Category Archives: Third Phase

Cinema and Television, Commentary on the news, Health, Humanities, Letters, Music, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

As Happy As Can Be

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Spring and the Leap Year Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Bright sun. White snow. Sturdy mountains. Gov. Polis. All workers in essential jobs, risking themselves for the rest of us. Tough decisions, made well. Governors and mayors. Drugs. Rigel, who practiced non-violent resistance last night when I moved her off my pillow. (100 lbs. of limp dog.) Seoah with her spray can of Lysol. Seoah for cleaning and soup and pancakes (veggie, Korean type). Kate for good attitude in spite of, well, all of it.

Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song:

I want to live alone in the desert
I want to be like Georgia O’Keefe
I want to live on the Upper East Side
And never go down in the street

Splendid Isolation
I don’t need no one
Splendid Isolation

Michael Jackson in Disneyland
Don’t have to share it with nobody else
Lock the gates, Goofy, take my hand
And lead me through the World of Self

Goofy and I have set out on this quarantine journey. It’s the Mickey Mouse club hike for us older Mouseketeers, now latch key elders stuck at home while the young ones go to work. What kind of mischief can we get up to? Been rummaging around for that chemistry set with the REAL piece of uranium. We can wave at the other seniors through the window. Hey, there, hi, there, ho, there.

We can also follow Goofy down the yellow-brick road to that ego wizard living behind the green curtains of our fear. Let him/her out. We’re all afraid now. Maybe not quaking or shaking, but definitely concerned. No reason to hide.

Here’s an elder countryman, speaking of a different time, but also of ours:

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated” Thomas Paine

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Family, Friends, Health, Science, Third Phase

Still Absorbing

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Chill air. Blue sky. A light covering of snow. Seoah’s meal last night, her version of scalloped potatoes. The coronavirus and its ability to make us reevaluate what’s important. Gov. Polis and his response here in Colorado. Health care workers: cleaners, docs, nurses, p.a.’s, receptionists, all of them. The literal front line for all of us. Gertie, our sweet girl.

Introverts lead the fight for social distancing! Winner, winner, chicken dinner. This is our time. We could go to the mall, an NBA game, that big religious service. Unless too many take the opportunity. Then, back home to the hygge. This is an hygge and introverts’ moment. We are all introverts during the virus crisis.

Like you, probably, I’m tired of hearing about the coronavirus, yet I can’t turn away. It’s a slow motion tsunami. We have time to reach the safe places before it crests, but it seems weird. All this waiting. This hiding.

Right now it has a pre-holiday, pre-big storm feel. Something big’s coming and we’re getting ready. I hope you are neither sick yourself nor anyone close to you.

I’m heading off to the post office and to King Sooper. Picking up groceries is a perfect way to social distance the act of grocery shopping. The post office is not, but taxes. You know the saying, nothing’s certain but the coronavirus and taxes.

Aging, Family, Health, Holidays, Jefferson County, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

In the Time of the Crown

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Thursday gratefuls: the warm reception for my presentation yesterday. Alan and the Bread Lounge. Being the doorman last night for Purim. Seoah greeting me when I got home. Kep, who stayed up waiting on me. The melting of the snow. The coming snow. The drive back from the Kabbalah Experience.

An all CBE all the time day yesterday. Left the house at 7:45 for the Kabbalah Experience. Not a fun drive into morning rush hour in Denver. If I do this again, I’ll do most of them by Zoom. It’s an unsatisfying technology in this context, perhaps because it’s not well integrated into the classroom at Kabbalah Experience.

Yesterday the sun had a corona as it sat behind a veil of cirrocumulus clouds. There was a streaky rainbow smeared across underneath it. Last night the moon, too, had a corona, a faint golden hue with a red tinged outer circle.

Seemed appropriate for life in the time of coronavirus. It’s spreading no rainbows. On the New York Times page I counted 46 stories that were virus related. That’s two-thirds.

Last night at the Purim event at Beth Evergreen I filled in for Kate who had a Sjogren’s flare. She was to be the board member on duty. The bmod greets people at the door. That’s the primary task. I also had to shoo folks into the sanctuary so the Purim spiel (a musical written by CBE’r Ron Solomon) could begin.

There was elbow bumping, some shoe greetings, and the purloined Cohen blessing, live long and prosper with fingers spread to create the shin letter in the Hebrew alphabet. There was bravado. I’m living my life as usual. I’m not afraid. There was cautious laughter with each improvised non-handshake. Even so, more folks showed up than I had imagined. The sanctuary was well-over half full, many of them older, like me.

As I opened the locked door for each congregant or visitor, I greeted them with a welcome, a smile, an occasional elbow bump. Yes, two contagions affected my work. Antisemitism keeps CBE’s doors locked at all times. We’ve had visits from the Jeffco sheriff, the FBI, and letters from politicians expressing support. It’s a virus of the heart, infectious hatred cultured in a stewpot of fear, white supremacy, Trumpian permission.

We had the whole megillah. No, really. The whole thing. On Purim the book of Esther, the megillah, is read in its entirety. It’s the story of Ruth, who saves all the Jews from the evil vizier, Haman. I want to write a bit about Purim, maybe tomorrow, but for today I’ll just add that as Haman’s name comes up in the reading everyone cranks their grogger and shouts boo! Sort of like watching a silent movie when the villain twirls his mustache.

The groggers, the boos, the whole megillah work against both contagions: antisemitism and the coronavirus. Next time you see the word coronavirus whip out your grogger (no, not that. look at the link on grogger above) and shout boo. Might catch on.

Asia, Dogs, Family, Health, Third Phase

Volunteers. Dog bless them.

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Friday gratefuls: Corinne in Boulder for her graciousness. Murdoch, for being such a good boy at her house. Seoah, navigating a difficult parting in a still strange language, a still new culture. Kate, living with her ornery body. Dr. Gidday, strong woman, good doc. The melting snow, mostly gone down the hill, lingering in the shadows. This moment of spring time. Corinne’s neighborhood had iris and daffodils pushing up, green eager for warmth and sun. A blooming yellow crocus.

Yesterday and today are visit potential foster homes for Murdoch days. Corinne was kind, thoughtful. Her ranch house in south Boulder is big. Unlike most of us in the mountains it has a basement and one that matches the upstairs footprint in size. A fenced backyard, big enough for Murdoch. Corinne wants to age in place, so she chose a location near shopping, a house with a level floor plan.

When we got there, she invited us for a walk, “He’s been in the car for an hour. He could stretch his legs.” We wandered the neighborhood a bit, learning a new part of Murdoch’s training. He sits at each intersection until you’re ready to cross the street. Very cute.

He sniffed around Corinne’s house, looking here and there, licking the floor as Kep does, too. Then, he settled in and waited. I don’t know what we’re doing, but my people are here, so it’s ok.

Today we’re driving much further, up to Loveland, which I always confuse with Loveland Pass, when I see it mentioned in the news. We’ll see Brenton. He knows and likes Akitas, has two foster dogs for DoD right now. He runs his own business out of his house, too.

You have to be a giving person to volunteer in this way.

My physical yesterday. Nothing notable so far. But, the lab tests aren’t back yet. Well, almost nothing. When she asked me how often I check my blood pressure, I said three/four times a week. Funny thing, it’s often higher at night. “What could cause that?” she wondered. Oh, salt. “You need to watch your salt.” Oh, boy. A moment I’ve dreaded. Not sure I can watch my salt. But, I’ll try to cut back. He said unwillingly.

Aging, Anoka County, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Other Nations

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Thursday gratefuls: That we haven’t switched to DST yet. Love me that standard time. Dr. Gidday, whom I see today. Corinne in Boulder. Murdoch, who’s getting a bath for his time with her. Kate, my Kate. The Democratic primary, calming down. Hope for the fall. My class with Rabbi Jamie, the way it’s provoking me. That I feel in excellent health on the day of my annual physical. (I know. Prostate cancer. COPD. Kidney disease. Even so, that’s how I feel.)

As the years grow greater in number, now 73 for me, the annual physical has a certain hold your breath feel. Will she find anything new, anything unwanted? It’s already happened to me a couple of times, so I know I can absorb the hits. Yet, I’d prefer not to. Life is still engaging, fun, demanding, exciting. I’m ready for a better year.

Kate’s had a recent setback with some bleeding. Not at the September, 2018 level, thank God, but there nonetheless. She’s going with me to my physical this morning, will talk to Dr. Gidday. Her recovery has been like this, a step ahead, a step back. She’s in so much better shape now that each problem now feels like a betrayal of those gains. Give her a break.

After my physical at nine-thirty, Kate and I will take care of a couple of errands, pick up Seaoh, and drive to Bergen Bark Inn. Murdoch will have had a bath and be ready for a visit to Boulder. We’re pretty damned lucky to have two potential foster parents and to be able to visit them both this week. Loveland, tomorrow, will be the second visit.

Kep got his teeth cleaned yesterday. Not our best part of doggy world. Gonna get better at this. Ordered some dog dental supplies. Will keep up with them now. He was a bit loopy from the anesthesia, his rear paws turning out at odd angles, his butt hanging lower when he walked. Took him until late in the evening to shake it off.

A friend wondered about our dogs, said he didn’t understand that part of my life. He wasn’t being critical, just a bit bewildered. “The dogs are a huge part of your life, I don’t understand all of that, three big dogs was overwhelming when…I visited you, there must be some ancient canine story flowing through your blood.” 

Dogs make it harder to travel. Pricey to board them. Dogs are expensive with food and vet bills. Dogs make messes, chew up stuff you’d rather have intact. Vega, for example, loved to eat shoes. Dogs get into fights, injure each other and us. They crowd into bed and won’t move, so we adjust. They sneak up under your arm at the table, seeking food or comfort. So, yes, hard to understand.

However. Gertie, in her last days, licked my face at 3 a.m. Emma stood on the downed cottonwood, a lioness looking over her domain. Hilo snuggled in under my armpit for a nap. Celt accepted all attention graciously, like a monarch. Sorsha took down a deer, tried to get two squirrels at once. Tor was one-hundred and ninety pounds of pure love. Orion, too. I pulled Tira, bleeding and in shock, off a gate in our garage. Morgana and Scot, siblings, were sweet, kind. Buck and Iris. Bridgit. Tully.

They are memories for us, like travel, I suppose. Moments Kate and I shared, often years of moments.

Mostly though, it’s about love. Given and received. Unreserved, unconditional. Greetings at the door. A friend for a nap. Their quirks. Their distinct and different personalities. Their willingness to share themselves completely.

They also offer a strange and privileged opportunity; they grant us a chance to live with and know what Henry Beston identified as: “…other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” Here’s the full, important quote.*

* “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Park County, permaculture, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Deep Guidance

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Sunday gratefuls: An extra day in my birthday month. DogsonDeployment and the three folks who responded right away. Seoah’s careful scrutiny of the profiles. Kate’s help with Corrine, who called from DoD. Blue skies and warm temps. Atlas Obscura. The Rocky Mountain Land Library. Jon’s offer to stay with Kate while I take the kids on a road trip.

Just signed up for a Food and Land Bookclub. My real interest in it is its association with the Rocky Mountain Land Library in next county over Park County. When I bought the books for the book club, four in all, I found my powers returning. Oh, this is what I’ve got energy for my body said. Book titles: Mayordomo: chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico, Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants, One Size Fits None: a farm girls search for the promise of regenerative agriculture, and, The Seed Underground: a growing revolution to save food.

When we first moved here, over five years ago now, I wanted to garden, to learn the native plants, to hike the mountains, learn the land and streams and wildlife. Prostate cancer, bum knee then knee replacement, COPD. Kate’s various medical dilemmas later. Distracted. Accomplished little of these. Some hiking, not much thanks to the COPD and the bad knee. Gardening here required more physical energy than I have available. My first native plants class got interrupted by my prostatectomy. Life. Stuff.

I first discovered the Rocky Mountain Land Library in 2015, our first year here. It was only a dream then, an idea concocted by the former owners of Denver’s most loved book store, Tattered Covers. It now has a ranch in Park County, south of Fairplay, a bit over an hour from here. Buildings and projects have begun to come together. It wasn’t ready when I found it and, as it turned out, neither was I.

During Gertie’s last days I reflected again on my instinctual opposition to euthanasia for dogs. It’s no longer absolute because I saw its necessity as Gertie suffered, but it’s still strong. Were there any other instances in my life where I made choices from an instinctual level?

Instinct? Intuition? Deep inner guidance? Link to a source of knowledge I can’t access consciously? Instinct in any formal sense is probably wrong, but the feeling involved, a strong compulsion, a certainty that this path was mine, had that flavor anyhow.

Turns out there were other such choices. When I turned 32, I knew I had to be a parent. Got a vasectomy reversal. Didn’t work. OK. Adopt. First child, a girl, died in a salmonella outbreak at the orphanage. Raeone didn’t want to go forward. She’d just gotten a new job. My deep push made me agree to take care of the new baby myself, no matter what it took. I took him to work with me until he was 18 months old.

After an Ira Progoff workshop in Tuscon, an intentional stirring of my inner life, I stopped by Denver to see Ruth and Gabe. By the time I left I knew Kate and I needed to move to Colorado. She agreed and so we did. We wanted to live in the mountains and to be in our kids and grandkids lives.

Other less dramatic instances. Saw a movie while in college that featured Manhattan. Put my thumb out and spent the summer of 1968, the summer of love, not in San Francisco, but in Manhattan. Curator of Asian art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bob Jacobson, gave a lecture on Angkor. Specifically he showed the amazing stone bas relief sculpture that runs for a quarter mile around Angkor Wat’s great Hindu temple. And in particular the churning of the sea of milk where gods and demons struggle for a magical elixir. Had to see it. When my dad died and left me enough money to do some travel, I went.

A related but less pressured decision came when I realized I was no longer Christian, that I had to leave the ministry. Had I not met Kate, this feeling would have been tested, but I met her and she allowed me a graceful exit.

Right now I’m feeling a similar push, perhaps not only to the Rocky Mountain Land Library, but to reawaken the me who woke up for twenty springs, twenty summers, and twenty falls glad for the chance to plant lilies, weed onions, harvest garlic, trim the raspberry canes. The me who woke up for several years and knew tending the bees was in the day’s labor. The me who came here excited about the West, about the mountains, about being in a brand new place. We’ll see where this goes.

Denver, Dogs, Family, Great Wheel, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Family Time

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Imbolc and the new Leap Year Moon

Monday gratefuls: Gabe, who wants to be an actor. Seoah leafing through a furniture catalog. Lunch with Ruth, Gabe, Jon, and Seoah at the Yak and Yeti. Seeing the Highlands neighborhood in Denver. Discovering University Ave. in Denver. Coffee. Coffee growers. The coffee plant. Laborers who grow, roast, and grind coffee.

Took Seoah and Gabe into Denver yesterday. Seoah wanted to exercise her military discount at Lululemon, a chic athleisure clothier. And, she did. Seoah is in great shape. She regularly runs 20 minutes at 6.5 or 7.0 mph, does 300 squats, yoga. Her fashion sense is also highly developed from 20 years in the upscale Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul. Lululemon is a natural for her.

Three things that make Seoah happy: a discount, pho, and Indian food. After the visit to Lululemon, we drove south through Denver. I’ve gotten my sea legs in the Denver street system now, I can navigate. Chose University Avenue to take us south to Hampden. Had not driven on it before. It runs by the University of Denver, Iliff Seminary (Methodist, as is UD), and past blocks of college type retail. Around UD the streets have names like Harvard, Yale, Bates, Cornell.

Hampden is the main east-west street for the southern part of Denver, which has no ring road that makes it easy to traverse the city. Hampden is also Hwy. 285, a Federal highway that runs out of Denver to the west, into the mountains, then south all the way to Santa Fe. It’s also the primary road we take when we need to go down the hill. I know it very well since it runs close to Swedish Hospital and is on the route to Jon’s house much further east in Aurora.

We met Jon and Ruth at the Yak and Yeti, an Indian, Nepalese, Tibetan restaurant. Wanted to eat at India’s Restaurant, the oldest Indian restaurant in Denver, on Hampden like Yak and Yeti, but on Sundays they don’t open until 5:30 pm. Yak and Yeti’s food is undistinguished, but plentiful. Attracts folks who want to eat cheap, the buffet is $12.95, and who want to eat a lot. A lot of family time this weekend.

Today Kep goes in for his physical and his rabies shot. His vaccination, good for three years, expires on the 27th of this month. Given our recent history we don’t want a dog with an out of date rabies vaccination. We’ll also pick up Gertie’s ashes.

No new word on Murdoch. We’ll visit him a couple of times this week. He’s having a great time there so far. Always happy and wiggly to see us. No idea he’s in exile.

Family, Health, Politics, Third Phase, US History, World History

Changing World

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Imbolc and the waning sliver Shadow Mountain Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate’s stitches out. Her toughness. Seoah cleaning. Rigel, grieving. Chinooks (snow eater winds). Gabe, who comes at 10. Jon and Ruth skiing at A-basin today. My Aeron chair. The split key-board I use. This Dell computer. The engineers and laborers who designed and built all three. The pretzel factory. Lodgepole evolution that allows them to withstand heavy snow and high winds.

Took Kate in for hand therapy. It’s a burn and reconstruction clinic, directed by Benson Pulikkottil. I thought at first he might be Finnish, given the last name. When I saw his burnt umber skin, however, I was pretty sure that was a wrong guess. Looked him up. Kerala. A state in India with 100% literacy.

He looked at Kate’s fingers, said they were doing well. Take the stitches out. A nurse came in and removed them. Kate winced and teared up. Unusual. She’s stoic, so the pain must have been exquisite. Made me wince, too.

Quieter here on Shadow Mountain. A good thing, but also strange. Both of us have the sense that we have too few dogs. Two. Just not enough. Unsure whether we’ll do anything about that, though a puppy or two would enliven the house.

Rigel has been subdued since Gertie died. When we’re not around, she’s also regressed to grabbing things off the table and moving them to her spot near the fire place. Kep’s tail is down more than up. The pack has changed and they don’t know why. Murdoch disappeared, too. Dogs don’t like change.

Speaking of change. The Munich security conference, a gathering of world diplomats had as its theme, Westlessness. A play, I suppose, on restlessness since organizers meant attendees to consider a world without the West as a dominant force. China’s rise spurred the conversation though Trump’s abdication of global leadership made it bite. The concern lies in diffuse centers of influence both in Asia and in the Middle East. The article points to Russia, Iran, and Turkey as core figures in Middle East politics now.

Wow. If dispersed centers of power become the norm, the post-WWII world will vanish like human space travel did. A wondrous achievement winking out. Not sure how I feel about this.

The US led West has dominated world politics since the end of World War II. Over 70 years. My entire lifetime. History though is the record of these tectonic changes, some taking hundreds of years, think the rise and fall of Rome or the changing dynasties of China, India, some taking much shorter times. The end of the cold war. The invasion of Turtle Island. Indian independence.

A world shaped by the U.S. and its odd brand of imperialism: We’re invading you to make you free. Oh, and here’s a ticket to an American capitalist economy, too.

My fellow leftists and I have been and are critical of these policies. Election interference, for example. Take a ride down south to Latin America. We’ve been engaged there for years. Meddling in the politics of others has been a hallmark of our “soft” control.

In that sense I’m happy to see other centers of power emerge, grow strong. We will have neither the responsibility nor the burden of global hegemony. It would, however, be a dramatic and drastic change. It is though a direct result of an America First policy, a policy wedded to xenophobia and white supremacy.

A world in which we are a valued member, one among many, not America First, but America With, would be my preference. Perhaps we need to go through Westlessness to reach this place. But. It can’t happen as a denial of a world already connected in so many ways. It needs to happen as a result of our humility, not our arrogance.

Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Judaism, Mountains, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

A Task

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Imbolc and the waning crescent of the Shadow Mountain Moon

When I first began reading Art Green’s Radical Judaism, I thought maybe my job would be to think Christianity through from his truly radical, non-supernatural perspective. Look at Christian civilization in the manner of Mordecai Kaplan with Green’s theology as a pathway, a halakha. The way to walk. Couldn’t get any energy up to start. Why?

Ah. I left Christianity behind long ago now. Of course, it still informs me and my life as the Torah informs the life of a Jew whether secular or religious. But, I don’t feel shaped by it in the distinctive manner my friends at CBE exhibit. Even if G-d no longer requires the hyphen, they still bow during the Amidah, wear the kippa, show up for High Holidays. I have no interest in Christmas or Easter services, that old life.

Huh, I thought. That’s weird. I spent all that time in sem, 15 years in the ministry, and I’m a product of Western civilization, profoundly shaped by Christian belief and thought. I like big projects. Why wouldn’t I want to go back and rethink all that?

It came to me slowly. Somewhere in Green’s book, I can’t find it right now and that frustrates me, he casually dismisses neo-paganism. It’s not clear what he meant, whether he’s taking a substantive jab at pantheists from his panentheistic position, or knows the shallow roots of Wiccan’s, witches, and druids. If it’s the latter, I agree with him. Silliness abounds in contemporary pagan practice and what passes for thought.

If it’s the former, he and I are in conversation with each other. In either case though it triggered a realization. I’m a pagan. Maybe not the best word with all its freight, but one I use intentionally. The pagans of the middle ages, rural folk (classical Latin paganus: rustic, villager, rural folk, peasant, unlearned, countryman, bumpkin), held onto their older religious practices and beliefs because the church had a more tenuous connection with them, less power over their daily lives.

In contemporary usage pagan is a very broad umbrella: Wiccans, latter day Druids, Asatru, Dianists, polytheists of many shades all fall under it. There are also pagans, see this page, who use the term much as I do, as a placeholder for a religious position outside the usual suspects of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as well as outside other traditions, in particular Buddhism, Hinduism, and most shamanisms.

That’s it, I realized. My task is to use the theological tools of Art Green and the civilization leaning thought of Mordecai Kaplan to reconstruct paganism for a contemporary audience. That I have energy for. Stay tuned.



Aging, Astrology, Colorado, Dogs, Family, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Living

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Imbolc and the waning crescent of the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jen. Who called my attention to a lapse in judgement. King Sooper. Who will load my groceries this morning. Tony’s where I’ll get the pork schnitzel. The crescent moon above Black Mountain. The Storm Glass Ruth got me for Hanukah. Jon home from the hospital.

I reported something here said to someone else about yet another person. That was a lapse in judgement and I apologize to Jen for that.

Past the seventy-three marker and heading into another Aquarian year. Might be a good time to get my chart read again. Sorta put all that away after an initial burst of interest. Maybe an annual thing? Like an oil change and vehicle inspection? Time has slipped by, following the trails of Maxwell Creek, Upper Bear Creek, Cub Creek. Running toward the sea of souls.

In another liminal space, a large one this time. After Gertie. After Murdoch. As the wounds heal. Quieter, solemn. Rigel and Kep both subdued, following us, I suppose. No plans. One day in front of the other.

Even Trump seems far away, perhaps only an orange smudge floating out over the Atlantic. Our little family so dispersed. Atomic. Held together by the weak nuclear force. Yet, held together.

The two feet of snow melted in the warm days. Our roof not as layered. Our driveway almost clear. Another round coming, maybe today and tomorrow. Colorado.

This space between, a sacred place, a holy place. Happening on our mountain top. In the Rockies, in the West, in Colorado. The Midwest a humid memory. We’ll see what comes. Living. That’s it right now. Living.