Beltane Emergence Moon
Once again, early morning. Up since 3:30. Not worried, just not sleeping. Lying there as the moonlight streamed in the window, turning to this familiar posture, then that. Mind chugging along, chewing on something which, even at this point closest to it, I can’t recall.
Calm. Just. Awake.
These times puzzle me with their resistance to solution.
Beltane Emergence Moon
Been on the slow boat these last few days, walking with that peculiar slightly stoved-in upper body typical of lower back pain sufferers world-wide. I’m not a fan of those days when my mind’s not sharp, whether the cause is melancholy or percocet or persistent pain.
Thankfully that fuzziness has lifted and clarity has begun to blow through the temporary cob-webs. As that happens, I’m reminded of a possible utility for melancholy and, perhaps, pain’s distraction, too. That is, melancholy often occurs when life has shoveled in more data, more choice points, just more. The trigger may seem to be an experience, emotional distress, or a recurrent worry, but in fact the trigger may be more like a thresh-hold device. In this understanding your mind has more to process than it can handle. It could be that a major creative project has been bubbling along below consciousness and as it surfaces overwhelms the mind.
So melancholy and perhaps physical pain can put the brakes on more data, more ideas, more experiences as the mind catches up, sorts, makes decisions. This doesn’t change the unpleasant affect of melancholy or the sleeplessness and anxiety it can produce on its own, but it can help us understand why such a phenomenon has persisted in the human animal.
Sometimes, when I’m most on my mental game (not often in this case), I can sense the onset of melancholy and sometimes (even fewer instances), then I can dredge up what has occupied me below the surface. When this has happened, I find melancholy a rich time, even as it puts out the drag chute and stops consciousness from rushing forward, ahead of itself.
On Maui Mt. Haleakala rises high above the lower reaches of the island, an extinct volcano with a huge caldera. Tourists often visit Mt. Haleakala around 4 a.m. so they can see the sun rise over the eastern Pacific. The chill of the height and the early morning creates a cold fog that rolls in through a large gap in the caldera, the ocean breeze cooled into a cloud formation that obscures the volcanic cone and the caldera. Then, as the sun rises and heat begins to dissipate the fog, the down coats and sleeping bags draped over shoulders come off and Mt. Haleakala suddenly becomes visible.
So, this time, the sun has risen, the fog has begun to clear. Thanks be.
Beltane Emergence Moon
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go. Mary Oliver, Blackwater Woods
This life here. This land. These friends. The memories. All mortal. And I love them all. For forty years I have held this life, in its glad moments and its sad ones, against my bones, knowing I did depend on it. For twenty years I have held this land and the life here with Kate against my bones knowing I depended on both of them. For twenty-five plus years I have held the Woollies and Kate against my bones knowing my life depended on them. The dogs, too. Later, the docents, friends from the Sierra Club and elsewhere. All against my bones.
Now, and here is the gray cloud lying close to my mental ground, the ravens and the crows flying there, the catafalque. The weight. The heaviness. The mudstuck boots. Now, the time has come to let them go. All but Kate and the dogs.
No, of course there will be times. Times back here. Times together. Moments driving down the same streets, sitting in the same homes. But then as a visitor, a man from far away. No longer here. But there.
Mary says when the time comes, let them go. Yes. I’m doing that. She didn’t say anything about being glad. And I’m not. I’m sad in the deepest reaches of my bones. But, it is time, and I will let them all go.
Beltane Emergence Moon
I have, uncharacteristically, started and stopped with this post several times. There’s a sleep deprived pall hanging over me, bringing the low-hanging, gray cumulus inside, almost to my psychic ground. It’s hard to see. Catafalques. Black-draped carriages. Heavy. Weighted.
This is the time of the mudsucked boot, the slow drudge through the mindscape where ravens and crows predominate. The pace of movement is measured, no second-lining, no upbeat notes. Where all this originates, I know not. That it comes once in a while is a certainty.
Beltane Emergence Moon
Slept in until 9 this morning after my couple of hours of insomnia. Cost me a lunch with Tom and Bill this afternoon since I have to get out there and chop wood, carry water for the Beltane bonfire tonight. Insomnia is one of those things that hits those of us with anxiety once in a while. Its trigger is not obvious and I’ve long ago decided that figuring what causes insomnia only exacerbates it.
As a general rule, my life is more placid now that it has been at any other point. Still, the occasional mood storm rushes through my inner world much like the rain ran through here last night, fast and furious. This one is gone now, perhaps leaving with the morning rush of hormones. Don’t know.
Anyhow I have Latin and chopping wood today. Carrying water, too.
Beltane Emergence Moon
It has always been so, I imagine. That those closest to us teach us life’s important lessons. Over the last couple of years my longtime and good friends in the Woolly Mammoths have taught me many things. This sort of teaching is much closer to apprenticeship than classroom lecture. That is, the lessons are taught by example rather than declamation. When we learn by example, we integrate the lesson into our journey; we learn as it affects us, rather than focusing on getting it right.
Two lessons stand out though there have been many from each Woolly. The first, accepting the death of a spouse has come from Woolly Bill Schmidt whose wife, Regina, died in September of 2012. The grace in his acceptance of her death, his willingness to give voice to his grief and his sense of loss while remaining upright and present to all around him teaches one elegant way to walk the ancientrail occasioned by our mortality. It is not in mimicking him that we will learn his lesson but, in heeding the deeper lesson, that is, to be present to grief in a way that is authentically our own.
The second is the homecoming of Frank Broderick. Frank has been in tremendous pain from spinal degeneration for the last couple of years. To deal with it a back operation, his second, was the only solution. But, Frank has a bad heart. Frank had to choose between a 
life of constant pain (He’s 81.) or an operation with some risk of death. As Frank does, he weighed his options seriously, getting a second opinion at the Mayo Clinic. Satisfied with the level of risk, he decided to go ahead.
He came home yesterday after a grueling 10 days of rehab and faced with several weeks of rehab still ahead. Again, the Frank lesson is not in how to deal with pain or a bad back, though he did both of those well, but how to bring personal courage and intelligent decision making to the often complex health matters we will all deal with as we age.
Both of these men have granted me access to their lives and to the way they live them. When the student was ready, his teachers appeared.
Beltane Emergence
In spite of what I said yesterday I’m still in the doldrums. Still feeling out of touch with now, wishing for some magic transport portal that would accomplish this move in a flash. The resistance I have is not about the decision, that makes sense, feels good. Moving. And prior to moving, culling, sorting, packing, staging, selling, buying. I’ve done it, more times than I care to count, but it’s been 20 years and that’s a long, long time. Longer than I’ve lived anywhere. All that time to accumulate. Stuff.
And the resistance is, as I said the other day, premonitory. What can I do today? Gather all the garden tools, put them on a tarp and divide them into keep and donate. After that’s done, I can plant the onions and leeks. Then, we can go into the garage. Same discipline. Sort. Divide into keep and donate. That’s what I can do now. I can’t hunt for land or property. I know that. So we can do the incremental things that will make it possible for us to move forward.
Imagine those pioneers faced with a homestead full of things and a Conestoga wagon to put them in. That must have been a challenge. Or, all those nomadic peoples who pick up and move every season. Packing light’s a necessity. So, it can be done. I know it.
Beltane Emergence Moon
The first wave of emotions has passed. I feel present now. Those onions and leeks which I did not plant yesterday will go in on Monday and Tuesday instead, along with some fertilizer for the daffodils. Big life decisions take a while to incorporate and this one is not done with me, I know. But for today, it is.
Kate and I are going into the Cowles Center to see the Inferno danced by the James Sewell Ballet. Several years ago, when the writing stalled, I spent a year reading the classics, among them Dante’s Divine Comedy. This is one of the masterworks of western civilization, especially its depiction of Dante and Virgil’s journey through the Inferno. I did read on, finishing the trilogy with the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. It’s ironic, and I’m hardly original in observing this, that the Inferno is what has held reader’s attentions the most over the years. Damnation interests us more than redemption.
Beltane Emergence
I’ve put myself into a shocked, off center state by our decision to move. Assimilating the idea and its consequences have left me lackadaisical about Latin, less interested in the garden, a schlump relative to writing except for this blog. This won’t last long. It’s a response to the gentle but powerful emotional tsunami washing up on my Minnesota shore, a flood that I realize will wash most of what has been my life here back out to sea. And, it’s premonitory, a reality in the distance, yet it has enough force to rock me.
I’m letting it, right now, take me out of the now and buffet me with imagined sequelae, some wonderful, some sad, some exhilarating, some anxiety producing.
Wonderful. Living near the grandkids, the Rockies, the West. More faces at holidays and birthdays. A new place to absorb, to see, to learn, to become part of.
Sad. Saying good-bye to the Woollies, this house and its gardens, the Walker, the MIA, the Guthrie, the memories of 40 years.
Exhilarating. Writing in a new natural environment, one that will give me years of stimulation as will the lived history of the region. Staghounds in our future, dogs of the West. A new home and land.
Anxiety producing. You know. Packing, unpacking. Money. Adapting to a new place. Finding medical care, insurance.
All this swirls around, causing emotional collisions that spark off each other, create radiants of feeling. It’s the early days of a love affair, one that will go the distance. God, how great, how frightening, is that?
Beltane Emergence Moon
A slow moving mountain. Or, a slow move to the mountains. Sitting here contemplating my study, its hundreds of books and file folders, computer equipment, desks, chairs. I feel overwhelmed at the thought of pruning, organizing, decluttering for selling the house and actually moving. That’s one reason we’re giving ourselves two years or so to move.
Two years might encompass the remaining lifespan of Vega and Rigel. We really don’t know since they’re hybrids, but we suspect 7-8 years and 2016 is 7 years plus. That’s a factor though not a determining one. Hell, who knows, it could encompass our lifespan, too, though I don’t imagine it will.
Talk about liminal space. Between now and then we are no longer fully here and definitely not fully there. I imagine a huge circus tent with many ropes and stakes and poles. Each stake must be pulled. Each rope removed. The poles must be taken down and the canvas rolled up. The canvas is our life in Minnesota and its attendant material possessions.
The stakes are friends, the MIA and the Walker, the Sierra Club Northstar Chapter, the background relationships developed over years of work in the church and in politics and in neighborhoods. The ropes are the emotional ties that bind us to places, to our years lived here, to our sense of ourselves as Minnesotans. The poles are those key relationships like the Woolly Mammoths, Anne, the docents, the folks Kate and I have worked with in multiple capacities: our vet, our doctors, our financial consultants.
All this must, in some way, be stored and the canvas packed. All these things will change once we reach our new destination. Our life will no longer be a Minnesota based life, but a Colorado based one. The friends will remain, of course, as will all the institutions and professionals, the places and their attached memories, but we will have stretched the ease and physical distance with many beyond the breaking point. It will not, of course, be possible to know which ones will suffer the most until time has passed. But all will suffer some, most will suffer a lot.
Feeling overwhelmed, of course, comes from imagining that the tent and its supports must be packed and moved for a train leaving tomorrow. That’s not the case. We have time and will use it well. It’s just that, well, right now, it’s a lot.