Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I think what keeps me from roaring at Bud is what I have come to see as the two sides of Boston Terriers. Bud took me to the woodshed today grabbing things that were not his, chasing chickens, intimidating the sheep, jumping on Red, stealing Fate’s treats right out of her mouth, farting and burping, nibbling on various kinds of feces.

I was yelling at him about half the day, not that he noticed or minded. More than any dog I have lived with, terriers have a ton of attitude, and minds of their own. They fool you, they’ll do anything for a treat, and nothing if they are distracted.

Then came the afternoon, I sat down to meditate, fell asleep and woke up with a dog on my chest. He could not have been cuter, or more affectionate. But then he was.

This evening, I saw that Bud has wiggled his way onto Maria’s chair, a great spot to keep warm and get some cuddling in.  I can’t imagine how he even corkscrewed his way next to her.

This combination of hellion and cuddler is one of the things that makes Boston Terriers so interesting to me – and keeps me from shipping Bud right back to Arkansas.

But is in the family now, we love him no matter what. There are times when he is hard to love, and times when it is quite easy.

A fascinating mix of traits, dogs really have our number.

Perhaps I’m getting vain as I get older, but I am bored with my glasses, and I think I need new ones. As many of you know, I wear essentially the same thing every day of my life, blue Chambray shirts and blue jeans.

This drives the artist in Maria crazy, she is all about color and style and usually shows about a dozen different colors every day in her clothes. I should be honest, I got the idea from the doctor who was trying to help me with my Dyslexia, she thought it would just be easier for me to be able to wear the same colors every day, I wouldn’t have to make any choices or get confused.

And it kind of stuck.

Because of the Dyslexia, I have to have all of my clothes laid out in open dressers, if they are in drawers, I can’t remember that they are there.

In the winter, I can wear sweaters and I have come to love colorful slouch hats. But  I like the blue clothes. The writer in me likes to look a bit bookish, or literary, I admit it. I was walking past this opticians shop in Bennington this afternoon, I went there to grocery shop.

I liked this gold-rimmed spectacles, they kind of spoke to me. And I think they look “writerly.” It’s kind of ridiculous, I know to think glasses make a difference, but I get sick of myself sometimes (often) and I like to fiddle with a different look. This, of course, is as far as I will go. Maria bought me a canary yellow polo shirt two years ago, but I can’t bring myself to wear it.

I think it’s vanished, it’s probably in one of her quilts.

I texted Maria  from the glasses shop and she said she liked the glasses, she said I looked like an owl, which she thought was a good thing (I wasn’t so sure it was a compliment.) Anyway I ordered them and after looking at the photo, ordered glare-proof glass. We take a lot of photos around here.

They’ll be here in about two weeks.

Today, in the space of just a couple of hours, Bud dragged a doll for the Mansion off of a chair and started eating her hair. Then, he dragged a giant stuffed dog off of another chair and started to chew on his ears.

When we went out to do the morning chores, Bud got excited. He buzz-bombed the chickens, causing much outraged clucking and huffing.

He ran towards Minnie, driving her into a corner of the porch. He stuck his nose in Fate’s face while she was napping, earning some hissing and a swipe across the nose.

He ran under the pasture and gate and up to Lulu and Fanny and began barking at them. These donkeys have seen it all, Lulu looked at Bud incredulously and he backed away quickly.

He then ran to the sheep and herded them into a tight circle, pausing to go nose-to-nose with Liam and back  him up a bit. Then he started  eating donkey manure by the mouthful.

Then he ran down into the adjoining pasture and I saw  him eating what I believed were goose droppings. At each step I was calling to him, shouting at him. He always comes when called, nor has he ever harmed a chicken or cat or donkey or sheep. He just likes be a guy and wreak some havoc.

Sometimes, when there is ice on the ground and it is bitterly cold, Bud will take a dump in the house – always in the bathroom, which is gracious of him. He knows to go outside and almost always does, except when it is bitterly cold outside and icy, and he is not that kind of hardly dog like Buck in Call Of The Wild, or even Fate or Red.

He just doesn’t like the ice and prefers to use the bathroom like we do. Having Bud, I realize is like having a teenaged boy whose testosterone is rising. Except his testosterone is supposed to be declining.

Sometimes – often – he likes to eat his own poop. We’ve managed to cut back on this distinctive habit, but not eliminate it.

When we aren’t watching Bud or yelling at him or shouting “leave it”  – most days we just live him in the fenced in part of the yard – we talk about how this must be what is like to have a teenaged boy.

I never had that pleasure.  My daughter Emma was an only child (we lost two children early on in pregnancy) and she never did a thing that I remember that was even vaguely obnoxious or rebellious. She was and is much like her mother, focused, smart as hell,  talented and sensible. Blessedly, she is not much like her father.

Bud is paying me back for those peaceable years. We have come to love Bud, he is quite a character. We had no idea when he first came that he was so full of himself, or loves having so much fun at our expense.

If I had a teenaged boy, he would be like Bud.

He is very responsive to commands, but not to avoiding mischief.

He his own agenda. He does what he is told, mostly and when he feels like it. This, I am told is a common trait in terriers. Border collies are not like that.

Like  Fate, Bud is Bud. I train him when I can, love him when I can, yell at him when I must. Bud is like a big Army tank in many ways, he always pays attention, and sometimes even listens. But he goes his own way, and has his own strong idea of things.

I’ve never had a dog like Bud, but I know he belongs  here and is much adored.

Today is my second Meditation Class at the Mansion. When I undertake something like this, I want to concentrate on it and do it well. I want to pay attention, and give it my full attention in a distracted world.

I have been reading about meditation, studying and preparing for my class. We’ll do five to ten minutes of silence. I brought meditation beads for everyone who participates. I believe between six and eight people will come.

I’m going to talk about peacefulness and acceptance, about how meditation can help us accept who we are in life. I want to talk about the Eternal Now, and the value of living in the moment when one is nearing the edge of life.

The Mansion residents need peaceful and nourishing spaces, I can feel their interest in meditation. I know this is as much a gift to me as it is to them.

I grew up and have lived in a world that promotes the idea of the Perfect Life.

This idea varies, from amassing a lot of money to having a secure job or loving family, or living in a beautiful place without hard work or too much responsibility.

The people who control our country advance the idea of the perfect life from birth to grave, some call it the American Dream. It might be your own home, or a well-funded and “secure” retirement, or enough money in the bank to buy a boat or trips around the world or beautiful new cars. In our culture, it usually involves money.

The American Dream is good for the people who run banks, build houses, make movies and TV shows. We are fed stories about the perfect life almost from birth. I know so many people who dream of it all the time. it makes a lot of money for a lot of people, that is the Perfect Life for them.

In this fantasy, we have sweet dogs, perfect wives, cars that run forever, houses that never leak. jobs we can depend on. We are never angry or frightened, we never stumble, we are close to our unfailingly loving families, we live a long time and die peacefully in our sleep.

I often get messages from people who say they envy me because they believe I have attained this life, this Perfect Life. I have Maria, my dogs, my farm, my blog and pictures. They see the photos of my farm, the wonderful animals, and sometimes think, wow, does he have it made.

And I am a lucky and happy man, I am grateful for the many riches that I have.

But I always cringe when someone says this to me, because the very idea of the “perfect life” is, to me, the cruelest of myths, spawning more fear and sadness and disenchantment than almost any other bit of illusions that I know.

My life is far from perfect, and I am grateful for that.

We are born believing, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Eery man, he said, bears beliefs, as a tree bears beauty.

The challenge is what to believe in. The pursuit of the Perfect Life is a hoax, a trap, a tarpit. I yearned for it a long time, until I realized it was actually the antithesis of happiness.

It would suck the true life out of me if it were real, setting me up for a lifetime of disappointment and lack of fulfillment. The person in search of the perfect life is someone who hasn’t failed yet.

Why want something I can never have, and that doesn’t even exist? The Perfect Life is not about happiness, it is about manipulation.

The real meaning of life for me are the things I can find – love, sharing, acts of kindness, nature, creativity animals – that help guide me through the rises and falls of life, the imperfection of life, if you will. A life of fulfillment is difficult, unpredictable, it is hard work.

I never kid myself into thinking that people with lots of money and beautiful houses have perfect lives. I spent too many years as a reporter knocking on those nice doors and learning about what was happening inside.

If you believe in the traditional  notion of God, you know that God never saw us as perfect, never made us in that way, he or she was always dissatisfied with us. We are supposed to be human, and that is a far cry from being perfect. Why, I wonder, did this this kind of God create people knowing that so many would end up in Hell?

I have a similar response when I see people carrying around Cesar Millan’s book How To Get the Perfect Dog, I wonder at how much money people will be willing to spend to fail and feel poorly about themselves and their dogs. Do you know a perfect dog? Do you have one? Do you want one? Have you ever created one?

That’s how I feel about a perfect life.

I feel  for the people who tell me that I have a perfect life, because what they are really telling me is that their lives are hollow and wanting. To see any other life as perfect is to denigrate your own.  I never speak poorly of my life, it is always listening.

Every bit of growth and wisdom and fulfillment I have achieved in life has come from pain, disappointment, failure, or my many and profound mistakes in life.

Saints are perfect sometimes, people are not. It is the struggles that really matter, not perfection.

In meditation the other morning, my mind started to wonder to the mistakes I have made, and I had to stop, it was  a devastating train of thought.

My life is rich and full because it has been so imperfect, not because it is perfect.

I learn from the darkness, I love the light. A perfect life to me is a life without challenge, growth and learning. It is a dull and a meaningless life.

I know people don’t mean it as an insult, yet it is insulting and patronizing in many ways. Because it is not  true. Because it is not valuable. Because it is the very essence of shallow.

Every one of the great lessons of my life has come out of pain and struggle. What defines me is how I have dealt with failure and disappointment, not how I have avoided failure and disappointment.

Out of my painful divorce came Maria, the most profound – not perfect – relationship in my life. Out of the collapse of my publishing world came my blog and my photographs, two of the most creative parts of my life.  Of of the collapse and sale of my first beautiful farm came this farm, the right one for me and for Maria, at the right trouble.

Out of bankruptcy came the wisdom to know how to pay my bills and manage my money.

The imperfect life I led brought me to therapy, and the  recognition that I needed help, and the strength and will to go and get it. And help helped me to get closer to a good life, a rich life, a meaningful life. I didn’t want to end my life the way it was, and I haven’t.

I love my life, I cherish it every day, but am grateful that it never was and never could be a Perfect Life for me.

I pray to be spared a perfect life. What a mess it would be.