Lately, Chloe's taken up air-humping our house-guests. It's something new and fresh for all of us, growing out of the trauma of her surgery and having to wear the Very Large Array for weeks. Also, less dramatically, it's part of the basic condition of being a house-dog. Chloe's air-humping John and Sunny, and Iseec and Leah, is a way of testing the waters. Who am I, here? How will these people respond to a little test of Chloe Is the Queen Around Here? And the wonderful thing is, we are all doing this all the time. Women who walk into a room and reflexively scan all the other women's clothes and hair to see who's got what going on. Men who scan a room reflexively for fuckable options. Travel-stories and kid-accomplishment-stories; stories of this Tibetan lama, or that. All of it is total air-humping. Will they notice me? Will they hear the name of So-and-So Rimpoche in association with mine, and forego the sharp teeth they would otherwise fasten around my neck? That would be so nice. So nice not to have the fangs, the blood, the humiliation of being on the ground again, pinned under immovable weight again. My kid is learning to sail in France. I got promoted to deputy manager for international operations. Please don't cut me open. Students do this. I'll explain an assignment what seems like straightforwardly, and then there's always someone who wants to air-hump their way out of it. This dynamic is very different from those who just hear the assignment, let it process through their awareness, and go do whatever they're going to do with it. Those ones don't have any time for air-humping, because they're too busy making art. They vanish, go find what needs to find them, and come back radiant with discovery and self-confidence. Meanwhile, the air-humpers - and this is pretty well all of us, at one point or another, a transpersonal force - want to be affirmed in their transgression. We can't face going to dwell in the unseen. We need assertion-with, or assertion-against. My teacher says. My party says. My great-great-great grandfather, Nathaniel Bedford Forrest says. On and on. Chloe, living with a gimpy leg, outside her species. I get it: confusing. Rules not her own. Get used to these two goofy humans, and then here they come, bringing new ones into the house, with bottles of wine, foot-cream, and Zionist flags. Now what? Yesterday, I read this: That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things No self to confirm: awakening. Embattled self always seeking affirmation: endless air-humping, plus fangs. So it goes.
Chloe, Chloe. Such a happy animal sometimes: prancing on her wolverine-feet, smiling her little lower-teeth smile as I pull together poo-bag, hat, leash, shoes. She doesn't need any of that. She's ready in her suit and shoes anytime. Her ears ready to hear, eyes ready to see, paws ready for the ground in all its forms. Three paws firmly grounded, one more tentative. Chloe poops brazenly on Jack's immaculate lawn, seeing only: this green world. She eats blades of long, fresh grass, savoring the summer through her curling pink-black tongue, bringing the world into herself, herself into herself. There is so much air-humping in religion: lovely, simple gestures that have hardened and lost the freshness of discovery. Everyone apparently knows to bring a white silk scarf along when it's blessing time with a visiting lama. We bow, we put our scarf around the holy one's neck, the holy one puts it back around our neck, we bow again, and pack up for the next time. Hum de dum. The gift and return are beautiful in intent, but what about all of us instead tying our scarves end-to-end, and playing twister? Or mummifying ourselves in blessings? Wrapping Tara in silk until she is a tufted titmouse, with golden toes and bun protruding. There are more possibilities than we know & it is good to go into the dark and find them. Air-humping the house-guests. Everyone's met a bad dog and the people who enable her. My grandparents used to blame my brother and I when Fanny the cocker spaniel would jump up and bite us on the ass. Fanny had no time for air-humping - it was straight to the fangs for her, and no hesitation. Something about my grandparents' régime brought this out in dogs - Tessan was a toe-biter, and poor Bendy was put down after mauling my grandfather once too many times. He was a golden boy, all blond feathers, and not nearly enough no. We don't give house-dogs room to go into the dark and figure themselves out. Farm dogs are different. They have a world to roam in, and a job to do. They will show fangs when needed, and as for air-humping, why bother with that, when the real thing is on offer, with that feral coyote in the windbreak? The vet thinks part of why Chloe's knee is damaged in the first place is that she was spayed too early, and so her muscles & tendons & bones & ligaments didn't get the hormones they needed to knit up strong. Poor beasties: we are so concerned with securing their well-being that we stunt it from the beginning. No time for the dark: the force of reason requires the light, the rational solution. No time for Moonbear pups for the Moonbear to lick & suckle & protect. We have gone a long way together. We are good at making ourselves lonelier. We do the best we can with what arises, and try, again, again, to tune to the mind of discovery, of neither for nor against. We put the dog in the crate in the dark for awhile, and then pay close attention to what emerges, smiling with little lower teeth, and eating marrowfat in the corner of the kitchen. We meet here, under these trees, to look into what is, to know this, and that, and to choose wisely. We let our loins rest from air-humping the world, and we relax.
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