Skin

I am not feeling particularly beautiful today. The cold has stolen the moisture from my skin and replaced it with cracked, hardened desert clay. Now I am reminded of hemp oil, an oil that is supposedly goddess-sent for the healing of all dry skin, dull hair, and stumbling health of the body my soul inhabits. Must find the nearest health-nut store and pick up a bottle. I am in the process of creating dreadlocks, and it is not a lovely process. Frizzy bits of electrified hair stand out in irregular, lashing patterns all over my confused scalp. Patience. I am determined to stop using shampoo or conditioner, for there is no reason to put that out into the environment when our sweet world is galloping on shaky, broken legs toward destruction, forced on by a mosaic of humanity, a belligerent rider. Hair can take care of itself, anyway. Beauty products are a human invention, only a blip on the long history of the evolution of body hair. I spiked my coffee this morning with Kahlua, since papers due the following day do not write themselves, and a sober writer is an unimaginative one. At least, when the writer is me, that holds true.

Such a jarring juxtaposition from a moment spent cuddling with hour-old goat kids and their benevolent, forgiving mamas late last night; straw needle skewers stabbing my ridiculously sensitive skin as I sat cross-legged on the ground, goat pellets squelching into the fabric of my yoga pants.

Sensory overload: the little kid in my lap, still with his umbilical cord damp and dragging, his white pelt buttery soft and splattered with afterbirth and brown-spotted swirls of contrasting hair, mumbling in his dreams. Mama, hot, tired, and saddened as only a mother who lost two of her triplets in the same hour of their birth can be, her neck muscles slack as the weight of her head drops firmly onto my thigh, under my forearm, my fingers tangled in her thick coat, scratching, rubbing, massaging the hurt from her body as only a human can comfort a beast. I utter awkward epithets of solace into her ears, ears that were beyond hearing because nothing, save time and the benefits of a life lived in the moment, can ease an agony of loss. Your baby is beautiful, mama. You did a good job. His little hoofs are perfectly formed, he breathes with strength you gave him, he smells like earth and life itself. Good mama. Be proud, mama. Mama, or A-23, the hastily scratched pen strokes on a thick, blue plastic ear-tag denote her breeding, her birth year, and birth order of kids born that spring when she first drew her own wobbly baby legs under her and lunged into life. Her skin, under a shaggy winter parka, is flaky with dirt and dead skin cells accumulated over months of living outdoors without artificial interference. My ordered, human mind automatically reaches for a solution, years and years of social conditioning scream at me to grab a brush and a bucket of soapy water and significantly change her skin's chemical make-up temporarily to ease my own feelings of inadequate beauty. But she is already perfect, already lovely and full of beauty, still wet and wild from the chaotic birth, in itself an incredible, improbable occurrence of creation.

We are so lovely, we shutter our eyes from it in order to save ourselves from a blinding beauty. I would rather be rendered blind and fully enlightened than be closeted in a matchstick house of denial. Allow myself to feel beauty, to be changed and influenced by it, to just be.