- Whew! What a wonderful week I've had! One of building
and fixing and tending and going and going and going 'til I drop, and loving
it all.
-
- Who could ask for anything more?
-
- Back when I went to an office and was yelled at by just
about everyone every day, I found solace in the writing part of the job.
I felt as close to a universal presence as I could get while I worked on
my words.
-
- Now that I'm in Paradise, my truest feeling of belonging
to something greater than myself comes while I work on the things that
are part and parcel of country life. When I get so immersed in each moment
of each task that all my shields are down and I forget just about everything
other than the matter at hand.
-
- For the past several days, I've been concentrating on
getting Cloud Creek in shape. My routine has been to awaken at sunrise,
arch my way out of bed to stand and stretch beside it like a great tree,
with my raised arms feeling like they're holding up the sky, and my feet
forming roots to the center of the earth.
-
- After I force myself to stop stretching, I pull on my
work clothes. A T-shirt. An old, long-sleeved cowboy shirt. Thick canvas
work jeans. I tuck the jeans into my beloved harness boots (the ones that
look so much like the engineer boots my mother never would let me have
as a kid), have a quick cup of coffee and put on my work gloves.
-
- Then it's outside to stretch once more.
-
- This time I stand on the area we call The Mound, where
the Ghost Dog was first spotted, and I listen to everything around me -
the house, the Annex, the sheds, pens, grass, trees, sky, and all the animals
- say, "I love you!" so loudly my ears ring.
-
- I say it back, luxuriating in the wind for a few minutes,
and then I'm at work, tossing a bale of hay to the horses, feeding several
cans of food to the dogs and bread to the chickens, refilling the wild
bird feeders
-
- And doing my chores.
-
- I morph into Brody the Horsepucky Raker, protecting Huck
and Elaine from disease! Brody the Fence Repairer, splicing wire and straightening
posts!
-
- Brody the Chicken Coop Conqueror, using my trusty staple
gun and chicken wire to keep out the wrens and even crows who've been coming
in through a tear in the window and frightening the hens out of laying!
-
- Brody the Wonder Putterer, sweeping the floor and rearranging
everything in the storage shed, nailing the old dog houses back together,
scrubbing the bed of the pickup truck!
-
- I circle the house, tightening the outside plumbing and
electrical connections, feeling a power just like electricity surge through
my body so that I'm absolutely certain lightning bolts are crashing from
my fists!
-
- I aim the bolts down the backside of the mountain and
take flight with my eagle wings, soaring above the clearing and over the
trees and laughing. Oh, how I laugh. It's a mighty roar, that laugh, scattering
the buzzards and crows and summoning my brothers, the hawks.
-
- I know what you're thinking. Sometimes I'll look over
to the window and see Gwen thinking it, too.
-
- Her expression says it all. "The boy's gone crazy."
But invariably, she joins in my joy.
-
- By midafternoon, when it's too hot to work, I'm exhausted
anyway. In I come, a separate being again, aware of my hunger and the ache
in my legs, back and arms. That's when I eat. Check my e-mail. Make phone
calls. Write things like this.
-
- And think. Now, with my fingers on the keys, as I try
to figure out what this wonderful week means, I find myself thinking about
farmers - real farmers - everywhere. The farmers who're up and at 'em at
dawn, doing what they need to do because they just plain need to do it.
Because it's what their lives are all about.
-
- Why do my neighbors work so hard, and fight so hard,
to keep their back-breaking family farms? Why do they do everything possible
to not only hang onto their land but to expand it so they can toil even
harder?
-
- Can it be that they're lucky enough to feel the way I've
felt this week every day of their lives? Are they this happy? This blissed
out?
-
- I sure hope so.
-
- *****
-
- Copyright C 2006 by Larry Brody. For permission to reprint
this column, please write to LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org.
-
-
-
- ******
-
-
-
- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM PARADISE!
appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written thousands of
hours of network television, and is the author of "Television Writing
from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television."
Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the
world's first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can
be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. He welcomes your comments
and feedback at LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org. Brody, his wife and their dogs,
cats, horses and chickens live in Marion County, Arkansas. The other residents
of the mythical town of Paradise reside in his imagination.
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