Farm Speed

That's my friend Jim. I've known the guy for most of my adult life-nearly 18 years now...He's lived at the same place for all of that time. His slice of paradise, the place he calls home, is an old farm surrounded by forests and old growth snags and the erosion of change.

Jim is a big animal lover. Yesterday as I spent the afternoon with him and hung out on his farm, I spent a lot of that time thinking about the places our lives had taken us. In that environment, with little distraction, it was easy to get lost in my thoughts.

Life on the farm has always seemed to run at a different pace, with it's own special rhythms. It's a way of life that I truly appreciate. Because of Jim's example, I've always known I could live anywhere I wanted to and that people cared a lot less about my sexual orientation than most activists on either side of the issue give them credit.

One of the most striking thoughts that occurred to me as I wandered around the barnyard and through the old dairy barn, were the many places on Jim's farm that I still identified with specific animals. Many of whom have since died. Most animals have much shorter lifespan than we do. I think that such a reality puts so much into perspective. As I recalled Wilbur and Hoover the pigs, Barney the lamb, Tobey, Bruce, Gracie and countless other dogs, each animal represented a specific memory or a period of time.

Oh yeah and don't even forget the Llama.

I think God gave animals shorter life spans to help us realize the tentative nature of our own existence. Maybe that we might appreciate those we've been blessed with a bit more.

Another interesting result of spending time with someone who's known you forever is there's a natural accountability to that sort of relationship. Jim knows my history. He holds me to it. I know his. I hold him to it. He's a father now and has developed eyes in the back of his head, a highly sensitive bullsh*t alarm and uniquely toned negotiating skills. Skillsets usually best displayed with "the lesbians"-his term for his daughter's two mothers.

I think as smart as we once thought we were, the longer we've known each other, the less it seems we truly know about anything. Citing all the times where I was deluding myself (a special state of mind I've patented that my friend Lane characterizes as "smoking crack"), Jim will often stop me mid sentence and ask me, "You don't really expect me to believe that, do you?"

Yet he's always been there regardless, as one of those precious few, true friends. I've cried on his shoulder heartbroken, or vented my way through being pissed or disillusioned. He remembers all the best examples of my self created sh*tstorms. Those really spectacular lifetime achievements, beautifully undertaken and spectacularly executed, the kind that make the six o'clock news or that create fallout that haunts you for years. Such flawless mistakes prove without a doubt the state of my humanity-even as I hope that someday I can move on, that those memories won't sting as much, and that people will forget, I also realize that such miscalculations are also the funniest. All comedy is born from tragedy. So should blazing disaster really be forgotten?

Jim's rejoiced at the highpoints, while sympathetically offering his advice during the low ones. Sometimes he kept his mouth shut, enduring the shenanigans of previous players I've dated. Other times he issued stern warnings, which I usually ignored anyway because he just couldn't understand what I believed I could see. The tally? Jim's been right more times than I'd like to admit.

Neither of us are wealthy. But I've come to realize I am wealthy beyond measure in all the experiences I've been blessed to share with him. That was made most evident as I heard him talking to his animals, carrying on mutliple conversations with sheep and cow and dogs. It was made most evident while listening to the horses rhythmically chewing their alfalfa as the light faded. And it was made most evident as I listened to all of the sounds conveying the rituals and routines of that farm.

Sounds that best defines a measured pace of living best known as farm speed.