Side hens

~

I sit in this holy place and the two angry hens they peck at the door… this was their space… I had  made it comfy for them…inviting,even.

A space decomposed now recomposed into something amazing.  An ugly piece of my life made beautiful.

Back  when it was what it was… I invited the hens to nest and squawk about.    Never able to share one box I had bought them two….and the noise was ridiculous.  Guests would stop by and remark of the noisy hens in the old space…. we would laugh as we saw their behavior.  They are provided a safe coop which is in the  barn we have for all the animals… yet they would  rather risk the foxes and raccoons than to live amongst the others.  They endeared themselves to me…me a creature of habit I couldn’t tell them to go.  I had given over the space to them and their noisy arguing. I would scrape up their little piles of crap.  I would deal with it, make it my job so my husband wouldn’t see it when he would go out about his way.  I noticed that no matter how I accommodated them they still growled in a way only hens do when I would walk out to the grill. My husband would occasionally question my sanity in accommodating them, after their spastic behavior would startle him yet again, and I would just laugh it off. I made more excuses for them then any other.   I would warn people not to pet them, “they aren’t tame they are just being pacified”.  Treated like queens behaving like animals with touretts.  I guess I had sympathy for them…at first I thought them superior to the others in the flock…aloof and too good for the others… but in the end I realized they were just disabled. They were not set apart… they just didn’t know enough to do better.  I really loved them…their little disabled tourette-hen selves.  No one could understand them the way I did….and I guess I sort of liked that about them too.  I guess I may have confused their loyalty to me with the fact they had made enemies of every one of their sisters in the coop…. I thought I was giving them refuge but I was just enabling their bad behavior. Perhaps in my absence and without anywhere else to go they will return to the coop.  Winter is coming…they will find a way.

But they couldn’t go into this new space… my new studio.  No little accommodations for them in this clean holy space we have created.  I have been blessed with this…. a holy space with fresh walls, and  my feet walk on clean floors free of crap.  The light it pours in and washes over my art … there was no light here before….but now it washes over me and it looks like no light I have ever seen.  No matter how much I liked…no,loved those two little hens I would never go back… I can’t go back to the old way.   I am in a new space…a holy place.  This place where the light rushes in to spotlight my little girl as she dances on the new bench.   A place where no one is threatened .  This little studio where you bring your gifts out and into the light.

I can still see them angry and wandering outside my door… I know if I left the door open they would walk right in. I can’t have that.

The piles of poo are gone and now have been replaced with dabs of paints woken up  each morning by me while I sip my tea.

The sawdust smell of shavings from the nest I gave them now gone, replaced with  the cider scent of a candle from a happy friend.

Unruly bushes replaced with pretty herbs and flowers brought by the man of my forever.

Where you could hardly hear yourself think because of all the hen yelling… now just songs that uplift from an awesome sound system, again from the man who captures my heart every day.

If you saw me now…you would never imagine I had put up with all that nonsense…

If you saw this place you could never imagine those angry little hens having been given domain over something that is now so filled with peace.

But sometimes….we entertain nonsense in our lives because we have made habit out of it.  Get the broom…swish those angry hens out…sweep away all their crap….Claim your peace back.

Let light reflect wide into the darkness.

~

(* for what it is worth…don’t worry about those two… chances are they will find their way back to their spacious coop and work it out with their sisters… which is most likely for the best.)

and

I really want to show you whole pics of my new studio… but I wanted to gussy it up before I show you. 🙂