Beltane Early Growth Moon
Spent some time in PT this afternoon, trying to get my shoulder and neck to calm down. Physical therapist an interesting guy, a Brit, a “Lancastersire man” who moved to Australia, then New Zealand, then here. 54. Very keen observer.
He’ll help me. Already have some relief.
Otherwise the morning got eaten up by the CD monster. Turn the dial, insert disc, write memo, repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat.
Tonight, Girl Rising at the Stone Arch Cinema.
Beltane Early Growth Moon
The tomatoes, peppers and egg plants arrived in the mail yesterday. They’re resting now, will go in the ground tomorrow morning. Today is a bee day, move leaves to the vegetable garden, new lights in the garage and in the garden study day, plump up the sun trap day and begin outlining projects for Javier to bid. Over the last three days I’ve laid the writing and translating aside in favor of poetry, analysis and today gardening.
I also worked out last night after missing Monday and Wednesday; this way I can get two sessions in this week. I really miss working out and need to rethink my schedule since having a meeting or event in the evening can often screw it up. I do three intense sessions a week, cardio and resistance combined in an interval training program that cranks up the heart rate, then extends it through a set of resistance work, a cool down to below 110 bpm, then up into the anaerobic range for a full minute followed immediately by the next resistance set. 4 sets altogether.
Soon, probably tomorrow, I’ll begin to feel the push back to the writing, translating rhythm, but right now I’m enjoying the break.
Beltane Early Growth Moon
A poignant and salient answer to how to live the third phase came from an 18 year old Minnesotan, Zach Sobiech, who died yesterday of bone cancer. Not much of a conversationalist or a letter writer, Zach’s Mom told him he needed to do something, something that would let people know he was here and leave them memories of him. Diagnosed with osteosarcoma when he was 14, the cancer did not prevent him from writing and singing songs of his own.
He became an internet viral celebrity with the song, Clouds, downloaded over 3 million times.
Those of us in the third phase understand the challenge Zach faced. Death was no longer an abstraction, but a certain visitor. As he says in this song, it won’t be long now. Oh, we may have 20 years or 30 years, compared to his 4, but the link is the moment when you come to know this life ends. For good and for ever.
(Alphonse Osbert – Les chants de la nuit.)
How did he respond? He dug into the riches of his Self, shrugged off the self-pity and depression, and turned those feelings into art. This is the best and healthiest way to greet the coming of the Sickle Bearer. Find out who you are. Find out what best expresses your journey, the ancientrail that has been, is, your life. Then open up that expression, put it outside yourself for the rest of us to learn from, to cherish, to embrace. Because it won’t be long now.
Beltane Early Growth Moon
An odd twist in emphasis in the usually technological triumphalist (which I enjoy, even if I don’t always agree with it) Wired Magazine: a sensible article on cancer, one that illustrates modesty in the face of evolution and the dangers of metaphor.
Cellular multiplication and cellular death occur over and over again in the human body from the moment of birth onward. (before birth, too? don’t know) As cells multiply, necessary to keep replacing the cells that die, mutations creep in. Cells have elaborate defenses against mutations that bloom into their own activity program–cancer and these work well, as the Wired article points out, most of the time.
But, two factors work against the body’s defenses: the first is the sheer number of mutations that occur in a lifetime, live long enough and one or two will sneak past the cells defenses, the second I snuck in the last part of that phrase, time. The longer we live, that is, the more successful we are pushing back disease, certain cancers, too, the more time we have to acquire new mutations that a weakened cellular defense system cannot handle.
Here’s where the Wired article goes radical. Cancer, it says, is not a bad actor, it is, simply, the bodies on agents acting without proper restraint. And, given the two factors mentioned in the above paragraph, it must be seen as a normal part of the aging process. Cancer, then, is not an enemy, but friendly fire.
This matters. And here we get into the power of language and metaphor. Remember Nixon’s War on Cancer? Well, guess what? Cancer won. Yes, we’ve developed many treatments that fend off this cancerous assault or another, but in this understanding, all we’ve done is delayed, not defeated cancer.
When we go to war against our body, we end up with the dire consequences of chemotherapy. All along here, I’ve been thinking about Regina Schmidt, Bill Schmidt’s wife, who died of complication relating to cancer treatment. She refused to see the cancer as an enemy that she needed to fight. She did engage in a battle with her cancer.
Yes, she used the tools available to slow it down, stave it off, but when the tools began to overwhelm her as well, she decided to not use them anymore. This is not the kind of decision you make in a war; it’s the kind of decision you make in a life.
And that’s exactly where the war metaphor gets us in trouble with cancer. We feel like if we don’t battle valiantly with all the weapons deployed, never mind the battlefield, we’ve admitted defeat.
No. We admit to being human. To having a body that cannot defend us forever. To having cells that mostly, in fact, almost perfectly, recreate us every seven years or so with no major problems, but which eventually face odds they cannot overcome. That’s not war; it’s time and fate.
We know the dangers of metaphor, those of us have lived through the reaction to 9/11. Bush invoked the war metaphor and trillions of dollars, thousands of lives and a wasted international reputation later, we’re still fighting. How much more sensible if we recognized terrorism as a mutation of the body human, not compatible with life, but not something we need to go to war against either; treating it rather as a cell treats a rogue cell, with localized defenses, something more resembling law enforcement than military engagement.
Words matter; lives matter. Let’s not waste either one.
Beltane Early Growth Moon
A post written this time by Woolly Bill Schmidt. My comment below.
From Bill:
We may be able to ignore the effect that humans have on global warming or even deny that it is happening. It is difficult to explain away the effect that we humans (farmers in this case) are having on an important earth resource. And the farmers are crying because they can no longer farm in ways that don’t make sense relative to what they are given. Maybe it is time to pay attention to our local environments and live/farm within the limits of what is provided by earth environments. Tapping the aquifers to irrigate farm land is like shooting yourself in the foot. The aquifer is not infinite and pretty soon you don’t even have enough water to drink.
Here’s a link to a New York Times article about the plight of Kansas (Midwestern) farmers who have robbed the aquifer and now it is drying up.
“And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains.
The irony of using insane amounts of water for fracking to get more oil would be laughable if it were not so sad. Literally hundreds of millions of gallons of water per day are being used for this process, poisoned by who knows what chemicals and with a fraction, if any, of that water being recovered.”
This is the cost of pumping 1,600 gallons per minute to irrigate farm land. And on page 2 of this article, the same farmer is continuing to drill more wells. Reminds me of a song: Pete Seeger “Where have all the flowers gone” — “When will we ever learn.”
My Willa Cather Moment With This Problem
I’ve told this story to the Woollies and others many times, I imagine, a sort of recurring tale like so many offer to others, unaware of their repetitiveness. But, it’s worth retelling.
Twice I’ve visited Red Cloud, Nebraska, a small town on the Kansas/Nebraska border, and home to Willa Cather, a favorite American regional author of mine: Death Comes for the Archbishop, O’ Pioneers, The Professor and many others.
In the Willa Cather Center there I remember, back in 2005 or so, speaking with the folks behind the desk. It was really hot, 107 or so, and we got to talking about climate change and agriculture. Since I have a long standing interest in the Ogallala Aquifer, I asked about irrigation.
The conversation became animated because it turned out that in the spring, when the farmers began irrigating their fields, the towns wells would go dry. It seems they’ve pumped the aquifer out enough that the volume of water available in their area can’t sustain the needs of both town and country.
Here’s a good resource on this issue, which nuances it: Ogallala Blue.
Spring Planting Moon
Let me describe, before it gets away from me, submerged in the always been, how exciting and uplifting it was to realize I was walking across the floor at Carlson Toyota. Just walking. Putting one foot in front of the other. No flinching, no torquing to keep things stable. Just. Walking.
When we return to normalcy after a period of illness or trauma, there is a transition period, a time of grace if we take it, which can offer us a reminder about the wonder of the every day. To walk across a floor with no pain, to walk as one is used to doing. So powerful.
In fact, I took as my motto Walking Upright in the World reflecting back on the fact that I had to relearn to walk at the age of 2 and honoring that 2 year old guy for the gift of a normal, usually unregarded capacity to do that.
So much of what we do is really a wonder. Take grasping and holding. Typing on a keyboard. Lifting objects from the ground to over our heads. Breathing. Yes, think about breathing. Only to inhale is not enough to sustain life.
Sitting. Standing. Eating. All wonders, wonders often, perhaps usually, revealed only when they disappear from our repertoire either temporally or permanently.
So take a moment today and celebrate the walk. The jump. The high five. The low bow.
Congratulations!
Spring Planting Moon
Thunder, a quick shower. Rain tonight, I hope. Back to wanting the weather to turn seasonal, open the spigots, irrigate the crops. Our irrigation system is not turned on yet and we have no way to get water to the onion sets, leeks, beets, cucumbers and sugar snap peas we’ve placed in the soil. They need it.
My mood has begun to rise. As the back pain recedes (far from gone, but no longer the first thing I think about when I move) and my body returns to a rested state after the stress of the last week, my work begins to come to the fore. I’ve set aside the Ovid, Missing, exercising, Reimagining for time and space to heal. It was necessary and good.
Now though those higher level needs, self-actualization, begin to kick back in, assert their right to time and attention. And I’m glad they do. Tomorrow I should be back at it, and, in case you hadn’t already noticed this, being back at it is where I like to be.
We’re going to the production and broadcast of a radio drama at the Artist’s Quarter tonight: Jazz Noir. I mentioned it earlier in the week. This is the first of 5. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Spring Planting Moon
75. The temperature outside is 75. Flick back to Monday and Tuesday. Snow, blowing snow and hazardous driving conditions. Minnesota has these occasions, these, oh let’s change seasons for good today moments. Not my favorite part of Minnesota’s climate, but not a bad one either.
Seasonal whiplash.
The back has gotten better, ouching not quite so much, the trajectory seeming to have tilted in a favorable direction at last. I miss exercising.
Still feeling a bit submerged since last Sunday when Kona had to go to the emergency vet, as if I’ve not swum quite all the way back to the top. I can the green filtered light, shafts of yellow reaching me on my way up.
Soon now. Soon.
Spring Planting Moon
A full moon tonight. And good cards. Fortuna walked with me throughout the evening, giving me winning hands including one lay down.
Ed, a regular, came in tonight and said he’d made driving mistakes twice, once on his way to his house and once on his way back and wasn’t sure he would make it through the evening. He did, but I thought it was brave of him to acknowledge his anxiety, sharing it rather than fussing about it the whole evening.
Dick’s PSA, after 37 radiation treatments, is 0.0. A good report at the same time his wife, on a recheck for a nodule on her thyroid, was told it was no longer there. A good day all round.
(trump in sheepshead)
Bill continues to walk straight in his life after Regina’s death, acknowledging her absence and the profound effect it has had on his life, yet he reports gratitude as his constant companion. He waits for a clear signal as to what comes next in this changed life situation. He says, like Ram Dass, Still Here.
Spring Planting Moon
I apologize for the long series of posts on my back and my shoulder and my angst. In part they come because this blog has replaced my long habit of keeping written journals, so you get what happens, if you’re a reader here.
In part they come because they track my progress (regress? slide? decline?) into the later years when the body repairs itself less quickly. In part they come, mostly they come, because they are what is foremost to me at the moment.
Still, I know such posts can turn off readers who also suffer from their aches and pains, their own flurries of difficult to handle matters, their own angst. All I can say is that this an ancientrail, too, one followed by so many, most, maybe, probably by all. So it is not about me I write, but us inflected at the moment by an Oklahoma born, Indiana raised, Minnesota preferred man and his 66 year old body.
Though my back feels somewhat better I am now weary, tired from the last week plus, probably allowing myself to be tired because Kate’s on her way home. Now I will be able to focus on recovering, not recovering, reinjuring and managing. Looking forward to it.