Monday gratefuls: Stevinson’s Toyota. Snow and rain. Now 8 or 9″. All moisture accepted and appreciated. My son. Shadow, the regresser. Her 15 minutes on the treat (shh. Leash.). Common Ground. Heal the soil. The Great Work: create a sustainable presence for humans on Mother Earth.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain and Snow
Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.
One brief shining: A cold rain has fallen; on its cool breath came a good night’s sleep, up at 5 am with a lick of Shadow’s tongue, a deep whine, unusual for her, so I moved as creaky quick as possible to get her outside.
The coming Snow. Leaving her Snow shoes on. Ruby will still get her 60,000 mile service with all fluids replaced. Means I will sit. Wait. Not easy, but necessary. Keep Ruby on the road. She’s already been built. I’ve gotten at least 250,000 miles on the Toyota’s I’ve driven. Probably my last car. Now seven years old.
A devil’s bargain I didn’t know I made back in 1963 when I got my first driver’s license. A carbon footprint, cabrón. All those years on the road. Helping send carbon up, up, up. Insulate Mother Earth.
The freedom of driving carrying such a high cost, higher even than Dead Man’s Curve or Teen Angel. Back then car wrecks were the worst we could imagine. Now: each car a tiny Chicxulub meteor. Death by a thousand infernal combustion engines.
Kate used to talk about an adrenal squeeze. Saw in my USPS advance notice I had a letter from Traveler’s Insurance, carrier for my home, auto, and personal liability. Stamped on the outside of the envelope: IMPORTANT INSURANCE INFORMATION.
Was it my turn to scramble for another carrier? The envelope didn’t show up that day. I checked online. Found nothing. It came the next day.
Conditional renewal. I have to accept a $5,000 deductible for Hail and Wind damage. Well, all right. I can do that. I’d read that insurers for Colorado homes see our hail threat as much more dire than Wildfire. Here’s proof.
Just a moment: Do all people deserve due process? I don’t know, said our President. It might mean, he went on, one million, two million, three million trials. What was that oath again?
Perhaps he thought then, right at that moment. What if I could be Pope? Hey, let’s get AI to see how I’d look. Tone deaf doesn’t even begin to describe that. It’s the religious equivalent of saying if you’re famous you can grab them by the pussy.
On a more upbeat note. I watched, at Tom’s suggestion, Common Ground. A documentary on Prime Video. I felt tears well up often at the savage rending of our most important resource: top soil.
Joy with the clips of regenerative farmers growing corn in fields with legume cover crops. With the 7,000 acre farm in Williamsport, Indiana. Disturbing the soil with cattle grazing, mimicking the buffalo. Turning a profit by not feeding Monsanto, Bayer, John Deere. Lower input costs. Higher return on investment. This is the way.
When I am on task I get a lot done. When I waste time, it clears my mind of all the things I need to accomplish. Wasting time on the internet, reading a good trash crime/detective book, taking a long mid-day nap, staring out the window at birds, all these things keep me from the task at hand. But is it bad, or a needed outlet?
A few resources below. The etymology of productive, waste, and sloth.
I offer them because Ode’s theme rests in a labyrinth of Protestant work ethic hedge rows. There was a time, now long past, when productivity mattered to me. When I made pound cakes in the bakery. When I moved eight-hundred pound bales of cotton underwear cutouts for rag-cutting. When I had to have something to show for my work in the West Bank Ministry. When I wrote 1,000 words a day.
Andover found me active, working at many different tasks. Amending soil. Planting Vegetables. Caring for our Fruit Trees. Inspecting the Bee hives. Feeding and Watering the Dogs. Cooking. Yet I never felt a need to be productive. I worked at this, then that. Doing what was needed.
Even my writing took on this patina. I did it as an act of self-giving, an expression of my love for the imagination. Since moving to Colorado, I extended this approach to fire mitigation, caring for Kate, being with friends and family.
Now in what I count as my fourth phase, with a terminal illness, retirement in the past, I find myself leaning into relationships, to reading and watching TV, learning with my friends at CBE. Caring for Shadow.
Not to say that the productivity demon doesn’t raise its hoary head now and then. It does. Yet I see it for what it is. Old pathways, deep ruts from past eras. No longer what I need now. Or, desire.
produce(v.)
early 15c., producen, “develop, proceed, extend, lengthen out,” from Latin producere “lead or bring forth, draw out,” figuratively “to promote, empower; stretch out, extend,” from pro “before, forth” (from PIE root *per- (1) “forward,” hence “in front of, before, forth”) + ducere “to bring, lead” (from PIE root *deuk- “to lead”).The sense of “bring into being or existence” is from late 15c. That of “put (a play) on stage” is from 1580s. Of animals or plants, “generate, bear, bring forth, give birth to,” 1520s. The meaning “cause, effect, or bring about by mental or physical labor” is from 1630s. In political economy, “create value; bring goods, manufactures, etc. into a state in which they will command a price,” by 1827. Related: Produced; producing.
waste(v.)
c. 1200, wasten, “devastate, ravage, ruin,” from Anglo-French and Old North French waster “to waste, squander, spoil, ruin” (Old French gaster; Modern French gâter), altered (by influence of Frankish *wostjan) from Latin vastare “lay waste,” from vastus “empty, desolate.” This is reconstructed in Watkins to be from a suffixed form of PIE root *eue- “to leave, abandon, give out.” Related: wasted; wasting.The Germanic word also existed in Old English as westan “to lay waste, ravage.” Spanish gastar, Italian guastare also are from Germanic.The intransitive meaning “lose strength or health; pine; weaken or be gradually consumed” is attested from c. 1300; the sense of “squander, spend or consume uselessly, expend without adequate return” is recorded from mid-14c.; the colloquial meaning “to kill” is from 1964.
To waste time “act to no purpose” is from mid-14c. Waste not, want not is attested from 1778.
Sloth refers to many related ideas, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states.[29] It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.[30]
In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas defined sloth as “sorrow about spiritual good”.[28]
The scope of sloth is wide.[29] Spiritually, acedia first referred to an affliction attending religious persons, especially monks, wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. Mentally, acedia has a number of distinctive components; the most important of these is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation. Physically, acedia is fundamentally associated with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work; it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.[29]
Sloth includes ceasing to utilize the seven gifts of grace given by the Holy Spirit (Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear of the Lord); such disregard may lead to the slowing of spiritual progress towards eternal life, the neglect of manifold duties of charity towards the neighbor, and animosity towards those who love God.[18]
Unlike the other seven deadly sins, which are sins of committing immorality, sloth is a sin of omitting responsibilities. It may arise from any of the other capital vices; for example, a son may omit his duty to his father through anger. The state and habit of sloth is a mortal sin, while the habit of the soul tending towards the last mortal state of sloth is not mortal in and of itself except under certain circumstances.[18]
Emotionally, and cognitively, the evil of acedia finds expression in a lack of any feeling for the world, for the people in it, or for the self. Acedia takes form as an alienation of the sentient self first from the world and then from itself. The most profound versions of this condition are found in a withdrawal from all forms of participation in or care for others or oneself, but a lesser yet more noisome element was also noted by theologians. Gregory the Great asserted that, “from tristitia, there arise malice, rancour, cowardice, [and] despair”. Chaucer also dealt with this attribute of acedia, counting the characteristics of the sin to include despair, somnolence, idleness, tardiness, negligence, laziness, and wrawnesse, the last variously translated as “anger” or better as “peevishness”. For Chaucer, human’s sin consists of languishing and holding back, refusing to undertake works of goodness because, they tell themselves, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of good are too grievous and too difficult to suffer. Acedia in Chaucer’s view is thus the enemy of every source and motive for work.[31]
Sloth subverts the livelihood of the body, taking no care for its day-to-day provisions, and slows down the mind, halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders the man in his righteous undertakings and thus becomes a terrible source of human’s undoing.[31]
Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. Her kindness. Amy. Her understanding. Cookunity. Colorado Coop and Garden. The Greenhouse. Gardening again. Korea. Malaysia. Australasia. Wisconsin. Saudi Arabia. The Bay. First Light. 10,000 Lakes. The Rocky Mountain Front Range. Where my people live.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse
Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.
One brief shining: Nathan and I wandered in my back yard, his app that shows Great Sol’s illumination searching for a good spot to plant my greenhouse, until we neared a spot close to the shed, that was it with decent morning Sun and an hours worth of afternoon Sun more than anywhere else.
That picture is not quite what I’m getting. Mine will have an outdoor raised bed on either side and shutters that move themselves as the greenhouse heats up and cools down. It will also have an electric heater for Winter and a drip irrigation system inside and out.
This guy Nathan, a Conifer native, started his business Colorado Coop and Garden to give folks like me an opportunity to grow things up here. Working a garden at ground level is long past for me. But Nathan can build the raised beds at a height where my back is not an issue.
Guess I’m regressing here in some ways. A Dog. A small Garden. Andover in miniature. The greenhouse will have a sign: Artemis Gardens. Artemis Honey was Kate and mine’s name for our bee operation.
I’m loving my classes at Kabbalah Experience. Reaching deep into the purpose of religion and Judaism in particular. Reimagining the story of Adam and Eve. My life, my Jewish life and my Shadow Mountain life, have begun to resonate. Learning and living an adventure in fourth phase purpose.
No matter what the near term future holds for my health I will not succumb to despair or bleakness. As I’ve often said, I want to live until I die. This life, I’m coming to realize, is me doing just that.
If I were a bit more spry, I’d add a chicken coop and a couple of bee hives, but both require more flexibility than I can muster.
I’m at my best when I’m active outside with Mother Earth and inside with a Dog, books, and new learning. All that leavened with the sort of intimate relationships I’ve developed both here and in Minnesota and with my far flung family.
That’s living in the face of autocracy and cruelty. I will not attenuate my life. Neither for the dark winds blowing through our country and world, nor for that dark friend of us all, death.
Just a moment: Did you read Thomas Friedman’s article: I’ve Never Been More Afraid for My Countries Future? His words, served up with a healthy dish of Scandinavian influenced St. Louis Park Judaism, ring more than true to me. They have the voice of prophecy.
We are in trouble. No doubt. Trouble from which extrication will require decades, I imagine. If not longer. Yet. I plan to grow heirloom vegetables year round on Shadow Mountain. To have mah Dog Shadow with me in the Greenhouse.
I also plan to write and think about the sacred, the one, the wholeness of which we are part and in which we live, die, love. I will not cheapen my life with bitterness, rather I will eat salads, read, play with Shadow and dine with friends, talk to my friends and family near and far.
Sunday gratefuls: Second day of Passover. Kate, always Kate. Shadow the toy mover. Her zooming in the back yard. Liberation. Freedom to choose. Egypt. The many Egypts we are heir to. Tara. Arjan. Robbie and Deb. Sandy and Mark. Eleanor. Kilimanjaro. Jungfrau. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. A Mountain night.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Liberation
Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.
One brief shining: The Haggadah had wine stains; the seder plate had a kiwi because we can; we dipped the parsley into salt water, tears for the suffering of the slaves, of all oppressed people, spread dots of wine or in my case grape juice for each plague, retelling each part of the passover story as if we were there, as our story.
Talmud Torah in the morning. (Torah study) A focus on the maggid, the telling of the passover story in the Haggadah. Complete with midrash, interpretation and expansion.
Later, around 4, over to Kilimanjaro Drive. Tara’s house. Steep driveway with cars parked at various spots along the way. All the way up to the top where I found a spot in front of a Tesla.
Thirty minutes before I had almost chosen not to go. Coming home in the dark. General inertia. A long standing aversion to parties. But this was Passover. At Tara’s. I’d be happy once I got there.
So I went to the liquor store, picked up a bottle of mid-range red wine and drove past Evergreen Meadows and past Evergreen Funeral Home where both Jon and Kate lay after death, down curvy N. Turkey Creek Road to the Mountains and roads leading to her house.
And I was happy to be there. Until we sat down to the table. Then the noise level, the angle of the voices, the general clash and clamor of a meal with eighteen other people. I began to recede. Off in my own quiet room of acoustical challenge. Nodding and smiling. Trying to keep up. Too often failing.
Now having to rethink even Passover, at least in people’s homes. Where it means the most. Where my friends want me. Where I want to be. The congregational Passover has round tables, more distance among the guests. Kate and I usually attended. I may need to go to it just so I can hear.
Talked to my son and Seoah on Friday night. Murdoch’s getting crate training. Seoah’s running, happy. We talked about Kate, her death, her wonderful life.
My son and I discussed details for the Jang family visit this summer. Money is, as you can imagine, an issue. 5 adults and two children. Seoah’s Mom and Dad, her brother, her sister and her two kids. Airfare, lodging, transportation. Food. That’s what we’re working out now. Need to make some decisions soon because Air BnB’s begin to fill up for the summer in this time frame.
Will be the trip of a lifetime for the Jang’s. The U.S. The Rocky Mountains. Deepening connections with my son’s side of the family. Myself, Ruth, Gabe.
Wanted to capture this while fresh. Drove into Leetsdale Ave near Cherry Creek in Denver. Right at the boundary of the largest Jewish community in Colorado. But I wasn’t there for religious reasons, I needed an MRI of my lumbar spine and Open-Sided MRI has its clinic there.
After time in an iron lung, which I do not remember, my body will not let my head be confined. At all. Ever. Traditional MRI’s therefore are out. Long metal tube, human insert. Face inches from the tube’s top. Nope.
So. Open-Sided. Though. When the sled slid under the projection of the magnetic circle, I looked up, found metal inches from my face. “I can’t do this.”
Chris pulled me back out. How about if you look to the side. I tilted my head to the left and there an opening appeared. But I was already scared. “I’m not sure.”
“I’ll get Audra and she can sit with you.”
A measure of serendipity. I’d talked to Audra on the phone Monday and discovered she had moved to Conifer last October. She had a quick wit and kindness in her voice. We agreed to swap stories of best spots to eat when I got there. A charming woman in her late 30’s, early 40’s I found her delightful at check-in, too.
Audra came in and held my hand for the entire 20 minutes of the exam. At first, still nervous, I looked her in the eyes and she pressed her thumb against my left hand which she held in her right.
After a while the odd noises of the MRI, which sounded like House music, and her comfort helped me relax. I closed my eyes.
A long twenty minutes. But, when it was done, I collected my disc with the scan on it, went out to the front desk and thanked Audra, back at her computer, again. She put my chai necklace back on.
I thought, decided to go ahead. “My wife died four years ago. That was the longest I’ve been touched since then. Regardless of the help I needed with the MRI, I wanted to say thanks for that, too.”
Monday gratefuls: Water. Lodgepole Bark, red in Great Sol’s early light. Aspen and their photosynthetic bark. Forlorn Grass, desiccated and brown as the Snow melts. Maxwell Creek. Cub. Blue. North Turkey. Bear. Kate’s. This wide world. All of it. Everyone in it. Daniel Silva. CJ Box. Authors. Poets. Painters. Musicians. Artists.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Working out
Week Kavannah: Ratzon. Will, desire, pleasure.
One brief shining: Realized that Ancientrails resembles my father’s column, Smalltown, USA, in that it focuses on daily life, his with a larger ambit, mine more personal, yet both with an occasional digression into the political or the humorous, printer’s ink and hot lead in both our veins.
Dog journal: Another realization. A different female has me back at a long trained habit, putting down the toilet seat. Kate of course insisted as do women in most homes here. This time though putting down the toilet seat prevents Shadow from drinking out of the magic fountain.
Her ears stand forward. She plays all morning with toys she never puts back after taking them out. Maybe I can train her to do that? Shadow’s all puppy now. Secure in her home, her routines.
Once more. Happy I took the risk.
Inner life: Been down, thinking about death with every tweak and pain. Whether all this self care makes any sense. Remembering Judy and Kate both saying, enough.
Then. Come on, dude. Shadow. Friends. Family. The Mountains. Books to read. Movies to watch. Places to go. Ruth and Gabe’s still young lives. My son and Seoah.
Further. Worked out. Mood instantly better. Wonder why I resist this consistent mood lifter. One which has the added benefit of improving my overall health? A puzzle.
Gonna wrestle with this one. All the way until it gives me my Hebrew name, Israel.
In part? I’ve been too serious about my life. Always wanting, maybe faux-needing, to think I have something important, significant to do.
Joy is a religious obligation in Judaism. For good reason. This life, the one freely given, is not meant to be a trudge, a never ending journey of obligation and expectation. It’s meant to be filled with good food, good friends, family. Rich experience. This whole world, this creation, a gift so precious and wonderful. Life itself, a miracle of evolution. Amazing.
Think I’ll back off myself. Lighten up.
Just a moment: This morning I’m a happier guy. Peg it to my workout yesterday afternoon and my decision to take a staycation. Read 75% of Daniel Silva’s 16th Gabriel Allon novel, The Black Widow. Plan to read more today.
Subscribed to the Criterion Channel. Plan to start watching movies from it on a regular basis. Watching ghosts, as Paul’s mother described watching classic movies. There’s a cinephile buried in me, but not too deep.
I’m ready for a new pattern to emerge. Will be watching for it as I paint, maybe write a little more. No hurry. Hunting for paths to joy.
Sunday gratefuls: Shadow, the muster dog. Eating. Above ground and taking nourishment. March. April. Spring, on its way, but not yet. Our Aquifer. Cracked granite. Mountains. Altitude. Climbing up to joy.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Muster Dogs
Week Kavannah: Ratzon. Will, desire.
One brief shining: This Shadow who shares my home and my life and my heart would be a muster dog in Australia, a Dog responsible for keeping mobs of Cattle together and moving toward corrals, slinking down low, nipping at hooves, barking as a language between two species, while Shadow and I must find jobs without mustering to keep her keen mind alert.
Dog journal: Muster Dogs have their own television show. In Queensland, the same state as Mary’s Brisbane, but much further north, close to New Guinea, muster Dogs replace the familiar herding work of the cowboy out here in the U.S. West. Shadow comes from this line of working Dogs.
Which means I have to find jobs for her. Training is a job and so is following the training. I imagine we have much more in our future life together.
Might get my buddy Vince to build some agility course apparatus, too. We’ll see.
I am already teaching her words. Water. Food. Outside. Toy. Not commands, communication. She may be able to develop a large vocabulary.
I’ve probably been inside too long. Might be cabin fever gnawing at my sense of ease. Buddy Mark Odegard takes care of cabin fever. Mexico. Hawai’i. Returns refreshed, ready to worry the inner bark of the Mulberry Tree into a fibrous paper.
How, I wonder, could I take a staycation, achieve some of those results. Spend all week reading fiction, going out to eat, taking drives in the Mountains. Maybe up to the loft to paint, do sumi-e? Write poetry. Quit thinking about medicine, disease, discomfort for a full week. Sounds sorta nice doesn’t it? Might do it this week. If it works well, maybe a fortnight.
Shift things up.
Just a moment: Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts. Trump Thinks He Can Win a War Against the Courts. He’s Deluded. Migrants Deported to Panama Ask: ‘Where Am I Going to Go?’ How DOGE is making government almost comically inefficient. Autocrats worldwide rolling back rights and rule of law — and citing Trump’s example. New Trump memo seen as threat to lawyers, attempt to scare off lawsuits. Putin commissioned a ‘beautiful portrait’ of Trump, U.S. envoy says.
Headlines in today’s New York Times and Washington Post. One day’s worth. The takeaway for me? Puzzlement. Frustration. Anger. Sadness.
How about the U.S. making the world safe for autocrats? Is that a rallying cry you can get behind? Me neither.
Or a President who has convinced Congress to put itself in handcuffs now taking on the Judiciary. A situation beyond the American experience.
Reminds me of a favorite kid’s game: King of the Hill. Fight your way to the top. Keep the other kids off. Declare yourself King.
Monday gratefuls: Shadow and me. Cool nights. Good sleeping. Figuring out Shadow. Amy. Annie. Luna. Leo. Gracie. St. Patrick’s Day. Taxes. 529. Cousin Donald. Democrats, wherever they (we) are. A world changing. My son and his theologizing. Seoah.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Granite Mountain Hotshots
Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.
One brief shining: We were all together, Maine to Shadow Mountain, spots around the Twin Cities, as we have been for several years on Sunday morning, talking about sleep, yes, but really seeing each other, nodding to the gods the neshama the imago dei in each of us linking arms again as we walk each other home.
Dog journal: My instincts about dogs came alive in the struggle over Shadow and coming inside. I realized what needed to happen.
When she came to the door, I opened it. When she then ran away, I closed it. We did this many, many times on Saturday. Many times. Now when she scratches on the glass, I open the door, sit down, and she comes in! Hallelujah. A chorus from Leonard Cohen in his raspy voice as background music.
Shadow and I crossed a bridge on Saturday, from puppy enigma to young dog companion. My confidence level in our relationship solidified. And hers with me. I can see it. We see each other now.
What a journey. 100% worth it. We needed each other and, thanks to Ginny and Janice and Heather and the Granby Shelter folks, we found each other. A journey only just begun. More doggy tails to come.
Have found a meal service I like. Cookunity. Not cheap, but not expensive when balanced against eating out. Lots of meal selections, easy to heat up, and all the ones I’ve eaten, six as of last night’s Chicken Schnitzel with Mustard mashed Potatoes, tasty.
I find the four meal plan works well for me. The meals arrive fresh and their use by dates make ordering a week’s worth problematic.
Breakfast I manage well. Lunch, too. The evening meal though I’ll often skip because I’m tired or at least too tired to go through the whole rigamarole of cooking and cleaning up. Still, I need the proteins and veggies. Four nights covered. All right.
Also measure the cost against having a light housekeeper come in twice a week to cook a couple of meals, tidy up, do laundry, unload the dishwasher. Probably a hundred to hundred and fifty bucks a week. This notion driven for the most part by the cooked meals.
Taking care of myself while living alone is not always easy. Maintaining chez Shadow Mountain, seeing I eat well, workout. I can do it, have been doing it, but things that ease the way are always welcome.
Fortunate to have enough money. Kate, always Kate. Still caring for me four years after dying. What a woman.
Just a moment: I liked the image that came to me of my age peers as the faded flowers of the Baby Bloom, seedheads ready, needing to disperse our seeds so that a new generation of just and compassionate Americans rise up when Spring finally comes for our benighted nation. Help me make this happen?
Tuesday gratefuls: Luke. Leo. Shadow. The flying hearing aid. Cool nights. Great Sol. The hard time in the Mountains. Little food, hidden under Snow. Predators hungry. Hibernators beginning to move around in their slumber. Temperatures careening between Winter and Spring. Snow sliding off the solar panels. Sit. Down.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Finding my hearing aid
Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.
One brief shining: Puppy paws and puppy claws plus puppy bouncy energy hooked my hearing aid, sent it in off on a long flight, hunting for it, needing it even more than my phone, where could it be oh god what if it’s gone what if she smelled the ear wax and ate it, lost things get found by a search pattern, ok here, there, wait, underneath the dumbbell? That’s it! Whew.
Kate. Yes. Always Kate. My ninja weeder. Quilter. Clothes maker. Physician. Traveler. Keen intellect. But most of all, my sweet Kate. The woman of possibility and promise. Music lover. Grandmother. Stepmother, but really second mother to my son. One who would not quit. Dead next month for four years.
Yet also here. In her quilts. In the Turtles and the small troll with the Norwegian flag. In the bronze Horse statue from Camp Holloway. In the art from our time in Mexico City, Paris, Hawai’i. In her Judaica which I use. Most of all in my memory, nestled in with all I most cherish, never to leave.
Thirty-five years from our marriage in St. Paul’s Landmark Center. Thirty-five years from our wonderful honeymoon following Spring from Rome to Venice, Paris to London, London to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Inverness. The first of many journeys we made together.
Circumnavigating Latin America. Korea and Singapore. Greece. The Greek Islands. Kusadasi and Ephesus. Istanbul. Maui many times. The Big Island and Kauai. NYC. New Orleans. Mexico City. Oaxaca. Merida.
The journey we made from St. Paul to Andover. The Gardens. The Dogs. The Bees. The Orchard. Then on to Shadow Mountain. The Mule Deer. Black Mountain. Congregation Beth Evergreen. Ruth and Gabe. Sadly, Jon.
Her own last journey. In and out of emergency rooms, hospital beds, surgery suites. A gradual, but inexorable decline. Yet always working the NYT crossword each morning. Always engaged with the politics of the day. Always engaged with me. Precious time together.
Now in the four years since she crossed the vale between life and death still vital and present in my heart.
Sunday gratefuls: DST. Ha. Shadow and her toys. Stubbornness. Seoah and her study of English. Joanne. Cool nights. Talmud Torah. Sefaria. Jamie. Luke and Leo. Computer help. Cookunity, Blackened Shrimp and Creamy Grits. Ways of eating. Regret. Remorse. Poets. Wendell Berry. Regenerative agriculture. The Andover years. Kate, always Kate.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sunseen
Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.
One brief shining: Shadow moves her neck in the familiar prey killing way, holding tight and shaking hard, again, again, as she burrows her way into her brand new bed, filling the area around her with soft fluffs of white filler and small bits of cutup rubber foam. Another foe vanquished.
Joanne called last night, after Havdalah, to thank me for her Shabbos meal, bean and vegetable and chicken soup. Kind of her. We talked about compost Worms, ninja weeders, and the joys of Mountain living.
I’m up early, earlier than I want due to the imperial clock and its demands on my time. The air-fryer clock and the turtle clock have now returned to the correct time. You might have one or two such clocks. Most make the transition thanks to computer based chronoworkings. Some don’t. A couple I never change so they return to instant utility on these great wakin’ up mornings once a year.
Most of you know my feelings on this matter so I won’t bore you.
How can I keep from yawning?
My practice for regret and remorse goes like this. Watch through the day for actions I regret, omissions of action, too. Name them and acknowledge the regret. Example: yesterday I didn’t work out. I regret that choice. What comes next? Remorse. OK. If I don’t want to repeat that regret, what could I do? I chose lean into netzach, perseverance and grit. When I consider working out today, I will raise netzach up, too. A reminder.
My practice for yirah. Sit quietly. Close my eyes. Breathe slowly. Pay attention to the sounds. Shadow chewing on her toy. The mini-split fan. A car passing on Black Mountain Drive. Open my eyes. See Shadow move toward her food. Begin to eat. Lodgepoles in the back with Snow piled up around their Trunks. The Oriental carpets. My hands curved over the keyboard.
Acknowledge the wonder, the intricate dance that is my immediate world.
Just a moment: Ancient Brothers today on end of life planning. Not a fun topic, but an important one. Why? Because good end of life planning frees up life right now. No worries about who’s responsible for what. What will happen as health deteriorates.
Surprised me by being both a pragmatic prod to each of us and a way of joining hands as we walk this final ancientrail together. We are not alone.
How many of us have a context where we can discuss a topic like this in a sober, respectful fashion? Not many, I image. Gratitude to Bill, Tom, and Paul for sharing their work to date.
The coming Snow. Leaving her Snow shoes on. Ruby will still get her 60,000 mile service with all fluids replaced. Means I will sit. Wait. Not easy, but necessary. Keep Ruby on the road. She’s already been built. I’ve gotten at least 250,000 miles on the Toyota’s I’ve driven. Probably my last car. Now seven years old.
On a more upbeat note. I watched, at Tom’s suggestion, Common Ground. A documentary on Prime Video. I felt tears well up often at the savage rending of our most important resource: top soil.
