Among the leaves

Still operating with the assumption that at the end of my half-time April, I'll be full-time unemployed, today was not a great day. In the second week of being off work, I filed for unemployment, a surprisingly smooth and easy task to accomplish. Then I spent half the day trying to correct a small mistake, not so smooth and easy a task to accomplish.

The lack of routine was welcome the first week. Now I know how deeply I'm caught up in identifying with my job. Without it, I'm a little sad this second week, at sea.

Or fallen. Pema Chodron says "To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest,” not exactly my favorite way to wake up.

Stopping in the office, I find a letter offering me my position at half time. A bit of delayed mail, it feels like a crummy joke. The one that followed saying "oops: they didn't really approve that" is even more delayed. It hasn't come yet.

I print jobs that will be posted soon at the state site. As a "terminal" employee, I'm not entitled to the forewarning, but a kind colleague passes his earlier notices along, alerting me. There are a few to apply for. Good.

But the sadness won't dislodge.

I take Idgie to the dog park.

The March wind is blowing hard. A big box elder branch cracks, breaks, falls to the ground. At the edge of the rutted road an Asian couple gleans in the brush that's been bulldozed there, stripping free supporting stalks to hold their beans and culling bigger wood for fire.

We head into the woods, Idgie on the heels of a squirrel. I lie down in the dry oak leaves. My hair must be lost in them, so close are the colors. New adder's tongue thrusts through the dead leaves nearby, sharp, green and gray and speckled. I cross my hands on my chest: the princess pose my sister called it, the one we'd take at night awaiting princes. Then I put them at my side, the corpse pose, the next one to take.

But not for awhile.

Idgie returns and kisses me. This is unusual. She's not an affectionate dog. But then, she's not used to me lying in the leaves, watching the branches wave above, wondering whether I'm closer to a princess or a corpse.

I decide it's a stupid question and brush off the leaves clinging to my sweater.

We spend two hours there. The dogs are mad with spring delight, humping each other and peeing on anyone foolish enough to sit in a chair in the place where people gather there. Idgie has perfected the leg-lift style of micturation and follows suit, proud of herself.

We head home for dinner. Then she naps and I steel myself to work, editing papers or applying for jobs.

Maybe. This fully awake business needs recuperative naps now and then. And when you wake, chances are the moon and stars will call you.

Eating babies

On a wild romp along Underwood Creek, Idgie disappears into the platoons of dried teasel soldiers who stand guard between the grade school and the business college. When she doesn't respond to my shouts and whistles I come hunting, only to find her finishing off the last bit of some small animal's tasty baby. Judging by the look of the burrow she is poking, it must have been a bunny baby.

A little early for bunnies, but then the timing of most everything seems off these days.

I am a little disgusted and a little proud. She's a good rodent and rabbit hunter, one of the jobs she's chosen as her calling, herding cattle, is not available to her.

But eating other critters' babies, that seems. . . unseemly. Of course, I am not opposed to eating a bit of baby cow or sheep now and then, so there! I can't really scold the dog for her pleasure.

And the night before I'd indulged in a little baby eating myself. The baby dragon has not yet sprouted wings or learned to breathe fire, but his lungs are working up to it. Fretting with a snuffy nose, he squalled his discomfort between fits of uneasy, sweaty, upright dozing on the chest of my daughter, Liz, who was babysitting him, or on mine.

Three months old, he is fat and brown and adorable. Something about the texture and density of baby flesh makes us need to touch it, squeeze it, kiss it,  hold it. We say "I'm going to eat you up," and we mean it, in some metaphorical way. We want to take their baby deliciousness into ourselves.

Thought shift: be like a dog--follow what moves. In Nairobi, WTF stands for Where's the Food? Price inflation makes it harder and harder to buy food. The land is tired and produces less. There's drought and speculation driving costs higher and higher: people raise biofuels instead of human fuels. Babies starve or grow into cheap labor, if there's anyone doing the hiring, any jobs to be had.

Whatever work I do, it can't involve eating other human babies, in any sense of the word. That much I know. WTF: Who's This Feed? That's a good test. My family, of course. But in all the jobs I've ever had was the prospect of doing good for other people's children, too. And not just the children of the parents at the top of the food-chain.

Too much talk. There are branches to drag and things to sniff in the air. My Sunday pack to meet.

Move! Now!!!

Redemption

In the dog park woods, our paths cross, and we nod or sniff a greeting depending on our kind and inclinations. Jack Russell nips the lab pups, who have gotten out of some line they don't yet know they're supposed to follow.

"She a old lady," one boy says to the other.

She not deaf yet, though, I think.

"But she fine," says the older man.

Snap! I hope the boys learn as fast as the pups seem to. And I am grateful.

I haven't written because I haven't been very dog-like, alas. Just grind and more grind. Human stuff.

Between then and now, the job I thought was gone was given back at half time, and then on Monday snatched away again. So for two months more I work at this job I love. But perhaps with less enthusiasm. You will excuse me for having no taste for this maybe game.

So I'm back here again, trying to live my life as a dog.  The wild winds of March and the solar flares might have something to do with it. Working with medical students who are daring to write risky things might have something to do with it.

Outside, it is fine indeed. If a little scary.

Sniff and nod, sniff and nod.

They both mean yes. I have no idea what the question is. Does it matter?

Woof!