Dog gone wild

Admittedly I look around at the world today, the parts of it comprised of people close to me, that I care about and know or have known, as well as those far and distant to me and I understand that what I am writing about here is probably small potatoes in the realm of loss, grief and personal tragedy. I know that, but I will write it anyway. As there is often great beauty and solace to be found, even in things that are sad. And sadness of any kind is profoundly felt and universal, regardless of the worldly cause.

It was August 7th when I started writing this. One week off the year anniversary of Piper's death-day. I was in the company of 2 good dogs, neither mine, looking over Elk lake, surrounded by birds of all sorts. It is therapy, it is penance, it is me offering care in the hopes that things will go better for these two souls than it did for him.

Now it is the morning of August 14th, and one year ago I was having a busy day filled with the ins and outs of taking care of my two young dogs, working, basking in the afterglow of a great trip to Clayoquot with good friends.

In the aftermath of Piper's death, which was brutal and bloody at the hands of another human being, I was knocked flat. Another's tendency towards a quick trigger finger was unlocked by my part of the equation. A door left open. The temptation of another dog being walked down the driveway, Piper darted out as I looked the other way. Ran himself down the road and up the wrong driveway into oblivion. Minutes later I found myself covered in his blood, cradling his limp warm body. The exit wound a gaping hole where his heart had been.

I cried daily for 6 weeks. Shocked by it. Unwound. My grief interupted over the months that followed by other things that rose up and shook me, in both lovely then devastating ways.

I never shed the feeling that I could not keep the creature left to me, Jespah, safe from the world. Perhaps that I could not love her in the way I should. Maybe it was cowardice or something else, but in the spring I gave her up too, though to a home that loves her and knows her as equally as I did. And is probably better for her.

One turn around the sun of a Piperless world is complete. That smooth-coated little black wild thing of a dog. He drove me nuts, defied everything that I had learned from my old dog/old soul Tarka. Taught me everything anew. He was insensitive, blazon, endlessly hyperactive.
Reckless, if a dog can be that.
We had come a long way he and I, had figured out how to harness his erratic energy. His blinding speed and unpredictable ranging.

Not quite enough to survive this human world.

He was wild but unbearably sweet. He thrived on touch, trusted infinitely the hands of humans and flopped like a seal across any lap that would take him. As he lay blown open by a bullet in my arms I remember thinking that he seemed the same. Heavy, limp, relaxed. A dark image perhaps, but it's the truth.

He was named after a bird. Chosen on a whim at the end of a late night drive home to Tofino. Passing Sandpiper Road in the dark wet of a west coast winter, the name of the dog I had had for less than a week arrived.

Work in Progress

That's what they say about life.

I seem to bounce back and forth between things. Between phases of belief and disbelief. Unwavering faith and utter despair. Trust and suspicion.

I spoke to two artists today and we talked about the way one of them would approach the act of painting not knowing what the end result would be. Deciding along the process of slathering acrylic on canvas what exactly she was painting guided only by what images emerged. How things would change along the way from whatever the original intent or idea really was.

Roses tight in the bud painted with a hammer, mountain top fires, and other such images haunt me. Stolen kisses amongst the firs. Cold fall rains. Wet dogs on beaches. Couches and movies barely watched.

(Given freely at the time. Stolen only in retrospect.)

With writing I am the same as that painter, at times not knowing what I have come here to say, to talk about. It is just a process of noticing, of taking note.
Of spilling with some measure.

I noticed today that the little metal tag on the hat that I've been wearing sea kayaking has become green with the salt in the air and spray of the ocean. Oxidized. I notice the way my face feels slightly frozen like it is after a visit to the dentist when I drink a glass of wine. During even. White wine more than red. Sparkling more than still.

I have forgotten how to trust that things are how they are 'meant' to be. Whatever that means. Like there is some grand pattern tracing and tracking the way my life should go. "Design".
Instead it is
Divergent.

We are pushed by tides and currents and suddenly caught up in worlds; bays, inlets that we did not expect to find or explore. And how these set us off on trajectories we did not see from the last leg of the journey. That we sometimes take the river all the way to the sea and find ourselves in salty instead of fresh. Or the opposite. Or without water at all, wandering in some desert we now understand as a vivid colourful richness of sun baked landscape, but previously only saw as arid, empty.

Feeling my way through this time. It is one of those when I cling to the decaying branch behind me, knowing it's truth but understanding that in order to move at all, release from the current state of unclarity is necessary. Letting go is critical. But I face thin air. No platform in sight. No certainty.

Other than a heart-in-throat drop into the unknown. I have made a business of wandering. So this new thing,
this staying put is showing me more about the unknown than the wandering ever did.

Uncertainty

I am sitting in an airport. Reflecting on the uncertainty that seems to be what life is all about. I am wondering right now whether anything is ever truly 'certain'.
We humans seem to like order, sense, meaning. We like to catalogue and file and take the scattered shards of things and put them back together. If that doesn't work we sweep them up and throw them away. We just can't abide anything open-ended, unresolved or unresolvable sitting out in plain view.

I am not sure why this is so, but I certainly feel the urge to find order and meaning and closure in things. But I am resisting that urge. When the mind returns once again to 'figure it out', explain something that has no explanation at present, something that is not closed or clear, I am just working on staying put. Allowing the mind to have a visit, but sending it on it's way again, past this messy pile of fractured experience. Perhaps it is allowed to pick up a piece or two, examine it, put it back down or maybe fit two previously unmatched pieces together, like a jigsaw puzzle. But it is not allowed to linger or force the cardboard images together in frustrated organization. Not allowed to force sense and order into something that as yet has neither. Learning to accept that there may never be answers to some things, that letting go and passing the rubble with kindness and a light hand is the biggest work in life.

Betrayal

It is deep. And shallow.
This emoticon-laden world of who did what.
Who shook me to the bones and lurched wildly into the wide open maw
of my heart?
Who opened, who closed.
But it is all in the imaginings. The mind playing tricks.
The telling of stories. Repeat.
This months past dreary-eyed remindering of something that was
Real
Promised
and Believed.

But is no longer.
Things pass, moments
Truths so absolute they are blinding become faint shadows
Of nothingness and dust
We run hard towards something and retreat
Fearful of our own boldness, suddenly remembering ourselves
And the laundry list of whatever it is we believe to be important.
But really is made up of should, can't, and if only

And sometimes I pretend to know what is real and true
But really I understand that I know nothing but the contents of
myself
That all the wishes and wonderings are simple and extravagant imaginings
Filtered through a tainted mirror
And more the stuff of stardust
Than they are of what is.

Any betrayal exists only by my own creation.

The Brink

I found this picture from 2008 (?). It is of me and my friend Gail on the Hood River in the NWT. There is something that struck me about my posture…leaning towards what lies below. Which by the way is a massive, mist-spewing waterfall. This was a slippery place, full of the potential for sliding towards death by rocky impact and water-pummeling. The rocks were deadly slippery, wet, slick and sloping in all directions. 

But I lean towards it, this precipice. 

I aspire to be brave. Not just in the physical sense. I know I am that. I am relatively fearless, blessed or cursed with that youthful sense of invincibility. It’s somewhat tempered since my twenties, but not appreciably. 

It is possible we are our own best teachers, if we care to notice. Our past selves have messages for our present selves. Insights, leading questions, inspirations, truths, invitations.

There is something here that reminds me of courage of the spirit and heart. It is like my body, captured in this photograph, is a missive to my 6 years later self. The way I am standing speaks of a bravery that I was not aware I had at the time. My heart is forward, as they say in the yoga circles. I am daring something to come get me. Curious, and stretching to see what lies beyond, beneath. I have one foot forward, the weight perhaps more on my toes than my heels and another one stabilizing me on the wet stone. Perhaps ready to reel back if needed. I am inviting the spray, the raw power of that plummeting river to drench me. I am asking to be invited to the river.
I am arcing forward more than back.

There is also something here about keeping my feet on solid ground. Wanting to be touched and enveloped by things magical and powerful, but also to remain in place, grounded.

Pause

I pause here.
A moment on the western ocean edge of this continent.
Post conference gathering
Of like minded and kindly souls.
Now I drift south and slightly west to hit this beautiful place from memory.
An impulse trimmed by
Another drive,
years before this moment.
It was
My first meeting with this Pacific creature.
Now the monolithic rocks and beach breaking waves of Cannon Beach
Seem familiar, so like a recent home,
But also it is a back casting swing of the mind,
Images stirring the surface like a
baited trout.
Who I was
Who I am now
Place
Welcoming me home.
I learn to stay put by wandering,
And returning.
And returning again.
To reground,
Breathe
Pause
Find my piece
of sandy salty ground.
Before the next swing of the rod
Propels me eastward.
Meet me here.
Because I will always pause
For you.

The Coccoon

It is possible I am just waking up now. All systems are not yet go, and it's possible I still have some sleeping to do, some more fibres to weave in the closed comforting darkness of this winter retreat. But I think I am feeling the slow outward stretch of emerging starting quietly. I have battened down the hatches, and that's a good thing. Withdrawn, sometimes isolated myself, at least from things that do not serve the process of attending to healing and fortifying myself. Attending to the core. Making choices about which branches to cut off while serving and feeding the deepest roots. Because that's where the energy comes from, and unlike other times in my life, this winter I dug in, sealed the doors and lit the fire. I took in only things that would feed me, and not much of anything that would drain. I made good choices for myself, and despite the depth of my retreat it felt like the healthiest thing to do. Especially in retrospect.
I reduced the 'shoulds' and attended to the 'musts'.
I have often been confused about whether I am truly extroverted or introverted and have sometimes defaulted to describing myself as an 'introverted extrovert'. Because most often when sad, or in need of rejuvenation I have turned outwards, filled my cup with good people and adventures. I have certainly done a share of that this winter, but there has also been the overriding theme of wrapping myself in the closed quiet safety of home.
I have learned a few things, some of them new to me:
That it's ok and sometimes necessary to say no.
That there is no set time limit, or statute of limitations on how long it takes to heal, or do whatever it is you know you need to do.
That quiet is an acceptable way to be.
That 'being anti-social' is a label and a judgement I put on myself.
And...
This is ground breaking: Not everyone is going to like, understand or support me or what I am doing, and that is ok and should perhaps be expected (but without dread or fear). The trick is to listen to the still small inner voice more attentively until it is louder and stronger than the ones coming from outside. Then it becomes your guide, even when you step outside the four walled safety of whatever sanctuary you have built around yourself.
When in doubt, stay calm, relax, get still...and wait to see which way the air bubbles go before trying to swim to the surface.