As the cold weather arrives and the pasture grass begins to die and brown, we go to the outer edges of the pastures for grass and brush, Red and I took the sheep out late this afternoon on a beautiful, cold and windswept day, and then after an hour or so, we walked them back to the farm. I am privileged to be in such beauty, so close to nature, learning to live the animals in my life, working with a remarkable dog like Red. This week, we will work with some vets, hopefully some from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Minnie had a better day today, she seemed to snap out of her two-day torpor a bit, we let her out early this morning and at first, she tried to run back into the house. She seems very intimidated by Flo, tries to avoid her, but after a few minutes, she walked across the grass to the woodshed, then cautiously made her way to the barn (where we found her the afternoon of the attack)
One of the many wonderful gifts coming to me later in life is my meeting the teacher in me, a part of me long buried and unrecognized, filled with meaning and emotion. One of the great ironies of my life is that I could never come to terms with education, I hated every day of school, learned little, confused and irritated every one of my teachers, and eventually abandoned the educational process completely. I was suspended from two different colleges for failing to attend class or complete exams, I spent my college time writing for alternative publications, exploring the wondrous subcultures of the 60’s, having sex and drinking. And I must say I learned a lot.
I am sure it was my fault, not the teachers, I was in a bad way much of the time, but I never experienced any kind of encouragement within the educational system, and the notion of encouragement began to grow in me.
Later in life, I taught at New York University for four years while writing my first novel, and while I loved teaching, I came to see that students were not a major concern of the academics around me, they were too preoccupied with other things. After that, I left education aside but after my crack-up at Bedlam Farm, I felt this calling arising in me. I began sponsoring open houses and art festivals (with my new friend Maria), teaching writing workshops at libraries and art centers, looking for a place to focus on this idea of encouragement. Along with love and photography, other things began opening up inside of me.
My first few efforts didn’t work – the wrong places, the wrong students, the wrong subjects.
Now, I have found a good home for teaching in the Hubbard Hall Arts Center in Cambridge, N.Y., a former opera house and freight complex turned into a beautiful theater and a number of classrooms and teaching complex offering classes in all kinds of things – theater, singing, dance, Tai Chi, writing. I donate my fees to the Hubbard Hall Scholarship Fund (next year I’ll take a small payment) I taught my Writer’s Workshop first (that went from six weeks to two years) and now, my “Art Of The Blog Class.” I’m eager to share the rapidly evolving ascending blogs of my students with you over the next few weeks. Two exciting ones are theshoulderedmuse.com by Roger McManus, a novelists and fantasy writer and elizabethnicholsross.com, a thoughtful celebration of life and death on life and death from a funeral home director in the small town of Cambridge, N.Y.
This class is fascinating as many of the students were unaware of blogs and even frightened of them. They are cranking out good stuff, finding their voices, writing up their lives and lessons and stories. The class is as wondrously varied as my town – a massage therapist, a singer, a retired Bishop, a novelist, a worker at a forest preserve, an undertaker, among others. They have all come alive, and are encouraging one another, something I preach and practice. They are embracing the notion of blogs as a means of voice in a disconnected society.
It turns out there is a teacher in me. I love the notion of encouragement, and I know how important it is. I am at an age where I have finally learned a few things and I am anxious to share them. Teaching only works with people who want to learn, otherwise it is just more background noise, and I have been fortunate to find people eager to listen and learn, and to then go and make their own way. I see the teaching spirit inside of me as a spiritual being, an entity, a calling. In our culture, aging is seen as being about health care and the warehousing of people and money and downsizing, but the gift of aging is wisdom and sharing, when it is sought and can be given.
I think the teacher in me has long wanted to come out. Joseph Campbell writes that the key to aging is knowing who you are and where you are in life. The teacher in me has long wanted to be free, and is determined to offer lessons he was never able to learn or receive.
I take my diabetes quite seriously, manage it carefully and conscientiously, I have kept my blood levels at normal numbers for some time, but life happens, of course, and it happened to me Saturday morning. I went into insulin shock as Maria and I headed out to the barn for the morning shores, I noticed my vision changing first, it was as if the light was being processed through a film projector, and then when we came in the house, I began to feel dizzy and started sweating and was hit by waves of drowsiness.
Insulin shock is a form of hypoglycemia usually resulted from an overdose of insulin and characterized by sweating, trembling, dizziness, and if left untreated, convulsions and coma. I have never experienced this before, and I knew almost instantly what had happened. The night before, when I take my major daily dose of insulin, just before bedtime, I inadvertently reversed the gauge that measures the dose – my hands were wet and slippery and I reversed the plunger, lowering the dose. I had to guess what the proper dose was, and what I had missed, and I must have overestimated my mistake and given myself too large a dose. In the morning, I take a different kind of insulin before breakfast and other meals to keep my blood levels steady throughout the day. Together, these two doses sent me into insulin shock.
I didn’t realize how serious it was until I saw the alarm in Maria’s face, she was calling to me to wake up, I was falling asleep with food in my mouth, my face soaked in sweat. She was thinking of calling an ambulance, but I told her to bring me the special drink an glucose tablets that raise the blood sugar levels in just such a circumstance. She brought me tea, an apple, tablets, some hummus and bread. I was ravenous. I took those things, drank some tea and in about a half an hour, I began to feel normal again, came out of my fog. I was a bit slow to pick up what was happening, but we both responded well. I had the appropriate remedy on hand, I took it quickly, it worked well.
I was scheduled to teach my Art of The Blog class, and I made it, just a minute or two late. Maria insisted that we tell the students what had happened so that they would know what to do if there was a relapse, but I knew it was over then. I felt some fatigue but was otherwise well. It was a really good class, as always. (I am teaching a short story course at Hubbard Hall in the Spring, limited to seven students.)
We went to the dump later, and I raked a bunch of leaves out of the back yard. (Good friends, there is no need to urge me to take my diabetes seriously, I take it very seriously.) There are no lessons for me to be learned, this is life, occurring in it’s own way, at it’s own pace. We all make mistakes, misjudge things, diabetes is a complex disease with complex treatments – pills, injections, needles, strips, lancets – so many measurements and things to keep track of, especially for someone like me who has never experienced chronic illness.
I was greatful to get to my class, happy to have lunch at the Round House Cafe with some of the students, Scott Carrino had already heard about my bout with insulin shock (this is a small town) and was lovingly concerned, he is a good friend and a good man. More than anything else, I felt grateful – that I have an illness that is generally controllable, that I must always be careful and diligent. The worst thing about the episode was the look on Maria’s face, I don’t wish to see it again. She took great care of me.
