The enforcing of religion

Posted on June 25, 2009 by K

Still in my stark frame of mind:

I believe in the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Joseph—the one true God and Jesus Christ, who he sent, who is our savior.  I say this in a voice that rings, that refuses to be mild and take the world as it is presently coming at me.

Ask me if I believe my God is THE God, the creator, the Father, the Only God – and I will tell you  yes.

Ask me if I wish I could force everyone on earth to believe that same thing, to make them all admit His reality and cause them to obey what I understand to be his law?  And I will tell you, most fervently, no.  No, no, no.

You cannot enforce religion.  Not the way I define the word.  Enforced religion = oxymoron.

Here’s a little thought: if there is a God, and he is an all-powerful being, and he wanted people forced to believe in him – couldn’t he do the enforcing himself?  And if that were the case, why would he have created people so that they are capable of making choices?  Is life just a wild game of nine pins – He sets them up, just for the joy of knocking them down?  Does this even begin to make sense?

So who is this God that is so well-served by bullies, butchers and megalomaniacs?

I want to save the Iranians.  Does that mean I want them to admit that the Christian God is the only God?  NO.  It means I want to build shields around all the nice people in Iran, all the innocent hearts, and keep them from harm.  I want to offer them all the choices I enjoy.  I want them to be free to choose.  That is my idea of saving.

A man who “believes” something because, should it become evident he does not actually believe, he will be put to death or tortured or exiled, does NOT BELIEVE.  He is not converted.  His heart is not, to that thing, true.  He is not changed.  He is not dependable.  He is a chemical bomb, waiting to be shaken in just the right way.

Make a man afraid of going to hell, and he may change his behavior.  The changed behavior may make the world a nicer place for everybody else.  But it is no witness that, should conditions change, the old, nasty behavior might not just come bounding back.

So can you “save” a man from “hell” by terrifying him?  Threatening him? 

And just what does “save” mean, anyway?  Saving the world?  Keeping it from blowing up?  Maybe teaching it how to integrate its peoples so that they don’t harm each other, so that they can take responsibility and feed themselves, and care for each other.

What do I want to be “saved” from?  Myself, sometimes.  From pain and fear and unexpected danger, always.  From sadness, when I don’t deserve to be sad.  From the stupidity of thinking I deserve anything.  I want my regrets to be limited, so that when I have made my best reparation, and I have changed my heart and my behavior to make it so that I will never do the regrettable thing again, I can go on and live a productive life.  I want to be saved from hunger and illness.  I want to be saved from all kinds of physical danger.  And from hurting other people.  I want to be shielded from the violence and shock that comes of people behaving badly, stupidly, cruelly.

So if you have something that will save me from a great deal of the anguish, sorrow, despair, failure, discomfort, regret that I might otherwise run into, you are welcome to offer it to me, and if I accept, to teach me.  But you may not threaten me or push me around or in any way try to force me to accept what you have.  What I end up living through is largely (but not all, factoring in the odd fatal disease and things like drunken drivers) my own responsibility.  If the consequences of my stupidity are going to offer harm to others (like if I was the drunk driver) then make laws that will protect other people from that thing.  But do not tell me what to believe.  And do not seek to take away my free will otherwise.

Yes, I think the world, if each person was willing to take responsibility, to serve, to love, to sacrifice, to work, would be a better place, but NO ONE CAN BE FORCED TO DO THESE THINGS.  Not and make it work.  Hearts have to be changed, or the world doesn’t change.  And the peace thus achieved is stretched like a rubber band.

And all of this has to do with my basic understanding of why we are here: to prove ourselves – to ourselves.  To find out what we are made of.  Not to be heroes or stars or kings or presidents or any kind of remarkable person.  But to live lives of rich color, deep love, earnest and joyful usefulness.  In the end, after we have been presented with a panoply of choices, a hoard, a buffet, a banquet, a tsunami of choices, we will be left with just ourselves – ourselves either surrounded by the things we have chosen – physical things, earth things – that will not pass easily into any other reality.  Or ourselves, deepened, made beautiful and useful and burdened by love and light – all part of the us that will, inevitably pass into other realities.

I am still trying to make sense of evil governments of whatever size – even ones fashioned out of one person in one home.

Not succeeding.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, mad | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Politics

Posted on June 25, 2009 by K

I do not write much about politics.  Framing my views about things over which I have no more than maybe the tiniest shred of a voice – if that – is too hard, too distressing.  I’d have made saltpeter in the old days, or knitted leg warmers or made a victory garden.  Over this world, and over some things there is nothing more than waiting and praying that can be done.  And about the efficacy of prayer in this case, I have my doubts – about which I will say more later.

In the last week several things have made me want to howl and rage.  The first of them was that stupid joke told by David Letterman, professional adolescent.  I imagine him easily as one of those really quick mouthed kids who just hated being “normal,” and made up for it by deconstructing anything and everything that anybody else thought was cool.  And when he’d finished with that, turning on the other “normal” kids.  Because he doesn’t seem to have grown out of it – yeah, you make a living interviewing people of singular and resounding fame and insignificance and poking fun at just about everybody who isn’t you.  Wow.  I hope my kids grow up just like that.

I’d only heard about the joke, so I googled it, and found myself watching a YouTube clip of an interview between some woman named Contessa (really?) and a way conservative commentator.  It wasn’t a pleasant interchange.  She was an idiot, and he – who I will say made some salient points – was smug and rude.  YAY for – wait, which one is our side? 

And how could anybody with a brain ask if the joke had really been that big a deal?

Let me just say this: let’s not make jokes about children, okay?  Not about democrat children or black children or white children or republican children.  Let’s not make “knocked up” jokes about other people’s daughters.  No matter who those people are.  Let’s not kick a girl who has already been publicly and nationally humiliated by a mother who had to drag her around in front of news cameras in all of her stupid and misguided glory.  Let’s just remember: it isn’t nice to make fun of people, generally.

Yeah, maybe the puffed up who put themselves in the limelight—maybe they ask for it.  If you take a public persona on, then you make yourself a target; comes with the job.  Make fun of Gov. Palin if you must – she’s a big girl.  But the word “slutty” is about as puerile and dull and braindead and adolescent a “joke” as I’ve ever slept through.  If the demos are so big on regulation, maybe they ought to start with late night television; watching it has GOT to kill brain cells.

At the time, this really made me want to hit my head against the wall.  Then North Korea happened.  Range of their nifty little Missile of Mass Destruction: 4500 miles.  Proximity to Hawaii: 4000 miles.

I do not throw around the word “evil” very much.  To me, the word suggests understanding and choice – a person who knows what is good and what is not, and who chooses to harm, to destroy, to laugh at suffering.  In other words, there has to be a twisted sort of maturity, an intelligence, for there to be evil.  There is another word, must be another word, for stupid people who are seduced by the promise (what promise?) of power.  But I can’t come up with it.  I am too amazed.  Too astonished. 

What do people propose to get out of power?  Sadam’s 200 unlived in palaces?  Wow, want those.  Are they sadists who thrive on inspiring fear?  They want somebody to cook for them?  Clean for them?  A whole country of people who will do this?  What is the point?  To get rich?  It doesn’t take much to get rich enough that you can’t even tell if you get richer.  They want, maybe, to make sure that they are never inconvenienced?  Never awakened by somebody’s music?  Their lawn never pooped on by somebody else’s dog – so they have to own EVERYBODY?

When I think of the North Korean government, the words “intelligent,” “complex,” “amazing,” “cultured,” “admirable,” “gracious,” “educated,” “aware,” “wise,” “grounded,” “mature,” “civilized”?  They never come up.  This is also true when I think of other governments, including Iran’s.  I think: selfish, bestial, short-sighted, testosterone poisoned, stupid, adolescent, repulsive.  Their missile won’t change that at all.  No display of “strength” is going to win from me any respect whatsoever.  I will still think of them as nasty, uncivilized, ugly and again, repulsive.  Even if they finally cause me to fear, I will hate and pity them.  And in death, I will lobby for their damnation. (See – I’m not a very good person, either, actually.)  The funny thing is, as far as I understand Eastern religions, Korea is not even justified by one.

This morning, I heard this phone call, from a young woman in Iran who had just witnessed an act of atrocity that equals anything achieved by Nazi Germany, anything within the chronicles of human horror.  And I sat for two hours afterwards, not even aware of the tears that just kept leaking out of my face.  Do not listen to it if your heart’s survival strategy in these days is to stay as far from the immediate realities as you can get. 

My heart swells with grief, with frustration – bordering on hatred of these men, these stupid, ignorant, selfish men who allow no limits to their own wills.  How could anyone desire to serve a God whose policy of dealing with the multitudes of levels of understanding in his children requires that everyone who is not on the “right” path should be beaten and slaughtered?

I’ll tell you what I want: I want God to come and kill them all.  I could stand in the back yard and scream this at the heavens, calling down the vengeance of the universe on those who impose their gross, bloated, disgusting pride and hunger on the innocent.  But I won’t.  The neighbors wouldn’t like it, and I’m not sure it would do anything but make my feeling worse.

Because I don’t think God is going to do this.  Not now.  Not yet.  Because of free will.  Because of that precious, dangerous gift that is at the root of this whole planet’s existence.  Because there are too many people who have not chosen sides yet, who wait in the shadows, unmoved by an over-arching code of ethics and morality, simply waiting to find the most comfortable place.  The field isn’t ripe until every grain takes shape.  The good need to stand for good.  And those too stupid to see light and joy and love?  They need to choose which circle they will stand in.  And I’m afraid the deep satisfaction and rejoicing I would feel at this moment if YouTube showed me a clip of a vast column of lightening decimating every unholy and cruel government – I’m afraid that would put me in the wrong circle.

This young woman finishes her phone call with the most passionate plea I have ever heard.  I have not heard many pleas—oh, from children, yes—“Can I use the car?” (answered with a modality correction: “May I use the car,”—“Please, can I go? Pleeeeeeeaaaase?” (answered in the same way).  I have never had to hear anybody plead for his life.  I have never heard an adult plead for anything – not outside of the movies. 

Now, I have heard it.

“Stop this,” she said.  “You must come and stop them.”

She meant us.

And, shoot – we’re doing the best we can:  that “president” of ours (I don’t hate him, but I will say that he seems to be living up to expectations) has been so moved that he actually de-listed Iran’s ambassadors from the 4th of July party guest register.

Wow.

People on the other side of the globe are fighting for human rights, for freedom, for dignity and safety.  As we did once, and have since forgotten.  Thank God for France.  Without them, we would have perished in the attempt.  And what we were fighting against was over-taxation, not the chattelizing and abuse of women, not dismemberment, not religious oppression, not on this level.  This is like the Jews rising in Auschwitz.  This is magnificent and horrible.  And I sit in my safe little living room, writing about it, my heart frozen.  And all of this done in the name of religion?  What religion?  What truth allows one creature to savage another?

I’m back to prayer.  I have to aim the prayers at the people, at individual people – for their comfort, their courage, their safety.  I know no names.  I send the prayers without names.  I have no bullets.  I have no power.  The country has some.  God has enough of everything to do the job.  How long will we have to wait?  How long?

Posted in IMENHO (Evidently not humble), mad | Tagged , | 6 Comments

That thing I do –

Posted on June 15, 2009 by K

I’m always intending to amaze and delight by explaining the structure (sorry, choked on that one) of my day.  Really, it’s fascinating.  No.  It is.  So today, as I was slogging away at my Life’s Work, I pulled out a couple of  nice little shots so I could put together a little power point for you: how I spent my afternoon – for the last year.  There is another version I intend to serve up: What I Did With All Day Last Year, which features the book I made for my dad.  But I’d have to pause to do that, which means it ain’t gonna go down soon.

I don’t scrap book.  I take pictures and stick them into high quality, hoity-toity archive quality books on AQ paper, annotated with AQ ink – in case anybody ever wants to actually put our family photo-history in – yes – an archive.  The problem with photographs used to be this: in order for each kid to have in his or her own possession the full history of the fam, I’d have to get ALL MY NEGATIVES (assuming I can find them all in their AQ glacine negative sleeves, tucked into their own AQ albums) reprinted, and then mount them all.  All thirty five ninety page albums.

At least, that was the only alternative before – ta DA – Photoshop and Blurb. com.  Now, all I have to do is scan every page in every album and then – ah, then – repair the ravages of time.  I cannot believe how sienna these things have gone on me.  Tucked away from the light, treasured.  Gin’s 1980 baby pictures look AWFUL.  My great great grandfather’s black and whites from the civil war era look a heck of a lot better.  And factor in the wide range of quality (or not quality) of the labs I’ve used over the years – I mean, some of these shots couldn’t have been printed more poorly.  So I go over each page, and each picture on each page – color correcting and restoring.  After which, I will print all of these restored pages in hard back books and make sure my kids have the whole entire library.

I do this because I’ve loved our lives.  And I want the kids to have those memories.  Yeah, the books will probably fade, too.  But I figure, if they last thirty years, I won’t know when they go bad.  Or we can reprint them again twenty years from now with better ink.  Assuming the world doesn’t blow itself up first.

So here’s the illustrated tour:

These are shots from Disneyland, in 1985.  Shooting the fam at Disney is sort of like trying to take a picture of one guppy in a bowl full of fish – you’re going to catch incidental tails and fins all over the place.  Last year, I came home with the bunch of Disney shots and was wrinkled nosed to find that I’d inadvertently captured a really, really well endowed and portly woman in a really, really  – ummm – poor choice of a T shirt.  But the fam part of the shot was important to me.  So.  I made the woman and her cleavage vanish.  It was fun.

In this shot, there’s no cleavage, just a nice guy who happened to stumble (he does not appear to be stumbling) into my frame:

1985-08-8DisMan

The thing is, I don’t know him.  And he’s distracting, considering that his clothes are so bright and well cared for and all.  So I stopped and took an hour or two, and invited him to leave the shot. He went quietly:

 1985-08-8DisNoMan

It really is fun to do this.  And this is a quick and dirty job.  But I feel so powerful when it works.  After that, I did some color correction and brightened things up a bit.

1985-08-8DisNoManBrt

 I don’t do the dust – it’s already going to take the rest of my lifetime to get through the eighties – dust can be dealt with by subsequent generations.

Here is the original scan of the page –

1985-08-8DisBigO

I never noticed all the dust that had accumulated at the edges of the paper until I did this.  The shots are dull now, colors muted and muddy.  Since I am preparing the pages for print, I go for a little more contrast than I would if I were just doing this for screen, and I saturate the colors.  And then the page looks like this:

1985-08-8DisBigF

So, that’s my life right now.  Mornings with the horses and the treadmill and breakfast (assuming there’s bacon) and afternoons steadily gaining weight as I labor over a hot keyboard.  Ain’t we got fun?

Posted in A little history, Explanations, Images | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

Morning howl

Posted on June 13, 2009 by K

May I just say that my hair is right now standing on end?  Holy cats.

One thing I hate about driving around the university is the propensity of the students who are on foot to think that, because they are attached to the university, it is impossible for them to get run over.  Even outside of a cross walk.  Not only that, but when the traffic does obediently pile up at crosswalks (more for fear of traffic tickets than worry about the dang students), the students drift slowly across the street, seemingly unaware of the lives they have stopped in motion – they make no eye contact, they hurry not, neither do they politely tuck tail and scoot.  And when this happens, not even knowing them individually, I hate them collectively.  Yes, even at BYU, interaction with students is a fine exercise in not murdering people who seem to be begging for it.

They are, after all, entitled to the space.  Aren’t they?  Public road or no.  They are the only real thing in the universe.  The rest of us? Just pesky wind.

My pasture.  It sits on the main east/west collector of town, down in the rural open spaces.  People pass us on the way to the airport, the tiny, full of itself airport, into which presidents and vice presidents and kings and CEOs fly on the way to making personal appearances.  Oh, and Robert Redford and his buddies.  So our grass has seen a lot of things whiz past in the last many years.  Our end of town is also evidently desirable fodder for things like Iron Man triathlons, bike races and marathons.  Which is kind of fun.  Until suddenly, the natives are reduced to inconveniences and the world is taken over by the interlopers.

This morning, I drove down to let the horses out, only to find that a good third of the road, half the east heading lane, had been commandeered for – something.  I’d had a hint of this last night when I found myself wondering what had possessed my good neighbor—who had evidently decided to install a porta-potty on the shoulder of the road right next to the edge of his driveway.

This morning, there was a table with coolers and young people in matching shirts supplementing the porta-potty, and there were orange cones all down the street, and a few early leading runners.  At first, I found this interesting.  But it didn’t take long for things to get alarming. 

They had chosen to put the race on the side of the road OPPOSITE the side that’s already truncated with the bike lane.  Thus, we have effectively one lane (in the middle with a double yellow line down the middle of it) and no traffic control.  Mix that with rubbernecking drivers (this IS a collector) and bike riders and people out doing their morning jog – not on the sidewalk, but in the bike lane.  My hands began to sweat.

The people whose lane had no cones were staring at the runners while they missed the joggers by inches on the other side.  They also failed to realize that cars coming towards them actually had to use PART OF THEIR LANE.  Nobody was looking.  Somebody was going to die. And Guy is out there somewhere on his bike.

I got down there without killing anybody and scooted into my driveway.  But on the way, I noticed that my east side neighbors, who had hung balloons on their front gate for some reason, had lost the mass of balloons, now rolling down the shoulder of the road, pretty much in step with the runners.  So I ran after the balloons.  Me in my pasture clothes and standy-up hair and rotten manure shoes, alongside the spandex and visored set.  It was during this little sprint that I saw the trash.  The gator-aide water cups.  Mounds of them carpeting the shoulder of the road, rolling slightly in the wind. 

Yeah, I know runners need water.  And marathons are wonderful things, yadda, yadda.  But as I walked back to my place and watched the runners snatch the water out of the volunteers’ hands, gulping then tossing the cup with no attention to where it fell, no concern about what they were leaving behind, I really had a bad reaction to it.  It just seemed like a very raw, very honest allegory for almost everything I see happening around us in the world:

If you are serious about doing something, something that seems to you to be really, really important, the whole rest of the world just doesn’t count.  What you need as part of this thing? It’s yours.  Take it.  Use it up.  Toss it aside and move along.  Lesser creatures will pick up after you.  Lesser creatures will take care of the dirty clean up.  But YOU – you’re a hero because, by George, you’re focused and trained and uber worthy.

When I got into my car, having to back into the road so I could go home, I checked out the runner traffic.  One woman, very close, coming along but moving not so fast, then a huge field of runners, coming along briskly half a block down.  I needed to get out of there.  I backed up a few inches, which can be interpreted as: Lady, move it.  I need to back up my car.  Runner: walk even slower.  I bump backward another two inches, watching that field come roaring down the street at me.  Runner: oblivious, walks even slower.  Me – handfuls of hair, considering rolling down the window and screaming at this woman.  Woman, slowing almost to a stop squarely in the middle of my bumper.  Me, making a mantra out of Heaven loves this woman and so should I –

As I drove home, I was amazed – people in the privileged, non orange coned lane, evidently couldn’t see the cars heading east (in other words, right at them) in half their lane.  All I could do was stop and pray they’d look at the road before they hit me, because the only alternative for me was running down the ten or eleven sweating runners spread all over my lane.

Car: Ummmm – 3300 pounds of steel heading for you here . . .

Runner: Duh, I’m in a MARATHON.  You CAN’T hit me.

By the time I got home, I was a nervous wreck.  And I was remembering the time we had one of the university’s premier performing groups come down to the studio to record a show.  The kids showed up in a million cars, roared down our road showing off for each other, helped themselves to our backyard, commandeering the little kids’ lawn furniture (leaving the little chairs bent and ruined), hung out on our lawn, laughing and yelling and messing around like there were no houses full of strangers around them, and when they left, cut screaming U turns and sped off down the street.  Later, I wrote them a nice letter.  It said, “Nobody in this neighborhood knows or cares who you are.   What they’re going to care about is if you run over their kids in the street because you’re so busy playing pheromone tag.”

Marathons are great.  Really.  I guess.  For the people who care about them – yeah.  Whoopdie-do.  But this morning, I am wondering – how many things am I doing that seem just hugely, globally important to me, how many times do I expect strangers to get out of my way and cut me all kinds of slack because I am doing THIS? 

I guess it’s human to be myopic. But it’s also kinda dangerous.

Well, sorry for the tirade.  It just, I was already starting the day out with my hair standing on end —

Posted in IMENHO (Evidently not humble), mad | Tagged , | 11 Comments

This morning and some

Posted on June 11, 2009 by K

Babysitting.  Which means, I am keeping company with a baby monitor.  Nice, gentle white noise.  I am wondering why the baby gets to sleep when I’m the one who got up at five this morning? 

Oh, wait.  So did he.

I am now going to regale you with vignettes of the day so far (it’s just after ten in the morning, but that won’t stop me).  Kind of  like the “scrap” posts, only with words.  So mind’s eye – wake up and imagine:

You can make your restaurant reservations for Dis World three months ahead of your vacation.  You actually MUST make them that far ahead, or you can’t get any.  So the other day, we all sat down and hashed out a Master Plan – which park, when – eating, when – park hopping, when.  One call to the Dis Dining, of course, can leave all that smokin’ in a pile of sad ash.  So we called, suffering trepidation, two of us sitting side by side on different computers behind my desk, one on skype, staring at us staring at the computers.  You have to call Dis Dining  long distance; no toll free for this deal.  So it was tense – both plan and money at risk.

Nice lady answered, asked questions, listened (minutes, ticking, ticking), then said, “You’re calling too early.  You have to wait until 90 days before your trip.  You can call tomorrow.  We open at six.”  That’s six in Florida.  Four in the morning here.  Big fight ensued amongst the female fam: who would be roped into making that call?  The daughter on Skype is on Florida time, after-all.  But I lost, as usual.  So next morning, I woke up at 4:30 and called Florida.  Only, turns out, Dis Dining doesn’t open at six after-all.  They open at seven.  So I went back to bed, only to wake up again at five twenty. Called again. No waiting.  Very nice.  Very nice lady answered (please plug in the entire first sentence of this paragraph right here—including the part about being too early, which means that nice lady #1 was wrong on ALL counts).

Last night, I nearly forgot about the whole thing  I mean, how easy is it for the brain, which has just made tremendous effort to do a thing, to file the failure as Job Done – I mean, it’s the effort that counts, isn’t it?  And it’s not like the flood waters of life hadn’t been rolling along under the bridge all day.  But I woke up at five 0 three with a start and remembered, and got up, figuring what have I got to lose but sleep and money?  So I call again.  This time there’s a REALLY long wait.  And a nice man finally answers, and it’s the right day, and the right time and I get all my reservations exactly as I wanted them, which leaves me itching to look behind the curtain for the catch.

And then it’s five thirty or forty or something and I’m sitting at the desk, blinking owlishly at the screen, not quite understanding that I can go back to bed now.  I know that plenty of really nice honorable people get up every day at five thirty, but I am not one of them.  So what do you do when you are blank-minded and at a loss?  I got on facebook and made a wall post.  Then I went back to bed.

Gin, having seen the wall post and feeling confident that I must actually be awake, called me twenty minutes after I’d finally fallen back to sleep.  Scared the brights out of me.  I sent her away and screwed my eyes shut against the incipient dawn.  But some time after that, G must have gotten up and dressed and taken off on his bike (the morning constitutional) because a dog started singing in my dreams.  It was very melodic.  Very tragic. Like opera.  Like, opera right under my window.  Piper has started doing this in the last year—when G leaves on the bike or goes out the back into the river (have I mentioned flood waters?) fishing, Piper plants himself in the last place he could possibly see G and begins to howl.  He never used to do that.  Now he’s old, and he gets it that there isn’t much time life.  Relationships become important.  So he sings.

I threw on my pasture clothes and clattered down the stairs (not really; they’re carpeted) and opened the front door.  Piper nearly fell in over the threshold.  Evidently, the singing now has been extended to “LET ME IIIIIIIIINNNNNNNN.”

I thought I’d get in a moment’s treadmill before I headed for the pasture, but I called Gin first.  Then Cam buzzed in (confusing me) to ask me to emergency babysit, and it wasn’t even eight o’flipping clock in the morning yet.

I had to run out to the pasture first because I had the vet coming at eight thirty.

May I say that working with horses requires PSYCHOLOGY???  And some chess skill?  Five horses.  Two with ouchy feet (which can mean death in the worse case) who have to NOT eat grass.  Three who are fine and MUST eat grass, but not too much grass because they get fat.  The ones who can NOT eat grass (because of their feet) are the ones who could eat all day and would still show ribs.  Where is the equity in the world, and why wasn’t I born with sore feet and that metabolism?  (Notice how smoothly I hijacked the story to include horse-tales?)

When your horses all run free inside an arena all the time, and you want to let three out to the grass and keep two in, you have a problem.  Actually, a dangerous problem.  If you stand in the doorway in front of a hungry horse who is watching the receding backsides of her family, heading for the grass – even if you wave your arms and shout and make dire threats, she will make a pancake out of you and never even look back. 

I managed to trick them all, though, two days running.  Good thing I don’t have to do it tomorrow, because eventually, they do catch on.  The two left in the arena, sore feet or not, instantly became rodeo stars – such carryings on.  The bucking, the yelling, the wild dashes and the bad words.  My lazy colt who walks under saddle like he knows he’s going to his death becomes magnificent in self-righteousness.  I shoulda taken the camera, because you have seen NOTHING like horse indignation.

Vets are always late.  Especially on farm calls.  How great is it that vets will come to your house?  I mean big animal ones will.  And that you can call them by their first name?  And that they don’t charge you for every breath you take in their presence?  I love my vet.  I loved my old vet, but he moved from horses to dogs.  My new vet has the sweetest face and the kindest way and knows all about feet.

He took care of everything.  Worst case scenarios set aside.  All will be well.  Just in time for me to go home, eat a protein bar, snatch my computer and run for this couch, where I am now sitting.  And that is why I am wondering why I am not the one taking the nap.

I promised you scrap and have not delivered.  Maybe there’s just one picture: yesterday, when we went to feed the big guys, Fendis, the little barn cat from next door, came to visit.  This is a delicate cat, a dainty cat.  A cat even people who do not like cats would still admire.  She’s like a piece of lace, a walking bit of dignity and kindness.  And I am allergic to her.

She comes out into the arena to see us, which always worries me.  The horses find her fascinating, and will follow her slowly with their noses nearly touching the ground.  I don’t know if one of them will strike at her, or step on her by accident, so I worry.  But yesterday, as Chaz (who was trying not to sneeze) and I were fussing over the colt’s feet, Fendis came out to see us.  She wound her way, threading that custard smoothness in and out, passing between the colt’s legs and ending up right in front of him.

He dropped his nose slowly, gently.  He’s a giant, really, fifteen hands for all his youthful slimness, and his legs are like redwoods to this cat.  He has always liked her.  Now, she held still instead of beating a wise retreat, and he, with his black muzzle, touched her lightly on the back.  She arched her back, presenting it to him, and he kept still as she passed back and forth, softly, under his nose.  She looked up at him, and he touched the top of her head with that same soft black lip.  She rose and rubbed her shoulder against him.  And he closed his eyes.

Chaz and I stood still, watching this amazing thing.  It went on for some time, until Jetta decided to come and find out what was going on.  It’s always something, isn’t it?  Transcendent moments are, as named, not meant to be long in this world.  I just had never seen anything like it.  Chaz picked Fendis up, having chased her down to a nice Jetta-safe place, and brought her back, presenting her to once more to the colt, this time at eye level.   “Purring,” Chaz announced happily.  “She’s just purring.”

End of picture.  The baby monitor is starting to moan a little bit.  So I am going to go and fill my own arms with warm, dozy baby. 

What will fill the rest of the day?  Who knows?  Could be anything.  I’m a mom.  I’m used to that.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations | 14 Comments

significant june

Posted on June 10, 2009 by K

Happy Birthday, Mom.

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I bet you  never thought you’d ever be 82 years old, huh?

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You with your busy, loving heart and that killer smile. 

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If I’d been with you on this day, I wonder what we’d have talked about?

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This was just a date.  It turned into, what?  59?  60 years – and us.

Sleep well, Mom.  I love you.  I hope they had balloons for you today.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations | 13 Comments

Hot to trot

Posted on June 9, 2009 by K

If a horse is going to blow up on you, there’s a good chance it’s going to happen in the rough seam between a trot and the canter. Which makes sense: if you’ve got a kid doing the dishes, and you smile and say, “Hey, after this, I want you to scrub the toilets,” you’re going to get about the same reaction—a lot of real earnest kicking.
Especially a new horse. A young one with some ginger up his nose. Which is why I did not want to be the first one to ask my colt for a canter.

But here comes Storm Crow Geneva, the horse maven, warning me I’d better get him into a canter soon, before he grows fangs and bat wings and begins to stalk the night, looking for innocent children to trample.

And I was so dang elated that I’d ridden the trot on my colt—trotted him around like crazy in fact, thinking the whole time – what do I need to teach him? How will I teach it? Like a real horse owner, almost.

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Why is it always guilt with me? Look what I’ve done: I’ve trained up a colt in the way he should go. Me. The person who only dreamed of horses. But whatever it is, it’s never enough. No. Now I had to CANTER. Never mind I’m old and brittle. Never mind I’m a perfect coward.

Enter more angels: first, Stan – then the Great B.

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The Great B

The Great B is Rachel’s oldest son—and just happens to  be a horse genius. A horse genius who just got out of school for the summer and has two mornings a week off work. His mother has given him to me. He is now my minion. Or, he would be if he weren’t as sassy as my colt. So GB (that’s short for Great B) came over last Thursday, after I’d ridden my colt three days two weeks ago and EVERY DAY except Sunday SINCE, and prepared to help me exercise the rest of my horses while I wrestled with the intention of (drum roll) finally introducing the canter.

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The Great B, focused

Here’s where it gets really good: remember when Rachel was the Other Horse on that bike of hers and saved me from riding alone on the river path?

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the other horse   (picture stolen from her website)

Well, I’d just about finished the ground work with the colt, and was JUST PUTTING MY FOOT IN THE STIRRUP (not really) when this storm cloud of a ninety-five pound fury comes leaping over the arena gate—Rachel herself, with a look of determination on her face that could have scared off the IRS.

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Of course, I have no pictures of the actual day I’m writing about, so I’m borrowing the next day as Rachel and Sophie make up, and Sophie sadly finds out that Rachel is the alpha after-all.

“Is he warmed up?” she demanded.

“Ummmm,” I said.

“Give me that rope,” she said. “Give me that stick.” And proceeded to dance with my colt, getting much livelier footwork out of him than I had been getting. I gave her my helmet after that (I had to), and up she swung into the saddle, saying, “It’s time he cantered, and it has to be done NOW.” Then she took off.

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I probably should have told her about his tendency to stop on a dime. But she figured that out pretty quick. He showed her his lovely trot, and his propensity to stay in the back of the arena, far from the barn (a point that had been driven home many a time – with the hope of riders keeping their heads on their shoulders as a continuing thing). And then she asked for the canter.

“No hablo,” he said, bringing out his A-level trot as a peace offering.

“Oh, yeah?” Rachel said, and squeezed tighter and added a little spanker. Up shot his behind. But then, out shot his front legs, and he was off, three whole strides of canter. She kept at it, and got no more back-end bounce ups for her trouble. They never quite achieved a sustained canter, but it was a HUGE step forward. HUGE. And I was dancing in barn. Then she got off and left the rest to me. Kick-in-the-behind friends. Does it get any better than that?

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Rachel with Zi

So up I got and after a few moments, Tiger (Hickory, Junior, the colt) and I were cantering all over the place, first in short bursts, then, as The B shot by on a flying Dustin, we slipstreamed them and ended up cantering a good halfway around the arena, not one time shooting off for the barn.

Elation reinstated.

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Zion with cheese

The GB took over after that, and under him, the colt behaved like a pro, cantering all around the arena time after time without any shenanigans at all.

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The Great B and the Great Colt

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In the canter – you can tell because the outside fore leg is forward, the two inside legs are close together, and the outside back foot is in the air.  Oh, and The Great B is rocking back with the gait.

I now have five real horses.

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The lovely colt.

Thanks to a crazy woman and her son.

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The next day,

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It was a stormy day.

we worked on tuning up some of the other horses, and invited Misty over to re-acquaint herself with the odd feeling of sitting on a thousand pounds of self-directed muscle.

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Horses make us happy.

And she brought Aunty Em.

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Auntie Em

It was a horse party. A glorious horse party.

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Even the barn was happy.

Part II

A little bit on the work that I do.  As I said, Friday was a stormy day, and worse, I was shooting (camera) under prime exposure by 1.7 stops.  I can’t remember why.  Add in the fact that I was shooting these exciting horses and not paying attention to my meter.  So the images we shot that day were terribly dark and dull. But hey – what’s life without a project?  And my project for the next two days was trying to find the picture in all that gray.

Here are four shots.  Shot 1 is the SOOC.  Yucky.  You can see the dead gray sky, and the low contrast on everything else.  Target: more contrast, more drama, more energy.

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Shot 2 was my first attempt.  I tried to preserve the darkness of the shed roof and grass behind Rachel and Sophie, and the sky while bringing out the brights in horse and rider.  But the tail was too intricate to mask on the fly, so it came out badly.  And the tool I was using made nasty dark stains on the lower sides of the shot.

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Shot 3 , below, is a different approach, isolating only the sky, mountains and trees to keep them dark, but bringing up the light values in the lower half of the shot.  This has its charms; we have a clear picture of the two busy tails.  But masking Rachel’s face was messy, and the roof of the shed and the grass – too bright for a stormy day.

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Shot 4 is my last effort.  Again, I tried to keep the background stormy, but in doing that, lost the clear image of Sophie’s tail.  So the question is, which shot – if any – works?  So I’m asking for input, here.

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Of course, ultimately, the most important element of the shot is what is so lovely and heartbreaking about horses; the joy of the movement, the energy and grace, the momentary unity of woman and great animal.  Rachel looks happy and focused and free.  Sophie looks like she just might not mind carrying her.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Horses, Images, Images of our herd in specific | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Morning Moos

Posted on June 5, 2009 by K

On the treadmill.  So much easier when Biggest Loser or So You Think You can Dance are on my DVR.  This morning, two nights ago, who knows when in real life, a very tall, very cute, funny, earnest dancer was dancing the gut wrenching choreography of Mia Michaels for the second time.  Hoping to stay.  More than one more day – to get the gig.  Auditions, how I remember them, and how I hate them.

They put him through the mill.  But he made it.  For one more round, anyway, and after, having sobbed his life nearly out on the stage with relief and shock, he told the girl with the mic, “I wanted to tell them, I love dance more than anyone else beside me on that stage, more than anyone in this room.  I love it so much.  I love it.”

And I heard myself say, “Oh, Tony.”  Because it struck me sad.  And I started thinking of what I love that much.

Home.  I love home.  I love the person who built this home with me, and the people who came to life and lived and left it.  I love them so much.  I love the way that light comes down through the leaves in front of the windows.  And the dogs on the porch.  I love where I came from, my parents, my interesting and determined and honorable parents, and Keven and Michael, who are not both brothers – I love Keven’s name, and her the stubborn determination she inherited, and Michael’s imagination.  I love my Aunt Jeannie, and I love my Aunt Donna.  I love knowing they are alive, and that I am in their hearts.

I love that Char has a breakfast date. (Right now)

I love Rachel, so very much, and Geneva and Misty and Michelle.  I love being cherished and remembered.  Such a rare and beautiful thing.  I love the memories of Sisters, Ore.  I love waking up in the woods.  I love waking up after an ocean storm.  I love singing with Joanne and Gaye.  Especially gospel music – so great.  I love the feeling of wipe-out I sometimes get after a congregational hymn, when they send the music back up at me, and up higher than that.

I love that a woman can have a poignant dream for forty eight years and still get it.  I love the spring and autumn worlds that remind me that I have a heart, and not just a list wanting check marks.  I love faith, and reading and making things and owning grass and wanting, and not wanting.  I love sleep when it comes, and I love waking when it’s free of anxious responsibility (I think I do, who knows?).  I love it when they say yes to a manuscript and I love it when the reviews come in and they get it (and there was something to get – yay).

I love gardens, and wish someone would make one for me.  I love the sunlight, pouring like buttered syrup over the lip of the mountains.  I love the quiet before that, and the loud and living caroling of morning birds.  I love riding in the mountains.  Breathing. Drinking water.  Feeling my brain work, will I , nill I.  I love being able to touch, and hear and smell and the colors of sight – I love that they are so fragile, and hate that, too.

I love chances.  I love second chances.  I love the idea of God.  I love the reality of God.  I love reading scripture and being at once confused and enlightened and puzzled and challenged.  I love that people are all over the place, and the way they all dress, so different, and the songs they sing, so different.  I love kind people and good people and sad people – but mostly, people with deep honor and well meaning, who are generous with their own responses to the world.  I love seeing people have pure, joyous, font-like moments in life.

These things, I did not have to audition for.  I mean, I don’t think I did.  If that’s what we did before we came here, I have no memory of it.  The world is a dangerous place, but I love it when people work together and come up with things like toilets and nose drops and antibiotics and vaccines and clean milk and strawberries in winter and computers that connect us in such weird and fabulous ways.  I love what we can do – what we can do so easily for each other.  Like music.  The harmony of humanity, rich and layered – especially when the surface tension breaks and it all flows freely.

In some ways, crying is a validation of all this.  And never is the door completely closed against our movement.

I even love the dog who is barking at the door just now, reality and demand on the doorstep of a moment’s spiritual awareness.  Gotta go finish the workout and save the horses from their own short-sighted hunger. 

But I love even that.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Facing the elephant

Posted on June 4, 2009 by K

There’s all this stuff I want to write about. Even if nobody ever read this, I’d want to remember it, talk about it. But life is like this moving sidewalk on steroids, and things whip past before you have a moment to touch them.

This is what I wanted to write on Saturday: WOO HOOOOOOO!!!! And I wanted to write that because I had a wonderful ride on my pony. This has been a horse month. Ever since the terrible windy day, it’s been Horse Problem Solving Month, which may be interesting only to me, but to me it’s been VERY interesting.

The first part has to do with walking my spooky horses down that lane past Bob Boardman’s long horn cattle and all the scary houses. I figured, if I walked them down there enough times, the mystery would wear off for them.

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Zion

And it did. Mostly. My colt, Hickory or Tiger or Junior or Get OUT of There (so many names to choose from), got a little nervous when this adorable tiny brown calf ran straight up the side of a twelve foot pile of manure and peered down at us over the barbed wire (yes, the country is interesting). Evidently, finding himself dwarfed by a calf was difficult for my colt to take.

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But my horse mentor – who NEVER has time for me, what with her three children and her husband and her own ten horses (can you imagine the selfishness?) – made FUN of me because I was WALKING the horses down there and not riding. Nevermind the point was to make them safer for riding, so that I would not someday find myself flying across Center Street on a panicked horse and becoming far more closely acquainted than I have ever desired to be with anybody’s front bumper.

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So I had to start riding. And really, the weather has been nice. Weird, but nice. It’s kinda sad, though, to be riding around and around your little arena all by yourself. Well, yeah – there’s the horse, but horses don’t talk much.

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And I talk – a lot. It would be nice, I think, to be able to say something like, “Well – how was your hay today? Too dry, you think?” And as we canter around the corner, Zion might say, “Oh, that little touch of cheat grass really spices it up, though.” And I’d say, “What do you think of that little Arab filly of Stan’s across the fence?” And he’ say, “What does it matter to me? I’ve been fixed.” And then, as he rounded the north western barrel, I would blush a little at my small indiscretion.

The elephant in the room down at the barn was the colt who has only been ridden three times. One long time, two tiny, timid, short times. Why would one keep a colt, honestly, unless one intended to ride him? Unless I really got him to be a house pet. Which it’s possible I actually did. No, though. He was to be the grandchild pony. The adorable copy of his mother, who is the coolest pony on the planet. Not a Shetland, tiny pony – a nice little-horse size pony. Just the size, I could actually reach the stirrup with my foot – without having to go contortionist and red in the face.

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My “pony”

Things did not work out quite that way. But he is lovely, and very good natured. And so it devolved upon me to tame him and train him, and eventually, to make him safe and ride-able. I took my first strides in that direction by making Geneva ride him for the first time (which I’ve already written about). But that was a long time ago. November last. And there was a long, saddle-less winter between that glorious day and now. Now, being my responsibility.

So last week, after warming up by riding first Zion, then Sophie down the lane, and then riding around and around the arena on saddled horses, and then naked horses, I worked up the courage to ride my lovely colt. But first I fed him (so he’d be full and sleepy), then I put him in the horse jail (so nobody could mess with him), then I tacked him up and left him tied (so he’d remember what all those clothes felt like), then I tied everybody else up (so that they couldn’t come out and chase us) and put electric fence tape across the front of the open barn (so he couldn’t run into the barn and sheer off my head in the process).

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Then we spent a while on the long lead, remembering that I am the boss, and he is the horse – backing and circling and disengaging the hindquarters (which has nothing to do with packing him in a small suitcase).

After all that, I got on his back. Swung sweetly into the saddle. Steeled myself. Squeezed my legs against his side and OFF WE . . . walked. He is not a fire-in-the-feet horse. He’s a why-do-I-have-to-do-this horse. We walked all around the arena. Walked and walked and sometimes just lifted our feet and let the earth turn slowly beneath us. I talked to him about trotting, and he said, “You mean, like this?” – taking two or three trotting steps. Then went back to his snoozing.

It was good. It wasn’t scary. It was . . . boring.

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So the next day, we tried again, and this time, I got a little trot out of him. A little more. But I’m a polite person. A breakable person. Not inclined to push a point far enough that it pushes back. Is that the same as a “push-over?” I think it might be.

For some insane reason, I didn’t just sort of drift off on my good intentions and find myself doing other things. Instead, I went again the next morning, refining my prep, and just as I was about to get up there in the saddle for another nap, my neighbor – who is a real horse guy – came by. I can’t explain Stan. He’s wonderful; he can do anything. But he’s horrible, with one of those senses of humor that leave you dead and buried under a cross-walk in Milwaukee. That morning, I poured my heart out to him, and he talked me through a few things, and darned if I didn’t feel better and braver. I got up there, asked for a trot, and I got one. Not real long, but longer. No bucking. No messing around. Just a happy little trot.

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And I felt like I was flying. I was wonderful. He was wonderful. All of the scary things in the ENTIRE WORLD went away. It was Heaven come at last, and nothing could ever hurt me again.

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And that’s why I wanted to write WAAAAA – HOOOOOOOO.

But I never got a chance. Till tonight. So I’m saying it now.

Because it still feels good.

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….to be continued

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Fun Stuff, Horses, Images of our herd in specific | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

Declaration:::::

Posted on June 4, 2009 by K

I will never ever ever ever ever ever write a song about Sibby (allusion alert: obscure).

No.  That is not my declaration.  This is my declaration (please hold in your head the silhouette of Scarlet O’Hara, fist held high against the sunset):

Never again will I post somebody else’s stuff on my blog. I don’t care how clever and brilliant and honest – in fact, the better it is, the less I will post it.  Why?  Why?  Because I got more hits for Kathryn than I have EVER gotten on anything I’ve ever written myself.  It’s like somebody posted the link to that thing on the Big Boards at Time Square.  My stats were decimated.  Squashed.  All bloggers know how it is: you hope people read you.  You pant in the desert for comments.  And then suddenly, you get this massive wave of hits and – THEY’RE NOT FOR YOU.  These people don’t even go on to read ME when they’re finished with HER.  And do I want them to?  HOW WOULD I KNOW?  I DON’T KNOW ANY OF THEM.

I feel kind of like I invited somebody for dinner and they brought their entire cell phone network plus a couple of wedding parties and maybe a family reunion along to take over my kitchen. 

So I’m not doing it again.  Ever.

Sheesh.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Uncategorized | 14 Comments