There are several reasons why I love cows, and you needn't be bothered with most of them. One ought to be obvious by the naming of this archive, and those with sense enough to search, or a history with me will perhaps smile at the various references made. That is up to you. As for an as yet opaque reason for my love of cows, humor me now, dear reader.
The evening I arrived in La Filaine, Cheateaumeillant, after an arduous jaunt of shopping, I lay on a small brass-frame bed in a stone-walled loft under at triangular ceiling with exposed beams. Five feet to my right, in a slightly larger small brass-frame bed, lay a Ukranian man named Denys. Down the steep open risers to the first floor you would find 6 dogs of various size and volume, but of equal disregard for authority and all in need of some extent of discipline and antidepressants. The poor things hardly ever get any attention, and are barely allowed out of doors. When I asked Denys upon meeting him, how it had been to be living with, and helping Jen for the past week he'd been there, he said, "She is sometimes no good character, and the house is big smell."
Jen is an older woman with a sad sagging face and thin short hair. When she hugs you, you may note her width and softness in the middle. She smells of cigarettes and smokes them frequently and her eyes dart about, lined in sparkling green. She has a boisterous laugh, compensating.
Denys is, at first impression, tall, thin, blond, quiet, rather nondescript. But after spending just a few minutes in conversation, and even more especially a few days with him, the lines of his face and a truer air about him lifts slowly from his center as if hiding at first. There are delicate, shy bags beneath his eyes, he is easily amused and a smile is glad to show itself though rarely. He is generally at ease, his shoulders almost always at the end of a shrug. He is a good worker, and would rather not.
Jen's land is populated by 3 donkeys, a leashed goat, a turkey, two sheep, several chickens, herself, Denys, myself, and the dogs. On the other side of the weak wire fence edging the yard, is a mob of cows. Surrounding on all sides, in fact, throughout the village, are cows. Armies of dispassionate cows.
On the day that Jen emerged from her 3-day enclosure within her bedroom crying and honest, she apologized in her Plymouth accent for being "in a hell of a state," and asked that Denys and I leave. Denys had seen the whole ordeal coming, had warned me, and we were both well on our way to finding new hosts. He, unlike me, had had enough already, and seamlessly removed himself from the ugly encounter, while I tried to comfort Jen. And then Denys and I went for a bike ride.
We rode in the opposite direction of Chateaumeillant just to see what we could. Gradually rising and sinking hills spread out around us. Every once in a dozen farms we faced a hill with greater confidence to stand tall against us, and always after were greeted with a slope of even greater zeal. After one very slow, but indeed pressing rise uphill, there came a decline reasonably envied by lugers with a bridge at the bottom and curves leading up again to an equally steep incline. We soared down, gaining speed we hoped to maintain up the hill, turned our gears down and accepted sadly the slug rate at which we would climb up.
Those who know me closely can attest to the terribly debilitating pain that often accompanies intensive exertion on the part of my heart. I implore those who are unaware, please do not take this metaphorically; indeed my "heart" can handle much exertion. My insides, on the other hand, begin to salivate some cold throbbing mercurial stuff which pools into my pelvis until I lose my peripheral vision. We reached the top of the incline, and threw our bikes down, I to the grass, supine, and Denys off to climb an apple tree. Apples picked, and eating, I sense naught but the crunch and sweet; the dull, relentlessly throbbing pain; and the clouds above like melted butter on a sky of fading blue toast.
As we rode towards what was to no longer be home, we approached the herd of neighbor cows at the fence. As they always do when we pass, their heads lift- heads of the most beautiful shape, if you ever care to notice it- and their eyes behold you with a blank and knowing mien.
I am sure that I am not the only one who has discovered a relationship between one's belly and one's mind, no? That when we worry, our middles gurgle, press out, churn up, or refuse cooperation, yes? The world about which we worry out there, comes in, and rests in here, and it is, of course, at the center of our being that we must decide what is to be welcomed in and what is to be forced out. And, to be sure, the free floating anxiety and groundlessness which understandably accompanies one on adventures which altogether defy expectation and definition, would certainly conjure up some ache for the belly, would it not? I assure you, I expected so, but I am pleased to announce, even given the free floating and groundless characteristic of my travels thus far, I have had nothing but hunger, happiness, and the occasional inoffensive wind. I credit much to the writing which has kept my stomach from digesting too much emotion. My friends the cows have 4 stomachs.
I've heard it said that when the prophet Mohammad told his followers the names of their god, he kept one name a secret to himself until his death, and upon his departure from this world, whispered that single name to a camel. To this day, camels are thought by some to walk as they do, proud, spiteful, and obedient because they know they know.
I think perhaps, cows know something of god too. And I think perhaps, it has something to do with the way they take the world into themselves. It shows on their faces, calm, ever unsurprised, and a kind of happy.
---
I stayed for less than a week in La Filaine, the little village outside of a town called Chateaumeillant, about an hour drive from Chateauroux and the train station. Originally my plan was to stay there for the duration of my 2 months (ish) in France with Jen, a host I had connected with via network: www.helpx.net. I want so badly to believe in things like couchsurfing and help exchange networks, but the truth is, really, most people are crazy. Which is fine, of course, and relative, to be sure, but it becomes a nasty gnarl to depend on the nutcases for your own well-being. I know of people who have made these networks work for them, and I applaud them. I wonder though, if having my own agenda with what I'm trying to accomplish in my travels, and having a sense of myself, while still admittedly utterly lost, impinges on the feasibility of casting myself to the wind for strangers to catch and direct me. I have created for myself a Chinese finger trap of sorts, as I am, as we all are to some extent, dependent on others, and yet so completely and undeniably separate.
My sense of time, for one, is for the most part, lost. Though I know, because of facts, that I've been in France now exactly 8 days, it seems to switch between feeling like a month, and like 2 hours. I am clearly, of course, a mess. I am calm, and happy, and an incredible mess. Amidst it all, I try to smile like the cows, and I am glad to be back in Paris.
The evening I arrived in La Filaine, Cheateaumeillant, after an arduous jaunt of shopping, I lay on a small brass-frame bed in a stone-walled loft under at triangular ceiling with exposed beams. Five feet to my right, in a slightly larger small brass-frame bed, lay a Ukranian man named Denys. Down the steep open risers to the first floor you would find 6 dogs of various size and volume, but of equal disregard for authority and all in need of some extent of discipline and antidepressants. The poor things hardly ever get any attention, and are barely allowed out of doors. When I asked Denys upon meeting him, how it had been to be living with, and helping Jen for the past week he'd been there, he said, "She is sometimes no good character, and the house is big smell."
Jen is an older woman with a sad sagging face and thin short hair. When she hugs you, you may note her width and softness in the middle. She smells of cigarettes and smokes them frequently and her eyes dart about, lined in sparkling green. She has a boisterous laugh, compensating.
Denys is, at first impression, tall, thin, blond, quiet, rather nondescript. But after spending just a few minutes in conversation, and even more especially a few days with him, the lines of his face and a truer air about him lifts slowly from his center as if hiding at first. There are delicate, shy bags beneath his eyes, he is easily amused and a smile is glad to show itself though rarely. He is generally at ease, his shoulders almost always at the end of a shrug. He is a good worker, and would rather not.
Jen's land is populated by 3 donkeys, a leashed goat, a turkey, two sheep, several chickens, herself, Denys, myself, and the dogs. On the other side of the weak wire fence edging the yard, is a mob of cows. Surrounding on all sides, in fact, throughout the village, are cows. Armies of dispassionate cows.
On the day that Jen emerged from her 3-day enclosure within her bedroom crying and honest, she apologized in her Plymouth accent for being "in a hell of a state," and asked that Denys and I leave. Denys had seen the whole ordeal coming, had warned me, and we were both well on our way to finding new hosts. He, unlike me, had had enough already, and seamlessly removed himself from the ugly encounter, while I tried to comfort Jen. And then Denys and I went for a bike ride.
We rode in the opposite direction of Chateaumeillant just to see what we could. Gradually rising and sinking hills spread out around us. Every once in a dozen farms we faced a hill with greater confidence to stand tall against us, and always after were greeted with a slope of even greater zeal. After one very slow, but indeed pressing rise uphill, there came a decline reasonably envied by lugers with a bridge at the bottom and curves leading up again to an equally steep incline. We soared down, gaining speed we hoped to maintain up the hill, turned our gears down and accepted sadly the slug rate at which we would climb up.
Those who know me closely can attest to the terribly debilitating pain that often accompanies intensive exertion on the part of my heart. I implore those who are unaware, please do not take this metaphorically; indeed my "heart" can handle much exertion. My insides, on the other hand, begin to salivate some cold throbbing mercurial stuff which pools into my pelvis until I lose my peripheral vision. We reached the top of the incline, and threw our bikes down, I to the grass, supine, and Denys off to climb an apple tree. Apples picked, and eating, I sense naught but the crunch and sweet; the dull, relentlessly throbbing pain; and the clouds above like melted butter on a sky of fading blue toast.
As we rode towards what was to no longer be home, we approached the herd of neighbor cows at the fence. As they always do when we pass, their heads lift- heads of the most beautiful shape, if you ever care to notice it- and their eyes behold you with a blank and knowing mien.
I am sure that I am not the only one who has discovered a relationship between one's belly and one's mind, no? That when we worry, our middles gurgle, press out, churn up, or refuse cooperation, yes? The world about which we worry out there, comes in, and rests in here, and it is, of course, at the center of our being that we must decide what is to be welcomed in and what is to be forced out. And, to be sure, the free floating anxiety and groundlessness which understandably accompanies one on adventures which altogether defy expectation and definition, would certainly conjure up some ache for the belly, would it not? I assure you, I expected so, but I am pleased to announce, even given the free floating and groundless characteristic of my travels thus far, I have had nothing but hunger, happiness, and the occasional inoffensive wind. I credit much to the writing which has kept my stomach from digesting too much emotion. My friends the cows have 4 stomachs.
I've heard it said that when the prophet Mohammad told his followers the names of their god, he kept one name a secret to himself until his death, and upon his departure from this world, whispered that single name to a camel. To this day, camels are thought by some to walk as they do, proud, spiteful, and obedient because they know they know.
I think perhaps, cows know something of god too. And I think perhaps, it has something to do with the way they take the world into themselves. It shows on their faces, calm, ever unsurprised, and a kind of happy.
---
I stayed for less than a week in La Filaine, the little village outside of a town called Chateaumeillant, about an hour drive from Chateauroux and the train station. Originally my plan was to stay there for the duration of my 2 months (ish) in France with Jen, a host I had connected with via network: www.helpx.net. I want so badly to believe in things like couchsurfing and help exchange networks, but the truth is, really, most people are crazy. Which is fine, of course, and relative, to be sure, but it becomes a nasty gnarl to depend on the nutcases for your own well-being. I know of people who have made these networks work for them, and I applaud them. I wonder though, if having my own agenda with what I'm trying to accomplish in my travels, and having a sense of myself, while still admittedly utterly lost, impinges on the feasibility of casting myself to the wind for strangers to catch and direct me. I have created for myself a Chinese finger trap of sorts, as I am, as we all are to some extent, dependent on others, and yet so completely and undeniably separate.
if you are a mess, it is a glorious one.
ReplyDeleteRemember, you will do many foolish things. Do them with enthusiasm.
--- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
and here I thought that was a father's original quote! thanks for all you do and everything you are! your wisdom (even when it's cited) is so genuinely appreciated! But I never knew you were quoting Colette! I've only ever given cursory glances to her writing, but a good friend of mine kept pointing me towards her work!
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