Smile: The Hound of Love is on guard

 December 2, 2008 – I did not have many friends before moving to the farm. I don’t think, looking back, that it was possible for me to open myself up to somebody enough to be a friend. The farm has been a great experience for me in so many ways, but farms in remote parts of the country can also be fortresses, a way to be away from people. I have a good friend who describes himself as a hermit, and who doesn’t really want a lot of human contact.
  I have another who is immersed in family and responsibility, and whose life is about helping people and supporting them, a powerful mix. Tonight, my great friend Mary Kellogg the poet came over for dinner, and we pored over the new poems she has written, (her first book, “My Place On Earth” is being reprinted yet again, the sixth time.  It includes her poems and my photos. She is working on another book.) Mary has been one of my closest friends for several years now, and she startled me after dinner by saying she has been watching me this year, and likes me better than she did when we first me.
  I took that as a compliment, and I know what she means. I have learned a lot about myself this year, and am hard at work trying to become the person I want to be, rather than somebody who is running away from people and things. I am not yet there.
 Thursday I’m going to see another very valued friend, the pastor Steve McLean and I was telling Mary how much his friendship has meant to me, and that even though I am still struggling with the nature of religion, Steve has taught me how to pray, and that is a great gift. I have another friend, also named Steve, who is showing me how to solve problems rather than fear them or wrestle with them.
 On a farm, you have to have friends, I suppose, and you need them. I see that you have friends when you are ready for them, ready to give and take. And to let them be friends. And to trust them.
  That is a gift I’ve come to later on that I would have liked, but better later than never.
  Walking Mary to her car, I thanked her for being my friend, and said I hoped it wasn’t too difficult, and she smiled, and said, “that’s what friends are for.”

–
 
   “Out Of The Shadows,” the second Bedlam Farm Book, will be published in mid-December, also by the Troy Bookmakers and in some bookstores. It is a chronicle in text and photos of my brush with madness last winter.