Category Archives: Third Phase

Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Third Phase

Blood test

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Tuesday gratefuls: PSA. PSA test. Prostate cancer. Life’s precious days. The Shofar. Pride. Sorrow. Will James. His proposal for the Trees too close to the house. Rick Standler who’s coming by this week to grind the stumps. Cleaning the garage. Finally. Gusting Wind. Clear, blue Sky over Black Mountain. Tree pollen. Sneezing. The fans here in the loft. Low humidity.

OK. Draw blood. Send it to the lab. Write down numbers. Post them. Send them to the oncologist. Weird to think that this process talks about cancer. About its presence or its likely absence. Quest labs. Makes it sound downright Arthurian, eh?

Each case of cancer has its quest. There is a dragon to slay. Trials to go through. Setbacks. Those who hinder and those who help. Obstacles. It is a test of will, too. Can you stay on your quest in spite of fear, pain, misery? Can you defeat the illusions, delusions, ghosts?

I suppose this is why so many obituaries start with he fought cancer. She was brave. Survivors writing what they hope will be their own virtues. The warfare analogy so common in the death notices is understandable, but far from adequate.

The medical care for cancer infantilizes as often as it ennobles. Toxic chemicals introduced into our whole body do their indiscriminate work. Get weak. Have hot flashes. No sex drive. Suffer bone loss. And that’s just me. Others. Our immune systems suppressed. Nauseated. Lose our hair.

Not victims. Humans who have a disease. Not victims. The knight on the quest can never be a victim. Cancer is, as doctors often say, bad luck. It’s deadly. Scary. As bad a dragon as you’re likely to face. Yes. All that.

But. To be a victim is to give cancer a victory it doesn’t deserve. We all die of something. I’ve come to think of that something as a friend as important as my mother. My mother gave me life. This life. Cancer or heart disease or old age will give me death. The most important punctuations for all of us: Life. Death.

Before death however, no matter how diseased or distracted, we are alive, here and now. I’ll die tomorrow. Yes, perhaps. Until then though we wake up, we cook, eat, wash dishes, hold hands. Look life in the face. Smile.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Ordinary Time

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Summer and the full Moon of Justice peaking over Black Mountain

Monday gratefuls: Seeing Jon, Ruth, Gabe. Rain. Cooling a hot day. Beau Jo’s pizza. Folks in masks in Evergreen. Simple Green. A good mop. Lysol and Tough wipes. Clean toilets and floors. The whole yard looking neater. Seoah closer to finishing quarantine. Old friends. Bringing joy. Being joyful. The moon this morning, full and half set behind Black Mountain when I got the paper. Our mountain life.

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by the frost.” J. R. R. TOLKIEN quoted in the INFP profile on 16personalities

On Sunday morning now I mop the floors and clean the toilets. Takes about an hour and a half. Feels good. More would not feel good. Kate dusts. Some stuff, like windows and the stainless appliances, get missed. We’re working on how to deal with that.

Seoah just did it. She’d mop, clean, hustle. I’m trying to continue the spirit in which she did these necessary chores. Working so far. I clean the kitchen each day. Load, unload the dishwasher, cook. With Seoah’s good energy as the backdrop.

Told the story yesterday to my old friends Bill, Tom, Mario, Paul about putting Kate’s feeding tube back in. First couple of times it popped out we went to the E.R. Once to the surgeon, Ed Smith. Now, I’ve done it twice. I care for her feeding tube site once a day or once every couple of days. Nurse Charlie.

Doing these things, plus getting all the pallets ready for collection and the lawn mowed have buoyed me. These are the chop wood, carry water equivalents for me right now. And doing them induces a meditative, here and now state.

Let’s hear it for ordinary time, not extraordinary time. These wild and precious days in which we spend the life gifted to us.

Friends, Humanities, News of the Strange, Third Phase

Neurotic

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Sunday gratefuls: A mowed and less cluttered backyard. Jon and the grandkids coming tonight. Pick-up groceries. Safeway. Even though. Kate’s feeding tube. Her appointment with an ostomy nurse. House cleaning. The dishwasher. The final days of our freezer. This pulse of energy I have for domestic work. May it last. Cool mountain mornings. Trump and his racist ways.

Not all who wander are lost. This Tolkien quote could be my family crest. Mary and Mark living the expat life. Kate and I finally come to rest, like Noah, on a mountain top in the Rockies. And that’s the external reality.

A few days back I surfaced the wandering going on in my inner life. Last night, as my plugged up nose kept me awake, an old shard of psychiatric shrapnel worked its way up again. Philosophical neurosis. Diagnosed with this in 1969. After, I think, the MMPI and one or two visits with a doc. Neurosis got ejected from the DSM in 1980, but not before it struck me with the force of a hidden mindmine.

Nowhere in searches on Google or in any book on psychology have I found the term. The psychiatrist who diagnosed me is lost to memory, as well as any explanatory information from him. Those two words, philosophical neurosis, have many synaptic threads attached to them and they tug out of the basement every once in a while.

Philosophical neurosis. It had the unusual impact of pathologizing a key aspect of my personality. I take nothing for granted. Discovering there was an entire, storied academic tradition of people who did the same transformed me over the course of a semester. Even though I came to love anthropology as much as philosophy, philosophy shaped me, made me a critic and theorist at heart.

When I was a young boy, my bedroom adjoined my parents. My father and I would “talk about tractors” for a while before going to sleep. As I recall, this meant talking about a diverse range of topics. Early on though it exposed me to critique. Even at age 7 or 8, I would pursue the logic of a topic to its fullest extent. Dad never had dad authority. He could tell me something, but I would as often say, I wonder about that, as I would nod my head.

He called me tech. As in, technical. I always argued about the mechanics, the structure of an observation. Wish I could give you an example from that time, but my main memories around being “tech” was Dad’s growing frustration with me. He had been raised by his German physician grandfather, Jonas Spitler. My impression is that Jonas had dad authority. Always.

It came to me from the womb. I had, and have, an instantaneous realization of a contradiction or a flaw in an argument. It was no surprise to me when I took the Meyers-Briggs personality inventory and discovered my letters: INTP, an introverted intuitive thinking perceiving type.

“Logicians are known for their brilliant theories and unrelenting logic – in fact, they are considered the most logically precise of all the personality types.” on the INTP personality, 16personalities. Poor dad. I came with this mental equipment, discovered philosophy and politics. Our relationship was over right about then. He had strong, definite opinions. With which, unfortunately for us, I often disagreed.

Then, that psychiatrist nailed me with what I now believe was a made-up diagnosis. Maybe he was an incarnation of my father’s persona. I do remember he told me I had to find values that I could embrace or my life would be, well, shit.

Embracing or conforming to a belief system defines blasphemy and anathema for me. If it makes sense to me, sure. I can go there. But if it doesn’t, now or later, then I’m on another path, another ancientrail.

This explains why I’ve always felt like an outsider in any job I’ve ever had. Even the ministry. In the end, it has to make sense, the assumptions, the framework of the job. And the world does not divide logically. So, Charlie out. Sorry.

Philosophical neurosis. As much as I hate to admit it. Fair enough. I have to approach the world as I am and that does seem, at least at 73, to be who I am, one who can’t turn off the analytical part of his mind. Doesn’t I mean I’m not loving, caring. I am. But don’t expect me to buy the shiny new religious or political system you’ve discovered. I probably won’t.

Anoka County, Colorado, Denver, Family, Friends, Holidays, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Park County, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Travel, US History

#244

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Saturday gratefuls: This country. These purple mountain majesties. The lakes of Minnesota. Lake Superior. Evergreen. Conifer. Shadow Mountain. The great plains, rippling wheat. Corn fields of Iowa. Lady Liberty. New York City. San Francisco. Puget Sound. The Colorado River. The Mississippi. The South. New England. The first lighters up there in Maine. Jambalaya. Gumbo. Devil’s Tower. El Capitan. Crater Lake. The Mackinac Bridge. Protests. Alexandria. Muncie. The Big Medicine Wheel. The sacred Black Hills. Cahokia. Carlsbad Caverns. Marfa. West Texas. From sea to shining sea. Haleakala. Waipio Valley. Waimea Canyon. Da Fish House. Denali. Kodiak. Salmon. Grizzly. Wolves. Lynx. Wolverines. An amazing country still.

244 years old. Lot of candles for that red white and blue cake. Hard times. Like the Civil War. The First World War. The Spanish Flu. The Depression. WWII. Yes, it’s been hard before. Will be again. We navigated the churning, stormy waters of all those. We can get through this one, too.

A canard? Maybe. Yet, I believe it’s so. Rising out of this fire may come a nation truer to its ideals. No more Trumps. Ever. No more easy white privilege. No more easy oppression of people of color, women, lbgt. A more just economic and medical system. If we do, the pain will have been worth it.

I love this country. From Route 66 to the hot dog shaped hot dog stand in Bailey. From Coney Island to Puget Sound. From the Minnesota angle to the bayous. It’s my home, my place, the spot on this earth to which I am native. It can be tarnished by the political class, but not erased.

Here are my friends, some of my family, the graves of my ancestors. Here are the roads I traveled as a young man, the streets and fields I played in as a child, houses in which I’ve lived, the cities I’ve loved and fought for. This is the land of memory.

Let’s celebrate #245 with a 46th President. And with 45 in jail or disgraced. Make it so.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Friends, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Good News

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Thursday gratefuls: Chuck roast fork tender in the Instapot. Yum. The stillness. Only the occasional car on Black Mountain Drive. Just us and the critters. Wild and domesticated. PSA next week. Kate’s ostomy nurse referral. Kep and the bone from the chuck roast. Rigel and the bone from the chuck roast. Kate’s voracious reading. Robertson Davies.

Doomscrolling. Covidiot. (thanks, Tom) Mask maker, mask maker, make me a mask. At home with the virus raging outside. Like a wild snowstorm blowing across Shadow Mountain. So quiet here.

Generation hide. They told us it would be bunkers, radiation hazards. They prepared us with duck and cover drills. (though, to be honest, I don’t remember any.) Pamphlets. Civil defense sirens. Those yellow and black icons of danger. Nope.

The biohazard sign, triplet open crescents over a circle. Duck and cover = masks. Bunkers = self-quarantine, but, at least above ground. No sirens, just daily updated charts of the infection curve. Never flattened here. Here, in the United States of America. Maybe we should duck and cover. In shame.

Mutually assured destruction now means all those freedumb loving libertytards who refuse to wear masks. Who refuse to believe the virus is real. Or, if it is real, they believe it’s germ warfare. God, our fellow citizens as intentional disease vectors. What….?

Our generation sits behind closed doors. Those books on the nightstand now read. Newspapers, for those ancient of days who still receive them. TV tuned to Netflix. As the bleeding edge of the Baby Boom, we’ve been in a high risk category for over 10 years. Now it counts.

Those who like good news can find a lot of it on television. Though I long ago stopped watching infotainment, the protests get covered. What a joy they are in this otherwise bleak time. Young people speaking their minds. Yes, something’s happening here. And this time, it’s very clear.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Great Work, Health, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Que serait

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Tuesday gratefuls: Seoah in Singapore (and quarantine) 6 days. Rick, the stump grinder, reasonable prices. David and Ray not so much. But the lawn will get cut. Moving the pallets. Giving the log cutter tool to Derek. Kate’s idea. At more ease with cash. Work happening. The clan.

Venality, denial, racism, support for white supremacists, demeaning the disabled, grabbing pussies. And, now, the worst treason of all: ignoring Russian bounties on U.S. troops. Outrage seems far too mild a response. This man is, and has been from the start, not only unfit for office, but a radical dismantler of its authority. No wonder the world has shaken its head, laughed, then cringed. Beginning to move on from us. A world without us. America cannot take getting much greater. Too much winning.

United StatesOn June 2914-day changeTrend
New cases40,041+80%

This box from this morning’s NYT follows Covid 19. In the last two weeks Covid cases have jumped 80%! So much winning. This man has actively caused the deaths of thousands of U.S. citizens. Ignored a James Bond villain, Vladimir Putin, who authorized election tampering and pay for slay in Afghanistan against American soldiers. Not to mention tweeting positive utterances about white supremacists. No, not only the “good people on both sides” remark, but new ones. Including the pink shirted man and the barefooted woman holding guns on protesters outside their St. Louis mansion.

Who would rid us of this troublesome President?

On a more upbeat note I scheduled my third Lupron influenced PSA for July 7th. I see my oncologist, Dr. Eigner, on the 17th and Dr. Gilroy, who managed my radiation, on August 3rd. A year ago I was in the midst of the 5 day a week drives out to Lone Tree. Lying down on the altar of sacrifice, listening to the Band.

Nope, I don’t think about cancer much. Life goes on until it doesn’t. Freezers go bad. (ours continue to chug along for now) Yards need mowing. Seoah’s in Singapore. Wildfires are possible. The future’s not ours to see.

Meanwhile, carbon emissions.

Aging, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Third Phase, US History, Woolly Mammoths, World History

It’s Not Even Past

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Sunday gratefuls: The Laramide Orogeny. The chance to see its starting point frequently. The chance to see the actual end of the Great Plains frequently. Stump grinders. Arborists. Lawn service folks. Asphalt. The Snow plows and their drivers. Jackie, our hair stylist. (Not that I have much left to style.) Seoah’s 5th day in quarantine. Only 9 to go. Kep’s hotspots healing.

The Past.  Our own, our family’s, our country’s, our specie’s.  How do we view the PAST regarding forgiveness, compassion, learning, loving, and, perhaps most of all, how we live in this one precious day of this one precious life NOW?

Buddy Tom Crane’s prompt for our meeting this morning on zoom. Old Friends. Bill, Mark, Paul, Tom, me. Over 30 years of jawin’.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner Whatever else the past is it only exists right now. Because everything that exists exists right now. At least from the perspective of our consciousness. Free beer tomorrow.

Ever learned anything? Faulkner’s right. Ever been in a relationship? Ever lived? Time’s arrow is an argument in physics. Maybe everything exists all at once. Or, maybe everything moves in the direction of less entropy. But, is that time? Don’t know.

What I do know is that until I could entertain the memory (a ghost from my past) of Vega looking up at me, willing me to do something about her bloat, I was trapped by the fear it caused. Glancing away from it. Pushing it out of consciousness. She died. And, I could do nothing. I loved her, she trusted me, but I couldn’t save her.

Finally, I went the whole way into the memory. Touched her again. Felt her stomach. Reassured her. Remembered that awful time at Sano when Kate and I knelt inside the metal crate. “Her heart stopped,” the vet said.

Now Vega romps through my doggy memories, being a rascal, chewing our shoes, peeing on our rugs, but also delightful and loving and funny. I had lost her to my fear.

So, the past is with us. And, within us, the past can change. Or, rather, our acceptance of it can change. When I went into treatment for alcoholism, I had years of hangovers, drunken one night stands, the grief over my mother, fear cutting jagged holes into my day to day to life. Fear that receded when the God Dionysus took over.

That guy, the one I’d been since the purple Jesus parties at Phi Kappa Psi in 1965, had to widen his arms, embrace all the pain, all the missteps, all the avoidance and denial. Had to come out of his own groundhog hole, look for the sun, as he had done many, many times. And, finally find it. Yes, I can live in the light, seeing all of who I’ve been, gathering all of it in close. Not in judgment, but in acceptance. Because, though I can’t change the past, how I live with it can change me.

Here’s a point where I get confused. That I. The Buddhists: no self. My kabbalah experiment with watching the watcher. Many selves, many masks. The long march from infancy to old age. Who was that masked man? At 40? At 30? At 10? Was he me? Or, do I have to believe that I somehow arrived at this point in my life sui generis? No past, no self. Just this accretion of cells that somehow insists on having a history? Let’s say Buddhism has a low view of the Self. Kabbalah a fractured one.

My common sense understanding? A solid Self. And what is that Self? The one who can access, retrieve memories that only this body has experienced. Yes, it’s true that this Self is not the one who experienced those memories. It exists in this moment, shaped by those experiences, yet changed by its survival into the now. And, it is not the self of the next moment since it will be changed yet again. No self? OK. Many selves, many masks? OK. A solid Self? OK. All at once, expressing a different view through the prism of consciousness. OK. After all, William James called consciousness a “blooming, buzzing confusion.”

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

One Day at a Time

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Simplicity. Does this idea bring me joy? Kondoing my thinking. Maybe. MVP. Rich. Susan. Marilyn. Tara. Judy. Zoom. Covid’s forced introspection. What matters in our daily life? What doesn’t? Seoah between Narita and Singapore. Picture of her with mask and faceshield on the plane. Kate finding Kep’s hotspots. Sano. Going down, coming back up.

On Shadow Mountain. The Sun rising, Black Mountain lit. The Air still cool. All the promise of a new day. Each day is the only day in which you’ll ever live. We’re all one day old, every day. Each morning we can choose to continue old patterns, the remnants of other days, or we can choose new habits, new actions. Even new thoughts. Each day is New Year’s. Old Mother Time melted away last night and the infant wrapped in the sash titled TODAY has succeeded her.

What will you do with this one wild and precious day?

We’re taking Kep to the vet. He has several new hotspots that have shown up on his back. Not sure why, not sure what to do next. So, we’re calling in Dr. Palmini.

Kate’s spirits took a dive yesterday when she discovered Kep’s hotspots. Seoah’s gone. She can’t hug Ruth and Gabe. Her stomach acted up. All got to be too much. She’s resilient though. Look at how she’s handled the multiple insults to her body.

Seoah will touch down in Singapore today. Or, rather, tomorrow. The mysteries of the International Date Line. Her flight gets in just after midnight Singapore time.

First Wednesday with no Kabbalah class since January. School’s out. Teachers let the monkeys out. Gonna take a rest over the summer, then pick up the Kabbalah thread again in the fall.

Groveland U.U., the congregation I joined soon after I left the Presbyterian ministry, wrote me a note yesterday asking if I would do some presentations for them over Zoom. An unexpected pleasure, made possible by your friend the Coronavirus.

MVP (Mussar Vaad Practice Group) met last night. The middot (character trait) we discussed was simplicity. As I’ve mentioned here before, mussar involved identifying a character trait and then creating a practice for yourself that you can use to strengthen it. There are many different lists of soul traits, some exhaustive, some short.

Once you find the middot or middah (plural) on which you need to work, you’ve defined what the mussar teachers call a soul curriculum. Judaism is very clear on the journey. You’ll make mistakes, regress. What’s crucial is to not stop. That may sound zealous, but it’s not. It’s a recognition of our humanity.

My practice, if I should choose to accept it, is to ask what thoughts bring me joy. Not sure yet whether I like this. I created it, so I can change it, but it seems interesting. Just not sure whether joy is a good criteria for thoughts. Even so, it intrigues me. I’ll give it a go for a while, see where it leads.

Aging, Anoka County, Coronavirus, Denver, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

At Her Funeral

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Thursday gratefuls: Gauze sponges. Wax o-rings for Kate’s leakage. Stoma powder. The chance to care for Kate. A forty degree morning on Shadow Mountain after 92 degrees in Denver on Monday. That silly Rigel, not acting her age. At all. Kep, the serious. Dog groomer today. The Kabbalah class. Folks liking my presentation. Workout yesterday.

Pine pollen season. Yellow streaks on the asphalt. Pollen lying on wooden tables, adding some color. The winds rushing through the Lodgepoles, shaking loose enough for a yellow storm. Part of the turning of the Great Wheel. That I could do without personally. But, how would we get baby Lodgepoles otherwise? Sneeze and bear it.

Wildfire danger remains high. Dry, Windy. Yesterday the Humidity in the loft was 2%, outside 6%. The arid West. A positive note. It was 80 degrees up here and a slowly rotating fan was all I needed to stay cool. Rigel, we’re not in Andover anymore.

A woman in my kabbalah class wants my Grammar of Holiness read at her funeral, “…whenever that may be.” A strong positive reaction to it from the class. Rabbi Jamie’s going to reprint in the synagogue newsletter, the Shofar.

Always thought my reimagining faith project would be a book, a radical theology with chapters and footnotes and acknowledgements. Nope, two pages. There it is. It feels said to me. We’ll see if I continue to feel that way.

After reading several pieces about Covid and underlying medical conditions, Kate and I have decided to become coronavirus hermits. Our hermitage, Shansin, on top of Shadow Mountain. We’ll ride it out with as little flesh and blood contact as we can stand. Would sound bleak, but Zoom helps, and we’re introverts, happy with each other, ourselves, and our dogs.

And, given recent news, I will add: white, privileged, financially secure, and aging with good medical care.

Still no word from the Singapore government. Seoah may fly there next Tuesday. May not. Covid has impacted lives in so many different ways. This is just one of them, but it’s personal, right here.

From Shadow Mountain, where the sun is rising and the morning is cool.

Aging, Health, Science, Third Phase

Cyberknifed

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Wednesday gratefuls: Spaghetti. Marco Polo. China. Cool morning. Kate’s physical. Telehealth. Dr. Gidday. The loft in the morning. The heat. Wildfire. Trees. Lodgepole Pines. Aspen. Colorado Blue Spruce. Dogwood. Lilacs. Iris. Shrub Roses. The New York Times. The Washington Post. The spread out Keaton Clan. The Human Narrative. Holy Land. Holy Water. Holy Air. Holy you.

One year ago today: Cyberknifed. 1st of 35 treatments.

Since then. Luproned. Hot flashes. Suppressed testosterone. Fatigue. Weakness. In the pursuit of a cure. 9 months later now, after the end of radiation. I think much more about the Lupron than I do about cancer though cancer is always present. The Lupron reaches out and touches me while the cancer is either gone or asymptomatic. It feels gone to me.

Think today, for a moment, if you will, of all those impacted by cancer. Those living with it, trying to cure it. Those caring for them. Their families, their friends.

Cancer is global just like Covid. Deadlier, too. 9.7 million deaths in 2017.