Category Archives: Feelings

Art and Culture, Asia, Feelings, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses

Percussive

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Imbolc                                                                           Valentine Moon

Woke up.  Turned on the phone.  Nothing.  Frozen.  Onto the internet.  Tried several fixes. Nothing.  Over to Verizon. No joy there either.  I’d had my HTC Thunderbolt for four years, so I opted to get a new phone, an HTC DNA.  Another Android phone, in the same lineage as the Thunderbolt so I already understood its basic use.  Not cheap, not outrageously expensive.  Did add one feature to the plan, text messaging.  Yes, after four years of owning a smartphone I’m catching up with today’s elementary school kids.

Later on Kate and I went into the McPhail Center, a place for music learning and performance, now located very near the new Guthrie and the Mill City Museum.  We were there for a performance by the Bakken Trio featuring the gamelan.  The gamelan is an Indonesian instrument, a percussion instrument played by several people.  It includes gongs, zithers, xylophones and upside down bronze pots that each have a tone and are struck with a mallet.

The gamelan’s music organizes around rhythm and melody, having as a particular feature density of tone achieved by the layering of one rhythm on top of another simultaneously.  There are no harmonics.

Joko, an Indonesian gamelan artist who teaches gamelan, has lived in the Twin Cities now for 18 years.  He said that a full gamelan orchestra is the largest percussive ensemble in the world.  (see image above for an Indonesian setting).  Gamelan concerts typically run 8 hours and gamelan musicians in Indonesia may play 8 hours during the day and another 8 at night.  Geez.

I wanted to see this because I’m fascinated by how other people do things.  In this case, music.

The concert itself featured quartet pieces by Ravel and Debussy, both influenced by a traveling program focused on Javanese culture, plus a work by a contemporary composer, Louis Harrison.  Impressed with the gamelan music and its difference from the Western tradition Debussy and Ravel both incorporated it.  Especially in pizzicato and in movements with narrow tonal ranges.

(Ravel)

Both Debussy and Ravel are in the romantic tradition and, for some reason I can’t explain, I don’t like romantic classical music.  I say for some reason because in painting and literature I find myself a romantic by nature and inclination.  There were some beautiful melodies, especially in the Ravel, his String Quartet in F Major.

The Harrison piece, though, Philemon and Baukis (for violin and gamelan), was wonderful.  It was airy and spacious, filled with the rapid changing of tempos typical of gamelan music. Harrison builds and plays the gamelan himself.  Philemon and Baukis, btw, is a story found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  It was the only piece in which the gamelan played.

Following the concert we ate at Sea Change.  We had a miserable experience there a few years back, but tonight was pleasant.  Then back home to the burbs.

Over the meal Kate and I discussed a possible (probable) move into the city at some point before infirmity strikes us so we can enjoy the city life again.  I’m hesitant about it, having spent 19 years adapting myself and my life to the exurbs, but aging has its own relentless pressures.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Third Phase

It Takes Courage To Get To The Ancient Altar

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Imbolc                                                                 Valentine Moon

“It takes courage to get to the ancient altar
of the moment where I create individual time…I am making it, my time visibly becoming me.”    “Individual Time,” Alice Notley

If I interpret her poem correctly, in it Alice Notley has commented on this author picture, arguing against those who would have had it prettied up.  And I get it.

When we talked about wrinkles and road map faces last night, I believe we were in her territory.  I wanted then to quote a favorite author Jorge Luis Borges, but the quote was longer than I could recall easily.  Here it is:

“Through the years, a man (sic) peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.” – Jorge Luis Borges

Combining the two we could say that it takes courage to get to the ancient altar of our own aged face.  And to follow Notley, why alter what it took courage to gain?

The Keaton side of my family, my Mom’s family, wrinkles early and the men go bald.  That means I look my age and then some.  I have no problem with that.  This face is what you get when you look at me; it’s the one I’ve earned and I’m glad to have it.  No amount of smoothing, lifting or making up will change what it is, the patient labyrinth of lines that trace my own image, the long journey to this ancient altar.

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Travel

Ghosts

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Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

Today, a bit tired due to early rising, moving books put a weight on my shoulders.  It was the past and its tangled feelings.  Found my first passport and saw a young man with a full head of dark brown hair and a beard that matched.  Surprised me, so long have I seen his gray descendant in the mirror.

(arrestedmotion.com 2012 10 upcoming aron wiesenfeld new paintings arcadia-gallery)

That was my passport for Colombia, the trip to check out a bank for the poorest of the poor.  Carolyn Levy was in my life at that point, between my divorce from Raeone and meeting Kate a year plus later.  A hard time, raising a 6 year old boy, working night and day between church meetings and organizing.  A hard time, too, since the future had grown unclear.  Something big had happened or was about to happen, but its outlines in my life were not yet clear.

Then I moved out the books related to shifting my ordination to the Unitarian-Universalist movement.   Again, a time when the future had become unclear.  Writing had not shown the promise it offered when Kate and I agreed I should leave the Presbytery.  Frustrated there, I regressed, headed back to the trade that I knew.  More lack of clarity.

Poor decisions.  I chose Unity UU over First Unitarian for my internship.  An error.   The humanist congregation would have fit me much better.  Then, at the end of an interesting year, I accepted a job as minister of development.  Chief fund raiser.   OMG.  One of the really boneheaded decisions in my life.  Not the only one, for sure, and not the worst one, but dumbest?  Probably.  Kate saw it coming. I ignored her.  Sigh.

(Vincenzo Foppa The Young Cicero Reading 1464)

Those books were the heaviest to move because I’ve traveled out of the UU circle, too.  A solo practitioner am I, as the Wiccans say.  In that vein though I retained many of my books on spirituality, works on natural theology and those commentaries I mentioned on the Torah and the book of Revelation.

Heavy, especially with lack of sleep thrown in.  Ghosts.  They’re real and they live in the closets, basements and attics of our mind.

Family, Feelings

All Aboard

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Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

Of course, it’s just a spot on the earth’s orbit around the sun.  The very spot where you or I slid out of the birth canal, or, in my case, were excised through the abdomen, kicking and bawling, with no clue about why the world had suddenly gone from watery and warm to non-viscous and cool.  No wonder we cry.

(So, there I am, just a bit more than halfway between perihelion and the spring equinox.)

And, it’s an extremely ordinary event.  I mean, everyone who ever lived–everyone–had one.  Certain cultures, I’m told, place no emphasis on the birthday at all and maybe they’re right, but the sentimentality of our way pleases me all the same.

People call us and tell us they love us.  Are happy for us.  Gifts come.  Cards.  Smiles.  A feeling of particularity overshadows all else for at least one day.  Love gets concrete on birthdays.

Advancing age makes me no less interested in celebrating this most ordinary of events which is, of course, supremely extraordinary in one important way:  it’s the only time this happened to me.  Or you.  66 is a good number.  So was 16.  26.  76.  The number says you’re still on board spaceship earth and punching your ticket for another full ride.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Friends, Latin, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Getting My Kicks

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Imbolc                                                                             Valentine Moon

Woke up, saw fluffy white snow outlining the trees, shrubs and fences.  A beautiful way to start my 66th year.  Spoke with brother Mark, Mary kept off by technical issues.  A new hard drive.  Always a good way to lose a program or two.  As they say in the Old Testament, blessings and curses.

I’ve been motoring along this morning finishing up a lengthy session in Ovid.  Or, I should say, several one hour or one hour + sessions that equal a lengthy one.  I’ve translated 21 verses and I’m confident of most of what I’ve done.  There are still hitches in my git along, but at least for right now I seem to have a flow underway.

Almost finished with the Eddas.  Then I’m going to put pencil to large format desk pad and start roughing out Loki’s Children.  I want to get it thought through to some extent before I start my revision of Missing.  That way, if I have to change things in Missing (and I think I will) I can do that in the upcoming 3rd revision.  I hope #3 is what will make me ready to start the search for an agent.

As I said the other day, I’m cruising into the third phase of my life, which I count as having started with the arrival of my Medicare card, with clarity of purpose, emotional support from family and friends, and good health.  Here we go.  Charlie, the final chapter.

Feelings

Fixed

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Imbolc                                                                 New (Valentine) Moon

Over the course of my life I’ve learned how to do many different things.  Among them has not been handyman type jobs.  I’m not clueless but you probably couldn’t tell that if you watched me trying to figure out how to rehang the front door today.

Between us Kate and I approached that door with more years in educational institutions than would be good certification for our sanity.  It defeated us.  We called a mechanical engineer now working as a handyman.  He fixed it.  My kinda solution to these kind of problems.

Having said that I will admit to a sense of male inadequacy during the time he was here.  I mean, I know I can’t fix it; I know he can; so, where does that put me in the testosterone parade?  Pretty far back, almost to the x chromosomes.  I’m not proud of it, but there it was.

Although, on my side, I have read that baldness occurs due to increased testosterone, so by that measure I can just about be the drum major.

Best of all though I have a partner who knows my flaws–I’m bad with a hammer and screw driver–and still loves me.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings

The Most Amazing Thing

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Winter                                                                   Cold Moon

What’s the most amazing thing you ever saw with your own eyes?  Question posed by the weekly calendar I mentioned a couple of days ago.

Interesting question.  30 years or so ago I was at the bedside of a dying woman.  Her son was there, too.  She was an irascible, even ornery person, though with a flint core of honesty.

She and her son were not particularly close and I knew her through regular visits to the senior citizen high rise in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.  Part of my work with the West Bank Ministry.

She had lapsed into the labored breathing so often preceding death.

We, the son and I, stood beside her bed, taken completely by the final drama.  Finally, she raised up a bit, sighed and breathed no more.

That moment was so peaceful, intimate, and spiritual, a moment of profound and universal transition, it transformed both of us.  At least for a while.

We went down to the cafeteria, drank coffee.  Quietly.  Bonded.  I saw him a few more times, conducted a brief service for her.  Then we went our separate ways.

Why choose this moment?  I’m not sure, but its finality juxtaposed with its peacefulness combined to create an electric, vital moment.  Maybe it was the injection of hope that my own end could be so graceful.  Maybe it was the awe-ful and final intimacy of such a time.

I’m not sure it’s the most thing I’ve ever seen with my own eyes, but it’s up there, for sure.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

A Good Week

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Winter                                                                                     Cold Moon

This has been a good week.  Woollies Monday night at Mark’s.  Good food, intimate conversation with friends of many years.  A solid base to life outside the home.

Tuesday night Kate and I went to see the Hobbit.  Ate dinner at Tanner’s afterward.  Going out together is part of the glue that holds our relationship together.  The movie itself reinforced my writing, excited me.  The movie together puts another memory in the common memory bank.  Like South America, the Aegean, Europe, Hawaii, Mexico, Denver.  All part of our mutuality.

Yesterday dinner with Bill Schmidt, then Sheepshead with Roy, Ed, Bill and Dick.  Another base outside the home.

Then breakfast this morning with Mark Odegard.  He’s reading Missing and offered some very helpful insights.  We talked about life, art, how do we work in this third phase of our lives?

Weave into those social events a few Latin sentences translated, more of the Edda’s read, a bit of thinking about how to continue my love affair with art and the art world.  Steady exercise and a sensible diet.  The dip that showed up early has begun to disappear.

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings

Hello In There, Hello

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Winter                                                                                Cold Moon

I guess it was inevitable.  After all the psychic work over the last few weeks, the last year, I’m beginning to head into a heavy place.  Low energy.  There is, too, the cabin fever syndrome.  Not out much.  Staying down here in the basement, reading, translating.  Working.  Then working out.  Sleep.  Get up.  Repeat.

Don’t know how long this will last, though I do know enough about these moods to know that they usually precede a creative period.  It may be that my work on the Edda’s, on thinking about the next revision of Missing, plotting for Loki’s Children; it may just be that all that has to go into the pot and cook awhile.  Meanwhile I’m on emotional simmer.