Tag Archives: Jon Katz

Feb13

my heart, our hearts

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Painting by Pam White                                     This painting is FOR SALE (Contact the artist for details).

Today like every other day
We wake up empty and scared.
Don’t open the door of your study
And begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do
There are hundreds of way to kneel
And kiss the earth.

                                                     Rumi

I have been reading Jon Katz about Valentine’s Week.  This post touched me deeply, because I too live with an artist, and when I see the light shining from her studio windows, my heart leaps.

Lately she has been painting hearts.  They are ecstatic, wildly beautiful.  I have already picked out mine.  “That one,” I said,  “That one is mine.”

2012 marks 26 years together.  That seems an impossible number, and yet there it is.  The years, the days, the minutes are a complicated dance, a beautiful improvisation, a meditation on listening, on moving, on being moved.  Being a love warrior, which mostly means learning to love oneself deeply enough to love another.

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Dec24

merry christmas

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Appreciate something.

Light a candle.

Find stillness.

Take a walk.

Take a nap. 

Breathe.


And with appreciation and thanks to Jon Katz, I had to share his Bedlam Farm video of Nicolene, the magical barn fairy.

Dec13

Jon’s Rose

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Photo:  Pam White

My friend Jon Katz lost his beautiful dog Rose yesterday.  Rose was Jon’s muse.  Rose was a muse for many of us – a treasure that he shared through his writing.  When I read his book Rose in a Storm, I felt I had found a doorway to something primal and precious.  It is a breathtaking, open-hearted book.  I loved the way Jon showed us Rose’s mind – her encyclopedic mapping of the farm and her ability to tell if anything was amiss in the map.

Rose was also mysterious.  She was a dog unto herself, if I understand her at all.  Her first business was The Work, which in this case was the running of the farm.  She and Jon share a devotion:  hers to the caretaking of her family and home, his to the deep and solitary practice of his lovely writing.

Thank you Jon.  Thank you Rose.

Dec7

occupy life

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Photo:  Pam White

This morning I read the article in the New Yorker about Ray Kachel and Occupy Wall Street.  I thought about gifted, desperate people like Ray.  The photograph of him is arresting, haunting.  He is looking straight into the camera.   There is both a challenge and a softness in his eyes.  His story is horrific.  His story is common.  I want to be angry.  I don’t want to be angry.  I want to do something immediate and helpful.  I don’t want to do anything.  I am powerless.  I have choices.

One choice I am pretty clear about: I don’t want to be in Zuccotti Park.  I don’t want to visit, I don’t want to feel what it is to camp on tarps, to be hungry and wet, and surrounded by sounds and humans over which I have no control.

Another choice: I want to show up, in my way.  To shine a light.  To do my best today. Even when I am not sure what to do, there can be a grace in that.   Maybe to just sit with my despair, my confusion and my love.

Yesterday I also read Jon Katz’s eloquent post about animal rights.  Another light shining.  More grace.

postscript:  This week in The Journal, I am writing another ragged little memoir.  The working title is The Beast.  You can subscribe to The Journal here. (As always, you can unsubscribe at any time.)