Category Archives: Feelings

Asia, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Friends, Politics, US History, World History

Love

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Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow. My son. Seoah. Ginny and Janice. Gabe. Happy Camper. Shabbat. Talmud Torah. Kabbalah. Cold weather. Snarfs. Ruth. CU-Boulder. Integrative Physiology. Jetplane to Incheon. The Jang family visit. My son’s promotion. Treats. Dogs.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Families of choice

Week Kavannah: Perseverance and Grit    Netzach

One brief shining: At 3 am while I slept Shadow Mountain emptied out with my son and Seoah headed to the airport, Gabe back home with his student I.D., Shadow sleeping outside the bedroom for the first time.

 

Too short a visit. In on Wednesday after a full day of travel, Casa Bonita, then Boulder with Ruth yesterday, home around 7 pm, then gone in the wee hours. My son and Seoah whom I saw last in September of 2023.

Here is your family portrait in the style of Hindu temple art with a Valentine’s Day theme

And yet. Yes to any amount of time. Hugs. Quiet conversations. Laughing. Creating new memories together. This all American family in which I have no blood connection. I was Jon’s step-father, so no blood with Ruth and Gabe. Joseph came into my life 43 years ago by plane from Calcutta. Seoah in 2016. Yet we love each other as any family does. Blood ties and love have no necessary connection. Just as ties with no blood and love have no necessary connection. Only the love we develop and nurture over years and decades.

My life has been rich in loving. And expands even now. My friend Luke. My friends Ginny and Janice. Shadow. Leo. Annie and Luna. Always Mark, Mary, Diane. The Ancient Brothers. The MVP group. Alan.

Not sure how I got so lucky. Found Kate. Together we loved so many dogs. Gardens. Bees and Trees. Places on this wide earth. From Gwangju, Korea to Inverness, Scotland. Each other.

A Valentine’s Day life in so many ways. And so grateful for each love. Every love. All of them.

 

Shadow would not come out of the bedroom yesterday. Too many people around? A regression? Both? Don’t know. Anyhow she slept outside the bedroom last night for the first time. I want/need to be able to interact with her and if we’re playing hide and seek all day that’s very hard.

Right now she’s comfortably beside my chair as I write this. We’ve greeted each other, nuzzled. She’s gotten treats and awaits her 8 am feeding. The consensus from my son, Seoah, Gabe, and Ruth is that she will be happy dog once she settles in. How long that will take? Uncertain. I’m willing to go the distance.

 

Just a moment: So. The American Vice-President, JD Vance, sits down with Germany’s Nazi’s OK! far right party, the AfD. Even pushes for them to be included in Germany’s parliament. The German chancellor said this: “A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” NYT, 2/15/1025

That’s a spectacle that beggars history. The head of a German government chastising an American Vice-President for support of Nazi sympathizers. WTF?

No wonder American Jews feel threatened and American white supremacists feel emboldened. Putting a substantial nick in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Politics

78

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Imbolc and the 78th Birthday Moon

Friday gratefuls: Casa Bonita. Seoah. My son. Gabe. Shadow and her fears. 78 years. Happy birthday greetings from friends and family. Still upright and taking nourishment. Valentine’s Day. Duncan, Oklahoma. Mom. Dad. WWII. Baby boomers. Talking about my generation. The training of Shadow. Alan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son and Seoah and Gabe and Ruth

Week Kavannah: Love  Ahavah

One brief shining: The Spanish Mission architecture, the bell tower, the hot pink facade with lines of diners snaking towards the doors, Casa Bonita, newly refurbished by makers of the South Park cartoons, improbable sources of English instruction for Seoah through her online English class, which brought us to our table deep in the Silver Mine section of this combination restaurant and amusement park, occupancy 2045.

 

78 birthdays. Median age of death for men in the U.S. 74.8. For the population as a whole 77.8. Whew. Just made it. Have had many conversations over this last year in which this oddity occurs. Geez, when I read about somebody that’s 80, my first thought? They’re old! Then. Wait a minute. I can see 80 from here. It’s just. Right. There.

In the first episode of Picard Jean-Luc looks out over his vineyard and says, “I’ve not been living; I’ve been waiting to die.” 3 years of episodes follow as he demonstrates what a retired Starfleet Admiral can do. My own motto is this: I intend to live until I die.

Sounds easy. A tautology even, right? Well, no. With TV, zoom, kindles, smart phones and tablets it’s simpler now than ever to push pause at a certain point and recede behind a wall of easy. To take on no new challenges. To forget about the world beyond illness and onrushing decrepitude. Have medical visits become the raison d’etrê for getting out of the house.

And. It is tempting. Especially for an introverted, mildly monastic temperament such as mine. I love being alone, on my own. Reading. Studying. Watching movies and TV. Cooking. Shopping. Following the world through newspapers and magazines.

Yet. Last year I finished my conversion to Judaism. This year so far I’m working with Shadow, a rescue whose fears make her a distinct challenge. I cherish my calls with friends and family on zoom. My breakfasts and lunches out with them.

I’m studying the Torah, parsha by parsha, using several modes of learning that are new to me. I continue to write Ancientrails, now in its 21st year.

My view is in this moment and ahead. Not looking back, except to write stories in Storyworth.

 

Just a moment in oligarchworld: I will not look away. Pretend that this delusional twit is not twisting the norms and purposes of our government to match his own paranoid fantasies. That best buddy Elon is not systematically destroying, breaking, tearing at the tissue which makes us who we are.

I continue to dream the impossible dream of a country true to the poetry on the Statue of Liberty. Of a country that is a place the world admires for its commitment to the rule of law and the health and welfare of its citizens.

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Politics

A Broken Heart, not a Hardened One

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Imbolc and the 78th Birthday Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Day 7, the Shadow trial. Cold. 4 this morning. My son and Seoah come tomorrow! The coup. The New Apostolic Reformation. Shadow. Rethinking politics. Resistance. Is powerful. Aging. Sarcopenia. Cancer. Puppy learning. Me learning puppy. Tired.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son and Seoah here tomorrow

Week kavannah:  Love. Ahavah.

One brief shining: At times I feel old, and by that I mean losing a sense of capacity, agency, as fingers trigger, my back says walking any distance is too far, the steady drumbeat of this medicine, that doctor, and at times I know that’s only my carapace, certainly part of my journey, the bearer of my soul, yet not my soul, not my mind, not my lev, other parts of my eternal journey that feel mature, enriched by years of experience in this most wonderful of worlds.

 

Margaret Renkl is one of my favorite NYT columnists. Here are two paragraphs from a column yesterday titled Tenderness as an Act of Resistance:

“Fury is a powerful motivator of resistance, but there is only so much rage a person can harbor without nurturing something cold and still and hard in the place where a warm, living heart once beat. Already I am exhausted by my own fury, and the second Trump presidency is only three weeks old…

Anger lets in too little beauty, but heartbreak? A tender heart feels the fury and the fear, the sorrow and suffering, the beauty and the bravery alike. In the years ahead, we will need them all.”

This reminded me of parsha Bo where Pharaoh’s heart hardens as Moses and Aaron confront him. Note: Pharaoh’s heart. The learning I’m taking from Renkl and Pharaoh is this: hardening the heart, though it may make taking action seem easier, ultimately leads to defeat.

What does that mean for us right now, in only the third week of an assault on our democracy? First it means we can’t look away. We need to see and feel the wrongness, understand and know the slings and arrows of outrageous politicians.

And we must allow our dream, a nation made of many, and of difference, and of laws, and of equity and fairness from sea to shining sea to crash into that wrongness and break our hearts.

The way of the open heart is not easy. But a tender heart, not a hardened one, is the only response that carry us through these next few years as Seed-Keepers of the American Dream.

In that way, when this storm of cruelty and avarice has blown out, we or those we have influenced with our tender hearts will still be strong, still be true, still be ourselves.

 

Just a moment: Got Shadow out of the bedroom once again. Her skittishness remains an inscrutable problem for me. She’s afraid of my voice, movement, things in her way. A fearful doggy. And, in touch with the thoughts above: it breaks my heart.

Still in it though. Working for a breakthrough to her trust.

Boulder, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, GeekWorld

Loss

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Imbolc and the 78th Birthday Moon

Monday gratefuls: Barb. Jen. Ruth and Gabe. Rabbi Jamie. My phone. My most asked question (to myself): where is my phone? MVP. CU-Boulder. Sushi. Pain. Back. First World Problems. Technology. Uncanny valley. AI. Wi-Fi. CPU’s. Graphics chips. Internet.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Electricity

Kavannah this week:  Curiosity. Sakranut

One brief shining: Sunday I got up and wrote Ancientrails, signed on to the Ancient Brothers to talk about love, got a text from Vince saying he could come with Levi to move my workout equipment which he did as Bill, the last of us five, still spoke, so I went downstairs to help Vince who stayed until nearly eleven when I had to leave for Boulder to pick up Ruth.

 

That was when I discovered my phone had scuttled off somewhere secret. Here, I knew, because I’d used it that morning. Conundrum. Keep looking for my phone so I can call Ruth? What if I can’t find it and I show up late? Then she’ll get anxious. I decided to look for five more minutes. Nope. Not here.

Leaving the house I felt naked and irritated that I wouldn’t be able to listen to the Hardfork Podcast about Deepseek. Drove a bit fast to avoid showing up late. Ruth has anxiety issues, as I have had. So I get it. About a fifty minute drive.

Got to Boulder. Ruth was in tears. She had, she said, called me five times. Including this voicemail:

“Hey, Grandpop. I’m waiting outside and you’re scaring me to death, so just call me if you get this, or I don’t know if you left your phone, or I don’t know, but I’m outside, so I’m hoping you’ll get here in a few minutes. Just call me.”

I felt for her, frustrated that with all the available tech I had I still had no way of connecting with her. We had a good lunch. I’d already set this up in the middle of last week, not knowing that her other grandma, Barb Bandel, would die Friday night. That made me even more frustrated because Ruth didn’t need more on her mind. Barb had been in declining health, but her death came with no forewarning. Her death means Ruth and Gabe lost Kate in 2021, their Dad in 2022, and now Barb. That’s a lot of loss. A lot of grief.

Meanwhile my back began grouching while we ate. My walking limit seems to be about a block, two at the most. This with an extra Tramadol already on board. The ride back tested my pain tolerance.

Back home I began looking for my phone. I’ve still not found it. I’m going to have to do a sector search I guess. I know it’s here because I asked Ruth to call me at 5 to see if I could locate it. She did, but, in the first of many confounding situations, the call came to my hearing aid. Which meant it didn’t help me locate the phone.

Did three what I considered thorough passes through the house last night. No joy. Asked chatbot for help. Alexa has a find your phone feature. Oh. I rarely, rarely use Alexa, but here was good use. Nope. The internet is not usable Alexa says. Odd, since I’m on it right now. We had very high winds last night, power went out four times, generator worked, but apparently it reset Alexa. And the Alexa app, which I need to reconnect her to wi-fi is, guess where? On my phone.

As is my ability to connect to Google Voice, which required a setup code sent to my phone. Arrrgghhh.

So, blehhhhh.

 

 

 

Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Poetry

A comma, not a period

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Jon Bailey. Detailing my car. Seoah is coming. Casa Bonita. Valentine’s Day. #78. Fitbit. Charlie H. Ruby clean inside. Avocado Toast. Lox and English Muffins. Ruth’s excitement about her new Astronomy class. Gabe. Coming up Saturday to interview Rabbi Jamie. Sue Bradshaw. Josh. Kai. Evergreen Family Medicine.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Marilyn and Irv

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Rachamim, compassion.  Practice-listening for the melody of the other.

One brief shining: Looking about the same except for a moon face, wondered if it was prednisone, my fellow traveler on the ancientrail of cancer sat in his chair, bookcases behind him, his lake out the window, and exhibited compassion, his melody a bit jagged after a year of death and illness, yet still poetic.

 

First iteration. A recruiting poster syle illustration of Mary Oliver’s quote

When Charlie H. said he was in remission, his surveillance pushed out to four months from the usual three, a sign of dramatic improvement, I felt an uncharitable son of a bitch why him and not me? I didn’t begrudge him at all the good news. No. Happy for him, but wondering why my cancer has proved so damned intractable.

Especially wondering today because yesterday I had four vials of blood drawn, one of which goes for testosterone and PSA lab work.

 

Reminded in that conversation of Paul’s online session with poet Jane Hirschfield. He reported two arresting sentences: Death is not a period, it’s a comma. And. Attention is your life.

second iteration after asking Chabot to correct the spelling of precious

A comma. “…a punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence.” Oxford Languages. Interesting to wonder about that sentence, the one in which your life this time might be an object or a subject, a life acted upon or a life acting on its own. What is the verb in the sentence? Verbs? Was there an adjective for this life of yours? Strong, passionate, weakened, vulnerable, clever, unusual? What is the cosmic sentence which the universe, in its polyvalent, multivalent way, has written that is yours and yours alone? It may be the work of a hundred lifetimes, learning how to read your own sentence.

One more thought on the comma. Learning to read each other’s sentence would allow us to glimpse the narrative line running through your time. A series of short stories, linked by the main character of your Self which, when combined, would be a novel in many volumes. Can you imagine the shelves in that Library of Alexandria?

What does that work require? Attention. To your own melody. To the melody of the other. To the moment, yes, of course. But also to the century, the year, the day, the hour. The millennium. Not different from the work of seeing. And hearing.

“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”

 

Just a moment: Welcome to the Year of the Snake. Although the Chinese zodiac correlates the snake as “simultaneously associated with harvest, procreation, spirituality, and good fortune, as well as cunning, evil, threat, and terror”, I can only see the last four in the American year of the snake.

 

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mussar

Rachamim

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Yule and the almost full Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Vince and his friends. Their muscles. Moving day for my home gym. A couple of chairs. My new computer. The complete Pritzker Zohar. My classroom for the next few years. Year Tarot: The Archer, #7. Life Tarot: The Wheel, #10, and a shadow card, The Wanderer, #1. Wildwood Tarot. Going deeper, yet staying on the surface. Ruby and her Mountain ways. Talmud Torah

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leaning in to mobility limitations

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Year card: The Archer, #7  “The Archer is located on the spring equinox, March 21. The time this card represents is sunrise. The Archer belongs to the Air element, bringing creative energy and inspiration. This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”  TarotX.net

Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

One brief shining: Seeing my son over the thousands of miles, listening to him describe his life and work, hearing his melody loud and clear, a strong man, dedicated, caring, loving, thoughtful, a tune marked by doggedness and intelligence, commitment, warrior energy.

 

Here is the illustration in the style of an ukiyo-e print, visually interpreting the nurturing and generative qualities of compassion.

This new practice for the month, listening for the melody of the other, has proved challenging to recall. Its purpose is to train my rachamim muscle, my compassion, over against my din muscle, my justice muscle. Justice somehow got wired into my soul from a young age. Always ready to judge and enter the fight on behalf of others. Compassion came later, or at least in much smaller emergences than my desire to stop the war, further women’s rights, block capitalist greed, build affordable housing.

As I’ve aged, compassion (rachamim) has pushed its way forward. Perhaps because I have needed more compassion. Perhaps because aging can induce, and has for me, vulnerability. Life contains fewer and fewer chances, contains more and more tragedy and chaos. Reduced energy, at least for me, plays a role here, too. I don’t have the get up and struggle sort of vitality, physically, that I used to have. Also friendships and acquaintances have risen to top priority in my life. Following only family. To retain and sustain relationships compassion must show up first.

Did that shoulder slump? Is her head slightly tilted down? Is there a tightness in his voice? That foot tapping. Clock watching. Smiling without sarcasm. She leaned her head suddenly on to my shoulder. What do I know of the composer? What’s likely influencing this melody? Is it one I’ve heard before? Is it new? Is it shrill? Or is it like morning Bird song? My eye can be, must be my ear.

Both rachamim and the Hebrew word for womb share the same root. What can we imagine from this? Does compassion have a generative quality, creating a womb-like space for another’s soul to grow? Does compassion nurture over time, making it a necessary element of every interaction with another? Frequent exposure to your compassion may be the fertile Soil another’s soul needs to flourish.

Sometime I’ll write about din. Which sets aside compassion in the interests of equity, fairness, fighting oppression. Not today.

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase

Aging and its cultured despisers

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Phonak. Amy. Mile High Hearing. All body workout today. The Outpost. Emunah. Snow. Cold. A Mountain Winter. Still light on Snow. The Churning of the Sea of Milk. Angkor Wat. Siem Reap. Cambodia. The Mekong. Brother Mark on his way to Saudi. Eleanor, the Dog. Tara. Friendship. Men. CBE.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Eleanor, fluffy kind energy

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for this January 7th life: Understanding. Bina

One brief shining: How many moments of wind carrying cold air over my bald head have to happen for me to have a good night’s sleep; or, how high do I have turn up the electric blanket which pleases me for reasons I cannot define; or, how much peace in my stomach and in my heart leads my mind into slowing down and slipping away into human sleep mode.

 

Here is the illustration inspired by Hokusai, depicting the essence of aging and Elderhood in a serene, nature-filled setting.

OK. Here’s a new pet peeve. Super agers. No, I’m not dissing them, whomever they are, for having won a genetic or geographic (blue zones) or good luck lottery. Good for them. Banners and candles and whatever else goes with it. Huzzah! Might we learn something valuable from their lives? I suppose so.

No. The peeve I have lies in the way we valorize certain individuals, lift them up as exemplars for what aging can be. That can have the effect, like all the hoohah about diet and exercise, of diminishing the perfectly normal aging most of us will experience.

The vast, vast bulk of us, somewhere north of 99.9% I imagine, live our lives doing the best we can, making decisions that impact our overall health in many ways, some good some not so good and often living out the consequences of a genetic heritage in which we had no choice.

Super agers. Centenarians. The tail of the bell curve, the one sloping to the right. Are they our role models? What about the poor bastards on the other end of the curve with disabilities of all kinds. With limited resources to realize the dreams of the American Immortal.

I do not consider myself poor because I have less money than Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. And more importantly I don’t want to have that money. It’s not a perfect analogy of course.

Would l want to have the supple brain and over-70 Olympian’s body of these wunderkind of the Sun City set? Yes. I would. Didn’t happen for me. Am I a less good person, is my aging somehow less than? No. I’m at 77 and-here’s the comparison I like-above ground and taking nourishment.

What I’m pleading for here is a way to accept and celebrate aging in all its varieties, all its super and non-super manifestations. There’s no one way to do aging right. There’s your way and my way and, yes, the way of the .001%. Everybody who manages to slip past, say 65, deserves the honor and recognition of Elderhood, something our society, our individualistic, youth oriented, success infested society has drained away from us. To its peril.

End of rant.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Woolly Mammoths

Men. In their awkwardness. Beautiful.

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Yule and a beautiful crescent of the Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Torah study. Men’s group at CBE. Flat bread with lox and onion. Pescatarians. Ruth skiing. Such joy. Gabe and his puzzles. 9 degrees. New Snow. Driving in the dark. A boost. Diet. Changing. Matt. Rob. Bill. Jamie.  The mesh bag. Neck weakness. January 20th.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Men, struggling with their hearts

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for this January 5th life: Persistence

One brief shining: Drove back last night from the men’s group at CBE graced by the waxing crescent of the Quarter Century Moon; its soft light radiated by a Mountain Fog illuminating the Arapaho National Forest and the curves of Brook Forest Drive, then Black Mountain Drive until Shadow Mountain Home appeared out of the mist, welcoming me.

 

Got a boost yesterday. Community working its magic. During Torah study in the morning I still felt pressed down, disengaged. Distant. But Luke came up and gave me a big hug. Ginny smiled to see me. I felt seen. Though. Still coasting at a slow low place when I left.

Came back and did nothing until 5:30 when I left to go back to CBE for the first meeting of the men’s group. Buzzed the door. Got let in by a guy I didn’t know. Then I let in a  couple of other guys, neither of whom I knew. One of them, Matt, turned to get his nametag. Oh, good idea, I said. I’m usually good for one a day he said.

Steve brought flat bread with lox and onions. Made by his wife. I brought my go to mandarin Oranges in my new mesh bag. Joe brought miniature rugalach and date bars. Jamie tossed a handful of leftover Hanukkah gelt on the table. Chips and dip appeared. Finger food. Manly interpretations.

The conversation had that awkward I don’t know you tone, things held back, laughing. I only knew Jamie and Steve. Steve just a little. As we navigated telling bits and pieces of our stories, wondering who resided behind the careful words, I felt myself easing onto familiar ground.

When it came my turn, the Woolly Mammoths came out naturally. 40 years of learning how to get behind the careful words, the fear of vulnerability, with other men. Men trained by American culture and in this case reinforced by Jewish culture that feelings were at best anti-competitive. At worst they could…well, you know, don’t you?

Sensing the journey ahead and enjoying the tender feelers put out, an occasional smile, a sad look, a story that told more than intended, my downward emotional Dog began to shift to a Sun Salutation. I didn’t expect that to happen, but it did. Not all the way back to normal, no, not at all, but buoyed up all the same.

 

Just a moment: Tomorrow some Christians celebrate the Magi’s visit to the lowly manger in which the Son of God was born. And Trump will trumpet the day of love which the bulk of us call insurrection. MAGA or Magi? Even as a Jew I’m going with the Magi.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase

I sense you’re slipping

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Candles. Snow. Torah study. CBE Men’s group. Feeling low. Workouts going well. 2025. Brother Mark. Mary. Seoah. My son. Murdoch. How do I feel? Acting. Erleada. Orgovyx. Medicare drug policy. Orcas. Sadness. Mountain dark Morning. Black Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for the January 4th life: Yirah. Awe, amazement, wonder.

One brief shining: Had a strange moment at breakfast with Alan, my tone and demeanor was soft, repressed, as if I were muted emotionally; nothing to do with Alan, whom I delighted to see after he had been gone a month, the strangeness coming in my lack of awareness that I felt this way, as if I had to have an old friend as a mirror to see myself.

 

Here is the image you requested, capturing a melancholic atmosphere inspired by Breughel’s style, blending positive and negative emotions with a surreal touch

Depressive genes run in our family. And, for Mary, Mark, and me the epigenetics after mom’s early death  pushed us each in different directions, yet pushed we were in unwelcome and unexpected ways. The Myth of Normal, an interesting if difficult read, says we all grow into adulthood with trauma overlaying our development, no matter our family of origin. There is, in its conceit anyway, no normal developmental path, only paths damaged in ways unique to each human.

Kate had a task set her by John Desteian, my former Jungian analyst. When she felt it, she was to tell me, “I sense you’re slipping into melancholy.” That she needed to do that helps explain the strangeness I felt at breakfast with Alan. That was me channeling Kate back to my self.

This might explain, too, my veering toward the past of late, and veering not toward its joyous times, rather those instances of loss, of failing to achieve the goal. Why this happens, much like my brother Mark’s much more intense struggles, is not clear. I can  find no particular precipitating event in my recent past.

Challenges, I just realized, my practice for this month in which I say to events I first valence as negative or bad: This too is for the good. This mussar practice forces me to pull the lens back, see an event in a broader or deeper context. How does melancholy fit into my life as a whole? Into what I need, really need, right now? Can it serve a purpose not evident in the way it makes me feel? What might that purpose be?

I’m not sure. The start of a New Year, even if you eschew resolutions as I have, can bring introspection if only by looking back on the year just past. Or, maybe I have it backwards and the fact that the past has come to visit me is the cause rather than the effect.

Perhaps I need, for some deeper psychic reason, to explore this ancientrail I have walked since February 14th, 1947 when I first saw the light of day. Melancholy pauses life, slows it down, turns it inward. Is it something I need to find a way to change or is it something I need to listen to, understand its role in my life right now? I don’t know.

These turns of heart can run toward danger if they get too far into the realm of regret or shame, but that’s not what I feel. I feel as if my heart has had a dark molasses poured over it, obscuring the present, making the now less immediate. Privileging then the look inward.

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Literature, Memories, Minnesota

The Skein of our Lives

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Yule and the 2% crescent of the Yule Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Honesty. To others and self. Yule darkness. The days between the Winter Solstice and the New Year. 5th day of Hanukkah. The Maccabees. The oil in the Temple Menorah. Good workout yesterday. Chatbotgpt. Ruth and Gabe. Mark and Mary. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Rich. Ron. Alan. Diane back home. That long dive into the deep end of my mind.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lev

Kavannah: Love (ahavah) and Persistence

One brief shining: Reading Michael Moorcock’s The War Hound and the World’s Pain I followed von Bek through Hell, through Mittlemarch, or Middle Earth, out to the world as we know it always hunting for the cure for the world’s pain until finally at the edge of the forest near heaven he receives a clay cup that signals his oh, so ordinary enlightenment while representing the culmination of human striving.

 

I have these threads weaving through my life and my heart as we head toward the quarter century mark of the first century of the third millennium. In no particular order: kabbalah, mussar, friendships, family, writing, the nature rights legal movement, Mountains and Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors, reading for Herme’s Journey, exercise, cancer, back pain, books of all sorts, travel, Seed-Keepers, telling my story, Ancientrails. AI. Judaism. Paganism.

And, of course, there is the wider context for all these: Kate, politics, organizing, Christianity, paganism, alcoholism, Jungian therapy, the Wooly Mammoths, Minnesota, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Raeone and Judy, Tina, seminary, Alexandria, the Andover years, the Peaceable Kingdom, all those dogs.

There is the third place of the lev, as well. Or, perhaps better, the lev as a third place in which all these coexist, influence each other, reaching over and shaking hands, embracing. Pushing away. Denying. Erasing. Recreating. Nothing is static. All effects All. Moving not necessarily forward or backward, up or down, but in and out, releasing new energy with each penetration, impregnating the moment so something novel can grow, reach out for something else and keep the whole underway.

 

Yes. We loved each other.

Let me give you a modest example. Last night I decided to have an English muffin with peanut butter plus the last bit of the unfrozen Senate navy bean soup. As the English muffin toasted and the soup warmed in the microwave, I got out the peanut butter and thought. Hmm. Honey.

Reached into the cabinet, moved a box of sugar, and there sat a small canning jar with a handwritten label: Artemis Honey. In Kate’s beautiful cursive. She came. Standing there with the uncapping knife, honey super in hand, looking beautiful and engaged. The Andover years where we worked as one. Dogs. Vegetables. Flowers. Bees. And the chamber quartet we commissioned for our wedding. The honeymoon. Living in the move as we prepared to come to Colorado.

For a long moment I stood there. Before I reached in. Should I eat this? As if it were the last piece of her, of our life together. The honey harvest. Of course I can eat this now, a holy communion, a eucharist. Her body and mine together again if only for a moment.

I spread a bit of the wonderful thick amber colored honey over my peanut butter. And ate it.