Time to relax

So maybe in the midst of not getting much done, there is a rambling of sorts about  - nothing at all.

Not knowing where I am or where to be in this time where everything seems to be all at once which renders me almost unable to do anything in the midst of projects piles up way above my head. Standing Rock and all those with that purpose, child labor and trafficking, the Russians and Chinese and the mess in Europe and the Middle East, the microbiome and genetic engineering still in infancy, and what of the oceans and animals everywhere...I could go on and on and on, including the acts of kindness and animal saving and restoration in the face of overwhelming odd against...
Black holes, and gravity and all the ancient myths and miracles and times, mushrooms and poop eating dogs, hawks eating a sweet chicken I was not able to protect, forever sitting on my lap with her soft feathers that I am stroking, forever running and trying to get away from the hawk who needed to eat, someone's dog dying likely of poison but they will never know because ...they could not afford vet care nor autopsy, so many lives everywhere and ....so many events and it is all always happening now, all of it and my mind can't grasp it

no wonder

we come back to the simple things..

the breath, this sitting here typing, this guitar playing soft sounds

There were times in my life I had direction, focus, energy, purpose.

Now it is all uncertain.

Transitioning, but no idea into what...holding on to some semblance of functionality...at least those chickens need to be cared for,  meals to be prepared.

It feels like my insides are empty as space with vast galaxies while this heart keeps beating I remember Tom Brown's teachings.

I am no genius but that does not mean I can't go insane - except there is nothing there.

There is nothing I can do, there is nothing to be done, it happens according to some unwritten code
My brother wrote today, I feel always connected to him.

Even those ideas of Love and family are no different, just part of the labyrinth through the stillness. This body needs care. This body is hurting, but then, it has been worse.

Sensing weird seeming things inside. Something inside me keeps coming back to this feeling of peace, as I am doing what I am supposed to do, all the while missing some aspects of what is called Life, and walking with horses, but I do smell the rain and taste the nectar of the Gods which as its main ingredient contains quince juice, warm quince juice with some honey and coconut bliss - nectar of the God's who would have ever guessed that this fruit was so divine. Silence and uncertainty but I am getting my paperwork together imagining that it will be less burdensome for those still here when this vessel has ceased to be inhabited by that mysterious thing we call life.
I have no painting days, but there is gardening and something to be done all year long. Maybe there need to be gardening days and images of the beauty and maybe I do need that new camera I keep thinking about, for the close-up shops, the clarity, to get better focus for one reason only: to show the beauty that surrounds us in any place, anywhere in all things.

In the end, I don't want to hurt anyone, even if part of me does, I do want to feel that kind hand on my face, grateful for the laughter and jokes and art and music in my life. there might be 2 young cat coming to live here, i wonder how that will change things.

Relaxing into it - for in truth, there is nothing else I can do that doesn't lead to more pain.
I have to get up so early tomorrow, this will need to end -  my neck and back looking forward to the evening routine on the floor. Tomorrow, which may or may not ever come for me, but still, there is food for the chickens in the feed storage this evening, and they will be eating well, thanks to help today, where is this longing coming from to just sit and breathe...feeling the universes inside the
stillness in which it is all happening.

All is blessed, all is suffering

That which animated her

Today I was present at a death, or more correctly - present in the moment when "that which animated her" left the body.

Here is the story:

A few days ago I noticed one of the blue hens was not doing so well. She is a daughter of a Sicilian Buttercup, the sweetest chickens. I did a few things to diagnose and help her, but last night, she was too weak to get up on the roost, though she made it to the coop alright. I helped her, but later found she had been pushed back to the ground. I put her back into the safe "hospital" space, where she settled nicely, like the night before. Earlier I even went back to the house for a few choice bits she was interested in eating. I picked another hen friend to spend the night next to her again.

This morning she was half sitting, half lying on the other side of the only 3 inches of the ground roost. She was weak, opened here eyes to look at me a few times, I gently touched her, made a few sounds, told her I loved her, she even recognized the food bits I showed her, but it was clear, her time of eating any however tempting looking food, was over. Mostly she closed her eyes for longer and longer times. She seemed in a comfortable position, so I let her be.

I found things to do around the coops, some chores had to be done away from it. She was safe but surrounded by the usual chicken sounds of her family. Her breathing, whenever I checked, was even and nonlabored.  Not once was there a gasping, no spasms,  - no  outward sign of any distress.

Checking whenever I passed by the space she was in, her breathing was even.
Around lunchtime, I knew I had to go to the house for a bit ...she must be close I thought, and so I stood looking at her and telling her about her life as a little chick, that she got to be under the wings of a mama hen, grow up with little chick siblings, the got to pick and scratch and be out foraging with the flock. She laid eggs, She was beautiful....and I told her, and: you were loved. ...Then I thought ...wait a minute...she is still here, breathing ...and changed it to: You ARE loved.

Then I closed my eyes and softly chanted a sacred chant I had been taught by a shaman over 2 decades ago. I was turning her over to the spirit guides....then, eyes closed, I saw something white, as if smoke -  only it was not smoke but white moving slightly twisting gently coming from her body, or where the body would be if I opened my eyes and looked. This white became a huge chicken shape, hard to say with eyes closed...but maybe 3-4 feet tall? facing me, head slightly cocked, a well demarcated shape of a white so clean and pure and flawless, without any blemish, that I have ever seen. It did not seem to radiate, looked solid but was not...it was very very still, just there, a kind of a light only it was not any light I had ever seen.

The communication was - hey, it's me, I AM HERE. ....stillness, just looking....then:
this is what animated her (this meaning the white shape from which the communication seemed to come) and with that communication there was as if an ethereal glance towards the body. It was one of knowing,  of connection, of care, of saying don't violate it, honor it.

There was no thank you for this wonderful life, no sense of relief to be "free" or anything like that...only this - I'm here, it's me, - that which animated her, calm, serene, indescribability serene  and still, not dead, just still and here. ..a vague sense of kindness, or understand/wisdom/knowing ..but not the human sense and barely perceivable.

Then ..with my "looking" with eyes closed at the pure perfect white chicken shape standing here facing me - it began to seemingly dissolve with movements similar to smoke moving...into a background of moving white light ...something I could not see past.

When this started to happen ..."I" started thinking ...if this just happened, she is gone, no longer breathing, and I wondered ...and I opened my eyes ... she was no longer breathing. I looked and looked and something in me seemed to be perceving some micromovements, but no breathing. Beak still closed, eyes closed, no spasm or anything. Just like that...like I saw it, or rather, how it appeared for me,  that which animated her had left her, and gone back ..just like like that ...

I left her body there, surrounded by the sounds she knew, for a few hours, before burying her beautiful body where it will be transformed into part of the chicken garden and it's trees.

It was interesting how I felt at the same time less involved, less sorrow when holding and looking at the body, while at the same time more honoring of it than any other chickens I buried before.

I had seen that which had animated her ...and whether still connected on some level ...that had gone elsewhere.

Her matrix, her blueprint, not a chicken blueprint, it was HERs, it was  animating this one....and it went back where ...I didn't follow it.

A white like I have never seen
her perfect chicken shape
no flaw

... had gone, at the same time being  connected to what it manifested as dissolving without any sense of attachment. - selbstverstaendlich - is a German word that comes to mind, a words for which I know no translation.

So, that was "just" a chicken.

I always do orb "runs" for them, always ask the guides for the best possible outcome.

...and I wonder if all chickens, no matter how they lived, animals in general, have that which animates them leave their bodies with such equanimity, this feeling or sense I don't really have words for.

...and just now I wonder: how do we eat something like that - something this sacred, and if this one is so, they all are, it all is sacred. ...and why does it blow me apart in this seemingly sentimental fashion? ....

Life Lessons & Training. 

but then, regarding the eating of them ...there is such understanding from their side...there is nothing to worry about.

Chickens, Love and the Fear to Die

It was a rainy day, mostly, and staying in the coop this morning,  I noticed one of the chickens just standing around not looking well. She is a sweet one, acted well just a couple of days ago. And so it got triggered again - as it does every time, no matter what the emotional starting point is on the spectrum I go through: this looking at the inevitability of death, feeling the loss of THAT one,  - and then to: having someday to leave this earth, this game, this reality, just having to leave, and leaving everything and everyone behind ....going to - what? No matter what anyone tells you or what your belief system is, you don't ACTUALLY know, do you?

None of the "exercises" I have done have the same effect.

I never used to feel fear thinking of death or dying or being dead. These days I feel it, as my mother is turning 80, as more people close to my generation die every day, as I studied the ABD more - but when a chicken is looking unwell, when there is a prospect or perception of them suffering - "it" gets triggered ... and some deep deep strange sorrow, longing, remorse, ....followed by gratitude and ...ultimately, renewed resolve to LOVE ...it is a certain type of heaven and hell ...and at this point I am unsure what the fluck if going on with that.

Looking at death and dying personally - it makes so much sense why having children and a loving family or partner might be so comforting, so soothing when facing death. Something of you survives. If you don't have family, what will remain of your being here? Anything you did or thought or felt? What IS the actual effect you had on this world?

And then, walking up the driveway from the chicken yard - dear god, I wish I had been able to be kinder, not cause anyone any pain, ease suffering. No matter that you did the best you can, understood, you know you caused pain - I know I have.

But even with children and grandchildren ...when the sun goes nova and the earth ceases to exists - it'll all be gone.

In fact, will ANYTHING ever remain?

YES - I know that answer, but I cannot explain it.

For my own meaning, at this time, the closest I can get is - all that mattered is how you loved, that you loved ...it does not matter what ...

and I don't mean "loved ice cream", but that is okay too.

This love that is a deep, unexplained awe inspiring being expanding - quivering wonder,  remorseful forgiveness asking all encompassing something...

and gratitude - such gratitude, for having another day, this moment .....

and so this chicken - may or may not get better which the treatment I am giving it. I don't actually know how chickens feel their own bodies, illness and impending death. All I want is for them not to suffer, to not be in distress and maybe that is just a wish I have for myself. It helps to know, or at least think,  they have a good life here, how everyone and everything needs to die when it is their time, how there is pain and adversity in every life....and how everything dies - sometime.

I wonder then...what it is that makes an individual life well lived - when you are no Einstein, Mother Theresa, Diva or inspired outrageous artist, Alexander the Great or Archimedes type human or parent of some ...So many many many unknown lives through thousands, no, tens of thousands of years....unbelievably many and varied.

Lately there is a sense, even though I still do things, and do some of them well - ...what does it matter, life will go on without me soon enough.  There is just such a short short time we are given here. There is also ...and this is strange, SUCH a sense of insignificance that kindness, being kind and compassionate to anything living ...which it all is,  is the only thing that makes sense. Yes to joy, or fun or whatever, good job and being responsible....but without compassion to the living, without consciousness  - the LIFE - the everything that is ....it is just an overlay.

Anyway ...more than 70 chickens are living in the chicken garden - I care for them ...they will all die in the next few years ...

Dear god, Help me

And those are only the chickens I personally know. ...

There is a lesson here somewhere that has not been learned ....

Some portal not stepped through,

though at times the direction where it is headed seems obvious.

I KNOW it ...it is just beyond this "thing" ....

Then I do an orb run ... it helps

" For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They’re not brethren; they’re not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." Henry Beston, The Outermost House