Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I realize that there are a lot of things to keep up with in my life. A good friend wrote to me that the new things I have been trying in my life – the radio show, acting lessons – fly in the ace of societal expectations for a 72-year-old man. I am, she said, continually learning and finding new ways to connect with people (and share my ideas of creativity.)

The dogs, she said, always seem to be hovering in the background, accompanying me to these new realms. Very perceptive thoughts, I think, and all of them a surprise to me. I just don’t think of myself in that way, my being 72-years-old never occurs to me unless I go and see a doctor for one reason or another, they are all eager to tell me in great detail what is ahead of me.

So I need to step back sometimes and look at myself from a distance. This week, news and more news.

I won’t be on my radio show Wednesday, we will be re-broadcasting last week’s show from one to three p.m. on WBTN1370. Don’t try to call, there won’t be anyone there. But I will be back next with a slightly shorter version of the broadcast – 90 minutes.

There is medical news starting this week. Tomorrow I get some more laser surgery to fend off any chance of blindness. I won’t be seeing clearly until the mid-afternoon.

Next week I begin several rounds of dental work on my gums, deep cleaning, new crowns, and a one-tooth “slider” to put in (I had a dental implant removed recently) for when I am speaking (or acting) on a stage. Don’t want to be spitting stuff out.

In two weeks I am also going to see an ear, nose and throat specialist about the dry mouth that is causing me to cough and choke up during my radio shows and sometimes, when I am talking. It’s probably the medicines I’m taking for my heart disease and diabetes, but I want to see if I can do something about it.

I’m switching diabetes doctors, going to see a female doctor in  Saratoga to manage my care. My diabetes is under control, my numbers are in the 90’s every day. I’m completing my campaign to only see female doctors, it has worked out beautifully so far.

None of this stuff is profound or life-threatening, it is part of the maintenance that 72-year-old people need to do if they wish to be 80-year-old people with their own teeth. I have lots to live for.

In between, there are lots of new things to try and do, including the play I want to write with Christine Decker. I need to finish the epilogue to my next book, “Gus and Bud.”

I’m also meeting with a Podcast consultant ($150 an hour) to help Maria and I figure out the software and hardware we need for our planned podcast.

I hope this week will see some movement in our push to get Eh K Pru Shee Naw into the Albany Academy. It seems they love her and she loves them, so something should be happening. Prayers and fingers crossed are accepted, these needs to happen. I hope to do this at least once every ear, that is help a gifted refugee child get a great education.

And today, heading to the Mansion to read to the residents. I’ve got some fun new books to them, I’ve invited Maria to come along, she is thinking about it. Thursday, the second meeting of my Mansion Meditation Group, I’ve got meditation beads for everyone.

There is actually more than that happening, but enough is enough for one shot.

I don’t often get a photo of all three dogs living in their own lives. This morning, when we went outside to do the chores, I had a chance.

Bud sat down, waiting for me to let him in the pasture; Red was already in, locking eyes with the sheep and Fate was in the background, running joyously around the sheep for no particular reason other than that she loves it.

The photo captures the personas of the three dogs – Bud’s presence and diligence, Red’s professionalism and focus, Fate’s renegade passion. They capture the spirit and  rhythms of the farm, and the impact these dogs have had on the life of this place.

It is not a simple time to be a man. I think of the lives of men every time I go into the Stewart’s Convenience Store at the edge of town, a morning gathering place for the men who labor.

Labor is the only industry left in our town, especially for men.

All the factories and the good jobs fled long ago to China or Mexico. The towns up here are mostly hallowed out by trade agreements and Wal-Mart.

At sunrise, the pick-ups and battered and mud-spattered SUV’s line up in the parking lot, the men gather inside – the engines stay running if it’s below zero, an unspoken understanding. They sit in the hard orange plastic booths – Stewart’s wants them to be comfortable, but not too comfortable.

Carpenters and contractor and mechanics and stone masons and plough guys.

They laugh gossip, joke, rag on their rich and demanding customers, talk about their wives and kids, bitch about the economy, bitch about prices at Home Depot, wonder when the press will stop picking on the president, who they love dearly, even though they wish he would shut up on Twitter.

I call it Grunt and Grumble.

They are not big on Twitter, these men. Most of them can’t even imagine it.

I think there is a cloud of loneliness around these men, these morning coffee talks seem very important to them, the regulars come every morning, even in bitter weather. There is a camaraderie about the men in Stewart’s, they notice is somebody is missing, they help each other’s kids find work, they trade tips and leads on new work and on rich people looking for help, they go on about the weather, the new people, school taxes, the wives and what they spend, the second- homers for whom most of them work now.

They talk openly to one another in Stewart’s in the morning,  but they will concede they hardly ever talk to men any other time, apart from the Super Bowl or big football games.

It’s the great irony of men in the country. They need the people who hire them, who have invaded the town and employ them, but who almost never socialize with them. There is not much love lost between the classes, between the outlanders and the locals.

I think man of these men are more at home at Stewart’s than any other place.

Women and many men are fed up with men these days. I guess I am. They seem to be hell-bent on wrecking the planet and the country.

There would be little violence without men, most of the jails would be empty. I read one feminist in the Washington Post saying, “do we really need men anymore, except for their sperm?”

Yet I know some of these men and like them very much.  They have been very good to me, accepting and considerate and  empathetic when I am in trouble. They have a strong sense of values. They love to help people in trouble, First Responding is a kind of faith up here. Nobody hesitates to come running when people are in trouble.

They work hard, care about their work, are honest and proud.

They seem lonely to me, and isolated. Things around them are changing faster than they can understand, or even react to. They are not sure of what is expected of them, of what is now permissible. They have strong values, some very much out of time, and out of favor.

They worry about their children and the kind of future they might have. They finally have a politician in power who speaks to them and know their minds, and everyone hates him.

I think they are afraid of women in many cases, they certainly know there is great change now, and more coming. But mostly, they are excluded from it. One men took his daughter and two friends to see “Captain Marvel” over the weekend. His daughter loved it, he told me.

But he felt the movie was not about him, and had nothing to do with him. He was excluded from it. “Couldn’t they have had a decent young man in there somewhere, just one man who wasn’t a jerk or a monster?”

He complained about this to his daughter.

Well, his  daughter said to him, now you know how girls feel?

I think the men listening at the table really didn’t know what to say, whether to laugh or to cry.

If he had asked me about it – he didn’t – I would have said the way I look at it is just this: it’s their turn. It just is.

I sat down on my soft chair to meditate this afternoon, the subject was silence, a precious thing in our world. My peaceful hour is usually about 30 to 45 minutes, rarely an hour, my mind starts racing at some point, and I have a lot of work to do.

But the silence has become very important to me.

“In a world of noise, confusion and conflict, “wrote Thomas Merton, “it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can blossom.”

And I find hope and promise, not fear or anger. Silence is a medicine for me, a magic pill, a potion from the angels. The only messages I hear are  full of light and meaning.

I’ve gotten use to what is for me an extraordinary thing. At some point in my meditation I close my eyes and let my poor mind run all over the place, like a dog in a play group.

At some point, I focus on my breathing, and come back down into the stillness, which is a beautiful space for me. There are things I can see in silence that I can’t see any other way or another time.

In the silence, I am  transformed to a peaceful, even mystical place.

At some point, there is a slight pressure on the chair, and a warm presence on my chest or stomach, and then, a soft and squish face on my should and in my own face.

Bud has come to share the silence with me, as he does almost every day. He causes no trouble other than his loud snoring, and I find his presence comfortable and life affirming. I feel like he wants to be a part of it, through all of his burping and farting and snoring.

Bud loves the silence, but he is not usually silent for long.

He likes to rest his head on my shoulder, and close his eyes. Every now and then, he opens his eyes, sometimes he jumps up frightened, having a bad dream or memory. I stroke his head and his shoulders, and this calms him almost instantly. Then he settles.

I like to think Bud wants to share the silence with me, But he might just want to be warm, to hear a beating heart. We are connected at those moments, though, dogs share the passages of life, they love the spirits inside of us.

The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, writes Merton, and the peace of solitude, which is essential, he wrote, for the fullness of human living. Man cannot be happy for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life, which are hidden in the depths of his own soul.  If man is exiled constantly from his own home, he wrote,  locked out of his spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person.

I know this to be so. I ceased to be a true person for a very long time, I am walking back, step by step.

Audio: Extraordinary Silence