Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon
Saturday gratefuls: Bonnie. Sefer Yetzirah. Rebecca. The Guardian. The New York Times. The Washington Post. The Denver Post. The Alexandria Times-Tribune of blessed memory. Kate, always Kate. Alan. Judy. Joan Nathan. Rigel, the sweet girl. Kep, the independent thinker. Ruby. (even though she is an internal combustion anachronism.)
Sparks of Joy and Awe: These Rocky Mountains
Tarot: Four of Arrows, Rest. Wildwood
The rhythms of our lives. A fascinating question posed by Ancient Brother Mario Odegard:
“The topic comes from one of the opening lines that Robert Bly said at one of his retreats that has stayed with me for many years. He talked about the absence of an inner rhythm in many men. He referred to this as not paying attention or listening to your inner flow. He asked what kind of “music” are you making with your life:
What is the inner rhythm deep inside you, that guides you, that swings you, that keeps you dancing with life? Do you need to create a new rhythm?”
Thinking about this sent me over an edge into the many rhythms that form the backbeat to our daily lives. Day and night. Heartbeat. Blood pressure’s rise and fall. Breathing in and out. Hunger and satiety. Thirst and refreshment. Weeks. Months. Years. Millennia. Birthdays. The Great Wheel’s seasonal changes. As it leaves, so it comes back.
There’s another rhythm in and down, out and about. That curious dance between introspection and agency.
Sleeping and waking. Punctuations. Semi-colons.
Music, too. Of course. Paradiddles. When I took to the inner rhythm that guides you, swings you, I went somewhere else. To the percussive driving beat of a snare, a fast and steady kick to the big bass drum. Justice. Always. A pushing rhythm, one to thrust me out of my inner fuzziness, my inner doubt and fear. Get out there. Boom. Boom. Boom. Crash. Whish. Go. Go. Go.
So here’s this archetype, the lady and the scales. The sword. Pillars of authority. A veil between her and the world. Let’s say she’s the one playing the drum set in my soul.
At the barest hint of unfairness I hear a faint brush of wire on cymbal. Attenhut! Is there more to this? Example. Got my haircut on Tuesday. Jackie. I’ve mentioned her before. A very sweet lady. Kate’s friend first, now mine, too. Jefferson County instituted a mask mandate last week for inside businesses. Jackie had her mask on. I did, too.
But. “Some of my clients just won’t wear a mask.” Puts her in the position of possibly alienating otherwise regular paying customers. And, does an omicron layoff lie just over the horizon? The combination of alienated customers and the financial cataclysm of a shutdown could ruin her financially.
Not. Fair. Jackie’s in her sixties I imagine. She’s worked hard, on her own, for forty years. Yet she now has to enforce a sensible, but to some, very unwelcome government rule; or, go ahead and cut their hair. Which is what she chooses to do for business and personal reasons. Some of these folks, outside the anti-vax madness are her friends.
Then my mind goes to other hair stylists, nail salons, barbers, mom and pop shops, shoe repair stores, anywhere one or two folks are both work force and proprietor. Lots of people. Especially in lower income communities, yes, but not only there.
I play out in my head the steps it would take to organize enough of these folks to demand some simple JUSTICE. Why? Because this rhythm has ruled my life since I was young. I let most of the situations I discover like this, and they are legion, go. Can’t be all things. Too tired and old. Don’t want to anymore. But there’s always the chance, in the operetta that is my inner life, that one will snag me, draw me in past the oh, I wonder what would happen stage.
It’s time for a new rhythm. One more to the tune of the Hermit. See what I did there? I’m thinking lutes and harps. Renaissance notes. Quiet. Seeking silence and contemplation like the drummer seeks justice. Justice has had at least 65 years to develop a presence, so I don’t imagine she’ll leave. But the Hermit has been around a long time, too. The guy on retreat. The guy who sought Christian mysticism, who studies Kabbalah and tarot. Astrology. The guy wanting to go in and down, not up and out.
Herme may be the balance to Justice, which pushes me up and out. Into the world. Maybe a battle of the bands?
Thursday gratefuls: Laurie Knox. Kate’s piecing. Joan Marshall. Others who quilted Kate’s tops into quilts. I now have four new, whole quilts pieced by Kate and quilted by her friends in the Baily Patchworkers. Two I will keep, a lovely batik quilt in purples and greens and a friendship quilt block one with squares from Kate and others in the Patchworkers. Women. Cold weather. Sleeping in. Snug as a bug in a rug.
Those folks at Phonak. New hearing aid a cut well above the last one I had. And, they let me buy a new Roger for only $200. Picked it up yesterday. Will use it today at mussar. And, working on a memory technique for not leaving it behind. Ever again.
The other part, smaller these days, knows about interdependence. Acid Rain. Drought. Wildfire. Human encroachment on the wild. (yes, guilty) Toxins and pollutants in our air. That brown scuzz filtering the sunrise over Denver. The draining of Aquifers. The dwindling snow packs. That part knows there is no corner of the earth unaffected. It also knows the silly politics of humans matter, matter in a life or death way to our species and thousands of others.
Oh. Remembered. When the electrician taking power to the mini-splits was here Friday before last, he encountered an additional task at the end of the day. His boss offered to come help.
White privilege. Yes. It’s real and it’s pernicious. In oh so many ways. But. Caste privilege is real, too. Those born into educated families who educate themselves may still find the American Dream. [which is a pretty damned shallow thing if you have it, but a shiny object on a hill if you don’t] At least the English own it. India, too.
Dexterity and mechanical intelligence. Also distributed. Those with these gifts suffer from our cultural obsession with intelligence of the sort used for a college education. They’re blue collar workers. Not quite good enough to make it into the office, to the C suites. Obvious they should make less, right?
And how do we pay them? As if their work were a casual necessity. As the economy improves the front line workers go to the back of the line for wages and benefits. Again. Still. Right where they’ve been all along.
Friday gratefuls: Cytopoint. VRCC. Chewy. Earth Venture. Veggie Dent. The Star show. Every night! The Winds of late Autumn in the Rockies. I am; therefore, I think. Thanks for that one, Tara. Tired Jamie. Jon. Winter tires back on Monday. Oil changed. Thanksgiving. Last holiday in the old kitchen. The mini-splits. Working. Lodgepoles bending. 25 mph Wind. Not breaking.
Climate change. Glasgow. Climate pessimism. Nihilism. 47% of Republicans don’t believe we should regulate greenhouse gases. Why? Oh, just the planet going through a regular cycle. Or, made up by the elites. Or, don’t give a damn. And they may win the 2022 elections. An election that could doom the planet and human life as we know it. Talk about high stakes.
Holiseason. A primer. I discovered holimonth 15 years ago. That was December with its abundance of holidays. Then I extended the idea to holiseason. (discovered later that this was a word anyhow. But, hey.) Holiseason by my reckoning runs from Samain on October 31st to the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. [A Kate aside here. She left Sunday School for good when one of her teachers, 4th or 5th grade, kept pronouncing the holiday epi-fanny.]
Reflecting on my radical career. One thing in particular. A long time ago, either 1975 or 1980, I attended a conference. Liberation Theology in the Americas. There were two and I can’t recall which one I attended. Cornel West. Harvey Cox. Lettie Russel. My roommate was a priest from Guatemala. Lots of impassioned speeches. Marxist analysis. Great meal conversations. Bus tours by a Detroit Socialist party that had made some political progress.
At the end of the conference he performed a ritual typical of the Confederacy, planting a pine tree as a sign of peace. In the original rituals tomahawks and bows and arrows and knives would have been placed into the hole, covered in soil, the tree planted on top of them.
Kate and I attended a Physicians for Social Responsibility conference in Iowa City. On climate change. This was in the mid-1990’s. A national conference they had now well-known figures in the climate change movement presenting. Each day we would go back to our hotel and express wonder that this science was not public. And, it wasn’t then. At least not enough for anyone to notice.
Friday gratefuls: Tina at Morry’s Neon. Master Benders. Fun. Making the house mine. Finding Morry’s Neon, an urban pathfinding adventure. Jon. Cardio. Gut bombs. Jodi coming today. New washer coming on Monday. None too soon. Cities. I love them. But no longer want to live in them. The Pandamndemic. Orgovyx. Prostate Cancer.
Then, when Tina flipped a switch, look what showed up. Could have been Times Square or the Vegas Strip. I love neon and neon signs.
Tuesday gratefuls: Amy, at Mile High Hearing. The Roger. Loss. Kate, always Kate. And, her quilting. Jon. Ruth. Gabe. Mark. Rigel, her insistent, loud barking at 3 am. Kep, who slept through it. Julie and AARP Advantage plan #1 with premiums. Electronic signing. Marina Harris’s Furball Cleaning.
Felt a little like I was on my way to the Principal’s office while driving into Mile High Hearing. It’s not often I face a relative stranger and have to acknowledge a failure. I could not keep Roger safe.
Got the art for my Hermit neon sign. I like it. Not cheap, but it will be a signature piece for the Shadow Mountain Hermitage. Gonna put it on the inside wall that can be seen through one of our front windows.
Climate change. The Whigged out GOP. The Gump Trump. The Pandamndemic. Democrats shooting themselves in the foot. I know. All still underway. As for me, I will remodel my kitchen, hang some neon art in my living room, utilize my mini-splits, pet my dogs.
