bleak house

November 24, 2010

Alone on the ranch for about five days in the freezing cold weather the water stopped today and a lamb froze to death and this morning when the guy came to shave Possums feet he said you gotta get him some protection from the wind because this old guy is shivering. So it was one of the most psychologically bleak experiences that I have had but as Sage says just think of those pioneers in Wyoming or Nebraska or wherever all alone by themselves in God know where and Brian says human beings were different then.

I’ve been digging into the dharma texts that I checked out of the Portland library. And they tell me to contemplate things like suffering, impermanence. So amid this bleak environment it seemed like the whole situation was there to offer me examples of the universal truth of suffering. The lamb was shivering and dying, the other four lambs were hungry for milk, the donkey was shivering, the sheep were covered in frozen shit, struggling to stay together as a flock, the blackberries were crushing all the other plants and then themselves shriveling into dry sticks.

The wind blows. This old guy is shivering, says a clean shaven deputy sherriff moonlighting as a horse and donkey man. Lambs bleat for food. Cold air blows overhead, to freeze the Willamette Valley, Idaho, and Texas after that. I putter around, throwing out hay, filling baby bottles of milk. Then I’m at my shrine trying to tell myself that the yellow cloth that silohuettes the Buddha is the sun. I try to breath in the suffering of the whole farm as a thick black smoke., just like the boddhisattvas do. The electric heaters hum along. Crawling under two poly-filled comfortors and a sleeping bag, I still wear a jacket so that my arms won’t be cold holding my book out in the air of my frigid bedroom. The house could burn in the night and I will have to climb out the window and slide down the icy shingles and crashland on the deck below. That’s if I wake in time to save myself from death by flame or smoke inhalation.

The cats are ripping wild birds apart and strewing them around the office, the floor of the hot tub room. Are these for me to find? Trophies and testaments to their prowess? I like it better when they leave shredded mice. One of these ferocious ones is with me now as I write, playing with a ball of wool on the throw rug, now knocking down a piece of particle board and jumping away. The cartoon cat on TV steps on a pitchfork, triggers a piece of plywood, and is flattened. The mouse escapes.

I rig plywood and a blanket to keep the wind off the jackass. I pitchfork the hay to the front of the feeders so that the sheep can reach it with their heads thrust through the steel bars. I lounge a little in the electric heat of the office and then heat up the cast iron skillet that’s been on the stove for two days. Roast beef in barbecue sauce and sauteed vegetables. Or maybe just a cup of tea and a saccharine muffin would be better. I have to feed myself before I can feed the animals.