Day: August 26, 2018

I am not the kind of person who normally runs around naked taking photos 100 yards from a busy highway. I am not the kind of person who runs around naked at all. I am 71 years old, and women are not generally lining up for a peek at my nakedness, nor do I have any illusions about what I look like.

On occasion, when it is early or there is a thick mist shrouding the pasture, I will run out naked with a camera to catch the light before it disappears, light is never static, it is moving every second, and it is shy, it can disappear in a flash if you don’t move quickly and I hate to lose a picture when the light is good.

The other morning, as Maria recounts in her blog, Maria and I had come downstairs to take our showers, and then she goes upstairs to get dressed and I usually bring my clothes downstairs. It takes Maria about three seconds to get dressed, it takes me longer these days, my knees have their own idea sometimes.

When she came downstairs, I could see something was up, she was dressed in her belly dancing clothes and there was an almost mad gleam in her eye. She shocked me by asking me if I would take a photo of her dancing in this purple belly dancing dress and Choli.

Maria has never asked me to photograph her in any belly dancing dress, and never when her belly was showing. For some unaccountable reason, Maria has always thought her body was ugly. Belly dancing is helping her to shed this falsehood.

I’ve always thought the same thing about my body, I still do most of the time.

So when Maria asked me to take a photo of her, I knew this was a difficult thing for her to do, and I grabbed my camera. The light in the backyard was just perfect, and I knew it would be gone in a flash. I wanted the light to shine on her face and body, I wanted it to be a backdrop against the house or the barn, whichever was better.

I knew the photo had to be just right or she would never put it up or show it. And I had to move quickly.

So I just ran out naked. I didn’t care if I was naked, and I knew I had to take my time to get her to move into the light and show me some of the attitude that is so important in belly dancing.

I had the right lens on my camera, the Canon 14 mm wide-angle lens that is sharp and fast, especially in the right light (when it is behind me at an angle).

I was adjusting the aperture and shutter speed as I went, the morning sun was too strong at first, and Maria  moved into the shadow. So I took my time and took about 30 photos until I was sure I had four or five good ones.

We both loved this one shown above. A good and lucky shot.

I was outside naked for about 10 minutes, Maria was much more rattled about my being naked than I was, she kept trying to shield me with her purple skirt, which was in itself, hilarious. Maria is a bit of a prude, at least in public.

One of the good things about being older is that the little things that upset so many people don’t bother me any longer. I am who I am, take it or leave ie.

So how, Maria asked me when I came inside, was I able to shed my inhibitions and caution and take these photos naked for so long right out in the yard?

I had to think about it.

For the longest time, I tried to hide my body from Maria, I was afraid if she saw me, she would no longer love me. I think she was afraid of the same thing.

The thing is, love is something of a tonic. It transforms people.

Over the years, I have come, warily but steadily to the realization that Maria loves my body, she thinks it is beautiful, she thinks I am handsome, something that shocks me every time I hear it. She loves me the way I am, just as I love her. I don’t have to worry about that any more, I trust it, and that is a wonderful gift.

I still have a hard time believing it.

But I think it is true. In our relationship, we love the heart and soul of each other, the spirit, and while I love and admire Maria’s body, it has always seemed beautiful to me in every way, from her feet right up to the vulva, belly and chest. I love the smile I see in this photo, I love her radiant spirit, creativity and strength. I love her inside and out.

I think she feels the same way about me, reluctant as I am to admit it, and even at my age. So I wasn’t afraid at all to go outside naked to get her the photo she needed and wanted of her in her purple belly dancing skirt.

It was a big moment for her, thus a big moment for us.

We work that way, we each know a creative moment when we see one.

I didn’t think a thing about it, and I am no longer afraid she will not like what she sees of me. I learned this other lesson, when you’ve shown it all, you really have nothing much to fear, in life, in soul,  in body.

Shortly after my first wife and I decided to get a divorce, we met with a mediator and found ourselves staring across a small conference table, adversaries for the first time in our 35 year marriage.  It was awful.

The mediator had asked the two of us what we wanted from one another, what we were prepared to give each other, what we needed and could afford.

My wife had her own job and career, but I made more money than she did the burden was on me to make sure she was comfortable, something I very much wanted to do.

I remember feeling horrible that we had come to this, and I was desperate for her to be safe and happy, as is often the case when people end long marriages. The mediator asked what I thought I could pay each month in alimony.

I was surprised, I hadn’t expected to pay alimony, but I said without any hesitation, “oh, I can pay $9,000 a month.” The mediator gave  me a long and hard look, she had seen my tax returns and I had never looked at them, my wife handled all of our finances. I said I would run the numbers by my financial adviser.

I didn’t tell her that I didn’t really have a financial adviser, only someone who handled what was left of my rapidly vanishing IRA.

“Mr. Katz,” she said before closing up her folder and advising each one of us to get an attorney. “I think you need to be your own financial adviser.”

I know I lived in delusion, I  did not take responsibility for my life. Like many other people who live with grandiose rescue delusions, I was living out of reality. I not only did not have anywhere near $9,000 to give Paula, I didn’t have enough money to pay the mortgage or my mounting credit card bills.

I was a best-selling author, HBO had just made a movie based on one of my books, I had a book contract for three more books. Surely, I thought, one of them would be big, a best-seller again. One would surely draw a  movie deal. I was a big shot after all, I  was on television all the time, I was sent on fancy book tours all over the country.

My next book, I remember telling Maria, who was then my best friend, would “be big.” When it came out, I could settle all of my debts, pay my wife whatever she needed. I did not feel mortal, I did not stop spending money I didn’t have, I did not for a minute accept that I was broke and would almost certainly have to go bankrupt.

That did not occur to me for a year or so, when publishing was devastated by the Great Recession, my farm had been on the market for three long and expensive years, the Internet had all but destroyed hard cover book sales, and my bank account and savings had bled to death.

I have a friend who is a musician, and is  broke like many musicians these days, and yet he won’t even think of getting a job or changing his work because he is working on yet another song, which will be big and provide for  his  family and other needs.

This is eerily familiar to me, his big album was my big book.

I have too many friends who are waiting for gurus, wizards, geniuses to come into their lives and fix them, give them money, show them how to make more, rescue them. I call it the “rich person” fantasy. I have a friend wearing himself out running a small business, like the farmers here, he went into debt to save  himself. There is always someone on the horizon, he tells me, waiting to offer magical solutions, maybe a wealthy person who wants to buy his business and absorb his debts.

I have another friend who lives with a severely impaired person, her house has grown filthy, cat leavings and dirt everywhere. She doesn’t seem to know that this is an over the line and unacceptable way to live. She is getting help, and my wish for her is that her delusions are destroyed, just as mine were.

These stories sound a lot like me, and it always hard for me to hear them.

When things fell apart, and I finally got the help I had always needed, my delusions were shattered. I began to understand that only I was responsible for my life, and I had to embrace that responsibility and pursue it. I began to understand that there would be no “big” book or movie deal or fat contract to save me from myself.

I was the only one who could do that.

I had to go to the place of my pain, gradually and painstakingly deprive it of its power over me, because I could readily see that pain was the mother of delusion, a fantasy escape from it. So when I began to see reality, and with the help of a tough-minded and blunt therapist – “Jon, you have lost all perspective…” I entered the pain and experienced its true rawness and misery.

Pain, writes Henry J.M. Nouwen, “is the experience of not receiving what you most need. It is a place of emptiness where you feel sharply the absence of the love you most desire. To go back to that place is hard, because you are confronted there with your wounds, as well as with your powerlessness (and helplessness) to heal yourself. You are so afraid of that place that you think of it as a place of death. Your instinct for survival makes you run away and go looking for something else…”

This was true of my delusions, they were nothing but an escape, a place to hide from the pain and heartbreak that I carried deep inside of me.

Maria also lived with a great illusion, that she was worthless and unable to find her voice or make art that was any good. it was how she escaped her great pain, and allowed the people around her to marginalize her and mistreat her.

Over these years, this illusion, this lie about herself, has also crumbled and begin to fall apart. She accepted the reality – she is different – and embraced it, and that is the truth.

She is now  living in reality, she has done every single thing she set out to do.

So I went to the place of my pain with the new knowledge that I was setting out to find a new place, I faced the reality of my life, and in so doing, it became less fearful than the illusion itself. I learned I could take care of myself, I didn’t need a big book or a rich savior or a mysterious wizard riding on a big white horse.

I know how much money I have in the bank, I check it almost every day. I don’t expect anyone to rescue me, nor do I need rescuing.  I can take care of myself and stand in my truth.

Knowing, rather than running and hiding in illusions, is the path to security and peace of mind. I have faced the worst truths about myself and acknowledged them. I have no secrets, nothing to hide.

The deeper the roots I planted in my new life the less the pain and fear that I felt. It just required my being honest to myself and to other people, and living in delusion and fantasy is not honesty, it is deception, it leads to nothing but panic and sorrow.

Anna Freud wrote that panic attacks occur when we lie to ourselves, and i kept telling myself one lie after another. I was better than that, and i am better than that now.

I mourned my pains and wept over them in order so that they could leave me bit by bit. I felt I was becoming free. I didn’t need to live in melancholy and panic.

I would never have a perfect life or lose consciousness of my weaknesses. I will never forget that I am broken inside.

But I could still have my life, and love my life, and that is so much better than my delusions.

When I moved into this version of Bedlam Farm, I made myself a promise.

I would buy and plant a tree every year that I am here so that Maria and the people who follow me to live on this farm will have shade and a ring of green around the old farmhouse.

I didn’t grasp the imminent onrush of global warming, it’s made me feel even stronger about trees, the people who come after me will need them more than ever. If you drive around the farms  year, you will usually see giant maple and oak trees towering in a  beautiful ring around the old farmhouses.

The first farmers were very conscious of their moral obligations to improve the land, nurture the soil and plant trees for their successors. It is a matter of  honor for me to do that, and Maria has fully embraced the idea.

I am older than she is, and  hope she will get to see the trees we have planted grow and widen. We planted three maple trees on the front lawn when we moved in, and they are thriving, shielding us for privacy, to soften the road of the trucks in summer and providing shade.

The future residents will appreciate them, as we appreciate the thoughtfulness of those who came before us.

Beyond the maples, we have planted eight trees along the South side of the house, front and in the side, mostly big and beautiful white birches. Today, we went to the Mettowee Nursery and we got two new trees, brown Paper Burch’s on sale for $160 each.

These were the last two small trees at the nursery, we got there just in time. Maria is out digging the holes right now, I can’t really do that kind of work any longer, especially when I pull a muscle in back, as I recently did.

So I swallow my manly pride and take pleasure in doing the watering. i put down the mulch and shovel the soil back off of the grass. And I water.

So two new trees to Bedlam Farm, I have kept my promise for another year. I will do so until I can’t do it anymore. I love thinking of people sitting in the shade, of having this beautiful old farmhouse enveloped in a circle of green, just like the old farmers wanted.

And I love keeping my promise, to the farmhouse, to Mother Earth. Planting a tree is always a sacred thing.

For me, you don’t have to die heroically or face bullets to be a hero. Some of the bravest heroes I know are the people who take risks and make leaps of faith to do what they love and do it well.

I’ve seen Nancy with her hot dog stand in Manchester, Vt. for years now, but it was only in the past several years that Maria and I ever stopped at her stand – she calls it “Nan-Z’s” and got to know here and love her quite exceptional turkey hot dogs.

I had heard a lot about her: her hot dogs are especially good, she has great mustards, her stand is spotless, she is lovely and remembers many of the people who have faithfully come to eat at her stand in all kinds of weather.

Nancy is coy about where she gets the hot dogs or just how she cooks them. She does say fresh rolls are important. She is a fresh face and admirable soul in a world increasingly occupied by unhappy and angry people who rarely get to do what they love. There are few callings in our time, only jobs that last as long as a company’s profits rise.

It is no longer in fashion to love your work, the goal is to keep from getting thrown into the street for as long as possible and work hard to build up hopelessly small IRA and pension funds that will not last very long once you need them.

I am lucky, writing is my calling and i have clung to it for dear. life. I have no pension plan or IRA, this is a trade I knowingly made for love and fulfillment.

A literary writer friend has obvious distaste for my blog, he wrinkles his nose  asked me once what Mark Twain or Herman Melville or Emily Dickinson might think of it. I said Mark Twain would love having a blog and I didn’t really care what Herman Melville or Emily Dickinson might think of bedlamfarm.com.

I get to do what I love, every day.

So does Nancy. For decades, she has been selling hot dogs in that parking lot near the popular outlet stores and hotels and inns of Manchester, once a quiet Vermont town, now a very busy commercial and skiing and tourist hub.

She gets to work for herself, live her life, ski all winter.

Nancy has been there through the good times and bad times, she cares deeply about the quality of her hot dogs – she has beef hot dogs also – and even got a picnic table installed on the edge of the parking lots.

She is, in fact, incredibly nice and raises hot dog making to the highest possible culinary standards. I’d rather eat there than most of the restaurants i know. Sometimes, we just make the 35 minute drive to Manchester to have lunch in Nancy’s parking lot. If you come early, you can eat at the picnic table.

Nancy is out there all day in the heat and cold from April to Christmas. This year the temperature was below zero and her mustard froze, it was the first Christmas in 30 years that she wasn’t selling her hot dogs. In the winter, she mostly skis, there are mountain ski resorts all around Manchester.

I love living in the country for many reasons, one is that it is still possible for individuals like Nancy to live their lives and be fulfilled and not tremble all day in fear of being fired or laid off. In the country, it can still be done. I am doing it, and so is Maria.

I count Nancy as being among the blessed.

People have the right to choose their own lives, but in my  mind, to work only for money is to be a slave.