As a rule, I do not l look back much, I try and celebrate my life now, not what is lost or in the past. The past is painful for me, the present is not. Today, going through some photos I came across this image, and I began crying, softly, tearing up, I was surprised, it just welled up in me, I kept thinking life is a river time is a river, it flows and flows, we are pulled along with it. I remember this morning at Bedlam Farm, the sun was rising, there was a mist, and my four dogs  – Izzy, Rose, Lenore and Frieda – were lined up together in the front yard, looking out over the valley. Lenore and Izzy turned to look at me, giving the photo a sense of expectation.

I could not have imagined that morning what was ahead of me. In a few months the river would have swept through my life, Izzy and Rose would be dead – I can see now in this photo what I could not see then, that Rose was already ill – and I would not be living again on this beautiful farm that had meant to much to me, that I thought I would never leave. I never thought Frieda would last longer than Rose and Izzy, she had been through so much, she is tough as Titanium.

I write this from another place, another time, another world in so many ways. Was that world me? Is this one? I think I am in my true life now, the other one was a mystical journey, the hero journey, I’m not sure it was ever real.

Life has it’s own ideas about things, and I see there is much emotion in me sometimes, I suppose there always has been, like many men, I learn, am taught to hide it. It comes out when it wishes and this photograph evokes a great deal in me. It was such a curious time, a golden time, a black time. Dogs like these are spectators in our lives, they love to sit and watch the river flow, almost as if they know where it is going. Dogs come and dogs go. Lenore came to keep love alive in me, Izzy to take me to the edge of life and bring me back, Rose, well, Rose…I don’t really have words for her purpose.

I write about my life all of the time, but I never see it coming, I am like one of the dogs, watching in astonishment as the river flows and flows. Crisis and mystery, joy and redemption, all around the corner.