my path was gone (I later learned that the power was out) and I had never felt so vulnerable as in that moment. I was certain that I would be struck and killed, but still I managed to turn and run back to safety, so petrified that I collapsed when I arrived and was nearly sick. Yeah, so not doing that again.]

Well, eventually things calmed down, the rain stopped, crews were able to repair the roads, and the sun came out to dry the earth. Soon the sugar maple trees on Drury’s campus will turn their brilliant shades of red and orange, and then fall, and then we’ll settle in for another winter—and perhaps hibernate in our winter lethargy until spring.

Freegles

2009-09-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

The first beagles showed up several months ago, trotting alongside the highway. They sported collars and tags, but the owner was unconcerned when called and said not to worry about it—they’d find their way back home. Then one day at work another beagle showed up with a little orange cat as a companion. Both were friendly, sweet, and in good health. I posted a “lost and found” ad on Craigslist, but no one claimed them. The dog was microchipped and registered to a breeder in Arkansas, but he never returned phone calls. My boss decided to feed and care for the pair while searching for a suitable home, even going so far as to take them in for surgery. As it turned out, the cat was already spayed, and the beagle was already pregnant. An operation cured that—too many unwanted pets in the world already, and these strays could obviously attest to that. Still, two months later, no one has offered to take them. Both are pretty fantastic animals—young, cute, affectionate, respectful, healthy, house-broken. Huh.

And then, last week, I was driving home with my mom when we noticed a dog shambling down the pavement. I would have kept going, with my failing compassion and growing cynicism, but in a turn of character my mom instructed me to pull over.

Immediately the dog approached us, cowering and scraping the ground and whining pitifully. She slumped into a puddle of loose hide over bones at our feet. The most noticeable aspect of her appearance was her “pot-belly,” or rather, her hugely swollen and distended teats, obviously the result of nursing a recent litter. The rest of her, however, was painfully emaciated, with the flanks drawn up, the ribs lining the barrel like bars of a cage, and the spine jutting up along the top like a ridgeback. The edges of her ears were torn and bloody and covered in miniscule seed ticks, while her tri-colored coat was dull and filthy. Her paws were raw with pink hairless sores from the rough asphalt. All in all, she cut a pitiful picture as she cringed on the ground.

I produced a few packages of the horrible gas station “cheesy peanut butter cracker” variety, and she gratefully snatched and snarfed the offerings whole. All except the last two, that is, for those she carried carefully away, disappearing through underbrush along the road until she found the perfect place to bury them for later, no doubt fearing future famine.

These actions were so heartbreakingly adorable that it was immediately decided that the dog would have to come home at once. She hopped right in the passenger side when encouraged and spent the ride home crawling on top of me, flailing around, making a mess, and generally wrecking the (*cough*) pristine condition of my car.

I named her Luka. She’s a good dog. She stays put and doesn’t bark excessively, unless she’s trailing some real or imagined varmint. She plays with our dachshund and comes with us on trail rides, something we can’t trust our own dogs to do. After getting her wormed and feeding her well, she’s starting to look pretty nice, too. And now it’s time to find a home for her. Someone volunteered, and we’ll see if that goes through. My parents and I will donate money toward her spaying fund for whoever takes her.

Yeah, but I’m kinda gonna miss her.

Oh, and did I mention that I don’t even like dogs?

Lamb to the Slaughter

2009-09-18T21:21:00.001-07:00

I saw this news article posted on Facebook last night by a former art teacher. Her response was simply “hmmmm,” and I too found the implications somewhat unsettling.

It’s not that I find the slaughter of the sheep morally reprehensible. While I subscribe to my holier-than-thou vegetarianism, I still begrudgingly support the industry through my choices and actions. And I would have no problem with it whatsoever if the process was carried out humanely (as currently it so seldomly is). But I digress.

The problem I have is what I view as the indoctrination of children. Yes, they’ve got to learn about life and death sometime. Yes, they need to develop responsibility. Yes, they need to know where food comes from, and that the world isn’t sunshine and roses, and that sometimes bad things have to be done for personal benefit (but then again, is the latter something we really want anyone knowing or acting on?). Yes, I think in this case some of the parents may have been naïve and overprotective. But still.

Most children, particularly urban ones who were not raised in a farm setting, would find the idea of the intentional killing of a personal pet abhorrent at best, even if they knew that this was the intent all along. If anything, lots of kids seem to be overly-sentimental and clingy. It’s a developmental phase we all go through. My point is just that the majority of kids, it seems to me, would rather not condone the death of an animal they were so intimately involved with.

I read an update saying that some of the children were emotionally scarred following Marcus’ demise (gee, ya think?). And the headmistress is receiving death threats, and there’s been talk of burning down the school…that, of course, is taking it way too far. Again, I’ve got to reiterate that I don’t think the adults involved in sponsoring the project are evil murderers, but I do think they’re on the callous and irresponsible side.

My problem is this: Ethical issues and responsibility are things that take a lifetime to develop. I don’t think that schoolchildren have the age or experience required to cultivate a real appreciation for and understanding of moral issues this complex. Yes, at some point we all need to be disillusioned with our view of the ideal world, but shouldn’t we postpone the cynicism and disappointment as long as we can, letting kids be kids and breaking the news to them slowly?

This is a real life lesson for the students, isn’t it? Part of it teaches about the circle of life, and the food industry, and the role of agriculture, and the importance of responsibility. But part of it is more sinister: Don’t spare a friend in his time of need if you stand to profit from his loss. Money is more important than relationships. Love is weakness; emotional detachment is strength.

Scary stuff…

Roughin' It

2009-09-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

I’m a third of the way through a three-week farm-sitting stint in the middle of 225 secluded country acres, and I’ve got to say that (despite the wireless Internet access and very nice modern commodities), I’m starting to miss the comforts of home. Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting sick to death of all of my roommates.

I can hear them scuttling around at night. One was so loud and sounded so big that I was certain that it was a mouse or perhaps a wombat. I was too afraid (and too tired) to turn on the lamp and look. The worst ones are the giant black beetles, which seem to multiply exponentially every night. Naturally, they’re attracted to the light of my computer screen and dive-bomb me when I’m typing late at night. Or they crawl right into my bed, prompting me to abandon my philanthropic “live and let live” philosophy and hurl them forcibly into the nearest wall. Yesterday morning I awoke to discover that a veritable herd of giant black carpenter ants had discovered the orange juice concentrate residue in the sink and taken up residence there. Then there are the plethora of multicolored moths that cling to the walls and ceiling, but they don’t bother me too much. The only thing that really alarmed me was the cockroach that crawled out of my hoodie when I went to pull it over my head. A person can only take so much.

The critters are perfectly welcome, as long as they stay outside. There was a lovely large brown mantis hanging around my door the other day, but Maggie the beagle quickly incapacitated it with a chomp and left it mortally wounded on the deck. Three bright green tree frog sentinels guard the doorway, perfectly spaced and arranged by increasing size. They can stay. Maybe they’ll do away with some of my other visitors.

The wall hangings inside my domicile are nice, too. There’s the cryptic alien cactus landscape and a framed copy of the Standing Orders of St. Thomas’s Hospital (dated 1699-1752 and including such pearls of wisdom as “Patients shall not Swear, nor take God’s name in vain, nor revile, nor strike or beat another, nor steal Meat or Drink, Apparel, or other thing, one from the other” and “no Person shall be received into the House who is visited, or suspected to be visited, with the Plague, Itch, Scald Head or other Infectious diseases”). My personal favorite is the perplexing embroidery of the lovely medieval couple posed in front of their castle; the countess sporting a rather unnerving one-sided wardrobe malfunction.

The mornings are misty and humid as I fumble around with weekend chores, carrying sloppy buckets of wetted oats to the stallions, dishing out the dogs’ morning chicken and rice, and flushing the algae out of the stock tanks. When I arrive late at night after a day at school, the curving country roads are thick with fog and the eyes of cats and raccoons glitter from the creek. And there are frogs everywhere, crossing every square inch of asphalt, a parody of that videogame I used to play. I was never very good at “Frogger,” and frequently got smashed by cars right around Level 2. I’m afraid I’ve taken out quite a few of these guys in the past few nights, too—but I can’t help it. They’re everywhere, and they jump so fast and so far and right underneath the wheels.

But nothing could prepare me for the sight I saw returning home in the late morning last weekend. Driving between two big barbed-wired pastures, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I slowed and turned to look, and my jaw fell in what I’m sure was an impressive display of incomprehension and incredulity. Deer aren’t exactly uncommon out here—dead ones dot the highway during breeding season, and there are several does that frequently pay a visit to my own pasture. But a buck is a rare sight—and here were six of them, all big, all sporting a fine rack of antlers, all just on the other side of the fence from me and running together in a tight group. None of them was monstrously large, but they were all very good sized, full grown, and certain welcome trophies for even the most discerning hunter. I don’t know a thing about whitetail social structure, but I’ve never seen a herd of big bucks moving together as a unit. As I watched, they returned my gaze, then loped off and hopped a fence in the distance.

Of course, as with everything, there are frustratingly heartbreaking ethical issues and mounds of stress to deal with out here. But, on the plus side: the work isn’t hard at all, I’ve gotten some pretty cool shots in the misty mornings, and the pay ain’t half bad.

One of Those Things

2009-09-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

Last week, Haley died.

She was 17 years old.

I didn’t know her well at all. I went to school with her, but she was two grades behind me and while I recognized her when I passed her in the hall, we never once exchanged words. She was the daughter of one of the teachers and heavily involved in dance team, theatre, and the bugle corps.

Then she got sick. I remember that clearly, because her decline was broadcasted around the school by sympathetic media students who featured her in a story and teachers who talked sadly about her situation to concerned kids. We watched as she was left confined to a wheelchair, pulled out of school, lost her motor skill, struggled to speak, was put on a respirator…

Her diagnosis, as I recall, was a long, frustrating, and heartbreaking battle. In the end, it was found that she had ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease. The “typical” ALS patient is a 50-year-old male. Haley was one of the youngest people ever diagnosed with the illness.

The entire situation was extremely sad. She fought hard and hung on and made it a lot longer than anyone expected her to, considering how quickly her body began to fail her.

When I heard the news via Facebook that Haley had passed away, I was stunned. And then I imagined what it would be like to be her—a girl even younger than myself faced so suddenly and absolutely with mortality. Forced to suffer and fade away at what should have been the rising prime of life. Or what about her mother, dealing with the death of her baby? Such a tragedy. Such a loss. Such a waste.

No religious-philosophical musings can approach a “meaning” behind all of this. It is what it is, I guess. But that doesn't make it fair or easy or right. Que será, será.

But I’m sorry, as we all are when we hear of something so drastically sad. I wish peace and comfort to Haley’s family. And wherever Haley is, I wish her the same.

Hi Standerds R Us

2009-09-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had to walk a mile and a half. Or, rather, the instructions were to “walk, jog, run, or whatever” six laps around the track. I thought I’d be clever and alternate between walking and jogging a lap, for a total “running” distance of three-quarters of a mile. I was great at the time, but today I can hardly walk. Damn. I guess I really am in terrible shape.

But I surpassed what nearly every other student did during class (yes, believe it or not, this is a college course). Way to set the bar high. The instructor obviously doesn’t care in the slightest about the course material or the students, and has exceedingly low expectations for our performance. She’s also five months pregnant, and she flat-out told us that if the baby comes early, we’ll all get a guaranteed 100% on our finals. Awesome enticement to study and try hard. Now how am I supposed to care about the material if she doesn’t?

For the most part, I think people will perform at the level they are expected to perform. That is, if they’re “supposed” to do poorly—or even have moderate success—it’s going to end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. Mediocrity and apathy breed….mediocrity and apathy. Raise the standards, however, and I think a lot of people will rise to the challenge. Give ‘em a push, and they’ll usually learn to fly.

I’m not much of a social theorist, but these to me seem like fairly obvious observable trends. I’m not blaming the fitness teacher—I’m blaming the societal mindset that tells us that this sort of thing is acceptable, normal, par for the course. While technology and our scientific capabilities and knowledge have increased drastically in the past decades, our educational and professional standards have declined (or so I’ve been told, and the limited evidence I’ve seen has supported that). Why? Why do we coddle our students, and then throw them out into the real world to, well, continue with their mediocrity and immature sense of entitlement? Heck, I know I’m a little guilty myself—most of us are. We like the easy life.

But if we don’t challenge ourselves to grow, who will?

Never Cross the Same River Twice

2009-08-24T23:56:00.000-07:00

Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to secure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger along the forest-track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss; which, at some epoch of the preceding century, had been a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere. It was a little dell where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees impending over it had flung down great branches, from time to time, which choked up the current, and compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier passages, there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush, and here and there a huge rock, covered over with gray lichens. All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue.

"O brook! O foolish and tiresome little brook!" cried Pearl, after listening awhile to its talk. "Why art thou so sad? Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!"

But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest-trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course.

"What does this sad little brook say, mother?" inquired she.

"If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it," answered her mother, "even as it is telling me of mine! But now, Pearl, I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of one putting aside the branches. I would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder."

The child went singing away, following up the current of the brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with its melancholy voice. But the little stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had happened--or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happen--within the verge of the dismal forest. So Pearl, who had enough of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all acquaintance with this repining brook. She set herself, therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the crevices of a high rock.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

Summer, or rather summer vacation, has drawn to a close amidst unseasonably cool weather. It should be in the high nineties this time of year; instead, we’re setting record lows for the month of August. It’s a welcome relief from the usual sweltering, stifling heat and humidity.

I took advantage of this pleasant spell to put in as many hours at work as I could squeeze before tomorrow’s classes. It was nice riding weather—even the four-year-old leopard mare who did her darndest to throw me today (unsuccessfully, I might add) couldn’t make me lose my temper or appreciation for the breeze. And my parents and I went on a trail ride by the river, crossing the Pomme de Terre and enjoying the scenery. Our horses hardly broke a sweat.

Earlier, lost in thought, mourning the many tragedies of this year while still grasping at my remaining blessings, I had pulled the car over at my usual spot at the intersection of two farm roads near my house. I sauntered down the asphalt over the water and leaned over to gaze down. Ten, fifteen feet below the concrete bridge was a shallow, nearly stagnant creek collecting in puddles and dips between large white boulders. Countless minnows appeared in formation as I looked down, scattering as my shadow fell upon them. The schools of tiny fish stretched on as far as I could see—there must have been thousands of individuals within my small viewing frame. On the other side of the drop-off the story was the same: more water, more rocks, more fish. Their bodies flashed silver electric sparks of sunlight whenever they turned just so as the gentle current caught and tipped them. Dull brown minnow-turned-white-sparkle-for-an-instant. A play of light and treat for the senses.

And the water moved languorously on downstream, skirting beaten rocks and lapping the roots of grasses. You can never cross the same river twice, after all.

And what does this say to me? The take-home lesson is that we’ve got to forge ahead wherever the path may lead. We can look back, but we can’t go back. Yes, and so the rippled remembrances of our past billow out and fade to nothingness against the sloshing shoreline—carried softly on white breaking foam, pulled downstream by the torpid current and lost around a bend, but even out of sight still glittering in the sun.

Teh Internetz

2009-08-17T23:54:00.001-07:00

As I type this, I’m also watching Dateline/MSNBC’s “To Catch a Predator.” If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this: Decoys portraying teenage girls pose in online chatrooms and lure potential sexual predators into meeting them at their “parents’ house” while they’re “home alone.” It’s a trap, however, and when the alleged pedophile arrives, he is videotaped, humiliated, arrested, and charged with various felonies, oftentimes spending time in jail and ending up permanently on sex offender lists. Many of the intended men had in fact seen previous episodes of the show, but still thought it was worth risking “big trouble” to meet a supposed 13-year-old for a night of pleasure (or, in one guy’s case, cats and Cool Whip).

Right.

The point I’m trying to make is this: The Internet that we all know and love has opened up this window of opportunity for all sorts of people, rapists and criminals alike. But it’s not just that. The World Wide Web is just that—it allows untold volumes of information to be shared at the click of a button. Virtually anyone (at least in the United States) can access it and use it for an unbelievable variety of purposes; good or bad, legal or illegal, beneficial or detrimental.

I’ll admit it. I’ve got a bit of an Internet addiction. I use it for my job (updating websites and marketing horses), for entertainment (I am a moderator on an equine-related blog that provides lots of amusement and sucks up lots of time), for education (I can google anything I want to know), for social networking (Facebook, email, and personal blogs), for journaling (hence this very post). I can’t imagine life without it. How could I, for example, write a paper that required the least bit of research or documentation? I surely can’t be expected to stagger blindly through a library, fumble through the Dewey decimal system, and paw through books completely unrelated to my topic. Egad. How did people live before the late nineties?

The Internet is useful, fun, fascinating, endlessly changing, and I love it. But it’s leading (as social scientist and anyone with a lick of common sense have been saying all along) to a serious identity crisis. When we’re online, who are we?

I usually hesitate to use my real name online, simply for the fact that I’ve managed to piss some people off and there are plenty of people out there who wouldn’t shy at carrying online disagreements to “real life.” Many people choose the same route, and this requires them to create an online pseudonym. But does this “alter” stand solely for the physical individual it represents, or does it take on new characteristics, personality traits, etc.? We’re allowed to rename, recreate, and reinvent ourselves. Am I as Shanna the same as me as Mozart?

Hmm. That’s a lot of rambling and beating around a point I don’t know how to make. I think, mainly, we need to keep track of who we are. The thrill of living an invented online life—or even simply self-publishing to an anonymous worldwide audience—shouldn’t make us throw all caution to the wind. I’m not just talking about Craigslist killers or potential job interviewers, but more about ourselves; our ethos; our psyche (I sure hope those teachers are proud of my fancy lingo). Don’t get carried away in the moment and make a mistake you'll regret, don’t lose track of reason and character, and don’t stay up until two in the morning polishing off a nonsensical blog post. I should take my own advice.

Burn Baby Burn

2009-08-16T00:17:00.001-07:00

If it hadn’t been for Google’s little illustration on the search engine homepage, I wouldn’t have known that the Perseid Meteor Shower was passing through last week. My mom, ever the Weather Channel addict, was of course already well aware of that fact. So, we went outside and lay down on a blanket on the deck and stared up at the show.

The faintest opaque gray-green of grass below. Inky blackness above, punctuated by darting bats all too near, scuttling by the downspouts. Tiny brilliant pinpricks of effervescent stars winking in the domed firmament. Curdles of the Milky Way glowing dimly in the far-off reaches of the galaxy. The night-sounds were deafening: lowing cattle, gravelly singing insects, occasional hooting crescendos from both great horned and barred owls. Once a pack of coyotes started up in a chorus of eerie shrieks and howls and all the dogs within a few mile radius joined in. The night was still and cool.

And then flashes of light. Brilliant atomic particles streaming madly through the sky, living and burning as passionately as Kerouac caricatures. White sparks, flaming snowballs, illuminated for a minute, straight-shooting star, gone. A blink, an instant, a fading contrail of smoke, nothing. And then another and another, legato interludes, fizz and burn out. Magic lights painted across the sky with rapid strokes of a celestial brush. We stayed out there for an hour and a half before exhaustion overcame me and I retired to bed.

I wanted to learn more about what I was seeing. After perusing Wikipedia (which everyone knows is the single most reliable source for scientific information on the whole Internet), I discovered that “meteors” are simply the light streaks we see in the sky, meteoroids are the objects themselves (ranging in size from dust particle to 10 meters or more across), and meteorites are particles that actually strike the ground. Comets are, technically speaking, giant hunks of junk and ice and rock and stuff that are irregularly shaped, reflect only about 3% of the light that is shown on them, and usually have elliptical orbits. Due to “outgassing,” they shed particles as they travel, and these are what create meteor showers.

And, apparently, “Comet Swift-Tuttle [the very same agent responsible for the Perseids] has been described as ‘the single most dangerous object known to humanity’” by a certain Gerrit L. Verschuur. In the year 4479, there is a 0.0001% chance that the comet will collide with the earth, in which case all life with be completely obliterated. Scary thought. If you’re still alive in 2470 years, watch out.

Grieving

2009-08-09T23:48:00.000-07:00

When it comes to the question, “What happens after death?” I tend to break it into two parts. First, there is the spiritual/religious aspect: Where does the soul (presuming a soul exists) go? I’ve heard countless answers. There are the traditional concepts of Heaven and Hell, which I’ve never found particularly attractive. Someone once explained to me that your last waking (living) moment stretches out infinitely, and you’re left with the eternal experience of the peaceful turning-point of death. Then there’s reincarnation, which is an appealing thought and no more ludicrous or provable than any other theory. Still, the question, with its completely unknowable answer, is enough for me to turn back to my stanch agnosticism, throw my hands up, and say that I neither know nor truly care. Might as well argue how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, for all that.

But when it comes to the physical side of things, the reality is much more definite. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, indeed, but it’s much more beautiful and vibrant than that. Decay and synthesis. It’s Elton John’s Circle of Life all over again. Yes…and isn’t that a beautiful concept?

One thing: grass and grasshopper. One thing: grasshopper and sparrow. One thing: sparrow and fox. One thing: fox and vulture. One thing, Jared, and its name is fire, burning today as a stalk in the field, tomorrow as a rabbit in its burrow, and the next day as an eleven-year-old girl named Shirin.

The vulture is fox; the fox, grasshopper; the grasshopper, rabbit; the rabbit, girl; the girl, grass. All together, we’re the life of this place, indistinguishable from one another, intermingling in the flow of fire, and the fire is god—not God with a capital G, but rather one of the gods with a little g. Not the creator of the universe but the animator of this single place. To each of us is given its moment in the blaze, Jared, its spark to be surrendered to another when it’s sent, so that the blaze may go on. None may deny its spark to the general blaze and live forever—not any at all. Certainly not me, for all my giant intellect. Each—each!—is sent to another someday. You are sent, Jared—Louis. You’re on your way, both of you. I too am sent. To the wolf or the cougar or the vulture or the beetles or the grasses, I am sent. I’m sent and I thank you all, grasses in all your forms—fire in all your forms—sparrows and rabbits and mosquitoes and butterflies and salmon and rattlesnakes, for sharing yourselves with me for this time, and I’m bringing it all back, every last atom, paid in full, and I appreciate the loan.

My death will be the life of another, Jared—I swear that to you. And you watch, you come find me, because I’ll be standing again in these grasses and you’ll see me looking through the eyes of the fox and taking the air with the eagle and running in the track of the deer.

--Daniel Quinn

I’m torn in my grief. On the one hand, I think it’s silly. Shorty was, after all, just a horse. Just a horse in the sense that I am just a girl, and really neither of us is particularly significant in the general scheme of things. Really, I must be grieving more for myself and what I have lost (memories, namely), and if this is the most traumatic loss that’s occurred in my life, perhaps I need to get out more and see what it’s like to have a child or best friend die.

But on the other hand, I know there’s far more to it than that. All people are wired in different ways, and, well, I’m wired towards horses. It’s my make-up, my career path, my calling in life. I can’t change it, and I certainly shouldn’t be ashamed of it. And even at that, I suspect I feel the grief less acutely than others might. I’m lucky or cursed enough to have some capacity of emotional detachment.

But for an animal that saw me through years of adolescent angst, who helped to solidify my future goals, who served as a catalyst for my current lifestyle, who was always quiet, always patient, always kindhearted and willing, who won me money and took care of me, who loved peppermints and Twizzlers more than anything else in the world, who was wrapped in an adorable jet black package, who served simultaneously as teacher and pupil, whom I rode at least 2,000 times, if I had to count (and that might be a low estimate), who was faithful, and calm, and athletic, and a good partner and friend—what else can I say? The loss is huge, but life will go on. Already it's getting easier.

The little nondescript grave doesn't look like much. Just a raised area of gray dirt that's packed down hard by the weight of the tractor and scarred by broad tire marks in red clay. No marker adorns the spot as of yet, and no radiant angel stands guard to mark its holy significance and command all passers-by to stop, kneel, and pray. It's shaded in the morning beneath a copse of tall persimmon trees, but in the evening it faces the sunset at the base of a rolling green hill that serves as our hay pasture. Microbes and carrion-eaters have already moved in; the carcass will decompose, disintegrate, turn to earth, and from this earth will spring shoots that grow leafy and heavy with sugars, and this will be harvested, and baled, and utilized as nutrients by the hungry herd that remains.

Yes, and that will suffice.

The wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken.
But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again,
And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.
Yea, I shall return with the tide,
And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding.
And not in vain will I seek.
If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.
I go with the wind, but not down into emptiness;
And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return.
The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain.
And not unlike the mist have I been.

.…
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.
Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.

--Kahlil Gibran

Requiem for a Black Horse

2009-08-07T23:53:00.001-07:00

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
The plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can't remember who to send it to

Yesterday morning I had to make the call that every animal owner dreads. Shorty was down, uninterested in food, feverish, and miserable. After a six-month battle with cancer (and after being told he wouldn’t live to see the end of January), it was finally his time. Nobody wants to play God and make the decision to end a loved one’s life, but in times like this, you’ve just got to do the best you know how. So I gave the boy a few pats and hugged his neck and shared some tears with my mom, then I dialed the vet.

By the time she arrived, Shorty was standing, but his breathing was labored and his appetite still very diminished. The bute he had been given had brought his temperature down somewhat, but not enough, and he was hot to the touch. My mom sponged him off with cool water and we offered him all the treats he would take. The vet checked his vitals, then turned to us for the go-ahead. We all agreed there was no point in carrying on. Even if by some miracle we were able to nurse him through this bout as we have the previous two flare-ups, the cancer was certain to rebound again in the near future—perhaps at the hottest time of the day, or in the middle of the night, when no one was around to help him. No, as difficult as it was, it had to be done.

We led him from his stall to the place we had decided he would be buried. At first he was reluctant to move, and we feared we’d have to euthanize him in his stall and then drag him a quarter mile with the tractor to reach the grave. Once we got outside, however, he seemed to liven up. He wanted a drink of water, which we gladly provided, and red clover, which we picked in handfuls and fed to him. Seeing him like that, rallied, was almost enough to make us second-guess our decision. But Shorty has always been a stoic horse, and we knew he was suffering. His eyes were tired. Always the good boy, he walked along obediently, oblivious.

We found a shady spot in the back pasture, and decided that this was the right place, if there can ever be a right place for something like that. My mom said her final goodbyes and left, but I elected to stay, for whatever reason I don’t know. The vet tech held his head while the vet injected a sedative. He drooped and grew limp. I bawled and stroked his muzzle. Then the IV was attached and the lethal cocktail was administered. Halfway through the dose, he crumpled and fell. His eyes rolled and glazed. We all three knelt over him and rubbed him, while the vet spoke comforting words. And then, a few violent but unconscious spasms later, he was gone.

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way

We walked back slowly and silently. The vet had cut a lock of his braided tail, which she discretely slipped to me. I hid it from my mom. A man with a backhoe was summoned, a hole was dug, and that was the end of that. So anticlimactic.

I cried off and on all morning, but I’d already expended so much grief over the past six months of trials that I didn’t have a whole lot left. I was just glad that he didn’t have to suffer; that he went easily, that we wouldn’t have to worry anymore. But just the previous midnight (24 hours before me typing this now) he had felt fine. We had been out to see him, and he was grazing contentedly in the light of the waning moon. Ten hours later, and he was dead. That’s life. Things change in an instant.

While Shorty was cheated out of time he should have had (at 15, he was only halfway through his life expectancy), at least he had the best retirement a horse could ever hope for. He was pampered and spoiled. He had free reign of the barn and could come and go from his stall at will. He was given all the most delicious and expensive treats, and he was checked multiple times a day to make sure he felt well, was eating, and did not have a fever. I gave him all the drugs the vet ordered and bought him all the time we could. Most of the time throughout his ordeal, I think, he actually felt pretty good, if tired. He was living the good life—the one we all deserve.

Been walking my mind to an easy time, my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around
Well, there's hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

But I make it sound as though Shorty was lucky to have us. While that is true as far as it goes, we were the lucky ones to have him in our lives. He was my first horse, and I got him eight years ago this month. He taught me so much, and tolerated my novice whip-jerk-kick horsemanship. He won me innumerable ribbons, trophies, plaques, halters, saddles, checks, and prizes, besides. Even last year he was still winning pole bendings without even trying. He took care of me in my youthful foolishness, and when I outgrew him, he proved to be a faithful and steady trail horse for my mom. Unflappable, kind-hearted, and quiet, he was lazy as could be with a beginner rider on his back, but a wild spitfire whenever I asked him to run. He knew the difference, and he knew how to deliver exactly what his rider needed. A horse like that—who is simultaneously an athlete and a babysitter—is hard to come by. Shorty truly was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of horse on so many levels. He was a good, good boy.

And there’s more than that, too. Shorty came during a transition period in my life, and he saw me through all seven of my years at Central as I grew and changed completely, throughout adolescence and the upheavals of the teenage years. And he changed the course of my life, too, for he indirectly started me on the path of Veterinary Medicine, and he taught me how to ride and train, and he’s the reason that I now live on 31 gorgeous acres in the country. That’s a big influence for such a little horse. But you can’t measure that unseen quality: heart.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

--James Taylor

For the most part, my mom (who loves the horse even more than I do) and I have been handling the grief as well as can be expected. I only lost it when Buddy started crying for Shorty. Bud came here seven weeks ago as a loaner for me since all of my other horses are, for whatever reason, out of commission (it’s been a really bad year). From the first night of his arrival, he immediately latched onto Shorty, who has always been solitary by nature. Buddy wouldn’t leave his side, however, and whenever another horse came too near, he’d run it off and herd Shorty away from the perceived threat. I’m not one to look for deeper meanings in things or believe in spiritual sentimentalism, but it was almost as though Buddy came as a guardian angel during Shorty’s time of need.

Anyway, as we were leading Shorty to his final resting place, I caught up Bud and put him in Shorty’s stall so he wouldn’t get too nosey or upset. But he just watched out his window and called loudly to his friend as he walked away. And, hours later, when we turned them all out for the night, the first thing Buddy did was run to the spot where he had last seen Shorty, neighing all the while, looking around, ears pricked, distressed, concerned. I hate to anthropomorphize, but it was quite clear what was going on. Anyone who says animals don’t experience emotions and attachment is cold and deluded. The same goes for anyone who claims that, if there is such a thing as a “soul,” only people possess it. Again, that’s sheer arrogance, as far as I’m concerned.

Eventually Buddy quieted and calmed down, although he’d still periodically lift his head and look around for his pal. Yes, Shorty, you’ll be sorely missed. Godspeed, little buddy. And thank you.

Things That Go Chomp in the Night

2009-08-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

I found this mysterious flying monstrosity in the barn, flapping around the lights and crash diving into the floor. I only had a chance to snap one picture before one of the dogs discovered it and promptly ate its wings and one of its legs. I threw it outside before she swallowed it whole. Anyone want to hazard a guess to what it is? It looked like a flying mole cricket. Do they fly? (According to Google Images, they do. Huh. Learn something new every day.)

The cricket, of course, was accompanied by a multitude of moths, a bevy of beetles, a congregation of creepy-crawlies (so maybe I’m grasping at straws for alliteration here). Tiny black bugs cover the ground underneath every light source, and fat bloated toads sit in the middle of a swarm, overwhelmed and overfed. You can’t walk outside without getting bombarded by flying insects that tangle in the hair and find their way underneath clothing, winding up smashed and itching.

And there are other nocturnal critters out there, too. Going out to check on the horses at half past midnight, armed with a high beam flashlight (unnecessary with the almost full moon), I spooked up a few meadowlarks settled in the tall grass before my feet. Sweeping my light around, I noticed bright reflecting eyes staring back at me. A chorus of coyotes and a barred owl started up in the distance, adding to the symphony of singing, grinding, and scraping performed by frogs and bugs.

And then Chi-Chi, my dachshund companion, took off barking, hot on the hunt. I aimed my light at her and saw her on the heels of a gray animal about her size. She was yapping and nipping and having a grand old time, while the armadillo (for that’s what it turned out to be) jumped and hopped and tried to scurry away in its haphazard, awkward, and most inefficient manner. I pulled the dog off (much to her offended chagrin) and followed the ‘dillo. It appeared to be mostly blind and mostly stupid, and when I got up close, I simply reached down, grabbed it by the tail, and hauled it into the air. From here, I examined its bumpy pink underbelly (covered in coarse bristly hairs), its thick, plated tail (through which I could feel its terrified pulse), its powerful digging feet (armed with sharp claws but not unlike cloven hooves), its armored back (wet with Chi-Chi’s spit), and its triangular, mouse-eared, pig-eyed head. Not knowing what else to do, I set it back down and it ambled off.

Then I came in and washed my hands, for I’ve heard that armadillos can carry leprosy, in addition to other nasty diseases.

I Concur

2009-07-26T23:25:00.000-07:00

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

--Walt Whitman

The simple fact that anything exists at all in the void of Infinity is astounding and mind-boggling, when one really starts thinking about it. Add to that conundrum the complexity and miracle of life, and the whole thing is beyond comprehension or explanation. Not that we don’t try, of course. In a few of my classes last year, I was taught about the structure and diversity of plants and invertebrate animals. I learned, for example, that Queen Anne’s Lace is nothing less than wild carrot. Pull a plant up from the ground and the bitter conical root emerges. Or how about the bdelloid rotifer, which is a multicellular aquatic animal capable of producing copies of itself without need for sexual reproduction? In some species, males have never been discovered, yet females continue to produce eggs which in turn hatch new, fully functioning rotifers. Fascinating. Tidbits such as these greatly increased my already-considerable appreciation for the world at large, and made me once again revert to childhood habits of kneeling in the mud by the creek, digging for signs of writhing nematode worms or tiny side-swimming crustaceans.

They fit together perfectly, you know, their parts. Throughout the eons they have evolved from that initial spark in the primeval soup or mandate of God or what-have-you. And those parts, the chomping mandibles, snapping pinchers, clicking legs, and beating hearts, are in turn composed of carbohydrates and lipids and proteins, long strands of amino acids, rows of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon. And within each molecule atoms, and within each atom whizzing electrons, the fat, torpid neutrons, pulsating protons, and so many particles we have neither named nor seen. And in them, what? Bits of sonic string squirming as frantically as the nematodes, as quantum physics would have it? Unimaginable energy forces? Divinity?

The second we think we’re at the brink of unearthing the final hidden secret of the universe, we’ve discovered the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, we’re at the brink of understanding all the clockwork of Creation, the proverbial rug is pulled out from beneath our feet and we find that, once again, we know nothing. Things don’t add up. Space, apparently, doesn’t play nice and behave in an orderly fashion. The old laws of physics don’t apply anymore. If there’s a unifying law of science, we’ve yet to find it. Well didst thou speak, indeed, Athena’s wisest son.

And so, with the knowledge we so desperately crave held maddeningly beyond our reach (like the Queen Anne's root on a stick, I suppose), we can choose either to chase it, or perhaps instead to simply sit and bask in its overwhelming beauty. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course, but for me I’ll leave physics to the physicists and mathematicians. Biology is interesting, important, and life-saving, but when push comes to shove, I think I’m on Walt’s side. Yessir, let’s all stop for a moment, turn over a pebble, and admire the ants and pillbugs as they scurry away in all their invertebrate glory.

The Metamorphosis

2009-07-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

Now I don’t intend to write about Ovid’s or Kafka’s takes on the subject (I have read the latter, but not the former). Rather, I’d prefer to mull over the little miracles I’ve been personally witnessing over the past few weeks. It started with the single spotting of an abandoned cicada nymph casing. The result of a molt to adulthood, the ugly pinchered skin was left behind, while the newly reborn adult began its aboveground life after more than a decade of blindly burrowing, feeding, and growing under the earth. Split at the top, brittle, hollow, but still completely and perfectly formed, its empty legs clung to the trunk of a tree. I plucked it from its perch, examined it, then discarded it thoughtlessly. Then, over the course of the next few days, I found more and more and more of the molted remnants of immature insects. They were everywhere—I didn’t have to actively search for them. I would stumble upon them stupidly, or they would suddenly appear before me as I went about my day, and I pictured the deluge of cicada nymphs digging their way out of the soil, clawing up a branch, shedding, emerging, drying, and droning off to begin the summer song. Fantastic.

And then there were the tadpoles swimming thickly in every puddle, every pond, every stock tank. In addition to the big fat lethargic resident toads, I’ve been seeing smaller specimens hopping around light sources, looking for bugs attracted to the brightness. Then I put two and two together. Huh.

The birdhouses, too, are full of young’uns. While their transformation may not be quite so dramatic, it’s still miraculous to think about the whole process of fertilization, which leads to an embryo in an egg, which hatches to reveal a hideous pink monstrosity that wobbles and cries through its gaping mouth and then, somehow, sprouts feathers and takes gracefully to the air. One set of fledglings was in the process of leaving the nest. I caught one when it clumsily flew into the garage and took it outside to rescue it from the dogs. It struggled and squirmed in my hand, alert, ready to spread its wings. How?

Change. Metamorphosis. Evolution—in the most literal sense of the word, as well as in the most hated Darwinian terms. But isn’t there something immensely beautiful about the whole thing? Something ugly because something magnificent; pieces are made whole; improvements are achieved. And this is not to play into the whole evolution-is-climbing-towards-the-ultimate-pinnacle (namely, mankind), because I don’t believe that at all. But, still, the drumbeats of progress create extraordinary things. Isn’t a butterfly more stunning than a caterpillar, or, to turn it around, doesn’t the butterfly’s glory make the caterpillar’s life that much more exceptional? Perhaps one completes the other—the yin and the yang.

Growth, anyway. Coming to fruition. Realizing one’s potential. Why are we so afraid of change?

The Curious Adventures of Jade the Tortoise

2009-07-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

The other day, while returning from a jaunt in the pasture, I edged along the dog fence and caught sight of something curious. The three hounds were sniffing and pawing at a round object that I at first glance took to be a buffalo chip with the word DADDY written on it (the mind is a curious thing, you know). A closer observation showed that the lump was in fact the shell of a box turtle, branded in large white letters with JADE. I wondered if Jade’s darling pet had gotten loose, but then realized that Jade was probably the turtle’s name. Huh. The dachshund was beginning to gnaw on the edge of the shell, so I hopped the fence to rescue the poor creature. I picked it up to have a better look, noting that its shell was also adorned with glitter nail polish. When I turned it around to face me, the hinge opened a peep and two indignant, glaring red eyes stared back. Then the hinge slammed back shut, and that was that. In that short instant, though, I had noticed that the coloration on the tortoise’s head and feet pointed to the likelihood of its being male. Poor Jade. I hope he’s secure in his masculinity.

Well, I carried Jade safely away from the prying jaws of the dogs and set him down gingerly in the pasture. He seemed bound and determined to stay tightly clamped in his shell, but when I returned later, he was long gone off somewhere—on a new adventure, no doubt. I rather pictured him slowly and determinedly crawling, crawling, crawling back to his home and the little girl who named him, à la The Incredible Journey. Heh.

But I had to wonder exactly where he had been in his travels. The nearest house with children is the better part of a mile away, and they don’t seem like the type who would decorate a pet tortoise and set him free. So where had ol’ Jade come from? And where was he headed off to? I read online that box turtles can live for 40 years or more. That’s a long time for little nondescript reptile. I bet he’s traveled the country; I bet he’s enjoyed the freedom of the open road; I bet he’s sired hundreds of turtle babies (turtlets?) that hatched from their eggs and stumbled out to meet the bright, fast world. By now Jadey-boy’s probably halfway to Arkansas, where he’s meeting up with some long-lost amigos for a Kerouac-style adventure.

I would have snapped a picture of his brief detour and visit, but alas! my digital camera broke and I’m most forlorn. Damn.

Leapin' and Hoppin'

2009-07-13T23:51:00.000-07:00

The other night, as it were, I had the opportunity, or perhaps obligation, to ride late at night. Never before had I taken advantage of the brightness of the full moon to enjoy the relative coolness of murky summer nights. The preparation was simple enough—I walked out through the pasture, found and captured a belligerent Brandy, bridled her, and scrambled up bareback. The lights from the house, barn, and telephone pole were distracting, so I turned the mare off towards the blackness of the woods.

And if I ever lose my mouth
All my teeth, north and south
Oh, if I ever lose my mouth
I won’t have to talk no more

She was understandably reluctant and less than thrilled about the midnight excursion, and I soon found that horses’ night vision is not all it’s cracked up to be. Brandy has slightly limited sight in one eye due to an old injury, but that surely couldn’t have accounted for all her stumbling, or the tree she very nearly collided with head-on before I averted disaster and pulled her off to the side. Still, it was a peaceful ride, with the nearly-full moon shining so brilliantly as to make the stars as faint as in the city.

And if I ever lose my eyes
All my colors all run dry
Oh, if I ever lose my eyes
I won’t have to cry no more

Riding back through the treeline, I noticed how once we were fully enclosed in the woods, we were immersed in utter blackness. Yet, looking through the upper limbs or around the bend, I could see the silver light playing on branches, bark, and the rustling grass. The striated ground beneath my horse’s hooves—my God!—moonshadows. And with that realization, the Cat Stevens song started running through my head.

And if I ever lose my hands
Lose my plow, lose my land
Oh, if I ever lose my hands
I won’t have to work no more

From time to time, I would hear the dull pounding of hooves on mud rapidly approaching. Sawyer. He couldn’t bear to let Brandy stray too far away, and whenever she disappeared from his view, he’d call frantically and charge up to make sure she hadn’t, say, fallen into a bottomless pit or been eaten by a rabid tiger. Thus reassured, he would show off by jumping the ditch, tossing his mane with its luxurious blond braids, loping circles, and behaving like a typical lovestruck teen.

And if I ever lose my legs
I won’t moan, and I won’t beg
Oh, if I ever lose my legs
I won’t have to walk no more

And I rode on—a few laps through the pasture, weaving persimmons in the woods, around the arena and roundpen…and that was it. I brushed the horse, turned her out, went inside to take a shower, and went to bed, whereupon I promptly forgot the exhilaration of living purely for the experientialist moment.

I’m being followed by a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
Leapin’ and hoppin’ on a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow

Did it take you long to find me?
I ask the faithful light
Oh, did it take you long to find me?
And are you going to stay the night?

Letting Go

2009-07-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

Allow me to recall and retell a story I first heard when I was nine years old. It has stayed with me since then, and the refrain will at times run through my head inexplicably. I’m not so certain what the moral is, but there’s certainly a lesson here.

An elderly Greek man lay dying after a long and fulfilling life. He looked around at his devoted family assembled together at his bedside, then he gazed out across the beautiful scenery that characterized his home and all that he had known and loved throughout his many years. What wonderful memories he had accumulated, what experiences, what untold things he had learned! This was the island where his ancestors had lived and died. This was the place where he had spent his boyhood, met his true love, married, and raised his family. In that sea had he worked as a fisherman; through those mountains had he walked and pondered and grown old. He sighed with contentment and resignation, and with a final effort he let his right hand fall to the ground beside his bed. “This is Crete,” he thought, “and I love Crete, and I can never let it go.” So saying, he scooped up a handful of the cool earth and, pulling his clenched fist up to his breast, breathed his last.

And then he was standing at the gates of Heaven. Ornate and gilded, they marked the entrance to a kingdom no mortal has ever known. Upon them was the inscription, “Leave behind all traces of your former life, and then ye may enter into the realm of Everlasting Paradise.” The man moved to step forward, but the gates remained fixed and solid. Then realization dawned upon him, and he looked down at the clay still clutched in his hand. “No,” said he. “This is Crete, and I love Crete, and I will never let it go.”

And then the gates opened, and Saint Peter stepped through. “You have been a good man,” he told the Greek, “and you have well deserved your place in Heaven. But the laws are such that you must cast aside all earthly things before you are allowed to enter through this portal to Eternal Life. Now, free the contents of your hand and join me here.”

“No,” said the man. “If I cannot take it with me, then I will wait outside forever. For this is Crete, and I love Crete, and I will never let it go.”

But then a small boy slipped out from behind Saint Peter’s robe. The old man’s eyes widened in recognition, and then filled with tears. The child was the man’s grandson, who had died when he was only five years old. “Please, Papa,” he spoke. “Won’t you throw away that dirt and come inside to play with me?”

And the man loosened the grip in his fingers and the dust of Crete fell through, and the gates swung wide open, and there was a terrible and awesome light.

And when the man had stepped through and his eyes had adjusted, lo and behold, the island of Crete lay stretched out before him.

The Least of My People

2009-07-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

From time to time hummingbirds fly into our barn by mistake and, disoriented, become trapped despite the wide open doors and windows. They fly higher and higher, frantically beating at the rafters because they instinctively sense that upwards is the way to freedom. The white underside of the roof mimics the pale tones of the sky and further confuses them and they zip back and forth, buzzing pitifully, until they eventually discover the escape route.

An unlucky few, however, don’t find an opening until they collapse from utter exhaustion, literally unable to move and as helpless as a victim of diabetic shock. They crumple to the ground, weak and paralyzed. On several occasions last year we found the fallen birds and, recalling a long-ago presentation at a local nature center, attempted to resuscitate them with sugar water. The task fell to me once, and the hummingbird feeder was brought down. The miniscule creature was cradled in the palm of my hand. It would open its eyes for a moment, then close them again in a pathetic display of hopelessness. I forced its beak into the opening in the middle of the plastic flower and it lay motionless in that position for a few seconds, before withdrawing its head violently. We repeated this procedure a few times, and it soon became clear that the bird was not only drinking, but regaining strength visibly. It puffed itself up and squeaked a few times, then fed on its own. Then it shook, stood up straighter, and whizzed off into the wild blue yonder. It was a beautiful moment.*

I’ve been thinking lately that maybe what we need in our lives is a little compassion. Take the time, reach out, offer a little help or just live and let live. While I’m certainly wont to grasp too hard for a metaphor, the helpless hummingbird could certainly be compared to anyone and everyone we meet on the street, or really any other divine spark of life.

Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me.

--Matthew 25:40

Can we somehow find personal fulfillment through our own kindnesses and good deeds? Religion and prophets would say so. By acts of compassion, we help not only the objects of our kindness, but also ourselves and our souls, if you’ll allow me to get a bit metaphysical here.

(I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Part of it is summer musings, part of it is parroting what I’ve been taught in philosophy books and religion classes. But it’s something to think about, anyway…)

Of course, this is coming from the person who will slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a butterfly.

*The first two paragraphs are a result of what happens when I try to compose a blog post at one in the morning. Melodramatic with pompous, unintelligible diction much?

Utopia

2009-06-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

In the future that we used to imagine
The one they pictured in those old magazines
Their tomorrow-land is so old fashioned
A delusion of the modern dream
But they had a skyway to the city towers
And we're still rocking over stones and tar
I've been crawling down the freeway for hours
I want my fusion-powered flying car
This ain't the modern world that I remember
The one they promised all us boys and girls
This ain't the vision that the artist rendered
What happened to my modern world?
They said my leisure time was gonna be bitchin’
I'd have my holographic TV phone
And we'd be cooking in our One Button kitchen
In our aluminum dymaxion home
With the enlightened ones leading the nations
Bringing peace around the world at last
A utopia of cooperation
Where injustice is a thing of the past
It's just a bunch of big baby boomers
Trying to snatch the last cookie and run
It's such a comfort to the guilty consumer
If Armageddon had already begun
'Cause if the world's a box of chocolate cherries
Then they can use it up and toss it away
They make it post-apocalyptic and scary
To even dream about the future today

--David Wilcox

I’ve had this stuck in my head on and off for months now—ever since I first heard it on the radio. I don’t know much about David Wilcox, but I love this song.

Bustin' Broncos

2009-06-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve been spending my summer with the horses. Out here in the boonies, there aren’t a lot of opportunities for social interaction, and I’ve been so exhausted from work and so preoccupied with the current events in my life that a drive into town just seems like too much effort at the end of a long day. So most of my time has been spent in the company of equines as opposed to humans, especially at my two jobs as a veterinary assistant and horse trainer.

There’s something cathartic about working with the colts. I tend to think of training as an art form. The rider is the sculptor or painter, and the horse is like a hunk of marble or a blank canvas. Chipping away haphazardly or slopping paint isn’t the way to go about it, and will only result in a poor final product. Instead, great care, dedication, and skill must combine in a labor of love to create something aesthetically pleasing, beautiful, and functional.

And each horse must be treated in a completely different way. They’re like people in that each one has its own personality, set of quirks, and personal preferences. Some get along famously with me: they trust me completely, look to me for companionship, and would do anything I asked of them…but would not respond nearly so well for another person, even going so far as to react violently out of fear or stubbornness. In others, the situation is reversed, and I consider it a success each day if neither of us kills the other. It’s funny that way.

I suppose that, officially, I’m a Professional Horse Trainer. This is a title that I neither want nor feel I deserve. I don’t think of this as a career, only a summer job, a pastime, something I enjoy doing and a learning experience besides. And indeed, I have so much to learn. As with most everything else, it takes a lifetime to even reach past the tip of the iceberg. This ain’t something you can pick up in books—it’s all hands-on, learn-as-you-go-and-hope-that-nothing-terrible-happens-in-the-process. And that’s the joy of it.

Kindness and consistency are imperative, or as the natural horsemanship mantra goes, “be as gentle as possible, but as firm as necessary.” Having “horse sense” is a must, too. Horse sense may be something innate, but much more of it comes from observation and, more important than anything else, common sense. It’s a mindset; it’s thinking like a prey animal; it’s reacting coolly but quickly in times of crisis; it’s deflating potential blow-ups before they occur. If you do things right and your horse has a good mind, you should never have to worry about a Wild West Rodeo bucking fit. Once mutual trust has been established, patience and baby steps yield the best results—in the safest manner.

I could fill up 100 blog posts o r 100 encyclopedia volumes with just the little bit I have experienced and know on the subject, and that still wouldn’t be enough. Yep, there’s a lot to be learned here, and most of it isn’t about horses. It’s about life.

Thoughts

2009-06-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I got to meet up with some friends from high school, several of whom I hadn’t seen in over a year. It was nice—we ate pizza and caught up on each other’s lives. It’s interesting to see how we’ve diverged into our various major…even those of us who had shared the same interest in biology are now looking at careers in ophthalmology, botany, biological engineering, and veterinary medicine. After dinner and a long debate about how we would split up the bill (too long since some of us had had a decent math class!), we headed off the Barnes & Noble to window shop and continue our conversations.

We gazed with halfhearted interest at the rows of books, wistfully categorizing them into Those We Had All Read in School (Life of Pi, The House of the Spirits), Those We Had Read for Self-Enrichment (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Everything is Illuminated), Those We Wanted to Read (Brave New World, The Dharma Bums), and Those We Should Theoretically Read but Never Would (War and Peace, On the Origin of Species). There was a hint of competitive one-up-manship, as we attempted to impress each other with our literary repertoire. “I wish I had endless time and an endless budget to read all of these books,” I remarked, sweeping my hand in a vague arc across the Fiction section. “Yeah,” replied a pal. We agreed that the tragedy of our condition is multifaceted. First, being Poor College Students, we can’t afford to buy anything (Last week, on a splurge, I spent an entire day’s wages on two books. But you can’t put a price on knowledge, right?). Next, our time is extremely limited. We don’t have the energy to read anything heavy during the school year, and during the summer, all we want to do is sleep. Finally, without the motivation of a grade or the encouragement and guidance of a professor, it’s hard to get interested in the more difficult (but culturally significant) works. So we settle into a state of apathy…and read the comics. Pity.

It was after 10:00 by the time we said our good-byes and the last of us split up to return home. I’ve always liked driving alone on the highway at night, when the faint lights of oncoming traffic off in the distance remind me, for some strange reason, of an amusement park ride. Last night there was very little traffic, however, and as the radio blared melancholy songs of unrequited love, I made the startling realization that I couldn’t see out my rearview mirror. I made a few adjustments before realizing that there were no problems with either my vision or the mirror’s location—there was simply nothing to see. The lay of the land was such that I couldn’t even see the dull, blank purple sky. My view was completely black for the “visible” mile or two behind me. No cars followed, and I could only dimly make out the tail lights of a vehicle far ahead. I was, I realized, completely alone. From time to time I amused (or consoled?) myself by tapping the brakes or flicking on the turn signal, so that the road behind me shone faintly red and proved that I hadn’t gone blind. Meanwhile, my headlights kept the highway directly before me brightly illuminated, while the median on my left and the woods on my right were black, shadowed, and hidden. It’s a one-track road, I thought to myself, bearing me down toward an inevitable conclusion. And sure enough, when my exit materialized out of the darkness, I felt myself signal, brake, and turn out of habit. What other choice did I have? Or, rather, what would happen if I just kept on driving?

But, despite my contemplative mood, I didn’t keep on driving. My only concession to impulse was to stop at the bridge over the creek, park my car, and walk out over the water. There was no moon in sight, but there were no clouds, either, and the stars were brilliant and as distant as ever. Imitating the stars were thousands of flashes of yellow light that moved and blinked and disappeared across the blank landscape. Fireflies. The whole show was reflected in the slow-moving waters of the Pomme de Terre and I watched, spellbound, for a minute or two until I heard the far-off rumble of a car’s engine and, seized by irrational panic, hightailed it back to the safety of my own vehicle to complete the drive home.

Buzz buzz

2009-06-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

They came in as a plague, a swarm, thousands of them filling the air, circling, alighting. The breeze was thick with the humming of their wings. Awestruck, and not a little bit intimidated, I hid out in the sunroom, snapping pictures through the window, hoping they wouldn’t turn on the nearby dogs and horses. Slowly, as more and more of them landed in a clump and showed no outward signs of aggression, I cautiously approached the tree where they had amassed. As I mastered my nerves, I walked directly underneath the seething cluster, holding my camera inches from the roiling bodies of the insects, fascinated.

They were honeybees, I could see when I got closer, not wasps or other stinging pests. They were of the sort that has been mysteriously disappearing, dying out, baffling scientists and concerning agriculturalists. I was glad to see that this little assembly had survived and set off to found a new colony. Unfortunately, they had picked a bad place to do it. I’ve heard stories of bees making homes in people’s houses, infesting so badly that honey oozes from cracks under the windows and whole walls have to be ripped out to remove the invaders. Then, too, once they are settled the bees become aggressive and will violently defend their territory. A call to the local Nature Center informed us that we had at most a couple of days before the insects changed from docile busybodies to vicious guard dogs.

A beekeeper was summoned, and he was delighted at the opportunity to add to his collection. He informed us that there was a queen in the center of the mass, secreting pheromones to summon the drones. By cutting off the branch he collected the queen and her followers. A few spritzes of hairspray sufficed to cover up the queen’s scent, and several drops of lemongrass oil further attracted the bees to the box he had set up for them. He estimated that there were 20,000 individuals, but while he’s the expert, I suspect this number is grossly inflated. Regardless, he succeeded in taking all but a dozen or so of the insects with him while avoiding the tragedy of anyone getting stung.

Good riddance—now the bees will be put to good use pollinating and producing honey—no need for an exterminator and a pointless eradication. The visual was an interesting display of fecundity; one more experience to add to the list of likely one-in-a-lifetime sights.

Gravity

2009-06-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

Enchanted by the fog that trailed wispily among the waving fields of fescue, proceeding slowly with the setting of the sun and the coming of dusk, I tore myself from my proceedings and ran, child-like, through the tall grass. Surrounded by thick clouds of mist under an inky sky, I took all leave of rationality and plunged into the heart of the sparse woods in the back acre of the pasture. There, broken by the horrible windstorms of last month (classified by experts as “land-based hurricanes), was a giant hickory tree, split in half. A large portion of the trunk had cracked from the main structure, and this was resting on the ground, although oddly still vivid and living, sustaining life from a few slivers of shattered wood that kept it connected to a source of water.

It was onto this broken trunk that I climbed, hoping to gain a better vantage point by grasping at limbs and pulling myself upward. The bark was wet with dew and quite slippery, so I inched along carefully, grabbing handfuls of thin, flexible twigs to steady myself and I progressed along the length of the tree.

It was growing dark by now, and I paused in my journey to survey the gathering fog. In the distance, a pack of coyotes began to howl, a high-pitched, eerie sound. Beneath my feet, large carpenter ants scuttled to and fro, irritated by my disturbance. Moths and beetles flew about my head and crashed into me, falling heavily to the foliage below. Most fascinating, however, were the myriad of fireflies that flashed around me, shimmering, seemingly (and, I suppose, truly) stretching on for miles. I could see thousands of the insects, bobbing and illuminating, like flickering stars in a dying galaxy.

Mesmerized, I turned slowly to take in the scene.

There was a crash. My left arm burned with an intense pain. I was looking skyward. Clenched in my white fists was a torn twig; my elbows were instinctively hooked over opposing portions of tree trunk, with my torso laying in between, suspended above the ground. What had happened was clear—in pivoting, my rubber-soled boots had slipped on the moist bark, sending me for an unintended voyage downward. I had managed to break my fall through a reflexive action. In this instantaneous moment of realization, I happened to see the body of a dead firefly crumple and fall to the ground. A bioluminescent steak graced my left jean leg.

After a moment’s pause to collect my thoughts and make sure that my aching arm wasn’t gushing blood (in fact, there was hardly a scrape), my new concern became the business of extricating myself from the tree. I relaxed, and my right leg found solid ground. That was good. My left leg proved a bit more of a problem. In my descent, the shank of my spur had slid between a crack in two limbs, and the rowel had held fast. Now, with my foot a good four or five feet above the ground, I couldn’t find the leverage to free myself. I tugged and swore, but remained held fast—a paralyzed, ungraceful Rockette. Finally, grumbling all the while, I raised myself back up on my scraped elbows and slid my leg from its trap. Even now, on solid ground, I found myself literally caged on all four sides by huge broken branches and tall clusters of leaves. Large moths began to bombard my face, and I heard the incessant buzzing of mosquitoes in my ears. The excursion had lost all of its appeal and, after a short bout of panicked pacing, I finally crawled out through a small hole in the limbs and returned, disillusioned, homeward.

Romanticism is overrated.

Perspective

2009-05-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

Things haven’t been going particularly well for me lately. There certainly hasn’t been anything completely catastrophic and, as has been pointed out to me on numerous occasions and in multiple formats, in the general scheme of things and the course of a lifetime, these current events are mere trifles, speed bumps, annoyances, and uncomfortable memories. Still, I can’t help but feel my characteristic “que será, será” attitude ebbing away in the midst of these unfavorable situations. My get-up-and-go has got up and went, as they say, and I haven’t been the most chipper individual lately.

Ah well. Be that as it may, things are certainly bound to turn around eventually. I still have much to be grateful for, as I constantly try to remind myself. My late-night readings of Kahlil Gibran and my current view out the window (a yellow field of tall grass bending in waves to the gentle breeze) remind me of that.

But keeping things in perspective—that’s far easier said than done. While I’m in the middle of some philosophical-religious work, I feel elevated to the heights of transcendence and peace and contentment reign. The next day, however, I’ve again sunk into a woe-is-me, the-world-is-ending-so-why-even-bother mope. Bah. I think most of us are guilty of this at some occasion or another, so give me my time to complain and it’ll all work out in the end.

The state Special Olympics are in town this weekend. Yesterday, I saw a group of athletes walking around the mall. My problems suddenly palled in comparison. Three summers ago, I volunteered for 50 hours at a workplace for the mentally handicapped. I had been told that the experience would make me appreciate what I had been given, because these people were always so happy, despite their situation in life. Far from it, I learned, for being so closely involved and interacting on a personal basis with these individuals only served to show me the suffering and monotony that was their daily lives. I was deeply touched by several of them—“Annie” who always gave hugs, “Marlene” who was madly in love with her supervisor, “Greg” who referred to me only as his “buddy.” The managers and supervisors, however, were obviously incredibly burnt-out with their jobs, and their frustration was apparent, giving the whole workshop a stressful, wearisome, uninviting atmosphere.

So, in the end, what right do I have to whine about my roadblocks since, when it comes down to it, I’ve got it pretty damn good? See—typing this out and working through it has me feeling better already. I wish more people would try this little exercise…maybe the world would be a happier place without all of the unnecessary self-pity.

Keeping Up with the Joneses: 2009 Edition

2009-05-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

I got a new cell phone on Saturday.

I didn’t need one. There was nothing wrong with my less-than-two-year-old one, save for a few cosmetic scratches on the front and the annoying tendency of the side flaps to avoid sliding back into their proper position. Still, it worked just fine, and since it was capable of making and receiving phone calls, I was happy with it. No need to upgrade.

But after my mom’s phone fizzled out last week and it became clear that I was eligible for a trade-in, the urging of the Sprint employee and the insistence of my father had me examining the display cases.

“What features do you want?” asked the helpful fellow.

“Something that won’t break when I drop it. And that will fit in my pocket when I ride a horse. And, oh, I like to take pictures, but I don’t transfer them to my computer or anything.”

He showed me fancy expandable QWERTY keypads. I don’t text. He showed me large, technologically advanced screens. I don’t watch TV. He showed me fancy Internet features. I don’t connect to the web.

Finally, I settled on a model slightly above the basic line—an upgrade of my old Katana. It came in three colors, but the pink was reminiscent of a certain stomach medication and the silver was unavailable, so I went for the black. “Boring, boring, boring,” said my father, who hasn’t seemed to realize that I’m no longer 10 years old.

On the drive home, I amused myself with picking out a new ringtone (a modernized rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon), then quickly grew tired of my new toy and stuffed it in my pocket, taking the old phone’s place. Meanwhile, my parents struggled to figure out the new features of their high-tech choices, repeatedly asking for my assistance and exclaiming in frustration. Simplicity triumphs again.

But in this era of supposedly increased concern for the environment and renewable resources, why are we so willing to constantly “trade up” for newer, bigger, better options when doing so is completely unnecessary? Far from making our lives easier, it’s simply more complicated and frustrating, as my parents found out. It’s not really a matter of impressing people, either, is it? Is it that consumer culture teaches us that our happiness is tied into constant transience, the pursuit of the newest, coolest, bestest thing? Does our value rest solely in our stuff? Is this Keeping Up with the Joneses: 2009 Edition?

And, of course, it’s wasteful. We’ll be keeping one of the spare phones, but the others will be donated to a charity—perhaps a battered women’s shelter—if we can find one, that is. The store wouldn’t buy them back, as it has no use for them, and didn’t offer to recycle them, either. So much for being green.

To make the situation even more absurd, I’ve had to opportunity to compare it with a completely different cultural outlook. As our roof was badly damaged in this month’s storm (now classified as a “land-based hurricane” rather than a tornado), a crew has been hard at work resetting shingles this week. An Amish crew, that is, who hitch a ride in a driver’s van from their homes several towns over. Although the Amish aren’t an uncommon sight in some areas around here, my interactions with them have been extremely limited. I’m sorely tempted to engage them in conversation about their beliefs, but too shy and embarrassed (not to mention rude and whorish, by their standards, I imagine) to carry out my plan. Besides, where does one begin? How would I respond if a “foreigner” (for although we live geographically close, culturally, we are continents apart) approached me and asked me to explain my fundamental values in 500 words or less? Instead, I checked out a Wikipedia article and pretended that that was all I needed or wanted to know.

I’ve observed them hard at work on the roof, though—all the way from boys of 15 or 16 to a man well into his sixties. They never remove their wide-brimmed straw hats, and they’re much more comfortable speaking amongst each other in Pennsylvania Dutch (at least according to the Wiki article—I can’t recognize the language). They brought a tin can to fill with water from the spigot, and they all share. It’s all so alien to me.

At one point, a man in his forties approached me as I was unsaddling my horse. Earlier they had all been having a good laugh at my expense as the mare spooked over their ladders and refused to come near. The man asked me questions about her, and I gladly answered, happy that we had found a common point of interest and expertise. Even on this subject, however, the discrepancies were notable. He was fascinated by her build, her gait, and the fact that I rode her every day—for pleasure, no less. To him, horses are a necessary mode of transportation, a machine that may be thought of fondly. To me, they’re pets and sources of amusement.

Funny how that is.

The Proverbial Rock and a Hard Place

2009-05-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

I’m between the two.

My dilemma is thus, and if anyone has any advice, please pass it along. I’m stumped and most horrifically confuzzled.

Without giving too much information away, I was recently hired to work as a horse trainer. My employer has proven to be nothing but kind. However, there is a situation with her large herd of horses that is quite troubling. They are all suffering from an obvious medical issue, and she doesn’t seem to be aware of it. It predisposes them to severe problems affecting health, comfort, longevity, usefulness, and monetary value. Several of them are already suffering crippling consequences, and the owner is neither particularly concerned nor aware of the extent, seriousness, or even possibly the identity of the problem. I have tried to gently coax her in the right direction, but she is not inclined to heed my advice, since she has decades of experience on me. For several of the horses, this is a veterinary emergency requiring immediate treatment. For the rest, they need drastic intervention to prevent them from going down the same path as the unfortunate few. I can’t stand by and let this happen, yet at the same time I don’t want to offend my employer, make myself into an obnoxious uppity whippersnapper, or lose my job.

Of course, there are several paths I could take here.

The emotional side, unchecked: Call the ASPCA and the veterinarian and the sheriff! I can’t bear to see an animal in such obvious stress and pain without reporting it to the authorities! OMGOMGOMG!!!11!!

The practical business side: This ain’t my problem. Keep the ol’ trap tightly shut.

The rational side: I have a moral responsibility to act in the best interest of the animals, but I must balance it carefully with my duties to my employer. I can only take baby steps and hope that by the time my advice sinks in, it’s not too late.

The common sense side: Um, why am I posting this potentially incriminating information on the Internet?

***

In other equine news, pictured at the top of this post is the new horse we bought for my mom. The shopping process was long, frustrating, and at times heartbreaking, but I won’t get into that here. The light at the end of the tunnel was this boy. I wanted to call him Fabio, for obvious reasons, but my mom decided on Sawyer.

That Missionary Zeal

2009-05-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

Last Monday, I had the opportunity to speak to Jessica Valenti, author of Full Frontal Feminism (which I discussed in a post several months ago) and co-founder of feministing.com. We read the book in my Women and Gender Studies class, in large part because Valenti was slated to speak at a convocation event in April. We were to listen to her speech, then follow it up with a private lunch where we could ask her questions and engage her in dialogue. Unfortunately, she became ill and had to cancel the event. With the end of the school year rapidly approaching and no time to reschedule, we opted for a phone chat, instead. So, after extensive planning, our large class huddled around an odd contraption for a teleconference.

It started out poorly. None of the students had prepared questions, and there was an awkward silence punctuated by our professor’s whispered, “Does anyone have anything to say to Jessica?” Valenti took pity on us and launched into a spiel about her new book while we worked hard to gather our thoughts. Then the conversation turned lively. Interrupted only by doorbell-ringing and dog-barking at Valenti’s home, we threw a string of questions and comments at her, often causing her to pause and think carefully before responding.

One girl asked her how she handled all of the negative attention she received for her very public feminist work. “I’m in therapy!” came the quick reply, accompanied by not-quite-sincere laughter. “No, seriously, I am. It’s hard…the weekend after my appearance on The Today Show, I received 500 hate mails. Five hundred emails in two days. It’s really difficult to deal with, but there comes a point when you turn to your friends for support and you realize it’s not worth worrying about. You can’t engage these people in dialogue—there’s no point in trying, because they don’t want to hear it. Don’t waste your time and reason arguing with them.”

I mulled this over for a moment, then overcame my shyness and leaned forward to speak. “Then how do you reach those people?” I asked. “The ones who are sending you hate mail—the ones who are so resentful—those are the ones who most need to hear your ‘message,’ right?”

“Well,” she said, “if they’re reading and responding so vehemently, that means they’ve heard your message. Otherwise they wouldn’t be writing at all—in effect, you’ve already reached them.”

This didn’t satisfy me.

But how do you answer that very difficult question?

I have found in my limited experience that even the most close-minded and angry of people will eventually cede somewhat and listen to the point they so strongly detest. Often they’ll consent that their opposition has a point, and if both parties can provide solid evidence to support their claims, they’ll be able to respect one another, agree to disagree, and coexist peacefully. Obviously, this is not always the case—far from it, in fact. I wish more people would be willing to give the method a try, though…the world would be a much more peaceful place.

But the next point is more of a philosophical one. How do we know that our ‘message’ is the right one? Feminism (or sexual equality/ egalitarianism, to use slightly less provocative terms) seems to be intuitive, a no-brainer for so-called progressives and liberals. But what about other topics? I can’t help but be reminded of the missionary mindset—the certainty that one knows the only right answer and has a responsibility, nay, a duty to spread the word and enlighten the poor, uneducated, uninformed masses. The absolute certainty of the superiority of one’s beliefs—it’s a thought that makes me cringe.

Reason, of course, can be employed to determine the validity of an idea, but we should still take care to avoid the trap.

(I apologize for the nonsensical ramblings. I just worked an eight and a half hour day, and I took a nasty final yesterday. That’s my excuse for incoherency.)

A Cruel Wind Bloweth

2009-05-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

Today was supposed to be the last day of instruction before finals week. Two of my four classes were cancelled, so I planned a leisurely day. I’d get up at 8:15, eat a good breakfast, attend the review session for the upcoming (and much-feared) American Chemical Society comprehensive examination, and get home in time to assist with the pre-purchase exam on our new horse and help the vet check Bones, as she’s been limping pitifully for the past few days. It should have been a good day, and hopefully some of the ongoing equine health issues would have been resolved.

Ha.

I woke up just a few minutes before my alarm was set to go off, vaguely aware of an ambulance. “Odd,” I thought groggily. “You don’t usually hear ambulance sirens out here.” But the sound didn’t fade, and as I drifted slowly into consciousness, I realized that the sound was in fact the tornado alarm. The background noise was rain smashing into my window. Fully awake now, I vaulted from my bed and peered out the window to check on the horses’ status. It was so foggy and dark outside that, coupled with my lack of glasses or contacts, I couldn’t see a thing. I stumbled down the hall and woke up my mom. “The storm siren’s going off,” I said. “Get Sawyer in the barn!” she replied, so I ran out in the rain to grab the horse and put him in a (hopefully safe) stall. I slipped in the mud and almost fell, and as I tore back towards the house, rain crashed down around me, and the wind whistled ominously. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. I was starting to get a bit worried.

I wondered whether or not it would be safe to go to school. As I weighed my options, the power flickered, then went out. The phone lines were dead. The sky was black. Then the roaring wind suddenly stopped. I usually keep my calm in situations like this, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit panicky. I went to find my mom, and she was staring out the window, watching shingles fly from the roof and smash into the front yard as the wind picked back up. The legs supporting the decorative windmill snapped, and the whole tower collapsed to the sidewalk. The purple martin house bent on its stand at a perfect 90-degree angle. The house shook.

We took the dogs and hid out in the closet beneath the staircase. Every so often she would go out to check on things, and come back with a dire report. The door I sat against was vibrating violently. The sound of the wind and rain was unbelievably loud. Then the fire alarms starting going off, in that obnoxious way of fire alarms (a shrieking squeal punctuated by a woman’s voice calmly repeating, “fire, fire”). The culprit turned out not to be a lightning strike, as I had feared, but rather water leaking in from the roof and soaking the wires in the ceiling. The carpet was flooded. Water streaks ran down the furniture and across the ceiling. The stone on the fireplace looked like a natural waterfall, with a vivacious spring bubbling from its surface. It was the strangest thing I’ve seen in a while.

Outside, after things had calmed down, we surveyed the damage. Shingles littered the yard, the road, and the neighbor’s pasture. Many objects were either broken or tilted haphazardly. One of the barn doors had blown completely in to a symphony of shattered glass and busted beams. The door on the other end was badly bent, bowing outwards in a strange convex shape. Debris and rain and torn into and through the barn—it’s a miracle that the one stalled horse wasn’t injured. I can’t imagine how terrifying that must have been. Judging from the splintered wood and uneven flooring, the entire barn must have been lifted in the air and then set back down, destroying the structural integrity without actually collapsing the structure.

The pasture, too, was a mess. Besides being horribly flooded, many trees had fallen, littering the ground with huge sharp limbs. Some branches had fallen across the fence, and other trees had split right down the middle. A magnificently large black walnut had uprooted itself completely, while another giant tree had collapse right onto our electric fence, bending and/or breaking several posts on its way down and stretching the ropes to the ground. With no power and no height to the fence, nothing is holding the horses in right now. Hope they stay.

Well, I spent a good chunk of the morning helping my parents with cleaning up and assessing the thousands of dollars worth of damage (missing, of course, the studying that I so desperately needed, but that seems like a pretty minor issue now). The only consolation is that all of the horses survived and appear to be on four sound legs—with the exception of Bones, who is actually much worse today. But now the vet can’t see her, because her barn lost its roof and her house is completely flooded. She’ll have to gimp around for at least another day. Poor horse. Poor house. Ugh.

But such is life. Nothing to do now but pick up and move on.

Mockingbirds

2009-05-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve been hearing a mockingbird sing like crazy lately whenever I make my way through the potholed Shewmaker parking lot. The asphalt there is so riddled with divots and holes that it just about gives me whiplash to drive through it, and with all the rain we’ve been having lately, it’s currently a spectacle of raging rivers and stagnant lakes. "Shouldn't our tuition money be going towards fixing the parking lot so we don't die on our way to school?" a friend asked me the other day. The bird doesn't seem to mind, though, and he keeps singing his heart out, alternating and switching every few seconds to a different loud call. Every time I walk past I look for him up on the radio tower or the telephone lines, but I never actually saw him until Wednesday. He was perched on a high limb of a flowering tree, puffed up in cocky pride, warbling as loud and clear as he could. Then he took off in flight to a blur of white-barred wings, tail fanned cheerfully, still singing although airborne. I had to chuckle at his confidence. “I hope you find a girl,” I told him, amused. “You deserve it.”

I don’t think I would have even been able to identify a mockingbird either by appearance or voice just last year, but after seeing them out here in the country, I’ve realized that they’re dedicated city-dwellers, too, and they seem to particularly love Drury’s campus. It’s funny that after being shown something obvious, you suddenly become aware that it was always there, present in your subconscious, waiting for you to notice.

Mockingbirds always seem so earnest, but there’s a peculiar quality to their song. It’s not authentic, I guess, it’s an imitation, a phony, a fake. The birds are cheeky little thieves, nature's downloaders of pirated music, the famous pop stars who get all the credit but don’t write their own lyrics. A line, as from a song or a poem, came to me—I don’t know if I made it up or heard it somewhere—“It was just me and the mockingbird, singing a borrowed tune.”

Seems like I had a point to this when I started out typing, but I can’t for the life of me recall what it was….I blame the last week of class and finals, which will be here shortly. Yep, that must be it.

And how cool is the picture? It’s a mockingbird…made out of elementary school students.

Dodging Turtles

2009-04-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

Now the going was easy, and all the legs worked, and the shell boosted along, waggling from side to side. A sedan driven by a forty-year-old woman approached. She saw the turtle and swung to the right, off the highway, the wheels screamed and a cloud of dust boiled up. Two wheels lifted for a moment and then settled. The car skidded back onto the road, and went on, but more slowly. The turtle had jerked into its shell, but now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot.And now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway. The truck went back to its course along the right side. Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over. Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright. The wild oat head fell out and three of the spearhead seeds stuck in the ground. And as the turtle crawled on down the embankment, its shell dragged dirt over the seeds. The turtle entered a dust road and jerked itself along, drawing a wavy shallow trench in the dust with its shell. The old humorous eyes looked ahead, and the horny beak opened a little. His yellow toe nails slipped a fraction in the dust.

--John Steinbeck

Friday, my birthday, I got up at my usual time in the morning to prepare for the exam in my 9:00 class. After breakfasting on cake (thanks, parents!) I drove off on my usual commute. On left side of the road I saw a dark shape, so I slowed and glanced over to see the ambling form of a box turtle. It had been many months since I’d seen one, since winter seems to lead to the seasonal disappearance of reptiles, so I smiled fondly at the old familiar sight. Cresting a hill as I continued on my way, I saw a second tortoise right in front of me. I slammed on my brakes and all of my books and papers flew heavily into the back of my seat and crashed to the floor. Then, turning a corner into a wooded stretch, I had to swerve around a third turtle. What biological signal told them that April 24th was the day to reappear, as suddenly as the reversal of a magician’s vanishing act?

The funny thing about the animals is the symbolism they’ve taken on. Simultaneously ridiculed for their sloth and praised for their perseverance, they nevertheless hold great significance in the stories we tell. Slow and steady wins the race, after all.

And there have been times in my life when I’ve felt very much like a box turtle, severe red eyes glaring out from under the lip of my domed organic dwelling. It’s not so much about hiding behind one’s proverbial shell as it is about plodding on and on and on. Despite the obstacles, setbacks, trials and tribulations, or just life in general—despite discouragement and feelings of doubt, uncertainty, or hopelessness, just keep trying to cross the road, one scaly clawed foot at a time. And when someone picks you up, carries you away, stuff you in a box and tries to shove lettuce down your throat, well, just bear it with a smile and an unfailing sense of optimism. Promise is on the other side of that stretch of gravel, so how can you live save by chasing it?

Returning that afternoon, I passed through that same stretch of road to see that one turtle hadn’t been so lucky—its shell smashed, caved in, redness oozing from the broken shards. Pity.

Ambition!

2009-04-21T19:48:00.001-07:00

Is it bad that I want to burst into song to the tune of Fiddler on the Roof's “Tradition?”

It’s an interesting subject, though, and one that’s been coming up quite a bit in my conversations recently. The most striking thing about ambition, at least to me, is how completely subjective its definition is. Some view it as a virtue; others, a moral flaw. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar revolves around the title character’s ruthless ambition and how it led to his justified demise. Conversely, other famous tales praise characters’ internal drive and desire to better themselves. Stories like those of Horatio Alger commend the attitudes that led to success and self-betterment.

In today’s contemporary culture, people are still arguing about what exactly “ambition” means. In a thread on an online forum I frequent, the topic came up. One 60-year-old male banker described ambition as the motivation to climb the corporate ladder in the business world, overcoming both internal and external obstacles to find fulfillment in both material and hierarchal success. A 25-year-old female engineer and outdoor enthusiast defined it as being the best self that she can be, regardless of what others think—what makes her happy (and does not negatively affect others) is all that matters.

This of course made me critically evaluate my own feelings on the subject. I’m not exactly an extremely competitive person by nature—I’m as comfortable following as leading, but if I sense on incompetence on the part of the person in charge, I waste no time before jumping in and bossing people around until the problem is fixed. I like to be recognized for my achievements, but at the same time I’m embarrassed when my name is called and my accomplishments are listed. I prefer to stay on the fringes, present, but unnoticed until I choose to make myself known. I’m a quiet person by nature—I don’t like a lot of fuss. So even when I do get a competitive urge, I strive to win only for my own sense of self-worth, not to make a name for myself or impress people. Of course, there are the petty but somewhat-justified times when I get the impulse to take some arrogant individual down a notch or two. Maybe it’s human nature, maybe it’s just my own wild competitive dominance-seeking streak, but there you have it.

But then, is ambition a “bad” thing when it seeks to take advantage of others or advance in a chain of command? If the ambitious individual acts justly, honestly, and causes no harm along the way, I see nothing wrong with a healthy competitive attitude. People are hard-wired to find self-value in different ways, and if success in the workplace is what makes them tick, then more power too them. Competition turns dangerous when the stakes are too high, though. When some succeed greatly and others fall by the wayside, things have gone too far. Really, that’s the great problem with laissez faire capitalism…"the poor get poorer and the rich get richer." But I digress.

Self-betterment and fulfillment (what some could call personal ambition) are good things, I think. They can bring greater happiness and lead to advantages not only to the individual, but to the community as well when personal values are involved. On the other hand, when third parties are negatively affected, egos get too inflated, or ambition turns into conquest for conquest’s sake (as was the case with Shakespeare’s Caesar), what was a virtuous ideal becomes a hollow victory and dangerous character flaw.

So, as Socrates would say, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Only through self analysis and introspection can we truly live “well.” To summarize my opining, everything in moderation. Ambition can certainly be a beneficial thing, but by all means keep it in check.

First Day on the Job

2009-04-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

Today I started my first “real” job. I’ve found various ways to make money in the past—riding, training, or exercising horses, teaching barrel racing lessons, buying and selling for commission or on my own (I cleared a fair chunk of cash that way starting when I was 14), and making a bit of custom tack. But I’ve never been on an official payroll before, so I was a tad excited to get to it today.

I was hired by my neighbor the equine vet, and until the end of the school year (in just a few short weeks!) I’ll be working one day a week as a degree-less tech—holding horses, managing equipment, and just being a general lackey. This morning I arrived just as the vet and her assistant were laying down a big white-faced mustang with squamous cell carcinoma on his lower eyelid. She used a scalpel to cut out the cancerous growth, then stitched the slit closed. While she was finishing the sutures, the gelding started to wake up, dopily and clumsily heaving himself up one his feet. He was far too sedated to actually support his own weight, however, and what followed was a dangerous dance as we attempted to keep the horse under control and on the ground. The thousand pound horse staggered drunkenly, fell, scrambled, and rose again. He was making his way slowly to where the cars were parked. His legs gave way. He stumbled and crashed sideways into the front bumper of my car. No harm to vehicle or animal, surprisingly, and things eventually calmed down. The vet was pleased with the results of the surgery, but suspected that she didn’t cut out all of the growth and predicted that the horse would come back in six months to have his whole eye removed. Sad, but it beats dying of cancer.

Next was cosmetic surgery on a show horse with an old injury to his nose. When he had been young, he had sliced his nostril half off, and it had healed with a long flap hanging off to the side. The vet reopened the old wound and stitched the sides together. This surgery was followed by a few ultrasounds on recipient mares for embryo transfer, then we headed out to do a dental float on an aged Arabian mare named Rosie. She was heavily sedated, almost to the point of collapse, but still she fought the hydraulic float and it was all I could do to hold her head still, even with the weight of it supported by the overhead beam. Her mouth was a mess, and during the procedure one of her teeth fell out, accompanied by much blood. She was underweight, too, because the pain in her teeth kept her from eating like she should. Poor old girl.

Finally, we arrived back at the clinic to collect semen from a stallion and do a few more ultrasounds. Overall, it was a pretty interesting day. I learned a little, and I’m glad I found a job that I enjoy and will benefit from in terms of life/career/résumé experience.

Good Friday, 2009: Riding Westward

2009-04-10T09:18:00.001-07:00

In 1613, the immortal John Donne penned this famous work. Today, 396 years later, while accepting my unfortunate limitations as a sub-par poet, I am inspired to answer:

“Let man’s Soul be a Sphere”—a proclamation
That fuels our quest across Creation
Always hoping, with any luck, to find
The origin of God, or the Heavenly Mind
But Society’s motion exerts its force
And all too often we are blown off course
We pick up the fragments to start anew
For what more, we ask, could we hope to do?
But as we grow old, our eyes grow dim
With faltering heart and weakening limb
Lost and circling, deaf and dumb
Simple ants being crushed by opposing Thumbs
Or so we think, in our cynical Hearts
Depressed bodies, broken parts
But Hope exists if we should but look
Up to the Sky, into the Book
So it is, on Good Friday, that I ride
Through the dark hills and green valleys wide
I raise up my head to the fast-clouding sky
What a death were it then, to see God die?
What Thinkers before me have wondered the same?
What countless Others have shared my aim?
My young horse beneath me does shudder and prance
Partaking in youth, and the joyful spring-dance
Perhaps I should join her—with wings we could soar
‘Cross the bright heavens. Could one ever want more?
What is Eternity? The Mystery deep
Does cloud our Conscience, corrupt our Sleep
The Unknown is brutal; our Hearts are shy
We fear the unknowable question: Why?
But why do we always have to know?
Perhaps the time has come to let go
Life is good; God is great—if these things be true
Then they are enough, and no more can we do
God willing, my time on Earth is yet long
This is but the prelude to my worldly Song
The Aria of youth; adolescent Crescendo
Vitality’s Symphony picking up tempo
Every Soul; every Sphere has a place in this Choir
From the birth of the World, ‘til the perishing Fire
Soft! Little horse, let us ride through the day
While the Sun is still high; ‘fore our lives fade away

Well, I may not be Donne, but I am done, so everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.

So that means I get to name it, right?

2009-04-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered a new species. Or at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

In Zoology lab, we were again viewing slides from our collected microcosms underneath the microscope. During the past week, our water sample has become much more, well, fragrant. The jar was filled with filamentous brown algae which choked out other life forms (most of the amphipods, copepods, and planarians had died off, it appeared), and the water itself was a murky amber. Unidentified chunky objects floated ominously near the surface, and I wasn’t very excited to stick my hand into the nastiness. Still, it had to be done, so shutting my eyes and holding my nose, I collected a few drops of liquid with a pipette and dribbled it onto my slide. The findings were exciting. There were multiple vorticella, telescoping in and out rapidly by contracting their myonemes. Paramecia and euplotes abounded, and I even saw an elongate diatom, a round foraminiferan, a bring pink blespharism, and an elusive trumpet-shaped stentor (can you tell that I like dropping technical terms in an effort to impress laymen with my uber-cool invertebrate knowledge?). Then there were the strange, large, round ciliates with obvious internal contractile vacuoles. I called the lab assistant over to identify the specimens, and he was stumped. The professor, too, didn’t know what to make of it, besides “Cool!” and “I’ll have to look it up in my protozoa guide later!”

Score one for me.

But then, oh joy of joys, I found the crowning glory of the lab. At first, scanning the sample at 100X magnification, I thought it was an amoeba. I zoomed in to 400X for a closer look. It moved and twisted about several strands of algae, presumably feeding on organic matter. It appeared to be dorsoventrally flattened, and its body was roughly triangular and very supple, with a definite anterior end. An artist’s (*ahem*) rendering is shown above. There was a clear area in the middle, which I at first took to be a vacuole, but it soon became clear that this was a multicellular organism, so perhaps it was some kind of organ. There were cilia surrounding what must have been some form of mouth through which food entered. I found it interesting, and observed it for a while. Eventually, it exhausted the food supply at its particular locale, and began to move forward. And then it extended the proboscis.

A long tube, at least as long as the “body,” protruded from the “head” region, whipping around every which way, feeling about in a way that very much reminded me of an anteater’s tongue. It could fully extend this introverted “trunk” as well as withdraw it completely. We have studied proboscis worms in class before, but that looked nothing like this: they weren’t microscopic in size, and they were round, not flattened. My new friend continued to move about in this manner, waving its tongue-like protrusion wildly about, while I hollered like a maniac for the professor. She arrived and bent down to have a look-see. Her reaction, and I quote, “Oh. My. Gosh. Oh wow.” She had never seen anything like it, and was absolutely amazed. “Draw a picture of it!” she said. “I’ve GOT to look this up!”

Score two for me.

Of course, although possible, it’s rather unlikely that this animal belongs to a currently undescribed species. On the other hand, with so many countless unknown species out there, who knows how many thousands (millions?) of creatures we have not yet discovered? It boggles the mind.

So, as a scientist, it’s my duty to name my new organism, right? Which leads me to a bit of a conundrum. I haven’t a clue what, given the opportunity, I would name a species I discovered. To name it after oneself seems vain and cliché. A simple description (anteater/large nose/worm) seems repetitive and not particularly fun. So do I give credit to the university? Or the month in which it was discovered? Or pay homage to my professor. Hmmm…what would you name it?

Unfortunately, as I watched in awe, fascination, and a tinge of pride for being a famous discoverer, the organism got too hot above the harsh light of the microscope stage. It stopped its movement, retracted its proboscis and, as I stood by in horror, lysed. Its cell contents oozed out into the surrounding fluid, and its marvelously unique form was no longer recognizable.

RIP, only known specimen of Myrmecophagidrhinoturbelladruriaprilonelsoniamozartiae.

Karma in Action

2009-04-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I arrived at school an hour and a half before rehearsal was set to begin, so I thought I’d head down to the computer lab and do some studying for today’s pseudocoelomate exam. Of course, if I’m set up with a computer and Internet access, I’m unlikely to do much studying, but that’s beside the point. When I arrived at the lab, I found it full of people. A glance at the sign on the door informed me that I was just in time for the “Access Missouri Letter Writing Workshop.” “Come in,” a man told me, and pulled me through the door.

They were writing letters to senators and representatives about the plans to cut funding for scholarship programs statewide. While I don’t benefit from this money, they were asking from support from anyone who would help, so I figured, “What the hey, it’s a good cause and it should only take a minute.”

Roight.

First, my nine-digit zipcode was not listed in the online database, so I couldn’t find out who my state representatives were. Several people scampered to my aid, but after a long and fruitless search, they gave it up as a lost cause and told me to write only to the Senate Education Committee. So I drafted a nice letter and proceeded to hit “print.” The computer froze. Nothing that I or the advisers did had any affect whatsoever. I hadn’t saved the letter draft, either, because it had come off of a template filled with and the like. Eventually, I again gave up and lost my work. I redid it, saved it this time, retried printing, and again the computer froze. So I attempted to email it to myself, but the Internet was down. Finally, I saved it on my flashdrive, went to another station, and voila! My document was in hand and signed.

Forty-five minutes later, I walked out of the room to a chorus of “thank you for coming by!” I had accomplished no studying. I was a little peeved.

And then today I got the email that, thanks to my participation in the campaign, I had been entered in a drawing and won a $10 Starbucks gift card. Hey, it’s not much, but it’s a little compensation for my frustrating afternoon. It’s the thought that counts, after all, and now I get to enjoy a mocha-frappa-something-or-other. OK, I’ve never been to Starbucks before as I’m not a big coffee drinker, so this will be a real experience. A little bit of good karma, right? It's nice to be rewarded for a good deed every once in a while.

The illustration, by the way, is Carousel, a piece I made in my Visual Arts class my sophomore year of high school, when I was in my “horse as a metaphor for humanity” phase. I was mighty proud of it at the time, and I still think it’s kinda cool. ;)

One Can Get Used to Anything

2009-03-31T13:36:00.000-07:00

In Zoology Lab today I gleefully assisted my partner in the brutal dissection of a live earthworm. First we pinned it to the dissecting tray (in its struggle to free itself it tore off its posterior segments) and then we opened a slit along its dorsal surface, running from the anterior ganglia down past the muscular band. The worm writhed while we separated the sides and pinned them down. We then explored the internal organs: seminal vesicles, nerve cords, pharynx, crop, and the like. We held the bloodied, miserable creature underneath a low-powered microscope to observe the beating of the five hearts. The worm still wasn’t quite dead yet when we discarded its butchered form in the trash.

A bit of a melodramatic description, perhaps, but was it I who was saying, just a few short weeks ago, that I couldn’t bear to decapitate a termite or pour some microscopic flagellates down the drain? Really? I can’t help but be reminded of a quote from Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. “It is simple and brutal: A person can get used to anything, even killing.”

Yes, indeed. And I’m a bit ashamed of myself. But I can’t help reminding myself of the loftier goals and “purpose” behind all of this. Not to cut myself undeserved slack, but the intentions, as they say, are what matter, and they are noble.

For this same class, we were given the assignment over break to collect a “microcosm”—a sample of water from a creek, pond, or puddle to observe and test. I took my missing very seriously. On Sunday, despite the somewhat cold, windy weather, I tramped out through the pasture, glass jar in tow, and waded down to a place where rainwater runoff had cut a deep creak intertwined with sycamore roots. Dressed somewhat inappropriately in bulky Carhartt coveralls and cowboy boots with jingling spurs, I nevertheless waded deep into the flowing water, scraping substrate, collecting leaves, gathering algae and moss, and chasing after tiny shrimp-like amphipods with the grimness and persistence of a hunter. Once I had collected a satisfactory sample, I continued to amuse myself by grabbing at a crayfish (successful capture!) and leopard frog (not so much). Oh well. I’d forgotten how intoxicating splashing in a creek can be.

Today we looked at slides from our microcosms, and I was utterly delighted to observe the fantastic creatures that live quite literally in my own backyard. Paramecia, volvox algal colonies, diatoms, and, “walking” euplotes ciliates abounded. The professor was hugely impressed with the large amphipods nearly a centimeter long, the hundreds of copepods that swarmed the surface and were visible with the naked eye, and the numerous large planarian flatworms—the very same that we recently performed regenerative experiments on, but wild versions….how exciting to see a standard lab-raised specimen in its natural environment! The highlight of today’s viewing, however, was the single amoeba, which slowly crept along via cytoplasmic streaming and the extension of its lobopodia. The professor was in awe, too: “That’s the best amoeba I’ve ever seen,” she said, “even of the ones that I’ve ordered from the lab supply companies. Even the prepared specimens are extremely difficult to find.”

So, I’m glad to know that the wonder of life is still very much alive in me. I never cease to be amazed by how fascinating and remarkably complex the world is.

US versus THEM

2009-03-26T23:04:00.000-07:00

Once there lived in the ancient city of Afkar two learned men who hated and belittled each other’s learning. For one of them denied the existence of the gods and the other was a believer.

One day the two met in the marketplace, and amidst their followers they began to dispute and to argue about the existence or the non-existence of the gods. And after hours of contention they parted.

That evening the unbeliever went to the temple and prostrated himself before the altar and prayed the gods to forgive his wayward past.

And the same hour the other learned man, he who had upheld the gods, burned his sacred books. For he had become an unbeliever.

--Kahlil Gibran

All too often we have much more in common with each other than we realize. So why do we choose to squabble about our slight differences instead of banding together over our shared similarities? And why must we have to agree with another’s viewpoints in order to like or even respect the other person? So much war and pain and suffering is caused by the contention of points which can never even be proven definitively one way or the other. Look no further than the holy wars (both ancient and modern day) to see that battle played out on both sides. It’s a real shame.

Our beliefs are so deeply ingrained into us that we rarely question them, and we would rather die (or better yet, kill our opposition) than risk abandoning them or conceding defeat. Honestly, though, there’s nothing wrong with being, well, wrong. It takes a brave and wise person to admit a mistake, after all.

But even at that, we don’t have to give up on our faith. Just as there’s no need to convert everyone else to our way of thinking, there’s also no reason to drop our old beliefs and pick up something else on a whim. No, there’s a lovely concept known as an amiable “agreement to disagree” that seems to be a sure-fire end to conflict and dissent.

After all, “diversity” isn’t just a way to look progressive and get more funding…it’s what makes the world go ‘round.

Me, as Mentor

2009-03-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve never really thought of myself as a role model. Once a girl a grade behind me declared me her “mentor,” but that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with her fascination with joining an older students’ “in-group.” She apparently misjudged who I was completely. My friends were brutal to her, but I took it as my responsibility to be nice. Eventually, however, even my nerves were rubbed raw by her nonstop obnoxious bigotry, and I managed to offload her into a clique where she better fit in. Shame on me.

Most of the time, though, I prefer to stick to the role of quiet observer as opposed to being the flashy center of attention. I often go unnoticed, and I prefer it that way. Less trouble, less drama, and a lot more actually gets accomplished.

Recently, however, I’ve realized that I’ve become a hero of sorts to several younger girls, ranging in age from eight to 15. This is particularly true in the barrel racing arena, where I’m championed as the quiet, inconspicuous gal with the fast horses. I guess there is a pretty big discrepancy between the people who go in whipping and sawing and jerking and hollering, only to finish last, and me, the smooth, quiet rider who places, if not first, then near the top. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, either—it’s just that I follow the age-old philosophy of true horsepeople, those who do what’s right for the animal and—surprise surprise—are rewarded for it because it works. Truth be told, though, I don’t think they even notice the animal ethics part of the equation. They just see that I win, and dammit, they wanna win too!

They watch me, they comment on how pretty my horses are, they wish me luck, they’re delighted when I notice them or pass out their prizes at the year-end awards ceremony. I feel a bit bad, too, because I tend to ignore them. It’s not that I’m snubbing my “inferiors”—like I said before, I’m just one to keep to myself. And there have been so many times when I’ve tried to offer advice for horse or rider’s benefit and been rewarded with a snotty comeback and a lifelong grudge that I’ve just stopped talking to people at jackpots, for the most part. I hang out with the aged 50+ been-there-done-that crowd—a group of nice “older” ladies who do right by their horses and serve as role models for me.

But, like it or not, want it or not, parents stop me to congratulate me and ask me questions. They turn to their children and extol my virtues—some of which, admittedly, I don’t possess. “She can do it all—horses and school and music and such! So can you, Junior!” Well, sort of. They don’t know how much I sacrifice, how I’m not quite as much of a praise-worthy Renaissance Woman as everyone seems to think. Oh well.

And as I find myself in this position, I realize that, even if I don’t want or think I deserve this responsibility, it’s mine nonetheless and I’ve got to take advantage of it. Inspire the “next generation,” y’know. Be a positive influence and all that.

So, I try to act like the role model they think I am. I try to clean up my sometimes-foul language and put a stop to the harsh criticism. I especially try to serve as a good example of how to be a good horseperson. Many competitors, after having a bad run, will make a big show out of punishing their horses (for a mistake they undoubtedly made), ripping on the face or spurring the flanks to show the audience just who exactly is boss. As for me, no matter what happens, I make sure to exit the arena on a loose rein, with a cooing “good boy” and a pat on the neck. And if my horses do need getting after, I do it as efficiently and humanely as possible, and try not to let anyone see—imitators abound, and I don’t want people getting the wrong impression.

This means, too, that I’ve got to have a friendly smile and a word of encouragement. All right, can do—let me inspire even though I’m not really worthy of being an inspiration. “With great power comes great responsibility,” or something like that.

But I must admit that having a fan club does wonders for the ego. :)

March Showers

2009-03-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

After a week of absolutely gorgeous weather, Mother Nature decided to ring in the first few days of spring with a heavy cold rain. But what is it they say? “March showers bring more April showers?” The gray firmament is really spitting down right now, but I can’t really complain, since it was so perfectly lovely last week. On Wednesday I spent my 40-minute lunch break walking around campus snapping shots of the blossoming flora: cherries, Bradford Pears, forsythias, and magnolias galore. I had to consciously resist the urge to throw myself down in the cool grass and lie there in Zen-like peacefulness. Of course, it helped that we had just finished a unit on nematode parasites in my Zoology class. The thought of tiny hookworms boring through my skin and encysting in my intestine wasn’t a particularly pleasing one.

Anyway, I’ve always liked all of what spring symbolizes. Rebirth, renewal, change, hope. Watching the birds seek out mates (the other day I saw a turkey tom doing a full-blown dance surrounded by appreciative ladies) and the pollinators busy at work on the new blooms fills me once again with appreciation for beauty. And now I’m on spring break—time to catch up on the multitude of short papers I have to write, pull out a few arts-and-crafts, and maybe get a little sleep for a change!

A Rather Appropriate Holiday

2009-03-17T18:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, walking around campus, I noticed the first faint and then overwhelmingly permeating smell of fish. The word “wharf” appeared suddenly in my mind by some strange synergistic connection, as did “fish market,” “crashing foam,” “surf,” and “jetty”. I don’t even exactly know what wharf and jetty mean, but there you have it. Fish.

Of course, there is no nearby ocean, so the fishy odor was exactly that—perplexing. I spent the whole day suspiciously sniffing the air until, passing by a Bradford Pear in full bloom, I put two and two together and instantly felt a bit dumb. Slow on the uptake, I am. Of course, once I realized that the pretty white blossoms were the source of the stench, all images of waves and beaches disappeared at once. A bit of a shame, but the tree in front of me was beautiful enough to make it a worthwhile trade.

Today, St. Patrick’s Day, marks the one year anniversary of my moving to what I still call “the country.” A lot has happened in that year: I finished high school (funny that the last few months of that seven-year experience passed by in a blur which I can hardly recall…save for IB test stress), graduated (yippee!), spent a lazy summer doing approximately nothing, started college (while spending a few months blindly wallowing in self-pity for indeterminate reasons), snapped back into the swing of things, and, well, here I am. I can’t say the Luck O’ the Irish blessed me today (that is to say, no leprechauns jumped out from behind a rainbow to offer me a pot o’ gold or anything spectacular like that), but still, it was a fairly excellent day.

After a semi-brutal lab practical exam in my morning Zoology class, I was ready for a bit of a break before Chem lab, the bane of my existence. A friend and I decided to get carryout from Lucy’s and eat it outside because it was just so flippin’ nice. As we toted our fried rice to the Philosophers’ Table in preparation for a well-deserved feast, I snapped open my fortune cookie. “You like sunshine and fresh air,” said the slip of paper inside. Well, that’s not exactly a fortune, but indeed I do, sir. How appropriate for today. My friend and I sat and talked for a while in the beautiful weather and managed to fill our palms with splinters, but we didn’t even care.

Later, after lab (which was every bit as horrible as I had anticipated), I trotted off to Wind Symphony rehearsal. It was my first time inside the ever-gorgeous Stone Chapel, and I was in reverent awe of the colorful stained-glass work. Lovely.

I elected to take the longer, slower, but much more scenic route home today, and I hung my head out the window like a dog the whole way back. I flipped the radio to the Decades stations for some more mood-appropriate music. Madonna’s La Isla Bonita came on. That’ll do. I noticed, on the way, that the farther from the city I drove, the earlier the development stage of the plants I passed. The flowers in Springfield are all coming up and the trees are full of petals. At home, however, only the grass shows signs of life. My hypothesis (for which I have no evidence and no plans to test) is that this corresponds to a lower carbon dioxide concentration outside the city. Hmm.

Then I went to the pasture to photograph the horses and saw the green, green clover appearing all over the place. Well, not quite the same thing as shamrocks, but it put me in the mood, anyway.

Half-Assing It

2009-03-13T20:40:00.001-07:00

I went to the local equine fair and trade show today to browse the tack vendors. It was considerably smaller this year than it has been the past few times I’ve come; I imagine the sorry state of the economy played a big role in the drop in attendance and sellers’ booths alike. After being disappointed that I couldn’t find anything worth wasting money on, I headed out to the barns to see the horseflesh. And was extremely disheartened.

It seems that several local breeders thought that this would be a golden opportunity to unload the previous year’s youngstock. Rather than presenting their colts properly, they pulled their poor, nasty, skinny, wormy babies straight out of the pasture and stuck them in tiny exhibitors’ stalls with a $500 price tag. Quite frankly, most of the ones I saw weren’t even worth that. Nearly all of the animals were poor specimens of their breed in the conformation and pedigree departments, and that’s already a big strike against them. I’m a huge proponent of responsible breeding: a quality animal is much more likely to fetch a high price, be talented at a job, get a good home, and avoid a double-decker trailer with a one-way ticket to a Mexican slaughterhouse. Presentation is all-important, too. These colts were almost unfailingly skinny, with ribs and hipbones hiding underneath their remarkably rough, puffy, shaggy coats which hadn’t seen a curry in months, if ever. Their feet were long, cracked, and jagged. Their eyes were white and spooked. They had little or no bedding in their stalls—just chipped asphalt soiled with their own shit…their owners must really care about their comfort. Not to mention that this set-up certainly wasn’t one that would make me want to buy a horse.

See, the school I come from says that if you’re going to do something, do it right or don’t do it at all. If you’re not passionate about it, it’s just going to bring you heartache. Better to quit than to half-ass it and do a shoddy job. If these people are truly in the horse business because they love it, why wouldn’t they put forth the requisite effort into their stock? Better yet, if they’re in the business to make money (and aren't most people?), then why aren’t they doing everything in their power to ensure a high price for their product? The logic escapes me.

Beyond that, it’s about responsibility, too. When you take a life into your hands (by choosing to have a child or purchase an animal), you become the sole provider for that being. It depends on you for its very life. How can anyone find it acceptable to abuse or neglect a living creature, man or beast? If you can’t—or won’t—care for it, pass it on to someone who will…please.

In addition, I’ve found that if you really invest yourself into a project, you’ll often receive a ripe reward. Let’s go back to the horse example: some of the fillies there were fairly close relatives of my mare, Bones (their sire shares her daddy). One of them was a three-year-old, greenbroke to ride and kinda cute in an ugly-headed sort of way. She was decked out in old, cheap, poorly-fitted tack, however, which wasn’t very becoming. Her coat was as long and thick as a sheepdog’s, and she was thin and unshod besides. In short, even I wasn’t tempted to buy her, despite her relationship to my excellent mare. I was reminded, however, of the circumstances under which I acquired Bones. She, too, was skinny, ugly, and untrained. She was probably a few owners away from the killer, herself. I overpaid for what she was, but even at that she was quite cheap. Some feed and training completely turned her around, however, and I could probably increase my money tenfold if I so chose…but I’d rather keep her, ride her, win on her, and appreciate her. She’s one talented mare—and because I put forth the necessary care and effort, she is being allowed to exhibit her full potential.

But Bones isn’t an anomaly. There are countless others out there—horses and humans alike—who fall through the cracks daily. If only someone would put forth the effort to help them shine. “Good enough,” after all, usually isn’t.

Blast from the Past

2009-03-11T19:00:00.000-07:00

If you had a heart
That went down to the soul
Up to the heart
To the brain
All the way to heaven
Where the angels sing to you and me
If your face looked just like mine
Though it doesn’t matter
We are in harmony
We are in destiny
A world without you’d be
A living misery
Don’t you see?

--Yours Truly, age 6

Oh yes, wasn’t I a clever little child? Particularly the lovely part when I thought that one could be “in destiny,” as though that were a state or a location. Pity that I wouldn’t listen when my mother tried to gently correct me. I know best, after all. Always have.

That little ditty (which I was extremely proud of and sang at every opportunity for a good year after I composed it) was originally titled “The Hamster and the Gerbil.” Yep, that’s supposed to be one rodent serenading another, speaking of their lasting friendship despite their many differences. It was inspired by my kindergarten class’s pet gerbil, Tommy (named, oddly enough, after the parish priest Father Tom), whom I got to take home and care for over summer vacation. I already had a pet hamster, Kookaburra (named because I liked kookaburras at the time, and kookaburras eat mice, and hamsters are kind of like mice—perfectly logical, no?), and with my overactive childish imagination I anthropomorphized the pair into best buddies.

I think it’s interesting that I mapped out the soul’s residence to be the center of the body, somewhere below the heart, smack dab in the middle of the chest. Perhaps I was expounding on the nature of the core of spirituality, existence, and individuality. Our identity is central to us, ingrained deeply into our center, virtually indistinguishable from our physical form. Or perhaps I was just plain dumb. Then, too, is the symbolism: animals as metaphors for humanity, illustrating my desire to connect with and bridge the gap between disparate, warring factions, urging us all to look past our differences to discover our hidden, integral similarities. Ha. The funniest part of all, however, may be that I still have the song and the circumstances surrounding it memorized, and it popped into my head today for no apparent reason…

The little birds, they creep and shudder
Beautiful butterflies dance and flutter
Following the eagle’s word

The clouds go rolling by and by
Covering up a clear blue sky
Following the eagle’s word

The deer, they jump in rhyming ways
Bounding, bounding through the days
Following the eagle’s word

And the eagle? He perches in a tree
Frowning down, but still with glee
Watching animals, and sometimes me,
Follow the eagle’s word

--Me, age 8 (or 9?)

Well, at least I gained a little more talent between kindergarten and third grade. I wrote this schweet work of art during a particularly boring class period, because times tables frustrated the hell out of me and I always was one to multitask. I showed it to the teacher (because I was also always one to show off, until I realized years later that a) bragging isn’t cool and b) half the time I didn’t have anything worth bragging about and so was just making a fool out of myself) and she was suitably impressed. She entered it into the district language arts fair, and I won a special prize, plus the honor of having “The Eagle’s Word” performed by Dance-A-Poem. Yep, dance students from a local college acted out their interpretation while a theatre arts major read the piece out loud. I felt special.

Let’s overanalyze again, shall we? The eagle is a wise, benevolent, but stern leader. Perhaps he’s a god-figure, in which case he must be overlooking his creation. His subjects, then, must follow his commandments. There are beautiful, innocent, pure things in the eagle’s world—such as butterflies and deer—but darker images exist, as well—storm clouds and the inspiration of fear in the little birds, for example. Still, we need both the aspects for a complete world. Yin and yang, black and white, good and evil, together.

Unfortunately, as pathetic as the above specimen may be, that’s about when my poetry-writing skills peaked. That’s a bit of a shame, because I wish I had the talent to express myself in verse, but eh, oh well. I’ll settle for the occasional blog post and call it good enough.

I’m burning all over, burning inside
I want to get out, but I’ve just gotta hide
There’s a flame in my heart, and a flame in my eye
I don’t want to live, but I don’t want to die

Waiting for someone to rescue me
Help me, I’m burning, and I wanna be free
Where is the light I’ve been waiting for?
Where is my second chance, where is my open door?

My mind is on fire
But my body stands still
I’ve become a monster
Against my will

Who am I…?
I don’t want to know
Where am I…?
Someplace light never goes
Let me out!
I can feel myself burning
Set me free!
Before I stop yearning
To find the real me

--Me again, unfortunately, age 12

There’s more to that one, but I can bear to post the rest of the pre-teen angst. Wow. That’s mighty embarrassing. But if we can’t laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? In my defense, at least, that’s not a self-portrait. It was written from the perspective of a rather creepy and also extremely depressed fellow in my class. Poor guy was pretty messed up, and when he announced one day that he was “burning all over,” my friend exclaimed, “Hey! That sounds like a song!”

So…man. Not sure why I felt compelled to share my more humiliating moments with the Internet at large, except to say: What we feel is really awesome at one point in our lives will probably look really stupid a year or two down the road. We’re constantly growing, changing, and maturing (hopefully, anyway). The moral, I guess, is don’t take yourself too seriously…and don’t forget to have a little fun every so often!

Fever!

2009-03-09T20:33:00.001-07:00

Of the spring variety, that is. Everyone and everything is feeling the change in weather and season: grass is greening, the trees are budding, the bluebirds and robins have returned, and the horses are going mad with ecstasy out in the pasture ("It's windy! It's rainy! It's warm! Runawayrunawayrunaway!"). It's hard to watch them without having your spirits lifted and feeling the urge to take off after them. Until the mud bogs you down and splatters everywhere, that is.

Brandy was particularly exuberant, as you can see. Crazy girl spent the morning staring at the Invisible Demons that only she can see, then running and bucking trying to antagonize the whole herd. A healthy horse in motion is really something to behold, though. Perfection in physics, chemistry, and biology, then the divine spark of creation, the spirit of life, the pride of ownership and the art of shaping it into what it is. Truly inspiring.

A couple of southbound geese flew overhead as I was riding this evening. I heard their honking in the distance (Why do they squawk constantly? What purpose does it serve?) long before I saw them. I reined in my horse and craned my neck around as they passed by, close enough for me to hear the beating of their wings and note the notched feathers of the leader.
The vet came out this to discuss Rebel’s navicular X-rays and Shorty’s cancer’s progression. I’m grateful that she’s our neighbor and that she treats us so well. She’s willing to come out on a moment’s notice, and quite frankly I think she undercharges for her service. I’m going to have to make her a headstall as a token of thanks.

All things considered, I think those horses have it figured out. Participate and enjoy life as fully as you can. Live in the moment—no regrets. And if the weather’s nice, then by all means kick up your heels!