For surprise, nothing beats this life
Posted At: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 9:50 PM | Posted By: Jon Katz
December 2, 2008 – E.B. White wrote from his farm in Maine that he imagined his friends and neighbors there must have watched him and thought of a little girl playing house. His notion of farming, he conceded, was a cheap imitation of the real thing. I know what he meant.
Real farming is nothing much like my farm. Farmers pound hand-made stakes into the ground with strands of barbed wire to make fences and chug manure and sileage around all day and night. They working back-breaking hours for little or no money and keep dead trucks and cars around for years for cannibalized parts.
Still, as White wrote, there is nothing that beats this life for surprise. Today, I found a feral cat in the barn, saw Minnie the barn cat curl up and sleep with Winston, my fading rooster, watched one of he neutered rams brawl with Lulu the donkey for position at the hay feeder, looked up the path in the woods to see a coyote staring at me, watched as all three goats climbed up onto the picnic table to catch some brief sun, saw the most amazing sky turn colors, had about a dozen deer burst out of the woods while my dogs and I looked on in shock, and felt the ground shake as Elvis and Luna nuzzled each other out behind the barn. “You never know where the enemy will strike,” wrote White.
Friends (3)
Posted At: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 8:57 PM | Posted By: Jon Katz
Smile: The Hound of Love is on guard
December 2, 2008 – I did not have many friends before moving to the farm. I don’t think, looking back, that it was possible for me to open myself up to somebody enough to be a friend. The farm has been a great experience for me in so many ways, but farms in remote parts of the country can also be fortresses, a way to be away from people. I have a good friend who describes himself as a hermit, and who doesn’t really want a lot of human contact.
I have another who is immersed in family and responsibility, and whose life is about helping people and supporting them, a powerful mix. Tonight, my great friend Mary Kellogg the poet came over for dinner, and we pored over the new poems she has written, (her first book, “My Place On Earth” is being reprinted yet again, the sixth time. It includes her poems and my photos. She is working on another book.) Mary has been one of my closest friends for several years now, and she startled me after dinner by saying she has been watching me this year, and likes me better than she did when we first me.
I took that as a compliment, and I know what she means. I have learned a lot about myself this year, and am hard at work trying to become the person I want to be, rather than somebody who is running away from people and things. I am not yet there.
Thursday I’m going to see another very valued friend, the pastor Steve McLean and I was telling Mary how much his friendship has meant to me, and that even though I am still struggling with the nature of religion, Steve has taught me how to pray, and that is a great gift. I have another friend, also named Steve, who is showing me how to solve problems rather than fear them or wrestle with them.
On a farm, you have to have friends, I suppose, and you need them. I see that you have friends when you are ready for them, ready to give and take. And to let them be friends. And to trust them.
That is a gift I’ve come to later on that I would have liked, but better later than never.
Walking Mary to her car, I thanked her for being my friend, and said I hoped it wasn’t too difficult, and she smiled, and said, “that’s what friends are for.”
-
“Out Of The Shadows,” the second Bedlam Farm Book, will be published in mid-December, also by the Troy Bookmakers and in some bookstores. It is a chronicle in text and photos of my brush with madness last winter.
Beauty in ordinary things: Bunker Hill Road (3)
Posted At: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 5:12 PM | Posted By: Jon Katz
I’ve driven past this telephone pole a million times, and until I saw it framed against this sky today, I didn’t really see how beautiful and graceful it is. It is not, to me, a religious symbol so much a mark of the beauty in ordinary things, that we can so easily miss, but that are a benchmark of real spirituality.
Messages on Bunker Hill Road (2)
Posted At: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 5:10 PM | Posted By: Jon Katz
I stood on Bunker Hill Road, in a strong wind and cold afternoon, and watched the sky rush overhead and open up. It was beautiful, and lifted my heart, and opened me up to all that power and mystery.
Finding yourself on Bunker Hill Road (1). The path to freedom
Posted At: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 5:08 PM | Posted By: Jon Katz
Shot with a 16-35 mm, ISO 640, ap f/11, SS 1/500
December 2, 2008 – Izzy and I were chasing sunsets this afternoon and came across this one on Bunker Hill Road. My friend Kim sent me this message, from Sogyal Rinpoche: “Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.”
When I am on Bunker Hill Road, or Kinney Road, with my camera, and I look up and see the glory of the big sky, and the emotion of the place, and the light, and the clouds, I let go and am on the real path to freedom. Make a friend. Find a friend. Trust a friend, and let him or her love you.
