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Poems, Prose, Photos & the Art of Being Human
What I’m learning from yoga, massage, injuries, illness, maximal healing/health, interest and others that would be nice to have included if we were born with a manual attached.
I used to paint and knit. Now I groom my healthy dog’s fast-growing hair. I trim at least a quarter cup of hair a day yet one would guess since it grows so fast!
So when I saw these short-haired shedding dogs, I laughed aloud that that Ziggy’s uses these images to advertise “GROOMING.”
A bath and maybe a nail trim is nothing in comparison with the hours I spend each week brushing and cutting hair.
Many. Hours.
Even having had large Collies and a Malemute did not prepare me for how time consuming this little 16 lb non-shedder could be. Though non-shed is a misnomer. She sheds, just like a person, very little. And her hair just keeps growing.
It grows thick and fast and doesn’t stop to ensure that her feet retain traction on the ground, but instead her paws mutate into large balls of fur. Without a severe trim at least once a week, her winter-rabbit paws are so slick with hair that she’ll slip and slide as if our floors are ice. Which leads to injury just like when people run on ice with slick bottomed shoes.
In other words, the dogs pictured do not warrant the term “grooming” any more than lounging in a hot tub is like riding a ten foot wave.
Fame puts you there where things are hollow.
John Lennon to David Bowie before Bowie’s mega-fame
TOUCH hands awaken stars in skin till our palms press peace deep as breath yet this snow-blind animal need for touch shared by grooming apes and dogs sleeping entwined is rarely about sex but instead our primal need to know we are not stones tossed out to sea as we breathe the same air molecules shared in this brief habitation of skin
Thank you to the editors of 5AM for first publishing this poem.
In many traditions, this long night marks the end of the solar year, the final day of increasing dark. Tomorrow our days will lengthen and a new year begins, not by calendar, but by the sun’s time.
Here’s to the cycles and the richness of dark, the silence of snow and opportunities to reflect, to sleep, and once more emerge into increasing light.
May this year bring peace, more love, more ease and safety for all. HAPPY SOLSTICE!
Look where your feet are planted, and bloom where you are.
Unknown yet variations by many