12 September

You Are Too Much For Some People….Those Aren’t Your People.

by Jon Katz

You Are Too Much..

My friend Janet Hamilton, a writer, shared a quote with me from Karen Salmonson. “You are too much for some people. Those aren’t your people.”

This quote struck me, it touched me and spoke directly to me and my own experience, as some quotes do. I often read the quotes of other people, and sometimes, I am surprised to find myself quoted. In a sense this quote reflects what I have been learning and writing for some time.

I am too much for some people, I always have been. But I never knew that they were not my people, I never understood that I could accept that, I always blames myself for being too much for some people.

Something must be wrong with me, I became frightened and angry. I was afraid of myself and angry at myself.

In our culture, if you think, if you ask people to think, then some people will thank you for it, and some people will hate you for it.

We are taught not to think, or to think so narrowly – the world as the left and the right – that we pose no threat to anyone.  They let us squabble like hungry chickens, we are not threat to them in this small little box.

Once you label yourself, or permit others to label you – the left and the right – then you have no need to think and no reason. Just a dog who never leaves the yard becomes sluggish and simple, so do human beings become parents, hating themselves for their dependence and mindlessness, hating others for being different from them.

And those outside of the tent, they wander among the raging ideologues, hoping for their own place in the sun. I have always been too much for some people, and always blamed myself for it. I have learned not to do that, an integral part of being authentic, of finding your voice and your place, is understanding that most people are not looking to awaken or change.

And some may hate your for trying.

You are too much for some people. Those aren’t your people. You are not too much for your people. You are just right for them.

12 September

Fate Scare: Witness Or Ghoul? Protecting Myself.

by Jon Katz
Witness Or Ghoul?
Witness Or Ghoul?

When Fate dropped to the ground Maria’s first instinct was to rush over to her, and when she got up, she held her paw and soothed her. I came to see what I could see, and then rushed back to take a photo, I have a powerful compunction to record  things, to be a witness. Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between that and being a ghoul.

When I was a young reporter, I covered the police, and my first editor, a man I loved, told me that the only crime in journalism was to not come back with the story. Don’t ever come back without the story, he told me, just get in your car and drive away. I stole photos off of the mantles of bereaved families, I sad on the road waiting for the police and holding the hands of dying accident victims, asking them how they felt, I called up the parents of war casualties and asked them how they felt about losing a son or daughter.

There is a fine line between reporting and vampirism, I think, and I was never entirely clear about where it was. Looking back, I see these issues were more morally complex than I thought then. But I have never lost that impulse – do not come back without the story.

For someone writing an open blog about his life, this has, I confess, worked for me in a new and different way. This sense of timelessness and urgency is one of the things that has made the blog popular, and saved my writing career when it seemed about to collapse.

I care about my humanity and don’t want to lose it, I love Fate dearly, but when something like this happens, the other part of me – some might call it the ghoul – rises up and I detach myself, even from death and suffering. I saw so many people die in so many different ways, perhaps I did become injured to it.

I love the journalistic impulse, it ties me to the world in a very real way and fuels my writing and energy and curiosity. And sometimes, living with Maria, frees me a bit from the need to be human, she will do that so totally and instinctively, I am sometimes free to watch.

I also realize that this is a defensive posture, the reason perhaps I became a reporter in the first place. It shields me from feeling. It was awful to see Fate struggling, perhaps even dying on the ground in the woods, there was little we could have done about it. Only later, when I got home and started writing, did I feel my heart beating and my fingers trembling a bit.

The feelings are all there, I have learned how to protect myself from them. I never come back without the story.

12 September

Fate Scare In The Woods

by Jon Katz
In The Woods
In The Woods

We had one of those dog scares, this time out in the woods. Fate suddenly keeled over, struggling to reach her hind quarters or legs, circling and falling down, she looked both disoriented and bewildered, we had seen nothing like it before. We saw some bees or hornets circling her legs and underbelly and brushed them away (foolishly, maybe) and got her away from there.

Maria went to her to try to calm her and see what could be seen – I was thinking she stepped on a hornet or bee’s nest in the ground or possibly on a snake – she kept dangling her leg, turning to us and falling over. I called the Cambridge Valley Vet and (of course took a photo) they said to bring her in, they would see her as an emergency.

We got her up and walking, she was halting and confused, almost as if she had absorbed a toxin and her left leg seemed useless and unable to withstand any pressure. Over the next ten minutes she began to move more freely and naturally – we had a mile-long walk back to the path and the car and I thought we might have to carry her.

Neither one of us could see any signs of a wound or bite or stinger.

She slowly regained her footing and by the end of the path, she was beginning to chase Red, even though she didn’t go far and move fast. But she was improving, we think she got stung a few times. I cancelled the vet appointment, we brought her home. She is moving freely and resting, she is fine. She ate  heartily and there seems to be no pain in her leg.

Unnerving to see  her like that, but she is an adventurous dog, she gets into everything, it was bound to happen that she would explore a bee’s nest, and we are very fortunate a horde of hornets or bees didn’t come out after all of us. It was good to move quickly away.

12 September

Portrait: Vince Vecchio, Jersey Guy, Family Guy.

by Jon Katz
Family Guy
Family Guy

Sometimes, it is a pleasure to pay people hundreds of dollars for good work done so well. Vince Vecchio is a builder and an excavator, he moves the earth around the same way and as easily as I move the camera from one place to another. He came to the country in 1971 and has made a life her as a good and hard-working who can be trusted to do what he says he will do.

Such a man is of great value anywhere, but especially in the country, and even more so when dealing with someone like me, who has no real idea of how the material world works. Vince is a country guy now, a big man in a truck, but at heart, I think, he is a Jersey guy.

I recognize this breed because I lived in New Jersey for more than 20 years. These are the people you call in a bind, the people who come running, the people you can trust intuitively. He came this morning, leveled our bumpy driveway, made room to park our cars.

Vince is a big man in truck here, but he is forever a Jersey guy, and I mean that in the best Springsteen  sense. A family guy too.  Work and family is what drives him, and he re-arranged our earth a bit here in just a couple of hours. I think the portrait captures a bit of his sturdiness.

12 September

Paying No Attention To Fate

by Jon Katz
Sheep At The Gate
Sheep At The Gate

The sheep were crowding the gate that was closed because Vince Vecchio was putting gravel into the pole barn for the winter, when I sent Red up to the gate to back them off, they turned and ran. When I sent Fate up to the gate, they gathered closer. The border collie trainers say this means the sheep don’t respect the dog, I think it means they are just pals.

Email SignupFree Email Signup