abigail414's diaryland diary
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Vulture Love
�Remember existence already remembers the flush upon it you will have been, you who have reached out ahead and touched the dust we become.� Galway Kinnell
I read that line while sipping organic wine and eating scallop Caesar salad in an outdoor caf� with dogs lying at my feet, live jazz wafting through the air, and a pale pink twilight sky. Huge sigh. Life is so painfully beautiful at times.
The past few days I�ve been up at a peaceful cottage in Idyllwild (1 hour and 10 minutes by car, 6,000 feet higher, 25 degrees cooler both temperature and culturally, than Palm Springs, CA). Lots of sitting outside staring at blue sky, sleeping, walking, yoga, writing, and reading - Merrill Markoe, Enid Shomer, Galway Kinnell, John Perkins, Dave Dempsey, and Paramhansa Yogananda.
I sat and stared at the sky long enough for a lone vulture to notice and start circling, attracting other vultures, until there was a small spiral conflagration of black birds with 6 foot wingspans. I love vultures - they thrive on disease and death, making the world a better place, and oh yes, soaring effortlessly and beautifully through the sky. The combined inert forms of myself and 2 dogs outside in the shade for hours was just too much of a bonanza for them not to check out numerous times. Sorry girls, not yet.
Death had a big role in my becoming a veterinarian. My dog Bitsy the beagle died in front of me when I was 11 years old � I was calling her and she came and ended up screaming and thrashing under a passing car. I was an only child and she was my four-legged sister, and shortly thereafter I started trying to heal my stuffed animals. At 40, I was a typical overpaid underworked state employee with great benefits, when my dad and a good friend both died � making me wonder if this was all I was going to do with life, and three years later I was a vet student. And then, my first semester in vet school was dominated with slowly cutting apart the same dead dog for 20 hours a week, and then the surgery class included killing 9 dogs per group of 4 students. (I opted out of the latter, figuring I�d been responsible for enough beagle deaths in one lifetime).
At especially beautiful moments, like in the jazz cafe, time stops - and I think �this is enough, I can go now'. I also think about how it looks like we�re killing the planet and will we go first or watch it die together. Maybe I�m depressed, but I think I�m realistic in trying to savor what is in truth a fleeting experience here on earth. A speech I gave my first year in college started �everyone here will die (big pause) sometime� and was about purchasing pre-need funeral plans. (Perhaps it is because I'm half swedish, and therefore have a tendency to be a little maudlin.)
Questions from my few days in repose are: Am I worth the resources I�m using here on the planet; how can I make the most of this brief passage and yet give back more than I take; and am I missing something important � like maybe loving others (and myself) more?
8:34 p.m. - 2006-08-31
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