Day: February 5, 2014

Maria and I have been together nearly five years now, married for more than three. Our relationship is a turning point in my life, it is always evolving, I think of our relationship as being like a garden, it requires weeding, nourishment, attention. It requires listening and learning. We always talk to each other when problems and issues arise, and any good relationship has problems and issues. Sometimes we get angry with each other, and then we really talk about things. I have learned so much in this relationship, it is one of the completely honest and trusting relationships I have had in my life.

And I am beginning to be old, I know I can never stop changing or opening my mind, that would be the first death.

Earlier in our lives, Maria and I both suffered greatly from what the therapists call co-dependent relationships, issues relating to control, surrendering parts of ourselves, losing ourselves in the lives and needs of others, enabling and being enabled. Co-dependence is a strange term, but it is a horror, really, it is, at the core, the loss of self, the destruction of the ego. We have both worked hard to recover from that, we are both sensitive to issues relating to control and independence.

Co-dependency is the excess emotional reliance on a partner, forming relationships that are one-sided or unhealthy. Co-dependent relationships often involve addictions of one kind or another. One therapist told me it was like giving pieces of yourself away to others until there is sometimes nothing left. There are takers and enablers everywhere, people who can suck your soul dry. Boundaries are the foundation of identity, of authenticity, they require attention every day of my life.

Once in a while, we need to stop and listen to one another.  I find as I get older that there are some things I can’t do on the farm any longer, and Maria, who is very protective of me, as I am of her, is always eager to help out, to spare me the chores that hurt or that strain my back or legs. This is a difficult thing for me to accept, as it is for many men. I dread losing touch with how the farm works, with the details of the chores – where the grain is stored, where the brushes are, the medicines and syringes. I don’t want to lose touch with the animals or the rhythms of the farm, it is my identity, the source of my writing, my photography, the sense of self. I fear the day when I can’t fully participate in my own life, it is not here yet, I am not close to that,  but it is sometimes on my mind.

Yesterday, when I came back from doing chores in town, I found Maria had fed all of the animals, watered them, done the chores. I was surprisingly and uncharacteristically upset about it, even angry. Maria was surprised, anger is very rare between us, she said she just thought I wasn’t going to be back in time. She didn’t understand why I was upset.

We sat down and talked about it, and as we talked I realized that she understood my feelings well, she knew how I felt, and was careful to make sure I had the opportunity to do whatever chores I could handle and wanted to, She understood how important it was that we share them – I help haul the firewood, bring out the water and hay, muck the barn, tend the stoves.

But I also saw that the real issue was that I was struggling to accept getting older, to acknowledge I can’t do as much as I did a few years ago, or for most of my life. That it was all right to let go of some things, and to do the many things I can do and want to do.  It was my  pride that was on the table, not her decisions. And I asked her to be thoughtful. Maria is the sort of person who will do every chore on the earth, left to her own devices, she has an obsessive streak, it is why she produces so many  beautiful things. She doesn’t say this, but I know she also wants to spare me things that are uncomfortable – my knees and legs and back squawk at some chores. It was good to have this talk, good to talk, good to listen. I understood myself a bit better, we trusted one another even more. Trust is not simply given, it needs to be earned, acknowledged, over and over.

Today, it was Maria’s turn to be upset, she woke up this morning and said she wanted to go out in the storm and have lunch with a friend, I said I thought it would be impossible to travel on the roads, the forecast called for 12 inches. She thought I was telling her what to do.  When we first were together, Maria was very anxious to prove she could live on her own, and she often drove her tiny little car to work (without four-wheel drive or snow tires) over steep hills and country roads with no cell service out in a series of powerful blizzards. This upset me, I worried about her all day, she had become so important to me, and I just couldn’t get easy with her driving around on icy and snowy roads in the dark in that car. She didn’t really care, she did it anyway, and good for her, she made it home every time.

When it came to for her to go out for lunch, I offered to drive her. I wanted to go into town and see a  friend and do some errands, but it was her turn to be upset. It was important, she said, that she drive herself, she was uncomfortable with the idea that she needed to be driven, that I thought I needed to drive her. I explained that I wasn’t worried about the short trip into town, she was using my car, which has snow tires and four-wheel drive. It was not in a remote place like Hebron where the first Bedlam Farm was. I thought she was making a big deal out of nothing, it was just an offer to go in together, since I had to go in anyway.

But I realized this was a huge issue for her, being independent, being trusted to make good decisions, being free to run her own life. This is something we both want, we have never told one another what to do. I was stung that I had to prove that again. But why shouldn’t I? Maybe I will have to make it another 100 times. And maybe I will have to tell  Maria every day of my life that I need to be relevant to the farm, to the life here, I do not want to be a bystander here, watching someone else do all of the work.

I said it was appropriate for me to be concerned about her sometimes, people get hurt all the time in snowstorms up here, but I also saw that there is a fine line sometimes between control and concern, something I learned from my mother. Maria has to make her own decisions about her safety and I have to let go of my old worries, something I have been learning to do for some years now.

In both conversations, we were reminded to listen to one another, to understand the deep feelings that were the foundation of our fears and old wounds. We were broken people, we are still putting ourselves back together again. That is not work that is ever done. Love is about supporting one another, not being defensive or feeling slighted or holding onto stubborn old positions. I commit myself to listening, always listening, our work together will never be done.

Conflict is frightening to both of us, but some are healthy, essential. It is not a question of right or wrong, it is a question of learning to respect someone else’s feelings, wherever they come from. This, like empathy, is an element of compassion. There are no perfect relationships any more than there are perfect lives, the meaning comes in how problems are resolved, not avoided. This is how love is preserved for me, and not eroded.

The animals are holed up in the Pole Barn all day as a full-blown winter storm rages all around them, Maria likes to give them all a treat when we come out for the afternoon chores – in this case, carrots for the donkeys, alfalfa cubes for the sheep. I was struck by how calm all of the animals were, there was no jostling, kicking or scrambling, the sheep and the donkeys gathered around Maria and waited quietly and calmly. I have found in my life with animals that if they are fed and watered and sheltered faithfully, they come to trust it, and rarely get overly aroused or dangerously eager.

Food is the way we establish trust, begin communications.

The storm dog gets it done, and I lay down in the snow next to him to show him getting it done, I was fighting low light and a cloudly day and I cranked up the ISO as far as it would go, it was too cold for me to lay down there for too long, but not for Red, who was doing it all day, I so love working with him, He inspires me to get it done.

I need Red, he’s very important in a storm like the one we are experiencing today, perhaps more than at any other time. This afternoon, I went out to grain the sheep and the donkeys. People with animals know that this can be complex and dangerous, animals stampede around grain, they get excited bump into one another, kick and bite, they can easily knock a human over in the process, I have been knocked down many times.

At moments like this, I especially appreciate a dog like Red – Rose was similiar in tough situations. He seems to size up the situation, here, he puts himself between me and the animals – the only command I gave was “hold the sheep” – and he locks onto the sheep and holds them. The donkeys usually respect Red as well now, something they didn’t use to do, so while I shoveled out the hay feeder and put some grain in, Red had my back, lying still as the snow covered his coat, he didn’t move a muscle, never took his eye off of the sheep. I must confess I don’t understand people who believe animals ought not to work with people, it is a spiritual experience for me, in anchors the farm in so many ways.

The New York Carriage Horses represent best the best opportunity in modern times to try to talk about what animals are for in our lives. One of the world’s greatest cities is deciding whether animals like draft horses can remain in urban environments. I’m sorry to see no one in the city – except perhaps the carriage horses owners themselves – seems to care to have that conversation. The mayor has decided that putting the horses to work is tantamount to torturing them – the mayor unaccountably compared their treatment to “waterboarding” on television the other night. He refuses to meet with the horse owners and riders or even go see their stables. He says banning the horses from the city is one of his major priorities.

The carriage industry is not media savvy, they seem somewhat overwhelmed, they are struggling to contend with the formidable array of politicians, groups that call themselves animal rights organizations, real estate developers and manipulable journalists shaping the future of the horses. The campaign to get rid of the horses has been going on a long time, it is loud, well-funded and well-connected, it got a huge boost in the city’s recent mayoral election. The new mayor meets with these groups frequently and regularly attends their fund-raising dinners. Some of them were among his largest campaign contributors.

It is become apparent that the purpose of this coalition is not to improve the lives of the horses or make them safer but to ban them from New York, where they will most likely face death or confinement in the largely mythical “rescue” farms believed to be somewhere out there. When I was a political reporter, I often heard the phrase “the fix is in” used by politicians, it means sometimes there is only the appearance of making a decision, the decision has already been made. In New York City, there is not even the appearance of making a decision about the horses. “It’s over,” the mayor said in his inaugural speech. The best hope of the carriage horse industry – and the horses –  may now be a good lawyer.

For me, the drama of the horses is the natural evolution of the way we have come to see animals. For most of human history, animals have worked side by side with humans, there was concern for animal welfare, but the fact that animals had worked and lived alongside of human beings in confined spaces in urban areas was never considered controversial. The carriage horses ancestors would have been content to live in their stables and under the conditions in which they live.

It was clear what animals were for. In recent years, that prism has changed. As Americans have become isolated from one another, disconnected from family and religious institutions, as they have become more mobile, gotten divorced more frequently, become disappointed in politics and pressured by economics and technology, spent more and more hours alone in front of screens, they have turned to animals for emotional support and connection and unconditional love.

This is good for people, but has greatly narrowed our view of animals, the way we see them, the roles they might have in our lives today.

If horses could bat their eyes at humans, offer them the appearance of unconditional love, and figure out how to crawl onto the couch, there would be no talk of banning them, there would be new laws making apartment couches bigger and banning trucks from residential streets. The mayor would be among the first rushing to pass the new legislation.

Thus the issue of the horses is historic, a template possibly for the future. If this is New York City’s solution, what is Cleveland and Phoenix or Miami likely to do? Our view of animals has changed radically, we have shed history and, since so few people making these decisions live with or near real animals living real lives, the discussion has been co-opted by it’s most extreme and least knowledgeable elements.

For many isolated and fragmented Americans, the purpose of animals has become their rescue. There are few organizations devoted to keeping animals in our lives, and they have very little money,  there are thousands devoted to rescuing them. The animal rescue movement, almost non-existent a generation ago, has become one of the largest, most dedicated, active and communicative (the Internet is the mother of this movement) sub-cultures in American life. Many Americans now see animals – dogs, cats, horses – almost entirely through the prism of rescue. It is increasingly common for people to see their dogs – to need to see their pets –  as “abused” and to attribute all kinds of behaviors and training issues to mistreatment, even thought researchers have said abuse in America has been greatly exaggerated. In addition, some of the ideologists of this movement see work by animals for humans as abuse, an idea that would have stunned human beings throughout their history on the earth.

Animal rescue is a worthy cause, I have rescue donkeys, sheep, dogs, chickens and cats. It is also a way for people to feel good about themselves, and to justify cruelty and abuse towards humans. It is society where we often feel helpless and powerless, the rescue of animals is a way to feel virtuous and superior to other people. This idea has become so pervasive it even unites the “left” and the “right,” who seem to agree on nothing other than a love of dogs and cats and often, a desire to rescue them.

Instead of talking about how to find ways to keep animals in our lives, to find roles and space for them, we are arguing about who is abusing them the most, about how to rescue them from human beings. That is the tragedy of the carriage horses, because the human beings willing to own and care for them and ride them are their only real salvation. The true animal rescuer sees that the horses do not need to be saved from their riders and owners, but from their rescuers. That is the true meaning of animal rescue, of animal rights.

Contrary to many accusations and reports and stories, there is simply no real evidence that the carriage horses  are being chronically abused and mistreated, legally or literally. The travails of life – accidents, illness, old age – are not measures of abuse, but life itself. The dogs of New York suffers mistreatment much more than the horses, no one is moving to exile them. An old tradition, a way of life, a meaningful role for beautiful horses is about to be destroyed, it is unlikely that the circling real estate developers will want to build spacious areas for animals to live in New York in the wake of the horses departure.

This morning, I put a photo of my border collie Red, covered in snow, up on my blog. Scores of people thanked me for it, wrote admiring messages about Red, were once more touched by the focus and fidelity of this remarkable animal. Once more, I thought of the horses, if a photo like that of the horses working in a storm appeared, there would be an uproar, it would be considered cruel. The carriage horses are not allowed to work in cold or heat, that is considered abusive, one of the reasons they need to be rescued from the allegedly cruel and evil carriage riders and owners. Does this really make sense to anyone who thinks about it?

It is, of course, the horses and other animals who will pay for this diminished, patronizing new view of animals. We cannot just see them as piteous, abused and dependent creatures, they are our partners on the earth, fellow prisoners in life itself. We cannot exile ourselves from one another, it is a death sentence for animals in the modern world. Dogs in New York City have made this transition, so can these horses, who have worked and lived in New York for hundreds of years. We have no right to discard them like more debris from the developer’s wrecking balls. If animals are only for rescue, but not for working with humans and living among them any longer, then we have failed in our sacred obligation to find a wiser, truly humane and lasting understanding of them and their roles in the modern world.