Every day is a work day for Rose
May 24, 2009 – I’m not going to work Monday, for personal reasons and out of respect and acknowledgment to the countless people who have lost their lives as a result of human brutality, soldiers and civilians both. Maria has to work, some friends are dropping by and I hope this week to do some serious reflecting and centering, starting tomorrow. I need to clear my head. I always have work to do on myself.
In addition to dropping by Christine Nemec’s Redux Gallery in Dorset, Vt. – she always has a cup of tea around – I hope to hike into the woods with the dogs and my camera. I might to and visit John Clark and see how he is doing a week after his cows left.
I want to take the sheep out to graze with Rose. I want to sit on the porch. I want to read. I want to think about the fear that has been so elemental a part of my life, and the progress I have made with it, and the work I have to do. I want to acknowledge and appreciate my good fortune – Maria, my daughter Emma, my friends, my farm, my work, my dogs.
I have often been alone in my life, and frequently been alone on the farm, and being alone is a natural state for me. Sometimes I drink it in like a cool drink. Sometimes the pain of it washes over me. Being with someone is so different, it is sometimes disorienting. As we all known, American holidays often lose their meaning. Memorial Day to some people is the beginning of summer. In small towns like mine, the small parades and flags till touch the hear. A farmer from Easton stopped by to ask me if I needed hay, and he asked me if I knew his son, who used to work as a handyman. I said, no, and he told me his son was killed in Iraq and he would appreciate it if I would remember him. I will.
Like many people who write me suggesting I have their dream life, I think often about what a good life is. It is not, of course, about perfection, or hanging around with animals. It is about the seeking and finding. I know now that we don’t actually get there. The glory is in the trying.