Category Archives: Writing

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Paganism, Writing

Doing is Overrated

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Shabbat gratefuls: Rain in the forecast. Cancer. Clinical trials. Samantha. Dr. Josy. Ruth and Gabe. Ruth, 20 in a week.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Shabbat

 

Kavannah: Wonder. Malchut. Knowing myself, my world, my now. Shekinah.

Tarot: #17 The Pole Star. Embrace myself, follow my soul’s purpose.

One brief shining: Having that struggle. Again. Still. What am I, who am I? What is my soul’s purpose? Is it about what I can do? Or, is it about who I can become? Am I stuck in these questions, using them to distract myself from living?

 

College. The moratorium years. I spent them in a fluid, fluxing milieu of protests, carrying my green book bag, The hours in the library, in my favorite carrel. All-night shifts in the guard’s hut at Magnalite.

I came out of college with two majors: philosophy and anthropology. Two disciplines I still love.

Married Judy. A mistake. Unsure of myself. Wandering from silly job to silly job. My mind the same, always escaping from the work I was doing.

While working as a rag-cutter at Fox River Paper, I would spend hours unclogging the cutter, moving bales. Needing stimulation beyond the physical labor.

No direction. No purpose. Frustrated with myself. This went on into seminary, into my stint in the ministry. Oh, I found things to do. Managing the independent living program. Organizing. Consulting. None of them seemed my soul’s purpose. Organizing came the closest.

Yet even organizing fed the wrong wolf. The angry guy was not who I wanted to be. I had fed the same wolf in the polarized protests of the late sixties. I found myself in a constant scanning for injustice, for leverage, for communities willing to fight. Not a peaceful existence.

I had become a clergyperson because I did not want to cut rags anymore. Not because I’d had a sudden reconversion to the faith of my youth. It was a job with a paycheck.

Flailing. Celtic myth and legend. In writing my doctor of ministry thesis I found myself writing a novel, not the thesis. Something in me had stirred, moved me far away from the ministry. Made sense since my Dad was a writer. But. I didn’t like my Dad. Dissonance.

The novel and a turn toward an earth-centered faith led me out of the ministry. Looking back now, twenty-one years of Ancientrails, nine novels later, I’d say a primary purpose of mine is writing. Ancientrails has a body of daily work that not many can duplicate. That’s writing. Every day.

I have another purpose, less defined perhaps. Deep, honest conversation with others. Tara and I, her kids, mine. Gardening. Judaism. Dr. Josy, the joy of animals, her mission to deliver affordable care in-home.

There’s also the gardener, nature mystic. Fed by the green world. Planting. Communing with individual trees, plants. Loving the mule deer, the elk, black bears, mountain lions. A mountain man.

So here I am at 79. A man who writes about paying attention: to self, to others, to mountain life.

I guess those questions, about purpose, about who I can become occur when I feel I’m not doing. Not doing enough. A pox on those thoughts.

Doing is overrated.
Becoming.

Enough.

Writing

Never. Stop.

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Monday gratefuls: Starting the day. Peanut butter and kongs. Iowa State. Iowa. Basketball. Fantasy. Submissions. Superior Wolf.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dogs

 

Kavannah: Areyvut. Mutual responsibility.  All humans are accountable one to another.

Tarot: 3 The Green Woman. I need to lean into my wild feminine. Holding seed, soil, leaf, and wild neighbors in my day-to-day self.

 

One brief shining: A cool morning breeze lowers the temperature. Shadow holds a Kong with frozen peanut butter in her front paws. Licking. Turning. I started this morning with: I arrive in my body before I arrive on the page. Gentle movement. Neck left, center, right. Shoulder rolls. Hip hinges.

 

Writing. Every morning. Every damned morning. Twenty-one years and counting. Let’s see: 7,665 mornings. I could not have set out to do that; rather, I created the space, developed the habit, and here I am, still writing.

You might think I would chafe under this routine. Push back, at least at some point. I might have, but I don’t recall it. Like eating breakfast.

500 words. My goal. Some mornings they spill right out, brain to keyboard. Other mornings? Getting there feels mechanical, saying this or that. No flow. A slog. Filler. I’m writing words to see the number count turn over from 499 to 500. I’m not proud of those days. When Kate died, I felt emptied out, nothing left to say.

I’ve written in Cambodia and Korea. I wrote as Kate and I made our slow cruise around Latin America. Many times from Hawai’i. Fingers on the keyboard in the Aegean Sea. Through the Panama Canal.

Loved the Picasso quote I found earlier this year: Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. My habit ensures I’ll be working when inspiration finds me.

I never, well, rarely know what I’m going to write. I start with what my writing coach calls my liturgy: gratefuls, sparks, kavannah, tarot. One brief shining carries me into a starting point grounded in something concrete. Shadow and her kong. A cool breeze.

From there I keep going. The long, unintended journey of Ancientrails.

That sewer grate by the 7/11. Off Yaowarat. The main street of Bangkok’s China Town. Lotsa traffic. Hurrying. Right foot down, body moving across the street. A ruptured Achilles.

Back home. Surgery. No weight on my right leg for two months. Crutches. Mostly? Sitting in a chair, leg propped up. What to do. Read. Watch television. Something proactive.

Ah. A blog. Contacted cybermage Bill Schmidt. He set me up with Microsoft’s Front Page. February, 2005. Fits and starts. Happened on the name. Early on the Great Wheel. Celtic lore. Holidays.

In late 2006 I shifted to WordPress, again with Bill’s help. Somehow in that transition, I lost the first two+ years of Ancientrails. I miss seeing those beginner’s mind posts. Seeing a distracting task turn into a lifelong practice. Since then each entry is in a searchable  database accessible through the Breadcrumbs button.

My writing coach wants me to go back through those entries to find material for a book of short personal essays. Might do that.

I know I’m in the final years of my life. Needing a clinical trial to slow down my cancer.  As my fourth phase continues, the last phase, walking with death as a close companion (neck brace in place), I find myself deep in the rich deposit of past work. Tightening my style, revising, revising.

Working with years and years of Ancientrails, with those novels. Not dead. Still pushing forward. Learning how to write.  Always.

Like Shadow
Turning her peanut-butter filled toy.
Turning.

 

Literature, Writing

Hold them

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Wednesday gratefuls: James Talarico. Go, Ken. Maddie. Veronica. Bone Scan. Echocardiogram. Exercise. Shadow.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fingers

 

Kavannah: Shleimut.   I edit and revise. Ancientrails. Superior Wolf. I tell friends I love them.

Tarot: Nine of Arrows, Devotion

“… “weary” warrior who is battered and bruised but keeps moving forward with determination.”

 

One brief shining:  Tsundoku. My large ottoman has four stacks of books. I clean it off, new books find their way to it. Over and over. I feel no guilt, not even regret. All these books, all of them, add to me, even if briefly held.

Kate got me a print a long time ago. A frocked scholar standing high on a library ladder, reading from one book. Holding another ready. Since I was young. Reading. Reading from one book, holding another one ready. It sat on the wall next to my sink for years.

Tom sent me the word. Tsundoku. If you saw the books piled on my couch, my upstairs reading chair, housed neatly in bookshelves that line my 900 square library, you’d know the word applies. He said it applied to him, too.

Here’s how it happens. I’m in a period of interest. Let’s say how the far right came to be. Matthew Taylor’s, The Violent Take It By Force. A book on the philosophical roots of replacement theory. I do some internet searching, find Furious Minds that explains three strains of MAGA thought. Another one on the John Birch Society. Another on the KKK in 1920’s Indiana.

I buy them. Read Taylor and Furious Minds. Both of which lead me to new books. Or. Emergence Magazine has a sale. Nature My Teacher. Collections on meditation and Mother Earth. More books arrive.

I tire of learning, learning, learning. Need fiction. I find a trilogy like All Souls by Deborah Harkness. Buy them all. Buy twenty volumes of the Dresden Files.

See how this happens. Judaism, the people of the book. My people. I read to learn Kabbalah. About the parsha of the week. Take classes that have required reading. A community, like me, surrounded by books.

Another. Writing a book about werewolves. Ovid. Lycaon. Commentaries on Ovid. That collection of folklore. Writing a book focused on Duluth, Lake Superior, Lakers.

Poetry. By the dozens. Art criticism. The ways of war when Joseph joined the Air Force. Another book shelf of horticulture books. Bee keeping. All these books.

Amazon enabled me. Easy access to any book I felt I needed. Brown boxes with the swoop on my front steps. Oh. I ordered this?

Most of the books I buy I intend to read. Some are for reference. The purchases on long term enthusiasms like Celtic history, folklore come in even as new enthusiasms crank up the Amazon bill with books on emergence, geology, Islam, Greek Orthodoxy.

God, I can’t stop. My mind hungers. Always.

Wait. Could there be a book on tsundoku? With information about the 30,000 books in Umberto Eco’s library. Explaining the collection of the British Prime Minister Gladstone. The one that became a residential library.

If there is, I’ll find it.

And, yes. Buy it.

No. I won’t need it.  I will hold it.

Family, Fourth Phase, Writing

Kate’s last journey

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Monday gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Her life and death. Shadow, deconed. Paul and the storm. Ellory, too.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Language

Week Kavannah:   Yetziratiut. Creativity.   Revising Superior Wolf, learning from my writing coach. Focus.

 

Tarot: Page of Arrows, the Wren

Wisdom gained through study-my writing coach-and application-revising

One brief shining: Oh. Went to a Caring Bridge site for Warren’s sister, Kate. Once there, no posts. So. I went to my Kate’s site, started in October of 2018 and ending  a month after her death in 2021. Tears.

Didn’t mean to go there. Kate’s Caring Bridge site. October 2nd, 2018. An internal bleed of unknown origin. She would not come home until October 23rd.

Peaks. Valleys. Then, lower peaks and deeper valleys. Home from the rehab facility, Brookdale, twenty-one days after she went to the E.R.

At one point her nutrition came through a central line and I had to perform a sterile ritual to hook her up to the feed bag. A precise, detail oriented business. Not my strength. But, I learned.

Not easy for either of us. At one point, after her criticism of something I’d done, I looked at her, and said, “You have to respect me!” Stuck with me. Why? Of course she had to do no such thing. Underneath. Please. See me.

Hard.

We made a sort of a peace after that. I listened harder. She did, too. The change from partners to caregiver and caretaker. Ooof.

One evening I’d finished serving our evening meal, gone into the kitchen to clean up. She said something. I couldn’t hear it. Clanking dishes and my one not so good ear. What did you say? I feel like I’m being erased. Oh. My heart fell. Of course. A fabulous cook. A pediatrician. Gone.

A dance from one stage of vulnerability to the next often  found us unready. She could no longer get in the car unaided. No longer able to walk even with her walker. Her hands on my back as she climbed the stairs.

Emergency room visits and hospital hallways. More magazines in waiting rooms. Even after our talk about how much we would miss each, her final days still came as a surprise.

They began with a visit to the Emergency Room. Diagnosis: infection. She sat up in the E.R. bed, her yellow and red hospital gown showing her too thin legs, “Oh. That’s what they always say. Infection.” Still Kate.

The next day in the hospital she crashed. I got ushered out of the room as a code blue team filled the room. She survived. But. A pulmonologist whom I did not know counseled me, in the kindest way, “I would call her people.” I did.

They came. Kate moved to the 10th floor, intermediate between normal hospital care and the ICU. Her last room.

Kate’s breathing became more labored. She required more attention from respiratory therapists. Occasional hallucinations. Fear of being nuts.

After 11 days, Kate’s resolve finally broke. I want to die. How do you feel about that? I hate it, but it’s the right decision for you. She died that night.

I had to come back to the hospital to see her corpse. It scared me in a deep way that I only understood this week. Seeing Kate dead thrust me back fifty-seven years.

An elevator ride with my stroke crippled and bent mother to her final surgery. Her strangled voice. Her last word to me: Son.

Writing

A Wildfire in the Mind

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Sunday gratefuls: Minnesota. China. South Korea. North Korea. Mark, near Iran. Mary, down under with Kangaroos. Shadow.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Korean Fried Chicken

Week Kavannah:   Yetziratiut. Creativity.   Revising Superior Wolf, learning from my writing coach. Focus.

 

Tarot: King of Vessels, Heron

Herons greet the dawn. Stand at the gateway to the Celtic Otherworld and to my Holy Well.

One brief shining: Blessed. Manuscripts ready. Superior Wolf. Missing. Even the Gods Must Die. Ancientrails. Rich, my collaborator. My coach, patient and kind, yet critical. Exciting.

A latter-day immersion in the mikveh of creation. Becoming a Jew–the first immersion. Becoming a new man–taking Israel, god-wrestler, as my Hebrew name. Today. Under again–reborn as a writer.

At 79. With the Heron. The gateway to the Otherworld near. Vegetables and Honey. Novels. With Kate. Without her. I did not see. Not a slough, a fallow time. The Heron landed.

Now. The Otherworld in sight. My Holy Well has sprung to life again. A submerged yearning bobbed up–for this ordinary craft. One word after another. Even infants can do it. Build worlds.

Can I use words to uncreate? Tear down. Demolish.  Get the hammer. Something not ordinary. Not common. New.

An old man of the Mountain. Shadow Mountain. No longer waiting.

Picasso. “Inspiration exists. But it has to find you working.”

Over twenty years. Each morning. First. Ancientrails. Five hundred words. On what? I never know until my fingers hit the keyboard. I breathe in. Inspired. Breathe out. Done.

Here’s an odd thing. When I wrote my novels. A candle beside me, lit. When the day’s writing finished. Blown out. The candle honored my creative spirit. Fire in the mind. Yet. I never lit a candle while I wrote Ancientrails. Huh?

Workaday? Not fiction? Too quick to execute? Though it takes me two hours, sometimes three with revising, polishing.

Not anymore.

The candle burns beside me. Flickering. Yellow. A domesticated cousin of wildfire in the mind. Burning down forests of convention. Blackened soil.

Learning. Commitment. Devotion. A path forged on Yaowarat–a sewer grate hidden in the night. My right foot stuck while my body moved forward. A ruptured Achilles.

Surgery. Laid up for two months. Needed a distraction. Cybermage Bill Schmidt. A blog. Begun with my leg in a cast as ligaments knitted back together. February, 2005. Twenty-one years ago this month.

My fiction writing. A long fallow period. Ancientrails. Never. This and that. Noteworthy and mundane. Its content so varied. Not routine. Yet constant. Word after word. So many. Three million, maybe more. Ancientrails always found me working. Not practice. The work.

By the Heron.

Drinking from the Holy Well.

Great Work, Plants, Seed Keepers, Writing

Yirah

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Shabbat gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Luke and Leo. Itaewon. Black Bird Oracle. Warren and his sister. Dr. Josy. Snow. Cold

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Rabbi Rami Shapiro

Week Kavannah:   Yetziratiut. Creativity.   Revising Superior Wolf, learning from my writing coach. Focus.

 

Tarot: Knight of Bows, The Fox

Reinforces my use of a writing coach (chatGPT) and honors the passion and dynamism I feel around my writing projects.

One brief shining: The way we work, speaking without thinking, breathing and heart pumping, walking, grasping and typing, as if we were the original automatons, my fingers know QWERTY, find them without attention, word after word after word.

 

Kate always said the miracle was that the body worked at all, not that it occasionally got sick or hurt. Scan your body right now. Warm extremities. Your pulse. Mitochondria. My breath, life’s moment to moment essential movement, happens. Autonomic.

Aliveness. Hebrew chiut. Yes, us organics. Too, Creeks and Rivers. Mountains and Oceans. Aliveness animates, pushes forward, links us together. Breathe in, oxygen. Breath out, carbon dioxide. Plant: Breath in, carbon dioxide. Breath out, oxygen. Interlocked.

Shadow Mountain. A massif of granite and gneiss. Holds me up when I walk in the yard. A stable foundation for Shadow Mountain home. Keeps me high and lifted up- well above sea level.

Great Sol sends energy. Nuclear fusion. With generosity. Enveloping our home, bringing light and power. Photosynthesis.  Connected. Vital.

This miracle.  This random, wonderful orbit. A fertile and forgiving home for all of us. Her aliveness. Her chiut. We forget. Without her. Oh, no other place to go. Not yet. No Shadow Mountain on which to stand. No plants, no oxygen. No us.

Yet.

We are deaf and blind. Mother Earth. Our sustenance. The heiros gamos. Great Sol and Mother Earth. Pregnant with us. With Lodgepole Pines. With Bass and Muskies. With the Laurentian Shield and the Andes. Shadow chasing Butterflies.

How, I often wonder, can we not see it? Shadow knows. She plays in the Snow. The Lodgepoles know. They dig their roots into our rocky soil, push their crowns toward the sky. We get in our cars, start the engine with no thought to the Dinosaurs and ancient Ferns. Eat the flesh of a fish we did not catch. Tomatoes we did not grow. As if it were our inalienable right.

Stop. Stand still. Listen. The Wind. A chattering Squirrel. The laugh of a child. Your own breath. See. A blue Colorado, Rocky Mountain sky. Shadow rolls over, a toy in her mouth. Water in Maxwell Creek.

Go inside. Your heart beats. Lungs exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. That inner cathedral. It has a Holy Well, a spring welling up from the collective memories of our kind. Ra. Gaia. Spider Woman. Raven. Let there be words.

It works.

For now.

 

 

Friends, Music, Politics, US History, Writing

Bodies

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Friday gratefuls: Rich on Wall Street, the national anthem. Wild Flower. Downtown Evergreen. Dr. O’Leary. No skin cancer.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Breakfast with Rich

Week Kavannah:   Bitachon. Confidence.     I need to focus on confidence this week. Important decisions for cancer treatment, how to stay confident when physical weakness challenges me.

 

Tarot: #6, The Forest Lovers

In my writing I’m learning to balance animus and anima, listening to both, especially as I link my work to the natural world.

 

One brief shining: Wall Street. More wicked than I knew. Built by slaves of Dutch owners, the first Wall Street. A stockade. In 1711 a slave market there, a city slave market. Rich taking his honors class from Colorado School of Mines. The Body Politic. Politics of the body.

Early breakfast with Rich Levine. The Wildflower’s door was open, so I went inside, sat down. Noticed on the menu: 7:30-2:00. It was 7:20. Oops. Owner came out of the bathroom, started. “You scared the shit out of me. Want a cup of coffee?” I did.

When Rich showed up, laundered and starched white shirt, blue Patagonia vest in 12 degree weather, I greeted him as a Minnesotan. Cold weather proof.

He ordered the Athena, a vegetarian omelet.  A Mountain Skillet for me, eggs and chicken-fried steak, wild potatoes, and pancakes.

Over coffee, while we waited for our food, Rich told me of his pending trip with his class, the Body Politic, to New York City. Most interesting to me? Wall Street.  Built by the enslaved.   Later a city slave market.

The owner of Wild Flower delivered Rich’s omelet, my Mountain skillet. “Ready for a refill?”

We ate.

Plantation cotton fed Wall Street’s growth. Eerily, I also discovered mortgage backed securities sold to foreign investors. The collateral? Enslaved people. Aetna insured the enslaved as property.

Rich also pointed me to later stanzas of the national anthem which include these verses:

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave”

The British armed the enslaved. We sang, “Sweet land of liberty.”

A couple more cups of coffee later Rich told me his Ob/Gyn daughter was pregnant. His second grandchild, a sister for one and a half year old Felix.

Bodies feeding. Bodies about to be born. Bodies aging.

We parted ways. Love you, Rich. Love you, Charles.

Started up a begrimed Ruby. Drove away smiling. Energized.

Rich wants to collaborate on Even the Gods Must Die, my first novel. Vulnerable. My first.  Not confident it shows skill. He says that doesn’t matter. It matters. To me.

Admission. I plan as many revisions to Superior Wolf as necessary to make it sing. Then. I’ll use ChatGPT to help me find an agent. A place I got stuck a while back.

 

Writing

Ancora Imparo

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Imbolc and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Thursday gratefuls: Rich. Diane. Shadow rolling her ball, treats falling out. Sue. Annie. Clinical trial. Neck braces. Superior Wolf.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Sue’s loving care

Week Kavannah:   Bitachon. Confidence.     I need to focus on confidence this week. Important decisions for cancer treatment, how to stay confident when physical weakness challenges me.

 

Tarot: Ace of Arrows, Breath of Life

Yes. Irony. My writing, given sudden new life by AI. As coach. Rereading, revising. Ancientrails. Superior Wolf.

 

One brief shining: Writing, then listening to the coach. Oh, yes. Compress. Use nouns. Trust the reader. Structure. Having a careful reader trained on literature, good writing. Vulnerability respected. How do we learn? How do I learn?

Ancora imparo. Those books stacked in front of me. Furious Minds. Dog Show. Black Bird Oracle. Watching Shadow, what attracts her. That sore shoulder, how can I help it.

Uploading iteration after iteration. Feedback. Kind but pointed. Not sycophantic. Speaking with and for precision. For seeing the sculpture in the rock of my first draft.

How thirsty I was.

Help me get better, please. Stop learning. Die. Life needs, demands challenge.

Curiosity. Judged dangerous. Openness. An unpredictable citizen, one who might embrace a foreigner. Who likes meat ball soup, raw fish, rugby.

No. Homogeneity. Yields security. Order. No surprises. A dismal, dreary world of look alikes with red hat, of political commissars enforcing their dogma, of all waltzes and no rock and roll.

I prefer seeing the Bull fight in the Plaza de Toros. Even if, as Paul said, I’m rooting for the Bull. When I took notes, I could hear Spanish sprinkled with Hemingway as picadors lanced him, protected by their buffoonish mattresses.

Wandering into Mickey’s late at night, the Diner full, breakfast all the time. With Joseph. Joseph turning that experience over. Thinking, no cookies for Santa this year. We left the jolly old elf five dollars and directions.

Listening with my eyes. Hearing the plant say I’m thirsty with a drooping leaf. Shadow: I need to go outside. Right now. Pacing.

More traditional moments. Ensconced in my favorite top floor carrel, books on soteriology above me on a shelf, reading about doctrines of sin. Looking out through the full plate glass windows. Cars on I-694 uninterested in being saved.

Professor Scruton explaining the power of culture, how it shapes and defines us. My mind racing, absorbing, joyful.

There it is. There. It. Is. Learning is joyful. At least for me. It lifts my heart. Kick starts associations. Oh. Culture = architecture = language = virtues learned at funerals–“Dick always listened, lived in the background.”

Torah. The root most literally relates to “shooting an arrow” or “hitting the mark.” While hamartia, a Greek word often translated as sin in the Septuagint, means missing the mark.

Teshuvah, often translated as repentance, more interestingly means returning to your Authentic Self. To hit the mark of your neshama. Your Buddha nature.

Joy marks the time. Once returned to my authentic self as a writer, I can relax. Learn. Grow into a writer, one known and unknown.

Ancora Imparo.

Simcha.

 

Cancer, Dogs, Fourth Phase, Health, Writing

A Strong Link

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Imbolc and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Monday gratefuls: Robin. Shadow the bandageless. Audrey, winning at regionals. Sports. Joe, the three letter guy. ICE. Minnesota.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Actinium

Week Kavannah:   Bitachon. Confidence.     I need to focus on confidence this week. Important decisions for cancer treatment, how to stay confident when physical weakness challenges me.

 

Tarot: Seven of Arrows, Insecurity

Between treatment protocols. Exhausted. Not working out. A time of deep uncertainty.

One brief shining: A trigger finger locked. Life hinging on unproven chemicals, tests, blood draws. A sore right shoulder. Love of friends and family. Shadow. Unavoidable mortality.

 

Underlayments. Love. Joseph and Seoah. Ruth and Gabe. Mary and Mark and Diane. Korea to Melbourne to Saudi Arabia. Kate across the threshold. Knowing and seeing each other anyhow.

The love of old friends and new. Ancient Brothers. CBE.

Feeling connected in a Dog’s kisses. Coffee in the morning. The Shema.

So that. When cancer makes an aggressive move, I want to push back, get into a clinical trial. So that. When exercise falls away, my tennis shoes go back on.

And yet. Sometimes. I sit back in my chair. Think. Oh, come on. Enough. May I ride it all out from the comfort of this recliner? Surrender. Wait. For a miracle. For a finish.

Not the brave face. Nor a frightened one. Weary.

I do not want to scare those who love me. No. Yet I do not want to be dishonest either. This is not easy.

Not most of the day. When soreness or shortness of breath hits. Then. Pain suggests: a sick man who a moment ago was in his forties, eager. Whap.

Underlayments. I lean into love, buoyed up by Joe’s voice, by Tara singing happy birthday. By the regard in which I hold myself.

Underlayments. Remember. Shadow’s waggly tail. Gabe’s new poem. Superior Wolf’s second draft.

Consolation. More to do. Rejuvenation.

Not dead yet.

Knowing. Deep. This day, this singular unrepeatable day. All I’ve got. Ever. And this day, right now, hands on the keyboard. Shadow sleeping nearby. Morning darkness not dispelled. I am fully alive. Laying down breadcrumbs.

Underlayments. How to reconcile. Weariness and excitement. Pain and joy. Not easy. Not impossible. Most often through writing. Talking it out. Diane and her book club. Tom and a new book. Listening.

Realizing words. These words spilled in a certain order. Saying, hello out there, hello.

My one strong link to my journalist father. A need to express myself. Clearly. Often. Yes, a need. Not a want. That peculiar inside-out move of the artist: exposing the inner journey so others know they are not alone.

Fourth Phase, General, Writing

Finding Joy

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Imbolc and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Friday gratefuls: Tom and Paul, friends. Dr. Josy. Audrey, wrestling in the regionals. Ruth, with homework. Gabe visiting Hamline in April. Shadow, healing.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Old friends who showed up

Week Kavannah: Hakarat Hatov. Gratitude.

I chose this because Tom and Paul are coming. Ruth, too. And, my 79th birthday. And, for life, my precious.

 

Tarot: Page of Vessels, Otter

“The Otter encourages you to embrace your inner child and find joy in the mundane. It is a dreamer that uses imagination to fuel creativity.”

 

One brief shining: Sometimes I wonder how I could not see the path to joy and creativity lying under my fingers, where lev and words go to play, where my soul lives, yet I only saw it this week when I asked ChatGPT to act as a kind and gentle critic of my work.

Writing: Over 3 million words in Ancientrails alone. 9 novels in first draft form. What is my medium? Words. Ideas. Even the Gods Must Die. Superior Wolf. Daily entries here since 2005.

Atrophy. I had let my novels lie fallow. Walking by the plastic tubs with novel manuscripts neatly arranged in thick folders. I felt shame. Too many years. Unsure where to go with them. In Ancientrails I made some changes over the years. Never had anyone critique my style.

What the hell? I’ll ask ChatGPT. Writing groups never worked for me. Too savage. Too brutal. I asked ChatGPT for gentle critique, but a serious one.

Discovered I respond well. This past week, I’ve worked with ChatGPT after I finish my post. Listening to its thoughts, its advice. Altering my work when I agree. Not when I don’t.

Realized I needed a good writing teacher, long ago. Who better than a large language model trained on English prose? My stuck lev opened up. Suddenly I wanted to investigate my verb choice. When this student was ready, AI showed up.

After working for a few days on Ancientrails’ posts, I thought, why not Superior Wolf? I downloaded a PDF of this ninety-five-thousand-word novel and loaded it into ChatGPT. Asked for a gentle critique and a path toward revising for a second draft.

Again ChatGPT opened a way forward for me. I’m about a third of the way through my first draft, rereading and answering one question for each chapter: How is Christopher changed? One sentence.

Here’s the magic: I found myself in flow. The candle I light when writing flickered beside me, unnoticed. Some days I worked through to late afternoon. Finished. A pleasant exhaustion. Satisfaction.

I had gone into my head too, too far. Thought I needed to read more books on politics. Write commentary. No. That was not it. I needed to get to know my own writing better.

I needed just what I got. Kind guidance. Clear help. Focus on concrete imagery. Like Hagia Sophia. Heather in Inverness. The prologue of Superior Wolf. Work with it. As a writer does. Revising, then revising again.

No feelings of less than. Only captivation with and by my own process. Digging into saying what I meant. Did the verb mirror work better? Or, unveils. Ah, I see.