AncienTrails

Spring and the Purim Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Diane. Rebecca. Mussar group. Rabbi Jamie. Evergreen Market Cooking School. A usual busy Thursday. Alan and Tara tomorrow. Shabbat. Then, Socrates’ Cafe. Jackie. Purim Spiel. Sunday. Ancient Brothers. Evergreen Chamber Orchestra. Busy guy. Bechira. Choice point. Kehillah. Community. Resurrection. New life.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Choosing how I feel

One brief shining: Got a call two nights ago from Joanne, hello Charlie, do you still want the Shema on your tallit, yes I do, thank you, you’ll look spiffy.

Over the next few days I’ll have lunch with Rebecca, breakfast with Alan, attend Thursday afternoon mussar, have a session on Jewish holidays with Rabbi Jamie, learn knife handling skills at a cooking school, continue work on my torah portion with Tara, participate for the first time in the Socrates’ Cafe, go to a Purim spiel at CBE, discuss pleasure with the Ancient Brothers, and attend a chamber music concert at St. Laurence Episcopal. Gosh. Cramming human interaction into a four day weekend. More than I usually do in a month.

All the while last week’s storm slowly sublimates, Great Sol beams it up, up, up into Water vapor. Half of my driveway looks like the leading edge of a Glacier with striations of Snow laid down at different points of the storm compacting each other, creating a layer cake look. In the back where the white has no disturbance the drifts and shallow areas quietly lose their height, as if they were a slowly deflating balloon.

My revenant from yesterday has moved on or sunk back in. This morning I’m glad to see Great Sol, glad to see my Lodgepole companion, glad to sit here on the third level of Shadow Mountain Home, and write.

Moods swing. Sometimes like that big, big swing in Bangkok*. A huge swing, over 90 feet high, featured in a ceremony with Hindu origins. Certain Thai folk would swing and swing and swing trying to reach a bag of coins placed on a pillar. Occasionally one would reach out for the bag of coins, miss, and fall to their death. Mood swings can have us reaching for a bag of feelings just out of our grasp, feelings that would either make us finally all right, or doomed.

So many suicides, I’m sure, were people on the Giant Swing, hoping for relief, any relief, from suffering, reaching for it. On a less dramatic note we can allow our moods to engulf us for a minute, an hour, a day, a week and while there to wreck havoc on our sense of well-being.

I’ve learned some tricks to deal with them. Tal’s How do I feel? Writing blog posts. Knowing that they’re moods and not permanent conditions. An awareness that they come and go. Perhaps talking of Michelangelo. Prufrock let his  mood take over.

*According to ancient Hindu mythology, after Brahma created the world he sent Shiva to look after it. When Shiva descended to the earth, Naga serpents wrapped around the mountains in order to keep the earth in place. After Shiva found the earth solid, the Nagas moved to the seas in celebration and made the earth stable completely. The Swing Ceremony was a re-enactment of this. The pillars of the Giant Swing represented the mountains, while the circular base of the swing represented the earth and the seas. In the ceremony Brahamanas would swing, trying to grab a bag of coins placed on one of the pillars. wiki

Imbolc and the 77 Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Snow. Cold. Winter Storms. Bringing Water we need. My own tiny Aquifer. A steel blue overcast Sky. Black Mountain gone. (I suspect it’s still there, though) Lodgepole Branches gathering Snow. The Supreme Court. Alan. Relationships. My life’s focus these days. Including with myself. Bereshit. Mishpatim. Parshas I’m studying now. That Shabbat feeling. Candles.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Eye

One brief shining: The Lodgepole out my window has Branches focused toward the east, toward Great Sol’s return appearance after a Mountain night; on Their west side, where Their colleagues grow, the Branches never emerged, the same true for Others who face out toward the open air with an eager reach, why waste energy where it’s all shade anyhow?

Been thinking about sexuality and aging. Yes, I know about the rising instances of STD’s among those in their seventies, geez guys and gals. Come on. Not my point. Good for them except for the no protection part. No, I’ve been thinking about myself and others like me, not an insignificant sized group I imagine, who have had their genital sexuality compromised by surgery or drugs. Or, indifference. Yes, it happens as many of you know.

In my case a prostatectomy and subsequent radiation, drugs, and two years of chemo have left me nonfunctional sexually. Been the case since 2018 or so. Kate’s illness made this less of a problem than it could have been. I know. TMI. Maybe. Nobody’s gonna hold you down and make you read this. However I know I’m not alone and I feel like this lacunae in our common conversation needs fixing. I mean, we’re all adults here, right?

In the case of those us who have had androgen deprivation therapy (adt), a usual treatment in the case of prostate cancer, the goal is to push testosterone, which feeds the cancer, as low as possible. The standard is the level of testosterone in a man who has been castrated. Testosterone goes low, so does the sex drive. My T score has been around zero for the last 9 years.

Doesn’t mean I don’t have desire. It’s rare, but it does happen. Yet even so the combination of low testosterone and other chemical insults mean I can no longer get an erection. Factor in fatigue from a funky thyroid, now remedied, and fatigue from the adt drugs and the chemo. Not a lot of energy of any kind, let alone sexual energy.

However, all this is prolegomena to the main thought. That is, what does gender mean in such a situation? I’m a man, a cisgender male. Heteronormative in my desire. All my life. And happily so. Yet what am I now? In effect I have been chemically castrated. My sexual drive gone. And even were it not, a real inability to function as I had for my adult life until cancer.

Who am I now? Am I a eunuch? Am I still a man in the strict biological sense? What do these losses mean for me as a man? I’m not sure. I feel the same in most ways. Yet I also know I’m changed. Not the same as I was fifteen years ago. Am I now a solitary, a hermit not only by emotional inclination but also by biological reality?

Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Joan. InSpire concerts. Bread Lounge. Bastiens Steak House. DAM. Heidi Saltzman. Irv. Kippahs. Mussar. Great Sol. The sacred surrounding us, above us, below us, within us, around us. Like Water vapor in the Air. Supporting us like the Granite and Gneiss of Shadow Mountain. Energizing us like our morning coffee. Mezuzahs on my front door, my back door, my bedroom door. Moving between spaces, thresholds, liminal spaces. A sacred moment. My son arriving on a 747 from Calcutta 42 years ago today. His wonderful life.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

One brief shining: Turned off the electric menorah with all eight lights plus the shamash going dark, watched the bright blue beeswax candles burn down on my crystal menorah after saying the Hanukah prayer for the eighth time, finished with my first Jewish holiday as a Jew, feeling my Jewish identity grow and strengthen, as it does when I touch the mezuzahs on my door frames, put on my kippah.

42 years ago tonight. At midnight. A 747 landed in Minneapolis. The night was bitter cold, well below zero and it had come from the warmer geography of the Indian subcontinent. Within were two nuns in blue and white habits each carrying a wicker basket with two tiny babies. When they deplaned and came to Raeone and me, we were suddenly, immediately, right then parents. Oh. My.

My son (whose name I don’t use for security purposes for him.) lay next to the boy who would later become Willie. By happenstance a work friend, Luann, had also adopted from India and her son was in the basket next to ours. Not sure how she did it but Raeone made off with the wicker basket. Which she still has. What happened to the other two I don’t recall, my gaze and attention fixated on the 4.4 pound body of OUR baby. Would we kill him? His body, wrinkled and brown, looked too small to survive. And we were responsible? Yikes!

The short answer. Almost. At the time I drove an orange Volkswagen, the original bug. Which, from time to time, including this time suffered from frozen gas line syndrome. We sputtered to a stop a mile or two from the airport on our way home. The bug immobile. Oh, oh. Fortunately for my son and Raeone, Luann and Willy came by, recognized my car, stopped and took them to our house in Minneapolis.

Me? Not so much. 15 degrees below zero and windy. This is, btw, before cell phones. A truck stopped. A Latino man got out. I explained. He offered to tow me to our house. Thank God. He had a tow rope in his truck, hooked it up and I rode with him.

He came inside with me to see my son and warm up a bit. His name? Angel. As I said above, the sacred surrounds us.

Summer and the Herme Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Honor. Kavod. Mussar. Weighty. We are holy souls. Sacred. Revelation. Community. Havurah. Interest groups. Anavah. Humility. Israel. Korea. My son, his wife. Her sisters. Murdoch. Investigations of our orange bitter lozenge of the mind. Smart phones. The Trail to Cold Mountain. Writing. Acting. Acting class. Eudaimonia. Vince. Luke. Leo and Gracie. Ann. Han Shan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Oppenheimer

One brief shining: Parting the insect curtain with its magnetic strip lets me enter a place where Cat says Hi, Charlie! and other waiters and waitresses smile, the owner too, and I go to the 2 top or a booth depending on the business of the day order a cup of coffee and open my book right now Two Koreas while I wait to order two eggs over easy, crisp bacon, sliced tomatoes, and toast.

Started yesterday at Aspen Perks. Where the wait staff knows my name. Not the best food, but the best company. OK food. Quieter than Conifer Cafe, closer than Primo’s. Massages my need for human connection. Have wanted to see Pete and Murphy since our conversation a month or so ago, but they’ve not shown up since or our times have not coincided. Though. It’s a small town. I’ll run into them again.

Still reading the second of my two histories of contemporary Korea, The Two Koreas. Written by a journalist it has reportorial style. Not the depth of Korea’s Place in the Sun, anecdotal with a first draft of history feel. My preference is Korea’s Place in the Sun but reading the two of them cements names, dates, places. Have let the Korean slide while focused on The Trail to Cold Mountain and reading these histories. May return to it in August.

The rest of the day yesterday I read and learned lines. Three pages down. Two more to go before I hit Han Shan’s poetry of which I’ve already learned 5 of the ten. May make it before class on Tuesday evening. Figured out a way to separate Herme and Gaius. I turn my right shoulder, then my whole body to the side. Herme. The opposite with a brassy voice. Gaius. I think it’ll work. The seeker though. Haven’t figured her out yet. An Asian woman, mature, accomplished. Knows what she wants. But not pushy. Haven’t gotten to her lines yet in what I’m memorizing. Will focus on her then.

Made a pan seared Halibut fillet. So good. Veggies. For dessert, a creme brulee truffle from Sugar Jones. For my light reading, The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier. Sky Castle, the K-drama. Bed. A solid day with before going to sleep thoughts about whether the sacred connects into a whole other world or whether it’s location and instance specific. About how revelation could be auditory. About doing laundry today, Sunday. And what to make for breakfast. As the edible hit and I drifted away into the arms of Morpheus.

Spring and the Mesa View Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Grif Gunnurson. Massage therapist. Alan, back from California. Mussar today. The Bread Lounge. Evergreen Market. Snow already melting. Love. Kate. Ruth. Gabe. My son and his daughter and their dog. The Ancient brothers. Diane. Mary. Mark. My treadmill. Anytime Fitness. All my wild Neighbors.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Travel

One brief, shining moment: Israel and Korea and lbm’s, all journeys I plan to take this year, this mesa view year when I can see so far, forward to the 90 year old man I will be and back to the 67 year old man who moved to Colorado with those he loved and whom he has now lost to death, all gathered in one man this April day, a 76 year old man who remembers and who lives now and forward.

Mesa view. Tom suggested this. I moved to the Mountain and now all of those who moved with me have died. So has Jon. Though I stand alone in that narrow, but very real and important sense, I am healthy and eager. Life far from over. Travelin’ shoes beginning to jitter in the closet. This is the Mesa view. Seeing far in all directions.

I could also call it, will call it, the threshold view. A certain fogginess lifted. Baggage stored in a place of non-interference. The fourth phase, the final phase separated now in two. Then. And, now. Then. Before Kate and Rigel and Jon and Kep died. Now. When I stand on the Mesa, hand over my eyes to shade the sun, see into the distance more clearly.

The door, death’s door which opens both way, has opened up for me again, this time toward life in the fourth lane, headed toward the final exit. And what a wonderful, exciting feeling it is.

Samain and the Decided Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Prostate cancer. P.E.T. Scans. Water up, dude. Dry brining the tenderloin roast. Thanksgiving. Kep. Fingerless gloves. Ruth in Colorado Springs. The Walmart shooting victims. The Walmart shooter. Creativity. Cool Nights. Reading. The Glass Bead Game. Movies. Seventh Seal. Poems. The Road Not Taken. Velveeta hair and clown tie. Jared Polis. Pete Buttegieg. Elizabeth Warren. Ukraine. All my friends and family.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: P.E.T. Scan

Yes. Today I have a P.E.T. scan. A special sort, like the axumin. Special in two ways. First, it will decide definitively whether I have bony metastases. Second, it will cost me over $1,100. My 20% share of the tracer plus a co-pay. I’m going into it with no sedative. It’s an open-sided machine and my head will only be enclosed for a brief period of time. I should be ok. Comfortable clothes, no metal. Worth the money to avoid general anesthetic. Though I didn’t have a choice. Have to drink lots of water.

Feeling a bit stressed. Thanksgiving. Claustrophobia. Cancer. But just a bit. The worst stress of the three is Thanksgiving. I don’t entertain very much. I want the tenderloin roast to come out well. My pie, too. This is a first try at the new family constellation after Jon’s death, too. Claustrophobia is a buzz kill in so many ways. But I can manage it for brief periods of time. Cancer. Well. To paraphrase my friend Judy, “This beast may kill me, but not today.”

Another session with Robin. Cleared the table for Thanksgiving in Kate’s old sewing room. Moved photographs out of that room. Got rid of a lot of boxes, trash. Which I took out to the road today for Shirley Waste Removal. This was the last session with her until the first of the year. She’s taking December off to be with family and see a bathroom remodel through. Going to go through the whole house with her. Making progress. Feels good. Winnowing. Pruning.

Got back the second bid for painting today. Surprising. It’s a thousand dollars less than the first one. And from Greg Lell. Whom I want to use anyhow. Doug has not called yet with his bid. I won’t decide until Marty comes and helps me choose paint colors. I may have her help me in positioning furniture, too.

Walmart employee kills 6. Chesapeake, Va. Walmart sells guns. I’m choosing to think right now that we’ll find our way out of this whole mess. Why? Not sure. A new feeling since the elections. Maybe it’s the chrysalis effect talked about by Phillip Slater. Thanks, Tom, for the book. More on this later.