Samain and the Radiation Moon

Friday grateful: Joanne looking well. Snow! Alan, my chauffeur. Rock. The Rocky Mountains. Joanne’s turn around. That driveway. Rainbow Hill Road. El Rancho. Stroke. Rehab. Ablation. Dr. Vu, whom I trust. Lonetree. Thanksgiving. Holiseason. Morgan of Evergreen Orthotics. Evergreen dressed for the Holidays. Christmas lights, well before Thanksgiving. The Chart House. Ruth and her A-Basin ski pass. Jon, of recent memory. Kate, always Kate.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Recovery

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Hakarat Hakov   Gratitude.    “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their portion.” Perkei Avot 4:1

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Joanne’s driveway, the stuff of CBE legend with its narrow road, curves, and its lack of a space to turnaround even at the top often necessitating a difficult backing up maneuver, has a modification, a car depth cutout, about 40 feet wide, exposing a rock face that the excavator said  could have been dealt with only by bomb. Much better.

But. It did expose an interesting geological phenomenon. At least to me. One large upthrust of granite leans in a southerly direction while next to it a companion upthrust of layered rock leans in a northerly direction. What, I wonder, could produce uplift of two massive chunks of rock, so close together, in two opposite directions? A curiosity. At least to me.

Joanne I’m happy to report has little apparent physical harm from her stroke. And, she is still her well-spoken, quick, and funny self. However. She has, she says, lost forty years of Hebrew. The psalms and the Torah, both of which she has translated, no longer unlock themselves. Her French and Latin have gone, too. She may, she says the doctor’s tell her, get them back. Even reading English requires some effort for her. Joanne, among the most literate persons I’ve ever met, had to spell out the words on the book I took her. The Hour of the Predator. As she said, sad.

We live in the age of gratitude for parts that still work, not surprise at parts that don’t. An age that requires, no demands adaptation to circumstances unthinkable, unimaginable to even our seventy-year old selves. Without that willingness to adapt, to accept things as they are and to become yourself in a new configuration, old age can kill the heart.

Just a moment: Can you say decompensation? You, said he who should be named horrible himself, told a woman reporter, are a horrible person, a horrible reporter. Her error? Asking MBS, the once and future king of the burning sands, about his involvement in the murder and dissection of the Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi. Trump the Horrible went on in the same interchange to say of Khashoggi, things happen.

In another moment of misogyny on Air Force One he turned to another female reporter and said, Quiet. Quiet, piggy.

These do not even come close to his reaction yesterday to a video made by six congressmen, former members of the military and intelligence communities. (see MSNOW clip below)

He called the video and its makers seditious, then later, seditious behavior punishable by death! He also reposted a suggestion to hang them.

Lèse-majesté. Off with their heads! These are the reactions of an unhinged, delusional mind, the mind of a man who sees himself in the famous quote attributed to Louis XIV, king of France, “L’etat c’est moi.” He’s a President, elected and impeachable, one of three parts of a system of government defined by a constitution that explicitly has no room for the divine right of kings.

This is behavior so distant from reasonable that you might expect to hear it shouted from a locked room in Bellevue.

How can we hold him to account?