Maria calls this yellow pillow “The Possibilities Are Endless,” and she has made a slew of pillows and potholders for the Pig Barn Art Gallery’s Functional Art Show, October 8-9 at Bedlam Farm. Details on her website. No dogs or gifts please, thanks. I will also be signing copies of “Going Home” which can be purchased nearby at Gardenworks, Salem, N.Y., (518 854-3250) or the Battenkill Bookstore, Cambridge, N.Y. (518 854-3250).
Maria is moving her pillows and potholders into the Pig Barn Art Gallery, for her functional art show, October 8-9 at Bedlam Farm, Columbus Day Weekend, 11 to 4. Lenore and Simon are the official greeters, and it seems like people are trekking her from as far away as England, Washington State, Oregon and North and South Carolina. Good for them, and for us.
Maria has assembled the work of nine gifted arts, including herself – mugs, quilts, memory boxes, jewely, paintings, great functional art at very reasonable prices. Height of foliage season. Details on her website.
Simon’s weekend is off to a good start. His Friday message: “Lips To The World. And Just Live.” Thanks, Mary Oliver. Three days to the pub date for “Going Home.” To pre-order signed and personalized copies of “Going Home,” the book or the video, call the Battenkill Bookstore, my bookstore at 518 677-2515 and ask for Connie Brooks. I will be at the store Monday signing some of the hundreds of pre-orders and taking whatever calls I can. From noon on.
For poultry, Winston III has a good deal of personality. He is serious, pompous, irritable and very loud. I love photographing him. Animals inspire me. They are not my children, I do not believe they think or speak in words, but they do speak, and I do hear them. In Simon’s bray, in Winston’s call, I am inspired to make some noise for life, and for the good things in life – love, compassion, creativity.
When Winston puffs himself up and crows, I am roused to get to work, to light the creative spark and appreciate my life. I guess that’s talking.
There are few people in the world more important to me and to my former girlfriend than the Rev. Mary Muncil. She married Maria and I. She is a close friend. She is a very gifted minister and blogger. She is a good witch, and makes wonderful skin balm. She is a mystic and free thinker. She is my spiritual counselor. She introduced us to tubing. When we met, I said I wanted a spiritual life. She’s on it. Today on her website, she wrote about the importance of listening to one’s inner voice. This is something Mary has been teaching me, and that has been a challenging thing for me, and has evolved into one of the most complex and important ideas in my life.
Henry David Thoreau would have loved Mary. She is not interested in conventional wisdom or in other people’s ideas about how she should live. Like Thoreau, she believes in moving confidently in the direction of your dreams, living the life you have imagined, even when the world around us seems to be telling us something else – to be afraid take our tests, count our retirement money every day, worry about the future.
This has been my work. To think for myself. To listen to my inner voices.
When the world says, go take tests every year and life a life of fear on medications, my inner voice says, no, think about it, be careful, carve out your own vision of health.
When the world says choose sides – “left” or “right” and join in a political system that does not work for people any longer, my inner voice says, no, there is nothing for me in this system right now. My politics is personal, in the way I live, not in the things people shout at one another on cable tv.
When the world says rush Rose to the vet and take more tests and put her on more pills, my inner voice says wait, see if she can heal herself, watch her closely, trust your own perceptions of her.
When voices shout that the only way to God is in a church or a temple, my inner voice says there are other ways, other paths. And on and on.
When other voices tell us that we might hang onto life at all costs by any mean no matter what the quality of life, my inner voices says no, that is not right for me. That is not my choice. Nor am I convinced when people in the animal world tell me how to herd sheep, or when to euthanize a dog, or what food to give them.
When other voices told me I had no right to expect love, no right to change my life, no right to buy my farm and live my life, an inner voice told me not to listen to that. To look for love. To buy my farm. To improve my life. There are long lines of people in the world eager to tell me what to do. Not so many urging me to follow my mind and heart. And yet, that is the only way to think.
Thoreau believed in free thought and choice, but in our culture people seem to be losing the instinct and habit of thinking for themselves, prodded instead by what marketers in the Fear Machine want them to think.We are taught there is one way to do things, and so our idea of friendship and love is to tell other people how to do things. This, I think, is what sheep do, not what individual and free wills do.
The idea of awakening for me, I think, came when I began to realize how much I was living in fear, how many choices in life were driven by fear. As I stopped living in fear, I began to awaken. To listen to my voice. To hear it and to trust. To make my own choices. That doesn’t mean I am right or other people are wrong. It means these are truly my choices. For now.
My life is not an argument. It is just my life. I am grateful to Mary for helping me come to see this.
” If you convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.” – Henry David Thoreau
