MASTER GEORGE

Taos Veterinary Clinic’s office called yesterday to say that George’s ashes were ready for pickup.  A jolt went through my body at the reality that our George could now be merely a box of grey ashes. If only I could rewind the two years that he lived with us, but alas, time surges on in only one direction like a powerful unrelenting wind and our will is no match for its force.  

My Desk Companion 

George was (is) a strong spirit. Of course he was a cat and yet he had many uniquely George traits that added to his charm. His intelligence and curiosity was sometimes problematic. There were many things we had to be careful about leaving unprotected because George would figure out how to get into almost anything and find what we didn’t want him to have. When he first came around our home, I called him Squeaky because he didn’t really meow he made a sound like a rusty hinge. Somehow, I don’t remember when, I began to call him Curious George because he was compelled to explore everything. He was also fascinated with running water and followed us into the bathroom if we let him, and would jump on the toilet seat or sink to watch the water rush down. Sometimes he would put a paw in the running water, shake his wet paw and put it in the water again as if trying to understand what water was about.

When we first allowed him in the house, (actually we leave the front door open in summer) he decided he would move in and put our sweet, once feral cat Shadow in her place. He would occupy all of her favorite sleeping locations and chase her around the house. This phase didn’t last very long and soon they were best buddies. Shadow still finds his absence troubling and I wish I could explain it to her. She is following me everywhere.

I’ve wondered if George might have been a hybrid because of certain traits that were unlike most domestic cats. He didn’t lift his tail high in the air as he walked in front of us the way most cats do, or lift his tail like a flag when following us. He carried his tail low like a tiger or leopard and he had a rangy shape. He was a big boy and weighed close to 20 pounds before he got sick. He loved people and his throne was the end table close to the door where he could greet people as they came in. He had no fear of dogs, which was probably not a good thing, but somehow he got away with it. Our son Corey has a boxer, lab, and something else mix that George thought he had a right to dominate. Fortunately, there was no face off, since this polite dog, Mini respects our hospitality. The closest she came to attacking George was once when Corey petted George in her presence. This was totally unacceptable; she quickly told George he was out of bounds with a deep throated woof.

I miss George very much but there is an unusual state of spirit that moved over my senses since he left his body and left an empty place in our home. It isn’t a replacement but a light form that shines where his presence was. I am somehow able to see and feel the world differently with sharper eyes and more sensitivity. Old conditioning makes me falsely cautious about giving an animal so much credit for influence but there is definitely something more than memories and grief. He has left his light form in our world.

 "..You and I shall smile together, so long as our two forms appear different in the Maya-dream of God. Finally we shall merge as one in the Cosmic Beloved…” said Paramahansa Yogananda at the passing of his master, Sri Yukteswar.

 Master George by his simple beingness renewed my awareness of unity with all who live and struggle in this time/space world and then move beyond it.

Can a four-legged creature be a spiritual master? I believe so. They are not interested in our way of organizing the world to fit ego driven concepts both personal and social. Such abstractions have no use in their lives.  If we look at them as more than a familiar pet, a warm furry possession but the window into realities that we are often exiled from due to our self-induced alienation from actualities beyond the borders of our human abstractions. I suspect that is one reason we have animal companions.  The animal being within us needs lots of backup in this mechanical, cerebral world we have created for ourselves. The salvation of the planet may depend on we humans coming back to earth, certainly our own survival does. Although we haven’t found a way to reach our neighbors in space and thus triumph over the bonds of earth just yet, it will do us no good if we carry our alienation with us. After all, we are already living in space. The desire to conquer the universe may be just another version of “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence (galaxy).”

GOODBYE BEAUTIFUL GEORGE

George Roars

Today we lost our George. He slept with us on the bed all night until I started to dress this morning. Then I found him on the bedroom windowsill panting with rapid labored breath. Not only was he not better since his visit to the veterinary yesterday, he was much worse. I gave him the two meds that the vet prescribed but I knew something was much worse than we imagined. I called the vet’s office but today they were closed for a remodeling project in the office. However, their voice mail gave me the number of another veterinary clinic for emergencies.  

We rushed him to the Taos Veterinary Clinic out past the old blinking light (it no longer blinks yet old Taosenos still call it by that name) and by the time I took him into the examining room, he was getting weaker. The Dr. took his temperature and found it much lower than it should be for a cat. His heart had a murmur, and a problem that he was probably born with that caused the heart muscle to become thicker and thicker in an attempt to compensate for an insufficient blood flow from the aorta. Eventually the thickened wall prevents enough blood from entering and exiting the heart. Apparently, his visit to the clinic the day before had been the stress that tipped him over the edge. The Doc ran an EKG and had me bring PQ in to see the problem on the screen. PQ had gone outside because he already feared the worse. The doctor recommended euthanasia to end his desperate struggle to breath in enough oxygen.  Troubled breathing is a repetitive theme in our world.

Kitty Love

I stayed with him to his last breath. It was very hard to accept that this beautiful, intelligent, high-spirited and extremely social young cat was gone and I couldn’t refrain from stroking his soft shiny coat for several minutes after he quit breathing. It didn’t seem that this was real. I numbly paid at the front desk and the receptionist mentioned that they recognized PQ and had one of his paintings hanging in the bathroom. Many years ago, he brought his Rottweiler Brute to this clinic. I took a quick look at the painting and on the way out noticed that a man in the waiting room was holding a cat with markings similar to George’s then I ran outside to find PQ.  He was obviously on the verge of tears.  

We drove home quietly. When we got home, PQ sat at the kitchen table and sobbed for several minutes. I didn’t have time to cry, but dearly wanted time to honor George with the tears he deserved, but this slave  to circumstance needed to wash my clothes and the cat carrier that poor George had peed on as he lost control of his body, take Corey to work immediately, pick the girls up from three different schools and fill an almost empty fuel tank for the next day’s back and forth deliveries.  I desperately didn’t want to do anything other than be quietly at home with PQ. Grieving George will be with me for a long time. Tonight we talked about how this loss hit us in the heart, and wondered how our other cat Shadow would react to being alone. Right now, she won’t come out of the bedroom.  We only had George two years but he had a much more powerful effect on our lives than we ever imagined. As PQ said, “he was our boy.”

George with a View

As I was driving around this afternoon, it occurred to me that certain beings come into our lives for a reason that we can’t imagine at the time, but it’s as if they are on a mission. When George was still a kitten, he parked himself in the grass near our front door day after day. We didn’t want another cat and in fact, didn’t want any animals. Shadow started us down this path. She was feral and obviously malnourished. I started feeding her outside and we gradually succumbed to her sad condition. It was fulfilling to turn her into a beautiful healthy creature. Nevertheless, we wanted to be free to travel without obligations tying us down. PQ’s health issues were quite enough to keep us challenged.

Why did George come into our lives? He was worlds of difference from shy Shadow. He loved people  and met no strangers. He was an unruffled cool cat from the first. While energetic, playful and extremely curious, thus the name Curious George, there wasn’t very much that frightened him and he was amazingly patient with grandkids. Nevertheless, he took on the yapping dogs next-door as though he was a real tiger even though he had eyes shaped like those of a lion. 

I have nothing insightful or wise to say, but I notice that the theme of heart and breath keeps surfacing as I recount this experience. Whether or not there is any insight or wisdom to be revealed by his loss, George deserves to be honored. Animals also come into this life carrying different proportions of consciousness, heart and spirit, and each one we get to know is a window into another world and I am grateful for our time with George.   

WINTER IN THE SOUL

Driving up Paseo del Pueblo Norte this Wednesday afternoon, dodging crater-sized potholes, trying to avoid the mud spewed up from the car ahead, slush and grey/brown snow everywhere, the tallest  

mountain in New Mexico majestically looms ahead covered in blue white mist. It materializes four miles ahead seeming from another dimension, refusing to be a part of our petty small town woes.

Dear sad town you were once the meeting place of 70’s counter culture, old Bohemia, more than one artistic revival, farmers seeded from the Middle Ages, fur trappers and bootleggers, and the mystic mountain’s children in their timeless mud palace. Movie stars, ex-cons who quoted Khalil Gibran and made their own boots, artists and wannabe mountain men living back to earth on the sagebrush mesa, all of them gems unmined by the mainstream embedded artfully into the Taos soul. Hollywood seekers met peyote and posole here, prime anthropological flavor-blends for a cosmic stew.

There once were those I termed the Taos Walkers. Usually, eccentric each with a documentary worthy life story,  Everett, Pauli, Rosemary, Lou, David, Pago, and Tony and some I never knew by name, all gone now along with the old men from the Pueblo who daily walked into town with their iconic braids and pale blue blankets to watch the  human spectacle stream by. And what happened to the Taos hum? 

It was normal to see the folks in town outfitted in their soul suits. For some it was leather and Spanish hats, or cowboy boots with spurs. Ladies dressed in broomstick skirts and silver concho belts. It was not unusual to see both men and women loaded with turquoise and silver. Even though this town is poor, none would stoop to wear costume jewelry.   

Taos where are you now? Too many galleries selling things only tourists buy. Repetitive but masterfully crafted pictures of the way things used to be for their expensive living rooms.  Has Taos become just a romantic memory collecting dust and mud splatters?  A ghost of the American Shangri La that was once   a welcoming paradise for hungry misfit souls escaping the stultifying blah of mainstream America?

Taos, there are layers of gunk and dust drabbing your glow. We have almost forgotten who you really are. Please awaken and remind us. Does anyone still sit in the great room of the Taos Inn to write in their journals, (not even on an iPad) or sketch the passersby?  There used to be a regular spontaneous meeting there, and we all knew each other.

The old timers and newbies used to mingle in the few coffee shops where old timers could tell the stories every newbie needed to know in order to be initiated into Taos membership.  Maybe I just don’t get out enough anymore to know where your life blood is now coursing. 

Back when, I used to look forward to the coffee shop in the morning with more anticipation than I now wait for the next episode of Downton Abbey.  Maybe it’s just me but on those rare occasions when we go out, there is nothing to remember, and we seldom encounter old friends, nor do we make those serendipitous encounters with interesting strangers that used to be so common. Have we become a population of crabs that occasionally pop out of our holes for the post office, grocery store and Walmart?

Or is this a temporary stage, possibly an intermission between acts? 

JOHN TRUDELL

John Trudell died yesterday. He was 69, my husband’s age.  John is one of those select people that I always wanted to meet. He had little formal education but he was a brilliantly complex thinker and vibrant communicator. He was also a visionary. While he participated in the AIM (American Indian Movement) protests at Alcatraz Island and Wounded knee South Dakota, he saw much further to the importance of recognizing the rights of indigenous people for the benefit of all people and even for the future of the world. He was aware that losing awareness of being indigenous was losing one’s human identity as a child of mother earth.   Here we are almost at the end of 2015. I guess it wasn’t in his contract to go further into this 21^st Century.  He delivered his message in print and with his earthy sonorous voice and he lived and suffered this message. It was his job, the one he was born to do.

I identified with him as a freethinker and visionary but wished I had his courage and public presence.  He had little formal education because he was born a child of the world and there were no schools teaching those skills. His philosophy and worldview confirmed my own hard-lived beliefs. There is no doubt that he was the most eloquent of native activists, but he also saw beyond his own people and recognized that the Red Road empowered him to live good medicine for everyone. He saw the real plight of his people and he saw beyond it to the faltering essence of being a human in the modern world.

John Trudell lost his mother at an early age and his wife and children to a house fire that may not have been an accident since at the time he was bearing down hard and effectively for native rights.  There was always controlled fire in his words and I suspect he knew that he was planting seeds but the harvest would be a long time in coming. 

John Trudell deserves a rest. I hope there is someone worthy to take up his work and carry it forward.  I am so thankful that he stayed with us as long as he did.  He was a very passionate man. You heard it in his message and you heard it in the fiery delivery of his speeches and poems, but it always aimed precisely like a laser beam. Despite the personal struggles and losses, he didn’t succumb to hateful reactive words. He knew that the big picture always loomed behind his words.

I always felt some fragility about his earthly presence. There are certain people that you just know are hanging to this dimension by a fragile cord.  I’m not accusing him of any death wish. Far from it, but he was cloaked in the essence of someone far ahead of his time who may only be hanging out here for a particular reason and when the message was delivered might fade into another dimension.

“No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense.”
― John Trudell