1 May

Reflections: Tales Of The Gym

by Jon Katz
Tales Of The Gym
Tales Of The Gym

I go to my gym four or five times a week, it is a part of my open heart surgery recovery, still underway and perhaps a permanent part of my life now. I rarely went to a gym, and hated it when I did go. I don’t hate my gym, it has the sense of peace and intimacy that is such an important part of the town where I live.

Life and open heart surgery is like that, you reject something for sixty years and then it becomes something you love. When you stop changing, you are already dead, the body just hasn’t caught up.

This week, I bring some true tales of the gym, it is a place I love, gyms reflect and mirror us, they can show us where we are in life, how other see us.

* I went to the gym this afternoon, I was alone there. Three strong men, weight lifters from the look of them came in, they ignored Red and came up to me together. It is unusual for people in the gym to speak to one another during a workout, I was surprised, I was reading and riding the exercise bike.

“Sir,” said the tallest, “would you mind if I turned the music up?”

“Not at all,” I said, “I have my earbuds if I need them, it is good to work out to music.”

Thanks, all three said in unison, and the one who spoke to me said I should let them know if it got too loud or bothered me or interfered with my exercising.

___

Tuesday  I came to the gym with Red in the early evening, I turned the lights on and changed into my gym shoes, street shoes are strictly forbidden, that is probably the only ironclad rule of the gym. Three very strong and large women were lifting weights, grunting and shouting and supporting one another.

One saw Red, called the work to a stop, and all three of these women put their weights down and came over and sat in a circle around Red. He loves women, he was delighted, he went from one to the other, it was a circle of love and affection, they hugged and touched Red for 10 or 15 minutes, then they all got up and went back to their weights. They all thanked me for bringing him.

__

You know when you are getting older by the way other people see you and treat you, very often you can’t really see it for yourself.

I am not great at tying my gym shoes, once in awhile my chest scars still hurt and it’s awkward to bend over. When I bungle it, the laces flop on the treadmill. Once I’m into the treadmill, I hate stopping it, getting off, tying my shoes and getting back on, I don’t know why, I just resist doing that.

Once, my laces were loose, I was trying to ride it out, get through my 45 minute workout, when a figure appeared next to the treadmlll, it was a woman from one of the exercise bikes, she leaned over and tied my shoelace, I was astonished. “We don’t want you to fall,” she said, and then went back to her bike.

_

A mother came in with her two young children, she had no sitter for them, no husband at home. They were driving her to distraction, jumping on the machines, running up and down and shouting. The women was exhausted, and harried. I asked her I could hire the girls to babysit Red, she looked surprised but agreeable. I offered the girls a quarter each if one would sit on one side of him, the other on the other side and watch him to make sure that he rested and behaved.

They were very excited, I said whispering was fine but running or shouting would disturb him. They each leaned over to kiss and pet him and then took their job very seriously, whispering earnestly and comparing notes. Red eyed them dubiously, but he put his head down and went to sleep. They were more or less still for at least 15 minutes. The mother, who was running hard and fast on one of the treadmills, thanked me and Red, she said we had saved her sanity.

One night, I was on the exercise bike when a man came in moving very slowly and carefully. I recognized the movements right away. He was unsteady, sweating and it looked as if every move was costing him. He seemed unsure of himself, he was looking over at the teenagers pounding away at the treadmills.

At one point he looked directly at me. “Heart surgery?,” I asked, and he nodded, he looked embarrassed, his shirt was buttoned up to the neck. He said he didn’t feel as if he belonged here. I told him I had open heart surgery, he seemed relieved to hear that, I said he would be more comfortable soon, the pain would mostly go away, he would be doing things he couldn’t do even a few months ago.

He nodded and said he was grateful for the information and encouragement, he thanked me. I did not see him again, I asked the manager of the gym about him, he said he paid one month’s dues and never came back.

1 May

Thanks for subscribing To bedlamfarm.com

by Jon Katz
Thanks For Subscribing
Thanks For Subscribing

In my 30 plus years of working as a full-time author, I never once imagined the idea of subscriptions as having anything to do with me or my work. I thought of them as having to do with magazines or newsletters. Life is a fascinating thing, it is a wheel that turns and turns and subscriptions now loom large in my grand scheme of things. I plan to use them to maintain and grow my blog, to replace the vanishing royalties I once counted on, to pave the way for my transition to the new kind of writer evolving and changing in once unimaginable ways.

Subscriptions are what makes it possible for me to keep the blog going, to post my photos and stories, to write about things are hopefully of some interest or use.

Subscriptions to bedlamfarm.com support the blog, which is pretty much a full-time job for me now. Writing books, my passion and livelihood, is also something that is important to me, but the blog has become the centerpiece of my writing and creative life. I see it as a living memoir, my great work.

Some things about the blog. It is free, to those who subscribe and those who do not. You do not receive anything for subscribing beyond reading the blog and supporting it and paying me for the work I do writing on the blog and taking and permitting free usage of my photos. Nothing is watermarked here, you are free to use any photo or idea you like, information does want to be free, but writers also need to get paid for their work, just like you do.

It takes a great deal of time and research for me to write about issues like the New York Carriage Horses or Joshua Rockwood, that is work I am not paid for in any way beyond subscriptions. It is important to me, and I hope to keep doing it. Subscriptions support our life and work with animals.  I am proud of the blog, it is different than I imagined.

I offer a number of ways to subscribe. You can pay $3 a month, $5 a month, or $60 a year. You can use credit cards or Paypal. The site is as secure as it it is possible to be.  I have no access to your money, I can’t authorize subscriptions or remove them, that is for your own protection. No financial information of any kind is stored on my website, two different companies monitor all traffic and maintain security. Should devious foreign nations or vengeful animal police or anyone else come after me, there is nothing of monetary value for them to get, unless you count my golden words.

I’m afraid they have been devalued by the publishing revolution.

Canceling a subscription is as easy as subscribing, I will not be one of those sites who hook people into monthly payments and then make it as hard to cancel as it is to have lunch at the NSA. I can’t cancel subscriptions (I have no access to your money, ever) but you can, anytime and easily. One week before renewal, you will be notified so you can decide with the click of a button to cancel or re-subscribe, and you can cancel any time in between. I understand the realities of life, I don’t want the money of anyone who can’t afford it or doesn’t want to pay for it.

And the blog will remain free to those who can’t afford it, and even those who can but won’t pay. You never turned your backs on me, I will never turn my back on you.

If you support the blog,  you do not buy me or my opinions. I respect anyone who cancels for any reasons, some cancel because they disagree with me, I wish for them to go in peace, but go. If you wish to read a blog that you never disagree with, I suspect this is not the blog for you.

The blog has grown beyond my own expectations, there are millions of visits a year, hundreds of thousands of unique visitors, some days a half-million. It is read all over the country and the world, this is as shocking to me as it is humbling.

So subscribe if you can and wish. Subscriptions are the foundation of my new writing life, my plan for changing into the future. Millions of people come here, but very few pay me for my work. It’s nice to be paid for my work, it does make a difference,  and it makes writing possible for me. It also ensures that people with little money can read it as well. So thank you if you choose to subscribe, and thank you for thinking about it. I am getting there.

Either way you are welcome here.

1 May

A Dying Rose: Praying For What You Hate, The Great Gift.

by Jon Katz
Pray For What You Hate
Pray For What You Hate

How curious for me to see that a dying rose is more beautiful to me than most of the living things around me.  There is meaning in that. Maria and I were talking about trust on our walk this morning, and I told her that she was one of the only people on the earth – perhaps the first – that I fully trusted.  She freed me from the curse of trusting animals more than people, it is better to trust and love both. She trusts many people, she is an inspiration for me in that way, she has helped me become more accepting and tolerant just from watching her do it.

But trust has been hard for me, a shrink told me that was typical of children who experienced trauma of one kind or another. Every morning, I get the most beautiful messages from all over the country and some of the world, some via e-mail, others by paper mail, others in the various comments, notifications and replies that are now part of our technological consciousness. Peace of mind is harder and harder to find.

Almost all of the messages are quite beautiful, they talk of people having coffee, starting the day with me, the dogs and donkeys, Maria and the blog. They talk of my writing having meaning for them, about their own lives and  hopes and dreams, about things to think about, a life to consider. I love these messages, they are food for my soul.

In addition to these messages, there are often a few angry ones, some hateful, some disapproving or contemptuous. I learned long ago to skip these messages, not to read them or reply to them, it is what the angry people need. Dr. King reminded us to never get so low as to let people make you hate them.  I got one message this morning from someone angry at me about my lapses in grammar.

I like the messages I get from  frustrated and retired English teachers, they wish me well and care about me, they are just trying to save my grammatical soul, poor things. So was Miss McCarthy, whom I sometimes brought to tears with my grammatical issues. I just never really cared about it, and I will be honest, I still don’t. Grammar is good, but it is a mistake to equate good writing with good grammar, they are not the same thing. This is why God created editors, bless them all. I l love mine and need them. But on the blog, I am my own editor, the way I like it. There is nothing between you and my writing and you and my ideas and photos but a keyboard and some cables or air. A miracle of freedom, I never had it before, and I like it.

I love it.

This summer, an angry person (you know the story) sent me some hurtful messages right after my open heart surgery, I was talking to my friend Dr. Karen Thompson (she gave me Red) about it, and she says she prays for people whose lives are so sad and empty that they send hateful messages to strangers, hiding beyond all of this miraculous technology. What a sad use of it, she said, she always prays for people like that.

I should too, she said.

I don’t pray much, I am not a conventionally religious person, but Karen’s advice touched my heart and soul both, and so since that exchange, I have continued my long policy of never responding to such messages, and consigning their senders to my spam folder, which is hungry to receive them and fat and happy. Mostly I just ignore them. It is true that life is just too interesting to waste even a second on the things you hate, or that hate you.

But if I sincerely prayed for this spiteful messengers, than it would strengthen me and my spiritual life each time, it would be a gift to me, it would make me stronger and more grounded, it would move me an inch closer to a spiritual life. We live in a world with anger, what a gift this could be. The angry become hollow and scarred, the lights and colors dim in their presence.

I did take Karen’s advice, and I now pray automatically for the angry messengers. And Karen was right, another precious gift to me from a deeply spiritual person of faith. I am sorry it took me so long in life to grasp this message, the Dalai Lama said it took him a long time also. That is comforting.

To the snide letter about my grammar, I stopped, took a breath and closed my eyes. I am feeling sad for you, I prayed. I wish you happiness and peace, I wish you a life that is so full of joy, love, compassion and meaning that you never again waste a second of it to send an angry or hateful message across the great void of time and space to a stranger. Could there be an emptier life?  I pray for you not to be small. I wish more than that for you, as I wish it for me, and I thank you for the great gift of understanding that I must never do the same to a fellow human being if I want to become the person I wish to be.

When I pray like that, I think of the windshield wiper on my car wiping the stuff off of my windshield, my soul feels cleansed and purified. I am here to tell you this is an important discovery for me in our disconnected and sometimes angry world. To pray for what I hate and for what hates me, and to take that anger and bless it, it makes me stronger every time.

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