Animal pleasures

As I sit at my desk on this cloudy, sullen day, feeling sorry for myself, I suddenly see three squirrels cavorting. Even as I write this, they are running, jumping, skittering up and down my window sill, chasing each other, feeling the thrill of teetering on the edge—just because they can.

My Jack Russell Terrier Asterix has a frantically scampering alter-ego that my daughter has christened his TGV avatar. Asterix’s French fast train doppelganger runs crazily and uncontrollably up and down the house flying over furniture, screeching around corners, almost crashing into walls and turning at the absolute last moment leaving us all wincing and gasping for air. He does this for minutes at a stretch until he feels sated and returns Asterix to us.

I am suddenly filled with the memory of the pure pleasure I felt as I ran wildly down a mountain side as a child. There was such sheer animal enjoyment in that unreasoning physicality, the instinctive, visceral need to feel the power of my body pushed to its limits, the exhilaration I felt as the air whooshed against me.

A big part of me wants to join the squirrels in their mad dash just now. When did my soul slow down? When did it begin compromising? When did it resign and settle down in this middle-aged body?

The twinges, the yearnings, the ranting against my own choices, the urge to blaze like I know I could--if only I let myself--they come and go, off and on.

When they come, they kick me in the butt and knot my tummy and turn my placid, smug existence upside down.

I hate them. I want them. I look for them. I will them to come. I cringe from them.

Those restless, relentless, moody, lashing phases usually yield another period of creativity, another growth; another change, another defiance against death and dying.