FROLICKING FOXES - Follow Your Bliss
RedFox 1 & 2 with GoldiFox
It's trash day. Sometimes I take it out in the middle of the day. Sometimes at night. Sometimes in the morning if I'm up early enough. Today, I put it off all day. I dragged the can into the middle of the kitchen so I'd have to trip over it - that's how we remember stuff around here. But I just didn't wanna.
Until 9:30 this evening. Then something poked me in the forehead.
Hey. Hey. Hey. Take that out. Seriously, you'll be too rushed in the morning. Better if you do it now.
So I did, and I was happy that I did. It is the absolute purrrrrfect weather right now. I had to blow the first fall leaves off my deck the other day, which means it cools down enough in the evening to be the most fabulous strolling weather. The cicadas are out in full force still. This is my top favorite thing about living in Arkansas--these kinds of nights.
Now that I'm back inside, the cicadas are dive-bombing my patio doors all evening. They've been doing this for the past two nights. For some strange reason, the hummingbirds have been, too, for the past two afternoons. I figure it's the angle of the light and my little crystal sun-charm in the window.
Or...something.
My Spockly eyebrow is raised since this is happening both at night and during the day by two different types of creature. (Two of my favorites, no less.) I've also been in my Disney Princess mode, where butterflies flutter by me and briefly land. The hummers feed two feet away when I've got the computer out on the deck, and even the chickadees and nuthatches alight nearby, sometimes almost on top of my computer. Wasps pay me no heed when I'm working on the deck near the hive. My friendly neighborhood orb weaver keeps weaving fabulous textiles along my outdoor cabinet, even though I accidentally walked through her main anchor thread two days in a row.
I'm just...in that zone. Fae happen.
So after hurling the trash in the dumpster, I am called by The Night. I start walking. I linger up at the highway where the trees open up to show an unobstructed view of the stars. I commune. I wonder. I ponder. I muse.
Naturally that leads to questions. Usually it's a variation on one question: WTF am I doing here?
I have no clue, especially in the past couple years after giving up on all notion of Life Goals. Relationship Goals. Career Goals.
Goals can pretty much suck my icky dancer's big toe.
That's been my goal each day. I dunno what else to do.
And then movement catches my eye. It's been awhile since I stood outside doing my communing thing and pondering this question, then really waiting around in expectation of an answer. The Universe never fails to deliver.
From the corner of my eye--movement. I peer across the parking lot of the building opposite my house. A red fox pads from the clump of trees out front onto the pavement. I beam, delighted.
Fox, huh?
Many years ago, someone offered to do my animal totem. In spite of being such a feline creature, I had all the canines, including Fox, who is an indication of Play.
Naturally, right before I had laid down to bake my neck on the Denner Roll and do some meditation tonight, I had been having a conversation about that Nietzsche quote about man wanting danger and play, and about the hefty streak of masculinity in me. I never wanted babies--that's what the outdated quote ASSumes about what woman wants and her primary reason for seeking out man. Hah. Not this woman.
On the other hand, I do have a deep nurturing streak in me and I create art babies by the boat-ton, many of which have been inspired by my dances with man, so perhaps there is something to that, after all...
But as I watch this fox dart across the parking lot, I have to grin. Particularly when a second fox bounds out from the trees after the first. The one in the lead paws at something on the ground, then gnaws at it. Jerks. Jerks. Drags. A long, white piece of something comes free. RedFox 1 skitters off. RedFox 2 comes up to investigate. It kind of looks like toilet paper, unfurled and curled up.
Apparently the need is too great, because RedFox 2 also jerks, jerks, drags. It breaks, therefore it is law: it must be hauled across the lot, pounced, and snuffled at. RedFox 1 agrees. They dance with it for a time and then trot off across the lot toward the nearest house. Something over there demands some tomfuckery as well. Task complete, it's time to lie down on the pavement together. A little nosing, a little frolicking, and then finally the woods behind the complex call. Off they go, one scampering, one trotting.
I am absolutely spellbound. Standing at the edge of the drive at the top of the hill, peering across the road and the parking lot, I stand motionless with a gargantuan grin gaping my mouth open.
The foxes skirt the tree line, disappear under the rise of the hill, scurry back up, disappear again. And then nothing.
I have to know. Like RedFox 2, I must investigate. This time it's the two-legger GoldiFox scurrying across road and lot to peer down at this long, white strip on the ground. The sidewalk edge has been lined with some sort of three-inch-wide tape. There's no fresh paint anywhere, so I'm not sure what it is, but my fox-friends have peeled half off it off and dragged it away for play.
Fascinating...
I glance up.
RedFox 1 is sitting at the edge of the trees, staring at me. I stare back and grin. We make eyes for a time, and then RedFox 2 zooms past. Shenanigans must ensue again. For a time, there is darkness, pockmarked by a bobbing head here, the flash of a tail there, a bounding body or tips of ears. RedFox 1 keeps popping up to peer at me. Sometimes I hunker down to make myself disappear from the line of sight, and then pop back up myself. It's a game I used to play with my cats.
When they start heading back my way, I cross back over the street so as not to impede wherever they plan to go. They investigate something at the side of the building, and then dart behind it.
I wait.
Nothing. Nothing...
Gone.
GoldiFox grins and skips back home, blissful that she has been awarded the stamp of approval for her Joseph Campbellness.
Synchronicity strikes again.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
--UP NEXT: CAT SCRATCH FEVER - My Oldest Obsession & Oxygen Mask
--OR: If you're a Joseph Campbell devotee already, I've got an entire section of MYTH & LEGEND
--OR: if you like this bliss-following nature stuff, a lot of it is in my PHOTO adventures and my creative/innovative journey HERE. You can also find it in the various HEALING categories and sprinkled throughout my art therapy adventures in dance, martial arts, writing and more:
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