Hay wagon, Kinney Road

  Maria sailed off in her car this afternoon, away for a few days, and I found myself alone on the farm for the first time in awhile. It was a strange sensation, given that I have spent so much time alone here, sometimes in bleak circumstances.
  Frieda seemed lonely too, and we sat on the porch together and I explained to her that sometimes when you love something, you have to let it go, and not get too needy or clingy. Frieda yawned, and went to sleep, and she is snoring by my feet now. Dogs roll with the world, I think, much better than we do.
  I guess you can’t really say you are alone if you are living with two donkeys, some sheep, two barn cats, three hens and four dogs. The most striking characteristic of my dogs to me is how much they seem to love one another, and Frieda is blending slowly into this tight circle. She loves to sit with me as I write, and that is good, as my other dogs are great, but not into being writing dogs. Frieda seems a natural, sighing, groaning and grumbling unobtrusively while I work.
  I made dinner – penne pasta (wheat) spinach, melon. Sat on the porch with the dogs. Rose off in a corner of the yard watching the sheep, Frieda next to me, Lenore in front of me, Izzy hiding under the wicker sofa behind me. Dogs seem to have defined recent parts of my life, as they do other people’s. Frieda seems to be defining this period, as she arrived with Maria, and the two of them have made quite a splash in this pond.
  I am planning on doing some things this weekend. Melissa Batalin is coming over in the morning to help set up and move files onto my new computer, a 24 Inch iImac desktop. I am reading three books –  “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life,” by Gerald Martin, a huge study of my favorite author’s life; “Hitler,” another massive biography by Ian Kershaw, and “American Rust,” a novel by
Philipp Meyer. I’ve just finished a wonderful book, “Netherlands,” by Joseph O’Neill. For much of last year, I was unable to read much, and I am very happy to be back into it.
   I hope to get to the Argyle Presbyterian Church on Sunday to hear my friend Steve McLean preach. Steve gave me sanctuary when I most needed it, and I haven’t seen him in  a few weeks, and miss him.
  But mostly, I am eager to learn how to do nothing, something I am not good at it. I have no plans. I might yak with my friend Drew Rozell about the book he is working on, but I am going to try and make space for life.
  That means turning my mind off, or cooling it down. Not thinking about the website’s imminent incursion onto Facebook. Or my novel. Or my children’s books. Or my photography. Or Maria, who
has not been her for long, but whose absence is a significant space.
  I know how to be by myself. What I’ve been learning is how to be with somebody else. A precious gift, that.
  But for the weekend, I am alone again, on the farm. Sometimes the farm was a bleak and lonely place to be.
  Being alone is a familiar state for me, as I suspect it was for Frieda. Perhaps that is our connection. The farm is a peaceful place right now, and I love being here. The fear that nearly engulfed me for awhile is receding, and sometimes I don’t feel it at all.
  All of the animals seem to miss Maria, and look for her. Loneliness is a gift sometimes, a painful one. If you can’t be by yourself, you can’t be with anybody else, I think.
  Sometimes I think I am just beginning to learn how to live.