Dialogs with Geese and other interesting things.

My friend, Karen, has a fabulous voice and has had a modicum of success in the music industry in Austin, a feat few, apparently, are ever able to achieve.

But here's the deal: She's going to be moving to the country (Virginia) and doing many of the things we do, possibly. But she'll have family around to teach her things we only pick up through the internet, a way that's pretty void of real character. I envy her, envy the generational passing of information that seems suddenly so important in this old world.

But this life is hard - having a full-time job and attempting to start a manufacturing kitchen (didn't I tell you?) and still having so many projects on the burners - front and back, that it seems impossible to think that we could ever accomplish them all. But we must. And we will. But not today.

I can tell you there's not a muscle in my body that isn't sore most of the time, there isn't an animal I haven't cursed for some reason or the other such as eating the wrong species' foods or getting into the front yard when it's not allowed - and there isn't a patch of ground that we haven't explored, thought about or developed on this piece of land. It's hard and it's fabulous. I don't think I'd ever want to go back to the white noise of the city, to listen to the cars outside my front door or the neighbors yelling at their kids. Traffic here consists of riding herd on the goats to get to the barn door. The neighbors are the mockingbirds, the caracaras, the bluebirds that inhabit one of our bird houses, the cardinals always chatting that there's never enough seed left out for them... and the white noise is that of total peace - at least peace as far as having 100 or so animals can be peaceful.

And I can walk around nude and nobody knows but me or Mike. I can rant at the goats for some infraction of rules they don't understand... I mean REALLY scream at them... and no one can hear me - except the goats and the dogs, cats, etc... and they just look at me like I'm insane.

People worry about whether I should get out more or do more social things with friends, but I can't wait to get home from work, to fuss with the geese, goats, guineas, chickens, peafowl, cats, dogs and the rest of the creatures here. And I HATE leaving this place, even to go shopping or do what I must to make a living. It's very difficult to get up and go to work, much less leave this farm for something like social intercourse.

No, dialogs with geese are not as informative as dialogs with those who've watched great movies, have opinions and supposedly a wider world view, or eat out at places I've never heard of. But with the geese, they talk back, tell me that they don't care how I dress or what I say -- as long as I let them get into the pond or let them eat the grass. They intrigue me in ways humans just can't anymore. This is home to them, and we are their keepers. They talk amongst themselves. We just listen.

Enough said.