“You do it all the time, messaged Connie about Applegate. “I think you enjoy it.” –

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“All conflict seems to irritate you,” wrote WendyO. “Encouraging the feeding of other people’s animals to those who look to you for inspiration is a good way to get someone hurt, either by an animal or by a less-cooperative animal owner with a shotgun full of rock salt.”

It should be evident that this absurdly ridiculous flap I call Applegate is not about horses and apples; it is much more.

It says a lot about us, me, you,  animals like horses, the disintegrating mental health of our country, and the growing inability of people to speak to one another online and listen.

It says a lot, too, about where I am in life and where I want to be.

For the young, wrote Carl Jung, it is dangerous to be too preoccupied with oneself.

For those who are older, he wrote,  life develops in stages. The end-stage has much to do with making sense of everything that has gone before it.

I’m in the end stage of my life, and it’s the most interesting, loving, and critical period so far.

It never occurred to me until I was 60-plus years old to give an apple to a neighbor’s horse.

Now, I want to do it every day.

What’s changed?

And why am I engaged in an argument so mindless, loony, and insignificant as Applegate? Is it my fault? Is it something I attract? Something I love?

Some people think so.

Is there something about me I need to learn?

I’m sure there is.

I am not interested in this as an argument; it’s a waste of time.

I will keep this friendship with a horse, of course,  and bring him an apple whatever I want, with the full blessing of his owner, who doesn’t need me to ask permission.

I don’t care what people say; they are invited to mind their business, an old idea gobbled up and fading in new technology.

I am defiant. Thomas Paine is one of my heroes.

That is one sweet advantage of getting older. I get to do what I want.

Instead of clawing and scraping my way through life, I am taking the time to figure myself out and be the human being I want to be and ought to be.

I’m opening up, step by painful step. My life is on the table.

This seems to threaten a lot of people.

But I love it; it’s perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me. It began with my crack-up, then Maria, expanded to Simon, the donkey, and then to my photography, blog, and work with the elderly and refugee children.

This is where my soul is, not with a gentle horse who likes apples and carrots.

Of course, I will keep giving the apples to him. I won’t even repeat the words the farmer who owns him uses to describe the people who think I’m doing awful and dangerous things to his horse with my apples.

But my feelings about this, and this knowledge and self-awareness, don’t come with a Zoom session.

Solitude is not my way of life but a path to a better and more meaningful life.

It is the most challenging work of my life.

And the most private and precious.

It is the unknown part of me to the many people who believe they know me, my motives, my thoughts, and how I should live.

This work, as Jung suggested,  requires both a will and a capacity for questions about what happened to me as I went through life to get to where I am right now and where I want to be.

It also challenges me to question and take responsibility for what I have become and be courageous enough to hear the answers.

That’s where solitude comes in.

This kind of reflection can’t be done in chaos or argument. In America, in 2023, that means going it alone. We don’t know how to speak to one another anymore.

We must create our sacred places; the existing ones fail us. I have to be far from the news, judgments, intrusions, and wanton arguments of strangers.

This requires me to get to the center of my soul at times and, with brutal honesty,  to own up to who I am. No more excuses, no more blaming others, no more plotting to become someone different later on.

There is no later on. I am running out of time.

So I’ve found my secret and sacred space. And when people violate it, I get angry. I will protect it from the insanity, anger, and cruelty of the outside world. I will write as I wish on my blog and take photos, two genuine passions in my life.

This is where I am, and while there is plenty of room for change and growth,  there is no room for delusion. I want to do good, make beautiful photos, be good, love, and be loved.

That’s what I want.

There is no magic path to make me into someone else.

I admit to being still puzzled by the ongoing – still raging – tension over my giving an apple into a pony, something I suspect is and has been done many millions, if not billions, of times over the years. On this earth. It’s become a positive new experience for me; the wheels are spinning.

Life is a continuous lesson; I can always learn from it.

It’s a wonder any of us apple-givers are alive now that I think of it. I thought it would be climate change that did us in.

I wondered yesterday if I was the first person in the history of horses who has been shamed, scolded, threatened, and condemned for giving a horse an apple. If so, I have a place in history, perhaps not what I once hoped for.

My search for my true self has brought me sadness and many unseen victories.

This week has reminded me that my achievements on the inside are unknown and unknowable to others, especially to those who think they know me best but do not. They are not welcome inside.

Social media breeds a lot of amateur psychologists and therapists, but I’ve been in therapy for much of my life. Carl Jung did it better and never analyzed or diagnosed anyone he didn’t meet or know.

All of us are unique, different, and complicated. None of us can honestly know what is inside the mind of another, especially someone we will never meet, see, or speak with. My therapist of 20 years says I’m a nice guy as far as men go. But how far is that? Maria says I’m a good man, and she has little use for men.

Connie thinks I love all this modern American conflict and chaos, and I have said as much myself a hundred times. I never miss a chance to argue. But telling people what they think is not an argument; it’s a statement. The two things are very different. The Internet is eating up the art of conversation.

E-mail and Facebook posts can’t listen.

My flash temper or willingness to argue is no revelation to those who read my books or blog.

I love standing up for myself, fighting for my truth, and calling out the people who are turning our unique and miraculous new communications technology into a battlefield, a  cesspool of cruelty, rudeness, invasiveness, and arrogance.

I have this fantasy that if we all stand up to these people, we will one day be able to talk to one another in peace, love, and honesty, as has happened with my Wednesday Zoom blog group – once all strangers, now all friends.

WendyO, of course, has helped me understand what often gets me so upset with social media and what people feel free to say to others they think they know but do not. She also claims to know what I am thinking without asking.

The problem is that she has no idea.

We don’t just disagree. I am now a monster, a potential killer, and a suicide prospect because I give apples to horses on neighboring farms. (Only one, actually.)

Sometimes in life, aloneness is a conscious choice.

When someone invades my sacred place, as they did this week,  I do feel alone.

Do I love these messages? No, I don’t. Do I enjoy these new kinds of conflicts? Not really; I think they are essential and worth having. I think people care about this stuff, as you can see from the response. My job is to write things people care about.

But you can’t know anyone fully by only reading the things they wish to write. That’s only one piece of me.

I’ve met enough authors to know that very few are the people I expected to know when I read their books. I only got to know one side of John Updike before I met him, and when I did, he was nothing like the person I thought he would be. Books are creations, not mirrors. So are blogs.

WendyO is correct about one thing. I get irritated when people like her tell me who I am, what I think, and what I should do without asking or knowing anything about me.

I never assume I know what people like Wendy O are thinking. I have no idea. And she has no idea what I am thinking. Once that is accepted, we might be able to talk. People ask me why I bother, but it is important to me, and know it or not, to you.

This is why I am drawn to conflict. This is my private space, and I dont let other people intrude just because they are in the mood or don’t think I should give an apple to a horse.

This is the time in my life for awareness; it’s now or never.

“Awareness is the new monastery of the elderly,” writes Joan Chittister in her excellent book, The Gift Of Years.

I fight to protect my growing awareness and the solitude and safety of my monastery.

To Connie and WendyO and so many others who have written to me this week, I can only say that people who tell me who I am and what I am thinking and feeling know nothing about me and seem too lazy or angry to try to find out. The curious ask questions; frozen minds only have answers.

I am coming to see why I get angry, not irritated, when that sacred and private space, my monastery, has been invaded by insincere pretenders and bullying crusaders.

They are not allowed into my monastery. There are no visitors.

My mind is my heart of me; I share it with no one.

No one has the right to take it from me or anyone else.