Category Archives: Health

Boulder, Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Earth Waves

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The Harvest Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. Boulder. Ruby. Celebrex. Tramadol. THC. Gettin’ old. The gradual arrival of Fall. Great Sol. The Flatirons. The High Plains as they wash up against the Laramide Oregeny’s Rocky Mountains. Mountains as Earth Waves. Second looks at my prostate cancer facts. Kristie. Steve. Dr. Leonard. Mr. In Between. Whippets. My son.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Staying the course with Ruth and Gabe

Kavanah: STABILITY יְסוֹד Yesod    Stable, rooted, grounded; literally “foundation”  Ninth Sefirah = Connection & communication; covenant relationship; regenerative organ  [נְתִיקָה Netika: Disconnected, detached, rootless, neurotic]

One brief shining: We gathered, the three of us, the last of Jon’s close family, sitting outside at the Hapa Sushi Grill and Sake Bar, Jon’s complicated impact on each of us lifted to the surface as we ordered the Multiple Orgasm Roll, the Hapa Special Roll, and a sashimi sampler with Daikon fries while Labor Day freed Boulderites and UC students wandered up and down the Pearl Street Mall.

 

At ten am Gabe and I took off for Boulder, an hour drive from Shadow Mountain. Once on 470 we headed east always driving along the Hogbacks that mark the earlier Oregeny (Mountain Building) phase that preceded the Laramide. Thrust up on angles toward the west, these ancient Rock formations mark the end of the High Plains, or their beginning. Heading east from the Hogbacks the High Plains move toward their lower, yet contiguous sisters that make up the Plains States, running as far east as western Minnesota.

Though technically the west begins around the 105th parallel in Nebraska, where Rainfall dips below 20 inches a year, the feeling of being in the West, the Mountain West, only begins when you see the Rockies in the distance and their older brethren, the Hogbacks. Coming from the east, of course, as I mostly have.

I have a marked sense of awe, in Hebrew yirah, wherever I drive in the Mountains. This path from Shadow Mountain to Boulder thrills me, as it follows the evidence of plate tectonics active 75 through 35 million years ago, evidence inescapable to the eye and to the internal combustion engine. The hand of Gaia splashing the ocean of land and creating waves in her outermost layer, easy to see even now so long after she finished. Earth waves.

 

Just a moment: Even with the Celebrex on board, the drive from home to Boulder, then to Denver to drop Gabe off on Galena Street and finally back west through Denver and up 285, left me in pain. And long before I finally got home.

When I got back, I hurt so bad I tossed in a tramadol and an edible. Big mistake. My stomach said no, I do not like this, not at all. Please go to bed. So I did. At 4:30 pm. Got back up a couple of hours later.

Worth it though. Gabe and Ruth need time together and time with me. Especially yesterday, two days from the second anniversary of Jon’s death. I gave both of them yahrzeit candles, candles that burn the full 24 hours of a yahrzeit. Had to take Ruth’s back because: no candles at all ever in the dorms. Oh. Yeah.

 

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health

Coiled Around It In a Flash

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The Off to College Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Seoah. My son. Dawn. A milky gray blue Sky. 47 degrees. Leo and Luke. Lakewood. Autism. Cash on hand. The Beatles. Mary and Mark, their ex-pat lives. Mary between K.L. and Melbourne; Mark between humid, libertine Bangkok and arid, rule bound Saudi Arabia. Ode in Glacier, seeing, then drawing. Travel. Taipei. Seoul. Songtan. Taos. Santa Fe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Celebrex

Kavanah:  KINDNESS חֶסֶד Chesed   Kindness, sharing, helpfulness  Fourth Sefirah = expansion & unboundedness; love & mercy; right hand pulling closer (opposite Gevurah/Strength) (טוּב-לֵב Tuv Lev: Good-heartedness, benevolence, charitableness)

One brief shining: At Luke’s in Lakewood yesterday I watched Sacha, his Ball Python, move around her aquarium home, forked tongue piercing the air as her sinuous moves carried over a Tree branch, dipped her nose into the water, then slipped around and behind a large rock, always the tongue out, sniffing the air; she’s hungry, Luke said, looking for the live rats I give her.

 

Sacha, named after Sacha Mama, a Peruvian forest guardian deity, gets fed in a plastic bucket. Luke quickly throws in a live rat, about every two weeks. She’s coiled around it in a flash, he said. Sometimes the rat’s eyes bulge until it quit thrashing. Sacha releases the rat and feels it with her head until she determines where the head is and proceeds to consume it head first, moving it through her body as she goes into S-shaped constrictions to crush all of its bones. Takes her about two days to digest her meal. Gentle Luke. Primal Sacha. Nature red in tooth and scale.

 

Gabe’s coming up today. We’ll go searching for wild Raspberries along Kate’s Creek. Hope we find some since he loves eating wild fruit. Tomorrow we head over to UC-Boulder and pick up Ruth. We plan a sushi meal on the Pearl Street Mall in honor of Jon, who died two years ago on September 4th. It’s important that I celebrate with them since we’re Jon’s surviving family.

Afterward, I’ll take Gabe home to Galena Street in northeast Denver and hopefully drive home against returning Labor Day traffic. The Celebrex makes all of this possible with much less stress on my body. Which I very much appreciate.

 

Just a moment: Another surprising word about chronic pain. First, my shortness of breath has diminished. Not sure why though it might be that the fatigue caused by pain led my respiratory muscles to tire, too. Second, it’s not perfect, but I don’t need it to be. I still feel little jolts and tweaks in my hip. What’s different is that my back and core aren’t struggling to contain the pain, tightening and holding in awkward positions.

I’m still amazed at how much pain relief has done to help my quality of life. Only beginning to appreciate what it might mean if I can continue to use the Celebrex. We’ll check kidney and liver functions in a month and if they’re ok, every three months after. I may have to buy Cheryl, my phlebotomist, a cake. She says she’s gonna retire in January, but I hope not. She’s smooth as buttah.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Mountains, Politics

Got it now

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The Off to College Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Diane. Ruth in Willville. Taking college classes. Eating dorm food. Gabe, coming up this weekend. My son and Seoah, a year ago yesterday in Songtan. Travel. Celebrex will help. Affirming life. Not waiting on death. Greeting Great Sol. The new fan in my bedroom. Keeping me cool. Electric blankets. Eyes. The occipital lobe. Frontal cortex. Amygdala. Hippocampus. Gray matter. White matter. Limbic system. Sloshing around in our skulls.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mark’s new job!

Kavanah:  PEACE  שָׁלוֹם Shalom   Peace, quietness, wholeness (קוֹר רוּחַ Kor Ruach: Calm, composure, literally a “cool spirit”) [בֶּהָלָה Behala, beh-ha-LAH: Fear, alarm, panic]

One brief shining: The blue Sky silhouettes the gentle curve of Black Mountain, its stony bulk covered by green Lodgepoles and clonal colonies of Aspen, at ten thousand feet it rises another twelve hundred feet above my home here on the top of Shadow Mountain, yet does not lord it over us, rather graces us with a neighborly, oh, there’s another Mountain feeling.

 

Sometimes I read more into what people say than they intend. I’m not the only one, I’m pretty sure. Let me give you an example. In conversation with my long time and dear friend Tom he made a casual comment about my application to get a Whippet puppy. “That’s a life affirming choice.”

He meant, I now believe: “That’s a life affirming choice.” I heard: I’m relieved you’ve finally made a life affirming choice after several weeks focused on death or disability. Which, of course, reflects my immersion, partial, yes, but tangible nonetheless, in matters cancerous over the last few weeks.

Since, in fact, that day after my bar mitzvah, when he and Paul listened in on my telehealth visit with Kristie. I try, and most of the time believe I succeed, in living a balanced life when it comes to cancer. That is, I acknowledge its existence, keep up with my blood draws, doctor visits, take my meds. Do what’s needed, what I can do. After that let it lie as a complex fact of my existence, not really at the level of consciousness most of the time.

Over the time since my PSA went up during my drug holiday, sooner than Kristie expected, I’ve been up and down, a shortened life span, wrestling the lesser demons in my body, mostly in an unhappy stew of uncertainty about where things stood. I felt Tom had ridden through my cover and seen the other side. Now, he may have. But in this instance he was not talking about that, but instead he was giving me a thumbs up for doggy possibilities. Sorry, Tom. Got it now.

 

Just a Moment: The asshole snuck above the fold with his usual gauchity, douchebagness. Doing politics in Arlington Cemetery. Flouting military rules designed to prevent it. I suppose this falls under the there’s no such thing as bad publicity rule. I’m so, so tired of him, of his disregard for decency, for the rule of law, for his support of white supremacists, his misogyny, his overall creepiness. So tired.

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Heirs

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The Off to College Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Diane. Brother Mark’s Bangkok walks. Water Monitors. Cattle Egrets. Wild Neighbors in urban areas. Rebecca leaving for India and the Buddhist nunnery. Joanne. Her new book with two Buddhist therapists. Pain. Cranking it down without addiction. Whippets. Sight Hounds. And those who love and breed them. Dogs. Oh, OK. Dogs again.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sight Hounds

Kavannah:  Friendship  אַחֲוָה Achava (חֲבֵרוּת Chaverut: Partnership, camaraderie) (אַחְדוּת Achdut: Unity, solidarity, togetherness)

One brief shining: A few decades ago, maybe 4, a group of middle-aged men who knew each other somewhat well ate dinner together in an Indian restaurant in Minneapolis, joined by two other men who did not know each other, but had slight acquaintance with one or two of the others; might have been a poker night or a get together to watch the Vikings lose another big game, instead it was the beginning of 40 year plus bonds of friendship among the Woolly Mammoths, who surprisingly still live up to their motto: We’re not extinct yet.

Wegman’s

Keep forgetting to post this. If you wanted to mail drugs worth $800 for a thirty day supply, how would you package them? Wegman’s is a compounding specialty pharmacy. Inside this colorful wrap sat my first doses of this round of Erleada. Clever, eh? And it gives the healthy message Ms. Thurston gave me in the first grade: Charles Paul, eat your vegetables. A twofer. Fun with cancer!

 

Had a session with my folks at Bond and Devick, financial advisors, RJ now for over thirty five years. They keep Kate’s IRA rollover steady. When the market goes up, you go up a little; when the market goes down, you go down a little. We’ve been with them since Penny Bond formed her firm, then hired RJ later on as her first employee. RJ just stepped down as owner/President, but keeps client contact and portfolio work. The IRA churns out what a 19th century British novel would refer to as a stipend and a nice one at that. With my Presbyterian pension and Social Security, I have more than adequate monthly cash. And. I will leave a tidy sum to my heirs: Ruth and Gabe, Seoah and my son. My heirs? That’s a weird phrase to write out loud.

The corpus has indeed gone up a little, down a little, always growing a bit but staying in the same basic range. Kate, always Kate, left me better off than she found me in so many ways, not the least financially. A shame that she didn’t get to enjoy the money she earned for longer. Thankfully, we had long ago passed the mark of mine and hers. We were together in all ways, no barriers between us. When she died, so did a part of me. A part now, in the way of the Soil, fertile ground for my new life after her death.

I suppose, come to consider it, that is the point of having heirs.

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Pain and Suffering

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The Off to College Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: RJ. Michele. Bond and Devick. Penny. Kate, always Kate. Ruth in college. Great workout yesterday. Terry. Rebecca. Joanne. Ginny and Janice. Whippets. Emma and Bridgit. Hilo and Kona. Buck and Iris. Dogs. Great Sol. Celebrex. Pain tamped down. Kamala’s bounce. May it grow. New electric blanket. Mary’s birthday across the International Date Line. Happy Birthday, Mary.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sisters

Kavanah: UNDERSTANDING בִּינָה Bina:  Understanding, differentiation, deep insight; from בּוּן to split, pierce/penetrate; also בֵּין between.  Third Sefirah = Left brain (opposite Chochmah/Wisdom)  (תְבוּנָה Tevunah: Comprehension, analytical thought, reason & intellect)

One brief shining: Take one a day with food it says on the pill bottle, a small white capsule, generic Celebrex, and so, compliant and dutiful, I take mine with breakfast as I read about Kamala and Tim, about Israel and Hamas, about Ukraine’s invasion of Russia, all outer battles dealing with the pain of conflicting values and unyielding desires for power, while in my blood stream this Cox-2 inhibitor acts to reduce the inner pain of spinal stenosis, pinched nerves, in my lower back.

 

Long ago, a young medical student who had become my friend told me he believed doctors should treat pain, but never suffering. Steve Miles went on to become a well know medical ethicist, and his words have stayed with me down the decades. Treating suffering meant treating it medicinally, with narcotics or other addictive substances. As the oxy epidemic hit, ironically, it would be the treatments for pain that caused the suffering.

Suffering is the province of religion and psychoanalysis, self-knowledge and self-care. Not medicines. At the time psychotropic drugs were often more problem than cure. Some still are and the issue is still fraught. As I hope it always will be. We need caution when crossing the line between medicine and the inner world of the psyche.

Granddaughter Ruth and stepson Jon are, together, paradigmatic. Ruth has struggled and fought for a sane life without maintenance psychotropics. She’s currently using none and is in her best mental health of the last decade. Jon self-medicated his psychic pain. And died as a result. The balance between the bodymind and its from the outside aids for health remains a form of art as much as science. Perhaps a matter for religion at its best, kindest, and broadest.

Who are we? What brings us joy and love? How do we know the path that leads to a full and rich life? The ancientrail right for you? On my own path I stumbled long ago after my mother’s death sent my Self on an underworld journey maintained and sustained by alcohol. It took years of analysis to find my way back to the light. Not psychotropics, but deep self-understanding, self-forgiveness.

This week I’m on a different path. Back to Steve and the treatment of pain. I thought since my back pain wasn’t constant it wasn’t chronic. Sue thought I’d feel better if she could treat the pain. I reluctantly agreed. Celebrex carries heavy potential side effects and I’d said no to this kind of intervention before.

In the three days I’ve taken it I’ve learned some things about pain. I didn’t realize the degree to which I’d adjusted and adapted my daily to ease my pain. More and more sitting. Lying down. Not lifting. Doing household chores slowly, resting often. Sometimes deferring them. And here’s an odd piece. As I adapted to the pain, I did not think it was chronic because I could make it fade. That was the pain managing my life for me. Huh. This in spite of regular exercise, physical therapy.

With the Celebrex on board I can bend down without wincing, turn corners without tweaking my back, go upstairs with ease, get out of chairs without groaning. It’s seductive. I feel more and more as I used to in my body. That is a wondrous thing. Yet the dangers it poses are real. Again, more blood draws to check liver and kidney functions. Taking prilosec to guard against intestinal bleeding. I may not be able to sustain its use. But, I might, too. It’s nonaddictive, why I chose it, on second thought, over tramadol.

I’ve dealt with my suffering. Perhaps now its time to let physicians treat my pain.

 

 

Health, Politics

What happens now?

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The Off to College Moon

Friday gratefuls: Ginny. Janice. Friends. Healing. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. A cool Mountain morning. Fall in the Sky as Great Sol’s angle changes. Elk Bulls clashing, ready for the rut. Bears a month or so away from hyperphagia. Mountain Streams at their shallowest points. Crowds from Denver, pre-Labor Day, at Upper and Lower Maxwell Falls. Story. Lake Evergreen. Paddleboarders. Kayakers. Canoeists. The Otherworld after the Jeffco 73 turnoff on Brook Forest Drive. My home world.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Seasonal change

Kavanah:  Serenity    Menucha

One brief shining: Sitting at an outdoor table at the Parkside with Alan and Joanne when a buzzing in my ear directs me to my phone, Evergreen Medical calling; Hello, Josh; Charlie, your PSA is .4; a bit of whiplash because it did not post on my Labcorps account and it had surprisingly and most thankfully gone down rather than up taking me out of the shortened life span version of my cancer.

 

Later in the day when I spoke with my son he said I looked more relaxed, healthy. Oh. Well. Could I have been more worried than I thought? It takes a worried man to sing the worried song. After all.

My chest had opened up, my head sat straighter on my shoulders. Ironically, knowledge taking back me to a welcome uncertainty about my future. No longer time limited, at least not with suggested parameters. Ye know not the day nor the hour. Back to that. Well, yes.

Why serenity has topped my intentions for the last week and still does today. The residue of the Pearl along with the blood draw on Tuesday made me stand in love on one foot and trying to absorb a sooner than imagined death on the other foot. Not a recipe for inner calm.

In this August 24 life I have passed through the waters guarded by Scylla and Charybdis, lashed to the mast of my trireme with wax blocking my ears. Removing the wax an act of bravery itself, but necessary. No wonder I looked healthier.

 

Just a moment: What happens now? The buzz after Biden’s abdication and the week of the Democratic National Convention has shaken the race, put the orange one on his back foot. May he stay there. Though. Suspect he won’t. His usual blend of bluster and anger and white grievance commingled with not well crafted outright lies will push him back to the headlines. At least for some of the time.

The question. Will he seem the smaller, meaner, unserious man that he really is or the norm-breaking, would be strongman idolized by so many who feel cheated out of their American dream? I hope Harris-Walz can keep the sad man behind blue eyes theme going. Frame the orange one as a pathetic loser not focused on freedom or liberty but on self-aggrandizement and bonus points for his billionaire buddies. If they can accomplish this, I don’t know how, then I believe they will be sworn in next January 20th while the red hatters (mad hatters?) foam and froth.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Myth and Story, Politics

An Unserious Man

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The Off to College Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Laurie and her Chicago stories. And her chili cheese hotdogs. The Pearl. Ruby. Ruth on campus. Kepler, my sweet boy. Kate, always Kate. The blue Sky above, Shadow Mountain Home beneath. Kamala. Her tagging of 45 as an unserious man. Joanne and Alan at the Parkside. Labcorps. Marilyn and Irv.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kamala and Coach Walz

Kavanah: Serenity  Menucha

One brief shining: A lesson in patience has come my way, the comparatively (to Quest) slow pace of getting my still not available PSA and testosterone numbers sent me down on Wednesday, forced to adjust my attitude, to open my heart to waiting, which has taught me to consider my desire for knowing, for knowing now, for knowing what comes next, for knowing estimates of my life span, that desire changes neither my PSA, what comes next, or my life span. Oh.

 

The story of the Pearl resonates with all who hear it. Though. Realized after recounting this at mussar yesterday Oysters are not kosher. No fins or scales. I’m not observing kosher, perhaps obviously, yet I did have to stop and consider this. If I were to observe kosher, and I have no plan to right now, it would be along the lines of ethical eating. Which is the function of kosher observance in traditional Jewish life. I do eat far less red meat than in the past, partly health and partly to eat lower on the food chain. Use less resources.

Still working on finding a jeweler or silversmith. Harder than I thought it would be. Evergreen Goldsmiths could have done what I wanted, but they closed. Going to the Silver Arrow gallery to see if they have recommendations.

 

No results from Labcorp. Not sure what’s going on. Practicing the midot of serenity. Does it make me serene to get agitated about not having these numbers? No. Will asking my docs to look into it help with my serenity? Yes. So I did that just now. Inner calm. Yes.

 

Just a moment: Listened to the opening twenty minutes or so of Kamala’s speech. Trump as an unserious man. Oh, yes. An epithet so true and so weakening. I hope it gains viral currency. I found her speech fine, but not exceptional. Not a barn burner as we might say in our suddenly spotlighted Midwest. So I stopped listening. Don’t need a barn burner. Need steady, stable, democratic small d. A return to normalcy. Never thought I’d write or believe those words.

She seems to have captured the zeitgeist perfectly. Hyperbolic promises and overheated rhetoric play into the bombast and chest-thumping of the MAGA style. We do not need more of that. We need to take this narrow window Kamala recognizes and keep the orange one in his billionaire fantasy world, his tasteless Trump Tower and gauche Mar-a-Lago. There to await the consequences of his criminal activity as his various trials come to fruition and his debts to his victims come due.

 

 

Health, Kabbalah, Politics

The flow of the Tao

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The Off to College Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth in her dorm room at Willville. With a passion for learning. Gabe home alone. Storm Clouds and high Winds. Breakfast with Tara. Cheryl, the phlebotomist, and my blood draw. The Pearl. Diane and Tom. Brother Mark and the Bangkok urban park. Mary in K.L. My son and Seoah. Songtan. My Lodgepole Companion waving to the keepers of moisture. Perhaps encouraging them. Rain on me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Blood and its mysteries

Kavanah for the life of August 21, 2024: Knowledge, da’at

One brief shining: Da’at lies directly beneath the keter, or crown, of the tree of life, linked in the downward movement of chi, of life force, of the Tao to hokmah, wisdom, and binah, analysis and planning, feeding in turn hesed, loving-kindness and gevurah, boundaries and strength; knowledge taking shape through consciousness and unconsciousness giving birth to wisdom, to shaping and birthing by the binah.

 

The tree of life in Kabbalah maps a flow of sacred energy from keter to malkhut, the realm of the shekinah, the feminine sacred, and then, as through a divine pump moving back up through the ten sefirot to keter where the cycle of creation and transformation begins again. Yesterday my blood filled a vial, already containing facts that I need for accurate knowledge of my cancer. The spark of that knowledge exists ahead of its translation into a something that can be considered, only becoming knowable as it moves through the laboratory, carried in drops of my essence, and transformed there into knowledge that I can access, use.

I am especially glad that that using that knowledge, my current PSA and testosterone levels, passes first into hesed, or loving kindness, reminding me that all knowledge comes as kindness, and also, through gevurah with its own boundaries.

A heady way of saying that I’m waiting on my lab results to see if my PSA has returned to undetectable, which would be a big YES, or has continued to rise, sealing my diagnosis of castration-resistant cancer. What framing this waiting kabbalistically does for me is remind me that all of life, all of creation flows up and down the tree, always, including the divine spark, the neshamah or pure soul that is me. Life to death, death to life. Constant change and creation, constant novelty. No destruction without creation. A Shiva view of the nature of life.

 

Just a moment: If you want a recent and readable analysis of the probable effects of an orange win, read this Thomas Edsall article, Trump is not done with us. Here is its last paragraph:

“I am going to give the last word to Timothy Snyder*:

Trump is in the classic dictatorial position: He needs to die in bed holding all executive power to stay out of prison. This means that he will do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power will do all that he can to never let it go. This is a basic incentive structure which underlies everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy.”

*”Timothy Snyder, a historian at Yale and an expert on the regimes of Stalin and Hitler…”

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Politics

Luminescence

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The Off to College Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth, off to college today! Good workout yesterday. The Democratic National Convention. Joe and his years. Joe and his tears. Kamala. Tim. AOC. Go, blue, go. Politics. A frisson of hope. A dollop of excitement. A Discovery of Witches on Netflix. Finishing the filet mignon from my dinner with Kate and her pearl. Tara. Dandelion.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth, her journey of independence which starts today.

Kavanah: KNOWLEDGE   Da’at (DAH-aht)   knowledge, sensibility, awareness; from ידע to experientially/cognitively know

First Sefirah = כֶּתֶר Keter, KEH-tare: Top of head, superconscious mind, literally “crown” (between Chochmah/Wisdom & Binah/Understanding)  This is kabbalah.

One brief shining: Still wrapped in the pearl’s luminescence Monday took me into an intimate place with my grief and with remembrance, a few tears as I recalled our life together, more smiles as I remembered making salads from our vegetables, eating toast with honey from our bees, evenings spent hanging out with our dogs, often Irish Wolfhounds on our laps, Hanukah nights with Gabe and Ruth on Shadow Mountain, driving down the hill to Congregation Beth Evergreen together.

 

As I go into the lab today, get my vein punctured again, small vials of blood filled by the beating of my heart, this lab test’s importance weighs a bit on my lev. Yes, I need and want the da’at, the knowledge, it will bring. Yet it could bring knowledge of a shortened life span. If so, that’s ok, I have no need to last longer than I can. Memories of Kate’s final days comfort me. Not that she wasn’t suffering. She was. But she was resolute, loving, and brave, too. A role model about how to face the end, not with a whimper, but a bang.

Does not change this life, this August 20th life. Which I woke into around 6 am. Opening my eyes from the small death of sleep to an unpromised resurrection. As I have for over 77 years. May continue to do so for years more.

See Tara for breakfast this morning at the Dandelion. Like a workout seeing friends restores me as I hope to do for them. Seeing. Being seen. Hearing. Being heard. Touching. Being touched. The essential food of the soul.

 

Just a moment: So happy to see Kamala and Tim, even Joe, above the fold. And that other person not there at all. The squatter removed from land he had begun to imagine was his alone.

I did not look forward to spending the last of my golden years under a Trumpist storm of bigotry, lavish capitalism, and the decline of U.S. status in the world. Of course, that’s still a real possibility, but now it’s a fight, not a giveaway. I’ll go with Kamala’s: When we fight, we win!

Mixed feelings here about protesters at the convention. Deja vu all over again. Except. In 1968 the U.S. had intervened militarily in a civil war. Based on the domino theory which imagined countries becoming communist if touched by red fairy dust. Makes me wonder what those old war mongers thought was so appealing about communism, but that’s another story.

Here the protesters have sided with the Palestinians against Israeli aggression. I agree with the facet of their argument that contends Israel has gone too far. Way too far. Where we part company is in the protesters willing blindness to the suffering of Jews over time, the reason for Israel’s existence, and the horrific nature of the Hamas attack on October 7th. This is a story with no heroes, no glory, no victory.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Torah

You are holy

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The Off to College Moon

Friday gratefuls: Doncye. My son. Murdoch. Seoah. Alan. Dandelion. Evergreen. Black Mountain Drive. Brook Forest Drive. Aspen Park. Notary. Blue expansive late Summer Sky. The West. The Mountain West. Harris/Walz. Tweedledum/Tweedledee. Psilocybin. Mary Jane. Celebrex. Cancer. Friends like Alan. Rabbi Jamie. Studying Torah. Joanne. Life.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: I’m at the front of a large group of people who will support you no matter what. Alan

Mikveh of my conversion

Kavanah: HOLINESS*   Kedusha       Holiness, dedication, specialness

One brief shining: Steve came in white hair tousled, spandex on his 70 pound-less frame, sat down at the Starbucks table where I waited for him with an iced white chocolate latte; he had just had a deep tissue massage and came to me ready to discuss prostate cancer. What he said drug me down.

 

Oh. See. Steve’s outside the golden zone where androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) works. At that point even though testosterone is at or near zero, the PSA continues to rise, meaning active cancer cells. Probably where I am, too. Find out next week. Blood draw.

In the midst of extolling his oncologist and her care for him he said, “She told me that once you get out of the golden zone you have about a year and a half.” I hope she meant, “Now that you, Steve, are out of the golden zone you have about a year and half.” Intend to find out for sure. Implications put me in a funk yesterday, this morning. Understandable, it seems to me.

This round of prostate cancer news has unsettled me, made me vulnerable. That last, vulnerability, has proved useful since I’m aware now that I need help with household chores and pain management. Over the next few months I hope palliative care will steer me in directions to take care of those needs.  A bit tender, sensitive. Cautious with how I view my future.

 

Just a moment: Studied Torah with Rabbi Jamie for an hour yesterday. Our monthly session. Interesting. I asked, “So Kaplan eschewed supernaturalism. What does God mean, then? How did God enter the picture.” Jamie started to ask why does it matter. We both agreed in some ways it doesn’t matter at all.

On the other hand, an interesting question. So we got at it anyhow. The parsha for the week: Parshat Va’etchanan, Deuteronomy 3:23 – 7:11 focused on Moses instructing the people before they go into the promised land. Moses speaks directly to God, then tells the descendants of the Hebrew slaves what God commands. No God out there in Reconstructionist thought, so…

I figured out that God came from the people. Moses, this wise guy, speaks and they follow him. How did he get so wise and knowing? Had to have the imprimatur of a God. What else could it be? In other words in order to follow Moses the people had to give him an authoritative source for his pronouncements: God. I really like this idea because it literally grounds God. Takes God out of the heavens, out of the supernatural, and places the God concept in the relationships in and among people. And, if you follow the thought, within your own inner world.

God is not out there. God becomes those impulses we follow for the collective good, for our own lifting ourselves up.

*(רוּחָנִי Ruchani, roo-chan-EE: spiritual,  cognitive function = intuitive/abstract)