Day: February 22, 2017

How strange, I walked with the dogs out into our woods – the snow finally melted enough to be able to walk out there – and I crossed the Gulley bridge and sat on the meditation bench and listened to the waterfall. And I found myself in prayer.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Red up on the hill, watching me, waiting for me. He is a spirit dog, he understands prayer.

I thought of Maria and sent a video of the stream to her, I don’t know if she got it or not. She is so far away. Last week, I prayed for a wonderful trip for her. She had one, although I don’t assume that my prayers are ever answered.

I know I cannot wholly embrace the dogma of any single religion, my mind just doesn’t work that way, I can’t be told what to think, I can’t worship somebody else’s God, embrace someone else’s dogma.

Yet I am deeply drawn to the spiritual life. I find myself praying all the time, including today. In recent months, I pray more frequently.

I am fending off the anger and anxiety in the air, staying grounded in my own truth.

In an odd way, this has been a good time, surprising and rich. I know who I am and what I wish to do. It doesn’t matter to me what everyone else wants to do

I am very much alive and engaged in the world, my senses are alert, my mind opened up.  Sitting on the bench, I realized that for me, prayer is my life, not a verse from a book.

Our in the woods, the rushing stream was my prayer the hawks in the sky my prayer, the dogs were my prayer, the trees and the stone walls, the wind was my prayer, the snow on the hillside, the donkeys braying, the dogs running.

Thomas Merton would say that God was in all of these things, and maybe so, I don’t really know. I like that idea of God.

He wrote that prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone. Sometimes I feel the world around me turning to stone, minds all closed up and angry, people awash in grievance and resentment. Prayer and compassion turn the stone to love.

A good time to pray. When I pray, like when I work, the dogs enter into my spirit and lie down, still.

I miss Maria, obviously, but I also feel liberated by the silence around me this week and last. I am not involved in the mechanics of my life, or the arguments beyond, but in the living of my life. In my life I have found a for of prayer I am easy with and open to, a kind of prayer in which there is no distraction. I love solitude, it is where I find myself.

At times, I see that my whole life is a prayer, my silence is a prayer, I don’t have to think about it or recite it or memorize it, it is all around me. Solitude and the world of silence I experience out on my bench and in the world deepens my prayer grounds me.

It is so hard to describe, but so powerful an experience. It is calming and peaceful, it is beautiful and honest and it is always there. It is not something I can find on my computer or I phone,  not on Facebook or Twitter.

Prayer is the simplest thing, all I need is me. The rushing stream is nice, too.

Jack Metzger posted a message on Facebook a couple of weeks ago saying that after 27 years, he was thinking of closing his iconic shop on Main Street in October. Time to focus on his art and travel a bit, he said. The word swept through the town like a dark cloud.

Everyone here loves Jack and wants him to be happy, but we are always fighting to keep our community together here, and Jack is a major fixture on Main Street, a big part of what makes our small town unique. I visited Jack today and he said the antiques business has changed, younger people are just not interested in old things any more, and they don’t have much extra cash to spare.

His business is still profitable, and he is selling a lot of his art, but he thought he might just need a change. It is hard to think of Main Street without Jack, but it is his decision, and I would never urge him to go against his heart.

I will say that Jack has made this announcement one or two times before, and when I saw him today, he had a stream of customers in the store, many of them buying things. Jack loves selling the old things he finds, and he looked very happy.

Are you really closing in October?, I asked. Well, he said, I am thinking about it. It might be time for a chance. Oh, excuse me for a sec Jon, I’ve got a customer over in the corner. He also dragged me onto the porch to look at a giant metal cowboy boot. I was not interested, but Jack loved it and told me the story anyway.

Jack and I are having lunch next week, we have a rich and good history together, and he got me to write a check today. I was preparing to say goodbye and wish him, well, but I’m not 100 per cent sure he is leaving. Jack’s soul is in that place, we’ll see.

I would miss him, as everyone here would, but that’s not a reason for him to stay. If he needs to give rebirth to his life, I wish him every bit of good luck.

Connie’s room is the talk of the Mansion, is is crammed with boxes of yarn.

We brought her a dog brush to keep in her room, and she loves brushing Red. It is a nurturing and comforting thing.

Connie told me some of her back story today, she lived in upstate New York and she had a close friend, and their husbands went hunting together – he worked in construction.

While the men were gone, she and her friend knitted and crocheted, and they began selling sweaters and blankets and mittens and scarves. “We made a kind of business out of it,” she said.

She is deeply into this work again, I see it has given structure and focus to her life.  It is very difficult for Connie to move around much, she needs an oxygen machine nearby to breathe.

She is insistent she does not want to  sell the things she makes, she wants to give them as presents.

We offered to take some of the yarn out of the room if it’s too much, but she says no, she wants to keep it, she may start making blankets and sweaters. She means to give them away to people, and although she said she didn’t know where she would put any more, I see she is not giving any up.

Connie is already making baby caps for newborns at Albany Medical Center, three of the boxes she received this week are baby wool, three more, behind Red, are regular  wool.

She is dumbstruck by your generosity, I think Connie was not ever given much in her life.

She surprised me by handing me a hand-written note on her “memo” pad and asked me to share it on the blog.

“I would like to thank everyone for your patterns and needles that you have sent. If possible, I would like a pattern for crochet baby hat and blanket as I like to crochet too and it would be nice to switch back and forth. Again, thank you very much.”

Connie asked me if it was all right to make that request, she wasn’t sure about it, and I said of course, people will help if they can and wish to, and not if they can’t. It is good for you to ask, I said, you have never asked for a thing, and I have asked you a hundred times if there is anything you want.

I just guessed right about what you wanted and needed. Now, it’s good to know what you want. There is an Army Of Good out there, I told her, and they care about you and the other people here. Red loved his brushing, by the way.

While at the Mansion today, I learned that they are in desperate need of a van to transport residents to doctors and take them out on field trips and shopping excursions. There are no funds to buy the van, so I suggested that they consider a gofundme project and I would support it on the blog.

I think they liked the idea. They are looking to see if a used one is available.

More later.

If you wish to write Connie or the other residents of the Mansion, you can do so at this address: The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Several new residents are coming next week, but I was given a list of first names today of residents who wish to receive messages: Bruce, Allan, Sylvie, Jean G., John Z., Carl (Bob), John R., Alanna, Peggie, Ellen, Joan, Brenda, Christie, Connie, Alice, Madeline, Mary, Barbara, Bill H., Brother Peter, Diane, Helen, Jean A., Gerry.

 

I was visiting my friend Jack Metzger at his shop, Outback Jack’s, on Main Street, and I froze. Isn’t that Lou Jacobs?, I asked as soon as I saw the thick cardboard poster way at the back of the store, amidst a cloud of folders, antiques, old albums and signs. I almost missed him, but it was like running into an old friend.

I recognized the tiny hat, the nose, the lips and the eyebrows. There was no clown like him, he was The Clown. All that was missing was his famous Chihuahua Knucklehead, who stole the show every time, and his famous mini-car, which he stuffed his long frame into and raced around the ring

I saw Lou Jacobs, one of the world’s most famous clowns, at a Ringling Brothers circus in Providence, then again in New York City, and once, I think, in Boston. He was considered one of the three best clowns in the history of the circus. I loved the circus dearly and it breaks my heart a bit to know it is shutting down.

“That is a poster of Lou Jacobs,” said Jack, and he took a look at me – Jack is a shrewd salesperson and he saw my face and he said if I really wanted it, I could just take it and pay me when I feel like it. I don’t like to do that, so I waited the requisite few minutes to see if the price came down. It did, but not by much.  Jack knows a winner when he has one.

He wants $225 for it, and it is cheap at that price. Jacobs died in 1992, I am glad he didn’t live to see the circus die as well.

Jack is important to me, every book I have written in the country, every blog post was written on one of his wonderful old farm desks, he has my number. In Hebron, when I first met Maria, Jack showed up every week with some old fiber tool he knew would make a great gift for her.

I love haggling with Jack, he tells the story of every piece he has, and his prices are always fair. He always comes down a bit, but not much. He has been doing this for 27 years, and he knows what his fascinating things are worth.

Jack was always right about the gifts for Maria.  And also, the stuff for me – old desk lamps and odd signs – that he carred around in the trunk of his car. Jack is an artist now, as well as a dealer in antiques and collectibles, his store is part of the soul of our town.

On The Paved Road to Hell, the people who say they love animals have killed off the circus, and many of the elephants they so righteously thought they were saving with it. Ringling Brothers will shut down in May. Jacobs died more than a decade ago, I am very sorry that the children of the future will only know him and the circus and the elephants on YouTube, if they know them at all. I think all the magic in the world will only be seen on screens, there will be no more Lou Jacobs to inspire and mesmerize.

For decades, Jacobs’s whiteface makeup and his enormous, goofy smile, outlandish eyebrows and apple-sized nose was the emblem for the Ringling Bros. circus. I believe he was  the world’s most famous living clown, I never knew of another to match him. They even made a stamp with his face. I am sure this poster was a promotional poster used by Ringling Bros. when it came to town.

The clown is a magical symbol to me, I vividly remember all the wide-eyed children laughing and pointing to him. What, I wonder, will open those eyes so wide now?

Jacobs won my heart and fired up my imagination, I think the circus is where I first saw the relationships people had with animals and the things they could do together.  It was such a rich way of life, I ran off once and tried to join the circus when it came to Providence, but I was way too young and they called my parents to come and get me.

Why on earth, asked my father, would you want to join a circus?

Jacobs wrote about the circus as a life he loved very much. It was a calling, not a job, and there are lots of jobs but few callings. I admit it saddens me that such a rich and meaningful way of life was also killed off, and in the name of loving animals. Jacobs loved the elephants he worked with, he often was photographed with them.

Jacobs often said there was nothing else in the world he ever wanted to do. I think I have to buy this poster and put it on my study wall. It seemed a luxury, but writing about it, I think it is just a necessity.

Lou Jacobs is important to me, and he would serve well as an inspiration and a muse when I write. I doubt he will be remembered for long, if at all, but he will always have a place on my wall. Another wonderful thing from Jack.

 

There’s a nine hour time difference between here and India, Maria wakes up when I’m asleep, so sometimes I post a letter to her on the blog, so she can hear from me while she is so far away and up in the dark.

This is the first day – it is warm and beautiful today – that I could make it through the snow pack and get to the meditation bench that Ed Gulley made. It is in the 50’s here, a far cry from the last few weeks.

The dogs came with me, you are right about where the bench ought to be, sitting by that stream is quite wonderful, the right spot.

I meditated for about a half an hour and the dogs just lay down near me and did not move much. Well, Fate moved a bit and came up and put her head on my knee.

I felt your presence very strongly, I closed my eyes, and you were sitting next to me, we were holding hands, and I thought of this great journey we are taking together through life.

And her, now you are in India, and we are 8,000 miles apart. Goodness, as Hastings would say to Poirot.

It was exciting talking to you today, I felt a new chapter coming in our lives, this trip has opened you up to your path in life in many ways, and I am eager to come along and support you, and also our work together. I am having my own epiphany, the Mansion work and the refugee work are opening my eyes to the possibilities for me as well.

I can’t wait to talk to you about it, all the love, me…