breaking up with tradition. i was singing cracking up by nick lowe this morning. the refrain i don't think it's funny no more coursing through my noddin' noggin as mister rolled in the cumulus leaves.
one time when i was doing the trail riding business up on gabriola island i went to give a horse an apple thinking how pleased she would be and she turned like lightning and bit my face. i was coming in her blind spot and she just reacted in fear, her instinct before her thought. we're hardwired that way. we get acculturated and our fears also. lots of people have irrational fears in the built world. we don't know what to fear, we just fear. the things that were meant to build trust, that built trust in the past, are not to be trusted anymore. we know how citizens and society use trust to abuse us. 
anyway dogs are like little horses that way, sudden movements confuse and alarm them and they react before they can tell what is really happening. and sometimes we communicate danger unthinkingly. as dogs get myopic and deaf they feel more fear and vulnerability, and they need slow careful treatment and trust.

there was a post by maria wulf on thanksgiving r. mentioned and it was uncanny. she always shied from holiday-making and felt she didn't belong and wanted to curl up with a book rather than feel estranged in company. but she made her first thanksgiving, like r., and like r. had three people to feed. and it was good. i felt that way too, though i kind of hung silent in the adjoining room some of the time, i felt united in the sharing of the wonderful lovingly prepared food and in the table games after. i also blogged some, and we drove our guest paige home on quiet streets, quiet ourselves, still digesting the day. maria wulf's day dovetailed nicely with ours at a distance, like two branches of the same plant transported to separate locales.

we're going to go to the big marsh i think this next holiday, the product placement one, like last year, to a place human industry left to return to nature with human help, to see the sweet and curious deer and the waterbirds. 

well, here's the song, since it was in my head on the walk, it's there in the background now, i'm not cracking up, but that's the way i feel not belonging in the larger society, and it's soul good to know there are other misfits like me at large.

Cracking up, I'm getting ready to go
Had enough, I can't take any more
No pills that I can take
This is too real and there ain't no escape
It scares the daylights
It makes a nightmare
I'm tensioned an I'm nervous

Everybody all around me
Shakin' hands and sayin' howdie
I don't think it's funny no more
Cracking up, like a worn out shoe
Ain't wet, but the world's leakin' through
I'd run, but I find no pace
I laugh, but it's wrecking me

Wrecking me
It make a shiver, it make a shake
It make a monster, just like an earthquake
Everybody havin' fun
I don't know how they can carry on
'Cause f don't think it's funny no more

At dead of night time, at crack of dawn
It comes upon me without warning
If I were a gunman I would shoot
I'd tear the hair out by the root
I'd make a knife out of a notion
All at sea in an ocean of a emotion
I don't think it's funny no more
I don't think it's funny no more

Cracking up
I don't think it's funny no more
Cracking up
I don't think it's funny no more
Cracking up
I don't think it's funny no more
Cracking up
I don't think it's funny no more
Cracking up