• Category Archives Feelings

  • My revels are not yet ended

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Taking out the trash. Pine Martens. Otters. Sea Lions. Platypuses. Echidna. Cassowaries. Emus. Ostriches. Dinosaurs. Velociraptors. T-Rex. Brontosaurus. Mitochondria. Organelles. Life. Its emergence. Our participation in it. A true and undoubtable miracle. Consciousness. Life observes itself. The Universe observes itself. And celebrates itself.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Life

    One brief shining: A morning thing gripping the plastic bar across the back of the trash bin, giving its plastic tire a kick so the bin shifts back onto the tires, then dragging it, making the sound of Thunder across the asphalt cracks headed toward not a curb, no not here, but the edge of Black Mountain Drive where it will wait for the truck to come, embrace it, lift it, shake it, and return it to the ground, goodbye trash, goodnight recycling.

     

    In at least two different places at once. An improvement over times past when my self lay fragmented over my calendar and its scribbled appointments, its crossed out engagements and the repercussions of both filtering out like tiny fingers, tearing open the envelope of the next day and the day after, contaminating them with worry.

    Today I’m pushing myself, challenging myself. Do the trip. Discover new limits. Or, discover that the worry, this not so tiny finger has no business in my heart. Yes. The trip.

    Second place. The new Jew. Still learning Torah portion. Perhaps needing to learn some more for the service. Reading to finish the last session of Jamie’s ten lessons for conversion. Finding myself oversaturated, filled past the brim with so much new information, behavior, language, worldview that I feel weary. Not weary as in on my Eloheinu this was a mistake. Not at all. Weary as in enough for now. Like nearing the end of a period of study. Bachelors. Master of Divinity. Doctor of Ministry. Enough for now. Don’t tell me what to read. Don’t put me on display. There is though, as there were with each of these degrees, still a bit more to do. Have the bar mitzvah ceremony. Read my Torah portion. Have my last class with Jamie. Then. Ahhhh.

    So travel as personal litmus test and pushing through the last days of my year of living Jewishly. Working to continue life with eagerness and depth. That’s what these represent for me. Both of them.

    Reshaping my days and my commitments to a new, 77 year old form.

    Want to be clear. It delights me to have these two places to become. A trip and a new identity. My life is not over and I’m living it full out or at least as full out as my 77 year old body and energy level will allow. I talk to Kate most days, know she walks this part of my ancientrail with me. A joy.

    From the calendar, the Zen calender: Joy is being willing for things to be as they are. Charlotte Joko Beck.

    And, just because Tom (who sends me the Zen calendar each year) put this out yesterday on Shakespeare’s 400th birthday:

    Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
    As I foretold you, were all spirits and
    Are melted into air, into thin air:
    And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
    The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
    The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
    Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
    And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
    Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
    As dreams are made on, and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep.

     


    Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism Travel

  • Dissonance and its troubles

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Spring and the Passover Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Steve, Cyndi, Hoosier woman. Heidi. Salaam. Kathy. Patrick. Gil. Seder at  the Saltzman’s. My permanent seat at Tara’s seder. And, Marilyn said, hers as well. Belonging, not believing. Judaism. An Ancientrail of debate, song, justice. The Passover Moon last night. Mountains. Forests. Wild Neighbors. Good food.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Palestinians. Israelis.

    One brief shining: When the chatter grows loud and the hearing aid fails, the world recedes and I sit there, an observer wishing I was elsewhere, sort of engaged, hearing the headline words, wanting to add something, get in there, talk, yet both functionally unable, too little signal, and emotionally unable, I need to get away from here, from these people.

     

    Passover last night at Marilyn and Irv’s. Wonderful. Frustrating. My first passover as a Jew. Now my story in a different way than metaphor, though it is too metaphor. My ancestors who stood up to Pharaoh. My ancestors fled into the Sinai, wandered there for forty years eating manna, grumbling, receiving the torah, making a golden calf. That’s the difference. The lineage. Whether Hebrews were slaves in Egypt or not, this origin story conveys how and who we are even now, thousands of years later. The we there is the difference.

    No longer do I sit at a seder table as an interested observer, rather now as one whose attention and person has direct links with the maror, the haroset, with the seder plate. Profound for me. And, oddly dissonant.

    As I sat through my first seder as a Jew, I was with people who waved “organized” religion away with a Buddhist shrug or a spirituality makes more sense wave from the back of a parade convertible. I wanted to say, well, ok, but for me I find wonder in the torah. In the blessings. In the community of Beth Evergreen. But my hearing issues and my sense of the chasm between me and religion’s cultured despisers kept me quiet. And in that quietness I judged. Judged.

    Shallow. Timid. Fearful. Seeking the pablum of the inner life. Baby food. The reason our politics are so screwed up. Bright but so caught up in their white privilege they can’t see the world as it is.

    Oh, I was superior. Better than them. And in that very feeling of course reduced myself and my own observations to a sideshow. I felt defensive, but not willing to talk about it. To challenge, to step in the water. I stewed. Wondering how I could extricate myself. I couldn’t.

    It was my first passover as a Jew. I wanted to be there. To hear the four questions, to sing Dayenu, to taste the bitter herb and the haroset. To listen to and participate in my story.

    Later, this morning, I found myself. Collected the Charlie from the table last night. Sat him down and said, “Look. These are people trying their best. Wanting to live well. To be loving and kind. As are you.” They don’t share your radical politics, very few do. They don’t share your fascination with the ancient ways of a desert people. And why should they? You are the one being judged when you judge. Lighten up and enjoy these folks.

    And here’s the thing. Outside celebration of a holiday focused on liberation I could have found each of these people to be interesting interlocutors. Good for a breakfast or lunch time heart to heart. Passover, and my first as a Jew, revved up my political and religious engines. I ran too hot for the evening.

    That is the other thing. I’m a man of religion and of politics. What are the two things folks agree not to discuss at Thanksgiving? Yep.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Holidays Judaism Politics

  • Passed Over

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Sunday gratefuls: Passover. The Saltzmans. Tara. Arjean. My permanent seat at their seder. Their willingness to sign so I can have a dog. Yesterday’s Snow melting off my Lodgepole Companion. Dripping toward the Aquifer that fills my well. Great Sol brimming over, gently warming the Needles, the clumps of Snow, an eternal cycle of Sun and Water, Plant Life and Soil. Observing it.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gravity and Water

    One brief shining: Sat down this am to write three morning pages, picked up the yellow legal pad, the black pen, and feeling overwhelmed, too much to do, wrote myself into a calmer place, write now I wrote, hah, I liked that writing write now, then slowly penning my way toward blessings, the hundreds of blessings I’ve experienced just since getting up and the joy of them, oh, not so bad now, eh?

     

    Snow melted off my Lodgepole Companion. A lot of it still there at 7:30 am. Now three hours later. Great Sol convincing a man to take off his coat. A blue Sky. Ancient Brothers on favorite places finished. Morning pages written. Breakfast made and eaten.

     

    Ancientrails, then a shower and a nap. Passover seders take a while and it’s often quite a while until the food. So, a nap. And a snack before hand. This is the day before the actual day because Salaam may have a track meet tomorrow.

    The Moon of Liberation carries us into this ancient story of slavery, plagues, a recalcitrant Pharaoh, and a stuttering advocate. The journey which leads me to the Saltzman’s began on the day in the far past when Azrael, the angel of death, passed over the homes of Hebrew slaves if they had lamb’s blood smeared on their lintel.

    The passover liberation of Hebrew slaves underlies de minimus this holiday, but also that Egyptian night of deliverance underlies all of Jewish history since then. The story told and retold among diaspora Jews in Babylon, in Russia, in Poland, in Hungary and Austria and yes Germany. Later in many places in U.S. cities. And in any other spot where enough Jews have immigrated.

    When we dip the parsely in the salt water, and the haroset in the bitter herb, we show the paradoxical nature of this holy day. It is of spring and growth, yet also tainted by the waters of the Reed Sea. The mortar of the former slave’s work has transformed to haroset: apples, walnuts, cinnamon, honey, and sweet wine, yet we dip the matzah covered with haroset into the bitter herb, often horseradish, to remind us that wandering the Sinai was also a time of affliction, affliction in spite or or as a direct result of liberation.

    We embrace our history, knowing we all have our own Egypt’s, our own shackles. Knowing, too, that the shackles of others, as long as racism and sexism and homophobia create contemporary ghettos, are our shackles as well. This is not just a holiday, it’s a promise to ourselves, to each other, and to the world that we will share the burden of the other.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Holidays Judaism

  • A person of…

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Shabbat gratefuls: The Morning Service. Bar Mitzvah. Snow. Cold. Moisture. Water. Air. Fire. Earth. Old physics. Physics. String theory. Twine theory. Thread theory. Quilts and quilting. Sewing. Matilda, Kate’s dress dummy. Kate in my dreams. Ancientrails. Diane. Art. In person. Judaism. My year of living Jewishlly. Outside my comfort zone. A lot.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Trains

    One brief shining: I looked out my window today, oh my, and there on the ground lay Snow, on the Branches of the Lodgepoles Snow, on the driveway Snow, and my Snow and Cold loving self looked at it and sighed, the calendar showing in less than two weeks, the fire holiday of Beltane, start of the growing season.

     

    Looking at myself. Some people. A man of money. Of power. Of racing. A woman of medicine. Of writing. Of the 100 meter dash. Of acting. Of music. Of whatever occupies prime location in an individual’s life story. I have to look at my story and be honest. I am a man of religion. Both small r and Big R. Individual and institutional. Can’t say I would have predicted this for me. Nor much of the time been aware of it.

    Yet. The deep questions of our species. Our search for meaning. For how to position ourselves in this, this whatever all this is. The folks and traditions who have explored these questions. My turf. Where I’ve lived much of my life. Oh, yes, their have been other enthusiasms: politics, art, writing, gardening, But somehow I always bounce back to the prayers, the songs, the sacred books. Not as a supplicant but always as a lover, one who presses his hand to the heart of it. Leans his head in and enjoys a quiet afternoon learning of the Greek Orthodox theological framework of reception. The Taoist wu wei. The Jewish Morning Service. Why Jesus prayed at Gethsemane. The Potawatomi writing habit of capitalizing the names of living things.

    One who rides through the Mountains looking for signs. Who walks down Mountain Valleys hearing the voices of the Creek, the Magpies, the wild Strawberries. Seeing in the gentle run of a Mountain Stream swollen by Spring Snows the path of all living things carried by this mystery, vitality. A man who cannot absent himself from the quest for what and why and where.

    Perhaps you, too? Do you read the sacred books and know their definite humanity, yet find within them the human desire to grasp the interconnectedness of things? Feel inspired to have your own moments of revelation? Perhaps, eh? That splash of color. That child’s laugh. The sudden sense that an injustice needs redress. The kisses of a small furry puppy or a three-year old child. A wondering about Buddha nature? About chi? About teshuvah? About Ramadan?

    You see my conviction is this. We are all people of religion. All born with wonder, imbued with awe, fascinated with the mysterious. Sure, some of us make a life of it, but all of us question. All of us see values and linkages. See them and need them. Yes, your path may be all of your own making, yet it can be informed by those who have chosen to retain the paths of their ancestors. As your path, your ancientrail, can inform theirs.


    Commentary on Religion Feelings Fourth Phase Great Wheel Judaism Mountains Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • The pit

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Sunday gratefuls: Gabe, turning 16 soon. Ruth, already 18. Art. The Artist’s Way. Morning pages. Rabbi Jamie. Vulnerability. The Morning Service. It’s depth. Alan. Lunch today. My Lodgepole Companion. Friend of Great Sol. The Eternal Moment in which I write this. My breath, each one a new life. The morning of this new life almost finished. The lev.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Cheesecake Factory

    One brief shining: Sat there the red covered book with its pages facing left, turning them trying to follow Rabbi Jamie as he chanted prayers, moved from Blessings to the Shema, then on to the often silent prayers of the Amidah, worrying that I could not match his prayer shawled ease, kissing the tzitzit at the appropriate time, building up a wall of anxiety that held the world of this ancient liturgy at bay.

     

    Oh my. Went down into the pit of anxiety. One I don’t visit often these days. But I fell into it with a thump, a real downward spiral. Haven’t worked out the inner fragile self that grabbed hold of me and belying its thin arms and legs dragged me into a fog of I can’t, I won’t, I’m not able, I’m not competent. Beside me as Rabbi Jamie guided us through the Morning Service lay the color coded sheet with its yellow slots for Student. That’s me. Those slots needed names, either mine or Lauren’s or Kat’s or Veronica’s. Too many slots with Hebrew or singing attached to them. Too many.

    When I fessed up to my anxiety, I felt diminished by it. Less than. Unworthy. Of what I don’t know. But unworthy for sure. If I were not me, I’d want to talk about this. Find out the trigger. Give compensatory ballast by pointing out the stuff he can do. Has already done. And that this is a moment in time. Which will come and go. Yet this is me I’m talking about.

    So I find that conversation difficult. Perhaps self serving. Definitely not objective.

    Yet here we go. Oh, I’m sorry that happened to you. Must have felt awful.

    Yeah, it did. Pretty bad.

    What do you think caused it?

    Not sure. For sure it was putting myself in Rabbi Jamie’s place, trying to imagine myself doing any of what he was doing. Any of it. Yet facing a situation where I would yes in fact have to do just that.

    I get it. Could it be the old clergy in you?

    Hmm. Hadn’t considered that. Don’t think so, but…maybe? Some of it. Holding myself to a higher standard? That listens.

    Any other possibilities?

    Well, my Dad once said to me that knowing how to get along with people mattered more than my grades. True that, but he didn’t mean it in a kind way. He was demeaning my competency by saying well, so what, here’s this other thing that’s more important. I might have learned from that competency is my way of getting along with people. If I’m not competent, no one will like me.

    Ooff. That’s convoluted. But I get it.

    Could be a generalized fear of being foolish. Wanting to avoid that. I don’t want to foreclose on the Fool’s journey though. What if that’s where I need to be right now? Foolish and brave.

     


    Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism

  • Eternal Life

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Shabbat gratefuls: Morning pages. The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron. The Socrates Cafe. The Morning Service. Bar Mitzvah prep today at CBE. Parsha Tazria. Lighting the candles. Saying the blessing. Learning my Torah portion. My son and Seoah’s 8th anniversary! Wowzer. Their meal yesterday. I have pictures. Murdoch at the Dog park. Honeybee rides. Scheduled for April 24th. Which, as it happens, is the wrong date. Sigh. I played with different dates. Didn’t check.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Torii

    One brief shining: I look through the Torii that is my back door, seeing the deck and garage beyond, my gaze goes up, to the left and sees the mezuzah placed there by Rabbi Jamie not long after the Hamas raid into Israel, but this day I remember the Shema, that most prayed of all Jewish prayers: Shema Israel, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad, Hear O Israel, Our God, Our God is one, tucked into the mezuzah on a kosher scroll and that the mezuzah blesses each going out and coming in as sacred acts so I can look through my own back door from the inside and see a sacred outside, and through it from the outside and see a sacred inside, knowing then that all is one and all is sacred in this moment and in all others.

     

    On this calendar Tom sent me. It is eternity now. Oh, well. That’s true. By definition. We don’t have to wait for our time in eternity. My Lodgepole companion and I exist in eternity, as do the brilliant rays of Great Sol shining on us both. As do all three mezuzahs here on Shadow Mountain. As does Shadow Mountain itself. And Black Mountain, too. All cohabiting in eternity.

    Eternal life is this life, these fingers, this heart beating right now. Will my life as I am go on further into eternity’s vast expanse? Hell if I know. Yet I’ve participated in, been part of eternal life. So, maybe? A little bit of head scratching definitional play here. Sure. But, hey! We created the words and the ideas which they express. We might know more than we think we do. In fact I’m confident we do. Hope this eternal idea is one of those things in which we intuit more than we can express.

     

    Just a moment: Biden creeping up on Trump. Oh be still my political heart. All we need to do is thump this orange tumor clothed in baggy blue with too long red ties. Thump him and his at the ballot box. Then we can get back to politics as forever changed, but perhaps not ushering in the American Empire quite yet.

    Trump is no Caesar. On the basis of competence alone. I doubt he measures up to even Mussolini and Hitler. An inferior autocrat. That’s what he is. And he’s come along when a certain demographic felt hopeless. When all would be dictators arise. Tell me a story, a story in which I’m better than those other guys. Or those other women. Or those others. And I’ll vote for you. Always.

     


    Feelings Fourth Phase Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation US History

  • SEE

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Thursday gratefuls: Poetry. Rodger Kamenetz. Jewish poetry. Irish poetry. U.S. poetry. Resident scholars at CBE. On dreams tonight. At our mussar today. Morning pages. Julie Cameron’s Artist’s Way. Have to claim it. So, here. I’m an artist, a writer. Artist’s date. A cleared out freezer. 13 bean soup with ham hock. Thanks, Tom. The eclipse. Such a peculiar event.

    Sparks of joy and awe: The size of the Moon and the distance of Great Sol

    One brief shining: The Japanese know about gates, about Torii, marking the transition from the mundane to the sacred, those red and orange Wooden portals so familiar from photographs, Shinto saying beyond here the realm transmutes, and yet if you look through a Torii the view beyond it is a continuation of the one in which you stand, like the rain on the night I saw that Elk Bull on the Forest’s edge, he was not in a different realm, yet he could have been a red and orange Wooden portal because what began at his presence was the sacred realm, revealed in all its glory and majesty as nothing more than the stone path leading to the temple, but, and this is crucially important, nothing less.

     

    You see. We all see. But do you see? Do you see what you’re looking at? In all of its mundane grittiness? That ragged line of cloth, where the old coat has begun to fray. The too pitted asphalt of the road, its shoulders cracked. The place on the Lodgepole where the Bark peeled away? Those solar lights now lying on the ground, tipped over by a season’s worth of snow pushed and pushed again by plows and road graders. The all too many Trees, too close together, not a natural Forest, but a clear cut of long ago now replaced with thinner, weaker individuals.

    Do you know that gritty look is a mask, a persona for the world? The road will disintegrate, disaggregrate. The solar lights will get re-placed. The coat will go to a tailor. And the Forest? Well, it will burn, thin itself and the two-leggeds who live within its boundaries.

    Nothing stays as it is in this moment though in this moment, this eternal moment, it is unnecessary to know this.

    And yet if you can see tomorrow through the lens of right now, then you can see the stone path, the one that passes through Torii gate, revealed as sacred on both sides of the gate. The gate’s true purpose. To reveal, to remind, to reconstruct the natures of the mundane and the sacred. Both the same, yet different. The incarnation, yes. That’s it. The capture of the sacred reality in the most mundane, the most gritty of all things. Like Black Mountain Drive. A Forest of thin Trees. A wet and staring Elk Bull. Even, and yes, please hear this as well as see it, even in that hand that types, that clicks the keys and sends these pixels out, these sacred pixels, to you.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • Apres la psilocybine

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Up early. Cleaning out the freezer. Two weeks from today, Amtrak. Shadow Mountain Home. Rebecca. Wild Alaskan. Black Mountain Drive. Brook Forest Drive. Shadow Mountain Drive. How I get down the Hill. Kate’s yahrzeit approaching. Eight Track Day. My transistor radio of long ago. Ruby. Will need summer shoes.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The generator

    One brief shining: Could be the morning rises with a hint of darkness reluctant to let go, with a slow and lazy illumination spilling like molasses first over the base of Shadow Mountain, then up up up defying gravity, turning on the lights as it goes, until Black Mountain, my Lodgepole companion reappear, and another Colorado blue Sky day has begun.

     

    Gotta leave this writing a bit early, but will return. Biweekly trash day and I’m clearing out my freezer, getting ready for Spring and for a less hoarding way of using the freezers -21 degree temperature. Trash has to be out by 7 am in case the routes have changed. Mostly ready but the freezer clean out had to wait until just before I move the clunky plastic bins. Bears. As I long I put the freezer contents out still frozen, their scent should not become a problem. Bears have just begun to wake up and they’re hungry. Long, long nap.

    Life is different in the Mountains. In any rural area with Forests and Wild Neighbors. The back and forth between humans and their environment never disappears in a cloud of bus exhaust or the twinkling of store lights. Here we have to travel within the Wild Neighbors’ domain. They are not relegated to alleys and basements, parks and open spaces by streets and acres of buildings, apartments and factories and businesses, hospitals and schools. We two-leggeds are the interlopers here. Exactly. Interloping. Loping along in our metal noisy contraptions.

    Careful now. Weeks old Mule Deer and Elk and Moose wandering the Arapaho National Forest. Fox Kits and baby Porcupines, Marmots, Albert and Red Squirrels all waking up to their first Mountain spring. We must lope with attentiveness. With care. Bear Cubs. Mountain Lion Kits.

    Not green here. Not yet. Still plenty of Snow in the back. On the ski runs of Black Mountain. In the shaded parts of the National Forest. Occasional scents of thawing Soil. The hurried babble of Mountain Streams draining rocky heights. (Gone for about 15 minutes. Finished. Freezer clear. Trash bins rattled out to the driveway’s edge. Waiting for the truck.)

     

    Just a moment: Apres la psilocybine. Surrender. Not resignation. Not aimlessness. Definitely not submission. Perhaps openness. Acceptance. Wu wei. That moment while watching the Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphs scroll across the ceiling of Heidi’s therapy office. That moment when in response to an inner doubt. I’m not using this trip well. I’m having too much fun. Very Calvinist inner dialogue. That moment when I wondered what I needed now. Up came the word surrender.

    And it lodged in my consciousness. Where, to this day, it filters moments and conversations. Finding evidence. That woman I know with stage 4 breast cancer. Who said cancer had clarified life. Distilled it to its essence. She asked me if I’d had the same experience. Not quite. But that crisp December morning on Crooked Top Mountain. Yes. Clarity.

    All of us over 75 are in stage 4 life. We’re terminal and we know it. Clap your hands. Life did not end abruptly for us. As it did for my mom, for example. No. We have the chance to pass through the last of the gates, the one that opens to eternity, knowing. If we surrender ourselves. Accept death for what it is. A final mystery. One that hides its truth even now.


    Aging Feelings Fourth Phase Health Mountains Shadow Mountain Wild Neighbors

  • Thin Air

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Tuesday gratefuls: Diane and her town. Tom and the eclipse. A Mountain morning slowly appears. Black Mountain and my Lodgepole companion emerge from the dark. Ashley. Good doctoring. The end of the power outage. Internet outage. Making plans for San Francisco. Judaism and paganism. A good fit. Talmud Torah. Reading. More and more. Spring.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Power

    One brief shining: Walking out the door my hand reaches up, touches the mezuzah, a jolt of tradition turns the threshold into a sacred place, the act of leaving home a pilgrimage no matter I’m going to the grocery store, to get a haircut, to fill the car up with gas, and while I travel those pilgrimage holidays might come to mind, especially Pesach since it’s less than two weeks away making me wonder what needs liberation in my life, what needs to rise up and leave the soul’s Egypt, then I put the credit card in the reader and buy gas.

     

    Frustrating. Having no internet. I could get and make phone calls, texts, but that was it. Verizon is its own network. I could see a Nextdoor post but not access it. My county, Jefferson, had the highest Wind gusts in the state at 96 mph. Downed Trees took out power lines and internet service. Could have been bad. Or, worse. A downed Tree hits a power line, sparks. Then, Fire driven by the Wind.

    Due to having no internet I was not really sure what was going on. I imagined it was downed power lines, but had no way to know for sure other than calling my electricity utility, C.O.R.E. Would have been on hold so. Pass.

    Kohler generator kicked in when the power went out. It’s a whole house generator, but due to altitude its efficiency is compromised. So my mini-splits did not work. Not a big deal in April. I did eventually turn on the hot water heat for the walkout level, but only for half a day. The stove, an induction stove, was out, too. But the air fryer and other appliances worked.

    It’s been a Mountain time of late with the three and a half feet of Snow followed by high Winds and power outages. Both isolating, both not unusual. Just uncommon. Spring in the Mountains.

    Today the mini-splits distribute heat gathered from the Air outside. The stove works again. Shadow Mountain Home has returned to its normative state. Good to have reminders of how fortunate we are.

     

    Just a moment: How Thin Air and Summer Snow Can Heal the Soul. NYT, April 8. Found this title yesterday with a beautiful shot of Mt. Whitney luminous in Great Sol’s early morning light. Haven’t read the article yet, but the title. Well. Living at 8,800 feet. Snow visible on certain Mountain peaks throughout most of the Summer. Hmm. Could have been the tagline for the days and months and now almost three years since Kate died.

    April 12th. She’s gone. Thirty-one years of marriage dissolved not by a court, but by a last breath. Ooff. Mourning lasted a month or so. Grief still has its moments. As Joanne and I acknowledged last week, often when we see a loving relationship on TV or IRL. Missing that with Kate. Or, in her case, Albert. And, also, missing it in our lives right now. Ooff, again.

    Yet. The thin air here. The vestiges of Winter serving as a reminder of grief’s long visit. The people I love here. The Wild Neighbors. The seasons changing. Life continues. So does death.

    Kate, always Kate. Of blessed memory.


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Shadow Mountain

  • The Good Boy. Again.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Monday gratefuls: Power back on! Internet back up! Exclamation points available! Only a bit over 24 hours but felt longer. Bleed appointment reassuring. Working on the Good Boy and his fears. Finishing Three Body Problem book. Reading There, there. And The White Road. A beautiful, calm day in the neighborhood. C.O.R.E. linefolks. Good work.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sparks of electricity

    One brief shining: Not sure what your triggers might be, here are a few of mine: must, should, have to, no choice, get on it now which of course reveal an underlying trigger too often tripped by those with imagined authority over me, my life, my choices, you know, you’re not the boss of me.

     

    Wanted to unveil an inner dialogue I had at 7:00 am today on the way to an appointment with a G.I. doc. While driving I rehearsed, “I’ve been without power and internet. I couldn’t have signed in.” “Are you even in the service business? Where do you get off telling me I must sign in?” “My late wife retired because she was so tired of this sort of medicine.” And other similar phrases.

    I wasn’t sure I’d make the 7:30 appointment. The first trigger. One of my own. Rocky Mountain Gastroenterology text saying: You must sign in for your 7:30 appointment. Second trigger. Internet down and power out. Third trigger. I felt embarrassed, ashamed, late, angry, defensive. Ready to go to battle with the evil empire of capitalist medicine. For about 20 minutes of drive time.

    And, I knew I was being this way. Tried to talk myself down. Failed. Finally got to a point where I could walk in and say, “Hi, I have a 7:30.” The folks behind the desk coudn’t have been nicer. They helped me get signed in, were solicitous, kind.

    Ashley, the P.A., was sweet. Knowledgeable. The bleed. Scary, but not life threatening. Might happen again. Good to be prepared. She had a sensible plan that includes checking my anemia, considering then whether to do a more invasive exam. I liked her.

    This was all about the Good Boy. The part of me that wants always to slip through authoritarian gates unnoticed. Neither defensive nor obeisant. Not sure why I’m so conflicted about authority, so eager to avoid its grasp. Might be Dad. Might be a more generalized angst about being trapped because of someone else’s rules.

     

    Just a moment: Iowa lost. But Caitlin. Ah, Caitlin. “I never sit and sulk about things that didn’t happen.” NYT

    This young woman is the complete package. Skilled, persistent, determined, sound work ethic, and now with inner calm. Be like Caitlin.

     

    In other news: Wars and rumors of war. Elections and rumors of denial. An eclipse with a prediction of clouds. And it has ever been so. The immediate, the happening causes us to gaze into the future, dragging it with us as we look. Ukraine and Gaza. Can WWIII be far behind? Biden and Trump. Who will claim to have won? Totality. What does it look like under cloud cover? Might be easier to live with what is and not wonder what will be.

     

     


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