• Category Archives Poetry

  • Too much with us

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Lab orders. Cancer. Ruby. Blackbird Cafe in Kittredge. Potato cakes. The fantasy homes along Bear Creek between Evergreen and Kittredge. All Stone exterior. All Log exterior. That one with the Waterfall. Bear Creek full yesterday after heavy Rains on Sunday. Coffee. Milk. Seltzer Water. The Shema. Unitary metaphysics. This spinning Planet.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Homes. Of all sorts.

    One brief shining: The kind phlebotomist wanted to help me; but, I’d forgotten my lab orders and she couldn’t find any in her computer system, after I’d driven a half an hour to get to her since my doctor’s office happens to be between lab companies this week; she flipped up the soft arm of the phlebotomy chair and I squeezed out, shaking my head at my own error, not bringing my copy of the orders.

     

    Been musing for a while about certain things that cannot be done via computer. Any medical visit that requires puncturing the skin. A physical exam in a doctor’s office. The delivery of physical objects purchased online. A kiss. A handshake. A hug. Driving down the hill and back up again. Flying in an airplane. Travel that involves dining and sleeping. The list could go on.

    Too often these days we give the lie to Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us, late and soon…” Instead we settle for the faux experience. Remember Alvin Toffler in his book, The Third Wave? High tech, high touch. Yes. The more we use technology, the more we need in person, face to face, skin to skin. We feel, often without knowing it consciously, with Wordsworth again: “Little we see in Nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away.” With A.I. advancing as it is, we may also find ourselves paraphrasing him: We have given our minds away.

    I’m no technoLuddite. Hardly. I have three computers. I’m writing this blog on my computer, expecting you to read it on yours. I spend at least three plus hours every week on Zoom, more some weeks. I no longer read a physical newspaper, relying instead on the digital versions of the NYT and the WP plus other news outlets. My shopping, like most of us who live in the Mountains or in rural America, happens online. My front door, your front door has become a receiving dock.

    Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
    Kindred Spirits  1849
    Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant

    Yet. The interplay between the online world and the world of physical objects, especially humans and other Animals, Forests and Oceans, Mountains and Lakes has made revisiting the Romantic artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries a useful corrective.

    In the United States Romanticism coincided with pre-Civil War and post-Revolution thought, the period often known as the American Renaissance. The Romantic turn toward the individual, the irrational, the natural produced works like Emerson’s essay, Nature, and Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.

    This period of American intellectual and artistic life wanted to discover a non-European, American style in literature, poetry, painting. Melville’s Moby Dick. Painters like Church, Durand, Cropsey, Cole. A fruitful period to rediscover for our current ailment.


    Art and Culture Humanities Letters Literature Poetry US History

  • Herme’s Journey

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Summer and the waning Bar Mitzvah Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Great Sol. Shadow Mountain. TV. Books. CD’s. Jazz. Mozart. Telemann. Bach. Coltrane. Monk. Parker. Gregorian Chants. Rock and roll. CD player. K-dramas. Netflix. Amazon Prime. Mhz. Starlink. Conversation. Listening. Seeing. Really listening. Really seeing. The Aspen out my bedroom window. The dead Lodgepole.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The lesser light-the Moon

    One brief shining: When I go now to an airport, when I even imagine going to an airport, I recoil, seeing the old Native American punishment, running between rows of TSA employees, airline boarding agents, and crabby fellow sufferers all diminished by the experience, yet needing to pass along, like some fraternity hazing ritual, the same misery to the pledges not yet seated in their too narrow and too jammed together seats. And paying often thousands of dollars to do it.

     

    Still enjoying a post bar mitzvah push sense of opening, of new possibilities. Herme’s Journey, which I imagined after the dream workshop last month, got sidelined a bit by the week of the ritual, guests, celebration, and the week of physical recovery that followed that one. Though. Kavod for the Trees (Honoring the Tree) has kept it alive.

    Herme’s Journey followed thoughts and feelings triggered by my Wabash dream. That dream encouraged me to reenter the life vision I had when I started college almost 60 years ago. To embrace that dream of a long period, lifelong in my hopes of those years, as a student, then a scholar. With libraries and writing instruments my primary tools. With ideas and their expression as my life work.

    Herme, you may recall, is the name I gave to the neon sign I had made of the Hooded Man Card* from the Wildwood Tarot Deck. The name I gave to myself in the wake of Kate’s death, of a mourner then a griever, then… I wasn’t sure what.

    Herme’s Journey blends the Hooded Man Card with the first card of the Tarot Deck: The Fool. The major arcana of a tarot deck tells a story of the Fool’s journey, begun blithely, a bindlestaff over one shoulder, a dog alongside, stepping off into the unknown. In the Wildwood deck** the Wanderer’s journey is through the Wildwood. Yes. My journey, too.

    The Wanderer is a beginner, the beginner’s mind at play in the fields of the psyche. Herme’s Journey is my Wanderer’s path, a beginner’s path, but one begun with the age and experience of an old man. So, Herme’s Journey.

    What lies along this path? Still unclear though Trees play a central role. As does the Great Wheel of the Year and the Jewish Lunar Calendar. As the pilgrimage unfolds, I plan to explore Kabbalah, my long period of work with Ovid’s Metamorphosis, poetry and literature, myth and legend, fairy and folk tales, religion, and the arts: music, painting, sculpture, theater, dance, opera.

    What will come? Again, unknown. It will be the path, not the destination. What I will do is read a lot, write, travel, think, listen, see, taste. Talk.

     

    *The Hooded Man stood at the winter solstice point on December 21, along with the earth and the sun in the night. This is the time to be alone and contemplate life. This card describes the gates of death and rebirth, deep inside the Earth.  Hooded Man

    **A central theme of the Wildwood Tarot is the interconnection of humans with the wild, with animals, and with the calendar cycle.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Great Wheel Hermitage Holidays Humanities Kabbalah Latin Letters Mountains Myth and Story Plants Poetry Tarot Travel Weather +Climate Wild Neighbors Writing

  • Cabin Fever Trip

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Tuesday gratefuls: Great Sol. Brightening our day. Counting the Omer. Begins tonight. Traveling readiness day. Delayed, but happening today. Diane’s great work on setting up an itinerary. Museums, as Ode says, temples of creativity. The Artist’s Way. My Jewish immersion. The Three Body Problem trilogy. Fall Out on Prime Video. High quality television. Kindle.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Artists-painters, writers, playwrights, musicians, poets, actors, sculptors, architects, composers

    One brief shining: With awakening I’m in a new life, a multiverse reality based on the day before yet new as the dew on a spring ephemeral, in that day my many breaths each constitute life breathed out and back in, new lives each breath, how can I keep from singing?

     

    Feeling the welcoming breath of a travel day exhaling from the end of the week toward me. Inspiring my activities today. Finalize packing. Stop mail. Get a pedicure. Collect myself for a journey.

    This is mostly a cabin fever trip. A way of escaping a place I love because the snow and the cold stayed a bit too long. And for most folks I’ve talked to. A way to refresh the joys of home by vacating its presence for a bit. Enjoy the graces and beauties of San Francisco, see Diane. Live in a hotel for 7 nights, 2 nights in a sleeping car there and back. Write. Read. See the Rockies, the intermountain West, the Sierra Nevadas, canyons and deserts.

    I’ve missed seeing good art on a regular basis. I’ve not found the Denver art scene at all comparable to the Twin Cities and I’ve let that attitude, plus the drive, keep me from seeing much at all. That’s on me. This trip will allow me to visit at least three of the country’s great collections: The Legion of Honor, the De Young, and the Asian Art museum. I plan to see them slowly. Taking as much time as I need. Reenter the world of Zhou and Han, Song and Tang, Picasso and Hokusai, Rodin and Giacometti.

    Yes. You could say of me. Religion, politics, and art. The subjective, the debatable, the aesthetic, the aspects of culture not manageable by STEM. Sure I like a good scientific discovery as much as the next nerd, but to examine an ancient text for the message it carries down the millennia to this day, to stand in the street and face down an oppressive economy, to join the conversation of those for whom shape, color, and language create whole worlds and dizzying perspectives, yes. That’s my journey.

    That and one other thing. The wild spots outside my door, up the flank of Black Mountain. Here on Shadow Mountain I can integrate the seeker, the advocate, and the artist with the world around me. My Lodgepole Companion and I see each other each morning. I said hello yesterday to those Mule Deer Does munching grass along Black Mountain Drive. Within them lie the same message as the Torah portion I will read on June 12th, the same spirit of over against oppressive structures, and an equivalent beauty to the best of Monet.

     


    Art and Culture Asia Mountains Music Myth and Story Poetry Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Shadow Mountain Travel

  • Taking Sides

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: Ruth. Dazzle. Alan and a new car. The signs of aging. Come to us all. If we’re lucky. Mountain living. Shadow Mountain. Kep, no longer out in the Snow, still my sweet boy. Kate, my sweet gal. My son. His 77 on screen golf! Seoah. Murdoch. Okwga. Seoah’s mom and dad. Our wild neighbors. Aging in place. Fire insurance. Wildfire. Move or stay, my choice. Mountain Water. Mountain Clouds. Emunah.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Wizard of Oz

    One brief shining: Oh the things we’ll see if we turn on the news, bombs bursting in air and on the ground, tanks and soldiers pushing, pushing, pushing, Gazans streaming toward the south, peace in shatters oh hallelujah says Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian allies, push, push, push until all Arabs push back, please please please stop all this.

     

    For today’s post, I’m offering this poem sent to me by my friend Rebecca Martin:

     

    Taking Sides

     

    Today I am taking sides.

    I am taking the side of Peace.

    Peace, which I will not abandon

    even when its voice is drowned out

    by hurt and hatred,

    bitterness of loss,

    cries of right and wrong.

    I am taking the side of Peace

    whose name has barely been spoken

    in this winterless war.

    I will hold peace in my soma

    and share my body’s breath,

    lest Peace be added

    to the body count.

    I will call for de-escalation

    even when I want nothing more

    than to get even.

    I will do it

    in the service of Peace.

    I will make a clearing

    in the overgrown

    thicket of cause and effect

    so Peace can breathe

    for a minute

    and reach the sky.

    I will do what I must

    to save the life of Peace.

    I will breathe through tears.

    I will swallow pride.

    I will bite my tongue.

    I will offer love

    without testing for deservingness.

     

    So don’t ask me to wave a flag today

    unless it is the flag of Peace.

    Don’t ask me to sing an anthem

    unless it is a song of Peace.

    Don’t ask me to take sides

    unless it is the side of Peace.

     

    Rabbi Irwin Keller

    October 17, 2023

     


    Judaism Poetry World History

  • Caverns Measureless to Man

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the Harvest Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: CBE. Israel Trip meeting this morning. Mary, my physical therapist. Exercises. Exercising. Jet lag. A day per time zone. 15 time zones on MST. Oh. Israel. Hamas. Hezbollah. Iran. Palestinians. Two-state solution. The Pacific. The Atlantic. They Yellow Sea. The Sea of Japan. The Korean Peninsula. The Islands of Japan. The Rocky Mountains. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. Conifer Mountain. The Night Sky. Darkness. The season of darkness. Samain. The Winter Solstice.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Night

    One brief shining: Nash from the Schneider’s will include bagels, cream cheese, onion, tomatoes, and capers for us while we try to digest the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in Ashkelon and Gaza and Tel Aviv, and civilians both Palestinian and Israeli dying in their homes as we assess whether our trip to Jerusalem is as over as we all imagine it is.

     

    So. The news continues to shock, dismay. Photographs of bodies, burned out cars, wrecked apartment buildings, fences, military vehicles. I continue to have double vision. With sorrow and grief for Israel, its promise and its failure, its dead. With sorrow and grief for Gaza and Palestine, people herded into narrow spaces, walled off, virtually imprisoned. No winners here. Only the eye of history scanning back and forth for that moment when things begin to change. Will this be it? I certainly hope so. For the dream that is a Jewish homeland. For the necessity that is a Palestinian state. For both to be true and friendly.

    The enmeshed politics of the U.S., Iran, Russia, even Ukraine now threaded more deeply into the bloodied tapestry of the current Middle East. We support Israel. We support Hamas and the Palestinians. We support our Sunni brothers and sisters. We support our Shia brothers and sisters. We support. But support really means we are willing to kill those we don’t. Or, provide aid and comfort while our proxies do it for us. This part of the world is a nightmare for all who call it home and for all who have interests there. Yet for those who call it home it is just that. Home. I feel linked in sadness with all those who care for these troubled lands. All.

    It is strange to have a personal stake in these events. But I do. A couple of weeks in Israel beginning on October 25th. Doubt it now. Meeting at CBE this morning with a representative of Keshet, the Israeli travel agency organizing the group part of the trip. Probably will start to unwind. I didn’t buy travel insurance so I’m not sure what the financial impact of a cancellation will be for me. Whether the airline will let me have a refund or a credit. Also strange to consider personal finances while people are dying. I need to, but it’s still strange.

    Have to go get ready for the 8 am meeting at CBE. Our Keshet rep lives in Jerusalem so this will be first hand about what’s happening there. Keshet sent an e-mail to all of us yesterday outlining the financial commitments they’ve made to relief work as an organization. The needs are great and if you feel like donating there are many opportunities.

     


    Commentary on Religion Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism Poetry Politics Travel

  • Love

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Waning Crescent of the Herme Moon

    Sunday and Monday gratefuls: The Trail to Cold Mountain. Off book. Kristie. Off meds? Sunday’s Ancientrails, forgotten. Unusual. The Ancient Brothers on love. A morning with Rich and Ron. Also about love. Burn away everything but love. Study today. Jewish identity. Cool and Foggy morning. Good sleeping. Ready for packing. Cable organizer. Reinforcing off book for the Trail to Cold Mountain. So many wonderful people in my life. Korea and Israel. Same continent. 5027 miles apart. [Osan to Jerusalem]

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Good friends

    One brief shining: A bowl filled with strawberries, blueberries, black berries, and slices of mango sat by a wooden cutting board with lox heaped upon it next to a lazy susan with cream cheese, capers, cut onions, almonds warm cut bagels on my plate as Ron and Rich and I sat together talking mussar, parenting sons, writing, such a good morning.

     

    I have now a surfeit of riches. Wealthier than I could have dreamed possible. And, yes, in terms of money, too. More important than money though friends and family who love me. Whom I also love. Who will open themselves to me and I to them. A wonderful morning yesterday as an example.

    The Ancient Brothers gathered on zoom to talk about love. Ode talked about Robert Bly’s connected universe, all atoms linked to each other in a grand chain of becoming. As are the atoms in each of us. Bill added Buckminster-Fuller’s Cosmic Plurality:

    “Cosmic Plurality”

    Environment to each must be

    All there is, that isn’t me

    Universe in turn must be

    All that isn’t me AND ME

     

    Since I only see inside of me

    What brain imagines outside me

    It seems to be you may be me

    If that is so, there’s only we

    Me & we, too

    Which love makes three

    Universe

    Perme — embracing

    It-them-you-and we

     

    Paul offered Rilke:

    Widening Circles

    Written by Rainer Maria Rilke

    Translated and read by Joanna Macy

    I live my life in widening circles
    that reach out across the world.
    I may not complete this last one
    but I give myself to it.

    I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
    I’ve been circling for thousands of years
    and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
    a storm, or a great song?

     

    Tom reminded us of the love we learn from the dogs in our lives, the angels of our youth and of our old age. Of kindness. Of the sweetness of vulnerability.

     

    I spoke again of the gift given to me between Mile High Hearing and Dave’s Chuckwagon Diner: The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love. If we perfected a just society, we could live only in love with each other. So to burn away everything but love, seek justice. If we could see the ohr [the shard of sacredness, divine light] in each other, in all Trees and Rocks and Roads and Flowers that love Great Sol and Mule Deer and Elk and Mountain Lions and Bears and all Mountain Streams and all Rivers and Oceans and in the Air we breathe, we would cry out in revelation like Mohammed, like the writers of the Torah and like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there, the sacred, it’s right there! And we could/would love it all.

     


    Dogs Family Feelings Friends Judaism Plants Poetry Reimaging revelation Torah Wild Neighbors Writing

  • Who can leap the world’s net?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Super Full Summer Moon Above

    Sunday gratefuls: Sundays. Ancient Brothers. The Fire This Time. Jude. Jessica. Neighbors. Derek. Mark in Camel Land. Mary in Friday Night Fish Fry Land. Me in the Land of Mountains and Dogs. Mountain Wild Flowers. The spike Mule Deer Buck eating dandelions. The Doe who came again. A day of small chores, reading, Han Shan poetry. Releasing.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Letting go of the to do list

    One brief shining: The Mountain Streams have calmed down only running now as they might after a wet Spring that ended in early June temperatures though remain cool a couple of hot days as a reminder but we hope for the Monsoon rains to start to tamp down the remaining fire risk and give us a low Smokey sign for an entire year which would be a first for me.

     

    Sat down in my upstairs chair yesterday. Finished memorizing my fifth Cold Mountain Poem:

     

    I’m on the trail to Cold Mountain

    The trail to Cold Mountain never ends

    Long clefts filled with rock and stones

    Wide streams buried in dense grass

    Slippery moss, but there’s been no rain

    Pine trees sigh, but there’s been no wind

    Who can leap the world’s net

    And sit here in the white clouds with me?

     

    After this I realized I’d paid all my bills, had food in the fridge, no urgent chores. I was caught up. A twinge of anxiety. Searching for something that needed my attention right now. Nothing. Well now. How about that? I could leap the world’s net and sit in the white clouds with Han Shan.

    So I did.

     

    In case you need some slivers of hope in this benighted decade here are a few I’ve found of late.

     

    Miss Texas Averie Bishop. Read this Washington Post article about an Asian Miss Texas who is shaking up the majority-minority state that is current day Texas. We don’t know yet how the demographic changes that have slowly edged their way closer to reality will affect us politically but if Miss Bishop is any indicator watch out Far Right and moderate Right.

     

    Déjà News by Rachel Maddow. Alan suggested this podcast by the MSNBC news personality. Here’s the podcast’s description from its website: ” In each episode, Rachel and co-host Isaac-Davy Aronson seek a deeper understanding of a story in today’s headlines by asking: Has anything like this ever happened before? Would knowing that help us grapple with what’s happening now… and what might happen next?”

     

    Consider this very strange NYT story. A ‘Cage Match’ between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? Yes. There is a current discussion on the details of a cage match between these two titans of American commerce. Need I say more?

     

    My own reading over the last six months or so has made me aware of the sine wave nature of extreme right wing politics dominating either states or the Federal Government or both, then being pushed back by an onrushing tide of progressivism. I admit it looks bleak in many ways right now, but consider the end days of the KKK in Indiana as evidenced by Fever Dream in the Heartland. Or, consider the Reconstructionist pushback against a wave of nativist sentiments before and just after the Civil War. Consider the demise of the Joe McCarthy era and the liberal era of civil rights and anti-establishment politics that followed.

    We’re overdue for a liberal backlash and I hope women, minorities of all kinds, and those who would move up our socio-economic ladder link hands and throw the capitalist, white supremacist, homophobic, misogynistic minority back on the trash heap of history where they belong.

     


    Acting Asia Poetry Politics Shadow Mountain US History Weather +Climate

  • Summer, the American Season

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits cooling. A cool night. Good sleeping. July 4th. Seoah’s birthday. Sending her a Jacquie Lawson card. Mary in Eau Claire. The most recent CJ Box book. K-dramas. Stranger. Sky Castle. Itaewon Class. Cod. Potatoes. Collard greens. Herme.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our Earth

    One brief shining: Geez Tom passed on an image from JPL that showed all the asteroids that could strike the Earth and they wove in and out of the Solar system creating a web of white that looked like doom doom doom for the Planet but no JPL says not this century.

     

    Learned another one:

     

    I traveled to Cold Mountain,

    Stayed here for thirty years.

    Yesterday looked for friend and family

    More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs

    Slow burning, life dies like a flame,

    Never resting, passing like a river.

    I stand in my lone shadow,

    Suddenly, the tears flow down.

     

    Summer feels like the American season to me. The 4th of July. The Indianapolis 500. NASCAR. Baseball. Family reunions in city parks and on family farms.

    For many years I would take the summer to read American history, political philosophy, political analysis. Haven’t done it for a while but recent reading about the far right was the sort of thing I would do.

    I also have a modest Civil War jones. I love to visit battlefields. Again, like the summer reading, it’s been a while since I’ve set out on a road trip to visit Civil War sites. Thinking I might do it next year. Visit Sarah and Jerry, Paul and Sarah. This year’s occupied with Korea and Israel.

    Let me see. I’ve been to Manassas, Antietam, Shiloh, Ft. Sumter, Stones River, Vicksburg, Ft. Donelson, and Andersonville. Still missing Gettysburg and several others. Enough for a long trip.

     

    Guess I could also visit Trump era proto-Civil War sites like the Capitol Building and Richmond, Virginia.

    With the Extremes dismantling  years of liberal policy and law trying to take us back to their own future, a dismal and cruel place, learning what the far right wants has become more and more important.

    They want no special treatment for African Americans. Even if the special treatment of slavery skewed not only the politics of our constitution but embedded racism in the very interstices of our law and governance. Even if the special treatment of slavery ginned up the falsest of lies, white supremacy. Even if we know all of this for sure.

    They want all life held sacred. Except the children born to poor parents or the children of immigrants. Or the victims of mass incarceration who end up dying needless deaths in prisons across the U.S. I mean not only, not even primarily, capital punishment, but deaths of despair, of under treated illness, deaths of families living without fathers.

    They want to be left alone in their enclaves of Christian Nationalism or survivalist paranoia or anti-globalist, America first isolation. They want to treat all Federal lands as personal property and suffer no accountability for their actions.

    They want guns to protect their liberty from the fascist Federal government while supporting the actual fascists who will certainly take their liberty and impoverish them even more.

    They want the libtards to stop trying. We cannot, must not. Ever. Stop.

     


    Acting Asia Commentary on the news Poetry Politics Science Travel US History

  • Cold Mountain

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Thursday gratefuls: Great workout. Learning Cold Mountain, one poem a day. A good night’s sleep. Protein. Carbs. Veggies. Fruit. Eat the rainbow. Exercise as a mood lifter. Challenges. Developing Herme. Cloaks. Psilocybin. Spores. Growing my own. A gray day. The Monsoon. Korea. The Hermit Kingdom. The Land of the Morning Calm. Chaebol. Kangim. Keshet. Beit She’an. Good food. Cod.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Hooded Man

    One brief shining: Writing again beyond Ancientrails this time a one man short play enjoying dialogue as the only tool well stage directions too beginning to soar again feeling the sun under my wings the air over my head timeless now while I dive into the deep pool below cast a net bring out a flopping sentence or two to advance the story. Landed it!

     

    Happy to say I’ve sidewised myself back to writing. This Herme project. Rolling, rolling, rolling. Dialogue advances. The idea emerges.

    Second Cold Mountain poem from memory: (well, mostly)

     

    One thousand clouds, ten thousand streams

    Here I live, an idle man

    I roam green peaks by day

    Back to sleep by cliffs at night.

    One by one, springs and autumns go,

    Free of heat and dust, my mind.

    Sweet to know there’s nothing I need,

    Silent as the autumn flood.

     

    Plan to weave together a Celtic backstory, throw in a bit of magic, and a Tarot major arcana archetype-the Hooded Man-with the Chinese Rivers and Mountains school of poetry. Liking the idea of turning it into a one man show. Still.

     

    On top of Shadow Mountain sits my home

    Lodgepoles and Aspens, Bunch Grass and Spruce,

    Cedar siding and Solar Panels outside

    Inside I ride out my days alone, yet not alone

    Accompanied by the dead and their living souls

    By the words of poets and writers, movies

    By words from my own hand, written

    Yet often unbidden. A man untroubled.

    Rock beneath stays quiet, unmoving.

     

    Playing now. Having fun. What creation can bring into a life. My life and yours. Who cares about legacy? Not important. Who cares about today, this wonderful only ever never again day? I do! Ichi-go, ich-e.

     

    Purple Haze. Nope. This time. Rust colored, apocalyptic sunseen and sungone. Bad air for all. Courtesy of the Ancient Brother’s Sunday topic: Fire. Yet this is also true. Those burning parts of Canada will resurrect, become green again. Yes, their carbon dioxide has gone up in, well, smoke. But the recapture of it on Mother Earth’s own schedule has already begun. We may not be around to experience that rebalancing. But it will happen.

     

    I see the Extremes knocked down affirmative action at Harvard and UNC. Expected. Never been sure how I felt about affirmative action. Its intent? Sure. Necessary. How it actually worked? Always wondered how those who were considered admits by affirmative action felt. I know for sure how some white parents and students thought. A toxic mix at best. We’re not done with this work and this sets us out on a different road to achieve results. Perhaps California’s reparations?

     

     

     


    Poetry Politics Weather +Climate Writing

  • A Do Anything Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Wednesday gratefuls: Tal. His new play. Learning Cold Mountain’s poems. Writing more for my character project. Acting. Acting class. Coffee beans. Coffee grinder. High altitude coffee maker. Writing. Ancientrails. A long road from my past through today. Bill Schmidt for helping me set it up. Allergies. Tree sex. Pollen, Pollen, Everywhere. Ruth. Gabe. Another bright blue Sky. Warm to hot days. The green. All the green. Everywhere the green. Mountain living. BJ. In her own personal Idaho.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

    One brief shining: Life rises from thermal vents, creates itself in tidal pools, wanders onto Land, Seeds allowing Plants to walk away from the Shore, moving and changing as it stretches itself into new shapes, new ways of being until Animals big and small, until humans, now able to look back, all the way back to its beginnings, life looking at itself, wondering about its own meaning.

     

    Tuesday. Writing. Finding out more about Gaius Ovidius. About the Hooded Man. About Cold Mountain. Deciding to memorize one poem a day. Here’s the first one. From memory:

    Where’s the trail to Cold Mountain?

    Cold Mountain! There’s no clear way.

    Ice, in summer, is still frozen.

    Bright sun shines through thick fog.

    You will not get there following me.

    Your heart and mine are not the same.

    If your heart were like mine,

    You’d be there, already.

     

    Called the gas company. They wanted to change out my gas meter. Turned out they’d already met their quota. Why would they change it out? Each year a random number of meters get swapped out for identical ones and sent to a testing facility to determine their accuracy. I found that interesting.

    Then, Nielsen ratings called. You know, the famous one from the old days of ABC, CBS, and NBC. They’re still doing their thing. But since nobody here was in their target demographic I got a pass from them, too. I found it oddly reassuring that they were still in business. As if the 1950’s will never die.

     

    Plunked down some more hard cash to ensure aisle seats on my flights from Denver to Heathrow, Heathrow to Ben Gurion. Easy access to the bathrooms trumps a window seat every time at my age. Couldn’t do the same on the return for some reason. Maybe later.

     

    I’ve not written about the Summer Solstice. My favorite part. It means the nights grow longer and the days grow shorter. I do not like hot nights, nor do I like hot days. Some warmer days after the cold of Winter feel good. I’m enjoying the ones we’re having on Shadow Mountain right now, but as they get hotter? Not so much. Why I enjoyed Minnesota and its short summers. Shadow Mountain, too. Cool nights are the difference between a good night’s sleep and a bad one for me. Last night stayed warm for a while and disturbed my sleep in spite of my fan and my mini-split. Feeling a little loggy this morning.


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