Day: October 6, 2013

Writers, philosophers, lunatics and drunks have at least one thing in common, they  ponder the world while most people are too busy living in it to think that much about it. I have long wondered why people are so mesmerized by leaves changing colors as they die. Up where I live, the roads are already clogged with visitors – people here call them “peepers” – who travel great distances to drive slowly along roads and watch leaves die in colorful glory.

In the next few weeks there will be thousands more and we scheduled our Fall 2014 Open House on Columbus Day Weekend because so many people are planning to come here anyway. This year I think I’ve figured out why leaves strike so deep a chord in people. I think that just like life, you can look at leaves in autumn two days: a dead end, the end of something, or rebirth and renewal, the beginning of something.

Fall is either the end of summer, the end of color and warmth, or the beginning of something, the dawning of the winter, the cold, the gathering time. We learn here to drive slowly this time of year, if you go fast you could well plow into people from all over the country driving slowly to take photos of shedding trees and gawk at them. People are so bereft of nature and light that they are willing to drive far and spend a lot of money just to look at it, and this makes me feel good about living here. It is always strange to see people standing alongside their cars taking videos of leaves falling, I always wonder at it.

I have always seen Fall as the beginning of something, a new year, the arrival of winter. Winter for me is a time of less pressure, when I was a kid they were always trying to make me play baseball or run around and slam into other kid’s playing football. I hated it, in the cold I could retreat alone into my room and read and write and hang out with my tanks of tropical fish, I was as strange a boy as I am a man. Even Maria pushes me into doing stuff – walks, nature hikes, tubing on the river, swimming and wading. In the winter, nobody bothers me, I can retreat into my writing cave, light my candles, make my stories and poems.

I love being in nature, even if I am not so good at conquering it.  Nature touches something in us, we need it, we are broken when we are so separate from it, I have seen the healing power of the natural world and of a life with animals, I believe they both have saved me and inspired me, as a writer and as a human being. From the minute I arrived in upstate New York I began writing, and I have never stopped.

As a photographer, my sense of the seasons stops, winter will challenge me, so much of the light and color is gone. Still, I know that winter is my time. I gather myself, it is a spiritual time. Reading before a wood stove, dogs curled up around me, the beauty of the winter pasture, the awful beauty of big storms, being holed up working on my books, challenging myself to find photos that touch the heart and light up the soul. We have our wood, our hay, our oil in the burner. Bring it on.

Like philosophers and lunatics and many drunks I have met, I have decided that there are no dead ends, really.  Leaves, like dogs, are what we need them to be. Life and death are the same thing, so are beginnings and ends. Every end is a beginning, one can’t exist without the other. In meantime, I am out peeping, on the road hunting for dying leaves. For me, leaves are metaphors for the great drama of life – change, change, change. Life compressed happens to leaves, every minute, every day. A living video of our story.

Yesterday I pulled my car over at a riotously beautiful and a van full of peepers pulled over, hopped out with their tripods and point-and-shoots and asked me about my camera, people always notice it, it is big and heavy and black.  Red ran over to them wagging his tail and one of the people exclaimed, “look a red Springer Spaniel!”

No, I said he’s a border collie.

“No,” she said, “border collies don’t look like that. I used to have one.”

“Oh, I said, “you must be right. I guess he is a Springer Spaniel.” She nodded knowingly. I have learned when to argue – never, and when to go along, much too late in life I concede.

“Where do you live?,” asked the man, I think it was her poor husband.

“Right down the road,” I said.

“How come you have to come out and take photos, you must have trees in your own back yard?” one asked.

“I do,” I said, “but I’ve learned somethings. I used to avoid taking photos of leaves because everybody else was taking them. Then, when I thought about it, I realized it’s a good thing to take photos of things everybody else is taking photos of. There must be something do it.”

The man laughed and clapped his hands. “That’s good,” he said, “that’s good.”

“Springers are smart,” said his wife, smugly.

“Yes,” I said, “he is, and you should see him herd sheep!”

She was looking at me curiously, but I was already heading for the car.

Every weekend, the Hubbard Hall Tune Jam Band plays at the local farmer’s market, today it was cloudy and rain and the band played on, a fitting backdrop to the fruit, vegetables, bread, soap and other organic goods sold at this small and classy market. I love the summer here, and one reason I do is that I don’t have to go near a supermarket from June to late October, and after this week I will. The Tune Jame Band is one of those wonders of rural life, local residents who come together for special events in the community to make their music together. The rain did not seem to bother them.

Here, community means something.

We went to the Cambridge Farmers Market today and at the Happenchance Farm Stand the farm dog, Trixie, a border collie, takes up position behind the stand and looks out quietly at the customers. I drive by Happehance all the time, and I sometimes see Trixie running around, she is a great farm dog. And a great farm stand dog.

I was startled to check on my books – I do this at least once a week – to see that I had three on various bestsellers books relating to dogs, animals, dog breeds, training and hospice care.  A decade ago, this would have been cause for great celebration and the purchase of the second camera I would love to buy but cannot afford. Today, it means something else, and I’m not entirely sure what. High up on Amazon’s bestseller list – and also on the New York Times Bestseller list was my book Izzy & Lenore, New York Times Bestseller when it was published in 2008 (almost on the day the Great Recession erupted), re-released by Random House last month as an e-book selling for $1.99 and now on the New York Times Bestseller list again.

The paperback is still being published, still on-sale for $11.47. But the e-book price got the book moving, publishers believe many people will just buy any book at that price and take a risk, whether they read it or not, they have little to lose.

All weekend, Izzy & Lenore, the story of my hospice therapy work with my border collie Izzy, traded places in the number one slot with Danielle Steel’s Pure Joy, which recounted her life with her mouse-sized dog Minnie and their life in San Francisco and and their clothes shopping trips to Paris. Also on Amazon’s bestseller list and others was my first e-book original, The Story Of Rose: A man And His Dog, also a New York Times Bestseller but a book that did not sell tons of copies, even at the price of $2.99 and despite the most uniformly glowing reviews I have ever received.

That was a surprise, but it seemed clear the success of Izzy & Lenore was also calling attention to “Rose,” pulling it up the lists also. But a bigger surprise was seeing Second Chance Dog: A Love Story on a number of dog and animal lists, including Amazon’s. That book isn’t even out for another month, although it is available for pre-ordering, and I guess a lot of people are pre-ordering. It is quite amazing to have three books on bestseller lists at once, even if one of them costs $1.99 and another $2.99. I used to say my books now cost less than a cup of coffee but it’s getting closer to a Morning Glory muffin.

We are in the new world of publishing, and many readers expect books to be free or very, very cheap, and publishes are obliging by dropping prices down to pennies. (For sure, this is one reason I started moving towards subscriptions to the blog.) I never imagined a book of mine, even one likely to be remaindered soon, selling for $1.99. It is interesting how synergy works, because the cheap price of Izzy & Lenore is also pushing people towards The Story Of Rose: A Man And His Dog, and then to Second Chance Dog: A Love Story, even before that book has been published.

I can’t figure out the economics, I hope somebody somewhere along the line is making some money. It is interesting to note that before e-books, Izzy & Lenore would simply have been sent to the shredder and withdrawn from sale. Now it has a vigorous second life and is also bringing new people to my blog and my books. It is smart of Random House to trigger this burst.  This is the new macro-synergistic model of publishing, lots of things published at low prices to many people.

I will have a much better sense of how it works when Second Chance Dog comes out in a month, just four weeks before Christmas. That book can be pre-ordered anywhere books are sold, including Amazon, bn.com, Ibooks and all bookstores, but if you pre-order it from Battenkill Books, Maria and I will sign and personalize it, it is the story of how Maria and I and Frieda came together, a story of second chances and how love and renewal can come at any age.

By the weekend, Izzy & Lenore was two slots between Danielle Steel and Minnie and Second Chance Dog had dropped off of the bestsellers lists, not surprising for a book that isn’t out yet. I was glad I got to see all three of them bouncing around up there.

In the meantime,I’m not quite sure how to feel about my bestsellers, I guess I am excited and confused and optimistic and hopeful. The new world has arrived, and it has landed right in the middle of my writing life. I must confess it was wonderful to see three books of mine on those lists at once, it was never an easy thing to do, it is harder than ever. And who knows, maybe I’ll overtake Danielle Steel and her mousy dog Minnie as they head for Europe to check out the Fall Fashions.

My Post Office Box Number 2 (P.O. Box 2, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816) is just a few weeks old, but it is already yielding much treasure, bringing me back into the nearly lost world of letter writing and also of the time when messages were considered, and took some time to compose, send and receive and absorb. I remember when letters were a treasure, I am surprised and delighted to have them back in my life, I love my Post Office Box 2, I visit it every day and there is always something wonderful waiting for me – not a text, not a notification, not a “like,” but a letter, sometimes written, sometimes typed, signed and surprising, intimate and affirming.

Somehow getting letters in my Post Office Box affirms my identity, confirms who I am. It means something to send a letter, it means something to get one. I don’t know how long there will be Post Office Boxes, I will cherish them for as long as they exist.

Saturday, I went to the Post Office unlocked my box – it is right  by the door – and there was one letter stuffed into a pile of junk mail (we use that for starting our fires, it burns quickly and well). I went home, sat in the Adirondack Chair, leaned back and opened my letter, I might need to get a letter opener, I am using my farm knife.

It was like reading a good novel, I was caught by the first line and pulled in. It had been a difficult day, I was discouraged. I ended up tearing up, nearly crying, this message from Post Office Box Number 2 brought me back into life:

“You crossed my life trajectory in a mysterious manner, ” wrote Judy from a small town in Wisconsin. “I am a 74year old, crusty, sometimes ornery, often solitary RN, struggling with life issues, and one November day, when walking my border collie Rosey, on the isolated windswept bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan, a grizzled looking character pulled up next to me on the road in a beat-up old station wagon, and I thought – Oh, Oh, Mr. Masher!”

“He asked, “is that a border collie?”. I responded “yes.” He shouted “read Jon Katz!” and drove off, Judy said, she put it out of her mind. A year later, she wrote, she was in a Borders bookstore killing time and she was some books on the sale table with my name on them. She picked up Running To The Mountain.

“Since then,” Judy wrote, “you have been a daily part of my life with the blog. Have purchased all your books and after reading them multiple times, donated them all to the (local) public library so others can spread the gospel of authenticity, honor, human suffering and renewal, the dignity of suffering and inevitability of death with peace and acceptance. You have helped me through tough decision-making, bleak mornings alone, successful days when I truly made a difference with my patients, and the decision to revisit an old love to see if renewal is a possibility. Things don’t change but WE Do!.”

She closed the latter with a note to the man who yelled my name out of a car window: “..grizzled master out there, wherever you are, keep on spreading the word!”

I folded up the letter – which included a wintry glossy of Rosey on a path much like the one at Bedlam Farm and put it on my desk. I will have to find a safe place for these letters, I have not gotten one in a long time.  I had been through a rough morning, the Anxious World was bearing down on me,  I was struggling with tech support, online banking, lost passwords, I was discouraged at the new reality of publishing, when my books sell for $1.99 and still lag behind best-selling stories of wealthy women taking their cute little Shit-zhu’s  to Paris. I was thinking, my stories will just never be cute enough to matter in the world, the world has changed.

But when I read Judy’s letter and I was reminded that I do make a difference, and my stories do matter, and things do not change but I do. I work every day to become more authentic, to live honorably, to understand the dignity of suffering and the inevitability of death. I work every day to accept my life, and to love it, and to never speak ill of it. And I know, as I hope Judy now knows, that love and renewal is always a possibility, at any age.

So thank you, Judy, I doubt I would ever have seen this message or that you would ever have sent it without my Post Office Box Number. It is a treasure, a reminder to me that considered words do matter in the world, and that life is filled with magic.

This is the beginning of a new column – “Letters From Post Office Box Number Two.” It will be about the power of the considered word, the re-affirmation of self in the era of the text message.