Cute Murderer

I took this picture through the glass of the dining room window. The raccoon is eating out of the bird feeder, and somehow didn't notice me. He, or one of his family, killed one of my chickens last night. Pansy must have gotten out of the yard before I closed them in for the night and I didn't know she wasn't there. When only five chickens greeted me this morning, I knew immediately what must have happened. I saw a pile of feathers near the fence, telling the story.

There isn't much I can say beyond what I have already said many times before. It is terrible to see nature at work, see the consequences of this ecological system we live in. It's startling how little meaning individual life has in this system, whether it be a spider eating a fly, a raccoon eating a chicken, a human eating a cow, or a shark eating a human.

Seeing Pansy's killer put a different light on things for me. This adorable little animal has as much or as little right to live as Pansy, so how can I make a judgment on which one is more important. Because I love my chickens, does that bestow on them the right to a long, happy life? I'm afraid I'm not that powerful. What does nature care about who or what is loved or not loved by another creature? We all stand alone, equally, when it comes to living or dying.

Our lives, Pansy's and the raccoon's and mine, are all the same. My delight at seeing the raccoon, and my sadness about Pansy, struggle to cancel each other out. I don't know what to feel. I guess the danger for us is that if we don't cultivate the non-objective emotions we feel, we lose our humanness.

Outdoor Painting, Ted Kennedy

Toni and I planned to go kayaking today, but it didn't work out. Instead, I went with Diana to paint outdoors at Gleason Cove. I like the little painting I did, and it certainly captures the sunny day. I did in in oil, simply because I'm getting tired of watercolor and don't have all my colors in acrylic. Oil is messy outside, and I think this is actually the first time I've used it. The look is different from acrylic because of the creaminess of the paint, and besides the fact that two bugs got stuck in it, I really didn't have much trouble.

Ted Kennedy died the day before yesterday, and I was unexpectedly upset by it. He has had brain cancer for over a year, so it was expected. Still, I always thought of him as a rather sad figure never quite able to live up to his brothers. I remember the incident that ruined him politically as if it were yesterday. Even then, I defended his actions, seeing things the way I thought he did and understanding his predicament. I was loyal to the Kennedys, beginning with John, waving my John F. Kennedy for president poster and wearing my plastic "straw hat" with the read, white, and blue paper band. I was stunned when he was assassinated and sat mesmerized in front of the TV for the four days the event was shown, analyzed, commented on, and replayed. I was there when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on national TV. I was at the funeral, saw John-John salute the casket as it passed on the way to the cemetery. I saw the lighting of the eternal flame (which went out shortly thereafter and was re-lit). I cried and cried, losing a piece of my optimism and naivte for good. Later there followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, and then Bobby Kennedy............that haunting popular song, "Has anybody here, seen my old friend, Martin......Abraham, Martin, and John. I still choke up when I think of it.

Ted Kennedy was not particularly well-known then, except as Jack's little brother. He is the one who lived on, though, and doggedly persued the same dreams his brothers had, in a quieter way. He earned his own place. He lasted. His death seems to put a period at the end of an important sentence. And because I was there for all of it, it makes me feel old now that they are all gone. I'm the last generation who knew them. I feel as if so many important people left without me, left me to see what comes after, left me to face the anticlimax alone.

Reunion

Yesterday I removed the partition between Petunia and the other chickens. She was very happy, but the others didn't seem to realize she had been gone. Since peace reigned, I took the chance of letting them all spend the night together. When I opened the door this mornig all six came running out as if nothing had happened in the interim.

With my history of chicken disasters, I am very thankful that finally one incident came out happy.

and once again, plus Annie Dillard

I don't know how many of these I will do, especially since I claim to be bored with them. It seemed like a good activity today, though, because it is so hot. I moved my painting stuff into the living and placed myself directly under the ceiling fan. Thus I managed to avoid complaining about the heat and created another pile of razor rocks.

Before that, though, I spent a little time reading "Teaching a Stone to Talk." Annie Dillard is so dense that every sentence has to be savoured. Every idea she writes down spawns fifty in my own head so I didn't get far. I have to ruminate on every one. I've read this book before, so I can open it up at any page and be delighted. Today I fell on "I have a taste for solitude, and silence, what Plotinus called "the fight of the alone to Alone.'" The last line of that particular paragraph is "the lightless edge where the slopes of knowledge dwindle, and love, for its own sake, lacking an object, begins."

This was a day that I got inside of, instead of skimming along the top of it.