I'm lucky.
Beauty surrounds me here atop the plateau and in fields down below.
Today I witnessed beauty.
And I also witnessed cruelty.
A puppy, left alone outside, chained, nearly hanged himself by wrapping the chain so many times between a tree and his dog house and the run line that he was left nose up, straining not to strangle.
I happened upon him, trusted that he wouldn't bite, held him, released the snap, unwound the chain, and re-snapped him to the line.
It was hard to leave, but when I did, he wouldn't leave me -- I smelled him and his muck smeared my hands and his yapping and struggling echoed in my mind. They still do.
I can't know whether his human gives him affection or comfort. I can't know whether he will choke on another day. All I can know is that today I was there and today I did the little thing I could.
And then I drove back into the green.
In An American Childhood, Annie Dillard recalled leaving pennies for others to discover.
I didn't leave this one, exactly. I stepped over it, thinking, There's probably someone who needs more luck than I.
Then I thought Who's the lucky one? and drove out of the lot.
Pollen swirled on University this morning as a university employee worked his way down the hill, wielding his leaf blower like a war machine, tornadoing dust and leaf mold and pollen.
At the garage, Harold said, "Bad day for pollen."
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Up close, pollen sparkles like blown glass. I can prove it. Just look: picture 1 -- clematis pollen; picture 2 -- blown glass ball (a gift from Pringle).
stared ahead
from his perch
atop the metal bird tree,
his antennae poised
like little flags.
Taking in the sun
perhaps
awaiting some signal
to leap and fly.
Three times, I snapped.
Before the fourth
he disappeared,
a sherbet dream.
Over tea late this afternoon, a thoughtful new friend and I talked about accumulating and deposing of things. She told an amusing story about a New York therapist who specializes in helping people get rid of family inheritances. The therapist leads the person to imagine her space enlarged without an object and encourages her to move it a bit each day toward the door.
My new friend once lived for three years without any material possessions when she was a Buddhist nun. I, on the other hand, have never been truly without, yet I have sometimes considered myself poor in comparison to others I know.What are possessions, the things we accumulate? If I think even a moment about this subject, I remember the objects I've left behind on moving -- the books and typewriters and musical instruments, the furniture and dishes and hand-thrown mugs, the pens and dressers and clothing. It's exhausting thinking of the thinginess of my own daily living.This busy fellow wallowed today in one thing only: pollen. He slathered himself in it, drunkenly rolling and rubbing in the extravagance of azalea. He and the flower enjoyed a short, mutually intense relationship, one in which they shared the pollen or the thing without either clinging to it. The thing itself will perhaps become another thing.As our conversation drifted, my friend mentioned watching Vietnamese children who had never owned anything swim for the first time. They discovered one floatie toy, which they circled and shared without complaint or jealousy or argument, the feelings that arise from possession and dispossession.Maybe liberality and extravagance and unthinginess are a secret natural order most of us have lost. Maybe I should wallow in conversation and tea and insect pollinators and azalea without pondering thinginess. Maybe these are the only things of importance this late afternoon.(Even these things have now transformed into something else in this post.)
They know how to soak up April sun and shade, and they know how to charm.
This mama dog and her two puppies waited patiently atop the steps until I gave the high sign. Then they wiggled down, licked my hand, pawed me, and let me pet them, one at a time. They had been lazing on a warm afternoon.
This little cat, on the deck of his mama's coffee house, lay in the direct sun, soaking in the heat, before he moved to the shade near me and slept like a spiraling sinew.
Oh, to be a black dog or cat, a loved pet, on a beautiful day filled with sun and shadow.
