Wit is educated insolence. (Aristotle)

17S got up!!!!! She was my downer cow from last Monday and today she’s up and down, walking around a little bit!!! Gods, I am so happy! It’s a birthday miracle! And although we lost 65S’s calf yesterday (another trauma birth) the fact that the cows are around and doing well almost makes it bearable to have had a calf die in my arms and stuck half way out of the cow yesterday.

People say that after a catastrophe that nothing will ever be the same. What they mean is that nothing ever should be the same. Because life goes on, much as it has before, and momentarily we take a moment to reflect that happiness should no longer exist for us when for so many there will never be happiness in this incarnation again. I felt like that yesterday as the calf’s heart beat slowed and stopped beneath my hand and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about. The vet arrived minutes later but it was too late. It feels like we shouldn’t go on with life and enjoy anything but the thing about farming is that you have to go on. There are live animals that require care. And few souls are so embittered that they would begrudge the living happiness. Sometimes it feels that those who have gone before and return to visit me bring with them this happiness that bubbles over and floods me during dark moments when I blame myself for so much death. But death is not in my hands. Some live and some die and all I can do is help them do both well.

Shit, I didn’t mean to get all serious today. It’s just that few animal deaths really get me. This one, as I said, died in my hands, draining away like water, and I was unable to hold it. Souls slip easily out of the young ones, like the glue between body and soul isn’t set until milk and shit go in or come out.

On a lighter note, I read Practical Magic yesterday. Good book. Not huge metaphysical drama. It dealt with how magic exists in the mind. More of an everyday kind of magic than the huge fireworks the movie used. Hoffman had amazing style and word choice in this one. I started Jodi Picoult’s Songs of the Humpback Whale last night. Not quite the earth shattering thing that Nineteen Minutes or The Tenth Circle are, but nice all the same. I’m listening to one of my favorite songs right now, Shinedown’s “Second Chance.” Often I can use a song, or snatches of songs, to illustrate a moment in my characters’ lives. This is one of those songs that will find a moment. It’s like my own private music video. Yes, I know. I need to get out more.