• Category Archives Writing

  • Psalm for a Wednesday

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

    Friday gratefuls: No lupron. Good PSA’s. Dog warmth, cold night. Kate and her sisters. Pickup at Safeway. Bright Snow. Lodgepoles. Black Mountain. Bunch Grass. Wild Rugosa. Mushrooms. Friends, old and new. Covid. Purim today.

    Sparks of Joy: Vaccines. Purim shpiels. Dr. Thompson.

     

     

    The Days Are Gods.

    (attr. Ralph Waldo Emerson)

     

    A Psalm for Mittwoch

     

    Woden. Odin. Ooinn, Master of Ecstasy. How do you fill our mittwoch?

    Ecstasy. Fill our poetry with heat, intensify our lives.

    Days swelling with your power. Ours, too. Our days. Oh. Ooinn.

    Never quit us. Never again hang from the great tree, never again die for knowing.

    Ecstasy. Learning flames within our hearts in your honor.

    Shaman, seer. Poet, warrior. See with the empty socket. Let me.

    Dance with Mimir who slaked your thirst. And took your eye.

    And water the great tree Yggdrasil with your blood

    You, Odin. One-eye. Trickster. Seeker of knowledge. On this, your day, we let you in to quicken our lives.

     

    yggdrasil

     

    This was gonna be my megillah post, but I’m going to have to do that tomorrow. I needed the time this morning for my assignment for Psalm’s class. We had to write a psalm for a day of the week.

    Makes me want to go through all the days, seek out their divine names and powers, honor them as they seep into us, over and over and over again. Not sure I will, but the idea’s there.

     

     


    Judaism Poetry Torah Writing

  • Acts of Creation

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the crescent Wolf Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Beau Jo’s pizza. Easy Entree’s Chicago beef sandwiches. Keepin’ me sane. Kate. Somewhat better days. Trying new things with her nourishment. That crescent Moon. Sleeping through the night. Invisible City, a short Netflix series featuring Brazilian folklore. Latin American magical realism. 100 Years of Solitude. Marquez.

    Folklore. Legend. Fairy tales. Mythology. Religion. Art. These are some of my favorite things.

    Just finished the short series, Invisible City, on Netflix. It features Brazilian folktale creatures like the Saci, the Cuca, the Cucupira, the pink River Dolphin. Green Frontier, a Colombian series from 2017, focuses on the Amazonian forest and the supernatural.

    Netflix and to a lesser extent, Amazon Prime and HBO Max, keep offering films and television series from all over the world. I love this, especially the original programming on Netflix produced by local creatives in their own language and in their own thought worlds. The supernatural dramas draw me in though they vary a great deal in quality.

    I also love dramas and mysteries that show life in different places. Gomorrah, organized crime in Naples. The Alienist, turn of the century (19th to 20th) New York, Monarca, contemporary Mexico City, Wild District, contemporary life in Bogota and the lives of guerillas. Many others.

    Since I can’t get out, get around, these days, travel comes to me. The anthropologist in me loves the folktales, the cultures, the different mores. And the ticket price is far lower.

    Reading lately. Finished a few chess related novels after watching the amazing Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. Finishing Theodora Gossa’s European Travels for Monstrous Women and will pick up Kim Stanley Robinson’s, the Ministry of the Future next. Science fiction and fantasy also live in the fairy tale, folktale, legendary realm.

    Writing. Jennie’s Dead. Ancientrails. Writing a Psalm for the Rabbi Jamie class. Not as much as I’d like, more than I’ve been doing. Just bought some Brazilian folklore books. Might be good basis for a new novel.

    I have another novel idea I’ve been kicking around for years, one that would examine white supremacy, maybe militias. This one emerges not from the favorite things I mentioned above, but from my growing up years in Indiana. Like my buddy Mark Odegard this work sustains me, even though it may never see the light of day.

    My birthday’s coming up and I’m playing with the idea of a podcast or a Patreon website on which I would read my own novels, figure out some sort of subscription service. Not a new idea, novels were sometimes published in newspapers, magazines, in serial fashion. Combine my speaking voice with my creative voice. The birthday part of this is buying items for a podcasting studio.

    Friend Alan Rubin has a lot of experience in audio recording and has created a studio for himself to do voice overs and commercials. He’s advised me. I’ve watched Youtube videos and just bought Audio for Authors, a book about this sort of project.

    So, yes, the creative me stays alive, is never far from my consciousness.

    The only rule is to work. From a list of rules by John Cage. That’s the trick. Persistence.


    Art and Culture Cinema and Television Literature Media Myth and Story Plants Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Travel US History Writing

  • Imbolc 2021

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Wolf Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Easy Entrees bacon wrapped pork tenderloins. Green Beans. Kate’s no nausea days. House cleaning today. LLBean and my new shearling hurricane shirt. The Ancient Ones tell stories around the council fire. Tom’s story. 45 gone. 46 doing stuff I like. Feel better. Imbolc.

    The Ewes, the pregnant Ewes. Milk for their Lambs. Means Milk for all. For Cheese. For children. Imbolc. In the belly. In Ireland this is and was the birthing time for Sheep. The Lambs came; the Ewes freshened; the family fed on food not stored over the long fallow time.

    It was clear the promise of the day after the Winter Solstice was not false. There would be another spring, another freshening of the earth. All would be well, all manner of things would be well.

    What a precious and delightful time. Lambs gamboling. Suckling. Milk squirted directly into children’s mouths. All delighted by the miracle of birth and renewal.

    Hard to put ourselves in the place of people who subsisted on stored Grains, Vegetables, smoked Meats over the long fallow time begun on Samain, Summer’s End, and lasting until today.

    Brigid, the Triple Goddess. Her day. This from a wikipedia article:

    She is the goddess of all things perceived to be of relatively high dimensions such as high-rising flames, highlands, hill-forts and upland areas; and of activities and states conceived as psychologically lofty and elevated, such as wisdom, excellence, perfection, high intelligence, poetic eloquence, craftsmanship (especially blacksmithing), healing ability, druidic knowledge and skill in warfare.

    Poetry, the smithy, and the hearth were her domains, thus the Triple Goddess. The often week long festivals the Celts celebrated on their four cross quarter days: Imbolc, Beltane (May 1), Lughnasa (August 1), and Samain (October 31st) gave villagers a break from their subsistence lives. A chance to play, to sing, dance, trade, honor their gods and goddesses.

    Imbolc was also a time for discerning weather, peeking into the immediate future. Hoping for Spring, but knowing it could still be distant. It was this tradition that has translated in the U.S. into Groundhog Day. Here’s a Scottish proverb that suggests the link. Bride is Brigit.

    Imbolc is a good day to consider those freshened thoughts and projects you have. What came up for you during the dark, fecund days of Winter? Are there dreams or hopes or works you imagined then that need a push right now? You can ask Brigit for help. It’s her big day and she’s listening.

    If you have an artesian well nearby or know of one, you could also follow the ancient Celtic practice of dressing the wells. On these holidays the Irish, the Welsh, The Scots, the Cornish, the Manx, and Bretons would, in ancient times, take flowers to the well, make corn dollies representing Brigit and leave them there, tie rags with wishes and prayers to shrubs and trees nearby.

    These Holy Wells are pathways to the Otherworld, the world of Faery, and a place where the Holy Ones pay attention to the needs of the common person.

    Brigit, the Triple Goddess, is a Fire Goddess, and at Kincaid in Ireland a double monastery, men and women, kept her eternal flame alive throughout the year. Might be a good day to have a Fire in the Fireplace, her hearth, and consider the creativity her Holy spirit represents.

    Welcome all to the blessed season of Imbolc. May your projects blaze up and warm you and yours.


    Beyond the Boundaries Commentary on Religion Great Wheel Holidays Myth and Story Our Land and Home Poetry Shadow Mountain Writing

  • Electoral College. Today, and Today only. Yes.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the 2021 Moon (yes, this moon will be full on December 30th and still big on the 31st. It will light our way out of this god forsaken chunk of chronology.)

    Monday gratefuls: Cribbage. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Snow on the ground. Blue Sky overhead. Hanukkah with the grandkids on Wednesday over zoom. Rigel’s visit today to the docs who cured her endocarditis. 37 days. When will he ever leave? The electoral college votes today. The Supreme Court ruled against the Texas lawsuit. Pushing us toward a new gratitude for our system. And, how it needs to change. BLM. Yes. Police radical reform. Yes. A broken medical system reform. Yes. Inclusion of all Americans. Yes. Better education and financial support for working class folks. Yes. Vaccines. That light at the end of the tunnel. Faint, but growing brighter.

     

    Sometimes I wish I was more poetic. Less choppy, more graceful in my prose. More metaphorical. More allusive. But. I’m not. I’m a meat and potatoes writer. You can see all the ingredients. Shorter sentences. Phrases. Using those ands, buts, and ors as headers. It’s not so much choice as it is feel. The way things come out, especially when I write Ancientrails. My way. Not a High way. A side road. Might be scenic, though.

    Next March Ancientrails will begin its sixteenth year. The longest project I’ve ever engaged. And, I still don’t know it’s purpose. A sort of heads up to my friends and family about life. Sure. It replaced years of handwritten journals. Probably those were more revealing about certain matters, less about others. Ancientrails has turned into a running commentary on my life, Kate’s, dogs, kids, grandkids. Politics. Religion. Art sometimes. If you’re a reader, thanks for following this inner dialogue.

    Another staycation starting this week. No exercise. Learning new games we’ve purchased. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Seven Wonders Duel. Twilight Struggle. Doing this and that around the house. Maybe some painting and writing. I’m trying to resolve a persistent inner conflict between caregiving and creative work.

    Why is this so hard? Something about my schedule. About when I exercise. Cook. Eat. Nap. Watch TV. I could do things in a different way, but I don’t.

    Yes. Even as I write this and read back over it, I can see the dark angel of doubt, of melancholy hovering over it all. Not a place I wanna be. But. Here I am. Again.

    My hope. Some downtime will help a new way of organizing my time emerge. Or, an inner assent to this is the way things are now. That my creative work also involves shopping, cooking, caring. Could be. Navel gazing. Yeah.

    Let’s hear it for the finality of the electoral college voting today. I don’t like the electoral college for reasons you already know, but I’m happy about its finish line role right now. Start renting the U-Hauls, Don, you’re moving house soon.

    How will we move forward? The important question now. In choppy, contentious ways, I imagine. But without the fact confounder. Without the ethical midget. Without the orange hair and funny skin. Without the Dunning-Kruger mind at the helm. Without his cronies. Without his kids. Without him.

    We could sink, relieved, into a blinkered return to “normal.” We must not. For, if the Donald has done nothing else, he has made us turn huge spotlights on the cracks in our nation. The Grand Canyons of racial oppression, violent policing, fenced medical care, and a chaotic foreign policy. We see them now. All of us. Time for radical change. Let’s get it going.


    Commentary on the news Coronavirus Family Feelings Friends Health Holidays Politics Shadow Mountain Third Phase US History Writing

  • Unanswerable Questions.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the RBG Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Orion, clear and distinct, like Descartes wanted his ideas. The night sky, visible again! Meatloaf from Easy Entrees. Learning to sleep all night on my side. The lens in my left eye. Kate, waiting for relief. Ruth will watch Kiss the Ground. Groveland wanting to hear me again after all these years. It’s Beyond Me.

    Three days post-op now. Biggest surprise so far was Orion, there. No longer several bursting flares, but his own, distinct self. Rigel there, too, his left foot, bright and clear. Ah. It’s good to see an old friend looking well.

    I no longer need glasses for television. But, I did order three pair of 2.5 cheaters off Amazon. I can still read now with my right eye, but that goes away on the 8th of October. With the artificial lens I can’t focus anymore.

    This surgery is such a good metaphor I wonder why it’s not deployed more often. Our vision gradually becomes clouded, the world becomes less and less easy to see. What do we need to remove our political cataracts and gain a humane vision? Those cataracts that have developed over years of lesser evils and disappointing politicians. Do we all come with the cataracts of racism and classism or do we develop them over time? Who will be our surgeons?

    Shifting. It’s Beyond Me. I’ve had fun gathering answers to Groveland UU’s question: What are the origins of religious beliefs?

    Finding an anthropologist, Harvey Whitehouse, has worked on the subject pleased me. He’s a cognitive anthropologist, a specialty that had little footing when I studied anthropology back in the late 1960’s. They study the way our mind shapes our understanding, rather than the understandings themselves. Whitehouse’s work is bloodless, but it has high points.

    This presentation has to be a discussion. It asks an unanswerable question, my favorite kind. Each of us has an intuition about the answer. It will be interesting to learn what others have concluded. I have several notions to throw into the pot, but the answer is lost in the long ago, far away.

    Doing presentations is a delight. I get to do research. I get to think about a topic. My ideas and conclusions get an airing. Feedback comes. On occasion cash, too.

    It’s also unsettling. The research has to stop. The thinking must end. No matter how tentative, the ideas must be articulated. Exposed. Naked. And, in person.

    My work doesn’t include the realm of the certain. I cannot say what the origin of religion is. No one can. Then I here Wittgenstein, of that about which we cannot speak, we must be silent. I only speak about such matters. A challenge, for sure.

    So right now I’m anxious, teeth a bit clenched. Zoom adds another layer of uncertainty. Also a layer of experiment, of trying something new.


    Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Health Humanities Minnesota Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Science Torah Writing

  • Open to Ideas

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa, the Labor Day Moon and Mars

    Afternoon note:

    In a curious mental place. I’m calm, not spending time worrying about results or outcomes. I’m busy cooking, shopping, feeding, pilling, driving, listening, changing bandages. Organizing crafts people for work here. Dealing with my own health. Working out. Getting sleep. Zooming with friends, family, CBE.

    I want to write and paint. I don’t seem able to. That’s not my way. I believe we choose our reality, live into the life we want. Ergo, if I’m not doing something I want to do, I’m not choosing it. An effective and self-motivating belief. Normally. I’m accountable for my life, no one else.

    Right now though my mind seems full. That’s the way I experience it anyhow. I’m trying to work on my Groveland presentation for the 27th, It’s Beyond Me. That’s the title, not my problem, btw. I go along, get a little done, find a set of definitions or some great examples, like the Chukchee in 19th century Sibera who would bare their buttocks in the direction of the wind and ask for better weather, then I wander away, no longer interested.

    Not procrastination. Sure, I indulge from time to time, but it’s never been a defining feature for me. Not lack of sleep. I’m rested and exercised.

    A similar phenomenon when I want to write, paint. When I say write, I mean work on Jennie’s Dead, my current novel about half done. I can’t put myself in the writing mental space. Can’t pick up a brush. Not blocked, Not afraid. My energy seems all used by life.

    The other things I’m doing take attention to detail, regular action, compassion, endurance, imagination, follow through. Yes, I know that. But I’ve not had this trouble before that I recall.

    When I want to do something other than domestic things, my mind goes fuzzy, unwilling to open, to wonder, to create. No space for it. That’s how it feels.

    Might just be the way things are. Or, there may be a solution? Not sure. Open to ideas.


    Dogs Family Feelings Health Our Land and Home Painting Shadow Mountain Third Phase Weather +Climate Writing

  • It’s Baaaackk

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Lughnasa Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Getting Ancientrails back. (It was lost somehow.) The lovely cool morning. Kate’s experiment with zofran. Kate’s appointment with the pulmonologist today. The cow that gave its life for our dinner last night. Potatoes. Our new mailbox. Jon. Ruth. Gabe. For the wonderful Saturday. Edging my way toward a new normal: Covid safe, Kate gaining weight, writing, painting, working out, seeing friends and family on Zoom.

    Ancientrails got lost in some cyber realm. When I wanted to access it yesterday, all that happened was little balls going back and forth on my browser tab. To show how seriously I took this, I contacted Ionos, my web server, for technical help. Reminded me why I never do that.

    Had to take Rigel to the vet on Monday. She ripped a nail part way off. We had noticed a limp and both sucked in our breath. Rigel’s eleven and a half, the longest lived by far of all our big dogs. Which is great. But it also means something could happen to her at any time. Too often a limp, especially in a big dog, means bone cancer. Relief when we discovered her injury.

    I have to go because it took Windows 10 forty minutes to update this morning and we have an 8:45 appointment in Englewood. Breakfast, stuff like that. I solved the Ancientrails issue by completing rebooting everything. That’s how I got stuck in the endless update loop.


    Dogs GeekWorld Health Writing

  • Let The World Be New

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Mountain Waste. Garbage truck drivers. Mail folk. Snow plow drivers. All risk their lives on curvy mountain roads with limited sight lines. Summer and winter. Everyday bravery. Kate’s better day. Lisa, seeing Lisa today. Get some next steps with Kate’s shortness of breath and nausea.

    I named the Lughnasa Moon as a reminder that the Great Wheel underlies most of what I believe these days, as a way to get back to the Celtic, the mythic, as a way to remind myself of the wonders floating in my imagination. Easy to lose sight of in Covid days and feeding tube nights.

    George Will. An honest man. Writes superbly. His column today in the Washington Post, Biden’s election will end national nightmare 2.0, references Gerald Ford’s comment at his inauguration that “our long, national nightmare is at an end.” In conclusion Will writes: “Forty-six years later, an exhausted nation is again eager for manifestations of presidential normality.” I hadn’t considered this, but it would take one huge source of angst off the domestic table.

    I’m looking for brightness, for the upbeat, for the comforting. Will provided some. Grateful for it.

    I’m also looking for fairies, for Gods and Goddesses. Ready to get back to Jennie’s Dead. A place of refuge. A place where the world can become new with my fingers on the keyboard.


    Family Health Politics Shadow Mountain Writing

  • Living

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

    Friday gratefuls: The Norsemen, a funny sendup of the Vikings. (which I also liked.) Derek’s continuing to cut up and cart away our felled trees. Children of Time, a sci fi book about terraforming, genetic manipulation, and the end of earth’s history. Spiders and ants and humans, oh my. Peter Praski who fixed our fan and our lights. Alan’s commitment to the political process. Sally’s thaw. The Mussar crowd.

    Still on vacation. Enjoying my focus on domestic chores like putting up smoke detectors (10-year batteries. Thanks, Tom.), laundry, getting the fan fixed, the stumps ground down, windows washed, and gutters cleaned. Cooked a bit, not up to my pre-Seoah standards. Out of practice. Will improve.

    Pleased with the healing of the angry skin around Kate’s stoma site. Gradually. Gradually. Next up we have to knock down the nausea that ruins her days. Not sure how to do that, but we’re gonna focus on it. Help her have more strings of better days. So dispiriting when she has to leave the breakfast table to lie down.

    Still feeling that limbo Kate talked about. In between. Not at a threshold, not in a liminal space, though I’ll appreciate that when it comes.

    Getting things cleaned up and reorganized has been good. Feels good. My mind has fewer anchors like, oh, when will I get around to that? That being those books and papers on the bookshelf in the living room. That being getting the final trees down for fire mitigation. That being the gutters that need cleaning. That being the disorganized state of the loft.

    As I pull up the anchors, I can feel the engine beginning to rumble below decks. No idea of the destination when I can finally slip away.

    A friend recently talked about all the volunteer work he’s been doing since retirement seven years ago. Do I still need to feel productive, he asked? Maybe there’s something deeper going on here?

    Has made me think about our American obsession with work. A Calvinist slant to our hearts. If we work, we’re good. If we don’t work, we’re lazy. Or, bad. Makes retirement a conundrum. Work is over with. Let’s get to it, then. Get to what?

    Work. In my imagination a post-neolithic revolution idea. Tend the field. Care for the animals. Fix the house. Govern the village. I’m sure the hunter-gatherers had their obsessions, too, but I don’t think it was work. In the third phase we try to leave work behind us only to reinstate it covertly. Or sometimes vertly.

    My suspicion is that we all need something that gratifies us, satisfies us, gives us a chance to be who we are. I cast off the mantle of work for those things and name them living.


    Aging Family Feelings Health Third Phase Writing