The Furious Spinner

I awaken at 5:00 a.m. after two hours of sleep. I am so irritated I want to scream. I twist and turn on the bed, trying to get back to sleep, but the twitches torture me, so I get up. It is light out, dawn light—gray and pink, at the edge of deciding whether it will be night or day—and the sky is hazy with pollution. I'm so pissed off from lack of sleep and shitty dreams. But lately, I've been trying to reframe experiences that I first perceive as unpleasant. So I put on clothes and go out into the cool morning. Getting up this early means I get to work in my garden before it is too hot out to do anything.

I walk over first to the Kuan Yin Peace Garden. I can tell the deer have visited. They gnoshed on a couple of tall yellow flowers and trampled on a few pink ones that grow close to the ground. I lean down to look more closely at the mashed flowers. Some of the wild peas are pressed down, too. Perhaps a deer even slept here last night. I have always said the deer were welcome to the flowers—even when the loss of beauty annoys me—and this morning is no exception. I reframe the experience even further: the deer came to pay their respects to Kuan Yin last night. The wild always have permission to eat the wild, so that is what they did.

In The Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols, Robert Beer writes that the deer "represent the natural harmony and fearlessness of the deity's pure realm." Deer were considered sacred to many goddesses, including Isis and Aphrodite. To me, deer represent survival. Despite the encroachment of civilization upon their territory, deer can often adapt and survive. They seem to be shapeshifters—one minute a tree trunk, the next a blur of camouflage galloping through the forest. When I first got sick, I remember someone telling me about the deer at the Grand Canyon. So many people fed the deer and left their garbage around that the deer's digestive systems got impaired. They grew so accustomed to this unnatural food that they were unable—physically—to return to a natural diet. I don't know if that part is true—I never researched it. But as recently as 2003, sixteen deer in the Grand Canyon area were put down when it was discovered they were starving to death because the plastic they had eaten had so impaired their digestion.

I want the deer to eat my flowers. I must remember to look around my yard and make certain no plastic is where the deer can get to it....

I work in my garden. The fava beans are rotting. I pick what is left, then I pull the plants up and put them on my compost pile. I stare at the lettuce. Then I decide: watched lettuce never grows. I pick a small bowl of strawberries. They're smaller now, their shapes bizarre. This happens every year. Why? Is is because I put bird netting over them? (With my strawberries, my attitude is if the bird is clever enough to go beneath the netting, the bird is welcome to the berries; otherwise they’re my berries.) I find two snow peas, and I eat them. I pull up grass, especially in my thyme and strawberry patches.

Then I go upstairs, pull off all my clothes, and get into bed. The sheets feel exquisite on my bare skin. I feel myself sinking toward sleep almost immediately. A crow calls out again and again and again. "It must be telling you it's time to get up, love," I whisper to Mario. He hugs me, then gets out of bed. It's 7:00 a.m.

I sleep until 8:30. My brain and body throb as I stumble up again, a bit dizzy and nauseated: I can't take any news. I can't try to save or change anything this morn. Need to eat and drink. It's so dry my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I get an email from a reader who gives me a recipe for lavender cookies. Her letter cheers me.

An hour later, I sit at my computer, preparing to work. Clouds must have descended while I was sleeping, or something. The air is not as hazy. Something is going on at the church across the street. It's Tuesday, so it's probably not a wedding. Choir practice is Wednesday afternoon. AA Wednesday night. Church Sunday. That must mean it's a funeral. (I know all this from living here, not because I attend the church.) I watch car after car drive up. People of all ages walk slowly into the church, looking shattered. I have seen many funerals at this church from my perspective across the street. Usually they are for older people, and most of those attending the funerals are older. When the death is unexpected, then the services are usually much more crowded.

I wonder who has died. I know many of the mourners. I start to feel nervous. Who has died? As if the death is any worse if I know the person! I remember the last time I saw a funeral like this here. It was when my friend Sheila's husband died. He had gone out hunting and never came home. He died of a heart attack next to his truck out near a duck pond. But it isn’t hunting season.

The minister comes out and waits by the curb. He is an older man, with white hair and a long white beard. He holds a blue cup in his hand and sips the contents as another man speaks with him. I have never seen the minister come out and wait for anyone before a funeral. That must mean it had not been a good death. Not an easy death.

A few minutes later I look up, and everyone has gone inside the church. One woman dressed in red comes outside. She faces away from the church and wipes her eyes with a tissue. Then she sighs, straightens herself—almost imperceptively—and returns inside.

I leave the house to meet Mario for his break. I cross the street and glance toward the open door to the foyer of the church. I see a small white Teddy bear sitting on the floor with a red heart around his neck. It takes a moment for me to realize what that means. I look above the bear and see the school portrait of a young boy.

Ohhhh. I meet Mario and ask him what has happened. Who is this boy and why haven't we heard about it? Oh yes, Mario says, he was crushed to death by an elevator or something like that in his home. That's all he knew. At the library, I ask the women what has happened. They tell me who the mother is. Ohhhhh. I know her from the peace group. I cannot imagine. A picture of the mother flashes through my brain. I see her at the church, working on the lawn and flower beds. She is smiling and leaning on her rack.

I have no coherent thoughts. No way to reframe this. I walk home slowly and go inside my cool house. I think of the deer in my flower garden. In some North American cultures, deer medicine was healing and protective. I hope the mother of the boy and all of his family are able have some kind of healing.

Death can be so unexpected. Life, too.

When Mario comes homes from work, we wrap our arms around one another. Then we eat lunch. I sprinkle flowers on my sandwich and thank the deer for the idea.

May You Love In Beauty.


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All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.