Imbolc New Shoulder Moon
Made corned beef and cabbage for dinner last night. Erin go bragh! When I decided to write novels, now long ago, Kate suggested I find an area that I could relate to. I chose my Celtic heritage, both Welsh and Irish. It is a fertile realm, filled with gods and goddesses, fairies and banshees, this world and the other world. Not so deep into it right now with one exception, the Great Wheel.
The Great Wheel, though, continues to inform my spiritual journey, a steady point on an often changing ancientrail. The Great Wheel is us, homo sapiens, using consciousness to ground ourselves on this planet and to its fate. Still seems a good place to start thinking about our relationship to the whole, better than any text. Great Wheel go bragh!
Took a sack full of food into the Aurora Olson’s yesterday afternoon. Jon, Ruth and Gabe have all been home sick since Tuesday. Gabe has pneumonia, Jon and Ruth the respiratory illness that preceded it for Gabe. Another positive of being close enough. Ruth sent a text Friday night, “Yo. Can you bring us some food?” I didn’t stay because neither Kate nor I want to get sick before her surgery on Thursday.
As long as I was in Denver, I drove to Meiningers. This is the big art supply store in the Denver area. It’s filled with paints and papers and brushes and pens and tape and pencils and cutting tools. A wonderful place, its existence alone stimulated me, and I’m sure every customer who goes inside.
Its sumi-e material material, though, was feeble compared to the hole in wall (by comparison), Red Herring. Meiningers’ selection of brushes were all cheap, beginner’s brushes. They did have a couple of Yasumoto inks that I bought, an Ultra Black and a Black Gold. I also picked up an Olfa knife to cut paper, from the kraft roll that came last week and from the rolls of rice paper I bought from Red Herring and Blue Heron, an online sumi-e store.
Not sure why this has become so important to me in so short a period of time, but as I said below melancholy allows the heart to catch up with decisions already known to the subconscious.
Life flows on, in endless song, I can’t help singing.
Under the New Life moon a new life has emerged, related to the old one, but different nonetheless. The trajectory and the distance of the change got a marker last night on the final evening of the kabbalah class on the mysticism of the Hebrew letters.
Too, under the new life moon I’ve become the regular dinner cook at our house, experimenting at times, at other times (mostly) using recipes, but enjoying myself immensely. Added to my long practice of working out, even that has a new flavor with the workouts every six weeks or so from On the Move Fitness, I’ve got tactile time each day. I’m using my hands and a non-verbal creative impulse.
It is no accident, though in real time it was, that this period was also the time of the middot of joy. Joy and sadness are not enemies, rather they are a vital source of learning if we don’t suppress them. Steering away from grief, tamping down joy in favor of a false stability, a false calm defuses the opportunity our soul offers to us through these emotions. They signal the soul’s gladness, the soul’s mourning, both key to a depth appreciation of our journey.
After buying a pad of larger rice paper and a larger roll, I picked out a new goat hair brush and a set of Japanese water colors for sumi-e. All the while we were talking and Kristi invited me to come to the Colorado Sumi-e meetings on the last Tuesday of the month. “You know, I use Kraft paper and plain old newsprint for practice.” Huh. Kraft and newsprint is cheaper than rice paper, for sure.
Last week at mussar we had a fascinating conversation on the essential dourness of both Jewish and northern European cultures stimulated by the Norwegian concern that they had won too many medals in the winter Olympics. In both cases happiness, and by correlation, joy, are suspect. Why are you so happy? What makes you think that will last?
Went to see the Blade Lady out in Centennial. It surprised me, when I saw the directions on Google, that it was 50 miles from home. I remember when 50 miles required a picnic basket and a living will. Jennifer was nice, picked up our knives and scissors personally. They finish fast. We gave them to her at 12:45 and we could have had them back at 1:30, but Rigel had to get to her 2pm vet appointment. She’s mailing them.
Hippity hop to the ortho shop. Kate’s got an appointment at Panorama Orthopedics today. Her right shoulder. She can no longer hold things up with her right arm and has to use two hands to put dishes away, sometimes to lift a cup. Annoying and painful. Screws up her sleep, too. She needs some kind of solution, more than likely a shoulder replacement. This is the first step, a consult to see what her options are.
An interesting week ahead. A session on green burial tomorrow night at CBE. It’s part of a conversation about creating a Jewish cemetery up here in the Evergreen/Conifer area. Oddly, I think I’d like to work on that. The next night, Wednesday, is Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees. Judaism has a lot of pagan inflections, Tu B’Shevat and Sukkot, a harvest festival at the end of the High Holidays, for example. Looking forward to this one because there’s a seder, too, with seven species of fruit and nuts. I’ll explain more on Wednesday. After the this celebration is another Kabbalah session, more double letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
Rigel has her second appointment at the Vet Referral Clinic with Dr. Bayliss this Friday, too. I’m excited about it because we’ll get a clearer picture of what’s going on with her. And, it’s not the dire prognosis we anticipated when we took her in a week ago last Friday.
Kate sewed most of the day yesterday. May not seem like a big deal, but it is. Her energy and her energy management skills are both improving and she’s enjoying life more. I’m so glad to see it.
Work on online education for Beth Evergreen will continue today, too. Marilyn Saltzman found some mussar sites and I’m going to add Coursera and EDx courses. I also plan to look at other, more general online education sites. So far I’ve focused on online education focused on Jewish studies, but I imagine there are more courses. A fun project.
I don’t miss the heavy lifting (the literal heavy lifting) for the most part, though part of my time at Beth Evergreen involves setting up for Adult Ed events and I do like moving chairs and tables, that sort of thing. Go figure. But I also need purposeful, intellect engaged physical activity. Different from exercise, which I also need. Cooking is physical and intellectual, also creative.
The sumi painting I’ve not yet fully engaged, still collecting materials, setting up my work space, learning techniques, but I intend to stay at it as long as it takes to get some proficiency. Precise or artistic hand work has never been my thing, but I’m going to change that, at least to some degree.
