All posts by Charles

Art and Culture, Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Music, Weather +Climate

Weather and Joy

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Alan. Cheri. The Inspire Concerts. RTD. Federal Center Station. St. Anthony Hospital. New knee, me. New shoulder, Kate. Ruby. 96, high in Denver today. The Ancient Brothers. Kamala. The orange comb over. These disunited States. Rain. Hale. Luke. Leo. Ginny. Janice. Great Sol. Cancer drugs. Jewish music. Today with Ruth.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

One brief shining: Short splats increased to faster, staccato impacts the skylights enlarging the sound, then the Hail, small at first, then larger pounded pounded pounded with the insistence of the natural world not recognizing barriers, pounding against them with the kind of fury increased by falling from a great height as Leo and I looked outside seeing balls of Ice bounce around on the black driveway.

 

A lesson in Mountain Microclimates. While Leo and I enjoyed a hard Rain with Hail, Luke only needed a transparent umbrella at the wedding being held on the west side of Black Mountain in Staunton State Park. Not very far as the Moose walks. Up and down Black Mountain. From their home in the State Park to our yards here on Shadow Mountain, the next Mountain over.

As the bride walked down the aisle, Luke said, the heavens parted and shone a bright light directly on her. Heaven sent. We take in the awe, perhaps dismiss it as random, as unmotivated and therefore meaningless except in a Hollywood sort of way, but yirah is yirah. Wherever and whenever. Yirah is a human emotion, a middot, too, one known in the lev, in the mind-heart. Experienced not in its source but in its recipient.

I enjoyed the thirty minutes or so of heavy Rain, conditioned by decades of Midwestern life to know the nurturance of a good Rain. Good for the crops. Leo wasn’t so sure about the Thunder. He didn’t tuck his tail between his legs, but he did pace. Some Dogs can have an outsized response to Thunder.

Tira, a Wolfhound bitch who lived with us in Andover, once impaled herself on a fence gate and clawed apart and bit, too, a license plate on the Tundra parked just across from the gate. I ran out when I found her and lifted her 160 pound body off the gate in one move. Adrenaline. Fortunately the wound was not deep. Her teeth and front paws though. Bloody.

 

Just a moment: Will elaborate tomorrow, but I spent a joyful day with Ruth today. We walked to Alan and Cheri’s from Union Station. Painful, but doable. So irritating to have this impediment. Walking has been my favorite way to see a city. Now I have to walk some, rest some. Walk some, rest some. Made it to Spire Condominiums across from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Up 38 floors to 3810, Alan and Cheri’s place, for another home based concert. Rabbi Joe Black, senior Rabbi at the huge Temple Emmanuel, sang. As did Eitan Kantor, a local Jewish musician. And a pianist and song writer whose name I don’t have. More on this tomorrow.

Health

On the other hand

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Trees. Those old Ponderosas off Hwy. 73. The things they have seen. Tara. Kristie. Lab Corps. Jessica Roux. The Beaver and Aspen print. Woodland guardians. Herme’s journey. Life. Aging. Mussar. Kabbalah. Neuroscience. Sensory data. Intelligent receipt of that data. The inner world of mind. Charging the heart.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lev

One brief shining: Oh, yes, coffee please, I said, as I sank into the booth, lower than I expected with the table further away than seemed convenient, while I waited on Ginny and Janice, the two look alike sisters brought a thick porcelain cup of coffee, utensils wrapped in a napkin, and laminated menus, restoration and reconstruction as always with close friends. About to happen.

 

Saw Kristie yesterday afternoon. She feels I’m in castration sensitive territory, not castration resistant. “I don’t diagnose that until you’ve been on both Orgovyx and Erleada and your PSA starts to rise.”

Back on Erleada now as of this morning. This is the gold standard androgen deprivation therapy. Yet another blood draw later in August. That might tell the difference between castration sensitive and castration resistant. Castration sensitive means a less dramatic prognosis than Dr. Leonard’s assessment of castration resistant.

Even so. She and Dr. Leonard present my case to the tumor board* on August 9th. This is not the first time my treatment options have gone before a tumor board. My numbers and imaging don’t fit in neat categories. Things could get complicated after this.

Let me explain. Kristie is a urological oncologist. Dr. Leonard is a radiation oncologist. I’ve seen Kristie for three years. Though I’ve seen Dr. Leonard only once, I have seen other radiation oncologists before him. Depending on the outcome of the tumor board, Kristie may refer to me yet a third oncologist, a medical oncologist. Kristie, Dr. Leonard, and the medical oncologist I would see are all on the tumor board.

A medical oncologist has a much larger toolbox/armamentarium than Kristie does. 4 times as large she told me. They are, I imagine, what we usually think of when we say oncologist. I’ve gone a different route due to the prevalence of prostate cancer and its resulting first treatments by urologists. Seeing a medical oncologist opens up other drugs, especially chemotherapy, to my care.

I know. Who knew? Tumor boards? Different kinds of oncologists? Salvage therapy? Which means any treatment after the best and generally successful treatments like a prostatectomy and radiation don’t affect a cure. Castration sensitive and castration resistant forms of cancer? A throwback to the days before androgen deprivation therapy drugs when an orchiectomy was the only way to lower testosterone; castration achieved levels of low testosterone are the metric against which ADT success is measured.

In summary. I may be in a less dire category but we don’t/won’t know right now. Maybe in a month. Maybe later. I’m back on the drugs I was on before my drug holiday, but may need supplemental treatment by a medical oncologist and a radiation oncologist.

The roller coaster of the last three weeks has drained me. I’m tired out. Partly thanks to being on the drugs again. Partly due to uncertainty, partly due to the need to level myself emotionally. Friends and family have helped a lot in that regard. You know who you are. Thanks.

 

*”A tumor board is a group of physicians and scientists who meet to discuss treatment options for individual cancer patients. Typically, those involved come from different backgrounds, specialties, and expertise, and may include surgeons, radiation oncologists, pathologists, and medical oncologists, so that fresh and differing perspectives can be discussed and knowledge can be shared.”  cancercommons

Art and Culture, Asia, Dreams, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams  Fan Kuan. C. 1000 ACE

Friday gratefuls: Lab Corps. New test results. Uh, oh. Kristie, later today. Mussar. The wonder of neuroscience and even more the functioning of our minds. Hello, in there, hello. The haze in our days. Not ours. Alan. Vincent, cooking at the Parkside. A dream. Art. Caravaggio. Giotto. Michelangelo. Botticelli. DaVinci. Rembrandt. Hokusai. Fan Kuan. Warhol.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fan Kuan

One brief shining: Each time I see Fan Kuan’s painting, my relationship to Mother Earth pops back into the foreground; in the bottom right, difficult to see in most reproductions, a group of travelers cross toward the left on their journey as the enormous face of the Mountain with its signature Waterfall and  hairy prominences rises above them; mist floats up where the Waterfall disappears toward the Mountain’s base, and hidden among the Trees, homes and monasteries, humans in a natural world so vast we understand at once who and where we are within it. Taoism.

 

The consolation of Fan Kuan’s painting. We come into this world as a birthed animal, fitted out to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell. To take into ourselves data from the world. And, fitted out to conjure our own data in the confines of our singular minds. Here Fan Kuan has shared with us a novel way he put together his experience of Song Dynasty China, its Mountainscapes, its mystery, its beauty. One of the wonders of art is its ability to allow us a glimpse inside the mind and heart, the lev, of another person.

After my diagnosis with cancer in 2015 I drove along the Deer Creek Canyon road and began to understand what Fan Kuan expresses. We travel along a short short road, we humans and our Mayfly lives. We wander along that road within eyesight of the apparently unchanging Mountains, the mist of a future clouded by our unknowing. Yet on that journey we have the chance, if we take it, to know ourselves not as apart from the Mountains and Streams, but as part of them. For me that makes the journey home, our mutual journey, both exhilarating and inevitable.

I had a dream last night. A busload of people with cancer were on their way to a university. I am on the bus. We discuss our cancers, our journeys. We stop near the campus at a large house and everybody gets out. As we enter the house, the home of some well known professor, and sit down, a man comes in, maybe the professor. He puts his hand on the shoulder of the man next to me. “Dead,” he says. He moves to me, puts his hand on my shoulder, “Dead,” he says. In my heart I already knew it. He just confirmed it. This dream is the same as Fan Kuan’s painting.

Triggered I’m sure by my recent visit to Dr. Leonard, the radiation oncologist, and lab results which show my PSA continuing to rise in spite of the Orgovyx. I see Kristie this afternoon. Together we’ll decide what happens next.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Politics, Travel, US History

International Dialogue

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Stien. Koontz. Ootz. The Netherlands. Arjean. Tara. Susan. Irv. Marilyn. Cade. Vincent. Eleanor. Kilimanjaro. Zugspitz. Jungfrau. Olympus. Conifer. Evergreen. Labcorp. Great Sol. Data. Mussar. Neshama. Nefesh. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Leo. Paulaner N.A. Kate, always Kate. Ruth and the Inspire Concert Sunday. RTD. Uber.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

One brief shining: Could I have a short spade, please; Tara handed me a gardening trowel and I knelt down in her curved bed of Carrots and Beets, plunging the trowel in beside the missing Beet plant and felt the Earth give way, yes, there was a tunnel there, something, maybe a Vole, had burrowed in and eaten it from below.

 

Interesting lunch at Tara’s. Met Arjean’s family: Stein, Ootz, and Koontz. And, his mother whose name I didn’t get. They’re visiting from the Netherlands. BTW: Don’t rely on those spellings. They’re phonetic, which means based on my hearing. Always a risky basis for sounds.

Asked Koontz, Arjean’s brother, about how American politics looked from Europe. Next question, he quipped. He went on to say what I’ve heard in many other places including Korea and Singapore. In essence, it really matters to us, but we can’t do anything about it. As an example, he mentioned NATO. Well, yeah.

Koontz also said there was some talk in Europe about deserving a vote in American elections since they impact Europe in such critical ways. Made me think of the Chinese taxi driver I talked to in Singapore in 2004, the day before election day. He shook his head and said, “When America sneezes, we get pneumonia.”

Stein, Arjean’s nephew, is in his third year of university pursuing a business degree. He’s also starting a clothing business as a middleman between Chinese garment manufacturers and a European customer base. When I asked him about the stresses of doing both at the same time, he looked over at his dad, Koontz. A bit sheepishly. Oops, I said. I withdraw the question.

After the meal Tara and I went downstairs to look at her garden. She’s had vegetable eating animals taking out Beets, Lettuce, Raspberries, and Tomato plants. She wanted to get my opinion about what was going on. That was when I asked for the trowel. I found the tunnel right away. Some critter has dug their way to a meal, perhaps several meals. She also has rabbits, I think. Her fence keeps the Deer out. They’re the animal that can really devastate a Mountain garden. They’ll eat everything down to the ground. Well, Elk, too.

Had no solution for her save putting in raised beds for next year’s garden. Would help her back, too.

 

Just a moment: A lighter heart. Some hope. Kamala wouldn’t have been my first choice, but she’s sooooo much better than Biden. Since I’ve long thought this election would hinge on turn out, I feel good since she will be able to energize the Democratic base.

Diane and I talked politics this morning. She feels lighter, too. That feeling alone may be enough to swing the election our way.

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Belonging, holy

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Wednesday Gratefuls: A bright golden haze on the Meadow. A blue, smoky Sky above. Kamala Harris. 45, a man of chaos and hate. Election 2024. A political clown car. Labs. Middle Earth. Hobbits. Ruby. Cool nights. Good sleeping. A big workout yesterday. 160 minutes done for the week already. Lunch at Tara’s. Stories. Books. TV. Movies. Theater. Ovid. The new translation.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ovid

One brief shining: Still glad, all these years later, I bought a Landice treadmill, lifetime guarantee, brought it here from Minnesota with my dumb bells, balance boards, and yoga mats to create a small home gym outfitted now with stall mats, a wall mirror, a TRX mounted to the ceiling, and the TV which accompanies my workouts with stories as I do cardio, stretch, lift weights.

 

Whimsy. Eudaimonia. Life of July 24, 2024. A response to the Ancient Brother’s question of the week: “All things considered are you happy? Why? Why not? What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy?” From Maine’s own man from away, Paul Strickland.

I’m sometimes happy. Sometimes not. In my world happiness is more a mood, a transient state induced by, say, a chili-cheese hot dog, seeing a toddler, finding myself lost in a book. Maybe the afterglow of a lunch or breakfast, a good workout. I don’t seek happiness, it happens to me in this moment or that. Always glad when it does. A bath of endorphins is good for the soul.

What I do seek is eudaimonia. Flourishing. Seeking satisfaction rather than achievement. As I consider it, not an ideology, but a way of integrating my sense of Self, my I am becoming, with life as it flows in and around me. Except in the academic world, and then without much true ambition, I’ve sought results that stem from my values. Those results, and/or the effort to realize them, matter to me. Success and failure are temporary states, neither definitive, neither more than a collective opinion.

I want to emphasize integration. Though I find Maslow’s later hierarchy profound since it added a stage beyond self-actualization, I’ve been anti-transcendence for a long, long time. It implies leaving my Self, my I am, my neshamah behind for a purer, bigger place or experience. Nope. This body. This history. This mind. Damaged and flawed it has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the dizzying heights of accolades, sublime moments of intimacy, and the joy of being alive.

Integration says nope I’m where I belong, among that and whom to which I belong and among whom I am a vital, unique presence. Valuable for my uniqueness, not for my capacity to leave my uniqueness behind for some spiritual space. My journey beyond self-actualization then lies in friendships, intimacy. In understanding how my Lodgepole companion and I share home ground. How the Mule Deer and the Elk, the Black Bears and the Mountain Lions are my neighbors. As in, Love thy neighbor as thyself. How as a human animal I am not only part of Mother Earth’s family, I have evolved from long ago kin whom I share with the Lodgepole and the Elk. I do belong here. Right here. Not out there or up there or behind that veil. Right. Here.

 

 

Art and Culture, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Poetry, US History

Too much with us

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Lab orders. Cancer. Ruby. Blackbird Cafe in Kittredge. Potato cakes. The fantasy homes along Bear Creek between Evergreen and Kittredge. All Stone exterior. All Log exterior. That one with the Waterfall. Bear Creek full yesterday after heavy Rains on Sunday. Coffee. Milk. Seltzer Water. The Shema. Unitary metaphysics. This spinning Planet.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Homes. Of all sorts.

One brief shining: The kind phlebotomist wanted to help me; but, I’d forgotten my lab orders and she couldn’t find any in her computer system, after I’d driven a half an hour to get to her since my doctor’s office happens to be between lab companies this week; she flipped up the soft arm of the phlebotomy chair and I squeezed out, shaking my head at my own error, not bringing my copy of the orders.

 

Been musing for a while about certain things that cannot be done via computer. Any medical visit that requires puncturing the skin. A physical exam in a doctor’s office. The delivery of physical objects purchased online. A kiss. A handshake. A hug. Driving down the hill and back up again. Flying in an airplane. Travel that involves dining and sleeping. The list could go on.

Too often these days we give the lie to Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us, late and soon…” Instead we settle for the faux experience. Remember Alvin Toffler in his book, The Third Wave? High tech, high touch. Yes. The more we use technology, the more we need in person, face to face, skin to skin. We feel, often without knowing it consciously, with Wordsworth again: “Little we see in Nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away.” With A.I. advancing as it is, we may also find ourselves paraphrasing him: We have given our minds away.

I’m no technoLuddite. Hardly. I have three computers. I’m writing this blog on my computer, expecting you to read it on yours. I spend at least three plus hours every week on Zoom, more some weeks. I no longer read a physical newspaper, relying instead on the digital versions of the NYT and the WP plus other news outlets. My shopping, like most of us who live in the Mountains or in rural America, happens online. My front door, your front door has become a receiving dock.

Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
Kindred Spirits  1849
Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant

Yet. The interplay between the online world and the world of physical objects, especially humans and other Animals, Forests and Oceans, Mountains and Lakes has made revisiting the Romantic artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries a useful corrective.

In the United States Romanticism coincided with pre-Civil War and post-Revolution thought, the period often known as the American Renaissance. The Romantic turn toward the individual, the irrational, the natural produced works like Emerson’s essay, Nature, and Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.

This period of American intellectual and artistic life wanted to discover a non-European, American style in literature, poetry, painting. Melville’s Moby Dick. Painters like Church, Durand, Cropsey, Cole. A fruitful period to rediscover for our current ailment.

Denver, Family, Fourth Phase, Politics, Sport

Buy me some peanuts…

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Monday gratefuls: Friends. Family. Coors Field. RTD. The W Line. Walking. Lidocaine patch and two nsaids. Cool weather. The Rockies. The Giants. Homeruns and broken bats. Hot dogs and pretzels. Shaded seats. The umpire pulling his arm in fast. A strike! Gabe. Who likes baseball. My son, who does, too. A long sleep afterwards. Life of July 21st, 2024. Play.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grandsons

One brief shining: Seats 12 and 13 in section 135, shaded throughout the whole game, hard wooden seats, narrow aisles, cupholders and a baseball diamond lit by Great Sol spread out below with the umpire squatting using his whisk broom on home plate, the catcher in his armor down on one leg waiting, while designated hitter Charlie Blackmon, he of the luxuriant black beard, swings his bat, then, Batter up!

 

The Rockies are in competition for the least capable team in the major leagues. They played the Giants, one rank above them in the National League West. Only the also hapless Marlins are further out of a division race. 28 games to the Rockies 22. Still. It was baseball, major league baseball. And it was sun hat day! I gave mine to Gabe to give to Ruth.

View from section 135

The new rules have sped the game up. I found I liked it better. No more drift into the setting sun as pitchers chawed, spit, pondered, and us fans waited. Might go a bit more often. With a lidocaine patch and a couple of nsaids my back was not impossible though it was a 23 minute walk from the train to Coors Field. Glad to have a seat at the end of the walk.

First time taking the light rail in for a game. Did it because Coors Field is not too far from the end of the W line near Union Station. No driving in downtown. Cheaper than parking and much less hassle. Will do it again next Sunday when Ruth and I go to the Jewish music concert at Cheri and Alan’s. $5.50 round trip. Uber then to their home on the 38th floor of the Spire Condominiums.

Gabe and the straw hats. He’s a kind kid. Enjoyed spending the time with him.

Warming up

Had a hot dog, sang take me out to the ball game, stood for the Anthem and, again, for God Bless America played by a trumpeter from the Air Force Academy band. Reflected on the years when I wouldn’t stand for the Anthem. I do now, but for a very different reason than before Vietnam. It’s important for those who, as I saw on a hat of a Never Trumper, want to make red hats wearable again.

 

Just a moment: And, he’s outta there! Another curve ball for election 2024. Though not an unexpected one. What is unexpected. How all this will effect the campaign. Who will be the candidate? Probably Kamala, but not necessarily. And can any one put the orange jinn back in the lamp? If they can, I personally volunteer to carry the lamp to the Marianna’s Trench and drop it over the side of the boat.

 

 

Colorado, Jefferson County, Memories, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Mountain Time

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Sleep. That nightmare with the undefeatable monster who kills everyone, enjoys it, and disappears at times. The Rockies. Gabe. Walking. RTD. My son and Seoah. Murdoch the languid. Bagel table yesterday. All Dogs. Everywhere. This benighted nation. The finished line. Blue Sky. Gentle Black Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My Son

One brief shining: We got here, let Rigel, Vega, and Kep out of the SUV after Tom’s marathon driving session from Andover to Shadow Mountain, the three Dogs ran around in the yard, peed, drank some Water, then ran right back to the SUV, jumped inside, and settled down for the ride home.

 

Colorado has had many moments. The first one for me was that Samhain when I took possession of the house after closing. Walked out in the backyard. Three Mule Deer Bucks grazed quietly. I got closer to them than I would now, looked in their eyes. They looked back. By the time they turned and bounded away, I had the feeling that the Mountains had welcomed me, saying I belonged here.

Acclimating to the altitude. While unpacking. Left Kate and me huffing and puffing. That one day in May the next year when I learned I had prostate cancer. The consolation of Deer Creek Canyon that followed. Prostatectomy in July of the same year. First time meeting Seoah.

Finding CBE through the class on King David taught by Bonnie. Meeting Marilyn and Tara there.

Doing the Fire mitigation, felling Lodgepoles with blue plastic ribbon tied to their trunk. The Durango/Mesa Verde trip with Paul, Tom, Ode.

My son and Seoah getting married in Gwangu. Kate and mine’s last big trip together. Including Singapore and Mary’s kind gift of a stay in a hotel suite. The magic of Umar. Vega dying when we got home. Jon’s divorce. His decline starting.

Cancer returning. Radiation. Buying Ruby for the A.C. while I drove to Lone Tree. Kate’s slow decline starting.

Seoah coming in January to help out, having to stay until June. The pandemic. Gertie dying.

Kate’s many hospitalizations. Her joyful time at CBE, living her Jewish life. Her death.

Mourning and grief. Jon’s death.

Somewhere in this time the start of the Ancient Brothers.

Three years of visits to my son and Seoah in Hawai’i, then Korea after Kate died.

Rigel’s death and Kepler’s death.

The Elk Bull looked at me from within the Forest. In the rain. And the Mule Deer looking in my bedroom window late at night.

My conversion and time overall at CBE.

Trip to San Francisco.

Now three years plus after Kate’s death, prostate cancer becoming more serious.

Through all of this. The Rockies. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Bergen Mountain. Kate’s Creek and Valley. The Wild Neighbors. Black Bears. Elk. Mule Deer. Mountain Lions. Squirrels, Red and Abert’s. Marmosets. Chipmunks. Voles. Fox. Bobcat. Lynx. Rabbits. Rattle Snakes. Bull Snakes. Black Widow Spiders. Wolf Spiders. Maxwell Creek. Cub Creek. Upper Bear Creek. Bear Creek. Lake Evergreen. Evergreen, a Mountain town.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

We’re All Just Walking Each Other Home.

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Life. Living. Death. Dying. Leo. Luke. Tara, a good friend. Sleep. Exercise. Red Beans and Rice. Chicken wings. Apples and mandarin Oranges. This July 20th wakin’ up mornin’. A new life, a new day. Great Sol. Blue Sky. Uncle Joe Biden at a crossroads. Recovering from Covid, but not from his debate performance. Our United States.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: 2024.

One brief shining: Two Tanakhs open on Rabbi Jamie’s round office table we roamed back and forth through the book of Numbers, from the spies and their devastating report on the promised land to Moses striking the rock at Meribah and Balaam’s donkey explaining there was an angel in the road that would have done Balaam harm.

 

Restored inner calm. Had breakfast with Alan and Joanne, then lunch with Tara. Just being in relationship with them, talking about usual matters like oh my god the election 45 Joe turnout and a positive story from Alan. Alan read that Joe has been waiting until the Republican Convention is over to step down. Maximum impact. Joanne talked about the conflicts and troubles of early CBE history after Rich’s sunny recollections last Wednesday night. Joanne and I traded stories about Japan and Korea. Ate. Saw each other.

Alan has the role of innkeeper in Ovation West’s upcoming Man of La Mancha. He even has a solo. He’s also getting into directing, taking up a work of the Executive Director of the Evergreen Players who is a playwright as well. Joanne’s new book on extreme mental states, written with two Buddhist therapists and edited by Marilyn Saltzman, is done. The Bread Lounge.

Lunch with Tara at Brook’s Tavern. An emotional one. We talked about my cancer news. Tara is so empathetic. And honest. She got me to commit to a visit to Taipei on my next journey to Korea. No excuses. She also invited me over to their house on Wednesday afternoon to meet Arjean’s brothers visiting from the Netherlands. Marilyn and Irv, Susan and her daughter will be there.

Talking to Tom at 8 this morning. Diane at 3 this afternoon. I am not alone, now, or in the future. This journey has companions, as I am a companion on the journey of others. Ram Dass: We’re all just walking each other home.

 

Just a moment: So. How bout the folks wandering around the Republican Convention with bandages over their ear? Eh? Like the orange one, their hero. Their avatar of Yahweh Sabbaoth, Lord of Hosts. Only the orange one’s hosts are the Proud Boys, the 3 percenters, and the KKK. 45 is, for sure, satan, the Hebrew word for adversary. He’s a thug with a gold plated toilet.

 

Downy Woodpeckers have attacked my house. Again. A problem with a cedar sided house. When I have it stained, I also have the painters patch up the holes the little buggers leave in their search for a meal. I’m mentioning this because someone’s going at the house right now in the back. It’s loud.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

The Next Day

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Friday gratefuls: This July 19th, 2024 life. Life. Neshama. Nefesh. Being a Jew. Studying with Rabbi Jamie. Balaam’s ass. The power of speech. Kristie. Dr. Leonard. The Ancientrail ahead. The Mule Deer Doe that comes to my back yard. Furball Cleaning. Stevinson Toyota. Ruby. Her faithfulness. Cancer. Mortality. Orgovyx and Erleada. Living while dying. All of us.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Honesty

One brief shining: Poached eggs with creamy yellow hollandaise sauce sitting in a bed of red Beans, a small dam of cheesy grits keeping the Beans separate from the white grits, a cup of black coffee, a large biscuit, and a glass of clear water, the buzz of other diners and the clink of silverware, as the three year old girl looked back at her parents, heard them call, turned and in a fast walk went away from them, exploring the restaurant as her mother got up smiling.

 

Serious gear turning still clanking and whirring. How do I feel? Anxious. How do I feel? Uncertain. How do I feel? Calm. How do I feel? Grounded. How do I feel? Happy. How do I feel? Gifted. How do I feel? Aware. How do I feel? Here.

Slept fine. Went to bed thinking about a defined outer limit for my life, woke up still thinking about it. The world has a different flavor now. Not bitter though. Sweeter. A wrap my arms around it and smile for the privilege sweetness. Yes, I am jangly and wobbly, sure. But. I am. And I will be.

Are there uncertainties that loom? Oh, my.

For example. Dr. Leonard (radiation oncologist) suggested not doing any radiation. Because he believed medical intervention should have a positive purpose. Oh? It becomes, he said, a lot like whack-a-mole. The very phrase I’d been using for my radiation. What he wants to do is put me back on Erleada, follow me as usual with the PSA and testosterone assays. If my PSA goes up, as it might, we’ll reconsider. Same with the testosterone. Otherwise he wants to repeat the P.E.T. scan in four to six months to see how the cancer progresses. Or, doesn’t.

He wants, I think Kate would say, for the cancer to declare itself. Then we could radiate the spots where it seems strongest. Along with other, lesser spots. This could be an off again, on again process as I move forward.

I have another blood draw next week and I speak with Kristie again. Where this is going should be clearer then. I’m eager to get yet better clarity because there are matters I’d like to decide or at least start the process for deciding. Like travel. Like what to ask of my son and Seoah. Like, oh, I don’t know.

Don’t need to get my affairs in order. They’re pretty much there. Will. Advanced medical directives. Estate plan.

Might consult my financial advisors. See what if anything this news means for money management.

As for the rest? Continue living in my usual way. Write. Read. Visit with friends. Take in the Mountains and greet my wild neighbors.