Day: April 23, 2012

A reporter once asked me what I thought was the most essential requirement for being a good writer, or artist, and I was a bit surprised to hear myself say “compassion.” A writer, I said, must be able to put himself into someone else’s skin, to feel both empathy and sympathy so that he can capture the life of someone or something other than his own. Otherwise, he will become self-absorbed, and his stories and characters will simply bounce off of people, and not touch them where it counts. Good writing makes the reader think, makes him or her feel.  This is true of photography as well I think, it literally puts you in another place, makes you see something outside of yourself. I believe it is true of art also. And surely, of a good blog.

Animals raise all kinds of issues relating to compassion. Since they do not speak, we have no choice but to put ourselves in their place, even thought that can be like stepping into quicksand, can be fatal. We surrounded ourselves with our own experiences of life, forgetting that every single person in the universe has it harder.

Compassion has vanished from our political system, and from much of media,   organized religion, corporate employers,  medicine and the law.  It is out of style among humans dealing with humans, but It comes up all the time when humans deal with animals. For me, it is the thread, the narrative, the point. Compassion was the central issue involving  Simon. With Orson. With Frieda. With Fran.  With Rocky. With the fox. With Rose. With Izzy. Compassion is the theme of my life, in so many ways. Animals show us how to be compassionate, as they require it. They are voiceless and cannot speak for themselves. Compassion involves all kinds of conceptions and misconceptions. When I said I could not shoot the fox after seeing and photographing the three kits, I was flooded with all kinds of messages of relief, many of them expressing gratitude for Maria’s presence, as if a man could not possibly have come to this decision by himself, or without being cajoled into it.

I am not fit to judge my own compassion, but I can say that everything I do that people like – every good story, photo, poem, essay, journal entry – speaks to compassion. And touches the emotions of another human, connects with them because I know I am not different from the people who read my work. This realization Involves empathy and sympathy. Compassion as I see my work is the literal process of putting myself in the shoes – minds – of others. My feelings for Maria are evident, I am sure. But we encourage each other, we don’t create one another. That is a different thing, and not, I think, a healthy thing.  Nobody gives somebody else compassion, or makes them feel it. I think we all feel it in our own way. Einstein wrote that the challenge of humanity is to step out of ourselves and feel the things others feel. That is the beauty of the universe, he said, what connects us.

There is no point in my life at which I could have killed a fox with three babies in front of me, and left them to starve, not when Maria was around, not before. What I have learned about compassion – and writing –  is that we are, in fact, the same. If I lose a dog, I remember that every single person reading this has lost a dog or a cat. If someone loses a parent, I am aware that everyone my age I know has lost one parent, most often both. This is the beginning of awakening.

Compassion is making sure a dog does not suffer pointlessly. Imagining Frieda running wild in the Adirondacks so that I could train her. Seeing Simon lie in his pool of frozen water so that I could help heal  him. Compassion is seeing the fox’s offspring starve to death alone in a muddy den. Compassion is imagining the fear of the young boy that Orson bit on the neck, as his flood flowed down his chest and stained his T-shirt. Compassion is what Maria feels for Rocky, basking in the attention he is getting on a windblown day.  Compassion is understanding that the fear I feel is felt by every single person who reads these words, and that  this is not my isolated and unique experience of suffering, but the shared experience of living in this world.

Izzy at the vet.

I want to share with you the news that Izzy is ill, being tested at the Cambridge Valley Veterinary Clinic to confirm what we believe is a life-threatening illness. I very much appreciate that Izzy, like Rose and my other dogs, does not belong only to me, but I am going to focus on this privately for the next couple of days until it’s resolved. I just can’t write about it much at the moment, and I don’t want to do a blow-by-blow drama. Sometimes, even in this contemporary and very high-tech world, you just have to turn inward. Maria and I are very much in this together, as in all things. I will let you know when things are clearer. I’ll be posting on the blog as usual, but not about Izzy. I know many of you love him and wish him well. Thanks for that.

Izzy, a hospice therapy dog,  is an angel in a canine body. He has done a lot of good for so many people at the edge of life, and if it comes to that, I will be sure and do the same for him.

Cows, like chickens, are something we see but do not think about, perhaps because they do not think much in return. I can’t count the number of times I’ve hopped out of a car with a camera, crawled through weeds and brush to get a clear line of shooting. Cows are the most curious of creatures. They stare at me, and then, one by one they come over to get a closer look. Sometimes they seem angry to me, and perhaps this is because I expect them to rebel at any moment about their fates. They do not, any more than chickens. Still, there is a beauty to them, hard to see sometimes, harder to capture. They have a quiet dignity about them, a sense of acceptance.

Cows are rarely alone, so the sight of this one got me interested. She did me the great favor of silhouetting himself against an atmospheric sky, driven by high winds. This cow has presence.

We could not resist putting together a new notecard series, “The Oldest Story: The Fox, The Farmer and The Chickens,” six signed notecards with images and text recounting parts of the oldest story, the eternal struggle between farmers and foxes, and foxes and chickens. We have been living with this little drama for a month, with its many ups and downs, and Maria has chosen six photographs that best capture the experience  – Meg, Fran healing, and as a happy surprise ending, the baby boxes we found up on the hill Monday.

This is something of a new way to present a notecards series, as a story with writing rather than separate and unrelated images. Maria and I both like the ending, as it has turned out. My neighbors and I were hunting the fox, but then we found the den with the kits and so the fox was spared and the family became residents of Bedlam Farm. Maria is choosing the images for this series and also making their purchase easier. She has Paypal now on her website. The notecards were prepared by the Image Loft in Manchester, Vt., and I saw some of them this morning (I brought an image of the baby foxes to add to the series).  They make my photographs look beautiful, and I appreciate their work. The notecards will be printed tomorrow.  I love this story, as it is such a perfect metaphor for life. It is sad in some ways – Toots and Meg got eaten – and uplifting in others: Fran is doing well and the pack of foxes seems to be leaving our chickens alone. Nobody is getting shot. Turns out the fox was the cleverest of them all, after all. He wasn’t hiding out in the woods, but right under our noses, with these cute and furry little chicken-eaters. The foxes knew what they were doing.

This series will be priced differently, as there are six images with text, all signed, and they will go onsale Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. Maria is not accepting pre-orders now, but will offer details on cost and shipping and put that information and the images up on her website when she can. Since many people are inquiring, I wanted to give everyone a heads up. The notecards offer me yet another way to tell my stories. There are a limited number of notecard sets.