Day: January 19, 2014

This farmhouse, not far from my own, is a beautiful and gracious place, I often take photos of it, it is, to me a place in balance, the trees stand like sentinels, marking each major building on the farm property, it speaks to me of a life in balance – love and work, friendship and connection, creativity and change, loss and gain.

Life is not one thing, it is many things, it has many parts, each changing, adjusting to the other, affecting the other. Success without connection is meaningless to me, loss defines gain, suffering defines health. We are perpetually shocked by death, we hide from it and stave it off, not seeming to realize it and birth are the two universal human experiences that bind us into one.

In my life, I have taken a vow of balance. I seek love in my life, and friendship. I seek community and connection. I seek security in self-awareness and authenticity, not in bank accounts of long-term insurance plans.  I seek not a perfect life but a life of grace and acceptance. I am not afraid to die, I am afraid to live poorly. I do not dread the loss of loved ones, I dread a life without loves ones, I do not agonize over the death of my dogs, I am grateful for every day I have them. I mean to live meaningfully, not forever.

John the chimney sweep came to the house to clean our creosote-ravaged wood stove fireplace, and he is a friend and he loves to talk about his dogs and he told me his dog is sick and he will never, ever get another one, the pain of losing him is just too great, he just can’t bear it.  John kept talking about his dying dog, telling me every detail, how hard it was for him, how he never wanted to go through it again.

“John,” I asked him, putting my hand on his shoulder,”what about the joy of having him for 13 years? Does that count for anything? Why do you dwell on the one and not the other, how much weight do you give the 13 years against a week of suffering?” He looked at me as if I had fallen from the sky. “I never thought about that,” he said. I hope he does (I handed him a couple of books to move him along.) As he left, he was talking again about how much pain his dying dog was causing him.

For me, as a writer and a human being, John had gone astray, lost the very meaning and joy of animals. Dogs have always been a metaphor for life, their real significance is not just in what they do but what they do to use and make us feel. Animals have always suggested balance for me, they live and they die, they come and they go, most do not live as long as us, they do not suffer for themselves the way we suffer for them. They are a joy to me, a gift, I will not make them a misery and a cross to bear, it demeans their purpose, to walk with us through life and bring us comfort.

They teach me that life of balance is a life of acceptance, for me, there is no value or meaning in railing against the very nature and meaning of life. I am not surprised by death, I would be stunned at its absence. What, after all, do we expect from the world?  We all come from one place, we are all going to another, it is the ultimate case for connection and fellowship, the irrefutable proof that we are all one thing.

Wikipedia defines Hubris as extreme pride or arrogance. The term is often used to indicate a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one’s competence, capabilities, or worth. This is particularly true when when the people exhibiting hubris are in a position of power, or use words or blogs or books or other forms of art to define or delude themselves or inflate their sense of self-importance.

Hubris can be the belief that the common rules of life – paying one’s own way, taking responsibility for one’s own life – do not apply. Or believing that one’s life is so important and sacrosanct that all reality must give way before it. There are lots of people out there eager to cheer on that idea, especially from afar.

I remember meeting a therapist in Saratoga Springs days after my crack-up at Bedlam Farm. She listened to my story, my tale of woe, the money I spent and gave away, the way I was living my life, the deep hole I had fallen into. She looked me level in the eye, a short, tough woman.I think she meant to stun me, I needed to be stunned.

“You have lost all perspective,” she said, as I babbled like a fish gasping for air in a dirty tank. I had no answer.

Hubris, I thought.

Hubris.

I know hubris well, it has been a silent if powerful partner in my life, I encountered my familiar companion again this morning when I declared myself healed from a wicked bout of viral gastroenteritis. I got up early to Maria could sleep in, went out to do the farm chores, haul water and hay, muck out the barn and announced that we ought to go to Brattleboro post hate to eat some Korean food at a restaurant we love and I could do my annual clothes shopping which consists of two pairs of jeans, two Chambray work shirts, two new pairs of suspenders, maybe some socks and underwear.

All this at Sam’s, a spectacularly rambling department store in downtown Brattleboro with fresh popcorn and acres of clothes in all sizes, including large and x-tra large. Brattleboro is an hour-and-a-half from us, our Korean restaurant was closed, we took refuge from the cold in a hip new cafe where I sampled some crepe with seasoned chopped beef. Then on to Sam’s where I picked out some clothes – Maria just puts away what won’t work – started to sweat, get dizzy and nearly passed out. I could barly make it to car. Back  home, in bed, with a fever, the gastroenteritis has it’s own ideas, hubris, my old friend, was sitting by my side grinning and dancing a jig and clapping his hands with joy, “you ain’t done with me yet!”

Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, merely for gratification. Some people think by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.  I don’t use it that way. As a lifelong student of hubris, I feel it often has to do with loss of perspective, anger and fear. We are afraid that we can’t cope with life and handle it, so we delude ourselves into thinking we can simply ignore it and create our own reality. We think we are above the reality of the world – we think that is heroism – because we need to think that way get through life.

Hubris is a close cousin of anger and panic. If you meet someone who lives in constant fear, I have found (myself surely included), there is voften, in fact,  a loss of perspective, a denial of reality. What? The rules of the world apply to me? I have to pay for what I buy? The forces of the world are just waiting out there to rescue me and save me and show me again and again that I am better than most people, more wondrous and deserving? All I need to do is think positive thoughts and charge ahead.  Even as a diabetic, I don’t need to rest one day before heading out to shop and put aside my Bratt died of applesauce, rice and cereal? Why would I need do that?

As I have learned to deal with fear rather than the things fear invokes – fear is a symptom, not a reality, a geography, not a concrete thing – hubris has taken a beating. I am conscious of what I need, what I can afford, I do not consider myself better than anyone, I do not any longer expect the world to take responsibility for my life because I am wonderful. I get beautiful letters every day reminding me that I am not, humility is the antidote to hubris, it’s nemesis. When I finished my therapy, my therapist said the people in my life would no longer recognize me, no longer know who I was, and this has proven to be so, if sometimes sad.

I am done with hubris, and the people who are afflicted with it.

Still, vigilance is a tough state to maintain. On the way back from Brattleboro, Maria kept looking at me and my ashen face and saying “we shouldn’t have come, we shouldn’t have come.” No, no, I said, I was feeling good, it was fun. She is right, I thought, hanging on until we got home, I should never have come.

So back to bed. In it’s contemporary usage, hubris suggests overconfident pride and arrogance, a simple lack of humility. The last few years have been good for me in so many ways, my delusions shattered and swept away, one by one. I am getting humbler by the day. And happier. Maria is happy that my old Chambray shirt, whose collar has visibly disintegrated right on my neck, is heading for it’s new home as a potholder, possibly a design on a quilt.

Back to the cold, sub-zero weather tonight, John Holloran came and cleared out the creosote from our wood stove chimney, things were getting smoky.  More snow, I am eating again after three days on applesauce, rice and cereal. Maria is still grappling with the aftermath of her abscess, we are ready to be whole again. We are a bit stir crazy, so heading out to Brattleboro, Vt. in the snow showers. We are going to have lunch at a great Korean restaurant there, and then go to Sam’s, I need shirts, jeans, suspenders and maybe a nice warm fleece jacket.

I am returning to life. Taking the camera and the 35mm lens.

Jean Allen was at church in North Carolina one recent Sunday and each person in attendance received an envelope that contained a small amount a small amount of money, and a blank note card to use to report to the congregation what they had decided to do with the unexpected cash. It was not a gift, the instructions said the money was to be used for creative energy to “pay it forward” in a way that fits the mission to:

“Celebrate life in all of its joy and mystery; inspire journeys of truth and meaning; and Engage in practice and service for love, just and peace.”

“It took only moments for me to decide where it should go,” wrote Jean in her beautiful letter to P.O. Box 205 (Cambridge, N.Y., 12816). “I can think of no enterprise that better embodies the above criteria than your blog, which I have been following for many years now.” Enclosed was the crisp new $2 bill she had been given in church, now in a place of  honor in my wallet, to be carried around with me and to remind me what I am doing with my life and work. Thank you Jean, I do not quite have the words to say what that message meant to me.

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A letter from Iris Hoffert in Ocala, Florida contained $200 for my Kickstarter Project, “Talking To Animals.” “I don’t belong in this century,” she wrote, “I tried Kickstarter but could  not quite get it to work. Enclosed please find my contribution to “Talking To Animals.” I look forward to the compilation of your efforts.” Iris did not need to send me that money, and she could easily have been discouraged by her technical troubles. That she was not meant a great deal more to me than the money, and the money meant a great deal.

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Jan Herbert from Oswego, N.Y., sent a $25 check, “seed money” for my new camera, in a card bordered by ink and designs. “You and Maria are such an inspiration to me – to live life to its fullest potential. God Bless You All.” And you, Jan.

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– Virginia Sasaki wrote me from Los Alamos, California, she included three $1 bills – “A Humble Thank You”, she wrote – and this quite gorgeous word poem:

“One morning upon reading your blogs,

My hand began to move with pen in place,

“Oh Goodness,” I said, “I’ve made them both a new face.”

—

And Eunice Dowd wrote me a three-page typewritten letter chronicling the very powerful story of her life, growing up in Tennessee, hoping to buy a farm with her husband after her younger sister was killed in an airplane crash. The farm was a dream fulfilled for Eunice and her husband, bought Ellie, a border collie. They bought a beautiful small farm – 7.5 acres – it was the perfect place place for the dog, and they worked on it happily for five years. Her husband was suddenly stricken with cancer and died. He was 54. “It was as if a wrecking ball had shattered everything,” she wrote. The lovely little farm had become bittersweet, a dark, lonely and grieving place. She moved back to the suburbs. Eunice is 67 now, loving alone with Ellie, her border collie, a 17-year-old cat and a parakeet. Ellie is nine years old now, “she has her border collie quirks, providing quite a bit of humor to my life. I hope I have done right by her.”

I imagine you have, Eunice, I have no doubt of it.

This, she added, “brings me to my latest connection with  you, Mr. Katz, and perhaps the best one. I have loved your photography Most all of it, and was particularly interested in the close-ups you do of flowers.  When I settled back into the suburbs, I pulled up the carpet in one bedroom, and painted the subfloor, so I could  make a mess if I wanted. It is filled with my paints and easels, none of which I have had time to use very much, due to my mother’s illness.” After her mother died, Eunice received a small inheritance, she bought a Canon T3i with an 18-35 mm lens.

I’d like to see your photos, Eunice. Your creativity is the spark of life, it burns in you through the joys, crises and mysteries of life.

“Thank you for the inspiration from your life with the animals,” she wrote, “and your love with Maria. I also thank you for taking the time to hear my story.”

Eunice, I thank you for your inspiration and for taking the time to send my your story. The creative spark shines through life and death.

The letters from my Post Office Box bring me daily wonders and treasures, laughter and tears, affirmation and connection, they are radioactive jewels of life, love, and the meaning of being human. As a writer, I am reminded again and again that letters are so different from e-mails and texts, they come from the heart, they are so real, they are the language of the soul.

– You can write us at Bedlam Farm, c/o Post Office Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. It is not necessary to send me money, I appreciate those of you who are committed to connecting in this way, I understand it and accept it in the spirit in which it is sent.

The “Talking To Animals” Kickstarter Project is a learning experience for me, I have already reached 120 per cent of my funding with nearly three weeks to go and some good people who have backed the projected have contacted me to suggest adding additional rewards to raise more money for the project – it would surely be put to good use. I so appreciate the dialogue on Kickstarter, and the enthusiasm there for creativity, it is so lacking in the corporate and political world. And I have more than two weeks to go for funding the project.

People do care about books and arts, they do want to support them and keep them alive, contrary to conventional wisdom.

I have already offered photos, updates, and a limited number of books and e-books to people who pledge $25 or more but one of the backers – Corinna – wrote me this morning and suggested a good idea to raise additional money and offer a guaranteed signed and personalized copy of “Talking To Animals” when it is published, presumably sometime in 2015. I can’t afford to purchase and ship a hardcover book with photographs to everyone, but I could afford to guarantee a signed book to any pledge of $80 or more. That would help raise money for the project – the $9,000 I asked for was primarily for photo equipment, I didn’t quite dare to ask for more – and cover the cost of the books and shipping as well.

In addition, I am thinking of offering signed photo prints from the project as an additional reward, I haven’t quite figured that out yet. This feels very much like a collaboration to me, an interactive process of sharing creativity, it is thrilling to me to be able to have this conversation with my readers, old and new. So there it is, another reward (perhaps not the last) for the “Talking To Animals” project. I’m talking to B&H Photo next week. People who have already pledged $80 or more will, of course, get a signed book.

People can leave their pledges as they are, and they are appreciated, or upgrade them for the new reward, or do none of the above. For newcomers, I wanted to let you know in case this matters to you.  I had no idea what to expect when I started a Kickstarter project, it is a gamble I am glad I took.