Category Archives: Feelings

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Why grief?

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Spring                                                         Wedding Moon

As you might expect, I’ve been thinking about death, about grief in the wake of Vega’s sudden death. In particular I’ve been wondering how I can have a grasp on my own death, no fear, but be so distressed at Vega’s.

Then, it occurred to me. In movie thrillers the torturers often open their usually neated packet of tools: knives, pliers, dental picks, pieces of bamboo with a flourish. Or, as in the Marathon Man, the dentist goes to work on you without anesthetic.  In many cases the torturee summons up inhuman courage or an anti-heroic defiance.

When the usual infliction of pain or disorientation fails, or when the torturer is portrayed as unusually sadistic, friends or colleagues or family members of the torturee are led into the room. Then the torturer goes to work on them. Seems effective in the movies I’ve seen.

Grief, at least in part, is because the universe is such a torturer. Not with malice, of course, but certainly with a sort of intention. Life has an endpoint and entropy sees that it arrives. So, it’s possible to have the notion of your own death sorted out while responding with agony to the grim torture of having your friends removed from the room .

Dogs, Feelings, Memories, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate, Writing

Foggy

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Spring                                                          Wedding Moon

loft2Clouds at 8,800 feet. Or, as some say, fog. Cold and clammy outside this am.

I’ve gotten back to work on Jennie’s Dead and Superior Wolf, not a lot of new content yet, but it will come.

Spent some time yesterday, too, in the what now seems eternal rearranging of the loft. Finding an optimal way to encourage my work with the tools I have: books, files, images, maps and brochures, workout equipment, lamps, chairs, is the goal. Still waiting on a couple of pieces from Jon, walnut shelves and a top for my art cart.

bandWhile I worked on rearranging the loft, I put on Pandora, the music streaming service. I have a Pandora station devoted to The Band, a sixties rock group who collaborated with Bob Dylan. As it played their music and music of similar contemporaries, an overwhelming sadness hit me.

It began with a memory of Vega, feeling her presence in my life, feeling her absence. But, it morphed into a more general sadness, possibly a melancholy nostalgia for the times the Band evokes, those days of the 60’s. It tapped, too, into old neurotic loops. What have I done with my life? Has it mattered? Does mattering matter? You know, those inner paths which have a Mobius strip nature, going nowhere in particular yet taking a very long time to get there, only to find out you’ve gotten back where you started.

As these moods do these days, these third phase days, they passed. Grieving Vega, grieving a time gone by, grieving unreasonable expectations. All part of life, not to be inhabited forever, but acknowledged. A hat tipped to them as they go by.

A less melancholy day today, I hope.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, GeekWorld, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Anxiety

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Imbolc                                                                        Maiden Moon

Palmer Hayden, a painter of the Harlem Renaissance, did a series of 12 paintings about the John Henry legend.  John Henry matched his muscle and steel-driving skill against a steam engine. When watching Alphago, the DeepMind computer program, play Go champion and legend himself, Lee Sedol, Michael Redmond, a Western go master at the 9-dan (highest level) said he really wanted to play the computer.

Here’s a quote from the only man who claimed to have seen the John Henry contest:  “When the agent for the steam drill company brought the drill here,” said Mr. Miller, “John Henry wanted to drive against it. He took a lot of pride in his work and he hated to see a machine take the work of men like him.” wiki, op cit

 

This is Lee Sedol and his daughter at Match 3. He lost, for the third game in a row, losing the match of 5 games to Alphago. Quite a different scene from Hayden’s imaging of John Henry’s loss, but still a human loss to a machine.

It occurs to me that both images evince a fundamental difference between humans and machines, love and concern for another. In Lee’s case, he and the Alphago team member are smiling, shaking hands. He has his arm around his daughter, another key distinction between  humans and machines, biological procreation. Parenting, the long task of raising a human child until they can take off on their own, is also a complex relational challenge, one well outside the current and possibly future capacity of artificial intelligence.

 

As John Henry lies dead, a heart attack brought on by the stress of the competition, others surround him. Their expressions vary from disbelief to sadness. One man has a ladle of water to offer, indicating that Henry must have just died. Too, the endurance of the legend and the song about John Henry show how deeply rooted are the questions. Is a human determined, defined by his or her capacity to defeat a machine? Ever?

Lee Sedol said, at the end of Match 3, “Lee Sedol lost. Not humankind.”

There is a fundamental anxiety about humanness revealed here. It is the question that Ray Kurzweil believes he has answered in his book, The Singularity Is Near. In Kurzweil’s mind, all of these human versus machine moments are stair steps toward the ultimate confrontation between humans and an artificial intelligence that is superior to us. The John Henry legend foreshadows what will happen. Like the steam drill a superior consciousness will simply eliminate the competition, not out of pique or malevolence, but because that is what happens when superior beings interact with inferior ones.

 

I don’t believe it. I believe the crowd around John Henry, the shaking hands at Match 3 with Alphago and the presence of Sedol’s daughter shows the true distance machines will have to travel to become superior to humans. And, when the contest is over love and compassion, the human characteristics on display in these two instances, then the machine will not want to eliminate us, but to embrace us.

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Our Land and Home

Again, Gratitude

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Summer                                                                      Recovery Moon

It no longer feels like I’m walking into a stiff headwind, head down and seeing only my feet. Now the sky is sunny, a gentle breeze blows at my back. Again, gratitude to all who held my hand during the last three months. I needed that.

Wow. And to Jon, who put together four more bookshelf units, connected three to the others already installed. I’ve got some shelving to do. We also ordered the last three units, one with shelves and doors for tea and coffee making. On Monday Jon and I will go to Paxton Lumber and pick out some exotic wood for the top to my work table and to use for making the short bookshelves tops wider.

After the final bookshelves are put together and connected, Jon will assemble the wire shelving. That will eliminate the pony wall of bankers boxes currently separating my workout space from the rest of the loft. When that’s done, the only major tasks left will be utilizing the art crates as functional island dividers, buying a small refrigerator and reconfiguring the workout space with the pull-up bar over the rubber mats.

 

 

 

Feelings, Health, Our Land and Home

Tomorrow Wall Down

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Summer                                                                              Recovery Moon

The tomorrow wall has come down. As Kate observed yesterday, “I could tell you were feeling more positive. You wanted to move things around, get a new rug, hang art. Talk about color.” Yes. More color. More art. Get back to home making, not things medical.

We have a new boiler. I’m continent less than a week after the catheter came out and about two and three-quarters months ahead of expectations. We ordered a 9×12 braided rug for the reading area in front of the fireplace. I have a new plumber, recommended by Ken, the Boiler Medic. Things have begun to happen.

Jon’s coming out today to do more bookshelf and handyman work. Jon’s skills make a big difference for both Kate and me. We’re lucky to have him.

office350Yesterday morning I moved empty bookshelves that we’re no longer going to use, four of them. I horsed the horizontal file cabinet more toward the center of the loft. That leaves a new expanse of wall where more tall birch veneer bookshelves can go.

Functional islands is the organizing scheme. Books and other storage against the wall, including a cabinet and shelf space for the tea-making, tea, and tea-ware, a slot for a small refrigerator and my exercise TV.

At the south end of the loft, positioned with a view of Black Mountain, is the reading area which includes a large rug and a Swedish recliner. Next, moving north, and away from the reading area, almost to the middle of the room away from the west wall, is the computer, desk and dictionary stand which holds my O.L.D., Oxford Latin Dictionary. I imagine the horizontal file cabinet will be part of this island, too.

In the same location, but out from the east wall and extending to the middle of the room will be a large table with three cabinets beneath it. It will be on wheels. The drafting table goes in this area, too. Here I can spread out books when doing research or work on other projects. I hope to get into some art making using this space. Collage work for right now.

Out from the north wall, on the same (eastern) side as the large table, is the treadmill, rubber mats, weights and weight bench. On the eastern wall in front of the treadmill is the TV I use as an incentive to exercise. There will be, too, a pull-up bar mounted to the ceiling.

On the same (western) side as the computer/desk island, will be wire shelving for my many bankers boxes filled with novel manuscripts, research, files related to other projects like art, religion, politics.

We plan to use the large wooden crates built to move our two large Jeremiah Miller paintings (brother-in-law) as dividers among the islands, cutting the larger crate in half to create three dividers. Jon has an idea for using piano hinges that will allow the crates to be used as art storage. They will have feet so they can stand on their own.

Once the bookshelves are all assembled, the wire shelving up, the large table finished and the tea-making/refrigerator area is in place I can get down to the serious work of giving my library its final shape. That’s a task, an important and fun task, that cannot be done with electronic books, at least not yet.

I’m hoping that all this work, if not the organizing of books and files and bankers boxes, will be done by Labor Day with the whole loft area ready for fall and winter.

This loft is a love letter from Kate since she chose this house because of the loft area for me and the enclosed two-car garage area for her. Finishing up both of our spaces—we have to re-assemble Kate’s long arm quilter and she needs to get a better organizing scheme—and the kitchen, the living room and the garage, lies ahead, but not too far ahead. Feels good.

 

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Yet Another Appointment

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Summer                                                                   Healing Moon

Today is my pre-op/post-op consultation with Dr. Eigner’s physician’s assistant, Ann. She’ll go over what I need to do for surgery prep, what we can expect during the surgery and immediately after, then give us post-op instructions. My level of comfort with all this is substantially higher with Kate involved, both because she’ll be there to hear what I miss and because her own skills make her over-qualified to help me before and after surgery.

I continue to sleep well, have no symptoms (none expected, but still good). Since we are now 10 days out, I’ve stopped my aspirin. My feelings have become more labile as the surgery approaches, which makes sense to me.

The surgery itself has a paradoxical quality, as I imagine many such surgeries do. The paradox is this. It offers me real hope, an opportunity to continue my third phase cancer free. And, that, of course, is the reason for the surgery. On the other hand it has attendant pain and discomfort, improbable but possible complications.

It also might reveal that the cancer is worse than we imagine.  My staging included the seemingly innocent, NxMx. The N refers to the status of the lymph nodes near the prostate and the M refers to possible metastasis, or the spread of the cancer to the rest of the body. The x means unknown.

This is where the paradox becomes strong, intense. The surgery might (probably will) move me past this whole episode. In that case, hallelujah. Or, it might dash that hope and begin another series of tests and treatments. In that case, uh-oh.

The good news is that if Eigner had suspected lymph node or metastatic involvement he would have ordered imaging studies prior to surgery. He didn’t. That’s a positive sign, but only that. We won’t know until the surgery is over, perhaps not even then. We may have to wait on the pathology report, or even the first few p.s.a readings in the year + after surgery.

My emotions ride along the trajectory of which outcome dominates my mood. Most of the time I imagine negative margins on the removed prostate. That means no cancer cells in the tissue surrounding the removed organ. Not definite relative to NxMx, but very positive. Occasionally my rational side will bring me up short while I’m feeling good about this most likely outcome. Wait, it says. You might be right, but what if you’re wrong. Then, you’re feelings will fall from the height of hope to the canyon of uncertainty. Oh. Right.

When rationality moves me to consider all the possible outcomes, then I can slip into fear. One problem with an active imagination (7 novels and one underway) is that I have no difficulty following the path of more tests, more treatment all the way to death. The first feeling that comes in the wake of that thought is fear.

I’ve worked out over the last 50 or so years, a philosophical position that calms me before the fear dominates and shakes my foundations. Usually. Nothing’s 100 percent. I’ve expressed it elsewhere. The short version is: something, some time. It’s buttressed too by my belief that life is the mystery, death is ordinary. And those rocks around Turkey Creek and Deer Creek Canyon roads. The ones that have been here so much longer than I’ve been alive and will be here so much longer after I die.

 

Feelings, Health, Weather +Climate

Fear Leaves

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Summer                                                         Healing Moon

Denver had some serious weather yesterday: a tornado not far from Jon and Jen’s home, beating rain that took out Jon’s cucumbers, urban flooding that set off alarms in the building where Bernie Sander’s spoke last week. We have rain in the forecast for the next week or so.

The fear subsided over night. Not sure why, but it’s replaced this morning with the calm about the process that I’ve felt most of the time. The trigger yesterday was, obviously, my pre-op physical. It pushed the surgery and its low, but real, uncertainty right in my face. Calmness can be a trap, too. If I’m not calm, am I doing this wrong? Am I not centered? Not grounded? Not spiritual enough?

We all cycle through various perspectives on important issues. That’s a normal and healthy way of seeing different sides. Some of those perspectives can be frightening, e.g. the instance in which the surgery goes well, but some cancer has escaped into my body, metastasized. It was that possibility that creeped into my awareness yesterday and it took hold, stayed present for much of the day. Oddly, even though I found Dr. Gidday very reassuring and I believed her confident appraisal of my prognosis, at the same time, the fear tickled my heart and fingers.

There are, too, family matters to deal with and I had to work out how to deal with them. These things don’t come naturally to me so I have to consider them, plan. Decided on a frank and open conversation which, I admit, could have come to me first, but didn’t.

So this is what I’m doing with my one wild and crazy life. Right now.

Feelings, Friends, Health

Fear Was My Co-Pilot

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Summer                                                      Healing Moon

Had my pre-op physical this morning, two weeks before my surgery date of July 8th. On the way over I drove through Turkey Creek and Devil’s Creek canyons, a beautiful backway to the southern Denver suburb of Littleton.

I was afraid on the way over. I’ve been distracted and anxious, unsettled so far on this journey, but have not felt afraid. The fear crept in as I drove, not paralyzing, but evident. The beauty of the canyons with their pines and aspens, the exposed rock and the mountain sides climbing up for the road soothed me. That’s why I chose that route.

Those rocks, I thought, have been here long, long before me and will be here long, long after me. At an intellectual level I find that comforting. Today though the surgery was getting more and more real. The fact of cancer, too. The fear was not about the surgery or the recovery. It was about the results of the surgery.Will I be cured or will there be lingering doubts, cells that escaped into the lymph nodes or into the body?

98% of the time I believe Eigner will get all the malignant cells and the pathology report will relieve me. 2% of the time, I’m not sure. Today was/is all 2%.

Dr. Gidday, my internist who did my pre-op, was great. She referred her 82 year old father to Eigner when he was diagnosed. She trusts Eigner and so do I. Dr. Gidday’s nurse Katie, who had another patient and couldn’t check me in, stuck her head in the room and asked me how I was doing. There’s a lot of caring in that office and I feel it.

Fear seems natural to me, so I’m just reporting it. It’s not dominating me. At least not right now.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Nourishing the Self

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Summer                                                      Healing Moon

Finding myself driven into my Self, wanting to nourish my soul/Self, my inner life, needing to do that. Mood a bit down, usually precedes inner work, and I plan to follow that thread today.

I may use the intensive journal, read some poetry, look into some books on the inner life. Meditate. Maybe hike a bit.

The tomorrow wall has gone back up, closing off my dreams for the future. This is not bad. It focuses me on the here, the now, but I will not allow this wall to stand after July 8th. No matter what the final pathology report says I plan to regain my usual rhythm. Write. Translate. Explore Colorado. Learn new things. Go out with Kate, the grandkids.

An example of what’s going through my mind right now. In traffic on I-70 yesterday, headed east, away from the mountains, I looked at all the cars and trucks and buses filling lanes, six lanes altogether, going east and west. Unbidden came the thought that all these drivers, all the passengers will get taken off the board.

This traffic, filled with strangers on unknown journeys to unknown destinations, purposeful and not, was a moment in history. And history’s tide would wash over it, sweeping in its wake all the souls present.

This was not a dark thought, rather a descriptive realization, offered to me, I think, by my unconscious. Why? To place my current predicament in context. Am I going to die? Yes. And so are all these others. As have all the others who lived, say, 120 years ago.

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

A Paradox. (more on dealing with cancer. if this bums you out, skip it.)

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Summer                                                                Healing Moon

I’m sleeping fine. I don’t feel that jittery, too many cups of coffee acidity in my stomach. I know what regular anxiety feels like, having been all too familiar with it for many years. Aches in my bunched up shoulders. Uncertain about my worth, what I should do. Waves of small fear about what now seem like the silliest things. For example, will the clerks at Best Buy demand to see my driver’s license if I pay by check? And refuse to let me use the check?

So it’s easy to assume that I’m not anxious. Easy for me to assume that. Yet, if I step back a minute, I’m not writing, I’m not doing my Latin. The tomorrow wall rises more often than it falls, not allowing my thoughts and dreams past July 8th. I am, in these significant ways, distracted, not feeling well, dis-eased.

I want to be cool about this, not degenerate into the life of a patient whose every waking moment is taken up with illness, with matters of medicine. That’s no life. That’s waiting for life. Cancer is, however, hard to ignore. This is one of the more difficult struggles in my life.

Trusting the diagnosis, the treatment feels both justified (I’m confident in the pathology, the physical findings, the PSA jump. I trust Dr. Eigner’s experience and his approach.) and necessary. No second guessing, I say to myself, at this point. You know what you’re up against, you’ve weighed the options and made a decision, just let all that play out. I’m doing that. That’s why I can sleep at night, why I don’t feel those frank expressions of anxiety.

I realize, of course, the irony of writing this. It focuses on the very thing I’m saying I want to let be, but I’m living in just that paradox. I feel confident about my decisions and about the probability of their resulting in a cure. At the same time there is this part of my body that no longer participates in the general keep Charlie healthy idea. All of these things persist and tumble around in me at the same time.

This comes, too, after an interstate move complicated by what felt like a very long time to sell our Minnesota house. Becoming integrated into the family here in Colorado has not been as easy as we had hoped either. It’s getting better, we’re all learning how to appreciate each others needs and feelings, but it’s not been what we imagined, at least not at first. It has been family, with joy and travail.

Laying this down as a record, an in this moment statement of how I am. Take it for what it’s worth.