Day: February 17, 2012

 

I think that moving and health care have something in common for me. To do either in the way that I wish, I have come to disregard most of the things people tell me about either, all or most of my life. The foundation of health care seems to be warnings and dangers, fear and helplessness. The foundation of real estate right now are the twins of gloom and despair: “in this market,” and “in this economy.” When you tell people your house is on the market – a farm no less – you are greeted in much the way as if you said you are parachuting into Afghanistan.

I am starting the “Moving Chronicles” to share the experience of selling Bedlam Farm and finding a New Bedlam Farm. It occurred to me while Maria and I were away that it is odd not to be sharing perhaps the most important experience in our lives this year – leaving this place, so important to us, and finding a new home together.

The house has been on the market a month. All kinds of people are driving by with cameras and taking long hard looks. But they could be watching out for Simon, you don’t really know. No buyers yet.

As is often the case, I am sorting out all of the information raining down on me.  In addition to being told that real estate is not moving these days, I have also been told to find a take-no-prisoners, wily real estate agent. To be dour when looking at properties, lest the sellers suspect I like them. And to sell the farm to anyone at any reasonable price. That isn’t going to happen.  I’ve never had more blood and soul in a place than I do in this one. I found myself as a writer here, lived here with Rose, fell apart here and met Maria here. I’ve written seven books on the farm, became a photographer, watched a movie being made off of one of my books.   Maria has found herself as an artist in the Studio Barn.  It is a powerhouse of a creative place. Still, we are both clear and focused on moving. It is time for a life that continues to be creative and will include our animals – donkeys, dogs, cats and chickens are all coming – but it is also time for a different kind of life, one I will share as it evolves.

Maria and I are not going down the path of conventional wisdom. There is no wisdom in it. We  can’t wait to meet the people who will feel the same way.  We will only sell the farm to someone who will get as much joy out of it as we have. We have a  mother-daughter real estate team in Chris and Kristine Prebble. Both are direct, honest, and perceptive, easy to talk to. They seem to listen to what we want and guide us to it, even if we sometimes forget. And we are closing in.

We have found a home we like, and we have met the people who are in it, in the sad process of cleaning out their mother’s things. We like them, talked to them, let them know how much we like their home. We were not coy, and neither were they. You could see this was important to them, even as I forgot to be dour and cluck at all the things that might need fixing. This is a process that felt right to us.

We are ready for this change, and determined to shape it in a way that is meaningful and uplifting. And spiritual as well.  Today we ordered a dumpster so we can start hauling things out. This will help make the move real to us. It is time for this move, and we will make sure to find people around us who share the happiness in such as passage as well as the difficulties.

Moving is a complex process. There are legal, emotional, financial and many other issues involved. It will be challenging and disruptive. We chose to embrace it and do it in our way.  I will keep up with it in the “Moving Chronicles.” It is the big story here.

 

Patty Newton of Brattleboro,Vt. did a Tarot Card Reading for Maria and me yesterday, something I would surely have scoffed at a few years ago. This is the second reading we have done with Patty and we were both deeply affected by it. It was perceptive, affirming and very relevant to us. Patty does a lot of things – readings, psycho-therapy, holistic health referrals and consultation, Feng-Shui, spiritual adornments.  It might be difficult for Patty to survive in many parts of America, but in Brattleboro, she is nearly mainstream. She is a part of my health care, and that is not a joke to me. Patty personifies my evolving idea about health care: I know it’s good when insurance doesn’t pay for it, when it is located in small storefronts in back alleys, when the practitioners have no receptionists and handle their own money, and when you are not afraid to go.

For me, the best health care has been on the edge of health care, and while that is not universally true, it is increasingly true for me. In the reading, we talked about soul-selling, the small compromises that disintegrate one’s sense of self and life, of the spirituality inherent in all of life – day-to-day, friendship, business, change. Of insulating oneself from the anger and judgement that swirl everywhere. Of the need to surround yourself with people who want their lives to mean more than angry political declarations, money and security, surviving from one passage to another.

How remarkable that I would be amazed by the perceptions of this woman, so unlike me, and yet in so many ways, exactly like me. I have learned to worship the power of new experience, to challenge myself to be open to it, and to understand jeers and contempt as a symptom of mine, not a shortcoming of theirs. Perhaps it is important in life to take great care to who and what you listen to. I am happy to include Patty amongst my new health care practitioners and I expect to live long and well.

Even in a place of darkness, light. In the small cemeteries of Vermont and upstate New York, it seems to me death was in the open, more commonplace, treated differently and in a more conscious way. I love the white slab rising out of the stained and weathered stones. I saw it from a long way off. From the darkness, light. From sorrow, joy. From struggle, peace.

In a Vermont village cemetery, we stopped at the gravesite of 24-year-old John Bathrick, who died in the infamous Andersonville Prison Camp, run by the Confederacy during the Civil War. Someone still puts flags on his tombstone.

Home again, from two sweet days in Vermont. We visited Rocky on the way back and gave him apples. He seemed happy to find us there. We ran around Brattleboro. Got a wonderful Tarot Card reading. I will put some photos up, and I  have a lot to write about, including a new Moving Chronicles: In Search Of The New Bedlam Farm, an account of the contemporary experience of selling a home and finding a home. We have strong feelings about how we want to do it, and we are finding that like so many other things in life – politics and health care comes to mind – it is important to ignore almost everything you hear and are told about it. Settling in. More later. Glad to be back. Got to feed the donkeys, walk the dogs.