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Category Archives: General
Turtling
Since July 1st, the day I went to the emergency room, I’ve been turned inward: a turtle with head, legs, and tail tucked inside. At first this was self-protection from the shocks caused by disease and then by the efforts to keep me alive.
Later it was a response to severe disorientation brought on by being suddenly thrust into vulnerability, having my body managed by others. Blood draws. Pills. IV insertions. How quickly I became dependent. Lost agency.
Don’t get me wrong. These were necessary, even life-saving interventions. I’m deeply grateful to be here, able to write. Even so the sudden turn into patient, into bystander rocked my world. How quickly I adapted, gave in. That frightened me. Is this all it takes to lose my identity?
Twenty-three days later, I’m on my way back. Yet I now need a walker, sometimes a wheelchair. The last three showers I’ve had a staff member doing much of the work. I’m contemplating a move to assisted living.
My sense of self has undergone a major transition. Independence is no longer a primary driver. Rather a focus now: my identity as a reader, a writer, a man of the arts. Less struggle with reality, more attention to core parts of who I am. Continuing and strengthening each precious relationship. Living for wonder, for awe. For a tactile spirituality.
I go home, not this weekend, but next Tuesday. Melissa will be there in the afternoon, ready to cook. Shadow will be there. Mary and Joseph, too. I’ll take a while to see how this feels from Shadow Mountain. I’ll decide my future later.
Two Days for One
Bone scan day. First, radioactive tracer. Wait one hour. Place me on a metal slab. Whir a tracer sensitive plate around my body. Check for doneness.
Marilyn Saltzman today. 9 am pickup. Down to Swedish. Kate stayed in it many times including her last. Not my favorite place.
Tomorrow, Petscan.
Nights here continue cool. Several Mule Deer yearlings visit. It’s summertime in the mountains.
I notice a distinct decline in mental clarity as evening approaches. Pretty certain it’s the abiraterone. A nasty drug. Except, of course, for its cancer suppression.
Our guy, Dopy, and his little friend, Sleazy, have tried many times to tell us what Iran has agreed to. Only the Iranians contradict them. Team America.
Wednesday. 6/24/2026
Bone scan yesterday. 3 hour wait after injection of tracer. Marilyn took us all the way back to Conifer while we waited. Above and beyond.
Bone scan tech one of the kindest folks I’ve encountered on this road. Makes a big difference.
Weary. Again. All these appointments. Asking for rides. Always high stakes. Takes the stuffing right out of me. Today. Petscan. Littleton. Again. Third this year.
Ruth’s coming up today with David. She’s two weeks out from her ulna shortening surgery. First a splint, now four weeks in a cast. Will be good to see her.
Weather beautiful. Colorado blue skies. Temps in low 70’s. Rocky Mountain high.
Short
Yes. Still here. Apologies for any concerns my distracted posting may have caused.
Fatigue caused by so many factors. Stressful when faced with appointments.
Feel better, very far from well.
Short
Still here. Up late. Forgot. Back to it.
Carriage
Spring and the Trial Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Ghosts. Shadow. Liminal times and places. Dawn. Dusk. Holywells. Doorways. The Shadow Line. Near death.
Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Torah
Kavannah: Netzach. Perseverance. Trial begins on Wednesday. I need netzach as I enter this latest round of treatment.
Tarot: paused
One brief shining: My body heals. Slowly. Stomach flighty, keeping me awake last night. Even so. Gradual changes. Gut inching toward normal. Less resistance to food. Coffee feels too far. Sensitivity. Two days ago. Felt good. Less so now. Forward. Backward.
Illness. Health. Mind scanning the body, the original imaging technique. Elbows ache. That sore on my left big toe. G.I. tract signaling caution. Bland foods. Reminds me with twitches in my stomach. A few back pains.
Maybe I should say, the mind/body scanning itself. Reporting to my conscious self and, always, to the subtle engineer crafting changes to endocrine levels, heartbeats. Kate used to say that the wonder was not that the body, on occasion, got sick. The real wonder? That it worked so well almost all the time.
When did you last consider your breath? In. Slight pause. Out. slight pause. No conscious mind at work. The body. Heartbeats.
How about my eye? Taking in light and, like Plato’s cave, projecting an image of this computer screen onto my occipital lobe. I act like the screen is real though I’m responding to light processed through my retina and onto the brain which interprets the message. Mediated at least twice removed from what Kant called the ding an sich, the thing-in-itself.
Or, my cancer. Known only to me through indistinct images of radioactive uptake. Affecting my life, yet unseen.
Our whole lives we move and breathe and have our becoming in this vessel of flesh. My body. My self. Evolution.
I am unique. This splotchy skin, road mapped with blue vessels against pale white. That scar on my left hand from a careless day breaking bottles at Pipe Creek.
No less me.
Turned away at the border station on the Ambassador Bridge. Guilty of long hair in 1967.
When I was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, my body/mind breathed air for the first time. Uniqueness elaborated. Marked by life. Again and again.
When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground. Yes. Just so. A life gone, a life of experiences, knowledge, wisdom housed in the library that is our body.
When Kate died, I mourned her as my lover, my best friend. I also realized how stunningly inefficient death is.
Her medical knowledge and experience. Gone. Her many skills: cook, quilter. Just. Gone.
This self, this body/mind of mine, my carriage will fail. Whether soon or late. Until then, I notice my stomach. And await its return.
Notice.
The carriage has changed.
Again.
Learning With Heart
Spring and the Moon of Liberation (4% waning crescent)
Wednesday gratefuls: Rich. Housekeeper. Fruit. Bagel w/ avocado. Tara. Marilyn. Jamie. Joanne. Laurie. Susan. Ron.
Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rich
Kavannah: Simcha. Joy. I have such joy with my friends at CBE.
Tarot: paused
One brief shining: Rich came in the morning. Fruit, bagels, breakfast burritos. And washed my dishes. On his birthday. #64. He made me a bagel with avocado and a side of blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and melon. A very sweet guy.
Tara came in the afternoon. Helped get my lower level ready for our MVP meeting. (see picture above) She fussed and stacked, moved this and that. We chatted. The Democratic Socialists called with an opportunity to leave a message for Senator Hickenlooper about two votes today in the Senate. I did.
Marilyn came a little early, bringing me a generous portion of spaghetti Bolognese for meals this week. As folks began to trickle in, Rabbi Jamie sent me a text: Oh, no. I just realized we’re meeting at your house! I’ll be there in thirty minutes. He’s just back from his sabbatical.
Joanne came with Susan Marcus. She has to go backwards down stairs due to arthritic knees. Many helped her down. She’s a living treasure at CBE and treated like one.
Laurie came. She had a story about cycling with her two kids. In the mountains. She’s quite the athlete, nearing 63, and still riding the mountain roads. Her son rode ahead of her on a steep hill. She got up behind me, trying to decide whether to pass him or not. Once before she had and he was embarrassed.
Then, I thought. Screw it. One pedal after another and I zipped past him. She thought about it this way: He might be embarrassed right now, but later he’ll remember the moment his 63 year old mom passed him. Otherwise we’ll be riding together, go home, and there will be no memory of it.
How do we learn best? When emotion and learning engage at the same time. That’s the big take away from talmud torah.
We had a great discussion. A first things part of our conversation. Can deep study/learning be seen as a middah? A character trait which mussar teaches us to either magnify or decrease. Doesn’t seem like it. It’s not the same as say patience or joy or honor. Clear character traits.
Yet. In order to engage mussar, we first have to study. A sine qua non. I suggested studiousness as the character trait. With an important addenda. Talmud torah is studiousness with heart, a studiousness that begins with the understanding we may be transformed by what we learn.
This is not the analytical study of sacred texts. No. It is the deep engagement of self with material that matters. It is learning with heart. Just as Laurie’s 28 year-old son created a memory of Mom passing on by, so do those of us who study with heart create not only lasting memories, but changed selves.
Quiet.
My heart opens.
I see.
Spring and the Moon of Liberation
Monday gratefuls: Accepting our own power. Prostate cancer, my teacher. Purple Iris for Kate. Stargaze Lilies and Gladiolus.
Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.
Sparks of Joy and Awe:
Tarot: paused
One brief shining:
Knocked Off Course
Shabbat gratefuls: Joe, the voice of the godfather. Gabe, trying to figure out college. Mary and her 17 shelf library project in the Graduate House of the University of Melbourne. Mark at mid-terms in Al Hafar. Tom and Roxann, taking care of Jesse.
Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family
Tarot: paused
One brief shining: Oh, man. No posts. Two days in a row. Never. Until now. My week + bout of constipation, finding my phone, getting through the final phases of trial preparation have wrung me out and hung me up to dry. I’ve also had an unusual stretch of poor sleep.
I would write a paragraph, then fall asleep. I wrote on on both days, but never finished more than you can see above. Frustrating. Maybe a little better sleep last night. We’ll find out if I can finish this
This has been tough. The constipation made everything harder physically. The lost phone bathed in Gen Z shame? Grandpop. How could you lose your phone. I walked along the hallway of a Dr’s office. A woman and a man coming my way asked if I could see them. No. That much pressure on my back made me even more tired. Stand up, drop your chin to your chest. Feel the muscles in your lower back. Yeah.
In regard to this problem. I’m trying to distinguish between prostate cancer in my bones and aches and pain related to my five bulging discs. Still unsure. I also get pain in my right lower back from a torn labrum. Steroid injection for that next Tuesday.
Life seems to keep lobbing grenades over my threshold. So far I pick them up, throw them back. I’ve Miralaxed my way past the constipation. Used Google to find my phone. However, I wake up around midnight, then sleep fitfully the rest of the night. No red alert. No sirens. Pain. Impaired communication. Sleep a fond memory.
I know from experience with Kate that these asides can be as damaging as a major disease. Why? Because they can reduce resilience.
Too, exhaustion like I’m still experiencing can leave the body more open to invaders. Colds. Flu. Covid. Work out? No thanks.
The frustrating thing is this. When I’ve gotten some spunk back, I go upstairs to cook. My head drops. My back ouches. I get right back in touch with my fragility. That’s dispiriting,
However. The well of my resilience has depth. Maybe not in the acute phase of a new challenge. Right after that though I begin to sort through a fresh problem list. See what I already know. Investigate my resources. Who might be available to take me to RMCC on Wednesday. Or, to Panorama on Tuesday? What do I need to know about constipation?
A direct outgrowth of this turn? I’m evaluating how a house keeper might help me conserve my energy, focus on things that matter.
Aching. Tired.
Seeking.
Ah. Water from the well.
Spring and the Moon of Liberation
Artemis: Miles from earth 205,372. Miles from moon 75,496. As of 4:45 am, April 5th, 2026.
Shabbat gratefuls: Luke and the phone. Tramadol. Miralax. Shadow outside. Shadow inside. Artemis II. Ruth and David.
Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Moon
Kavannah: Hakarat Hatov. Gratitude. “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their own portion.” Pirkei Avot (4:1)
Tarot: paused
All I got today