Category Archives: Feelings

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Woolly Mammoths

The Samhain Bonfire, a bit more.

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Samhain                                                             Samhain Moon

Frank said as he left, “Casual gatherings.  Low key.  That’s what I like best.”  It was low key, but in its own surprising way, profound.

The bonfire stayed interesting for 3 hours plus, the last hour or so the result of the five four foot lengths of ironwood cut in the morning.  There will be a number more of those logs cut over the next few weeks as we prepare for the Winter Solstice bonfire on December 21st.

The calling of the ancestors to the circle worked.  When we finished, they stayed with us, entering our conversations, adding layers to the people gathered around the fire.  Our group of 7 grew by generations of Fairbanks and Charles’s and Wolfe’s and Perlich’s and Zike’s and Spitler’s.  Some of us called in our tribal ancestors from those days long ago before settlement of Europe and all of us gave a nod and a toast to the Tanzanian man whose y chromosome all the men share.  Mitochondrial Eve, too.  (Though I understand that picture has gotten more complicated.  But the idea is sound.  That woman and that man, far enough back to have entered all our DNA.)

Warren and Sheryl threw their names into the fire wrapped around logs from long ago cached wood for a barbecue.  When they did, sparks from the fire flew up toward the night sky.  Reminded me of Beowulf’s bier, where “heaven swallowed the smoke.”

More memories gather around this place.  It becomes richer with each event, especially with the crowd of ancients who filled it last night.  Some of their spirit will linger on, remembering us and being remembered.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Humanities, Memories, Third Phase

Into the Weeds

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Fall                                                                               Samhain Moon

Additional on post just below.  There is a tendency in quasi-religious, new agey thought to condemn doing and promote being, especially being here now.  Nothing wrong with being here now, of course.  Especially since we really have no other choice.  This seems like a false dichotomy to me however.

Even in our doing we are being and in our being we are doing.  This is only to say that doing entails presence to the world and to ourselves, albeit in a different way from the semi-mystical state of being here now.  If you’re a fan of Zeno and his paradox, then you might craft an argument about never changing out of the now, but in other ways of explaining reality, even being here now is impossible.  Why?  Oh, the earth moves around its poles, through the sky and your body digests food, engages in symbiotic exchanges, responds to changes in temperature and light, shifts nourishment into cells and waste out. Change, that old black magic, has its hooks so deep into the universe we often never notice it, even when it moves with the speed of light.

However, if you go back to the observations I’ve been making about circular time, the repetitive nature of change, how it loops back on itself in predictable patterns, perhaps, yes, in more of a spiral than a bicycle wheel, but still Fall then again Fall, and Winter then again Winter, and Birth then again Birth, and Death then again Death, well, if you consider them, then the cycle from one now to the next is Now then again Now.  We’re never ever out of the now, yet we experience movement.

These paradoxes point to being and doing as a false dialectic, not poles resonating with each other like, say liberal and conservative or life and death or true and false, but as alternating ways to explain the same thing, our hereness.  As Heidegger points out, we are thrown into the world at a particular place, to particular parents and in a particular time. I would push that one step further and say we are thrown into each moment in a particular place, in a particular time, with the unique, particular body/mind that is you.

In each moment our particular response to the now has doing characteristics and being characteristics.  Perhaps another way to say this is that part of us is at rest while other parts are engaged with the now, acting on it or being acted upon by it. We do both at the same time, being and doing.

So what’s all the fuss?  It’s about attention.  When all of our very valuable attention focuses on the action or work or active play of  a moment, then we draw ourselves from the beingness of that moment.  When we focus on the beingness, we draw ourselves away from the doing.  But both states co-exist, no matter on which we focus.

The key move here is about attention.  We can and do shift our attention from different aspects of our life to others, from ourselves to the world or moment into which we are thrown.  If we spend all of our attention on doing, then we neglect the deeper, more reflective aspect of our selves.  Conversely, if we spend all of our attention on being, then we neglect matters necessary for our survival.

In the rhythm of your day, your year, your life, you can choose to attend to the activity, the work, the “what you do.”  This might entail lists or calendar marking or goals and objectives or satisfying layers of cloth or manuscript pages.  Likewise you can choose to attend to the beingness, the what you are.  This might entail meditation, silence, counting breaths, noticing plant and animal life at a close, intimate level.

The point?  What do you do, is a valid question.  So is who are you?  They might have the same answer.

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Humanities, Latin

The New Way

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Fall                                                                              Samhain Moon

Latin today, a good lesson.  I forgot basics, stumbled around, thought I had it when I didn’t.  So why keep banging my forehead against the solid wall of the Roman language?  There’s no reason, no necessity.  Just like the MOOC’s I’m taking are not necessary.

When Kate pressed me on taking two MOOC’s at once, I replied, “I never took less than 18-20 credits a quarter in college.  Graduated with way more credits than I needed.”  She looked at me. “You’re not in college anymore.”  There’s that.

In my defense I did set one aside, so I only took two instead of three.  That’s progress, right?

No, there’s something deeper going on here, I know that.  Learning keeps my mind vital, alert, attentive.  It helps me jump out of ruts into new territory.  I’ve always been curious what’s beyond the limits, the city limits, the college rules limit, the religious limits, the limits of the universe.  Liminal spaces are my favorite, places where two worlds intersect, a little blurry, mostly undefined.  In the past, the now distant past, I used to get there chemically, now books and movies and essays and thoughts and the shovel and the quiet mind and the open heart, they get me there instead.

I want to stand on the shore looking out, stand on the peak looking over the valleys, stand at the mouth of the cave looking in, then follow my gaze.  See what’s beyond safe ground. I hope I never lose that desire.  In fact, I hope I have it when I’m facing death, wondering what’s just beyond the safe ground of life itself.  But not, as my ENT doc said, for a long time.

Feelings

Old Friend

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Fall                                                                              Samhain Moon

You seem to be sinking into melancholy again.  No, I’m not.  Yes.  You are.

Oh.  Well.  October is often gray as my consciousness begins to mirror the sky.  It is in my way to miss the dimming of the lights arrival and not notice when it leaves.  Kate reminds me.  Then I feel heavy as if weights descended within from head to foot, slowly, taking attention and vitality with them as they slip down.

“Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to visit you again” has always seemed so apt. There is that strange feeling of comfort, of familiarity, as the mind’s interior collects, becomes heavier.  It is, almost always, a prelude to a period of heightened creativity, but there is the tunnel, sometimes long, sometimes short, that must be negotiated first.

That manhole cover is off and I’ve begun climbing down the ladder into the labyrinth.  I’ll need an Ariadne sometime soon.

 

Bees, Family, Feelings, Garden, Great Wheel, Woolly Mammoths

Wholeness

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Lughnasa                                                                  Harvest Moon

Mabon eve.  The night before the fall equinox.  Tomorrow the light loses its struggle to own more than half of the day, a gain achieved back at the Summer Solstice in June.  From this point on the light diminishes and the darkness increases to its zenith at the Winter Solstice.

Been meaning to report on an interesting feeling I had at the Woolly meeting on Monday night.  I took two pies Kate had baked:  ground cherry and raspberry, both of fruit from our garden.  I also took a box of honey from our  hive, Artemis Honey with the label made by Mark Odegard.

When I left, after having sold 18 pounds of honey, I had a feeling of wholeness, that’s the best way I can describe it.  I had worked all season on the garden, the orchard and with the bees and somehow that evening I felt one with it all.

When I told Kate how I felt, I said it felt like something private was made public, that those two worlds knit together in one moment.  She said she got a similar feeling when she took food for a group, as she did so often for work and as she does now for her sewing days.

It was a good feeling, however understood.

Feelings

Loaf

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8/10/2013     Lughnasa                                                 State Fair Moon

Caught up on my e-mails.  Walt Whitman said of summer that he would “loaf and invite his soul.”  That’s what I want to do for a few days now.  Missing 3.0 is out of my hands at the moment.  Loki’s Children has not started up again, Latin’s in abeyance, most of the garden chores are caught up.  A rare moment between.  Loaf, I like the word.  For now.

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

Kona

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Summer                                                                  Moon of the First Harvests

Kona died this morning.  Both Kate and I spent time with her just before she died.  She was alert and responsive to the end.  She died knowing we loved her and in the crate she knew as her safe place.

(Kona)

We cried, both of us.  Yes, in spite of an end obvious long ago, the actual loss still opens a chasm between the living dog and the dead one.  That chasm represents the never will agains.  And those made me cry.  I would never again feel her nuzzle into my hand.  Never again see her smile.  Never again see her run the trails in our woods.

Her corpse no longer retained her; it was a symbol now, not a reality.  This is a wonder to me.  When I spoke with her about a half hour before she died, she looked at me, put her nose in my palm, caressed me with her muzzle.  Kona was 100% there.  Then, she was gone.  The light left her eyes and her body no longer moved.

The wonder is this, that life has a magic about it, seen most clearly after it is lost.  That which was Kona was there, then not.  Yes, her memories live on, that’s true.  But Kona does not.  The personality, the somewhat aloof I’m living life as I intend to personality of the sighthound, has vanished.  Just like that.

(Rigel, Gertie, Kona)

Life is a miracle, ordinary in its profusion and ordinary as long it exists, yet when it has gone, then we know.  So, each death gives us a moment to reflect on the precious gift we have.  The one carrying us forward into tomorrow.  A gift others give to us, too.  Each death is an opportunity to affirm and celebrate life and living.

Kona’s father was a whippet champion named Drum.  When we picked up Hilo and Kona from the breeder, the puppies and the parents were watching Animal Planet.  We brought them home and they began a series of escapes from the property, going under the chain link fence in pursuit of prey or delight, often both.

We held them on our laps when they were young.  Hilo would squirm, sit up, stretch, jump down.  Kona, the much larger of the two, would lie quietly, happy to be there.  

In her early days Kona was a predator.  I remember one day Kona came up on the deck, dropped something there, then ran back out into the woods.  The something was the still warm and clear eyed head of an adult rabbit.  Why she brought it to the deck I don’t know.   Over a long period Kona would kill rabbits and we would pick up the dead rabbits, put them in a plastic bag and dispose of them.  This never deterred Kona.  She just kept at it.

Hilo died three years ago of kidney failure and was never much of a hunter.  She liked to be with her people.  Kona kept to her self, finding places to sit nearby, sometimes with us, often not.  She kept her own counsel and determined what her day would be like, pretty much independent of us.

After her death this morning, I went out into the garden and sat on one of the raised beds.  Gardens heal.  Surrounded by life and life producing food, the cycle of life was concrete.  Kona fit into this cycle.   It helped me remember that at some point the light in my eyes will go out, too.  And, more.  That will be fine, it will fit into this cycle.

(Vega and Kona)

Kona had privileges the other dogs didn’t.  She would go with me into the garden, mainly because we could count on her not to dig holes in the garden beds.  She would also be outside on our brick patio with us because we could count on her to stay around the house.

She has been part of our lives for 12 plus years, as real and regular a part of our lives as we are to each other.  True she was a dog, but as a companion and fellow traveler on this pilgrimage she was with us, part of our pack as we were part of hers.

We travel on now with one less pilgrim immediately in our presence, yet at the same time, the whole pack with us, all 17 dogs, two parents and two sons.  Amen.

 

 

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings

Primal

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Summer                                                                 Moon of the First Harvests

Kona lives though her mobility has been greatly diminished.  She is, however, alert and responsive.  We get down with her and talk to her on a regular basis, letting her know that we love her and are with her in this part of her journey, too.  It’s the light in her eyes, the Kona-ness of her presence in those eyes, I think, that forces me not to put it out.  At least that’s a big part of it.  Another part is not breaking trust.  She has trusted me to care for her all these years.  To care for her.  Not kill her.

If you differ with me on this, I understand.  I can see how caring might reach to euthanasia, the whole control around end of life debate has many testimonies to that effect, even in humans.  Why I feel so strongly on this is not clear.

It’s strength oddly enough reminds me of one other moment in my life, the one in which I knew I needed to be a parent.  It was a strong, primal feeling, dominant.  The need became overriding, pushing other concerns into the background.  It wasn’t compulsive, at least I don’t think it was, but it was so urgent.  The best word I can use to describe it is primal, that is, it came from a part of me so deep that it bypassed subconscious and conscious thought to arrive full borne in my psyche.

The same process has surfaced in me around euthanasia.  I have no reasons, no arguments, no explanations.  For me, it is forbidden.

Just to be clear, really really clear: there are no religious or political sentiments attached in either case.  This is something from the veldt or the cave.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Retirement, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Being Human

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Summer                                                             Moon of First Harvests

The morning after.  The Woolly feeling lingers here, a gentle mantle over the back, around the fire pit where we gathered.  A primary, perhaps the primary, purpose of the Woollies is to see and be seen.  No invisible men allowed.  We have bum knees, wonky shoulders, weak legs, poor eyes and sore backs.  These are acknowledged, not for sympathy, but for recognition that we are each the sore back, the poor eyes, the weak leg, the wonky shoulder, the bum knee.  And that we are none of us only or even mostly our ailments, more and mostly we are the ones who have spent this 25 year+ journey together, time that included wholeness, able-bodiedness and now includes physical decline.

We’re not exactly a support group.  We don’t try to fix each others problems (usually).  We do go in for empathy, but not too much because too much focuses the group on one while the whole has been and is the most important.  We’re not a group of friends, or, at least, not only a group of friends, rather we are fellow pilgrims, traveling our ancientrails in sight of each other, calling out from our journey and hearing the other call out from theirs.

Though our ancientrails intersected less in times past, as we move into third phase life they intersect more and more.  How to make this transition.  How to create a life anew when work is no longer the primary lodestar.  How to look death in the face, unafraid, even welcoming.  No, not suicidal welcoming, but unafraid of what is common, ordinary, part of the path.  We look at each others hearts, hear the pulse of each other’s blood.  This is what it means to be human.

 

Aging, Feelings, Friends, Health, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Watching As the Lights Go Out

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Summer                                                                        Solstice Moon

When we gathered last night at the Woodfire Grill, five of us Woollies talked, catching up on family, discussing current events, laughing.  Then, the talk turned serious and deep, as the fly fisherman said, “existential.”

A sister-in-law, a chiropractor, called one of us and told him she was retiring.  “Because,” she said, “I’ve been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s.” That brought silence around this table where the youngest was 64 and the oldest 80.  As is his way, this one wondered how to be present to her, not to fix her, but to aid her in her present situation.  How might he stay present to her over time, perhaps learning enough to alert her children, who live far away when things become dire?

I pointed him to a website I recently added here, under the link’s title, Third Phase, called Watching the Lights Go Out.  Here’s this 68 year old retired physician’s description of its purpose:

“In September of 2012 I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. This blog is the story of my day-to-day life with this illness and my reflections upon it. We tend to be scared of Alzheimer’s or embarrassed by it. We see it as the end of life rather than a phase of life with all its attendant opportunities for growth, learning, and relationships. We see only the suffering and miss the joy. We experience only the disappearing cognitive abilities and ignore the beautiful things that can appear.”

One of us has an obvious anxiety about this since he has a mother with Alzheimer’s and definitely does not want to place that kind of burden on those who would be his caretakers. What will I do, he asked, if this becomes me?

We turned to the writer who cared for his mother-in-law, Ruby, who tipped over into Alzheimer’s after open-heart surgery.  He has interviewed many Alzheimer’s sufferers and said that after a couple of years of sometimes intense existential dread, there comes a peace with the disease.

“But I don’t want to not care!” said the one of us who was anxious.  “That leaves my caretakers with the burden.”

This conversation continued, all of us trying to put ourselves in the situation of watching the lights go out.  It was not pleasant, but neither was it hopeless, because we had friends around the table.

A primary inflection of this whole conversation was readying ourselves to live into this and other dark realities that loom not far down the stair case of aging.