A friend found a dead sparrow and brought it to us for our home school. It resided in our freezer for a couple of weeks until today we remembered it.
We unwrapped it and studied it for a bit, which wasn’t easy as it was frozen stiff. Then Amie suggested a funeral. We brought it outside to the compost bin. I put it in there, and Amie said some words. She had no connection with this individual bird, so it was a different, exploring kind of speech. She tried “Have fun in heaven” and “You flew so high”. Then she remarked that we all have to die, “like Gilgamesh learned”. (I had told her the story of Gilgamesh yesterday evening.) That was fitting. She poured some “happy sand” (yellow sand) on the little corpse. Then we turned the compost over it so it can feed new life.
After that we visited the chickens, which were yelling for us. They are such complainers, but they’re very generous: in the nest boxes we found eight eggs.
Our last stop outside was also with a bird. This was a chicken Amie made in summer out of clay. This is what it looks like after a winter on the porch:
Amie knew exactly what had happened. It had been wet and then frozen, so it exploded from the inside.
Category Archives: pain, illness, death
And Again!
A lot of things are happening with “Inner Work” (after much debate and discussion in our wonderful facilitator’s group this term is now entirely up for grabs, but we’ve yet to find a better one), and with the related, but in-its-own-league “All Things Mortal,” a program to bring a conversation about death and dying to our community.
I hope to write about those soon. In the meantime, even more snow falls.
Sun Motions
This is a cool tool. Put yourself on the north pole, or at, say, 74.8 degrees N latitude.
Is this nature study?
I’ve rediscovered Tim Morton’s books on ecology, among them Ecology without Nature and The Ecological Thought, where he introduces the concept of dark ecology as a means of expressing the “irony, ugliness, and horror” of ecology. Yes, that’s what we need, or what I need: to ditch the neutral theoretical ground on which to articulate ecological claims. Instead, all beings are always already implicated within the ecological, necessitating an acknowledgement of coexistential difference for coping with ecological catastrophe that, according to Morton, “has already occurred.”
With a friend I’m also working on a series of events and a documentary film about dying, death and burial. How can it be that death is a rumor? And I also suspect it is about endurance as well. “The Sovereignty and the Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed,” by Liz Waldner:
“Time” is a word. “Love” is a word.
Between them are words and between theman entrance. I pray to be
entranced, starting right now again I do.I am old enough to understand
being willing
to go on is a great gift.
Chicken in Brown Paper Bag
Our plans to bury the recently deceased Nocty were thwarted by the deep freeze we are in. The ground is rock hard. The bird too.
I put Nocty in an empty feed bag and rolled it up. I’m keeping her on the porch so no big animals can get at her. As for the little ones, the undertakers, they won’t start their work until the body defrosts. Amie asked why, and I explained we humans are about 60% water and I suspect it’s somewhat similar for a chicken. She got it right away with regard to the chicken. It blew her mind that the same goes for the soil. I couldn’t say how much water is in the soil, but all the tiny spaces between the mineral molecules were flooded when it rained or when the snow on top of it melted, and then that water too froze. So the soil per se isn’t frozen, but the water that saturates it is. That’s why my shovel can’t make a dent in it.
Thinking of it now the similarities between the state of the bird and the state of the soil go further. Both seem brittle, parched, dry, because the water in them can’t do its thing, that is, moisten and move. The soil should be awash with life and so should Nocty – Amie believes that firmly now, that Nocty should rot and give her body back to the circle. But the bird, the creatures who will do the rotting (the washing), and the medium in which this can be done (the soil/the water) – all are waiting.
Looking down into the brown paper bag at the golden brown feathers, it doesn’t feel right that she’s neither alive in the chicken-sense, nor in the rot-sense. I hope we’ll have a thaw soon.
After reading Lauren Scheuer’s book, Once Upon a Flock, in one swoop, Amie now has a favorite blog: Scratch and Peck, which is adorable and very funny and, well, about chickens! She has decided that this Spring we should get one Barred Plymouth Rock, one Black Australorp, and one Buff Orpington, just like Ms. Scheuer has!
For a New Culture
In the last few days I’ve come across no less than three children (all 8) who think babies are born by being cut out of their mothers’ bellies. That adds to the child who, a couple of months ago, said this to Amie, who immediately set the record straight. What with all her exposure, from a young age, to David Attenborough’s documentaries, my kid knows about mating and birth in detail. It was a bit of a shock to the other girl’s mom (a GP) when she heard the life lesson her daughter had just received. And then it was a bit of a shock to me what that mom’s reaction was!
Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge. But it worries me that children now think that C-sections are the way children are born, “naturally.” It means that the girls are scared witless, for one, and “never, ever want to have babies!” But what really scares me is that here is yet another essential function of a culture down the drain. The other two are initiation into adulthood, and death rites. There’s a slew of others, of course, like where food comes from, respect for elders, the preservation of the earth for future generations, etc. But these come out of and after the three basics: birth, initiation, death. Our children are born in hospitals, with only the parents present. Our youth lacks any kind of clear transition into adulthood. Death is hidden away.
If it does not give guidance in the landmarks of our lives, a culture is truly an empty shell and the men who live by it are hollow. All it gives guidance in is the latest style in fashion, what new technological gadget will make you happy, how much money this or that celebrity makes. When it does reach us deep in our foundations, it disempowers us with fear, submission to the political/economic powers that be, and the suspicion, truthful, finally, that our lives are meaningless.
In this culture, our children are not prepared. We do not prepare them. What do we do about it?
For this reason I’ve become interested in cultures that still give the precious gifts of initiation rites, death rites and birth rituals to their community (let’s not use the language of the dominant culture, that they are “public events,” for that immediately befouls the goodness). Not to adopt these other cultures – I would be extremely uncomfortable with that – but to learn from them. What do their rites look like, what do they do? Perhaps they will help me recognize the remnants in my own culture(s) and then I can perhaps revive them. And, if my culture turns out not to be redeemable, they will help me make a new one.
That is the task, simple as that. All you have to do is say yes to it, and start the work.
Of Flowers
I’m sitting at my desk, drinking hot tea of
. chamomile,
. peppermint,
. licorice,
and honey. There’s a book open, in the pool of lamp light. It’s William Carlos Williams’s Collected Poems, at “Asphodel.” Reading it is like descending, step by step, into a deep sorrow, from
. root,
. to leaf,
. to flower,
The one you hope will never open and unfold. The one you hope you will never see blossoming, billowing. Williams writes:
The poem
. if it reflects the sea
. reflects only
its dance
. upon that profound depth
. where
it seems to triumph.
. The bomb puts an end
. to all that.
I am reminded
. that the bomb
. also
is a flower
Two Month’s Worth of Trash and Terrible Faux-Pas!
This is (four days shy of) two month’s worth of trash: one 30 gallon bag (our town uses PAYT – Pay As You Throw – and these bags cost $2 each, which is still way too little if you ask me) and an assortment of recyclables. I didn’t weigh all this before taking it to the Transfer Station, but I doubt it came to 6 lbs. per person per month (the value I usually put into our Riot).
On the way back from the Transfer Station Amie and I stopped by our town’s Winters Farmer Market to see the lamb and buy some carrots. We learned that there were also Angora rabbits, which we immediately sought out. While admiring the rabbits in their cages we asked questions of the farmer. Another mom with her two-year-old joined, right on time for my next question:
“How long do they live?”
Woah, the look on the other mom’s face! The farmer saw it too and merely gave me a sheet of paper, saying there was a lot of info there. None of it, I see now, about how long a rabbit lives. She told me that after the other mom had left (5 to 6 years, some 9 years).
The death-phobia in this culture is something fierce! We no longer tell our kids Grimm’s fairy tales, because people die in them (the gall!). Taylor Swift scored big giving Romeo and Juliet a happy ending, and the only characters that die in kids’ movies are animals. Human characters may die only in animated movies. One is no longer allowed to ask about lifespan of animals in public because, dear lord, the concept of span implies a beginning and an end.
Well, more about that soon. Did you know that rabbits can die of wool block?
Today 12/14/2012
Today I had to go into therapy
with my chickens.
I sat in the sun watching them and
calmed down.
They look at you without filters, without pity or fear.
Their question is always:
Who do you think you are?
Perspective from the Creatures of the Soil
A Fugue.
I’m reading the newly arrived Life in the Soil. Actually, I’m devouring it. And it’s not even that particularly well or passionately written.
I started wondering about this as I marveled over acellular slime molds and trichomycetes and realized that I often take refuge in books about soil and geology when I am down about the state of the world. In the first days of my “awakening” to climate change, peak oil and what have you, I fed on McPhee’s Annals of the Former World, like Henry, swallowing all 712 pages whole in the matter of a week.
Why?
Glaciers, archaebacteria: they are the kind of Earth without us. The kind of Earth that, given enough geological time, will be there after we are gone. Maybe what I am looking for in these books is perspective. I mourn so deeply what we might lose, and it seems such a shame. But these books tell me that, in another scheme of things, it doesn’t matter so much. From the perspective of the glacier, of the lichen, we don’t matter that much…
Does it work? I lose myself in the text, in the imagining of these things so utterly un-human. That’s something at least. When I read about art, about philosophy, it’s all so thoroughly human. Even a medieval religious icon or a 17th century piece of music are tainted with my sense of loss, of futility. So, losing myself in this Earth-without-us helps take my mind off things.
But then there is always the moment when I come out of the text to be reminded that it was written by a human. The science was done by humans. That knowledge and imagination, once we’re gone, will be gone as well – all that work, all that passion – for nothing! True, the real thing will still be there, the lichen, the glacier, geological time. But here I am, just holding a book, and sighing too much.
Aren’t you glad this wasn’t another “tutorial” (remember “Calcium in the Soil,” in 8 parts)?
Exploring Pain: Amie’s Variation of the Wildcraft Board Game
Last week I splurged on Wildcraft, a cooperative board game for kids (and adults) developed by HerbMentor, one of my favorite places for herbal instruction. The idea of the game is to make it up the mountain to the huckleberry patch, gather huckleberries, and make it back down again to grandma’s house before nightfall. And not to perish.
In the official game there’s not much chance of perishing. When you land on a cross you get a trouble card – a hornet sting, sore muscles, hunger, or stomach ache. But you start out with four remedy cards and gather lots along the way. It’s usually an easy walk. Usually.
Amie loved the game from the very first. She has played it several times, with us or by herself. She’ll skip around the house telling her doll they should find some Plantain for that bee sting, Echinacea for the sniffles. It’s sweet.
Then yesterday she came up with a variation. She set up the board and invited me to play, but wisely kept the rules to herself until I had committed (you spin that wheel, you’re committed). The variation was this: only trouble cards, no remedy cards.
Painful, to say the least! Our conversation ran thus:
– You’re killing me!
– Don’t blame it on me.
– Well, you’re the one who invented this game.
– Blaming isn’t nice. Oops, now you’ve got diarrhea. Too bad!
She weighed ailments (diarrhea would be the worst one) and inflicted pain (gleefully handing out the cards) all in the playful and safe setting of a game. She also explored endurance and the extent to which the human body can handle pain and discomfort. At the end of the game, when we finally made it back to grandma’s house, Amie gathered she must be near death. Like so:
Notice the tongue sticking out, a sure sign of near death.
The cards near her head, by the way, were her trouble cards. The long line near her feet, those were mine! She invited me to come lie next to her and be really dead.
I declined, stating someone had to take the picture.