With her new muzzle, Gus happily joins in the life of the pasture. But I’m not always sure who is watching who.
Usually, Red is watching the sheep, Fate is watching Red, and Gus is watching Fate. When Red moves, they all move. Red is the only one actually working, but the others have great fun running in circles and chasing one another.
I got a message this morning from a woman named Laura, who lives in California.
She supports my work and has taken out a voluntary paid subscription (the blog is free to anyone who doesn’t wish to pay or can’t). The subscription program has been efficient and successful and has helped to make the blog a success.
Problems are very rare. But occasionally, there are software glitches, and Laura was double-billed.
That is the world we live in.
Laura was happy to pay once annually, she said, but not twice. I think she might have been expecting a run-around or a struggle. That is usually what happens when we try to talk to software or giant corporations, it is easy for humans to hide now.
And the individual feels every more alone and at the mercy of others.
I got Laura’s number and called her right back and asked where to send a refund, and she asked that I donate the over-payment to the Mansion work I am doing. I was touched by that. I forwarded her message to the computer techs who over see the subscription plan and it was resolved.
My police is to always refund anyone’s mistake, no questions asked. And I have never had a problem.
Laura and I had a good talk on the phone, we connected easily, she apologized for bothering me, and I told her it was no bother, it was my problem, I had learned to take responsibility for the things I set in motion, and her call reminded me of just how much I have changed. And for the better.
She was relieved and appreciative. That felt good.
Even a couple of years ago, that would have been a very different exchange. I would have been irritated to be disturbed while I was working, I would have thought this was beneath me. I would have been curt or perhaps indifferent to Laura and her problem, which was very real. And I’ll be honest, Laura would never have gotten through to me.
I was screened off from the word, an important author, I would have tried to give the problem to someone else.
I hope that I never stop growing and changing, and I am in awe of just how much changing I have to do.
We are easily made to feel helpless in the corporate world, especially where our money is involved and we have no humans to help us.
We don’t expect to be heard, we often feel trapped in a system where nobody is listening. If it frightening and frustrating to be in that position.
But it is an act of trust for people to pay money to support my work, and I am responsible for the subscription program. I can’t foist it off on anybody else, or hide from it. That is a change.
Sometimes, you just have to be knocked down in order to get up.
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For much of my writing life I was a New York Times bestseller, and that used to be a big deal.
When I traveled, I rode around in limousines, with eager escorts who supplied me with aspirin, band-aids, snacks and anything else I needed. I was never asked to drive myself anywhere, and other people kept my schedule and told me each morning what I was supposed to do. People asked for my autograph all the time and said they were honored to meet me.
My agent was a ferocious warrior who descended on anyone who messed with me. My wife at the time handled all of the money, I never saw a monthly bank statement. She made my doctors appointments and reminded me of them.
Whenever there was a problem, there was someone somewhere – an agent, assistant, publishing aide – to take care of it for me. I was a big shot, I could not be bothered by small details, I had great work to do.
And oh yes, I ate in the very best restaurants int he country and send the bill to my publisher. And I traveled first class when I flew and stayed only in four-star hotels..
Large crowds came to bookstores to see me, my editors regularly flew me to New York and dined me in restaurants in Manhattan and met with me in big conference rooms with startlingly beautiful people, and asked me how I was, and how I felt, and was I happy? They were eager for my ideas.
Reporters and TV crews called on me all the time, I had a publicist who was always available to me, and I gave scores of interviews all year.
It would have been inconceivable for Laura to contact me directly about some issue that might have seemed small to me, or the province of the many people – assistants, interns, publicity aides – who tended to me.
All of that changed in 2008. I rarely, if every, speak to an editor, there are few interviews and no invitations to New York, no expensive accounts, no eager assistants and secretaries to call when I was busy working. An interview once or twice a year.
I am an older mid-list author in a different time, and I have always known what that means. My agent and I talk once a year, we don’t have all that much to talk about. Yet I am happier than I have ever been, and feel more successful than I have ever felt. Life is quite curious sometimes.
I am not bitter or regretful about all this. Humility is a gift, I have come to learn. I am learning how to live my life, and how to be responsible for what I do. I have no people to hide behind or drive my places or do my work for me. Good riddance to them, I had become a kind of impervious monster.
The change was good for me in many ways, and it gave rise to the blog, which I love, and my photography and my life with Maria, which I love even more. I went through a lot in the change, a breakdown, loneliness, depression, terror, some humiliation, even bankruptcy, and the gift of that was that I learned empathy, for me the highest aspiration of a human being.
it is never good to be cut off from ordinary people or the original and true world, and I enjoy being an ordinary person again.
I did not dismiss Laura’s call for help this morning, I understood immediately that a malfunction with somebody else’s credit card is a serious and frightening thing. Phone trees are viscerally inhuman and disturbing.
I didn’t want to pass it along to someone else, I asked for the donations, Laura was kind enough to send me money for my work year after year. It was my responsibility.
I made sure the techs had Laura’s information, I will follow-up on it every day, it is simple to fix. I immediately offered her a refund, which she declined and sent instead to the Mansion fund. That is pretty classy, she deserves attention and relief. I will make sure she gets it.
I joke all the time to friends and people I know in stores that I’m going to call Customer Service if they don’t take care of me and we all laugh at the joke – we know Customer Service is not likely to take care of us, the modern corporation always pretends that we are important to them, but we all know we are not.
Talking to Laura – I thanked her for contacting me – I realized that in a remarkable twist of fate, I am Customer Service now. The old impulse to forward her message on to somebody else is gone. It’s on me. And I do care. The people who support my work have made it possible for me to be a writer in the new world, and I am ever grateful to them.
And I understand well what it is to try to get problems like sorted out in the Corporate Nation. They don’t care about me either. And I don’t ever want to do that to someone else.
I’m not sure there’s anything more beautiful than an old apple tree in a big snowstorm. I am always drawn to it.
I had Open Heart Surgery four years ago, and the thing about Open Heart Surgery is that it can come to define you, if you let. People start seeing you differently. At the hardware store and the vets, the staff always tries to carry the bags of dog food out to the car for me. Bob at the dump never lets me haul a garbage can out of the car and to the bin by myself.
And almost everyone I know warns me not to shovel snow after a storm. This is a complex and sensitive question for me, and it is very difficult to get to the truth of it. Even our electric company sends me e-mails during the storm warning people my age with heart disease not to shovel snow. I don’t recall asking them about it.
Every time I see my cardiologist – not rarely enough – I ask him if it’s okay to shovel snow. And up here, that is not an idle question. If I don’t help, Maria has to shovel all of the snow by herself, and I don’t feel okay about that. I’m not about to sit in the house sipping tea while she’s wearing herself out. Just now who I wish to be.
My cardiologist, a data man who sees me as one continuing blood test, always smiles and says, “well, don’t torture your heart.” I’m not sure what that means. Sometimes he says I can shovel, but don’t over do it. I don’t know what that means either.
And all of the people telling me not to shovel snow don’t really know a thing about my heart or what i should be doing. I don’t do old talk and I don’t do heart chatter either.
I do shovel snow, every time it snows, and this is a subject Maria treads on with caution, I am touchy about it. She would prefer I didn’t shovel snow, but she doesn’t bug me about it, we give one another space to make our own decisions. Just like I hate her driving off in a blizzard in her toilet bowl of a car, she doesn’t like me shoveling heavy snow, although she doesn’t directly try to stop me.
She is crafty. Sometimes, while I’m dressing or in the shower, she just rushes outside and shovels the paths clean. She’s a fast worker and strong. By the time I get outside, the heavy work is done. The other day, I snuck out of bed early and went out to shovel. She came flying out and practically knocked me over getting in front of me.
She leaves me along to scrape off the cars and the back porch, maybe to shovel a path to the garbage cans. I don’t have any trouble shoveling, sometimes my angina kicks up and I have to slow down. I think it’s good for me, and there are worse ways to go, should it come to that.
I can shovel snow for a half hour or so and not feel strained or winded. That’s my answer, I think, even the cardiologist doesn’t know that. And I do not torture my heart.
I’ve come to understand that nobody can answer this question but me. I don’t live in the world of alarms and hysteria that marks our interactions with one another in America. I listen to myself. I have an intimate relationship with my heart and it will let me know if I’m going to far.
Illness can either define you, or you can define it. There’s no joy in being stupid, but there’s no joy in living in fear either. I’ll take my chances until or unless I hear otherwise from my heart, the cardiologist isn’t going to commit himself. And most of the people telling me what to do have no idea what they’re talking about, warnings are a reflex in America.
Somebody who lives in upstate New York and can’t shovel snow in the winter needs to think about New Mexico. I’m not there yet. My heart says I should shovel, and that’ s good enough for me.
Last week, the Mansion Activities Director asked me if I could help them find a new bingo game, Bingo is popular at the Mansion and their old set had deteriorated. This, I thought, was a perfect case for the Army Of Good, a small thing in many ways, but a big thing to the people in the Mansion.
Bingo is activity almost anyone can join, and prizes are awarded, people look forward to it.
So I got on Amazon right away and found this “State Fair” Bingo game and it came right away and makes it’s debut at 6 p.m. in the Mansion dining room. I know some of the staff have to stay late on Friday to play, so I volunteered to run the game myself. The residents got excited that Red and I were coming to join them for the new Bingo game.
This was exciting to me. I have never played Bingo in my life, I have no idea how it works. I’ve been boning up at the Mansion, taking the game apart and getting some lessons. Maria might join me, and our friend Susan Popper, who is in town for a couple of days, and is a veteran Bingo player.
I’m not sure why I’m so excited about it. I love learning new things, of course, but I also love the connection of running a game that gives people pleasure and stimulates them. They don’t have the freedom I have to go out to the movies or dinner whenever I please, or just take a drive around.
I don’t know why the idea gives me so much pleasure, maybe I just like the idea of belonging. That has not always been my story. The Mansion residents and i are comfortable together, we trust each other and feel at ease with each other.
I love the mission we are on: small gifts of great kindness.
Somehow, this is where I belong tonight. I’m going to go out and buy some prizes, a gift certificate to a local convenience store and some sparkly stuff at the Dollar Store.
