Category Archives: Travel

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

Farewell, auf wiedersehen

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Today Adrian leaves for Holland. Two days later Tara goes to Florida where she will store her Costa Rica luggage and fly to Barcelona for a family wedding. At that point only Mary will be left here. She leaves a week later. I’ll have two weeks of no one but Melissa unless I can make other arrangements.

I can walk up the stairs! I thought so. Tried and it was easy. That’s a milestone. So is my improvement in breathing. After pneumonia my breathing had been compromised. I use a spirometer and a clever device called a breathing muscle trainer.

The trainer has seven settings for inhalation, an equal number for exhalation. I breathe in, forcefully, through a small tube. The inhalation setting determines how easy or difficult it is. Then breathe out. 10x rest 10x.

Weather here has been cooler and wet with no wildfire smoke. Good sleeping, fire protection.

Marilyn and Irv come over tonight with food from Oyama, the sushi spot in Aspen Park. Marilyn and Tara have been close for many years. A farewell Shabbos dinner. Trump affects us.

Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Travel

Today

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Adrian leaves the U.S. on Friday, headed for Holland, his brother’s place in the heart of Amsterdam. Tara and Julia (their middle child) will join him briefly before heading out on a week and a half long trip together.

The night after he arrives Adrian and his brother will board his brother’s canal boat and head to a spot close to a floating barge with classical musicians who present, this one night a year, a program involving musicians from various orchestras and ensembles. A lottery allots spaces near the barge. “And,” Adrian said, “Every year my brother wins a spot.”

After Holland, Adrian flies to Costa Rica where Tara will join him a few days later. They have reservations at six air bnb’s over the course of a year. This allows them to sample various locations before choosing a place to settle down. Quite the adventure.

After they leave, Mary stays till August 30th when she flies to Singapore where she will meet Guru for one last stay in a favorite hotel-like building, the Raffles Town Club. She put Kate and me up there in 2016. Nicest rooms I’ve ever had.

I feel good. I’m getting things done. Working out. Not sure where cancer is right now. In a couple of weeks. Eating well. Reading a lot.

Meeting with financial folks on Wednesday. A focus will be on my move to Elk Run. Robin comes tomorrow to tell me about how my stuff will fit into the apartment. Excited about about both sessions.

Ruth and David came up. A good, long conversation about college, David’s job hunt.

 

 

 

Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel, Weather +Climate

My travel snowpack sits way below normal.

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Shabbat gratefuls: Snow! Vince. Shadow, dancer in the snow. Ruth. French toast and bacon. Lab results unread.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

 

art@willworthington

Kavannah: Groundedness. Yesod.    Yesod is about establishing oneself in reality, refusing to rely on comfortable illusions

 

Tarot: Page of Vessels, Otter     I need more play, more  lightheartedness.

 

One brief shining: Snow fell. Mountain joy. Our drought parched Arapaho National Forest. The lodgepoles and aspen at Shadow Mountain home. Need moisture. Even more, a lot more. I hunkered down, besotted by the falling, falling snow.

 

Snow brings water to thirsty grasses, trees. Skiers to A-Basin, Vail, Steamboat. Silence. Muffles sound. Alters the landscape, smoothing out rock outcroppings, covering vegetation.

Snow matters.

This winter, until yesterday: forty-nine inches. 2016: two-hundred and twenty inches. Snowpack way below normal. Never thought about snowpack in Minnesota. Here it’s vital. Not only for Colorado, but for the Colorado River basin. Las Vegas. Phoenix. LA. All depend on Colorado’s snowpack. Releasing water over time. Snow melt.

Surrounded by a National Forest filled with second stand, close together lodgepoles and aspen. Drought=high fire risk. Lodgepoles close together burn by crown fire. Fire jumps from the top of one tree to the next. Hot and fast. One reason we all pay ridiculous premiums for home insurance.

As the drought here deepens, I’ve been thinking about other droughts in my life. I’m in an exercise desert. My travel snowpack sits way below normal. Otter reminded me. I’m in a play and lightheartedness drought.

Exercise. Since I turned forty, I exercised. Daily often. No less than 5 days in a week. Resistance and cardio. Worked with my hands and legs in the garden. I was in good, no, excellent shape.

Of late. Not so much. I find excuses not to exercise. A tough day yesterday. Workout room too cold. Like today.

Mood regulation. Guard against heart attacks. Retain muscle mass. Balance work. Fall prevention. All benefits of regular exercise. Fights cancer, too.

But. Finish Ancientrails. I’m comfortable sitting down. I’m going to die of something anyhow. Why make the effort.

I hate this. Not exercising harms me physically. Perhaps even more mentally. Why am I not taking care of myself? A dissonance between how I perceive myself and how I act. How to bridge the gap.

Travel, like exercise, fills the heart. Shifts in perspective. Lightheartedness. So many good memories. Singapore. Angkor Wat. Joseon dynasty palace. Okgwa, Seoah’s home village. Street food in Bangkok. Blood pudding in Inverness. Italian coffee. Chilean fjords.

Last time I left home for more than a day: September, 2023. Back went bad. Sent me into chronic pain world. Better now. Stamina sucks. See exercise. Standing for any length of time. Nope. Makes travel feel onerous. Beyond me.

Drought takes. Water from the bunch grass and lodgepoles. Traveling to see Joe and Seoah. To see the National Museum in Taipei. Damages roots.

Like our snow drought I have no surefire way to fix my travel drought, my play and lightheartedness drought.

Drought dehydrates. Devastates. Stunts growth.

And yet. Snow slides off lodgepole branches. Shadow dances, her blackness covered in white.

 

Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Korea, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Travel, US History

Is it time to go?

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Tuesday and the Moon of Tides

Monday gratefuls: Tara and Eleanor. Arjean. Costa Rica. Iran. U.S. Israel. Gaza. Lebanon. War and peace. Mark in Hafar.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

Kavannah: Shleimut. My lev, calm. Clinical trial decision made. Living into the next.

Tarot: Knight of Vessels, Eel. My spirit, strong. My decisions, made. Old, not dead.

One brief shining: While I sit in peace on Shadow Mountain, Shadow gnaws a toy, asks for breakfast. Mary roasts in summer heat. Joe and Seoah shiver in a cold Korea. Everyone seems further away.

 

A conversation U.S. Jews. Is it time to leave? Is this a Weimar moment after Adolf took power? Friends Marilyn and Irv looked at land in Costa Rica. Decided not to go. Irv said he loved the mountains. Too old to leave.

Tara and Arjean. Have hired a property manager. Are cleaning out 27 years of stuff.  Move to Costa Rica sometime in June. Stay in AirBnBs as they scout for a place to settle. A year or so experiment.

Two times when I almost left the continental U.S. 1969. Got the call for my draft physical. To Indianapolis with all of my money and all my possessions. (not much) Would have moved to Canada like my old friend Mike Hines.

Turns out psoriasis worsens when wearing wool and in hot, humid climates. Army uniforms. Wool. Vietnam.

As I left the place where I’d had my physical, a serious man told me: “You cannot enlist in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, or the Marines.” I asked him, “Are you sure?” When he said yes, I said, “Thank god.”

Second time. After Kate died. Joe and Seoah. Planned then to retire after Korea and move back to Hawai’i. Cleared out the house and garage. Researched places on Oahu where Kepler and I could live. Checked out synagogues. Studied my budget.

Jon died. I couldn’t leave Ruth and Gabe.

My sister and my brother, Mary and Mark. Long time expats.  Mary now in Melbourne and Mark teaching ESL to young Arab men. Joe and Seoah: Hawai’i, Singapore, and Korea. Nine years

State Department urges Americans to leave the Middle East. Mark stays. Hafar has no military targets. He lives among the Saudi citizens. Not in an Aramco US compound. An old Saudi hand at this point.

I’m the stay at home of a far flung family.

When is it time to leave?

 

For me. Not yet.

Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Plants, Reimaging revelation, Travel

The Wild Life

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Tuesday gratefuls: Sue Bradshaw.  Shadow, bone crusher. Warming. A bit of Snow. Marilyn and Irv. Roxann and Tom. Jessie. Minnesota, leading the way. Non-violent resistance. Just folks saying no. Australia Day yesterday. On this side of the dateline. The Emirates. Saudi Arabia. Desert monarchies. Iran. Israel. Palestinians. Egypt. Jordan. Syria. Lebanon. Iraq. Kuwait.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Circle Route around Lake Superior

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another. 

Tarot: Page of Bows, the Stoat

  • Connection to Nature: The Stoat serves as a guide to help you reconnect with the sacredness of the ground beneath your feet

One brief shining: The wild streets where violence and dominance meet love and resistance, a reminder that our animal natures lie not far beneath the veneer of civilization, only waiting the right insult to emerge, leap the whole construct of ego and superego, let that id out to play.

https://www.duluthharborcam.com/p/canal-park-cams.html

Minnesota on my mind: There is a spot on I-35 heading north where your vehicle crests a rise and suddenly, in the interior of the North American continent, lies a huge body of water and two port cities, Duluth in Minnesota and Superior in Wisconsin. From that crest you can see the shipping canal visible if you click on the link above. A shipping canal! On a Lake.

If it’s summer, Lake Superior straddles the horizon, a blue reflection of a northern Sky. In winter the Great Lake might be frozen or might be, as it had been on this cam for several days, a scrim of slate gray with Water Vapor boiling off it.

I never tired of seeing Lake Superior just as I never tire of living in the Rocky Mountains. Different geographical features, yes, but equal in majesty and wonder. Twice I drove all the way around Lake Superior, 1,300 miles. The shoreline itself is 2,726 miles. A big Lake.

We live our Mayfly lives in the presence of miracles. Black Mountain. The Front Range. Lake Superior. You. Your friends. The Atlantic and the Pacific. The Mississippi and the Nile. Africa and Asia. Wild Neighbors like the Mountain Lion of Pacific Heights in San Francisco. Kangaroos and swooping Magpies.

See what you’re looking at.

 

Soul work: Is easy. Let no one fool you. No clergy, no self-help guru, no psychologist. All you have to do? See what you’re looking at. Hear the world around and within you. Let your hand brush over the coarse bark of a tree. Smell that Wood-burning stove. Or a Stargazer Lily. Taste your morning coffee and, in your mind’s eye trace back to the hand that dug the clay and the one who shaped the mug, the Coffee Tree, the Bean picker, the who dried the beans, who packaged them.

Then. Notice who saw. Who heard. Who smelled. Who touched. Who tasted. Really notice. If it was the One within who saw the miracle revealed by each sense, that’s your soul. If it’s not, repeat until it is. Easy.

Dogs, Family, Travel, US History, World History

I mean, really?

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow of the morning. Snow at last! Cold. 10 degrees. Winter. Vince. Joe coming this week.  Ruth and her wrist. Dean’s list again. Gabe. Starting his last semester of high school. Ginny and Janice. Luke and Leo. Minnesota. Colorado. Blue state resisters. My homes.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Minnesota

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, butten-bows-wildwood-tarot it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah:  Wholeness. Shleimut.                                                “The concept of shleimut extends beyond the individual, applying to relationships (finding a life partner with whom one feels complete) and the community (mending societal cracks to achieve collective creativity and flourishing).”

Tarot: Ten of Bows, responsibility.

  • The central meaning of the card is shouldering a significant weight of duties, obligations, or stress, either for yourself or others. Although the burden is heavy, the card also suggests that you are close to the finish line of a major project or life cycle. The end goal is in sight, and persistence is needed to reach it.

One brief shining: Shleimut and the ten of bows resonate with each other since another meaning of shleimut involves tikkun olam, or repair of the world; the joining of these two ideas in these, the years of devastation and degradation of a once great nation, remind us that though the path winds ever upward and our burden can seem unbearable, our journey toward wholeness, restoration demands much of us, perhaps all of us.

 

Dog journal: Shadow now trots inside as if the threshold, what threshold, dad?, were no longer a vampire-like barrier which she had not been invited to cross. Oh, happy day! Well, most of the time. Sometimes she needs a bit of encouragement. But only very occasionally. Thank you, Natalie, Dr. Josy, prozac, and those pheromones. Oh, and Nathan, too.

Her life and mine. Again, together.

 

Family: Set up a zoom call with my sister, Mary, in Melbourne, and my brother, Mark, in Hafar, Saudi Arabia. Not many time slots when we’re all awake. To make it work, I agreed to start the call at 9 pm, MST. Well past my bedtime. 3 pm for Mary and 7 am for Mark.

If you draw a triangle using Shadow Mountain, Melbourne, and Hafar as its points, it would almost be an equilateral with 8,000 miles on each side. That’s sibling dispersion. Little bits of Alexandria, Indiana spread apart from Alexandria and each other.

After looking up those distances, I decided to look for Shadow Mountain’s antipode. According to this website, antipodes map, tunneling straight through Mother Earth from here would land me under the waters of the Pacific, somewhere east of the main island of New Zealand. So, I won’t do that cause I’d drown.

 

Just a moment: So the only limits on red tie guy’s foreign policy is, in his own words during an NYT interview, “My own morality.” Oh, my.

Yeah. This from the guy who’s said he would “accept” the Nobel Peace Prize if Venezuela’s winner of this year’s prize, María Corina Machado, offers it to him. Managing to combine ignorance (of who gives the prize) with narcissism, greed, envy, and lust. I mean, really?

 

Dogs, Family, Health, Holidays, Travel

Ometz Lev

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Mabon and the Samhain Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth, two years sober. Paul, hearing Yo-Yo Ma. Tom and his PET scan. Dr. Bupathi. Metastases. Radiation. The maze at Swedish. Shadow, the good girl. Kate, always Kate. Driving down the hill and back again. Frost, the third. Sleep. Ruby and her snowshoes. On next Monday. Winter is coming.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sobriety

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Ometz Lev.  Courage of the heart.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: As I drove around and around, trying to find valet parking, hidden in a frustrating maze of blocked roads and Kafkaesque detours, I knew the results of my PET scan awaited me, if only I could find a parking spot, each circuit seeming to put me further and further away from information I needed, needed, not wanted.

 

Health: I finally found a spot, a handicap spot in a parking garage I could have used much earlier, if I hadn’t been trapped in my ruminations. What will the new PET scan show?

The mystery of the slow rise in my PSA solved. One metastases enlarged from 8.8 to 52. A big jump. It’s on my T-4 vertebrae. Not a great spot. Dr. Bupathi has referred me back to Dr. Leonard, my radiation oncologist, to kill it. But. Need an MRI of my back first to be sure there is no nerve involvement. This time I’ll need anesthesia for the imaging.

My cancer has begun to push against the Erleada and the Orgovyx. Slipping toward the hormone resistant stage though if the radiation can kill this one, I might stave it off a while longer. On the other hand my other mets were stable to improved. That is good.

I had planned to stop at Noodles and pick up some comfort Mac and Cheese, but after my maze runner hunt I wanted to get home, see Shadow, consider all this.

Now an in-between before the MRI, then another before the radiation, and another until l know the results of the radiation. These will test my resolve to live in between. So many high stakes moments in such a short space of time.

Meanwhile, the back pain story continues on, a slow rolling melodrama with a potential finish in early November. And, just for completeness I’ve tried to adapt to a foam collar for my neck. Haven’t found the right one. Feels, well, weird. A journey  just begun.

 

A look back: In 2004 I took an early November trip to Southeast Asia, starting in my sister Mary’s Singapore. My week there happened to coincide with the second election of George Bush, Ramadan, and Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. It’s underway this year in late October.

We went to Little India and saw the place lit up for this joyous, light filled holiday. That was fun for this Midwestern guy, but the peak came in the wee hours of the morning. At Sri Mariamman Temple. The oldest Hindu Temple in Singapore, it features, during Diwali, firewalking.

Mary and I walked the empty streets of China Town, which had closed around this temple built in 1893, and found a long line of people waiting for their chance to walk on hot coals, immerse their feet in a milk bath, then be caught by volunteers.

Of most interest to me were the folks at the end of the line, all women. We talked with some of them and found that their inclusion in the ceremony had come only recently, feminism changing even this thousands of years old ritual. Gave me hope for the world.

 

Asia, Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Korea, Travel

Constraints

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow of the morning. Out in the darkness. Mary in Oz. Mark on the Arabian Desert. My son and Seoah on the Korean Peninsula touching the Sea of Japan. Me in the Arapaho National Forest among the Rocky Mountains. Ruth and Gabe on the High Plains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Simcha. Joy.        Simcha Torah. Sukkot. Artemis. Shadow. Ablations.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: Amazon boxes pile up on my living room floor, two new wastebaskets, terracotta pots for Artemis, a bottle of Calcium plus vitamin D3, healthy snacks like Edamame and popcorn and protein bars, no longer shopping in the physical world (IRL) I have become instead a receiving clerk, checking goods against their invoices, having to dispose of the packaging.

Shut Down: Talked with my son last night. How about those Yankees? He’s a baseball fan, reading the stats, watching games, caring about the playoffs. I’m a fan of him so I pay some attention, enough to know when something of note has happened, like the Yankee’s hyper symbolic loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. Oh, Canada! Tariffs can’t win the game.

We had father and son scans this week. My PET scan. His CT and MRI. He gets semi-annual scans for hepatitis B as I said earlier and this time an MRI for his back. Geez. And we don’t even share DNA. Surveillance, which, oddly is his primary work in Korea.

“I might need some cash, Dad.”

Oh, some financial crisis in his and Seoah’s life? Nope. He’s not getting paid. Because of the government shut down. Oh. Well. His opinion of Congress has hit an all time low. As he points out, they still get paid.

Not to mention all those young men and women he’s responsible for. Many in their late teens. Living off base with kids and rent and refrigerators. And no money.

Grrr.

It’s one thing when the politics of stall and wait are on the front page. News about stuff happening somewhere else. Yankee’s lose! Federal worker’s furloughed. May get back pay. May lose their jobs entirely.

Another thing when your son has car payments, groceries, dog food to buy. When he’s doing that in service to his nation. Then, it’s personal.

Government matters. And ours, especially Congress, has been asleep at the switch for so long. So damned long.

Wake up, America!

Health: My medical October continues this week with a visit to my ophthalmologist. Glaucoma. Then, two trips to Lone Tree for nerve ablations. Doesn’t end until a week from Monday when I visit my oncologist to discuss results of my PET scan. Big fun.

Cousin Diane, who leaves this month for a trip to Peru to see Machu Pichu, had planned to spend time in the Peruvian segment of the Amazon. But. When she saw the travel medicine doc: Nope. She, like almost everybody in the U.S., had not gotten a yellow fever vaccine before age 60. And, for some reason, they no longer work at our advanced ages. No Amazon for Diane.

 

 

Health, Korea, Memories, Travel

The Ancientrail of Pain

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Dr. Do Vu. Injections of lidocaine. Relief on the left side. Pretty good. Susan. Who drove me. Her kindness. Today, the right side. The Night. Shadow. CBE and its Mitzvah Committee.  Lone Tree. Fairplay. Troublesome Gulch. Pine. Conifer. Evergreen. South Park. Kenosha Pass. Guanella Pass. The Shaggy Sheep. North Fork of the South Platte.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jews

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Malchut.  Wonder.

  • “Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge”.  Abraham Joshua Heschel

Tarot: paused

One brief shining: When the first of the six needles went in, a numbing one, I said, “Fuck me!” as I lay face down, head supported by a leather pillow with a hole in it, much like a massage table, but this was no massage and I could tell that right away, not a fan of pain-who is-yet this was pain in service of pain reduction, an irony no one needed to point out.

 

Slowly, slowly: The Joseon Palace, Gyeongbokgung, Seoul. Two years ago last month. A tourist day in Seoul, driven by Daniel and Diane. Daniel interpreted for me at my son and Seoah’s wedding in 2016.

Earlier in the day we had visited the fish market with Diane’s dad, a professor of communications at a university in Busan. They asked me, at a particular stall, to point to a Fish. I did. Oh, my. The stall owner gaffed the big Snapper and we took pictures as it flopped around. I did not feel wonderful.

After seeing a few more of the stalls, we took an elevator to the top floor of the market, went into a restaurant, where we had sashimi and fish head soup. Yep. That Snapper I condemned.

We dropped Diane’s Dad off at the train station for the high speed train that runs from Seoul in the far north to Busan in the far south of South Korea and followed my interest in seeing historical sights. The first one we visited, Gyeongbokgung. 

A huge place. I loved it. Yet somewhere along the way my back no longer wanted to hold me up. I started sitting outside spots where my son and Seoah, Daniel and Diane, went inside. Finally, the pain got bad enough that I asked to leave, to return to Songtan.

That began a two year long journey. Massage and various machines in a Korean orthopedist’s office. Meds dispensed in small cellophane made units. Back home 29 total sessions of p.t. Celebrex until it bothered my kidneys. Acupuncture which only yielded a nice nap for ten sessions. Tramadol and acetaminophen, which help some, but not nearly enough.

Yesterday, the first of four appointments hopefully leading to substantial relief. Nerve ablation. Burning off the fatty sheath around the offending nerves. Plus a butrans patch which may knockdown any residual pain. May it be so.

I so want to return to Korea, maybe even visit Mary and Guru in Melbourne. Go on another cruise. You know, get outta the house a bit. Fingers crossed.

 

Asia, Cooking, Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, Travel

Now, not so other

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Natalie. Mussar. Luke and Leo. Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Tara. Eleanor. Paul and Findlay. Jim Butcher, a summer’s entertainment. PSA. Testosterone. Kailie. Marny Eulberg. Dr. Buphati. Shadow, her mornings. Mine. The darkness increasing.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Western Medicine

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ometz Lev. Strength of the heart. The inner strength to move forward. Courage.

Tarot: #0, The Fool (Druid Craft)

  • Optimism and trust: Have confidence that you have everything you need to begin this new phase. The Fool’s lack of baggage is a strength, not a weakness.
  • Living in the moment: This card encourages you to enjoy the process and worry less about the future. It’s a reminder to approach life with childlike wonder.
  • Embracing your inner eccentric: The Fool operates outside conventional rules and norms. Your unique approach to life is to be celebrated. 

One brief shining: Ate the last of the hard boiled eggs with a bit of the regenerative farming sourced dried steak, some mayonnaise, and a banana after I finished my workout, a leg and core day using exercises from Halle, who now works in Dallas, a bit of cardio, another full morning.

 

Health: In somewhat new territory. My PSA rose to .3 from .19. Not a huge rise, certainly not a doubling which always gets attention. Even so, it’s not the direction I want. Probably means another blood draw on Monday as a check, then another one 4-6 weeks later.

At some point, maybe now, I become the Fool on another stage of this eleven year long cancer path. The Fool reminds me to take even this possibility as part of the process. A part that does not suppress seeing the world with childlike wonder. Live until l die.

Mountain View Pain called and scheduled my lidocaine injections, October 1st and 2nd. Left side, right side. The lidocaine anesthetizes my lumbar nerves. Seeing if numbing those nerves stops my pain. That guides the upcoming nerve ablations on October 15th and 16th. Those ablations plus the butran patch should knock down most of my pain. May it be so.

a bit corny, yet…

I feel ok about all of this. Part of living with chronic pain and a terminal illness. I did choose ometz lev as my week kavannah knowing my PSA could change. Strength of heart, the inner strength to move forward. I needed it when I read that number yesterday. And, I had it. I did sit for a minute, looking out my upstairs window as a car went by on Black Mountain Drive, considering my alone but not lonely life.

 

Just a moment: The Chinese military Parade. Modi, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un. A world without us. My son close by in South Korea. Seoah, too. And, the Jangs.

Asia used to seem so far away, so exotic, so other. Then Mary went to K.L. Mark to Bangkok. Kate, my son, and I to Beijing.  Mary to Singapore. My trip to Singapore, Bangkok, Angkor Wat.  Then my son to Korea where he met Seoah. Kate and I to South Korea and Singapore. Later, my son and Seoah to Singapore.   My trip to South Korea. Still far away, now not so other, though often still exotic.