Thanks to all of you for posting all those wonderful names for the new hen. We have elected to go with “Toots.” She seems like a “Toots” and it’s a neat name for a hen. I appreciate the names. The winner will get a signed copy of “Going Home” and thanks again.
Researching “Going Home” I was increasingly intrigued by the guilt I saw and heard when people talk about their lost pets. They should have acted sooner. They acted too soon. They waited too long. They did too little. They did too much. They spent too little. They spent too much.
Guild is an odd and useless emotion to me, and I wrote about it a good deal in “Going Home.” It’s useful to remember that animals don’t feel guilt, and don’t blame other animals for their troubles. They don’t have regrets and recriminations. This is a human construct, and much as we love to put it on our pets, there is no evidence they feel our many neurotic emotions. I fully understand the profound sadness many of us feel when we lost the animals we love. But guilt? I don’t quite get it.
It’s interesting when I hear these guilt stories, because almost all of them are blatantly and obviously untrue. The people who feel guilt are the ones who love their animals the most and worry about them the most. People who mistreat their animals rarely feel guilt about it. I love the Biblical Story of the man who went before God and begged for mercy. “I am not worthy,” he said.
God looked down on him and smiled.”You are enough.” It’s a good story to think about when you feel guilty, I think.
We are enough. Most of us do enough, do the best we can, and usually, that’s pretty good. It’s all we can do. I am learning to drop old fears and troublesome ways of thinking. Dropping guilt is an elemental step towards grieving that is meaningful and sometimes even joyous, rather than tangling the animals and our memories of them up in all this very human baggage. Lucky for them, they are not like us.
I believe that sadness is essential to grief, healthy and cleansing. Guilt is a symptom and disorder, a close cousin of anxiety and depression, not something that is grounded in real life. It depends on a willing human participant to survive. If you ignore it, drop it, walk away, it will shrivel up and die, like many kinds of fear. Guilt isn’t truthful. It doesn’t help anyone or anything, not you, not the dog or cat or horse or chicken. It has no purpose other than to shower the glorious human-animal bond with misery. Maybe try this: Just drop it.
The Morning Glory is a willful flower. Like a donkey, it has a mind of its own. It hangs on long after other flowers have given up. It closes and opens when it feels like it, and it can pretty much go where it wants, even if you don’t want it to go there. When it has something to say, though, you hear it. This is a flower that speaks up for itself.
Put the Daily Egg in an old cold cream jar we dug up beneath an old stone wall. They seem to fit together somehow. Tomorrow, back to Battenkill Books. Another load to sign and ship out. People ask if my hand hurts. Maybe a bit, but nothing makes me happier than signing my own books. If I ever complain about that, then my fingers deserve to fall off.
I told Maria a few minutes ago that I felt at a loss for words, and she laughed. “You’ll get over it,” she said. Today was supposed to be a quiet day. Five or six interviews, but no signings or talks until Sunday, a chance to rest up before next week, which includes a Midwest Swing through Wisconsin and Ohio and the Pig Barn Art Gallery Show on Columbus Day Weekend. I knew that Slate.com, an online magazine I sometimes write for, was planning to publish an excerpt from “Going Home.” When the excerpt first went up, I saw they had a photo of me, so I send my editor the above photo of Lenore. Nobody can resist looking at that face, and it fit the excerpt, in several ways.
There were signs that “Going Home” was selling. Connie Brooks is getting a stream of orders for signed and personalized copies of the book at the Battenkill Bookstore (518 677-2515) and the book was being heavily pre-ordered, according to Amazon, independent stores, and Bn.com. Random House and I have had a creative and effective time working on “Going Home.” Writers love to squawk about their publishers, but the marketing team at RH had a ton of good ideas and we were having fun exploring new ways together to get the message out. As you know, I believe writers have to take more responsibility for marketing these days, but nobody can make a successful book alone. I was especially proud of the “Going Home” page and video project. Nearly 1,000 animal lovers so far have shared images and stories about the pets they have loved and lost, and those who are alive still. Many of their images were used in the “Going Home” video. My first two events – held locally – were both crowded and lots of books were sold. Everybody seems to know somebody they think ought to have this book.
Still, I was planning on a quiet evening, the last for awhile.
At 2 p.m., I started getting hundreds of e-mail messages from people who were reading the excerpt and liking it. That was my first inclination something unusual was happening. Then my Slate editor e-mailed me that the column was getting “monster views,” more than a million as of 3 p.m. Then another wave of e-mails: Msn.com was linking to the column Slate on its monster website homepage. My agent e-mailed me that the book was number 40 on Amazon. Time, I told Maria, to turn off the computer, have a glass of wine and get my head organized.
It feels like a day that has changed things a bit. In publishing, things go up and down quickly, and the cultural attention span is short. Some hot video on You Tube of a puppy could alter things quickly. Still, a million views…Wow. I am also proud that I have changed my own attitude about co-operating, listening, opening up, changing. I was told a few years ago that writers who wanted to survive needed to change. I have, personally and professionally. I am letting people help me, allowing myself to trust others and let them support and challenge me.
I don’t, of course, know how far this will go or how long it will last. It feels like the book has taken on a life of its own,and I am just along for the ride. I am loving the conversations I am having with people so far, and I am a bit numbed by today. I wanted to share this with you, since many of you have been along on this curious ride for some time, and I will be faithful to the idea of being open here about a writer’s life. Going to be a wild book tour I think. I’m ready. I think.
