I can always tell when Spartacus is stressing out. He shreds tissues.
As far as obnoxious dog habits are concerned, I think we won big-time. There is no chewing. No swallowing of articles of clothing. No pooping in the house.
Just a raided bathroom garbage can, with evidence of the purloined contents strewn across their hearthside pillow/bed, with maybe a few extra shreds in a pile in front of the couch.
“Mommy. Where were you?” these strips of Kleenex communicate. “I was worried. I thought you’d never come home again,” they whine.
The difference between dogs and cats never ceases to amaze me.
It’s been written about ad nauseum, so I won’t go there tonight, other than to say I adore the palpable emotional connection I share with my two Boston Terriers.
I love my cats. I cannot imagine living without having at least one or two cats in my household. But dogs truly add a dimension to life that is precious and endearing. Not only do they seem to notice when you’re not around or when your routine changes, they also make their observation abundantly clear.
I wasn’t gone that long this evening, so I was surprised that my absence had engendered a couple piles of shredded anxiety.
Part of the problem is undoubtedly that Karl has been traveling. Another, though, could perhaps be a deeper issue.
I have to wonder if Spartacus can detect the decline in his mother, Sheila’s, health.
Karl and I certainly notice. And we’re worried.
She’s been with us for 15 years and has been the most surprising, delightful addition to our lives that we ever could have imagined. She sets the bar for all our pets – and it’s a darn high one, in spite of her slight stature. (She was the runt of the litter.)
I’m thinking I may need to write about her some more. Maybe tomorrow.
In the meantime, as I consider the prospect of losing her, I feel a need to shred some tissues.
I’m struggling tonight. I’ve been awake since 4:00 a.m. and I’m falling asleep sitting up.
I did manage to get a walk in before the rain arrived, though. Thank goodness. But even better than the mere health benefits (and constitutional rigor it provides to our pups), was the fact that our little black piggies were playing outside today!
I wish I could post some of the short videos I take with my iPhone sometimes. For instance, today I could see from afar, as we approached their field, that the pigs were no longer hunkered down in their wooden pen, but were just outside it, grazing on tufts of grass and snuffling into the mud. I put the iPhone on camera mode as we approached and tried to coordinate both leashes in one hand, hoping that Spartacus would not suddenly lunge at the adorable porkers when I started talking and calling to them.
See, the problem with the pigs (from Spartacus’s perspective) is not that they are classic puppy-fun to run after. It’s that I talk to the piglets in the same high pitched sing-song voice that I talk to all animals, domesticated or not, and usually babies, as well. It’s the same voice I use to converse with Spartacus and Sheila. So there’s a hint of jealousy in the air when he hears me calling to the piglets and sheep. But I have to give Spart credit. His ears perk up at first, but then he just brushes it off, usually continuing to stop, sniff, and tinkle he way toward home.
Pigs But Not Pork (to me)
I took some video today and managed to catch the pigs at the moment they noticed we were walking up the hill along the road that runs beside the edge of their owner’s property.
Sadly, words fail to describe how freaking adorable they were! Oh my, I know why I don’t eat pork any more and haven’t for years (besides having been born in the Year of the Pig and therefore not wanting to eat one of my own) (for these are definitely Earth Pigs!). Just as we started approaching them, I saw one pig catch sight of me. He seemed to hop, startled, but then grunted something that the rest of his cohort totally understood, because suddenly they lifted their snouts en masse and the whole little herd started running toward us!
Even though I’d had my iPhone/camera ready, their sudden movement did make the pups pull a bit harder, so I fumbled with touching the button to start the recording. I managed, though, and I captured them trotting happily over to me, bopping along the edge of the fence, ears flapping gaily. A car suddenly rounded the corner, heading toward us (luckily not traveling too fast), but I only managed to capture a few frames.
It was long enough to capture the cute. Regrettably, though, I can’t post video on this blog.
Unbridled Joy
So the still shots will just have to do. For now. I’ll try to get even better ones another time.
These little creatures give me unbridled joy. The way they seem to hop and skip as they trip over themselves to run to greet me, their surprisingly long ears flapping and flopping in their exuberance, never fails to bring laughter and a burst of delight to my heart.
I hope my one-handed photos brighten your morning. Oh – and I forgot to mention the three sheep (one little, one medium, and one larger) who, for some strange reason, have been separated from the rest of their kin (who are in a large field at the top of the hill on the other side of the barn) and are relegated to, or perhaps rewarded by, hangin’ with the piglets.
Here’s a photo of the smallest one peeking out at me from behind the largest.
Sometimes I have to wonder how I got so incredibly lucky to live near all my beloved creatures.
Naah, I’m not going to talk politics. But I did watch it (the so-called SOTU); and I watched Stacey Abrams’s response. And all I’ll say is that I felt inspired listening to Stacey Abrams. I felt heartened by her vision of working together, searching for and implementing innovative responses to our country’s issues for the benefit of us all.
And it felt rejuvenating to contemplate just how quickly so many of our current, existential issues can still be turned around – before it’s too late – if we work together.
Our Ability to Share is Based In the Power of Knowing What We Have
We can do this. We must not give in to fear. We must not give in to the cynical fatalism that encourages people to take as much as they can from whomever they can get it because it’s every man for himself.
I loved the story she told of her father walking home in the pouring rain from his job, soaked and shivering when Stacey and her mom and siblings went out to meet him in their car. I loved that he gave away his coat, knowing he would be soaked and freezing cold, but knowing also that he was going home to his family; knowing they would take care of him, get him warm, and give him dinner. Giving his coat to the homeless man was a no-brainer for Mr. Abrams because that man didn’t have Mr. Abrams’s knew and felt certain of the power of greatest resource: his family.
I think that’s the single most important realization we can make in these times: we need each other. Whether we know each other or not, we must be family for each other.
We Need to Offer Of Ourselves
Yes, some of us are lucky enough to have that support system readily in place in the traditional sense. By that I mean siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins living in relatively close proximity to us. But a pretty significant portion of us do not have that comfort and sense of stability close at hand.
Instead, we’re asked to look to our left and look to our right. Some of us are starting to realize we need to reach out to our friends – and maybe even our neighbors. We need to offer our friendship and support, offer our unique skills. Offer our selves.
We’ve all seen that every time a catastrophe happens, people rally. We come together and offer what we have. We pitch in to help each other, scrounge up sustenance, and provide emotional and energetic support (if not also tangible and fiscal support as well). We don’t stop to ask about politics or who you voted for. We tap into our humanity. We tap into our shared experience.
Embrace Beaver Energy
I yearn to be challenged by our leaders to be visionary and innovative. Don’t you?
So much more is possible when we work together and hold each other up. So much more is possible when we embrace our Beaver energy.
Come on. You knew I’d bring some archetypal animal medicine into this, didn’t you?
Embrace your hope. Embrace your wit. Embrace your intelligence, your inspiration, and your passion. And be vigilant about giving your power to or believing anyone who would tell you that your woes and miseries are someone else’s ‘fault.’ That the ‘other’ (who would actually give you the coat off their back) is someone to be feared, hated, or bullied.
We are in this together. We need to believe. In us.
While I realize it’s highly unlikely that many of you share ‘Boar’ status with me, I suspect there are at least a few of you who do. In fact, I know there are at least a couple of you out there, so I don’t feel too bad about indulging in a little bit of Boar-ology.
Actually, in spite of the appearance of self-indulgence, I’m only using the Year of the Pig as an example, since this subject is far too complicated to cover even superficially in a short blog post. But I thought you might find some of these descriptions interesting.
The Five Elements
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, there are five different variations attributed to each Chinese Zodiac animal. These differences are based on the elements, and change with each 12 year sub-cycle within the overarching 60 year cycle.
Last night I wrote about the five elements each particular sign expresses in any given year, which continue to rotate in order every 12 years:
Metal Water Wood Fire Earth
I must confess, I do not have anything but the most cursory of cursory understandings of how each element associated with a sign shapes the expression or experience of those born that particular year. While I am aware that there are quite a number of books and other materials available on Chinese Astrology, as well as the meaning and significance of The Five Elements in Eastern philosophy and study, I am using only two reference materials for this short post:
The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes (6th edition) by Theodora Lau; and Pig, from The Chinese Horoscopes Library by Kwok Man-ho.
Chinese Astrology is a Complex Subject
The first of the books mentioned above is a 415 page treatise that probably only scratches the surface of the intricacies of this field of study. Not only are each of the twelve signs discussed, but the author then explains how the Chinese not only apply one of the five elements to each sign in a particular year, but also assigns seasons and ‘stems’ (a positive or negative energetic component – as opposed to a value judgment) to each sign. Not surprisingly, the system further breaks things down into two hour increments of a 24 hour day, assigning an animal sign to each of those twelve portions of the day as well, all of which influences the expression of the individual born at that time.
Learning the meanings and interactions of the five elements with and between each other appears daunting to me, and I know this is actually a very complex field of study.
Just for fun, though, I wanted to share with you the following intriguing descriptions of each type of Boar, which I believe are tied to how the particular element applies to the sign that year. I found these descriptions in the second book I reference above, Pig , which would probably qualify as a ‘pocket reference,’ it’s so small.
Anyway, following are the Boar years spanning the last century or so. Beside each set of dates, you’ll see the element associated with those years and, beside the element, I’ve quoted the poetic description and first paragraph of how that element is interpreted by the author of Pig.
1911 and 1971: Metal – “Pig in the Garden” – “This is a very complex Pig. Its natural intelligence is combined with a certain brashness and lack of innate wisdom, which can lead to unnecessary trouble.”
1923 and 1983: Water – “Pig in the Forest” – “This is a classic Pig. It leads a solitary life, it is obstinate, yet it remains essentially fortunate. It does not worry about the consequences of its actions.”
1935 and 1995: Wood – “Pig Passing By” – “This is a classic Pig personality – although you may suffer while you are young, you should invariably enjoy happier times as you grow older.”
1947 and 2007: Fire – “Pig Passing the Mountain” – “This Pig possesses great talent and self-assurance. Unfortunately, it also has a quick temper, which might lead it to unwise decisions and hasty actions.”
1959 and 2019: Earth – “Monastery Pig” – “The ultimate threat to any Pig is being eaten. Chinese monks are vegetarian, however, and since this Pig lives in a monastery, it will never be threatened.”
This Just Scratches the Surface
I guess the upshot of all of this is that over the next year, there will be lots of little pampered Piglets being born. Hopefully they will be pampered, but not spoiled!
One last thing I’d like to mention is that my description in yesterday’s post on how the Chinese new year is determined each year may not be entirely accurate, although I know it is connected with the new moon. I of course recommend that you study up for yourself if this is something that piques your interest.
I’d really wanted to get a photo of the seven or eight little black pigs that just took up residence near us. They’ve scampered out of their wooden shelter and tumbled over each other to greet me at the fence alongside the road almost every day this past week. Today, of course, since I was hoping to take their photo for inclusion in this post, they acted weirdly shy.
Happy New Year! Happy Year of the Boar (Year of the Pig)! Technically, we’re not moving from the Year of the Dog until tomorrow (Monday, February 4th, 2019), but since most of you don’t read my posts until the morning after I publish them, I’m just paving the way for you to hit this new year running and give you the chance to celebrate all day.
Of course, I’m speaking of the Chinese New Year. And since the Chinese calendar is based on lunar cycles, the new year begins tomorrow at 4:04 p.m. EST, the time of the new moon.
You might wonder why I’m so excited to wish you these porcine-centered felicitations. A big reason might be that I am a Boar, having been born between February 8, 1959 and January 27, 1960.
And to make this year’s Year of the Pig even more ‘special’ for me (and those born in that same time span I just mentioned), since the Chinese Lunar Calendar is based on the number 60, this year signifies a full turning of the astrological cycle since we were born. This will be a year of completion or ‘coming full circle’ for those of us born between the dates listed above.
Twelve Signs of the Chinese Zodiac
Just as you’re aware of the twelve signs that comprise our western zodiac, which begins with Aries and ends with Pisces, there are twelve signs in the Chinese Zodiac as well. The western zodiac signs change every 30 days or so, though, giving us twelve signs within each calendar year.
The Chinese system assigns a single symbol to an entire year, with the Year of the Rat, for instance, being considered the ‘first’ sign of the zodiac, and the Boar the last. However, each ‘year’ begins and ends on a different date according to the moon’s cycle in January/February of each year. Specifically, each new year in the Chinese system begins at the occurrence of the first new moon following the first full moon in a calendar year.
The signs, with the year in which each ‘mainly’ appears, are as follows:
Obviously, if your birthdate falls toward the end of January or through about mid-February, you’ll need to check the specific dates for when each cycle began and ended in the year you were born. (I’m sure you can google it; but I’d be happy to post the specific dates for anyone who requests.)
The Five Variations of Each Symbol
Every twelve years, the cycle repeats. It’s important to remember, though, that the larger cycle recognized in this system is the 60 year cycle.
Thus, each symbol is repeated five times within those sixty years. And each of those five variations on the theme corresponds to an element: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.
Every 12 years, then, a different variation of the particular sign occurs, with the cycle repeating itself for the first time after 60 years have elapsed.
It’s quite intriguing to read about the variations in characteristics of the different signs as they are manifested every twelve years. You can just imagine the differences between, say, a Fire Rooster, a Metal Rooster, and a Water Rooster. (I use that as an illustration because I happen to have lived with these ‘variations’ for much of my life: specifically, my husband and two of my three sons.) (Which is also why I decorated our downstairs bathroom in fall colors, filled it with many roosters, and dubbed it our ‘cock room.’)
And with that image fixed firmly in your minds (a ‘cock room’ – you just know that’ll stick with you!), I am going to complete this post. I’ll write a bit more about the Year of the Boar tomorrow, and describe a bit more of the elemental attributes distinguishing the variations that occur every twelve years.
The point of all of this is that there are so very many ways we humans have developed, across cultures and across time, to help ourselves understand and make sense of who we are and what we’re here to experience. There are maps for us all over the place. We just need to look around and find the ones that work uniquely for us – and then dive into a deeper understanding of their keys.
Bet those are two words you never thought you’d see together. Me either.
But in contemplating what I would write about tonight, I thought I would share a photo I took from our porch this evening, minutes after Karl and I got home from a walk.
Suspension in a Cocoon of Serenity
The sun had set on this Groundhog Day 2019, and the colors of the sky were simply too spectacular not to honor them by sharing them with you. What you see is completely unfiltered. And would you believe me if I told you the entire scene was more catch-your-breath exquisite than I can express?
Yeah, you’d probably believe me. I bet it happens to most of us a lot more often than we realize. I hope so, at least.
Nature just is that way. It fills us up and transforms us from within. All we need to do is open our eyes, ears, and every other sensory receptor and allow. It fills us up through our being.
The sky tonight brought me to the verge of tears. For a few moments, when I stood on our porch and I gazed into this magnificent palette, I felt suspended in a cocoon of serenity. The air was crisp and fresh, but not so cold as to rake my sinuses. Two deer ran an obstacle course of trees and bushes at the base of this photo as I took it, their somewhat tentative and graceless dance rustling leaves and breaking sticks as well as the silence.
More Moments of Love
In those sacred moments, I stopped worrying about my mundane concerns. With no one to talk to and no humans or their activity in sight, it was as if I were less a human and more a simple observer – and member – of the web.
Can you look at that photo and not feel it viscerally in your heart?
We need more serenity in our lives. We need more magnificent, rich hues coloring our perceptions. We need more opportunities to forget about our mundane worries and concerns.
At the risk of sounding hokey, we need more love permeating our cells and blanketing our landscapes with colors and beauty and simple appreciation for life, bringing us to the brink of tears.
(T-1028)
“Minutes Before Groundhog Sunset” – Photo by L.Weikel
Silly as it may seem, we checked the faucets upstairs and down, hoping that one of them might yield a trickle that could, oh, I don’t know – unblock everything else? Yeah…no luck.
I could’ve kicked myself. I’d actually had a conversation with someone just yesterday about the danger, in this weather, of pipes freezing. My friend and I discussed keeping a trickle of water coming out of a faucet, to avoid this very peril, particularly in an old house like we both own. And then, as soon as we had the conversation I forgot it. BOOM. Out of my head entirely.
Whose Fault Was It, Anyway?
So when Karl admitted, chagrined, that he’d not even thought about keeping a little water running through the pipes last night, I had to fess up. It was bad enough that he’d not thought about it at all; but it was far worse that I had thought about it, and then promptly forgot it.
No use in blaming each other. In my experience, blame never improves a situation; it only makes things worse. We’ll be celebrating our 34th year of owning this house on March 15th. In all that time, the pipes have never frozen. There were a couple of years, though, where we had similar frigid snaps. I seem to recall a ‘polar vortex’ hitting us about five or six years ago, if I’m not mistaken. It ended up killing our English walnut in the back yard, the ground froze so deep. Even then, we never had a pipe freeze. Possibly because we kept a little water running through the pipes…
Karl went into the cellar (and yes, we have a cellar, not a basement – dirt floor and everything) to check the pipe that comes into the house from the well. When he came upstairs, he admitted that when he squeezed the pipe, he could feel and hear a ‘crunching’ noise, so he assumed it was ice. Ugh. Lucky for us, though, nothing had broken – yet.
Strategies
We discussed methods of unfreezing the pipe, opting for application of a heating pad. As he was fishing around in our downstairs bathroom cupboard, looking for a heating pad, I was standing in the kitchen, calculating whether there was enough water in my espresso machine’s reservoir to make myself a coffee, when all of a sudden I heard a <<thunk>> and a swoosh.
I called out to Karl, asking if he’d heard it, too. (He hadn’t.) I was really worried that a pipe had just burst and the ‘swoosh’ I’d heard was water cascading onto the dirt floor in the cellar at the front of the house.
Instead, I went to the kitchen sink and tried the faucet once more. Ta da! Water sprang forth, running free and clear. Karl had apparently dislodged enough of the freshly formed ice within the pipe to get it to break free! Huzzah!
Yup. We dodged a bullet. Thank goodness we didn’t have to face either the ordeal of the potential expense of repairing busted pipes, or at the very least, the hassle of no flushing toilets or running water the entire weekend. Lesson learned, we’re keeping the water on at a trickle, and we’re taking the added precaution of wrapping the incoming pipe with a cloth, keeping the heating pad snugly cuddling it securely in place.
I hope all of you are staying warm in the midst of this polar vortex. As a PSA, may I remind you to keep a trickle of water coming out of your faucet until things warm up on Monday.
And may your day be filled with serendipitous breakthroughs such as those we experienced this morning.
Glacial water cascading from high in the Sayan Mountains of Siberia (Photo by L. Weikel)
I’ll come clean with all of you, since we’re all about intimacy, right? I feel intimate with you, anyway. I know there are a number of you who are keeping me company and making sure I do indeed keep my commitment to Karl’s memory. (I can’t thank you often or sincerely enough for that camaraderie, by the way. And my most heartfelt means of expressing that gratitude is to be radically honest with you. Intimate, in other words. Letting you see and hear my inner me, warts and all.)
My confession is this: I was honestly excited last night when I wrote about getting myself much further along in Instagram World than I’d ever managed before. I knew I’d successfully posted (what, a post? Do you post a post on Instagram? God, how can I do it if I don’t even know what to call it?); anyway, I knew I’d successfully put something on my IG ‘feed’ yesterday afternoon because people had reacted to it by later in the evening.
Even better, I thought, I’d figured out how to get links inside my post to actually get opened without some rigamarole that I didn’t even understand. It sounded like a good thing to do and I thought I’d figured it out. The app I was using to accomplish this task is called Link In Profile. Technically, I’m still using it, I guess, as of tonight anyway. Luckily, they give you a month’s free trial first.
It seems pretty neat. At least, yesterday afternoon, as I said, I managed to post my initial Instagram and, in it, include a link to my Devotion blog post, which explains the inception of the whole 1111 Devotion commitment I made in November. And I thought it meant that people could click on the link inside the post and go directly to the webpage it referenced, instead of people having to go to my Instagram bio to click on it.
Yeah, this is making my eyes glaze over, too.
But I think it did the job. I don’t actually know enough yet to even be able to tell.
First Opportunity to Show My Stuff: Brain Fart
Problem is? By the time I published my blog post late last night and shared it on FB in the couple or three places I usually do, I totally forgot how to actually, literally, POST on Instagram! Yeah, I’m saying I forgothow to do the single most basic function on (and the whole point of) the entire stupid platform.
So I’m sitting on my couch last night, eager to put my blog post ‘out there’ on Instagram, too – especially since I’d just written about it to all of you! – and I’m clicking on every damn icon I can see on the Instagram app on my phone. None of them take me where I want to go or let me do what I want to do. Mostly I’m just reminded that I need to complete my stupid bio.
Oh my Goddess. I wanted to scream.
And then, once I accidentally discovered the ‘entry’ screen (and I still don’t know what I tapped to get there), I couldn’t even figure out if it would somehow access the photo that I’d included in the blog and publish that as the ‘accompanying’ photo (like FB does) – or if I had to publish a photo independently, from my phone’s photo archive, and then include the link to my blog post in the comment area.
My head was swimming by this time.
Hence the random photo of our Boston Terrier, Sheila, pretending to be Princess Leia (even though she actually bears a much more uncanny resemblance to Yoda).
Moving Forward, Figuring It Out
The bottom line, therefore, is that I’m still figuring this out. I know some of you are clearly adept at IG and others of you, while you may be trying to make me feel good (and it worked, thanks) by telling me so, admitted to being in the same boat as I am. You know who you are: the ‘I have a name on Instagram too, but haven’t used it yet’ gang.
My pledge to you: I will be your guinea owl! We can figure this out – together. And I will report back on how much fun and success I’m having as an Instagrammer.
In the meantime, here’s both a photo of a rock formation on the Siberian steppe south of Lake Baikal (above). And another photo of Sheila, her son Spartacus, and Cletus. Our Black and White Triumvirate enjoying a bit of warmth and respite in front of the hearth fire .
