As always, there is work going on to re-think bedlamfarm.com. This is the age of the blog and good blogs require constant change, mechanically, graphically, and in terms of content. At the moment, we are working on a design change to the header of the Farm Journal Page. I’ve asked Mannix Marketing to explore a way to bring moving or fading text to the top of the page below my by-line. I’d like to connect the blog more with words, more with the idea of a daily, living book, even if it is not in paper form.
We’re thinking of streaming some quotes from my blog posts across the top of the page, I’m hoping to connect the blog with the idea and form of the book.
As many of you know, I have come to recognize that the blog no longer exists simply to promote my books, it has become a book in its own right. As such, I have been working to establish a secure and easy-to-use subscription program so I can be paid for my work and my photographs. You can use Paypal or Credit Cards. You can manage your own subscriptions and cancel at any time. I am not accepting donations or contributions, the blog is not a charity, but I have recently opened a Post Office Box for people who wish to send me letters (no gifts please, they will not be accepted). The address is P.O. Box 2, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. There are people, I realize, who do not like to use e-mail and are not on Facebook and they have the right to communicate with me also. I will try to read all of your messages, I can’t often respond, there are just too many messages these days coming from too many different places.
Your subscriptions are important to me. They make a difference. It is very affirming to be paid for one’s work, it will also help keep the blog vibrant and secure in a changing publishing climate. The blog will remain free to those in need. For those who can afford, I would ask you to pay for the blog if it is uplifting, informative or entertaining for you. You have a number of payment options: $3 a month for those who are financially pressed, $5 a month or $60 a year. I know how many people are subscribing and how many unique visitors there are, but I do not keep track of who subscribes and who does not. That is your business.
You will also have to make your own ethical decisions about reading the content of writers and artists and not paying for them. From the response to the subscription program so far, people seem happy to pay for the things they value, even online. So thanks for your subscriptions, they keep this blog going and growing. For those of you who simply can’t afford to pay anything, the blog will always be free to you.
I will never forget the panic and terror that enveloped me as a very small child and followed me through life, derailing and nearly destroying me and others in my life time and after time. I will always remember what frightened me so, and it will always be a part of my neural system.
I could never sleep and so took Valium for 30 years, and when I quit, I could never sleep again and the night terrors reminded me of why I started taking those pills in the first place. It was a Post-Traumatic Stress symptom, a therapist said, the symptom of the traumatized child. She suggested I visualize the fear as a red soccer ball and kick it over the horizon. That didn’t work, so she suggested I give the night horrors a name and so I did, I called the panic Herman, gave it a name, and I began a long series of conversations with him as I woke up, my mind running away with fear.
Six months or so ago, after much therapy, searching, counseling, reading and analysis, a spiritual counselor helped me use meditation to drive the panic away, seemingly for good, and she said I would miss Herman, he had been with me for much of my life, he saw himself as my protector and so, perhaps, did I. A part of me always believed that fear kept me safe from a fearful world. This morning, I woke up early – it was around 4 a.m., still dark – and was reading a novel and Red growled and stirred on the floor and then moved and I felt this presence by the side of the bed. It was Herman, but it was not scary, he always seemed gentle and forlorn to me.
“Herman,” I said, “is that you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I miss you, came by to check on you, see how you are doing. Since you told me there was no more work for you here, I’ve been free-lancing, visiting a bunch of different people, no shortage of clients. But it isn’t the same, I was with you for a long time.”
“A lifetime, almost,” I said.
“Didn’t we have some good times?,” he said, laughing out loud. “The panic attacks, the nightmare, the sweats, wow, you were special! My best work, maybe.”
“I miss you too, sometimes,” I said to him, trying to be kind, although I wasn’t certain that was the truth. People say that fear can keep you safe, alert you to danger, but I think it is just a poison, part of God’s plan to keep us humble and awed, to punish us for being violent and harming Mother Earth. “It sometimes feels that something is missing from my nights,” I said, and that much is true, I thought ,and then I remembered the panic and trembling and tortured nights and remembered to collect myself, to never again fall into the trap of nostalgia, or of thinking I needed Herman or anyone else to save me.
“What do you want?,” I asked. I wanted to get back to my book and, in a few hours, my life. I was very grateful to not be living in fear, it feels strange and wonderful every day, like release from a dark prison.
“Look,” Herman said, “I want to come back. You used to need me, you still do. The world is a dangerous place, there’s money stuff, you haven’t sold Bedlam Farm, you have diabetes, the house needs a lot of work, there are bills to pay. Lot’s to panic about, you have good reason to worry. You’re just not paying attention. Don’t you watch the news, listen to all the struggle stories?”
It was very still in the bedroom, I saw the moon rising over the pasture, Red was sitting up, staring at me, Maria and Lenore were sleeping on the bed, Frieda, ever vigilant, was snoring.
I reached over and put my arm on Herman’s shoulder. “Look,” I said, “that was many lives ago, in the time before love, before peace of mind, before I finally came to understand the truth about you — ”
Herman winced, almost cringed, as if he were expecting a blow. “Which is?”
“You don’t really exist, Herman, you are a figment, a mirage, an empty space, an abandoned lot. You have nothing to do with life, the mist before sunrise. Life happens to me, every day, along with joy and love and meaning, see this wonderful woman sleeping her beside me, she cannot see or hear you, and I do not need you, you did not keep me safe, I never needed you–”
And then, I thought a bat or a giant moth was fluttering across the room, the moonlight came pouring through the window.
I was out late yesterday afternoon stacking firewood and doing one of the last mowings of the year on Florence Walrath’s venerable old mower, which sounds like a World War II bomber revving up it’s engines. I was lost in these chores – I love mowing my own lawn at last and when I am outside, Red is outside with me. After several hours of work, I went in the house, was cleaning up, starting to cook dinner when I remembered Red and wondered where he was. He is always nearby me, he never lets me out of sight.
I couldn’t find him in the yard, I checked the pasture to make sure I hadn’t left him with the sheep by mistake and then I knew instantly where he would be. He was sitting and waiting for me by the back pasture gate, the gate we always use to go out and round up the sheep, the gate we use to do herding demos. When we go outside, he always goes and sits by one gate or another, hoping to lure me into the pasture, pretending that we are about to go sheepherding. He had been sitting out there waiting for hours.
I love this border collie yearning, it is in me too, about writing and photos, I have the yearnings of a border collie to do my work and live my life. “Red,” I said, “we aren’t working now, it’s too late, come on in,” and he did, looking discouraged. Something about this scene was touching to me, it spoke of the soul of Red, the soul of me.
