Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

There are some needs in the Mansion that I need to attend to, and could use some help.

Wayne’s reclining chair broke and had to be thrown out, he needs a new one and I ordered him a new one this morning from Amazon, they will deliver it in several days. It cost $400.

Ruth needs some flat dress wedding slippers, they arrived today. She also asked for two erasers and a notepad to write her poetry in.

Tim is recovering from a leg amputation and is having trouble walking. I asked him why, and he said if he stands up, his pants trousers won’t stay up. He is embarrassed to stand up, something he urgently needs to do.

I ordered two pairs of sweat pants xx-large with elastic belts. He can stand up now.

Ellen loves her dolls very much, and is upset that they have no socks. I ordered some socks today, $10 for a dozen pairs.

G, a new resident at the Mansion, has no warm weather shoes or blouses. I ordered several from Amazon.

The plans for Ruth and Wayne’s Commitment Ceremony on May 15 are moving forward. Thanks for the dress, shirts and favors. I ordered $200 worth of flowers, an am negotiating for a two-tiered wedding cake and cupcakes.

I’m hiring a musician to play at the ceremony. A calligrapher/friend has offered to write up a Commitment Ceremony certificate. No charge.

Wayne asked for some sports books in large print. They are on the way.

I need to get a stand/reading light/magnifying glass for one of the upstairs residents, an avid reader who can no longer read without magnifying help.

P has no spring jacket, and J’s blanket has been damaged, she needs a new one.

Your support would be appreciated during this busy time. You can contribute via Paypal, [email protected] or by check, Jon Katz, Mansion Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

We recorded our fourth podcast this morning, the techs are still working on the final format.

It will be registered and available everywhere by next week. Podcast buttons will be on every blog page, and there will be a podcast library on the site.

The podcast is called “Katz and Wulf On Bedlam Farm,” and we open each podcast with Simon braying his “Call To Life,” something of an anthem for us.

Maria and I will talk about our creativity, the farm, the animals, the news of the week here, and our own relationship every now and then.

Check out this Podcast Four and feel free to offer feedback: [email protected], [email protected].

My radio show “Talking To Animals” ended this week, and so we went ahead with our podcast, which we have been planning for awhile.

This is wonderful new medium for us – simple, intimate and connective.

I hope you will enjoy it. The podcast is free, donations are welcome if you like it (see buttons below) and we might take an ad or two of anyone wants us.

We talk easily with one another and there is always a lot happening here. If there is something in particular you want us to talk about, e-mail us: [email protected], [email protected].

Thanks for listening and supporting Bedlam Farm.

Audio: Podcast Four

I am tired tonight, and drained. I got almost no sleep last night.

Maria had an awful dream, a nightmare, perhaps the worst and most disturbing dream either of us can remember having in our time together, and we have had some pretty jarring dreams.

Her nightmare was physical, I could see it in her face and body for  hours.

She woke up shouting in terror and calling for help, and she spent the next hour talking, shaking, breathing, getting her bearings. I was afraid for her. She was struggling to catch her breath, her heart was racing.

We got on Netflix on my smart phone and pulled up Queer Eyes, the  crew was transforming another awkward and hapless straight man into Johny Depp by buying him some new clothes, fixing up his bedroom and teaching him to make cookies with his daughter.

There were plenty of sappy Norman Vincent Peale’isms also.

(I love this show, talk about small acts of great kindness.  It is the perfect bedtime program to watch, there is always a happy ending, the heroes are nice and generous. Total transformation is not only possible, it only takes a couple of days.

The premise of the program is that gay people have a sense of style, fashion and food, and a lot of people don’t. Then I watch a British mystery, Maria falls asleep and I’m up for much of the night.)

Maria and I both suffer from long and hard nights sometimes, we each wish we could make the other feel better. Last night broke my heart a bit, if you love someone, it pierces the heart to see them in so much pain.

She wrote about this nightmare on her blog a bit,  and will write about it more if and when she is ready. It isn’t for me to talk about it, it’s  her dream. I wanted in the worst way to help her, and understood that I couldn’t really, other than just being present.

By morning, we were both raw and exhausted.

Not surprisingly, we had a good fight, lots of anger shouting for a few minutes, it was like flushing the toilet, wash the shit out.

But it is very rare for us to do that, it is frightening in itself – I heard fighting every day of my life until I was 18 – even though we both know it is inevitable.

Tonight, we are like zombies, yawning as we write on our blogs, I was so tired I just picked up Shrimp Fried Rice in Bennington this afternoon when I went to get my computer fixed,  and brought it home for dinner. I couldn’t have prepared a peanut butter and jelly sandwich tonight.

Maria, usually so upbeat and energetic, is sleepwalking tonight, going through the motions. The dream still is haunting her. Her spirit is floating around somewhere.  I can’t help her, not really.

This is where love is tricky. You really can’t swoop in and solve other people’s problems. You really can’t.

This has been one of the hardest lessons of my life, and I am still learning it.

But it is, for me, the beginning of love. And friendship also. I’ve tried to save a lot of friends lives, and not a single one is a friend today.

That’s not going to happen to my marriage.

Thomas Merton wrote that the beginning of love is the will to let those we love be themselves, for better or worse.

The task is not to twist the people we love to fit our own image, or our own ideas about feeling safe, or to shove our own wisdoms and experiences down their throats, or assume we know what is best for them.

If in loving them, we do not love who they are, but only seek to see ourselves reflected in their faces and spirits, then we don’t really love them. We are only loving the reflection of ourselves that we see in them.

Love for me is learning again and again to face and accept my own failings and limitations. In that way, I leave space for someone I love to live. Love is about living for another in some ways, of learning that I am human, like everyone else, and have plenty of weaknesses and deficiencies.

It is because of those weaknesses that I need her and that she needs me. But we are  not all weak or troubled in the same ways, no two people are, we have to be left alone to find our own way. If we love someone, we learn to step back and watch, and listen.

I think at the root of our love is not that we are alike, but that we are  not. We each make up in ourselves for the lack in the other.

So Maria’s dream was yet another lesson for me in how to love, to give her the space to suffer in her own way, and learn how to be strong.

Cats are unfathomable to me, I find dogs much more comprehensible. I love our barn c cats, Minnie and Flo. They won’t want to come into the house any more until November (Minnie likes to come it rains, she rushes to the basement door.).

Today it was chilly, and windy. Although they will hiss and swat at each other from time to time, they seem quite close. On chilly mornings like this, they each curl up into a ball and lean into one another to stay warm.

They take care of each other.

Our culvert sits in the rear of our pasture, over it is the gravel bridge that leads to Lulu’s crossing, some of you may remember that Lulu refused to cross the first bridges we built, they were not fancy enough for her.

When we build the dirt bridge, she deigned to cross.

The culvert is a sort of woodland highway, it can be magical watching the water flow through it from the mountain streams that rush through all year, getting low in  August and September.

Maria loves to sit and take videos there, I like to sit and watch the frogs, waterbugs, snails, small fish and grass come pouring through.

Our culvert is always busy. Two geese have taken up residence during the  day, they ran off two ducks. Bud will have fun with the frogs.

A neighbor came by this afternoon and said the words everyone with a farm hates to hear. “One of your animals is out.” He said a sheep had gotten through the fence in the back and was eating grass out by the back of his house.

I called Maria, grabbed Red and we ran out to the rear pasture together.

The flock was standing in front of us, the two donkeys, and all ten. Whoever got outside the fence managed to get back in.

We found a section of the wire fence pushed open, some branches had fallen on it and widened a gap, we saw bits of wool hanging off the wire.

Because of winter flooding, the electric fence doesn’t work, the high water keeps shorting it out. We closed off the rear pasture, we’ll probably put up some wire fencing ourselves.

There are only two short areas that seem vulnerable. Meanwhile, the pasture is closed, the geese will be happy.

I’m glad the sheep got back in by him or herself. I had to think of any animals close to the busy road.