shilohbear2

Dog Rescue—The Dark Side

2010-11-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

Dog Rescue—The Dark Side

In a rational world, Emily and I would’ve been a match made right up there with raspberries and cream. Instead we both got sucked into the tornado and it was a long, surreal ride till we touched down back in Kansas. Or thereabouts.

After months of trolling dog rescue websites, I spot Emily on one and submit an application. A few days later I get an e-mail from Carla, the woman who runs the rescue, telling me to call Emily’s foster family and set up a meeting. Carla’s e-mail makes me uneasy. It reads like gibberish—unfinished sentences, misspellings. Like it was written, and forgive me if I’m wrong, by somebody who didn’t take her meds.

Oh well. We’ve adopted rescue dogs for the past thirty years and never had a problem. We’ll adopt Emily and move on. What’s the worst that can happen anyway?

Let me tell you about the dog who scooped up my heart and trotted off with it. Emily is a young Lab-Sharpei mix. Looks like a Black Lab except for the smallish floppy ears. Got a white star on her chest and a sprinkle of white on her toes and chin. A shelter picked her up on the street with a couple of puppies. Her past is unknown. You can only guess—hadn’t been spayed, doesn’t know basic commands and—the heartbreaker—doesn’t know how to play with toys.

She’s got an abundance of puppy energy, but there’s also a serene elegance about her. The combination is irresistible. Emily’s a tad wary at our first meeting, but after checking me out she warms up. Later, while I’m chatting with Jane, her foster mom, she’s snoozing on my feet.

My husband Max meets her a few days later. I send Carla an e-mail saying we’d love to adopt Emily. The e-mail we get back makes the previous one look like Shakespeare. From what we can glean she seems to be stalling. Bizarre. I thought she wanted to find a good home for Emily. Well she’s found one, damn it. I go from being merely put off by Carla to being ticked off.

Clearly, Jane and her partner have been providing a positive environment for Emily. They’re doing everything they can to facilitate the adoption. I tell Jane I’m feeling nervous about Carla. She confides that she’s had her own disturbing encounters with her. Suddenly, our relationship shifts from foster mom and potential adopter to allies against some weird gnarly antagonist.
Emily has an infected tooth. It looks awful. Jane says she thinks Emily broke it trying to chew her way out of a crate. Carla’s big on crates. Emily isn’t. Carla tells us that her vet, the one who had spayed Emily to get her ready for adoption, extracted the tooth.

??#%@+??&/%$???

I’m not a veterinarian but even an aging rhino could see that the tooth hasn’t been extracted. Jane can see it. Jane’s own vet can see it, the one who removed Emily’s spay stitches a few days ago. So while Carla’s jerking us around, Emily’s medical needs get stuck on hold.

Jane and I decide to wait a few days before trying to figure out what to do next. Carla may be a dicey character and we don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize the adoption. Then Jane gets an e-mail from Carla. Now she says the tooth hasn’t been extracted after all—she’ll have her vet take care of it.

What’s that line from The Wizard of Oz? “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” But one thing is clear. I don’t trust Carla or her shady vet. I don’t want him touching Emily. Why hasn’t the guy been de-frocked or whatever it is they do to hack vets? Carla lies. What else is she capable of? Now we’re really scared for Emily’s safety.

I e-mail Carla again, say that Max and I are completely committed to adopting Emily but we’re worried about her tooth. Would she mind if we have our vet, Dr. Brown, examine Emily at our own expense? Dr. Brown has been treating our dogs for over ten years and we have absolute trust in her.

Carla says she doesn’t want Dr. Brown to examine Emily. My concern for Emily soars. I’m totally creeped out by Carla. Is she unscrupulous and irrational? Does a bear poop in the woods? And isn’t “poop” the operative word?

Emily’s in pain. I decide to go ahead and have Dr. Brown check her anyway. I don’t bother to tell Carla. I make an appointment and ask Jane to bring Emily to Dr. Brown’s clinic. We tell Dr. Brown the whole story. She’s says she’s run into characters like Carla more than a few times. They can do bad things. She agrees the tooth needs to be extracted.

It’s crazy to wait around for Carla. In three seconds I to decide to ask Dr. Brown if she’ll do the surgery. She agrees. We all realize at this moment that I’m crossing a line. I don’t have any legal rights to Emily. And Dr. Brown’s crossing a line. I’m grateful beyond words. Jane’s in, too.

The surgery is scheduled for next week. We all sense Carla is somebody you don’t want to cross. We even consider boarding Emily at Dr. Brown’s until the surgery to make certain she’s kept out of harm’s way. But, hey, isn’t that more paranoid than a couple of reasonably sane people need to be? We decide against it.

Jane and I write an e-mail to Carla telling her what we’re going to do. Max and I will cover all Emily’s medical costs and will pay her $250 fee in full. (We don’t say, “Even though your inflated fee presumably includes providing a ‘medically sound’ dog.”) Then something like thank you for your dedication to the dogs blah blah blah. Please don’t contact us again, best wishes.

The night before Emily’s surgery, Jane calls us. Her voice is almost unintelligible. Carla and a sheriff pal showed up at their house and seized Emily. The sheriff was a bully, just like Carla. They felt blindsided and violated.

I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. My shock, rage, grief, and fear for Emily shoot off the charts.
Oh I get it. Welcome to dog rescue—The Dark Side.

If Carla cared a rat’s tail about Emily she could at least have waited till after the surgery. I can’t stop crying. I drink a glass of wine. Then a second glass. I look out the window. A pale half moon floats amid a sea of stars. Shiloh, our Golden Retriever, ambles over to me. He’s a rescue, too. He leans against my legs. I hug him hard and long. His stillness is extraordinary.

I try not to think about Emily with Carla, stuck into a crate in the back of some grimy truck, trying desperately to chew her way out.

I can’t think of anything else.

All I want to do is hold Emily. Take her someplace lovely and green where she can bop till she drops. Teach her silly tricks. Teach her how to play. Dogs are the ones who usually remind us to play. It’s one of their gifts. I want her to see that life is good, that not all the world is a dark scary place. Where’s that Yellow Brick Road when you really need it?

Next day Jane and I turn into a pair of manic researchers. We hit the Internet, send e-mails, make phone calls. We contact Animal Rights organizations, try to find a local animal rights attorney. Maybe it’s not in the cards for Max and me to adopt Emily, but we’ll do whatever we can to make her safe.

The consensus is that our only recourse is the humane society or law enforcement. After Carla’s sheriff stunt, law enforcement is a wash. And Jane thinks Carla may have some kind of connection to the local humane department, but she files a complaint anyway. Can they check up on her? The supervisor acknowledges that they’ve had run-ins with her for years, he’ll do what he can. We’re heartened. Carla’s shrewd and devious, but we’re on a mission—warriors for justice, beauty, and all things dog.

A few days later we learn that the humane society has done what they call a “Welfare Check.” Without even bothering to investigate Carla in person, they scanned some paperwork on her and concluded “All is well.”

And the ruby shoes. Where are the ruby shoes?

I call a friend for guidance. She's had decades of experience doing animal rescue. She says I have to do the unthinkable. I have to let go. I have to let go of even the hope of keeping Emily safe. She says people like Carla are treacherous—nobody wins against them. And once they target you the harassment might never stop.

How do I let go of Emily?

I hug Shiloh again and again. I’ve got to stay positive or this anger will eat me up. Tagore wrote, “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while it’s still dark.” A mantra my mind can latch onto every time it starts veering off into that swamp of fear and rage.

I miss Emily. I’ll probably never see her again. Never see that soulful little being who appeared in my life for such a short time and then was violently yanked out of it. “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while it’s still dark.”

Next day Jane and I talk options. We can’t let go. Not yet. What if we could find someone else to adopt Emily? Someone with no connection to any of us so Carla and her sheriff crony wouldn’t have any excuse to harass them. Or maybe someone else could adopt her on paper then down the line turn her over to Max and me. Okay, I’m a dreamer.

“Somewhere over the rainbow…troubles melt like lemon drops….”

We check Carla’s website. She put Emily back up for adoption. Seeing her picture makes me melt—and seethe again. There’s got to be a way to get Emily away from Carla. And soon. Please God, Buddha, Wakan Tanka, the Unified Field Theory….

Just in time an angel appears. Jane called her friend Sally who runs a ranch nearby. Sally’s outraged by the story and agrees to try to adopt Emily. She’s already got more animals than she can handle and won’t be able to keep her for long, but it can buy us some time.

Sally immediately writes Carla asking to adopt Emily. She understands completely—the urgency, the kind of person we’re dealing with. Her letter is a work of art. Within days Carla agrees to let Sally adopt Emily.

I write Sally a check to cover Carla’s absurd fee (while holding my nose) and her son goes to pick up Emily. He’s appalled by what he sees. Carla’s place is filthy, dogs are in tiny cages, Carla looks strung out on who knows what. And Emily’s collar was fastened outrageously tight.

But she’s home safe with Sally! Amazing. I can breathe again. Maybe once we recover from this saga we might be able to do something to shut down Carla’s sleazy operation before she does more damage to the dogs. At best she’s a case of good intentions gone terribly terribly bad. Maybe drugs blew some of her circuits. But people make choices. All that counts now is that Emily’s safe.

Last week she had the surgery to remove her bad tooth—like two months overdue. Thank you doesn’t begin to say it. Max and I had to jump through a few more technical hoops, but Sally legally transferred Emily over to us. Not even the Pope can take her away now. Emily belongs to us. And we belong to her.

Somewhere over the rainbow? Shiloh and Emily are asleep at my feet—that somewhere is right here.

Anywhere But Here

2008-01-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

Anywhere But Here

I met Houdini. Right on the corner of DeLaVina and Mission Street on a hot afternoon. There was a haunting loneliness about him, as I’d always imagined. He’d escaped again, only he appeared more bewildered than triumphant.

He resembled a small Doberman Pinscher. Burnt sienna, lean and lithe. I’m driving home when I spot him in the middle of the street, cars whizzing all around. I pull over but there’s a ton of traffic and I have to wait before I can open my door. When I reach out to grab him, he doesn’t resist. The blue metal tag on his collar has an ID number, but no name.

I lead Houdini to the back of my station wagon. He doesn’t want to go in. Odd, I think. He looks so agile. Maybe this is one of those artist’s contradictions, like Hemingway’s macho image and his reputed sexual ambivalence. The dog seems docile, but I hesitate to pick him up—something about that predatory Doberman aura, with the physical power to back it up. I do it anyway.

In the rearview mirror I see him squirming around like a worm on a hook. “Did you catch the new Ralph Fiennes movie? Sexy guy, huh?” I ask, trying to pacify him. In a flash, he scrambles from the cargo area into the back seat then over and into the passenger seat. Gangly, all legs. Bet he could do zero to sixty in five seconds.

The passenger seat is piled with so much stuff from errands I’d been running that Houdini can’t find a place to sit down. He ambles over the emergency brake onto my lap. I take one hand off the wheel and sort of shove him back into the passenger seat, trying to communicate suggestion rather than control. This is a Doberman.

I stroke him. He’s turning in circles on the seat, searching for a place to settle in. What the hey—I dump the mountain of junk that’s on the passenger seat onto the floor. Everything that can possibly spill out of the bags does—fruits and veggies, lightbulbs, a package of fresh cod fillet—but the seat is now a reasonably civilized place to hang.

Instead of settling in, Houdini jumps down on top of the stuff I just dumped onto the floor to make room for him. I’m ticked off but pat the seat beside me, inviting him back up. A grape oozes between his toes. Juice from the cod trickles onto a magazine. He decides it’s too cramped on the floor amidst the parsley and shampoo after all. Maybe even undignified. He clambers back up and sits down on the seat beside me. Seconds later, he springs up. Now he’s down again. And he’s up. I feel like I’m sitting next to some guy who just did a line of cocaine.

Only ten minutes ago my life had at least the illusion of calm, I’m thinking between long, deep breaths. I keep driving, stroking Houdini, trying to reassure both of us now that life really isn’t the lunatic, whirligig ride it seems to be most of the time. It doesn’t help that the drive home is along winding foothill roads so that Houdini, whose slender build verges on the ethereal, keeps losing his balance, tumbles, rights himself, tumbles again. He’s doing all the moving around and I’m exhausted.

When we arrive home, my own two dogs run out to meet us. Not wanting to take a chance of a dogfight, I stick Houdini in the dog run and ask my husband to take our dogs into the house. The run is a spacious grassy area with trees and water, completely ringed with a five-foot chain-link fence. What’s not to like?

I phone the Animal Shelter and they trace Houdini’s tag number. “The dog was adopted a few days ago by a Mr. Ventano,” a woman tells me. “He doesn’t have much money, drives a school bus, lives in a trailer park.” She gives me his work number. I’m about to dial when I glance out the window. Houdini has materialized in the unfenced part of the yard. He’s strolling around the lawn, looking guileless. I dash outside. Again, he doesn’t try to run away. I don’t understand his m.o. He escapes, doesn’t evade capture, escapes, then doesn’t evade capture. Is this a game? A compulsion? Mental pathology?

My husband takes Houdini in the house while I call the school bus company. They radio Mr. Ventano who’s out on his bus run, tell me he’ll be over in half an hour. Dying of curiosity, I check the dog run to see if Houdini jumped over the fence or dug out. There’s an awesome hole by the gate he must have dug in seconds.

I go back in the house. My husband says Houdini started whimpering as soon as I left the room. Weird. He bonds fast, then bails. Fear of intimacy? Shameless manipulation? What, I wonder, makes him so obsessed with freedom one minute, then indifferent to it the next? There’s a bedeviled energy about him, as though he was wired the minute he shot out of the womb. I have the feeling that if he were left alone in a room he couldn’t escape from he’d implode.

Houdini crawls into my lap, looks like he’s going to kick back, then hops off and sucks up to my husband. I like him, but he unnerves me. He relates, but no matter how affectionate or needy he seems, it’s like there’s an invisible bubble around him. His isolation makes me sad.

Half an hour later, Mr. Ventano drives up in an ancient Chevy. He’s about 70, very Old World Italian, has slick black hair, speaks fast with a heavy accent. He’s still wearing his bus driver’s cap. I walk down the path to meet him. He shows me the dog halter that he repaired with candle wax after Houdini chewed through it in four places to escape. “I tied him up because he chewed my chairs, my cassette tapes, my portable radio,” Mr. Ventano says without a trace of anger. He named the dog Rusty, refers to him now, tenderly, as Rascal.

As we walk up to the house, Mr. Ventano hands me a brown paper bag. It’s a bottle of fine Italian wine. I’m so touched I can hardly speak. I know I can’t refuse his gift. Before we’re halfway to the house I’ve learned that Mr. Ventano is a widower—he still wears his wedding band— and that he got Rusty because he was lonely. Eyes moist, in a whoosh he tells me about his late Springer Spaniel who he had to put to sleep after 15 years and even though it was on the advice of others he still feels guilty and he used to take the dog trout fishing with him and his grandson. By the last stair I’m in love with Mr. Ventano.

He sees Houdini, scoops him up in his arms, scratches the dog’s ear, then gently lowers him to the ground. In Italian-crusted English, Mr. Ventano repeats to my husband everything he told me. I assure him that if he thinks he can’t manage the dog, the Shelter will take him back and find another home for him. “Our local Pound is a no-kill Shelter,” I say. “Sometimes a person and a dog just don’t fit. If this one isn’t right for you, I’m sure there’s one out there who is.”

Mr. Ventano hooks the dog up to his leash and we walk back to his car. “I had to put my Springer Spaniel to sleep who I had for 15 years and I was lonely and that’s why I adopted Rusty,” he reminds me. “God bless you,” he says, closing the door. As they drive off, I watch the dog turning his familiar, edgy circles on the seat, still looking for that consummate destination. The one that’s always somewhere else.

God bless you, Mr. Ventano. And, Houdini, wherever you are.

©Lucy Aron, The Santa Barbara Independent 1999

The Neighbors

2008-01-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

The Neighbors

I’d always been a city woman with a country heart so when we moved to the foothills of a mountain fifteen years ago I was eager to get up close and personal with the creatures. What poet and naturalist Gary Snyder calls “getting to know the neighbors.” I envisioned our yard an enchanted place where astonishing birds and butterflies would be jostling each other for a chance to hang out. We planted pyracantha, Mexican sage, and grevillea to augment the profusion of nesting sites and food sources already on the hill. We built a pond with a birdbath, hung up a birdhouse, did everything but serve them cabernet and truffles.

And they came, they came. Red-tailed hawks, mockingbirds, the elusive canyon wren with its singular call like a descending scale. Kestrels perch on the railing of our deck. Swallowtails, ladybugs, dragonflies flutter by. We’re crooned to sleep by frogs, crickets, great-horned owls.

But to make certain life didn’t become unbearably idyllic, others came too. The ants gave us our first taste of how uncivil the locals could be. I remember in particular one sweltering weekend when a coursing river of ants had surrounded the entire perimeter of the house. Then they stormed the parapets and partied inside, dancing on the ceilings, gorging themselves in the cupboards, streaming up and down walls.

Two of our rowdiest visitors were a pair of red-shafted flickers who kept insisting on using the redwood siding of our house to build their nest. We finally placed a birdhouse next to the gashes they’d pecked. They moved in, then on, after breeding season. I think I heard one of them mutter as it wheeled off into the sky, “And they call us birdbrains.”

Not long after the flickers, a thundering, seething swarm of bees took up residence in the birdhouse. Joe, a local apiarist came and, with devastating calm, removed the birdhouse replete with queen, a battalion of bees, and a mantle of impeccable honeycombs on its interior walls.

But rats were our grossest neighbors. Meeting one in the hall at two in the morning when you’re barefoot and bleary-eyed can jump-start your heart. It took months to get the greasy little beasts out. Then, as if to stick it to us for evicting them, one built a nest in the air filter box under the hood of my car. “It got in through your grille,” my mechanic told me, so thrilled by his find that he took a photograph of it. “Brought leaves, shredded paper, acorns, the works. A regular living room.” I was not thrilled.

The coyotes, another incredibly adaptable species, weren’t a surprise. We live adjacent to a canyon near the aptly named Coyote Drive. I enjoy them, especially their haunting howls. Even after one killed our cat. I respect their role as predators, many of them displaced by people like us. And their dauntlessness. Once I spotted a coyote at midday in the yard standing about ten feet away from our dog. They almost looked like a couple of pals chatting about the weather, but I became unglued, ran toward the coyote, waving my arms and yelling to chase it away. Shamelessly cool, the coyote ambled off ever so slowly down the driveway.

Then there was the scorpion that stung me. And the cone nose beetle that bit my husband. Its bite can trigger anaphylactic shock. And the black widow in our bedroom that killed the kitten we had adopted just weeks earlier. And the leg of a deer our next door neighbors found in their yard the morning after we’d sighted a mountain lion. And the rattlesnake in our next door neighbor’s studio.

Still, I wouldn’t dream of exchanging our cherished corner of the cosmos, neighbors and all, for the most chi-chi high rise in Manhattan overlooking Central Park. I don’t love all the neighbors. I do admire them. Apart from the biodiversity essential to our planet’s health and survival, they’re integral to what makes this place breathtaking. The loss of any species—the less-than-genteel as well as the cuddly and endearing—would, I know, diminish us and this mountain that’s a joy, and adventure, to call home.

©Lucy Aron, October 1997, The Santa Barbara Independent

Buddha, The Learning Curve, and a Dog

2008-01-25T08:28:00.000-08:00

Buddha, The Learning Curve, and a Dog

I never had a guru. Not that I didn’t yearn for one, especially during those golden years of the early sixties when the blush of the East was bright on the rose. Like many of my peers, I devoured the literature—The Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Siddartha, Be Here Now—that enticed us, so we thought, with the promise of that sweet, perpetual high we sought in drugs and didn’t quite find.

Though there was many a dark night when I would have renounced chocolate for someone who could provide infallible answers to my endless, urgent questions, someone on whose shoulders I could have shifted the burden of will, I felt constitutionally unable to surrender that kind of power to anyone. No matter how exalted the reputation, how seductive the goodies, nor how frayed the rope from which I frequently found myself dangling.

Primed from childhood by parents who were oppressive and heavy-handed, I distrusted authority. Whether it was school teachers, preachers, or cops, control by others became anathema, an attitude intensified into a virtual ideology when I became a college student in Berkeley in 1962. Besides, I’d heard too many stories about false gods, beguilers, and charlatans.

When I was a kid, teachers were old people whose classes I had to sit through. Except for Mr. Major, my high school English teacher, most of their names and faces have become a blur. Mr. Major was charmless and caustic, and bequeathed to his students an uncompromising knowledge of the principles of good writing. It wasn’t till years later that I realized what a gift his classes were.

There were some memorable teachers in college, but the most influential ones were those I encountered outside of academia. From ex-lovers I learned about my tendency to see what I wanted to see and about my fear of being alone. Anyone I got burned by became a mirror for my pridefulness, lack of discernment, or extravagant expectations. From my parents I learned what I did not want to become. And from friends I discovered generosity and constancy.

But spiritually I was on my own, or so I believed. I studied Buddhism, Sufism, Native American culture. At 28, I joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). I was attracted by its non-hierarchical structure—each member is considered a minister—and the mystical silence at the heart of Meeting for worship.

In my early forties, illness knocked me off my feet with such an emphatic thud that there were times I was sure I’d never stand up again. Helpless in a way I had never been before, I realized that my own relentless inner control, or attempts to control my life, had been as restrictive as the outer controls I had always feared. More so actually because I had the illusion of freedom. With illness, surrender was no longer an option but a reality.

Propelled now by desperation rather than curiosity, I looked for more answers. Finding them was no longer some intellectual exercise of the cocky college kid I used to be. It was survival. The journey was arduous, but I did find answers. They were in those books I’d read all along, only, in the brutal light of hindsight, I saw that I had been looking for another high rather than wisdom on how to live. Not until I became seriously ill did I get it, experientially. I learned that I wasn’t on my own. The Universe—what Native Americans call Great Mystery, Buddhists the Void, Christians the Divine—was my ally. That’s the real source of power. That’s where my absolute faith belonged, not in some trendy spiritual leader-of-the-week after all.

I didn’t become suddenly less responsible for my choices, but felt immeasurably less alone in making them. I realized it’s not about accretion, but about letting go and emptying, not about finding answers to questions, but living the questions. It’s mystery, too—“don’t-know” mind. And I saw that the source is many. It’s the wind and ocean and stars, it’s the creatures and, yes, people. I began to see teachers everywhere, could glean gems from the seemingly dullest.

I understood that no matter how hard you fall—if your house burns down, if you get dumped by your lover, if you lose your shirt, your head, your heart—there are jewels in the ashes. I was learning where to look. Indeed, to look, rather than writing those ashes off as useless trash.

Still, despite the plethora of lovingkindess in my life, for which I’m ineffably grateful, I had become distrustful and cynical. Writers I revered, particularly Buddhist writers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Shunryu Suzuki, and Jack Kornfield, consistently articulated the spiritually lethal effect of holding on to negativity. But my anger, fear, and despair had always seemed so compelling I’d had trouble letting go of them. Now, without the physical reserves I used to have, my body was confirming with startling clarity the transformative power of letting go. Exquisitely aware of the internal pull between my perceived need for self-preservation—the ultimate act of holding on—and a more healing receptivity, I knew that the qualities I needed to cultivate most were trust, non-judgment, and joy, no matter how dark the night or long the day.

Along comes Zachariah.

Zach’s my dog, a gangly sweetheart of a Golden Retriever I found through a breed rescue group. Long in the back and leggy, he was teeming with fleas, had sores on his feet, and favored his right shoulder. He’s afraid of loud noises and manhole covers, and has a tendency to try to rescue swimmers at the beach who are not drowning.

Other than that Zach is the soul of mellow. It took him five minutes to adapt to his new home—different environment, our other Golden Retriever, and us. He settled in as though he had been with us forever. It was awesome, a creature totally at home wherever he found himself—and with whomever.

That was how I wanted to do life, and found so difficult. Zach assumes the absolute goodwill of everyone he encounters. He expects the best and that’s what he gets. Gentle to a fault and friendly but not in-your-face, he’s an extraordinary magnet for people. Zach doesn’t sit zazen, practice vipassana, or burn incense, but he has become an incomparable spiritual adviser. Without words or intent, that 85-pound package of gold teaches by the sheer power of his presence. He’s open, spontaneous, delighted, responsive, forgiving, expressive. If only I could begin to achieve that kind of emotional suppleness.

He smiles a lot and is, above all, playful. He doesn’t attach to things or brood. If he chases a squirrel and it runs up a tree, he doesn’t spend hours trying to bark it down. He moves on. To Zach, life is a romp.

And he has no ego. He’s not invested in looking good or scoring points. I’m getting better, but the traps are everywhere. Each time I think I’ve avoided another one I start to congratulate myself on my skill and, whoops, I’ve fallen into another trap.

Maybe Zach’s cerebral cortex lacks the capacity pundits require to designate a creature as super-conscious. And maybe his behavior reflects little more than a biological mandate rather than an evolved spirit. I don’t believe it for a second—I’ve met too many dogs who make algae look evolved—but who cares anyway? If, as the Buddhists believe, consciousness is as much a function of heart as mind, Zach’s is up there with the highest of them.

I never had a guru, but I found some terrific teachers—including one who can balance a biscuit on his nose then flip it in the air and catch it in his mouth, and who doubles as a foot warmer on cold nights. Like a bumper sticker I saw recently says, “May I always be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”

©Lucy Aron, The Santa Barbara Independent, January 1998

Yes

2008-01-17T08:19:00.001-08:00

Yes

for Chris & Bruce

I could have been dancing tonight,
night of bubbles, noisemakers, paper hats,
and faux good cheer. But here I am,
shoeless and sober as a cobblestone,
sipping the champagne of contemplation.

Four hours to midnight. The spirits of Tara,
Jizo, and Avalokitesvara shimmer
in the air like moonlight on snow. Here
in the spangled silence of this house, I inhale
clarity. On this foggy last day of 2002—
year of the warrior women of Nigeria
armed only with courage and dignity
who said no to Chevron—
year that Bali, land of people who dance
when they walk, was bombed—
year of the burgeoning battle drums—
I exhale ill-will. Witnessed by these sisters

and brothers on the cushion who sit steadfast
as oaks despite sore knees and sleepiness,
I intend “a cup o’ kindness” for the noisy
neighbor, the tailgater, faithless lover,
the ignorant and the gnarly, for fat cat
corporate profiteers, hatemongers and hawks,
for my own magnum of fissures and failures.
Before these candle flames that flicker like doubt,
like waving so long to the old and hello
to the wild and hallowed new—I resolve not
to marry my opinions, not to turn away
from the dragons at my doorstep, not to covet
dark Belgian chocolate, except once in awhile.

And “should auld acquaintance be forgot”
I vow to remember and cherish the luminous
bell of here and now
and yes.

©Lucy Aron, 2003

Wild Turkey Shine

2008-01-17T08:17:00.000-08:00

Wild Turkey Shine

If he were a city he’d be Las Vegas,
this pachuco of the pasture with his neon
blue and hot pink head held high and
that baroque theater of tail feathers. Bronze-
tipped yet, they flare then fold then flare
like a stageful of Busby Berkeley showgirls.

Usually clunky, now he puts the “oo”
in smooth the way he struts so cool, all but
glides across the grass towards her as if something
bigger even than himself depends on wowing
this chic-as-a-brown-paper-bag audience of one.

So what if he’s subtle as a traffic light?
You’ve got to love the James Brown blare
of him. And despite the stupidity, he knows
that when the stakes are high, bet on extravaganza.

©Lucy Aron, Birmingham Poetry Review, Winter/Spring 2005

Butterfly Love

2008-01-17T08:14:00.000-08:00

Butterfly Love

The fritillary, a pale orange butterfly with dull black spots, fluttered and flailed in the web outside my window as the spider watched from an upper corner. A moment later, a second fritillary appeared and began darting frantically around the periphery of the web. It charged towards the web, then wheeled off, back towards it, and away again. Its dance of indecision suggested a creature suspended between the conflicting impulses of self-preservation and self-sacrifice.

Was the second butterfly the mate of the first? And did the display reflect concern? Empathy? Love? Butterfly love. Yet entomologists assure us that invertebrates do not love. They lack the complex attachments of the more highly evolved species. Their bonding has no emotional content.

But if the behavior of the second butterfly was not a demonstration of caring, why didn't it simply fly away as soon as it sensed peril? Why did it keep gravitating back towards the captured butterfly, as though wanting to rescue it?

I was torn between my own contradictory impulses. Should I just watch, dismayed, or demolish the web and liberate the butterfly? Though I knew the spider was merely fulfilling its biological imperative, I identified with the butterfly as it struggled against the lethal strands—with weak against strong, prey against predator.

Yet I am a predator. I don’t eat red meat or fowl, but I do eat fish. I don’t kill fish, but the act of consumption renders me a co-conspirator in their demise. I destroy snails in my garden. I kill fleas and ticks on my dog.

Why, then, was I disturbed at the prospect of a butterfly’s death? Was I responding not to death, but to the dying process, a reflection of my own anxieties? Or to the butterfly’s gossamer beauty? And which considerations ought to determine such life and death decisions—here and elsewhere? Aesthetics, evolutionary status, abundance, size, charm, service, entertainment value?

I don’t know. I’ve sought a philosophy which would teach me how to make peace with life’s contradictions, to cherish rather than allow them to bedevil me. Appalled by the arrogance and rapacity of Western culture, I have chosen an eclectic blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and Native American thought. Their cosmologies are disparate, yet I’m inspired by the balance they embody—between head and heart, yin and yang—and by their fierce reverence for life.

Still, facile answers elude me. What does reverence for life mean in the crucible of day-to-day existence? All inanimate stuff of the planet, according to many non-Western belief systems, is as alive as any finch or daffodil. We must destroy in order to provide food, clothing, shelter. But destroy what, and how much? Which animals? Which plants?

In many Native Americans traditions, one takes from the earth only with a profound sense of gratitude, and always gives back to it. When picking herbs to use medicinally or ceremonially, the Mohawks never remove the largest or healthiest members—those that are essential to the perpetuation of the plant community. And when possible they sow seeds back into the ground from which they were removed. My existence affects the natural world. I can only hope to affect it as consciously and tenderly.

The second butterfly seemed to understand that there was a critical line. If crossed, there would be no crossing back. Ultimately, it was unwilling to take that final step. And I, too, was unwilling to interfere. My role wasn’t to judge but to acknowledge, with awe, the spider as vital a player as the butterfly in the cosmic drama.

Despite my biases. Despite my unease. Despite my butterfly love.

©Lucy Aron, Cune Press 1997

Waltzing on Water

2008-01-17T08:12:00.001-08:00

Waltzing On Water

You want to run. No time
to board up the doors
or windows. Head inland.
There is no inland. No
horizon. No south or north.
Just this rain-whipped sky, a dissonance
of wind—each gust a different pitch
like when wolves bay—and waves.

Big as yesterday. No-escape waves.
Waves that wallop you into another
universe, certain you’ll never find
your way home. But you are home.
Same leaky faucet. leafless birch
still standing by the porch. Only
the house is a moonscape. You float
through the rooms, the hours. Wonder
how to navigate the sudden glut
of space, a hollowness like the inside
of your heart. Stoke the fire.

Sweep the floor. Try Bill Evans,
a Schumann quintet, Aretha singing “Amazing
Grace,” her voice a shimmer of salvation
from the wind chill that pierces marrow.
Whoosh. Remember waves, good times
waves, all alone waves. Always in threes.
You spin and spin, waltzing on water. And
wait, unmoored, for the tide to go in.

©Lucy Aron, Red Wheelbarrow, 2005

up the nasdaq

2008-01-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

up the nasdaq

down 45 points wild
iris in the rain semiconductor
thrives near the sea
interpolated resolution

dreaming,

calibrate contemplate high-voltage naked shoulder silicon
valley russian river at dusk

multi-tasking blue-green
serrated leaves double

click on crane courtship
a leaping dance
dotcom plant at new
moon configures
unfolds
hyperlink
the light-splattered sky
cybersex this twisted branch with lichen

powerful mangos
in nanoseconds—
Buddha.

multiple incremental
flutter of finches yahoo
old friends download
forgiveness go to wind-
scattered seeds 8 million
gigabytes suck virtual
blossoming, crash a dusty
cow path turbo-charged

your eyes

©Lucy Aron, Peregrine, Amherst Press 2001

One

2008-01-17T08:08:00.002-08:00

One

We swim home. Oblivious to the consummate circle
of leave and return, beginning and ending. Indifferent
to idyllic visions of a cool sinuous universe rimmed
by willow and alder, where pintails glide and herons
wait. We swim our vaguely Shakespearean story—epic

journey, warrior spirit against the currents, time,
the artful cast. Without grief or rage against the poisons,
concrete walls in our path, we fly. Over millennial stones,
up waterfalls, unable to resist the roar in our blood
that obliterates everything except one memory. Then

beget and die in the narrow green waters that cradle
the moon, that buoy the souls of those who spawn cathedrals
and rockets, CAT-scans and cinema, yet refuse
to honor the sustaining symmetry of gain and give back.
Who take our bodies into theirs and deny that we are one.

©Lucy Aron, Knock Journal, 2005

North of Oz

2008-01-17T08:08:00.001-08:00

North Of Oz

Once you stumbled
upon the place and now burn
holes in your shoes to find it
again. From Maine
to Madagascar, compass
in pocket, coordinates inscribed
on your brain like the name
of a firstborn, you trek
with a hunger that feels encoded
in your DNA for one glimpse.

But did you remember
to toss away
your gear?

©Lucy Aron, Many Mountains Moving, 2002

Mysterious Object of a Luminous Verb

2008-01-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

Mysterious Object Of A Lucid Verb

I’m scrambling eggs or pumping gas
and they tumble out. From the heart,
if not the tongue. Like a bell. More music
than prayer. Then the careening train
chugs to a stillness and I remember.

For a wisp of time I remember, and all
the white noise of my life—the jangle
of people, traffic, work, of doubt and longing—
morph into a star. I become sky.

Daily this bell, like grace. The words ring
and You’re near. I remember. This breath.
This meal. This day. Thank You.

©Lucy Aron, Nimrod International Journal, Spring/Summer 2004

Luminosity in a Mud Puddle

2008-01-17T08:06:00.000-08:00

Luminosity In A Mud Puddle

i.

I want to believe
that I’ll walk the earth
like sunshine on wheat fields.

ii.

When the low one
glows like the Northern Lights
and calls my name
mellow as Ella sings Porter,
when my feet ache
and all I see
looking up
is a mountain,
I want to believe
I’ll take the high one.

iii.

If you steal my last
crust of bread,
toss my heart
out in the rain,
or leave when I’m losing,
I want to believe
I’ll keep a light on
in the window.

iv.

When in looks like out,
1 + 1 make a tin can,
and I crave nothing
except the answer,
I want to believe
I can love the question.

v.

May I always see
the luminosity
in a mud puddle.

vi.

When my faith
is ragged as a cat
on the short end
of a brawl
and I’m being devoured
by my own shadows,
I want to believe
I’ll remember
how to dance.

©Lucy Aron 2005

June's Hands

2008-01-17T08:02:00.000-08:00

June’s Hands

Slower than Sunday morning
they ramble over
the stony topography
of knees, shoulders, lower back
while I lie on the table
in this cabin-in-the-woods
my mind a junkyard
from the 5 o’clock news—
Palestinians and Israelis,
priest molests boys,
river toxified—
I’m lattéd out
stopgostopgo
muscles tense as traffic
yield
to feather fingers
that track the back roads
of legs and neck,
uphill grind of joints.
“The hip is a hinge,”
she says
adjusting, shifting
soft
like the summer of her name
something glides
from a cage—
no destination.

©Lucy Aron, 2002

Horses of Summer

2008-01-17T07:58:00.002-08:00

Horses Of Summer

Close your eyes and listen to the lazy guitar triplets
and it’s July, you’re rockin’ on the porch with a beer
while the sun floats down behind a neighbor’s magnolia.
Then a red splash in the tangerine sky. Her voice—
pan-fried in Southern Comfort and heartbreak. "Summertime
and the livin’s easy," she sings with a scorching tenderness
that feels like forgiveness for the worst sin you ever committed.

And if you’d been able to think at that moment, maybe
you’d wonder how somebody whose livin’ was sharp edges
and a hard rain, never enough and too much, is riding
the horses of summer like a dove on the wind. You try
to picture her in a field of buttercups, sun on her shoulders.

There’s the round face, the ever-ready smile, but what grabs you
is the winter in her eyes. Yet stoked by the music she could lope
through the dark and out, from the Fillmore to Woodstock.
The music was church, fire, the mountaintop, abiding lover.
Where you lose yourself and find yourself. Life was walls
pushing in and the only way to stay alive was to sing.

Now the band turns up the heat on Gershwin’s bluesy ballad
and you hear someone about to implode—but not now. Slowly,
she wrenches a galaxy from "hush Baby Baby Baby don’t you cry,"
and you’re mesmerized yet uneasy, as if the ground is melting

but you don’t want to run. The guitars shift into a jacked-up
wah wah that flings you back to the acid-tinged sixties
and leaves you tripping behind a wall of sound, and when
the maxed-out woman from Port Arthur sings, "till that mornin’
nothin’s gonna harm you," the quiver of faith and fifty shades
of yearning in her voice break open something in you
and you cling to the line as if it’s the only thing in the world
that can save you.

©Lucy Aron, The Litchfield Review, Summer 2004

Dancing with Sasquatch

2008-01-17T07:58:00.001-08:00

Dancing With Sasquatch

A fist through the wall while you’re sipping
vermouth and listening to Schubert, this thing
that looms and bellows like a creature chained

to a tree for centuries, suddenly unleashed.
You run but buckle, spinning from the heavy metal
clang that eclipses reason and light, and the stench—

like breathing crushed glass—as you struggle
to imagine the pale blue houses by the bay,
redwoods at dawn, your lover’s face,

but the whang and clatter invade your chest
and you forget the sweet floating blackness
of your first refuge, before time and dreaming

when you swayed as if forever to the lilt of zero
gravity. You forget how the trembling becomes
a dance, that everything you need is in this moment.

©Lucy Aron, Dogwood, Spring 2002

Cut Time Burn

2008-01-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

Cut Time Burn

The pinto, her mane a flourish of mahogany,
prances along the fence line like a tethered gypsy.
Hooves beat the air in cut time, a heartbeat away
from the road that flares toward the horizon then melts

into cedars and sunlight. Shift, sway. She whirls
around, etching into the earth again and again a line
as deep as her yearning. To or from doesn’t matter.
Just shake that insistent staccato. Fa-da-da-

dum, fa-da-da-dum. Is it Andalusian? A tune drenched
in minor with edgy guitars that tick out an easy
rhythm almost concealing the fire inside the notes. Music
that can make you dance when you’re on your knees.

©Lucy Aron, Red Wheelbarrow, 2005

Connoisseur of Dirt

2008-01-17T07:56:00.000-08:00

Connoisseur Of Dirt

Who cares about the banana slug? Suddenly
there on the path inches from your feet
like a refugee from a painting by Bosch.
Can’t you picture its image on a bone china teacup?
This dawdling thumb of slime—so viscous
it could cruise a knife edge without a nick. Oozes
through the day, unapologetic, as if haste
were a sure sign of the uncivilized.

Imagine spending every hour contemplating
the earth millimeter by millimeter. To track
the footprints of beetles, wakes of worms.
Probing like a lover’s topography tiny arcs
of forest floor, the density of dirt, forsaken pebbles.
Would you hear a heartbeat? Some ancient,
implacable ka-thwunk, ka-thwunk that rumbles,
like the lazy lope of a brontosaurus, up through
magma and igneous rock? And would it change
in the rain?

Married for life to a place enduring as faith,
a cool, dark realm that hums with roots unfurling
and seeds that dream their tomorrow then do
their dance, could you forget how the earth holds
you, gives and receives without judgment? Spirit,
manifest in a mud puddle and in this slithering
alchemist who turns fox dung, rotted leaves, poison
oak into the shimmer and glisten of blood, breath,
and light.

©Lucy Aron, Birmingham Poetry Review, Winter/Spring 2005

Church of the First Light

2008-01-17T07:55:00.001-08:00

Church Of The First Light

Some still sleep
while owls on high branches
croon matins,
bassos in the dew-drunk
choir of cricket and frog,
contrapuntal burro
drenching in holy hubbub
the moon-tinged believer
in the pew by the window
too dazzled to dream
who testifies
to the conversion
of hills from silhouette
to madrone and oak,
the transfigured sky—
indigo, topaz, light-lavish
morning
glory.

©Lucy Aron, Bodega Land Trust, 2005

2008-01-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

Because You Ask

2008-01-17T07:54:00.000-08:00

Because You Ask

to hell with the clichés
of crisis, the gift-
in-disguise, grist-
for-the-mill treacle

with grit, composure,
other people’s notions
can’t they see
the sky’s on fire?

I want to scream
the moon out of its orbit
bash my fist
down fate’s throat

this isn’t the time
for sherry and marzipan
served on white
linen tablecloths

besides, I threw away
the painted smile
i used to carry
in my pocket

for the others
the ones who prefer
plastic flowers
that never need

sunshine or water
anyway, they ran off
when the ground started to melt
but I’ll tell you a secret

because you ask
how I am
as if you want
to know

sometimes, like when
I listen to billie
sing “Autumn In New York”
her voice raw and ragged

or glimpse a hawk
above the hill—
wed to the wind
I remember

it’s all grace
in this untidy
extravagant moment
called life

I tell you because
you ask how i am
as if you want
to know

©Lucy Aron, 2003

Apéritif

2008-01-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

Apéritif

At a nook in the café
dense with diners
toe peruses calf
beneath the table
where one perfect tulip
in a bud vase
perches on white linen cloth
above languid circles
traced on a kneecap—
like nothing to do in your whole life but this—

circles in synch
with Sinatra

while spoons clink
and conversations buzz
sole probes thigh—
like bee nuzzles clover

and nowhere to go but
(yes) there, he sighs, she smiles
at the waiter
who brings the bisque.

©Lucy Aron, 2003

An Affliction of Foresight

2008-01-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

An Affliction of Foresight

cloudy eyes more smudge
than impediment
the rocking horse gait
a quirky concession to the years
now we sit on the sand
and watch
the waves

yesterday you were a dolphin
today, the cool hug of the water
somewhere between dreaming
and memory
your legs creaky, irascible
from the hurt and muddle
yet opening, somehow,
to the noble freedom
of no-effort

and later, if for a twinkling,
front paws out, rump up,
tail a reed in a gale
married to the moment
as I wish I could be
oblivious
to the misty nearness
of tomorrow

©Lucy Aron, The Bark, Summer 2001

14th Street Shelter

2008-01-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

14th Street Shelter

i. Susan at seven

exuberant
as april
caramel curls
and a birthday
cake smile

she holds Zach’s
leash like it’s a
golden wand
like holding it
makes her golden too

we stroll
around the block
yak about ponies
what goes best
on chili dogs

down the street
two boys shoot hoops
the spring air
sweet
with their hollers

we pass a yard
bursting with bougainvillea
blossoms spill
onto the sidewalk

she tucks the leash
under one arm
picks a posy
hands it to me
with that smile

the one that helps me
forget for awhile
her mother’s a junkie
the dad fast with his fists

what helps her forget?

***

ii. decorations

two teenage girls
saunter down the hall
to check us out

Angie, a runaway,
with faux eyelashes
that unfurl like feather dusters

Melinda was picked up by
Child Protective Services
wears long purple fingernails
with sparkles
and earrings that dangle

as interested in Zach and me
as in reading
War And Peace
they sashay back to their room
to the epochal business
of hair and makeup

more like sisters in art
than adversity
they primp and spruce
bedeck themselves into
a merry brightness
like a pair
of slightly tarnished
Christmas ornaments

***

iii. king of the circle

always something or other
spilled on his shirt
Tommy’s an ocean of motion
zips around the parking lot
playground on a tricycle
in his “kiss ‘em and run” style
confers a ritualistic pat
on Zach’s head
with every pass
whizzes around
wheels on the ground
yet off in space
you can see it
in the tilt of his head
as if he’s about to ask “Why?”
but forgot the word
and from the look in his eyes
behind those thick glasses
like the world’s still a blur

***

iv. warm

now here’s Laurel
with the blueberry eyes
toddling toward Zach

her white-blonde hair flies
arms flap
i hold up my hand
like a crosswalk guard
remind her
“dogs aren’t rubber balls—
whoever heard of a rubber
ball with a tail?”

stooping beside her
I take her hand in mine

we stroke Zach’s back
feel his shaggy tenderness
under the lazy rhythm
of our hands

now child, woman, and dog
all melt a little
become each other’s sun

***

v. almost dark blues

dusk pouring
over the mountains
on the drive home
Zach in my rearview mirror
looking like a wilted sunflower
the kids’ hugs
still in his fur

later, in the unlit
living room
twilight stillness
I sip a burgundy
listen to B.B. King
and wonder why
I’m crying

is it these burnished
city blues—
the effervescence
of the kids
that splashes through
their hurt—
or Zach’s heart
that enfolds us all
with the ease
of a summer day?

***

©Lucy Aron, Friends Journal, 2004

A Millennium Cow Ruminates

2008-01-16T10:29:00.000-08:00

A Millennium Cow Ruminates

Dear Mr. Spielberg:

Have you heard about the Maglev? It’s a train that runs on a magnetic field and can top 250 m.p.h. One of your Senators rode a Maglev in Germany and wants to buy one for his state. He said everything goes by in a blur, but it’s exhilarating. Yikes! Does that sound like life nowadays or what?

Cows aren’t known for their smarts—most of us are going to wind up as some guy’s hamburger for God’s sake— and we don’t read The New York Times or Vanity Fair so how hip can we be, right, but we’ve been watching you and it’s scary out there.

Everything’s going faster—cars and catamarans and the Concorde and computers, then there’s Jiffy Lube, Insta-Soup, Quick Smog (don’t ask). I’m not suggesting they ought to slip Nembutal into the Cornflakes, and this probably sounds retro what with the speed gods they worship every morning at Starbucks, but instead of the Yellow Brick Road doesn’t all that bustle make you think Twister meets The Titanic? And we haven’t even talked road rage, fossil fuel, Bovine Growth Hormone (if it makes us grow faster, what’s it doing to you?).

I know movies won’t change the world, but what about a movie with a cow hero? You’re into critters—the spiders in Arachnophobia and that over-the-top-grumpy guy with all the teeth in Jaws and ET looks like a turtle. Anyway, people would see creatures who don’t whine if the bus is ten minutes late or fight over who got there first—or over anything for that matter, but that’s another movie—and take time to smell the weeds and aren’t stressed out and maybe there’s a connection.

Not a message movie where you bludgeon people over the head with some Universal Truth, but a subliminal feelgood ride that eases overwrought brains down to a civilized alpha. By the time people amble out of the theatre they’ll look at each other and go, “Whoa, I think I’ve just had a Zen moment. Maybe those cows are are on to something.”

Instead of another cliché couple of hours watching Bruce or Keanu chase bad guys around the place and all that gloom and mayhem, there’d be Guernseys, Jerseys, Dutch Belteds! Isn’t that refreshing? We dawdle and plod incomparably. Pretty scenery, too. We’re green freaks so you could even bill the movie as an eco-flick. The studio’s promo department would love that. Appeal to the environmentalists. And while we’re talking demographics, the movie would be a natural for the ranchers. Get the tree-huggers and cowboys together for a change.

I wouldn’t dream of telling you how to do your job, but I see fading in on some cows grazing on a hill, while on the soundtrack the Eagles are singing “Peaceful, Easy Feelin’,” maybe dissolve to a two-shot of cows contemplating a field of daisies.... The mind reels.

Yours Udderly,

A. Holstein.

©Lucy Aron, The Bohemian 2001

Free on the Inside

2008-01-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Free On The Inside

Even the air in the parking lot feels high voltage. My husband, Max, and I approach the sprawl of bunker-like buildings surrounded by layers of electrified fence tall as a semi truck. A dirty haze lies over this huge, desolate valley. It’s spring. We can see the High Sierras in the distance, snow still on the peaks.

Looking for an antidote to my claustrophobia, I keep my eyes on the mountains as we walk towards the door of the Visitors Processing Center. This is my first visit to Annie. She’s a lifer—killed her stepfather when she was twenty, after a decade of sexual abuse. That was fourteen years ago.

I had answered Annie’s ad soliciting a pen pal in a writer’s organization newsletter. During our three years of correspondence, I’ve discovered a woman who’s big-hearted, honorable, wise. I’m in awe that anyone’s soul can survive, let alone flourish, in such a brutal environment. She’s the flower that defies the rock, keeps blossoming up through the crack. Her refusal to succumb to negativity has to be key to how she can stay so astonishingly on center. What most people use as an excuse for cynicism and despair, Annie is turning into redemption.

She doesn’t contest her guilt, but hopes to get paroled. In this state a life sentence means 25 years to life, depending.... She had a public defender who didn’t allow her to testify, so was never given an opportunity to explain the circumstances of her crime. A group of lawyers working pro bono for battered women inmates has Annie’s name on their long waiting list.

We have interests in common—animals, spirituality, writing, the criminal justice system, a passion for the sea. She keeps me informed on prison-related legislation, sends magazine articles, cool postcards that have been donated to her, inspirational quotes from her eclectic reading that somehow arrive in my mailbox at just the right time. Sometimes she signs her letters, “Free on the inside.”

I send pictures from magazines of Caribbean beaches with pink sand, of hot air balloons, geese in flight, photographs of our dogs and ourselves that she requested, a subscription to Mother Jones, postage stamps, a book of Rumi which she devours. Our correspondence is like having an ongoing conversation with someone who’s articulate and incredibly attentive. I share myself with her, impressed by her interest in who I am, and she gives me one hell of an education on what life in a cage is like.

A trust has evolved between us. A prisoner’s openness is rare. There are some gnarly people behind bars and vulnerability can be dangerous. But Annie has an inner spaciousness. She is, indeed, free on the inside in ways I could only dream of being.

Inside the Processing Center Max and I are ID’ed and searched by guards with guns and attitudes. What we can wear, what we can carry, what we can bring the prisoner (nothing), have been absolutely pre-determined. We pass through two sets of electronically-controlled doors that lead to a large, open-air (thank God) walkway. We’ve been directed to cross it to the cafeteria where we’ll meet Annie. It’s a considerable distance and something about the ambiance here makes it feel more ominous than a stroll down a walkway.

Suddenly, I’m startled by a jamboree of huge roses growing on a small lawn amidst the relentless concrete and steel. The incongruity takes my breath away. For a moment I feel terribly moved. The roses intensify the reality of where I am and, briefly, ease it.

I wasn’t unfamiliar with the prison system before my relationship with Annie. Thirty years ago I worked weekends at the L.A. Catholic Worker soup kitchen in Skid Row and answered an ad similar to hers in the Catholic Worker newsletter. And many years later, a friend committed murder and was sentenced to life in California’s notorious Pelican Bay prison. I kept in touch with him and his daughters until his death.

I’m not sure what it is that compels me about prisoners. I’m concerned about the politics of the system—the corruption, bias against the poor, the counterproductive mentality of warehousing people. But viscerally, it’s perhaps my own sort of primal horror at the thought of being locked up. I don’t deal well with authority or regimentation. More even than the deprivation, I think a life micromanaged by others would be unbearable.

At the door to the cafeteria, we’re ID’ed by more guards. There are about thirty tables inside and a few more in a small, high-fenced patio connected to the cafeteria by an open (thank God) door. Most of the tables, each with a cardboard number on it, are filled with people of all ages, including children. All prisoners wear blue denim, clothing visitors are prohibited from wearing. Along one wall is a series of closed windows into rooms for visits with prisoners not allowed access to the cafeteria.

Guards behind a counter ID us once again. We sign in, are directed to table #11. Max and I sit down. Even as a visitor I’m feeling the oppressive paternalism. I look around. This is a state prison. That’s hard to forget. One of the least progressive in the country, right up there with the worst, like Texas. There have been a number of documented deaths in this prison due to medical neglect. Thousands of women, from minimum security to Death Row, reside here. Many of the women have been victims of sexual violence. The majority of guards are men. The staff gynecologist is a man. I flash on the double whammy of betrayal by the father, then a life dominated by a web of “fathers.”

It’s noon, a hot day. I feel edgy from the crowd, from the aura of hostility. There’s an Us versus You mindset—You being the prisoners and their visitors. Whether you’re family, friend, or attorney, you’re perceived by the staff as Other, as suspect. Max and I chat for a few minutes, not knowing quite what to do next or how long we’ll have to wait to see Annie. We wander over to the food counter where they sell potato chips, cokes, candy bars. We’re told that if we want to order lunch there’ll be a wait of more than an hour. We’re ticked, split a lemonade, order three lunches.

Forty minutes later, Annie walks over to the table. She’s tall, weathered, charismatic. The three of us indulge in a long, intense hug. Annie tells us she has to sit in the chair facing the guards’ counter to stay in the line of sight of a surveillance camera. We’re told it’s against the rules for us to speak to anyone except the prisoner and the guards.

She’s like her letters—graceful, a natural storyteller. In minutes, we’re so deep in conversation I forget where I am, then remember, then forget. Even the grumpy old guards disappear, reappear, fade. I ask her about the roses. They, like the almond orchards outside the walls, are tended by minimum security prisoners for the requisite 17 cents an hour. Annie is, of course, maximum security.

Sensitive to the claustrophobia I’d written her about, she suggests we walk out to the patio while waiting for lunch. The sun and fresh air feel good. Max and I were on the road for almost four hours driving here and we’re glad to stretch our legs. The three of us cruise the periphery of the patio over and over.

Lunch arrives. We talk about life inside and outside the walls, about families, and our dogs who apparently have become well-known at the prison from their pictures on Annie’s cell wall. In answer to Max’s question, she describes a cell. About the size of a living room, it’s bedroom, living room, bathroom, and sometimes kitchen to eight women. There are four bunk beds and a locker for each person. She tells us how our tax dollars are paying for a proliferation of anti-anxiety drugs some of the women are given, but don’t swallow. The prescriptions go on their record which then helps them get SSI checks when they’re released. We’re updated on the workshops on domestic violence Annie conducts for other prisoners. It’s hard not to think about what a dynamo she would be on the outside, connecting with troubled girls before they do something irreparable.

Visiting hours are over. People say their goodbyes, shuffle towards the door. It’s a bittersweet moment. We hug, then watch Annie move off into a line of prisoners forming along the wall. I feel a shudder of constriction around my own body. I’m left with the kind of buzz you get from spending time with someone you really care about, and a fantasy that makes me ache—the one where Max and I walk out, take Annie with us, don’t stop till we’re miles away from the prison, pick up a six-pack of ice-cold beers, and drive to the coast for a long, long walk on the beach.

©Lucy Aron, 2003

Letters to Cybelle

2008-01-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

Letters to Cybelle

My cousin Cybelle was killed in a car accident recently and, as I was going over her effects with my uncle, her father, I discovered these letters. They were written to Cybelle by her mother shortly before she died following a long illness. Each of the letters was delivered by Cybelle’s father, as her mother had requested, on her 5th, 11th, and 16th, and 21st birthdays.

17 September 1963

Dear Cybelle,

Happy Birthday, Plum. Daddy said he would read this letter to you today. There’s nothing I wish more in the whole spinning world than to be with you now when you become five years old. Imagine, that’s as many years as all the fingers on your hand put together.

I hope you like the seashell. It’s called a periwinkle and I found it when you and Daddy and I were at the beach last year. Do you remember? Your hair was braided in a long pigtail down your back and you were wearing a red swimsuit with blue polka dots, just like the color of the ocean, only everybody knows that the ocean doesn’t have polka dots. Daddy lifted you up on his shoulders and the three of us waded out into the waves. You squealed each time the water splashed over your toes. You said it felt like a big oozy monster was trying to gobble you up. But you weren’t afraid.

Then we went back to our beach blanket and had tuna fish sandwiches and apple juice. When we opened up the bag of chocolate chip cookies, we found the sand had gotten into it. So we just shook the sand off and ate them all anyway. Daddy told us he thought they tasted even better that way. Did you know that tuna fish live in the sea, just like the little animal who used to be curled up inside your periwinkle? That shell used to be his house. Do you think he snored when he slept?

I wonder how high you can count today. You would have to count for a long, long time (longer even than it takes to build a snowman) to count up all the creatures who live in the ocean. Daddy promised he would give you the biggest kiss for me and the biggest hug that anyone anywhere has ever gotten because I love you so much and I don’t want you ever to forget that.

You are very special. If you walked for miles and miles, or if you got on an airplane and flew over the clouds to the other side of the world, you would never find anyone else like yourself. I want you to be proud of that always. And to remember that every one of the millions of other people in the world is special, too.

I love you more than the sky is wide or the grass is green or lollipops are sweet.

Mommy

26 September 1963

Dear Cybelle,

One Christmas many years ago, my own mother gave me this pony pin, and I can’t think of anyone who it would look better on than you.

Happy 11th birthday, Sweetheart. The pin is made of cherry wood, and Mother told me it was whittled by an old man who was selling fruit at a roadside stand she passed one day while driving through the countryside. She said the man was as skinny as a flagpole, wore a tattered straw hat that perched on his head at a funny angle—like a hat on a rack—and he didn’t have a single tooth.

Where do you think the pony is galloping? Toward the mountains, where he can use his powerful muscles to climb its steep sides, then maybe to stand atop a high cliff so that he can look out over the green shining earth? Or is he cantering into the forest, where he can play amongst the birds and the dancing shadows of the tall trees? Or is he on his way to a river that glitters like silver in the sunlight and provides water for him and his family when they’re thirsty?

I’ve been thinking a lot these past weeks about what the world will be like when you receive this letter. I hope there are still many wild places left where you can run free like the pony. This planet is the home of every creature on earth, and it is a giver of many precious gifts. I know Daddy is teaching you to love and take care of the earth, just as you love and take care of all the gifts you receive. Be thankful for it, and spend as much time as you can in places that are wild and natural and quiet. They have much to teach you.

I’m closing my eyes and trying to imagine what you’ll look like today. Let me guess. At least a dozen freckles decorate each cheek, and your smile looks exactly like Daddy’s smile and you’re wearing a pink velvet ribbon in your hair. When I was your age, my favorite things to do were swimming, playing hopscotch and taking Louise for walks. Louise was our Boxer and she was very smart. One summer I took her to obedience class at the park and she won second prize. They gave us a little trophy with a red ribbon attached to it. Louise learned how to sit, stay, heel, and come when I called her. Well, most of the time anyway. And she loved Swiss cheese. Besides Chalice McPheeters who lived down the block, Louise was my best friend.

If I were there with you now, I would hold you so close and so tight that not even a butterfly’s wing could slide in between us. I hope you’re having a birthday party with lots of friends to help you celebrate. Of all the things in this world, including emeralds and great big houses and fancy cars and pretty clothes, friends are by far the best. Be a good friend always.

Well, Plum, I know that nobody wants to spend all day reading a letter on her birthday, so I’ll close here. Give Daddy a jumbo kiss for me.

I love you I love you I love you I love you.

Mommy

3 October 1963

Dear Cybelle,

I’m sorry that this letter isn’t in my own handwriting. I can’t lift a pen anymore, but every word on these pages in traveling directly from my heart to you, and Dad said he would write down every last syllable for me.

Happy, healthy, glorious 16th birthday, my not-so-little-anymore one. I’m watching you now, aged 4, sitting on the floor of the living room, seriously engaged in the art of finger painting—with more of that art on your face and overalls than on the paper—and trying to think of you as 16 years old.

It’s impossible. Or maybe I just don’t want to do it. When I think of you as you’ll be twelve years from now and know that I won’t be there to hold you when you’re sad or sick or frightened, to worry about you when you’re late coming home, to teach you how to sew a dress without a pattern, to sing rounds together, to show you the village in Wales where your great-grandparents were born, to brush your hair before a date, it makes me weep. So I won’t even try.

Because, Dearest, today is an occasion for rejoicing! This journal is for you. I suggest that you set aside at least fifteen minutes at the end of each day to write all your feelings and thoughts in it. Write your dreams, your doubts, your troubles, the good times. Write about the people in your life, about anything that thrills or confuses or touches you.

As you see yourself in the pages of your journal, you will begin to know yourself in a deeper way. And as you write down your observations of the world, you will see that world with greater clarity and compassion. That’s very important. I’ve discovered that the better I understand something or somebody, the less inclined I am to dislike or fear them.

You’ll be in high school now. What subjects do you enjoy most? Geometry? History? English? I loved biology. Do you know that high school was one of the happiest times in my whole life? There was so much to do and so many new things to find out about. There were football games and school dances and pizza and root beers at Vinny’s down the street when school let out. And there were science fairs. One year, Zach Whitcomb and I were chosen from our entire class to demonstrate the exhibits! Each semester we took field trips to places like the art museum and an ice cream factory where they gave us two giant scoops of the best chocolate fudge ripple I ever tasted. And on Saturday afternoons we usually went down to the Belvedere where we could see a double bill for a quarter. That’s where I first fell in love with Cary Grant.

I still remember Mrs. Clausen, my American history teacher. She spoke so slowly you were never quite sure if she was going to finish her sentences—but she did every time—and each Monday morning she brought a fresh bouquet of flowers from her own garden, which she put in a tiny lavender vase on her desk. Mrs. Clausen taught us how hard our country struggled to be free. She told us that nothing that is worthwhile in life is easy. From achieving freedom to learning how to play the piano to forgiving someone who has hurt you.

You’re nearly a woman. Your body is changing in wonderful ways. Like most 16-year-old girls, I’d wager there’s at least one thing about your body that you hate. For me, it was my crooked front teeth. They weren’t really very crooked, but nobody—not even my mother—could convince me that my teeth weren’t the only things people noticed when they looked at me. There isn’t a girl your age who hasn’t said to herself something like: “I’m too tall,” or “I’m too fat,” or “My breasts are too small,” or “My skin is too pale.”

Take pride in your body, but know that there are more important things than what you look like. Or what others look like. So take the time to focus your eyes beyond appearances. Ask yourself, is this person kind, or diligent, or honest? Think about the pearls that sometimes dwell inside the oyster’s plain, unadorned shell.

How many boyfriends would you have had by now? Half a dozen? Your sexuality is a gift. Treasure it and only share it with as much care as you would share your deepest secrets. And remember that broken hearts are as much a part of life as snow is a part of winter. Almost everyone has had their heart broken. And as snow melts, so hearts can mend. That’s the miracle. Protect your heart, but never allow anger or bitterness to let it close.

It’s drizzling now. Do you love the rain as much as I do, or have you inherited your father’s preference for warm, dry weather? You wouldn’t believe the shimmering orange and scarlet and burgundy leaves on the maple tree outside my window. It glows so brightly I wouldn’t be surprised if you could see it in the dark.

I’m sending to you across the mysteries of time and space (since I’m certain that neither is large enough to keep them from reaching you) bushels of pecks, squeezes that go on forever, and my love for you, Plum, which is imperishable.

Mom

7 October 1963

Dear Cybelle,

Happy birthday, Darling. Twenty-one years old! Such a momentous event. Isn’t it exciting? Do you like the teacup and saucer with the yellow tulips? They were made in England. Your father bought a set of six for me shortly after we were married, and when the earthquake roared through town the following year, this was the only one of the whole set left standing on the shelf. I know you won’t mind the small nick on the saucer.

That teacup holds so many memories for me. Many gentle and lovely, some sad. What is it about a cup of hot tea, with perhaps a dash of cinnamon, that enhances any occasion? I drank from it on nights when Dad and I would relax after dinner and share what happened during each other’s day. I drank from it while sitting with friends, talking for hours about everything from almond sponge cakes to zithers. While listening to the radio or writing letters. On chilly evenings when I was by myself, dreaming about the future, reflecting on the past or, maybe best of all, snuggling up inside the moment—whatever its hue—and simply letting its magic envelop me.

You’ll likely be in college now. My only advice is: Don’t let anyone else tell you what to do with your life. No matter how well intentioned or practical their opinions, or how old they are. Find something you love with a passion so deep you can’t see its bottom, then work at it ceaselessly till you become its master. but know that the process of mastering anything—be it the calling of aeronautical engineer, circus clown, or wife and mother—continues without end.

Right now I’m watching you sleep. No one could guess from the angelic look on your face what a mess you made of the kitchen this afternoon. You’re wearing pajamas with robins on them and a Raggedy Ann doll is sharing your pillow. Simon is snoozing at the foot of your bed—his front paw twitching—making sure that no harm comes to you when Dad and I go to bed. I don’t believe any mother has ever loved any daughter more than I love you, Plum. And tell Dad for me how much I love him, too. When you love somebody, let them know. Again and again.

A quarter moon is floating in the sky, peaceful as a lullaby, reminding me that it’s time now for me to sleep.

Mom

©Lucy Aron, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 27 1991

Bat Shower

2008-01-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

Bat Shower

We sit bat vigil. Out on the grass at Tucker’s Grove in Santa Barbara. About thirty of us wait at dusk for them to emerge for their nightly forage. There’s a colony of Mexican Free-Tailed Bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) under a bridge spanning the creek. Bats like water. They don’t like moonlight.

We’ve come because the Los Padres Interpretive Association, a non-profit volunteer group that works with the Forest Service, has sponsored a public education program on bats. Other people are drifting out of the park. It’s the end of the day. We assemble on the grass in scattered groups of two, three, some sitting alone—middle-aged, kids, older folk. One man, clearly a serious bat watcher, sports a bat tee-shirt and looks through a pair of binoculars fitted with an infra-red device. The lenses have a spooky glow, making the man appear as though he has red-orange eyeballs on stalks. I’m here because I’m beguiled by the natural world and because of a rather excessive tendency toward outrage. Bats have gotten a bad rap and my propensity to ally with the underdog made me want to experience them for myself. Will I be freaked or charmed?

We’re facing south towards the bridge. We gaze at its underside, but in the settling dark can’t discern much more than creekside flora—bushes, sycamore and eucalyptus blurring into shadows.

It’s mid-June. The babies have only recently been born. Each female bears a single young. The infants roost in masses so thick they can exceed 500 per square foot. Primarily cave dwellers, bats roost in buildings or under bridges mainly during migration. From which cave, on which mountain, have they come? And where will they go?

We cock our ears. A lush sound, massive but muted, like hundreds of tweeting, chirping mice or baby birds, wafts up from under the bridge. I imagine a dense wall of bats the color of espresso, pulsating, about to explode off into the night.

The noise of traffic over the bridge, headlights flashing, irritates me. Don’t they know something extraordinary is about to happen? I want the cars to go away so I can hear them. Even the whispered conversations around me seem blaring. But these are city bats. Cars and street lights and barking dogs and people have become aspects of their natural habitat. If they’ve adapted, so can I. Seng-T’san, poet and Third Zen Patriarch, wrote, “....In this ‘Not-two’ nothing is separate, and nothing in the world is excluded.”

Colder and colder. I put my jacket on. Darker. It’s 7:40 p.m. Thirty minutes pass. I shift my body on the hard ground, trying to get comfortable. Binoculars at the ready. My Nikon 10x50 Stayflow Plus II is powerful but heavy. Its strap is starting to bite into my neck. My discomfort, like the fading light, intensifies the anticipation. A place for secrets and subterfuge, the dark has an edgy quiescence, a claustrophobic feel. It belongs less properly to human beings than to creatures with huge, haunting eyes and soundless footsteps.

Will they show? When? Forty-five minutes go by. I look up at the canopy of trees above my head. A breeze makes the leaves shimmy, now twirling silhouettes against an indigo sky. I turn again towards the bridge. Some Native American tribes view the bat as a symbol of rebirth. The Chinese consider it an omen of good luck and happiness. But in the West it’s reviled and misunderstood. The myths and legends of a culture maintain the strict boundaries that guarantee the integrity of its cosmology. The imputation of evil originates from the crossing of those boundaries, be they religious, class, sexual, racial, taxonomic. The bat is a mammal, but flies like a bird. It has wings, but fur instead of feathers. Transgression. Evil. Taboo.

We fear what we do not understand. Barry Lopez could as well have been referring to the bat when he described the wolf, another maligned creature, as “not so much an animal that we have always known as one that we have consistently imagined.”

Bats do not attack people. They are not blind. Vampire bats (and they constitute just three of over 900 bat species) represent far less potential harm to the human body than Anne Rice does to literature. We rely on bats to pollinate fruit and nut trees, to disperse seeds that foster reforestation, and to control insects. A single bat can consume 600 insects in an hour. They love mosquitoes. If we pay attention, they can inform us about our own health. The vitality of their populations reflects pesticide and pollution levels in the environment.

Whoosh! Something springs out from under the bridge, flaps toward us, then zips over our heads and away. Was it a bat? Too dark to tell for sure. Flew too fast. Maybe just a—wait, there’s another—moth? No, there’re two more. Yes, bats.

All conversations stop. It’s 8:35 p.m. Another whizzes by. Seconds later, a trio. Then a stream of bats. It burgeons into a river. They sweep out from under the bridge, sparrow-size, flying erratically with sharp, angular turns like slightly stoned navigators, assured nonetheless, of their course. With a tailwind they can do sixty.

It’s like a star shower. They don’t shine, but they, too, are gifts of the night. Aggregate, relentlessly onward, evanescent. A bat shower. Hundreds and hundreds and magical hundreds more. They flutter straight towards us, reduced now in our wonder to absolutely silent witnesses.

They’re up and over our heads, as though acutely mindful of our presence, but with more consequential business on their minds. Survival. They register us briefly with their exquisite echolation as they glide off, heedless, finally, of anything but an inexorable purpose. I like the purity of their disregard, envy them their birthright community.

There’s something about critical mass that compels. A few bats tweak my attention, hundreds enrapture. The largest urban bat colony in the world, half a million strong, resides under a Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, Texas. The sight must mesmerize one nearly into a coma.

The cocoon of darkness gives this spectacle an aura of intimacy. It’s like watching a birth. I almost feel like a voyeur, but can’t take my eyes off them. Airborne, the bats ground me, though I feel lighter. They humble me. My petty worries and selfish concerns seem trivial. I’ve forgotten about the cold and the traffic and the damp grass I’m sitting on. I wish the river in the sky would go on forever. But it stops as suddenly as it began. I look at my watch. The river has flowed for over five minutes. It felt like seconds.

I wonder how many other such events exist in this bountiful bioregion, ones of which I have no knowledge? I want to see them all, from the tiniest lichen sprouting in the canyons to the Blue Whales cruising the Channel. I have no doubt that if I learn deeply enough about nature, particularly in my own backyard, I’ll learn everything I need to know about life. I love my Macintosh and depend on my microwave and automobile, but technology makes me uneasy. I don’t want my reality virtual any more than I want my breakfast or friends or sex virtual. The further I move away from the natural world, the less in tune I become with my own soul.

Thank you, bats. For reminding me. And for your mystery and grace.

©Lucy Aron, Outrider Press 1999