Day: January 23, 2012

The first thing I look for every morning when I get up and out of bed is this tree, tall and proud and alone out in a huge corn field in the valley across from the farmhouse, perhaps a half-mile away. I call it My Tree because I once swore an oath to it that I would stay true to my wish for a life of self-determination, no matter where it led. At the time, and still, I have believed – as Joseph Campbell wrote – that human beings are either mythically  or security driven. The people who come up to me at readings and clasp my head and tell me of their dreams would be mythically driven. I don’t imagine too many people who are security driven would love this blog or hang around too long, although they are very welcome.

Thoreau urged us to live in the direction of our dreams, and there we would find happiness, love, creativity and purpose. He worshiped the idea that everyone dances to their own drum, and we have no right to tell anybody else how to dance. I believe he was correct and I work every day to do that. My Tree has stood out in the pasture for as long as anyone can remember, and the farmers over the years have cut down all of the other great trees that once surrounded it. None of them could bear to take this one down. It stands as a witness to time and place, and has great presence.

I talk to the tree of Moral Identity. What I want in life. A considered life.  With laughter and connection. Animals feed my humanity and compassion, and the better I treat them, the more my life seems to grow. I am still at it, Tree, as are you. I am making my own decisions, learning to trust myself, to live in hope and light.

I won’t quit, and I know you won’t either. I know one morning I will look out my window and you will be gone, chopped down, taken by loggers, bulldozed or splintered by lightning. Or perhaps I will go first and you will not hear my voice one morning, across the misty fields. But I appreciate you. You inspire me every single day to turn away from anger and fear and cruelty and to live a good life filled with love.

I have talked to the Tree every morning to tell us how it is doing, but I have never visited it. I have an itch to do that if the farmer will let me.

The first trip Maria and I ever took together – it was a dark time in a very bleak winter – was to Disney World, mostly because it was warm there and we got a great deal on the trip. The Great Recession was just a few months old and the people at Disney were wheeling and dealing. One of the first things we saw there was a daily show called “Dreams Do Come True.” In it, Mickey, Snow White, Captain Hook and the Evil Queen chased each other around. The spirit of evil was vanquished when Mickey led the vast crowd changing “Dreams Do Come True! Dreams Do Come True!” This caused Captain Hook to flee and the Evil Queen to vanish in a puff of smoke.  It’s an age old story, filtered through Disney’s particular prism. It rarely takes such a simple form.

This trip, Maria bought me this pin featuring Mickey and Walt Disney, a successful creative collaboration surely, and perhaps a hint of the evolution coming between human beings and animals. To my absolute shock, I’ve been wearing it. I’m taking it to New York tomorrow, that might shake my editors up a bit.

Nobody would claim Disney is cool or hip, it’s just that nearly everyone loves going there. Each time we go there,  we look for the “Dreams Do Come True” show. A lot of people beyond Disney are accepting and exploring the idea that dream are important. They show us where we want to go, they lead us to the places of our imagination. At the time of our first parade, my dream was that Maria and I, both coming out of divorces, would be together. Soon after, we were.

Shortly after that, my dream was to write fiction again, and soon I wrote “Rose In A Storm.” This time in Orlando, my dream was to move forward creatively, to try and expand my writing in new and different ways. I am now negotiating my first E-Book. I am dreaming of our New Bedlam Farm and I believe we will be there soon.

It is a different way of thinking. It is not sophisticated, fashionable or even comprehensible. Before, I did not dare to dream of such things. I wouldn’t dare. I would have considered it arrogant and foolish, much like the mice and witches at Disney World.

People who have lost the ability to dream have lost joy and promise.  I believe that dreams nourish the soul, give us hope, pull us forward, whisper to us to cherish our lives and live them, every day. Ring your bells, for a life well lived. I’m off to New York City for a couple of days, and the blog will cool down for a bit, like some overheated engine in a steam-filled factory.

When you feel great pain, you become conscious of the suffering of so many people, for whom chronic pain is a continuous reality of life. We sometimes tend to forget these people, as we forget the  struggles of others who are often out of our sight and awareness. In that sense, pain can be a gift. It can also test one’s faith.

I was in a lot of pain this morning, and while I am not a complete stranger to it, it had my full attention after my fall on my knee yesterday. I saw all kinds of stars last night. My first thought was to go to the emergency room, my second to an orthopedist. But then I listened to myself, and there was an inner voice for sure, and it said “you have worked hard to find and trust an alternative kind of health care, and why not use it, give it a chance?” I think pain is like fear in that way, in that it can wash choices and other kinds of alternatives away quickly.

I also have been working to trust myself, to listen to my body and feel it. The pain was substantial, but the leg bore weight and when it was still, it diminished. It didn’t feel broken to me. I didn’t intend to diagnose myself, but to take the time to consider how I felt. I called Dr. Roseanne Dennon’s office in Manchester, Vt. and talked to the practice receptionist, Janet Baierlein. Janet and I have have many conversations on the phone and in Dr. Dennon’s waiting room and she has been supportive and influential in my gathering the strength to define health in my own way and seek serious but alternative approaches to the conventional health care system, which does many things very well I gather – including dealing with orthopedic traumas. Still, the process has been long and frightening to me, and the support of people like Janet very important.

So this morning, a more urgent chapter in my health care than usual. I called Janet and told her about my knee. Come on in, she said. Dr. Dennon, who is easy to talk to, yet very focused and businesslike, had me lie down on the examining table and she moved, prodded, lifted, poked my knee and leg from about a 100 different vantage points. She adjusted my knee and my knee cap. She told me to get a bandage for my leg, to go home and lie down and rest my leg, elevate it, put ice on it. Go to New York, she said, do what you need to do, but take some time out to lie down, keep the leg up, put ice on. No medications.  The knee is better but I am not pushing it. No photos, no chores, no hopping up and down (mostly). I am doing what she says.

I do not mean to steer anybody away from their own choices of health care if they wish it or need it. I am not telling anybody else what to do, or arguing my own decision. But this was a good thing for me to have done. I have a health care system in place. They are very good. I listened to myself. I knew what to do. And as Dr. Dennon reminded me, I need to consider new ways to keep from falling on my hilly, icy, farm. I’ll do that too.

For me, this kind of health care is very important. They listen to me. I listen to them.  I trust them. They never do more than they need, and do not assign tests or procedures for other than health reasons. I mean to work to expand and retain this – for me – very new and different idea about what health and health care is, when I am tested as well as when I am not. Roseanne and Janet are warriors for health.

I fell Sunday, a long hard fall, my left knee landing square on a big flat stone. I call them hayloft falls. This one hurt  and I saw all kinds of white and colors and it was awhile before I got up. I don’t usually write about the minor traumas of life. I don’t like telling struggle stories. They often elicit sympathy and pity and they often trigger a lot of advice. Sympathy and advice are very well-meaning, and come from the heart and I appreciate that, but I don’t really care for either. Pity and advice are reflexes, I think, responses, but I don’t like being pitied and I don’t want sympathy  for my life and I cherish making my own decisions, doing my own research. We have to live our own lives, and experience life in our own way, not in the way of other people. So I believe.

After I fell, I went to Jenna Woginrich’s reading at Battenkill Books and there, the knee puffed up pretty good and moving it has been something of a challenge. I am not good at all at being still, resting, and I have tried to do everything I could possibly do to get the knee moving, mostly by ignoring it, and it is, of course, worse for that. Maria  caught me hobbling outside with the camera to get a photo of the donkeys and has threatened to beat me senseless if I don’t stop moving, so I will. She could do it. She is sweet, but has a hair-trigger temper and is not to be trifled with. Every time the knee hurts I think of how much I love her and it feels better.

I thought about calling an orthopedist, and then stopped and went online and browsed around a bit. I don’t want an X-ray or an MRI. I don’t want pain pills or surgery, etc. At least not now. I’ve got to go to New York City tomorrow and Wednesday for some important meetings with my publishers – Henry Holt for the children’s books, Random House for the adult books. I’m going to see my daughter Emma as well, so you can bet I am going, if I have to crawl around

So I called upon my young and emerging center, the soul of my own sense of life and spirituality, and I saw that I should listen to my own inner voice and call Roseanne, the chiropractor I go to. Come on over, her receptionist said. We’ll get you in, we’ll fix you up.

I’m glad to be writing this. Writing always makes me feel better, and open is open. This is one of those times where I see if I mean what I say, and I think I’m on a good track. Life happens, no matter how much positive thinking and meditating one does, and how you respond is the real test of spirituality for me. And of my own instincts. I’ll keep you posted.