Day: September 15, 2017

“Nobody knows what waits ahead, Beyond the earth and sky. Lie-d, Lie-d, I’m not afraid to die” – Gillian Welch.

Our gray hen is perpetually confused and adrift now, she is losing weight, I think, and stays near Minnie, our barn cat, when Minnie is nearby. Otherwise, she wanders the farm by herself all day and much of the night. I can’t find where she sleep sat night, which is good, perhaps predators can’t find it either.

Maria wants to keep her alive, and that is our decision for now. I suppose part of my unease about her is that she reminds of death.

When I watch her moving slowly about the  yard, I do think of death. Maria is much younger than me, but I turned 70 this summer and death isn’t quite as remote an idea as it  used to be. I don’t want to hide from it.

It is good that the young believe they are immortal, otherwise they might be as cautious and wary as older people can sometimes be.

A friend asked me the other if I was afraid to die, and this afternoon, during my quiet hour, my lonely place time, I listened to Gillian Welch and Willie Nelson sing Welch’s song “I’m Not Afraid To Die” together. Gillian Welch is, at the moment, my go-to musician when I lie down and put my earphones on and rest and think at the end of the day.

To be honest, I’m not afraid to die, at least most of the time. I do know I am followed by a shadow which is my death – it has no shape or feature or definition. I have become the observer of the things that haunted and followed me all of my life.

I walked out into the pasture after my rest, and was worn down by the strong sun – heart medications don’t like the strong sun, and I sat down in an old Adirondack chair by the big apple tree to rest.  Maria was hard at work in her studio, spinning some of her magic. I felt quite alone, like something cold had reached down and touched my heart.

Red came trotting over from the pasture gate to put his head on my knee and look up at me. He does not care for it when I feel alone.

The donkeys sidled over to the fence and brayed softly at me, they have learned over the years how to get me to bring them a cookie or a carrot, it never misses, I never fail to bite. The got my number years ago and no day goes by when they don’t remember it. Okay, okay, I say, give me  a few minutes.

It is nearly the end of September and all around me leaves are beginning to spin down to the ground in their gentle ballet.

Like me, the leaves have begun to decay, they are never more beautiful than just before they die. I know my body has begun its own long decline, my substance is still strong and very much alive.

I am at this time in my life singing my song, my body is preparing to one day rise up out of the world.

There is a point in life when you dread the idea of death, and a point where  you come to see it as something else, a friend and guide perhaps, coming to take you to the other side.  Another of those magical helpers. I have of work to do in my life, lots of love to give Maria, lots of blogs to write, photos to take, small acts of great kindness to perform.

It seems that ever day is Friday, the weeks and seasons blow right over me like the wind that rushes up our valley, I sometimes feel that I too am leaping off the trees, and twirling to the ground. Maybe I will land in the wildflower garden, and give myself over to them.

But I’m not afraid of death. Let it be. It is enough.

I am not there yet, I know that, the beetles and worms will have to wait, but I feel an acceptance of death that is new to me, and leaves me at peace.

So, no, I am not afraid of death today, sometimes, though, I am still afraid of life.

Of all the many thousands of things I have written on the blog over the years, the most controversial has been my writing about my own ideas about manners, ethics, personal space and boundaries online. I’ve been writing about this for 30 years, as I watched the Internet grow in importance, complexity, cruelty, bullying, rudeness and a disrespect for privacy and dignity and independence.

The social conventions that have generally marked human interactions have mostly vanished, and so many good minds have gone underground, afraid to share their beliefs and get what they are asking for.  In our world, to share is to invite controversy and condemnation. Thoreau knew better than to bring  a laptop to Walden Pond.

People tend to get upset with me when I write about this, they are upset when I speak up for myself, or when I respond to people I believe have behaved improperly. They accuse me if arrogance, whining, myopia. If I share my life, put my work and ideas out there, then I am asking for it, and need to simply suck it up. What did I expect?

Well, I expect more that that, and I will certainly die expecting even more.

I think I have found that my best friends online are those I keep at a distance, not that live inside of my computer drives, waiting to pop up without warning or invitation, or sent me way too personal and familiar messages via Facebook Messenger, a plague on all of our houses.

Lots of people have suggested I get off of social media altogether, but they misunderstand me. I love writing about this, it inspires and energizes me. It is one of the most important social issues of our time – just look what it has done to our civic system – and I prefer to explore important subjects rather than run away from them. I’ve been writing about this all of my adult life, this is no time to quit.

Manners are important to me. Manners are my outward bearing, my conduct to other people, my way of wishing to behave to others. Nothing in my life has tested my idea of manners than the Internet, and the simple and often thoughtless way in which people can behave with others. People often tell me I have it coming – I write about my life and put my work out there, I deserve whatever I get.

Nuts to them, people who say that have no manners.

My manners generally have come from my grandmother, the only person ever to teach me any. She could not have imagined the Internet and the new challenges of digital technology and the virtual community.  But she had a passion for civility and for treating people decently, she learned firsthand what it meant to be treated poorly.

I have lived the evolution of social media every day, from the beginning. It is one of the great stories of our time.

My grandmother’s rules for being civil and decent were simple, I am astonished at how well they hold up today, and how comfortably they apply to the virtual community.

She told me to mind my own business unless someone asked me to enter their lives.

She told me to never offer or give unwanted advice to people, it was rude, she said. (And Thoreau taught me that in order to be independent, we must be permitted to make our own mistakes and learn from them, not live in a world of preemptive warning and fear.) Foolish people do not take advice, my grandmother said, and smart people don’t need it.

She said it was not my business to save other people, except in dire emergencies. People must save themselves.

She told me not to hide. If I had something to say to somebody, say it to their face, not behind their back (or in a tweet or FB message.) Only cowards talked behind people’s backs, she said. And only small people attack strangers while hiding behind screens and distance.

She cautioned me to not patronize people (to treat them with apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority) or think I am  better than anyone else.

She taught me not to hate my enemies. If you are alive and think, you will have enemies, she said, don’t hate them for being different.

She told me not to argue my beliefs (this was before the Internet), they are, in most cases, no one’s business but mine. She said she had seen enough of war and argument to know that neither had ever solved a problem or made the world better.

She told me to look in the mirror every time I had a decision to make, and if I like what I saw, then it was the right decision for me. My ideas were mine, they were as precious as gold. I didn’t need the approval of other people to find the right thing for me to do. I don’t need for the rest of the world to approve.

She told me to put myself in the shoes of other people, she perhaps did not know the word “empathy.” She told me that everyone one in the world had it harder than me, and fought tougher battles. That was the way to be humble, she said.

She taught me to never be cruel to other people, or take away their dignity or treat them with disrespect. You are not a judge, she said, you are not a holy man.

She cautioned me against listening to the “fear-mongerers, and vampires of worry” as she called them, the people who lived in the dark side, who spread rumors and saw death and danger everywhere and who spread fear like the plague.

In her time, those were the old ladies at the butcher shop.  in my time, they are invisible  they live on the superhighway of fear and alarm that is the Internet,  and feast online on the well-being of people. She urged me to love truth, and fight for it. For me, this idea has evolved, I call it Standing In One’s Truth. My grandmother was authentic, she did not know how to lie or hide.

And the poor. Above all, the said, never forget the poor and the vulnerable. That is the holiest wish of every God in every faith, she said. Give the poor hope, and love the earth, it is our home.

Reading over these ideas, I realize that every one of them is under siege on the Internet, where so many people feast on fear and conflict, even hatred, and where hostile messages and unwanted and intrusive (and often worthless) advice floods the Internet like a raging stream in a tropical storm.

Why do I write about this? Because if even one person reads this and thinks before hitting the “send” button, the world will be a better place. Lots of people have sent me messages like that, bless them. How often do we get to make the world even a little bit better?

So this is what I do or try to do. What you do is up to you.

I am happy in my life and grateful and aware of the gifts the Internet has brought me – just think of the Army Of Good.

Hopeless causes are always special for me, they are the part of the foundation of thought, how bland and boring the world would be without them.

This yellow barn on Route 22, my road, is one of my favorite photo subjects, and one I get a lot of comment about. Yellow barns are rare around here, red paint was always cheaper, but in the Fall, when the Goldenrod emerges, this barn is especially beautiful, it looks as if it grew out of the field.

It is about eight miles from me.

I took this photo today with my Archomat art lens, and as I hoped, it captured the rich dimensions of the meadow around the barn, and the connection between the two – I can’t imagine the farmers who built the barn and painted it didn’t see that.

This photo evokes a lot of things for me.

I am offering  a signed limited edition of 20 prints,  8 1/2 by 11 inches on archival paper, shipped in secure tubes.

The photograph costs $75 plus $10 shipping (a total of $85.) George Forss, the photographer and artist and friend, will do the printing.

My new lens has opened a path for me to sell some of my photographs in a limited and inexpensive way, something I have been trying to do for years. I will only sell photos that have special meaning for me, and all of my photos, as always, are free for people to use in any way they wish. None of them are copyrighted or bookmarked.

The new lens is very popular with my readers, as it turns out, and it gives me a way to capture the sometimes otherwordly and magical feel of nature, or at least, the nature around me.

The lens is modeled on the very first optical lens used in photography, it was first built in 1837 and has recently been re-issued. It is a very simple lens with no auto focus or image stabilizer, and it is a challenge to learn. It only focuses well on images it likes.

The picture will be unframed.

Maria is handling the sales, she receives a commission. If you are interested, you can e-mail her at [email protected]. Thanks.

For thousands of years, human beings have been asking dogs to get the sheep, and almost without fail, the sheep appear. For me, it is one of the cherished rituals of the farm, it tells me there are timeless rituals, and it reminds me that we desperately need rituals to give structure and balance to our lives.

I learned when I came to the farm that a life without ritual is somewhat empty, it drifts and frightens. I don’t even have to look at Red, I just open the gate and say “Red, get the sheep,” and a few minutes later the sheep appear. This is the way I start my day, and it grounds and comforts and inspires me

I am not given to morbidity, but I do know how much I will miss Red when he is gone. He is my dog.