Lenore has been trying to win over the donkeys for months now, and she is finally turning Fanny around, and offering kisses on the nose. Fanny does not let people or animals kiss her snout much, but Lenore is the Love Dog, and sooner or later, she always prevails. She spreads her message all over the farm.
It’s Daylight Savings Time, and the Fear Machine was at work this morning, cranking out warnings to people with sleep issues that time changes can be disruptive and disturbing. Go to bed early. Get up and turn a light on your head. Let the body know things have changed. The Fear Machine turns everything into a warning, but I think I can handle Daylight Savings Time without preventative and precautionary steps. I didn’t know Daylight Savings Time was dangerous until I read some of the news. I won’t make that mistake tomorrow.
Up early this morning, I was drown by my Ipad into the new video world, and the many videos of the suffering and destruction in Japan. At first, I felt as if I were watching a TV show or sci-fi movie. Then I showed one of the videos to Maria, of a store clerk struggling to hold up an enormous shelf filled with glass jars, a hopeless task for so small a person, and an impossible one, as glasses and jars and tin cans rained down all around her. I was a reporter for many years, and was so used to seeing people injured and living amidst ruin.
Maria cried and I was grateful to that, as she reminded me that I was not watching a movie, or a sci-fi film, but real people struggling with real fear and loss. And I needed to feel real things. Thinking of them all.
“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief…For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
I woke up early and came downstairs with my IPod and spent a couple of hours with REM and their wonderful new CD “Collapse Into Now,” a wise, touching and beautifully written collection of songs. I was feeling nostalgic, and so were they. One of the songs I loved was “Uberlin:”
“I know, I know, I know that this is changing
We walk the streets to feel the ground I’m chasing:
I am flying on a star into a meteor tonight
I am flying on a star, star, star
I will make it through the day
And then the day and then the day becomes the night.
I will make it through the night.”
There were so many nights I wondered that, if I would make it through the night. Sometimes, it always gets to the day, and I am learning to accept that, and many other things.
I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he said he thought that fear was useful in that it alerted us to dangers and problems. I said yes, I thought that was so, but I had a different idea about fear.
I think it’s a space to cross, and when I feel fear I always think “what is on the other side of it,” and I believe the answer to that is “life.” I told him that one thing about fear that always fascinated me was that in my life I was never afraid of the right things. The things I feared generally did not occur, and the things I should have feared did not cross my consciousness.
I should have feared becoming disconnected from my family and my life. I should have feared living in a compulsive frenzy, failing to manage my life, doing harm to people close to me, living a dishonest life without thought, honesty or self-awareness. I never feared those things. Instead I feared the things society teaches us to fear so we will spend money trying to avoid them.
So I love with fear, but I no longer trust it. It is mostly a space to cross. REM spoke to that for me. I remember sitting in my car and listening to “Losing My Religion” and bursting into tears and never understanding why. Now I know.
