Dao Of Donkeys

TIn art, literature and spiritual history, the donkey has always been linked to human beings in the Theater Of Chance. They carried Jesus into Jerusalem, brought Napoleon over the Alps, carried Queen Victoria and traveled with Sancho Panza on his journey through Spain. No animal comes close to the rich spiritual history of these creatures.

Yet so little is known about them, so few people have met them. I have been studying the Dao of the donkey for years now, they have been a part of my life since I came to my farm, a bigger part since Simon arrived near death. I'm writing a book about Simon, Red and Rocky and it includes a history of the donkeys, I have been researching it for months.

When I think of donkeys, I think of these traits: intelligence, curiosity, independence, loyalty and a capacity for hard work. They are hardy creatures, requiring little care (hay in the winter, water and farrier). They love to explore rough and brush-filled terrain. They powerfully attach to people, but like a cat, on their terms. They are not eager to please, they do not respond instantly to commands, every idea has to be theirs, or they are not likely to do it, or not likely to do it right away.

Like all animals, they love who feeds them. They are more intuitive than most dogs I have known, they can read intentions and moods from a half-mile away. If you bring them carrots at the gate at 7 a.m., they are likely to be there braying every day for the rest of their life and yours. They are scholars of food, and know when you walk into the kitchen of your home, no matter how far away. They can be trained to pull carts, haul wood, give rides, pull plows. They are smarter and easier to work with than horses, or so I am told. They are guard animals, they keep coyotes and stray dogs out of the pasture. They love to be brushed, talked to, read to and sung too. They are one of the few animals with a sense of humor. They seem to grasp the ridiculous nature of human beings and get a chuckle out of us.

Oh yes, they have big soft warm noses.

Tai-Chi lesson

I took my first Tai-Chi lesson since I got sick last week, and wanted to go on the eve of our one-day trip to New York City to see the movie "Hannah Arendt," playing for short showings in several cities in the coming weeks. Movies like that can no longer get into the big cinemas, another gift from the corporate Leviathans that have gobbled up our culture as well as our work. Scott and Red have a particular connection, Red just has this gift of entering whatever space he is in, whatever space I am in.  Not that many people get down on the floor and talk to him, though.

I am liking Tai-Chi, it is not simple for me to learn. Breathing is important, there are lots of movements that require precision and memory, and my head is a distractable space that does not retain too many specific things. I had so much trouble in school all my life I am fairly certain I have one or another of those much discussed learning disabilities. I just don't absorb things in the normal way. And my body has not quite returned to normal, Lyme is a disease that keeps on ticking. Scott is a patient teacher and we are getting to know one another. I took a video of the first four movements today with my Iphone and that will help as he will be away next week. I'd like to do 20 minutes in the morning, another 20 minutes at night, sometimes it is hard to find that time.

I've got the broad outines of the first movements down, it is flowing more easily and naturally. I have a ways to go. I am eager to pursue it.

I can see the rewards to Tai-Chi, in our world it is just critical that we find ways of unplugging ourselves from the fragmentation, data, bad news and notifications of the outside world. It helps me already with focus and balance, I think it helps me recover from my encounter with Lyme Disease last week.  From dog-walking to meditation, people are awakening to the importance of finding time and space for their own thoughts, their own peace of mind. I know I have. Scott is a busy man with lots of interests, but he finds time for Tai-Chi and other elements of spiritual practice. I think this becomes more important every day.

Naming Ceremony

Some friends asked me to come over and take photographs of a naming ceremony for their two grandchildren. I love doing photo assignments like that, it is a creative challenge – have to figure out the light and the lenses – but it is also a wonderful affirmation of photography. Assignments like that take you out of yourself and your normal comfort zone, they are a wonderful use of photography. They are affirmations of life, the big stories that will never make their news, but which bring light and love and meaning to our news. Once, journalists knew that, now they think stories only happen in the offices of Washington bureaucrats and in bloody and violent conflicts.

The setting was simple, they were planting two trees on a hillside, one for each daughter, and a minister read from some beautiful Celtic poems.

There is pressure in an assignment like this – you don't want to disappoint, you won't get a second chance.  The lighting was bad, the line of sight clouded with trees and cars. And it is a nice gift for friends who have done a lot for me. They also remind me of something else. There is a skill to photography, all photographs are not the same, if you are open to feeling, you can capture the feeling in front of you. I conducted a naming ceremony once, long ago, for two children that were lost to me, and I did try and picture them there, just for a moment, but it was not about me, it was about someone else's children, and  it lifted my heart to see this one, so full of life and connection.

Vintage Scarves

Vintage hanky scarves, from fullmoonfiberart.

Back Porch

Our back porch has taken on a life of its own. My wife is a compulsive planter, and Flo and the chickens have formed a porch condo association of their own. Minnie joins in when the sun is out. There is no dislodging them, it is their porch now, we will have to find another one.

Relationships

There are few things more fascinating to me that seeing the relationships of animals evolve. When Red came to us a year ago, Simon tried to bite, kick and stomp him into the ground. Then Red became close to Rocky, who Simon tried to drive out of the pasture. Now Simon seems to have discovered Red, he comes up to him every morning, sniffs him, stands by him while he keeps the sheep at bay. Red does not change, he is the same all the time. He focuses on the sheep no matter what, doesn't acknowledge Simon directly, but he does indirectly, in his posture and body language, both of which say "no trouble."

As one who made so many decisions out of fear for so long in my life, I am curious to go to New York City Wednesday with Maria, meet up with my daughter Emma, and all go and see the new movie "Hannah Arendt," showing almost nowhere but New York. I am lucky to have a wife and a daughter who want to see this movie with me, I was expecting to go alone.

You will not see this movie in the megaplex near you, Hannah Arendt is not somebody corporate entertainment conglomerates are about to put up on marquees. A brilliant moral philosopher and journalist and professor and author, I have a dog-eared copy of "Responsibility And Judgement," a book on how to make good and ethical decisions that I have used many times. It is becoming more, not less, important to me. If you are not sane, you will not make good decisions no matter what you read, if you get sane or saner, it seems to work out better.

Arendt argues that good decisions come from self-respect, not the advice of other people, and they require some practice in thought. In the world I peer out at from my farm, I do not see people being encouraged to think, they are encouraged to be afraid, and make decisions accordingly. Get  tests, you might get cancer. Stay out of the woods, there are ticks. Build huge IRA's or you will starve.  Don't find work you love, you need health care. Keep your cholesterol down, mess up your kidneys. Don't ever talk to strangers or tell anybody how much your dog cost, it is dangerous out there. Aging is a terror bounded by tests, pills, long-term insurance and health care. You don't think about how you wish to age or die, you just keep adding options, procedures,  and policies.

Those are not choices or decisions to me, they are a way the outside world has of telling me to do these things or else. To live their idea of life, not mine.  For me, that does not seem like free will.

Frightened people cannot make good decisions – I can testify to this – precisely because their decisions are based on reacting to what frightens them, not to what it is they want or need in their lives. You can eat up a life in a flash that way, the fast-track to what T. S. Eliot called the "hollow life." If living in fear led to a good life, I would have it knocked, but I do not believe it does. To make good decisions, I have to think, and to re-think, I have to set aside what the world tells me I must have to live, and consider what I tell myself I must have to live a meaningful life.

If I am not being scared to death, I am drowning in unwanted advice and every day each of us must struggle through this swamp and figure out who we really. To make good decisions, I must know myself well. If this shortens my life or brings a plague down on my head, I will accept responsibility and as of now, I will consider it a fair trade.

I was on the phone with Fedex tech support today – their software didn't like my telephone number, refused to believe it was mine. After escaping the phone tree, I made it to India where a lovely man set to work on the problem while humming some music. After a few minutes, he remembered that I was there and apologized. Did I mind the music, the humming?, he asked. Not at all, I said, it was lovely and it was better than listening to static. Soon he fixed my problem and he said he enjoyed talking to me. Americans usually got annoyed with his humming, he said.  Of course, I thought, they didn't have time for it. I will make time for it.

Everywhere I go I am being told what to think, what to do, what I need. I can't recall when anyone last asked me what I think, I  want to do, what I need. This is what I need to keep on learning to do, this is my work, this is Arendt's vision.

Every time I read Arendt -  this gutsy old-world intellectual, think of her throaty, chain-smoking voice, her gutteral German accent,  her challenge to people to avoid labels and think for themselves – I learn something about decisions. You will not find moral philosophers on cable tv news, even though that might be the best possible thing for all of us.  You find ideologues and dogmatics using ideas as entertainment to feed their own tribes. I'm excited to see this movie and get a breath of the other world and I hope, as always with Hannah Arendt, I learn a thing or two more about making decisions for myself. About learning how to think. I have a farm, but I live a life of the mind, and it is the mind that needs its own grain, as the donkeys need theirs.

Wednesday, I'm going to New York for  a vitamin boost for the mind, an affirmation of the fading are of learning to think for myself.

Big Red Dog

Waiting for work.

Surprise

We were out doing the morning chores today when Maria astonished me by hopping up on Fanny's back. Fanny was a bit startled and circled a bit, then settled, and then Maria hopped off. She said she just felt the urge, and I was not able to move the camera fast enough. Maybe next time. I have had that impulse too, our friend Aidan hopped up on Simon's back and rode  him around the pole barn. And Fanny loves and trusts Maria, she wouldn't harm her. I wonder if she'll try it again. She says she doesn't know.

When Letters Die

I can't remember the precise point when letters died, I think there should have been an announcement, a ceremony, something to mark the passage of something so important in our cultural, economic and personal history. I still walk to the mailbox every day, even though there are fewer and fewer things of importance in it, most of my critical messaging is sent and received online. Today when I reached in our big mailbox, I felt something unusual – a letter, not a flyer or utility bill, an actual letter, I could tell by the feel of it. It was solid, heavy, on good thick paper. It crinkled, as if something was wrapped inside of it. And it had an actual postmark – it was from a remote corner of Canada, there were four beautiful stamps of the Madonna and child.

I brought it in the house and put it on the table. Maria opened it and said, hey, you have to look at this, and I took it in my hand. Inside was a handwritten message composed so it would fill the middle-third of the page and then could be folded into thirds. Behind it was a tin sheet of  foil crisply wrapped in thirds. When I opened it, there was a fresh new $50 bill. A letter with $50 in it. And a hand-written note, I felt as if I had been visited by a time machine, and I suppose I had.

The letter was from Fram Brummer. To my knowledge, I had never heard of her or seen the name. Seemed clearly from a small town in a faraway province. The penmanship was strong and clear, obviously the product of some education and practice. The tone was friendly, warm, but not in any way inappropriate, it was the message of someone who knew us well, was a regular follower of the blog. She knew what was going on.

First, Fran wished us a happy anniversary. Then she wished me a speedy recovery from Lyme disease and hoped I could get away for a few days. "Love your blog," she wrote, "and you saved my life on August 30, 2009 when my sister Marion, recommended you. Thanks for all you do!" And she added warmly, "Never quit writing, Sincerely, Fran Brummer."

Her letter was in response to the new subscription plan I instituted on the blog a week or so ago. People can access the blog for free, or they can contribute any amount they choose for one-time only, or they can now subscribe using Paypal either for $5 a month or $60 a year. The response has been strong and supportive, we are getting underway. Fran does not belong to Paypal and she does not send e-mails when a letter will do. I was touched that she would go to the trouble of getting a brand new $50 bill and then go insert it so neatly into foil – there wasn't a single wrinkle in the foil, I can't imagine how she did that – and write her very neat and touching letter, and mail it off. She felt it was important to subscribe in her own way.

That kind of character is inspiring and it also made me realize how much I miss letters. You have to think about a letter, before you send it, and before you read it. Fran had to take a lot of steps beyond e-mail to do that, and I appreciate her understanding that it is time for me to be paid for my work, to allow that and receive it. I would never have accepted Fran's letter a year ago, or the $50 bill,  now I will paste it on the wall above my computer with my small and growing collection of favorite letters.  Lots of subscribers are letter writers, I see, no surprise. Thanks Fran. If you never quit reading, I will never quite writing.

You give me faith that as long as there are people like you, writers will never fade away like letters.

Old Mailboxes, Old Messages

I would not have though to see the old rural mailboxes as an artifact but looking at them the other day, I realized they will soon be gone, their messages gone with them. I was thinking of letters and what it means to the world that they are vanishing, so of course, are their boxes.

Red

Red is a spirit dog, but few people see how quiet and centered he is, how meditative and peaceful. When I meditate, he enters the spirit, the quiet. He lies down, does not move, is absolutely still until I get up. He was on one side of me this morning, Simon on the other, both still, both quiet. Then the chickens came and lay down. Something beautiful happened.

Animal Meditation – Simon

I am more mindful of meditating with animals, of meditation around them, and meditation in which they are participating, aware of it, playing a role. Simon is acutely conscious of my meditations outside in the chair by the pasture. When I turned on the timer, I saw he was starting at me. Fifteen minutes later, when the third bell went off, he was in the same position, watching me. During the meditation i was aware of him, I sensed his presence in the silence. I imagine he heard my breathing, I sensed a connection being made, it was from him, but I felt it, it entered the quiet, was a part of it, was healing. This is a very powerful experience, one I am just beginning to open myself up to. Today's animal meditation involved Simon, Red, even the chickens. I'm putting up a photo album.

The blog

In Thomas Jefferson's world, media was not a corporate-for-profit thing, but a way for individuals to find voice and identity. The first journalists were farmers, men and women (yes, women) close to the land, merchants and Quakers and abolitionists also who wrote about their daily lives in printed pamphlets (often by hand) and posted them up on fences and walls. They were clear and vibrant voices with great influence. Individuals have been robbed of their voices in our culture by the greedy corporations that have taken over almost all of our media and turned into in a civil nightmare and public health issue (in a doctor's office I saw a flyer urging patients to "take time off" from media for the sake of their mental health). Our media is most a shattered and fragmented world filled with argument and commentary useless to us and disturbing. Worse, we have lost our own voices in this corporate morass.

The blog has emerged as a powerful Jeffersonian antidote to this catastrophe, especially for women whose voices have been marginalized in modern media, unless they are arguing or sensationalizing their lives. The blog has become a great equalizer, a creative breeding ground, a salvation for artists seeking to sell their work. Just ask Maria, whose gentle blog has affirmed her life as an artists and connected her to that world. Or ask me, whose blog is becoming the centerpiece of my creativity, a source of inspiration, income and a way for me, like those farmers, to find my voice, share my life and understand my own identity.

I think people who overcome their fears to tell the stories to the world are heroic, and the newest hero is Tess Wynn, a warm, honest and open human being with things to say. You can check out her blog for yourself. Her blog is a simple WordPress blog, it doesn't cost a thing to set up and takes just a few minutes. It was not easy for her. It soon will be. She has things to say, and she will burst if she doesn't get to say them. She will not be invited on cable, she can run her own network at home. Welcome to this world Tess, it is brighter still thanks to you.

I met Tess at one of Maria's art shows and we both connected to her and her family. I've known her since mostly through her curious and lively posts on Facebook. She can tell her own story, she is a poster child for the blog, a nurse, mother, wife, and as she puts it, "recovering big mouth." Not yet, Tess, I'm afraid. Hopefully never.

Blogs are not about technology for me, they are about creativity and the releasing of the inner spirit, a way to find your tribe as well as your voice. This is why I am teaching a course this fall at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, N.Y., in "the art of the blog." It is absolutely essential now for the individual and creative soul, the Internet is the media, love it or not. People complain to me all the time that they don't like computers, and I say, well who cares? Just ask my 88 -year-old friend Susan, who started a blog this year to sell her vegetable seeds and connect with other gardeners. She doesn't like computers either. So what?

And check out the new  Open Group For Bedlam Farm where you can see these surprising and delightful and powerful blogs emerging in a community of like-minded people. Mr. Jefferson, wherever you are, I suspect you are blogging, too.

Napping With Hens

Red took a nap next to the adirondack chair today and while he was sleeping, two chickens came up and sat down to take a nap right beside him. The chickens love Red now and follow him around, but they make Red uncharacteristically nervous. When he woke up to the sound of soft clucking, he sat straight up and came around to the other side of the charir.

The Little Thug

I call her the little thug of Bedlam Farm, she is a small cat, she has a big swagger. She has trained the dogs to keep their distance, stares down the chickens when they get too close, swaggers to me or Maria if she feels like a hug, has carved out much of the back porch as her domain, she will not hesitate to chase Minnie away if she takes her chair. A few months ago, she wouldn't show herself, now she sits on various commands and gives orders. And is obeyed.

Our moving anniversary celebration is moving again it seems, this time to New York City for one day to see the movie "Hannah Arendt." Arendt, the late moral philosopher and author, was a significant influence on me and my life and writing. When I was a teenager, she flew to Jerusalem for the New Yorker Magazine to cover the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the "Final Solution" that sent nearly six million people, most of them Jews, to their death.  In 1960, Eichmann was found hiding in South America by Israeli agents, kidnapped and brought to trial in Jerusalem. The trial mesmerized much of the world. Arendt's brilliant reporting of the trial resulted in a controversial book, "Eichmann In Jerusalem," denounced by many American Jewish leaders then and to this day.

The book advanced the notion of the "banality of evil," the at-the-time shocking notion that one didn't have to be  brilliant or even intelligent to commit great evil, you could simply be morally dead, even small and banal. You can look up to understand evil, she wrote, or you can look down. In Eichmann she had been expecting a monster, but was instead shocked to find a clueless, even stupid bureaucrat who had no conception of what evil was, and had absolutely nothing revealing, intelligent or significant to say about it, not in many months of questioning and testimony. It was one of the most sensational trials in the history of the world, yet the criminal at the center of it was an empty shell, a lip-chewing bus driver.  It wasn't that he was just an anti-semite, Arendt wrote, Eichmann was a dull clerk moving trains and pieces of paper – and millions of people – around. He was, she found, morally dead.

I can't begin to describe the impact her reporting from Israel had on me, a young Jewish teenager, aspiring to be a writer, bewildered by the holocaust that had engulfed my own family and everyone around me. How could they have done it? How could the world have let it happen? How could the Germans have slaughtered a million defenseless babies? How could Jews have let it happen? I understand now that there are no answers to these questions, not in my life time. Some things are simply beyond my grasp and the reach of even the greatest minds. But I still ask these questions,  on a vastly smaller, perhaps more comprehensible scale. How could Simon happen? Why are we so blind to poverty? Why are we so kind to animals and so indifferent to the suffering of people? Arendt did not work miracles, she could not explain the scope of the holocaust, but for me, she came closer to any other writer I had read, any other thinker.

Arendt taught me to consider my decisions, they are the cornerstone of any moral person, they are the building blocks of life.

When my daughter Emma e-mailed me a few weeks ago that this movie was open in New York and nowhere else and was closing this Thursday I had this fantasy of doing down to New York on the train to see it and coming back in the same day. I didn't see how it could work. When we cancelled the inn in Massachusetts we made plans to go to another inn tomorrow, this one in Vermont. Today Emma called to wish me Happy Father's Day. We had a long talk, she seemed eager to take some time. She brought up the film again, said I could get it on CD. But it was there until Thursday, she said. Maria and I were driving in the car on the way to do some chores, get some food. Maria turned to me in the car. She seemed very clear, strong about it.  Let's go to New York, she said, you know you want to see the movie, you know you won't get another chance, wouldn't you love to see it with Emma?

Emma said she couldn't get off from work on Monday but if we came on Wednesday, she'd love to come, go to lunch or dinner, see the movie. The rolling  anniversary seemed to be shifting again. Maria and I didn't really even need to speak.  I pulled over to the side of the road, turned on the flashers, pulled out the Ipad, called the inn and moved the reservations to August, to my birthday. I went online and booked train tickets. I reserved three seats in the theater on Wednesday,  the next to last day of the movie's showing. There was a train at the right team leaving, one coming back when we wanted it to. Our house-sitter could come as easily on Wednesday as Monday, it turned out. Everything had fallen into place the way it does when things want to happen. The anniversary without a home had moved to New York City and wasn't really an anniversary thing any more. Life happens, every day.

I am excited to see this movie, moral philosophy and the echoes of Hannah Arendt appear in so many of the things I write, so many of the decisions I make regarding my life and my life with animals. Her sense of ethics has helped me so often to build one of my own. Her voice spoke to me when I put Orson down, when I took Simon in, when we sent the old sheep off to die. When Maria and I decided to euthanize Rocky. To stand in one's truth even in the face of angry mobs of people. Her outspoken independence. The strength of her convictions. Her idea that a moral decision is one in which one respects him or herself and is not driven by the opinions of others. When I was a kid living in New York City I went into one of her classes in the New School For Social Research in Greenwich Village, then the center of the intellectual world, now another corporate box-store showcase.

She was an imposing figure standing behind the lectern, moving around the room, speaking to hundreds of riveted and earnest young eyes, a powerful charismatic woman, one of the strongest women I will ever see. I can still hear her strong, heavily-accented voice – she was herself a refugee from Nazi Germany. A moral decision is yours, she said, it is the best decision you can make.  Your decisions are yours, they belong to you, never let anyone take them from you. Conscience, she said, is a way of feeling, beyond reason and argument, beyond the opinions of others, beyond the dogma of people who put labels on themselves, of your knowing through sentiment and hysteria what is right and what is wrong.

It will be good to see her again on Wednesday, perhaps for the last time on screen. I miss her books, I wish for a world in which there were more moral philosophers and fewer commentators..We are going and coming the same day. I am seeing that it is connected to our anniversary after all, it is an anniversary gift. Its is a pilgrimage.

Skirting Wool

Last Fall, we added a new ritual to the farm, Skirting Wool, wherein dirty and oily sheepskin is picked clean for hurts, blade of hay by blade of grass. Sheep are neither neat nor clean, but it is a soothing kind of chore, painstaking and satisfying. Maria did most of it, it is a beautiful and ancient ritual in many ways. Maria is selling her fleece to people for yarn, details on her website.

Sacred Rite

I spotted this barn five years ago sitting proudly off a busy highway in Arlington, Vt., and I have been photographing it ever since. It is an abandoned barn, not used in anyone's modern memory. It is returning to nature, a powerful thing to see. The old barns are going away, they are going home, there is no used for them any longer, their time is passed. This is neither sad nor happy to me, is the nature of the world. The old barns have no wish, I think, to hang around and be discarded, nor can I imaging them wishing to die without purpose or dignity. This barn is melding into the trees around it, gradually becoming indistinguishable from them, a very dignified end for an old barn. One day it will not be possible to tell the trees from the old barn.

I am happy to see this beautiful thing meet so soft and peaceful and gradual an end, free from the wrecker's ball or the bulldozer's deprivations. The old barns know what humans are like, what they do, how little loyalty or memory we have. No one fights to save old barns, they would be laughed right out of the developer's offices. Godspeed to you, noble thing, go at your own pace in your own gracious and silent way..

Anniversary Present

This was my anniversary present to Maria, a framed print of this photograph. To me, this photo captured a bit of her loving and rich soul. The photograph was timeless to me, not really about Rocky, not really about her, but the ancient and deep connection human beings have for animals, a connect that has been pushed aside and often forgotten in our world.

In our own imperfect and uneven way, those of us related to this photo, those of us reading it, we are seeking to keep this connection alive. Some of us through pets, some of us through other animals, some of us through farms, through breeding, rescue work, therapy work, cuddling on the couch, all kinds in many different ways. Although we are all very different, in this, I think we are united. We are all different, we are all the same. So this photograph is about all of you.

Father's Day Wish

It's Father's Day morning, and in an hour or so my cell phone will ring, when my daughter gets up (it is Sunday, you are not an early riser) and you will wish me Happy Father's Day in a foggy voice. I know you are just cranking up, anxious to get out and around Brooklyn, be with Jay. I have not been the center of your life for a long time now, I accept it. We will wish each other well, and then get on with the business of the moment, our lives apart.  The calls always feels a bit rote, something of obligation rather than of feeling or meaning. American holidays are like that.  Still, I like getting it.

I am not into regrets or looking back, it makes my heart heavy, I do wish we lived closer to one another and were more a part of each other's lives. I accept that we are not. Nobody made me come up to upstate New York and buy a farm. I hope you will one day understand why I did, but you also have better things to do now with your ascending life.

I always want to tell you, but rarely do, that when your eyes popped open, and you were looking straight at me – you looked at me in wonder, then screamed, sort of setting the template I guess – you gave me one of the two or three transcendent moments of my life. Nothing much can top it, I think, I hope to leave the world remembering it. You gave definition to the very idea of life.

I am proud beyond words at the bright, funny, ethical, loving and gifted human being you are turning out to be. I don't know if I had anything to do with that or not, I hope so. Because they are men, father's are so many things that are strange and complex, sometimes warm, sometimes not, sometimes close, sometimes remote. Father's Day carries this ambivalence, I see this stream of messages on my newsfeed, declarations of thanks and love and gratitude from daughters and sons to their fathers, living and dead. I will not see one of those with my name on it, that isn't you and it isn't me. We both would wince.

I'm heading out to help Maria shear the wool and I hope to paint the porch steps before it rains again. Until the phone rings, I will be thinking of you. I have only one wish for Father's Day, only one thought about you, about being a Father, being a man, loving you, this is my Father's Day wish:

Be Happy.

Gardening

Like many things I love, I've come to them late in life, and yes, better later than never for sure. Maria has flowers in her blood, like so many creative and nurturing women. Flowers are a creative and spiritual thing for many and Maria has this sense in her head of where each flower might want to be, in relationship to the world and to one another. It often works this way with us, I will say "hey, let's plant a bunch of gardens," and she will roll her eye at first, another chore, something else to buy, something else to do.

And then her artistic soul will kick in, she will begin to see the colors, how they will look, how they will grow and I will see her at odd times, crawling around, weeding. Both of us are obsessives, we simply obsess on different things. Yesterday there was a gleam in her eye and she said she wanted to go to the Stannard's greenhouse and get some flowers. I brought the camera and Red and she wandered the aisles, talking to herself, pictures in her head that I could not see. Then she came back and went whizzing around the gardens, planting some around the statue, some to fill out this spot, some to fill out another.

She was in her own space in that greenhouse, had no idea I was even there until she came  up to me with an armful of flowers whose names I do not know and will never remember. Creativity comes in all forms, and if I will never be a blood gardener, I sure love the colors and even more, I love watching the peace and gleam in Maria's eyes when she put them in the ground.

You cannot be a gardener if you are not an artist of one kind or another.

At The Greenhouse

Red and Maria went to the greenhouse at Stannard's today to buy some flowers for our garden. We got a rose bush and some other stuff. Red wandered around greeting people and following Maria, always keeping her in sight. I have some other nice photos of this trip, but I'm worn out, ol' Lyme reminding me that I am not the boss. I'll put it up tomorrow.