Midnight in the Garden of Good and Stinky

It's about 11 p.m. on a weeknight. I'm sitting, here, at the computer reading a few blogs. I hear the laundry porch door slap its closing. The husband must be done working on his car. Footsteps. Footsteps stop. I wait for the familiar sound of the fridge door closing and a glass of milk being poured. Or the plink of the remote control as he tunes into the poker tour, the golf channel or the Giant's baseball game. Silence. A big, fat, loud silence follows his footsteps. His sharp and jagged presence pierce my calm. I'm trying not to show annoyance--he's harshing my mellow.

I turn toward him.

He gives me "the look."

No, not the late night, boudoir look that is usually paired with a coaxing pat to my rump roast!

The other one. The one that says stop what you are doing. I need your help now!

Doing my wifely duty, I ask him what is wrong.

He tells me that Maaco just got sprayed by a skunk in the back yard. Maaco the Thunder Dog has been on a roll lately--and not a good one.


Every so many summers, the skunks decide that the best way to get to the field across the street from our house is through our back yard. They are headed for the neighborhood run-off water that is captured in a culvert. My older dogs tangoed many a losing dance with the skunks when they were pups. They got sprayed so frequently in a short span of time, that the dog groomer gave me the recipe to her secret de-skunking potion. I like to think she took pity on my finances, but it was probably out of self-defense. I can only imagine what her clients thought when I towed my two protesting, malodorous canines into her shop. Bless her, she was a patient woman.

They finally learned not to mess with critters that looked like large black and white kitties with big tails. But not Thunder Dog. He came to us a couple of years later. Until tonight, he's never seen a skunk. His tailgating the south end of this one ended in a skunk-cident. So at midnight, I gathered up the three magic ingredients and we set about washing one putrid four-legged in the garden. Skunk spray is so toxic at close range that it makes your eyes and mouth water. It is nauseatingly noxious. They should use the stuff for chemical warfare. Skirmishes would end quickly. Saddam would wave the white flag.


As we were drying Thunder Dog off, B.B., one of our other dogs, commenced with a barking and pouncing fit. The husband went to quiet her down and discovered that the skunk was still in the yard. We couldn't tell if he was dead, injured or just playing possum so the dogs would leave him alone. We weren't about to go close enough to find out. After getting the dog and ourselves clean, we snuggle into bed for the evening. Still worrying about the fate of poor skunky, I decide to perform a coning.


Coning is a raising, concentrating and directing of psychic energy. On Thursday, I will go into the process of coning but for today, you have enough information. The technique I choose to use this night also employs the help of nature in the healing. Before going to sleep, I visualize the skunk and get into a meditative state. I appeal to the appropriate guides to help with that which is for the highest and best good for the animal. How long I linger in that state, I do not know. I just keep focusing on the well being of skunky. After several hours I experience something new--even to me.

I notice that I have become very expanded. Thin. I don't mean body weight wise. I mean thin as in substance.

Like atmosphere or steam. I am not a liquid or a solid so I must be a gas.

Oh, stop! I wrote "be a gas" not have gas.

I'm serious. I become the space between the cells. The stillness between the breaths. The quiet between thoughts.

No body. Pure space.

I feel like I still have eyes and can see. At one point, I go quite a distance out from my center, turn back and look at myself. I see that I am as thin as vapor--with stars, planets, and galaxies for eyes. Universes are my face. I stay in that cosmic, stretched state. I feel calm. I feel comforted.

Eternal.

Without Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, I disappear into myself.


In the early hours of morning, I venture outside. Skunky has gone. I hope that when we left and all settled down, that with our help, he got his bearings and, uninjured, headed back to his family. I honor all of the helpful guides, Devas, and the animal's higher self and ask them to end the coning by disconnecting one by one. The coning ends. So does my evening in the garden of good and stinky.