Day: August 13, 2013

When I came  home from the doctor and told Maria I had decided to go on insulin, I saw that she was angry. I was surprised, she is one of the most sympathetic creatures in the world. She seemed short with me, abrupt, leaving the house to go back to her studio, and when she came back she asked me some sharp questions: Was I sure? Wasn’t there anything else I should do? She could do? That we might try? She wondered if I was giving up, and then after a few minutes, she began to cry and said she was just upset, it seemed like a big deal to her and she wondered if I was accepting it all too readily.

We talked about it, as we often do when there is some tension or trouble and she wrote a beautiful thing about it on her blog yesterday. I was inspired by her piece, I wanted to write about it also. Maria and I talked it out quickly, I told her I was expecting this, I was prepared for it. I have long been eating properly, made many changes in my life to deal with diabetes, I saw that my blood sugar levels were too high, and if I didn’t do something about it, then there would be some permanent damage to my organs, which had not yet happened. I am accepting this, dealing with it directly, blame is neither healthy or useful.

It was a big deal to me, too, I said, I didn’t want to get here, but I am very cognizant of the fact that there are many worse fates to befall people, many things medicine does not understand as well as diabetes. There are many worse things to hear, as many reading this know. The truth was, I said, this was my problem, she couldn’t fix it or take it on, she couldn’t make it better. I had to deal with it myself and I had and was and would. I would surely ask her help when I needed it, and I knew it would be there.

I hear people blaming other people and things for their troubles all the time. The government. The banks. The media. I hear parents blame teachers, and patients blame doctors. The left. The right. When something goes wrong, it seems to be a human instinct to be angry, to find someone to blame, to shed responsibility, taking responsibility for one’s life is a pretty rare thing. I do not blame myself, doctors, health care, the Gods,  for diabetes, it was in my family, I always knew it was a possibility, I could perhaps have reacted to it much sooner.

There is no point in blaming other people for my life, it is distasteful to me, I don’t believe in it, it is not healthy. Recently, I had to remove several hundred people from the Open Group at Bedlam Farm, there were just too many people in it, and I tried to notify as many as I could, but there were just too many for me to contact individually. I was saddenes by the outraged messages I got demanding explanations, suggesting they were victims, they received no satisfcation, blaming me for disliking them, for being unfair to them.

And then were those messages saying they understood that changes and difficulties occurred in life, and they appreciated the complexities,  they didn’t take it personally, but they would love to be re-admitted, they loved the site. I let every single one of those people back in instantly. They not only told me they cared about the site, they told me they didn’t need to fix blame when life happens. They are the sort of people you want in any group.

Kiki messaged me this morning and thanked me for the blog, which she said got her through a difficult time in her life, she wasn’t sure why, it just did. There are she said, only two elemental rules in life:

No one gets out alive and everything changes.

How true, how wise. Almost all our troubles and miseries come from those two realities of life.

Who is the blame for that?

I see lots of children coming to the farm, and it is understandable but sad to see how frighten most of them are around the animals here. The Bedlam Farm are animals, and any animal needs to be treated cautiously, but when I see children come who are appropriate, careful and affectionate – even at two – you know they have been given the opportunity to be around the natural world, to learn how to be, to not just be aware of the dangers, but also of the wonderful connections and experiences that can come from animals. Jay Anderson walked the pasture, visited the sheep, cuddled with Simon, hung out with Flo the barn cat in the garden and gave Red a good belly-scratched.

You learn a lot about people from watching animals react to them, and the animals here are skittish around people who are afraid of them. At one point, Simon grabbed for a carrot in Jay’s hand and he nipped the edge of Jay’s figure lightly. Jay winced, cried for a moment, and then asked for another carrot to give Simon. He approached the animals slowly – his father cautioned him to be even slower – and they all were at ease around him. Border collies don’t roll over on their backs for scratching unless they feel very much at ease, full of trust. Hope Jay hangs around the farm.

Jay Anderson and his father Jeff came to the farm today, Jeff and I were meeting to talk about plans for the new Open Groups Of Bedlam Farm, and Jay took the place by storm. He is a born animal lover, and the animals here loved him. Simon and he bonded quickly, and even Flo the reclusive barn cat ended up in his lap. He belly-scratched Red, picked flowers in the garden for his mother. Oh yes, Jeff was there too.

Watching Simon and Jay, it occurred to me once again that Simon must have known children in a previous existence, on another farm. He loves kids, he was enchanted with Jay, snuggled him and followed him around the pasture. More photos later.

I love moving forward into the new world with this blog, bedlamfarm.com, now eight years old and growing. Wow. When it began, I have 200 people on the site each month, and now there are nearly 160,000 each month, I don’t know how many on Facebook. The blog is a mirror, a reflection of my life, the evolution of writing, the world we live in.

As is customary, I’m offering in update on where things stand. First, the mobile Web design for smartphone users is up and running, and a hit, thank you for all the nice messages. My Open Group at Bedlam Farm is successful, cohering beautifully into a creative work sharing site. I’ve pared it down to 450 people or so, it is better. I’m thinking of creating two or three much smaller groups to allow for more teaching, work shopping, encouraging and communicating on a personal level. They would be limited to 15 or 20 people, rotating in and out. Subjects might include blogging, photography the arts, animal love. More later. The group is capped right now, but will be opened up again later.

Thank you for all of the subscriptions to bedlamfarm.com, they are appreciated. I love being paid for my work – and to be honest, I need to be paid for my work –  and the $3 option has been helpful to people who are pressed financially. The most popular choice has been the $5 subscription option, then the $60 a year choice.

These have all been on Paypal, in the next few days it will be possible to sign up for the blog using your credit card of choice. I see there are Paypal people and credit card people, and you can each have your own way here.  The credit card buttons are up, but they are not yet operational, the wizards at Mannix Marketing are on it.

As I announced earlier, the blog will remain free – permanently – to those who can’t afford to pay for it, or simply don’t wish to. I think it would be  wrong to cut off or limit access to the blog to people who have been following it and supporting my work for some time, I just couldn’t do it. They will always be welcome here.  My goal is to get three to five percent of the people reading the blog to subscribe, this is considered very good in Internet marketing terms in the period when we are making a transition to an Internet where all the good stuff was free, to one where people pay small amounts to access it. It feels good to me, and clearly, to most of you as well. Thanks for that. I resisted it for years and I am still not sure why.

Publishing has changed rapidly and while I am committed to my paper books, they are a smaller part of my life and publishing revenues have declined sharply due to digital publishing and other factors. This blog will soon be my primary means of making a living, along with e-books and every year or so, hardcover books. And I like it, I love working on it, writing on it, sharing my photos. People who wish to subscribe on Paypal can do so now, I’m $200 away from my weekly goal,  otherwise the credit cards will be up and running shortly. Stay tuned, more podcasts are coming as well this Fall.

The blog is the new book, my new living memoir and it is time to be paid for the work that goes into it. It is expensive to maintain and the subscriptions make it and the photography and maintenance and mobile web designs possible. I think I’m doing well in my transition to the new writer’s life, and you are all a big part of that. Those NPR fund-raising drives used to bug me, but I am more sympathetic now.

Among the many joys of being a writer is that writers tend to come into their own as they get older, mostly because the older they get, the more they have to write about, the more they have seen, the more they have to share. This is also true of photographers and artists I think. In our culture, older people are discarded like plastic water bottles, sent to the trash but not re-cycled. In the Corporate Nation, the value of life is measured in remaining peak purchasing years, not in wisdom and experience. Nobody wants to hear the lessons or cautions of old people, they are banned from the news, movies, TV shows and hideous cable debates. Curiously enough, I always did want to hear the stories of older people, I still do. I feel like I’m soaking up the meaning of life, they have so much to tell me. I love to hear about their joys and regrets, soak up their lessons and parables, and I am grateful for that.

This made me a story-teller and gave me stories to give back. As I get older – I am still working out taking insulin now, I took my blood and gave myself the first injection this morning, and it has put me in a reflective mood this rainy day – I think more and more about my life, my past, my regrets and lessons.

I have this idea that  our world has become  harsh, edgy, tense and rarely nourishing. Everywhere I go, I am asked for passwords, social security numbers, my mother’s maiden name, the teacher in elementary school that I most disliked. The big idea in our world seems to be that our lives are filled with danger, nobody can be trusted, nobody can be taken at their word. Everyone I talk to seems to assume I am dangerous, a thief, a hacker, or worse, and those codes and passwords are supposed to make me safe.  I work to find the points of light, the points of connection. They are almost always there. Underneath it, we are all human.

As I enter my 60’s, parts of me are diminishing all the time, other parts growing richer and deeper, I sometimes feel I am a skiff going in two directions at once.  Something aches on most days, I have never felt younger, more energetic, more creative. My big lesson now: it is important to work to soften the edges of life, to be kinder, to be gentler, to listen.

When I go to the health center to get my blood checked, to get my prescriptions – it is fascinating to be where you said a million times you would never be, and isn’t there a lesson in that? – I stop and asked the harried women how they are, I work to get a smile, to break through the ice, to find the natural part of any human that wants to trust, to get to the spark in all of us that is passed my passwords and codes. I mean who but the real me would want to come to a health center to get blood drawn?

I am working to soften the edges of my life, and those of the people around me. To be softer to the people on the phone, the tense bank phone bankers, people on the edge of our lives who control our money and machines and sometimes, our peace of mind?

This is a lesson  I have to offer to the world. Soften the edges, be gentler and kinder. When I think of my regrets, I most often think of the times I failed to be gentler, kinder, softer. I love being a writer growing older. Sometimes I feel I have finally learned a few things, and I will pass them on, whether or not people want to hear them.