Midsommar Most Heat Moon
Living at altitude in the arid West has its challenges. So far we’ve decided that the blessings outweigh the curses. Kate did come back from her 55th reunion trip to Iowa healthier. Part of that was a treatment for thrush she began before she left, but a part of it, too, was being much closer to sea level (better O2 stats) and much more humidity. We joked about taking the oximeter and the blood pressure monitor on a drive around Denver to find a place we could live that would be healthier for us. The oxygen concentrator is a better solution for us right now.
In other health news an x-ray of my left knee (total knee prosthetic imaging) raised a question. On Monday I see Dr. Peace, my orthopedic surgeon, for a follow up. Kate thinks and I hope he will say nothing’s wrong. I will use the time to ask again about how much I can challenge the knee. Can I, for example, kneel? It’s painful now, yes, but does it actually harm the prosthetic? Is hiking up a mountain trail too stressful for it? Why do I still have pain seven and a half months after surgery? Are my high intensity workouts too much? I don’t want to be too cautious, neither do I want to be cavalier.
Jon’s waiting on news about whether the seller of the house he’s purchasing will replace galvanized piping. Could be a deal breaker. Possible bummer alert.
Kabbalah. It’s trying to pry off the empiricist covering I’ve put on my world. I say trying because I’m a skeptic at heart, a doubter, a critic, an analyst yet also, and just as deeply, a poet, a lover of myth and fantasy, a dreamer.
Rabbi Akiva says that nothing in nature is less miraculous than the rarest exception. This means, for example, that the water in the Red Sea (or, Reed Sea) is as miraculous as its parting. Or, for that matter, the Hebrew slaves pouring across it are, too.
It is anxiety. I believe it infested my life in two early stages. The first was polio, a young boy’s physical experience of our human finitude. It happened once; it could happen again. The second was the death of my mother when I was 17. It happened once, to Mom. It will happen to me and could happen quickly.
The wrong part is that it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to worry about it, fear it, be anxious about it. It is. Or, rather, will be. Maybe in the next ten minutes, maybe in the next ten years, maybe longer. I know this by reason, have known it for a long, long time, but I have not been able to displace the irrational fear in spite of that knowledge. That’s why I say reason can take me up to the wall, but not past it.
Yet, increasingly I find myself wanting a way through this. I can sense, and here kabbalah is playing a critical alchemical role, a different world, a better world now hidden from me. I can peek through the vines at times, can see the secret garden beyond. It’s this wall that holds up the substrata, keeps it from being ground other parts of my Self. This wall has its roots sunk deep into this tectonic plate, is a barrier to its movement. But I can feel the vines withering, their complicity in the substrata’s effect on my psyche weakening.
Back to exercising yesterday. Yeah! Still a bit foggy in the am and my energy level remains subdued. Might be a summer slump occasioned by the heat or I might need a vacation. It’s been a stressful time period since December 1st, when I had the total knee replacement. That in itself was plenty but Jon’s divorce and Kate’s health tripled down on our resilience. It’s pretty good, I think, but the challenges this last few months were severe.
It’s been an odd week. I felt physically down for three days, not awful, as I said below, but enough to make me stop exercising (very unusual) and thinking was hard, maybe not unusual in itself (I mean, thinking can be hard, after all.) but in its persistence and its type, sort of a muddy feeling in my mind that made the thought of mental exertion seem too much effort. When, for example, I had to consider e-mails to three new Muslim contacts for our first Evergreen Forum event in the fall, I set them aside. Same thing with fixing some ongoing computer issues, none remarkable in themselves.
The hearing world (or, better, the not hearing world) in which I live. I’ve not written about this before, at least I don’t recall it if I have. It’s a profound disability, but invisible, often even to me. I’ll explain.
This was an early and extreme instance of a situation I encounter daily. Since I don’t hear anything from my left, if some noise happens over there, for me it’s as if it doesn’t exist. And even now, over 30 year later, I still forget. I am much more cautious about crossing streets, fear will do that, but in other situations, the absence of noise is, of course, just that. It means even if it’s there, I don’t know it. Basic epistemology. If I can’t hear it, it doesn’t enter my world. What’s the sound of one person speaking to me, if I don’t know it? Silence.
Drove the hour out to Denver International to get Kate. Found Scott Simpson with her at the arrival gate. He’s on his way to Carbondale to see his son. We took him to Union Station where he planned to board a Bustang for the rest of his trip. Scott’s reading Homo Deus right now and says it’s rocking his world. Good to see him.
The go-go girls, Rigel and Gertie, joined me on a breakfast outing to Crow Hill Cafe. Crow Hill is the steep, 7% grade, that takes Hwy 285 down into Bailey. On the way there, from the western edge of Conifer, the continental divide defines the horizon, peaks until recently covered with snow. They allow us, who live in the mountains, to see the mountains in the same way folks in Denver can see the Front Range, as distant and majestic.
Back to Conifer and the King Sooper. King Sooper is a Kroger chain upscale store, one listed as a potentially threatened species by newspaper articles about Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods. With the rapid concentration of certain retail activities we may need an endangered business protection act. King Sooper does deliver though we’ve not made use of that service. Those of us on Shadow Mountain don’t expect to see drones with celery and milk anytime soon.
Neighbors and their dogs were on the sides of the road. Cell phones (pocket digital cameras) were out and aimed at the curve. The chop chop chop of helicopter rotors was evident, but the helicopter itself was not in sight. Then it was, slowly rising from the road, Flight for Life spelled out along the yellow stripe leading back to its stabilizers.
We had a light frost the other night. The weather has been generally cool since Kate left which is ironic. Friday and yesterday were her 55th reunion, today she drives back to the Twin Cities to stay with longtime friend Penny Bond. Monday the ladies who lunch will gather to include her again while she’s in town.
I’ve been speculating about my knee, about how hard I can push it and not have to replace it too soon. Tough since I want to keep my cardio work up. My decision so far has been to privilege my heart over my knee, reasoning that heart health has longer term benefits, but I don’t want to be stupid about it either. Decided last night that I want to see my internist, Lisa Gidday and get some guidance.