Here is a letter to Jim published with his agreement. It serves as an introduction to Scratch a Cynic, Jim’s most recent post and it signals the teaching relationship that exists between us. Such relationships stretch both parties and I’m not sorry about that.

Scratch a Cynic takes Jim out of the garden, and off the beach, to reflect on the raw realities he lived within, day in day out in an American Police Station – for years. I can just about join him with the harshness, although it scares me, and I can understand more deeply why the conscious appreciation of garden and beach have been so significant to him. (Ones senses must be rubbed red raw in the law enforcement world he describes, breathing in the sound of ocean waves a balm.) Soon after his retirement we talked about the intensity of his War Zone work life and I remarked that, you are as one who has returned from the battle field, and your boots are still smoking! Gladly his boots are cool enough to reflect on now.

Dear Jim,
It’s finally came to me to re-read your Scratch a Cynic piece and I’ve decided to publish it. But before I do that I want to thank you for your patience in sticking with me; for listening to my difficulties with the piece, my teaching/remarks about it and still keeping on going. You might have quit and I’m so grateful that you haven’t.

Thinking about you in particular, and the other two as well, I can see how in different ways you have come out of the War Zone of your lives, and thankfully reasonably unscathed. But in a war zone you have been, undoubtedly. Over the past few years I’ve know you, and the others, the residue of excitement, buzz (and disappointments and dented self esteem) have settled and bodies and minds have renewed, and recovered! This achieved largely by going about your daily rounds in garden, farm, beach and textile heaven – dwelling at the shady end of the garden of life as I have put it in a yet-to-be-published article.

Yes, there has been more than garden and beach of course however your (Jim’s) beating of the drum has been a little slower (not much though by all accounts) and what you do now has been less war zone like. Perhaps the emergency nature of events that come up now can be related to more as a movie you visited. Rather than as being trapped in a movie theater, you only dimly knew you were trapped in.

Your article shows that however locked in you, or anybody in similar circumstances have become there is a capacity to reflect on ones actions/thoughts/feelings and to do things differently. Perhaps that’s all part of the gift that comes with the human being package. I don’t know. Anyway thanks once again for your reflections, and your willingness to stick with me as I reflect on myself. Yes, sometimes I’m difficult.
Mugo

Picture and poem for Alison and her extended family.

In my mirror,
birth and old age
sickness and death
reflect,
Sour and sweet
bitter and hot,
true sweet dew.

Into the four forms,
my body disintegrates,
earth and fire
water and wind;
emptiness.
But like the Buddha’s kindness

I am everywhere.

Excerpt from a poem by Tsung tsai, translated by George Crane from Bones of the Master.

…and for all those who find themselves in extremity.

Bilberry a recent addition to the alpaca family.
A few years ago I wrote a piece for the local BBC Radio Cornwall which was about how sometimes when we want to help it is best to just do nothing – be there, but don’t rush in and try to make things, as we would see them, better. I illustrated this with the example of the best prescription for helping an alpaca to give birth. An authority on alpacas suggests we need two crucial items of equipment for helping at an alpaca birth – binoculars and a length of rope. The rope is to tie yourself to a fence a suitable distance away from the alpaca, the binoculars are so you can watch what is happening from a safe distance.

Well, this seemed to be a good point to make back then, and it does seem to be the case that with our expectations of how things should be we can often cause problems by jumping in and ‘helping’ when supportive and attentive inaction could be a wiser course.

Anyway, it is alpaca birthing season again here on the farm, and this year has been a fine teaching in how sometimes it is good to help.

We had four alpaca babies (technically known as cria) in four days – one a day in the short sunny spells between downpours. Unfortunately Julie (the real expert on our alpacas – I am not an animal person) was bedridden at this time having been thrown by a horse. So it was up to me to oversee birthing. The first cria made it out before I even knew anything was happening. The second needed membrane and fluid removing from over its mouth before it suffocated, the third presented with head and only one leg so needed a quick intervention to flip the other foot out in the right direction so the cria could make it out. All needed drying out and coats to cope with the challenging weather.

Which doesn’t mean the original advice about doing nothing was wrong – its just there is always an ‘and…’ Fortunately, in these alpaca births it seemed that if I was just calm and quiet, then when something needed doing it was pretty clear what it was that was needed. I’m not an animal person, so I’m not going to say the alpacas told me what needed doing, and yet…

Two week old Bilberry.