Day: August 10, 2013

So after months of mulling my writing life, my writing future, subscriptions, etc., I’ve reached a big decision. Even though I will continue to expand the blog’s subscription program – the blog is how I will make the bulk of my living as a writer in coming years – I have decided that the blog will remain free and fully accessible to people who can’t afford or don’t wish to pay for it.

So far the subscription program has convinced me to trust my readers and have faith in them. People are happy to pay a small amount of money – $3 a month, $5 a month, or $60 a year – to subscribe to the blog. Next week, there will be credit card payment options as well as Paypal options. The conventional Internet marketing wisdom is that once a subscription program is in effect, then free access ought to be curtailed, if not eliminated.

But I have never really followed the advice of marketers too closely, if I had I would never have started this blog, or put so much free content on it. Although only a fraction of blog readers have subscribed, that is not an insignificant number – a lot of people come through this site and that number is growing and will, I believe, continue to grow. There has been little or no grousing about subscriptions, it is a payment for my writing and photos, not my life. I am not a good cause or a charity,  I do not need or accept donations.

People seem to grasp, even embrace the idea of paying me for my work, a growing realization online, and I am surely embracing it as well. If I am wrong in my assumptions about the good faith of people, I can always revisit the issue, but I don’t think I am wrong, people understand that I need to be paid for what I do, just as if they were buying a book – the blog is a book, for sure, and more – and my photos. I just trust my readers, as many trust me, and I don’t want to slam the door on any of them.

I just hate the idea of sealing off the blog or limiting access to it. I want people to see it, and to continue to flow into the site. I understand that many people are pressed these days and the idea of subscribing to anything makes them nervous, or they just can’t afford it. If they can afford it, and value it, they will subscribe in one of the varied options I am offering them.

I feel very good about this decision, internet marketers will think me crazy and they are, of course, right about that. I love getting paid for my work, I love having a blog that is free. We’ll see just how crazy I am.

I am as powerfully connected to Simon as I am to any animal I’ve ever lived with, except perhaps for Red. I often wonder about this connection, this attachment that a battered old farm donkey has to a human being from another world. Was it our healing each other?

Do we connect on the level so many people connect with animals on – this idea of rescue? In the ancient literature about donkeys, in the paintings and writings about donkeys, there is always this idea of a partnership, donkeys and humans linked together in what the ancients called the Theater of Chance. Donkeys and humans always seem to be traveling together, on the road together, sorting out life together.

I do not compare myself to animals, especially donkeys, yet Simon and I both met when each of us was opened up in the most intense way. I remember the beginning of this connection, when I started reading “Platero And I,” a wonderful book about donkeys and men traveling together in the Andalusia region of Spain. I was broken emotionally, he was broken physically, but not otherwise broken.

Simon was in the most horrific condition I have ever seen an animal be in and survive, yet it only seemed to affect his body, never his spirit, never his drive to live, his trust and willingness to connect. I was also struggling to survive in a different way, yet like Simon, I never stopped wanting to live, to find love, to trust and connect. So perhaps we began this process of healing together, each of us offering a need part to the shattered parts of the other.

Simon and I live in the Theater of Chance, we do not see ourselves as rescued creatures, as abused or piteous. We have danced in the dance together, and are still dancing. Maybe that’s it.

I found a grasshopper sitting in the kitchen sink yesterday afternoon. My first impulse was to crush it in a paper towel, for most of my life I’ve killed bugs and insects when I found them in my home. But now I am married to Maria, the Pagan/Buddhist/Nurturer of Animals, and now I re-home moths and worms and snakes (not flies or mosquitoes).

So I trapped the green grasshopper in a tissue – he was beautiful and I loved his shade of green and carefully held it so I wouldn’t crush him and took him to the back door and opened it. Once outside, I released him – I never imagined myself as a re-homer of bugs – and he took off, healthy and eager to get back out into the world, he few in a strong zig-zag right out towards the barn.

Only at this point did I notice the gray hen heading out at a fast trot underneath him, tracking his floppy arc. “No,” I yelled,”keep going!”, but the green grasshopper did not hear me, he landed right near the pasture gate and the gray hen arrived seconds later, leaned over and gobbled him right up.

I felt badly, really, for this grasshopper. Saved only to be eaten and pecked to a quick death. What was the message? Leave nature alone? Better to kill bugs than free them? Animals don’t live in a no-kill world? Mind your own business? Maria asked me later if I had reached any conclusions and I said I had.

Next time, I’ll let the grasshopper out the front door.