28 October

Friendship: Tai Chi, Writing, Pain, Loss, Meaning

by Jon Katz
Friendship, Loss, Tai Chi,  Writing
Friendship, Loss, Tai Chi, Writing

I call Tuesday our Friendship day, at 1 p.m., I drive out to Pompanuck Farms with Red and Scott and I meet for our Tai-Chi writing lessons. It was a beautiful day, soft and warm for late October, we sat outside. I was in a lot of pain today, and Scott’s broken back was tender as well, we focused on writing, and then did as much Tai Chi as we could. I have learned four exercises now, and I do them before I write, there is so much going on with my body right now that I can’t really tell if the Tai Chi is  having any effect on me but I will continue, we are just beginning.

Scott is at a critical point in his writing, he is struggling to write about some of the painful events in his early life, and it is chewing him up a bit. At some point, every writer wonders if his or her stories are important, and if anyone will ever care about them, Scott is at this point, I hope he breaks through, I think he will. Scott and I listen to one another, we trust one another. Trust is the foundation of learning, I think we are both teaching each other a lot, a rare thing among men.

I told  him writing, like Tai Chi, was internal, not external. It is about feeling and  honesty, if something wants to come out, it needs to come out. One has to set up a boundary, you write for yourself and  you hope it has meaning to others, but when you write, you write only for yourself, you cannot be thinking about what everyone else might feel or say. Creativity is a coming out, a leap of faith, it is neither simple nor easy, but it can be profoundly rewarding. Scott has had some hard experiences, some painful things to write about. Like many children who suffer greatly, he feels ashamed and afraid, all the more reason, perhaps to do it.

But writing, I told him, is personal, you have to want to do it, you have to own it yourself. Ultimately, it is his decision, surely not mine. Scott and I have been meeting like this for more than two years now, and our friendship has deepened and matured. It is the kind of friendship I have wanted for a long time, I think Scott has more friends than I have had, he is more open and accepting perhaps. And his life has been more stable, although he has done many different things, he has been in one place while I have been in a dozen or so.

I suspect we both have landed. My body needs Tai Chi, not just because of my surgery but also because it is, like writing, an internal path to a healthier body and a greater connection to spirit. I need these things, and I am hopeful. Tai Chi has not connected yet with my interior self, I don’t quite get it and am not yet really comfortable doing it. Scott says this will come in time, be patient. I will if you will, he says. We shook and hugged on it. I talk to Scott almost every day, I spent a good chunk of my life in his cafe, the Round House. But Tuesdays at Pompanuck are special, the geography of friendship and connection, two friends teaching one another what they have learned, what the other is hungry to know.

28 October

Mary Kellogg’s Third Book: “How We Dance,” Coming Soon

by Jon Katz
New Book By Mary Kellogg
New Book By Mary Kellogg

Happy news. We now have 35 poems in hand from our wonderful friend, the poet Mary Kellogg, and we are ready to publish them. We’ve titled her third volume “How We Dance.” Mary, who will turn 85 this year, has been writing poetry since she was eleven, I am very proud to say the first person she ever showed one too was me, and that happy encounter with me and Maria let to the first two volumes of her work, My Place On Earth, and Whistling Woman. Mary had Lyme Disease and couldn’t make it to our Open House this year, she says she will be here next October with bells and whistles, hustling her book and reading her new poems.

How We Dance is yet another life affirming volume of poetry that explores life, land and age with great feeling and wisdom. Maria and I are very happy to be publishing this third volume of Mary’s work, we are taking it to the printer this week and hope to have it available for sale by Christmas. Details to come, I’m hoping Connie will sell them from Battenkill Books and Maria will sell the book on her website as well. Mary has asked me to take some photos for this volume, as I did the last two. I think she ought to be on the cover.

Mary is very happy living on her 30-acre farm in North Hebron, she always laughs at the idea she might ever want to be anywhere else. “Oh, no,” she says, “this is where I belong, this is where I will stay.” Believe it.

Maria and I both feel that publishing Mary’s wonderful work is one of the best things we have done or will do.

Mary is a wonder and an inspiration, I’m sharing one of her poems from the new book here:

 

Dance Of Life

we are born with one desire

to suckle at our mother’s breast, warm, fed and loved

discovery follows

step here and step there

searching

seeing expanse around us

our bud to sprout

spring to dance

 

question

how to dance

within the frame

step within sight

where walls are high

feet tangle

dance of life is full

 

dance now with final curtain

drawn close behind you

collect your loves

dance together

cherish the prize

 

Mary Kellogg October 9, 2013

28 October

Genie In A Bottle

by Jon Katz
Genie In A Bottle
Genie In A Bottle

I decided to start burning incense a few months ago, it helps me when I write. I was having trouble with ashes, and Maria went out and bought an incense bottle, you light the incense from the bottom and stick it in the bottle, and sweet-swelling wafts of smoke come out.  I light one every morning when I write now, I like it. But I think there’s a genie in the bottle now, I see faces and hear sounds, sometimes singing and laughing. I think I might make a wish tomorrow and see what happens.

28 October

Yelling At Lenore: Today A Breakthrough, Filled With Meaning

by Jon Katz
Yelling At Dogs
Yelling At Dogs

I want to share with you an important milestone for me, it might seem strange that it was sparked by an eight-year-old Labrador Retriever who eats awful things, but that is the nature of life, you grow as a human being when you can.  Today, for the first time perhaps in my eight wonderful years with her, I did not yell at Lenore once on a long morning walk through the woods.

Lenore, as a proud Lab, eats gross things, and this has always bothered me and I have always tried to stop her. As someone who writes about dogs, I well know the folly of this, I know it won’t work, isn’t right, is not about her but about me, the legacy of issues of my own involving cleanliness and order. Lenore is about as good a dog as one can ever hope to have, she is loving, gentle and obedient.

As a Lab, she cannot help herself, it goes directly against her nature to walk through the woods and not eat grass and other mostly unspeakable things. A hundred times I’ve told myself to stop worrying at her stop thinking about it, it disturbs the walk and accomplishes nothing. I have no apologies to make for yelling at Lenore, I yell at my dogs all of the time, I am a human being, not a saint. Positive reinforcement, like spirituality, is a worthy goal, I doubt one ever completely gets there. Yesterday I wrote about this issue, and it often happens with me that when I am really ready to confront something, I write about it first, that works with me.

I believe one of the most wonderful things about having a dog is that to have a good one, you really do have to become a better human. Everyone of my dogs has made me better in some way – less angry, less frustrated, less distracted and impatient. Today, after years of frustration, I was somehow ready. Lenore scarfed grass up, dug stuff up in the woods, licked coyote scat, I started to open my mouth once or twice, I closed it, I walked on and as she always does, Lenore followed us along, came when we called, was the wonderful dog she always is.

It is so important not to project our many neuroses and issues onto our dogs, I was proud to have completed our first walk in a long time where I was not trying to impose something on her that was neither right or acheivable. It was about me, not her, it almost always is, and strange as it may seen, I think it was one of the bigger steps I have taken in my life with animals.

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