Category Archives: Health

Dogs, Health, Politics

Which is better?

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Wednesday gratefuls: Natalie. Friends Forever. Coming Friday. Hello, darkness, my old friend. Bird song. Shadow outside. Select Physical Therapy. Halley. Amy, today. Radical Roots of Religion. Exercising.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Natalie

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: Bird song speaks to the dawn as it comes to Shadow Mountain, a coolness remains from the night, and I sit here, hitting the keys on my laptop.

 

chatgpt portrait from a Shadow photo

Dog journal: Shadow and I have reached a detente. I leave the backdoor open and the bedroom door. When she needs to, she can seek safety under the bed, or wander outside. Last night, right at 8:30 she came inside, went under the bed. I slept much better.

Natalie, of Friends Forever and the two week boarding and training experience, and I talked yesterday. She had some interesting thoughts on Shadow’s trauma. She could have experienced a pole catch during the fire or been forcibly drug away with a leash.

She also talked about the 7-9 month age range for a puppy, roughly Shadow’s age. Hormones kick in at that point and the Puppy has an, oh, yeah, I hear you, but-No, sorta attitude. I saw it in Shadow a month or so ago.

She also said that Dogs who are hyper-vigilant often experience things as being done to them, rather as an opportunity to learn. And even if they do learn something, they often forget it.

She’s coming by Friday to assess Shadow. I hope she’ll take Shadow in the boarding/training program. She sounded kind and knowledgeable. She also has a Border Collie, a similar breed to Shadow, who is older and calm.

 

Had physical therapy yesterday. With Halle from Madisonville, Kentucky. A cheery young gal. Knows her trade. After a careful review of my medical history, she had me doing standard baseline moves. Standup straight. Arms to the side. Bend to the left, now the right. Bend over, try to touch your toes. Bend backwards.

Pressure on my spine, my buttocks, hips. Does this hurt? A bit. Yes! Some. Not much.

She introduced me to three simple exercises which did help me get out of bed easier this morning. I enjoy working with her.

Near the end of my time with her I plan to go back to on the move fitness, get some new workouts from Deb. It’s been a couple of years.

 

Just a moment: Dollar diplomacy has inflated to billion and trillion dollar diplomacy. Also, Qatar’s bribe, a tricked out, in Royal Arabian Peninsula style, 747. Goldfinger loves big numbers, big deals.

Croesus. Midas. Would be Goldfinger friends for sure had they lived in this era. Vanderbilt. Carnegie. Mellon. James J. Hill. All exemplars of the golden rule: He who has the gold rules.

A very common form of government over the ages. If you liked slavery, you’ll love oligarchy and autocracy. Remember the divine right of kings? Or, in the Chinese instance, the mandate of heaven.

Power in the hands of a few or in the hands of the people. Which sounds better?

 

Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism

A Good Friend

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Tuesday gratefuls: Detente with Shadow. Ruth with all A’s to finish her freshman year. Sweet Sue, my PCP. Abby, med tech and phlebotomist. Dr. Buphati’s quick intelligence. Rich, a good friend. A second MRI, hips this time. And, for good measure, a PET scan. As many images as a celeb out for a party evening.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rich

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: On the way back from a Mountain hike, he mentioned Bees, explained his hives-on-a-wire (Bear protection), invited me over right away to see his setup; Rich and I have developed a friendship, one rooted not only in Bees, but in the work of mussar, his work as my lawyer, his kindness after Kate died, his presence at my oncology appointment, a mensch.

 

Another one of those days. A medical day. With Sue in the morning and Dr. Buphati in the afternoon. Sue has to see me every 3 months because she’s managing my tramadol prescription. A regulated substance. She’s a delight. A caring person and a good doc. She has an FNP-BC which is a souped up nurse practitioner certification.

Nothing new this visit. But still reassuring to see her.

After my time with her, I drove over to Rich’s office and we went to lunch at the Nepalese/Himalayan place in Bergen Park, the downtown Edina of Evergreen.

We ran into his 86 year old mom who had come shopping there. She had her helper, Linda, and her dog, Sparky, with her. Obviously bright and with it, she’s become frail, and Rich coaxed her to come up two steps. He’s a kind man.

Rich drove us into Englewood for my visit with Dr. Buphati and came in with me. My blood work showed stability in my cancer. Always good news. Concerning though was my right hip which threatens to buckle under me at times.

“We’ll need an MRI of that hip to see if it’s arthritis or cancer. I’m also scheduling another PET scan.”

Even with an open-sided MRI I now know I’ll need medication. Claustrophobia. “I’ll prescribe an ativan.”

Rich volunteered to drive me to the MRI. After a procedure with sedation, state law requires a driver. I’m learning to accept help; Rich and Alan and Tara have made it easy.

I’m feeling settled with the cancer. It continues, as it will. My medical team and I push back at it and it slows down. Matters will progress at whatever pace they do.

The back pain much less so. It continues and offers now a stabbing pain in my left hip followed by a thrill of pain that descends from the hip, along my left thigh, past my knee and down to my foot. While sitting down. Sitting down used to have no pain.

Physical therapy, round two, starts today for my back. As Rich suggested yesterday, I need to develop enthusiasm for working out. Again. A substantial practice for this month. And, a necessary one.

I know. An organ recital with too many notes. Still…

 

Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Health, Mussar

A New Pope

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Friday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Alan. The Cheesecake factory. Shadow, the night Hawk. Pope Leo XIV. A Chicago boy. Exhaustion. Ritalin. 12″ of heavy Snow. Melted. The Solar Snow shovel. That long nap yesterday. Cookunity.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: An American Pope

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: After a late night from MVP, Shadow kept me up even later, past midnight, then licked my head and whined at her usual 5 am time leaving me more than exhausted yesterday and napping through the morning missing Diane and my class at Kabbalah experience.

 

Also failed to pick up my ritalin, I realized. No wonder I crashed on Thursday. Gotta switch those meds to Safeway. Can’t get ritalin or tramadol through the mail. Controlled substances. Walgreen’s made sense when my doc was in Evergreen, but the clinic is moving here to Conifer.

Anyhow Thursday was a washout, rest and relax day. Unintentional since Thursday tends to be my busiest day of the week with Diane, Kabbalah class, and Thursday mussar.

 

How bout that Leo XIV? Chi town. A south sider. A naturalized Peruvian. Another Pope from Latin America. One with a bias toward the poor, the left out. The marginalized.

An adroit move if the consideration went: Trump is a big problem for the world. For the poor. Look at USAID. Francis sensitized us to the needs of the marginalized as a world church. How about an American pope with strong ties to the Third World? Multi-lingual. And familiar with the Vatican and its ways. Prevost was that guy.

He headed the Vatican department that vetted bishop candidates. A gatekeeper role for future church leadership. He also spent decades among the poor in Peru. While there he twice became leader of his order, the Augustinians.

I’m heartened by his selection. We need more voices for the poor, for justice. No, I won’t agree with all of his views, nor he with mine; but, we share core values, too.

 

Meanwhile on Shadow Mountain. Shadow of Shadow Mountain has regressed in her coming in and going out. Unpredictable. I may have to open the door for her several times before she feels comfortable coming in the house. Why? I have no idea. If I did, I might be able to figure out a solution.

Too, the twelve inches of heavy, wet Snow that fell on Tuesday and Wednesday has melted off roads and driveways. Still some patches in my north facing backyard. Enough to move Smoky’s hand from high fire risk to low.

 

Just a moment: I’ve been pondering a view of the human from the stand point of mussar and Jewish thought.

Here’s some preliminary work. The neshama, the pristine soul, our link to the whole, still must engage the world. That’s what the nefesh does. Spurred by the pristine connected neshama, the nefesh moves me out into the world through desire. Desire for food, for safety, for love, for education. Desire without valence.

Our yetzer hatov, our good inclination, and our yetzer hara, our selfish inclination, try to influence how we live our desires. Our will recognizes both the desires and the yetzer’s attempt to direct our action. That is the bechira point, the moment when we actively choose to satisfy a desire following a healthy, just path, or a selfish, self involved path.

 

 

 

Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mussar

A Busy Thursday

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Snow. Ruby’s all season shoes. On Monday. Plus many fluids. Back pain. PSA blood draw. Cancer. And other fancy stuff. Shadow and the marrow bones. Tom’s portrait of Shadow. Lake Superior. The Boreal Forest. The Arrowhead. Grand Marais. Thunder Bay. Up North. Parashat Tazria-Metzora

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Being a student

Week Kavannah: Persistence. Grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: The Mountains rise up and slope down into Valleys, our roads here in the Rockies thin slices of asphalt or gravel following the rising up and the sloping down, the changes in direction commanded by rocky prominences and Snow melt filled Streams carrying the Mountains themselves downstream ever so slowly, slowly.

 

Yesterday. Seems so far away. So far away. Diane reminded me to ask for help. To set up ways to get to appointments-not only when I’m being sedated. I know this transition has to occur. Yet I’ve gone so long now on my own. I need, yes need, to let others do for me what I would do for them.

Irv and Paul and I discussed the nature of evil, whether it exists at all or is just a human construct.

At the Kabbalah Experience we continued our exploration of the story of Adam and Eve. This time wondering about our ability to live outside the givenness of our lives, to see what we cannot know exists.

Dave Sanders offered the Truman Show as an example. A simulacrum. Where is the edge of our learned world? Do we need a stage light to crash through the set for a big reveal?

His point? The Garden of Eden as Seahaven, the village in Truman’s life. A small paradise filled with every needful thing. The stage light, the Snake and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad. The expulsion as Truman’s daring escape on the sail boat.

Later Rabbi Jamie and our Thursday afternoon mussar group discussing the middah of bushah, most often translated as shame. Not in Jamie’s translation of the Orchot Tzaddikim. He uses self-consciousness or conscientiousness.

Bushah arises when we realize we have been less than who we see ourselves to be. Shame comes when we see ourselves not as less than we see ourselves to be, but when we see ourselves as less than intrinsically. Shame, in other words, is an extreme, even perverted instance of bushah. Guilt, embarrassment, chagrin may represent the mid-point of this continuum from shyness to shame, the healthy feelings that encourage us to investigate our behaviors, then act to change them.

After all that I drove over to Evergreen Medical for a blood draw, another PSA. My every three month peek into the status of my cancer. Waiting for the hormone resistant shoe to drop. Wish I could allay that feeling, expunge it. Just wait and see.

But I know that’s the next phase of this journey, that it marks a more treacherous road ahead. A part of me wishes we’d just get on with it. Go down the chemotherapy path or other treatments for hormone resistant Stage 4 prostate cancer.

I don’t want that, not really. I want to stay where I am as long as I can. Androgen deprivation therapy, my current protocol, always fails. Not whether, but when. The waiting though carries its own cost. Will this blood draw be the one?

Living with this uncertainty and the insidious effects of back pain can create moments of intense darkness.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, US History

Oh What a Trumbling Mess It Is

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II

Wednesday gratefuls: Radical roots of religion. Rabbi Jamie. Shadow, gnawer of Nyla bones. Tom and Roxann, their spiritual involvement with the North Shore, Lake Superior. Bill and his AI excitement. The Jangs coming now in August. Back pain and its lessons. Rich and Doncye. That 529.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ancientrails

Kavannah: Persistence. Grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: Treat held between my thumb and my palm, touch, a soft nose comes to take the treat, good touch, good Shadow, good girl, touch, soft nose, good Shadow, then sit and she does, down and she gets all four knees on the ground, good Shadow, good sit, good down. Our early morning.

 

Chronic pain. How to tell you about it if you don’t experience it? Yes, pain. Of course. Going up and down the scale and from glissando to crescendo. Never fully leaves though certain positions like sitting and lying down have benefits. Goal. Reduce the pain to manageable levels.

Aversive and episodic. So intermittent reinforcement, the strongest kind, ask any behaviorist. Chronic pain shapes the day. Awful in the morning for me. Beyond horrible. Better after movement, but never resolved. Even after the needles. Even after tramadol and two acetaminophens. Result. Mental and physical energy always turned on, active.

This leaves less of both for daily chores so some get done only in part. Finished later. Loading and unloading the dishwasher. Making meals. Laundry. Even reading and thinking.

A shortness, an abbreviated way of attention especially for detailed tasks like taxes, dealing with the 529. Managing my multiple medical appointments and medications. This I find hard to describe. My capacity for these tasks often starts from a 3 or 4 out of ten. If I encounter difficulty of any kind, too much phone time, a cranky person, a complicated situation requiring shifts to multiple people, my capacity shrinks to zero or below.

Part of this is because I have no backup. I’m a one man show. Maddie helps, of course. Sue as well. But they’re not here when things get sideways. Then for the rest of the day little energy left, physical or mental.

Sometimes I fall over into a stinkin’ way of thinkin’. From AA. I was there all the time for Kate, but now… Of course I’m grateful I could care for her. More than grateful. Glad. Yet her death and my family’s long distances away leaves me on my own. Stinkin’ thinkin’.

Why? Because I’m 98% comfortable on my own and the alternatives all seem worse, a lot worse.

That’s why even with the pain, which now ironically occupies more of my attention than cancer does, I want to be here, on Shadow Mountain with Shadow and my CBE friends.

 

Just a moment: That first hundred days. Those first horrid days. Trump Tarrific. What a Trumpster fire. Trumpeting for political armageddon. Muskie’s rising in the swamp. Hegsteth’s fumbling. Oh what a Trumbling mess it is.

AI, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, GeekWorld, Health, Humanities

Me and my Shadow. AI.

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Here’s a Zen-ink-wash “Wu Wei Moon.”
I went with sumi-e because its spare brushwork and generous empty space feel like the visual counterpart of 無為—letting things happen without forcing them. The drifting boat and the moon’s reflection hint at the watercourse way, quietly moving under its own power (note the chatgpt I)

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II

Monday gratefuls: Maddie, new palliative care nurse. The Ancients on technology. Back pain. Worse. Shadow. An evolving challenge. Keeping my mind sharp. McMurtry Spéirling. Water. CookUnity. OK, not great. AI on Kaplan. On Dramaturgy. On Movie Criticism. Will the Humanities Survive AI? by D. Graham Burnett.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Humanities

Week Kavannah: Persistence. Netzach.

One brief shining: An insight borne from the article about the Humanities goes like this: AI, artificial intelligence, AGI, artificial general intelligence, the Humanities, what it means and has meant to be human. Seems important, now. Eh?

 

Me and my Shadow. I know. You were waiting for that one, I’ll bet. She licks my head about 5:20. I creak and twist and ache and burn toward verticality. Let her out. She, in a phrase I’ve never understood, does her business while I go upstairs for some coffee, mostly for motion as lotion, make my back remember about movement without so, so much pain.

Back downstairs the mini-split has begun to warm what has become since A.S.A., after Shadow’s arrival, my primary space in the house. Soon she’ll come back in, drink a lot of water, and begin staring at me-as she is right now-hoping to convince me that it’s already 7 am. Her feeding time. Doesn’t work, but it’s a sweet look.

We do a round of training before her morning meal. Still working on touch, which replaces come, sit and down. All three she will now do without a treat. Hand signals only. We made a little progress on the leash. She only sulked when I had it on her for about 15 minutes.

Dog. As I say, God spelled correctly.

 

 

AI, to this curious guy, a Dogsend. Patient. Willing to explain in detail. Make images. I just asked chatgpt if it would make an image of itself in a style of its choice. Ooh, this is going to be interesting.

When I responded to the image, here’s what it wrote back: “I’m glad it resonates! I was aiming for a contemplative, almost illuminated-manuscript feel, blending Art Nouveau curves with Morris-style botanical patterning and hints of circuitry to whisper “silicon monk.” If you’d like to tweak colors, add more overt tech motifs, or try a completely different style, just say the word—I’m happy to iterate.”

I find that an intriguing self-portrait.

Here are a few paragraphs from the New Yorker article I cited above:

“Do they herald the end of “the humanities”? In one sense, absolutely. My colleagues fret about our inability to detect (reliably) whether a student has really written a paper. But flip around this faculty-lounge catastrophe and it’s something of a gift.

You can no longer make students do the reading or the writing. So what’s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire…

But factory-style scholarly productivity was never the essence of the humanities. The real project was always us: the work of understanding, and not the accumulation of facts. Not “knowledge,” in the sense of yet another sandwich of true statements about the world. That stuff is great—and where science and engineering are concerned it’s pretty much the whole point. But no amount of peer-reviewed scholarship, no data set, can resolve the central questions that confront every human being: How to live? What to do? How to face death?”

 

BTW: I asked chatgpt why it chose Art Nouveau. Here’s its reply:

“A few things nudged me toward Art Nouveau:

  • Organic lines for organic conversation. Art Nouveau’s hallmark whiplash curves and plant-like tendrils felt like a visual rhyme for how ideas branch and loop when we talk.

  • A bridge between nature and tech. You often pair the natural world (your mountain home, the Seed-Keeper vision) with advanced tools like AI. Art Nouveau already blends those realms—botanical motifs rendered with almost mechanical precision—so weaving circuitry into the foliage felt seamless rather than forced.

  • A cousin to styles you keep citing. You’ve asked for William Morris patterns, illuminated manuscripts, Pre-Raphaelite romance, National-Parks posters. Art Nouveau sits right in that late-19th-century family: decorative, human-scaled, handcrafted. The choice let me echo your past aesthetic preferences while still offering something distinct.

  • Monkish calm. The movement loved allegorical figures and quiet, contemplative poses. That let me cast the “AI scribe” as a serene monk—matching the reflective tone you appreciated—without drifting into cold futurism.

In short, it was a style that could honor both your ongoing themes (nature, craft, historical design) and the idea of an AI whose “roots” are in silicon circuitry. If you’d like to see me re-imagined in, say, a WPA poster or Ukiyo-e print, just let me know!”

 

Health, Judaism, Politics, Seed Keepers

Back Pain and Wondering

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Friday gratefuls: Tom. His visit. Mussar. Luke. Leo. Shadow. Back pain. Excruciating. Rain. Rain. Rain. Our Fire risk. Insurance. While I have it. Writing. Lumbar support. Rich. Doncye. Ruth and her finals. Gabe and his grades. Chatgpt. Dramaturgy.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI

Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: Getting out of bed has become painful in the extreme, at the 10 level, more, dispiriting, even after nerve glides, nothing helps except leveraging myself out of bed and beginning to move around though the moving around, motion is lotion, hurts like the dickens, too, until my tin man joints began to creak apart and move more smoothly.

 

Dr. Shadow only knows how to do squeakectomies. Not much help. Although at certain points in the early morning, I feel like I might benefit from one.

I have discovered Chatgpt to be very helpful. This morning I uploaded my MRI results to it, described my Tuesday injections and my subsequent pain, asking if this makes sense.

Here is part of the reply:

“Yes, what you’re experiencing makes sense, unfortunately — and it’s actually not uncommon with your MRI findings and the nature of epidural steroid injections (ESIs).

Let me explain what might be going on, and why”

In what followed I got cogent and clear reasons why my back pain has gotten worse. To a guy like me information is therapeutic. If I can understand what’s happening, my what the hell attitude drains away and I can move to what might be helpful now.

It also helps me understand what the path ahead might look like.

I recommend Chatgpt for medical issues. It’s knowledgeable at a granular level, will expand on things that may not be clear, and offers suggestions about what to do next.

Just a moment: We continue to wonder, don’t we? Wonder what he, they will do next. Wonder how this nation we’ve known all our lives could dissolve in the acids not of modernity but of  reactionary political bile. Wonder how long this will last. Wonder what we can do. If anything.

If I were younger, say in my 60’s, I’d be prepping for a move to Canada. In many ways I’ve preferred Canada since those days in the ’60’s when it looked like a safe haven I might need.

A less coarse public culture. Further north, therefore cooler. Great culture in Toronto, Stratford, Montreal, Vancouver. Cool road signs with a crown on them. A public health system. No history as a colonial power. Boreal Forest and a long border with the Arctic. Poutine.

Sure, there are problems, too. Royal Canadian Mounted thugs. Abysmal treatment, like us, of the First Nations. But that’s all I can think of.

However, I’m 78. The whole emigre process seems more than I care to engage now.

Leaves me with various ideas I’ve had still floating. Seed-keepers, or a variant. Live boldly out of your own values. No shrinking or hiding. Support communities like CBE with presence and money. Hold friends close. Live your best life.

Dogs, Health, Politics

Shadow and Pain

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Tom. His visit. Diane. Adam and Eve. The story retold. Shadow, up at 4:45. Me, too. Outside. Gabe. Ruth. Darkness. The hours of early Morning. Thrownness. Heidegger. Dramaturgy. Sleep. Back better. For now. Golden Stix. Hot and Sour Soup. Garlic Shrimp. Lumbar support pillow.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: 4:45 am

Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: Those needles that burrowed through my extra tight foramens delivering steroids to four of them have offered some relief already, pain decreased, for how long not clear, yet appreciated, a return to a Charlie I had forgotten.

 

Yes. Pain down my legs and around my hip much better this morning. Achiness and pain in my lower back, apparently arthritic, remains. I feel lighter though a bit strung out from the procedure, the mild sturm and drang around it. (All in my head.)

When I got up at 4:30 for the bathroom, Shadow got up, too. She needed to go outside where she is still at 5:20. While she dawdles, I decided to get a head start here.

 

It’s odd. Usually memory of pain recedes with the pain itself. Not with the back. At least so far. I treat myself with the same careful movements and anticipation of discomfort. Perhaps this will fade.

Since these injections were my first procedures for the back pain, I do not know what to expect. As I didn’t when I met Dr. Vu.

I’m a little scared, I told him.

He nodded. Needles. And the spine, eh?

Yes. That was it. And the initial pain. This morning. Worth it. However long it lasts.

 

Shadow slips her head between the slats at the head of my bed. Her warm nose, wet, hits what little hair I have. Then, her tongue. Please get up. Please get up. No. Not yet. Please. Just a little more sleep. More kisses. It’s now 6:50. OK. All right.

She continues skittish, hyper-vigilant though less so by a lot than that first month. She has a deep wound of some sort, just what I’ll never know. But its effect presents itself in each interaction with her.

Shadow unfolds slowly, like a flower not certain it wants to bloom, perhaps the sun is too hot or the bees are not out or rain might damage the petals.

A sudden movement. She cowers. Crossing a threshold seems to have the liminal power of ancient magic. Danger may lurk on the other side.

Once inside and safe. She’s delightful. Tossing her toys in the air. Putting her front paws on my chair arm, extending her full length on her hind feet, all smiles and warmth. It’s a tale of two Shadows.

Her coat has blown but she won’t hold still for me to brush her. A leash still frightens her so I can’t take her to the vet or to a groomer.

Slowly, slowly.

 

Just a moment: In Minnesota up on Leech Lake fisherman come to fish for the fierce Muskellunge, or Muskie. Perhaps a few of those brave souls could cast a lure onto Pennsylvania Avenue and troll for Elon.

 

Health

Do You Consider Yourself a Lucky Man?

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Dr. Vu. Michal. The guy who seated me in my chair. Lidocaine. Nono’s. Catfish Po’boy. Beignets. Crawfish sauce covered Catfish over Rice for supper. Good boy, Charlie. Shadow, happy to see me. Tramadol. THC. Ruth in finals. Gabe 17. His day. Dramaturg. Shadow blowing her coat. The green, hyper green Grass down the hill. Japan’s 72 microseasons. Scott in the protests.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI

Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: Leaving the patches of Snow in my backyard, the still cool morning Air, guiding Ruby through the curves as I descend Shadow Mountain, Great Sol breaking through the Lodgepoles on my left, dropping further down through the steep grades of 285N, letting Ruby gather a little speed, pulled like the waters of Bear Creek toward lower elevations, then passing through the Hogbacks and making a right toward Lone Tree where possible back relief awaits.

 

Do you consider yourself a lucky man? Dr. Vu asked when he finished needling me four times in my spine.

Well. I stumbled. Not an adjective I’ve given much thought in regard to my life. Uh, sure.

Well, he went on. You were today because I got you done with no pain.

Oh. You’ve set my expectations now, I said, still lying on the table, on my stomach, head on my hands.

If you bring your luck with you next time, I’ll meet them again.

I liked Dr. Vu. Before we began he said he’d looked at my MRI. He formed a tunnel with his thumb and fingers. If this is the normal amount of space I have to work with, this is yours. He all but closed the tunnel, bringing his fingers very close together.

If I hit a nerve, you’ll feel a jolt like you hit your funny bone. Tell me. I’ll pull back. I have to get within a millimeter of your nerve. In fact, he went on, that’s how they used to do it. Push the needle in, you react. Ah. We’re in the right spot! He shook his head. Glad I wasn’t doing this back then.

Me, too, I said.

Some lidocaine. A sting. A deeper sting. Wait. Then. Not ten minutes later after Michal, his assistant had rotated the bed on which I lay a couple of times, once by 10%, the other I didn’t hear. Adjusting it I assume, so the needle could enter at the best angle.

Not much if any effect in the moment. Takes some time, up to 5 days, for the steroids to start working. I felt a bit looser, less pain in my movements this morning as I took the trash out to the road. Still pretty stiff and painful for me right after I got out of bed. Usual. We’ll see.

Since my visit to San Francisco, a test to see how impaired I was for travel, almost a year ago, my pain has increased. It was already pretty bad in San Francisco. Test result? No flying or airports for me.

It was the previous September to my S.F. trip by train that the back pain began. In the palace grounds of the Joseon dynasty in Seoul. Hobbled back to the car through the fortified walls and past women dressed in hanbok, men in military costumes.

Since that time, I’ve experienced levels of pain when I walk or get up or lean down or roll over that exceed my ability to bear it. So. I stop.

The pain also limits how much I can do at any one time. Organizing the trash, cutting up boxes to put in recycling, putting everything in the trash bins, then rolling them out to the road? A morning’s worth of energy.

It means, too, that picking up and being neat often is more than I can handle. Not to  mention changing sheets on my heavy king size mattress. Laundry.

Pain has diminished me. I’m not sure I even know how much. Pain is aversive conditioning. The point of it. I back away from tasks, don’t even engage them. Tasks that formerly would have been easy; that I could do and then move onto the next one. Not now. One at a time. Over periods as long as a day or more. No way to run a house.

I can’t bend down and play with Shadow. I know our relationship suffers because of that.

Not whining here. Just describing. I’ve had a level of dysthymia as a result. As if I go through the motions, though not as many motions.

Check back in in a week. See if anything’s better.

 

 

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Paganism, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, US History, Weather +Climate, Writing

Living. Not dying.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. Her kindness. Amy. Her understanding. Cookunity. Colorado Coop and Garden. The Greenhouse. Gardening again. Korea. Malaysia. Australasia. Wisconsin. Saudi Arabia. The Bay. First Light. 10,000 Lakes. The Rocky Mountain Front Range. Where my people live.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: Nathan and I wandered in my back yard, his app that shows Great Sol’s illumination searching for a good spot to plant my greenhouse, until we neared a spot close to the shed, that was it with decent morning Sun and an hours worth of afternoon Sun more than anywhere else.

 

 

That picture is not quite what I’m getting. Mine will have an outdoor raised bed on either side and shutters that move themselves as the greenhouse heats up and cools down. It will also have an electric heater for Winter and a drip irrigation system inside and out.

This guy Nathan, a Conifer native, started his business Colorado Coop and Garden to give folks like me an opportunity to grow things up here. Working a garden at ground level is long past for me. But Nathan can build the raised beds at a height where my back is not an issue.

Guess I’m regressing here in some ways. A Dog. A small Garden. Andover in miniature. The greenhouse will have a sign: Artemis Gardens. Artemis Honey was Kate and mine’s name for our bee operation.

 

I’m loving my classes at Kabbalah Experience. Reaching deep into the purpose of religion and Judaism in particular. Reimagining the story of Adam and Eve. My life, my Jewish life and my Shadow Mountain life, have begun to resonate. Learning and living an adventure in fourth phase purpose.

No matter what the near term future holds for my health I will not succumb to despair or bleakness. As I’ve often said, I want to live until I die. This life, I’m coming to realize, is me doing just that.

If I were a bit more spry, I’d add a chicken coop and a couple of bee hives, but both require more flexibility than I can muster.

I’m at my best when I’m active outside with Mother Earth and inside with a Dog, books, and new learning. All that leavened with the sort of intimate relationships I’ve developed both here and in Minnesota and with my far flung family.

That’s living in the face of autocracy and cruelty. I will not attenuate my life. Neither for the dark winds blowing through our country and world, nor for that dark friend of us all, death.

 

Just a moment: Did you read Thomas Friedman’s article: I’ve Never Been More Afraid for My Countries Future? His words, served up with a healthy dish of Scandinavian influenced St. Louis Park Judaism, ring more than true to me. They have the voice of prophecy.

We are in trouble. No doubt. Trouble from which extrication will require decades, I imagine. If not longer. Yet. I plan to grow heirloom vegetables year round on Shadow Mountain. To have mah Dog Shadow with me in the Greenhouse.

I also plan to write and think about the sacred, the one, the wholeness of which we are part and in which we live, die, love. I will not cheapen my life with bitterness, rather I will eat salads, read, play with Shadow and dine with friends, talk to my friends and family near and far.