The Mountain Summer Moon

Thursday gratefuls: This July 28th, 2024 life. Castration resistant prostate cancer. Me. Dr. Leonard, a poetry major at Vanderbilt. Kristie. Lucille’s Littleton. That independent, bright three year old. Those up after the Baby Boomers. Great Sol. That tiny living layer of each Tree, the Cambium. Sell by dates. Joanne. Wallace Stevens. Ovid. New translation.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: This moment

One brief shining: A radiation oncologist, Dr. Leonard loves T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Auden and once spent a year reading only those three, he said to me as we were parting; he had just told me I had castration resistant cancer and have five to seven more years ahead of me, “Not a death sentence.”

Hit me hard though. Not an immediate death sentence, no. Yet. Having a stop sign ahead felt, in that moment, like it was one. Not three hours ago, this news. Still echoing in my inner world. These sort of thoughts. Oh, my money’s going to last. Easy. That cute little girl. Always death, birth, growth. Always.

When I left Rocky Mountain Cancer Care, I’d found the route to Lucille’s Cajun Cafe for breakfast. Then I thought, no I want to go home. Go to Aspen Perks. Shook my head. Drove to Lucille’s instead. Right call. An interesting place for breakfast, good food, and that little girl. Set my phone down. Looked out the window, past the group of young Latino men in a serious business conference, to a sunny blue Sky Colorado morning.

This is the life of July 18th. Up and out to the doctor. Over for a cheesy grits, red beans, and poached eggs breakfast. To go order of red beans and rice. The drive back home. A slight daze haze. Serious gear turning. Bouncing foreground: the Hogback, Hwy 470. Background: Dying before 2030. Does it matter? Not really. Though of course it does.

Mortality. A finished line ahead in the mist. Now the mist has lifted and the track seems shorter than I’d imagined.

Other thoughts in no priority or order: Want my son and Seoah here. Don’t want to leave my house. Want to go on a long cruise. See somewhere new. Does this mean I don’t need to diet? Exercise? No, it does not. How much fun is this. Relief. Ready. How will it play out?

Just a moment: Economic populism. The American Compass

JD Vance loves these folks. I looked up their website and found this paragraph*. I agree with most of it. Without getting into the weeds let me say I would underline the idea that markets are a means to the end of human flourishing. That the economy should empower workers, their families, and communities. And that public policy plays a vital role in advancing those goals.

We would not, I’m confident, agree on our definition of family, of empowered workers, what strengthening the social fabric means in practice. I’m not an economic nationalist either.

I’m an economic agnostic. Whatever economy encourages justice, fairness, healthy families and communities I’m for. That makes me feel hopeful when I read this because there are grounds here for common direction and policy.

*”Conservatives rightly value free markets, but we also recognize that markets require rules and institutions to work well, that they are a means to the end of human flourishing and exist to serve us (not the other way around), and that larger televisions and fancier cars are not what people value most. Rather than evaluate the economy by how much stuff it allows everyone to consume, conservative economics asks whether the economy empowers workers to support their families and communities, whether it strengthens the social fabric, and whether it fosters domestic industry and innovation. Public policy plays a vital role in advancing those goals.”