Working in Paradise

Judy's figs August 2011.

***

The Telling that Changes Everything XXII.

July 22, 2012

And Paradise?  And what is Paradise?

... A Paradise without work?  No,

in this Paradise we’re all working, 

And sometimes we wish life were easier.

–From Sun 15, Kostroma, Russia, fall 1995

We choose the

reality we trust, the bonds of affection

that best pull us up to our full height,

egg us on to do our most outstanding

work, give our gifts whole and unclouded

by doubt or dismay.  It’s called an act

of faith.  It doesn’t make you rich, 

but it does make you happy. 

–The Telling that Changes Everything XV.

***

I designed my own Paradise:

an island of sanity and love.

As I labor to uproot the high

grass weeds, shovel compost

from the hen house, feed and

water chicks six times a day;

as I brainstorm to outwit possums,

squirrels, birds, voles, which

peck, bite, and steal my peaches,

pears, tomatoes, I think: “This

is too hard."  The morning glory

vines that are swarming over

the sweet potatoes and bell

peppers are winning.  I’m losing.

The garden at its peak is

attracting all the thirsty, hungry

wildlife.  Yet I do harvest 

apples, figs, blueberries, tomatoes,

raspberries, cucumbers, and

peppers.  I make applesauce, 

pickles, vichysoisse, and 

minestrone.  I eat like a queen:

raspberries and milk for breakfast, 

cucumber and tomato with my 

cheese sandwich; eggplant

Parmesan or an omelet of fresh

eggs and herbs for supper.  I

drink lemon balm-peppermint tea.

I sleep like one dead, but every

morning is a resurrection.  Insects

bite me; my lower back aches; 

I fall asleep at the computer.  This

year’s hottest summer on record 

keeps me safe inside.  Yet I rise

early and spend the dusk with

the mosquitoes to fertilize, dig,

plant, and water more beans and

okra; pick the unharmed tomatoes

to save for spaghetti sauce.  The

freezer fills for the winter.  I write

and type my books.  The chicks

grow large and feisty.  My creatures

are all alive.  Of course, it’s Paradise.

I wanted this.  My aches and itches,

my exhaustion each night are

worth it to be here in this very

place, yes, working in Paradise.

You better believe it.

Man is the Tree that Walks

Four-week old chicks, learning to roost.

***

The Telling that Changes Everything XXI.

July 15, 2012

Man is the tree that walks.–Light Food 27 (1989)

For Gene, whose mosaic blue tree fed this poem.

***

It is my hands that feed: the chicks and hens,

my children and grandchildren, my friends,

myself; my hands that loosen the new raspberries

and hunt the last of the blueberries.  My hands

wash the dishes, scrub the kitchen floor,

shovel pine shavings into the chicks’ room;

dig, plant, grab the huge grass clumps and

jerk them free, then pound them against the

ground to loosen the earth caught in their

roots.  My hand moves this pen across

the page.  Once my hands held babies,

fed, stroked, changed diapers, rocked,

burped, tickled.  My hands tell the story

of the tree I am.  I, too, have my seasons,

sometimes bereft: where are my leaves?

What happened to my fruit?  But in this

season of my life, three-quarters lived,

I bloom and make fruit as never before.

You might not find me easily.  I live

on the back wall of a garage in a modest

Durham neighborhood.  The many phases

and seasons of my life are implied but

not in focus here.  Here I live a joy as blue

as a serene lake where the current runs

deep but doesn’t ripple the surface, and

the sky penetrates the water it sees below.

I still work hard.  You will see my limbs 

in motion, a form of dance if you pay

close attention.  You didn’t expect to see

new buds or fully ripe fruit?  Both are

possible when a tree is planted where

it has always longed to be, a home that,

if not permanent on earth, is, in some

sense, eternal, despite, or maybe because

of so much change, in our past, our

present, and well into future time.  Hold

in your mind this vison of a blue tree, in

dance ecstatic, needing no name or

century.  You’ll remember the hands.

Climate Change, Fracking, and Aging

The sign for my figs in Chatham Marketplace, July 5, 2012

***

Several reassuring and reinforcing things have happened to me this week, and yet I find myself giving priority attention to the negative things.  This isn’t like me.  I like to focus on the positive.  Hence, this blog.  What exactly is disturbing me so much that the good things are not buoying me up as they usually do?

This week these good things:

1) Sasscer Hill and I sent in our guest blog to Kaye Barley for its appearance on July 18 on meanderingsandmuses.com: Parental Wings and Fowl Play.

2) I watched the DVD film the Farmhand students from Duke’s School of the Environment made last spring when they visited local farms, including mine in February, to help with fence work (keep out those possums that eat chickens and fruit).

3) I made and canned applesauce from the bounty of my cooking apple tree (Gravenstein).

4) I moved the three-week-old chicks out to their “room” in the coop, and despite the 100+ degrees temperatures we’ve had, they and the eight big hens are still alive.

5) I took my local co-op, Chatham Marketplace, the first figs of the season, and they featured me and my figs in their weekly newsletter (check it out with this link:  

http://www.icontact-archive.com/ax046v6l6BIP5_he6K60Hmic0ag97lym?w=3#.T_hPESaVXyo.email.  

The figs are selling faster than my nine trees can produce them, but the summer looks good for figs, since they like hot weather, and the trees are loaded with green figs.

6) My friend Doug took me out for a birthday dinner (too much happening in late May, when I turned seventy-five).

7) My younger daughter and her teenagers came over to celebrate her July birthday.

***

Doug's photo of figs in Chatham Marketplace, July 5, 2012.

***

So what’s my problem?  I’m feeling dread because of two major events–also this week.  The N.C. Legislature passed a bill to legalize fracking as early as 2014.  The Governor (bless her!) vetoed it, but it was overidden, even though the deciding vote to override was a mistake.  

I’m learning that there may be ways still to protect our environment and landowner boundaries (fracking uses horizontal drilling and can go under land where permission has not been given), but I also know that fracking has yet to be done safely, without harm to the environment and human beings.  The little town in West Virginia (Cameron) where I lived from ages four to six, was ruined by fracking.  There is gas under my land.  What this signifies to me is that I will lose my home and farm, my ecosystem of a life that I designed and love, that enhances my aging and keeps me well and happy.

The other sense of dread comes from our heat wave (this is day ten of it–temperatures 100-105 F (103 F predicted for today) and higher heat indices (up to109 F because of the humidity).  N.C. WARN sent out an email this week with these facts:

1.  Spring 2012 in the contiguous U.S. demolished the old records for hottest spring and most extreme season of any kind.

2.  The last 12 months were also the hottest on record in the lower 48 states.

3.  This temperature change is strongly correlated with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  “The bottom line is that atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as a thermostat in regulating the temperature of Earth.”

4.  Nearly three-quarters of the U.S. is in drought, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map.  “The parched conditions have been aggravated by a dry mild winter and above-normal temperatures.

5.  Carbon accumulations in air and water from emissions to date mean droughts, torrential storms, heat waves (in all seasons) and wildfires in the west and southeast are likely to keep increasing for at least several decades–even if humanity quickly begins reducing global warming pollution from fossil fuels.

If fracking doesn’t drive me out, the heat and storms that are in our future may.  Agriculture is threatened by both these realities.  We need water and fairly predictable temperatures to grow food.

I do tell myself that I will cope.  I can still write.  I’m ingenious.  Even if I lose everything here, I will be okay in my spirit.  I will live and write.  But I already grieve the loss of what I have now, which is clearly at risk.

That little ecosystem I’ve created?  What is it exactly?  What is at stake?  I am in close touch on a daily, even hourly basis with the world of growing things.  I feel how the plants struggle to survive the heat.  I fight weeds and bugs and wild animals that like to eat fruit and chickens.  Yet I’m providing half my food: vegetables, fruits, eggs, some meat from the hens.  

Farming is a lynch pin in my lifestyle now, giving me exercise, motivation to stay healthy, eat healthy food, and do the work that provides my food.  I sell some crops (figs, leeks, eggs) to keep the farm going as a viable business (I can subtract farm expenses from income on my income tax).  I can live simply on social security and not have to work as much for money at teaching. 

Even more importantly and part of all this is that farming is good for my morale and challenges me constantly to keep solving problems.  More droughts led to my putting in drip irrigation.  A possum killing a chicken led to my reinforcing the chainlink fence by getting volunteers to help put down ratwire along the bottom.  Razor wire at the top is the next project when I have extra money.  When I go outside to work in the garden or shut up the hens, I feel replenished and refreshed in my spirit.  My main work is my writing, and the farming provides ballast and balance for that.  I sit a lot, to read, write, work at the computer.  But all day I’m in and out, using myself, mind and body, every day, and refreshing my spirit both ways through writing and communicating as well as taking in the peaceful hens as they settle in the evening or a new moon as I got out to shut them up for night.  

There is also a community of people, friends, neighbors, even strangers around me who help me.  They also lift me up and make my life feel good and meaningful.  Aging brings more fears and doubts, so people and good healthy work combat such feelings.  

Here’s the poem I wrote last Sunday.  I do believe in transformation, but this is a hard one–this fracking, climate change future.  What can we human beings do?

***

The Telling that Changes Everything XX.

July 1, 2012

How do I describe the equilibrium I feel now?

It’s a form of sanity, a balance it took me

a lifetime to achieve.  I used to let my passions

rush me to extremes.  It doesn’t mean I can’t

still be enthusiastic or feel deep grief.

Ecstasy comes and goes, an intermittent wind.

Because we have days of dangerously high heat,

I spend more time indoors.  Outside it feels

like a Finnish sauna but with bad air.  I go

out early and late, to water, pick fruit, and 

at intervals to check on the hens.  The weeds

take advantage of my being sensible.  Then

even they begin to wilt.  This, too, will pass,

but I know we’ll have more and more

weather that is dangerous for human beings,

that make it harder to grow food and raise

chickens.  That knowledge weighs on my

spirt.  Yet I have two bushels of cooking

apples and the time to make and can

applesauce.  I’ve written “The End” on

my new novel.  The co-op produce man is

eager to buy my beautiful fat figs.  People

read my poems at the farmers’ market.

They buy my book before it’s published.

The two-week-old chicks are lively and

funny.  They perch on my hand when I

reach into their tub.  The big hens settle

into the shade under the fig trees.  Their

bodies know a wisdom I have to remember:

do what you can.  Adapt as needed.

Don’t despair.

To Forgive is Wisdom; To Forget is Genius

Nadya's hollyhocks in a Russian village near the Volga.

***

The Telling that Changes Everything XIII.

March 18, 2012

People need our clarity, our joy, how 

we do a stake-out to catch the errant heart

when it suddenly opens wide.

–The Telling That Changes Everything IV.

To flourish, we allow the mind to empty, 

the feelings to experience hunger.  Then 

the words and the love rush in.

–The Telling That Changes Everything V.

Learn and learn.  Learn humility again.

You can’t always get what you want.

You want to save people from the fate

that looms because they’re afraid to take

the only path that frees them.  Am I

afraid?  Afraid to let them learn the

hard way?  It’s how I’ve learned, how I

still learn.  They may well fail you, too, 

but mostly themselves.  You have

knowledge they need but run from.  

Old Gulley Jimson’s “to forgive is

wisdom; to forget is genius” helps

you now.  To let go when you feel

that tug of war, that will to win in

the other person, that stubborn streak

like a thick brick wall, well-mortared,

is to know true compassion.  She

learns faster when you cease striving.

He hears his heart’s true love song

when you stop singing.  It took you

seventy-five years to touch this home

truth?  Be grateful you stepped ashore,

however wounded in soul and body.

Comforts beyond your present

imagining lie straight ahead.

Can We Adapt to Change?

End of June:  cosmos blooming, zinnia seedlings popping up; week-old chicks trying out their new wings; leeks mostly harvested; some peaches rescued from the squirrels; picking my biggest crop of Gravenstein apples to make canned apples for the winter; first batch of borsch in freezer; making pickles today from my own cukes, onions, and peppers.  Back in March?  A strange, unpredictable spring, and yet...

***

The Telling that Changes Everything XI. March 4, 2012

We have it all: the numbing, merciless cold

and the beneficent sun rays rousing all the

juices of spring–animal, vegetable, human.

Will I lose my peaches because sun has 

lured them into early bloom time and

a hoarfrost lurks around the corner?  Last

night’s rain nurtures the new roots of leeks

and onion plants, brings insects and

earthworms to the surface where the hens 

scratch and pounce, feeding on their native

diet.  I pull them chickweed, which is

impervious to frost and relishes both rain

and sun.  I am whole and hale in my aging

time, but I lose companions, like Odysseus

did.  I walk, garden, eat well, create, to stay

lively, but even so my flesh being firm as

I approach seventy-five is a gift, one of

many I’ve had in my lifetime.  To live

long is to lose much, yet I want to live

and do, as Susan says, the best I can.

I am able to write and publish books.  

I am able to see into the souls around

me, even tame them, as the Little Prince

did.  That, too, is a gift I must not abuse.

I carry my years lightly, and yet sorrow 

sits on my heart for all the losses, for the 

lack of wisdom, the inability, in so many

people, even to see what benefits them,

what helps them thrive.  Yet the Great

Mother, our planet home, teaches us

the same lessons over and over.  If we

don’t adapt, if we refuse to cope, if we

become passive and inert, if we say,

“It’s too hard,” we die.  To live well, 

to stay our whole life course and make

our final homeward journey, we have 

only one choice: to pay close attention

to the world within and the world without.

The grain of the universe doesn’t destroy

us unless we let it.

Two Ways of Looking at Things

Judy's figs

***

The Telling that Changes Everything VI.

January 8, 2012

There are two ways of looking at things.

I learned this the hard way.  I had hints.

At the end of The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis

takes the children through a stable and

into the Elysian Fields.*  The dwarves,

right behind them, see only the stable

and not the beautiful meadow.  I look out

my window at my January garden and the

meadow beyond it.  Six months ago it was

vibrant with color, and I picked cukes,

tomatoes, peppers, and later, figs, okra,

beans.  The fruits of that flourishing

beauty lie safely in my freezer or stay

cool in my unheated bedroom where I

sleep under layers of quilts, my wool 

serape on top.  But some see only a

bleak, grey landscape, a scarecrow in 

her blue robe and plastic bag head,

her two-by-four arms held wide to

frighten crows and guard the plenty

that ripened all around her.  In my

mind’s eye, the garden still lives.

Next year I’ll have new fruits to gather,

savor, and lock in boxes against the

winter, cold and grey.  I learned early

that I would be loved and hated.  So

I learn now that my books will stir 

praise and blame.  It shouldn’t surprise

me, since I do what I love and in the

mode it is given to me.  I see by my

visions.  I follow the prompts of

my Deep Self.  I’m more interested

in revealing how love works its

transformations than in being known

to be Kierkegaard’s genius.**  The only

kind of genius I want to be is the one

who knows how to invent in Sartre’s

desperate circumstances.  The one who

can take an unexpected kick in the gut

and place it in the context it deserves,

of short-sightedness.  You see only the 

stable and not the Elysian fields?  It

must mean you’re short-sighted or even

blind.  Procrustean*** beds can only take

you so far.  But I refuse to have my arms 

and legs lopped off so you can fit me

into the box of your choosing.  I’m a 

little more effervescent than that.  I 

didn’t get to this age without learning

how to elude the reductionists who

love to classify, categorize, and box 

you in.  Of course, you’re welcome 

to your opinion, and you may spread 

it around, conceivably do me or my 

books harm.  But I have weapons 

you scarcely imagine.  You write to 

rules and slogans.  I heed the Muse, 

write the books I must write. If you 

read them with an open mind, they 

might change how even you see 

the world.  As for me, I’m on my best 

path, heading in my chosen direction.  

I wish you well on your path.  

Let’s see who dies most satisfied.

* Elysian fields: in Greek mythology, the fields of asphodel (like daffodils) where the good dead go.

** Kierkegaard distinguished between the genius, who writes to show off his genius, and the apostle, who writes for the sake of what he values.  Sartre said: “A genius is one who invents in desperate circumstances.”

*** Procrustes: a giant who forced people into a bed, whether they fitted or not, lopping off limbs as necessary.

Judy Turns Seventy-Five

Judy Hogan fall 2011

***

I am seventy-five today.  More importantly, I am healthy and feel in my prime.  I grow half my food (most of my fruit, vegetables, and I have eggs and occasionally chicken from my small flock).  I walk five or six days a week and do most of my own outdoor chores: weedeating, mowing, and as a small farmer, I use hoe, shovel, and rake to prepare the soil, plant, weed.  I harvest, preserve soups, stews, vegetables for the winter, freeze and can fruit, and make jam, preserves, and pickles.

I still work for a living: teaching, editing, and I sell figs, leeks, and eggs, an occasional loaf of bread.  I’m finishing up a ten-month self-declared sabbatical from teaching writing, in order to focus more on my own writing, though I did a backyard chicken workshop in April.  

I don’t travel much, but the end of April I attended the Malice Domestic mystery convention in Bethesda, drove there in my ’96 pickup and rode the Metro from my friends’ house (Sharon and John Ewing in Alexandria).  May 31-June 5 I’m visiting my elder daughter’s family to celebrate, my twin grandchildren's (Megan and Will) graduation from high school.  I took care of them when they were babies.

This summer in the spaces I’m writing my tenth mystery novel, Death of a Hell-Razor, the second novel to take place at fictional St. Francis College.  The first, Killer Frost, is coming out September 1, and I have a busy fall of bookstore and library readings scheduled, with a book launch at my Hoganvillaea Farm in Moncure on September 22, in the afternoon, the autumn equinox.  Everyone invited.  It’s pot-luck, bring your own drinks, and buy or pick up a book you’ve already paid for.

I’m at the autumn equinox of my life, too.  My body is still up to all that I ask of it, but I pay attention to its signals, rest more, break up my work stints, alternating garden chores and indoor writing and reading time.  I usually sleep well.

My body needs more consideration, and my daily walks are necessary for my knees, heart, circulation, digestion, as is my keeping active and engaged, physically, mentally, spiritually.  I have most of what I want in this life: good, stimulating work, people to love and be loved by, land to farm, care for, and enjoy. 

I love all the birds that flock to the feeder, the way the hens come running from the orchard when I open the back door, the small apples, pears, peaches swelling on the fruit trees; the blueberry bushes crowded with pale blue fruit.  The big green figs ripening slowly, the heavy rain, when it finally comes, to give all my growing things a good drenching, all the signs of my work and care over thirteen years of feeding the soil and eating its produce.

Some things I wish for I know now I probably won’t have in this autumn phase, and others I have to wait for. But, as so many elders tell me when I ask how they are: “I can’t complain.”  I have a very rich life.

The saddest part of staying healthy and aging well is losing people you love and value, sometimes much younger than you are, so three weeks ago, May 5, I lost Tuddy (Walter Hackney), one of my neighbors, whose life work or “calling” was helping people, though he never said so.  He liked to mow my lawn when I wasn’t home.  He wasn’t a talkative person, but he was so kind and good.  I wrote about him the day I learned he’d been killed.  This poem also catches the “place” I am right now, as I turn seventy-five.  Enjoy!

***

The Telling that Changes Everything XIX. May 6, 2012

I dreamt I was alone, at the beginning

and at the end.  I joined a big family group

that included young children, and they 

ordered me food–fries and a drink.  I knew

I couldn’t stay, but when I tried to leave

the restaurant, my arm was held fast.  I

had to pay first.  I couldn’t remember the

name of the people who had treated me,

and they had left the restaurant.  When

I asked help, someone told me they were

outside.  Someone else said, “They’re

with the Army, and the Army has a 

different system for paying.”  I still felt

lost and helpless when I woke up.  I

remember that I had my own goals, that my 

way was different from that of the big

family I’d been with.  Something in me,

though slowed, impeded, baffled, was

determined to reach my own goal.  It’s 

my life.  I’m part of many worlds, including 

that of my family and my children’s 

families, that of the writers I know and

love, including mystery writers.  My poems,

true stories, and novels go their own way,

speak their own truth, as do the doubts

that niggle at me when I’m tired.  The fears

I dream at night throw light into my

darkness, but I cope.  I replace the bulb

I can barely reach.  Two days ago I feared

I’d lose my balance and fall off the chair.

I scolded myself: “You can certainly

change a light bulb.  Learn how.”  I read

books where the author presents goodness

through a smokescreen of self-doubt, 

satire, and dismay.  That’s not my way.

Goodness suffers, but I know it wins 

in the end.  Emma calls to tell me Tuddy

was killed last night, hit by a car while

walking on 15-501.  Tuddy, who has

helped me quietly, as if he didn’t want

me to notice, these years I’ve lived here:

mowing the grass outside my fences, 

caring for my hens when Robert

got too sick, building me a clothesline

closer to my house.  Loving, giving

man, now gone.  One year he came 

over on Christmas day to give me a 

Christmas hug.  I gave him token

gifts, but I could never thank him

enough, and now he’s gone.  We all 

go.  I hope, when I’m gone, that some

trail of goodness is visible behind me,

some trace of my solitary quest for

the words that will release the truth

we all need and offer healing.