Day: November 2, 2015

I remember a gray November day in 2008, I had broken down completely, and three things were keeping me alive. First, I would count the minutes until Maria came to the farm, as she did every Saturday morning to help care for the animals, and I always knew how many hours and minutes it would be until she came through the door to get food for the barn cats.

Maria always came through the door, and I am not certain I would be here if she hadn’t. Then, there was the medication my shrink gave me to quiet the panic that had seized control of me and sent my mind spinning with terrifying obsessions. The pills quieted my mind, I remember walking on my path and blinking at the flashes of white light that crossed my consciousness as my mind began to quiet.

And then, of course, there was a dog, it was Rose, she pulled me along, reminded me to get busy, gave me some strength. I had broken down, and was getting divorced and my editor called to say he had been laid off and he worried about my future with my publisher, he said it was likely they might turn away from me. He was right, of course, publishing collapsed like a punctured balloon, so did my income and my savings. I didn’t know then that it would take four years to sell Bedlam Farm and shatter our remaining resources.

I think everyone had it worse than me. The recession had just struck, and there was panic everywhere, and in those days I soaked it up like a homeless man on hot soup. And I was right. My work life just crumbled, change was all around me.

I knew I had to change, I had to face myself, I knew everything in my life had to change, I could not end my life in that way. I had to be strong and committed.

The shrink said he had never seen a man my age undertake so much change, and it was all good for me in various ways. I have found more meaning and happiness and friendship since that time than I had experienced in all the years before. And thanks to my blog and my photos, my writing has never felt stronger or clearer, or been more popular. How strange is life. My blog, begun in 2007 to support my books, has become my book, my living memoir, my great and continuing work.

Sharing a life authentically is what memoir is all about, and I am determined to do it.

I have never been freer, more committed, more creative. The blog suits me, the way my mind works, my sense of timeliness, the range of my mind and the joy of taking pictures. I love the freedom of it, no marketing department telling me what I can or can’t do.  And thank God for my blog, without it I think I would not be a writer today.

The universe has come around to me in some ways, blogs were a fringe thing when I began mine, now they are a mainstream source of creativity and structure for my work. My subscription program, begun in trepidation several years ago, is beginning to work, I can feel it. The subscriptions come in slowly but steadily, I was told to be patient, and I am, and it is beginning to pay off. People are willing, even  happy to pay me for my work. I am thinking of altering the subscriptions in a few months, eliminating the $3 a month option (for future readers), leaving the others.

Subscriptions matter. They are my future, and I much appreciate  being valued and paid for the work that I do. There is no honor in undervaluing myself, it took me a long time to see that. I imagine was too frightened to ask people to pay me for my work, what if they didn’t?.

I am at a crossroads of change again, as it happens, I see that change is not the exception in my life, it is the rule. At an age when many people are downsizing, heading for simple lives down South or time with their grandchildren, I feel as if my career is just beginning. And I need to recognize the reality of it. I am a chapter or two away from finishing the first draft of my next book “Talking To Animals,” and I told Maria this morning I have to make some decisions about my future. Do I wish to continue writing books? Can I make the blog financially successful enough that I can live on it? Will my new publisher even want another book for me?

I am a lifelong book writer, I have written 28 books and loved every one of them, but my readers – everyone’s readers – have moved to the Internet. More people read my blog on smartphones than on computers. Publishing has changed beyond recognition,  royalties have vanished, I hardly know anyone in my publishing life except by e-mail and text messages. The blog is my creative heart and soul, it connects me to a community, now a family in many ways. I never imagined that when I began it. I love working on it, it is never a chore or a burden or a strain.  I write a lot, just about every day. That is good for me.

When creativity flows like that, one knows it is for real.

Sometimes I get frightened by all this. The last few years have left me – us – without the security net I am always being told I should have. But I will never have it, I choose instead to love what I do to the end and pour my heart and soul into it. Maria feels the same way. If I believe what people tell me, then I am foolish and short-sighted. Maybe so, but the days since that awful walk in the woods in 2008 have been days of love and joy for me, I would not trade one of them for millions of dollars.

So I guess  change still looms for me, I have some decisions to make, some leaps of faith to take, a lot of good and hard work to do. I will share it as I go. Thanks for coming along on this journey, and thanks also for the subscriptions. They matter.

We walked in a new and different wood today, Maria and I, Red and Fate. These woods are beautiful, deep and old and tall, beautiful paths cut through the forest. Fate seems at home here, almost in charge of the walk, she keeps an eye out for us, circles back, finds the paths, knows the way home. It would be easy enough to get lost in these woods, they are so dark and thick, but dogs know their way back. Red stays close by me as always, he never gets too far from me, Fate zooms through the leaves like a rabbit on the run.

She is full of joy and curiosity, Red is steady and even, two very good dogs to explore the woods in. It was almost achingly beautiful and peaceful there, I have come to love and connect to the big old trees, they are full of life and spirit. A gift to find these new woods – they are on the property of a friend and he has been inviting me to walk there for years. We walked for a mile or two, the sun painted the ground.

A few months ago, I secretly agreed to teach photography to a few people who love taking pictures. It is an informal but committed group, we do as much sharing as I do teaching. We meet once a week – I have not mentioned it before – and we have the nicest time.

I have a lot of issues with teaching, and a lot of issues with the way writing and photography is taught. So I wanted my students to understand that my view is just my view, it isn’t the accepted practice, I am not bound by the conventional wisdoms about how things ought to be done. That doesn’t mean that I’m right and others are wrong, it just means I don’t teach it the way other people might, for better or worse.

We communicate by e-mail, Skype and text, I don’t charge for it, I’m still uneasy about charging for teaching.

We do exercises and show one another our work. I forbid the mention of shutter speed or aperture settings, we don’t break the photo into third’s or fourths, or any other thing or setting. We don’t need to center the images, just ourselves. We are all moving forward, sharing in the excitement of stretching oneself.

Settings are to photographic instruction what grammar is to writing classes, I don’t pay much attention to either. For me, creativity is about the heart and soul, about voice and identity. If one is thinking about settings, it’s easy to forget the photograph.

That is just me, those things are important to many people and I don’t mean to denigrate them. The class is not about the technical nature of photography, it is about feeling and emotion and color and light and originality. We do talk about lenses, that is important.  We try and think outside of the box, we always try and take photos of things we normally wouldn’t see or photograph and we look for growth and impact and risk.

I take photos of Fate nearly every day, they seem monotonous to me sometimes. Today I stood out in the field and thought of our last class, it was about movement. Photographs have to move if they wish to be original, I said, different lenses, angles, awareness of light, a different eye for composition. I stood behind Fate and I lay down in the grass – always an adventure with sheep,  horses and donkeys around. Fate turned to lick me, the donkeys came over to sniff me and Chloe nosed my pockets for treats.

Eventually they all settled down and I got the photo I wanted – it took some movement – Fate in the foreground, sheep lined up to stare at her a few feet away. It came out okay, the experience of a dog and sheep from their perspective, not always looking down. A different way to see it.

Maria has once again delved into her spiritual and mystical self to conjure up a new thing, a Horse Intuition Doll, complete with one of her ripe, exultant and powerful goddesses, it is always a treat to go into her studio. The Intuition dolls are a new thing for Maria, the idea of intuition ties closely into her work with animals, especially with Chloe, her pony. Intuition is a huge part of their communications, it is also becoming a major part of Maria’s evolution towards strength and self-awareness. I think this one is a significant evolution in her work, because it ties some of her ideas about nature and feminism into her – our – love of animals. I think she is going to put this up for sale today on her  website.

The autumn meadow is soft, yellows, browns, reds, light greens. Color starts to die now, but has it’s own hues, it’s good to the camera in it’s own way.