Category Archives: Health

Asia, Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Could Get Ugly

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers and chesed. Coffee. Coffee mugs. From the Gunflint Trail. From Kate and mine’s 25th anniversary. With Dogs. From the Polar Express. World’s Greatest Grandpa. Southern Poverty Law Project. Memories in ceramics.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Another wakin’ up mornin’

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: Turn on the coffee grinder with dark roast beans, fill the coffee pot with filtered water, tighten the lid on the pot, separate out one filter for the coffee basket, measure two-thirds of a cup of ground beans, place the basket in its holder, pour the water into the reservoir, close the lid. Minutes later. Ahhh.

 

Morning rituals like making coffee. Saying the Shema. Touching the mezuzah. Breakfast. Reading the news or a morning book. Waiting a half an hour before exercise. Get my day off to a good start. The golden hours from waking up, around 6 these days, until 2 or 3. A life.

 

In Nexus Harari points to stories as those things that can connect us, many, many of us, in a shared enterprise: family, state, nation, passenger on spaceship Earth. Becoming human. I agree with him. Even family, which we take as a given, easy to define and know depends on the kinship story that our cultures teach us. In the U.S. we have pared down the family through our emphasis on individualism. The nuclear family tends to be the hub until the kids get older, then even family can narrow further to a couple or a single person. All held together by increasingly thin cords of memory and affection.

Ruth on her own at UC-Boulder. Gabe and Jen. Me on Shadow Mountain. My son and Seoah and Murdoch in Korea. Mary in Southeast Asia. Kate and Jon dead.

This frays the old patterns of families caring for their aged memories. This is a crisis, too, even in traditional societies like China and Japan where birth rates have plummeted, marriage is suspect, and adult children there often want the kind of freedom American culture offers. Especially mobility and choosing their own partners.

I’m lucky in that Kate left me enough money to sustain my life on my own. That I have good, close friends here and far away. I can manage. But my circumstances are not shared by many, perhaps not most of my age peers. Culture changes more slowly than jobs do. Than desire and ability to live a life of your own making does.

Again, my family. Mary and Mark in Asia and Saudi Arabia for much of their adult lives. Me in Minnesota, then the Rockies. Far from the Sycamores on the Wabash. Far from Madison County. Alexandria. As my analyst Jon Desteian put it: an atomized family.

All this now put in the alembic of an unserious man and his many hatreds, his colleagues yearning to reshape reality in an even more atomized direction, hoping to dismantle the New Deal, strip away the thin gruel offered by Medicare, Social Security.

Could get ugly.

 

 

Friends, Health, Writing

oh my

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Samain and the moon of growing darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: self-care. Dictating. Wind. Knives. Apples. Dressing the wound. Remembering Kate. Blood red. Cloth tape

Sparks of joy and awe: taking care of myself

Intention: compassion

One brief shining: that honeycrisp apple sat on the cutting board, seven pieces cut, on the eighth piece my hand slipped and I sliced my give them hell finger, lots of blood a bit of confusion got it to stop bleeding and congratulated myself on good self-care.

 

 

With a clumsy bandage on my give them hell finger I’m trying out dictation on word to produce this post. It’s pretty good, but I find it too slow. I I can talk ohh um well I’ll leave that in to show you the fat that I’m on a learning curve with this method of writing. If it can even be called writing.

I can talk faster than I type, but the program cannot go as fast as I talk and and produce legible text. Even so, it’s better than putting blood on the keyboard.

Started back with exercising yesterday morning. Harder than I imagined it would be, but I’m going to keep at it. Started reading seat keepers, no, seed keepers. Recommended by Paul. No lying OK we’ll keep that in too just to show you the curve has not reached far off the bottom of the graph.

This morning I’m having my winter tires put on about 25 inches of snow too late. Also having my differential lubrication refreshed. Marilyn and nerve no herb no IRV right lower case. Still learning. Can’t tell whether it’s my voice or the program, probably a bit of both.

Marilyn and I RV backspace backspace backspace oh oh. Ohh my. Verb. No. Leaning in to the microphone. Erve. Well, that’s as close as we’re gonna get.

They are picking me up at stevenson’s Toyota and taking me out to breakfast. It will be a long morning for Ruby. Now see the program correctly capitalized my maroon Toyota Rav 4. No line ohh.

This is borderline painful. I’m going to take seed keepers with me so I’ll have something to read. I imagine I will be in the very familiar customer lounge at Stevensons for some time.

I’m going to stop now. Hope this doesn’t have to be my means of communicating with you for very long.

Aging, Asia, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Seek-Keepers, Shadow Mountain, US History

An American Sannyasa

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Snow, and more Snow on the way. Harris and Waltz. Liberals. And, radicals. Politics. Changing in big ways. History. Always moving and shifting. The One, taking it all in and forming a new world. Cold nights. Diane. Tom. Irv. Paul. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Shadow Mountain. A Snow globe week.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Purpose

Kavannah for election week: contentment and joy

One brief shining: May have seemed odd to you that I chose contentment and joy as my intentions for election week, that most fractious and unhappy of weeks for one side or another, may have seemed odd especially to have continued with them after the elevation of an anti-liberal mean of our collective culture; yet, I have found them good for me, instead of being angry about a situation now beyond my reach, I have been able to draw to myself a lesson about my life’s purpose.

 

A while back I borrowed the idea of a fourth phase of life from the Hindus.* I don’t define it in the same way, but I find the idea of a stage after retirement-our version of the forest dweller stage-makes sense.

The commonality between my view and Hinduism’s lies in death and acceptance. Readiness for death and seeing it as not only somewhat imminent, but as welcome.

This week I not only learned that the orange one will be our next President. I also learned that my cancer is not aggressive, and not hormone resistant. Which gives me a longer possible lifespan. And, I’m glad. Even so. Death lies over the horizon, but not nearly as far as it used to.

I would not know if I was fully enlightened and I’m not detached. I may have some wisdom but that’s for others to know, not me.

The rise of a populist anti-liberal agenda, a rise that came with unexpected force, has clarified my fourth phase. Though I am a Forest dweller and though that remains a central part of who I am, I passed, as I said a week or so ago, into Sannyasa when diagnosed with prostate cancer. Over the almost ten years since then I’ve been conflicted at a core level.

Some of the conflicts. In but not of Judaism. No longer an activist but feeling like I should be one. Wanting to hike in the mountains but being constrained first by shortness of breath, now by a gimpy back too. Wanting to travel more. But. See s.o.b and back. Learning to live without Kate and without dogs.

Resolutions. Converted to Judaism. Election 2024 has made see my role in culture and politics. I am a seed-keeper, not an activist anymore. (If this isn’t cultural appropriation. I hope not because it fits so well.) Hiking and traveling. Can do some with good drugs and patience, but it’s never gonna be easy for me again. I have lived into a life without Kate and without dogs. Difficult, of course. At times it still is. Yet I have a Herme Harari Israel life defined now:  An introverted Mountain man who struggles with God. However you want to fill the God bucket. Or, even if you want to live it empty.

So I will continue to write. Continue to read. Continue to study mussar and be with my CBE friends. Continue to love them and my other friends and family. All this is enough for me. My fourth phase. An American Sannyasa.

 

*Brahmacharya The student stage, when one focuses on learning and gaining knowledge. This stage is the time before puberty and up until marriage.

Grihastha The householder stage, when one is occupied with family and household matters. This stage is when one starts a family and maintains a healthy marriage.

Vanaprastha The forest dweller stage, when one retires from business as usual.

Sannyasa The stage of renunciation, when one is wise and fully enlightened, detached from everything, and ready for death. A Sannyasi is a religious ascetic who has renounced the world by performing their own funeral and abandoning all claims to social or family standing. 

Acting, Cinema and Television, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, US History

I know

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Wednesday gratefuls: Generator. Electricity. Snow. America. Our coming time of growing darkness. Harris. Troubled. Elections. Democracy. My son. Mountains. The West. Minnesota. Colorado. The Left Coast. History. Coffee. Prostate Cancer. Hibernation. Bears. Mountain Lions. Mule Deer. Elk. Wild Neighbors.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends and Family

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: The oxygen concentrator coughed and turned off as the fan’s light blinked on, then off, I waited a moment, and heard the chug-chug-chug of the generator kick on as the automatic transfer switch did its job and the oxygen concentrator returned to duty and the fan bathed me in light. Time to get up.

 

There will be time, too much time, to sort out the implications. Yes, he won. I know. Yet I still seek this week contentment and joy. I will still enjoy and celebrate the holidays of light and the one of darkness, most important to me. Thanksgiving will find me looking back over my gratefuls, finding the ones appropriate to that day.

I love my son, Seoah, Murdoch. Mary and Mark. Luke and Leo. My Ancient Brothers. Ginny and Janice. Marilyn and Irv. Alan and Joanne. Tara and Arjean. The MVP group. CBE. This country. Now more than ever. All Dogs and Wild Neighbors. All members of the Tribe wherever they may be.

Relinquishing my equanimity, my joy, my contentment to the fevered anxieties of those losing their status and power. No. I will not do that. This morning on a Snow covered Shadow Mountain I am at peace. Neither angry nor despairing. Ready though.

A suffering world has drunk the toxic waters of he who would save them. The USA has not shrugged off this trend, instead it has leaned into it. As always when history turns this way, the need for those who will carry the flag of justice and democracy and freedom through and beyond these days reaches its high tide.

We need each other. We need to stand up and to sit down with each other. To continue our lives. To embrace beauty and wholeness. To seek and find the sacred in each moment and in each person we meet.

We must not raise the cup of bitterness and despondency. Instead pour it out and refill the cup with whatever gives your life fullness, satisfaction. This is what we will need to ensure our children and grandchildren inherit a world not driven by fear.

 

Just a moment: Found out yesterday that I’m not in hormone resistant prostate cancer. At least not yet. My PSA has continued to go down, though it’s not yet undetectable. Means my metastases are not growing.

This news was welcome and it came on Election Day.

 

Watched the tenth and final episode of 1883 yesterday, too. Cried through it all. This is transcendent television, showing what the medium can do. Over these next four years I want to channel Elsa’s spirit of embracing the moment, embracing joy and pain, seeing this wild and often strange world for what it is. Our home.

 

Herme Harari Israel

 

 

Cinema and Television, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Shadow Mountain, US History

Seeking Contentment and Joy. Losing them.

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Sadness. Unhappiness. Dismay. Prostate cancer. Dr. Buphati. That P.A. Kristie. Contentment. Joy. Pain. 1883. Ilsa May. Her role as Elsa Dutton. Cold Nights. Snow. Wild Neighbors. The West. Comanche. Lakota. The Great Plains. Buffalo. A Wild and undiscovered country still. The West of my heart.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Home

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: In a small office at Rocky Mountain Cancer Care I experienced dismay, unhappiness, a strange intersection of politics and self care, and again, as I did on the drive home three weeks ago from RMCC, I felt alone, this time in the usual patient’s chair listening to the P.A. say they had no PSA for me.

 

First jolt was seeing a P.A. instead of Dr. Buphati. I liked him, was counting on his knowledge to guide me through what came next. She offered to go get him. She said she did not care either way. This was the strange intersection of politics and self care. I wanted to see Buphati, but I didn’t want to deny her skills, her right to be there. Feminism strong in me. In medicine especially. Kate.

Second jolt. We have no PSA for you. I deflated. This appointment was supposed to define the next steps in a journey that had made confusing turns over the summer and early fall. Why not? How can you not know?

She said (I don’t remember her name, if it even got through the fog.) I just got assigned.

Then I got unhappy and said so. I’m unhappy and disappointed. I don’t understand how after three weeks you don’t have it. My expectations about knowing what comes next had me in knots. I wanted, no needed, to know and I couldn’t. But why? In the end it didn’t matter.

Go ahead, I waved my hand dismissively. Still trying to reorient. She handed me the results of the DNA results for my cancer cells. Nothing of significance. That means no clinical trials, no targeted therapies. Oh. I took the papers, glanced at them, wondering where my readers were. Nothing of significance. Oh.

In the end she went to get Dr. Buphati. Who came in masked, as was she. Making it difficult for me to hear. He agreed I had every right to be upset. That somehow the lab didn’t have the results. I told him my upset had started back in June when my PSA went up after my drug holiday. Then went down after going back on Orgovyx. My visit to the radiation oncologist who said I had hormone resistant cancer. After which Kristie said, no. Not without rising PSA on two drugs. Erleada came next. This was the PSA measure that would tell the difference. But there were no test results.

We talked for a bit more. His knowledge and clarity helped me calm, but the dismay and the sadness had already burrowed their way into my feelings of the moment. When the phlebotomist, a kind Latina, young, asked me how I was, I said feeling down. And I was. She knew that already. Helped me put on my jacket.

I wanted contentment and joy. They were/are my intentions for this week, but I lost them at the words no PSA results. I wanted to be calm, clear, kind. But I wasn’t. I felt let down by Dr. Buphati, by RMCC. No mussar moves came to mind.

So the valet got my car and I drove away toward the Mountains, wanting only to be home.

 

Just a moment: That was yesterday. I got some Chicken wings, cole slaw, and Potatoes at Safeway, drove to Shadow Mountain, and binged 1883. Soothing myself. Letting myself feel sad, disappointed.

In 1883 I witnessed one of the best dramatic performances I’ve seen. Ilsa May, a young actress, plays Elsa Dutton who turns 18 as her family makes their way as part of a wagon train headed to Oregon. Her arc from bonneted, piano-playing Tennessee girl to cowgirl, then wife of a Comanche warrior and becoming a warrior herself was an alembic for my feelings. In seeing Elsa take the real agonies and the ecstasies of young maturation I rode with her. Seeing a way through the self-inflicted responses I had. Better this morning. Much better. Thanks, Elsa.

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Literature, Mussar

Contentment and Joy

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Snow. 4-5 inches. Powder. Or, as the skiers say: Pow. Vikings win. The Ancient Brothers. Walking Each Other Home. Mark in K.L. The Brickfields. The lives of all the Wild Neighbors. Everywhere. And, all the domesticated Animals. The Great Wheel. The Tarot. Kabbalah. Living in joy. Cosmic voids. Sculpture. Rodin. Brancusi.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: First substantial Snow of the season

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: At night I crank open the casement window over my bed, letting in the  smell of Lodgepoles and Grass as the Night Air streams over my head, when Snow begins to fall like it did last night Snowflakes come through the screen, shower me in a light experience of the weather outside, and often, like last night, make the window hard to close.

 

Without knowing. Without certainty. I claim today my joy and my contentment. I seek today those moments that delight my heart, tickle my inner child. Like my Lodgepole Companion holding the powdery Snow as an early seasonal decoration. Thinking of lights, Christmas and Diwali and Hanukah and Kwanza and Yule. Remembering sliding down the hill at the end of Monroe Street and taking my sled over the jumps we kids created. Of the farm outside of Nevis, Minnesota on a Snowy day, air-tight stove crackling with good, dense Oak logs, the cook stove boiling water for coffee. Of standing by the Shadow Mountain kitchen window with Kate by my side, watching the Snow come down. How lucky we are to live here, she would say. Yep, I would reply.

Also enough coffee in the pot this morning for a full cup. The mini-splits keeping the house warm. An early Dawn, at least according to the clock. Life, this precious and wonderful gift.

Reading, that most amazing skill. Example: The Emptiness of the Universe Gives Our Lives Meaning. I loved this short piece. The cosmologist Paul Sutter chose for his life work the study of cosmic voids. The apparently empty spots between and among galaxies, local clusters, superclusters. How innovative and creative, to study negative space. It’s as if an art historian chose to study only the negative space in sculpture, in paintings. Or a musicologist specializing in rests and stops.

I am content. I’ll have Fire in the Fireplace tonight. Toss some Pinōn on for a scent treat, thinking of the clay stoves in the corners of rooms in New Mexico. I’ll have a good book, probably An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns-Goodwin recommended by Marilyn.

I’ll take in what Dr. Buphati has to say at 2:30 today and I will see it as the next steps necessary to claim the life I have yet to live. Not as the first steps toward death. Which comes anyhow.

Realized the other day that after my Bar Mitzvah, literally the day after when I had my unsettling telehealth visit with Kristie, I’ve been living with the notion of a shortened life span, an inner focus on decline. So much so that I gave up exercising. Wanted to privilege spontaneity.

My year of living Jewishly had its capstone moment and I voluntarily took the steps down into my Cloud of unknowing. And reified it. Since that day, June 12th of this year, until last week, I’ve had a focus on less than, what would soon be missing. Me. I made a pivot from a deep plunge into Judaism to a dive into the shallow end of lack. Broke my heart for a while.

Then I began to understand that the Cloud of unknowing was the true and only way to view life. Whether shorter or longer, I don’t know. As has always been the case. I came up from the mikveh a Jew. I came up from the shallow end of lack attentive again to today, to this life as I have it now. As I will until I don’t.

Herme Harari Israel

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

The Obstacle is the Way

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Mabon and the 3% crescent of the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Teshuvah. The Shema. A unified metaphysic. Cancer. Prostate and all other forms. Oncologists medical, radiational, and urological. The Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos.* Rebecca in India. Mark still in K.L. Mary and Guru, too. Songtan, South Korea. San Francisco. The Twin Cities. Maine. The Rocky Mountains. Boulder. Denver. Where my close people live.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cold Air

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Turned off Union Avenue, found a parking spot, crossed the small bridge over the I’m sure well intended faux creek, into the zombie office building, one of hundreds, maybe thousands in the Denver metro, found the elevator and pressed 4 in the five story building, got out and walked down the long hall, empty office spaces splayed out on either side, only two occupied on the whole floor, Locomotive Services and Mile High Hearing, where my newly refurbished hearing aid got returned to me, bluetoothed to my phone of course as it would be, right?

 

A few now barriers to being clear as the Scientologists say:

1. Government ban on Kaspersky antivirus and password manager has forced me to get a new password manager. Bitwarden. I found a way to transfer all my passwords to it, but it’s new to me and doesn’t work the same way Kaspersky did. Means I often to have to stop for something formerly automated. A first world problem for sure. But…

2. That 529 that will help Ruth pay her college bills? I’ve gotten everything into them, twice. Except. They don’t like the declaration my lawyer sent them saying I inherited 100% of Kate’s assets. They want a small estate affidavit. For estates under seventy-nine thousand dollars or so. Doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been at this since early August. Unresolved.

3. Herme. My time of mourning, early grieving neon sign depicting the Hermit from the Wildwoods Tarot deck has gone dark. Need to call an electrician.

4. My once upon a time reliable handyman, Vince, has ghosted me on a few tasks. Do I start a relationship with someone new? Always something of a hassle. He also does my snowplowing. ?

5. Only non-first world issue here. See Buphati, my new medical oncologist, again this Monday. He’ll give me my PSA to see if I fit into castration resistant or castration sensitive diagnostic criteria. He will also update me on the DNA of my cancer cells and whether there’s some treatment modality available.  Also, when I’ll need another PET scan. Probably, too, how, if at all, radiation factors in to my next treatments.

Just a moment: As we will have to learn how to adapt to full on climate change, we may have to learn how to live in a dramatically changed nation. My teeth gnashing, dooms day for democracy feelings are gone. I’m ready to push into the next phase of our nation’s history. If necessary.

  • THE FATES and their roles
  • Clotho: The spinner, who spun the thread of human fate
  • Lachesis: The allotter, who dispensed the thread
  • Atropos: The inflexible one, who cut the thread to determine the moment of death 

Friends, Health, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Writing

An Unsystematic Theology for the non-Supernatural

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Mabon and the waning Sukkot Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ginny. Janice. Alan and the Piggin’ Out Barbecue in Lakewood. The Evergreen Chorale. Ovation West. Community Theater. Gabe. Ruth. Studio Arts. UC Boulder. Go, Buffs. Coach Prime. Great Sol. Maxwell Creek to Bear Creek to the South Platte to the Missouri to the Mississippi to the World Ocean.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Watersheds

Kavannah: Serenity  Menucha

One brief shining: At the Piggin’ Out Barbecue you enter behind their food truck, WhattheTruck, and find yourself in a room only big enough for 8 people, six if they’re large sized, and a smiling woman with silver eyeliner, at a tiny counter, the menu on the wall to her left, a glass covered drinks cooler on the other side of a doorway leading back to the kitchen, out of which a staff person comes carrying finished orders outside to one of three seating areas, one in an enclosed tent, another under what looks like a large carport, and the third tables on a concrete slab.

 

Met Alan at Piggin’ Out last night. Tasty. I had a slab of ribs with spicy sauce, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and a honey glazed chunk of corned bread. Obviously a joint and a local favorite. People came and went while we ate, most picking up to go orders.

Had breakfast with Marilyn and Irv, too. A day of friends and minor key domestic tasks.

 

Ann, my palliative care nurse, called just as I’d hit the garage door button on my way to Piggin’ Out. She had to reschedule. A funeral on Friday. We set up a zoom for Thursday in place of our 1 pm Friday appointment. Looking forward to talking to her. This regular conversation with a medical person feels supportive, kind. We all need support and kindness.

 

As you can tell from my title, I’ve chosen a path that works for me. I tried, more than once, to write a Ge-ology. A Pagan Halakah. A Great Work focused website. Systematic. With chapters and subheadings and thoughtful transitions between big ideas. A Mother Earth focused imitatio of, oh what the hell, Aquinas, Tillich, Barth. Discovered my mind doesn’t work that way. I work in smaller, sermon or ancientrails sized pieces. And, thoughtful transitions, building toward a comprehensive conclusion about matters holy, sacred, and divine? Not so much.

However. I have written, over the course of many sermons and postings, in hand-written journals, and spoken in numerous conversations, occasionally insightful remarks about the nature and accessibility of the sacred world. I want to begin gathering those, seeing if I can place them somehow together without giving up their ad hoc, highly contextualized origins. A Hermes’ Journey task.

 

Just a moment: Well. A week from now. 7 days.  Do you feel a big nuclear bomb with a cowboy dressed Orange One astride it, one hand on the fuse and the other waving a Stetson dropped toward our nation? Or, do you hear high heels clacking on the floors of their new home in that big Whitehouse on Pennsylvania Avenue?

I have no idea what will happen. Maybe like you?

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Writing

Not sure at all

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Garbage out. No garbage back in. Shirley Waste. Nights in the thirties. Jennie’s Dead. Dead. Phantom Tollbooth. Most excellent. Coffee in the morning. Mineral Water. Spoons. Forks. Knives. Especially Japanese knives. Fruit. Clementines. Grapes. Bananas. Honeycrisp Apples. Pears. Tomatoes. Dragon. Jack. Durian. Asia. Begging bowls.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Mind. Whatever it is.

Kavannah: Netzach in its sense of persistence

One brief shining: Sitting on a knife edge, no, wait, standing on a narrow path, chasms on either side, a Mountain Meadow at the end of the path, I’m walking shakily, old man legs weakened by sarcopenia and easy distraction, needing to cross yet another hazard in the video game Life, will I keep on exercising? Or, not.

 

When I considered stopping my cancer treatments, I stopped exercising. Felt a whoosh of freedom. I have time in my days for creative work, taking care of domestic tasks, living my life of tasks, of agency. Why, you might ask? Well, I exercise, which I have done since turning 42, 43, now only in the mornings. It’s when I have energy.

Dilemma and the source of the freedom feeling. That’s also when I feel good to write, make phone calls, pay bills, do difficult reading, load and unload the dishwasher, pick up around the house. I also have regular breakfasts which break into the morning as well.

By early afternoon, two or three at the latest and that if I had a full night’s sleep-which I usually do-my energy wanes into watch TV, read fiction, light tasks. Often a nap.

You can see the problem. Does the exercising provide enough benefit to me to use up valuable morning energy? When life has begun to look shorter. Which I admit could be wrong. I feel like the answer to this question is yes, it does. Because. Vitiates sarcopenia. Lifts my mood. Improves my heart rate. Helps my bowels.

But. I also want to write. In particular. And writing requires a rhythm. Which I find best now in the mornings. The fog of the afternoon and evening is subtle. Some of the obfuscation comes from fatigue. Pure physical weariness. Better now with the celebrex, but still enough to slow me down. Some of the obfuscation though, and this is the critical one, is mental. Not in my mind doesn’t work as well then, at least mostly not that. But a sort of brake, a diminishment of will.

Example. Today I need to call the MnSaves folks to continue the process-the now toooo looonnnggg-process of transferring Ruth and Gabe’s education money into my name. I can handle the phone call, the waiting, the repeating of information, the yet one more thing to do in the morning. I won’t do it the afternoon. If I absolutely had to, I could, but I don’t feel emotionally ready to put up with bureaucratic bullshit later in the day.

Example. I tried to workout in the afternoon a couple of weeks ago. Made sense to me since I used to workout at 4 pm for about twenty years. Nope. My body does not want to do that.

It is true that I can engage others just fine though. Like MVP Monday night. Like Mussar at 1pm on Thursdays. But. If I do that more than once or twice a week, or if, like Monday I don’t get to sleep until late, it cuts into my morning time.

Not sure how to handle this. Not sure at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Love is more powerful than discomfort.

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Grandma. At Chief Hosa lodge

Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Monday gratefuls: Boulder. Ruth. Snarfs. The Flatirons. The greens as Great Sol sank below the horizon. Grandpopping. Podcasts. One on crime and disorder. Another on Walter Benjamin. Falling. Of the Aspen Leaves. The dry Willow Leaves blow away, many carried downstream by Maxwell Creek. Samain only 10 days away. Simchat Torah Wednesday.

Sparks of joy and awe: UC Boulder

Kavannah: Compassion  Rachamin

One brief shining: Ruth and I sat at a blue metal table on Pearl Street, Boulder’s main drag, our paper wrapped sandwiches spread out in front of us, mine a french dip sans jus, hers something with nothing animal, a few cars drove by since we were far from the Mall, Leaves finished with their seasons work lay scattered on the sidewalk as we spoke of painful childhoods, death, deception, and treachery.

 

Our initial impetus for moving to Colorado came after I attended an Ira Progoff retreat in Tucson. In a meditation on the next stepping stones of my life I realized Kate and I needed to be here in Colorado for the kids. Reinforced on the drive back when I showed up at Jon and Jen’s with no warning to Ruth. She saw me, turned and ran back in the house. That was April of 2014.

Kate agreed. We gave ourselves two years to make the move. Momentum took over though and by that October Kate had been in Colorado as our scout, finding a house. I knew I would dither and Kate was decisive. 9358 Black Mountain Drive. In the Mountains as we both wanted. Jen called it Mountain fever and was mad that we’d not moved closer. We however were not coming to be babysitters, but grandparents.

Andover and its gardens, its bees, its orchard, its woods had become too physically demanding for us. Kate had retired three years before. It was an inflection point for us. We still had four dogs: Kepler, Rigel, Gertie, and Vega. As the Winter Solstice neared Tom Crane and I got in our Rav4 with tranquilized Kepler, Rigel, and Vega. Drove straight through. Rather, Tom did. We talked the whole way only stopping when one mammal or another had to pee. Kate left a day or so later in a van I had packed full with items we didn’t trust to the movers. She had Gertie with her, feeding her Whoppers on the way out. Well. Parts of Whoppers. Which Kate reported Gertie approved.

In the Garden Andover

Leaving the Twin Cities after forty years, a bit longer for Kate, was tough. I had friends, especially the Woolly Mammoths, and I had immersed myself in the cultural life of the Twin Cities: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra where Kate and I met. The Science museum which Joseph and I loved. The Children’s Theater, The Guthrie, the MIA, the Walker. Both of us had spent hours and yet more hours planting, weeding, living with dogs, caring for bees and extracting honey. Sitting by the firepit. Just being together in a place we shaped from our first days there.

Yet. The call of being with our grandkids as they grew up in what we knew were challenging circumstances with an angry mother and father felt compelling.

Kate and Ruth developed a strong, strong bond. Kate helped Ruth learn to cook, sew, be a Jew, and a young woman. I took Ruth on adventures to museums, the National Western Stockshow, hikes in the Mountains. Gabe, too. When Kate died, then Jon, Barb, Jen’s mother aka Tennessee Grandma, and I were left. Barb had to move to into an assisted living spot and sees the kid’s less.

I would have gone to Hawai’i in spite of all this had I not figured out that my son and Seoah’s return there was not certain as I’d initially thought. Glad it turned out that way. Ruth and I have become close, Gabe as well. I’m an important, stable, calm presence in both of their lives. They both love Shadow Mountain Home, being up here.

Now I drive to Boulder once or twice a month. Gabe comes up and stays for a couple of nights. Critical for them, I believe. And, me. When I think about them, about my son and Seoah, about Mark and Mary and Diane, then about cancer, I can see keeping up with treatments as long as they are life extending. Love is more powerful than discomfort.