declaration of breedom.

Today on this sunny 6th of July, the month of my birth some years before now, I pronounce my intention for imagination. I return on the same loop as many a time before, to the essential quality of play in my life, to inner manifestation outwardly danced, gargled, giddily whispered, merrily belched in song. I scrawl on this mud slate of my current lifetime: I am here, and I am free. The converse is only true through submission to an abstract police force, of mind, and also overcome by mind plus some other quantity of something. It is that something I strive for, that I make my life's work. And what is fabulous about that Something, is that, it is free and is astronomically abundant in staggering proportions. It is that with which I play, my invisible friend of mutual devotion, of light-heartedness and strength. Let us roll around together, rejoice and love. Good day!

Crying over spilled milk and having a hayday

A couple of mornings ago I overslept by 24 minutes (one too many slaps of the "Snooze") and bolted out of bed, out of my faded turquoise Kenskill trailer I call abode, and trudged frazzled in my muck boots to the barn for chores. We begin the morning by milking several sheep, and Jill was not pleased to have had to begun alone. I entered embarrassed and apologetic for my juvenile mishap. She already had India up on one stanchion, and Wild Girl, my go-to ewe, was nowhere to be seen, so I brought in Pink who was waiting at the gate for her turn (sheep are extremely grain-motivated). Pink is a veteran sheep, of the first flock of East Friesians Ren and Sam ever brought to the farm, and is a matriarch ewe of sorts, with many daughters and granddaughters. Her udders sag after several seasons of lambing and milking (we have considered rigging up an udder "bra"--they do manufacture such things!-- to take some of the swing out of the sack as she saunters). Despite being somewhat painful to look at, her large low-hanging udders make her supposedly the easiest sheep to milk. I had previously been designated as milker of the younger ewes such as Wild Girl (whose name I amended with "Grace" in attempts to sway her demeanor on the stanchion) due to my apparently small hands, and haven't spent much time handling Pink. And though Pink knows well the routine, she just would not have me this particular morning. It was going something like squirt KICK! squirt squirt KICK! endlessly for what seemed like over twenty minutes. My forearm was sore and covered in muddied hoof tracks, my feelings also bruised that she would stand still and calm for others but not for me (it is a bit humorous how personal an animal's lack of cooperation can start to feel--she's the one tied up and having her teats tugged at after all). My frustration was mounting and I was not doing a good job of masking it to put her at ease. What made it even worse was Pink has not physically been in very good shape; her wool has thinned, her backbones are visible, her udder's scabbed from so many little lamb teeth, and several sores have come and gone on her teats leaving them lumped with scar tissue. So my frustration was a blended one--at myself, at the stubborn animal, at having to put this poor and seemingly fed up creature through this at all. I haven' t developed the weathered farmer's emotional calluses to the master-chattel dynamic, nor is that the standard at this farm anyway (the sheep are often referred to here as "people"). I felt that Pink had given enough, but it was not my call to say we were going to stop milking her even if she was clearly over it and had to finish the task. Just when I had managed to get close to a quart from her--SWIPE!-- and the milk was everywhere--except in the now-empty jar. Frustration breached its limit and too spilled in the form of tears. It is unexpected and I almost laugh to myself, understanding finally the expression, "Don't cry over spilled milk." No doubt it was written by a milker.

Something else that became tangibly clear here: Several weeks before I had been graced with a whisper of wisdom that said, "your world is your mirror" and had been ruminating that one since. And while I had been mostly striving to put that philosophy into practice in some of the difficult (human) relationship dynamics I have been experiencing (if there is a void, be the first to fill it; transmit what you wish to receive; etc.), I had fallen out of practice this particular morning in my interaction with Pink. Sheep are especially sensitive animals, and I realized I need to be more conscious of how my internal state will be transmitted to them on the milking stand. I imagine that a mood determines not only our energetic vibration, but on a subtle level even the way we carry our bodies and the way in which we'd use our force in handling another creature. I realized in this way the sheep are giving us the gift: the opportunity to change our frequency to a calm and soothing state when it comes time to milk. And perhaps even to carry that state on into the rest of the day.

Laying with the lamb

It is a strange thing to cuddle up with your food while it is still breathing. To share a nap, and a moment's contentment in the grass at the golden end of a long work day. Saag's ears are back, his eyes partially closed, and is relaxedly chewing his cud. His body is warm and has the wonderful lanolin smell of sheep. He is oddly affectionate for a "prey" animal, but the sheep we keep have come to trust us, and his pawing at my lap with his hooves and settling down next to me is probably also part of missing his mama--India--from whom he and his brother Curry (harbinger names) have been weaned a couple of days before and is in the east pasture. I look at him looking at me so peacefully and wonder if I am violating some code of Nature. I know very well his fate has already been decided as "food" (he and the other boy lambs have been "reserved" for slaughter time), but for the moment I can do nothing more than savor the feeling of this woolly creature completely at ease laying his head on my leg, accepting me as one of the flock.