Category Archives: Friends

Aging, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Humanities, Literature, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Travel

A Change in the Mind

May 10, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane and the Beltane Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dead Mouse. Felix in the Odd Couple. A lawyer in View From the Bridge. Dinner at Robbie’s early. Back much better. Melancholy. Back. The Sun. My Rocky patch of Mother Earth. Kate fertilized Iris pushing up into the Light. Kep. A real sweetheart. Happy to see me last night when I came home from acting class.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A script

Tarot: Knight of Stones, Horse

” Healthy activity and independence adorn your path. Boldness, pride, and love for the land lead you… Let the Horse take you away.

Mentally, you may suddenly find yourself overwhelmed for no specific reason. You can try to control each issue at a time. You are going through a mental change when this happens. Remember that you change for the better.” tarot.com

Suddenly overwhelmed. As the Knight of Stones says. A response to exhaustion from Saturday, then last night. An hour late getting to bed because of acting class. Still a bit achy from the fall. Body not quite right. Exercised hard yesterday as well.

Melancholy. Things bite that wouldn’t have a week ago. Shorter fuse. Not my favorite state of being, but one that recognizes a truth. I’m going through a change, maybe the one I’ve been seeking, that new life I’ve perseverated about.

Lots of clues. The Inner Work of Aging reading. This reply from my oncologists about my future.* That fall. The house nearing completion, Vince on tap for some more work inside and out. The acting class. Wondering if I’d be able to learn lines. My waning interest in kabbalah and astrology. Reluctance about travel.

Mortality behind me. Mortality ahead of me.

Got cast as Felix in the Odd Couple for a scene with Alan. And as a lawyer in a scene from Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge. This is scene study, the purpose of the class. It helps us develop an approach, a process for taking on a role. It was fun, but when I had to improv the Odd Couple scene, I felt out to sea. Like my memory had deserted me. Not true, yet it added a layer to the melancholy coming on the night air.

After the class I stepped off a high curb, unlit, stumbled, hit a sewer cover, and tripped. Righted myself. With a quick FUCK! Another vulnerability message. Pay more attention at night, Charlie.

An inner journey underway, headed to the shadow side on Shadow Mountain.

*You have had a great response to Orgovyx/Erleada combo thus far and could continue this way for years to come. Individual response varies incredulously. Regardless, there are a multitude of additional modalities beyond this to treat you. I believe you could live 10+ years but in what state of health is hard for me to say because I am also not as privy to the rest of your medical history as your primary care.” Kristie

“I agree with Kristie. You are responding quite well and we still have plenty of ammunition unused for the future if needed. And we continue to make great progress with time. So for now you are good. What happens years from now we don’t know…so it is possible this does effect your longevity, but I am not willing to say that for sure at this time.” Dr. Eigner

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Memories, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, US History, World History

RazzPutin

May 6, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane and the Beltane Moon

Friday gratefuls: Blue Sky over Black Mountain. A fading contrail. Sun hitting the solar panels. Wind. Muscles still healing. Luke. A sweet guy. So talented. Rabbi Jamie smiling, easy. Mussar. Kate’s yahrzeit tonight at CBE. Her plaque on the yahrzeit wall lit up. Kya. The road trip to meet her tomorrow. Ode on the Road.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A possible buddy for Kep

Tarot: Six of Vessels, reunion

At first I thought. My class reunion in September. Read a note about it before I shuffled the cards. That’s pretty on the nose. But something deeper. The mound, a dolmen? Pouring out of it. Water. Into a pond on which six small vessels float, a light in each one. Ferns and arrow root frame the vessels. Two otters look intrigued. They might slide into the water and play. The sun is behind the trees, faint as if it were dawn or dusk. Long shadows jut out from the leafless, gnarled trees.

The deep and holy well of memory gushes into the pond of our everday, our present. Perhaps unexpected. Yet with strong emotion. Emotion that can illumine our life. If we let it. Maybe I’m the Otter, the one with his head up, looking at the Waterfall. Maybe I’m the Arrowroot, ready to offer stored up energy for the table of this life.

This continues the story from yesterday, of old bonds broken, other old bonds recalled and renewed. Gushing out of the dolmen, informing me. Philosophy. Acting. Writing about travel, politics. Writing itself. Friendships nurtured. Maybe movies. Art.

This is the Watercourse way. Following the River of self where it flows, not forcing it. Embracing the eddies and pools, the rapids, the sudden falls. Ah.

The war in Ukraine. America loves an underdog. The plucky Ukrainians against the old Russian empire led by Czar RazzPutin. The bare-chested bear baiter ruler against the comedian. Seems like an obvious win for the Empire, neh?

Funny how things are working out. As the military loves to say, the Ukrainians have taken the fight to the Russians. The supposed easy victims now become the aggressor. Must be confusing for the folks back at Russia military HQ. Heads will roll.

While I sit atop Shadow Mountain, fingers crossed that some event or another doesn’t pull us all in. Biden’s got this one right. Unite the allies. Send weapons. Money. Intelligence. Stay out of it otherwise. A larger war would serve no ones interest. A Ukrainian victory just might make the world safe for democracy. For awhile. As we’ve often claimed as our motive.

Of course. That assumes the electorate in the U.S. still wants a democracy. I’m pretty sure the majority do, but there’s that troublesome fringe of fascists, organized and strong. Trumpites. Trumpettes. Trumpists. Fascistii with too long red ties, those red hats, and hearts filled with sadness over the loss of white privilege.

Live free or die. Don’t tread on me. Those confederate battle flags. Flown in defense of a form of government that will, by definition, restrict freedom. Oh, well. May you live in weird times. We are.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

This is not that kind of fight

May 4, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane and the Beltane Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: CBD. THC. Heart. Inflammation. Life itself. In all its glory and misery. Whacked back. Still ouchy. Rain. Two falling Charlie’s. Our fragile government. Acting class. Falling out of like with Astrology. And Sefer Yetzirah. Weary of stuff that doesn’t feed more than my intellect. Melancholy. No. Melancholy lite.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain in the Mountain West.

Feeling low. Melancholy lite. Don’t like it. Mostly related to the pain lingering from my Monday fall. Not intense, but reminding me every time I get up from sitting. Dingbat. Don’t wear tennis shoes in the snow. Will pass.

More into searching for and finding joy. Letting go of some now longstanding quests that have become merely intellectual exercises for me: Sefer Yetzirah and Astrology. I’ll finish these classes then I’m focusing on Tarot, on Acting class, on writing. Other reading, thinking that has impact on my heart as well as my head. Some more jazz.

In a fog. No, not my mind. My house. At 8,800 feet it happens sometimes. The cloud layer the dewpoint and the temperature converge on top of Shadow Mountain. This time it’s also raining and snerting. An odd mix. Not a mood lifter, but in my instance, a mood intensifier. Still. Moisture good. Drought bad.

How bout that Supreme Court? Ideological decisions, rank ideological decisions like overturning established law because they can. That will weaken the Supremes, make their legitimacy as a high court doubtful at best. And legitimacy is what makes any court what it is. The final arbiter of cultural clashes. A minority will feel heard, that’s true. Not the purpose of the Supreme Court.

And. That’s not good for our democracy. We need our institutions to manifest the authority granted them by our constitution. Not tilt themselves against it.

This may, just may because Democrats are fickle creatures, upend the midterms. An organizing tool that binds women, race, and economic condition, even religious conviction together against the Republican, Trump-led, anti-democracy party. The party of autocrats. That’s what I’d use as my slogan if I were the Democratic strategists.

The old free-market, pro-business blueblood, National Review at the extreme GOP is gone now. It’s become the party of grievance, of sweeping away America as I understand it with racist tropes, vote nullifying, voter nullifying, white supremacist, evangelical “piety”, and an astonishing new way saying know nothing.

This is no longer a culture war in the metaphorical sense, but in the naked grab for power, use whatever tools work, back alley street fight way. Democrats come ill-equipped for it. We still believe, even if weakly, in the public square, of debate among reasonable people. Taking the normal tensions of public life and using elections, governing bodies to sort them out.

This. Is. Not. That. Kind. Of. Fight.

(quick weather sidebar. Not only foggy. No. It’s a foggy snow. Strange weather. But. Still. Moisture.)

A liberal democracy has an exposed belly to this kind of attack. Turning its own strengths into weaknesses. Look at Putin, Orban, Egypt, Turkey. Almost France. Democracy’s with no democracy, rather autocracy with a democratic facade. Even Hong Kong. A future Taiwan. If we join them. Melancholy will become a world state of mind.

The Roe v. Wade leak could, at least for a moment, make us find a path that unites the very disparate parts of the Democratic coalition. This would strike at the heart of poor communities, especially poor communities of color. And, women, all women. Liberal religionists, too. Yes, there are such folks though their numbers and power have faded away, become almost ghostlike.

If this uniting does happen, we need to seize the moment. Find the political super glue to hold that coalition up as the shining beacon it still can be. Damn it, we are racists who want to end racism, not further it. Sexists who want women to enjoy full equality and esteem. Greedy fucks who want money to be distributed among the have nots so children do not die. So their parents might have a chance. Internationalists, yes, but internationalists who are pro-trade and pro-immigration.

We’re not that much different from the populist, fascist right in our deeply entrenched sin, but we know what sin is and want to repent. Tangibly, concretely. In public. Not sin more.

That’s our weird strength. And we must own it.

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain

Noh Mask At All

May 3, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

How I knew it was Ravens taking the Mice

Beltane and the Beltane Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Acting. Old chops coming back. Found the third mouse from yesterday. Ravens. Achy. Feeling old, a little miserable. Back sore from banging against the deck. Note to self: don’t do that again. Bear. The generator repair tech. Really, his name was Bear. Pete. Centering the chandelier. Ana and Letty, a clean house. Acting class.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Acting

Found the third dead mouse from yesterday. Downstairs on my level. Did Ana and Letty accidentally move him? Or, did Kep find him and mouth him only to drop him far from the scene of his execution? I’ll never know. But, it does mean no mouse resurrections. No smart mouse.

Did not slip this morning when I tossed the dead bodies over the fence for the Raven clan. Man am I sore. Neck, back. Even intercostals on my left side. Quite a back whack. The good news? I slipped so quickly I didn’t have time to brace myself so avoided a broken wrist or other arm bones. Could use some how to fall training.

Not only did this make me sore. It also made me scared and sad. Remembering Kate’s bleed. The start of the long downhill slide. Not ready for my equivalent. Yesterday could have been it. I don’t want to think like that, but I also have to face the fact. Could happen in a flash. Want to shake this but the pain keeps reminding me. Coming on the heels of that damned cold. Grrr.

To add to it. See this: THC increases heart attack risk. Well, damn. Gotta back off the edibles until I know more. Sounds like CBD oil might help. Last night first without an edible in a couple of years. Maybe a bit more. Went ok. Pain might have influenced it a bit.

Well. As usual, writing it. Setting it out on the page in black and white. Better. Dispels demons. Easier. When life throws you lemons, throw’em back.

Reeling in my travel ambitions a bit. Gonna start slow. Road trip to Del Norte with Kep. See how that goes. About 3 hours down, 3 hours back. Then, a short road trip. Maybe three days. Hawai’i in late June for Seoah’s birthday. Have to choose between Iran or Taipei. Old bones. Thinking about checking on the Road Scholars. Used to be Elder Hostel. Might be time for some group touring. Or, maybe I’m being more conservative following my slip. We’ll see.

Acting class. Huh. Enjoyed. In an exercise, How do I feel, I said I feel like a school boy on the first day of class. I feel exhilarated. I feel exhilarated. Even though ouchy and unable to bend as easily as usual (the back owie) I find myself intrigued and engaged. Next week we get a scene from a play. Start digging into it with the five questions:

1. Who am I? details of the character’s life: name, age, gender, economic status, social status, parents, siblings, birth order. Things like that.

2. Where, when am I? Where: Like Jane Crofut’s address in Our Town.

“Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America. GEORGE: What’s funny about that? REBECCA: But listen, it’s not finished: the United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God.”

When: Day, month, year. Also. when in life is the character?

3. What do I want?

Objective-Super Objective-Spine

Objective-what do I want in this scene

Super objective – what do I want in the whole play

Spine – what do all the characters in the play want?

4. How do I get what I want? Actions I take.

5. What do I do when I do or don’t get what I want?

Questions 3 and 4 have the most weight, but all are important according to Tal Arnold, Rabbi Jamie’s oldest son. He’s an actor himself and a director. He directed the play I mentioned a while back: Dementiaville. Alan was in it.

I’ve done some acting, but never learned acting in this way. The bones of it. The how. This has touched my heart, given me a new way of moving forward. Even if I go no further than this class.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Memories, Minnesota, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Beltane: You are alive!

May 1, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane and the Beltane Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Beltane. The growing season. Fire festival. Life renewed. Again. Still. My voice. Jon. Better. More insight, moving forward. Three dead mice. 2nd night, none in the kitchen. Edward Abbey. Mario. Taos. Road trip. Iran. Possible tour in the fall. Taipei, winter. Energy back. Got a lot done yesterday. Closing in on a finished downstairs. Feels so good. Jon’s idea about centering the chandelier. Smart guy.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jon, taking hold

Beltane. Yes. The season I need. A Fire festival. Those crazy Scots and Swedes. All naked today, bonfires. Probably a lot of making love in the tall grass. Sympathetic magic. Maybe a few year and a day handfast marriages. The maiden goddess lying with the Greenman, with Cernunnos. Persephone with Pan. Ceres waving her hand, seeds unfurling, heading toward the sun.

A celebration of the Garden, the Prairie, the Pasture, the Woodland. Life giving. Soaking in the Sun. The Rain and the Snow melt. Mountain Streams full. Trout loving the cold Water. It’s Beltane. Ring out the fallow season for real. Ring in the season of plenty.

In the old days, the farthest away of the Celtic times, only Beltane and Samain. The growing season and Summer’s End. One or the other. Fertility or waiting, decomposition, getting ready. Resting. For this. The time of green. Of yellow and brown.

Oh, I’m so ready. I’ve had a long, long fallow time. Maybe since 2018 or so. Life with Kate had hit its late fall, early winter. The Covid. Her decline and death. Grief. Kate, always Kate. Now less Kate and more me. Alive still.

Beltaned. My Seed beginning to unfurl, blast its way through the Soil. Drinking in the Rain. Basking in the Sun, gaining power. My own Photosynthesis. Hands out, palms up, neck back, face lifted to the warmth of a new life season. Probably my last one. The fourth phase. Joyful. Rich. Headed toward joy.

Leave no bit of juice in the tank. Spill it all on the road, running the engine as long and as far as possible. Like Ode on his long road trip. Like Neal Cassidy and Ken Kesey. Like Walt Whitman and his powerful Yap.

That’s the message of the Great Wheel. Until you fall into the soil, become one with the next generation of life, you are alive. An agent. A whole universe swirling with galaxies of love, nebula of knowledge, Big Bangs of creativity.

Contra Dylan Thomas I do want to go gently into that good night. Not as one passive and resigned, but as one filled with experience. One who took the moments and lived in them, loved in them. Shouted. Danced. Acted. One who knows the night is nothing to rage against, rather something to embrace. These element’s fallow time after their long journey as me.

So. Take off those clothes. Throw away the inhibitions and the ambitions. Open. Spread out. Jump and twirl. It’s the Beltane festival. For you and for me.

Colorado, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot, The West, US History, Weather +Climate, World History, Writing

Erev Beltane

April 30, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Spring and the Beltane Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Pete and the chandelier. Better than I thought. More exercise. Call from Ode. Breakfast with Alan on Monday. No Mouse in the kitchen Rat zapper! Cool night. Wild dream. New Acorns. Still reading Amanda Palmer. Qin Empire: Alliance. TV. Outer Range. TV. High Country News. P-22, the Mountain Lion of Griffith Park in LA.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The predator eating the Mice

I throw the dead Mice over the fence. In a very short time they’re gone. Gonna watch this AM. See who this critter is. Glad to feed somebody. Makes this less onerous. A circle of life thing.

Presentation tomorrow for Groveland. Zoom. Quite the thing. Something I couldn’t have done otherwise. Devolution. Trying to follow David Sanders advice. Write as I talk. Still working on reimagining faith after all these years. Getting very close to what I saw originally. The key move may be asking why privilege faith in the unseen when the seen has as much power in our daily lives? Our whole lives. I will post Devolution after I’ve presented it. Happy for critiques, thoughts.

Ode called from the road yesterday. On his way to Taos. Blown away by the West. His sketchbooks, my blog. A daily discipline. Influenced by life in the moment. A confidant. To whom we tell our story. While other people listen in. Or see. Native to each of us. Over many years. A friend. He saw this similarity.

A legacy of a sort. Maybe a legacy in reality. I’ve ensured Ancientrails’ longevity past my death in my trust. Not really a bid for immortality or legacy, but a way for grandkids and kids to remember Dad or grandpop. What was he like? Oh, yeah. Kate’s quilts, mug rugs, shirts, dresses, wall hangings. A bit of us hanging over in the visible world: stitches, color and ink, words.

Healthspan. Asked Kristie about it. She said I could live 10 plus years with the treatments available for prostate cancer. Kristen, my PCP, said 90 was reachable with my current health conditions. Both positive and sobering. I mean, geez, even fifteen years. That would get me back to only 60. Not that long ago.

Still. Able to live, love, write, travel. Tomorrow is not promised. Only this moment is sure. Gonna keep at it until I can’t. Unafraid. Except about getting Covid. Damn that disease got under my skin. Stephanie, the PA I see at Conifer Medical said, “Covid’s weird.” She had a tone of respect in her voice. Wu wei.

The world. Odd things. Why my gratefuls include items like prostate cancer, death, grieving, illness, war, climate change. We see only dimly, though that darkly glass. Putin invades Ukraine. Awful. Ukraine stands up to Putin. Amazing. The fractured EU and Nato begins to heal, the West remembers itself. Wonderful. Ukraine pushes Russia out of Kyiv and begins to carry the fight to them. Wow. Biden’s handling of our response elevates him in world leadership.

As does his handling of Covid. Which we may now find ourselves sort of out of. As a pandemic anyhow. Not gone. Probably never gone. Like the flu. Will we need Covid shots, boosters now? Like flu shots. Annually? Maybe. Fine.

Covid has changed the nature of work. Created an economic recovery which has raised wages for the working class. Has cost us so many lives. So much time together. Made us realize how precious community is, even for solitaries like me.

We often see well only in what Kate used to call the retrospectoscope. Why we need history. So much. I love history. And art. And religion. And writing. And people. And Shadow Mountain. And Arapaho National Forest. And Maxwell Creek. And whatever eats my dead Mice. Even the Mice. And life itself. Death, too.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Four Dead Mice

April 28, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Trash pickup. Four dead mice. See how they lay. The new chandelier. Astrology. Sefer Yetzirah III. Luke. Leo. Kep. Findlay. Supermax. Snow mostly melted. 55 yesterday. Sunny. Cold waning, not gone. VRCC. Kep’s allergy shots. Recovery. Exhaustion. Illness.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Road Trips

Four dead mice. All in the trash. Zappers zap. Four d-batteries. Interestingly it says you can still use the batteries when the indicator shows they don’t have the oomph necessary to kill a mouse. Will kill 60 rats with fresh batteries, so I imagine many more mice. Still makes my heart sore, but a little less so this morning. Desensitization. Don’t like that. Taking a life should never be casual.

Still. All that evidence of mousey invasions. Chewing dog treats. Eating in to my new loaf of sourdough bread. Which I, for some reason, did not put the bread box. Gnawing the flap on the dog treat box. And all those turds. They must walk and poop at the same time.

Cold. Hanging on. Fatigue. Stuffy nose. Feeling blah. Head stuffed with cotton. Hard to think around it. Yecch.

Chandelier came. Custom made. Expensive. Not sure I like it. No. That’s not right. I love it. Not sure I like it for the place I wanted it for. Sigh. Gonna get it hung anyway. See how it looks. Might play with its location if I don’t like it over the common room table.

I need a week or two of feeling healthy, energized. Then I can dive into the last of the inside work. Discovering how much my workouts do for me. A lot. Especially the cardio.

Sewing Room area has more work. The chandelier needs to get hung. Kitchen. Still infrequently used items to put in high spots. Shelving to finish installing. Like that. The bookcase downstairs. The rotating shelf. A few items that need to find new homes. Either here or elsewhere. At least one more visit to Goodwill.

But already functional. Usable. Comfortable, as somebody said. A good word, happy to hear it.

The quotidian. Necessary for the soul to feel calm. What I want and need. Like most of us, I imagine.

Feel like I had made good progress, then got derailed by this cold. Have to start over again. That I can make progress is, I suppose, the point. Read the Mayo Clinic website and they counsel waiting until your body is ready to get back to exercise. Then, gradually. Feels like the story of my exercise over the last year or so. Get started, get feeling good. Injure something. Start over. Repeat.

Finished Matt Rose’s book on philosophers of the far right. It’s last chapter is interesting. In it Rose offers an apologia for Christianity against the critiques leveled by these extremist thinkers. Not sure why the chapter is there. Maybe the book was too short. Anyhow I noticed that some of their critiques and mine share a common theme. But not one that I would ascribe only to Christianity, but all major religions except one, Taoism.

Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Shadow Mountain, Travel, Weather +Climate

Cold leaving. Slowly. My thoughts on teen mental illness

April 25, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

Monday gratefuls: Snow. Three inches or so. Cooler after heat. Cold on the wane. Stuffy still. A do nothing Sunday. Talk with the Ancient Bros about sex. Nap. Watch TV. Eat See’s candy. Shadow Mountain cold cure. Love the Snow’s fire suppression. I also liked the heat last week. Not the 75 down the hill, but the mid to high 60’s up here. Acting class starting next week. Evergreen Players. Barry on HBO.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Recovering from a cold

From the new dining room, The Sewing Room. Today

Oh. I’ve become so cautious. Covid. Suppressed immune system. Introversion. Downright timid. Not in love with this side of myself right now. I think. Travel! Then, I think t.r.a.v.e.l. with a pause and a wonder at each period. Money. Time away from my own bed. Meds. Kep with somebody else. What if I get sick? Oh. I don’t like this.

Might be feeling it more while still in the grips of this damned cold. Not back yet. A longer recovery period than I recall. Certainly longer than I want.

It’s been so long since I’ve been sick. I remember the last time. February 2019. Here’s my summary of it from back then: “…had an influenza strength virus for ten days, then I really got sick.” This cold. Mild. That one. Whatever it was. I got down 138 pounds. Kate was in the hospital part of the time. A miserable, miserable month. Immune system, even if not being all it can be, still has oomph.

Loved seeing Ode’s bright blue SUV heading off toward Santa Fe on 285. I could feel his excitement at being on the road again. My friend. Stirred those same yearnings for me. Right now. Not sure I want to go out to lunch with Luke today.

A rebound, yes? There’s a rebound after recovering from a cold if I recall? Hope so. I could use a rebound.

Aside from illness and timidity. Snow. Rat Zappers arrived. Haven’t assembled them yet. They had that odd phrase on their boxes: humanely kill. That’s an oxymoron, right? Sure, it means without cruelty. That’s good. No vice grips on the testicles. Or gouged out eyes. However. Still dead.

Gonna use them. That part about stripped electrical wiring. Diane’s a sensible woman. Besides burning down my house could burn down the neighborhood. The town. So there’s that. Seoah and Diane were shoulder-to-shoulder on the mice.

Been reading about the epidemic of teenage mental illness. There’s an NYT series. Here’s a link to part of it. Have been reading it with interest. Ruth’s recent voluntary stint in the psych hospital underlining it for me. Close to home.

Of course there are various causes proposed, but no one seems to know for sure. Social media. Less sleep. Less exercise. Less time with friends. The article features teens from Minnesota, one of whom did commit suicide.

I have a thought here. I haven’t checked it out with Ruth, but I intend to.

We had a birthday party for Gabe last Thursday. He got presents. We sang him a silly Happy Birthday. He was happy. We had a birthday party for Ruth three weeks ago. She and Cord were a teenage couple. Learning the ropes of boygirl land. It was a sweet evening, we all had a good time.

This all seems normal. But these kids are not hitting their teen years in normal time. Covid might be the least abnormal part of it. It disrupted their schooling, keeping them at home and on screen for months at a time. It interfered with their social life. A lot. And don’t forget they waited longer than anyone for the vaccinations. This would raise, as Kate might say, their anxiety titer. Quite a bit. So it might be the least of the abnormalities, but it’s far from trivial.

Trump and the rise of populist politics around the world creates a serious frisson for teens entering the years of identity formation, sexual exploration. Especially with gender fluidity yet another turn of the screw during an already perplexing time. Might the far right win more elections and trample all over teens? It’s happening already. Don’t say gay. Many legislatures passing anti-trans legislation.

School shootings. School shooting drills. Everywhere, not just Colorado. Gun violence common. Even at malls where teens used to congregate. How would you like to have to go to a place every day where you fear being shot?

Looming over all these though is the Big One. Climate change. For those of us in our seventies climate change will not push the needle over into the red zone. Yes. The Miami condos. Yes, more wildfires. Highest temps. Day and night. The beginning of climate refugees. We’ll not live to see the red zone.

But these teenagers will. Think they don’t know that? Think they don’t know that all the time we’re giving the usual counsel about college, and majors, and careers, and driving, and dating? We’re giving them the counsel of our past. Which will not be their future. They’re going to live into a world of difference, unpleasant difference. Not all the unpleasantness identified either.

I remember R.D. Laing who said adjusting to an insane world is the true insanity. I hope their dis-ease says they are not ready to go down without a fight.

Commentary on Religion, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Mountains, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

A Simpler Heart

April 17, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Pesach. Chag Sameach. Easter. Ramadan. All together now. A time of high Winds. High Fire danger. Liberation. Resurrection. Revelation. Spring. Nowruz. Ostara. Beltane. The birth of Lambs. The Greening of Grasses and Trees. Blooming of Flowers. Bees hard at work. Snow and Cold in the Rockies. The fallow season becoming a distant memory. Fresh Milk. Seeds in the Ground. (not in Minnesota or up here.) Life triumphs. For now.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

The second day of Passover yesterday. Tell me that old, old story of Pharaoh and his slaves. Saw it on Zoom. Broadcast live from Congregation Beth Evergreen. Was gonna go. Got Covid feet at the last minute. Fear makes prisoners of us all. Also. Didn’t know what to wear. I don’t have fancy clothes. Well, I do. I don’t like to wear them. Jeans and plaid shirts. An LL Bean vest. That’s the outer decor. With a pair of Keens.

When I watched Rabbi Jamie go through the haggadah with the gathered (smallish) crowd in the sanctuary at Beth Evergreen, I both wished I was there and was glad I wasn’t. This is a long service. A couple hours until the meal.

I stayed with it both out of a sense of obligation these are my people after all and out of a desire to re-member an ancient tale of liberation. An ancientale of authoritarian rule and those who broke away from it. The ancient and lonely trail of trying to lose the slave mind, to take life in your own hands and live it responsively and responsibly.

It’s not easy being free. It takes work. Every day. Get food. Maintain health. Love family. And the Pharaoh’s of our day want their slaves to have just enough money to buy the things Pharaoh wants them to. Just enough to have some food, be healthiesh, maybe maintain a family. Buy gas, processed foods, over the counter remedies, pay rent.

Then there’s the lower caste. The people of the street. Who are either can’t or won’t play the Pharaoh’s game. Who suffer from mental illness, addiction, loneliness.

Those with privilege can navigate past the Scylla of money and the Charybdis of social expectations. Yet even most of the privileged founder anyhow. Crushed between the jaws of earning and wanting to fit in.

Judaism knows this in its traditions and works to keep the freedom. It’s hard though even for ones who know the true difficulty of the journey from Egypt through the Reed Sea and those days years in the desert and hardest of all-gaining the Promised Land.

Christianity went off on a tangent about mortality and its pain. Solved through a resurrected God who would take us all with him someday. Beautiful metaphor, resurrection. Death is not the end. Ain’t no grave can hold my body down. A little creepy in its bodies zipping up from cemeteries, or taken whole out of life in the rapture.

There’s a liberation message there, too. But you have to work to find it, embrace it, follow it. Would have been better without the sin. Making it seem that resurrection needed earning. By not doing this or that. Rather than by following a path. A via negativa toward heaven. Born good? Nope. Born bad. Work to put away the stain of the Eden rebellion. Wash, wash, wash the stain away. Shout it out!

We can take this wonderful wakin’ up morning and realize that death does not define us. We can take this pesach and gain our freedom. The resources of these two great faiths are available to us, but they come with so much damned baggage. So much institutional hoohah.

Even so. I’ll stand with those who find death only a part of the journey. I’ll stand with those who know Pharaoh lives in our own heart and the journey lies in turning him from dictator to collaborator.

Sure. I believe those things. They’re important.

I have a simpler heart I’ve learned. One not so enmeshed. I recognize the wonder, the miracle of elemental creation. I see the Sun and its life-giving power. I feel Mother Earth under my feet, responsive to my hands, bearing all I need for this life, the one right here, right now. Ichi-go, Ichi-e. I see the moon in the darkness. I feel its gentle lunar power ripping whole oceans from here to there.

I do not need to go further than these. I do. But I do not need to. I could live happily with giving only them reverence. With realizing awe only in their presence. With letting them think about my afterlife. About Kate’s.

Death and life. Oppression and liberation. Yes. Important, big questions. Journeys of a lifetime. But, too. Following the water course way. Living life as it comes, letting it flow beneath and around and with our feet, our body, our heart, our mind. I’ll flow with the Taoist while I stand with those others and their ways. Seems strange I know, but that’s the spot I’ve come to for right now.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mussar, Shadow Mountain

What is truth?

April 14, 2022 Charles Leave a comment

Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

Kate, back from her hospitalization and rehab, covered in the friendship quilt from Baily Patchworkers. October, 2018

Thursday gratefuls: Rich. Jamie. Marilyn. Susan. Truth. Emet. Luke and his new haircut. Alan. Pesach. Liberation. Slavery. Myth. Story. Legend. Ovid. Latin. Writing. Ukraine. Climate change. Democracy. Liberalism. High fire danger.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Emet.

Oh, boy. Tired this morning. I was up until 11 p.m. last night. Could have been New Year’s. When I got back from the mussar group at CBE, a guy was in my driveway. Kep was barking at him. Go, Kep. I stopped and rolled down my window.

I can’t get any cell service. I’m lost.

My suspicion meter went up, but he seemed non-threatening.

Could I use your phone?

I handed him my phone through the car window. Still suspicious.

My girlfriend. That’s her in the Jeep. He pointed to car lights nearby, the vehicle idling. She’s been drinking.

OK.

I live at 285 and Sheridan. I need to call a friend to come get me. (285 and Sheridan is in Lakewood, all the way down the hill.)

He made two calls, both went to voicemail.

The Jeep moved closer to my driveway. Well, maybe I’ll go talk to her. She’ll give me a ride home.

Maybe she would let you drive?

I doubt it.

He left, talked through the Jeep’s window, got in and they drove away.

Left me feeling conflicted. I was already past my bedtime. He was a stronger, younger male with a strange story that I couldn’t parse. Why was he walking alone, in the mountains, trying to find cell phone service? Even if his girlfriend had been drinking, what prompted him to leave her house and walk away into a Mountain Night when he lived so far away? He seemed sober and as I said, non-threatening.

Woke up this morning wondering if he made it home ok. If I should have driven him home. Why didn’t I? Was I too tired? Too unsure of my ability to handle him if he was not as he appeared? Conflicted.

Odd.

Last night we talked about emet, the Hebrew word for truth. What a topic. See the above story. What was the truth of it? I didn’t know, couldn’t tell, and it made me nervous. So, lacking a way to discern the truth, I backed away. Afraid of a lie that might do me harm. The truth matters.

But, as Pontius Pilate said, “What is truth?” That’s the rub. And, in this post-modern age, who’s truth are we talking about? Mine? Yours? This guy in my driveway? His girlfriends? Was this a case of domestic abuse? He didn’t seem harmed. What was going on?

A lot ink has been spilled on the topic of truth. A lot. We came to no conclusions.

We always have practices. Things we do over the month that will help sensitize us to the particular middot, character trait, and how it can fit into our day-to-day life. Marilyn came up with “I’m going to tell people how I feel about them more often.”

I asked her if I could copy her. She said sure.

Then, after we’d finished cleaning up, Rich and Jamie were back in the kitchen and I was ready to leave. I went back to tell them I was leaving. “I came tonight in person because I knew you two would be here.” Jamie came over and gave me a big hug.

As I left, I surprised myself, and I imagine them, too, by saying, “I love you guys. See you later.” I’ve gotten a little more comfortable with this, saying I love you to important people in my life with my Ancient Brothers and I’m glad it’s spilling over. Because. It’s the truth.