Rose colored mornings, magenta sunsets … all so typical of a northern California winter sky – but really, not day after day after day.

I find myself yearning a bit for the ravages of winter. Winter, with its bone damp and cheerless skies, furious winds and pelting rains driving every living thing to shelter … the nights by the fire, cats curled and snoring dog by my side, and raging fire in the stove complementing a glass of wine and a good book.  It all turns me inward, happily seeking those deep and dark discoveries that nurture feelings that may have been folded up and laid off in a far corner, all stirring up the words that act as bridge from my secret shadows to the light. I write a lot in the winter. But this winter? What winter?

rosy dawn

fiery sunset

It seems so long go now that the mighty oaks that surround us here still wore their orange robes and dared winter to come and strip them bare, and drive the last of their life deep into the ground, deep into their roots, that quiet place that harbors the bit of life-force left over. There the flame grows and builds until spring sucks it all back up into the green glory of rebirth.  I was so excited for the winter to come, then … I felt so like those trees, daring but ready to welcome the time I’d be sent to the underworld for the winter.

When the first great storm of our season was predicted and well on its way, I watched carefully as the wind began to whip and churn and then hit with a roar, the air suddenly alive with oak-leaf like panicked butterflies, and within an hour the orange robe was reduced to carpet under my feet and trees stood naked and shivering.  The winds tore trees from the ground, felled them onto houses and roads, the rains backed up the seasonal streams and caused ponds to over fill and overflow turning pastures to lakes and our Yuba River into a torrent that shook me to the bone.

red robe

upside down autumn … in reflection

upside down winter … in reflection

Mama Yuba before …

after the deluge

A few of these storms primed our winter and covered the neighboring hills and mountains with a white shawl – and then stopped coming.

A sun seeker such as myself cannot be driven indoors, let alone deep within when the skies are clear.  There’s too much to do!  With a little farm and its resident horses and goat to care for, the extra time allowed in any day was consumed by the sunny day routines normally left to the drier months.  When clouds would cloak the sun, and the mists would rise from the valley to bathe us with that bone-cold chill, I rejoiced.  Despite more than a month of mornings in the mid 20’s that I hacked – with a hammer – at 1 inch thick ice in the horse’s troughs, even those clear mid-January days that usually offer no warmth at all no matter how long you bathe in the sun’s light, were an illusion. I sat outside one day all dressed in my winter warmies actually hoping that the darkened skies, rays of sun biting through like shards of crystal, might somehow connect me to winter but started to peel the layers of fleece off as the sun warmed me too much. Warm sun in January.

Its interesting to me that, for me, this no-winter, rather than filled with words sprouting from fertile thought was time set instead deep in the doldrums. No current, no wind for my sails.  Echoing the upturned season, perhaps, it has been filled with what I consider to be ‘spiritless writing’, hours spent pouring over old words as I continue to stuff them into the various and very different tight harness’ that are required of agents and publishers I pursue for ‘Graces’.  380 words distilled into synopsis of 1 page, 2 pages, 5 pages, or a chapter-by-chapter outline. A 2 paragraph summary, or how about a 2 page summary? Drives me nuts.  It’s the part of being an author that I hold no fondness for. There has seemed to be little left over energy to put into this blog, or into my new novel that wants to burst out and thrive in the light.

But I’m starting to see that the gift of this no-winter’ is just that. Time to ride out the doldrums with the hard stuff – leave the flowers to the spring.

Now I am tired of mourning winter’s missing and am driven to get on with welcoming spring. (Watch, we’ll get another monumental storm next week, now that I’ve said that!)

There has been one lovely plus offered up by the non-winter – the lack of mud!  Not only because of the horses, but because we now have lovely Lovie in our lives, who loves nothing more than diving head first into a puddle, digging frantically until it is a roiling mass of muck, coming up for breath now and again until she is finished with what I only surmise she considers to be her masterpiece – a broad dog smile shining out from the black sticky mud that covers her head to her shoulders, and her paws to her belly.  So … that lack of muddy earth has been a blessing in one sense!

Lovie has gained 12 pounds since she came to us, a frightened ball of bones, in September.  She’s such a joyful sprite who in the kind weather has been able to spend hours each day discovering what it is like to be the puppy she never got to be!  She turned 1 in January (our guess) and upon reaching that milestone, began doing the devilish things pups are known to do…  shoes or tools, or anything within reach actually, waggling from her mouth as she runs and leaps her way to the barn and back, happily bringing them when called only to grin and leap away to the far ends of the acres where we only can find her prizes after a major hunt … inserts gnawed, cats chased, hiding prized gopher heads in her mouth to deposit onto the hearth rug, jumping up to stand on the car hood, (“but the cats do it…”) joyfully dismembering and disemboweling her stuffies one by one and spreading their insides to the four directions.  Really, all we see is a dog allowed to ‘become’ herself; a spirit once so encased in a fear that she could see goodness in nothing, allowed to emerge in safety, she’s burst from her chrysalis, and with her new joy has come a personality so enormous no darkness could ever again contain. Her once-deep well of fears is now very shallow, with only a few shadows left clinging to its crumbling walls.  She still trembles at the sound of loud motorcycles and gunshot, and has distrust really of only one last person who I just think doesn’t understands dogs or what it was that she had to live through in her past, but we’re doing our best to help her move past these last remnants.  She loves the dog park, her pack and their happy people, and at about 1:30 each day begins to pester and implore, as it surely is time to go… to run and wrestle with Buddy and Karma and Fred and other dogs who like her, came from devastated lives to emerge joyful bringers of happiness.  We can’t say ‘Karma’, or ‘dog park’ out loud unless we can stand the time that follows that she wines and frets as she insists “get thee there”.  (She is learning Greek now – like Djuna did before her – and soon ‘tha pa’me to parko?’ is something we’ll be spelling rather than saying.)

Lovie and Karma

… but the cats do it!

Lovie and Buddy2

We love our Lovie, a bright blessing

that sprang from a different sort of

winter,

the one that enshrouded us

for a long time after Djuna died, a winter of the soul.

love

So now, in February as the daffies and narcissus persist in their usual trajectory from earth to sun and on to their big show, exploding into blossom at the end of the month, I brush away the annoyance I’ve felt by being snubbed by winter and start tending to the juicy shoots starting to emerge in ideas and words … my own ‘big show’, I presume, whatever it may be.  It’s good that this life keeps us guessing…

One flower that emerged from the non-winter and the decomposing remains of my life in modern folk music – I am organizing an early September ‘non tour’ to Greece for 8 to 12 independent travelers …  I will be the ‘midwife’ rather than a ‘tour guide’ for those who choose to come along – there to ensure a safe and comfortable birth into experience of the culture and this place I love so well.  I will arrange transportation, accommodation and furnish ways to experience the Greece and island beauty that lives behind the veil that many regular travelers never get past. We will start with 2 full days exploring history and antiquity in Athens and then travel to a group of islands in the western Aegean, the Sporades …  the gates of the wind … namely, to the island Skiathos, a gorgeous, verdant place to which Paul and I have traveled to for 27 years, where one can explore delight, swim, just sit and stare, eat, drink, hike, visit other neighboring islands … paint with my dear friend Yvonne Ayoub, learn about myth and magic and history of the islands with my friend, historian and author and resident of Skiathos, Victoria Sandels … or spend quiet time somewhere that is purely magical, with me, working on writing prompts … Something for everyone. If any of you are interested, please let me know how best to contact you.

Breathing in, breathing out. Welcoming Spring, now …  In Gratitude.

palio limani Skiathos

Always… the dogs saved me.

It’s hard for me to remember times in my life that found me deep in a state of doglessness. I’ve always had gentle beings in dog bodies guiding me. My first memories are of a dog. When I was three or four, there was Queenie – a Weimeraner, with me through the unsettling times that my adoptive parents spent screaming at one another. A big, gray pillow of love I would rest upon, curl up with to snuggle away the scaries. After watching Virginia, my mother, ride on horses I think I must have gotten the idea that perhaps I could do the same on Queenie.  She immediately told me no, by piercing my ear. And then she was gone.

Cherie, a small black mass of poodle curls, got me through my Mother’s death.  He slept with me, was always by my side and kept that monumental loneliness that only a motherless child feels just hovering in the shadows. He taught me to stand up for myself and bite the ankles of those who were not nice people (in my case, not literally) and even to share, as he shared his milk bones with me! He taught me the language of Dog and took me for long conversational walks, and slept curled in my bed where we whispered to one another until the good dreams took over. He pooped in the swimming pool one day; I think to spite my evil stepmother. And then he was gone.

Their being taken from me left a gaping chasm in my already inflamed soul. They had helped me survive a sadness that too many of us suffer as children, that some never recover from… They let me know that no matter what, I was OK and would be OK, that I was loved, that I was safe. I mourned them even more than I mourned my missing mother. And those two were just the beginning – I’ve always felt the need to pay them back in kind and so it seems a dog or three have always been by my side.

Until March, when Djuna had to leave…

I’ve written so much about him here on these pages, I need say no more other than that his leaving us was a devastating blow – and through our grief, our missing him at every turn, with a dreadful, dog-shaped hole in our hearts we were left doomed to a spate of doglessness. Being quite busy helped.  Music, the farm, writing … being in Greece, filling our cups with the light and inspiration that always nourishes us to our bones, it all helped. Paul and I engaged in many a conversation that helped to ease our missing of Djuna and nudge aside a bit of heart, enough to begin to think of bringing in a new companion to fill the holes, should he or she find us.

Angeliki

It was a ‘Yes’ day, something I wake up to on occasion. I would say ‘yes’ to anything that came my way, leaving all doors open to let the light in.

On my list of things to do that day was to go to our local animal shelter, Sammie’s Friends, to deliver copies of ‘All The Little Graces’ which they sell as they wish and keep the proceeds to benefit the animals there. It’s the least I can do. I also was going to apply to possibly adopt one of a litter of Border Collie pups that had been dumped on the angels there as newborns. I had to be ‘approved’ in order to see them when they were ready for the world, and approved I was.  As it is now a no-kill shelter, it doesn’t break my heart to walk through and give love to (and get love from) each of the dogs and cats there as I know that they will all eventually find the home they deserve. The ulterior motive here is to see if  ’The One’ happens to be there waiting for me – but though the shelter is filled with lovely dogs, none of them told me that I was ‘The One’ for them.

Upon returning home, as I walked through the door the phone rang. “Eleanore, a dog just came in that I think you need to see” Maureen said. Oh geez, I’d just driven the 20 minutes from town – but it was a ‘yes’ day, so off I went, back to the shelter.

And in came the light.

The dog kennels are in a cement block building, vibrating that afternoon with the loud joy of dogs that knew it was time for their afternoon walkies.  It was if hungry lions were roaring, the sound overwhelming and terrifying, and I almost had to cover my ears.

She lay there in a heap of fear, plastered to the cold cement floor as though trying to become one with it, trying to disappear from a terrible, loud world filled with pain and sadness. She shivered uncontrollably, teeth chattering, terror radiating from her emaciated body like shards of lightning. I sat, trying to sooth her with a voice that usually works to bring the scared ones to safety, but she was absolutely shut down.  Eyes vacant, there was no response other than even more violent trembling. I scanned her for signs of her past and saw that besides being skeletal, her little body was scattered with open wounds. My heart shattered right there.

“She can’t stay here.” I said. ‘She’ll die of fright’. I was told that she had been carried in by a harried woman with toddlers her side. She was 8 months old and good with dogs, children – and cats. With 19-year-old Queen Lily at home, those were words that clinched the deal and I heard myself say (while another self was yelling ‘No NO NOOOOOOO Eleanore!”) – “I’ll foster her.”

It took me four hours to coax her out of the car.  I sat, reading by the open car door, trying to let her know that she was safe. Darkness fell and I needed to get Posy goat put to bed for the night. Frustrated, I walked Posy to the goat villa and en route whispered to Djuna, wherever he may be.  “Help her, please.”  When I turned back to the house, there she was – standing in the open, tail tight between her legs, but out of the car. It seemed to be her safety zone, and she dipped in and out of it, trying her legs on new ground, looking for trouble and when her well of courage emptied, she’d hop back in to fill back up.

She slept in the car that night.

The next day, she came in after much coaxing – and immediately found Djuna’s sofa. Her power-spot. I examined her, doctored open wounds, and when she’d summoned enough of that special courage she had, she began to explore a bit. She returned from our bedroom with Djuna’s favorite (disemboweled, destuffed) stuffie, the hedgehog hanging from her mouth. A bit of a twinkle in her eye. Tail wagging. I have no idea where she found it. Maybe Djuna showed her.

Paul and I awoke at dawn the next morning, just at the time that Djuna would always come to snuggle with us, to this thin little being jumping on the bed – and taking Djuna’s place. “I’m afraid I like her.” Paul said.

Lovie is her name. She’s had her ups and downs here but once the dark shroud of trauma began to wear away, Lovie began to come alive. She started her second life like a tight rosebud, and shedding her fears one by one slowly opened to the light of love, as a flower opens to the sun. Each fresh petal told us more of her story. The sound of motorcycles in the distance sent her into a panic. She’d been terribly mistreated and had swellings on her body, signs of abuse. Large men with no hair and gruff voices brought on the shivers, her coat pilo-erect. The sounds of children in the distance perked her up, and while she eschewed kibble for days, she LOVED the rustle of a bag of chips, and dove into the butterscotch wormer the vet offered her. Chips and Candy! She’d had children of her own, and likely was their angel, that buffer between them and violence in the home.  Dogs terrified her. She was covered with open bite wounds and old scars. We discovered that he’d been shot, as there were pellets under her skin, showing in small and hard, round wounds that she chewed at furiously for her first few days here …  and purged herself of the pellets as though purging herself of her past life.

A bit of bird-dog betrays her lineage as we watch her sneak up on the birds and then hold a perfect ‘point’.  She follows their flight path with envy and sometimes tries to take off after them. She loves water and mud puddles and has her own little pool now that she leaps into from six feet away with great, triumphant splashes, rolling and wallowing and grunting like a little pig. (We’ve found it to be difficult to keep her out of the horses’ water troughs.)

Lovie is just a pup, probably for the first time, really, in her short life. She’s learning how to ‘be’ in love and in safety, but really has come so far, so quickly. She’s studied the book that Djuna left behind for her in all of his scents that still linger.  Food is good.  Burying bones is good.  Zoomies, leaping and flying and dancing, tongue waggling – good. Stuffies and sticks and water and pinecones – and socks and shoes are all good. (But Djuna forgot to tell her the part about bringing all of the things she asks us to throw for her, or those things she steals, back to us, running right past in mischievous squigglyness instead.)  People are good.  She has a job keeping us in line and making us laugh. She has horses to watch over and cats to cuddle – and is learning to speak the dignified language of ‘goat’.  Greek will be next.  With the great compassion kind dogs have, her boyfriend ‘Rudy’ has melted her icy fears and she now plays and leaps and runs with indomitable joy. She now loves the dog park and her pack of ‘littles’ there, and the larger dogs who can only try to keep up with her deer-like agility.

Lovie and boyfriend Rudy … happiness

the gang – Sasha, Lovie and Rudy

The car is REALLY good, and with the window open she leans her head on the sill, eyes closed, blissfully studying the notes that come to her in the wind. She’s been through ‘cat school’, being tutored, severely at times, by Madame Lily who, at 19 still has it in her to show her how to become an Honorary Cat.  She has been to the beach. The pictures here tell us what she feels about that.

Lovie has been with us for two months now, is sleek and soft – we can’t see her ribs any more.

And she smiles.

With an incredible capacity for forgiveness, Lovie blossoms, filling our once dog-joyless home with the essence of great contentment- and a lot of laughter – echoing and magnifying all of the happiness (that filled dog shaped holes) that was graced us by all those who came before her – and when she comes up on the bed and nestles into our warmth … we smile.

People tell me how lucky she is that we rescued her.

But we’re the ones who’ve been rescued. Lovie Cupcake saved us, from a life of doglessness.

I have a new shadow now

I’ve been creeping along the cyber highways on an ancient iBook, the infrastructure crumbling beneath me as I inch along… It has been making it nearly impossible for me to work with photos, and to get a new blog out there that will resemble anything that I might envision! So, thanks to kindness, I now eagerly await the arrival of a new computer that will speed me into the 21st century and effortlessly along the Blogobahn!  Please bear with me – next week I’ll finally be able to post the new one – #20 ~ Saved From A Life of Doglessness.

Like many people, I thrive on quiet…  Within the quiet is where I divine inspiration and can access my most authentic self. It is hallowed ground, where the ego eventually goes missing, sometimes for hours at a time.  Most of us have a special ‘place’… or places… where we can easily release and relax, and can access that deep, deep well within. For some, it is as close as their own home. For others, it is on the other side of the world.

I’ve been blessed with a sense of ‘place’ here at home since I first moved to Nevada City, CA in ’74 and discovered the joys of swimming naked in the Yuba River; a river I wrote about in the very first posting here in The Endless Sea.  Mama Yuba… gorgeous and wild, studded with large, soft white granite boulders and emerald pools, cool, crisp and deep.

Early Yuba morning – photo by Kashi Albertson

There’s something so incredibly nourishing and healing about lazing about on sensual rocks emanating the healing heat of the sun, melting stiffness and burning off stagnant energy… and then diving into crystal, swirling, caressing water, Mama Yuba taking all of one’s cares with her, away to the sea. I spent all of my afternoons there in my 20s and many into my 30′s… always with my constant companions, my water-dog lovies, Macushla and Jovi… and Rose and Callie, and then of course my darling daughter Breelyn, who, like so many of the babies born of the ”flower children’ here in Nevada City, was raised in the rivers arms; learning to walk, run, swim and leap from rocks at the Yuba. Learning to be free.

Life grew busy, our daughter and her friends grew, the water dogs left us and farm dogs took their place and the Yuba is now like a distant relative visited only on occasion, the visits always leaving me with that ‘DAMN, why don’t we visit more often?” feeling…  because it still is ‘that’ place.

As life broadened and the reach of my heart carried me over the sea to a new menu of culture and color and discovery, I came to know and love many others – but it really wasn’t until I discovered Greece in ’86 that a new sense of place began to develop.

When times get tough – sing and dance. Greek spirit.

It took awhile. Paul and I, sometimes with Breelyn, sometimes with friends, kept being drawn back to an island in the archipelago of the Sporades in the NW Aegean, and after years of discovery, and then that discovery infiltrating my dreams and my words and then my heart, I finally got it.

THIS is my place.

home

Like the Yuba back then, THIS is where the ultimate release, relaxation and divinity comes now. But it is more than that.  Over years of developing a very intimate relationship with the island of Skiathos – getting to know the people there, the nooks and crannies, the gorgeous, magical places behind the mists, that veil that shields them from the track of the ordinary and the hordes of summer visitors – this has become the place where I feel most alive.

the blessing of the sunrise

Upon setting foot on this island home I am instantly grounded, settled deep within Mother’s arms. Relief. Respite.  It takes a few days to expel the heavy, stagnant air from my being… to let go, to still the crazy making jumble of random thought and anxiety, and the frenetic energy of ordinary life as I know it here, in order to make room for the extraordinary, that lightness that invariably follows.

And then, it starts to trickle in. After being surrounded by the history of the Ancients and their kin, a passionate, lyrical people; after inhaling the culture and stunning colors and sea mist, eating and drinking far too much; watching the sun’s rise, daily, over an otherworldly sea while being serenaded by the waking swifts and gulls and even the occasional fisherman setting out for his morning’s catch… and after days spent at water’s edge, and hours spent bathing in the very healing sea, I empty out the unnecessary and begin fill up with that lightness.  In the blushed, or sometimes tempestuous, dawn the words begin to pour out onto the page, tears and laughter flow effortlessly and the spoken word quiets. I go missing from the ordinary world sitting there with toes almost to the water where I AM the gull, the sun, the water, the sandy shore… the dolphins feeding just 20 meters away; the goats, their tinkling bells filling the atmosphere with a delicate music, browsing the verdant hills … and the Eleonora falcon soaring overhead.  And comes the quiet. That’s it. Divinity. As my head empties, my heart eases. Priorities shift.  It gets no better than that.

What a gift, this place.

I honor it and cherish it and carry it home, within the womb that IS me … and it is me, for as long as I can maintain that calm presence.

After about a month passes, when the sea seems farther way and the hot air of an inland northern California summer dries my skin and hair, and time and life and the world around me threatens again to dry my spirit, feeling as though I might just shatter, I remember that place. It’s inside. What I gestated while there can come to birth again and again if I go deep within and connect with source.

Yes, I know that I am fortunate to be able to go so far away to touch in with that particular beauty. But we’re not famous or wealthy – we have bills and a mortgage and old, broken cars, horses and other critters with feed bills and vet bills. Land to maintain. Just like anyone, we have responsibilities in this ordinary life.  We scrimp and save our coins and dollars and block a time out on the calendar a year ahead, sacred time that nothing can touch, give ourselves permission… and go.

kindness – and fish heads …

what to do on a cloudy day

I’ve asked this before… but I will ask again.  What is your place, your ‘endless sea’?  How do you find it, where is it, how does it make youfeel, what do you carry away from it? Does it help you to gather up your strength and enable you to shine your own special light all around you  into this troubled world somehow – whether you are a car mechanic, waitress, mother or father, artist, doctor, laborer… What is your place?

I would love to hear from you. Please write it out, leave a comment here so we all can bathe in the light you shine and take our own deep, cooling drink from your vast well.

words pour out

the magic place

I am working on a new blog post, I am, I am!

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, with a month away – that ‘season’ for my gathering up of fresh inspirations and impressions in my nets, those gifts that come coursing in great rushes on the Aegean tides and her balmy airstreams.  Upon coming home, I am always faced with the responsibility of maintaining the gift Skiathos gives me, an utter calm and connection to authenticity, but this year I was able to be ‘in’ that while completing my Kickstarter campaign and seeing that ‘All The Little Graces’ came into the world as a ‘real’ book through a steady and uncomplicated birth!

The book has been delivered to Sammie’s Friends and the Skiathos Dog Shelter so that they can sell it and keep all of the proceeds; it’s been sent out to my Kickstarter Angels, delivered to the local bookstore and has had it’s first ‘reading and signing, it’s ‘coming out party’ so to speak – a beautiful affair in which the bits of readings were paired with perfectly matching snippets of musical improvisation by my friends in Beaucoup Chapeaux !  I am currently working on promotion so that it may find it’s way out into the world, and starting again to query publishers and agents in that eternal quest for traditional publishing.  Paul and I have had some lovely Festival performances (the Kate Wolf Festival) and after our next, and last, summer gig I see a world of possibility opening up before me – time to reel in those nets filled with color and characters and the fruits of research and plot and sift through it all in order to make a real start on my next novel.

All The Little Graces can be found in paperback at my Createspace page as well as at Amazon, where you also can find the wealth of reviews that have come in; you will also find it at Amazon UK and all of the other European Amazons that exist out there in cyberspace … If you prefer to read an eBook, ‘Graces’ is found in that format at all of the usual outlets.

Coming soon … a new blog installation, one straight from the source, the home of my Muse.

w/ Ouranos, the magic beach cat

the dark and the light

The gray brings out the vivid greens and purples and yellows and pinks of the spring. A respite, a bit of a breath before full steam ahead into summer, the day has chilled my toes and given cause for a wee four-legged to wedge himself in the chair here and curl tightly against my leg for warmth.

I am 40 miles from home, (40 million, it seems) spending a week away to care for a dear friend’s beloveds in the way I care for my own. Embraced by a verdant sea of grasses, waist high and dotted with wildflowers, I am in charge of furred, feathered and hoofed beings that absolutely delight me at every turn. Beyond the feeding, grooming, mucking, playing, hen herding and egg collecting, I have a lot of time to work on my print book project and learn how to further shamelessly self promote All The Little Graces. But at any pause I am just a step away from acres of fresh springtime for walking in––or a step away from the animals with their magical ability to ground one whose spirit has been floating about a foot above her body for about 3 weeks now.  (That would be me)  They are bringing the great relief in the necessity of Being Present. There’s much-needed dog energy here in the form of a small sable bundle of flash and laughter, delivering a daily quotient of silliness in the big dog-ness he carries around in his pint sized body. Tido Bat Ears, King of Mirth and Mayhem. He also stays close, for warmth in the night, but I also see he has his eye on me, he is being certain in his closeness that I am watched over, that I am safe.  I will most certainly miss his happy, constant presence when I leave to go home.

captain tido

There’s also the ever cheery, kind and funny black lab, Millie, a bow-legged, gimpy old gal who has learned to live well with her infirmities. I hear her when she sits, or goes down for a nap, anywhere in this house – BLAM – because she just can’t easily get down more gracefully than that.  In the afternoon when I am walking back from the horse’s barn, she throws herself down onto the grass and rolls over onto her back in her imitation of a great big 4 legged pill bug, curled with both hind paws almost touching her ears and a big smile on her saggy, graying face.  She stays motionless like that until I’ve had my fill of rubbing her belly and then somehow miraculously, despite knobby hocks and owie hips, goes sproinging off into her version of the zoomies.

pill bug impression

The horse, really more of a saintly gentleman in the skin of an equine, talks.  Constantly.  I’ve always told Paul, when watching films that have horses in them, that they DON’T do that!   They don’t stand around and whiffle and whinny all of the time for no reason!  I’ve been around horses my whole life.  I know these things.  But – here, Kokino whiffles and whinnies (while nodding his head) and wiggles his lips nonchalantly, like Mr. Ed – really – whenever I am near.  He talks constantly.

kokino

And finally, there are the 7 chicken ladies, delightful bug scrubbers who cluck and chant their way through the outskirts of my day. They gift me with at least a few eggs each morning – one chicken lady even hightails it out of the pen after her breakfast as fast as her scrawny chicken legs can carry her to reach the hay/nest that is in the carport, always just in time to deliver a beautiful egg that the wee bat eared dog will sometimes gathers up himself, I’m told, very carefully, and deliver to the house! And on occasion, when I am well lost in the manuscript, I hear the announcement of a special delivery –– one of the ladies will break into song, an aria with an astonishing crescendo that foretells the laying of an egg.

A few nights ago I lost a hen.  I counted the girls as usual as I closed them in safety for the night – 1,2,3,4,5,6 … 6 … where’s #7?  Panic. I thought of those creatures of the night, the owls and coyote and raccoon who just love chicken tenders.  It took me awhile, but I finally did find #7 sweetly hunkered down in the warmth of the horse’s hay, on the other side of the property.  She was resting there, caught up in the veil of dreams the dusk draws down upon chickens. She let me pick her up, and carry her back to the henhouse, a substantial, feathery-soft ball of air that put her little head on my shoulder and sang to me, a soft murmuring and humming, the whole way.  I am in LOVE with chicken ladies!

As I’ve been sitting in front of the computer much of my time here, at some point I must make myself step away – eat – drink – and walk. Before this misty gray descended, the days were hot, and I found the dusky twilight to be a magical time to walk the few miles down a narrow country lane that could as easily be in the West of England as in the foothills of N. California.  At the last hill, after twisting and curving up and down, the narrow lane straightens out and heads to the valley below and on it’s crest, I am literally standing on the last foothill … I can see the Sacramento Valley, in it’s great flatness, beginning to stretch below.

friend along the way

On the first evening of my walking, and just as I began to think of Djuna, missing his generous presence by my side, I heard a rustle in the grasses to my right.  And out popped this …

From nowhere apparent this little Border Collie materializes every evening, a minute or two into my walk. She joins me for almost an hour as I meander, huff up hills, take pictures … a silent but joyous echo of Djuna in her enjoyment of reading the days ‘news’ along the way, chasing butterflies, running back to me to touch my hand as if telling me that I must stay present, I must be happy, I must never forget the important things… and before I head up the last short hill to the house, she disappears.

I thank all of these beautiful beings for helping me to touch the earth again.

But back to Spring – THAT time of year.  The baby animal time of year, filled with leaping kids and lambs, and calves and piglets playing like puppies… and of course, there are the puppies and kitties. The far too many that are born each spring because many of us Humans – even many of the more responsible sort, some of whom are my friends – demand the right to a sort of ignorance in refusing to pay attention to the stats, and the realities, around feral or unsterilized animals.

Why are there still balls on your dog?

Why is your sweet gal in heat?

Oh, it’s natural, they say.  Oh, we want her to enjoy giving birth and having babies before we get her spayed.  Oh, we want our children to witness the miracle of birth!  Oh, he won’t hunt if he’s neutered.

Well, yes … but Oh. What about the babies? The litters that you won’t be able to find homes for that will either go feral and hungry and become someone’s nuisance; or will be kept by an uncaring person who doesn’t bother to keep them safe and they’ll end up running wild, on the road to be struck and killed by a vehicle, or in a field chasing Farmer Martha’s livestock, to be killed by shotgun blast;  or, they’ll end up at a shelter hoping for a home with a family that really might care what becomes of them, or at a pound, facing the gas chamber on death row with all of the other unwanted ones. All of the shelters are heartbreakingly full as it is.

the homeless ones

Here are some recent stats, gleaned from various online sources. (HSUS, RSPCA, various shelters and rescue groups) If you still have an ‘entire’ male or unspayed female dog or cat, please do me the great favor of reading this and then go and do the right thing yourself.  If your animal companions have been sterilized, you can edify your community, your neighbors, family members, etc., and save the local shelters from having to waste their energy on something we ALL should already know and practice.

One pair of breeding cats can be the source of at least two litters of kittens in one year.  That translates to exponentially growing numbers of offspring that, in just four years, can add up to around twelve thousand cats! TWELVE THOUSAND cats! Say the original two parents lived nine years – the numbers of their offspring through the generations could soar to around eleven million!  All because of just two un-sterilized cats that someone left to their own natural devices! Those figures don’t take into account that one tomcat can impregnate several females in any one day during the season!  That kind of math hurts my head.

One fertile dog can produce two litters of puppies a year and then, if left to nature, her descendents and their descendants will number in the sixty-seven thousands, in just six years.

Also good to know –– the fact that a spayed female will be far less likely to develop uterine or breast cancer.  And that a sterilized male will be far less likely to roam and fight, leaving him less vulnerable to abscesses and other infections and disease. (and the cats will still be great hunters – our big lovey eunich, Moggie, is busy collecting up at least 3 gophers per day and will meditate on the compost bins until he comes up with his daily bellyful of mice. And Mr. Annie is capable of murderous deeds I won’t even go into here.

So, where will the babies of the spring end up? Many that survive will end up with otherwise great people who say Oh, it’s natural …  Oh, we want our children to witness the miracle of birth!  And the awful cycles will continue on and on and animals WILL suffer.

Ghataki mou

Welcome to springtime, to the return of Light, to rebirth, life and kitties and puppies and other growing things … to the birth of new ideas and new dreams.  There is always the dark there to antagonize the light … but there are these things that we can do, so easily really, to help the light and dark come to better balance, move us forward and make that darkness less opaque.  Go for a walk… laugh… hold a chicken… tickle a pillbug’s belly…  write, sing, dance, garden, love, laugh… and spay or neuter your companion animal. Please.

]]> http://eleanoremacdonald.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/17-comes-the-spring/feed/ 14 eleanoremacdonald IMG_9093 IMG_9170 IMG_9263 IMG_9256 IMG_9173 IMG_9159 IMG_9105 IMG_9138 IMG_6691 IMG_0940[1] IMG_3331 http://eleanoremacdonald.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/16-one-of-the-seven-great-dogs/ http://eleanoremacdonald.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/16-one-of-the-seven-great-dogs/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2012 01:24:56 +0000 eleanoremacdonald http://eleanoremacdonald.wordpress.com/?p=414 ]]> “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
Anatole France

Djuna Cupcake, my heart of hearts
photo by Breelyn MacDonald

A great squall came upon us here on our farmlet a week ago. I saw it first from a distance, in that dawning of the morning when Djuna usually announced the coming day with his gentle, breathy ‘woooof’, his polite plea to join us on the bed. Mysteriously disturbing, it surely was a sign of things to come, but we didn’t know how dangerous it really was until it was upon us.

And when it was suddenly there, a Great Joy was sucked from our world and an overwhelming sadness took its place … a raging stillness, hot and stifling, no breath, no heartbeat.

My springs of Joy are dry …  (a sentiment stolen in part from that great old song, Long Time Traveler)

Djuna Cupcake was one of the Seven Great Dogs.  If you’ve seen the film ‘Dean Spanley’, you will know what I mean. If you have loved and been loved by a dog of pure heart … one who was a great teacher of presence, of patience, one who was the dispenser of unconditional love and the blessings of an incomparable joy … one who was a great listener, guardian, and the embodiment of Buddha, Coyote, the Goddesses Eleos and Kuan Yin all in one soft coated body … one who was your loving shadow because he or she felt that it was their job to see you safe at all times … you will know what I mean.

He died quite suddenly. Like that squall, his death came with no warning and for days after Paul and I were sucked deep into that great black hole of grief. The dread attacked us at every turn, where we would always see him but now only a glaring emptiness stood. I felt as though my heart and soul had a raw, oozing, gaping, searingly painful wound where he had been torn away from me.  Stolen.  We cried a lot.

Some people will never understand.  I try to feel compassion for them, rather than issuing the big ‘EFF YOU”, but I am only human. What is this BS about a ‘three day’ rule? What? Because he was ‘just a dog’ we should be over it all in 3 days?  Djuna was surely a better person than most Humans and I will never stop missing him. I feel so deeply sorry for those people who have overlooked having such grace and beauty bless their lives –– the companionship of a great dog (or cat or horse, or human person) –– so that, when the monumental end comes and they’ve come through the great fires of sorrow, and have been washed by the flush of a million tears, they come through to the other side where they are able to see the remarkable love, joys and lessons they’d been gifted by that companionship. I can only hope now to ‘be’ the person Djuna thought me to be.

3 days and 3 more and 3 million more and even then more just won’t do it.

Paul and I were with Djuna on our bedroom floor when he died. I lay with him next to my heart, whispering love, my arm draped over his neck …  and as he was leaving us, I saw him standing just beyond Paul. Alert, ears akimbo, head cocked, eyes bright, a wad of socks in mouth, standing in his particularly great exuberance, as he did each morning when the time for chores presented itself – “Come on! It’s time to go! Get with it you silly humans! There’s work to be done, there’s a barn to clean and a day to sniff, there’s delight to be found!”  And then he left.

My ‘joyometer’, my daily dispenser of mirth, and my constant reminder of the importance of presence, has gone missing – his lessons of ‘Be Here Now’ measured in doses of  ’Oh, sense the beauty in the music of the wind!’, ‘Let’s just run in circles and laugh’, ‘I love, love, love you!’ … gone. It is wholly up to me now to remember to stay in each moment, to just be a nice person, cry whenever I must, to laugh as much as possible and dance for the sheer joy of it.  And when the cacophony of the deafening silence has quieted and the colors of sorrow have muted and gone transparent and I’ve had some time to let the Aegean clean up those bloodied wounds in my heart and soul, there will be room again here for another one of the Seven Great Dogs.  And the cycles will continue on.

Almost every evening Djuna and I took an evening stroll down our quiet lane. I loved watching him dance his great joy, nose to the ground scenting all of the news of the day or nose to the sky, sensing what was coming on the breeze. On our walks I watched the seasons change, the rising of the full moon, the greening of the new spring and the evening skies, like snowflakes, no one ever alike … I watched the Canadian geese come and go, the Red Tail hawks courting in the air above me, and let the build up of my day fall away as I tread softly with my gentle friend. It took me several days after Djuna’s death for me to realize that here was yet again another gift he had left for me in his wake, and one I should continue to enjoy. The sky was black to the West, we’d had heavy winds and rain all day, but when there was a break I set off on ‘our’ walk. Wrapped tightly in sadness and hardly breathing with the missing of him, I shuffled along about a 1/2 mile and turned for home before the rains started up and the chill wind began to blow, fierce again, from the south. That wind battered and bashed me until it freed the tears from my eyes, and the freezing rain lashed my face until I grew numb. As though suddenly realizing I was about to drown, I surfaced, taking in great gulps of air as though I’d not been breathing for several days, and began to climb free of the suffocating bonds of my sadness.

My Djuna, my Cupcake … My Heart of Hearts who knew my soul, my every thought; great lover of Paul and I, and of Breelyn; great lover of his mare and his pony, of socks and his furry toys and his GWBush chew doll; great lover of his evening walkies and of riding in the car, and feeding the birds; great lover of sofa naps and sleeping in late with us on the bed and chasing BALL and rolling on the grass and of eating horse poop; bountiful bestower of stealthy kisses; joyful jokester, Greek scholar (he knew about 15 words and understood several phrases spoken to him in Greek; something we did only after he’d begun to understand words and phrases *spelled out* in English! ‘Car’, ‘dinner?’, ‘play with the ball?’, ‘feed the birds’, water, pony, get the goat, etc!); Djuna, beloved Honorary Cat, our timekeeper, our guardian angel, our boss, our playfully dignified friend (thanks for that Marija) and family member, and one of the Seven Great Dogs – we will love and miss you forever.

But now – there’s work to be done, there’s a barn to clean and a new day to sniff, there’s delight to be found!

love - photo by Breelyn MacDonald

]]> http://eleanoremacdonald.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/16-one-of-the-seven-great-dogs/feed/ 29 eleanoremacdonald mom&Djuna3 IMG_2179_2 extendedfam_2 eleanore&djuna http://eleanoremacdonald.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/15-the-winter-within/ http://eleanoremacdonald.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/15-the-winter-within/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 07:03:27 +0000 eleanoremacdonald http://eleanoremacdonald.wordpress.com/?p=385 ]]> the winter within … or … the musings of one fortunate in this uncertain world.

winter blessing

This is the winter that isn’t.  Here, where Paul and I – and the Reverend and Tempest and the rest of the clan – live in Northern California we’ve had a grand total of about 5 ‘storms’.  As of late January, the lack of winter left us with an historic failing – almost immeasurable rain totals and feeble findings as regards the northern Sierra Mountains’ snowpack.  As in – No Snow!  That lack has since been supplemented a bit by Mother Nature, the weather Gods – or by HAARP, depending upon how one sees the world – bringing a few more cold and wet storms upon us, but still, I feel as though I’ve missed out on my annual hibernation.

Winter pulls me within, deep within myself …  I don’t do well at all with the lack of sun, or with her icy blasts of wind, or with the need of the mountains of clothing I must wear each day simply to trundle off to the barn to care for the horses through those months … but the quickening darkness and the inclement weather are good for making me want to dive deep inside, deep into heart and soul and multifaceted thought for a long and soulful winter’s rest.  Winter is good time to heal, to rest, curl by the fire with a good book and a glass of good wine, cat on lap and a dog at my side … work new songs, play catch up on life itself but mostly, it’s a good time to delve within for words that have been incubating there throughput the busier months. To hibernate, like the bear, laying on the layers of soul nutrition, that juicy, creative fat that can then be divvied out as the year moves forward.

While the shorter days certainly came upon us, and thick ice had to be broken from the horses’ troughs for 35 mornings in a row, the winter’s wildness and respite did not come.  It is hard to go cozy, sink into the warmth and away from the winter’s chill to do some navel gazing when the skies are bright blue and days blaze a sunny 70˚.  The iris’ came to surface 2 months early, at the same time the bees that live in our neighbors old oak ‘bee tree’ started being buzzily active; the neighborhood peepers and bigger frogs began tuning up their respective symphonies … the squirrels never stopped their forage and nor did the horses – the last autumn’s huge fall of acorns never got softened and rendered unpalatable by winter rains. They remained crunchy and even now in March, impossible for the horses to resist,  (Unsettling, if only because too much acorn can founder or colic a horse, or lay on far too much weight.)  Tempest, an older lady by horse standards, remained ever the hussy with none of the usual winters’ diminishing of her ‘lady season’. She has been unrelenting in her attempts to beguile the poor, unassuming old thoroughbred neighbor-gelding over the back fence with her squeals of lust and even stranger mare behaviors … The old goat Posy is in some twilight zone of diminishing hormone, and rather than her newly acquired devil-goat behavior mellowing with the onset of winter, she has kept up her  ’blubbering’, following every human, dog and horse she meets with wide, horizontally-pupiled eyes a’blaze, her waggling tongue protruding 2 inches from her gummy, half toothed mouth as she snorts and growls and aims for any face or crotch within her reach (you have to see it to believe it.)  ….

Mz Posy ... pre 'hormonal convergence'

The Shetland pony, Molly, began shedding her long full Siberian pony-like winter coat even before any winter had come upon us!  The timing of her shedding is normal, as horses will begin to shed their winter hair to some degree with the passing of the winter solstice.  They are governed by the light, the shortening of days after summer solstice telling them turn on their ‘grow the coat’ DNA – the return of the light with the winter solstice telling them that they had best get busy losing that hair, for the summer will come.  But long before the good nesting materials became abundant (the short twigs that come with the winter windfall; the long, tough black and white pony hairs and the soft-as-silk and shorter, red Tempest hairs), blue birds and wrens began searching for suitable apartments; the Fuji trees went into bud in early February and then froze to a crisp; and as the sun shined cheerily and relentlessly, like the early flowers, I turned towards the sun.  There wasn’t the dark to welcome me.  Where was winter?

I had to find it somehow …  that quiet, darkening peace. I knew it was out there, despite the hue and cry of doom all around me. So I devoted my evening walks with Djuna to finding the winter within the winter that wasn’t.

And there it was – in the Canadians and the silly ducks skating on the neighbors’ pond, frozen solid for days with the month long sunny-but-icy blast that came to us early in the year; in the bird tree, the great, season-stripped naked Oak deemed to harbor the winter’s evening bird conventions – birds, mostly European Starlings filling it with a cacophony of song, the hue and cry perhaps just the birds seeking consensus about where the best seeds could be harvested or cold season berries found, or where the best neighborhood birdfeeders filled with goods devoted to the nuthatch, towhee, oriole and finch could be raided – the birds packing into the old, gnarled branches so that the tree looked as though gloriously decorated with audible ornaments ….

winter bird tree

… And the sunsets … our winter sunsets rival the best, anywhere.  Every night, a new offering – like my endless sea. The distant horizon a place to rest eyes tired of seeing too much, and all that is between here and there, a colorful balm to sooth the soul.

lost in color at the end of the day

my endless sea

The winter fog even blessed us a few times on our walk, leaving only the ghosts of oaks in our pastoral paradise, covering everything with the winter quiet, a blanket of peace – like going within, where only the essential can be heard …

Paul and I recently spent 2 weeks performing music and seeking alligator, Ibis and spanish moss through the state of Florida, which also seemed curiously turned upside down. There is a drought there as well.  The hanging bits of moss were brown and crisp.  Usually in winter it flows from the oaks like greening silk, and the wee orchids that live off of the oak bark are brought to life with the rains.

But everything was dry and seemed caught in the stillness that comes from life going dormant in order to survive. On an off day we journied to a northern Florida beach. We had to sit by the water, breathe in the salt air. Walking a long, wooden path we eventually emerged from dry forest to turn towards the sea … and were met suddenly by the most remarkable winter tableau.

another world

The day was 65˚ – but fog was hugging the shore like a frozen veil and the ghostly rolling sand dunes, stark and white, looked as though they’d been dusted with an otherworldly snow.  Here was a vision of our missing winter.

Now it is time to reawaken. The trees will survive our drought.  What flowers and forage cannot replenish enough to be reborn this spring will come again in another, given the blessings of the rains.  Despite her likely disappointment in us human parasites, Mother will always grace us with the good and the beauty, no matter what. While the sandhill cranes and the snow geese begin their long trek north, we will begin our long trek back to hope – the songbirds will still nest and fledge, the horses’ dappled coats will glisten in the summer sun. We will still create, we will still love, we will still grow and draw our sustenance from the parched soil. Rebirth.  Life will continue.

Ibis in Florida shallows

Here and now I extract what is known from what is not, find custom in the unexpected (these words, for a start), and will get busy looking up, working in word and song, looking forward to a journey to my sacred place in the Aegean sea, get my body and heart and mind summer ready though they’ve had little rest or respite. With much gratitude, I recognize that I am fortunate in this life, winter or not … I have stayed warm, haven’t been without shelter, or food – or hope – so, blessed with abundance that I do not take for granted, it is time to face the past and move into the future.  Being Now.

being now

So I am working on my 2nd novel.  It, too, is set mostly on a Greek isle and also will be advocacy for all of the animals, but most specifically for the American Pit Bull Terrier … a tale that will illustrate how it is that the creatures of this beautiful earth can draw us humans out from a stifling darkness and into becoming all that we can be.

As I try to figure out how to market my 1st novel, All The Little Graces (don’t forget, it is an eBook – go to it’s page here on the blog for links to where it can be found online!) I also wriggle like a child who is done with the winter and needs to be out in the sun and air rather than sitting in a seat at school – so full with this new life growing within, the words that seem to multiply by the moment.  They are alive. I look forward to being able to devote myself to making the perfectly opulent, colorful, comfortable yet challenging bed upon which those words may land. I’ll be tracking the life of those words here on these pages, winter or not …

I will embrace the spring in its perfection.  It is there, no matter what. That is a given, something we all can trust. Let’s keep looking up …

Margarita

I am sitting here by a welcoming fire -  with the Reverend Djuna Cupcake at my side, the old widow Lily (Nemo) Bubbie on my lap and Moggie and Mr. Annie sprawled about – and I’m wearing a big smile. Though Paul is on the other side of the continent, I can feel his presence here as well. I’ve just cracked a  bottle of a fine Cabernet and am celebrating the final leg of ‘All The Little Graces’  journey to becoming an eBook!  Today it was sent off to the various online outlets, and thus begins it’s flight.  Of course, I hope for traditional publishing. I want to hold that book in my own hands, so now I will renew that tricky, testy task of querying literary agents – but if this is as far as my book ever gets, I will still be pleased.  I love it.

In a day or so All The Little Graces will show up at Amazon and the iTunes iBookstore, and in the weeks following will follow at Sony, Kobo and Capia. So those of you with e-readers, be on the lookout for it!  If you do venture into it’s virtual pages, when you’ve finished, please remember to go back to the site on which you found it and leave a review!  Even if you think it was dreadful, leave a review!  The more reviews it gets, the better.  And if you enjoy it, please spread the word.

So now, where is that bottle of wine?  I’ll drink a toast to you all.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All The Little Graces percolated and brewed and stewed for 10 years before it ever even whispered it’s first words to me. There are many people to thank for it’s ‘becoming’, those who contributed to the six years that followed in a blaze of words and pages – but I must first begin at the beginning and thank that mangy little brown mutt of a street dog, Margarita, for being the inspiration for it all.  Though the story itself is a work of fiction, it is based in many truths – the first being that Margarita was indeed real.  My family and I met her in 1990 at the beginning of six-weeks spent on a Greek island and she changed our lives forever.  Though a victim of the streets she was quite a character, a pure little soul who captured our hearts and ultimately introduced us to the harsh reality of the life of a Greek stray.  More truth … Greece is enigmatic and magnificent, and for me, there is nothing that can match the magic and peace a Greek island can offer!

I must also thank Skiathos, an island of the archipelago Sporades in the Aegean Sea – a magnificent beauty and a deep well of inspiration, I thank her for our 26 year-long love affair and for being a throne for my Muse. My grateful thanks to her people, who over the many years have slowly helped me to better understand the Greek spirit and passion, and have given me some insight into their country’s painful yet inspiring past.  Skiathos is one of many islands and villages that served as a template for ‘place’ in the story, all of them responsible for the DNA that ultimately makes the ‘Graces’ island one of a kind and very much it’s own character.

Grateful thanks also … to my husband and partner, Paul Kamm, for encouraging me, humoring me, feeding me, letting me ‘liberate’ some of his words, and for being patient with my frustrations and the strange hours I had to keep to get the writing done – as well as for being an incredible help as a reader and an editor all along the path; to my darling and talented daughter, Breelyn MacDonald, for being a part of it all and always encouraging me along the way, and for the fantastic photograph that graces the ‘About the Author’ page; the Reverend Djuna Cupcake, my dearest canine companion who always helped ‘keep the space’ for me as I wrote, and who is a living, breathing conduit to the book’s main protagonist, Margarita; to friends Wendy Spratt, for the lovely painting that became the cover, and Lorraine Gervais for the cover design; to Kip Harris, who was my English teacher when I was a junior in a remarkable high school neatly tucked away in the magical woods of the Sierra Nevada Mountains … an inspiring man who opened my world to Emerson and Thoreau, to Wordsworth, Keats, Hemingway and Shakespeare and therefore encouraged in me a passion for the colorful world of words; to my other readers - Cindi Buzzell, Maggie McKaig, Mike McKinney, Elena Powell, Kate Wall, Donna Natali and Tom MacDonald – for begging me for clarity, for weeping and giggling and ensuring that I wasn’t writing *it’s* when I should have been writing *its*, and essentially helping to make sense of it all; to Sands Hall for encouragement and tools that changed my writing life; Eleni ‘Helen’ Dumas, our darling Greek language teacher extraordinaire; Yvonne Ayoub, for her own unique perspective of an island we both deeply love; Kiri’a Koula, and Syrainoula Mathinou, for their loving kindness and true hospitality, and for the beautiful, inspiring spot on their veranda that hovers just above the Aegean, where the words flowed to me over the calm morning sea from the sun’s rising … and Dimitrios Mathinos, for sharing his tales of life on the seas and his knowledge of and glimpses into island life in days long past; Ioannis Tsikounas for his help, his friendship, and for being the source of boundless laughter, always; to Mike Voyatzis, for information about fish and fishing the waters of the Aegean, and most importantly for his warm and gracious hospitality in the quiet of several Skiathos winters – visits that truly enabled me to get my book finished; to the angels of the Skiathos Dog shelter, especially Helen Bozas, for making the shelter a reality and for caring so selflessly for the voiceless ones; Greek Animal Rescue, and Diane Aldan (Tails from Greece Rescue) for information, and for helping the animals of Greece’s streets; and to my kind friend Giorgios Koumiotis … and his beautiful old caique, ‘ΘΥΜΙΟΣ’ (THIMIOS) … who both took away my fear of the sea and in doing so, encouraged me to listen to the poetry and music in the waters and the wind, and unknowingly always helped me to find the pure magic, that place where the words live and breathe.

And to my agent and publisher, whoever you may be – you will realize this dream and never be disappointed that you did!

Forever am I thankful to you all.

With a great love,

Eleanore

wolf moon '12

Not long before the glorious January full ‘Wolf’ moon, the hungry moon, we were blessed with a bit of rain.  It came in the night, easing away the crackle of static and brittle leaves, rinsing off the dust, plumping skin left dry and haggard with the stripping of the cold winds from the north, leaving everything feeling alive and smelling fresh and clean.  Mind you, this is winter.  And that was the only rain we’ve had in a month’s time.  I’ve been chipping ice, every frozen morning, from the horses’ water troughs. But the days turn to spring, even the birds sound fooled – and there has been no more rain.

I’ve taken to walking the sunset with Djuna each evening. (We’re often joined by Posy the Goat)

He sniffs about, scenting the messages left behind in the dark by passing bobcat, coyote and raccoon while I visit with neighboring horses and scan the skies for astounding clouds and colors, and the gaggles of geese that course overhead from pond to pond. (Oh, I would give anything for a new camera!!!)

But on the walk we took just after that one rain – with a sunset still roiling with clouds, golden hued and illuminating the darkening sky from below– a sound, perhaps the cooing of a dove? Or a smell, the scent of damp earth and distant sea on the breeze … something took me immediately to Skiathos.

When we can, Paul and I go to to the island for a few weeks in winter as well as in the springtime. We were there just over a year ago, bundled in berets and warm scarves and jackets, bathed by a weak winter sun as we sat outdoors in a taverna by the water … soothed by the music of foreign language, only a few other non-residents spotted here and there wearing the same faraway look in their eyes that we possessed, and likely were there for the same reason. It is our hearts’ home. It’s where our Muse is all around us, in us, with us always.  She carries us through our time there charged with juicy inspiration.  We spend days walking empty driftwood scattered beaches, hiking though sand floored cypress forests, feeding street cats, reading, reading, laughing …  writing … visiting with friends who are always far too busy ‘in the season’ to sit and linger over a meal, a coffee or a Tsipouro.  Walking ‘home’ along the waterfront in the dark of a winter’s night we can see our breath in reflected light …  the weather Gods usually treat us well, giving us only a taste of Zeus’ furies in occasional torrential rains and skies full of lightening bolts, even a hint of snow here and there in between long stretches of glorious 65 degree sunshine.

Ouranos the magic beach cat, Eleanore, and empty winter strand

Two years ago on Christmas Day I went to Skiathos alone.  It was an epic journey … not only was there the long flight to Athens (via many points in between) but also the sometimes adventurous winter journey from Athens to the island, always with the threat of a National Strike lurking about.  In winter, ferry passage is dependant upon organized protests or the weather and flights go only 2x a week from Athens and then only if the pilot feels he has gotten enough sleep, isn’t fighting with his girlfriend or wants cheap shrimp from the island fish market … and again, only as long as the weather is cooperating. But I made it, settled into the lovely, cozy little stone den that our good friend so generously offers as winter lodging –– and then it started to rain.

And rain.  And rain.  This winter ‘home’ is a good quarter mile from the village, which I depend upon for signs of life and sustenance so I slogged it every day through ankle deep rivers-that-once-were-roads and sheets of rain to visit the market and sit in a warm cafe.

The rain didn’t matter. I was there to write.  My story originated on the island long ago, it’s where much of its writing had developed and I was not there now to leisure away my days on golden winter beaches or walking goat paths winding through verdant fields.  My adventure was simply to go to Skiathos and finish my story.

I arose early every day … to the sound of the torrents outside … and swaddled in my long down coat, set to work on the computer. By mid day I would be ready to uncurl, stretch, unfurl and emerge from my cozy little word-cave so, bundled up like a pack mule, I’d make the wet expedition to the town where I then would sit again for hours … first over a silken, delicious hot chocolate, then Greek coffee, and eventually tsipouro with meze’des, the wonderful side dishes that accompany each small bottle of tsipouro, a salad of some sort or a plate of small fishes, or big beans drenched in a tomato/garlic/oregano sauce … and work on new ideas and the edit of my paper manuscript.

HEY!! Where's my Tsipouro? ... hic

The rains stopped on New Years Eve. I put down pen and computer for the day and took advantage of late afternoon sun, walking the village, up and down the hilly cobbled lanes and whitewashed alleys past doorways of red and green and blue that still were blessed with flowering bougainvillea …

winter bloom on blue

I fed hungry cats everywhere, and walked to the shipyard to visit beloved caiques that were ‘resting’ there for the winter, and with the coming of the dark, found myself quite hungry – but heading back through the village I couldn’t even find one open market or taverna. The only place open for business in the entire town was a small cafe in the harbor where the closest thing to dinner were the wee handfuls of nuts that came as meze’ with the 2 shots of ouzo I drank!

The coming of the New Year is a big deal in Greece – bigger than Christmas Day, which is second to Easter in regards to a religious celebration though also significant in that it is Agios Nikolaos’ day. St. Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, and therefore also very important to these people of the sea – and is the namesake of all named Niki or Nikos, etc. It a solemn day next to the celebration of the new year, Agios Vasilis’, or Saint Basil’s day (for anyone named Vasilis, Vasilikoula, etc.) This is the day of the ritual “renewal of waters”, in which all water containers in the house are emptied and refilled with fresh water, and (I love this quite pagan piece), offerings are made by some to the naiads, the spirits of springs and fountains in thanks for the plentiful waters of the year before and to ensure the flow of good water in the year ahead! It is a lucky day, as Saint Basil is not only the patron of healing and protection but also of good fortune and the ‘vasilopita’ is shared, a cake with one coin baked into it; whoever finds the coin is considered to have good luck coming.  But of course, being the first day of the new year, it is marked by much festivity …

There would be parties all over the village … I’d been invited to a few, but as they wouldn’t even start until after 10 PM there was a lot of ‘lost time’ to handle. I wandered (well, after 2 ouzo, I wandered a bit tipsily!) off to the end of a small, wooded peninsula known as ‘Bourtzi”, where I could watch the moon showing off over the sea through the few scattered clouds.

view from winter bourtzi

I was beset by a bit of melancholy there, looking over the water, sitting alone in the dark freezing chill in this place that always has been metaphor, to me, for my more authentic self.  The place where, while being fed by the warmth of color and the sun, calmed by the healing water and the island’s richness of spirit, I’ve always been able to retreat to – within – to where the magic of a potent silence can so easily be found  despite being surrounded, at times, by a multitude of tourists!

But on that cold night, in a different kind of silence I could have been the only person left on the planet.  I wept a bit, missing Paul and the Reverend Cupcake and the other furries on the farm, said my blessings for the New Year ahead and then stood, and sang – rather drunkenly –  a melancholic version, in the Gaelic, of  ’Auld Lang Syne’.  Walking back along the Bourtzi’s stone path to the old village harbor, dolled up in it’s holiday lights and blue Christmas trees, I felt like I was moving down a birth canal. Leaving the old behind. Rebirth.

The wonderful parties with their great food and dancing came and went, with the new year greeted by a hail of shotgun blasts and fireworks, and good wishes of  ‘Xronia Polla! Kali Xronia!’, many years, good years! The sun shone throughout the whole of the next day and I walked clean, dry alleys and along a golden beach to our springtime landlady’s house for a lovely feast with her family. With the year completed and a new one welcomed in with such love, I felt truly blessed.  I wandered home beside a calm sea, through a sunset, a brilliant wash of many colors … returned to my hobbit house … and finished the story.

Another few years followed – polishing, sculpting, rearranging, rewrites, a lot of edits (a few of them done over coffee as a springtime sun rose over the Aegean) and many readings by my ‘readers’ … and then even more edits, spit polishing and reading but suddenly – I was done! Surely ‘All The Little Graces’ is an imperfect specimen, the flawed but much beloved first child, not literary genius, but it is whole and it is done.

And with the coming of the full ‘Wolf’ moon, it was sent off into the world to become an ‘eBook’.

While I continue my quest for traditional publishing, ‘All The Little Graces’ will be available as an eBook via Amazon (Kindle, Kindle app for Mac, Kindle app for PC), Apple iBook/iTunes (iPad, iPhone and iTouch) and Sony. I am bypassing Barnes and Noble (Nook) because B & N has even less integrity regarding author’s sales than Amazon has. It should be available soon.

Follow your passions and never let go of your dreams. Please. We must have dreams to light our way in these interesting times.

Howling at the moon, in love

Eleanore