5 June

After The Rain. A True Love Story

by Jon Katz
A Love Story

I love stories, maybe because I am in one, and I collect them. Think how wonderful the news would be if it ever included a love story, or if it included them every day. Part of awakening, I believe, is to know that there are so many love stories out there,and they are just as important as the angry men and women shouting at one another.

I heard one such story tonight. A woman in her 60’s, a strong, educated and loving woman, worked to stay inside a loveless and cold marriage for nearly 30 years. Her husband was an angry man, judgmental, quick to lose his temper, belittling and controlling. Not that rare a story, sadly, we hear it all the time. She had given up on doing better. Not easy to find love when you are over 40, she was told. And told. No movies about that in the theaters, no shows on TV, no CD’s with that story.

One day she discovered just what an awful man her husband was, and she went to a lawyer and left him. She had wonderful friends, did her good work, had a full life, but she was still, lonely, yearning for a companion that the world told her was not likely to ever appear. She subscribed to an online dating service for the first time in her life  – it was Match.com – she said, and went through one poor match and another and was about to quit when she came home and saw a message from a man who said he would make a perfect match for the right woman. Hmmmphhh, she said, how cheeky, and then she wrote back and said she would be a perfect match for the right man.

They had dinner the next week, they fell in love, they share a love of animals,  talk to one another all day and are soon to start traveling the world. “I almost gave up on it,” she said, “but I couldn’t. Some voice told me not to. We love each other so much and I never thought it could happen.”

How wonderful my friend is, to never give up on love, even when the world told her to. I didn’t give up on it either, and I told her this and we teared up on the telephone a bit. After a rainbow, a true love story.

5 June

Rainbow In My Yard. Daring Me

by Jon Katz
Rainbow In My Yard

I glanced out the window shortly after 8:30 – this happens more and more since I began taking photos – and I heard that the rain had stopped, and I saw a rainbow in my front yard, just sitting there, waiting for me, calling to me.

Daring me, I think.

To live in fear.

To not see the world as a dark and dangerous place.

To live in the fears and narrow expectations of others.

To give up on love.

To give up on hope.

And thank you, thank you.

For reminding me that without rain,

you would never have come into my yard.

5 June

Butterfly: New Bedlam Farm. Choosing Life

by Jon Katz
Butterfly: New Bedlam Farm

I am so struck by the many touches in our new home that reveal the spirit of Florence Walrath, who lived her for 80 years and made every inch of it her own, as my wife will soon begin to do. Kindred spirits, those.

I feel as if I have come home whenever I come to the New Bedlam Farm. The house needs a great deal of work – I am only realizing how much. Yet I love everything in it and there is not much we would like to really change. (Okay, the bathroom, maybe.)  As I work through the complexities of home buying – people talk about real estate transactions in much the same way they talk about the economy, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads in sympathy – I remember the vows Maria and I took at our wedding two years ago, and also the vows I made to myself as I have worked my way through fear and challenge. We have a choice, as does everyone. We can awaken or we can sleep through the setting of narrow boundaries for us, accepting these external ideas of what safety and comfort mean.

We can choose fear, a kind of death, or we can chose life, an affirmation. We choose life. I choose life. Every time I turn away from fear, move forward with my life, separate myself from the  great mob and their news,  shouting at us to be afraid, be concerned, be careful, take your tests and count your savings, be small and angry, be left or right, I am choosing life. Buying this house, we choose it again.

This is perhaps what I feel in the New Bedlam Farm, another fork in the road, another rebirth and renewal, another chance to make a choice for living my life. Here’s to that and to the many brave people out there struggling so mightily to do the same. We are here. We are alive.

5 June

My Office: New Bedlam Farm. Books And Blog HQ

by Jon Katz
My Office: New Bedlam Farm

Maria will work in a new studio behind the farmhouse, and we both decided I ought to work in the downstairs parlor – where the dead were always laid out. Seems to fit. I love this space, and I can imagine writing and blogging happily from there.

In the farmhouse, I tend to drift all over the place – the porch, dining room table, a corner study. The New Bedlam Farm is smaller, but the rooms are large an have such wonderful character. This is a dream place for me to write. More photos later.

5 June

Kitchen: New Bedlam Farm

by Jon Katz
Kitchen Reflections

Several people asked me what we wanted to to do the kitchen at the New Bedlam Farm. Little or nothing, I think. Maria and I love it’s old porcelain feeling. I love the reflection of the light on the ceiling. We went in to the house today to check on things – first time we’ve seen it with most of Florence’s furniture gone. I’ll put up an album later this evening. We loved every inch of it. I can’t wait to cook in this kitchen.

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