I woke up this morning uncertain, wondering about the new normalcy of living in a sea of bloody images, videos, sad and disturbing things. My words and photos seemed quite insignificant when weighed against all the pain and sorrow and fear sweeping through Boston this week. How do I find my ground while floating in this electronic sea which makes the world – always full of tragedies – seem such a sorrowful and hopeless place, images that drowns out love and happiness?

Is there a normalcy when I am thinking of lockdowns, searches, barren souls,  slaughtered innocents, SWAT teams, bombs and guns?  This is sadly a part of the human experience, and has always been, and the horrible truth is that it has often been much worse. This is of no comfort really, not Monday or today. Or is that not so? Is there any comfort in accepting that human beings are so flawed and imperfect and destructive and will maim and kill one another again and again?

Uncharacteristically at a loss for words, and reluctant to blog,  I was alone – Maria was away this morning – and Lenore and Red were at the groomers.  It seemed a bit strange to me to write about farms and animals and other things on this strange and disturbing morning. But then I remembered that is the point for me, to keep love and light alive for me – hopefully for you – and to celebrate it. That is, I think, the new role of the artist and the writer.  There is plenty of darkness to be had elsewhere. So I went off in search of myself. You can’t find your ground in the news, you can only get away from it, in your own life and dreams.

I leashed up Frieda – she caught and killed a groundhog yesterday, I got the poorly bloody thing out of her mouth and walked the body across the road, scaring the wits out of Maria, who looked out the window and thought it was one of our animals I was carrying – and we went out on the highway for a walk with my dog and camera. I often am reminded how Frieda survived in the Adirondacks for years on her own.

I love walking with Frieda, she walks naturally and easily, she is a hunter, as always, scanning the woods and fields. She walks proudly and steadily. She is a formidable dog, full of dignity and purpose. She is smart, she stops when I stop to take a photo and waits for me. On the way back I stopped on the highway to take some images of the farm with my fisheye lens and then I sat in the house quietly for 10 minutes listening to the sweet sound of my own breathing. This is my ground, I thought, I did go find it. Our farm, my life. The place where Maria and I live with our animals and do our work.

Every time a sad image came into my head, I took a deep breath and blew it out through my mouth. And looked at my ground, gave thanks for it. Strange, it seems, yet it worked for me. I am getting back to normal.

And so I found myself, started moving to normalcy.  I do not choose to dwell in sadness or regret, not in my own life surely.  I have work to do on a book, things to write and photograph, dogs to pick up at the groomers, lunch to make. To find my ground, I have to stop and think about it and pull me back into myself, which is where my  creative spark lives.

Frieda, who has always symbolized this dichotomy of the world to me – lying at my feet one second, slaughtering a groundhog the next, both quite natural – loved her walk and it settled me. This is the story, I thought, this is the way of the world. Some people hurt people, some people don’t, from the dawn of time.That is, I suppose, what makes being human so remarkable.

Unimaginable brutality and inhumanity one moment, extraordinary love, bravery, connection and empathy the next.

This is the drama of life, humans have always lived with it and perhaps will always live with it. God told the mystics in the Kabbalah that love is what endures, love was the point. That is what grounds me, even if we are not yet there, if I may never live to see it.