I can't seem to get my head together enough to write the blog entries I want to write, but I am starting to piece through old snippets of writing to try and put this huge jigsaw puzzle of a novel that I have together. In the meantime, I came across this old "poem" I wrote years and years ago that I thought I'd post just for the hell of it. I would never call myself a poet--just having fun and playing with words and form. Enjoy!
The Drunk Geisha
Sitting with knees bent
and archless feet
tucked under a heavy bottom,
draped from the shoulders
with layers of onerous silk.
Her hand cups a wrist to pour
placations, inebriations
for men
wrestling with temptations.
They watch the stillness of her movement
listen to the slumber of her speech.
They wonder what the smile hides
what her mind may know
and what her beauty
will not tell them.
Onyx strands fall
against niveous skin
and guarded lids
cover lashes that slash her heart.
She administers alcohol or tea
to soothe their spirits
laughs at their jokes
and makes smalltalk
to fill the silence.
She is doing a job
that was assigned to her
by a male God
and taught to her by women.
When the evening is complete
and she has purged the men from her hold
she will consume the last drops of liquor
that made her so bold.
Tranquil bitters coat her tongue
Her head hung
Sitting, now bent
and hunched with repent
full of the woes
of being in the throes
of men, those damn men,
who tell her,
"You are simply a rose."
Her sister, the Dragon Lady, scoffs at her kin
says, "Girl, what's your problem?
Why you trippin?"
The Lady flicks her red nails and slugs from her drink,
tosses her black tress and gives her a wink,
"It's business, my friend.
You're not selling your soul.
Get off it, move on...
it's taking it's toll."
2/6/99
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
A Place Called Home
I've just landed in Savannah, Georgia--leaving behind certain travails and tribulations in Tennessee, having encountered a few glorious faery souls, encountering the dark and the quiet and the lushushness of the woods--and pulling into the park-like neighborhoods, trees draped with Spanish Moss, and the breathtaking Colonial, Federal and Victorian architecture of buildings and homes that have been here for centuries. I walk past wrought iron gates and find my footing on sidewalks of uneven bricks, concrete and broken shells.
I'm mesmerized by this place, I'm mesmerized by the South. I've been indoctrinated and seduced by each place I've encountered. Whether it's the winding roads that by night look like a dopppelganger of another road I had already driven by day or the animals I've come to know and love, the insects I've been forced to accept, admire or endure, the different personalities or ways of living, the familiarity of loved friends who have welcomed me into their homes and given me a respite or place for me to gather and absorb and partake in their world and livelihoods... I have been mesmerized and truly grateful and yet still wondering.
When strangers ask me, "So, where are you from? What are you doing out here?" I reply in a fashion that is now becoming staid: "I'm from LA. I'm a writer. I've never experienced the South." Sure, my response, at the moment of discussion, may not be that bland and there are moments of more interesting conversations where I'm able to insert other anecdotes or supplementary information about why I am here or what I have experienced thus far, but the longer I am out here, just simply traveling (as much as I LOVE traveling and going from place to place), there are times when I have to ask myself, too: "So, where are you from? What are you doing out here?" Why am I here, where am I from, and what am I doing out here, anyway?"
It dawned on me tonight that I have been a hobo for way too long. I've been basically couch-hopping (or rather beautifully bed- or home-hopping), HOPING that maybe I might find my home or my place if I went... to that next place.
Part of my problem is that I convolute or intertwine my feeling of security or home with a man. Which, actually, I find curious when I'm one of the last women standing! I'm a single woman here now--almost 40--by choice. I did not or never wanted to be "that," I never thought I would turn "that age"... it just happened, and then being single at my age also happened by choice. Mostly because I never found the man who I wanted to be with and I think I held out for that for most of my twenties and thirties, despite my personal beliefs.
It was like this: if I had my druthers, I would be the single, accomplished woman who didn't have to rely on a man for my happiness or well-being, but if the beautiful man came along I would go there and love him completely, which I did for most of my life. I've always been boy-crazy: I was that kindergartner who got benched during recess because I was always playing chase with the boys and who wrote about my "boyfriends" in my first diary in first grade: one, a red-haired mop-headed Jewish boy from the San Fernando Valley and the other, a dark-skinned, gentle immigrant from Tanzania. I just always loved the boys.
I tried. I held out for that ideal of being the single, accomplished woman, but I always buckled because I love the boys just too damn much. I came up in the 90s with collegiate-feminism and inaccessible, pretentious theory and no utilitarian practice. That was my big gripe whenever I had to read these texts in college and then had to translate their ideas into what I had experienced or how I saw the world. Academia is all theory and fuckin bullshit brain power---there's no practice or immediate use for all the great good that the privileged few can do anything with. And if there is anything good, it takes eons and years for it to trickle down to the masses. There was always that struggle between reading, learning and processing and then applying it to my life or experience and what I have known or observed.
Then, I saw too many intelligent, beautiful, accomplished women settling for unrealized, unformed "men." Ugh. I looked at them, observing these intelligent, beautiful, accomplished women settling for unrealized, unformed men, which is easy to do from afar and also desire as an observer or lover-of-being-in-love, but the problem for me was that I could never get my own shit together enough to even be that. I was still just grappling with my own demons and then meeting these random guys who wanted me and then who I got involved with in these two-year long relationships that went nowhere because, honestly, I didn't want to be with any of those guys from the get-go, but they were just, maybe, the next best thing to make me feel more whole or sure about who I was and... well, then, they usually disappointed and I did, too. Me and them. I didn't have my own shit together or was unformed and unrealized myself and these two broken parts would always come together--never enough wholeness to make a whole functioning unit.
There are two kinds of men: either they want their cake and it eat it, too, and can never settle down fully to commit and not wrestle with those other "I'm -scared-of-committing-demons" (and they'll always "dabble" even if they say they are done with that part of their lives) or they are the staid, regimented, boring types that freak the fuck out whenever you suggest or insert something new or different into their lives. I don't care if you try to be loving or understanding or work with their insecurities or whatever, whether they are the terrified single dude or the terrified regimented boy they just freak out and either begrudgingly partake in your suggestion or they just won't do it and will stay set in their ways. Either one is mind-boggling and frustrating and makes me claw at the walls. I'm probably not picking the right men to be involved with, yes, but I also just get to a point where I get sick of the bullshit and would rather be alone and single than constantly having to put up with someone who needs so much work and isn't willing to do it on his own. I want someone who has worked on their shit apart from anyone else, someone who has gone through the ups and downs and difficulties of life, but who has taken quiet time out for themselves to learn about why they do the things they do and how these patterns erupt in their lives or who may have figured into that picture and what they can do to change it now. I want to feel their substance and worth--wrap my fingers around their grace and beauty and linger there, dawdle and slip and slide between knowing and unknowing. I want permanent press with the romance of silk, the durability and contention of hemp, the familiarity and sweetness of cotton, the sexiness of satin, and the modernity of bamboo. I want to recognize that hodgepodge of fabrics that creates the one I love, but then feel the substance and delight that we are made of the same material.
I want adventure and fun and anticipation of the unknown in my life, but I also want security and deep-felt love and the comfort of knowing and understanding with a man. Unfortunately, I am not a lesbian and sometimes I wish I was... if only because the alternative to loving and wanting and being sexually turned on by men is loving and wanting and being sexually turned on by women. I think women--especially beautiful women--are HOT and even though I've gone there it's never dawned on me to get involved with a woman or to be in a relationship with one like a man. It's simply not appealing to me. The roles and gender things are just too confusing. I want to be involved with a man--my best friend, my alter ego, my lover, that person who has different parts than me and is just the one who I find gorgeous, wonderful and endearing... and also the one who will travel the ends of the earth to be with me no matter how difficult the circumstances or obstacles. He will climb through the tundra or battle windstorms, hijack a 747 or become a stowaway in cargo on a ship, fight a duel to the death, scale tall buildings with a single bound. But, hell, I know Superman doesn't exist. Maybe the problem is that there are too many women out there trying to be Superwomen and there just aren't enough Supermen.
PJ Harvey's "A Place Called Home" is ringing in my ears. She has always been my bitch, my kick-ass chick who fuckin calls it as it is and still makes beautiful, intelligent music. I always have to have a muse, especially when I write, and Ms. Harvey is my muse right now. The music lingers in my ears from way back when and then I remember a random title here or there: A Place Called Home. It is what I am seeking. I want a place called home. I want to find my home within myself, maybe with a good man, definitely somewhere--whether it be within myself or with another loved one--that is beautiful and functional and secure. A place full of romance and love and continuity and belonging. A place that I, myself, can call Home. I will be there. I will get there. I will find my home soon. I know it. It's just around the corner. I just have to keep having faith, keep loving and keep walking on these broken shells and uneven bricks...
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The Mountain
Since I've been here on the Mountain, in the country, in the backwoods of Tennessee, it's been an experiment and "test" for me to go with the flow, to allow things to unfurl and happen as they may. In the city or even in small towns, life is contrived: planned, anticipated, already pre-determined by schedules and agendas. And then there is just the general discontent for the want of more--material goods, acknowledgment, status, peace of mind, direction, discussion, connection.
I'm not saying that those things don't occur in the country. People can certainly be unsettled here, too. Drugs--mostly meth production and consumption--are a rampant problem for some. I've seen the made-up ladies with their aerosalled hair driving BMWs down country highways or the dulled, pot-bellied men buying cigarettes and beer at the local gas station or a fat man and woman traipsing around their garbage-strewn front yard and plopping down on a dirty couch as though that might be the only thing to do in their world.
Maybe it's the particular place I am in the country--the Mountain: a covenant of hills blanketed by thickets of trees; winding roads that all look the same, especially after dark when even your brights can't help to discern a bend in the road or one God-fearing sign from the next; a pasture of grazing animals--goats on one farm, horses on the next, a couple of ostriches, or maybe it was ostriches there and horses next, and goats somewhere else; a well-kempt cottage, a trailer, an impressive log cabin, a dump, or random trails that actually lead to another part of the Mountain that you might pass by if you didn't know that they led to where you wanted to go.
Most people just live here, some have lived here for generations, inheriting land from their parents and grandparents and trying to carve out a life for themselves from the generous land that requires so much tending and work. Others have moved here because they remember passing through the lushushness of Tennessee: resplendent with the green of the foliage and the woods and the tumultuous pink-clouded, electric blue, gray firmament of revelation and glory; the clap of thunder that echoes through the canyons of trees and the lightning that darts through slate skies; creatures that scamper and sprint across the road, insects--microscopic or as big as your hand--that bite, sting, sing, and just fly and buzz around constantly; the quiet, the dark, the humidity, and the absolute grace and beauty of Mother Nature all convene here in mid-Tennessee.
It is also the place where I find myself here on the Mountain, though, just miles from The Retreat--this place that so many of the friends I've come to know in the last two months have all gathered around.
I've heard many stories now about The Retreat and how it came to be. It was a hippie commune, it was a communist sanctuary, it was a place where people could come to escape the confines of the city or capitalist society and live with Mother Nature, give and take with the land and learn how to live with each other. Then, it became a haven for gay men to come away from the city and appropriated roles and live life freely, leanly, fully together without harm, without judgment to nurture each other and Mother Nature as one. A beautiful life.
People came. Since the 70s. People came and lived here at The Retreat--a pocket in the hills of The Mountain--and settled there. I don't know what it was like in the 70s, 80s or 90s, but now, as an outsider, as a straight Japanese American woman from Los Angeles in 2010, I have come to know The Retreat as this: a true haven. It is a slice of Heaven, a slice of Life, a sliver of what could be in this World, a redemption for all the evils and misconstrued expectations and acceptances of what a Good Life is all about. This is the Good Life: living freely, without expectation or want, having a community of people to find the balm for your insecurities or uncertainties, experiencing your sexuality openly without fear, coming to an understanding about true reciprocity, taking from the land and giving back equally, finding peace even in your own disquiet, staying still and just listening to the world around you, which, in this world, is all bugs and darkness.
I say this from afar, still, because I have not or am not, maybe, of this world that I have landed in. I have not experienced my sexuality freely (though I have certainly toyed with the idea), I have not lived truly freely without expectation or want, but I am learning about reciprocity, taking from the land and giving back equally, finding peace in my own disquiet, staying still and listening to the world around me, in the bugs and darkness or light of day, and finding a community of people who have given me the balm for my insecurities and uncertainties. Since I have been here, whether its the woods or the people who have lived here longer than me and have a deeper understanding of what Life and reciprocity is all about, I have said to others around me that these woods, this land, the people who inhabit this place, have given me exactly what I needed, whether good or bad. Maybe it's the quiet that's allowed me to receive it--good or bad--but, regardless, there is something about This Place that has given me exactly what I need.
And I am forever grateful....
I'm not saying that those things don't occur in the country. People can certainly be unsettled here, too. Drugs--mostly meth production and consumption--are a rampant problem for some. I've seen the made-up ladies with their aerosalled hair driving BMWs down country highways or the dulled, pot-bellied men buying cigarettes and beer at the local gas station or a fat man and woman traipsing around their garbage-strewn front yard and plopping down on a dirty couch as though that might be the only thing to do in their world.
Maybe it's the particular place I am in the country--the Mountain: a covenant of hills blanketed by thickets of trees; winding roads that all look the same, especially after dark when even your brights can't help to discern a bend in the road or one God-fearing sign from the next; a pasture of grazing animals--goats on one farm, horses on the next, a couple of ostriches, or maybe it was ostriches there and horses next, and goats somewhere else; a well-kempt cottage, a trailer, an impressive log cabin, a dump, or random trails that actually lead to another part of the Mountain that you might pass by if you didn't know that they led to where you wanted to go.
Most people just live here, some have lived here for generations, inheriting land from their parents and grandparents and trying to carve out a life for themselves from the generous land that requires so much tending and work. Others have moved here because they remember passing through the lushushness of Tennessee: resplendent with the green of the foliage and the woods and the tumultuous pink-clouded, electric blue, gray firmament of revelation and glory; the clap of thunder that echoes through the canyons of trees and the lightning that darts through slate skies; creatures that scamper and sprint across the road, insects--microscopic or as big as your hand--that bite, sting, sing, and just fly and buzz around constantly; the quiet, the dark, the humidity, and the absolute grace and beauty of Mother Nature all convene here in mid-Tennessee.
It is also the place where I find myself here on the Mountain, though, just miles from The Retreat--this place that so many of the friends I've come to know in the last two months have all gathered around.
I've heard many stories now about The Retreat and how it came to be. It was a hippie commune, it was a communist sanctuary, it was a place where people could come to escape the confines of the city or capitalist society and live with Mother Nature, give and take with the land and learn how to live with each other. Then, it became a haven for gay men to come away from the city and appropriated roles and live life freely, leanly, fully together without harm, without judgment to nurture each other and Mother Nature as one. A beautiful life.
People came. Since the 70s. People came and lived here at The Retreat--a pocket in the hills of The Mountain--and settled there. I don't know what it was like in the 70s, 80s or 90s, but now, as an outsider, as a straight Japanese American woman from Los Angeles in 2010, I have come to know The Retreat as this: a true haven. It is a slice of Heaven, a slice of Life, a sliver of what could be in this World, a redemption for all the evils and misconstrued expectations and acceptances of what a Good Life is all about. This is the Good Life: living freely, without expectation or want, having a community of people to find the balm for your insecurities or uncertainties, experiencing your sexuality openly without fear, coming to an understanding about true reciprocity, taking from the land and giving back equally, finding peace even in your own disquiet, staying still and just listening to the world around you, which, in this world, is all bugs and darkness.
I say this from afar, still, because I have not or am not, maybe, of this world that I have landed in. I have not experienced my sexuality freely (though I have certainly toyed with the idea), I have not lived truly freely without expectation or want, but I am learning about reciprocity, taking from the land and giving back equally, finding peace in my own disquiet, staying still and listening to the world around me, in the bugs and darkness or light of day, and finding a community of people who have given me the balm for my insecurities and uncertainties. Since I have been here, whether its the woods or the people who have lived here longer than me and have a deeper understanding of what Life and reciprocity is all about, I have said to others around me that these woods, this land, the people who inhabit this place, have given me exactly what I needed, whether good or bad. Maybe it's the quiet that's allowed me to receive it--good or bad--but, regardless, there is something about This Place that has given me exactly what I need.
And I am forever grateful....
Friday, June 18, 2010
Entomophile
I am the kind of City Girl who will call a friend on the phone or the guy from across the hall to come and deal with anything creepy crawly. Or I'll let my mom do it. Her OCD is allayed for just a few moments as she scrambles across tabletops or counters on the kitchen to swat a pesky fly. I can't kill flies and I definitely will not kill spiders. I will find a Tupperware and piece of paper and scoot the insect into the trap and let it go outside. My inner Zen monk comes out around insects.
It's not that I am horrified at the idea of killing living things. I will step on ants. I used to get great joy out of it as a child, stomping on lines creeping around the sidewalk and watching them scatter in confused loops. I also enjoy killing fleas. I remember a particularly bad summer as a child when my cat was host to their party and I would walk around with knee-length white socks waiting for them to jump on me. Then, I would get great satisfaction out of picking them off my socks and filling the toilet with their scrambling bodies.
Ants and fleas are the general exception to my killing of insects, but I don't kill insects, mostly, because I've been terrified of them. I spaz out when a bee flies within a foot of me. I'll marvel at a grasshopper or cricket, but jump faster than they do if they move.
Needless to say, my first few weeks in the country were a challenge. No, actually, I was entomo-challenged for at least the first month: constantly swatting, flicking, scooting and scratching. I was a goddam buffet for the mosquitoes, the chiggers, noseeums and any of the other many, many biting insects. After complaining to Judd's boyfriend, Argent--a quiet-spoken, observant gentleman who's lived in the country most of his life, he commented to me that tolerating insects is simply a way of learning how to deal with the irritations of life. I am easily annoyed and irritated. I thought about our conversation for some time and realized that maybe that's one of my lessons right now: to learn how to deal with the irritations of life, and not be bothered by them--not to scratch or pick at them, to not get flustered and reactive when they occur.
I am also learning how to appreciate all of them for their inherent, individual beauty and function. I've seen some of the most incredible insects since I've been here: an array of butterflies, dragonflies the size of my hand, fireflies that put on a nightly show in the trees, the most curious creature with a burgundy body, short black wings and a beak-like tendril that dipped into the stigma of the flowers it fed off of one-by-one like a hummingbird. The most amazing insect I've seen is the lunar moth. It's as large as my hand and looks like a creature from faery tales. It looks like it could glow-in-the-dark.
The longer I stay here, the more I like bugs and think they're pretty cool.
It's not that I am horrified at the idea of killing living things. I will step on ants. I used to get great joy out of it as a child, stomping on lines creeping around the sidewalk and watching them scatter in confused loops. I also enjoy killing fleas. I remember a particularly bad summer as a child when my cat was host to their party and I would walk around with knee-length white socks waiting for them to jump on me. Then, I would get great satisfaction out of picking them off my socks and filling the toilet with their scrambling bodies.
Ants and fleas are the general exception to my killing of insects, but I don't kill insects, mostly, because I've been terrified of them. I spaz out when a bee flies within a foot of me. I'll marvel at a grasshopper or cricket, but jump faster than they do if they move.
Needless to say, my first few weeks in the country were a challenge. No, actually, I was entomo-challenged for at least the first month: constantly swatting, flicking, scooting and scratching. I was a goddam buffet for the mosquitoes, the chiggers, noseeums and any of the other many, many biting insects. After complaining to Judd's boyfriend, Argent--a quiet-spoken, observant gentleman who's lived in the country most of his life, he commented to me that tolerating insects is simply a way of learning how to deal with the irritations of life. I am easily annoyed and irritated. I thought about our conversation for some time and realized that maybe that's one of my lessons right now: to learn how to deal with the irritations of life, and not be bothered by them--not to scratch or pick at them, to not get flustered and reactive when they occur.
I am also learning how to appreciate all of them for their inherent, individual beauty and function. I've seen some of the most incredible insects since I've been here: an array of butterflies, dragonflies the size of my hand, fireflies that put on a nightly show in the trees, the most curious creature with a burgundy body, short black wings and a beak-like tendril that dipped into the stigma of the flowers it fed off of one-by-one like a hummingbird. The most amazing insect I've seen is the lunar moth. It's as large as my hand and looks like a creature from faery tales. It looks like it could glow-in-the-dark. The longer I stay here, the more I like bugs and think they're pretty cool.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Gothic Appalachia
I arrived at Sassafras, the artist's collective located about twenty minutes from Ragmar, several days ago after trying to pack up the last of my stuff. As I trekked to and from from my car, it began to thunder and rain, and out-of-nowhere I received this barrage of text messages from the Scottish Whore. I last texted her two weeks ago. She proceeded to "show me" how she and Indigo Boy had "something" as I carted stuff back and forth from my car in the rain. I thought I was done hearing from her or about the whole mess. She's just a dumb-ass bitch in my book. Stupid whore making my blood boil again. I told her to fuck him or someone else and just to fuck off. Things aren't working out between them and now she's getting psycho on me. Just stirring up shit because she can't leave well enough alone. Doing everything now to screw the both of us. And still I try to find peace in the woods of Tennessee 2000 miles away from L.A. I'm glad I'm not there because she's the type of woman who would go to extreme measures to get back at us because she finally got dissed by him. And I am glad to be here because I have peace; they don't.
I have found my peace here at Sassafras. My cellphone has no reception, so phone calls and text messages are few and far between. What relief. What silence. What a breath of fresh air. I have Internet connection, my computer, great company, a gorgeous structure of windows and carefully-hewn wood to call home and 300 acres of verdant woods to roam and find reason.
I had a rockstar weekend with the lot of them, drinking whiskey on the porch and nursing bad hangovers the next morning. The day before Xavier and Paul left, the three of us hiked for two hours up the dense wooded mountainside, through a depressing decimated clearcut where we got lost, and back down through the trees and foliage to the Refuge. We hiked and walked for hours in our tall rainboots that we wore to protect us from chiggers and ticks. Eventually, we made it to Ragmar's (after walking another 45 minutes or so from the Refuge to his property) and collapsed onto the hammock. Anouk had to come pick us pathetic city slickers up, but we showered, had a lovely dinner of shrimp scampi and salad and slept like babies.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Indigo Boy
I've been hesitant to write about this for awhile, but this blog is an exercise in release for me: in finding "liberty"... and also to exorcise the demons that reared their ugly heads these last few weeks. Censorship simply does not have a place here. Warning: this post should not be read by the faint-hearted, the blind, or sexually prude.
For anyone keeping up with my blog, you might be wondering why I haven't written as much as I did in the beginning. Well, a few repairs were being made: my computer, my camera, and then my heart. About a week after I arrived in Liberty, Indigo Boy told me that he had slept with someone else. I knew something was up because he had been spending quite a bit of time with this girl from work the week that I left... I'll call her Scottish Whore. I call her that because I knew she was sketchy from my own experience, but then later I learned she had slept with more than a handful of people from work. That he fucked her came as a shock because Indigo Boy and I had just spent the last week talking on the phone every night, texting throughout the day and exchanging sweet nothings throughout my trip out here.
We agreed to have an open relationship after I left. There was no other alternative to our age difference or the literal distance we would be apart. I asked two things from him, however, before I left: use protection and don't sleep with anyone from work. I had already broken my cardinal rule of not sleeping with anyone from work by getting involved with him and I knew that if he did things would get very, very messy. There is something sacred about the workplace that needs to be honored. Sex just simply doesn't belong in the equation. Lesson learned for me: NEVER sleep with anyone from work!!!!!
Even though we had an open relationship, we were still very much together. We texted and talked everyday. We had spent the last three months practically inseparable. He had been so involved in my life; I wondered how his 24-year old attention span would deal with my absence once I was gone. I knew he was sad. The last picture I saw of him on Facebook taken by a friend of his after I left made my heart break. He looked so dejected. I knew he was lonely. I didn't think anything, at first, of him spending time with Scottish Whore because she claimed to be a lesbian and Indigo Boy insisted that he wasn't attracted to her "in that way." He said they were just hanging out because I was gone and he just wanted to play Wii. I told him that I thought she was seducing him with Wii. He is twenty-four, after all. He laughed and said, "I don't think so!" and I believed what he said to me. How could I not? He sent me a text pic of him kissing me while he was at her house. I told him to tell her "hello" for me while he was hanging out with her and he said "Scottish Whore says 'hello,' too!" Smiley face included or something insidious like that.
So I believed him... and then one night we talked on the phone before he was running out the door to her house again at 11pm. My antennae went on high alert. He said he would text me in the morning. Nothing. He had never done that to me before. He was always so good about checking in with me, doing what he said he would do, coming through for me in a pinch. I called him, left him a few frantic text messages the next day. Nothing again. I was 2000 miles away and I knew he had fucked her.
And then all hell broke loose. I knew this girl from work. I had hung out with her once before about a year ago and then stayed far, far away from her because I got such sketchy vibes. The night I hung out with her, she told me that she had left Scotland because her best friend's boyfriend had killed someone or something crazy like that and then she and her best friend got caught up in it and needed to get out of Scotland. Then she came onto me. And then I said my goodbyes and never looked back. I had a civil working relationship with her after that, but I kept my distance. I thought she was sketchy, needy and unstable. Whenever I saw her at work she was always complaining about this person and that person or how she had been wronged in some way. She looked like a strung-out junkie, too, with her pasty skin and sack of bones that she called a body. She was wretched. And then Indigo Boy slept with her... and I lost my shit.
I know it takes two to tango and I certainly don't hold Scottish Whore solely accountable for the whole thing, but I have very little sympathy for her. She is a lying bitch. She swore she would never have done anything to hurt me and then said she didn't want anything more to do with him after she found out we were together. I told her I wouldn't put it past her to keep sleeping with him. Had I been her, even if she was misled by him, if I found out that the guy I had just slept with was already involved with someone else (especially with someone I knew!), I wouldn't have slept with him again. After one stupid fling? And all the drama that is sure to come after? She's thirty-two years old. Come on woman!
I'm sure he told her he didn't want to be me with me anymore... that he wanted to be with her. Whatever he needed to tell her to keep sleeping with her. And then he just felt guilty for the whole mess and then he was trapped. There were four things at play here: he was lonely and vulnerable, she sank her claws into him, Indigo Boy and I had shit to work out that we never got a chance to and he has a terrible pattern of overlapping his relationships. I think he did the same thing to me after his "best friend" K freaked out on me one night after Indigo Boy and I had been together for a month or so. I thought her reaction was strange because he swore nothing was up between them and that, really, they were just friends. I told him that any girl who reacts that strongly to her "best friend's" new woman clearly has feelings for him and that he better sort that out, but I chalked it up to a 24-something crush. I didn't think he was lying to me. Now that I look back on it, he was probably sleeping with her the whole time, too.
So, I feel duped. Yes, like a "foolish woman" as my mother called me once she found out I was dating a 24-year old guy. I "shouldn't have"... shouldn't have gone there, shouldn't have done it, shouldn't have even bothered. But I couldn't resist. He was so disarmingly sweet. His energy so pure and fresh. How could I resist falling for him: this gorgeous boy with caramel skin, puppy-dog eyes, pillow lips and a body that makes women ravenous; this adoration, this soulful yearning, this love? We spent a full three months doting on each other everyday. We spent my birthday weekend dancing and rolling among the bedsheets, went to Santa Barbara for Valentine's Day, San Francisco for a four-day roadtrip, and did almost everything together. We are both die-hard romantics. Music was one of our connections and, though, we shared many songs, Esthero became our muse. He called me "That Girl." He was my "Indigo Boy." Yes, the sex was hot, but it was our kiss that sealed the deal for me. It was a kiss that I hadn't shared with someone since I was his age. It was the kiss of being twenty-four: a kiss full of belief and hope, rapture, longing, comfort, and desire. We kissed in elevators, among the pillows for hours, whenever we saw each other we kissed and, then, everything was made right in the world. It feels like we spent most of our time kissing. Just kissing. But he's twenty-four. He doesn't want to just kiss! He wants to fuck and experience sex in all forms! I get it... I was twenty-four once.
I guess, these last three weeks have just been a painful wake-up call for me. I knew that things weren't right the last few weeks when I was still in L.A. I was in the midst of transition--quitting the job I had been at for 2-1/2 years, packing up all my things to go, trying to settle my heart as I tried absorbing this separation from Indigo Boy. He, too, was in the midst of transition. He knew I was leaving. He helped me move things around in my parents' basement. We spent as many nights as we could together going out or hanging out at his place. We talked or texted on the phone every day as he went carousing around with his boys or went to practice (he's an amazing dancer, btw... exceptionally talented), but I knew I was cramping his style. I knew he was flirting with girls and we would joke and tease about it. He was so much younger than me. I didn't want to get in the way of his having a good time or doing what 24-year olds do. His flirtations didn't really matter to me, anyway. What mattered was that I knew I was his #1 Girl and that we still communicated everyday or made the time to spend with each other when we could. But the last few weeks before I left were fraught with uncertainty--what would happen to "us" once I was gone? Would we, could we still remain true to each other in our hearts? Would we be able to withstand the pain and difficulty of what would come?
Apparently not. I don't know. I broke up with him last week because he handled things so poorly. I just don't know anymore where the lines of truth and loyalty exist for him anymore. He betrayed me. He strung me along with half-assed attempts at saying sorry, asking me what he could do to possible make it right again between us because he didn't want to throw what we had away and then kept fucking her and telling her only god knows what. Now she's probably hooked on him and embarrassed about the whole thing and acting needy and confused and he's too much of a softy to tell her goodbye. He couldn't say goodbye to me. I asked him after it all happened if he wanted to break up with me--that he should have just done so. He didn't have to kick me in the stomach, too. He insisted, No! No, I don't want to break up with you! I don't want to throw all of this away! But he transferred the feelings he had for me to her because she's there; I'm not. I don't want to be involved in that kind of bullshit. And I got pulled into it for a hot second. And, man, I went there. All my ugly junior high school vitriol came spewing out. My anger, all the hurts that I've already experienced with other men, all the many, many disappointments and betrayals.
I scared him off with the intensity of my anger and pain and probably drove the two of them closer together. But I don't regret doing so. I am learning that my emotions are my emotions and to own them fully and, also, to express them when they need to be released. Anger and pain are especially ugly emotions, but if you don't release them they sit in you and fester and morph into something much uglier and destructive. I've done that for too long--held my emotions in or taken them out on myself. And I don't want to hide my emotions anymore. Or to manipulate my emotions to hold onto something or someone because I am alone. I have learned how to be alone. My challenge is to learn and trust to be with another. I do believe, though that I will recognize my love when a Man can deal with the uncertainty of my pain and discomfort.
I told Indigo Boy once that though our bodies may age, our emotions do not. Each person's emotional world is full of every heartache, betrayal or loss that one may have suffered since childhood. Each person learns to deal with the pain or express it in different ways, but those seeds of pain still exist. I thought, at my age, that I would be able to handle it better once the inevitable came to pass, but I did not. My pain still exists. I am still a little girl lost, a jr. high school bitch, a woman who loves and distrusts men, a mother that has not found her child. I knew he would sleep with someone else or many, many other women. I knew that one would create heartache for the other. One of us would have found someone else at some point. We have different needs at the ages that we are: I want security; he wants to have fun. I just didn't think it would come so soon. I just believed that what we had created together would endure. I thought that what we has shared was sacred and that he would have honored it in some way.
I went there: into the magic and romance of being twenty-four again and I reveled in it. I swam in our love. We learned to swim together--to open ourselves to the uncertainty of the depth we may find, but then to release ourselves into the joy of finding equal amounts of recognition and nourishment. We introduced each other to different worlds. Our friends celebrated our love. We talked about the future--the near future seemed too uncertain, but the faraway future seemed like a distinct possibility. But I was more ready for it than he was. He hasn't been through enough bad relationships yet to know how to recognize something really good when he has it and then what to do to preserve it.
I don't regret "going there" with him. He gave me so much. I know he's a good guy with a beautiful heart. I can give him a reprieve for being twenty-four, but I just hope he knows that if he keeps going for older women, he better be prepared for the Pandora's Box of emotions that comes with it. I can forgive him for his indiscretions, another woman may not be so kind. For me, it took more than a decade to experience the purity and sanctity of the kind of love we shared. For him, he may find it sooner or more often than me. Maybe Indigo Boy will; maybe he won't. I hope he does. I hope he beds many women. I hope he gets his heart broken. I hope he learns all the ups and downs and ins and outs of love. I hope he learns from his mistakes and learns to be a better man.
For me, I would rather have loved and lost than not loved him at all. That Girl will always remember and hold Indigo Boy close to her heart, even as she says goodbye...
For anyone keeping up with my blog, you might be wondering why I haven't written as much as I did in the beginning. Well, a few repairs were being made: my computer, my camera, and then my heart. About a week after I arrived in Liberty, Indigo Boy told me that he had slept with someone else. I knew something was up because he had been spending quite a bit of time with this girl from work the week that I left... I'll call her Scottish Whore. I call her that because I knew she was sketchy from my own experience, but then later I learned she had slept with more than a handful of people from work. That he fucked her came as a shock because Indigo Boy and I had just spent the last week talking on the phone every night, texting throughout the day and exchanging sweet nothings throughout my trip out here.
We agreed to have an open relationship after I left. There was no other alternative to our age difference or the literal distance we would be apart. I asked two things from him, however, before I left: use protection and don't sleep with anyone from work. I had already broken my cardinal rule of not sleeping with anyone from work by getting involved with him and I knew that if he did things would get very, very messy. There is something sacred about the workplace that needs to be honored. Sex just simply doesn't belong in the equation. Lesson learned for me: NEVER sleep with anyone from work!!!!!
Even though we had an open relationship, we were still very much together. We texted and talked everyday. We had spent the last three months practically inseparable. He had been so involved in my life; I wondered how his 24-year old attention span would deal with my absence once I was gone. I knew he was sad. The last picture I saw of him on Facebook taken by a friend of his after I left made my heart break. He looked so dejected. I knew he was lonely. I didn't think anything, at first, of him spending time with Scottish Whore because she claimed to be a lesbian and Indigo Boy insisted that he wasn't attracted to her "in that way." He said they were just hanging out because I was gone and he just wanted to play Wii. I told him that I thought she was seducing him with Wii. He is twenty-four, after all. He laughed and said, "I don't think so!" and I believed what he said to me. How could I not? He sent me a text pic of him kissing me while he was at her house. I told him to tell her "hello" for me while he was hanging out with her and he said "Scottish Whore says 'hello,' too!" Smiley face included or something insidious like that.
So I believed him... and then one night we talked on the phone before he was running out the door to her house again at 11pm. My antennae went on high alert. He said he would text me in the morning. Nothing. He had never done that to me before. He was always so good about checking in with me, doing what he said he would do, coming through for me in a pinch. I called him, left him a few frantic text messages the next day. Nothing again. I was 2000 miles away and I knew he had fucked her.
And then all hell broke loose. I knew this girl from work. I had hung out with her once before about a year ago and then stayed far, far away from her because I got such sketchy vibes. The night I hung out with her, she told me that she had left Scotland because her best friend's boyfriend had killed someone or something crazy like that and then she and her best friend got caught up in it and needed to get out of Scotland. Then she came onto me. And then I said my goodbyes and never looked back. I had a civil working relationship with her after that, but I kept my distance. I thought she was sketchy, needy and unstable. Whenever I saw her at work she was always complaining about this person and that person or how she had been wronged in some way. She looked like a strung-out junkie, too, with her pasty skin and sack of bones that she called a body. She was wretched. And then Indigo Boy slept with her... and I lost my shit.
I know it takes two to tango and I certainly don't hold Scottish Whore solely accountable for the whole thing, but I have very little sympathy for her. She is a lying bitch. She swore she would never have done anything to hurt me and then said she didn't want anything more to do with him after she found out we were together. I told her I wouldn't put it past her to keep sleeping with him. Had I been her, even if she was misled by him, if I found out that the guy I had just slept with was already involved with someone else (especially with someone I knew!), I wouldn't have slept with him again. After one stupid fling? And all the drama that is sure to come after? She's thirty-two years old. Come on woman!
I'm sure he told her he didn't want to be me with me anymore... that he wanted to be with her. Whatever he needed to tell her to keep sleeping with her. And then he just felt guilty for the whole mess and then he was trapped. There were four things at play here: he was lonely and vulnerable, she sank her claws into him, Indigo Boy and I had shit to work out that we never got a chance to and he has a terrible pattern of overlapping his relationships. I think he did the same thing to me after his "best friend" K freaked out on me one night after Indigo Boy and I had been together for a month or so. I thought her reaction was strange because he swore nothing was up between them and that, really, they were just friends. I told him that any girl who reacts that strongly to her "best friend's" new woman clearly has feelings for him and that he better sort that out, but I chalked it up to a 24-something crush. I didn't think he was lying to me. Now that I look back on it, he was probably sleeping with her the whole time, too.
So, I feel duped. Yes, like a "foolish woman" as my mother called me once she found out I was dating a 24-year old guy. I "shouldn't have"... shouldn't have gone there, shouldn't have done it, shouldn't have even bothered. But I couldn't resist. He was so disarmingly sweet. His energy so pure and fresh. How could I resist falling for him: this gorgeous boy with caramel skin, puppy-dog eyes, pillow lips and a body that makes women ravenous; this adoration, this soulful yearning, this love? We spent a full three months doting on each other everyday. We spent my birthday weekend dancing and rolling among the bedsheets, went to Santa Barbara for Valentine's Day, San Francisco for a four-day roadtrip, and did almost everything together. We are both die-hard romantics. Music was one of our connections and, though, we shared many songs, Esthero became our muse. He called me "That Girl." He was my "Indigo Boy." Yes, the sex was hot, but it was our kiss that sealed the deal for me. It was a kiss that I hadn't shared with someone since I was his age. It was the kiss of being twenty-four: a kiss full of belief and hope, rapture, longing, comfort, and desire. We kissed in elevators, among the pillows for hours, whenever we saw each other we kissed and, then, everything was made right in the world. It feels like we spent most of our time kissing. Just kissing. But he's twenty-four. He doesn't want to just kiss! He wants to fuck and experience sex in all forms! I get it... I was twenty-four once.
I guess, these last three weeks have just been a painful wake-up call for me. I knew that things weren't right the last few weeks when I was still in L.A. I was in the midst of transition--quitting the job I had been at for 2-1/2 years, packing up all my things to go, trying to settle my heart as I tried absorbing this separation from Indigo Boy. He, too, was in the midst of transition. He knew I was leaving. He helped me move things around in my parents' basement. We spent as many nights as we could together going out or hanging out at his place. We talked or texted on the phone every day as he went carousing around with his boys or went to practice (he's an amazing dancer, btw... exceptionally talented), but I knew I was cramping his style. I knew he was flirting with girls and we would joke and tease about it. He was so much younger than me. I didn't want to get in the way of his having a good time or doing what 24-year olds do. His flirtations didn't really matter to me, anyway. What mattered was that I knew I was his #1 Girl and that we still communicated everyday or made the time to spend with each other when we could. But the last few weeks before I left were fraught with uncertainty--what would happen to "us" once I was gone? Would we, could we still remain true to each other in our hearts? Would we be able to withstand the pain and difficulty of what would come?
Apparently not. I don't know. I broke up with him last week because he handled things so poorly. I just don't know anymore where the lines of truth and loyalty exist for him anymore. He betrayed me. He strung me along with half-assed attempts at saying sorry, asking me what he could do to possible make it right again between us because he didn't want to throw what we had away and then kept fucking her and telling her only god knows what. Now she's probably hooked on him and embarrassed about the whole thing and acting needy and confused and he's too much of a softy to tell her goodbye. He couldn't say goodbye to me. I asked him after it all happened if he wanted to break up with me--that he should have just done so. He didn't have to kick me in the stomach, too. He insisted, No! No, I don't want to break up with you! I don't want to throw all of this away! But he transferred the feelings he had for me to her because she's there; I'm not. I don't want to be involved in that kind of bullshit. And I got pulled into it for a hot second. And, man, I went there. All my ugly junior high school vitriol came spewing out. My anger, all the hurts that I've already experienced with other men, all the many, many disappointments and betrayals.
I scared him off with the intensity of my anger and pain and probably drove the two of them closer together. But I don't regret doing so. I am learning that my emotions are my emotions and to own them fully and, also, to express them when they need to be released. Anger and pain are especially ugly emotions, but if you don't release them they sit in you and fester and morph into something much uglier and destructive. I've done that for too long--held my emotions in or taken them out on myself. And I don't want to hide my emotions anymore. Or to manipulate my emotions to hold onto something or someone because I am alone. I have learned how to be alone. My challenge is to learn and trust to be with another. I do believe, though that I will recognize my love when a Man can deal with the uncertainty of my pain and discomfort.
I told Indigo Boy once that though our bodies may age, our emotions do not. Each person's emotional world is full of every heartache, betrayal or loss that one may have suffered since childhood. Each person learns to deal with the pain or express it in different ways, but those seeds of pain still exist. I thought, at my age, that I would be able to handle it better once the inevitable came to pass, but I did not. My pain still exists. I am still a little girl lost, a jr. high school bitch, a woman who loves and distrusts men, a mother that has not found her child. I knew he would sleep with someone else or many, many other women. I knew that one would create heartache for the other. One of us would have found someone else at some point. We have different needs at the ages that we are: I want security; he wants to have fun. I just didn't think it would come so soon. I just believed that what we had created together would endure. I thought that what we has shared was sacred and that he would have honored it in some way.
I went there: into the magic and romance of being twenty-four again and I reveled in it. I swam in our love. We learned to swim together--to open ourselves to the uncertainty of the depth we may find, but then to release ourselves into the joy of finding equal amounts of recognition and nourishment. We introduced each other to different worlds. Our friends celebrated our love. We talked about the future--the near future seemed too uncertain, but the faraway future seemed like a distinct possibility. But I was more ready for it than he was. He hasn't been through enough bad relationships yet to know how to recognize something really good when he has it and then what to do to preserve it.
I don't regret "going there" with him. He gave me so much. I know he's a good guy with a beautiful heart. I can give him a reprieve for being twenty-four, but I just hope he knows that if he keeps going for older women, he better be prepared for the Pandora's Box of emotions that comes with it. I can forgive him for his indiscretions, another woman may not be so kind. For me, it took more than a decade to experience the purity and sanctity of the kind of love we shared. For him, he may find it sooner or more often than me. Maybe Indigo Boy will; maybe he won't. I hope he does. I hope he beds many women. I hope he gets his heart broken. I hope he learns all the ups and downs and ins and outs of love. I hope he learns from his mistakes and learns to be a better man.
For me, I would rather have loved and lost than not loved him at all. That Girl will always remember and hold Indigo Boy close to her heart, even as she says goodbye...
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Animal Farm
I am a professed animal lover. I've grown up with dogs and cats all my life, a couple of hamsters, a lizard, and I vaguely recall my sister keeping a green garden snake at one point. Not to mention that my mother is a complete dog nut. We've always had a dog: BonBon--her first love, a present from her sister on her 16th birthday--my mother's white toy poodle that was ten or eleven by the time I came along and spent the remaining years of her life snarling or growling at me; briefly, Sadie--a black puff of a Lhasa Apso--that we had to give away sadly after a mudslide destroyed our home when I was nine; then came Chewie, another Lhasa Apso, this time smelly, but ever so sweet. She could sneeze on command. Chewie gave me one of my first heartbreaks when I took her for a walk one night and a truck of boys racing on our street hit and killed her. For years after that and still when I think of it now, I could not erase the look in her eye as the headlights from the car lit her irises and then forever dimmed her light.
For a long time, we were blessed with Huey and Phoebe, a duo of Jack Russell terriers that brought much joy and love into our lives. Phoebe lived the life of a princess, being my mother's favorite, and we had her from the time she was a wee runt until she became a blind, spindly-legged geriatric. Huey, a dopey sweet boy, taught me the painful ecstasy of sudden death when he died in my arms, literally taking his last breath and in that exhale a sweep of his energy rushed through our house.
Then there was Guinness. We called him a Muttweiler--he was half-Rott, a quarter Lab maybe, an eight German Shepherd, and a sixteenth and sixteenth of God know's what. I found him poking through the garbage at a school I worked at; the kids throwing crackers and trash at him. I scooped him up and brought him home. He must have been all of two months at the time. My stepdad adopted him and we raised him on duck and lamb, non-gluten dog food--my parents spent hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars on that dog, trying to cure his perpetual skin ailments and unmistakable pungent odor. He was a great dog as most dogs are--loyal, well-behaved, sweet and calm. He would swim laps in the pool barking and biting at the water. He died a sad, premature death at eight or nine after going blind, his hips failing and his hair falling out in pieces.
Now my parents have Ruby and Juno--an unlikely pair. Ruby is a rehomed Jack--all full of sprite and good cheer. She is the sweetest dog we've had: she'll paw at you like a cat to rub her chest and, literally, one day after I hadn't visited my parents in awhile, jumped into my arms and covered my face in licks and kisses. Juno is another rehomed dog--a Bernese Mountain Dog or something thereabouts, who is still a puppy but twice the size of Ruby and can't help but pee everytime you come home. They play for hours in the yard together, tumbling and chasing each other about.
My parents, especially my mother, instilled a strong love of animals in me and my sister that I carry now with me to Liberty. Though I have befriended many dogs since I've been here, there is a veritable zoo of other creatures that I've come to discover, learn about and love.
There is a llama that looks like an ostrich from afar, but it's not. Although, come to think of it, I've seen an ostrich around here, too. The llama hangs out with the goats and they chew grass all day and then lie together under a tin shed. The goats have udders that swing from their abdomens and kids that romp and butt heads all day. The goats baa like sheep. Horses abound--munching grass under trees, trotting down the lane as their owners wave at me, galloping across pastures with their manes and tails flowing in the wind. Cows abound, too, but they are on other farms and, strangely, I don't see as many of them as I thought I would. There are chickens that forage in the woods and drink from the pond. Since being here, I've learned that chickens don't just cluck, they whine, too, and they will eat anything, including their own eggshells! There are also sheep on Ragmar's farm, but they won't let you get near them and hide in the tall grass.
That is, except for one sheep--one lil lamb named Daphne. She came to the house a few days ago, rejected by her mother after being born (a normal occurrence I've learned if the mama sheep has too many lambs to care for or is sick, etc.). This black, wooly-haired lil girl came to us all spindly-legged, her eyes still cloudy from birth. Needless to say, I adopted her. She needed someone to take care of her and I needed to take care of someone or something. I pulled myself out of bed at 3am to bottle feed her, spent the morning scrubbing the porch that's adjacent to my bedroom of the shit and pee she left everywhere, and just held her close. Now she cries when I'm gone too long or if she's hungry. Today, I found her waiting for me at the gate after I left for an hour to go to the market. Her tail wags and dances when she smells me or hears my voice. She's a dear little lamb.
There are also dogs and cats here, too. Deuce is a skittish black and white tomcat who won't let anyone get near. He's been traumatized by his mother, Stack, a gray and black striped kitty who hisses at him, but adores people. She was a lovebug when I first arrived, but I've noticed that she's kept her distance from me since I adopted Daphne. Myrna, a great, big lug of a white dog, lives down the lane and leaps out at cars from the side of the road when you approach. I worry about her getting hit, but she's almost as big as my car, so I hope that should that ever happen, she'll be okay. Sade, was just a floppy, paunch-bellied pup when I first got here, but she's grown twice her size in only two or three weeks. 
There is a cycle of life here that I am coming to grasp and understand. Random shots sometime ring out , exploding through the hills, and I then know that a feral dog may have been killed or a horse who couldn't stand. The butterflies eat the chicken poop and the chickens eat their own eggshells and the frogs eat the dragonflies that eat the mosquitoes that eat us. And then we eat everything else. Although, I keep telling Daphne that no one will eat her.
For a long time, we were blessed with Huey and Phoebe, a duo of Jack Russell terriers that brought much joy and love into our lives. Phoebe lived the life of a princess, being my mother's favorite, and we had her from the time she was a wee runt until she became a blind, spindly-legged geriatric. Huey, a dopey sweet boy, taught me the painful ecstasy of sudden death when he died in my arms, literally taking his last breath and in that exhale a sweep of his energy rushed through our house.
Then there was Guinness. We called him a Muttweiler--he was half-Rott, a quarter Lab maybe, an eight German Shepherd, and a sixteenth and sixteenth of God know's what. I found him poking through the garbage at a school I worked at; the kids throwing crackers and trash at him. I scooped him up and brought him home. He must have been all of two months at the time. My stepdad adopted him and we raised him on duck and lamb, non-gluten dog food--my parents spent hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars on that dog, trying to cure his perpetual skin ailments and unmistakable pungent odor. He was a great dog as most dogs are--loyal, well-behaved, sweet and calm. He would swim laps in the pool barking and biting at the water. He died a sad, premature death at eight or nine after going blind, his hips failing and his hair falling out in pieces.
Now my parents have Ruby and Juno--an unlikely pair. Ruby is a rehomed Jack--all full of sprite and good cheer. She is the sweetest dog we've had: she'll paw at you like a cat to rub her chest and, literally, one day after I hadn't visited my parents in awhile, jumped into my arms and covered my face in licks and kisses. Juno is another rehomed dog--a Bernese Mountain Dog or something thereabouts, who is still a puppy but twice the size of Ruby and can't help but pee everytime you come home. They play for hours in the yard together, tumbling and chasing each other about.
My parents, especially my mother, instilled a strong love of animals in me and my sister that I carry now with me to Liberty. Though I have befriended many dogs since I've been here, there is a veritable zoo of other creatures that I've come to discover, learn about and love.
There is a llama that looks like an ostrich from afar, but it's not. Although, come to think of it, I've seen an ostrich around here, too. The llama hangs out with the goats and they chew grass all day and then lie together under a tin shed. The goats have udders that swing from their abdomens and kids that romp and butt heads all day. The goats baa like sheep. Horses abound--munching grass under trees, trotting down the lane as their owners wave at me, galloping across pastures with their manes and tails flowing in the wind. Cows abound, too, but they are on other farms and, strangely, I don't see as many of them as I thought I would. There are chickens that forage in the woods and drink from the pond. Since being here, I've learned that chickens don't just cluck, they whine, too, and they will eat anything, including their own eggshells! There are also sheep on Ragmar's farm, but they won't let you get near them and hide in the tall grass. 
That is, except for one sheep--one lil lamb named Daphne. She came to the house a few days ago, rejected by her mother after being born (a normal occurrence I've learned if the mama sheep has too many lambs to care for or is sick, etc.). This black, wooly-haired lil girl came to us all spindly-legged, her eyes still cloudy from birth. Needless to say, I adopted her. She needed someone to take care of her and I needed to take care of someone or something. I pulled myself out of bed at 3am to bottle feed her, spent the morning scrubbing the porch that's adjacent to my bedroom of the shit and pee she left everywhere, and just held her close. Now she cries when I'm gone too long or if she's hungry. Today, I found her waiting for me at the gate after I left for an hour to go to the market. Her tail wags and dances when she smells me or hears my voice. She's a dear little lamb.
There are also dogs and cats here, too. Deuce is a skittish black and white tomcat who won't let anyone get near. He's been traumatized by his mother, Stack, a gray and black striped kitty who hisses at him, but adores people. She was a lovebug when I first arrived, but I've noticed that she's kept her distance from me since I adopted Daphne. Myrna, a great, big lug of a white dog, lives down the lane and leaps out at cars from the side of the road when you approach. I worry about her getting hit, but she's almost as big as my car, so I hope that should that ever happen, she'll be okay. Sade, was just a floppy, paunch-bellied pup when I first got here, but she's grown twice her size in only two or three weeks. 
There is a cycle of life here that I am coming to grasp and understand. Random shots sometime ring out , exploding through the hills, and I then know that a feral dog may have been killed or a horse who couldn't stand. The butterflies eat the chicken poop and the chickens eat their own eggshells and the frogs eat the dragonflies that eat the mosquitoes that eat us. And then we eat everything else. Although, I keep telling Daphne that no one will eat her.
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