All posts by Charles

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Original Relation, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Minding the Gap

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Two ayes for two eyes. Clearer, some fuzziness. Supposed to go away. Easy to read computer screen. No pain. Tony’s. The clerks at Tony’s. Kate’s wrist improving. This mythic sky. Fall. Courage. Sadness. Springtime for inner work. The days and nights of the year’s last half. The harvest. The rut.

Come into me, spirit of Fall. As I drove down Shadow Mountain yesterday, the golden glory of autumn Aspens against the evergreen Lodgepoles, all on soaring Mountain sides, this prayer came, unbidden. Soon my hand moved in a waving motion, like the sageing rituals of the Lakota, wafting the vision of Fall I could see into my heart, into my soul.

Judaism emphasizes kavanah in prayer. Intention. I wondered, what is the intention of this prayer? Why has it come to me?

Minding the gap. That’s the intention, I understood this suddenly, too. The gap between my self-understanding as a distinct and separate living being and the World outside my car window. It is a false understanding, made to appear real by the mind we carry and the body that is its vehicle. I am part of the Fall, part of its courage and sadness. Part of its springtime for Soul work.

The Great Wheel turns. We live through its Seasons. Its Seasons live through us. Invite the Season into your body, into your Soul. Live within it, not as an observer only.

Then. The Mountains. What do they mean? Strong. Hard. Tall. Shansin make me strong, hard, and tall like Black Mountain, like Shadow Mountain, like Conifer Mountain. Raise the mountain in me, let it support and define me.

Then. The Aspens. Make me aware of the living links I have with friends and family. Like the Aspen Grove. Interleaved. Sharing nutrients and knowledge and warnings. Then, no, not like the Aspen Grove, as the Aspen Grove. Help me feel the rootlets of these Aspen, these Lodgepole supporting me, feeding me, making me aware of what’s coming.

Why these prayers, these meditations, came to me, I can’t say. They were powerful and sank into me, radiated back out of me. I was one with the Fall. One with the Mountains. One with the Aspen Groves.

The Great Wheel has within it the learnings we need. And, apparently, will grace us with them when we need them. Blessed be.

Music, Myth and Story, Politics, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

The Plastic Hour

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Fall: RBG Moon, Mars, Orion, and Venus in the morning sky

Friday gratefuls: Savannah, nurse at Cherry Hills. Dr. Gustave. Sandy, the nurse anesthetist. Right eye cut and healing. Zeiss. Alan. The intraocular lens. Those who invented, designed, and made it. Annie and Sarah. Kate, her wrist calming down. Carne asada from Tony’s.

Right eye patched. I see Dr. Gustave today at 10:30. A familiar routine. Even with the right eye still dilated, I can see the words I type with clarity. Not before, not without glasses. And, even then, fuzzy,

I feel younger. Silly? Yeah, but I feel it anyhow. I’m ready for a bonus round with life.

Wondered what it meant to have Johnny Nash, the singer of “I Can See Clearly Now”, die in between the surgery on my left eye and the right one.

Checking on the idiot. Give me a sec. OMG. He’s worse. Prosecute Biden and Obama. A rally in Florida on Sunday. Won’t debate virtually. Going out in public when he should still be in quarantine. No boundaries. No sense. Aarrggh.

George Packer writes for the Atlantic. In the Plastic Hour, he wrote himself into hope after dispirited articles: “We are living in a failed state”, “Failure is a Contagion”. and, “The President is winning his war on American institutions.” He’s brilliant and has a feel for this time we’re in. Recommended. And, if you read it, what do you think?

Aging, Commentary on the news, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Shadow Mountain

Clarity

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Fall and the RBG Moon with Mars, Orion, and Venus

Thursday gratefuls: Steady hands, Dr. Gustave. Cataract surgery, the new lens. Kate. Cool weather coming. Alan. Susan and Marilyn who will keep Kate company during my surgery. Aspen gold among the Lodgepole green.

Right eye. Slice, dice, remove old lens, insert new. Clarity in both eyes. Cherry Hills Surgery Center is a standalone building just off Hwy. 285. Cataracts, corneas, other procedures peculiar to the eye. Alan will stay in his Tesla. He bought a new infotainment upgrade so he will be back home in his living room if he wants.

This surgery will improve my eyesight in several ways. No need for glasses to drive. Sunglasses, I’ll still wear. No glasses for TV. Colors brighter. Cheaters for reading. As it looks right now, I will only need cheaters. I got three of them for $10. Much cheaper than my old ones. By a factor of almost 100. I suspect I will be able to see better in low light, too.

Eventually cataracts cause blindness so improving my vision while preventing blindness offers something medicine rarely does. A body better than the one before.

Kate had a tough day yesterday. Her rheumatoid arthritis kicked up, making her right wrist painful, red, swollen. Her upper arm became swollen, red, and hot. That subsided over night. I do not like leaving her when she’s having trouble. Surgery has its own demands. I’m glad Susan and Marilyn offered to be with her, at least by phone. Marilyn is close, in mountain terms, so if Kate needs medical care, she could take her.

Did not watch the Presidential Vice’s debate. I could have streamed it through the New York Times or the Washington Post. But, no.

Rigel refuses her meds and bites down when I try to open her jaw. Will need new strategies if we go the whole 12 weeks.

The RBG Moon stands above Orion’s right shoulder while Mars, as close it ever comes to earth, twinkles over Black Mountain. Venus shines in the east. When warriors fight, they fight for love. Of country. Of family. Of an idea. This sky, this warrior sky, filled with love. A strong night sky.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

RBG and Mars

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Fall The Full RBG Moon and Mars

Saturday gratefuls: Kate’s better breathing, stamina. Easy Entrees Oktoberfest meal today: Pork Schnitzel, Bavarian Pretzels, and German Cucumber Salad. Prosit! Sukkot. The Sukkah is up at CBE. Harvests all round the world. Confirmation on masks, social distancing, staying away from crowded enclosed spaces. My new lens. My new cheaters. Fall. It’s courage and sadness.

The alignment this morning of the full RBG Moon and Mars happened just over Black Mountain, a bit to the northwest. Beautiful in the early morning sky. Mythic, too. The warrior God of ancient Rome and the warrior Woman. Anima and Animus. The full power of masculine and feminine writ large. A good time to remember that this miserable administration has only a few weeks to its reckoning.

No. I don’t relish Trump’s struggle with Covid. Not when I view him as just a man. I neither wish nor celebrate suffering on anyone. Sure, I might joke about it, but in the end, no.

As a scumbag President, cheerleader for the Proud Boys and the Klan, as a misogynist, a racist, a mocker of the disabled, and as an ignorant man in a job that requires learning though, I’m glad he’s sidelined. May he be out of the picture long enough to ensure his defeat.

Saw Dr. Gustave yesterday. Still at 20/25 for distance. He seemed disappointed. I’m not. Things are so much clearer. Colors are brighter. The World has a certain freshness to it. It seems younger. Cataract surgery gives me a boost mentally.

Had to sign permission for my right eye to get cut. Acknowledge that I still had blurry, hazy vision in it. Forms and checklists, scheduling. The usual morass of American medicine.

I won’t rant. I won’t. Yet, for all the questionnaires, all the releases signed, the same ones over and over, the system, well, no, not a system, the chaotic, entangled delivery of medical care here in these United States, medical care itself is often thwarted rather than delivered.

If you’ve followed this blog at all, you may recall my struggles with the axumin scan and subsequent imaging. Kate still has no wheelchair. She went in Wednesday and got prepped for an unnecessary procedure, called off before it was about to start. Why? What caused her shortness of breath that has now abated? Will we get a referral to Dr. Taryle to answer those questions? Unclear.

The referral system demanded by insurance carriers is at the heart of all this trouble. It’s the way we curb medical costs. They say. It’s the way they guard their profit margin, I say. Wish we could just get Marine One to pick us up at our front door and deliver us to the doctor or the hospital. That we could get the same kind of care as the President. That all of us could get that kind of care.

Delay, denial, and skepticism are the main tools of this failed institution. Sure, there are doctors who know what to do, hospitals that deliver excellent care, but how can we access them? The burden of making the system move too often falls to the sick one. This is cruel and inhumane.

Hoping for a massive and radical change in how Americans receive medical care. Vote. That’s a start.

Aging, Colorado, Coronavirus, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

WTF

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Family, near and far. Friends. Ancient and new. ADT. Androgen Deprivation Therapy. It’s not just Lupron anymore. For Charlie H. 27 degrees this morning. The Denver Post. Decompensation in full public view. The orange excrescence. Dez and the wheelchair. Kate. And her anger.

What a long strange trip it’s being. Geez. Took Kate to Swedish for her thoracentesis. We found the ambulatory care unit hidden down a corridor tacked on to the main building, but leading further, past the ACU. Hospitals are often like English buildings with various floors built at different times, different buildings, too, then all stitched together with elevators and hallways.

I wheeled Kate into Room 9, really a small stall covered with a curtain, where Alice, the nurse, cared for Kate. Alice. Hmm. They hooked Kate up to the hospital oxygen, took her blood pressure, and her O2 saturation. We’d already decided that I would go eat breakfast, so I left for the cafeteria.

Where there had been a number of tasty options, there were now breakfast burritos wrapped in tinfoil, fruit in cups, some with yogurt, scrambled eggs in small plastic containers. I went with the breakfast burrito and blueberries buried in yogurt.

Not bad. I stayed in the cafeteria awhile because it was big, airy, very few tables spaced far apart. Not many people. Safer. Weird to think about personal safety in the hospital, but. Covid.

I find a place in one of those hallways connecting two buildings, no one there, but with a convenient, lonely chair. Kate called after about twenty minutes.

Come get me. I’m done. Oh. It was before 10:30, the time of her procedure. Huh. I got up and walked down the ACU corridor again, past medical oncology, and cardiac testing reception. Wondered briefly what it was like to spend your working life in such a dismal looking space.

When I got there, Kate surprised me. The ultrasound tech came and said there is no pleural effusion. What? She had an IV in, four pokes, she has terrible veins, and she looked angry. As well she might. We’d come in Friday evening, about an hour and a half round trip, for a drive up Covid test. Then we’d come Tuesday for the ct scan. Another hour and a half plus the contrast, and a long ride across other corridors and into other buildings to find an available cat scan machine.

Now we’d come in a third time in six days. Parked. Gotten tested at the lobby with the temperature gun, received green and white pre-screened for Covid wrist bands, checked in, schlepped to the ACU. Kate had been hospital gowned. a sheet gotten for her to cover up, and a nurse had taken four tries with a very sharp needle to insert an IV. Then, nada.

Alice. Indeed. We’d gone down the hospital looking glass.

We have an appointment with Taryle for next week. WTF, doc?

Also, still no wheel chair. We’re renting one. Though. Dez, Lisa Gidday’s nurse, says she’s on it. I believe her.

Aging, Dreams, Family, Feelings, Garden, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Springtime of the Soul

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Thoracentesis. Valet who got our car from a distant garage. The imaging employee who found an unused machine for Kate’s catscan. Phase two of the three stage plan done. Remembering to take out the blue foam. Clear vision. Michaelmas yesterday. Cool morning.

Michaelmas. The Saint’s Day of the Archangel Michael, he of Lucifer ejecting mythic fame. God’s great warrior. Also the name of the first term in British colleges and universities.

But best of all, the springtime of the soul. Rudolf Steiner. The growing season has finished. The external world had its glorious moment at the Fall Equinox, the celebration of the harvest. The body will be fed.

We turn our attention inward after Michaelmas. The nights grow longer, the angle of the sun shortens, and the days grow cold. Courage and sadness. A touch of melancholy encouraged.

When we drove down the hill yesterday, golden leaved Aspens had burst out among the Lodgepole Pine green. Framed by a typical clear blue Colorado sky the beauty made me gasp.

The beauty, the chill in the air. We know its brevity, like the beauty of the young. Those Aspen speak from the sides of Black Mountain, Conifer Mountain, Shadow Mountain. We are done now. Good bye. See you on the flip side. Their golden glamor a farewell to summer.

We know it. Many falls. The outrageous, over the top color of a Midwestern fall. The remnant of the Big Forest, the one that stretched from the east Coast to the Plains. Before the modern era a squirrel could travel tree to tree from the Atlantic to the Great Plains without ever touching the ground. So much melancholy in those colors, the abstract landscapes of a vivisectioned ecosystem.

Piles of Leaves in the yard, on the Forest floor. Running, jumping, landing in the piles. Dogs racing into them, through them. Do you remember, as I do, burning Leaves in the street? An acrid smell combining with earthy wetness. A strong seasonal memory.

One day soon Winds driven by the Cold slumping down from the Arctic will strip them all, Maple, Oak, Ironwood, Elm, Ash, Locust, Hickory, Sycamore, dislodge their Leaves and the tree naked against the coming winter. The Aspen gold rush will disappear and only the ghostly gray-white of their Trunks and Branches will remain.

A woman I learned ritual craft from thought this denuding of the deciduous Trees might explain Samain and the Celtic belief that the veil thinned between this world and the next during the transition.

Kate’s sister Sarah married Jeremiah Miller. A painter. Before I met her, Kate bought two of his very large paintings. One hangs in our bedroom. In it the Sky is a gunmetal blue and its complement of cumulus Clouds show as reflections in a Pond. Both Sky and Pond show through a Forest of bare Trunks and Branches, a before Winter comes scene we see all year.

This turn of the Great Wheel follows the gradual waning of the Light until the longest Night, the Winter Solstice. What better time for introspection, for the Soul to rise?

May this season of the Soul’s Springtime give you what you need for the next months and years of your journey, your ancientrail.

General

Rats!

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Cat scan today. A quiet day yesterday. Safeway grocery pickup. Salmon and Asparagus. A butter and brown sugar plus soy sauce topping. Yahrzeit candles for mom. Covid. Trump. Alt-Right. Climate change. Black Lives Matter. A shaken nation, forced to reconsider its purpose and future.

In the year of the rat Magawa lifts up rats and smashes our prejudices. A feel good story for a difficult time.

Had a quiet day yesterday. The only trip was to Safeway to get a pickup order. Read some more in Rage, almost done. Painted again for the first time in three or four months. Not my best nor my worst. Needed to pick up the brush again.

A while back I ordered an internet course on growing Sacred Mushrooms. The course emphasizes Mushroom culture. It seemed odd to the folks at Visa security. They put a hold on my credit card and gave me a call. Yes, I ordered that. Oh, ok, sir. Thank you.

Got started on it yesterday. Growing Mushrooms is something we can do without a greenhouse. We both like them, so I’ll give it a go. I’ve always been fascinated with decomposition, how necessary it is and how elegant the living things that make it happen. Took a UofM course on Lichens years ago.

Kate’s had a bad couple of weeks. Mostly in bed, though she does get up each day. The shortness of breath has made moving a challenge. We look forward to the cat scan today and the thoracentesis tomorrow, hoping together they will provide relief and better knowledge.

Got some feedback about Sunday that helped a lot. Thanks, Ancient Ones. My men.

Hard to know what’s affecting me these days. Stress from Kate’s struggles. Eye drops and adjustments in vision from the cataract surgery. Lingering Lupron. Two years of thc at night. Need for a vacation with no possibility of one. I do feel slower, tired. My mindset is strong though.

I’m healthy in my own way. Good heart rate, blood pressure. COPD controlled. Exercise, now aerobics only for a month, continuing. A PSA next month. Not depressed. A bit dysthymic at times. Referented, I believe.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…

Aging, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, GeekWorld, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Minnesota, Mussar, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Paying the Price

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Monday gratefuls: Groveland. The Ancient Ones. The ancientrails of wondering and friendship. The Darkness. The Stars, now steady. Kate’s stoma site. Getting clear and healthy. Kate. Just Kate, always Kate. Exposure. Fear. 28 degrees this a.m. The Gold in them thar Hills: Aspen. Magwa, the hero Rat. The clan.

So what happens to me. I over prepare. I go deep but the subject has only so much time. I’m disappointed. Did I give them anything? Did I intervene too little? Was I defensive? Will they want me back? Especially yesterday with It’s Beyond Me.

Zoom of course. Perhaps my choice of style, a discussion rather than a straight presentation. The inherent ambiguity of the topic. Felt off when it finished.

Also, I need this. I need to try something new. Learn something new. Be in this zoom moment as an actor, not only a passive observer.

Watched Social Dilemma on Netflix. The second of three documentary recommendations from the ancient ones. Again, not much new. Still, disturbing. I’m writing this in Firefox, using duckduckgo as my search engine. I practice good hygiene on Facebook and still love the old friends and Irish Wolfhounds. I heard the young, bright manipulators, but did not hear the path forward. Unless it’s regulation. Which is a duh unless you hate regulation as evil government intervention. I’m for it.

As I changed Kate’s bandage yesterday, we talked. I’m wondering how we can lift ourselves out of, or away from, this medicalization? I mean, I don’t want to see you as a patient all the time, but with all these appointments and treatments, it’s hard. Our life is not that. Yet, it is.

Right then, Rabbi Jamie called, wondering how Kate was? She mentioned this thought I’d just had. He listened. He had some time before Yom Kippur and wanted to connect with some folks. They miss us. We’ve been absent even from zoom mussar for over a month.

Covid. Makes all this hard. Kate can’t go to Patchworkers or Needleworkers. We don’t go to mussar at CBE. Or, services. Or the occasional program. It will soon be Sukkot and the booth is up, but we’re not there to participate. Yes, this is life now. Yes, it has its price.

God, this is cheery.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Health, Humanities, Minnesota, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Torah, Writing

Unanswerable Questions.

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Orion, clear and distinct, like Descartes wanted his ideas. The night sky, visible again! Meatloaf from Easy Entrees. Learning to sleep all night on my side. The lens in my left eye. Kate, waiting for relief. Ruth will watch Kiss the Ground. Groveland wanting to hear me again after all these years. It’s Beyond Me.

Three days post-op now. Biggest surprise so far was Orion, there. No longer several bursting flares, but his own, distinct self. Rigel there, too, his left foot, bright and clear. Ah. It’s good to see an old friend looking well.

I no longer need glasses for television. But, I did order three pair of 2.5 cheaters off Amazon. I can still read now with my right eye, but that goes away on the 8th of October. With the artificial lens I can’t focus anymore.

This surgery is such a good metaphor I wonder why it’s not deployed more often. Our vision gradually becomes clouded, the world becomes less and less easy to see. What do we need to remove our political cataracts and gain a humane vision? Those cataracts that have developed over years of lesser evils and disappointing politicians. Do we all come with the cataracts of racism and classism or do we develop them over time? Who will be our surgeons?

Shifting. It’s Beyond Me. I’ve had fun gathering answers to Groveland UU’s question: What are the origins of religious beliefs?

Finding an anthropologist, Harvey Whitehouse, has worked on the subject pleased me. He’s a cognitive anthropologist, a specialty that had little footing when I studied anthropology back in the late 1960’s. They study the way our mind shapes our understanding, rather than the understandings themselves. Whitehouse’s work is bloodless, but it has high points.

This presentation has to be a discussion. It asks an unanswerable question, my favorite kind. Each of us has an intuition about the answer. It will be interesting to learn what others have concluded. I have several notions to throw into the pot, but the answer is lost in the long ago, far away.

Doing presentations is a delight. I get to do research. I get to think about a topic. My ideas and conclusions get an airing. Feedback comes. On occasion cash, too.

It’s also unsettling. The research has to stop. The thinking must end. No matter how tentative, the ideas must be articulated. Exposed. Naked. And, in person.

My work doesn’t include the realm of the certain. I cannot say what the origin of religion is. No one can. Then I here Wittgenstein, of that about which we cannot speak, we must be silent. I only speak about such matters. A challenge, for sure.

So right now I’m anxious, teeth a bit clenched. Zoom adds another layer of uncertainty. Also a layer of experiment, of trying something new.

Anoka County, Garden, Great Wheel, Hydroponics, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Plants, Science, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Gardner Me

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Kiss the Ground. Netflix. Not a huge fan of documentaries. Not sure why. I love fiction, not non-fiction books though I read them from time to time.

But this one. Recommended by long time friend Tom Crane. Didn’t say much new, maybe nothing for me, but it pulled my heart. Reminded me of who I’ve been. Who I’ve left behind.

Gardner me. That guy that used to spend hours planting flowers, amending soil, weeding the onions and the beans. Cutting raspberry canes back for the winter. Thinning the woods. Thinning the carrots and the beets. Lugging bags of compost. Bales of marsh hay. Planning flower beds so there would be something blooming during the entire growing season. Hunting for heirloom seeds.

I had plans. I read books about adapting gardening techniques in xericulture. Thought about this idea and that. Read a lot before our move. But, then. Prostate cancer and a cascade of other distractions. Divorce. Arthritis. Kate’s troubles.

The whole horticulture act slipped into yesterday. And I miss it. Even the cussing at the critters. A notable reminder. Heirloom Tomatoes. Oh, my god. I buy them when they’re good. Five bucks a pound. I eat them like the fruit they are as a fruit. The taste. So good. No comparison to those raised for mechanical harvesting. Not even the same thing, imho.

Our carrots and beets and leeks and garlic and beans. Our honeycrisp apples. Granny. Plums. Cherries. The onions drying on the old screen door in the shed Jon built. A basement pantry filled with canned vegetables, canned fruit. Jars of honey from Artemis Honey.

A greenhouse. That’s the only way I could return to gardening. I’m no longer strong enough for the kind of gardening we did in Andover, Minnesota. I’d need plants on a bench about hip height. But I’m seriously considering it. The dogs. Yes. Kate. Yes. But, plants, too. Our own food on our table. Nurturing plants. I’m sad I left it behind.

We’ll see.