Month: August 2012

I see September light everywhere, all around the farm, a special kind of light.

Since Red got hurt (he is doing well, starting to put some pressure on the rear leg), Lenore has stayed close. I never think I know what is going on in a dog’s mind, but Lenore is a love machine and she surely can sense Red’s unease and discomfort. I’ve never seen them sit this close together before.

Battenkill Books called this afternoon to tell me the new biography of the writer David Foster Wallace – “Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace,” by D.T. Max had arrived, and I rushed down to get it. I have been waiting for this book, I knew it would be as beautiful a book as it is painful, and I was not wrong. I’ve been reading it for hours, and it breaks my heart.

Wallace, a brilliant writer – “Infinite Jest”, “The Broom Of the System,” “Interviews With Hideous Men,” – was an important writer for me, perhaps the most important of his generation, and he hung himself at the age of 46 after a life-long struggle with depression and anxiety and the powerful medications he had been taking. Wallace was an amazing writer but perhaps more than that,  he showed, as Max writes, that “whatever the price, the meaningful life is always worth the fight.”

More than once when I fell apart I thought of hanging myself in one of the barns. I even know the spot, in the silo barn that I had chosen. I never came close to doing it, I don’t think, but  I thought about it a lot. Whenever I thought about it, I thought about Maria, coming through the door in just a few days to help care for the animals.  There were times for Wallace, as for so many others, when the pain of living was just not bearable, the fear and depression smothering life.

Despite his suicide, Wallace was a brave figure who did not surrender. He fought every day to live a meaningful life and was an inspiration to me and to others. His characters often testified to the fact that anyone who seeks a meaningful life will pay the price and reap the rewards. And there is a price, always, evidenced by the sad fact that so few people want to pay it or can. How often people tell me I have a perfect life, one they envy, here on a beautiful farm with my animals. I love my life dearly but I do not have the heart to tell them what it costs to seek a meaningful life, and perhaps they know, or they wouldn’t covet a life other than their own.

For all of that, I never doubt any more than Wallace did that a meaningful life is worth any price. It is always worth the risk. It is always worth the fight. It often means abandoning what is known, what is safe and secure, what is familiar and comprehensible to others, even our own families. It is worth every second and any price, and I write this post in honor of David Foster Wallace, a writer of accomplishment and suffering, whose price was  high for a meaningful life.

He died for it.

Our wallpaper strategies are evolving. This is a two-person job, really, especially if we want it done soon, before we move. We are learning more each day about how to do this, and I think we have it down now. We tried vinegar and store-bought enyzyme glue dissolving solvents. The thing that has worked the best for us is fabric softener mixed with warm water in a large pump spray bottle. One third softener, two thirds water.  One person scores the wallpaper lightly with a scorer – that is me.The fabric softeners smells a lot better than vinegar or solvent.

Another (Maria) waits five minutes or so until the paper softens and the glue begins to dissolve,  and then gently slips a scraper under the wallpaper and slides it off.  The scraper must be used gently, as if the wall were glass. Otherwise there are holes in the plaster. A drop cloth or tarp is important, as the wallpaper has glue and other residue on it and can damage the wood floors. We pick a section at a time, and then the sprayer (me) continuously sprays the wallpaper and scores it again with the roller when it gets soft, all the better to spread the solvent into the glue. We have three layers of wallpaper in the living room.

Once we got rolling, it went more quickly. We did a third of the room tonight, and hope to finish scoring and scraping by the end of the week. Then Ben will sand and spackle and Maria and I will put on two coats of off-white, beige paint. This is a physical task and it actually requires much more ease and patience than one might think. You have to to easy, let the solvents work, and the key is spraying, spraying, spraying. It helps to have an obsessive wife also. She loves this stuff. And so, to our surprise, do I. Might go back at it tomorrow evening.

Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm came over to the new farm today and she had a cuddle with Red. Red is still limping but otherwise find. Several radiologists who read the blog thought they saw a fracture in Red’s foot from the x-rays I put up on the blog – ah, the Internet – and the vets here will double-check. We’re just going to wait a bit to see how things go. If it is a fracture it will heal with rest.

Red seems a lot more comfortable and he has no trouble hopping around on three legs. No work for him though, until we sort it out.  I don’t want him to have any more tests at the moment. Let’s give him a chance to heal.