All posts by Charles

Aging, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot

the moment when change is possible

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Imbolc and the Moon of Seoah’s Citizenship

Babar on Dick Cavett, Jon Olson, Spark Gallery

Sunday gratefuls: Jon. Spark Gallery. Tom Liker. His paintings. Santa Fe Art District in Denver. Rocky Yama Sushi. Rabbi Jamie. Divorcing. Luke. The Mussar group. MVP. Snow. Cold. The Ancient Brothers. David Sanders. Kep. Ukraine. Zelensky. Kate, always Kate. Rigel. Kristine. Kristie. Erleada. Orgovyx. Prostate cancer. Deer Creek Canyon. Living with, living in spite of, living into. Living.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rabbi Jamie

Tarot: Two of Vessels, Attraction

 

Accent acute. Accent grave. The cedilla. Diacritical markings. “The word diacritic is a derivative of Greek diakritikos, meaning “separative” or “able to distinguish,” which is based on the prefix dia-, meaning “through” or “across,” and the verb krinein, “to separate.”” Merriam-Webster

Kairos. Another Greek word. This one often used in theology, there translated as crisis. This from wikipedia: ‘the right, critical, or opportune moment’. In modern Greek, kairos also means ‘weather’. It is one of two words that the ancient Greeks had for ‘time’; the other being chronos. Another translation: the moment when change is possible.

We have lived for this whole millennium in interesting times. Since 9/11/2001. That was the first and so far most impactful inflection point. It is easy to separate, to distinguish between the pre-9/11 world and its aftermath in which we still live.

It was a kairos moment, a moment when change was possible, and we chose, through the dark machinations of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and their likable stooge, George Bush, Osama Bin Laden’s exact goal: an asymmetrical war considered a holy war, or. better, an unholy war against Muslim’s who co-opted the idea of jihad.

We were in the right; they were in the wrong. Let’s go get’em! Now 21 years later the wreckage of our intervention has left smoking ruins in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and to a lesser extent in Lebanon and Palestine. We’ve spent lives, a trillion dollars or two, but who’s counting, and our reputation as a beacon of liberty. Coming well after another stupid war, the Vietnamese War, these twenty one years have eroded the idea of democracy and helped fuel the rise of oligarchs and autocrats.

Kairos II. A macro problem, let’s call it. Because the next big shock was microscopic, a virus. Can’t even see the damned thing. We’re still not done with it, may never be done with it, and millions have died world wide. We’ve holed up in our houses, become afraid of our neighbors and friends, let alone the maskless vigilantes who so badly misunderstand liberty that they’re dying by the thousands without needing to.

Kairos III. Sorta in the middle of all this, what?, horror? George Floyd. In my former home town, Minneapolis. The San Francisco of the Wheat Belt, a progressive’s dream city if there ever was one. Black Lives Matter. Riots and protests. All over the world. Where did we put that beacon anyhow?

Of course riding high above all this was Kairo Prime of our time, climate change. Super wildfires. Ocean rise. Tumbling condos. Jacked up hurricanes and tornadoes. Changing weather patterns. A lot of record warmth. Uneven rains, 800 year droughts. Geez.

We got a lot going on here as I head into my 75th year. Three quarters of a century and I’ve never seen any time like these last twenty. Even the Vietnam War and the movement seem preparatory, not diacritical as I once thought.

And I have grandchildren. Who have to live into this world we’ve birthed. Yes, none of this had to happen. But cooler heads did not prevail and we got global warming. Peaceniks failed and we got forever wars. The civil rights era came up short and we got George Floyd, Trayon Martin, Ahmaud Arberry. How do I sit down with Ruth and Gabe and say sorry?

I really, really don’t know. Yes, of course love. Yes, of course compassion. Yes, of course justice. Knowing this from the jump doesn’t seem to have saved me from implication as a failure in every kairotic moment, every event diacritically identified here.

And, I’m tired. Not sure I have the eagerness or the energy necessary for another fight. Without a fight how can I hope to live with myself in my last quarter century? Or so.

Yet. Joy. Patience. Loving kindness. Honor. Holiness. Also necessary. Perhaps I can evoke, provoke those? Keep tossing virtues into the collective until something catches fire? I don’t know and I don’t pretend to know.

I do know that I cannot be silent, nor complicit. The chief sins of our age.

 

Family, Feelings, Judaism

The Ancientrail to Joy Winds Through Sadness

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Imbolc and the Moon of Seoah’s Citizenship

I offer you this because it spoke to my own hard-ship over the last year. And I appreciate each of you who read this as one of the members of the crew who has helped me steer to calmer waters, a more joyful place. Reading it can help.

 

Sunday Gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie’s piece in this month’s Shofar, the CBE newsletter.

“…this psalm, Psalm 102, reminded me of an often-overlooked truth. The pathways to the kind of enduring and exalted joy we seek goes through and not around the disappointments, struggles, and tragedies of this life. Holidays like Purim and Passover do not avoid the grave threats of power hungry demagogues like Haman, and dictators like a Pharoah trying to perpetuate a slave-based economy.

With groggers in hand, we read in the scroll of Esther [Megillah] eight chapters of a nightmare scenario before we celebrate an unlikely redemption. Around the Passover table, the jubilant songs of the seder come only after pages of pages of oppression and plagues in the Haggadah.

In our quest for joy, we don’t avoid the hard-ships of life, we steer them, we sail them towards a promised land. We suffer loss and grief because we love with fervor. The extent of the grief parallels the extent of our love. And, the depth of our sadness elevates our eventual joy.

So, we tell the story of our ancestors (Israelite and American) and honestly confront the scars and sins of our past, not to ferment guilt or diminish our sense of pride. We remember and allow ourselves to feel the pain of a legacy of enslavement, oppression, and genocide because this is how we cultivate compassion and inspire acts of lovingkindness. Welcome the stranger because you were strangers in Egypt. And the stories of sadness and grief that we share as part of our holiday rituals are integral to and in service of our journey to joy.

Ivdu et hashem b’simchah. And so, we feast. And when our plates and wine glasses empty and our bellies and hearts fill, prior to offering a blessing following the meal [bircat hamazon], it is customary to chant Psalm 126, a ‘song of ascents:’

It’s like a dream – our mouths filled with laughter our tongues with song…we will rejoice. Those who sow with tears will reap with joy…

Explore the tears, journey through the sadness. You will return with bundles of gladness and joy.

And so may it be. And so it is.

Chag Purim Sameach – Happy Purim!

Chag Kasher v’Sameach – Happy Passover!

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Tarot

Changes

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Imbolc and the Moon of Seoah’s Naturalization

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley waste. Vince and his laborer. Moving day. Kristine Gonzalez. Kep, my buddy. Rigel, consciousness shifted. Kate. Always Kate. The Ukraine. Russia. Biden. Democrats. He who shall not be named, but will be put in jail. I hope. Sun. Solar power. Snow coming. Warmish weather. Projects. Phases.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Young muscle

Tarot: Knight of Vessels, Eel.

 

And so the day comes round at last. The shifting of furniture, the changing of the house from its care for Kate days to its Hermitage days. I keep hearing in the back of my head, “You’re erasing me.” You said this when I first began to move things in the kitchen to better reflect how I cooked.

Kate, I’m not erasing you. You will be present throughout the house and the loft. In the common room a wall dedicated  to art that you loved. Including Jerry’s big landscape. The bronze statuary. An arts and crafts clock with a turtle tile. In the bedroom the Bailey Patchworker’s quilt remains on the bed. Your sewing room will become a family gathering/celebration space. In the loft your ashes will sit behind my computer, so you’ll be with me while I work. I’m thinking about stenciled Irises in the kitchen. I can see the expanded Iris garden from the loft window. And, the lilac bushes await spring for their second year of growth.

More. Our anniversary comes next week. I’m going to celebrate. Not sure yet, but it will be you and me somehow. Also, the April Big Celebration will include plenty of time for your yahrzeit. No, you are gone as a body, but not as a memory or a presence. Your love, your intelligence, your knowledge, your passion lives on in those of us who loved you and all the patients and their parents you served over many years. Your friends at CBE and Kate’s girls, the Bailey Patchworkers, and the Needleworkers. Each one carries a piece of you in their heart.

But, yes, I am changing things to meet the new life that has emerged after your death and Rigel’s. More conversation around the fireplace. More family and friend meals. Holiday celebrations in your old sewing room. A more Arts and Crafts lower level, a better appointed guest room.

Hey, guess what? You know that thing we couldn’t figure out on the stairway upstairs from the lower level? It’s for cd’s. It held all of the cd’s!

Your life and mine. Intertwined. Now and forever until the end of the universe. No erasing possible.

Vince D’Orio and his brother Preston have come to move everything. Nice guys. Vince replaced John who replaced Ted, all since you died. Vince is the best of the three. He’s young, energetic, personable, friendly, and eager. His brother the same.

Do you think it means something that his brother Preston showed up with a Woolly Mammoth on his hat? Vince’s family came to Long Island from Sicily, then moved to Albuquerque. Now the D’Orio boys are both in Colorado. Vince lives on Warhawk. Preston in Henderson.

Now they’re moving stuff around in our house here on Shadow Mountain. Oh, yeah. And then there’s the house. Which you found. Which you chose because of it’s loft space for me and my library. My eyrie, you wanted to call it. It’s that, too.

You live in my heart and in my memory as a blessing.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Sweet honey to the rock of my sadness

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Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

Monday gratefuls: Vince and his laborer coming Wednesday to move furniture. Unloading the Stickley bookcase and the leather bench. And, the cd cabinet and the Stickley table. Herme goes upstairs. Jon’s work now in three print shows. His idea to take the bookcase downstairs. Ruth’s gentler habitus. Kep’s calm. 32nd anniversary next week. Kate, always Kate.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kate

Tarot: Six of Stones, Exploitation

 

The Common Room

Getting ready for the big switch. Vince and his laborer come on Wednesday to move furniture around. The stationary bike will go to the loft, where I’ll use it for HIIT workouts. The cd cabinet (remember cd’s?) will go where it used to sit in the downstairs home office. The Stickley bookcase will go to my level downstairs, against the wall under the mini-split. The leather chair from Pottery Barn will go upstairs to the common room. The leather bench will come up to the loft, too. The teak dresser in my bedroom and the tv on it will go into the guest room, aka, Seoah’s room. The Stickley table will go up into Kate’s sewing room, creating a new dining room for larger meals.

The end result will be a comfortable conversation area in front of the fireplace, a Stickley themed space on my level, a place for guests to unpack and put their clothes away plus a tv if they want, a sorta formal dining area, and a place to take off boots in the loft and a stationary bike well suited to high intensity workouts. This will end the second phase of my plan. The first phase was the kitchen remodel. Which is almost, almost done.

The third phase will see the arts and crafts chandelier hung and Herme finally moved to his place on the wall. This phase requires an electrician. At that point I’ll declare a pause until spring when I have some landscaping/yard cleanup work that I hope Vince can accomplish. There’s another level of organization that the loft requires, too. I’ll be getting on that as soon as all this calms down. Mostly filing that needs doing as a result of my taking over the financial responsibilities.

My conceit is that Kate would have loved all this, but truthfully, I’m not sure. A lot of money splashed around, a lot of disruption. As she might have said, “I’m feeling penurious.” I know I’ll love all of it.

One unexpected but oh so good part of all this was my discovery of a notebook containing a page from January 2021, four months before Kate’s death. She had started a gratitude journal. Early in the month one entry read, “Charlie’s wonderful care.” A second, later in the month, “Charlie, always.” Sweet honey to the rock of my sadness.

Time for breakfast now and then more prep work for Wednesday’s moving day, a workout after. Gotta go. On the flip side.

 

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Imbolc and the waning crescent of the 3/4 Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jon, struggling, trying. Making prints and entering them. Ruth, happier, easier. Gabe, a sweetheart. Rigel. Kep, using the doggie bed he’s ignored for months! Ciabatta rolls from Bread Lounge. Sourdough from same. Reading. And, more reading.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Remembering the old dream

Tarot: Nine of Stones, Tradition

 

An interesting Tarot pull this morning considering my first topic this morning. Theory. By the end of college I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. Theoretical Anthropology. That fit together well with my double major Philosophy and Anthropology. Theory folks look at a discipline from a meta level, considering how assumptions and conceptions in the field match up with the field actually does. They can also propose next steps for field work, or suggest whole new fields of inquiry. Say, bio-linguistics, or one that was just emerging as I graduated, Cognitive Anthropology.

I would have been the first Ph.D. in Anthro from Ball State and the Department was behind me. The religious affairs advisor sponsored me for a Danforth fellowship for graduate study.

Three problems. I never finished the Danforth fellowship application. Both Brandeis and Rice accepted me but could offer no fellowships. Fellowships for theoretical anthropology didn’t exist, at least at the time, in those programs. The third was the real stopper though: I decided that university education was a tool of the establishment (it is) and inculcated capitalist/militarist values in its often unwitting students. It does.

I decided to take a principled stand and not try anymore to get into graduate school. In hindsight? Dumb. Of course education was a tool of the establishment, but I didn’t have to be. Especially with the tenure system. Of course, it inculcated capitalist/militarist values. Those are establishment values. But I didn’t have to inculcate them. I could have worked against them.

Also, something I can admit now, but could not then. I was afraid I would fail. Ashamed of that as I look back. But, the combination of all these factors ensured I would end up in the winter of 1969, cutting rags in the Fox River Paper Mill, owning a house in Appleton, Wisconsin, and trying to live up to the promised I’d made to be in an open marriage.

Again in hindsight I wonder I didn’t go into treatment for alcoholism even earlier than I did. I was a living embodiment of the adage: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

Those were painful years. Each morning excruciating as I tried to combine living as if I was Christian with anxiety about my future, my marriage, my drinking. Those years and that anxiety continued through seminary, ameliorated a bit by the heady intellectual work in seminary. Which I had not expected, but loved.

Judy and I divorced

 

 

 

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Unextinguishable

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Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Vince. What a good guy. Kristine Gonzalez. What a good and thorough doc. Maren, for getting me past the electronic gates of the patient portal. Finally, a good medical practice. And, local. Cheryl, too, at Quest in the practice. A good phlebotomist. A local team for medical and Snowplowing/handyman needs. Jodi and Bowe. A good team for the kitchen. Ruth, Jon, Gabe. Coming up at 3 pm. Safeway pickup. Alan and the Bread Lounge this morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Irreducible Mind, Edward Kelly, et al

Tarot: Nine of Vessels, Generosity

 

Digging into the books written by Ed Kelly and his collaborators. Many flashes across the dark desert, a storm coming that will bring rain to the arid behaviorism of the Watson-Skinner crowd.

These books, there are three: Irreducible Mind, Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality, and Consciousness Unbounded: Liberating Mind from the Tyranny of Materialism, fat ones, heavy on my sturdy Stickley chair, reflect the work and interaction of a multidisciplinary team. Ed says in the preface to Irreducible Mind (IM) that the purpose of these volumes is to get to advanced undergraduates and early graduate students in disciplines like philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology before they experience, and I love this phrase: hardening of the categories.

Guilty. I am guilty of a hardening of the categories on just these issues. Skepticism has its place, oh yes, but when it turns, it turns bad. It creates walls that can’t be breached even by new data, creating the very situation that it purports to avoid. Ed offers several antidotes to this rotten form of skepticism.

Francis Bacon, 1620: “The world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding…but the understanding to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world as it is in fact.” p. xxii, intro to IM

Also, and you’ll like this Bill, by Philosopher F.C.H. Schiller: “For the facts to be ‘discovered’ there is needed the eye to see them.” ibid.

Gotta lot more good quotes. Ed is a funny and acerbic guy. Here’s my favorite: “chess-playing computer programs represent real progress toward real intelligence in roughly the same sense that climbing a tree represents progress toward the moon.” xxv, intro.

This feels like a spot I could have inhabited a long time ago if I had not allowed my flat earth empiricism (a variety of rotten skepticism) to keep me on a conventional and conservative line of thought about these matters.

Combining this work with kabbalah, tarot, and astrology should be enough to keep me busy for the next quarter of a century if the docs can keep me kicking that long.

This kind of stuff excites me, makes me eager. I’m getting this house set up for good eating, good exercise, good study, good thought. Now I have subject matter that actually conforms to my old reimagining faith project. Wow.

A strong and unextinguishable part of me is an academic, episodically trained in esoteric fields like philosophy, theology, kabbalah, and now the war between physicalism and idealism. I like that part of me and want to feed him over the next few years. Feed him better, more consistently. The Hermitage. A good spot for all of this. And, for conversation about it.

Thanks to Ode for putting me on this path.

 

Fourth Phase, Judaism, Kabbalah, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Soul

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Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Forgot Wednesday. David Sanders. Jodi. The new kitchen. The furniture rearranging and moving. Herme going on the wall sometime in March. Along with that Arts and Crafts chandelier being hung. Kep. A very good boy. Rigel, returned to her constellation. Kate, always Kate. Snow and Cold. A Minnesota winter week for Shadow Mountain. Great sleeping.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The heart/mind

Tarot: The Knight of Bows

 

I’m a fence sitter when it comes to ideas. I can hold the polarities, as kabbalah teaches, but when it comes to saying yes to something like the soul, I shy away.

Seems it went like this. Freshman philosophy at Wabash. All those proofs for the existence of God that Father Ed gave me my senior year of high school. That I loved. That seemed clear and irrefutable. Pretty refutable. After that, Camus.

Reinforcing Camus was the flat earth metaphysics of the logic positivists and the linguistic analysts. Wittgenstein: That of which we cannot speak, we must be silent. I inhaled.

No god. Or, if there was one they weren’t very good at their job. Anyhow, I became an enlightenment guy, empiricist full stop. Skeptical, sometimes veering into nihilism, sometimes cynicism. Actually, a sort of lonely place.

Appleton, Wisconsin. Married, deeply unhappy. Working in a paper mill cutting rags to make paper for the U.S. Treasury. Drinking way too much. Trying to live with the open marriage I entered into willingly. In my head. But not in my heart. In a city I could not embrace.

Judy and I decided to part ways, but not divorce. I’d find politics and the church. The politics led me to seminary. A Kierkegaardian moment gave me a window into the Christian faith without having to accept the metaphysics. I’d live as if I believed.

Worked. I took a deep, deep dive into Christian theology, ethics, mystical thought. Practiced several forms of mediation like lectio divina, the Jesus Prayer, contemplating the ineffability of God.

Worked until it didn’t. I began searching in my heritage, my Celtic heritage for writing ideas. Found the Great Wheel of the Seasons. This time I not only inhaled. I held it in. Got giddy. A new way of looking at the world, an animistic way, a pagan way. Not Christian. Oops.

Not like Judaism. Where your belief in God is your business. Even for Rabbi’s. Had to bale. Lucky I met Kate. She gave me a parachute out of a difficult situation. Kate though.

She was a flat earther, too. A scientist. A mathematician. A healer. And my love. She took to the animist idea, the live close to the earth, live with animals. Dogs in particular. Bees. We loved each other into the land of Andover. Growing vegetables. Planting an orchard. Making our own cutting gardens. Seeding much of our front yard with prairie flowers and grasses. Harvesting honey. Building a fire pit for those cool Minnesota evenings.

Kate was also a Jew. A convert when she was thirty. A Jew of the heart. She went to a service at Temple Israel and began to cry. She felt at home. Kate was not a cryer. Probably a mystical experience in retrospect.

During our Andover years we worshiped Mother Earth and Father Sun. In the old way. By working with them to grow food, to enhance the beauty of our home. Those years with hands in the soil, seeds and seedlings our tools, made me-and her-into confirmed animist/pagans.

Until we moved to the Mountains. It was time to take on new masks and tasks. We stumbled upon Congregation Beth Evergreen late in our first year here. Kate found a home for her Jewish soul. And I found a home for my animist/pagan one.

All this to get to one sentence: I’m going to live as if evolutionary panentheism and the notion of a soul are true. Said another way, I’m going to live into them.

 

 

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain, Travel

75

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Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

my work

Sunday gratefuls: Kep. BJ and the basket of fruit. The J.O.E. family gathering: Johnson. Olson. Ellis. Sara and Annie. Jerry. Schecky. Turning 75. Rigel. Now appearing in Kate’s  personal heaven. Prostate Cancer. Erleada, currently kicking my butt with fatigue, low stamina, and maybe increased high blood pressure. Orgovyx. Kristie. Tom. The draft horse. (He’ll know what this means.) Roxann. Her struggles. Mornings.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Therapy

 

50th High School Reunion, Alexandria, Ind. 64

Haven’t written about turning 75. Too caught up in the doggie drama of Rigel’s death. Still sad. Like Kate’s death though Rigel’s had been coming for months, maybe a year plus. She pushed past the endocarditis but it could well have ended her. Also like Kate I’m sad she’s gone, but relieved she can run free, all legs working, appetite restored. No angels are ever destroyed. They just change location.

Last Thursday evokes what it means to turn 75. Fellow ancient wayfarer Tom Crane was here, helping me ease past the shock of Rigel’s death. Marilyn Saltzman and Irv had called the day before.

Tom and I had breakfast at Aspen Perks. Talked about life, our 35 year plus relationship. We’re brothers. Yes. Now and forever. 75 would be barren without him, without those other ancient brothers I see every Sunday. Without the other Woolly Mammoths.

In my therapy session David Sanders identified three issues he heard from our initial session: emptiness, potential future relationships, and creative work. The emptiness is there and will remain for some time. It doesn’t scare me or feel abnormal. I’m not ready for a new relationship, may never be, but certainly not now. That put us at door number 3.

second from right, front row. maybe 10?

David asked me to send him a copy of a novel I’d written. I sent him the first 50 pages of Superior Wolf. He sent me some interesting work sheets to fill out. I’ve done that. We’ll talk next Thursday. With the simple act of sending him that material, the stuff I’d sent out to agents, I felt ready to get writing again. Very soon. Maybe this week.

Also, had some ideas about emptiness and the Tao. In Taoism emptiness is what makes certain things useful. The void in a cup. The space of a door or window. The interior of a car. The room inside four walls in a house. The inside of a refrigerator, dish-washer, cabinet. Made me wonder if grief is an emptiness that lets us see through it to a new life.

2016, second from right, back row. Stillwater, Minnesota

In a class with Rabbi Jamie a while back (well before Kate’s death) I wrote a poem that had this line: Death’s door opens both ways. Perhaps grief is that door. Perhaps that emptiness is the vessel into which we pour all the ingredients necessary for a new life to emerge.

Therapy over, I waited for an hour and headed over to Evergreen to meet my new doc, Kristine Gonzalez. As I said in an earlier post, what a delight she is. As David took my now 75 year old psyche under his care, she listened to me about prostate cancer, post-polio syndrome, high blood pressure, radiation induced proctitis, peripheral artery plaque. And said, “Just live until 90. I don’t see anything in your way.”

Almost 75, in new kitchen

At On the Move Fitness an hour after this Deb got that body back up out of the chair and onto the tread mill and the mat. Put weights in my hands. Had me huffing and puffing.

That’s all a window into my status as a 75 year old man, walking his ancientrail.

 

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

We

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Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

Kate at Purim, 2018

Saturday gratefuls: Tom, leaving on a jet plane. Black Hat Cattle Company. Jon, still struggling with thrush. Bed slats realigned. Leah. Happy Camper. Good sleep. Blue Sky. Solar panels. Induction stove. The new kitchen. Life emerging. Regenerative agriculture. The Solar snow shovel. Judaism. CBE. I’m a part of it. More than a camp follower, less than a member of the tribe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friendship, chosen family

Kate at CBE, September 2018

Breakfast at Aspen Perks yesterday with Tom. He went from there to the Hermitage to attend a virtual board meeting of ESI, the company to which he sold Crane Engineering. They made a decision. Kep kept Tom company.

I went to King Sooper to cash a check, the rebate of overpaid dental insurance for Kate in 2021. While at the bank, I said to the teller who had bent over, “Masks make hearing even harder.” She smiled, a beautiful young Latina, after standing back up, and said, “Masks make hearing even harder.” I told her that was what I had just said. We laughed for a full minute or so. Take that pandamndemic.

When I got back home, Tom and I took off for the Happy Camper. A second stop for him. Time for a second purchase in a couple of weeks for me. More important. Leah.

Leah, former executive director director at CBE, now works in the Happy Camper office. She came out a bit hesitantly, not sure she knew a Charlie. When she saw me, it’s been two years, she lit up. Charlie! Big hug. Her purple tinted hair, her Grateful Dead dancing bears lanyard, her big smile. Second big hug. I loved her, too, Charlie. I know.

A long conversation ensued. About her and her partners relocation to Vegas to care for his mother. Their return in November after her death. Vegas stinks of gambling and addiction. And really damned hot.

In the course of the conversation she included me in a we. We have all these holidays and each one’s different and a little weird. We, meaning Leah, myself, and the other CBE’ers. I loved that.

She also said, and I don’t have this quite right: All our holidays boil down to three things: somebody tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat! Leah’s a character and I’ve missed her.

Back to the Hermitage for a nap. Tom back to Comfort Suites. We met later at the Black Hat Cattle Company for a final meal together. Tom and I understand each other. Like brothers, he says. And, I agree. Brothers from another mother.

He took the Kerr Gulch Road to get to Kittredge. The Black Hat sits right on 74 with some of its parking places only a few feet from the north bound lane. The Kerr Gulch Road, which I’ve not driven, added to the western flare for Tom. It winds through ranches and Mountain vistas before narrowing considerably as speed signs drop to 20 mph, then 10. At 10 it becomes an almost single lane gravel road before depositing the persistent traveler onto 74 not far from the Black Hat.

Part of the oddness of Mountain living is you never know what a road’s like until you’ve driven it. That may sound obvious, but the differences are stark. Some roads, many, trace Mountain Streams as they follow gravity’s insistent pull toward sea level. Others climb up Mountain sides in switchbacks. But from the intersection with whatever road you’re on, they may look like any another country lane, nothing remarkable. Some valleys are narrow, but there’s usually enough room for a farm or two in the flat Land on either side of the Stream. Sometimes not. A series of switchbacks can require careful navigation, then open up to a wide view of Mountain Ranges and Valleys.

Life goes on, in endless song…

 

 

Anoka County, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Mussar, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Charlie’s Difficult, Wonderful Week

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Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

At the VRCC, Jan. 2018

Thursday gratefuls: Rigel. Her death. Kep. That hole in my heart. Tom. Here. Cannabis. Leah. Marilyn and Irv. Susan Marcus and Thoreau. Rich Levine. Dr. Palmini. VRCC. The new kitchen. The new furniture and lamp. Snow. A good bit. Stopped early morning. Plowed Black Mountain Drive. Bright Sun. Robin Egg’s Sky. White Lodgepoles and a white Black Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rigel’s death. And, her life.

 

My life flows on in endless song,
above earth’s lamentation.
I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.    The Hymnary

Yes, it’s surprising, but this is how I feel. Eager for the new creation while sad about Rigel, about Kate, about the life that included them in the body. No, I’m not moving out of the present moment. I anticipate nothing. I regret nothing. I yearn for nothing.

Part of this equilibrium I have Tom Crane to thank for. He came here, to Shadow Mountain. And cousin Diane Keaton, my best person when Kate and I married. I speak with her once a week. Part of it has to do with the Great Wheel which has turned for Kate and Rigel and will one day turn for me. Part of it has do with the loving and loved members of Congregation Beth Evergreen and the Ancient Brothers. They hold me in a fine net of their care, mystic cords of love.

And, of course, part of it lies within me. One now turned toward the earth rather the heavens of the old three story universe. One reading the torah of mother nature, listening to midrash about her. Her oral torah loosed in the songs of birds, the bugling of the elk, the silence of snow falling.

Leaving now for breakfast with Tom. More in a while.

Kate, Nov. 29th, 2019

No, the deep sorrow has not left me. If someone says something kind about Kate or the conversation turns to death and dying, sometimes tears will press up, coming from a holy well of honor for her, for us. This will, I imagine, lessen over time. It did with my mother. It has with each of the dogs. Vega’s death took the longest to assimilate because she died suddenly and after we had been gone for four weeks.

Tom’s willingness to be here and his actual presence has, as my Jewish friends say of the deceased, been for a blessing. We know each other. Pain. Flaws. Joys. Anguish. Inner compasses aligned.

Kep and I have begun to negotiate life after Rigel. Just us boys. He comes up to the loft, but he’s not eager to stay. He likes to roam. Gertie would lie down on her bed, from time to time gaze up at me, and leave with reluctance.

Tom, Durango, Co.

Today is body-mind-spirit day. Breakfast with Tom. Therapy with David Sanders. Annual physical with Kristine Gonzalez. New workout with personal trainer, Deb Brown.

Did not finish this yesterday. So, I’ll just go on from here.

David Sanders called me an exceptionally intelligent person. Nice to hear. In these tough days a few compliments help. He also noted my breadth of knowledge. OK. Enough back patting. He convinced me to send him some of my work. I sent him the first fifty pages of Superior Wolf. And, I admitted that I probably had a book in me about the Great Wheel, tactile spirituality, the ur-religion. Feels like he moved the meter in my head back toward creative work.

Saw Kristine Gonzalez, my new primary care provider. What a delight! She loves taking care of folks over 65, listened to me, discussed my health with me like an adult. To my Bill Schmidt inspired question about what I needed to do to love (meant live, but this works, too) until I’m 90, she said, “Just do it. Your prostate cancer is under control. You should be able to.” A big sigh of relief to be in a smaller medical practice and with a competent, caring doc. I told her Kate would have liked her a lot.

Dave and Deb, owners of On the Move Fitness

Then, over to On the Move Fitness for a kick start to my workout routines which I’d let slide. Deb is the person who lost her husband David to glioblastoma in June of 2020 as the Covid pandemic began to wrap its coils around our lives. Dave and I bonded over cancer recurrences and now Deb and I have over grief. She gently guided me back to a new routine. Slowly, slowly.

By the time I got home I was exhausted. Called Tom and said so. He graciously agreed to let me rest. He’s coming here for breakfast before his board meeting, then we’ll probably head over to the Happy Camper. Might go to Scooter’s for lunch.

One of the upsides of all the angst this last year has been an immersion in love. Folks from all parts of my life from high school to college, family to friends, Minnesota to Colorado, Evergreen to Conifer, Judaism to Christianity have reached out, offered or given me support. It’s had the result I’ve needed. I’m not alone. I’m both needed and accepted as I am. Good to know at 75.