Category Archives: Shadow Mountain

Plants, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors, Writing

Pinus Contarta

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Monday gratefuls: Good night’s sleep. Bringing together past and present. Knuckling down for the next chapter of my story. Excitement. Starting with and staying focused on Trees. Coastal Redwoods. Sequoias. Bristlecone Pines. Lodgepoles and Aspens. Slipping out from under the pale of grief and self-doubt. Teshuvah for tikkun.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Trees

One brief shining: Each morning my Lodgepole Companion stands tall, Branches thrust out to the east awaiting food from Great Sol, the light bringer, gentle morning winds move its Branches, in heavier winds the whole Tree sways, taking and releasing energy, its male Flowers now standing up at the ends of its Branches, readying themselves to disperse yellow Pollen with the wind, a yellow dust that will coat our driveways and make my nose itch all while impregnating the Lodgepole’s female flowers.

 

Early June. Tree sex season. When, if this season is like the others, I will have to close up my house to keep out Lodgepole pollen. It coats every surface in its broadcast of Tree passion. It only has to hit the female flowers-which grow on the same tree as the male flowers-but evolution has taught Pinus contartathat its survival depends on a blanket of pollen among its near neighbors. No female flower should go unfulfilled.

It’s easy for those of us suffer from pollen allergies to blame Pinus contarta for our sneezes. Its pollen comes the same time as many pollens from Grasses. But its grains are too large to bother humans.

This is also the time the Elk Bulls come to my yard for Dandelion dining. I’ve had Mule Deer Does, yearlings, over the past couple of weeks. Yesterday evening a yearling came up to my lower level door and looked in at me. Then turned her head and went back to the Grass and Dandelions.

Early June is also the time, now five years ago in 2019, that I began my 35 sessions of radiation. Started on June 6th, the first day the three Elk Bulls came. One or two of them have come each year since. Identifiable by the Bull with only one rack. They grew from young Bulls to full sized Bulls ready to have their own harems of Cows.

Lodgepole pollen, Elk Bulls, and radiation. Memories of summers past and present.

 

Writing, as always, massages my mind, makes it relax, then throw off sparks. Today the sparks led me to an idea, a perhaps I will notion. A focus on Colorado Trees. Visiting Forests. Learning the ways of Mountains and Trees, their mutual dance. Fits well with another spark I had yesterday. Tree mythology. Tree fairy tales. Trees in Kabbalah and in other mystical traditions.

The gardener in me. The lover of mythology and fairy tales. Of Ovid. Of religious insights. The Mountain dweller. The Hermit.

 

Just a moment: Who woulda thought? A Jewish female President. In Mexico. Oh so Catholic Mexico. Oh so machismo saturated Mexico. Yet another country teaching us what can be if we turn away from the yellow fascist pollen spread byPolitico contarta

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Jefferson County, Mountains, Park County, Shadow Mountain, Travel

Desiderata Days. Mountain Nights.

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Desiderata days. Cool, good sleeping nights. Colorado. Guanella Pass. That jerky store. The Cutthroat Cafe. Happy Camper. The Waterfall. Geneva Creek. The Continental Divide. The Shaggy Sheep. Jefferson Lake. Ruby and her new shoes. Taking a day. Letting it just be. Mountains. Forests. Streams and Creeks. Bridges and trails: The Abyss and Burning Bear Creek Trails. Square Top Mountain. Mt. Blue Sky. Mt. Rosalie. Square Top Mt.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Rocky Mountains, my home

One brief shining: Great Sol, my inner ohr, has begun to peek over Mt. Grief and Mt. Inertia, encouraged by the trip to San Francisco where we/I/us let go of the Lilliputian ropes with which we’d bound ourself to one place, Shadow Mountain, and to one journey, becoming a Jew, and to the dark arts with which death enthralls our psyche, let go of them and got out, on the train, let go of them and went on a trip.

 

Yesterday. Ah. Well.

At last. After too many years. Too much thinking and sitting. Yes. I did it. I went on a short but profound adventure, never leaving the familiar confines of Jefferson and Park Counties. Here’s how it went. With pictures.

Before. A while ago. I named Tuesdays as desiderata days. Go anywhere days. Let the day unfold. Rather than directing it: Write now. Eat now. Study Torah and bar mitzvah portions now. Sleep now. Watch TV now. Workout now. Do work-a-day things to manage my life. Pay bills. Write e-mails. Contact my docs. No. Not on a Tuesday. On Tuesdays I would set aside all that, get in Ruby and head out.

Problem was. I never did it. Oh, I went on a few hikes last year. But not on Tuesdays. Just never let myself experience the freedom I put in my calendar. I even have the Tuesdays named on my Google Calendar: Desiderata Days.

Until. Talked with Tom. The Florida Panhandle has a different understanding of Mountain than we do here. They even put up this mural and named a road and businesses after Blue Mountain:

64 feet. The highest point on the Gulf of Mexico. Photo Credit: Tom Crane, retired.

After I finished talking to Tom the day could have devolved into a usual Tuesday. But it didn’t. I put on my jeans, my LL Bean vest, got my car fob and tiny wallet, a hat, got in Ruby, and left the house. First to King Sooper for the ATM. Cash for the Happy Camper. On to 285 headed south and west toward Pine, then Bailey.

Bought some edibles. Still can’t believe this is legal. Always feel a bit furtive.

Down Crow Hill and it’s 7% grade into Bailey and the Cutthroat Cafe. Passed the Smiling Pig Saloon and Smokehouse where I hope to take Tom, Irv, and Paul in a couple of weeks. Breakfast outside. Oatmeal and Italian sausage. Coffee, sourdough toast. Over for a look at the Sasquatch Outpost. They’re all in on Sasquatch tourist items. From t-shirts to action figures, signs and blankets. Plus footprints.

Faced a decision. Go home or go to Guanella Pass? A desiderata day. Guanella Pass. On Highway 285 through the Platte River Valley, past Shawnee, the Orvis ranch and fly fishing destination, Villa Marie, the Shaggy Sheep, and onto tiny Grant. Turn right.

The Continental Divide
Upper Geneva Creek
Turned Around here

I only drove part way up the 11,700 foot Pass which leads to the old mining town of Georgetown, also accessible from I-70. I had gone on a whim with no water bottles or camelpak. No sunscreen. Plus, it rained much of the time. No raingear. No such thing as bad weather only inadequate gear.

On the way back down I stopped at the jerky place I’ve driven past many times. The owner, a luxuriantly white bearded old man with an oxygen canula, said, “It’s a tiny shop. Just look.” He pointed to the signs above the racks: Salmon jerky, Beef jerky, Alligator jerky, Buffalo, Elk, local beef. I paid with cash and when I did he pointed to a sign, no tax with cash. Cheating the taxman, I imagine. Especially since above this sign was a $1,000 bill with a head shot of our criminal ex-president. The Mountains.

Back home I rested. Thinking. Yep, about a half a day’s energy. That’s my limit these days. Most important. I smiled. Desiderata days. After the bar mitzvah, a desiderata week. Off to Taos.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Gettin’ Real

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Great Sol yet again. All the Water falling down the Mountain toward Bear Creek. Reconstructionist Judaism. Irv and the Ancient Brothers. Taxes. Tom and his test. Ruth and her gift. Domo. I-70, experiencing Crash Week. David. Kristie. Learning Hebrew. Learning the Morning Service. Pushing on through to the other side. New tires Thursday.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Driving in the Mountains

One brief shining: Velveteen Rabbiting so many things: that Stickley couch with naps, the Stickley chair with books of all sorts, the living room with its Garden Path paint and Jerry’s painting, Joseph’s self-portrait, Ruby with every nick and scrape, Judaism with each Hebrew word and phrase I learn, Great Sol and my driveway, my lev each time I write a post or go see a friend, becoming, changing participating in the One.

 

“God is that aspect of reality which elicits from us the best that is in us and enables us to bear the worst that can befall us.” Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, Reconstructionist Prayerbook

 

Shadow Mountain. Rubbing it each time I drive up and down the hill, each time I get up in the Morning, say the Shema, touch the mezzuzah, cook a meal, read a book, see it whole from the Safeway parking lot. It is the literal foundation of my world. Its rocky, knobby forehead posed toward the West, its long flank running from my house all the way downhill to Hwy. 73, and then, too, toward the north and the Valley of Cub and Blue Creeks. Its broken Rock Aquifer holds Rain and Snow for the Lodgepoles, the Aspens, and my shower, dishwasher, toilets and sinks, and boiler. Shadow Mountain also lifts me up to 8,800 feet above sea level. Making Oxygen less available. How big it really is I do not know for it shades into Black and Conifer Mountains. Mountains, at least in the Front Range, do not live isolated lives, rather they brush against each others’ Valleys, Meadows and often join together below the surface, stand together in runs of Peaks and Valleys. Yes. It is Shadow Mountain Home.

Kate’s Creek and Valley: Also shabby from an abundance of love. Where I first dispersed some of Kate’s ashes, where I later distributed them all. A spot I’ve used for hiking for several years in all seasons. I know where the Strawberries and Raspberries and Wild Roses grow. Kate’s Creek Waters its banks. A White Pine grows straight and tall. Perhaps a ship’s mast in another century.

Congregation Beth Evergreen. Rubbing shoulders. Literally. Mussar. Evening Services. Outdoor performances. B’nei Mitzvahs. Classes of all sorts. So many years with Kate. She rubbed it, too. And is part of what has become real, alive for me there. Breakfasts and lunches.

The loft. Where I workout. Where I paint, store my books, most of them, read and used to write. Everyday for so many years until Kep’s illness. A place made real.

What, I wonder, are you Velveteen Rabbiting right now?

Art and Culture, Asia, Mountains, Music, Myth and Story, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, Travel

Cabin Fever Trip

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Tuesday gratefuls: Great Sol. Brightening our day. Counting the Omer. Begins tonight. Traveling readiness day. Delayed, but happening today. Diane’s great work on setting up an itinerary. Museums, as Ode says, temples of creativity. The Artist’s Way. My Jewish immersion. The Three Body Problem trilogy. Fall Out on Prime Video. High quality television. Kindle.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Artists-painters, writers, playwrights, musicians, poets, actors, sculptors, architects, composers

One brief shining: With awakening I’m in a new life, a multiverse reality based on the day before yet new as the dew on a spring ephemeral, in that day my many breaths each constitute life breathed out and back in, new lives each breath, how can I keep from singing?

 

Feeling the welcoming breath of a travel day exhaling from the end of the week toward me. Inspiring my activities today. Finalize packing. Stop mail. Get a pedicure. Collect myself for a journey.

This is mostly a cabin fever trip. A way of escaping a place I love because the snow and the cold stayed a bit too long. And for most folks I’ve talked to. A way to refresh the joys of home by vacating its presence for a bit. Enjoy the graces and beauties of San Francisco, see Diane. Live in a hotel for 7 nights, 2 nights in a sleeping car there and back. Write. Read. See the Rockies, the intermountain West, the Sierra Nevadas, canyons and deserts.

I’ve missed seeing good art on a regular basis. I’ve not found the Denver art scene at all comparable to the Twin Cities and I’ve let that attitude, plus the drive, keep me from seeing much at all. That’s on me. This trip will allow me to visit at least three of the country’s great collections: The Legion of Honor, the De Young, and the Asian Art museum. I plan to see them slowly. Taking as much time as I need. Reenter the world of Zhou and Han, Song and Tang, Picasso and Hokusai, Rodin and Giacometti.

Yes. You could say of me. Religion, politics, and art. The subjective, the debatable, the aesthetic, the aspects of culture not manageable by STEM. Sure I like a good scientific discovery as much as the next nerd, but to examine an ancient text for the message it carries down the millennia to this day, to stand in the street and face down an oppressive economy, to join the conversation of those for whom shape, color, and language create whole worlds and dizzying perspectives, yes. That’s my journey.

That and one other thing. The wild spots outside my door, up the flank of Black Mountain. Here on Shadow Mountain I can integrate the seeker, the advocate, and the artist with the world around me. My Lodgepole Companion and I see each other each morning. I said hello yesterday to those Mule Deer Does munching grass along Black Mountain Drive. Within them lie the same message as the Torah portion I will read on June 12th, the same spirit of over against oppressive structures, and an equivalent beauty to the best of Monet.

 

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Apres la psilocybine

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Up early. Cleaning out the freezer. Two weeks from today, Amtrak. Shadow Mountain Home. Rebecca. Wild Alaskan. Black Mountain Drive. Brook Forest Drive. Shadow Mountain Drive. How I get down the Hill. Kate’s yahrzeit approaching. Eight Track Day. My transistor radio of long ago. Ruby. Will need summer shoes.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The generator

One brief shining: Could be the morning rises with a hint of darkness reluctant to let go, with a slow and lazy illumination spilling like molasses first over the base of Shadow Mountain, then up up up defying gravity, turning on the lights as it goes, until Black Mountain, my Lodgepole companion reappear, and another Colorado blue Sky day has begun.

 

Gotta leave this writing a bit early, but will return. Biweekly trash day and I’m clearing out my freezer, getting ready for Spring and for a less hoarding way of using the freezers -21 degree temperature. Trash has to be out by 7 am in case the routes have changed. Mostly ready but the freezer clean out had to wait until just before I move the clunky plastic bins. Bears. As I long I put the freezer contents out still frozen, their scent should not become a problem. Bears have just begun to wake up and they’re hungry. Long, long nap.

Life is different in the Mountains. In any rural area with Forests and Wild Neighbors. The back and forth between humans and their environment never disappears in a cloud of bus exhaust or the twinkling of store lights. Here we have to travel within the Wild Neighbors’ domain. They are not relegated to alleys and basements, parks and open spaces by streets and acres of buildings, apartments and factories and businesses, hospitals and schools. We two-leggeds are the interlopers here. Exactly. Interloping. Loping along in our metal noisy contraptions.

Careful now. Weeks old Mule Deer and Elk and Moose wandering the Arapaho National Forest. Fox Kits and baby Porcupines, Marmots, Albert and Red Squirrels all waking up to their first Mountain spring. We must lope with attentiveness. With care. Bear Cubs. Mountain Lion Kits.

Not green here. Not yet. Still plenty of Snow in the back. On the ski runs of Black Mountain. In the shaded parts of the National Forest. Occasional scents of thawing Soil. The hurried babble of Mountain Streams draining rocky heights. (Gone for about 15 minutes. Finished. Freezer clear. Trash bins rattled out to the driveway’s edge. Waiting for the truck.)

 

Just a moment: Apres la psilocybine. Surrender. Not resignation. Not aimlessness. Definitely not submission. Perhaps openness. Acceptance. Wu wei. That moment while watching the Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphs scroll across the ceiling of Heidi’s therapy office. That moment when in response to an inner doubt. I’m not using this trip well. I’m having too much fun. Very Calvinist inner dialogue. That moment when I wondered what I needed now. Up came the word surrender.

And it lodged in my consciousness. Where, to this day, it filters moments and conversations. Finding evidence. That woman I know with stage 4 breast cancer. Who said cancer had clarified life. Distilled it to its essence. She asked me if I’d had the same experience. Not quite. But that crisp December morning on Crooked Top Mountain. Yes. Clarity.

All of us over 75 are in stage 4 life. We’re terminal and we know it. Clap your hands. Life did not end abruptly for us. As it did for my mom, for example. No. We have the chance to pass through the last of the gates, the one that opens to eternity, knowing. If we surrender ourselves. Accept death for what it is. A final mystery. One that hides its truth even now.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

Thin Air

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Tuesday gratefuls: Diane and her town. Tom and the eclipse. A Mountain morning slowly appears. Black Mountain and my Lodgepole companion emerge from the dark. Ashley. Good doctoring. The end of the power outage. Internet outage. Making plans for San Francisco. Judaism and paganism. A good fit. Talmud Torah. Reading. More and more. Spring.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Power

One brief shining: Walking out the door my hand reaches up, touches the mezuzah, a jolt of tradition turns the threshold into a sacred place, the act of leaving home a pilgrimage no matter I’m going to the grocery store, to get a haircut, to fill the car up with gas, and while I travel those pilgrimage holidays might come to mind, especially Pesach since it’s less than two weeks away making me wonder what needs liberation in my life, what needs to rise up and leave the soul’s Egypt, then I put the credit card in the reader and buy gas.

 

Frustrating. Having no internet. I could get and make phone calls, texts, but that was it. Verizon is its own network. I could see a Nextdoor post but not access it. My county, Jefferson, had the highest Wind gusts in the state at 96 mph. Downed Trees took out power lines and internet service. Could have been bad. Or, worse. A downed Tree hits a power line, sparks. Then, Fire driven by the Wind.

Due to having no internet I was not really sure what was going on. I imagined it was downed power lines, but had no way to know for sure other than calling my electricity utility, C.O.R.E. Would have been on hold so. Pass.

Kohler generator kicked in when the power went out. It’s a whole house generator, but due to altitude its efficiency is compromised. So my mini-splits did not work. Not a big deal in April. I did eventually turn on the hot water heat for the walkout level, but only for half a day. The stove, an induction stove, was out, too. But the air fryer and other appliances worked.

It’s been a Mountain time of late with the three and a half feet of Snow followed by high Winds and power outages. Both isolating, both not unusual. Just uncommon. Spring in the Mountains.

Today the mini-splits distribute heat gathered from the Air outside. The stove works again. Shadow Mountain Home has returned to its normative state. Good to have reminders of how fortunate we are.

 

Just a moment: How Thin Air and Summer Snow Can Heal the Soul. NYT, April 8. Found this title yesterday with a beautiful shot of Mt. Whitney luminous in Great Sol’s early morning light. Haven’t read the article yet, but the title. Well. Living at 8,800 feet. Snow visible on certain Mountain peaks throughout most of the Summer. Hmm. Could have been the tagline for the days and months and now almost three years since Kate died.

April 12th. She’s gone. Thirty-one years of marriage dissolved not by a court, but by a last breath. Ooff. Mourning lasted a month or so. Grief still has its moments. As Joanne and I acknowledged last week, often when we see a loving relationship on TV or IRL. Missing that with Kate. Or, in her case, Albert. And, also, missing it in our lives right now. Ooff, again.

Yet. The thin air here. The vestiges of Winter serving as a reminder of grief’s long visit. The people I love here. The Wild Neighbors. The seasons changing. Life continues. So does death.

Kate, always Kate. Of blessed memory.

Shadow Mountain, Travel, Weather +Climate

Out. And, all aboard!

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April 7, 2024

 

Spring and the last crescent of the Purim Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Generator. High winds. Lodgepole companion ok. Calm now. Travel plans in place. Art and San Francisco. Diane and her town. Internet down. Starlink available but no way to access it. Great Sol illuminating Black Mountain. A certain immediacy blocked. Another immediacy heightened.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Generator

One brief shining: Charging, charging, the docking station for my medical guardian said, going off and on twice, the oxygen concentrator quit, then turned back on, twice, I heard the rumble of the generator’s engine through my wall, those winds that chilled the house yesterday and last night stopped the free flow of electricity from the grid and the internet connection made through Centurylink, glad to have the Kohler generator doing its emergency service.

 

Rare. The DSL is down. So are my mini-splits. If it was colder, I’d turn on the gas heat. Not sure why the mini-splits are down but so are other electrical services on the west side of the house. Irony: the Starlink installation would bypass this problem, but I can’t access it without the internet.

Change of weather systems can be brutal up here, bringing high winds that break electrical transmission lines and sometimes the telephone lines as well. Apparently what happened last night.

Might make me reconsider Starlink. If you recall, I dropped it right after I had it installed because of Elon Musk’s anti-semitism. Still, if it’s the only way to have reliable internet…

 

An odd moment when I realized the Centurylink connection was down. How could I host the Ancient Brothers? I can’t. What’s going on in the world? No NYT or WP. Are others up here also without power? Can’t check Nextdoor Neighbor. It’s on the internet. Felt as if a sensory organ had gone quiet.

There is an apparent immediacy to the internet, one we rely on, one I rely on.

Yet it is only apparent. It is instead highly mediated, requiring electricity, servers, available transmission modalities. Even Zoom or Skype, the video phone calls of Dick Tracy’s wristwatch, take place in cyberspace with no skin in the game.

 

Odd. And telling. I can walk outside as I did a moment ago to get the mail. The Lodgepoles and the Aspen. The Granite and Gneiss. Right there. Great Sol warms me without need of electrical wires or gas piping. I move through space. While in the cyberworld no matter how it might appear we’re always seeing a two-dimensional screen. Even virtual reality doesn’t change that. The only movement for me is fingers on a keyboard or my hand on a computer mouse.

 

Just a moment: On April 24th I board Amtrak, find my roomette and settle in for a 34 hour overnight journey to San Francisco. There I’ll settle in to the Chancellor, a boutique hotel on Union Square.

Diane has a comedy night and a trip to Muir Woods planned. We’ll also avail ourselves of a fine restaurant or two. She also has memberships in the Asian Art Museum and two others.

My main intention, my kavanah, for this trip is vacating Shadow Mountain for a bit. After that. Spend time with Diane. Spend time with art, something I feel starved for. See some sights. Test my back.

Bon Voyage to me!

 

 

 

 

Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Sport, The West, Travel, US History, Weather +Climate

No Loyalty

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: My Lodgepole companion, Needles again covered with Snow. A cold Mountain morning. Remembering Andover (see header image). Being where you are. Wendel Berry. Regenerative Farming. Loving the place. Knowing the place. Where the Mule Deer come. Where the Creek blasts down the Mountain in Spring. Where the Dogwood blooms. Where Fawns and Calves move up and down the Mountains on wobbly legs.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Moisture on the Mountain and the Forest

One brief shining: You know I looked out at the Snow yesterday, falling sometimes gently, sometimes vigorously, and I thought beautiful, then when I saw the same Snow coming down on my driveway I screamed enough, no more, we’ve had plenty thank you very much, however; I did not mean it, I meant bring as much moisture as long as you can and I will be grateful.

 

Yes. Cabin fever time. That moment when what looked serene and beautiful a few short months ago now scrapes across the seasonal blackboard like bad chalk. Up here it produces a split personality. One tired of the cold, the Snow, driving on Ice, huddling up all about hygge. Wanting to run outside in a t-shirt, arms spread wide, soaking in Great Sol. The other remembering summers past when the Smokey the Bear sign pegged Extreme Fire Danger. Snow as far into April, hell, even May as you want. In fact, Snow until the Monsoons return. Please.

I’m cutting a middle ground between these two. Gonna take off for San Francisco at the end of the month. See a lot of art, maybe a Redwood or two, visit my cousin in her native habitat. Eat. Sleep. Test my back in a safe environment.

Of course. I would for sure wear Flowers in my hair if I had enough left. Gonna ride the Amtrak route between Denver and SFC. Really, Oakland, then a bus. Or, Diane. With a roomette. See the Rockies and the intermountain West without having to drive.

A way to discover if I can travel, probably back to Korea again. Maybe to Israel if this war ever ends. Perhaps this year for both.

 

Just a Moment: Caitlin Clark. Wow. 41 points. Final Four. Iowa! Once more, with feeling: Go, Hawkeyes! Iowa feels like Minnesota’s younger sister. Which would make Caitlin our niece? Always nice to see family doing well.

45. His $175 million dollar bond. His legal peril. Or, from the MAGA perspective, the persecutions not prosecutions.

Brother Mark asked if Trump won how would I be the loyal opposition?

I wouldn’t. Be loyal. Though I would be in opposition. Loyal opposition as an idea implies mutuality, a framework in which political opponents serve as testers of ideas, as citizens of a shared form of government. A form of government which all sides agree has the best interests of a nation as its true purpose.

Trump is not a politician in that sense. He is a politician though, one of the oldest kinds. A brute seeking total power. Power with which he can punish his enemies and reward his sycophants. Kings, Queen, Pharaohs, and Emperors, autocrats and dictators all are this sort of politician.

Loyalty has as its sister virtue respect. No respect for pussy grabbers, for those who provide safe harbor for white supremacists, misogynists, anti-Semites. No respect for insurrectionists, for anti-constitutionalists. No respect for frauds, for payers of hush money, for election deniers. Therefore. Q.E.D. No loyalty.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain

Wakin’ up mornin’

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Spirited Away, my biopic for the Ancient Brothers. Dawn and the longer days. Spring in an adagio, playing slowly toward its late April, early May crescendo. A short season in the Mountains. Each living thing up here, the Wild Neighbors, the Humans, all the Plant life, the Fungi and Lichen, the Soil Microbes, Streams and Rock Faces, Boulders and Talus has begun to respond, to anticipate the changing temperatures, to give birth, to run a little fuller, to find more light and the increased warmth of Great Sol each day.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: That great wakin’ up mornin’

One brief shining: What in my inner Shadow Mountain needs to have the stone rolled away from its tomb, what dark and hidden fear or regret or failure has lain too long on the stone slab of its occultation, waiting for an Easter morning of the nefesh, a push toward consciousness of that shard of my past buried because its edginess could not be accommodated in a forgotten moment of psychic pain?

 

Yes, it’s Easter morning. The most famous Jew in the world has his special day. Resurrection. What a splendid piece of mythology, one we need, have always needed. Will always need. It is not blasphemy to recognize that resurrection need not be a historical event for it to be a profound reality. Its mirroring of the vegetative cycle, of course. But also its blatant affirmation of the human journey from inner darkness to enlightenment.

What do you fear about the course your life has taken? Did you shame your parents? Push down your gifts in service of the material God, Mammon? Hurt the one you loved? Loved the one you never had the courage to talk to? Which death bed in your life shook your inner world, perhaps opened a crack into the abyss? Steal or commit fraud or murder? Sure, it could be that tenebrous.

All of these and so much more we tuck away, morticians for our own pain, placing rock after rock over the fearful and shameful. Like Jews even when we visit the grave we put yet more rocks on. Can’t let that get out. Gotta keep that crucified part of our past away from the living parts of ourselves. Because it could ruin everything. Couldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it?

That Shadow Mountain of yours, how many sites does it have? Perhaps a mausoleum? Two? The ashes of your past still preserved in small urns of repressed memory.

Here’s the Easter sunrise service promise. Humanness is glorious, all of it. Even the moments of pain and shame. I left my dreamed of college, Wabash, for a state school. Ball State. A teacher’s college. I drank myself through my early twenties. I had two marriages and a sort of third. Judy. Tina. Raeone. I went to seminary because I needed a trade, a place away from the papermill. I couldn’t bear the sight of Kate’s corpse, of Vega’s pleading look. And so much more. All put away in the mountain that is my Shadow. Yet as I have called these and many others to the light, as I have put my shoulder to the stone once rolled across their tombs, I have become more not less human.

We are not only good. We are not only the worst things we have done. We are now the result of all those moments pushing against each other, shaping and forcing our growth. All of my previous marriages prepared me for the ancientrail of intimacy I found with Kate. And ensured that I know how fortunate I was. At Ball State I majored in two disciplines, philosophy and anthropology, which had few majors. The result? A close and careful journey through two departments with full professors. Both Kate’s corpse and Vega’s pleading reminded me of the limits of my own ability. An oh so important learning about aging. And death.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Shadow Mountain

Surrender

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth and Gabe here for spring break. Blood pressure. This laptop. Ancientrails. Black Mountain and Great Sol. A Mountain morning. Herme. The Monsoons in K.L. The Desert and the white Camel Bull in Hafar. That Mule Deer Doe back again yesterday. Hunting for Grass beneath the Snow. Simple Pinto Beans. Pretty good.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grandkids

One brief shining: Soaked the Pintos for six hours, drained them, covered them with Water, added a Bay Leaf, slab bacon, and half an Onion, hit P for the power setting on the stove, brought the Water to a boil, then backed it off to 3, a gentle simmer, one hour later added Salt, Cayenne, and Paprika, waited another hour, stirring occasionally, the beans softened, chopped the bacon into bits, returned it to the Beans. Tasty.

 

Cooking more and more with Beans. Easy. Freezable. Lower on the food chain. Fire up my Zojirushi Rice cooker at the same time. Rice and beans. Filling and nutritious.

I make most of my meals, some as easy as lox and cream cheese on English muffins, some more difficult, but not much. The freezer lets me extend a batch of Beans, some Greens, even hamburger into many meals.

Rarely eat out by myself anymore. Breakfasts and lunch with friends maybe two, three times a week at most. Once in a while I’ll get a Subway or food from Fountain Barbecue or the Evergreen Market. But not often. The way life has evolved. I enjoy either reading or watching TV while I eat and both are easier at home.

 

Suppose this goes back to the bechira points question of yesterday. Am I hiding out or living comfortably? Feels like the latter. But is it?

Also relates to the broader implications of surrender. Not resignation. Not submission. More wu wei, the Taoist notion of going with the flow, not trying to control events but to discover their patterns and to move with them.

Perhaps, too, it relates to thoughts about chi, love, the sacred consciousness, becoming as the underlayment of the universe. If I am surrendering to the flow of chi in my life, to the patterns of becoming, leaning into love of self and others as my prime directive, then how I’m living is fine. That is, it matches the movement of essential energies intersecting and shaping my day to day existence.

 

You know, as I’ve been writing here, as often happens a crystallization of thought, of learning has precipitated out onto the page and in my heart. My current life of friends, family, Judaism, and a rich home life does feel right and good.

Even when I decide to stay home rather than go to an event. Those events are not the key moments. Not anymore. Probably never were. No, the key moments find me in a booth at Aspen Perks or Primos, or the Bread Lounge, or the Parkside, or Thai 202. With Ruth and Gabe, Ginny and Janice, Marilyn and Irv, Tara, Rebecca, Alan. Or on zoom with Tom, Diane, the Ancient Brothers. Or talking with my son and Seoah. Going to mussar, not the event so much as the time with the people there.

Other key moments find me painting, writing, reading, cooking by myself. This is me. Now. Walking myself, my friends, and family home.