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

bree, jasmine, della, maggie and foal

for all of the ‘horsie’ girls, who like me, have never quite grown up …

A sweet memory came to me through the thick, balmy fog balm as I walked with Djuna down our country lane this evening … the memory, moments finely hewn of mist and late nights, the solemn clop of rubber shod hooves on pavement accented by a the melody of bells provoked to song by each gentle step … the cold, quiet, absolutely empty late night streets, swirling fog lit by gas lamp … Maggie, tethered to me by a cord of trust, 4 legs swinging to the rhythm and her long, inward curved ears like radar, attentive to the magic at hand.

In another life (certainly in another century) I was a carriage driver, a 5’5″, 108 lb. teamster who worked for years for the local carriage company – my partners, a few good women and several magnificent Percheron draft horses. (Animals Rights activists, simmer down, now! It was another life, another time, and if not for the few of us horsewomen/carriage drivers, those horses’ lives would have had far less kindness and comfort.)

my partners, breelyn and maggie

Aside from carriage work I once drove a team of six big mares – dapple grays, a snowy white and several blacks all hitched abreast, side by side and pulling a disk plow over rutted ground. The sight of those six huge and powerful butts in a line in front of me was surely incredible, but even more so was that though the rein coming from the mare farthest to my right was of a normal length, the other, coming from the mare at my far left, was not!  It was a good three feet short, so as we bounced over that uneven field I had to lean far forward and to the left to make up it’s lacking. I remember looking down – legs shaking as I balanced perilously over those gleaming, knife sharp discs churning earth under the metal tractor seat I was thrown from with each bounce – making pleas and promises to some unseen Deity. But then there came a few weeks of peaceful work in a sustainable horse logging operation; setting the choke on a big log and then asking the big boys, Jerry, Bill and Dan, to pull it away – moving neatly through the woods, we snaked silently between standing trees.

big love, small person

I’ve loved horses since the beginnings of time. These wondrous and somehow fragile creatures had always figured largely in my life, yet a horseless void did come upon me in the early ’80s. The carriage work came to fill it, and having the opportunity to work with these massive beauties was a new kind of heaven for me.

I met Maggie in my second year as a driver. She was only three years old then, a finely tuned mass of muscle and nerves that had only been in the traces – in harness and at work – for about a month before being given to me to drive. A wee harrowing, it was, two novices turned loose in a town full of cars and oblivious tourists but when we found it, The Trust was easy and mutual and I fell hopelessly in love with the beautiful mare. Our connection was deep and mysterious.

The long trail of ‘lines’, the reins used for controlling direction, connecting horse to driver, felt to me electric, yet soft like butter … as though inhabited by light sprites relaying instant messages from me to her and back again. There was no strength needed to ‘control’ Maggie, for through the lines from my hands to the snaffle bit in her mouth I could telegraph messages with a delicate wiggle of only one or two fingers and she knew the verbal requests ‘Gee’ (move to the right) and ‘Haw’ (move to the left), a breathy ‘Easy’ (it’s OK, my darling girl, you can relax) and of course “Whoa’.  An audible kiss, or a cluck let her know that I would like her to move forward.  I carried a long driving whip, beautiful and made of holly, because it is traditional for a carriage driver to carry one.  A driving whip is something never to be used aggressively towards the horse but rather is used as an ‘aid’, with a gentle touch to the horse’s side, right or left signaling to it to step over or to yield. It takes the place of what a proficient rider’s leg can accomplish when in the saddle – gentle, nearly invisible aids, asking, never telling. Maggie was so willing and sensitive that she would respond to a whisper and move on a dime, so my whip was only a dramatic prop in that theater of the streets.

There were those times, however, I was known to stand tall in that carriage box and lean out and over the street to use my whip, hard, on the tops of cars that passed by us too closely or that belonged to eejits I felt were harassing my horse!

Maggie was quite small for a Percheron, only standing about 16.2 hands tall. Each ‘one’ hand is approximately four inches, so she topped out at about six feet at her withers, the spinal processes where the horse’s neck meets their back. She probably only weighed in at a graceful 1500 lbs. While the Percheron is more compact than the other well known breeds of draft horse like the Shire, the Belgian or the Clydesdale, an average Percheron can weigh from 1800 lbs to over a ton, and stands about 17 or 18 hands tall. From the La Perch region in the NW of France, the Percheron has a good bit of Arab blood flowing through it’s veins, though it’s exact lineage has been lost somewhere in time.

elle and mags

Though she was quite dainty and elegant, her attitude made up for anything she lacked in stature … delicate of bone and petite in build, Maggie was huge and fiery in spirit. Her Arabian lineage made itself apparent in her verve and intelligence, and in a fine hair coat that was a brilliant, shiny black even in the dead of winter. She was gorgeous, a mass of muscle with a low center of gravity that made the street work quite easy for her. The carriage she pulled was a Vis a Vis, a replica of a 19th century six-seater which, though fitted with the a modern 5th wheel and rubber wheels for convenience and comfort, was a heavy carriage – yet she was forever asking me if she could please sprint up and down the hills of the town. Can we go fast now? Now?  Now?

In our second summer together, while the rest of the company – four or five horses and three carriages – went off to work the California State Fair for a few weeks, Maggie and I were left behind to conduct the street business in town all on our own. We covered the long day and night shifts, every day, by ourselves and as there was no Boss to constantly look over our shoulders, we did as we pleased! The business didn’t suffer at all – but neither did the horse. Our hot summer days were measured, she was well rested and well watered, well shaded and never overworked, and on our dinner breaks I would unharness her, bathe her with cool water and rub her legs and back with liniment before settling her in a stall, deeply bedded with straw, to a leisurely dinner of grassy alfalfa hay and oats. A few hours would pass and we would hit the streets again, for our night shift. Locals felt sorry for us, being the only carriage in town for all that time, so Maggie was showered with thoughtful gifts of apples and pears and peppermints and horse cookies – and I was brought cafe lattes and ice cream (shared with Maggie, of course) and boxes of our illustrious, locally made gourmet pizza.

Life was good!

getting dressed

Our nights ran quite late during that two-week stint.

On this one night in particular, the hour hit 1 AM before I was finished and ready to head for home. After backing Maggie – and the carriage – into the narrow barn, I’d had to unhitch, shed her of her 100 lb. harness and then groom and feed her before my shift was over and I’m certain I was a bit brain dead there at the end my 18 hour day. I do remember, though, noticing through my haze  that some kind soul had left Maggie a  lovely gift sitting just inside the old barn’s door – a  box filled with 50 pounds of carrots!  I grabbed up a handful and fed them to a delighted Maggie before shutting off the lights. She whuffled her sweet goodnight to me, I locked up and went home.

cleaning the collar

Next morning, 7 AM, I was at the barn as usual to feed Maggie and clean the carriage, and as I slid the big door open I felt the earth move … an earthquake … the barn floor was shaking, then the whole barn was shaking, as though with the pulse of a large horse’s quick step.

It WAS the pulse of a large horses quick step. Maggie whinnied, a sound of pure delight that I seemed to mean:  HELLO! MY GOOD FRIEND! LOOK! LOOK!  SEE WHAT I GOT TO DO ALL NIGHT? I HAD SUCH FUN! SUCH JOY! COME ON IN AND SEE! … and at a bouncy trot she came to me from the dark of the barn.
She was loose.

She was supposed to be secured in her stall! The barn had four ‘tie’ stalls, and while large enough for a horse to easily lay down in, they were unenclosed so the horses had to be tied to the stall. With a loose lead rope leading from halter to manger, they couldn’t get themselves into any trouble elsewhere in the barn.

But Maggie was not tied. She was loose and trotting towards me right then. Laughing at me, I was sure.

I noticed that the box,  just the night before overflowing with carrots, was now almost empty. Why, that little beast …

She danced up to me, 1500 pounds of big, happy horse loose in this rickety old barn … I caught her by the halter and put her in her stall, and going to fetch her breakfast hay worried about the troubles she may have gotten herself into overnight – Could she have cut herself on something? Did she get into the grain bin?

As my eyes adjusted to the barn’s dim light, my worries dissolved into wonder.

One of the handmade Amish carriage quilts was in a heap on the floor, a good six feet in front of the carriage. (I had left it, as usual, neatly folded on the back of a seat inside the carriage.)

It had been pooped on.

Another pile of Maggie poo had been precariously yet strategically placed on the carriage’s one step while another, an extremely large pile of manure had been left on top of the stemmy, weedy bale of hay that Boss provided for her. (This was a bit of a statement, I thought.)

What of the bale of fragrant, grassy hay that I had bought for her? A quarter or more of it was gone, nowhere to be seen – she must have been working on it all night long, when she wasn’t having loads of other kinds of fun.

(It came to me a bit later … how it was that Maggie had managed to poop so much throughout the night. She had been well loaded up with that nice hay!)

The wheat straw I used for her bedding was no longer in a neat bale, but had been fluffed and thrown to the four directions – the back of the barn now looked like a huge feather bed.  Various bins and buckets had been overturned and opened, tools, nails, horseshoes spilled out onto the oak plank … halters and brushes and hoof ointments looked as though they had been carried off, and much thought had gone into how they were arranged, left in a neat array eight feet away.

Four large leather horse collars that had been hanging neatly in a row along the wall had been flung to the far side of the barn … it was as though she’d been playing a midnight game of toss-the-freaking-collar with them …

And  -  she had squeezed far enough into our little dressing room to be able to take all of the coats from their hangers, scatter them about the carpet and then knock the empty wire hangers down on top of them.  Top hats had been pulled down from a shelf and riding boots were gone – eventually found scattered around the barn and even underneath the carriage.

She left a tidy little pile of manure there next to the topcoats as well, but had to have backed herself partway into the room in order to do that.

It took me two hours to clean the barn and put it back into a semblance of order; a good twenty minutes of that time was spent in tear streaming laughter as I tried to visualize the little mare wreaking havoc, in pure delight…

burrito and carrot

Maggie was my partner for about two more years.  Of course I would drive whichever of the horses had been brought to town for work on any given day (they would get rotated in and out regularly for R and R back at their farm.) but I always looked forward to my shifts with her more than with any of the others. Our connection was magical, a shimmering, gossamer thread, heart to heart.

Eventually I worked it up to ask Boss if I could buy her … secretly wanting to save her from that life.

He knew. And he said …”No!”

happy ... filly #2.

maggie's first foal, rosebud ... she lived only 2 days.

It was an autumn morning. I came to work looking forward to a whole week with my little black mare, but she wasn’t in the barn. I grumbled about Boss changing up the schedules. Where was she? I asked. The other carriage driver looked down, quiet, and quickly turned away. Traitor.  Boss walked right up to me and with jutting jaw and puffed out chest, looked down his nose at me and said she’d just been loaded up in a fancy trailer and was on her way to be shipped off to a new life pulling carriage – in Japan.  (Japan. Where they eat horses, I remembered.)

What? And you didn’t have the decency to tell me ahead of time so I could have gotten here twenty minutes earlier?

“She’s gone. Deal with it. And I want you on the streets in an hour.”

Gone. I never got to say goodbye to her.  I cried.

And cried.

I made a list while I was thinking about Maggie. I was curious how many of the furred and hooved ones have found their way into my life and heart through all of my 57 years … I came up with roughly 50.  14 dogs. 18 cats. 14 horses. 2 cows. 2 goats.  50 beating hearts, 50 gossamer threads, 500 stories, 5000 smiles, 5 million tears. And a lifetime of gratitude.

I can’t imagine these years without them. They’ve warmed my heart, warmed my bed, gave me a place to deposit my tears and made me howl in laughter, taught me patience and responsibility … they embodied unconditional love and gave me their goodness and helped me to survive, to make it thorough. They, sentient beings all, have enriched my life. May I have many more lessons with those yet to come.

Djuna is standing here now, nudging, telling me it’s time for our bedtime walk.  I’m going to go with him … we’ll see what beauty may still be out there for us in the fog.

love - the gossamer thread

With all my heart and soul, I do believe that this story deserves to become an actual book … tangible and genuine, a book that one can inhale the woody, inky scent of and page through, cuddle up and fall asleep with … so I most certainly will continue on with my quest for a literary agent.  In the meantime it will become an ‘eBook’ and will be available to read on one’s Kindle or Nook as well as on one’s computer, Android, iPad and iPhone.

The writing of the ‘Acknowledgements’ , and the ‘Afterword’ , have me busy in the moment.  This quieting season has freed up time’s usual constraints a bit, so it really shouldn’t be long before I will be finished with the last details and sending it all off to www.BookBaby.com for e-formatting and distribution.

I will let you know when it is ready for launch!

It will be available at iTunes and Amazon and the other usual suspects that sell eBooks.  A percentage of profits garnered from it’s e-sales will be going to two animal charities …

Skiathos Dog Shelter, on the island of Skiathos in GREECE

http://www.skiathosdogshelter.com/

and

Sammie’s Friends … our local no-kill animal shelter-and-more in Grass Valley, CA.

http://www.sammiesfriends.org/

photo by Breelyn MacDonald

 ”Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” Anatole France

When she was quite old my grandmother told me that the years were passing for her much as the months had when she was younger. She said that it was because we fill our lives up with so much busy-ness, and as she was discovering that life was to LIVE and not to “busy away”, time was slowing for her again. Damu was heavy into Science of Mind … metaphysics. And, the grande dame was always up at 5 AM to meditate, every morn without fail, something I have yet to emulate! She had a very simple and clear perception of the world around her and fully lived her next 15 years, right up until she decided that it was time for her to go and leave the living to the rest of us.

Now people say that time’s rushed march is because of the earth’s quickening, the space-time continuum, the earth’s heartbeat is speeding up, the universe is expanding, a shift of our realty from the 3D to the 4D frequency, or …

All down for simplicity, I am tending to agree with Damu.

My Damu

I was such an earnest lass when I first embarked upon this ‘journey-of-the-blog’ …  ‘One Posting A Week!’ I exclaimed to myself.  Then time began her reckless race around me and I found that it was simply impossible to keep up with that initial zeal.  Living the life of one of us ‘normal’ human beings and not the life of a ‘writer’, things like mucking stalls and grooming the horse-girls, caring for our own wee farm as well as my ‘other’ work caring for other people’s animals … and then booking the gigs, learning new songs, recording and certainly the things like being away on tour with Paul (we are musicians) all began to take it’s toll on my time for writing.

The ‘busy-ness’ of life’!

One of the things I’ve been chipping away at in the little bits of time I steal is my next query, this one to a Literary Agent in the U.K.

“By mail only, send; (everything paginated and in 1.5 line spacing of course)

` A cover letter including; the title of the book, what it is about, the word count, what date it was started, # of drafts so far (finished) …. It’s history – what prompted you to write it, when did you start it, who has read it and what were their reactions, what derives from your own experience and what required research AND what is your appraisal of it’s current state???

` and …  a detailed synopsis written in the 3rd person present tense (and essentially tells the 373 page story in 4 or 5 pages) with ALL detail – no suspense. Including the end.

` and …  a 3 sentence description of the novel.

`and …….. a resume, regardless of writing experience.

`AND finally – the 1st 50, and last 10 pages.”

I think I am on page 9 … of that 4 or 5 page synopsis.

It seems that I have some whittling to do.

Time.

A few months back, in a rush between tending to the last minute details of our tour to the Northwest and tending to our dying goat, I sent my most recent query out.

One. Cannot. Rush. Through. These. Things.

It was just last week, realizing that I’d not heard anything back from the agency (not even the expected rejection!) that I checked my ‘sent’ box to see what date I’d sent the query out – and upon reading the first few lines of the email, nearly passed out.
One doesn’t usually get ‘do-overs’ when one is querying agents. They just don’t like that.  We are, understandably, supposed to fulfill their protocol to a ‘T’ before sending to them.  But this one is just begging.

In my hurry to beat off those strangling tentacles of time, I had written to this particular (big) agent that my novel was complete at … 373,000 WORDS. ThreeHundredAndSeventyThreeThousand words!!!!

That is like The Fountainhead … or Middlemarch … almost like War and Peace!!  NO! My novel is NOT that long … It is 106,675 words, yet somehow I’d confused my word count with the length of the book which is 373 PAGES!!  Not words!  No agent will consider a first time author’s novel that is complete at over 110,000 words!

So – writhing in a wretched agony of embarrassment, I am writing another letter to that agent, trying to sound nonchalant while really groveling and begging for him to reconsider and to please, not discount this lovely story simply because it happens to have a complete nincompoop for an author!

Rush rush rush … all the more reason to find ways to slow down, to make the time stretch … get outside, breathe deeply and mindfully … explore the emerging autumn – the colors, the scents and the cooling air … take the moments to groom the now winter-furry girls, walk a sunset with Djuna and Paul, look up and trace the trail of the sandhill cranes as they practice their winter run with purpose, a mile high …

Rev. Djuna Cupcake and his shadow ... seeking sunset

colours of the autumn ...

I was privileged to spend last weekend in the company of about 100 draft horses, Shires, Percherons, Clydesdales, Suffolks … the great work and war horses of ages past. I fell deeply in love with Sully, one of Wareing Shires’ 18 hand lovelies … there is nothing like the steady, slow heartbeat and embrace of the gentle souls of those great beasts to get me to settle.

Sully's muzzle

4 tons of play

in full flower

kindness

Mac and Pipsqueak

Me and Mr. Pure Love Sully ... whose head is as long as I am from the top of my head to my waist and weighs twice as much as I do!

And as the first rain of the season neared, I saw Tempest and Molly do a ‘happy dance’, the airs above the ground that they perform in pure joy, nostrils flaring and tails flagged high, on hind legs as they circle one another – or aloft, all four feet off the ground and squealing in play.  Punctuated with equine giggles this one irrefutably signifies the change of season – Autumn is here.  ‘The rain! It’s coming, it’s coming!!’ Having watched Tempest’s behavior for 20 years now, I’ve come to know that this is true – she used to live with 12 other horses in a large, grassy pasture and, breathlessly captivated by the web of magic they wove, I watched them all perform the very same dance together, just prior to the first autumns season’s rain.

These simple things – inspirations, really – help to bring me more into presence, aware of the life coursing all around that shelters and fills me with peace, with energy … They just make me stop. Stop spinning out of control as they stretch the ‘busy-ness’ out, and slow my perception of time’s rush.

Or perhaps it’s just that those inspirations actually build more time! Yes! If we can stay inspired, we can ‘make’ the time to take the time – to do those things that get wrestled away from us when we’re spinning around while the universe expands and the earth’s heartbeat quickens …

magic

As I’ve written this piece I’ve been able to revisit the sureness that – for me – the act of writing is just as calming and slowing as any of the other of my life’s joys, all of those inspirations that fill life with beauty.  I won’t wait so long to ‘make the time to write the next one …

How do you find your own way to the calm, through your own busy-ness and into just living life?

What inspires you?  What is it that makes you thrive?

Now, I’m going to take the time to go and find another moment – I hear the Sandhills passing overhead…

There are people who have asked me why I don’t write about things that are ‘important’.

Important.  I only have this to say – as the world roils around us, I feel that it all is important. Without the dark there would be no light … and without the light I could not survive … the light and dark are symbiotic, I could not see color, nor could I feel peace without them both. And here, on these pages I choose to focus on what it is that brings me peace.  It may well be a journey to get to it, it may be through the beauty of our music or the sight of a doe and fawn tiptoeing through the morning mist or even a slog through something difficult to come to eventually find it, but that is the point of this blog. The journey TO the peace. The Muse.  Inspiration. ‘All The Little Graces’ could not have been written without the existence of not only the Light – the beauty of the Greek light and her sea, the people, the magic of all of the elements in perfect combination and the deep and resonant calm life on the island gift me with – but also of the other side, the dark, the ‘hard stuff’, the sadness and cruelty that is a big part of the life of animals on the streets, unfairness, the unwarranted and the painful.

It all comes to color and beauty in the end. If I can embrace the spectrum of color, existence, emotion, life on this planet, I can hopefully find the goodness, the peace. I can sing peace and write peace.

At this moment, my peace comes in the form of ‘goat’.  The animals do that for me, more than the Humans … take the form of goodness and peace. But here, perhaps it is the ghost of Pan, the half man half goat Greek God of nature giving reason to make me giggle?

Capra Aegagrus Hircus. Domestic Goat. Crazy 4 legged ruminates that make one laugh. And sometimes curse. We don’t eat goat here. We love goat. Well, we have learned to love goat. We sometimes do curse Goat, but more often than not, we smile and laugh Goat.  A few years ago we inherited two elderly spinster Nigerian Dwarf goats from neighbors who had to move away … Daisy and Posy, very intelligent, self-possessed sisters who had been raised more like Yorkshire terriers than goats. Paul built them a magnificent little house of mostly found materials, ‘Villa Katsikes’, Villa of the Goats. (“I could live in THAT” my more sarcastic friends say. Well, you are welcome to, one day. Right now, it is for the goats. And THAT could take me into a discussion around “Are goats NOT important?  Why not?  Is it because they are not human? Is caring not true, or righteous, if the caring is for the animals … rather than for the humans?” But I won’t go there, now.) Villa Katsikes is ‘barn red’ and has mangers for hay and a bucket of fresh water, a soft mound of bedding and a ‘scratching pad’ mounted on the wall because goats are very itchy beasts and will destroy everything in their path as they rub their way through their search for that perfect something to scratch upon!  Villa Katsikes has windows and doors that lock up to keep vulnerable creatures safe from coyote and lion and is set within the confines of a 60 foot round pen that I used to school Tempest in.  Some day it will be Villa Kotopoula, Villa of the Chickens. Or ‘Villa Pali Mousiki , Villa of the Old Musicians.  But for now it is the Villa of the old lady Goats.

villa katsi'kes

I’ve been graced by the companionship of horses, cats and dogs my whole life. Even cows. My deep, and darling, teachers, all. Never goats. These little creatures were new to me and after I naively offered to take them in they presented me with an abstract learning curve I’d not been expecting. I did expect to be able to ‘read’ Daisy and Posy, as I do all of the animals in order to sense more about them, but they were impenetrable! They just lay there in their stony holes pawed out of the round pen footing, burping and chewing their cud, mutant golden eyes half closed as if meditating on some great, vast within-ness  …  they did not respond to their names, and only followed me around, or interacted with me in any way, if I carried pockets full of goat goodies, little balls of edible goodness made specifically for goats that quickly became a currency as precious as gold.

They just … were.

Yet when not meditating the Caprian dimensions of ‘I AM HERE’, the girls could be heard uttering pathetic whispers, a soft bleating under their breath as they stood at the edge of their pen staring longingly in the direction of the place they had long known as home, the only home/people/horse/routines they had known for 10 years before coming to us …

This was their other meditation, the one on ‘I WANT to be THERE’.

Indecipherable, sad goats. Living, hungry, itchy lumps of burping, vast and bottomless sorrow … yet more beings to protect from the appetites of the wilder things, two more mouths to feed and even more to keep us tied to a schedule in our sometimes inconvenient lives. What had we done?   Administering worming paste and trimming dainty little cloven hooves were matters I quickly learned to attend to, and since Daisy had come to us with a mild congestive heart failure I also learned how, in essence, to torture a goat by wrestling it and then trying to get the poor thing to stay still long enough to medicate it; administering shots or pills, or drenches that I tried to get into her mouth and to trickle down her throat, but more often got all over both Paul and I, on clothing and in hair. So it didn’t help things that poor Daisy started mistrusting her new people almost immediately. She began to growl at me as only a goat can, and scurry to a more distant spot in the pen when she saw me approaching the villa.

“F### THIS!!” I announced loudly one day, covered in white goo and foamy, stressed-goat spit.

I suddenly understood that we all would live far more happily with the heart problem, and without these twice-daily torture sessions. Daisy was an old lady who had lived a good, long goat life and who deserved ease in what was left of it! So quality of life took over where responsibility/torture left off and she did just fine without the meds. It took close to a month for her to stop eying me with suspicion, though – but then things began to look up within this human-goat conundrum I had so willingly invited into our usually quite Zen life on the farm.

We eventually let the ladies out of their pen, thinking they would like to graze with Tempest and Molly. On that first day their gate was opened to the farmlet’s acres, they were absolutely bewildered – they seemed astounded that they were free and, blinking wildly, and hesitant as though stepping into a burning sunlight for the first time ever, they tiptoed into their new world …  But instead of nibbling young oak shoots or browsing the burdock erupting from the ground around them they headed, like robots, stiff legged and bleating in monotones to the fence-line at the back of our property where they stood for hours, keening for what used to be their home. Our currency, the goat cookies, suddenly lost all value … we could not get the girls to budge. Through the afternoon their unison bleats turned into a cacophonic chorus that we could hear rise and fall in distant waves on the breeze, and they only quieted with the coming of dusk. For some reason that was it, that was the last of their unhappiness, as if they had banished it with their strange song, some ritual known only by the goat-kind.  Like little toddlers exhausted by a particularly emotive day, dragging their feet and whining only a bit they followed us back to their pen for the night. The very next day they began to let us ‘see’ them. Personalities blossomed, fragrant with cheer and mischief. Daisy; the stoic independent, the thinker, the cat chaser, the ascetic who spent hours meditating in her little plastic dog igloo or alone on the farthest reaches of the property radiating happiness from the profound depths of her goat meditation … Posy; the quiet joker, always looking through windows – or under skirts – subservient to her sister but happiest closer to the house with the humans and the horses than out ‘there’ where there might be monsters and wild things. Often they moved in stealthy tandem, each other’s shadow, tinkling bell and clickity hooves giving them away, or they danced and chased … the clowns, the joy bringers, amusing sprites – light, like balloons filled with helium – these crazy little old ladies were just delightful.

It didn’t take them long to discover the true joys of foraging … the scrub shrubs and weeds, clovers and dandelions, oak leaves, acorns, burdock and blackberry.  And then they found … the roses and daisies, coreopsis and cosmos and lilac bushes … and in one day had re-designed our whole yard.

bluejay bush landscaped by Goat Inc.

a little trim here ...

a little trim there ...

It was as though the Alien Landscaping Company had been here and everything from the ground up to 3 ½ feet was carefully stripped and pruned to the goats’ liking.  But trading sullen, sad goats and a conventional yard for lively, happy pixies and a yard that is at the least, quite interesting?  … That was priceless.

Daisy and Posy made us laugh a lot.  Each morning they sang a greeting to us when we first stepped from the house, much like the echo of goats giggling, and when alerting us to any perceived ‘danger’ they sounded as though they were farting with the ecstatic delight of a 13 year old boy … THAT in itself is worth whatever it takes to keep goats thriving! Some people know this about me – I’ve never quite grown up. So if in just the right company (meaning ‘another immature adult’) when the ‘alert’ sounded, over and over and over, I could be found on the ground, rolling in a heap of mirth with tears running down my cheeks. (Now truly, that is an important thing for us adults to do once in awhile!)

The ladies also loved children and ran back and forth along the paths with them like happy, curious dogs. We learned not to leave anything of any length on the clothesline to dry, unless we wanted it to have that frayed and used look that only busy and curious goats can provide. And to keep the garden gate closed. The barn’s feed room door closed. And when we chanced upon them both sneaking into the house one day, we learned to keep the doors to the house – closed. I took to keeping my own mane pinned UP, after Posy – in one short second of what seemed like sweet nuzzling – snipped a two-inch wide swath of 8 inches of hair with her scissor-like teeth. They followed us everywhere and kept us entertained with their mischief, their goat dances and cat chasing and their endless curiosity … and those brain bashing goat games, rising up on hind legs and meeting in the loud crack of a head butt. (They tried this with Djuna, but he objected.) They loved the horses and if not grazing alongside them, could be found somewhere on the property in the best of the cool, moist, shady spots … burping and chewing, meditating and smiling.

I’ve been blessed by the companionship of many, many dear four legged ones, and of all of those who have lived well into their elder years only a very few have left us in their own time. I absolutely hate the option to that particular grace – that final decision, to euthanize, never gets easier for me, though I am truly grateful to have the ability to even make that choice. (If only we could make that decision for ourselves should frailty and pain or a slowly disappearing mind overcome our own dignity and quality of life in our elder years.)  But the ‘when’ part of that choice is never quite clear enough to me. I belabor it, lose sleep over it and weep buckets of tears over it while my dear one may be suffering longer than is necessary. But when the decision has been made, I will hold my beloved in my arms, if possible, while they slip away …  and whisper my love for them, my grateful thanks into their ears before they can hear me no more. But then, there is the sadness. The dying is usually so peaceful and beautiful, a holy moment, like birth – it is the missing them that gets to me, that stays with me, a heavy cloak of grief. I am certain many of you also know this feeling all too well.

Daisy Goat

We lost little Daisy a few weeks ago. Her heart finally just gave out and it became obvious that we needed to help her along her way before she began to suffer.

I didn’t get to know her as well I get to know as a dog who has been by my side for 14 years, or a horse who has grown older with me for over 20. Perhaps losing her was a bit easier because of that. A lovely young vet came to the farm to gently euthanize her and we buried her in the back of the property, with Shorty, Nemo, Haley, Mouse, Fluffy and Lila … the Yuba River rocks atop her grave, her monument.

the light and the dark

Only Djuna showed distress over her death …  when we covered her with earth his great calm returned.  Posy just sniffed her sister’s lifeless body for a moment, and then raided the open feed room.

Something sweet seems to have been liberated in Posy with her sister’s leaving. She has a bright bloom to her we hadn’t seen before, as though she is always smiling or harboring a silly joke. She is freed now of some unseen bonds, perhaps a need to honor the unspoken hierarchy of sisters. She sings a joyous, tremulous hello when first greeting us for the day, absolutely cherishes Paul and would follow him to the ends of time and though, once let out of her pen for the day, she has the run of the property she’ll join Djuna and I in the barn/church for our morning’s service of grooming and mucking.

And … she has taught me goat tricks of her own design, in trade for pony cookies.

Rev. Djuna and Mz. Posy begging

... pay attention!

... and watch the Goat Dance

Surprisingly content here as an only goat, she lives her days browsing the pasture or yard with the horses. She has landscaped all she can, there is no more she can do, this year, to sculpt the flow of the yard, so when not nibbling the clover and dandies she’ll often be seen enjoying long, quiet spells of goat meditation, eyes closed, chewing her cud.

We will hospice her here to her end too, Posy, the gentle being who makes me smile. Who makes me laugh and brings me peace. And that is Important, to me.

endless sea

I’ve been home several weeks now … I think I’m in the final phase of ‘re-entry’.   When returning from the arms of my Muse it always takes me awhile to get used to life here. Not to life here on the farm … that’s actually quite perfect for me.  Here I can safely wander around bumping into things when I’m up at 3 AM and to bed at 8:30 pm for several days of jet lag, and I soften the prolonged re-entry by brushing horses, watering plants, writing in the mornings after a ½ hour or so sipping coffee and watching birds.  I can be useful from those rarefied ethers by listening to songs Paul has written in my absence (he has no trouble finding his Muse anywhere he may be), learning new ones and preparing for upcoming gigs.  It’s the ‘being around other people’ part that I have trouble with. Culture shock. We Americans, even here in what we locals consider to be ‘the promised land’, are really very loud and fast! Don’t believe me? Go away for a month, preferably to the still of an ancient sun draped place drenched in color and myth, with welcoming waters and no clocks to obey, where you write and read and swim and smile and swim some more – and eat and drink and write – and move really, really slowly.

quiet

This loud and fast bit still surprises me – it used to be the landing at JFK that knocked me off kilter. Now it’s landing in downtown Nevada City!

My comparisons are to the cobbled streets and peaceful harbor in Skiathos, Greece where just about everyone greets one another in the mornings with a genuine “kalimera!” (good day!) and “ti kanis?” (how are you?). Or on the first day of each and every month, a “kalo mina!” (have a good month!) I like that. A lot.

On the island, almost everyone I pass and greet looks me in the eye with a smile. (well, except for that old woman clad in the black of a widow who spit at me when I passed one day! I was assured that it was for my own good, her spit … it warded off the ‘evil eye’ and protected me from the bad luck of any envy! I did notice that she had been looking at my ‘burnished rose’ painted toenails when she spit.)

Time passes slowly there, and it is kind.

So – I am reticent to venture out into the harshlands for quite some time as I readjust to the scuttle of daily life in America.  I have to work to hang on to the presence and peace I am blessed with on my journeys-to-the-Muse, and attempt to linger there and steep in it’s loveliness for as long as I possibly can. That means long stretches of speaking little ‘human’ and lots and lots of ‘equine/canine/feline and goat’

I was just looking over the many photographs I took on my journey and towards the end of the bunch I found the one I’d been able to snag of the Rev. Djuna Cupcake on my second day home. Djuna and his ‘Homeland Security Threat Levels’ have been written about previously here in my ‘notes from an endless sea’, but this picture captured the first seen – ever – ‘Homeland Security Threat level multi-socked and blue/white/purple/flowered undie’d’, which we translate to mean …

… ‘Un-effing-believably High’.

HSTL "un-effing-believably High"

Paul and I had gone out for brunch, a sliver of time together after a month apart, and returned home to find Djuna waiting with worry in his eye and several pairs of socks and ALL of the old undies that had been designated as his ––probably 8 pairs–– dangling from his mouth.  We’re thinking that he may have been pondering the thought (he has many thoughts, believe me) that one of us might be disappearing, again, and far too soon for his liking. (I’m thinking that his ponder went something like this … though Paul may feel differently … DON’T leave me with Dad – again. Don’t you dare.  I’m too old for this s**t.  I can’t possibly take care of everything here while having to let him think that he’s the one in charge, it’s indoggedly possible. He just runs around acting crazy, trying to make sure everything is freaking PERFECT, and I think he’s going to have a heart attack, and THEN what?  HOW can I keep everyone and everything else safe when I have to worry about him all of the time? Don’t. Do. This. To. Me.)

I am happy to report that he displayed this SOS one time only and is generally back to demonstrating his standard HSTlevel 1, “No Problem, I’m just a goofy dude”, which is only one pair of socks or the stuffie of his choice.

~

when words come ...

~

I thought it time to write a bit about progress made in my quest for finding a literary agent to represent ‘All The Little Graces’.

To this point I’ve received 6 rejection letters (ranging from – a very polite “We loved your work and have no doubt that it will find it’s place in the world – we just aren’t actively seeking this type of project at the moment. Our best wishes to you!”, to the more straightforward  “This is not for us. Your voice does not stand out – actually,  it is imperceptible – and your writing is weak at best. Back to the drawing board, or better yet, forget about trying to be a writer.”  I really do expect many, many more of these, 40 or 60 or perhaps even 90, before the book finds it’s ‘place in the world’. I’m not worried – yet.

But really, this is how it will play out … I will print all of those letters and place the considerable stack in a folder titled REJECTIONS - in bold letters. I plan to take that folder with us to Greece where I will sit with friends and family on our veranda by the sea with the view to eternity, the thick folder on the table before us … we will propose a toast over it … a toast to dreams.

Because my published book will be sitting on the table there, right next to it.

Here’s to dreams … those dreams, don’t ever let them go!

look up! angels all around ... and a hawk!

morning still

The mornings come to me quite early here.

I am up before the sun. I make a cup of strong coffee in my room to take to the flower filled veranda that hovers just over the Aegean, where I watch the sun make its appearance as small fishing caiques purr past, gliding through a glassy sea infused with the golds and silvers of the new morn. Among the 5 or 6 colorful boats that pass by there is sure to be one with it’s captain, in full voice that ripples through the still, singing his way into his new day.

singing for calamari

the peaceful blue

I am alone … there, in the quiet that is natural to this place.

Just me, the wren singing his aria and the soaring gulls that float past at eye level … and the chorus of swifts that scream through the air above me, commenting in unison on the state of the day. Embraced there by this morning loveliness, I will write for a few hours before heading down to the heart of the village, the harbor, to watch it come to life.

psipsina mou

Psipsina and Koukla will meet me on my way out the front door … Psipsina is always waiting overhead in the arbor woven with night blooming jasmine, her upside-down Cheshire grin and a polite “maaaaoow???’ greeting me as I step out into the morning and after a somersault, a tightrope walk across the narrow wooden railing and a graceful float to the ground, she dances me to her feeding spot. I’ve known Psipsina for 3 years now – somehow the little redhead has survived life as a Greek island stray.

The cats still have it pretty rough here, but I have to say she always looks good. There must be someone who lovingly sees her through the leaner months for she has a soft, glossy bunny coat and does not sport weepy eyes or the telltale greasy, dirty nose of a street cat that must rummage through garbage for a meal.

From year to year Psipsina has remembered me by the jingle jangling of my silver bracelets –– and once it’s established that yes, indeed, it is the ‘music of that kind food lady’ she hears, she sets up camp on the window sill above that delicious arbor and delights me every morning with her song and dance.

psipsina

When she’s not busy eating, she likes to just sit and chat and will sometimes climb into my backpack for a quick nap … but she also can be quite sneaky. I once opened the door to my room to find Psipsina sitting right there in the hall … looking up at me patiently, as though she belonged in the house.  There she was at my door –– there are 5 rooms on that floor –– no matter the front door to the pensione was closed, and locked! How did she get in? Only the cats will ever know that. But she marched right in and jumped up to curl in comfort on my bed.  No, this is not a typical street cat. Koukla mou (my little doll) is also not a typical street cat.  She’s a young, lithe, happy little thing, a beautiful dark calico who really seems more interested in socializing than eating kibble, curling in my lap while Psipsina eats, gazing up at me with what looks like a sure smile on her squinty eyed face, her white toes spread and paws kneading in a gentle ecstasy. Drooling.

koukla mou

There are 2 other mostly grown cats who also come to me to be fed regularly, Agapi (love) and Asprolaki (little white) … again, these cats are in good flesh, are clear eyed and would make beautiful companions for anyone with an open heart. Why they are plying the streets is beyond me. Abandoned? Perhaps. Though these two have a healthy fear of strangers, with the humans they trust they are chirpy and lovely and not at all shy about showing their gratitude. I feel blessed that they trust me.

asprolaki

street kids

In my last few visits to the island, spring and winter, I’ve noticed that several of the old neighborhood grandmothers, the yia yias, have taken to caring for cats. On one of the breathtakingly beautiful cobbled strolls I take from my pensione to the harbor, there is one small house … always emanating some delicious, herb infused aroma … with no less than 9 fat and happy cats lolling about the stoop waiting for their scarved and black clad slave to serve up the breakfast orders. These fortunate few are also not at all like those who must lurk in the shadows, the desperate, haunted ones, the sickly, hungry ones who live from garbage can to garbage can. But it is those cats I still find in abundance everywhere I go.

Caring for the unwanted ones is one way that I can give back to this island that has afforded me much peace and inspiration over the years. I do what I can for the strays of the village neighborhoods while I am there … there are many that are far more needy than my crew of fatties, and on my daily rounds to their feeding stations I leave heaps of kibble and any leftovers I’ve gleaned that they might find appealing. It’s never enough …

The very best I can do is sadly only for those who will allow my touch. I am able to dose these cats with a good ‘one spot’ product purchased from my Veterinarian, one that eliminates fleas, ear mites, heartworm and internal parasites all in one go – a pricey but miraculous treatment for these unfortunates of the streets. In the past I had to struggle to dose ears for mites with one product, use another product for the fleas and forget about worms … none of them would tolerate my jamming a pill down their throats!  This year I was blessed by the generosity of many folks who wanted to help in some way with the needy street urchins of the island. They donated money, used in part to purchase a lot of this miracle product that makes it possible for me to take care of more of the street cats than ever before. After treating the cats and setting a bit aside so that I could administer a second dose at the end of my month’s stay, I took the generous amount left over to the island’s dog shelter. Along with the remainder of the donated cash, it will all come to good use for the many dogs there. (The animals thank all of you who donated so generously to their cause!) You can visit this amazing place that is attended by angels by clicking the link to the right of this page –– Skiathos Dog Shelter.

I am never prepared to accept that there are any of them that I cannot help … but my heart is always challenged in one way or another at some point in every visit ‘home’. This year’s trial came to me late in a night blessed with a much welcome stillness; finally some quiet, after several noisy days and nights of construction that disrupted the peace in my usually placid neighborhood.

Mew.  Meeeew.  Mewwww.  I really didn’t take any notice at first. The sounds of cats … hungry, happy, fighting, mating … is hardly something unique in the soundtrack of a Greek village’s night. But it continued. And grew stronger, more insistent. Within an hour I was out there in the dark of the new moon with no flashlight and a 7-foot high wall between me and the yeowls, trying to figure out WHAT this was about. I couldn’t see a thing! I couldn’t do anything! The plaintive cries, sounding more and more like a kitten only 4 or 5 weeks of age, went on for awhile, pulling at my maternal instincts, tearing at my heart – but then, they stopped.

The next morning, just as I contemplated diving into a blank page with all the words still dancing around in my head a pathetic ‘mew, meeeeeew’ sliced through the quiet! I peered over the railing to the dense tangle of bush below but there was nothing there that bore any relation to those cries. It remained unseen. I flew down the stairs and out, walked through the construction mess next door over heaps of rebar and form planks and buckets and dirt, to bushes far too thick to investigate. Yet that is where the tiny thing seemed to be.  Where was its Mama? I’d not seen any new Mama’s in my little world of streetlings there in the neighborhood. This baby sounded desperate.

How did it come to be there?

I won’t say any more about that now other than this … there are boys, and girls, the world over who will do despicable things under the pressure of peers to prove themselves. Here, sometimes they still test their bravado, in the dark of a drink-fueled night, by tossing unwanted kittens over cliffs into the sea. And there are some people still see this as a way of curbing the population. So, I will never really know who was responsible, but whatever the intent, this one hadn’t been tossed far enough –– the dense thicket caught it instead, saving it from a sure drowning. But now it prevented the kitten being rescued!

There was nothing that I could do, so I went on about my day – haunted by those pathetic cries.

MEOW.  MAAAAAAAAW.  When I returned to my room in the late afternoon, the cries were louder still. Such strength of spirit! The kit was not growing weaker – it simply seemed more alive! But still, it was nowhere to be seen.

And late in the night when I came home from my evening’s meanderings? The cries were more desperate, more insistent. I could not sleep.  All I could hear was fear and hunger in that kitten’s cry. What could I do?  I wept. I had to close my windows, which for me was not at all unlike just turning my back. Even that didn’t work – I had to use earplugs to sleep.

And so it went for two more days and another night … on and on and on.  But no one else seemed to hear it! Was I imagining things?  Was this just the ghostly archetype of all that I find wrong in the world, distilled into the mirage of a motherless kitten?

Of course, I’m thinking … Great. I’ll have to just sit here, the helpless kitten in its death throes just feet away but out of reach?  Is this what I get, for saying that I like animals better than most people?  Are all of those people who think I’m a nutcase, RIGHT? As Paul has written, sometimes it’s a curse to care …

The next day, all alone at my secret, peaceful spot by the sea I daydreamed of a world where all living beings were cared for, a world where humans had common sense and did the right things, harming no one, harming nothing, a world with no hungry children … no kittens tossed to the seas.

... my secret place ...

And that night … to escape reality manifest outside my window I resorted to what I NEVER do while on the island –– I turned on the television. I watched the Greek news, bad Albanian soap operas, English films dubbed in Greek, anything to offset the sound of the unseen kitten’s wailing. It didn’t offset the thoughts, though … Was it in fear?  In pain?  Shouldn’t it have perished by now, no Mama, no food, no water?

Finally……..  in the evening of day three, it made it’s appearance.

Yes, there it was, just emerged from it’s snarled prison of bushes! I saw it from the veranda above, a tiny speck of white and ginger and calico perched in the low branch of a fig tree just outside the tangled copse!

wee foundling

At that very same moment, my future ally in a pending search and rescue also finally caught sight of the wee thing! Carla is a wonderful, rosy cheeked, matronly Swedish woman who was staying in the apartment below, and was, apparently,  the only other human within miles to hear 3 days and nights of frantic kitten screams. (… also an animal lover in need of a good night’s sleep!) Carla was on her tiptoes, peering over the wall after the kitten’s constant cries for help.

I heard her gasp aloud.

She looked up, our eyes met … thumbs up … we both smiled … and then we set to work …

the great kitty rescue (photo taken by Richard, our good friend from Munich)

Carla was all business. She marched right out over the construction mess in her going-out-for-the-evening clothes and fancy shoes to help me place planks of wood here and there that the kitty might use to make way from the tree by the bushes, to the higher ground where we might be able to catch it. Then she scared the living bejesus out of the kitty with sprays of water from a hose … sending it over a plank bridge and straight into my arms.

Pathetically tiny, the kitten was all bones, dehydrated, far too young to have been on it’s own all that time. She dove greedily into our offering of water, growling as she lapped it up after not having had any water or nourishment for three days. I held the bony little bit close to my heart so that it could absorb any warmth and life I had to give. A wild thing, she trembled in my hands, terrified.

safe harbor

But now what??  She was too small to eat kibble, we didn’t know how to easily come by goat milk – and we knew that our beloved landlady would have a fit if either of us chose to keep a foundling in our room.

“To zee fish market, to zee taverna!” Carla proclaimed!

Iannis, the owner of the fish market in the harbor, was known to take good care of strays there, feeding them fish and milk by day and giving them a safe place to get away from the harbor chaos. By night the cats all queued up to beg courteously from people dining at the neighboring taverna there at water’s edge.  So, Carla put the loudly protesting kitten into a bag and marched it down to the harbor and I watched, holding my breath as she set the tiny thing free … to face 5 fully grown cats and a forest of human legs there at the taverna. As if its last 3 days weren’t trauma enough. The kitten promptly ran off into the nearby bush.

My heart sank.

But that was the best that we could do.

I walked past the market early the next morning, hopeful, but not really expecting to see the kitten there. But there she was, quiet, her belly round and full, her tail up at full sail. By evening she was practicing leaping in and out of a small urn filled with fishing line and playing in a wild kitty abandon with two other tiny kittens all along the front steps of the market.

In just days she was adopted by a thin, black mama cat who allowed her to nurse alongside her own babies –– or perhaps this was one of her own, gone missing?

new life

Over the next few weeks I watched our foundling grow and thrive, observed her learning to beg for a bite of something at the taverna alongside her new Mama, saw her hanging out with all of the ‘big kids’ at the market’s morning rally when the fishermen brought in their catch. And often saw her sleeping in a soft, warm pile of kittens … She was safe. This one had a chance.

Of course I hope to see Psipsina and Koukla and the rest of the gang next spring when I return – I am always hopeful, but have learned over the years to expect nothing and just do what I can for those I find in my path.  There will be another story to tell, there always is, but I hope that along with some tale surely fraught with peril, I will be able to report that Psipsina came dancing to the jingle jangle of my bracelets, and Koukla has grown into a fine fattie who still likes to dream of lovely cat things while curled in my lap … and that there is a young white and ginger calico gal, sprawled in the sun on the fish market steps with the blacks and grays and oranges, stuffed with fish and goat milk, who seems to be winking at me as I walk by…

The Rev. Djuna Cupcake

It’s not easy to pack when there is a (very sad) 75 lb. dog sitting in one’s bag.

I had to look twice as I waltzed by the guest room en route from the office to kitchen for more coffee. Well, I’m not sure I waltzed at that time of the morn, I more likely was dragging in body, waltzing in mind, but no matter how I got from there to there, I did catch a large blur of black in the periphery as I passed the room. I was trying to weed out a passable lot of clothes-for-life-on-a-Grecian-isle from a hump of stuff piled on the bed.  The only place for my bag was on the floor.

And Djuna was sitting in it.

He frets a bit when ‘the bags’ come out … he knows well what it means. If I could take him with me – I would. In a heartbeat. But he is not a portable dog and will have to stay behind here on the farm to help Paul make sense of all of the chores and keep the animal-family in line.

If Paul is my soul-mate and the horses are my spirit …  if the cats are my familiars and the goats are a humorous conundrum …

Djuna is my heart.

He came to us almost 10 years ago. We’d been invited to a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with friend’s.

“Did you see the puppies?” Che asked.

Puppies?

I don’t even remember dinner. I only remember being smothered in a warm pile of 3 week old pups, all puppy breath and soft groans and grunts. I sat still, happily stroking soft puppy bellies, wondering what they dreamt about.

Paul and I decided on the drive home – after the pups were peeled off and I was dragged away – that it was time to bring a new companion into our lives. Old Lady Callie was aging and could use an intern – for all involved, it would be just perfect.  So I set my sights on a cute, fat little female, black with white tipped paws …

… who took no interest in me, whatsoever! I didn’t want another male dog.  I’d always been graced with the company of females, other than our rescued ‘terror’ Shorty and he never helped ‘male’ win over ‘female’ in my heart. Dear, complicated little Short-man.

3 weeks went by and each time I visited the pups (Often. Che started to wonder if I had moved in permanently.) I sought out that little girl, even though this other little black pup – a BOY – was the one to squiggle over to me to cover me in happy licks.  How blind was I?

When the day came to make ‘the’ choice I watched the pups from afar, now a pack of rolling, tumbling energy. I can watch puppies play forever.  They all were now were able to run about, albeit clumsily on their short, 6 week old legs and as I walked toward to squealing mass of delight looking for my little girl, here came that darned male pup, rolling head over heels as he tripped on his own paws.

And then he sat on my feet.

contemplating 'balls' at a young age ...

So – Djuna Cupcake came home with us. He was mentored by old Callie for the first year of his life, (In the dignified arts of ‘how to properly care for one’s Humans’ and ‘how to steal tomatoes from the vine and carefully pick berries from the brambles’) until she left us for those greener pastures.  He was schooled in the finer arts of dog play and general mayhem by the neighbors’ Jack Russell, dubbed Peenie,  who seemed to live with us much of the time for about 5 years … she taught Djuna how to dive through the cat door, which he did with great joy until he grew too large to fit any longer. He was taught how to behave properly by Mistress Lily, the Queen cat who always kept the dogs of the family in line, and because of his impeccable behavior he eventually earned the title of ‘honorary cat’.  The cats all love him.

Being born with the genes of both Border Collie and Labrador retriever has left Djuna with amazing intelligence, but also great conflict.  We joke that he’s got a bit of the Dr. Heckyll/Mr. Hyde syndrome going – Dr. Border Collie by day (all business, focus, job oriented) … Mr. Lab (mellow cuddle bug) by night.

Mr. Lab by night ...

But he has a job, and that keeps him happy. He keeps us in order, metes out our farm duties and shadows our every move. (Hey hey hey turn THIS spigot on! I have to keep you safe from this snake that looks like a hose!  Now … isn’t it time to turn out the Horse? How ‘bout I get pony for you? The birds the BIRDS let’s feed the birds – now!!! Want me to get that goat away from your roses?  Aren’t we supposed to be IN the car NOW?  And what about the BALL?)  When both Paul and I are home, he is more relaxed and will actually sleep in – on the bed – with whichever one of us gets to enjoy that pleasure. And sometimes we are dragging him off the bed, late for work!  Mr. Lab sticks around until about 10 AM, and then Dr. Border Collie is down to business until the chores are done and the dusk has settled.

He is quite smart.  He was able to figure out how to stuff 3 balls in his mouth at one time as a 6 month old. He worked on that one for a few weeks and happened to master it at the exact moment that I had the camera in hand.

We only saw him do that one more time and then he was on to the next challenge. He knows Greek. – Sit, please! Do you want to play with your ball now? Let’s go to the barn and see the horses!  Shall we feed the birds now? Now? Let’s go in the car!  –  All, in Greek.  He learned English far too quickly and because of his ‘all business’ nature, would anticipate our every move. So we started to spell words like ‘bird’ and ‘ball’ and ‘car’ … But then he learned how to spell.  So, as Paul and I are students of Greek, we started practicing our minimal skills on him.

But, well … now he knows Greek better than you do.

Djuna 3-balls

As you know, the U.S. has been under a strange sort of ‘Home Security Alert’ of varying levels and colors since 9-11-01.Well, Djuna has devised a sort of ‘Home Security Alert’ system of his own.  If both Paul and I are ‘in country’, meaning he sees us both here, at home on a daily basis, his threat level is quite low.  He knows for certain that we are both safe. NO worries.  If we go out and leave him behind, he will greet us at the door upon our return with his bowl, or one of his ‘babies’, a stuffie, in his mouth. Mr. Hedgehog who grunts, or Mrs. Duck who quacks.  This is ‘Baby level, threat 0’

But then, we move to ‘Sock level’.  If we are gone for a longer period of time, say we’re off to a gig, he will begin to fret just a bit – and then we move to ‘sock level, threat 1’.  He greets us with a pair of my socks in his mouth.

The threat level goes up from there to ‘sock level 2’, 2 socks … and ‘sock level 3’, 3 socks…

But if one of us is away, far away as Paul has been for this last week and I am about to be for a month, the level changes altogether. Not only is Djuna my constant shadow, if left behind when I go out for errands, a movie, to visit friends and must leave him behind, he will greet me at the door with MOST EXTREME SECURITY THREAT level – 3 socks AND a wad of my underwear in his mouth…

I know that he is thinking – very clearly – How In The World Can I keep This Stupid Human Of Mine Safe When I Cannot Be With Her Every Moment? He does not trust me on my own.

Don't bother my person, she is working ...

I’ve had to give him his own little basket of socks and discarded undies so he doesn’t abscond with and slobber all over my favorites.

Paul is home now, but I am packing to go off to take a long drink from my Endless Sea. I will recharge and heal, work on ideas for a new novel, laugh a lot and miss my loved ones, drink too much and float on my back on waters of warm glass, always looking up. I will feed and care for the furred street urchins with Djuna, my heart of hearts, and his kitties in mind.  Djuna is on Highest Security watch now, and cannot look at my packed bag without then looking at me with sad eyes that make my heart break.  And often, with a sock and several undies in his mouth.  Reminding me. He is good at that.

But I know that in days he will recover, he will realize that he still has a human here to care for. Paul and the rest of the clan will stay safe under the ever watchful eye of The Reverend Djuna Cupcake (yes, somehow he ended up with one of those certificated from the Universal Life Church … if you need someone to marry you …) and I will know that all is well in my world.

I will try to post something along my way, some notes from an endless sea …

Look up!

The Queen of Everything ~ 2011

Last week my friend Maggie’s Belle had a birthday – she turned 33. Now that is really not so old, unless you are a horse, which Belle is … a ranch horse, a foundation bred Quarter Horse born on the prairies of Calgary. Maggie was working on a ranch as a young woman, learning the cowgirl’s tools of the trade from her mentor, a kind horseman man named Bill.  She had always figured her ‘once in a lifetime horse’ to be a flashy, shiny sorrel, so when Bill gave her a young and talented, flashy, shiny sorrel colt to train … and subsequently sell (a right of passage for those who want to be in the business of horses) … she was elated. She trained George to perfection and then sold him for good money. It was that ‘selling’ part that broke her heart. She was nursing grief around her loss of the beautiful George right around the time that one of Bill’s old mares gave birth … and a plain, brown filly slipped into the world and into Maggie’s heart. Bill, feeling so sorry for Maggie in her sadness, gifted her then and there with that little foal – and Belle has been by her side ever since. Belle and Maggie grew up together … showing, working cattle and riding the wild lands, and have traveled many a mile from there to here over those 33 years. Belle helped to raise Maggie’s boys, and even gave her that flashy sorrel filly she had always wanted, but they never quite bonded in the way that Belle and Maggie had – so it turns out that Maggie’s ‘once in a lifetime horse’ all along was Belle. The wise and beautiful old Belle.

Maggie and Belle

There is something truly mystical about the horse-human bond. My own love affair with horses started when I was about 5 – with no mother to nurture me, my grandmother made sure that the delightful things, like the sea, and books and dogs and horses figured largely in my life. Black Beauty, National Velvet, a wee fat (real) pony named Merrylegs and a large, gray horse name Seagull started it all and I was infected straight away with the magical and lifelong ‘girl lives and breathes horses’ disease. I learned to ride well and speak their language and as I grew, any extra time I could muster was spent in their company. I lived and breathed the amazing beasts and would clean a barn full of stalls and a roomful of tack if I had to in exchange for lessons or show entries or just to give me those added precious moments to spend being close to them.  I could watch them for hours; at work or at play; asleep flat out like dogs, squeaking their pleasures with legs twitching as they galloped through the air of their dreams. Sometimes I would sit quietly in a sun-drenched pasture full of horses, in calm ecstasy as I watched, breathing their beauty and magic into my soul until, enchanted by their grace I would drift to a peaceful sleep … awakening to the sight of 12 horse muzzles, drooped and quivering in their own rest, just inches away and circled in protection all around me …

River and Tempest and Elle 1995

They are yet another safe harbor in my Endless Sea.

I celebrate the old ladies … I’ve known quite a few of them, calm and patient and wise, fully in their spirit and all with more personality than most Human people I know.  Today, my own old one, Tempest, turns 24 … 24 going on 5, and I would say that the ‘patient and wise’ parts will probably come along to her at some later date. Neither of those adjectives describe my old girl! However, now at about the age of 70 in people years, she is a Grand Dame, opinionated and certain, surely the Queen of Everything and Everyone here and I think that, were she human, she would be much like my dear grandmother – benevolent and bawdy, benignly dictatorial and full of spirit, and insisting, at the age of 90, upon setting sail to Venezuela – on a freighter, not a comfy cruise ship.
Tempest is one that you must always ask, and never demand things of.  She came from sadness, abuse and neglect … a friend found her starving in a field when she was just a two year old filly. She was a royally bred Quarter Horse that opportunists wanted to make into a show horse and use up quickly, for fast money. People who knew her story enlightened me – she was trained brutally at an age that no one had any business even being on her back. As she is quite the willful girl, we are certain that she did not ‘submit’ to the abusive handling, did not do what was demanded of her and this is why she was punished … ridden in a twisted wire bit and left saddled in a stall, her head tied around tightly to the right side of her girth one day, and to the left the next and on another, down to the girth, between her legs. She was kept like this in her prison cell, a 10×10 box lined with electric wire. She is know to have torn boards from the sides of a hitchcock pen … an oval, walled ring used for training … in a desperate fury, effectively ending that session by trying to kill her trainer.
Eventually those folks went broke and tossed their horses into a grassless, barren field to fend for themselves. Found and rescued by my friend Michelle, they were bags of bones and covered in balls of mud, with skin and hair peeling off in great patches.

Baby T 1990

I inherited Tempest – sullen at the time, with little use for most Humans and certainly harboring a hatred of men in cowboy hats.  One luscious autumn day Michelle asked me to go riding with her. As I was an experienced rider, she put me on a young, gorgeous copper chestnut filly. “She needs a calm and steady hand.” she’d said. I rode the little mare in a simple hackamore, a gentle bitless bridle, and tried to stay out of her way. Crow-hoppy and balky when we first set out to ride the 600 oak and cow studded acres, she eventually relaxed and softened and we had a good time together – I discovered that she loved to be sung to, morphing more and more with each verse from a tight, ear-pinned ball of funk to a happy, forward-eared delight with a loose swinging walk. After our ride, she stood quietly while I brushed her and whispered love into her ear, her head hanging low with eyes closed and 2 inches of tongue hanging out as she sucked every last bit of pleasure from a bit of apple I’d given her … Michelle walked up to us and with a devil’s grin told me that Tempest had never gotten along with anyone. Ever. “A pishy mare.” she said, one who rarely had a rider for she tended to throw balking and bucking fits. Bucking fits that usually abruptly put an end to the ride. And then, she told me Tempest’s story.
“Do you want her?” she asked.

So ………. the little red mare has been with me ever since. It took a year for me to quietly gain even just a little more of her trust. And then another year.  And even another to get through issues and bad memories that came to surface in one way or another with almost every ride. There were times that I was plainly frustrated with her. She was not the warm, outgoing personality that my ‘horse of a lifetime’, a young thoroughbred named Bliss, had been – she was a challenge, not only to work with but to my patience. Sometimes I couldn’t even tell if she liked me at all and I wanted to just give her little miserable self away.

Thankfully I was able to see that, were I to sell her, she would most likely be used up as a breeding machine just because of her fortunate genes, OR she would end up as someone’s dinner in Japan because most people found no good use for a crabby and sometimes dangerous horse. I was also able to see that she was my teacher. Horses are Divine Inspiration … far better for me than any meditation practice or Master could have been in helping me learn to flow, to be, to be present, to be still, to be patient, to give without expecting anything back … Tempest gave me all of this and more.

We’ve been through a lot in 20 years … from long meanders through endless green fields, to the metaphysical and artistic discipline of dressage which, despite her bulky QH build, she took to like a chunky ballerina while quite obviously loving the

Tempest and Elle 2000

challenge … I could almost see her brain churning as she mulled a new test of her abilities, and feel a palpable joy in her when she figured it out. In that span of time Breelyn, who half jokingly calls Tempest one of her furry siblings, has gone from girl-child to amazing Woman, we’ve endured the deaths of 4 of our beloved dog-family members, 6 of the cats and several Humans … and she has survived a debilitating trailer wreck and the removal of a sarcoid tumor by an eye, hoof abscesses and check ligament injuries … several corneal ulcers that required weeks of doctoring requiring attentions every 3 hours, 24 hours a day … I’ve learned to give, and she has learned to give in, ultimately learning to trust that we are only here to help her, and to know that she will never again be hurt by the hand of a human. She is a bit stiff these days and going gray here and there, and is ‘retired’, spending days at leisure in a lovely field with ‘her’ pet, the pony Molly, who quite good naturedly allows Tempest to boss her around. But really, under that ‘Queen of Everything’ routine, with the squeals and sneers that no longer foretell of anything sinister – they’ve morphed into things like “(squeal) please put that pan of food down here now!”, or “(sneer) You dare to brush me, before you’ve kissed me?” – she’s really just a big, red softie with a wide grin, the empty shells of old habits and an addiction to sucking on sugar, or carrot, or banana, or a scrap of anything edible in absolute ecstasy with ears askew and eyes closed, tongue hanging, even humming sometimes.

Big Bad Tempest. She still does not often reach out to people – but we know her well enough now to understand that if she chooses to just come close to you, quite close and stand quietly with her eyes closed, you have passed her test with 10 gold stars – you have been honored by one who has traveled a long road to trust. We all, Paul and Bree and I, Molly and the dog, Djuna, the goats and the cats, are her herd, and she is at peace.
I’m watching she and the pony doing their spring ‘dance for joy’ in the wash of green outside my window.  She has lost most of the dullness of last season’s coat and is glowing dappled copper in the bits of sun that sneak out from behind clouds. While the squat pony bucks and farts, Tempi does her ‘airs above the ground’, caprioles and pirouettes, leaping and twirling, kicking out, head high with her tail a up like a gorgeous flag and snorting loudly as she floats in grace over the grass.
I imagine that the next 10 years will slow these expressions – but I have a hunch that they will also offer some of that great wise calm that Maggie’s Belle has now.
The Queen of Everything, I celebrate you and your great, free spirit today.  I celebrate you and the wondrous depth of a horse’s heart … and I celebrate you and all of the old gals in your wisdom and beauty,and all of that which is yet to come …

smiles ...