Category Archives: Friends

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Health, Politics

Living and Dying

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Spring                                                    Full Flower Moon

Death comes calling whenever it wants,  not worrying about the season or the weather or the inclinations of the living.  Kate’s colleague, Dick, suffering from multiple myeloma has gone on hospice care after two years of often brutal treatment regimens.  Bill Schmidt’s brother, who has prostate cancer, also chose hospice care recently to ease the pain of complications.

Tonight I was on my first Political Committee call of the year, a Sierra Club committee that deals in endorsements and retail politics.  The dogs were making noise so I quick ran upstairs to shoo them inside.  Emma didn’t come inside.  She lay under the cedar tree.  I’ve watched a lot of dogs die over the last 20 years and when I went to her side, she looked up at me, but had the stare that looks beyond, out a thousand yards, or is it infinity?  Her body was cold and she did not rise.

Vega, the big puppy, came outside and poked at Emma with her paw, sat down and nuzzled her.  Vega loves Emma, has since she was a little puppy.  I called Kate to let her know I thought Emma was dying.  Emma’s fourteen, our oldest dog right now, and our oldest dog ever with the possible exception of Iris.  At fourteen her time is near, perhaps it will come yet tonight.  Right now she’s on the couch, wrapped in a blue blanket, her head on her favorite pillow.

She seems a bit more alert now and Kate says her heartbeat is regular.  She may have had an arrhythmia and converted it, that is, brought herself back into normal rhythm.  Hard to say.  As Kate said, she appears to have the dwindles.

When I compared the call, about politics, and Emma lying outside, I realized Emma was more important to me than the call, so I stayed with her awhile, brought her inside and made her comfortable on the couch.  Then I returned to the call.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Humanities

I’m Ready

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Spring                                                  Waxing Flower Moon

I’m ready.  What a phrase.  So innocent.  Three words.  Could be I’m ready to dance.  I’m ready to walk.  I’m ready to go all the way.  I’m ready to quit.  I’m ready to start.  I’m ready to rumble.

This phrase came into focus for me when Dick, a colleague of Kate’s with multiple myeloma, said, after a visit from his financial planner, “I’m ready.”  I’m ready to die.

I’m ready indicates an inflection point in our life, a moment when a decision turns from option to choice.  We signal our willingness to execute, to act.  To dance.  To walk. To quit.  To die.

I’m ready could be a creed, a three word existentialist philosophy.  It means I’ve made up my mind.  Just me.  No one else.  I’m responsible for what happens next.

I’m ready to cross the Rubicon.  I’m ready to drive.  I’m ready to fly.  I’m ready to go to college.  Get married.  Have a child.  Retire.

As I grow older, a lot of the simpler things now appear profound.  I’m ready is one of them.  Watch for the next time you or a friend or loved one say it.  Something important may be about to happen.

Aging, Family, Friends, Health, Memories

The Moratorium Years

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Spring                                   Waxing Flower Moon

As the moon makes its circuit from its crescent form in the west to its fullness in the east, it passes over the skylight in our living room, at about half full.  It was there tonight, shining and visible to me as I sat in my chair.

To get my sunglasses back I had to park in University parking, then wend my way through skyways and the labyrinth that is the University of Minnesota’s medical complex.  In several buildings there is the school of dentistry, the medical school, a hospital, a heart hospital and a children’s hospital plus numerous organizations that have some relationship to the world of medicine.

There were kids with backpacks leaning against stoplights, chatting in small groups, a girl sitting cross-legged on a high wall reading a novel, signs:  Are you bipolar?  Pediatric Grand Rounds.  University Brain Tumor Center.  What a time, those university years.  Hormones on high, ambition oozing, a heady mix of freedom and new ideas all combine to create the combustible reality that is and has been college for several decades, perhaps even centuries.

A grand time and one I wouldn’t revisit.  Getting older has much to commend it and among its sweeter pleasures is a certain calmness, a centeredness impossible, at least for me, to obtain when I was in college.

Kate came back from work tonight with sad news.  Her colleague Dick Mestrich, who has been battling multiple myeloma for 2 years plus, has begun to die.  He’s Kate’s age and had just begun retirement when he got sick.

Bees, Friends, Health, Memories, Woolly Mammoths

Friends

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Spring                                                  Waxing Flower Moon

The Woollies met last night at Stratford Wood where Bill and Regina live.  The topic of the evening was friendship, requiring time one said, trust another, play yet another.  We evoked our history as a group of men who have given each other time, trust and vulnerability.  We talked about the vessel, the container we have created, a place of safety and love.  We wondered about men and the trajectory of men’s lives that leads away from the easy friendships of youth and into the barren land of male competition and ambition.

One of us spoke of his wonderful physical.  His doctor commended him on lowering his blood pressure through diet alone.  All looked well.  Until the phone call.  Which said his hemoglobin numbers were well below normal.  Since then he’s been endoscoped, colonoscoped and even put on film by a small bowel camera.  No joy.  No explanation.  Only shortness of breath going upstairs and fatigue.  He sees a hematologist this week.  Kate thinks the hematologist will probably take a bone marrow biopsy.

My swollen hand and bruised middle finger got some attention.  We discussed, again, the bees.  Charlie said I should get an epi pin right away.  Kate, who sees a lot of bee stings in urgent care, has a more moderate evaluation.  A localized reaction to multiple stings.  I think she’s right.

Cybermage Bill Schmidt’s brother in Iowa still lives, though in hospice care.  Another brother, Bob, had a near deal with sepsis.  Life is fragile and wonderful, treat with gladness.

Aging, Art and Culture, Cooking, Friends

S.A.D.S.

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Spring                                        Waxing Flower Moon

Shopped at the Wedge.  Boy, have co-ops changed.  They’re no longer like buying screws and nuts at a hardware store where you have to know the price and quantity.  Barcodes, scanners, conveyor belts.  The selection includes meats and many items found in other grocery stores as well as drop-dead gorgeous produce, a large line of tofu and tempeh, shelf fulls of various rice products like mochi, sea weed and other sea plants in many different forms.  Impressive.   I picked up tempeh, mochi, sweet rice wine, nori, coconut oil and sunflower oil among other things.

Made me feel like an aging hippy.  I realized there were a lot of folks in there who spent the sixties just like I did, smoking dope and fightin’ the man.

Tour this morning had great kids and a game teacher.  We wandered around, stymied now and then by sudden art disappearance syndrome, SADS.  SADS happens when curators and registrars start getting creative with the collection.  In theory we walk our routes before the tours but I’ve become lax on that score and may have to start again, especially if SADS continues to interfere with my tours.

Saw Wendy this morning, too.  I gave her hug and told her she looked great. And she did.  It was good to see her.  Breast cancer is scary.

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Humanities

Worlds Opening Up

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Imbolc                                     Waning Wild Moon

On the way into St. Paul tonight I listened to lectures on Epicureanism, Stoicism and Skepticism.  These were especially relevant and resonant for me since Latin is the native language of many who took them up, though their roots were in Greece.  They got me excited about reading Cicero and Polybius, maybe Marcus Aurelius in the original.  It was a fun intersection current learnings.

Of course, in St. Paul, I play sheepshead with a group who have had varying relations with a Latinate institution, the Roman Catholic Church.  Mostly Jesuits, or ex-Jesuits rather, they have lived inside an institution directly influenced by the Latin language and Roman political culture.

The  card gods smiled on me tonight, sending me several wonderful hands.  This does not always happen so it’s fun to play them when they come.

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Literature, Woolly Mammoths

Turning 63

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Imbolc                            New Moon (Wild)

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”- Franz Kafka

It’s not an especially significant birthday in the way of things.  63 is a lull between OMG I’m in my 60’s and 65, the all purpose retirement age in former times.  The lack of symbolic significance and its very ordinariness makes me happy to turn 63.  I have no expectations about life at 63.  So far, the 60’s have been kind to me.  I’ve lost no friends, no family.  With the exception of Kate’s back trouble, no one I know has a serious ongoing health problem.  Frank Broderick who at 77 is now in his 15th year after his first heart attack manages his cardio problems, proving that even yesterday’s fatal condition can now fit into a long life.

(Rembrandt self-portrait at 63)

Turning the prism one more  time 63 astonishes me.  Why?  Because of its very ordinariness and because of its lack of symbolic significance.  Not so long ago, say when I was in my teens, folks my age had begun to teeter toward a time of serious old age and disability.  That point in life is still not on the observable horizon for me.  In fact, it’s possible some number of us reaching this age will be relatively healthy and able until our final days.  Quite a change.

On a personal note I have made my peace with the world in terms of success.  What I’ve had, little but some, will do.  I enjoy the love of a good woman and five dogs here at home and the circle  expands to nuclear family and extended family and friends like the Woollies, the docents and the Sierra Club folks.  My days have meaningful labor that changes with the seasons.  I live in a country I love, a state, and a home.

Intellectually and creatively, it seems, I’ve just begun to come into my own, which means there are satisfying frontiers still ahead.

Then there is Kafka.  Kafka.  What an odd and yet appropriate quote from  him.  He knew with fine detail the absurdity of modern life, yet he  found aesthetics central to a life of real engagement.  Me, too.

Friends, Humanities, Letters, Woolly Mammoths

Sunny Beaches. hmmm. what would that be in latin?

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Imbolc                             Waning Cold Moon

Kate and I have gone through Chapter 4 in Wheelock.  Onto Chapter 5 with the future and imperfect tenses and their conjugation.  Doing this makes me wonder what other layers of knowledge I have tucked away, not called upon, yet ready to return to duty if asked.  As Greg, our tutor, said, “You learned this already.”  We’ll move out of zone of previous learning, but right now, the auld tongue has come back pretty well.

Got back in the study today for the novel after the nap.  We do our sessions with Greg at noon on Thursdays, so we spent this morning on review, then in conversation with him.

The novel has not gone anywhere.  It has not gotten longer while I slept or while I was at Blue Cloud Abbey.  I read much of what I had written, trying to get back in the groove and that took up my writing time for the afternoon.  Tomorrow morning I’ll put fingers to keyboard again.

Buddy Mark has pics from the beach outside Puerta Vallerta.  The one below of an Aztec dancer has an interesting rattle.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Writing

Not Known To Self

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Imbolc                             Waning Cold Moon

“It is clear Charles, you know where you are going, and knowledge is the fuel.”   a fellow Woolly

Have you ever heard of the Johari window?  Here’s a graphic that illustrates it.  The white or open box represents common information shared between yourself and others who know you. The reddish brown box contains the stuff of which you are aware, but have shared with no one.  The third box is the one I’m interested in here, the green box.  It contains material not known to you, but known to others.  This is information to which you are blind for one reason or another, yet is apparent to at least one other.

This comment from a Woolly falls in the blind box for me.  Or maybe not.  A bit hard to tell.

It did make me reflect.  If someone else thinks where I’m going is clear, why would they think that?  Do I really know where I’m going?  Why is knowledge the fuel?

Here’s what came to me, after rolling the idea around for a week or so.

Long ago, perhaps in adolescence, the notion of a liberal arts education became central to my personal project.  How did it get there? It may have been my parents, could have been teachers, might even have been a minister, perhaps all of these plus things I read. The notion of a broad and deep education in the humanities, an education that began at least by the time of college.  There exposure to the great ideas, to the breadth of the human experience, to literature, art, music, theatre would open up a way of perception.  Perception that would inform life, even create a life.

There’s a lot more to this, but I’m tired.  Later.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Floating Away to Blue Cloud Abbey

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Imbolc                              Waning Cold Moon’

Last day at home until Sunday.  Headed out to Blue Cloud Abbey, where Kathleen Norris wrote at least two books.  The Abbey’s buildings are 1960’s modernist, most like public elementary schools, save for the Abbey church which has some panache.  The Abbey church, the guest house and the monastic facilities sit on the highest point for miles.  After sundown, the lights of small towns faraway twinkle.

I’m looking forward to an actual retreat with some quiet time spent on meditation and my own spiritual path.  I haven’t done one of those in a long time, too long.  Love is on my mind, right now, so I’ll plan to spend some contemplative time with how it is in my life and how I offer it to others.  This Valentine’s Day, my 63rd birthday, feels like a spur to thinking about love, a bit unusual for me since I’m normally focused on my birthday.  Anyhow, I have a new Parabola focused on love that I’m taking with me.

Woolly Brother Mark Odegard has taken his magic bus to the shores of the  Pacific Ocean outside Puerto Vallarta.  His journey, a pilgrim’s really, takes him where his vision beckons.  I admire his willingness to open himself to the world and to others, a life lived embracing life.  Very Zorba.  And Zorba is one of my heroes.