Day: March 6, 2016

Dante called the age from forty-five to seventy and beyond the Age Of Wisdom. In some parts of India, the wise get sent out to the forest. IN some Native-American tribes, they set off alone to meditate and die.

In the West, we expect the aged to stay in society, look around with a jaundiced eye and share the benefit of their experience. Joseph Campbell says the the qualities of aging are wisdom, justice,  generosity,  and humor or cheerfulness.

At this age, people have little or nothing to lose. we are approaching the evening. We have nothing to prove, and apart from death itself, less and less to fear. I am getting wiser all of the time, and I had a very long way to go.

For all of my life, I have loved to walk, that is my sport and one of my passions, it is the best possible way to see and understand the world, it is soothing and healing for me, and always inspiring.

The world on foot is my muse and my mentor. Growing older is not linear, it is not a straight line, it is a series of changes and  revelations, some up, some downs, a slow, gradual series of new understandings.

I’ve always had some problems with my feet, surgeons have long wanted to smash up one ankle and foot and rebuild it, I have declined the opportunity. I am still walking every day, often more than once, on roads, in forests and whenever I can, in cities like New York. It was when I was struggling to walk up a modest hill two years ago that I realized my heart was failing. I could not bear the thought of not walking, and so I woke up, and my life and my ability to walk was saved. I charge up those hills gratefully every day, if a bit more moderately.

But there is change, that is part of being mortal, and so is learning wisdom and acceptance.

In the past few years, something new has arisen when I walk on the concrete of big cities. My feet have changed and flattened out, if I walk for any real length of time, I get blisters, my legs and ankle finally protest after many decades of walking all the time. My body is changing.

The blisters are painful, and I am told, for a diabetic, potentially dangerous.

There are a number of things I can do about this, all kinds of special socks and shoes and wraps, although I very often forget to do them. Not walking as often and reflexively as I always have is a very difficult thought for me. I don’t really get it, but my feet are talking to me.

There is moleskin that prevents blisters, there are soft and more pliant shoes for me to wear (thanks but I don’t need advice about this, I’ve had plenty) but the thing is, I have to prepare myself, I have to remember.

it takes time and forethought. I am an impatient man, i live in the now and this week, even though I knew I was going to New York, I just, as usual, threw my camera in the bag and put on my hiking boots. And I walked and walked and walked, as I love to do. But the last few hours were different, I was walking in pain. Maria, seeing me grimace and grunt, asked if I was all right, and of course I said I was. I didn’t care to be asked. This is the awful and often fatal disease of men.

It’s odd, I have no trouble walking in the woods for hours, but a few hours on the concrete floors and walks of New York now causes trouble for me, various things – the blisters, my ankle – begin to hurt, I begin to hobble.  I have walked all over New York for so much of my life, it is almost impossible for me to accept this new reality. But I will. That is wisdom.

I am a veteran teeth-gritter and stoic, I soldier on, but I have spent a lot of time since I returned patching up my feet and recovering from my seven or eight hours of walking. I am getting it.

So acceptance and wisdom swirl around me once more, and to be wise means to finally understand.

I will get there when I next understood this: I can walk as much as I want, (almost) but I can no longer take those feet for granted. I must support them as they have supported me and protect them, and thus protect me. Denial is just another form of lying, it does not slow age or prevent death. I learned this from my heart and am now learning it from my feet as well.

I took care of the one, and I can take care of the other. In a sense, all pain and sorrow is a lesson, a chance to see beyond both.

I am a combat veteran of the hero journey, I believe the way to find your myth, to realize  your adventure, to find your support, is to know your place in life. The problems of youth are not the problems of age, neither are the solutions. The penalties and consequences of hubris grow exponentially as one ages.  Wisdom comes gradually, not in single revelations, if it comes at all. And despite our arrogance, there is no one way to get older any more than there is one way to die. You may think you know what is best for me and others, but you don’t.

I have to follow my own path, just as you have to follow yours. That is the very idea of acceptance.

There is nothing more important than bring fulfilled, that is my signal to the world that I am alive and was alive.

The question for me, when all is said and done, is this: what am I looking for? It is to fulfill the potential that is in me, and I believe in every human being. It is a tragedy every time a single person  fails to search or is denied the chance. The quest is not an ego trip or an action movie, it is to bring into fulfillment my gift to the world, and that is me.

I will keep walking.

Fate amazes and delights every day, she has not yet figured out how to intimidate or move the sheep very much, but she loves to be with them and stare at them, often from a good vantage point, like behind Red, next to me or underneath Chloe’s legs. Every living thing on the farm loves Fate, and she seems to return the favor, she even loves sheep more than the border collies I have known.

Today, she tried to give the sheep some idea using Chloe as a screen and the big pony, looked down started to nuzzle her, which I have to say is pretty adorable. Nobody much can resist Fate when she turns her Pirate Eye upon them. She is having a very happy life, I’m delighted to report, and that it what counts.

She did seem a bit started when Chloe reached her big head down to say hello, but she stayed there and rushed out to confront Liam, who charged at her and send her back underneath Chloe. She is safe there.

Thanks to all of my fellow creative and other lunatics who share my superstitious love of muses, totems, crystals and statuary, all meant to inspire me and guide me to glory. You can’t beat the Madonna for a muse, although my friend Ed Gulley is making his own muse history by creating a series of “Mr. Blockhead” brick creations from discarded bricks on his farm.

(You can wander into the unique imagination of Ed Gullley, a dairy farmer from White Creek, N.Y., he has started his own blog, the Bejosh Farm Journal and we are encouraging him to show and sell his folk art there. I think he should call it farm art, since everything he makes comes from things on his dairy farm.

I wouldn’t say Ed is insecure, but he is just coming to terms with the artist inside of him, it is coming out with a roar.

Mr. Blockhead started out on the back porch, but quickly migrated into my study, where there is a corner devoted to strange and beautiful things. These totems have not catapulted me to fame and riches, but they have helped me write 28 books and publish this blog, and more books are on the way.

That’s not bad. Today, I decided to use Mr. Blockhead’s lap as a sort of display space and gallery, I put my new Pinhole Photograph from New York City there. Maria says she wants to put some flowers there, sounds great. I’m moving my beautiful statue most to the corner tomorrow. We are going for it.

Ed has dramatically expanded his “Mr. Blockhead” collection, there is one for  St. Paddy’s day and two riding  wagons made out of stumps Ed dug up and carved and cut up. Check them out. I believe they are all for sale, and quite reasonable, I am proud to be the first purchaser of a Mr. Blockhead, I am very happy with mine. And judging from my messages and e-mail, he is catching one. I think I need to get Ed to sign mine before he becomes a big shot and gets an ever bigger head.

One of the new ones even got a beer can to sit next to, it was tossed on the road in from of Bejosh Farm.

We might send Fate to the winter olympics as a skating dog, she would do well there, she loves to skate on the ice. It will be warm this week, so Fate’s ice pond will almost surely melt. She’s getting some last romps on the ice in before the season ends. I have not yet got a photo of her sliding across on her butt, I just haven’t been lucky. But I did catch her feet leaving the ground here.

Bliss and Robby McIntosh are important people in my small town of Cambridge, N.Y. They are generous and civic minded, they care about community and environment, they seem involved in every thing the town needs.

I did not know until today that he plays the accordion and she plays the violin, and today they played for us at the weekly Sunday brunch at the Round House Cafe.

I was enchanted by their close and easy way with one another, the camera never lies about connection, it sees it or doesn’t see it. The morning sun graced both of these two good and gifted people, it was a joy to sit there and listen. The quiche was pretty great too.

Every Sunday morning, Maria and I resolve to sleep late, around 9 a.m. she usually gets hungry. “So,” she says, “what are we going to do about breakfast?” This is now code. “We ate out last Thursday,” she says, “and we went to New York yesterday, so we probably should eat at  home.”

I know she is asking me if we should go to the Round House Cafe for brunch, and I know she wants to go, and I know we will be going , but she doesn’t want to be the one to suggest it, as she is always watching and guarding our money.

Marriage is full of codes like this. At night, at some point, I announce that I’d love a snack, some cereal or fruit. She smiles. “Do you want me to get it for you?” No, of course not, i say, I’ll get it, but it often seems that before I get up, the cereal will appear. We are like that with one another, we always want the other to have what they want, even if they can’t quite say it.

I want to be responsible, I don’t want to spend all of our money at the Round House either. So I wait a few minutes and say, “you know, we don’t have anything to eat for breakfast.” This, of course, is not true, we have all of the things we normally eat for breakfast.

This is Maria’s cue to say, “okay, you’re right, let’s go to the Round House.” And we do, today’s brunch was quiche in different forms, a salad, fruit. And lovely music from Bliss and Robby. It felt like the angels had come to serenade us.

Community is important. It shines in the Round House.