Visionary Vet

She was an angel looking down on the human world from a great height. She floated where material concerns and possessions did not matter in the big picture. 

She remembered standing at attention at basic training in another century with Senior Drill Sergeant Roger That screaming in her face, “You’d better keep the big picture in mind you bunch of dumb shits. What I’m telling you may save your sweet ass.” They practiced eating dust, killing ghosts and lethal hand-to-hand combat. The quick and the dead.

It was one of those crucial survival messages she was blessed to receive in her short sweet life. Before they packed her off to a hot humid Asian jungle where she gobbled rice with her hands, moved with the speed of a reptile, swam with leeches sucking her blood, connected all her senses into a single bright sharp clarity, maintained her ironic detached sense of humor and kept her mean machine clean. 

She’d rotated out of the jungle and just kept on going. 

They pinned medals on her in sweltering Saigon, she caught a freedom flight, confronted bitter cold in thin tropical khakis dashing across an Alaskan tarmac, then flew to the City by the Bay. A sergeant offered her a steak dinner. 

She muttered, “Screw the steak, give me a fresh dress green uniform and I’m back to Colorado.”

Airborne, airmobile to Denver she became an exile with a degree in Silence and Cunning. Surrounded by the living dead. Wandering Ghost material.  She’d evolved through the first of many metaphysical windows. It was impermanence; one life, no plan and many adventures. Restless was her masterful mistress. Movement and silence. 

She eased out at the Spanish summit to breath deep - receiving freezing cold gray and black clouds. They gave her the threads she needed then and there in the wilderness. They were a security blanket around her shoulders and she weaved them into a fine piece of work. 

She started descending toward the Penon Grande mountains above Lacilbula where she’d sit down doing her winter weaving travail. 

Immediately after arriving at her small space it started pouring. Coming down. Reminded her of Nam monsoons. Nature’s rain turned to violent hail, welcoming her to a new sanctuary in the old Roman pueblo. She welcomed the transition.

Inch deep hail accumulated on patio plants. She’d been warned it had the highest rainfall in Andalucia. The weather turned bitter cold for a week. 

“Unseasonable,” said a woman neighbor near a rose bush outside her cobalt blue Moorish door. 

She settled into an intimate furnished two room space with plastered stone walls, no central heating, a patio with 20 plants and delicious orange and lemon trees. Simplicity, serenity and sanctuary.

Metta.