Hello dear Hivers!
I have not connected to this account for quite a while,
There has been a LOT going on for the past year actually, and I could not keep up anymore with posting regularly, every day was a change of perspective, I felt like on a train that would never stop for a halt.
In fact, we pretty much spent the entire summer and since, taking care of Brownie, the wise old Labrador that has been on @ravenking13 's side for more than 15 years now and counting!
He is a true phenomenon; not like any other dog I've ever come across.
I usually got pretty annoyed at him very quickly, as I was really not used to such a demanding dog; yet he was patient with me, very much so that his biggest gift was to show me what it is like to not have any expectations towards me.
He never questioned his worth in my eyes (or other's for the matter); yet he never questioned mine either. He always received me with love, never snobbed me back, just always offered me his full loving presence whenever I did decide to engage with him.
But what I appreciate the most is he was never impatient with me and gave me the almost two years I needed to open up to him and get to the place by myself where I do truly love him, unconditionally, like he does too.
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Yet he also taught us a lesson in hard core reality those past months; literally having to clean up shit was probably the most maturing I've had since burying my father.
It confronted us both with our concepts of responsibility, as well as questioning what reality right here right now really asks of us.
It's so easy to get a dog, or any pet, or a child and not think about the implications in the long-run.
I heard a woman apologize to all the women out there who want to have children, when she said that it's not always easy.
I was so struck by that apology because it was exactly what has been kept taboo for so long.
I felt that, because of exactly those feelings of embarrassment or not wanting to spoil the fairytale, many mothers did not dare to say exactly those things everyone should hear before deciding to take on such important responsibility.
We both realized that for us, and many like us, the reality is not clear enough in what it really means to be responsible for another living being and dedicating oneself to that, without compromise.
Maybe if parents would be more open about all the delusionments they experienced once they had children, we might understand that what was kept in the dark is actually totally normal and even a big part of the entire thing.
She said that, although her child is only around 6 years now, she understands that she won't have the same quality of time for herself for practically until the child is a grown-up, and honestly that makes totally sense.
Even the entire subject of sleeping became clear as crystal; I get it now that you cannot expect to have a night of sleep just the way you did before having children. I'm so grateful to have understood this, as a friend of mine had no idea it would take years when she gave birth..
I only got to see such points mentioned in an advertisement for durex a couple of years ago... Obviously that is not the point either, but about being unabashedly real about parenthood and taking care of animals, plants and everything alive.
So last summer, life brutally confronted us with those realizations; as we learnt to live in a reality where we shifted our sleep so that we stayed up all night to vigil Brownie as he can't get up on his own and we had to assist him for his toiletry.
It reminded me a lot of the time where my father was dying. I didn't want to be around much, as Death was too present.
I just thought I could look another way and just "live my life".
But I was a coward really, I couldn't stand the ugliness of life.
I think many people are used to wanting to avoid these subjects and these situations as much as possible.
Death, the dying and the dead are kept afar and nobody really knows how Death is really happening day by day.
And with Brownie, I was seeing it all; I was seeing how he started to not be able to stand up on his own anymore.
I saw how a few months later he could not go on walks anymore, not even to the front of the house.
I witnessed how a few months later, he could not easily sit down by himself; it was too much pressure on his hindlegs and he just let himself fall down from then on. Also was there when he started to not notice when he was pooing and it happened in his sleep. A few weeks later, he could not even walk around much.
Since he could not stand up anymore, we were responsible for understanding anything he needed, especially if he needed water and when he had to go pee or poo.
Obviously that's when we both also discovered living together as a couple assisting each other in alternately catching a dump he was pushing out, here and there. Casual!
But it was liberating; it was amazing to be in that experience together; where we had to learn about all these "inconveniences", actually just reality shoving us the cake of sobriety in our faces.
It's already a big responsibility to take care of our own shit, but making the choice to having to clean up someone else's shit for several years, is not a light choice to make!
And the beauty of it, reveals itself at last! It's the sharing of powerful presence. This St. Johns Wort on the left has grown in the garden without us sowing it, it came by 'itself' which was quite a magical statement from the Plant Spirit And it's almost as if Life gave us our graduation when we got announced that we had to leave now; Having had a year where the attention had to go towards Life in all its shapes and forms in and around us just brought us a step further on our journey of creating a space where any kind of free spirits can feel at home. The bees unfortunately will have to stay here; but that's fine, as they have survived the winter strong, with no human interference, (I wrote about this here) and they probably have all it takes to even go feral! That would be such a significant sign of their sovereignty; if that happens we would have completed our goal. In any case they will be safe to stay here in our absence, left in peace in their hives. The pythons will travel with us, and we plan to take Brownie too! And that is what I cherish from this experience with Death hovering all around; where eventually Death became the biggest bullshit slayer and the gifter of immortal value; The stage Brownie is in right now, is almost a priviledge for most of the pet dogs that are populating this earth; many people by now would already have put their pet to sleep before even letting all those handicaps become a reality in the day-to-day. Every body makes their own choice, but I would love for all of us, to always consider the ugly and frustrating parts of welcoming life as a valuable part of the whole; and not cut life off just because we feel we don't have the patience, the humility or the devotion to assist another life with our true presence, and if needed, to the very end of the gates of its natural liberation. Thank you for reading, if you made it this far, this probably was my last posting with this account. I would like to invite you to the new account we created as a joint profile where we will document our journey to our new Home and Sanctuary Creation : @housecatharsia May you walk with Death, anywhere it wants to show you, unafraid and unresistant, KPHI
I sucked it up & tried to do live sketching during a night where we watched over him. Live Sketching as an Art practice has been eye-opening on many levels; it's all really just about opening up to what is in your present moment, right there, all around & observing & drawing that, as opposed to an inaccessible fantasy.
Although we have not been able to practically leave the house since the summer, I have discovered so much more in the intimacy of Amore and Brownie. With the time spent just being present with him and being on his side constantly, it slowed us down into the present, living in the feeling, and not in the idea.
We started to nurture a nucleus and started to show up more for our own life journey. We had not much contact with other humans anymore, but felt fully immersed into our environment in that house. Some house spirits made themselves known, the garden felt fully alive, the bees and the pythons were thriving.
that time feeling impatient and constrained showed us in the end what really matters to us; how we show up to all that is present where we are at each moment, not needing an idea of what kind of life we want to have lived from the outside, but more wanting to relate to all that is inside and around us.
And the earth, nature that I am longing to unite with, without all these human-made barriers; so it is really a gift from life to get us up and go to a place that we can call our home.So it was very obvious to us that the new property we would settle down would be the start of the Sanctuary @housecatharsia we intuitively already had started building; at least in the inner worlds.
Goddess Tara mask protecting the Hive of Gaia, we really thought they would not make it since they had not even a full storey of honey, but they did, with divine providence! Magic is all around, in all that is alive & living, really!
He really may be at the end, but taking him with us on this new adventure would be pretty rad for him to expand his horizon one last time.
It's incredible how his body is weakening, yet his spirit is so present. He is so alive, not anything like senile humans we've come across, there is none of that in him, it is quite peculiar how it seems that animals don't have that mental regression at all when they are old and weak.It's been truly a blessing to witness a being get so old and incapacitated, yet have such a striking presence and vibrant spirit, amongst all that.
Old people get locked up in old people's homes, and children get stuck into daycares.
But that was not an option for us; we wanted to face Reality to the end! I missed out my fathers reality of his dying and I don't want to miss on that part of Life anymore just because it feels uncomfortable. Brownie is still alive and were it not for his body, he would not look like he's at the end.
Life cannot just be put down for our convenience. Life is so strong, so pervading, that it is fully there until it decides itself it's ready to move on; and Brownie has that fire in him and we will see to it he will let it extinguish when Death has chosen his time ultimately.
