There are now baby bobcats.

No kidding.

My neighbor, who's lost over 20 chicks these last couple of weeks to the same bobcat who dined on my lovely, plump geese, has seen the whole family each morning around 4AM, he says. He's the breakfast buffet, apparently.

He's seen a little black bear too. Regularly.

We're going to have to do the six strands of electric fence around the bee hives, no doubt. A bear doesn't just open up the top of your hive and scoop up some honey for a little snack. He smashes your hives to smithereens.

I often wonder if my horses are on speaking terms with bobcats and bears? Do bobcats and black bears stroll nonchalantly through the property in the middle of the night?

I suspect they do.

Maybe with the rain yesterday and today, we'll see some tracks.

At the crack of dawn my eyes are ratcheted wide open at the crack of thunder rattling the windowpanes in a fury. What’s everyone so mad about? I’m wondering, and I'm not even awake yet. I’ve been dreaming about a sleek black dog with a square blockhead and glittering topaz eyes. I was worried he was going to bite me.

It’s an understatement to say that an early morning thunderstorm in the Pecos valley is an anomaly. Kind of like a tsunami in Oklahoma. Although I spent more than my fair share of my childhood there in tornado cellars, part of growing up on the Great Plains, I guess.

We are at a dinner party recently, a thank you party, basically, for the men and women with whom my Stetson-wearing husband a.k.a. Jack Bauer works. I hear the words plutonium and atom and all kinds of scientific terminology bandied about. It’s the kind of stuff I have a hard time keeping up with, but I can go there with ya if you keep it at the 5-mile-up kind of level. My part of that conversation is generally just listening, like a good soldier, and asking for a few points of clarification so you know I’m at least trying. And interested. Which I am. I am struck by all of the brain cells and the synapses firing in that drafty room in that old log lodge on the mesa's edge in what they used to call The Secret City. More than anything, though, I am struck by the patriotism of the men and women assembled there.

One fellow party goer, a wife--of one of the eggheads, she says--with pretty red hair and an engaging smile, and on whom I easily have fifteen years, is telling me a story about the duck and cover drills they used to do in high school, as if that would save you, you know?

I know, I am nodding.

Now the only emergency drills we ever engaged in that involved any ducking and covering when I was in grade school in the sixties were of the tornado variety, when they lined us up and down the hallways against the steel lockers with our skinny arms around our heads, but I don’t say anything. I think that nice young woman has imbibed a little too much of the fine boxed wine, which can lead to exaggeration. I let her have her story.

Sounds like the gods are angry. My husband is shaving, smiling and speaking to me from the well-lit bathroom mirror, while I rub my eyes in wonder at the freight train rolls of thunder, wondering how anyone can be so wide awake or so annoyingly cheerful at this ungodly hour, especially with the house shaking all around us.

I don’t know about the gods, but I sure know about his Arabian mare, Miss Morningstar, who follows me closely all the way to the hay barn, in a big hurry for me to feed her ASAP, with her teacup muzzle tucked to her chest, except for when she’s waving it up and down and up and down at the freezing cold rivulets of water running over her forehead and dripping off of her eyelashes. I can feel her hot breathe steaming at me through the curtains of rain, although she knows better than to nudge me, at least most of the time, and I can only think about Thor, the POA pony we had when the kids were little bitty. My husband, who gets to name just about everything around here, it seems, named that old rascal after the God of Thunder himself. The diminutive horse’s two front legs were white, you see, with lots of feathers, making for an impressive thundering gallop with a child on his back.

On the way to school, the Post Office Dog, who growled at me once because I was silly enough to try and pet the unsocialized creature when we first moved here, has taken up her post near the front door. Her yellow fur is sopping wet and nearly curling right before our eyes in the unexpected damp. As my ten-year-old son Cole opens the car door and steps out, with the mail in hand—bills to be paid, NetFlix movies, a birthday card—the Post Office Dog waddles over. And I don’t like the attitude of her wooly shoulders. Or the look in her coffee-colored eyes. If you mixed a little cream in there, they’d damn near be amber.

Topaz, maybe.

I step out of the car, and walk around, strategically placing myself in between Post Office Dog and boy. Cole skedaddles it to the drop box.

Jaws cracked open in a yawn, the Post Office Dog sits back on her haunches, and we have ourselves an old-fashioned stare down.

The thunder roars.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

I ask my longe-line student if she'd like to try a canter on the horse.

The forty-something-year-old woman is so relaxed at the trot now, sitting it nicely, surprisingly so for just her second-only longe-line lesson on Andalusian horse Caprichosa, who is really like riding in a Lexus, or floating on a fluffly cloud, not to mention an old pro at this twenty meter circle thing, but so full of beans before we start that I have to warm her up for twenty minutes before I can put my student on her back. And of course the whole while my student is watching with a healthy amount of trepidation as Cap and I methodically work the buggers out.

"Do you think you can control her?" my student asks, as one of Caprichosa's flea-bitten ears swivels back to her and then over to me.

"You have nothing to worry about," I tell her, confident in the now mellow state of the mare after all of this well-behaved trotting with student. "I think my daughter's first long-line lesson on this horse was when she was about three years old."

My student seems to do the math, calculating that Jessie is somewhere around eleven-ish now, and must arrive at the conclusion that the odds are in her favor, because she grasps the handles of the vaulting surcingle and takes in a deep breath. "OK", she says, gazing out over Cap's ears, resolute, looking way ahead like I told her, and I wonder what she sees. This woman's only other experience with horses has been a few of those nose-to-tail trail rides, so she has no idea what's ahead of her.

"Now listen," I say as I'm lifting the longe whip from in front of Cap's nose where she's been at a very docile and solid halt, to her credit, good good mare, swinging it around the back of my head, until it is poised just above my right shoulder, "Cap may not get directly into this canter, because she's not some big deal dressage horse and she's a little out of practice. You may get a few strides of the trot beforehand, and it could be a little choppy?"

My student is nodding her head in what I take as consent, and that's when I allow the whip to flick near Cap's hock, lightly, lightly, and ask for "Caaaaaanter!" but we get four, five, six strides at the trot, with my student hanging onto the surcingle handles like she's prepared to meet her death, until the Andalusian leaps forward into the canter departure, and the woman is right there with her, face betraying her surprise at the power of the hindquarters, at the rocking, rhythmic waves of motion, at three beats repeating over and over again, at all that muscle undulating beneath her seat bones, buttocks, thighs, calves, ankles. Then I think she forgets her fear, because she's all smiles like a little girl for a good three strides, until she seems to remember herself, and is suddenly all afluster OK OK, that's enough, we can stop for now, we can stop, she's announcing, and I ask Cap to halt, which she does, good, good mare.

Cap is blowing through her nostrils, annoyed at me for the stop when she was obviously just getting warmed up. And I am surprised that my student is wiping tears from her cheeks.

She is crying.

"I'm not crying because I'm scared," she tells me, embarrased, rubbing her eyes, although there's no reason to be, and I tell her "it's OK, it's OK, if you haven't done this before, this is big deal territory, in my estimation, this cantering on a horse when you haven't done anything like this before." And I am surprised to hear it coming out of my mouth, just like I know what I am doing, or just like I feel it's necessary to fill up the empty space in between now and what happens next -- "You just go ahead and bawl if you want to."

I don't know a lot about her, but I do know that my longe-line student is a survivor. Of one of the worst kinds of agony I can imagine. I know that something touched her deeply. And I don't need to know what it is that happened in between the trot and the canter. It's none of my business. But as I'm patting the horse's neck and bragging on my student, telling her how well she's doing, I am just wondering at the whole thing.

At how deeply a horse can move us. And at where our shadows rise up to meet us.

I imagine Cap might have something to say about that.

Well. I did it.

Traded my beautiful, elegant, shiny, gas guzzling hawg of a Chevy Tahoe for a brand new Honda Civic that will get 40+ miles per gallon if I tone down my driving habits. At 17 MPG, putting 100+ miles a day on an SUV to get to work and back plus run a few errands would just about make anyone with a lick of sense who isn't a gozillionaire weep. Profusely.

I feel like an era has passed.

Is anyone else feeling like this too? (And please don't send me preachy comments about the environment and global warming. I need to do this pitiful bout of wailing right now and I do have a DELETE button, you know.)

The era of driving around in super stupendous luxury, being taller than everyone else on the road, bigger than everyone else on the road, being able to drive wherever the hell I liked, etc., in whatever kind of weather. Not to mention just looking fabulous, absolutely fabulous in that stunning super loaded SUV. I admit, I had the cushy soccer mom thing going on, and I enjoyed the living daylights out of it. Call me shallow, but that Tahoe meant a lot to me, kind of my weak spot, OK?, and I'd waited a long time for my big, fancy car. When I tell this to my dad, he replies that Detroit makes most of its money off of our egos.

Ouch.

Words of wisdom from a man with a big Mercedes Benz and an SUV. But then again he's retired and not commuting.

We still have the trucks. Heck, they are paid for. And we've got to be able to haul hay and horses.

My husband the cowboy just bought himself a Mini Cooper. Cute as button little thing that actually looks like its going to make driving fun, especially when at ~40 MPG you haven't spent every single dime you've got on gas. It's still in Germany (isn't that where they make those BMWs? Bavaria?). Destined to arrive in three weeks. I'm wondering where he's going to put his Stetson. I will have to resist dubbing him the MINI COWBOY.

Even in this state, where I just heard on the radio this afternoon that 70% of us New Mexicans still own our trucks and are loathe to part with them, more than any other Americans, apparently, I still had a hard time getting a little less than the blue book value for the Tahoe until the good folks at Honda Albuquerque made me an offer I couldn't refuse. With the price of a barrel of oil still spiraling up into the clouds, we managed that still palatable deal by the skin of our teeth.

I kept looking at my beloved Tahoe as I was setting my mind to do this awful, unspeakable thing, wondering if I couldn't put solar panels on her somewhere. You know? Or some kind of masts and sails setup to harness the wind and get me going. If I had one more draft horse, I'd just harness them up and pull my gal to Santa Fe. But it's too late. My beautiful baby is gone. I should not admit this, but I hugged her goodbye in the Honda dealership parking lot. I think the salesman was embarrassed. My little girl Jessie hugged her too. (Possibly I have not been teaching my daughter a good thing about being so darned materialistic about an SUV. But then again, you could never accuse me of being uber PC.) And you know what? I don't care. And yeah yeah yeah, the little tiny itt-bitty short Civic is fully loaded and has a sunroof, etc., even a jack for my MP3 player, heck, it's actually very pretty, but I don't want to hear that. I need a little time on this one. You see --

I. Am. In. Mourning.

Sniff. This end of an era thing sucks.

On the bright side, maybe one of these days I'll be riding my draft horse to the office.

When I teach my nine-year-old niece to ride, the daughter of my now ex's sister, a whole other lifetime ago, I hang back what seems like a quarter of a mile on my neighbor's aging Morgan gelding, the 25-year-old who's still too spry and full of himself to put a kid on, and I turn her loose.

My appaloosa mare Lacey trots down the sandy Pojoaque creek bed, her new shoes catching the sunshine, making me shade my eyes with one hand. My niece's blonde ponytail is bobbing beneath the white riding helmet that's been handed down almost one too many times, but not quite. The mare's salt and pepper tail is held aloft as she carries the little girl further away from me with each step. I know just how fast that spotted, raw-boned horse can run if she's of a mind to. But I also know she won't, not with that precious cargo holding the reins (and her own) just like I taught her to.

The girl has learned well.

Framed by the blood red barrancas, both niece and horse look very small to me, and I fight the temptation to ride up beside them, until they disappear around a bend of swaying cottonwood trees that are all heavy and summer heat stroked, nearly faint in their velvet greenery, way overdressed for the high desert afternoon, until I can't stand it any more.

I let the Morgan gentleman who's been dancing and chomping on the bit like a three-year-old render his always surprisingly big energy forward. (Ebony was A Very Big Dressage Deal in his younger days, and he will never let you forget it, not for a single minute.) The Morgan and I are sluicing down the creek bed like the frigid river water he's splashing up in style with his hooves, until we are both drenched, and the New Mexico sun is upon us like a pack of wolves.

We ride the current towards horse and girl, but we never quite catch up.

I haven't seen her in over a decade.

This afternoon I ride not because someone needs to be trained. Not because someone need rehabilitation and physical therapy. Not because someone is getting fat and needs the exercise. Not because someone is standing at the gate begging to go too, me too, me too, dancing on pie-plate-sized hooves, pleading with jet black eyes.

No.

This afternoon, I ride because I need to.

My long-legged quarter horse mare Pinon swings into a walk the moment my butt is in the saddle, and I don’t mind. I gather up the reins and we are off. With the heeler dogs glued to our tail.

I won’t let the long, lean horse run full out to start. I’m smarter than that. And she needs to warm up. Not to mention that I’m a woman with a strong sense of self-preservation. Miss Pinon can run so fast your heart will leap right out of your mouth and get left behind in the dust on the ground, still beating like a tom tom, if you don’t watch out. I am not exaggerating.

We chew up the hills by the railroad tracks twisting a serpentine path to the south, a Centaur shadow accompanying us. I cast a look over my shoulder for the heelers, whose ragged breathe suggests they are exactly where their name implies, and I worry that the steam locomotive mare will give them a heart attack. We are so tall, our legs stretching impossibly long, the red canyon walls can’t hold us in. We almost spin off the earth, until I am relieved to feel each hoof strike the ground, and suddenly I’m a four-legged creature too. The horse tries to come in under the bit for more rein and more speed because she just wants to go fast.

Fast.

I swear we could beat the AT&SF if it came roaring by right now.

I let the quarter horse go.

We outrun The Chihuahua from the office, the surly stupid bureaucrat with a grudge, who couldn’t do what we’re doing right now for love nor money. Here, that squat creature from the nether realms simply doesn’t count. We race ahead of the pain that’s been twisting beneath my ribs like a knife for way too long. We race ahead of outpatient surgical procedures. We race ahead of beautiful boys who die young. We race ahead of food shortages and soaring gas prices and terrorists and all of the Reverend Wrights and the snake handlers and the clutch on the pickup that needs to be replaced and a kid entering junior high school next fall and alarm clocks everywhere.

We race with the sun as the mare wheels on a dime, frothing, as I’m whispering settle, settle, easy there, big girl, laying a hand on her steaming neck until we head for home with the heelers’ eyes nearly popping out of their heads in dogged determination to keep up with this brilliant blaze of fire we have become no matter what. No matter what. We race for home because Dennis will be worried if we stay out after dark, afraid we’ll burn up--woman, horse and heeler sparks combusting out of control--and he’ll come looking for us like a one-man cavalry on his head-tossing Arabian horse Morningstar, and oh my goodness, it sure feels good to be loved like that.

Pinon’s ears flatten against her head and we are all git out for what is not nearly long enough.

We nearly outrun the archons themselves.

Our neighbors invited the kids and their houseguests over yesterday afternoon to visit with their pot-bellied pig Otis. Otis is a charming and rather shy pig, but a box of Nilla wafers is an excellent icebreaker!

For the most part, the day hummed along in the key of C. Dennis, who'd just returned from what sounds like a harrowing week in D.C., cleaned the pasture with the tractor and watered his orchard, content to be himself again in his old Stetson, wranglers and cowboy boots. (He did take a Stetson to Washington with him this time, where I'm sure he looks mighty exotic to those Easterners.) The girls and I rode horses while the boys continued modifications on what is turning out to be an epic fort out on the back forty. And then we had our social engagement with Otis.

All the while the New Mexico sky was a deep, cerulean blue. It's hard to find a sky much larger than this. Or a day better.

Music: Key of C from Tried, True and Tested by Tim Ryan.

The kids have named our two beehives. The Bumbles. And ... The Stingers.

I'd been reading in my bee books about how bees will raid another hive in a pinch, and I told them about it, which has sparked this whole idea of rival hives. (Although I am still clinging to visions of love and peace and blissful tranquility.) How the guard bees will stand at their posts at the hive doorway and escort any strange bees away. Or worse, if things get pushy. And if the interloper bees get through, they raid the honey.

Bee wars.

So now I have two pristine white bee hives painted with the names of their prospective "tribes". The Montagues and the Capulets. The Jets and The Sharks. The Crips and the Bloods. The Shirts and The Skins, my ten-year-old son, who recently played a basketball game with his high-school-aged cousins, chimes in.

This is what happens when you hand your gradeschoolers a paintbrush and encourage them to express themselves!

Well, our bees are still down south in Las Cruces, I understand as of today. The woman from whom we are purchasing two nucs (this is something like 150,000 bees total? plus 2 queens) tells me that she wants to make sure they are sturdy enough, the queen of each is strong and secure. We will be picking up our bees somewhere around the first of May, it looks like. We have to pick them up after the sun has gone done. Like hens, bees return home to roost at night. I'm still slightly worried about the transport part of this transaction. Do I put them in the back of my SUV with their little door closed? How do I make sure they are sound asleep? What if they wake up?! I have to figure that out. This will require more than crossing my fingers.

We've cleared the space, after lively discussions all winter long about where they will be located. Leveled the ground. Placed the concrete blocks upon which the hives will stand, facing southeast. They'll receive the warm morning sun on our cool mountain mornings and be shaded from the hot afternoon sun by a curtain of pinon trees at the back. My husband the nuclear engineer has this all figured out. We believe our orchard will be in full bloom prior to the arrival of the bees. Although the three inches of April snow plus what we are still receiving as I write and stoke the woodburning stove up may slow that a little. Oh well, next year, we'll get pollinated.

My smart children tell me something about whacking the fruit trees with a stick during a good wind to take care of pollination in the absence of bees. Their teacher told them that, they say with a certain amount of smug satisfaction.

Despite all of the bee tomes I've been buried in this winter, I still feel a bit scared about all of this. But I can't wait either. And we are this close. They may spawn their very own bee blog, I'm just not sure yet.

I'm already tasting honey made from the pollen of our fruit trees and the wild flowers of the national forest.

Wow. My percheron horse Toby is getting his own emails. He is very excited. Especially from a beautiful big gal like this. His eyes almost popped out of his head when I showed him this picture. He's begging me to teach him to type now. Although that will probably be difficult with those pie-plate-sized hooves.

Dear Toby, My name is Lady Charlemagne. Thank you for teaching us about shaking hands. I am sending a photo of me with my food bowl. best regards, lady charlemagne

ps I am also called "good girl"

Toby says-- Please send hand-shaking photos, Miss Charlemagne!

"Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?"

"A great shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from bed... "How do I feel?" he cried." Well, I don't know how to say it. I feel, I feel" --he waved his arms in the air-- "I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!"

- J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Return of the King

I read the Tolkien books to my two kids when they were babies.

This was in part due to my mother's insistence about the importance of reading to infants and me trying to maintain some semblance of my sanity with a one-year-old and a newborn. I was doing full-time web development work from home with absolutely no help around the house from their dad, who was essentially worthless. (Still is, I hear, in terms of helping my kids' stepmother with that sweet little baby.) I was also getting pushed around and advised regularly by Mr. Charming that I was nothing, absolutely nothing without him.

Luckily, that's no longer my problem...

Lord, I don't believe I've ever been so tired in my life as I was when my two were babies. I could have laid down on a slab of concrete and slept soundly if you'd told me I could have a 15-minute nap way back then. I see exhausted young mothers sometimes, and I fight the temptation to say what everyone said to me, "It will get easier." Because you just can't see it. At least I couldn't then.

I have grieved what I lost during that part of my life. I have sat down and I have cried. Rivers. No one putting their hand on my stomach to feel the baby move. No one pressing their ear against my swollen belly and listening to the new beating heart inside of me. No long Saturday afternoon naps when I was pregnant and filled to the brim with life because I wasn't, believe it or not, allowed to. I could go on and on. A lot of the joy could have been sucked right out of me. But there was always that ember inside that refused to get snuffed out no matter how hard he tried.

Tolkein sustained me.

Will everything sad come untrue? I don't know the answer to that question.

I do know I have two beautiful kids who are a joy to me. Monday night when they got back from their dad's, we lay on our backs in the buffalo grass, shoulders touching, stretched out along the curve of the earth, breathing in the cool mountain air, watching the sun set and the half moon raise its pale face in the pale sky. I marveled at the two pairs of deep green eyes, so much like my own, snapping and flashing as my ten- and eleven-year-olds told their stories about their school day and we were laughing. I have the sense sometime when we are together that time is speeding up to double or triple what I would expect, and it is slipping through my fingers like the dry red earth that manages to produce the coarse stuff that passes for grass here in the desert. They grow so fast.

I know that yesterday morning at work, when I went to meet with a psychologist at the State Penitentiary, I was greeted with a depth of warmth you hardly see in other people any more by the inmate who was cleaning her office. He clasped my hand and introduced himself, and I told him I was glad to meet him. And I was. My friend the psychologist works every day with men who've done some unspeakable things, and yet she manages to see them as more than the sum of their mistakes. Occasionally I am in awe of that woman. I left my meeting there wondering at a life force blazing as bright as an orange jumpsuit.

I know that when I went to the pasture last evening, our appaloosa horse Teyla was waiting for me at the gate, like she's been doing more and more often. I cast my eyes down as I approached her, because she still gets nervous. I stand by her shoulder, give her a rub, feel her muscles relaxing. Move my hand down her back as she turns her head and her eye softens. I inch up to her head, cautiously, and surprisingly the horse doesn't move. I trace her jaw, rub her speckled ears. She wouldn't have let me do that a few weeks ago. But my husband Dennis, the horse whisperer, the one who whispered me back to the land of the living nearly a decade ago, has taken to currying the generally standoffish horse nearly every afternoon. He says she looks itchy to him, shedding out all that crazy winter coat of hers.

Something's shifting inside of the horse.

As I caress her face, I ask her if she has forgotten. If she has forgotten the years of abuse before she came to us. The loneliness. The despair. The pitch black dark place where you hit the bottom. Where chains rattle and where, if you are not strong enough or smart enough or capable enough or you just don't know how to open the goddamn gate, you are hog tied and branded. If somehow it has slipped away from her, slipped away like an old garment.

I let it fall to the floor until suddenly I am standing there naked. My bare feet tingle against the cool hardwood planks. And then I remember. I remember how I used to ride bare-footed as a girl. My ankles pressed against warm flanks. Toes tickling fur.

The horse lays her eye on me softly, a caress. One ear is cocked in my direction. To let me know she's listening.

I am driving into Albuquerque, approximately 9AM, enjoying the red-dirt-colored skyline in what more often than not strikes me as a downright stark (and if the sun is just right--occasionally pretty) high desert town. A big red pickup hauls past me on the right. It's business as usual. Cowboy in a Cowboy Hat Driving a Chevy with Country and Western Blaring on the Radio.

(If you're a big city person, this is nothing like those rapper fools whose music penetrates you to your DNA level, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, because he thinks that everyone else in the world wants to listen to the noise he's listening to. No. I'm not talking about that.)

What gets my attention is strapped to the back of the flat bed trailer that cowboy's towing through the post-rush-hour traffic. It's a longhorn. As in cow. And it's dead as a doornail.

Thankfully.

I guess ... ?

I can't take my eyes off the darned thing it's so awful. My eyes dart--

Traffic. Cow. Traffic. Cow. Traffic. Cow.

I'm noticing that the other drivers are seeming to have the same problem too. The speckled longhorn is at least two of my percheron horse Toby, and he's huge. I get that unpleasant picture out of my mind. Fast. I can't see a bullet mark on that cow. She's as neat as a pin. Eyes closed peacefully like she's really just taking a nap. Although her hooves are undeniably sticking up in the air. Poor thing.

I wind up tailing this cowboy and his deceased longhorn down I-40 towards the Sandia Mountains. I have ample time to observe that the only thing holding her onto the flatbed as it bounces down the asphalt is a set of ratchet straps ratcheted right around those impressive horns. Horns that nearly span the width of the flatbed trailer. Now there's a bad end, I'm thinking. I do have a soft spot for these critters, which is why Dennis won't ever in this lifetime let me and the kids have a 4-H steer, because he says he'll wind up feeding it for the next twenty years while I teach it circus tricks or some such nonsense.

As I'm about to make my exit, I'm really relieved that I'll be leaving this ignoble sight behind me. I reach to tune into the local AM radio and then all of a sudden I'm cursing under my breathe, seriously cursing, mind you, as the cowboy Charon ferries his gigantic dead beast right across the lane in front of me. I can see her pink udders waving in the wind. Couldn't he have covered her up or something? Where is his sense of decorum?

I follow him all the way down San Mateo Avenue, feeling worse and worse for that longhorn with every passing city block. I half expect the cowboy to turn his rig into the Livestock Board Offices, which are on our left, but he doesn't. At a stoplight, I fight the nearly overwhelming temptation to roll down the window of my SUV and ask --

So what happened?

And where are you going with a longhorn ratcheted to the back of your flatbed trailer? A barbecue?

Hey, cowboy, I feel I have a right to ask. After being stuck behind you and your dead longhorn for something like a good half an hour while I'm trying to get to a meeting.

It's right there on the tip of my tongue. Then I consider the idea that the recently departed longhorn might stink if I do roll down my window. Might stink real bad, actually. I think about the boy I knew over twenty years ago who was the keeper of the Texas A&M longhorn mascot. He loved that longhorn. Loved to drink beer and tell stories about the spotted fellow. Even showed me a photo of him and the big boy on the football field once. That longhorn's horns were as wide as goal posts. I keep my hand off the window button and mind my manners.

My kids' friend's dad is a taxidermist. I consider that as the light turns from yellow to red. Maybe the cowboy is decorating one of those high-end Santa Fe haciendas and they're going for the "working ranch look" in their living room, complete with glass-eyed longhorn. Or better yet--their foyer.

I was in a super duper upscale house in Santa Fe once whose Hollywood owners had larger-than-life Kachinas decorating standing sentry in their entryway. Imagine 7-foot hairy wolves with gnashing pointed wooden teeth, if you will. Not to mention recessed and theatrical lighting straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Kind of had me wondering if there would be blood sacrifices after the tiramisu and coffee. (The floors were glossy red ochre. The walls covered in lightning bolts. This mess made it into a very expensive coffee table book of Southwestern architecture eventually.)

I've seen worse than stuffed longhorns.

"It's a rather joyous song . I like very much the last verse. I remember singin' it to Bob Dylan after his last concert in Paris. The morning after, I was having coffee with him and we traded lyrics . Dylan * especially liked this last verse "And even though it all went wrong , I stand before the Lord of song With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah"

Leonard COHEN (interview,Paroles et Musiques,1985)

*....and Bob Dylan sung live "Hallelujah" during his 1988' tour

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, baby, I've been here before.
I've seen this room, and I've walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you.
But I've seen your flag on the marble arch,
And love is not a victory march,
It's a cold and it is a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, there was a time when you'd let me know
What's really going on below,
But now you never show that to me, do you?
But remember when I moved in you,
And the Holy Ghost was moving too,
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, maybe there is a God above,
But all that I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.
It's not a cry that you hear at night,
And it is not somebody who has seen the light
It's a cold and it is a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah