Day: December 19, 2016

Tonight, I’m launching something I’ve been working on for some time – adding my voice and narration to the blog. I’m using an audio sharing app, Itunes and a voice recording program to post audio – I’ll do poems, commentary, excerpts from my books, occasional musings about philosophy, animals, and also some anecdotes from the farm. I share photos and words, why not my voice.

This is a powerful new tool for writers who wish to share their work and ideas with their readers, a new way of our inter-acting with one another. A kind of informal podcast. This will not replace words but occasionally supplement them, a new way to use the creative tools we have to…well, be creative.

My first broadcast, accompanied by a photo of Deb and Jake, two beautiful lambs, both gone now. And I read from my notes that helped me begin the first chapter of my next, next book “Lessons From Bedlam Farm,” out in 2018 and just underway. I use italic notes to help me get started on new chapters and these were about the lessons I learned in just one week of living on my farm, one of the great teachers in my life.

So welcome to the voice of me, hopefully the first of many and thanks for coming along on this ride with me as I seek to re-invent the life of an author in the new world. I do not intend to be irrelevant. Thanks for supporting me.  I love the challenge of creativity, and thanks to my good friend John Greenwood for inspiring me to do this and for helping me to do it. He did it a year ago.

I think my next offering will be a poem from Hafiz.

I have succeeded at some things in my life, failed at many others. One of my failures has always been my inability to slow myself down. My head is spinning when I wake up and when I go to sleep. Meditation has helped me, it is an important part of my life. So is reading, walking, listening to music, all calming and slowing things.

This week I want to slow things down a bit. I don’t want to stop blogging or writing my book or taking photographs, those are all things that are precious and grounding to me. I want to loosen up a bit, I want the holidays to mean something.

Next week, Maria and I are going to New York for two days to visit with my daughter and granddaughter in Brooklyn. The following week we are going to an old motel nearby to spend a night reading and talking and loving each other.

Those things will help.

This weeks is Christmas week, and while I am not a Christian, I am a follower and great admire of Jesus Christ, I wish he were alive today to teach us what faith and compassion really mean. I want to honor the week, not by going to elaborate dinners and family functions, but by going inward to a spiritual and empathetic place.

In the week of the Christmas Solstice, I’m going to bed earlier and sleeping a little longer. I have a stack of fine new books to read – right now Moonglow by Michael Chabon. And some albums to listen to. I have to learn Lightroom, my new photo management program.

I want to see two movies this week – Rogue One, and Manchester By The Sea. When the temperature rises above 8 degrees, I want to walk in the woods with Maria. I want to sit with friends and talk by the fire. I want to slow down a bit, which for me, means working and working, but also balancing the work with other things.

Writing and picture-taking is never work for me. I am avoiding the news this work, I’m not just interested right now. I am avoiding conflict and argument and people who favor conflict and argument. I will visit our friends in the Mansion with Red and help ensure that all of them have something under the tree Sunday.

I will give Maria the rest of her Christmas presents one by one, someone messaged me recommending diamonds as a gift, but he does not know me diamonds are not for us. Maybe a book or two.

And I will re-dedicate myself to learning how to be more compassionate, more empathetic,  to do more good. On Christmas, I think of Christ, and his passion for the poor and his outrage at greed and injustice and his love of healing, and I will imagine him coming to visit me and asking me what I am about.

In this age of hypocrisy and anger, when so many invoke his name but not his spirit, I hope to persuade him that me, a non-believer but a follower still, remembers what Christmas is really about. I hope to bring a smile to his face.

This is how I hope to slow down this holiday week.

Rosemary’s beautiful wool is revealing itself, and she’ll need it this winter. Yesterday we woke up to 49 degrees, this morning it was -5. We are climate accepters here, the farm does not lie, and all we have to do is look out the window. Glad to have Rosemary here, she is a regal creature, and her wool will make Maria and others very happy in the Spring.

As I’ve mentioned, Christmas gifts are a controversial topic around here, but so far, I’ve stayed out of trouble.

Maria liked her “Bad Ass Babes” pouch, but she loved this comfort blanket I got her, my second gift. I’ve discovered a neat website run by artists, they have some original things, including the Frida Kahlo leggings I got Maria last winter.

I hung it up on the line this morning to take this photo, it lives on the sofa in the living room.

Some things, even she can’t get ticked off about. I found this blanket online, and it sort of screamed to go to Maria, it’s perfect for the evenings, when we usually sit around by the fire and read.

This blanket is actually not unlike something Make would make herself. And it’s true, she be but little, but she is fierce. Thanks to Bill Shakespeare for the idea. I’m not supposed to give her any presents at Christmas – she is fierce – but I can’t really help it. I have a few more to go, nothing big stuff I have been amassing secretly for awhile.

If I give her all the presents before Christmas, it seems to work out okay. I’ll save one for Xmas morning, I have to say, I really love this blanket, and I could see that she does too. She wrapped it around her legs last night.

For me, photography helps me see the world anew. My eye changes as the light changes, and as new objects come into view, or I see familiar things in a new and different way. A few weeks ago, Maria found this beautiful old red wicker chair in the barn. We are going to repair the seat and one day, bring it into the farmhouse, I hope to use it as a reading chair. It is pretty old, we think.

It fits beautifully into the old barn, the light hits it differently almost every day, or as we move it around to get to the hay. It has a lot of character and dignity, after the winter, we will figure out how to repair it and restore it.

In the meantime, I almost always want to photograph it. These objects come and go in my imagination, and I return to them often, and then move onto something else. The process is interior, not conscious. I follow what I feel, and what touches me. This chair has a lot to say, and I see it is in the right place. We will do justice to it, I hope to capture the mood it evokes, it is almost a living embodiment of the farm, I can almost see the people sitting in it and rocking back and forth.