Winter Stent Moon
4 years ago today we moved to Colorado. Yes, we moved in on the Winter Solstice, my favorite holiday of the whole year. It was snowy and cold, well below zero. We thought, oh, this is familiar. Seemed just like what we’d left. And, for four years now it has never been that cold again. Strange.
As readers of this blog know, it’s been an eventful four years. We both hope that events will stop whipping by like Randy Johnson heaters. A nice, calm boring 2019 would be a good thing. Let us catch our breath before Johnson switches to curve balls. If not. Well. It’s been growth inducing. Still. I’m ready to stop growing for a bit.
In ancient Uruk residents opened all city gates, lit bonfires and sang hymns timed to the rising and the setting of certain stars in the sky. This all night vigil honored many Sumerian deities, but most of all Anu, king of the gods, and special protector of the city. In the Congo the Mbuti hunters clap, sing, and dance around a fire at night, the Molimo Ceremony. This is not only a solstice observation, but for significant events. If there has been a death, they sing to the forest: “If darkness is, and the darkness is of the forest, then the darkness must be good.” from the Lapham Quarterly, Winter 2019
Today, four years after the move, Kate gets a stent placed in her superior mesenteric artery, hopefully ending the reign of terror instigated by its stenosis. The placement, done by catheter inserted into her femoral artery, is not without risks. The probe can dissect the artery (open it), letting blood flow out, possibly causing death. The probe can dislodge plaque (causing the stenosis) causing a stroke. A thrombosis can form at the stent placement site, a blood clot that also cause a stroke or bleeding. We both agree that the risks are worth the chance to return her to a normal diet and life.
The guys who’s doing it, Dr. Mulden, has the praises of all those who work with him and know him well. Dr. Kooy, whom we saw at the interventional radiologists, said if anyone in his family, wife or kids or parents, needed a stent placement, he would choose Mulden. May his hands be steady, his eye clear, and his knowledge adequate to the task.
Then Kate can heal over the longest night of the year. Fecund darkness, calm and quiet night, holy night, sacred night. A 98% full moon. With all the energy of a still waxing moon, one very near fullness, she will receive the best energy this long night can offer. If you have a moment once the darkness falls, feel your way into it, perhaps in the moonlight, and remember Kate.
It will be the most significant solstice for me in a long time, perhaps ever. Candles and silence. A walk outside, here on Shadow Mountain, to view the moon. I will remember the darkness, the emptiness which precedes our birth and the darkness, the emptiness which follows our death. Life grows from the night and flourishes under the sun. We need light and dark, cold and warm, life and death. Blessed be.
Tomorrow is the winter solstice. I haven’t gotten yet to the six new rituals I found in Lapham’s, but I will either later today or tomorrow. The dark, the long night, to me symbolizes healing, fecundity, a depth experience for the Self, a soulful journey. It’s what I need right now, a time out of time, time with the ancientrail that winds in and down, following the shamans toward the center of the earth, the center of the soul.
The dreaming. Elisa told me I’d start remembering dreams during Mercury in retrograde. And, I have.
Bought this ceramic container a few years back, probably during a Woolly Mammoth retreat at Valhelga, the Helgeson’s family retreat on a lake close to Collegeville, home of St. John’s Monastery. It reminds me of the modest clay cylinders that held the Dead Sea Scrolls and I loved the brown to black glaze, the whoosh.
Been thinking about actions to fight climate change. The inversion of the Great Work championed by his Satanic Majesty, the orange tumor on our democracy, threatens human genocide. Intentional mass murder of potentially billions. Hitler and his crowd? Pikers.
Astrology is a thicket of wild claims, unjustified certainty, and intriguing utility. Sorta like religion. In my reading so far I’ve found sensible, modest intellectuals who lean on the utility, using this ancient discipline (Mesopotamian in origin.) to promote self-knowledge. I’ve also found, as you might expect, a number of at least charlatanesque figures who are only one step away from the traveling potion wagons of the early frontier. OK, maybe not one step away.
In the later days of my interest in psychometrics there was a similar change from seeing certain personality characteristics as bad or good, especially those characterized as abnormal. Two instances from my own testing. I spiked both the 4 and 5 scales* of the MMPI when tested in the mid-1970’s in seminary. In the original uses of the MMPI these two scales supposedly determined whether you were a psychopath, 4, or a homosexual, 5. The new (then) understanding became: 4 spike = non-conforming, rebellious, angry, creative, family problems, impulsive and 5 spike = lacks traditional masculine interests. This testing was also done while I was still drinking and some of those 4 scale attributes reinforced my addiction. Though I may have lacked masculine interests (not quite sure what that means), I did have one clear masculine interest. Women.
Mercury retrograde. Elisa said this would be a time when I would remember my dreams. I have recalled some, definitely more than usual. I’d also reassess my life, letting new things in, chucking the no longer useful.
You might say, oh, the power of suggestion. Could be a bit, I suppose. But recalling dreams when I haven’t been is big for me. Years of Jungian analysis, you know. Running toward something like astrology is a definite change in mindset. And, oil painting? I mean, come on.
Holiseason underlies and inflects all of this, creating moments of reflection and quiet, reinforcing attention to the Great Wheel. Feeling as positive about life as I have in a long, long time.
What a remarkable turn things have taken here. After many -oscopies, endo, upper, lower, colon, small bowel follow through, a HIDA test, nuclear med search for bleeding, bowel surgery and even more doctor visits, finally, finally. A consensus. The superior mesenteric artery has sufficient stenosis, severe, to cause Kate’s symptoms. And, there’s a stent for that.
Happy to have some good news to report about Jon. Went to his court date yesterday. His inner attitude seems to be shifting away from anger about the divorce (understandable, but not helpful) toward getting on with his life, accepting the constraints of the restraining order (unreasonable, but legally enforceable, as he just discovered). He wants to get his art in a gallery or up for sale. This is big because it’s a key part of his identity that lay fallow during the twelve years of his marriage. He needs positive reinforcement and he’s had more than his share of negatives over the last few years.
He’s a very talented, smart guy who can handle all the work necessary to remodel his home, replace an axle in his car, ski a great line down an A-basin bowl, teach elementary age kids how to express themselves. I hope he can organize his life so these thing line up, move him forward, and make him feel good about himself.
I’m feeling a bit stressed, a lot going on. Religious school tonight. I’m taking pizza makings and teaching a unit on holidays, especially winter holidays. The kids will reimagine, reconstruct a new winter holiday. Tomorrow morning Kate has two imaging studies, looking for zebras. Tomorrow evening is Gabe’s winter concert in Stapleton. A sequelae of the hearing yesterday is that Jon can’t, for the moment, attend. The old protection order carved out an exception to the 100 yards rule for events with the kids, things like parent-teacher conferences, concerts, doctor visits, but the law is a blunt instrument. Yesterday by default it eliminated those exceptions. Jon wants me to go to represent our side of the family. Important for Gabe. I’ll go.
Got reinforced shortly after the move out here when I had to deal with prostate cancer. That shook me. I worked hard to keep myself upright and maybe, in the process, began to consolidate a lot of learning. A major part of that consolidation came from the support I got from family and friends. Oh. Life can be good, even when it’s bad. Weird. Since the move, it’s been one damned thing after another, or it feels that way right now. Those things forced a going deep, being honest, being grateful a lot. Now, four years later, our move anniversary is the Winter Solstice, my Colorado Self, the one born in the alembic of all those insults, has asserted itself.