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I saw a sheep who herded pigeons    january & february at farm sanctuary, new york february 21st meghan and i spent our last day together standing by the fence in the sheep meadow. she had her nose through the wire, watching some chickens who were out in the yard of the upper hospital, being happy as hens are in the sun and the grass, even if it’s dead, grey instead of green-- they were across the little dirt road the tractor took--the road whose steepnesses i sledded down, years ago it felt, on another such day, one day of coatless warmth after an ice storm. saturday seemed like any other there, slow and quiet with moments of sun; so few people on the farm. and it was just like how i’d always spent them: visiting my friends the inhabitants of the sheep barn, which was the only barn where species lived all together instead of being segregated. sheep and cows lived there alongside three goats and one pig. and the pigeons of course, flying in and out. all good friends.. arbuckle and billy martin; adel, bronwyn, krishna, suzy, idgy, brambles, meghan. meghan. she could stop my heart on a dime. i knelt beside her whose ears were pivoted chickenward and lost in listening. i wish my ears had sockets they too could swivel around in. swiveling ears are a gift from god! (i type the word "god" so seldom that my fingers fumbled then, and said that swiveling ears were a gift from fog, which i like better anyway.) it was good there, and at that moment, and all we could hear. geese-calls to the left, clouds to the right. all sounds, all lives surrounded our own squeaks and living. we were not the only two inhabiting earth after all. there was still the great mystery, at least for sheep and i--of what we are and what we are not, and the largeness of love. i felt time not moving.. i felt how there were no last words, or songs, hugs, or days. i felt the immortality of afternoon. how i wasn’t leaving. my accordion not in its box, things thrown into a paper bag, the bedhseets not torn off in great haste. and then it moved. if only an inch, for spring to come to the hill. and i stepped off it. i hugged meghan and walked away. she’d started grazing, but when i looked back she was watching me over her shoulder. her final spotted face, and the wisdom around her mouth like stains left there. the face her eyes were sunken in, when turned towards me, fixed on my own sunken, crooked orbs-- "baaa," she said. "baaa," i said. how alone she was. how alone i was, in the meadow between the barn and yellow hill, without a friend or flock, anywhere to go to. i left the farm following a straight line from the place on her head i always kissed to the end of the road. now i am a state away, a few mountains over. that is all. i lift my snout and look around. she is still alive somewhere. i am still alive.. somewhere. but where? here? could it be? where is my masterpiece? where are tornadoes? aphasics? those soft ones who smell so nice, who can always be counted on to sleep at 3 o’clock? and where is my kazoo?! february 19th An Ox Looks at Man They are more delicate even than shrubs and they run and run from one side to the other, always forgetting something. Surely they lack I don't know what basic ingredient, though they present themselves as noble or serious, at times. Oh, terribly serious, even tragic. Poor things, one would say that they hear neither the song of the air nor the secrets of hay; likewise they seem not to see what is visible and common to each of us, in space. And they are sad, and in the wake of sadness they come to cruelty. All their expression lives in their eyes--and loses itself to a simple lowering of lids, to a shadow. And since there is little of the mountain about them--nothing in the hair or in the terribly fragile limbs but coldness and secrecy--it is impossible for them to settle themselves into forms that are calm, lasting and necessary. They have, perhaps, a kind of melancholy grace (one minute) and with this they allow themselves to forget the problems and translucent inner emptiness that make them so poor and so lacking when it comes to uttering silly and painful sounds: desire, love, jealousy (what do we know?)--sounds that scatter and fall in the field like troubled stones and burn the herbs and the water, and after this it is hard to keep chewing away at our truth. - Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Brazil, 1951) then there were bubbles, kazoo songs, and valentines of breath. i blew them all; my lungs were bright with the finest clouds. i spent seven weeks writing them down (kazoos & secrets), in a small blue notepad stolen from the supermarket in watkins glen. that was the first of secrets: i just stole this notepad and pen. i used to get pens like this on christmases. it's from france and writes four different colors. see? the pen stopped working a few hours later, as they always did, around the time long after presents and cinnamon rolls, when my sister would be asleep on the sofa, and i would be making camcorder videos with stuffed animals, horse models, or lumps of clay. i found a pencil stub and stuck it in the binding. today i wrote the last secret on the last page. standing near a window in the kitchen, my mind long turned sheepward, in the direction of my friends on the warm hill. standing in a kitchen, and having such friends nearby. i don't know how i am leaving them. i tried to teach meghan to curl up into a small woolen sphere (like an armadillo wearing a cardigan) so she could leave as i do, on saturday morning, hiding inside my accordion case. but she doesn't like it in there--it smells like german shephards, and under the sheet music there's a rubber alligator named aloysius, wearing a cape. it's just too scary, even for a brave sheep. i pulled the notepad out of my overalls' bib pocket and was fumbling to push the pencil out of the spirals when the shelter manager walked through. she asked me what i was doing, and i realized i was standing there with the hot water running. the pot in the sink was overflowing, and there were billows of steam all over the place. "um. writing something down," i mumbled. "oh, okay, i thought you were opening a packet of soap, and i was like, 'neat, i didn't know we had packets of soap.'" then she was gone, and i wrote "soap in paper envelopes" on the line at the bottom of the page where i'd been about to write my last secret. adel is brilliant maybe she would like rimbaud --or is rimbaud? meghan had a tick on her foot today!! it's very strange, because when i was helping with the sheeps' health checks last week i asked susie (the shelter manager and caretaker) if the sheep ever got ticks. and she said no, the only tick anyone got last spring was queenie the cow, and that no ticks live in winter. then i was sitting beside meghan today, both of us in the straw, and she pulled one of her front legs out from under her. she was showing me where the tick was so i'd get it off. susie came in the barn and i said, "meghan has a tick on her foot!!" and she didn't believe me. i said it was either a tick or an adhesive watermelon seed (that is what it looked like), and it was a tick. it was biting into the skin right where the two portions of hoof split. susie pulled it out and said it was okay because it'd been sucking on one of her scent glands. i didn't know a sheep had scent glands. "is that why they rub their faces on their legs?" i asked. yes, that is why. i was really happy because meghan didn't have a tick anymore. i rubbed the place where it had bitten and got meghan smell all over my fingers! i told meghan she smelled nice, and susie said meghan said "tha-a-a-a-nk you-u-u-u." after that we went up to the pasture and it was 4 o'clock and fifty degrees, and the sheep were playing, and arbuckle was bucking and spinning in circles. i was up to my hightops in mud. meghan was baa-ing in the doorway. and the sound of their hooves as they ran downhill, and the silence of their hooves for frisky moments, when they jump away from the earth. susie told me about how her parents had been with some shepherds in israel one time, and when they travelled, and met up with other flocks, the sheep always recognized their shepherd's voice, and didn't get mixed up or left behind. later i mentioned some horrible thing about the nazis having to get a building permit so the interior doors of the gas chambers could open outward instead of inward.. because bodies were piled up inside in front of the doors and they could not open them. the bodies had been beside the doors, trying to get out, when they died. i never have very good things to say. february's other intern walked through the room a while ago while i was typing, and sang, "sarah, sarah's a writin' machine," and i responded by describing how, after i'd been masectomized, i'd like to have my chest filled with typewriter keys, because i like the way they sound. i would like masectomies. only it might damage the lymphs. and i love my lymphs. even more than i resent being breasted. new topic please! many souls are flabbergasted by the way i eat. today i ate a few pieces of a chocolate cake with chocolate mint frosting that someone'd brought in to share (and all its crumbs), a big pumpkin cookie i got in the mail, half a sheet of cookie bars that my housemate's boyfriend had to bake me in exchange for my visiting permissions (we have a cookie toll at this house you see), a big slice of blueberry pie, and a piece of celery (for good health). also, because i often forget, or never thought of it in the first place, much appreciation--to the people that've found me. february 18th i done been hearin' voices mah whole life.. they's just ain't them human types. i got me a hankerin' for one of them bubble pipes! february 15th nothing, anymore, is satisfying about articulation. i've never been more unhappy about the species i really am; never cared less than this about writing down everything that's pronounceable, and everything that isn't. i don't want to speak, type on this computer, reply to letters, or converse with what ghosts i have gathered--their books, records, boxes. i only want to live alongside sheep, donkeys, ponies, and still have a mind left that remembers an old yellow bicycle. that is all i have been doing. constructing their valentines, sharing their naptime, wandering in concert for them, with a kazoo on a ribbon to ward off human spirits. especially those which threaten to surround me. the ribbon is the color the bicycle used to be. i do not know how to go back to vermont. everyone there has so few stomachs. i could mend them--i could build second, third, and fourth stomachs for everyone i know. but their bodies, and our bodies, are not what's wrong with us. what about the things put into those stomachs, without a shadow of remorse.. how can anyone who has ever loved a dog or cat sit down and swallow a pig or a chicken or a glass of cow's milk? my burrow has collapsed, blocking any exit to the outside world. it is scary when the dirt falls so fast and i can't even remember being at bennington, or having ever been alive amidst other seasons. what brightness will be left in our backyard, besides the tips of my ears, which are white, or the clouds' shadows, moving more slow across the mountains? i have no idea what i'm going to do, hiding in my room all spring, smelling little lumps of wool. i honestly just want to go live in kansas. i could change my name, and maybe the student loan people would never find me, as i would be protected by pastures adhered by trees to the earth, and wearing socks like pippi longstocking. 2 o'clock in the immortal afternoon. curled closed-eyed against arbuckle's soft shoulder. meghan resting her head on my knees. bronwyn breathing into a cloud of red hair. the smell of billy martin in the sun. adel turning around and looking at me when i call her name. rustles coming up and letting me pet his nose for the first time after a months-long spell of shyness. sound of pigeons' wings in the warm, dreaming breaths that cover the ceiling. it is less than a lifetime. i have wooden eyes. february 12th today meghan fell asleep with her head in my lap, and i ate... hushpuppies! i ate a great many hushpuppies. a great, great many.. all fried in oceanic depths of oil. so.. many.. hushpuppies. ugh. now i want ice cream! february 6th day off tomorrow. i think i'm going to walk in the flooded mountains, drink cherry cider, stay warm, order books (everyone send me a book), help out with cow checks, and take a nap with meghan around 3 o'clock. i haven't been able to write much or practice my accordion here; i am also unable to fold an origami raccoon. this is from part of a letter i wrote my friend today: when we sit together, without words or songs, i am young enough, or old enough, to know that the distance between us is imaginary. i wonder who imagined such a distance. i wonder who ever imagined a difference between the life inside a "human" and the life inside an "animal" that was so great it could justify the whole history of imprisonment, exploitation, and murder of one species by another. so much so that people--almost all people--began to believe this imaginary distance was REAL. wouldn't you have found it strange if, upon the release of music tapes into the wide world, everyone believed in it so much that clapping hands & metronomes as large as coffins had to be poured out of factories to fill humans' homes, until they were as common and as much a part of society as a clock or a toaster--or a wool coat, or a hamburger, or a glass of milk? surely, whoever imagined it never acquainted themselves with a sheep in winter, and ran each day up the hill to visit her, bearing songs in their throat with cookies, concerts, and clumps of their hair. they never knew how warm february could be when you and a sheep have breathed into each other. today on my lunchbreak i went to the pasture and sat beside her, on ground that was cold and hard. she chewed quietly, and i heard the movements of her many stomachs, and smelled the sweetness of wind and cold tea and the nisqually river in her fur. under the sun, i imagined sheep in circles around a lighthouse, and the playing of a fog whistle.. then again, so is this: i am happy to hear about the newness in athens, and of its churning, like stomach acids splashing ashore for cookies and cobbler. february 5th everything is beautiful here. all temperatures remind me of times when i was free. no one understands when i look at the yellow hills, or the tornado-laden sky, and say how it feels: like april in iowa, or any morning in milledgeville. it is really no more than twenty or twenty-five degrees. certain moments i feel so warm, and so happy. walking down to the farm or standing at the door of the pigs' barn, pitching dirty straw into the back of the tractor. i have a crush on the ocean. no residue remains of the tragedy that passed over, like a newsprint-colored cloud. today on my lunchbreak i went to ask for an escort so i could see meghan, and the shelter manager said that wasn't necessary anymore. i galloped all the way to the sheep barn. she spoke to me for the first time. i walked in and called her name twice. all the sheep were milling about in the mid-day mood, munching hay from the racks, licking salt, standing up on two legs to sip raspberry lemonade from the fountain, and i didn't see her at first. then a couple sheep parted a path between us, and she was standing there looking at me. "baaa!" she said, with all teeth and pink tongues possible. i ran over and sat down in the straw and hugged her for about a million years. i made her a valentine last night. i'm not sure where to put it after i show it to her. maybe i'll leave it in the tree that is a ghost, on the edge of the sheeps' pasture. i know the sheep recognize me, by my flying red fur, or my voice. it could be the smell of ginger snaps that follows my every move. the sheep i have met know they have met me, and the ones i call my friends are always coming over for a touch of cold paws. while i was singing this afternoon, a black-faced sheep came right over to where meghan and i were sitting and shoved her face in mine. when i saw the row of white hairs on the end of her nose, i recognized just who she was. a sheep whom i'd met and kissed on sunday when she shoved her head through the bars of the gate; a wonderful-smelling sheep with number 61 around her foot. i'd felt her lungs breathe into mine. which is what has added forty or fifty more degrees to my body than to the bodies of those around me. whose bodies do not deserve sheep-given warmth, or any warmth whatsoever, because they talk too much and keep me from writing and i am going to go hide in my room now. february 2nd i do not realize i am crazy until i've been sitting at the computer for 10 minutes, listening to the stupid conversations of others take place around me, then walk into my room and look at a note i've written to myself, and the note says: "MOUSE-SIZED HYDRAULIC HAT." that is when i realize i am crazy. february 1st today is large and peaceful in the loneliest of ways. it is dark, tremendously windy, and for at least another half hour, i am alone. resolution can occur in the blink of an eye, if and when such are are filled with tears. i thought writing was my last connection to humankind, but i was wrong; it is weeping. who would have guessed this would become my business after so many dry-eyed years spent making coherent stains of ink-- but it seems it is. the only method left of communicating anything convincing to other people. when the shelter manager told me to go up to her office yesterday, i thought: at last! and then: i hope i don't cry. well, it's a good thing i did, because that's the only reason i'll be back on shelter the month of february, instead of slumped over a desk wishing i could be dead. this has taken so many tears. my "note" wasn't repentant enough. not-knowing is not sufficient. she equated not telling me i wasn't allowed to feed the sheep grain with not telling the cleaners they weren't allowed to drive the tractor through the side of a barn. well. i'm sorry. i didn't grow up on a farm. what i know about the health of sheep comes from reading thomas hardy when i was 13, and those sheep got sick from tearing down fences and gorging themselves on clover heaps, not from a measly paw of grain. she wasn't planning to let me back on the farm at all. my letter had been merely "defensive" and i wasn't saying anything (as usual) to convince her that i understood the seriousness of what i'd done. she was giving me the chance to, but i just sat there staring at my shoes. as usual i was dumbfounded by what could possibly be the right thing to say. i started crying--probably out of pity for myself, who would never see the sheep again. i would have to go away, even though i do no have a home until february 24th. people don't make sense to me. it has been pointed out that i don't very likely make sense to them either. but this one, for some reason, saw something in my crying that made her trust me again, and it is finally over. from now on i have to be escorted by a member of the shelter staff every time i want to visit the animals. it's nearly the same as banning me from the shelter altogether, which i realized today. i went for a walk in the flooded mountains, planning to go see meghan around 3 o'clock, but all i could think of was how i'd have to ask someone to go with me and they'd say they were too busy. of course they would. i can't stand interacting with people! much less having to squirm about and ask them to stop what they are doing, please, so they can come monitor my sheep-snuggling for an hour or two. even if they had the time for such a thing, which they don't, how could i sing for meghan with those human ears hovering? would they give me, what? ten or fifteen minutes, and then lead me away like a prisoner? maybe they could hire a chaffeur to push me from barn to barn in a wheelbarrow, with my paws tied together or wrapped up in a trash bag, making sure i did not have any gruel in my stomach which i could possibly regurgitate into the eager mouths of sheep and bunnies. i feel sick. i wonder if it's possible to die from shyness. only a skunk would know. as a side note, my shelf in the refrigerator right now has on it margarine, pudding, carrots, pickles, mustard, and a box of chocolate almond milk. january 28th The sleeves of my sweater smell like Meghan. It is not a hallucination--we had a clandestine meeting in the sheep barn this afternoon. It was the happiest reunion I've ever had with anyone. I spent all morning in the campaign office, and when lunchtime came I drank grape juice and went on my true mission. When I first walked in the barn, all I saw of anyone was their rump, because it was lunchtime for them too. I honestly cannot identify Meghan by her rump, though it is one of the tailless ones, so I just sat in the straw and hoped she would finish her meal soon so I could see her. A trio of black-faced sheep greeted me with breaths of hellos, and then Billy Martin came over, as he always does, wanting all the attention (and treats) you can give him. Before, Billy Martin always made me a little angry because when I would be with Meghan or Arbuckle or anyone else besides his majesty, he would come over and butt my friend with his horns. Meghan especially he would butt on any occasion I was spending with her. I thought it was pretty mean. I used to yell at Billy Martin. But today I was so happy to see him. He must have known it because he wrapped his whole neck around me and demanded I hold him for a long time. It was a good hug. I laid my cheek against his shoulder and he smooshed as much of me as possible with his face, though he was kind and kept his horns out of my eyesockets. It made me a little sad--he's getting old and I feel his bones through my clothes. But he might feel my bones too. I was sorry I had ever yelled at him. When I let go, he practically climbed right into my lap to rub his head against me. Surely his ears were very itchy, or he was very glad to see me again, sitting in my familiar spot. Then Bronwyn came over and I pet him too for a little while. I was starting to think it was almost time to get back to the office, unfortunately, but I really wanted to see Meghan. All the animals are wonderful, but she's my special friend. Favorite Sheep herself. I nearly fell down in the hay when I saw her face again, I felt so much love. But I just knelt and gave her a big hug and lots of kisses. I didn't talk about what happened. We are more free than all that. I promised her parties, songs, cookies, concerts. A walk up the hill on a warm day. Like the yellow ones--in Iowa and Kansas under the waning light. I wish I could give that sheep the kind of freedom I've felt, at times. I wish I could give all the animals that. Just as I was going Meghan lay down, meaning she wanted to be sung to. I was already half an hour late getting back to work. And felt too weepy to sing besides. So I will go back tomorrow, and I don't care who sees me, or yells at me. The shelter manager never responded to my letter. It just seems indecent. I'm here on a completely volunteer basis, working 40+ hours a week, doing about a million times more work for this organization than I ever did for my one back in Minneapolis, and this person can't even respond to my most necessary need, which is to see the animals. As for February, my schedule hinges upon those detestable words: "We'll see." These people are almost worse than my parents were. In other news, there is no such thing as other news at Farm Sanctuary. The month's ending signifies very little. January's interns depart and February's arrive. Bennington seems about a 1,000,000 years or miles away. Evan is the only one who writes. january 25th A dark hill, and trees in February. A goat licking salt. Before it started raining yesterday, all the sheep stood at the top of the hill, in some burrow they had dug out of the thick mist and bare trees. I looked out at them from the door of their barn. I was supposed to be cleaning it, but I was unsupervised, and needed feelings before my soul exploded. You do not have feelings cleaning barns for 8 hours. You do not have any, either, sitting in an office that is so terrible and loud with radio, buzzing lights, and asthmatic xerox machines running non-stop at your earside. 8 hours of stuffing envelopes, 8 hours suffocating, 8 hours of emotional starvation, 8 hours of LITE 101.5 FM. You have less feelings than none at all, because the only animals to interact with in the office are of the human sort. And these offer no inspiration, only band-aids--when your fingers begin bleeding, and you look up and speak for the first time, "I'm bleeding on your envelopes. Is that bad?" It is, apparently, bad. No one is going to give Farm Sanctuary any money if they get their mail in envelopes bled upon by my likes. The farm, the red barns and buildings in mist after lunch, looked like West Virginia, the sheep like statues grinding their jaws. Storms and rain remind me of much younger years. And early mornings when horses smelled wet. Getting In Trouble a lot was also part of it. Of all the feelings I returned to yesterday, that was the worst, and farthest away. But I am still In Trouble. Because I gave the sheep a couple bites of grain. The person who is the shelter manager walked into the barn when I was doing this and started screaming at me. Whenever you do something wrong here, they tell you you're going to kill the animals. That is their constant threat. If you leave the door of the hay barn open, since you've never been told not to, they tell you that the chickens are going to walk in there, fall behind some hay bales, and die. If you give the sheep a tiny bit of grain from a large bin marked "SHEEP FOOD", they tell you the sheep are going to die. No, not that the sheep are going to die, but that you are going to kill the sheep. They are very good at manipulating your emotions here, because they know you love animals more than anything, and they can use that to so many advantages. I didn't suspect there would be any outcome to the incident with the grain other than the verbal admonishment I received in the afternoon. By the time I left work for the day, after finishing my own barns and helping out an employee (paid) who was behind on her barns (too many cigarette breaks), I wasn't thinking much of it anymore. It was Education Night, and I was thinking of the free dinner I'd get to eat in a few hours. So I was confused when, after the highly enthralling presentation on how to write a press release, the Intern Coordinator told me she had to talk to me--alone in her office. "There's been a schedule change... Susie told me about you feeding the sheep, and she doesn't want you working on the shelter anymore, so I'm taking you off shelter." (bewildered silence) "Why?" "She thinks you're a danger to the animals." (lots more bewildered silence) "Is that for February too?" "I'm not sure. I'll have to double check." I cried a lot at night, and have no idea where I can go next month, if it turns out they're not going to let me on the sanctuary. I wrote the shelter manager a letter, with the vague awareness that that's what somebody else would've suggested I do. dear humanity, thank you for 23 years of hating me and offering proof upon proof that it is impossible to live. your friend, sarah no, no, actually it went like this: I hope you'll take some time to reconsider your decision that I no longer be allowed to work at the sanctuary. In no way was I aware of the threat I posed to the well-being of the sheep by feeding them a very modest amount of grain--a couple handfuls (I have very small hands) distributed to numerous noses. At most, each sheep got one or two bites, and I would not have given them anymore, because I know they could colic from too much. If the danger of feeding the animals any grain is so great, you need to make this clear to all interns before they begin working on the shelter. No one ever warned me about feeding the animals, and I have been offering them apples and carrots all month. Lots of interns enjoy giving treats to the new friends they make here. Since this is obviously a serious problem, you need to tell people. Why don't you have a list of shelter rules to be given to interns before they start? I am sure they are all, like myself, only here with the most love and respect for the animals as possible, and would follow all guidelines to insure their safety and well-being. I am here for another month and will not survive doing office work every day. I came here to be with the animals. Now I'm afraid that if I even try to visit Meghan or Arbuckle on my days off, I will be told to leave. Whose ears will I sing for if not her spotted ones? For whom will I play my accordion if not Arbuckle? After what Michelle [my intern coordinator] told me, I don't know if I'm even allowed on the shelter anymore, much less welcome or the least bit appreciated. Maybe you could let me know. And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and am lost forever. Which is too bad, because boxes of cookies and brownies were supposed to arrive today. january 15th Those songs I sing for the favorite sheep. If it snows, we have parties in the straw, and they are very quiet parties, without tea or carrot cake. Her falling asleep puts me to sing. I have taught my throat three songs. They are all very nice. Someday, we will have real parties with troughs of vanilla-flavored water, and sheep-shaped cookies, and I will make a mobile for both our dreaming. A mobile, or a mountain, of valentines. I am going to bury myself alive if you ever try to cut off my tail. A Monday afternoon there is a paper pew, in straw, where we both lie spot-faced. The pew holds a quilt amd hooves. Arbuckle becomes very jealous of our time together. He doesn't live with the other cows because he is blind. He lives with the sheep, and the old goat with curly horns. He came over while I was singing.. and actually shoved Meghan with his head, which was rude. Isolated Februaries built and boiled, and built, and built by young hands. I guess I was escaping through the stomach--it was full of knotted bedsheets like the ones orphans used-- january 12th A few days ago we went to the stockyards in Bath, New York. I walked away--from the cows, the pigs, the goats, the horses--feeling horribly helpless. That night I dreamt of an afterlife in which we all got the chance to relive a certain date in our life, and I chose the first of October. In this dream I had a friend who'd recently killed himself, and I wanted to go back and play my accordion for him before it happened. I felt like this would've prevented his suicide. On the boat, holding my accordion case, I realized the friend was myself, because I was dead. Today I played for Arbuckle. He came over and touched the accordion keys with his nose. I've been to a stockyard once before, in South St. Paul. This one was much smaller, with fewer animals going through. The "customers" there--the people who had come to bid on the animals--were also very different. There were a lot of Amish farmers. These had come in buggies and I saw their poor, thin horses tied up to trees outside, having to stand for hours in the January weather. The people hadn't even taken their harnesses off or given them water. We, of course--the Farm Sanctuary interns--did not blend in with the crowd there. We were four young girls and two boys among the miserable, bitter old faces of farmers, many with beards and hats framing the faces. We were petting the animals. I was feeding pieces of a pumpkin muffin to the horse and murmuring to the scared goats. The Amish people glared at us. They knew who we were, and why we were there, and they hated us. You could feel it. But you could feel worse things. The despair of a day-old calf without his mother. There was a whole pen of these babies, dozens of gorgeous little black and white Holsteins, each one being auctioned off to serve a sentence in a veal crate. They were all male babies of dairy cows--the unwanted byproducts of the milk industry. I am going to type a lot of things about what I experienced with these calves, but here first is the simple truth: if you drink milk and eat dairy products, you are contributing to this. You are contributing to it economically and you are saying it is morally okay for people to do this. To keep cows pregnant their entire lives so their bodies will keep producing milk; to steal not only this milk (milk people do not need), but to steal the babies for whom the milk was intended, and turn them into veal. The calves were only a day or two old. Some of them still had the shrivelled ends of an umbilical cord attached to their bellies. The newness of them was amazing, and amazingly sad. They were so small, and perfect, and beautiful. Only a couple of them--the ones lying down on the floor of the pen, staring at nothing--seemed to have any understanding of the cruelty. The others just wanted their mothers: the long flank in which they'd grown, the sound of the loud heart, the milk, the comforting tongue, the voice and nose. The milk. They wandered, looking for the smell of her. I saw the spirit contained in them, how much more life was in the hooftip of one calf than in all the hearts of humans who'd come to pay money for the flesh growing on their newborn bones. I knelt down beside the pen. Parts of me literally couldn't stand the sight of them. Other parts reacted to the urge any human, I think, would have to touch an adorable baby animal. One of the calves eventually came over to me, and poked his little nostrils between the slats. I touched his nose. I don't know what I smelled like to him; inside a coat and clothes I too had spots, and innocence, and wanted to live, and for some stupid reason I would be allowed to, and he wouldn't. He licked my face and hands. He rubbed what of his head he could fit between the slats all over me. His tongue, I couldn't help noticing, was the exact size of a human tongue. Small and pink, it even looked like one, or it looked like mine anyway. He knew I wasn't his mother. But he was hungry, and alone, and he started sucking on my fingers--out of the most simple need to be comforted. He sucked on one finger, or three, or all five. My paws were pacifiers. Those silly five-fingered hands with their opposing thumbs--maybe this was the best use they'd ever been put to. As surrogates for something far more special. He knew, too, he'd attached himself to something useless. But he suckled anyway, in a trance, and I told him: "They don't work." I told him: "They're broken." He still held my fingers in my mouth--his tiny, toothless mouth. He still tried to pull milk from my hands, and I wished that the heart and all it felt for him could be milked, could be made to manufacture something sweet and something needed, instead of just flopping around all the time. But all that was there was feeling. And what is one girl's empathy worth to an orphaned calf who is chained in a tiny wooden crate by now, a) standing up, or b) lying down? What am I really worth but fingers to fill a mouth for a moment? A mouth without a mother, or a mother tongue? Think of all the human mouths. The ones, dead and alive, who have kissed me, sang songs for me, read stories and poetry before bed--think of their tongues. In Russian, German, English, Spanish--think of the words these tongues have wrought. What tongue has ever touched me like this one? What human tongue has ever expressed so truthful a need from inside its damp hole? I wasn't wondering any of these things while I was kneeling there, the calf's mouth wrapped around my fingers. The amount of saliva was absurd, bubbling past every bone, even those thousands of the wrist. It felt so desperate. I had desperate thoughts to go along: bundling the hundred-pound infant inside my coat; killing all the people at the stockyard; running into the auction ring in place of the calf, proclaiming my anemia and soft, white flesh. What did I do? I walked away. I walked away with all he had wanted wet on my hands. It is possible to do so much for animals and still feel horrible, and still feel horribly ashamed of your own existence. I'll never understand on what basis every right is granted to me, and none to him, when he was better. He had bigger spaces inside of him--capacities for love, and peace, and beauty, and reason. Happiness. january 9th It is admirable what difference ten degrees of warmth can make for spirits who work outside all day. It was so nice. I got to take off my coat! I got to go sledding! The hill was slick with morningborn ice, and my sled went very fast. Other interns came too; one of them rode on the sled with me and the other one fell off and lay in the middle of the road for about an hour, without moving. The cows were very amused by our brightly colored sleds and shrieking, watching us from their pasture. The mountains looked beautiful here today for the first time in history. I'm not sure what else happened because I forgot to carry my notepad. Oh yes, there was a symphony of turkeys mewling and gurgling! january 7th Today I learned that hens like to peck snow off your pants, and that the old brown hare's name is Petey. I hope we have more dreams together soon. january 5th Cold. Hungry. Kazooing for the geese and swans. I did steal a chocolate bar for lunch.. if these people would leave the house I'd steal their food, too. Stabbing pain in the chocolate eyesockets. Various bells affixed. My heart wanders like a white turkey. At least I have a bed. And snugly Eeyore, clenched underelbow. Skull smashed in the one warm corner, reading Chekhov. I wish someone, somewhere, would play a nice song. I take small sips from the map of flowers. I'm always thinking about one of the last days at Bennington; my room around 5 o'clock, Evan standing near the window, and cocoa. What will my future be like? Reclusion? Picnics? I love cocoa. What will you do all your life, if I do not find you? A many-thermosed cocoa picnic. I did take apple slices for Arbuckle today, but they were intercepted by a goat with persuasive, curly horns, in an attempt to eat the ticket stubs out of my pockets. january 4th Most days for the next two months I will have to get up and go clean barns from 7am to 4 on the cold, wind-covered mountains. Today was my first day off--a day of making friends! I visited the sheep and cows in their snowy pasture. There is one cow here who is blind. His name is Arbuckle. He has a seam where his left eye used to be; his other eye is still there, but it's broken. He likes to stand close to the fence, so he was the first one I exchanged breaths with. If you ever meet an animal with hooves, remember that they greet each other with breath instead of words. Press your mouths close together and exhale in a friendly tone: do not shut your lungs too forcefully or your introduction may come across as a snort. I have always known to say hello to the horses this way, and it seems to work for cows too. It was especially important for Arbuckle because he couldn't see me with his eyes. He had to get a sense of who and where I was by smelling and licking me often. I was breath and mitteny hands to him--a size and shape of body filled with the odor of breakfast cookies. He is a good, gentle friend. He has soft brown fur, and a grey nose, and a curly lash of black hair on the end of his tail. Maybe we will get married! I'll bring him an apple next time I visit. The sheep in the same pasture were also quite friendly. A couple of them kept coming over while I was brushing Arbuckle. They seemed curious about my sniffing, so I told them the legend of contracting a cold through the heartfelt sharing of chocolate candy canes many weeks ago. I told them about the window in Vermont through which flowed the torrential jet stream of germs, and about how I once stood on one side of that window. They listened patiently. I explained almost everything. The sheep are very wonderful and wise. When you kneel down to look a sheep in the face, you must be prepared to return a gaze that is calm, and honest, and noble. Not all sheep are shy. The sheep I met today were altogether unflinching. They even allowed me to brush them. Their coats were like palaces full of straw, or clouds that come back after stampeding through a hayloft in the middle of the coldest night. I wished such a palace could contain my own small, hairless body. I don't know if that's possible, or if it's possible to really groom a sheep, but we tried. Arbuckle came over and assisted me with his tongue. I think the sheep liked that a lot because after about a thousand licks she got a very sleepy expression on her face and closed her eyes. I live in a shitty little house with five other interns. The spiders have hung a tiny crucifix.. ? Living here is hard for me. Other people are disorienting--they make sounds in other rooms that confuse me. Coughing, talking, moving, vomiting. Someone asked me where I learned to play the ukulele. But I have dreams here, the same as I do any other place. Dreams tinged with beards. Last night I fell off the back of a carriage while going 30 mph. Before people could come to help me, I ran into the woods, following a path of animal tracks in the snow. I came to a place where the teeth began rearranging themselves inside my mouth. Snow was piled up as if by a bulldozer. A large brown rabbit ran down the path and I followed him; I was aware of putting my smell between the rabbit and whoever was chasing him. He is a rabbit I recognize from the farm. My footprints cover his, but not much. My box of everything still hasn't arrived. Neither has my food supply. So I don't have any books, or origami paper, or records or warm pants, or miso or donuts. I have an accordion and a kazoo. I have my notebook and a pen I stole from the grocery store in Watkins Glen, but it's really hard to write, with all the voices in the air all the time. It is impossible to be alone. I'm being nicer than I would've been a year ago, though. I do speak, every once in a while. Often enough to tell the people the music they listen to is horrible. I wept yesterday. I was working in their campaigns office, logging videos. On one of them was a program about the ADC (Animal Damage Control)--the group that receives millions in government funds to go up in airplanes and shoot coyotes, to put down traps and poison, to kill buffalo and antelope. They were showing pictures of all the different "non-target" animals who get caught in the leghold traps: dogs, cats, deer, eagles. Badgers. I haven't cried in a really long time. |