Day: July 26, 2013

A little over a week ago, we decided to put Bedlam Farm up for rental and see what happened, so I’m offering an update as promised. The phone started ringing off the hook for Kristin at Preble Realty – 518 854 7888 and Kristin spent a lot of time fielding phone calls and answering questions. Kristin can tell pretty quickly who’s serious. One woman said she wanted to rent the farm and write a book but she couldn’t rent it now, because her dog is old and sickly and might not handle the trip North. Not serious.

Another woman said wanted to rent the farm and establish a dog rescue facility there and would raise the rent though boarding rentals. Not serious. Another wanted to know where Orson was buried, could she come to farm and see the site? No. Some people were serious – a woman from Vermont wants to raise Alpacas in Washington County, but it seems she wants enough pasture to grow her own hay (for me, buying hay is a lot cheaper than buying a tractor.) Another wants to partner with Maria and I in a Bed &Breakfast, not serious. Another is coming up from Florida in a week or so to look at the farm, and she might be serious, she wants to come north to live.

Kristin is still sorting through the calls. I think the farm is well suited to two kinds of people – people who want a second home to test out life in the country, and people who want a neat house and facilities for having animals like sheep, goats, horses or alpacas. Kristin is also getting a lot of e-mail ([email protected]) about Bedlam Farm. Nothing concrete yet. It also seems that more people have surfaced who want to look at the farm and buy it. We will see, we’ve shaken up the tree, somebody will come and love this beautiful place, I can feel it.

Every morning, I bring Red out into the pasture, to get the sheep out of the barn, keep them away from us while we clean the barn, give carrots to the donkeys, say hello. It is a beautiful scene for me, every day, the sun seems to find Red and light him up.

We came out to do the morning chores and I was a little startled to see my girl Flo the barn cat (retired) in the old apple tree, high up. When I looked up, she came skittering down – Flo is always looking for a cuddle – and she practically walked right into my camera lens. Now that it is cooler, Flo has resumed moving around a bit, perhaps she was up there hunting a bird or just exploring – I will never know. Flo and I are in sync.

I especially love photos I take when I come across an image that perfectly reflects what is going on inside of me, as well as what I see outside of me. Photography is an emotional thing for me, I began taking photos when I met Maria and every one is a love letter to her, then and still. I believe photographs are a reflection of what is going on inside the person with the camera as much as anything.

Like writing, photography is always shrouded in mystique and an aura of complexity. People are always telling me they are not writers and they are not really photographers as if they need some special certificate or graduate course of approval. This never sits well with me, I never understand or accept it. I never took a writing course in my life or graduated from college or took a writing workshop. I decided I wanted to be a writer, and so I became a writer. I decided late in life I wanted to take photos and so I became a photographer. I told Maria many times I am not an artist, and she laughed at me the same way I roll my eyes at other people when they tell me what they are not.

In this life, we are what we wish to be. There is no magic in taking a photo unless there is magic in your heart. There is no magic to writing if there is not magic in your head. Encouragement is an ideology, a philosophy. It holds we all hold creative sparks – creativity, ambition, achievement, love. Nobody gets to decide who we are, that is our mission, our sacred tasks.

When I saw this barn at dusk, it perfectly reflected what I was thinking, that we live in two worlds, the world we seek, the world we have, and we are forever balancing these two impulses. In the creative life, there are always obstacles to work – money, distractions, obligations, fears. In the spiritual life, reality is always introducing on the search for peace and constancy.

But the core of it is this – our work, our aspirations are our identity, our voice to the world. They are not things that others can give or take away. Only we can do that.