Spring Planting Moon
Not often you see an image that helps you understand yourself. This one does that for me. Perhaps I’m thinking about entering the third phase.
Category Archives: Third Phase
Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon
Spring Planting Moon
Got up with the sun this morning, needing to pick up Kona between 7:00 and 7:30 am in Blaine. Having the sun out and being up early both put my mood into high in spite of the significant cash outlay for Kona’s needed care.
Imagine my surprise when I looked at the weather report. 6-8 inches of new snow. Tonight! Then, maybe 70 by the weekend. OMG!
Had Kona over at the vets by 9:40 am where I got the good news that her heart murmur has disappeared and the bad news that her tumor was cancerous. Kate was in the room from Denver, Colorado via Verizon wireless and my Droid phone. We discussed the options with Roger and decided to go ahead, as I wrote below, to have it removed.
Back home. Nap. A long nap since my back, unconvinced by the meds and the rests I’d taken, continued to ouch. A lot. Couldn’t take the best meds because I had to drive out to Stillwater, then into St. Paul and home after that.
Stillwater was the bee pickup. My two pound package of Italian hygienics are now buzzing on top of the dryer in the basement. I sprayed them with sugar water, will do so again before bed, once more in the morning, then again just before I hive them around 6 pm tomorrow. That way they have full tummies when hived and are less likely to go adventuring. Which would serve no good purpose right now anyhow. I had planned to hive them tonight, but the snow. Comes down hard and wet right now.
St. Paul was to see John Desteian, my longtime Jungian analyst, I started to see him in 1986 or ’87 and saw him for a long time after my divorce from Raeone. I’ve seen him off and on over the years, last in 2006.
I want to see what I’m trying to tell myself through my dreams of loss and being lost. As I imagined, we headed in the general direction of faith, though not retrieving a lost faith so much as redefining faith, Reimagining Faith, in light of the pagan, existentialist, flat-earth metaphysics of my current world view.
As always, John asked the good questions. Pointed me, this time, toward an essay by Heidegger called “The Last God” and understanding the essence of the numinous. I’ll have a month to ponder that since my next appointment is on May 23rd. He’s been a useful, valued guide and Jung my chief spiritual adviser. Sounds like that run will continue.
Back home to an oxycodone, spraying the bees with the sugar water, crating the dogs and relaxing. Quite the day. Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon. A lesson there.
Oh. Had a vicarious feeling of pride when I learned John now runs an international training institute for Jungian analysts based in Zurich, the Mecca and Jerusalem of Jungian thought. Here’s the link.
Help!
Spring Planting Moon
Kona will have her tumor removed tomorrow. Roger Barr, our vet, says it is cancerous, which surprised me because she’s been so sturdy and active in spite of the tumor. A chest x-ray though showed no metastases, a good thing. We’ve opted to remove though the emergency vet bill and the removal costs will debulk our capital reserves. Which means we’ll have to find a way to build them back up again.
After our appointment with Dr. Barr, I tried to lift Kona up into the Rav4. Usually, no problem. I can lift her 40 pounds. However. Last week I wrenched my back cleaning out the bee hives in readiness for the new package, which I will pick up today. As I struggled with what would have been an easy task, a woman came along and asked me if I needed help, “Yes. I do.”
Between us we got Kona up on the blanket in the back.
“Her and me, we’re doing it together.” I said, nodding toward Kona, “Thanks.”
“Bless you,” she said.
I recount this conversation because it reminded me of a third phase thought. A thought important for an all men’s group like the Woollies. We must learn how to recognize when we need help, how to ask for it and how to graciously receive it. It’s not easy for me to ask for help and I imagine many of us are the same. As we age, infirmity and illness will increase the probability, the likelihood that we will need the help of others. Fellow Woollies. Family. Other friends. Medical professionals and home health care assistants.
Becoming a doctor instead of a professional sewer
Spring Planting Moon
Granddaughter Ruth, turned 7 last week, asked Grandma, “Why did you become a doctor instead of a professional sewer?” Grandma has been teaching Ruth to sew. “Because I’m good at being a doctor, too.” Lots of great information in that exchange.
Vega just came in from the outside carrying one of the green toy balls. She brought it all the way inside, deposited it beside the water bucket and continued onto the living room to lie down on the rug. It’s a dog’s life.
We’ve been talking, here and there, about the third phase at our Woolly meetings. Maximize life now. While we have it. Say yes to life. Do what only I can do. A few approaches, still being tried out. We had two new third phasers join the group in the last couple of months. There’s one outlier at 64 and another at 60.
Third Phase: Woolly Report
Spring Planting Moon
Kate reports in from Denver that 8″ of snow has fallen there with more on the way.
Woollies tonight at chez Schmidt. A great beef stew, salad and pre dinner conversation.
We discussed the retreat, a topic often fraught with indecision and uncertainty. We buzzed around some important areas for us all, among them: elders (what does it mean and what does it mean for us?), the third phase (what are the Woollies in this new and substantially different aspect of our lives?), the differing realities of aging for men and women (wives and the relationship, how it might change), death (as Regina’s death brought right up close, this is a time when mortality is even more of a companion than before. What does this suggest for how we live?).
In essence we agreed that since these topics are on our minds and hearts, present to us right now, that we will talk about them during the retreat without need of particular structure. Some offered to bring movies, others suggested art galleries and other outings.
Sitting on the rocks by the lake seemed to have a part in everyone’s plan.
Only I Can
Spring Planting Moon
A while back I mentioned doing work only I can do. Part of the third phase thang. What I meant specifically when I said that was writing Missing and the other Tailte novels, Reimagining Faith and the translation project, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. (Yes, others may/will translate Ovid, but I’m the only one that can produce my translation, make my choices, add my commentary.)
Why is doing work only I can do important to me? Mortality. Coming at me now faster than ever. Within this phase of my whole life for sure. Individuation. It’s taken a long time to get clear about who and what I’m for, what I’m good at and not good at. Now’s the time to concentrate that learning, deepen it. Fun. Doing work I really want to do has a satisfaction level that is intrinsic. Other satisfactions, reward may come. Fine. But not the focus now. Common sense. If I won’t do it, who will?
This notion could get gummed up in what kind of work I should do. I should continue my long political career. I should continue giving tours at the MIA. I should work with the disadvantaged in some way. I should be in the church somehow. Well, I spent three decades following my values in my work. And I’m glad I did. But that kind of work has a tendency to move away from personal strengths and dreams. Which was ok. Which was fine.
Not now. Now the millennials need to storm the barricades, give the sermons, teach the kids about art. That work needs to go on, must go on in fact, but through the energy of others.
Now I need to concentrate, distill. Work with the alchemy of the backroom rather than the chemistry of the frontroom. It’s a different time in my life and one I need to honor. One way I can honor my third phase is by doing work in it that only I can do.
Third Phase
Spring Planting Moon
The third phase and its staggering newness, a third phase of life available now to many by virtue of health care, sanitation and public health campaigns. A phase of life previously available only to the lucky and the strong, as Bette Midler’s the Rose sang of love. Like love in the Rose though, the third phase is not only for the lucky and the strong, at least not anymore.
Now many, perhaps most, will live 20 years or 30 years beyond what used to be considered their expiration date of 65. Since this was far from the norm for generations prior to ours, this time remains undiscovered country, at least insofar as it is a country of our life and not a painful preliminary to that Shakespearean, final undiscovered country.
Carl Jung, a long time spiritual adviser and guide, divided life into two phases:
““We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true, will at evening have become a lie.’
What is the difference between these two halves?
Jung believed that middle and old age, like youth, have specific developmental tasks. While the developmental tasks for youth involve turning outward and engaging life, the goal for the mature you is to consolidate your conscious and unconscious parts of yourself. In other words, the primary task in the first half of life is to develop and adapt to your outer world and thus fit into society. You study, find employment, form relationships and move through your life with a social cohort of like minded people. For the second half of your life the task is to adapt to your inner world; that is, to discover who you really are and then create an environment to suit your unique self.” from secondhalfsuccess.com
In my scheme I separate out a learning phase and a career/family phase, moving us into what Jung defines only in the third phase. Yet his understanding of the second half and mine of the third phase mesh pretty well.
Distillation. Condensation. Authenticity. Work only I can do.
Going Out on the Town With My Sweetie
Spring Bloodroot Moon
Kate and I went to the Macy’s Flower Show. The Dayton’s flower show. Anyhow, I’d never been but going once came because we’ve agreed that each of us has one time during the month that we can schedule whatever we want. And the other one has to go along.
Last month we went to the Loring Pasta Bar to listen to Hot Club of France type jazz (Kate’s choice) and to the Cynthia Hopkin’s performance, This Clement World at the Walker. In a rut already I’ve chosen another Walker performance, a jazz pianist and his ensemble late in the month.
Kate felt we weren’t doing enough together, too much like adults engaged in parallel play. She quilts; I write. She was right. It was a habit and we broke it. I’m glad we did.
The best part of today’s outing was the Smack Shack. A food truck that turned in its wheels for brick and mortar the Smack Shack serves po’ boys and lobster boils. We had the lobster boil complete with the bib, shell crackers and tiny forks. I haven’t eaten lobster in a very long time and it was fun.
Turned out it was the Twin’s first day-time game this year, so I had to park about 6 blocks, long blocks, away–it’s on 6th and Washington North. That turned out to be a treat because I could take a survey of this rapidly changing part of the city. Lofts, luxury apartments, redone warehouses, new apartment buildings, lots of restaurants, design stores, gutted buildings and construction zones. A fun, energized area, an area that used to be fairly dull commercial. Not too long ago.
The Undiscover’d Country
Spring Bloodroot Moon
At times my past bleeds into the present, creating small emotional events, upsetting my inner equilibrium. Right now is one of those times. Many of us are heir to understandings of ourselves as malformed in some way, not quite right. I certainly am.
(Dante Gabriel Rossetti Hamlet and Ophelia 1858 pen and ink drawing)
These irruptions come in the OMG I’m not doing enough form or OMG I have not done enough or OMG I’ll never do enough forms. My anxious self underlines and bolds these self-declarations as my mind races back to find the not enoughs in the past–no graduate school, no published books, never made it to Washington, the not enoughs in the present–Missing not revised, Loki’s Children not started, no time for serious in-depth reading, not helping out enough at home or making enough time for friends and then uses both of these information streams to predict a dire future: no books published ever, no friends, no concrete results of any kind, then, wink out.
If this line of thought continues, I’m going to have to visit my analyst, John Desteian. In touch with him (and, now, Kate) I’ve been able to dispel these strong phantoms, learn to live with facts not illusion and get on with what is a good life. This is, I think, as much due to faulty wiring as anything else, my family coming with a strong genetic pattern for bipolar disorder, though I don’t believe my issues rise to that level of dysfunction. I know, not enough even there, eh?
Not long ago I re-read Hamlet’s speech in Scene I, a scene I had memorized long ago for a dramatic presentation contest. It’s baldly existential view surprised me, even shocked me. A line from it came to me as I woke up this morning and it captures my feeling tone right now: “…the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” This exactly describes me when I get into these episodes.
In the lines just before this one Shakespeare refers to death as the undiscover’d country from which no traveler returns and identifies the dread of that journey as producing the pale cast of thought, thus rendering a person unable to act. To be or not to be neatly summarizes all this.
Vacated. Returned.
Spring Bloodroot Moon
Vacated, now returned, back in my regular work space. Feels good. 11th and E street, the Hotel Harrington and the Penn Quarter coalescing into memory. I doubt I’ll ever travel for a particular art exhibition again, though I’m glad I went this time.
Why? Crowds. I like quiet time with art, non jostling, personal time. Time to dig in and look, really look and not feel like I need to give someone else their turn. Then, too, I like time in between, away from the art, then going back, looking again. These big shows actively work against close encounters. I know this from my work with the Louvre, Rembrandt, Terracotta Warriors.
(Lady of Shallot, William Holman Hunt)
The trip did accomplish its purpose. Remember my OMG am I doing enough entry a couple of days ago? My purpose was to get a sense of how my life with art might unfold after I leave the MIA for good. I see it now, at least a place to start. It means a study program over several years in the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romanticism and the whole Modern(-ism)(-ity)(post-) bundle with the occasional excursion into the history of science and perhaps fin de siecle Europe, all with the intention of integrating my interest in the pre-Raphaelites, Aesthetes, Symbolists into the larger movements of cultural forces over the Modern and pre-Modern era. Ambitious? Yes, but what’s life for?
The trip accomplished a second, unintended purpose, too. I gotta go on vacation with no purpose at all. That’s next.
Right now it’s back to revising Missing and reviewing my Latin for Friday.