Category Archives: Feelings

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings

Eudaimonia

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Summer                                                                     Solstice Moon

 

A word about pursuing happiness.  Or meaning.  Yes, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  I know.  Right there in the founding documents.  An ur-right.  One equivalent to survival and liberty.  Well, who wouldn’t be pleased to find happiness?  I doubt I would.

Now this may be because I have a northern European genetic predilection to dysthmia, could be.   And, in fact, I think that’s the case.  This is not, however, my point here.

Happiness doesn’t strike me as a desirable state, at least not for any length of time.  Why?  Because it has the flavor of arrival, of sufficiency, of finished, of done.  Happiness comes to the human life like the finish line model of retirement, once we get there that’s all we need. After that, we coast.  Play golf.  Smoke cigars.  Travel.  Watch TV.

No, I’ll go for a more Greek idea, eudaimonia.  Composed of two Greek worlds, eu (good) and daimon (spirit) Aristotle and the Stoics after him promoted it as the end of human life. As such it has often been translated as happiness or welfare, but perhaps a better phrase is human flourishing.  Or, without getting fancy, why not good spirit?  Both have an active turn, taking us toward enrichment, fullness, striving within a humane ambit.

Now there you have an internal state worth cultivating.  It’s the difference between a noun and a gerund.  Happiness vs. flourishing.  I would much rather flourish than be happy.  Much.

Family, Feelings

The Sweetest Sound

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Summer                                                                        Solstice Moon

Apparently this decompression thing will take a bit longer than one day.  Slept in this morning, late start.  Worked out last night and that often means a longer sleep the next day.  I’m pushing myself now, more reps with lighter weights.  Taking a weight until I can do 20 reps twice, then moving up.  That means more work per set and a longer time with the body at a higher heart rate.  All for the good of the team.  Team Self.

There is a feeling of satisfaction, a deep joy.  Though they differ from culture to culture, there are certain basic roles that define us.  Raising children is one.  Being a grandparent is another.  These are old roles, ancientrails common to all cultures.  Who does them may change from place to place, but in our culture it is usually the core couple of a nuclear family that fulfills both roles.  Blended families bring nuances to those roles that are real, but they don’t change the roles themselves.

Cries of grandpop! in the small voice of children has to be one of the sweetest sounds the human ear can hear.  Better than Mozart or Led Zepplin or I do or here’s your diploma.  Why?  Because they come from innocence, unfiltered and largely unexamined.  They are an unconditional affirmation.  I know this because I here these words from Ruth and Gabe with whom I have no genetic link.  That’s one of the nuances from the blended family.  Yet even Ruth, who wanted to meet her Dad’s real (biological) father and therefore her real (biological) grandfather, greets me with the same lack of reserve.  I fill the role, am the role.

 

Bees, Family, Feelings, Great Work

Bee Diary: The Ruth Entry

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Summer                                                                              Solstice Moon

Took grand-daughter Ruth with me on a hive inspection today.  I showed her how to fire up the smoker, use a hive tool, check for brood and move slowly when working with the bees.  She hung in there, saying a couple of times, “Now it’s making me really afraid.” but not moving away.  Gradually her fear receded.  Now she can back me up when I need help.

There’s something profound about sharing a passion with a grandchild, as Kate has done already with Ruth and sewing.  Whether they choose to pick it up or not, the indelible memories, for both Ruth and me in this instance, speak of today and tomorrow walking the ancientrail of life together.

Because, like most current beekeepers, I have 9 frames to a 10 frame hive box, the frames are easier to manage that way, the bees often fill up the empty space with comb and honey.  I harvested a lot of this today, so we have fresh comb honey, both comb and honey made in the last week.

 

Family, Feelings, Garden, Memories

Archaeology of the Heart

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Beltane                                                                         Solstice Moon

While watching a NOVA program on dogs, a reference was made to archaeology.  I studied archaeology and the broader discipline of anthropology seriously in college.  Seriously enough that I applied for doctoral work in theoretical anthropology.  Why I didn’t follow that up is a story for another time, but archaeology resonates for me and the mention of it in this context triggered a memory only recently interpreted.

Over the course of my life when confronted with the odd plumbing job or carpentry task, you know, the men things, I would fob them off with the stock phrase, “Oh, I learned everything my Dad knew about these things.  Nothing.”  And, as far I know, that’s a true statement in both instances.  I’m still not able in those areas though I admit I’ve never tried too hard to learn.

Kate and I work outside together a lot, though she works in one area and I work in another.  I found myself having a rising sense of impatience, irritation about her work.  Those who know me well would recognize this mood in me.  I’m not proud of it, but it does surface from time to time.  This time I knew my mood simply had no basis in reality.

Kate works hard.  She works well.  And she was doing both of those, as I know she always does, so this mood was about me, not her.  Suddenly buckets of water sloshing in the wee hours of the morning came to mind.  Uh, oh.  When we moved to our home at 419 N. Canal, it was the first, and last, home my father and mother owned.  We moved there in 1959 and my dad had his stroke there in the  1990’s and died after having moved to a nursing home from there.

In my years there, from 1959 to 1965, I don’t recall a service person ever coming to our house to repair anything.  Likewise, I don’t recall anything ever getting repaired.  Must of have happened, but I don’t recall it.  The only such incident I do recall was a recurring one in which our basement, which housed our furnace and little else, would flood.  When that happened, Dad would get me up and together we would bail out the basement, one bucket at a time.

Roused from sleep, cold and wet, these were not my favorite memories.  I do remember that as we worked, Dad would become silent, sullen.  In fact, I remember him being irritated and impatient with my willingness to do this chore.  Aha.  My memory of teamwork seems to be tied to those nights and I seem to have selected my father’s attitudes to carry on, carrying his water into my own life.  As sons often do.

Rethinking this time also made me realize a second thing.  Why didn’t Dad try to solve the problem rather than resort to such a makeshift solution every time?  I don’t know the answer.  It might have been money.  It might have been pride.  It might have been that these matters simply didn’t show up as problems to solve, but rather came up as problems to ameliorate.  Whatever the reason, I learned to be incurious about solving problems around the house.  Doesn’t matter.  Maybe it’ll go away or fix itself.

Now, I have owned homes since 1969, 7 altogether, one in Appleton, Wisconsin, one in Minneapolis, one outside Nevis, Minnesota, 3 in St. Paul and 1 here in Andover.  Over that time I’ve learned some very minor skills in home repair and one big one.  The big one?  Hire somebody.  Works most of the time.  As far as I can tell, solving day to day problems in the house is one of the few things I’m incurious about.  Fortunately Kate is better than I am and together we can call anybody.

The archaeology of our own thoughts and feelings is the most rudimentary and personal dig we will ever engage.  And that, I’m plenty curious about.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Memories

Memories

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Beltane                                                                     New (Solstice) Moon

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had interactions with folks from Alexandria, Indiana resulting from a reader posting a blog entry, a 50’s boyhood, to an Alexandria Facebook site.  It’s been interesting.  The most interesting interaction has come from an old classmate who found my memories romanticized.  You can see her comment under Who.

(1st)

I wrote her and in doing so discovered that she was a girl (then) who had done very well in our class, but didn’t (apparently) get the recognition she felt she deserved.  I had to reflect that could have been true.  Sexism (though not named) was alive and well back then and I’m sure it effected teacher’s perceptions and other students opinions.  It may have helped me to some awards and recognition.  Impossible to parse out now at this remove, but I’d never thought of it until she wrote.

Having said that I want to add that happy memories are not necessarily romanticized.  That’s a word used by an outside observer.  As resident in those memories, they were happy.  Being a kid among kids is a great way to spend time when you’re young.  Sure, we had our hassles, too.  Our arguments and fights.  I remember one incident where a next door neighbor pulled my pants down in front of my friends.  This was the nuclear option at the time.  I thought life was over and I could never face anybody again. Until the next day of course.

(3rd)

Once my life moved away from Monroe Street it began to take on a more serious, turning toward adult tone.  We had a house on Canal Street, one  we owned, rather than rented.  In junior high I remember a fight with Rodney Frost, a bad one by the standards of the day. (low)  Rodney died several years ago and my first memory when I saw his obituary was of that 6th grade fight near the junior high school.

Girls remained a mystery for me well into college, so I had the normal ration of pre-teen and teen angst over dating, sex and self worth.  Those were not happy memories.  My father and I began to part ways emotionally during junior high, a fact I credited only much later to a growing unease he had with my intellectual maturing.  When this distance had reached its maximum, around my senior year of high school, my mother had a stroke and died seven days later.

(4th)

Those months and the years following them were more than unhappy times.  They were a constant struggle for self-worth capsized often by grief and the estrangement I had with my remaining parent.  This was just the way it was.  Do I wish it could have been different?  Of course.  Do I know it won’t be.  Yes, I do.

That period and its attendant miseries are now in my past, but they are in my past and they show up whenever I visit that period or that place, Alexandria.

(third phase)

Family, Feelings

Cash Flow, Fiscal Tides

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Beltane                                                               Early Growth Moon

Boy.  This money stuff doesn’t seem to get easier, even with practice.  The annoying reality of cash and its flow, in and out, never seeming to be quite enough, no matter how much is available.  A well known phenomenon at all income levels this is an area where Kate and I have grown enormously over the last 15 years, yet still have growing to do.

We have different approaches to money, no surprise there, we’re different people and most of the time the differences seem to complement each other.  Her more detailed way, my big picture way.  Her more generous nature, my more conservative one.  (when it comes to money.)  Sometimes we work at cross purposes and that requires extra conversation, extra listening, extra patience.

Money is very far from the point of life, for either of us, but its misuse can make life pretty damned miserable.  As we’ve experienced.  So we’re committed to staying on top of this, to stay in the conversation, to keep things clear and honest.  It’s good for us, but it’s not always easy.

I’m proud of both of us and how we’ve become more adult, more rational, more compassionate in this area of our life.  We never stop learning or growing.

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Health, Music, Woolly Mammoths

It Won’t Be Long Now

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Beltane                                                                        Early Growth Moon

A poignant and salient answer to how to live the third phase came from an 18 year old Minnesotan, Zach Sobiech, who died yesterday of bone cancer.  Not much of a conversationalist or a letter writer, Zach’s Mom told him he needed to do something, something that would let people know he was here and leave them memories of him.  Diagnosed with osteosarcoma when he was 14, the cancer did not prevent him from writing and singing songs of his own.

He became an internet viral celebrity with the song, Clouds, downloaded over 3 million times.

Those of us in the third phase understand the challenge Zach faced.  Death was no longer an abstraction, but a certain visitor.  As he says in this song, it won’t be long now.  Oh, we may have 20 years or 30 years, compared to his 4, but the link is the moment when you come to know this life ends.  For good and for ever.

(Alphonse Osbert – Les chants de la nuit.)

How did he respond?  He dug into the riches of his Self, shrugged off the self-pity and depression, and turned those feelings into art.  This is the best and healthiest way to greet the coming of the Sickle Bearer.  Find out who you are.  Find out what best expresses your journey, the ancientrail that has been, is, your life.  Then open up that expression, put it outside yourself for the rest of us to learn from, to cherish, to embrace.  Because it won’t be long now.

Cinema and Television, Feelings

Upstream Color

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Beltane                                                                Early Growth Moon

Saw Shane Carruth’s second movie, Upstream Color, tonight at the Walker.  He made Primer, a film about time traveling geeks who become paranoid in the course of their travels.  It was a huge hit, cost $7,000 to make and got Shane noticed by Hollywood and film buffs.  It won the grand prize at Sundance when it premiered there.

Upstream Color is another dense, need to see it again and perhaps again movie.  According to Shane, who was at the screening tonight and answered questions afterward, this movie began with the idea of a woman stripped of all those things that make her her–house, money, job, self-respect and then follows her as she tries to rebuild herself.  And this movie is about that.

But it gets there through magic worms, pigs in Circe like relationship to a group of human beings, a thief and orchid harvesters.  It also gets there in a circular narrative that has no apparent center, no apparent antagonist and finishes with an ambiguous ending.

Shane is a direct, humble, honest representative of his work.  And when I say his work, both films are his work to an extraordinary degree.  He writes and directs them.  He also composes the score and has a lead role.  He has also taken on the role of distributor, describing in answer to one question a film industry equivalent to the disaggregation of publishing I learned about it in my marketing seminar with Scott Edelstein.

This movie was at Sundance in January and now it’s here in Minneapolis in spite of a limited release distribution schedule.  It was fun to see it so soon after the Festival and to hear Shane talk about his work.

I realized I really enjoy being part of the Walker crowd, seeing and hearing things early in their arc, discovering artists as the world discovers them.  In the same train of thought I realized I’m really having fun translating Ovid, sort of the opposite aesthetic experience, one rooted in the deep classical past.  Then it occurred to me that I must really be enjoying life.

But.  Over the last two or three weeks I’ve been feeling, if not melancholy, at least morose. Triggered by the back pain and Kona’s vet visits, yes, but still, odd for one who’s enjoying so many aspects of his life.  Including writing the novel.  I guess all this means is that we are not one, but many and some of me has a happy life and part of me has a blue life right now.  At the same time.

Aging, Feelings, Third Phase

Ruts and Graves

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Spring                                                                            Planting Moon

 

The only difference between a grave and rut are the dimensions.  Oh?  At least when you’re in a rut you can still breathe.  Breathing means hope.  Nothing definite, for sure, but hope.

This cliche points at a perceived truth, that being stuck in sameness is a living death.  And you can certainly how that might be true.  Work at a convenience store, come home, warm up a tv dinner, grab a beer, fall asleep in the recliner.  Get up and do it again.

Or drive into the city, park the expensive car in the expensive parking slot ride the elevator up to a posh office, direct, command, leave and drive the expensive car home to the expensive house.  Get up and do it again.

Sure.  That can mean a restricted, narrowed way of greeting this vast opportunity called life.  But.  People like me find certain routines soothing, they pave the way for creative activity, for hard concentration.  Routines allow the needs to be taken care of.  That way the non-routine acts of writing, scholarship, thinking, close looking and reading can happen on their own rhythms.

I like the bowl of fruit, some cottage cheese and a tomato in the morning, reading the paper, having some tea, then heading downstairs to start work.  I suppose you could call that a rut, the food boring, the repetition bland, I find it nourishing and centering.  You say cereal, I have tomato.

My opinion?  Pick your routines and habits carefully, make sure they support the things you do that matter the most, not the other around.  Then reinforce them as much as you can.  If you’re like me, that is.

Feelings, Friends, Health

In the Company of Old Men

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Spring                                                                            Planting Moon

A full moon tonight.  And good cards.  Fortuna walked with me throughout the evening, giving me winning hands including one lay down.

Ed, a regular, came in tonight and said he’d made driving mistakes twice, once on his way to his house and once on his way back and wasn’t sure he would make it through the evening.  He did, but I thought it was brave of him to acknowledge his anxiety, sharing it rather than fussing about it the whole evening.

Dick’s PSA, after 37 radiation treatments, is 0.0.  A good report at the same time his wife, on a recheck for a nodule on her thyroid, was told it was no longer there.  A good day all round.

(trump in sheepshead)

Bill continues to walk straight in his life after Regina’s death, acknowledging her absence and the profound effect it has had on his life, yet he reports gratitude as his constant companion.  He waits for a clear signal as to what comes next in this changed life situation.  He says, like Ram Dass, Still Here.