Day: February 16, 2016

“There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say “It is yet more difficult than you thought.” This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” – Wendell Berry.

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The term being “put out to pasture” was once coined to describe tired old horses who were retired from their work and put out to the pasture to graze and wait quietly to die.

Today and thanks largely to the new economy that our political leaders and corporations and economists embrace so passionately, the term is applied to people.

I got a message from a friend in California today, Elizabeth was writing about my series on mortality. “…what  you are talking about is so potent,” she wrote, “especially for men. And especially in this time when so many people in their 50’s and 60’s have been ‘put to pasture’ early as the “new” economy has no use for them. I worked in a hardware store in Silicon Valley that was full of engineers who lost their jobs and weren’t able or ready to retire. They looked stunned, they can’t figure out how they could get a college education and have a good profession and have it disappear overnight, seemingly permanently….”

The experience of being put to pasture is neither rare nor shocking any more. Corporations routinely let people go for all kinds of reasons – they are older and can’t or won’t work long hours, stockholders are hungry for greater profits, CEO’s are eager to show their management skills, outsourcing and other trade agreements ship innumerable jobs out of the country, companies are merged or acquired.

Countless small farmers have been put out to pasture, millions of trade and factory workers, and in recent years, even lawyers, academics, and yes, lots of writers. I had written 27 books when my long-time editor was himself put out to pasture and left my publisher, and from the day of his departure, I barely ever spoke to anyone in the company again. It was my turn.

There was no goodbye or handshake, no 27-book pin. No one there had any need of me, and I was still writing books and selling them. It was much worse for many of my friends, who could no longer sell books or even get anyone to read their proposals. They were out to pasture.

I was one of the very lucky ones. A new publisher signed me up right away, and my blog has become widely read and successful. But I will always remember the experience, it is much as Elizabeth describes. it is stunning, irrevocable and shattering in many ways. You always think it will be one of them, not you. You can’t believe people you have worked so hard for for so long suddenly decide you are worthless and not even worth speaking to.

There are not lots of good jobs available for men and women in their 50’s and 60’s to do, but there are many ways to live. Men seem singularly depressed and paralyzed by the experience.  I get heart-breaking letters from wives almost every day, they are desperate to inspire their husbands and renew their faith and hope.

I think this suffering has to do with contemporary notions of what it means to be a real man. It takes a lot of work and strength and determination not to quite and brood or seethe and break.

I have always been short on good sense and long on determination. It may have saved my existence as a writer. I believe determination is important. No one can put me out to pasture unless I put myself out to pasture. No economist or politician or  CEO can decide that I am no longer of value, that I don’t fit into new notions of loyalty and worth. My dignity is mine, I own it, and no one else can take it from me, no matter how powerful they are.

As Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote so eloquently, we are no longer only born once, when our mother gives birth to us, but life requires us to give birth and rebirth to ourselves, again and again. Our lives as men and women in the Corporation Nation are all about redemption and resurrection, we stand at the crossroads as we enter mid-life and beyond: we can surrender our sense of worth and pride, or we can embrace it and reinvent ourselves, and our own sense of self.

I used to have a full-time assistant, an editor who took me to lunch every few weeks to make sure I was all right, limousines to drive me around, big crowds on book tours to talk about me and my work, a partner who assumed responsibility for finances, bills and the nitty-gritty details of life. I had big contracts and turned down TV interviews. I was set. All kinds of things nearly put me out to pasture, I did more damage to myself than anyone did to me. I spoke poorly of my life. I ranted and complained. I waded in the warm stream of nostalgia, and lamented what was, I could not imagine a new future for myself.

I didn’t know what to do at first, and then the real journey began.

I am building my future, my value and worth. I do things every day that I would not have imagined doing just a few years ago. There are no assistants in my life, I am my own secretary, I field my own work, take responsibility for my own life. It is a very good thing. My life is what I make it, I have learned to stand on my own, make my own decisions, stand in my truth, unleash the creative spark the holy spirits have given me.

My writing is beginning to be good, I am connected to tens of thousands of valued readers.

In our world all of the old contracts and understandings and loyalties have been shattered, we live in new and changing times, and our choices are to change and see the world anew, or stumble off into the pasture of pathos and oblivion. If no one is loyal to use, then we can and must be loyal to ourselves.

I am grateful for my life, I will never look in the mirror and accept anyone’s decision that I have no worth or meaning in this world. I love every minute of this life, and I will take it in my hands and love it, every day in every way I can. The pasture is another word for fear, it is just a geography, a space to cross. It can be a death sentence for pride, or a call to life.

I see the pasture as a liberation, not a prison, an opportunity, not a loss.

When they tell us we have no value or worth, when we no longer know what to do, then the real journey begins.

 

Donkeys are imperious and intelligent creatures, when they want something, they let you know. When Fanny feels she is being neglected – this happens often – she will either come up behind me and nose me in the butt, often hard enough to move me a few feet, or even know me down.

If she is facing me, she will nose me in the crotch. We’ve had some painful exchanges over the years. Fanny has been with me almost from birth, we know each other quite well. She is very sweet, not as vigilant as the protective Lulu, the chief guard donkey of the farm.

No animals loves shrieking wind, things flying around, the barn creaking and straining. Our Pole Barn is well built, it is dry, deep enough for everyone and offers shelter from the wind. But Fanny wanted some attention, I was taking photos of Red and Fate with the sheep and came up to me and put her nose right into the camera.  She looked serious and purposeful. I knew that was next, I put the camera down, grabbed a brush and started paying some serious attention to her.

It was a wild day, woke up this morning to an awful ice storm, we and the animals could barely move, a few hours later, the temperature was in the mid-50’s, the snow and ice was gone and a fierce wind blew limbs off of trees, blew glass out of barn windows and drove the animals deep into the Pole Barn.

None of this deterred Maria (or me, for that matter), we went out to visit the animals, make sure they were okay – the wind was literally howling. Food calms them, so does grooming and brushing, they came out into the muddy pasture to be with us, they reminded us that they need human attention, it grounds them and keeps them at ease. When the wind shrieks like that, the animals get nervous and restless, they rushed to be with us and stayed close.

We brushed and groomed them, then Maria sat with them in the Pole Barn.

Things are calming down now, and tomorrow looks like normal winter cold, below freezing but above zero, where it belongs in mid-February. I hear you, Mother Earth, you are talking to me.

Like so many humans of my gender, there was a time not long ago if someone had told me to be a mountain, I would have snickered and rolled my eyes and found a way to run away. I was allergic to most, if not all, of those woo-woo solutions to life’s problems in my life, in health care, in the spiritual realm.

I can’t speak for all men, but I think most of us have not grown up with fathers and brothers and uncles who teach them how to be open and nurturing and spiritual.

We haven’t often seen how men can love one another and others and we don’t always know how to do it. If you watch the politicians and the way the speak, you can see how destructive this can be.

I always have craved a spiritual life and worked for it, but I was not self-aware and open enough to understand fully what it meant. As God was once quoted as saying, love is the point, not conquest.

Life is great teacher, and living is a great lesson in itself. There is no better way to get a man’s attention than to tie him to the back of a truck and drag him up and down a rocky hillside.

It was good for me.

I always say the  only men I love and can bear to be around were either tortured as children or humiliated as adults, These men make the best friends, and they have either died or been  blown open to feeling and awareness. They know what it means to love and be loved.

I have survived being a man and am lucky.  I don’t snicker at powerful spiritual notions of peace and healing any longer, they have, in some ways, saved my life, and there is no more satisfied customer in the world than a middle-aged man who been opened up like a ripe cantaloupe.

I once listened to a meditation tape – meditation has helped me in my life – about  being a mountain . It was guided and the instructor – this program is an App – asked me to picture a mountain, and think how steady and strong and grounded the mountain is, even as life rages all around it, with its ups and downs, frights, storms, changes, challenges.

Be the mountain, the instructor said, and find the grounded and peaceful part of yourself that is steady and confident, even as life taunts and surprises. I like this idea, I believe there is a strong, steady, peaceful part of me at the core, it is my mountain. When I am angry or fearful, I imagine the mountain, its steadiness and strength, it’s peacefulness. The idea settles me, strengthens me.

I like to see myself as a mountain, I guess, it seems a bit vain to me sometimes.

But it is a soothing image.

I believe we are stronger than many of the things we fear, stronger than we have been  led to believe we are. I believe fear is a geography, a space to cross.

For me, the role of the man is not to conquer or demand or dominate, but to be a source of steadiness and encouragement, we are, beneath it all, nurturing creatures, we are drawn to nourishment and protection. Before they forced us from our homes and into factories we cared for our families and home and were not, as we so often are, strangers to them.

Mountains are beautiful and peaceful and inspiring. In another life, I might like to be one.

Women can just as easily be a mountain as a man. But I would no longer laugh at the idea or make it small. That is part of being a mountain also, it helps me to see what it means to be a real man.

Fate finally met a force more powerful than she is, Mother Earth. After the wicked ice storm last night, the pasture was a skating rink, we had to stomp a path to the feeder for the sheep. Fate tried circling the flock as she loves to do, fell on her butt one, then slid right into a pole in front of the pole barn.

I will give her this, she kept at it until I made her stop, it’s a good way to break a leg or tear a ligament, as I well know. This is a first, I’ve never quite seen a pasture covered like that on our farm, not even last winter. An hour later, the temperature is 52 degrees here at the farm – 75 degrees higher than yesterday at this time, and the ice is gone, and the snow is melting. Rain on the way.

I wonder what the people who don’t believe in climate change are drinking, I’d like to try some.