Life is but a dream

 
 

Experience is but the dream we pay attention to.

----
            Listen closely... 
            the eternal hush of silence
            goes on and on throughout all this,
            and has been going on,
            and will go on and on.
            This is because the world
            is nothing but a dream
            and is just thought of
            and the everlasting eternity
            pays no attention to it."

            - Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969)
  ----

It feels like I'm perpetually waking from a dream.

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A coyote and her pack visit us each night. She hunts the voles and rabbits that infest the fields that surround us. She brings her pups along with her as she hunts. They are about eight months old now. They are full members of the pack with hunting and scouting duties. A month ago, she and her pups were feasting on the Italian Plums that remained on trees after we picked all we could eat and dry. I could tell they enjoyed the treat because the shit they left on the driveway was full of plum pits, runny, reddish from overeating the plums. They had to eat them whole as being without opposable thumbs, they found no way to pit them.

Mary and I sleep with the window open, and Alpha female and her pack serenade us with their various songs. Something I imagine that one of the pups gets a little confused and lost and cries out in an attempt to locate the group's position. Sometimes I think she has discovered a source of food, maybe a deer carcass or a litter of rabbits, and is calling the pack to join the feast. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a coyote. They are so exuberant and melodic when they sing to us, we are warm and safe in our bed, and they are out there in the cold dark rural wilderness.