Ugh. I did not wake up right today. I�m bleary-eyed this morning, friends, and anxious. I hear Lola�s voice and it�s like nails on a chalkboard. That woman. Forget it. I hate talking about work. But I�ll just say Lola and the other evil fink posing as the most syrupy sweet southern woman are talking about The Family Circus. Figures. Them and Mayor Wilkins. Evil.

Met a buzzard with a broken wing last night, sitting next to Basho�s dead raccoon. I was scared the dogs would pull another bloodlust frenzy but they were pretty ok with being called away from the bird. Basho was more like, what the freaking hell is it? But then he just kept walking on. We came home and I called the wildlife rehab place up at the zoo. The woman was cool�she told me that if I wanted to try to catch it I could bring it in and they�d rehabilitate it. She said I�d need at least a couple of other folks and she told me what to do but by then it was dark so I just let it go, thinking maybe I�d try this morning. I am scared of tasks that require me to ask for help. And who would I ask? Jeff�s up in Maryland and Mr. Brown would no doubt laugh at me. I couldn�t find the buzzard this morning. I�m sorry, god.

I am pretty much the biggest yellow-bellied coward you ever saw. I�m petrified of having to act, of having to ask for help, of knocking on doors or calling folks up on the telephone, of going into strange stores. I�m scared even more of the wounded�both psychically and physically. I hate myself most when confronted with a buzzard with a broken wing. I wish I were braver, wish I could just do the thing that will help already and stop being such a cowardly lion.

I started thinking, though, how weird we people are. The only species to actually create whole breeds of other animals for the express purpose of eating them (which, really, when you think about it is just plain creepy�I�m not talking from my animal rights brain or my be kind to the planet brain�I�m just talking from the creeped out brain. I decided we invented vampires and other intelligent monsters who feed off of us as a direct result of the deep down cultural anxiety that this system of raising other mammalian life as product has caused), we also seem to be the only ones so afeared of death and pain and woundedness that we rehabilitate wild animals. It�s weird. Like trying to save all the dogs and cats is weird, you know? Especially when we�re busy chopping up the cows and the pigs in the meantime. Yet when we encounter a hurt pup, most of us do our best to help it out even though thousands of healthy dogs are killed all the time because there aren�t folks to care for them. I�m not saying it�s wrong to do that, I�m just wondering.

I watched Survivor last night. Turns out we get that channel. I only watched half because then Jeff called, but it was enough to ignite the flame of my addiction. That show is my crack rock. Jeff told me about a show he watched on the comedy channel. We talked about tv shows which is ridiculous and funny and fun. I miss that boy. He makes sure I take my vitamins and eat my greens and keeps me from getting too alone and weird. He�s coming home soon, I hope.

I just read this over at salon and I do think it's one of the best things I've read in awhile. I'm putting it here to remember it. Thank you to that man who writes that thing:

There are no reasonable grounds for abandonment, for the breaking of a covenant. That doesn't mean that he's committed a crime, either; all it means is that what happened is not in the realm of reasonable grounds, but the realm of sudden storms, inexplicable blizzards and sunspots, unnatural avalanches and summer squalls, abnormal tides, exotic mutations, screaming monkeys, falling rocks, freak accidents of the heart. We are not talking about reasonable grounds. We are talking about the kinds of life-shattering things that we cannot comprehend logically, that force us to turn to our spiritual protectors to handle them and absorb them, to salve our wounds after the searing burn, to bring us out of shock, to bear us over the scorched ground.

Why is it that with us Americans when we feel the maddening pressure of grief we look for laws and right and wrong? Would it make you feel better to know that you deserved this, or that you didn't deserve this, that you or he had made some mistake in judgment or had some failure of will power? If you were stabbed in the chest, would you think, oh, if only I had lost some weight it wouldn't have happened, I could have controlled this man's heart? No, your proper role is to grieve and try to get through it, and place yourself in the hands of your spiritual protector. Do not torment yourself with hindsight. Just grieve, and seek solace in your relationship with the great power you pray to.

How to grieve? Grieve with purity. Grieve completely, until the poison is gone. Try not to turn it into knowledge about other people. The result of grief is not knowledge about other people. The result of grief is the contour of your own survival, a knowledge of your hidden animal strengths, the words you tell yourself when you think you can't go on, the noises you make when you're in pain, the shape of the road you're on and what it feels like to walk barefoot across the broken glass, the knowledge that somehow above all you survived, that this is your own fate and you survived, and if you survived this, you can survive the next trial too, and the next and the next and the next. That's what the grief is about: It sobers you up right quick, and reminds you to be ready. What I mean is that it's about you; what I mean is try not to make it about men in general and the awful things they do, like a lesson that you tell your grandchildren. God knows all about men and the awful things they do. Nobody needs to hear it from you. What people need from you is the example of your strength, your ability to bear the loss with dignity.

Do not let this make you into one of those women who says to their grandchildren, Here is the truth about men, what bastards they are, what a bastard your grandfather was. Instead, make it about how to live in a world where the bastards are going to pull shit like this all the time, how to carry grief as lightly as a Panama hat, how to know the deepest and hardest things about life and still tap-dance by. Make it into something you can tell your grandchildren about how to endure what gets handed to you, and how if you keep practicing, you learn to walk over it happily.