Beltane New (Closing) Moon
Got to feeling like I was a victim, not of any person, but of the insults to/from my body. I hunkered down, quit working out, quit Latin, quit writing. Almost a month now. Tired of feeling like a victim and I know the only way around the feeling is to stop acting like one.
So, back on the treadmill. Back to Latin and Superior Wolf, let the health matters develop as they need to.
Beltane Beltane Moon
It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood. For a biopsy. Slept well. Think I sussed out on my own the culprit in my lower oxygen readings. Trazodone. I stopped taking it a couple of days ago and I slept well (ironic, since it’s a sleep aid.) plus my breathing has returned to normal.
I have no fear, not even of the procedure itself, nor its possible information. Doesn’t feel like denial. (But, would I know if it was?) The details of the procedure and its possible results are clear to me. Though death does seem to hang around these intersections like a prostitute looking for a trick, I’m in no way tempted. Life, as long it runs, is good.
Whatever transpires, this whole month (it was april 14 when i saw lisa for my physical) has been an intrapsychic marathon, 26 miles of self-examination, staying with the feelings, considering worst outcomes. It has also been a month in which friends (especially the Woollies) and family have helped me stay strong and clear.
It could have been otherwise. One of the things that worried me when we moved out here was the loss of my friends. But I’ve found that those relationships, docents and Woolly Mammoths alike, transcend distance. The warmth and support I’ve felt from all of you is no less, perhaps even a bit more, for traveling 900 miles.
So, thanks to you all. I’ll get back to you with the results.
Beltane Beltane Moon
The hits just keep on comin’. Now, in addition to the biopsy this Thursday I have lowering oxygen saturation. This is not good. It can and does destroy brain cells and my brain is my favorite organ. So, I have an appointment with Lisa Gidday sometime in the next three weeks. Geez. This all converges with long standing, but well-managed issues (right now) like high blood pressure, cholesterol levels too high or too low, stage 3 kidney disease and others like left ventricular hypertrophy.
Now, I choose to see this all in a positive light. I have some chronic conditions that are common to many people and the dietary and pharmaceutical solutions to them have been successful so far. The kidney disease and left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) are not good, but they both seem stable.
Unless. The LVH ends up reinforcing the lowering oxygen saturation. That’s for the follow-up to my appointment with Lisa.
My sense of myself, in spite of all this, is that I’m healthy and strong. Doesn’t feel like denial. I know about each item here and its implications. My choice is to take positive and aggressive action where I can and to accept the limitations or ultimate consequences in those instance where no action can be taken.
Two different streams of thought have lead me to a calm place. The first, experienced immediately after the beginning of the prostate journey, involved facing my actual mortality. We maintain throughout most of our life a subtle innocence about the probability and even the possibility of our own death. In my opinion this attitude is the reverse of unrealistic. In fact it is protective of our need to get on with living in the face of an inevitability about which we can do nothing.
The prostate findings lifted that protective innocence from me. There was death peeking over my shoulder, the agency of its coming perhaps revealed. This shook me. Hard. Finding my way into it, not running away, took the better part of a week and a half. Then, I realized that, if not this, something. If not now, sometime. With that frame and the palliative effect of taking the actions I could take, I became peaceful again.
The second thought involves living until I die. This has always been intention, not to run away from life or problems but to embrace them. Make choices. Take action. If I see a problem that affects me deeply, my tendency is to move toward it, see if I can do something. The realization here is that no disease, no condition can stop me from living until I die. I will, in other words, continue doing those things that matter to me. As I have done. Death cannot defeat my life, just end it.
So far these two thoughts: something, sometime will kill me and death cannot defeat my life, have helped me see that I am in no different situation now that at any other time in my life. Nor will I ever be.
Spring Beltane Moon
Building on the Colorado River session reported below, I also wanted to comment on a happenstance that seems significant. When things show up in disparate parts of my life, surprising me by their shared connections, I try to pay attention. That happened on Wednesday night. In the post below I mention the pulse flow that allowed, for 8 weeks, river water to fill the Rio Colorado and reconnect that river with its delta in the Gulf of California.
Last year in April I drove to Tucson for an Intensive Journal Workshop. It so happens that was when the pulse flow was underway. It was a news story the entire time I was in Tucson and it intrigued me, though I had forgotten about it until the presentation Wednesday.
It was the psychic pot stirring that happened for me in the Workshop that led to a conversation with Kate. We decided to move out here. Perhaps an analogy could be made between the pulse flow that revitalized the Rio Colorado basin and the tilling of my inner garden in the Intensive Journal.
So I put it together this way: intra-psychic journey in the Southwest, during an important riverine experiment, which landed me here on Shadow Mountain. Now I’m learning more about the Colorado River, source of the pulse flow, and water usage in the arid West, a topic that has interested me for some time.
Not sure yet what to make of this connection, but there is one, and something may, well, flow from it.
Spring Beltane Moon
On Monday (yesterday) my spirits lifted. The beginning of the work week moves my needle in a positive direction. Kate came up with some distractions. Yesterday we finally liberated all the art with the exception of our really big paintings from their containers and stored them in the guest room. This meant another slice and compress hour or so with the discarded cardboard, then stuffing it into the recycle bin. Mostly though I think I’ve integrated the possible futures and can live with any of them. (well, maybe not live with one really bad one.)
My distraction level is down. I’ve given myself (contraindicated over time) a break from exercising. An occasional vacation is good for the bones and blood vessels. I’m being gentle and compassionate with myself.
I got back my lab test results for other parts of my body. I am more than my prostate! An odd finding was that my total cholesterol at 127 is too low. Those atorvastatin pills go under the knife, cut in half to slim them down to the 10 mg dose. It’s weird considering the need to raise my cholesterol.
My kidney disease is stable and may well remain so for the rest of my life. The numbers were good for the most part with the exception of that damned PSA and the cholesterol.
Under any future I plan to live and live well until I die. That has always been my plan, my intention and I refuse to let anything, anything, interfere with it.
Spring Beltane Moon
Discovered two places that may shape my long term presence here in the West. The first I found in, of all places, the NYT. The article recounts the new mission of the former owners of Denver’s most treasured book store: Tattered Covers.
They gave up the book trade to create the Rocky Mountain Land Library. Here’s a brief explanation from their website:
“IMAGINE a network of land-study centers stretching from the Headwaters of South Park to the metro-Denver plains. Each site will be united by the common purpose of connecting people to nature and the land, but each site will have something unique to share:
—South Park’s Buffalo Peaks Ranch will offer a 32,000+ natural history library, along with residential living quarters for anyone who would like to experience the quiet and inspiration of a book-lined historic ranch, set on the banks of the South Platte River, and surrounded on all sides by a high mountain landscape, with some peaks rising to over 14,000 feet.”
As it happens South Park (of television fame) is about an hour from here going west and over the Kenosha Pass in the South Park Heritage Area. It is, oddly, 66.6 miles from here according to Google Maps.
I plan to volunteer here as soon as my medical condition becomes clearer. This will point my life more towards the west, away from Denver. A good thing for me and it will root my life more in the Rockies and the idea of the West.
The second I discovered just today, The Shumei Natural Agriculture Institute in Crestone. Here is a brief explanation:
“Doing nothing, being nothing, becoming nothing is the goal of Fukuoka’s farming method, an approach to agriculture which he has pursued for over forty years with resounding success. With no tillage, no fertilizer, no weeding and no pesticides he consistently produces rice, barley, fruit and vegetable crops that equal or exceed the yield per acre of neighboring farmers who embrace modern scientific agriculture. The basis of his philosophy is that nature grows plants just fine without our interference so that the most practical approach is to get out of the way. In the course of explaining his reasoning and methods, this do-nothing farmer delivers a scorching indictment of chemical agriculture and the human assumption that we can improve on nature. He explains the beneficial role of insects and plants usually characterized as pests, the fallacy of artificially boosting fertility with petrochemical concoctions, the logical error implicit in the use of farm machinery or draft animals, and why pollution is an inevitable result of misguided attempts to improve on nature.” This from an Amazon review of his book: Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy.
This is exciting, a form of gardening that appeals to my soul. Crestone is about three hours from here just off 285. I’ll get down there sometime soon and start reading about Natural Agriculture.
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Lucky we live the mountains. Yes, Minnesota is a beautiful state, but the exurban chunk of it in which we lived and the areas in which I usually traveled, south toward Minneapolis, only occasionally reflected the wonder of the northern part of the state. There was the Mississippi, the lakes in the city, the green belt of parks. There was little Round Lake on Round Lake Blvd. That was about it. The rest of it, the beautiful part, including northern Anoka County with its high water table, marshy and wooded terrain, had to be sought out by driving.
Here the 3 mile drive home from highway 73 up Black Mountain Drive winds past a valley filled with grass and pine on the south side of which rises Conifer Mountain. To the north Shadow Mountain gradually pulls the road higher and higher, rocks jutting out, ponderosa and aspen dot the slopes and mule deer sometimes browse. Each morning when I go to the mailbox to retrieve the Denver Post Black Mountain is on my right, guarding the west and the eventual sunset.
Anytime we leave home, whether to go into Evergreen for our business meeting or into Denver to see the grandkids or south toward Littleton for medical care mountains and valleys, canyons and gulches grace the roadways. Small mountain streams run next to the roadways, swift and right now, often violent. Walls of sheer rock alternate with wooded mountainsides. Always the journey is up or down until we get past the foothills onto the beginning of the great plains where the Denver metroplex takes over.
This was my thought while driving home from the doctor yesterday. How short is a human life span. Not even a tick of the second hand to this rock. These mountains have been here for millions of years longer than the human species itself has existed. They will probably be here millions of years after we’re gone. What is one lifetime? What is a few years here or there? Compared to these. This was a comforting thought.
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Several years ago Kate and I took advantage of an after conference package in Hawai’i. The conference itself was on Maui, Kaanapali Beach, but the package allowed a three day extension at the Mauna Kea Resort on the Big Island, Hawai’i.
The Mauna Kea is unusual for several reasons. First, its location was a gift to Laurance Rockefeller for taking the risk, in 1965, of starting the resort business on the Big Island. He chose a site with a beautiful crescent beach of white sand. Second, Rockefeller had it designed by famous modernist architects from Chicago, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.
Rockefeller went on an art collecting trip along the Pacific Rim and brought back works he instructed the architects to use as the center pieces of their overall design. The result is a mixture of Hawai’ian island romance with clean simple lines and materials used honestly. It is a beautiful place, one of my favorites.
Interestingly, very close to the Mauna Kea is a heiau, a Hawai’ian temple built by the powerful King Kamehameha, and named Pu`ukohola. Pu’ukohola is dedicated to the war god Ku. It is a site where human sacrifices were made and was built when Kamehameha wanted to unify the islands under one monarch.
Just a bit on down the road is a small restaurant where Kate and I ate a modest lunch. I had a local favorite, spam fried rice, which was delicious. We talked with our waiter who said, about living in Hawai’i, “Lucky we live Hawai’i.” I heard it other times, but that afternoon, after breakfast overlooking the white sand beach, a late morning visit to the temple of Ku, the war god, and a tasty basic lunch it seemed very true.
When I hear the islands call, and I do from time to time, what always comes to mind is “Lucky we live Hawai’i.”
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Under the mountain spring moon various shades of green have slowly, slowly begun to appear. The ponderosa pines have been green all winter but they’ve greened up some. The first ground cover green to appear was the bearberry when the snow melted back. This evergreen ground cover was green all along, just hidden. A shaded patch of moss has gone from a muted pale green to emerald over the last couple of weeks. There are, too, even here at 8,800 feet, dandelions. Some grass, too. Crab grass for sure, another hardy perennial. Tufts of grass that look like prairie drop seed, but are not, I’m sure, remain their winter tan.
Too, the dogs have begun to sniff through the deck, smelling, I suppose, new rodents of some kind. Along with that has come Rigel digging. With the advent of warmer soil Rigel and Vega may begin creating holes in the rest of the yard as well. Another harbinger of spring.
Birds chirp happily around 5:30-5:45 am as the sun begins to rise.
Driving along Highway 78 (Shadow Mountain Drive, Black Mountain Drive (our segment) and Brook Forest Road) the only snow that remains is on the north side of the road or in shaded spots. A pond not far from our house still has ice, but the ice has a shallow layer of water over it. The mountain streams run, burble, ice now long melted and turned into stream. Willows along the streams look fire tipped as their branches turn a green gold. “Like dusted with gold,” Kate said.
The mountain spring is a slow arriver, coming in pulses, alternated with sometimes heavy snows. We have the potential, for example, for a huge snow storm Wednesday through Friday.
While on a drive Sunday, not far from our home, on top of a large outcropping of rock where the sun penetrated the trees, lay a fox, curled up and enjoying a quiet Sunday nap. The fox was a tan spot against the gray of the rock. Mule deer have begun to return as well, we see them at various places along the slopes and valleys. Kate just called and said, for example, that we have four deer in our front yard and “the dogs are levitating.” Sure enough, there they are, finding the green just as I have been.
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Wondering about retirement, about the third phase, not from an abstract notion of this journey now, but from within it, on the path. I notice things like this. A weather blog I follow talks about the decadal oscillations (Atlantic and Pacific) that have a determining effect on drought patterns in the U.S. When the author says these may not change their influence until 2035, I quickly calculate. 92. That means I may live in the forest fire red zone knowing only drought conditions.
Work. I commented here about work, about Latin and writing, gardening and beekeeping as work. And it’s true that I experience them that way. When I call them work though, I sometimes find myself confused. Am I retired or am I working? Yes seems to be the answer. Perhaps I need a new paradigm.
What came to me as I wrote that last sentence was the Hindu notion I mentioned a while back, action without attachment to results. From within that idea it doesn’t matter, working or retired. Both. The doing, the acting carries the meaning, not the end. Related I think to the idea of the journey as the destination.
Yet, I admit that the culture comes up inside me, makes me wonder about the wasted years, all that time since leaving the church, now 25 years. What have I done? Which really means, of course, besides being alive how have you contributed to the world? I was taught, in that it’s obvious, it’s the way it is manner that culture defines for us, that work means results. A man is his attachment to results and the results make the man.
Results mean new law, building affordable housing, organizing citizen based power to balance philanthropic concentrations of wealth and to alleviate the pains of vast unemployment in Minnesota. Those were results a man could claim and in claiming lay down evidence as to his worth.
But. What if the novel doesn’t sell? What if the effort to market work is so weak that it never really has a chance? Does that invalidate the writing, the patience, the persistence necessary to conceive, execute, revise? Then, if the action does not have the expected result, does it come crashing down on the man, rendering him less a man?
Some days it feels like the answer is yes. If there is no book on the shelf with my name on the cover, then I am less of a man. If in writing, I have taken energy away from the political work which gave me tangible results, then I have contributed less than I could have. Have I allowed fear to dominate my marketing work over the last 25 years? Fear that I would be rejected time and again. Possibly. Does that erase the novels and short stories I have written? Or, to put it in the most blunt way possible, has it called into question all the “work” I’ve done in the past two decades and a half?
Some days it feels like the obvious answer is no. What is the result of loving a woman? What is the outcome of raising a child? Where is the success in a flower bed or a dog? All these most important actions rely not on the actions of the man, or at least not solely. Loving a woman does not make her a better woman, does not create an achievement. Raising a child, though important, does not make the child. Children make themselves, influenced no doubt by the parent, but still, the responsibility is theirs. The same with grandchildren. Flowers and vegetables grow, too, again perhaps aided by the gardener, but it is their task to produce a bloom or a fruit or vegetable. Dogs live their lives in the orbit of the humans who love them, but their life is the result and who can claim ownership of life itself?
Another angle. The taking in of knowledge, developing understanding, all the reading and attending to cultural artifacts like art, theater, chamber music, movies, what does that amount to? What is the result, the thing that matters? Is there any point to it all?
Not to mention that I have made almost no money for the last 25 years. Not none, but not enough to count.
As I write this, see it laid out on the page, though, I’m inclined toward compassion, toward acceptance of the man who has done what he has done with as much energy and passion as he has, a man who has stayed faithful to his wife, his son, his stepson and his family, dogs, gardens, bees, who has remained constant in following his inner path regardless of the outcomes.
Bill Schmidt’s find of this poem says what I feel better than I express it myself:
Love after Love
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life…