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barton cole :: veni, vedi, vero scripsi
 Sunday, March 08, 2009
I live across the street from a fifty acre pasture, with a copse of douglas firs in the middle, and houses clustered at the northwest end. The land is contoured like the Palouse, to the degree that it would nearly be better for sheep, and is divided into a few fields with hotwire fences, cedar and barbed wire along our road.
I was out working today; a week or so ago, I took out two of three wild plum trees along the north fence. They were shading the neighbor’s garden, and the birds didn’t even eat the fruit!
They’ll be replaced by blue elderberries (we only have the red, poison kind in abundance around here), which, if I don’t manage to make jelly and wine out of them, will certainly be favored by waxwings and jays, and even those horrid, thrush-chasing robins. Now, there’s a pile of branches and brush in my yard. In a day or so, I’ll get to renting a chipper and turning the brush into mulch, but all the decent-sized wood I saved out – to deliver to, among others, a friend who put the word out a couple of months ago that he needed firewood – he got a supply, but needs it for next year. I was out there today, having cleaned out the back of the truck, cutting the long branches shorter so I could deliver them down the alley.
While I was standing there, having deposited a load of wood down at the mathematician's trailer, and at the editor's woodshed, and having put bar oil in the saw, an eagle came low over the neighbor’s house, and right past the truck and across the road, barely skimming above the barbed wire, and fifty feet later, a gentle lift above the perpendicular fence, with a twitch of the tail like a marsh hawk, across the pasture just a few feet off the ground.
For about four years, eagles have nested in the firs in the middle of the pasture, having certainly been enticed by the abundant rock doves who visit my birdfeeders. As the eagle skimmed across the road, I looked ahead to see what it might be preying upon, but there were no rabbits, just the cows, and he didn’t have his gear down, anyway. His flight was rather laconic and coasting, indeed, as a marsh hawk.
The cows have worried a section of the field at the crest of the slope into a bare basin two meters in diameter; the eagle was headed for this.
One of the cows along the fence over which the eagle had glided, and just up the hill a bit, saw the eagle moving over the grass, and as the eagle neared the basin, the cow had already begun to move, like a fat cop spilling his coffee and gathering headway.
The eagle landed, backfilling with its huge wings, and by now, the cow was nearly there, like a linebacker charging the quarterback, and two calves were even in pursuit.
The eagle looked up, and here was this cow bearing down on him, and I imagine it will always be fresh in the eagle’s mind, the memory of that treacherous sight, and the massive, glistening, foaming nostrils, and the brisket flapping from side to side, and into the air leaped our brave hero, the eagle, barely having avoided being trampled by a cow.
The calves arrived on the scene as the eagle flew south, and by now, the ten or so other cows were in on it and charging after the eagle as if it were several apples I had thrown, and then –
There was a cow, like there always is, the one far from the herd, nibbling grass that had some odd taste that only it favored, or just being a loner, or needing some quiet time, but you’ve seen them there, the cows, the lone ones away from the others, and this girl got in on the act, too.
She was far away from the eagle, and by the time she intersected the cows, the eagle would be in the forest, but our clever girl made a move in a flash, as if she were in the backfield covering a receiver, and made the move to intersect the eagle’s path, and she did, and the poor eagle, our national symbol, came this close to being mobbed and beset by misery and at the mercy of cows.
I never would have thought you could tell a story that had cows and eagles in it, a friend said later, when I told him the story.
It brought home to me, too, the importance of being outside. That’s where the miracles and ironies are happening, and you have to be out there to catch them in the act.
I'm glad I banded with the squirrels and the crows and their ilk, and join them when I can.
Later, it snowed.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
I was a cat guy, early on. I grew up with a cat, who came to us when I was a wee toddler, and died when I was nineteen and had left home long before. I never knew a day at home without that cat, Chessie (named after the mascot and logo of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, since she resembled it so much in demeanor and color - and her name was technically, "Chesapeake and Ohio," which you would deploy if you wanted to scold her - at least I did, since I was the youngest of four and had no authority over anyone but the cat - okay, I have since learned that the cat is at the top of the hierarchy).
Chessie was a great sport, and served, as many cats do around children, as the ambassador for all cats, so I became a cat guy.
After leaving home, I didn't live with a cat, but that changed.
Back in 1983, I had a friend who had a cat. He lived on Seattle's First Hill (known as "Pill Hill," since that's where all the hospitals were - I was born in one of them, so was my son…), and one stormy night, a little black-and-white kitten followed him out of the rain and into the lobby, into the elevator, and into the apartment.
The cat stayed.
A few months later, my friend moved into the University District, which was my neighborhood; he and the cat moved into a house just a few blocks south. Several of us young guys hung out there - we worked in a restaurant, so we kept odd, late hours, and drank a lot of beer. And played with the cat.
I was the only one who seemed to have much regard for the cat - all the other guys would tip him out of their laps if he made a move that way, but not me - the little cat and I were buddies.
So, not long after the cat arrived in my neighborhood, he had to move again - this time, into an apartment with a no-pets lease.
My friend called to give me this news, and to ask me if I could look after the cat; "Just for six months - I only ask you this since I know how close you and the cat are."
I knew it would be a responsibility, and, being young, knew that I wasn't sure I wanted to hinder my functional irresponsibility. But the cat needed me, I thought, so I relented.
We became rapidly close. During the six months, my friend never visited the cat, and when his lease was up, he called to say he was coming over to pick the cat up.
"What cat?" I asked.
He thought something had happened to it.
"What do you mean? Where is he?"
"Well, if you're talking about a black-and-white cat, yes, I have one. You don't, but I do."
I wasn't going to give the cat up, which was the right thing to do -- think of the welfare of the cat; should he live with someone who was devoted to him, or with an ignorant buffoon? As a result, the friendship was terminated, but I didn't care - I had gotten the better deal of the bargain.
He was quite something, that cat, and I soon named him, "Figaro." People thought it was cute, that I had named him after the charming kitten in Disney's Pinocchio, but that wasn't the case. I had named him after Figaro, the Barber of Seville, from Rossini's opera, Il barbiere di Siviglia.
Figaro's great aria: Largo al factotum della citta… "Make way for the great factotum of the city!" That was the way my cat Figaro was, a factotum. Brilliant cat. He would climb up the cedar that grew outside my bedroom window to get in at night, and would even leap the twelve feet from the landing of the upstairs duplex next door to my windowsill. I saw him do it once, and was astonished.
Everything about him was astonishing - including how handsome he was.
The U-District is crawling with rats, more than a wharf, and Figaro would catch them. I saw him drop one at one end of a sheet of plywood leaning up against the house - the rat, spotting freedom at the other end, would make a break for it. When he arrived at the edge of safety - Bam, there was the cat! Back the rat would go, and Bam!
Or another time, I saw Figaro batting a rat, spinning around and around, like a hockey player on the icy street.
Figaro was a clever cat; you knew he was the boss, and he loved me. In fact, I maintain that he taught me to love myself (cats having such a capacity to be avatars), which enabled me to love others, which enabled me to fall in love with the woman who became my wife and mother of my kids. Their existence can be directly traced to a cat who walked in out of the rain.
Everyone knew I was devoted to this cat - beyond Damon and Pythias, even. We were close. So when my future wife fell for me, she knew that she had to get the cat's approval, first (authoritative cats are nothing new; see P.G. Wodehouse's short story, The Story of Webster). Sure enough, though, Figaro fell for her, too, so all was well.
In 1989, I lived in a house next to a woman I had gone to school with in another town; she played the clarinet in the Symphony (we had played together in the band at school - she kept playing hers, mine sits in the corner to this day), and traveled in the summer. She would let Figaro into her house, although her husband was allergic - he was some cat; he had that kind of appeal.
When they would go on trips, I'd look after their mail, and water their garden, and would always be paid with a bag of cookies on my porch the day they left.
One day, I came home, and there was a bag of cookies, and a note, and an art card, a painting of a cat. She had included the card since the depicted cat reminded her so much of Figaro.
We became quite fond of that card - ironically, it was from the Kirsten Gallery, just a couple of blocks away from the house I lived in when Figaro came to live with me in the U-District, but I rarely went there.
Once, though, my wife and I, when she was pregnant with our son, visited the gallery, and while looking around, came upon a framed print of the painting that was the image on the card, by Nicholas Kirsten-Honshin.
Zen Cat Meditates on Essence of Moon and Essence of Iris - All is One
My wife and I looked at each other, wondering: Should we buy it? Could we?
We thought about it. Kept walking around.
And then, just around a corner, there it was: The Original. Much more expensive than the print, but just above the painting was a sign on the wall: "All art may be purchased on time with no interest."
Wow. We had to live with it.
We went upstairs to the desk to make the arrangements; Nicholas was there, and came out to meet us.
"So many times, that painting has almost left, but then, the people changed their minds - and now I know why: it's supposed to be with you."
They took down all my information, but not even a credit card number, and we began contemplating making the payments until we could hang the painting in our home.
But they asked, "Is your car parked in back? We'll wrap up the painting and take it out there."
What? They were letting us take the painting without even a down payment? Yes, indeed they were. An odd transaction, but clearly, we were supposed to live with the painting.
You can still get prints, and art cards (contact the gallery), but you can't get the original. It lives with me.
It's one of Nicholas's well-known works, and one of a few that feature the handsome Zen Cat. We even got to know the actual cat, Crowley, who once favored me by sitting on my lap.
After having the painting for several years, it had acquired a bit of moisture-spotting on the inside of the glass, so we arranged to bring it to the gallery for re-framing. Nicholas's father, Richard Kirsten-Daiensai (much more on him another time), was having a festive art opening, and as my son carried the painting through the garden to the gallery, you could hear the guests fall silent. Someone whispered, "That's the original!" It really is a stunning asset, and, as Nicholas has pointed out, it's done better than the stock market!
Figaro died in 1996, which was a heartbreak. My son's first word, when pointing at the cat, was "Fo." He was enmeshed in our lives, and had changed everything. We still invoke his Number One Rule: "Walk in like you own the place."
I have lived with other cats in my time; Rosina, who was named after the femme fatale in Rossini's opera (she and Figaro were pretty tight), and then Gioacchino, named after Rossini himself, and who was superbly handsome and soft. There was Sophia, who was small, and fey, and had a short life, and then Akira, who was all black, clever, but didn't come home one moonless night.
We were without a cat for some months, and after a while, we noticed that we were tending to get on each other's nerves just a bit more often, and needed that tranquil lightning rod of a cat. It's unseemly for us to go out and try to acquire a cat, but we figure that if we just let the cosmos know that we're open to having one (derived from our standard philosophy; see my previous essay, good dog cosmos), then a cat will appear.
After a few months, we received a call. A woman had a cat who had come in out of the storm, and had been hiding out in her basement for a week, coming up at night to eat her cat's food. When she finally discovered this stowaway, she invited her to join the household, but her own cat wasn't having any part of it - you know how cats can be.
So she called us.
She didn't know that we were in the market for a cat; she worked at the Kirsten Gallery, had for years, and since the cat reminded her so much of the Zen Cat, and she knew we had the painting, she called.
Let me spell out the irony for you:
The painting came into my life since the featured cat resembled my cat, and now a cat was coming into my life since it resembled the cat in the painting.
We collected the cat, and soon named her Guinevere. How nice it was to have a cat again.
The problem was that she had obviously been abused by a man; any time my son or I would go into the room where she was, she'd dash into hiding. She was close and cuddly with my wife, but wasn't going to tolerate me or my son.
This was frustrating. "The hell with it," we would say, "let's just get a kitten so we can have a cat."
 Months of this tragic behavior went by, but I kept trying - I'm the one who feeds the cat, and always endeavor to be close to animals - it's my notorious nature - and eventually, my attentions paid off, and we're now not only close, but closer than she is with anyone else. She's like my girlfriend - she likes me to leave a sweater on the bed sometimes, so she can lay on it, and when she sees me in the garden, she comes running; we always spend some time when we're out there together, her rolling around in a patch of grass under the apple tree, and me rubbing her belly and running my hand from the top of her head all the way down her tail.
She's another clever one, too, and lately, we've said to each other, "Are you getting a 'Figaro' hit from Guinevere like I am?"
They are much alike, with one prominent difference - I heard Figaro meow maybe fifty times in the thirteen years I lived with him, but compared to that, Guinevere is a regular chatterbox, meowing maybe a dozen times a day (not like the famous Gioacchino, though - he meowed all the time, with a marvelous voice; once, I thought I would count how many times he meowed in a day, and after an hour, he was up over seventy, so I gave up and called it five hundred for the day).
The best way to get out of this essay? Wrap it up and go to bed - Guinevere's waiting…
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The other day, I wrote about dogs, and how capable they are when given a clear job description (see The Good Dogs).
I promised to make an ironic leap with the topic, so here's my stab at that:
I have a good friend, a Zen priest in fact, which I suppose makes him more the master and me the disciple, but neither of us looks at it that way - he's a fellow crow devotee, which fostered our relationship - at any rate -
He travels with his sons to Las Vegas when they attend conventions (they're in the art publishing and gallery business), and unbeknownst to the casino managers, who see this frail old man and give him a complimentary room, he rakes it in on the slots.
How does he do this?
He whips out his jizo statue and sets it on the machine, and then, if you were watching, you'd see him lean in and caress the slot machine, the way someone does with a favored horse, and whisper; he's making a connection with the machine.
"What people don't realize is that even though a man made it, the machine has a soul," which he treats with respect, and is rewarded with consistent winnings.
Really, he's just tapping into the cosmos's willingness to accommodate our needs.
I've spent a lot of time around theaters, have appeared in a lot of plays, have learned tons of lines. Fortunately, I'm good at the memorization, but for others, it's tough; I do all I can to help my fellow actors out, running lines with each other, until we're all comfortable that we know them.
I was running some scenes with a friend who was in a challenging play; most of her lines were long, non sequiturs - tricky to learn, as you can imagine: having a thread in the dialogue gives the actor some handholds, but working with random monologues is tough - you have to memorize it until your body knows it, and then deal with the chaos of the scene.
Needless to say, my friend was having trouble, which was why she called me - so I could help her run the lines, over and over.
Still, she was having trouble, which was really frustrating for her.
{note - this is funny - I know what my point is supposed to be, but I look at what I have and wonder if I'm getting close to making it, which shines a light on what would seem to be one of my approaches as a writer - if a topic is difficult to pin down, throw enough words at it to smother it).
"I'll never get this line!" she said.
No.
She won't; she can't, with that attitude.
You see, I regard everything that we say to be a prayer. Any statement can be easily recast to highlight this; in the case of my friend, the frustrated actress, her statement translates, with hyperbole intact, as:
"Please, O provident Cosmos - don't let me learn this line, please…"
I prefer to approach that situation with this prayer:
"Man, this line is a bitch - but I'll nail it down; I'll keep working on it."
Really, it works that way.
Around here, we really try to avoid negative statements, as a corollary of this approach, urging one to remember something rather than admonishing them not to forget.
It works in all kinds of ways, too, such as finding one's car keys - say it out loud - "I really need to find my car keys in the next five minutes, since I don't want to be late…:
And it helps, as in that case, to be specific. I was talking with a friend who runs a non-profit, who said the institution depended on a miracle.
My notion is that they'll get their miracle, but not until she states clearly just exactly what kind of miracle it is.
Of course, it helps to be vague at times, too - since, if there's any order or structure to the cosmos, one might assume that the providence can be obscure but authentic.
Still, if one is willing to be clear with the cosmos, it will endeavor to provide.
Just like a dog; it only wants a good, clear job description.
And that's as easy as talking to a dog.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Once upon a time, I was a "cat person." That's right - I was devoted to my cats, but didn't have time for dogs, and couldn't, in fact, understand why someone would want to live with one and deal with all the work: the walking, the dealing with the crap…
Still, there were some dogs that I admired, but as a rule, I was pretty ambivalent about dogs.
Part of my awakening as an adult over the last twenty years or so has been a constant and deeper embedment with my natural surroundings - I pay more attention to the flora and fauna, and couldn't be happier than I was today, for instance, when I was working in the woods, and chirped at a winter wren, encouraging it to be interested and follow me, which it did (they're my favorite small bird - which may be on the quiz). Not long after, a douglas squirrel (native to woods in our region) got my attention by chirping at me from a few feet higher on a douglas fir. I was on my way to my truck for a tool, so I told him to hang on: I'd have some nuts for him in a few minutes…
[NB: I keep nuts - usually pistachios, since everybody likes them - and birdseed - blend of black oil sunflower and cracked corn - and dog biscuits stashed in my truck, so I can feed whoever might be around - occasionally, chickadees, which are highly gregarious, will eat out of my hand]
But I never had time for dogs, as devoted to animals as I felt I was, and declared myself to be.
Eventually, I realized I was nothing but an elitist - ever the trap, especially when humans think about animals, or in the case of Orwell's Animal Farm, when animals think about themselves: "Four legs good… two legs better!"
I made a rational decision that I needed to embrace dogs, and be curious about them, and get to know them, and include them in my personal zodiac (circle of animals).
It wasn't that I got to know a special dog, who made me feel deeper about dogs, but being a Capricorn, I was rational (I believe I tend to be, although I'm sure I could find dissent), and decided to feel deeper about dogs.
And for this task - to be the ambassador for all dogs everywhere in my life - I chose the nastiest, little dog I knew - an obnoxious Chihuahua that belonged to a nutso woman that I worked with.
He was one of those dogs that didn't understand my boundaries, and would leap in my lap spontaneously - even when I had seen him coming and tried, discreetly, to actively discourage it (had to be discreet - it was politically unwise for the nutjob dog's nutjob owner to realize that this particular nutjob - me - didn't like her dog - in fact, would have moved slowly if an eagle were swooping down after the dog…)
I decided that I would befriend this nasty little dog, and that by having through this intense hazing ordeal, this trial by nasty dog, I would be welcomed in the Dog Clan (as I am in the Wren Clan and Squirrel Clan, as noted above, and if you follow me…).
Quite an undertaking, really, but insert your own mental montage of me befriending the dog, giving it treats of my own when I declared my satisfaction with its behavior, which improved… you may complete your montage with me sitting on a bench next to the dog looking over the East River at Manhattan and the sunset, but that's just a bit too much of a stretch. Suffice it to say that I did become friends with this little dog, who also befriended me.
  A few years later, I met my cousin's dog, Mauritz, in Germany. He's a Hofawart (Hoe-fuh-vart) which means "farm guardian" auf Deutsch), and was bred in East Germany, known for breeders and trainers of gentle dogs, while the West Germans bred them for police work.
A big dog, Mauritz was also handsome, with the false eyespots and the black-and-tan gorgeous long coat.
I had learned that the best way to approach a dog, when meeting it, was to ask it to do something, and praise it when it complied.
I gave Morris my standard suggestion, "Sit." But he wouldn't. Most dogs, in my experience, know that one - in fact, I am usually stunned when I meet a dog who won't simply sit.
Oops - I remembered where I was, and asked again, quite politely, "Mauritz, setzen Sie, bitte," and he promptly did.
I met another dog on that journey, an Irish dog living in Hamburg, who spoke no German at all, but his English was quite good...
I got to know Mauritz well during the two weeks I spent with him, and discovered that he had a fundamental understanding of geometry:
Like many dogs, Mauritz was into "The Ball." He would prance and leap through tall grass, which was splendid to see, and dash across the yard after it; a favorite game was to walk around the yard with a beer (a Flensburger Pilsener), kicking the ball for Mauritz, who would scamper after it, and return it, tossing it with a flip of his chin to give it a little air, so it would bounce a bit, so you could boot it farther.
But if the ball were on the ground, and you were poised to kick it, Mauritz would line himself up with it about three meters away like a lineup for a soccer penalty kick.
If, as you addressed the ball, poised to kick, you stepped to the side, Mauritz would shift himself accordingly, so that all three components were on a line, geometrically. A small step by the one with the ball, but he would have to step a couple of meters to the side, which he would do with gusto. The game was economical that way, giving Mauritz much sport as one did a slow foxtrot at the ball, beer in hand.
Although a rural resident, I saw Mauritz in action in an "urban" environment, walking in a little town near Denmark - he stopped at all the curbs until instructed to proceed, a skill he learned when young and living in Hamburg.
These dogs taught me that they have an excellent capacity for complying with instructions, but like anybody, they need the instructions to be clear.
Today, I was at the lumber yard getting some quotes on materials; while I leaned on the counter, one of the staff asked me, "Do you have a black dog?"
I raised an eyebrow.
"No," I said, "why?"
"There's one just walked by the door, outside."
"Oh," I told him, "If I had a black dog, it would be right here with me, and you'd be amazed at what a good dog it is."
What's a good dog?
A dog who does just what you tell it to do. You give a dog a clear job description, and they're off and running, eager to get the task done. All you need to be is clear (a subtle Zenmaster thing that dogs can do, similar to the Zenmaster thing that cats can do, showing us ways to live - in this case, by seeking mental clarity - if you can explain it to your dog, you can understand yourself).
 I know another dog, my friend Choux, who was described to me, when I met her, as "a really dumb dog."
Well, in my experience, dogs aren't dumb - they're good at doing what they're told to do. If you think a dog is dumb, maybe you're dumb. The Zen mirror again (which, being a Zen mirror, is Empty).
Within five minutes after meeting this "dumb" pooch, she was looking at me, waiting for the subtle shift of eyebrow and nod to indicate that she could now eat the cookie that was sitting on the ground between her two front feet, which she was too nervous to even look at, fixating on me instead.
She has since learned how to hold a cookie on her long, slender nose - cross-eyed dogs are particularly charming - and wait for the nod. Smart pooch.
And I dispense lots of loving to my dog friends, knowing that I will start out, as a default, right up at or near the top of their hierarchy, and that they will want lots of jovial praise.
Dogs, like lots of other animals, tend to like me, and I like them.
I see a couple of guys who walk by my house with their dogs; neither of them uses a leash, but the behavior is totally different.
One of the guys walks in the morning, past my house every day, no matter what the weather, with his old Russian wolfhound walking alongside, the two of them in tandem, connected like Fred and Ginger, even when the dog is checking out who peed on the fence post, then picking up and catching up.
I enjoy this simple evidence of mutual respect, how the two of them pay attention to each other, and walk together.
This other dude, though, is a different story. The dog, an old golden retriever, comes in my yard and carries out his annoying dog business, and eating the food left out on the shrine for the crows to eat, and I holler at him to leave and he won't . I holler at his dude, who often walks along reading the local newspaper, "Hey, get your [goddam] dog out of my [goddam] yard!"
Both the dudes in this scenario, human and dog, aren't paying attention.
But if you work with a dog, and make it clear what you like and don't like, you can encourage them to engage in all kinds of fun, proactive behavior, and find fulfillment by completing the task you have set out for them.
And of course, I am obligated to make an ironic leap out of all this, but I will do that tomorrow.
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