Day: June 10, 2013

Wednesday is our third wedding anniversary and Maria is taking me off to some secret location for one day, which is our usual  celebration. That are two days in my life that are deeply etched into my consciousness, the birth of my daughter Emma, my wedding to Maria. We got married in the big barn at Bedlam Farm, about 80-100 people were crowded into the barn, it was raining. I date my life to two periods, before Maria and after.

For more than two years, I had been pestering Maria to marry me. I knew she wouldn’t, I knew she wasn’t ready but I wanted her to know how much I loved her, how much I was committed to us. Every time I asked her – on walks, in restaurants, at dinner – she would look at me and smile, and say “no, thank you.” Then around the 500th time, she began saying, “maybe, not now, thank you.” One day she rocked my universe by saying “yes, ok.” She was ready. I was terrified she would come to her senses and find somebody better, handsomer, saner, younger. I did not see myself as a good catch. I would not have blamed her if she did.

But we just seemed to fit, and set off in the Theater Of Chance Together. Three years. Maria has given me a reason to believe in the afterlife, I want to spend eternity with her, I think it might happen, we are soul-connected and perhaps souls don’t die.

But for the moment, I have to interrupt this ode to love, I’ve got a good fever and am shaking like an October leaf. To bed. More later.

Lenore is a mud dog, she loves mud and water and a mess, she preens and wallows and dances around, and at some point, looks at me seriously, as if to say, “why aren’t you jumping in?”

Every time I look at our back porch, I do a bit of a double-take. Sometimes there are flowers, sometimes chickens, sometimes a barn cat or two, sometimes all of the above. The back porch seems to be a focal point for the barnyard creatures we live with, they love the cool slate, the shelter of the overhang, the sun warming them in the late afternoon. We gave up sitting there, we just turned it over and found other places to sit. On a farm, you are never alone, and a back porch can take many forms.

I am having a bit of a flirtation with my 35 mm lens, I am understanding it as a reliable scene lens.

Sunday, I posted a letter from Red to Dr. Karen Thompson on the roughly first anniversary of his coming to me. I tried to capture the world from a dog’s point of view, not a simple thing.  I also tried to capture the very remarkable nature of the story – Karen had read one of my books and she is a minister, a person of great faith, and she had this instinct that Red should be my dog. That is an amazing thing, to get a dog like Red in that way. And she was right.

I got a lot of response to the letter so I decided last night to record it as a podcast. I’m still tinkering with the podcast idea – Fromm Family Foods is interesting in sponsoring the podcast idea, figuring out the technical issues and also trying to determine what I’m comfortable doing. I’m not used to speaking without an audience, so that has been a little strange. And I’ve been wrestling with the technics of an external microphone which picks up all sorts of strange sounds.

I have to admit that the subject was also a bit emotional for me, something I realized as I was recording it.

I took my digital voice recorder and microphone and Ipad and extension cords down into the Cold Storage Room in the basement, as close to a soundproof room as I will find around here, and I think I figured it out. I hope to do weekly podcasts from Bedlam Farm, I recorded five versions of commentary on “Lulu’s Crossing” but I didn’t like any of them. I have high hopes for the podcasts (they are free), they are an exciting new way to communicate with my readers. So here it is, my reading of Red’s letter to Dr. Karen Thompson. I’m figuring it out, hope you enjoy it.

2013-06-09-Red’s Letter To Karen