Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

Ellen didn’t win tonight, and she didn’t like my singing either. She let me know, Ellen has a wicked sense of humor. Matt won five different games, he is the runaway Bingo Champion this year.

It was another night of small acts of great kindness.

Ruth wanted a printout of a photo of her on the Lake George Steamboat Thursday for her “hubby,” Kenneth, who is in a rehab facility.

I bought a $299 fireplace/heater insert for the Mansion Great Room at the request of the staff, in cool and cold weather the  residents love to sit in the room in the evening, and the fireplace insert crackles and glows and has a safety turn off if the insert warms at all.

The residents have always pleaded for an insert, it feels like a real fire to them.

I scored a victory tonight with Jack. In the three months in which she has been coming to the Bingo games, she has never accepted or wanted a single one of the many prizes I’ve bought and the Army Of Good sends regularly to the Mansion.

I’ve tried just about everything, from stuffed animals to singing flower pots, but no luck until tonight. She  accepted a large print novel. Jackie is bright and very serious, Maria got her to laugh and smile tonight. She is quite serious about Bingo and never misses a night. I know what to get her now.

Today, the new easy-to-use lightweight scale arrived at the Mansion, the residents can simply roll up onto it to be weighed, it will save the staff a lot of work. I’ll take a photo when it’s assembled.

The Army Of Good cleaned out the new Amazon Mansion Wish List, Halloween  decorations and party plates are on the way. Any personal contributions of Halloween symbols or crafts would be most welcome.

I bought Tim a $40 gift certificate at the Battenkill Book store, he is a little down after his leg amputation, and dealing with some of the aftereffects. He seemed understandably depressed to me, it’s no fun losing a leg. If you’d like you can write him c/o Tim, The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Jean loves her new wide sneakers, he feet do not hurt for the first time in many weeks.

Buying book is one of Tim’s absolute loves, the certificate always gets him visiting Battenkill Books.

The refugee/ Mansion fund is unusually low, down to $800. The boat trip, scale and underwear/clothing purchases took a toll.  I’d like to get it a bit higher, soccer season approaches.

If you can please consider helping by sending a contribution to the fund c/o Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. Please mark the payments for “The Mansion.”

Here is a list of Mansion residents who wish to receive mail. You can write them c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Winnie, Ellen, Matt, Mary, Sylvie, Alice, Jean, Madeline, Joan, Allan, Bill, Blanche, Helen, Alanna, Peggie, Dottie, Tim, Jackie, Brenda, Wayne, Ruth.

For much of my life, I have been searching for my voice, as happens to most writers and artists and people who wish to be creative. I lost my voice early on in life, and could not seem to recover it until I went to pieces right around the time of the Great Recession.

I suppose there is some meaning in that.

Voice is so essential to identity, if you can’t find it, you can’t quite know who you are. I believe I have to love or at least like myself, and I have to like my voice. It has to feel like me. That has been difficult.

I learned some years ago that I could not cure myself from helplessness and voicelessness.

Like so many recovering people, I had to accept my powerlessness to even begin to heal. I did the work.  Slowly, my voice began to emerge, to find it’s expression from deep within.

Part of it was Maria, I think love gives voice to the people who feel it, love is a difference language and emotion than almost any other feeling, it is really about voice in so many ways. Love for me is never silent.

My blog helped me to find a true voice. So did my very personal search for authenticity. No one is ever fully and without exception authentic, I am not nearly that pure. It’s a place to get to.

My photography brought me a long way towards finding my voice. The photograph above for example, is my voice in so many ways, it says so much more than I can say, and more simply and beautifully.

But I am learning to be honest, and to say what I feel. I learned that as long as I ran from who I was and where I was, I could not  really permit myself to be healed.

When you keep digging the seed up to check whether it is growing, wrote Henry Nouwen, it will never bear fruit. Think about yourself as a little seed planted in rich soil. All you have to do is stay there and be quiet and trust that the soil contains everything I need to grow.

I am finding my voice, spiritually, emotionally and literally. I am learning what it means to be authentic, the good and the bad of it.

And speaking of voice, I’ve installed a Quick Time audio player. I record comments on my pieces, read my poems and other people’s poems, share quotes from books and articles I’ve been reading.

For a week or two, I’ve been fiddling with a new microphone to go with a recording app I’ve installed, I’m, seeking to get my voice loud and clear for my readers. It is startling to me to hear my voice, I’m not sure what it sounded like. I’m trying to learn to like it.

I do like this new way of connecting with my readers, it deepens our conversation.

I think I’ve got the audio program and my microphone working in the way I want. I think I’ve found my voice here. See what you think, and thanks.

Audio: Finding my voice here online and on my blog. Finally!

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.

There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. 

We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, 

that something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.

It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.

Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

 

Mary Oliver, Don’t Hesitate

 

Audio. I read Don’t Hesitate.

Note, I’ve reset the microphone, the audio will be louder and clearer next time.

“isn’t that what friendship is all about,” asks Henry Nouwen, in his book, Being the Beloved, “giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness?”

To me, there is a sacredness to talking to those who are never  spoken to, to listening to those who are never heard, to feeling the pain of people we may not know or see.

If you are like me, you yearn for the person, thing or event that will come along to give me the feeling of inner well-being that I want to much. Yesterday, on the Mansion Boat Ride on Lake George, I had that feeling, again and again and again.

I was with people of compassion, we spoke heart to heart, we shared the common experience of listening and loving, of empathy.

This, I thought, is what our world should be like. This, I thought, is what Washington should be like, this, I thought is what our leaders should inspire us to do every day in our lives.

I saw clearly yesterday on that boat that each human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers, so I know I need to get closer to the experience of being broken.

As I  want people to understand it in me, so must I understand it in them.

The suffering I most see is the suffering of the broken heart. When hearts touch, it is healing.

Audio: Our Brokenness

This is a window in our pantry, it looks out onto our backyard, the clothesline sits just outside of the window. It is a little used room, but Maria has managed to curate the old windowsill, which wealmost never see. She found some bottles and jars, and set against the backdrop of the clothes hanging against the line, it seemed like a beautiful piece of art to me.

Beauty is where we find it.

Audio: “The Simple Life,” by Thomas Merton