Healing With Donkeys

I went to be early last night.  I’d been laying on the couch for most of the day but as it grew dark and I got more achy I was craving the soft mattress.

So when I woke up at 5am and needed to stretch, I decided to go outside and open the gate for the donkeys and sheep so they could get an early start on grazing.  Fate came with me and got to run around the sheep, while I sat on the damp grass and watched the mist hovering over the marsh.

The sun not yet over the tree tops, the light was still soft.  As I sat there, a thick string of mist gathered above the stream.  I turned my head for a moment to tell Fate to “get the sheep” and when I looked back to the stream, the mist was completely gone.

So I tried to watch it dissipate over the tall wildflowers in the marsh, but it too eluded me. Moving the way the hands of a clock do.  Too slow to see and then suddenly the purple flowers and tall green grasses are brighter no longer seen through the scrim of fog.

I went back to bed after that, tired again.

That’s the way it’s been since yesterday, I do a little something, then get tired and have to lay down. I haven’t had the flu in a long time, but that’s what this feels like.  Rest and lots of liquids everyone says. Take your vitamins, Alfreda texted me.

So that’s what I’m doing.

Except when I went back out to the barnyard some hours later to close the gate after grazing.  And there was Fanny laying in the sun.  I gently walked over to her and sat down beside her.  I know sitting in the sun, next to Fanny has to be healing. She twitched her ears at the flies and I scratched her neck.

Feeling the soft hair under her chin tickling my face, I didn’t know that Lulu was standing next to me until I turned my head.  How can an animal that big be so quiet?

Now I was surrounded by donkeys.  I scratched Lulu’s neck until the chills I was feeling subsided and suddenly the sun was too hot.

I’ll go out again later.

Feed the cats and check on the donkeys and sheep.  In between, I sleep on the couch, maybe do a drawing.  I’m reading Nicole Pasulka’s book How You Get Famous about the Drag Queen scene in Brooklyn.

I never work makeup or heals rarely even a bra,  and have never been interested in most of the music I’ve heard Drag Queen’s lip sink to.  But I love watching drag. I’m thinking there’s a connection between that and my love of Bellydancing (which I missed last night) but I haven’t figured it out yet.

Maybe I get some insight as I continue to read Pasulka’s book.