28: In honour of Audrey-Hepburn-Mouse, RIP (post from September 2019)

I must have written this on 22nd or 23rd September last year.  I don't think I posted it. I want to, so here it is. The tree I planted for her at the time has just begun to leaf. It's sprouty and all over the place. I think she may be growing through it. Thanks, Mousticle. Still miss you, always love you, little silly dog. 

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A Man Who Is Gentle With Dogs

First photo I ever saw of her

It’s been quite a day. This morning, after resisting it for a few days, I returned with my beautiful, skinny little girldog, Mouse (aka Audrey Hepburn), to the vet. She has been vomiting a lot. I thought she just had a grass fetish, and I failed to notice how much weight she’d lost. It’s a lot, and she’s lost even more over the last few days. She’s very thin, with her little bony pelvis all pointy and her ribs showing. Looking back, I’m embarrassed to say that I’d noticed quite some time ago that she was losing weight, but that I hadn’t taken it in as an ongoing thing. She was still eating well until this morning.

She was sprightly on our walk today. I let her off the lead and she ran around joyfully after shaggy old Ossian and her beefcake sister, Baba. She hadn’t eaten and she was a little bit reticent in places, but running free, she was boisterous and waggy.

She wasn’t keen on going back. Last week, a gentleman who seemed quite friendly at the start stuck a cold stick up her bum. She wriggled it out before the temperature was fully taken. And then he gave her an injection that made her writhe and bark (quite normal, he said, and it did stop her being sick, but it wasn’t nice). So in the waiting room, she looked like a completely different dog. Cowering, her skinny made her skeletal, where tail-up and dressage-stepped in the open field, she’d looked lean and healthy.

In the waiting room, she shrunk next to me and made to leave whenever the lead was slack. After a while, a man came out from the vet we would later see with two cats in a carrier. Mouse, enemy of cats, didn’t so much as sniff at them. Not so the man. This timid girl pulled towards him, gazing up. He was grey-haired, soft-eyed and solid. Quite pleasing to look at, but more to sense. He had a gentle groundedness that Mouse and I both loved. His wife was there – it wasn’t a hit-on thing – but Mouse was smitten. Before long, she was locked underneath is leg, leaning in with all of her sligthness. He held her gently, laying his hand softly on her scruff and on her chest, stroking and then just letting her be there while we talked. I could see how safe he made her feel and I was grateful to him for that.  
He made me feel safe too. That, I thought, that is the kind of energy I want too, in my man. That solid, unapologetic masculinity, that protective gentleness. Fatherly without control. Husbandly, perhaps. I don’t quite have the word. Gentle with dogs.

He was so sweet and very loving with the Mouse (who is a dog). His wife commented on how all dogs love him and I felt such gratitude to him for soothing her in a way I couldn’t.

Later, talking with the Eagle Owl again, I was drawn into a yearning and a sudden knowing. First, that I want this energy in my life, that I yearn for it, and know its welcome touch. This is good news. With that energy (his, but not his… the generic form of his energy – GentleMan-Wife, you have nothing to fear from me).

 I felt in my body how much I want to be held in such safety, and I felt how it would feel – to lean back into a body that can take my weight, whose active, gentle presence supports me like a wall, with warmth and softness and with affection.

Two things were clear:

First,that I want this in a man in my life – someone whose pleasure it is to hold me and to receive my nurture – a sweet flavour of a different giving energy, flavoured with the feminine. I fantasised how I would feel invincible with someone of that strength and gentleness on my side, ready to step in.

Second, that I have that energy too. That I can make that in my own body, generate that feeling of always being held, of someone (in fact, me) having my back, with loving eyes and a hand resting gently on my scruff or my chest, saying ‘I’ve got you. Do your thing. I’ll love you whether it lives or dies. I’m here’. Divine masculine, says Eagle Owl, and it feels divine. Full of respect and nurture.

I felt elated. Today has been rich in so many senses of the word. On agreeing to leave Mouse at the vet’s, I had some fear. I’ve left myself short for emergencies, or even basics. I’ve had a temporary rock-bottoming and it has, I think begun to bounce.

A beloved friend stepped in and agreed to lend me the money I need – for now – to keep the girl in care. Not only that, she took the time to say wonderful things to me, things I really needed to hear. I find myself turned around – from a feeling of deep lack, and fear that I’ve been rejecting to no avail (instead of loving it – aaaahhhh, such gifts to realise) to one of lushness, provision, flow. I sense something I have been striving to feel and missing, feeling it tickle my fingers as it slipped though… and now here it is, fat and heavy in my hand, weighing it with meaning. Here is everything you need. You can have what you need but you must must must learn to receive. By rejecting this receiving out of pride, you turn away untold riches at the gate, all dressed up and ready to come and dance with you. But no, you say, I must provide for myself, I must fight my own weakness, I must, I must, I must…

And so the tension, shame and lack had won the game, but with this cut-wide openness to flow and to what is, I sense that the change has come. A blissful, blessed time.

Mouse is still at the vet’s. She’s being well looked after and has a drip to fill her little body with fluids and keep her well. She’s having tests. Whatever happens (and of course I’m worried – she’s my sweet nugget of dogness, and such a gentle thing herself), I hope I will accept it. I love her, and I send my love to her. She hasn’t had to strive to earn that bounty, and I hope she’s wise enough (and so much dog, so little human) to let it in and keep on filling her up.

27: Sad Magician

Teaching improv to homeschooled kids this morning (even though they're officially on holiday right now) and grateful for the chance. We were playing with characters. They came up with loads. Among my favourites were evil hippy, excited executioner, lazy superhero and sad magician. Sad magician was a proper delight, lots of lacklustre card wrangling and a good few tears. I find it very odd teaching improv as a new skill to a small group of young people. I don't think it's ideal, myself. But they do enjoy it and that's the thing. Zoom has been a real gift. I'm delighted with its flex.

The sun was bakey today. Dogcheeks had her tongue almost dragging along the ground. The dogs are having separate walks at the moment, because cheeky lady silkchops is far from angelic of a walk. She's the anxious decision-maker, so she tells the shaggy, laid back protector what his job is. When there's a cat or another dog, any natural propensity to chase or bark (of which there is ample) is ten-folded by her dog-language instrucion to protect the shit out of her/bite the cat. She gives him proper little rile-em-up bites at him, sending him semi-rabid. 

Hunkering into my thighs with two shouting hounds straining at the leash while some pert little chihuahua tiddles past, I have a glimpse of what it might be like having a tantrumming toddler in a swanky cafe. So they've been separated. They're not allowed to sit together right now. It's a shame - I love walking with both - but it is much more relaxed this way. Without her bully-boy, my girl trots along with pleasing poise like a dressage pony on its parade. She makes mostly happy howls when she sees other dogs, and wags her whole body up them. She is easy. On his own, he is also more chilled, though occasionally a bit of a dick with certain breeds (with gentitals intact). It's for the best. 


I have started my tax return. I shall have finished it within the week. I've done this only once before. It made my year so, so, so much lovelier! I actulally enjoy it very much once I get strapped in to do it. So onwards. May this time of shut-inness bring other such mental wellness boni. Because not thinking about doing your tax return is a proper gift. 

26: Perspectives

This afternoon, kissed by the sun, returning from the beautiful garlic-green banks of the river into a wide field, I felt a nag and kept Baba-girl on the lead. At the lip of the next field we both spied three deer, still at first, then running. The were 45 metres or so away - small fry for a lean and zippy dog - bounding up the side of the field. 

They waited half way and nipped through the hedge, out of sight behind it, then I saw their heads above it, bounding back down. Baba was transfixed. She lay on the ground, staring at the spot we'd last seen them.
Minutes later, they (or three identical deer) were right over the other side. Neither of us had seen them pass us. I watched them for ten minutes or so. Baba (the most beautiful, but not always the wisest of creatures) was still transfixed on their last-sighting spot, fully ignoring their actual presence in a new field. I was reminded of myself, sometimes fixed on something I know to be true, because once perhaps it was. 

I'm aware of the need to meditate more, to centre, to ground in, so that the small trials of nowness don't tip me so easily off balance. I am meditating some. Such things are not instantaneous. Nor are they fixes. They are long, slow dissolvers of ingrained perspectives. There are rarely fireworks or other such epiphanies, just a gradual noticing of what used to be no longer seeming necessary, a reshaping of the eyes that see, not the objects they observe. 

This morning, a wonderful conversation with my beloved Victoria Sandison... a salve, a boon, a sweet nut by all accounts. And then a podcast practice with the inimitable bag of wise that is Sammy S. And later still, cousin Ruth. Thanks, tech, for the wonders you make possible. Thank you, good friends, for the perspectives you make possible.

Important post-script: current names for my dog:
Official name: 
Baba Yaga Claybourne (Baba)
Also: 
Barbara, Babs, Bubba, Bob
Chops
Barbara Streisand/Barbara Streisand Dog
Babaji, Ji, G
Baby Girl, Sweet Girl, Lady-girl, Girlface
Sausage, Sos-chops, Sos-mix, Sos
Dogs (collectively with the Handsome Mr Chops)

In case you wanted to know.

Post 25: An Exceedingly Post-Modern Apocalypse Now

Great skies, there've been

It's the end of the world as we know it. Post that. It's after the end of the world as we know it, or, in some ways, so I may hope. Because if all this was for anything, surely it was to make some lasting changes to the rabid, grasping, consume-fest we've been partaking in. 

And if one thing makes a difference, it's gratitude. Everybody's doing it! So let's get in there. For my own mental wellness, I'm starting up this gratitude blog again, and lordy, it's time, it's time, it's time. If 'everybody practising gratitude' is the one thing that sticks from this whole thing, that will be a fine result. We don't get to choose everything that sticks, but we do get to choose that. Because nobody can practise your gratitude for you. It's up to you. Do it. Or do what you like. I'm in. 

I am blessed with a dog who is Actually Golden. She glimmers on the tips or her fur-hairs. She is silky of cheek, howly in a good way (a spoon-nosed happy gr-howl, she makes, when she is pleased to see you, be you dog or person) and she barks at tractors, wheelbarrows and anything upside-down. She flumps her body onto any part of mine, sleeps in the C of my side-sleeper legs whenever she can (above the covers).

I'm also blessed with the company of a scruffy prince of a dog, straggled, doe-eyed and solid as a wall (more in the way he is than the meat of him - he's more fur than anything else). He does and indignant growlette with a backwards walk when he wants 'pudding' after his meal. He has brains to burn and he communicates his wishes clearly. This one's a bed-burrower. He'll make a very quiet barklet, waits for the lift of a peek of duvet, then in he gets and settles along the bottom half of the bed, pack pressed against my legs. 

I realised today, in conversation with two fine beings Emily and Tim, that one thing I miss since 'Two Metres' became a thing, is touch. The uncomplicated nourishment of it. Hugs of greeting and goodbye, playful touch, companionable touch, massage (I have been LOVING giving more massages, was about to start up a massage, yoga and coaching combo thingy, with an embodiment focus). So these two dogs bear the brunt of my gratitude today for their willingness to nuzzle, play and love me stroking them. You hairy little saviours, you. I love you.