What Rose knows

Whenever the suitcase comes downstairs, Rose takes up position between the suitcase the door. She waits. She knows I am leaving. Does she want to come? I don’t know. She watches my back, always.

My front yard

Hannah Arendt wrote beautifully about the notion of the “New Man.” Thomas Merton wrote of the New Man as well, a man who sought humility, kindness and generosity and who was connected to his friends and family. He sought a spiritual life, valued creativity and the life of the mind and worked hard to understand the fear that men have sometimes spawned in the world. And to use his gifts to life people up.

I love this ideal of the New Man, a hard thing to acheive but something I aspire to.

Tonight, heading to New York City. We are going to the opera with Maria’s mom, a lifelong opera lover. She is excited, so are we. I think when you do things for other people, you are almost always doing something for yourself. Generosity is a selfish act, and no less valuable for that. Back tomorrow morning.

Smile. It's the Hound of Love

A couple of years ago, I had given up on love, on an entire part of love and the human experience. I just didn’t think it was possible for me. I closed down and then, began to break down. I have a different notion of love. I see that many people give up on it at some point in their lives, just as society conditions them to give up on their dreams and stories and ambitions.

We are trained to see accomplishment and security as linked with money and 401 K’s and the money to pay for pills we might or might not need, depending on which survey comes out this month. I ran headlong into love, and I remember thinking, “I will not let this opportunity pass. I will not be closed to it. I will not let it go and live in the light and spirit of other people and their expectations of me and my life.”

There are all kinds of surveys and statistics about love and the odds of finding it – age, gender, geography, psychology. I don’t choose to live by these odds, but would rather make my own. If you give up on love, you are giving up on so much of what matters in life. Love, like anything worthwhile, is hard work. But to me, it embodies Mary Oliver’s wonderful notion of putting your lips to the world. And just living.

As the Buddhists say, time passes quickly. Use it.

Milkhouse, late afternoon, Hebron, N.Y.

Humility, wrote Thomas Merton, is absolutely necessary if a person is to avoid acting like a baby all of his life. To grow up means, in fact, to become humble, and cast aside the illusion that we are the center of things. True humility, is, I think, one of the rarest traits that I encounter in human beings.

I can think of few people to whom I might apply that word. It is something for which I truly strive because I believe that only the humble can really be open to true human connection, and learn to listen and put their own fears and needs aside. I’m not there, but it is a place I would love to be.

I’m heading to New York City for the day. We are taking Maria’s mom to New York for a special birthday celebration. I hope to see my daughter there.

It has been about five years since I pointed a camera to a farmhouse on Kinney Road and opened my eyes to the light and images and shadows of the world.

That night changed my life. I have not seen the world the same since then and an abandoned milkhouse on a country is a radiant place for me when we drive by and I see the late afternoon lighting coming through that screened window. Maria, who is as humble as she is good, can sense my twitch now and says, on her own, “do you want to stop,” and I nod and she pulls over and I jump out of the car – nearly rushing into traffic as always – and she takes out her sketch pad and draws while I nose around for the best angle to catch the fading light.

We have pulled over a thousand times in a thousand places and never – not once – has she been annoyed or impatient with me. I am so appreciative of that.

A neat book, highly recommended

Next week – March 16, to be exact – my daughter Emma Span joins the authorial ranks with her new book, “90 per cent of the game is half mental,” already getting nice reviews. Her book party is next week in Brooklyn, of course, and I’m going as proud papa and official photographer. It takes Em a lot longer to write a book than it makes me, but then she has taken on a pretty big subject. And she labors over every word, five or six times. They had to pry the book out of her hands.

Although the book is nominally about her strange experiences as a New York baseball fan, it is, of course, about much more. It’s a coming of age memoir, I think, a book about work in New York these days, and about an outsider coming to terms with an insider world, a subject that is perhaps familiar to her. Her chapter on movies is hilarious, not in the least because she recounts in great and merciless detail my dragging her to movies since she was in a stroller. I got in trouble taking her to see Terminator II when she was eight or nine, and we had to go back and see it again because her eyes were closed for most of the first viewing.

She has lots of fun poking Dad, as is only fair.

Emma’s odyssey took her through some awful and scary jobs in New York and finally to work as a baseball writer, at least until she got canned in a corporate takeover. Emma never quite figured out (I think she did) whether she wanted to be watching the game from the press box or out in a bar. The book is funny, but also pretty poignant, at least to me. I keep thinking of O Henry’s amazing accounts of the smart people who came to New York to make it and of their struggles. There’s a lot of that in here. Anyway, it’s coming out next week, and as a completely unbiased observer, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Place to meditate

This is where Maria and I go up to meditate sometimes, or just to sit and talk. It is a good view of Bedlam Farm and yes, one would have to be a little crazy to leave here. Where else in the world would one get to sit in a place like that.

Barn window

Barn windows have lots of meaning for me, past and present, different perspectives. They tell stories, say a lot.

I have a mansion and a yacht

My dogs have taught me that to have good dogs, I have to be a better human. This is a lesson I learned in the hot and wet fields of Bedlam Farm. I believe the same is true for love. To find love, you have to be a better person, and you have to keep getting better all the time.

A week or so ago, I was joking that I didn’t want to clean the bathroom because I was a New York Times Best-Selling Author. At least I thought I was joking. Maria gave me a particular look – she is Sicilian – and she said I reminded her of Elmer Fudd when he said “I am Elmer Fudd. I am a millionnaire. I have a mansion and a yacht.” This just before Bugs Bunny made him look stupid as usual.

This has become a standing joke with Maria and I whenever I get attitude. One or the other of us will say “I am Elmer Fudd. I am a millionnaire. I have a mansion and a yacht” and we both end up laughing. It’s one of those stories that is funny, but isn’t.

To find love, you have to earn it, be open to it, find those closed up, walled off, selfish and self-absorbed parts of yourself and root them out. Being a New York times Best-selling author is meaningless when it comes to love, of course. Like most wortwhile things, you will find it when you get to work at it.

I clean the bathroom regularly. And do the laundry too.

Teacup, Studio Barn. Black and white.

March 9, 2010 – Joanne writes that she gave her cat the wrong medication for an illness  – the medicine was improperly prepared, and she sensed something was wrong – and her cat Debbie died. “You talk about guilt, there is nothing in this world that will  ever make me feel better about giving that medication to my cat. I should have trusted my gut and asked to speak to the pharmacist.”

Guilt is an integral part of the new animal grieving we are seeing in America. People feel guilty about letting their animals go.

It’s difficult to talk anybody out of guilt – I know this from personal experience. But I am also learning about letting go. The human animal bond is not about loss, pain, grief and guilt. It is about service, love, companionship, challenge, patience laughter. Things will happen. Dogs and cats get sick, they run in front of cars, they die, as we all will.

I do not think their wish for us, if they could speak or talk, would be for us to carry grieving, pain loss and guilt in our hearts for years. I think they would wish for us to let go, and let their spirits live on by our recognition that the impact a dog or cat has on our life does not die, but lives on within us.

I am sad when a pet dies, but I know they live on in me, in the things I do, the periods of my life that they mark, and the things they teach me and lead me to. I wish for Joanne that she would give herself permissiion to acknowleldge that she did her best, she loved her cat, and if she can’t feel better about the medication, pehaps she can move beyond that pain and put this energy into the love of another animal. Lord knows there are plenty who need it.

Lenore resting on the sofa.

Lenore is not allowed on the sofa, and that is where I can usually find her when she’s in the house. The Love Dog gets tired. She needs to rest.

Sunset, Pole Barn

I walked up the hill with Maria on this crisp, Spring like day. I missed the sheep today, missed going up there with Rose and marching up the hill, through the woods, down paths in the forest. I am not one for looking back too much, although I am beginning to tally up some of the loss in my life, but this would have been a glorious day to take the sheep out. I think Rose missed them today too, although I can’t say for sure.

The sheep loved the pole barn, and it was the center of their existence, Perhaps I will visit them in Vermont over the next few weeks, and take some photos. I think it would have been too painful to see them – they are with Lulu and Fanny also – and I’d like to see them as well.

Return to the City of God

Izzy and I resumed our Washington County Hospice volunteer work today, visiting a Hudson Falls Nursing Home, and a new patient, Louise, a long-time dog lover. She was tired, and said hello to Izzy and then had to lie down and rest. We will return on Thursday.

This afternoon, Maria and I walked up the hill to sit in the Adirondack Chairs I put up there when I moved to the farm. I remember – before I fell apart a bit – going up there almost every day to sit with the dogs and be still. I remember reading St. Augustine’s City of God, sometimes to me, sometimes to the dogs. The dogs soak up the contemplative feeling of the moment, and settled down. Mother came up to say hello. It was wonderful sitting there with Maria, as happy a moment as I could ever have dreampt of.

Soon after those visits, I lost my mind, or much of it, and went into one of Joseph Campbell’s dark places. I am fighting my way out, and I see much light, joy, peace and love. It was wonderful to sit up on the mountain, and remember Augustine’s notion of a city of light. That’s where I was. Seeing Louise was uplifting for me. I love watching Izzy work – he tuned up the whole wing. And I always appreciate my life when I am near people on the edge of life. Time is short. Use it well.

Headless Bird: Can it sell?

The last potholder dispute involved a pink and green thing that I thought was ugly and wouldn’t sell, and was promptly snapped up and is being framed to hang on a Colorado wall. Today, in the Studio Barn I found a potholder I really liked in a corner, and I asked Maria about it and she said there was a headless bird so she decided nobody would want to buy it. Are you kidding? I said. A headless bird potholder? I think it’s great.

So I had to put a photo up. I don’t even think it’s on her website with her other potholders, quilts and handbags.

Notes: My daughter’s book “Nine percent of the game is half mental” is going on sale next week. I’m going to NYC for the book party and Em has asked me to be the official book party photographer. I’ve accepted.

Bedlam Farm notecards are up on the Redux Art Gallery site. New ones are coming for Mother’s Day and Spring and Easter.

Lenore, finding water

Lenore, finding a spring in the woods. Spring is close.

Rose, at rest

Rose napping this morning. Some people (a lot of people) have been e-mailing, fearing that Rose has died, because of the content below. She is fine. I just liked the photo with the text is all, and was perhaps thinking of the inevitable time when I will have to face life without Rose. Hopefully that is a good ways off.)

March 8, 2010 – Sunny, cool. Decisions regarding the death of animals are personal. I can only speak for myself, and from my own experience. People have to make up their own minds. I have seen over the past decade a change in perspective about animals and their death.

There is the political idea that animals should not be killed or euthanized but kept alive at all costs and by any means. There is the deepening view of animals as human-like, as children. More and more people believe that dogs think like us, have souls. There is a growing belief that dogs are intellectual equivalents of people, psychics, therapists almost, best friends and soul connections. That they can spot our illnesses, sense our death, even heal us.

Veterinarians and psychologists report dramatic increases in the length and severity of animal grieving. Decisions regarding animal welfare and health care have gotten mixed up in corporate money-grubbing. Animal health care is a multi-billion industry. Surgery for dogs and cats is on the rise, and it is getting  more expensive. Decisions regarding the end of life for animals are also more complex, as the Internet has spawned the idea that the veterinary industry is corrupt or inadequate, and that there are all kinds of new and effective healing solutions, if only we will go out and find them. The idea is growing that our vets may be hiding these approaches from us. And there are plenty of people online with all sorts of answers to complex questions.

People, accordingly, feel enormous confusion and guilt when their dogs and cats get sick and die. For me, this speaks of loss of perspective. I do not equate dogs with children or human beings. I celebrate the differences. It demeans dogs and people to compare them. Each is different in precious, even sacred ways.

I think it is important for people to come to terms in their own ways with the reality of animals – they don’t live long, their health is fragile, our society cannot afford unlimited health care for them. We can’t even afford it for people.

For me, people are more important than dogs and other pets, and I love my dogs dearly. I always seek to keep in mind the ethical questions involved in how much money I spend on an animals, how long I will prolong their lives. For me, it is disturbing to equate dogs and cats with children. It is not ethical to spend unlimited amounts of money on animal health care when so many human beings are needy. It is important to give people permission to be advocates for their dogs and pets and help them leave the world with dignity and comfort. We owe them that. I do not believe my dogs will tell me when it is time for them to leave the world.

That is an abrogation of my responsibility to them, to act as their advocate in a human world they cannot negotiate by themselves. For me, ethical grieving means recognizing the sanctity of the animal, and the glorious differences between them and us. And meeting my responsibilities.

If dogs could speak, I believe they would tell me this: “I loved serving you. I am grateful to have entered your life. I hope you will give another good home to another dog or animal in need of one. And thank you for letting me move on.”

Frieda, watching

I love the look Frieda gets when she has spotted something, out on the path. She is a true hunter.

Izzy and I, back on Callaway Road

It’s been awhile since Izzy and I chased sunsets on Callaway Road, and my life has certainly changed since the last visit. It is as beautiful as ever, and it was lovely so sit there with Izzy for awhile in the quiet. I think I am mourning the past a bit, which is healthy, but only up to a point.

I’ve lost a lot, and am thinking of many of the things I have lost. But I have gained as much or more, and isn’t that the nature of things? I am not a fan of nostalgia, which I think is a hiding place for people who don’t want to move forward. Yesterday always seems better to people than today, and I guess I don’t share that view. But Callaway Road gives me strength, and perspective and I am eager to revisit in the Spring.

Maria, a portrait

I guess it is not an easy thing, Learning to Love. By definition, it involves change, sharing, listening, giving, opening. I never gave up on love. I hope I never do.

Giving permission

I receive messages every day from people suffering the most intense grieving for their dogs, cats or other animals. This is a subject I want to write more about. Andrea put her Boston Terrier down after $9,000 in surgical and other bills and is so tormented by her decision that she hasn’t slept for  weeks and is on medication. She may lose her job as well, as she can’t focus on her work.

As animals mean more and more to people, animal grieving is becoming a problem. I told Andrea she needs to give herself permission to say goodbye, and to let go. She made the best  decision she could for the dog, it is a personal one and only she can make it, and now it is time to move on. There are lots of other dogs out there who need a place to go.

Animals are not people. They are not children. They are not spouses or life partners. We ought not mourn them the same way we mourn people, as it is disservice to humans and animals. As much as we love them, they do not live nearly as long as we do, and if we want a life with animals, we will experience loss and grief.

The epidemic guilt is another matter. Vets tell me they are struggling mightily with animal grieving, and few of them are trained to deal with it. It is become worse, even extreme. I think the process of coming to terms with losing an animal begins before you get the animal. Do you have a vet you trust and can talk to?

Do you know how much money you will spend and can afford? Does the dog’s illness or death raise other issues in your life from other times? I am working on a philosophy I call Ethical Grieving, which involves perspective,  boundaries and an understanding that we are the only advocates our dogs and cats and other animals have. Contrary to popular belief, they will not tell us when it’s time. These decisions are ours and ours alone to make on their behalf, and they never need us more than when we find the strength and wisdom to make them well. I will return to this subject in the next few weeks. It’s important.

Carriage Barn

Going to the Argyle United Presbyterian Church this morning. Working on a book proposal, new idea. Working on my short story book. Reading three books. Walking dogs. Maria is at work all day. I’ll miss her. Will be writing about Learning to Love.

My creative status:

First children’s book “Meet The Dogs Of Bedlam Farm” will be out next Spring.

“Rose In A Storm,” my novel, will be out this October.

FInishing my untitled short story collection, out next Spring or Summer hopefully.

Next week I begin my storytelling workship at the Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Center (LARAC). The four-week workship is full up,but we will do it again in August for anyone who is interested.

Notecards from Bedlam Farm are now on sale at Redux. Spring and Mother’s Day cards are coming this week. Flowers, chickens, eggs.

Window, Coila, N.Y., garage

March 7, 2010 – Someone asked me yesterday what my responsibility was a writer and an artist, and the answer came right out: to lift people up, to stimulate, entertain and sometimes provoke them. Expensive art is not selling right now, and some books aren’t either, and for me, that means the creative challenge is greater to connect – through stories, different kinds of writing, notecards and, if necessary, to crawl on my hands and knees to each reader and kiss them on the nose.

The creative has to reach people, and keep trying until they do. I am fortunate, not because I am more gifted than others, but because I am writing about a subject people care about these days – pets and companion animals. But even in that context, I have changed. I am writing fiction, short stories, children’s books, selling notecards. All of this involves many things – money, opportunity, but as much as anything else, a passionate desire to connect with people and spark an emotional response – through words, images, experience.

I told my friend that whenever people weren’t buying the creative works of people, it means the artist or writer was out of touch and needed to change. Maria did this with her potholders. I am trying it with new kinds of writing and photography and new ways of distributing it. That’s the joy of the creative life. You have to be creative. I think this responsibility is especially critical in challenging times when people are bombarded with disturbing information from unthinking people around the clock.

My job is to help people make sense of the feelings, light and images of the world. If I do my job, my work will find a home.

Last light, in the deep woods

I have always loved the last light of the day, as it filter and moves through the woods. Hard to catch.

Leaf in the ice

Saw this lealf melt right through the ice. Can’t quite figure out how that happens, but it was lovely to come across.

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Rose and the imaginary squirrel

March 6 2010- Rose is now in her seventh year of pursuit of the Imaginary Squirrel which she saw the first week she came to live on the farm when she was six months old. I have not seen him since, but she has never passed this tree without stopping to check. One day I am sure he will return and the chase will be renewed. But Rose does not take her work lightly.

Today, writing a proposal for a new book idea. Secret for now. Tomorrow work resumes on my short stories.

Mother, on Maria's car

Mother has discovered Maria’s Toyota as a good place to catch the afternoon rays and she is often sitting out there keeping an eye on things. Barn Cats are nothing if not adaptable.