Category Archives: Mussar

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Stretched again. By love, by injustice.

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Beltane and the Mesa View Moon

Monday gratefuls: Josh. Rebecca. Marilyn and Rabbi Jamie. Beltane. May Day. The merry, merry month of May. Cubensis. Anger at injustice. Baku Grandprix. Sergio Perez. Charles Leclerc. Mountain Streams running fast and full. My son and his wife. No furniture. Aloha to Hawai’i. Workout today. Richard Powers.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: F1

One brief, shining moment: Those F1 cars, slim and downforced, all speed and bones, threw themselves around the street circuit in Baku, two hundred miles per hour past twelfth century city walls and the eighth century Maiden Tower, marrying, at least for two hours, the ancient history of Azerbaijan with the manic movement of twenty-first century high technology.

 

Quite a day yesterday. My first dose of psilocybin in about fifty years. A microdose. Floating. Peaceful. Glad to be alive and on the Mountain. Cubensis. Capsules from Josh. Delivered by Luke. Short lived, maybe two hours. The first step toward a psychedelic senior life. Feels right.

 

The Ancient Brothers wrote letters to their future selves and their past selves. Here are mine:

At 90

Hey, old man. I mean. Wow, dude. Look at you.

What? You’re 5’ 2” now? Sorry. I know. This spine, eh? How did you live so long?

Fish and chicken. Some pork. Lotsa veggies and fruit. Exercise. Good friends. With warm hearts.

I get that. That sounds like now. You know at our age, 76.

Well. There you go. Stay on the path. It’s working.

 

At 67

Guy, I wish I could prepare you for the next eight years. But I can’t. They’re gonna be tough. Rock bottom, knock the bottle over, don’t win any prizes hard.

Love. Death. Harsh illness. Family upset. All of that until you’re the only one left standing. With cancer.

And yet. Live into them, live into it all. As you face each one, your life will change. Pivot. Deepen. Grow sadder and yet more stable, too.

I love you and that gets you through, on the path.

 

Talked with my son and his wife. Their house is bare. Only the furniture that will go into storage is left. The nomadic life of a military career. Each time I see them I love them more, as if love can expand and expand, not only filling the vessel it inhabits but enlarging the vessel, pressing it into new, better shapes, shapes brighter, more luminous than the ones that came before. May this continue. A real blessing.

 

Watched the Baku Grand Prix on F1 TV. Slowly gaining a better understanding of race strategy, how drivers adapt to different tracks, how their cars get tuned for the specific challenges of the day. These F1 drivers are unicorns like all elite athletes. Reflexes and courage. Competitive. Glad to have this diversion, a hobby, I guess.

 

Later in the day Dismantling Racism at CBE. Oh, so hard. Even deciding how to talk with each other about it. One person spoke with some force and came up with what I think is the most succinct way of understanding anti-Black racism in our country I’ve ever heard.

We Jews, he said, left Egypt, left our oppressor behind. But Blacks in the U.S. have never had an Exodus moment, they have never left their oppressor behind and their enslavement follows them down to this day. Wow.

He went on to wonder what life would have been like for the Hebrews if they had been freed from slavery, yet never left Egypt. Also an interesting, very interesting question.

Which, come to think of it, makes me wonder how many instances in world history there are of whole peoples being subjugated as slaves.

Not sure where this class is going. It’s a new model, one that tries to use the wisdom of mussar for the inner work necessary to fight our own racism. My sense is that writers of the curriculum have underestimated the learning required to understand racism, first, then mussar, second, then meld the two into something that aids the actual dismantling of this peculiar institution.

I’m in it though, all the way. Trying to merge this round of struggle against racism with the reading I’m doing about the far right. Stretching. Yet again.

 

Acting, Colorado, Cooking, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Hermitage, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Writing

The Time Has Come To Cross

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Spring and the Mesa View Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Luke. Leo. Rommertopf. Psilocybin. Younger friends. Tal. Character study class. Murphy and Pete. Kat. My son and his wife. Their furry one. Snow. Melting. A Mountain morning. Sunlight on the Lodgepoles. The Snow that stays on the north side of my house. That Mule Deer Doe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The threshold. *reposted the O’Donohue quote

One brief, shining moment: Liminal spaces, third spaces, often overlooked, undervalued, yet the Dawn and the Dusk, the doorway and the window, the death bed, the coffee shop, the neighborhood bar, churches and synagogues, neither home nor work, neither light nor dark, neither in nor out, neither life nor death, points of transformation, places where we can practice being another version of ourselves, meet people we would not otherwise know, thresholds between this life moment and the next, or between this life and what comes after.

 

I’m an old man. Been a lot of places. Experienced weirdness. I identify with the Grateful Dead’s: what a long, strange trip it’s been. Yet these last few days have left me marveling at what’s happening.

Now that I’m writing about it, I think it may have begun to crystallize when I spoke with my son last Sunday. Be spontaneous, he said. Go for it. Take the trip. We had been discussing my trip to Korea and the trip to Israel.

And, I did. I raised my hand. Yes, I’m going with you. I’ll be there in Jerusalem. Not an hour later.

Dismantling Racism class, a mussar approach came next. Mainlining my past with talk of injustice, the struggle, la lucha. Going down old pathways with new folks, from a new perspective.

A heavy workout on Monday. Another heavy one Wednesday. Where I was left shaky, feeling off. My resting heart rate actually increasing. Worried me. Made me feel vulnerable.

On Thursday I had breakfast with Alan, catching up. Then my massage and Thursday mussar. Where Rebecca and Leslie both kissed me on the head. After mussar I encountered Luke and Tal outside the synagogue. Tal told me the next acting class was going to be character studies. Sounds good to me. Ready to continue expanding.

On Friday I went to sign up at Anytime Fitness. With Dave, the 65 year old manager. Quite the talker. Where you from? Raised in Indiana. Really! Where! Alexandria. Anderson. Muncie. I know them. I was raised on the southside of Chicago. But we moved to Calumet. Ah, I said. Da region. He laughed. Right. My brother worked in the Calumet mill.

Not sure how the conversation veered to his life as a battery salesman working out of Madison, Wisconsin. His alcoholism, cocaine addiction. 25 years sober, he said. 43  years here. Instant deep connection. In the program. Lifers.

A thick, muscular young guy walked past. Clayton, Dave hollered. Clayton, meet Charles. 43  years sober. Clayton’s got 109 days. Clayton and I fist bumped.

A strange but instant fellowship, wrought by inability or unwillingness to contain appetites. Then, to wake up. See another way. And walk it. With others.

Went back home. Clicked on a zoom link. First time with the Dream group. Dreamers and dreams. The dream of of the White Tomb. Realizing the threshold had come to meet me. People on the call from Santa Fe, England, the Netherlands, Conifer, Evergreen.

Then. Later that day. In the desert of the afternoon hours. Feeling aimless. Projects around the house winding down. No Dogs or humans to care for. More hours than I needed.

Next morning. Off to Aspen Perks to have breakfast, begin my re-read of Why Liberalism Failed. Maybe see Kat. She was there. She smiled when she saw me, came over and squatted down. What  you reading? I showed her. I don’t agree with all of his arguments, but it’s a powerful read. She looked at it. Yeah, I have a Steven Hawking book like this. I put it down. Take it up. Well, I’m trying to really understand this guy’s arguments. So I’m doing something unusual. Rereading.

Ate my chorizo and scrambled eggs. Read Deneen. Got up to go. A tall man, maybe 50’s, sitting with an older man, closer to my age. Hey, I was wondering. What ya reading? I showed him the book. Gave him the two minute version. He reached over to shake my hand. Murphy. Matt Murphy. This is Pete. I want to have some time to bother you about that. What do they call ya? I told him. See you next time I come in maybe. We’ll talk.

Went over to Safeway. Picked up the Chicken, Carrots, Potatoes, Pearl Onions, Garlic for the Rommertopf Chicken. Back  home I did the prep. Soak the Rommertopf. Peel the Pearl Onions. Cut up the Potatoes. Slice and quarter an Apple. Stuff it in the Chicken. Put butter and Garlic under the skin of the breast. In the oven.

Luke came and stayed for three, four hours. Leo sniffing around. Finding things.

Can you feel the threshold moving toward me? I sure can. Definitely time. Gonna discuss a ritual with Rabbi Jamie, Tal.

 

*”At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.” John O’Donohue in his book, To Bless the Space Between Us.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Mussar, Weather +Climate, Writing

It’s beginning to look a lot like…oh, wait. It’s almost May

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Spring (ha, ha) and the Mesa View Moon

Friday gratefuls: Grif. Second generation Coloradan, 4th generation Norwegian with cousins (distant) in Minnesota. Alan and the central coast wineries. Bivouac coffee’s espresso blend. The Bread Lounge and its multi-grain sourdough. Thursday mussar. Rebecca and Leslie. Kathy, another fellow traveler on the cancer journey. Campfire grill’s truffle mac and cheese.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Yet more Snow

One brief, shining moment: This challenge of Mark’s, to write more complex sentences, ones that glitter and shine on the page, perhaps sentences that belong more in novels written by really good writers, has stretched me, made me put writing in a new key, perhaps B sharp where my voice rarely strays above C.

 

Had that massage. Grif has a long, millennial hipster beard. Dark. A slightly dour expression. Sweaty palms when we shook on meeting. Perhaps not the most relaxing first sensation. A Norwegian. No kidding. Another one. I found a Norwegian in Colorado. Uff da. We have not yet discussed lutefisk. But, soon.

He’s a decent massagiynist. (I made that up. Can you tell?) I did not leave with that loopy about to melt into the floor feeling that I have after other massages, yet my body felt looser. This was, you may recall, a gift to myself after finishing radiation.

Decided to buy a five massage package, give Grif a boost. He seemed to need it. Going to try a different massage style next time. Neuromuscular. He asked me which of several types I wanted. I had no clue. My massage experience is limited. Not a Thai massage I said.

That’s a Bangkok story. Temple Wat Pho. That’s actually redudant since Wat means Temple. The day after I ruptured my Achilles tendon during a night time trip to a 7-11-I know, so mundane-I was in pain with what I thought was a sprained ankle. So, I thought. Get a massage. That could help me feel better all over. Right?

Nope. I paid $10 in bahts for a small Thai woman to attack me with multiple body parts. Elbows. Knees. Fingers. Shoulder. Oh, man. I don’t even remember if I felt better afterward.

 

Cheri, Alan’s wife, bought a trip to a California central coast winery at an auction to help the Colorado Ballet. In which Alan occasionally appears as an old guy with a white beard. When they need one.

They had a great time. It included a visit to the Victor Hugo winery, a boutique operation that produces only two wines, Quasi and Modo.

 

It was my first time back to Thursday mussar since January, maybe earlier. I’d attended on zoom some, but with Kep’s decline and the snow and other things, I hadn’t felt up to the drive. Two of the women, Leslie and Rebecca, both kissed me on the head! Not sure what that was about though it was clearly a sign of affection.

Kathy has stage four breast cancer. She’s had a mastectomy and 35 sessions of radiation. Sounds familiar to me. But the cancer won’t back down. She has scans every three months and blood work once a month. This last blood work had her tumor markers up. Not good.

But we both agreed our quality of life right now is good. That’s what matters. Cancer is a good teacher of what matters. Perhaps that’s its role in the larger culture, to strip away pretense and help us get down to the nub of life.

Perhaps.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Hermitage, Judaism, Mussar, Shadow Mountain

Round Three

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Spring and the Kepler Moon

Thursday gratefuls: MVP. Tara. Marilyn. Susan. Jamie. Rich. Ron. Bitachon, trust. Kate’s memory, a blessing in all ways. Cooler today. Snow. Good workout. Furball Cleaning. Ana and friend.  A clean house. The new colors. That threshold. Coming closer. Irv. Adoptable dogs. Radiation #3. Joy. Simcha. Embracing joy. Living joyfully.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Eudaimonia

 

Hit the treadmill for 65 minutes. 101 total minutes of exercise with the 2 minutes for every intense minute calculation. Felt good. Coffee and albuterol, oatmeal and peanut butter on board before hand.

While I exercised, Ana and her friend cleaned the house. It needed it. The last of Kep’s hair. The leftover from Doug’s painting. Ruth, Gabe, and Mia’s visit. Plus it had been three and a half weeks since it was last cleaned. Feels so good to have a clean house. A clean house with a fresh look. Mental health. Moving forward, over that threshold.

 

MVP last night. The topic, the middot, was bitachon, trust. I said that I trust everyone. To be who they are. Realized I need to modify that. I trust everyone to be who I know them to be. I can’t truly know another’s essence. But I can know how I experience them. In the moment and over time.

This means I have varying levels of trust, many of them. None blind. All based on experience, not hope. If you tend to show up late, I know that. If you do what you say, I know that. If you anger easily, I know that. If you steal things, I hide what’s valuable to me. Either emotions or goods.

We all agreed we had trouble, for various reasons, keeping our mouths shut about others. Not that we gossip, but that some circumstances arise. Ones where we start sharing things about others that aren’t ours to tell. Not necessarily secrets or negative things. Just things that belong to others. One person gave the example of a neighbor asking about a divorce. She found herself offering more detail than she needed. Wanting to keep the friend. That sort of thing.

So our mutual practice for this month is. Value the vault. Keep what we know to ourselves. Allow others to tell their own stories. If they want to.

 

Round three of radiation on my left hip lymph node today. Though the radiation itself is both invisible and non-tactile at my sensory level it’s still powerful. Find myself sleeping longer and harder. Fatigue, not awful, but there. The thing about radiation is that its side effects can show up a year, two years later. And I won’t know for sure whether it killed my two mets until later this year when I have a P.E.T. scan. An odd form of therapy. You can’t feel it and you can’t tell if it worked until sometime after. Glad it’s available though.

Next week we get started on my T3 thoracic vertebrae. This is the one where the possible side effects become dire. Including, but not limited to, paralysis. After several conversations with docs, I decided the risk made sense. There is a chance, albeit a small chance, that if we kill these two mets I could be cured. Wouldn’t that be something?

Not counting on that. But I will extend my time off Erleada and Orgovyx when I go on a drug holiday later this year.

Neil Young for music today.

 

Mussar, Politics, US History, World History

Vive la difference

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Spring and the Garden Path Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Bread Lounge. Mussar. Thursday. Kep with pain resolved. Doug. Colorado Cold. 14. Snow showers off and on. Safeway. Grocery pickup. Lab tests. Thyroid. Plus a few. Nichie. Kristie. Dr. Gonzalez. Ruby. Ivory. Ruth. Gabe. Jon, a memory. Kate, always Kate. Ukraine. Russia. China. India. USA. Liberals. Socialists. Communists. Belize. Marilyn.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A Mountain Dawn

 

Another good workout yesterday. Hitting 200 + minutes a week this last month. 11 more to go this week. Feels good. No resistance work though. Need to get back to it, but I’ve found a reluctance that I don’t understand.

 

Doug didn’t show up yesterday. That’s what he had said on Tuesday. That he wouldn’t be working Thursday or Friday. Then he said he would be here. Guess whatever it was came up anyway. Might be Snow. He could be a skier. Folks in the Mountains prioritize matters differently. Dr. Doverspike has changed two appointments with Kep due to sudden outbursts of Powder. Makes sense to me. Even if I can’t do it.

 

In Mussar yesterday Sally, a Trump supporter who lives this half of the year in Ecuador but comes in through zoom, said she doesn’t understand all the emphasis on differences. We should be emphasizing how we’re alike, she said. She’s been a good friend to Anshel, a trans man at CBE, and to Luke, the gay former ex-executive director of CBE. And they appreciate her for her friendship.

So the group went off on how everyone has a divine spark (Lurianic kabbalah), is made in the image of God. I agree with the conclusion though the metaphysics for me are different. We’re all children of the stars made of atoms passing through this phase of their existence.

Sally has a wedge issue here and she’s not wrong. We need to emphasize our commonalities. What’s beneath this though is a right wing attack on identity politics. In order to get justice we have to recognize that though we are all one in the eyes of God or the universe differences do exist and they matter when the favors of our civilization get distributed.

For example, we also discussed deed covenants in Denver. No Negroes. No Latinos. No Jews. I’ve mentioned before the first house I bought in Minneapolis had similar covenants. These covenants were legal until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act passed. So here’s the problem. Folks with the power to enforce injustice recognize differences. Ask any gay man or woman. Any trans student forced to choose between gendered bathrooms. Ask any Jew. Any Latino working in the fields of California’s Central Valley or on the lawn of homes of any gated community in the U.S.

That’s not all though. The differences matter in a positive way, too. The richness of a world with Tex-Mex food. With Chinese bronzes from an ancient civilization. With folks among whom you feel comfortable. With hamburgers and pizza. With Italian and Hmong and Tagalog and Arabic and Latin and Korean. With sons from India and daughter-in-laws from Korea. With genders recognized along the continuum that has always existed. With bulgogi and moo goo gai pan. With sushi and a full Scottish breakfast. With tartans and kente cloth. With black skin and white skin and yellow skin and brown skin and red skin. With skiers and snowboarders. With Olympic athletes and amateur golfers.

We need difference. Vive la différence.

Yet we also need to recognize our dependence on the Sun and on Mother Earth. We eat. We laugh. We bark. We cry. We wail. We hurt. We experience awe. We roar. We swim in the ocean depths and fly high above the Lodgepole Pines. We are one as travelers through the vastness on this tiny blue marble.

Are we all one? Oh, yes. Are we all different? Oh, yes. Can we merge these two truths? Oh, yes.

 

 

Cooking, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, GeekWorld, Health, Hermitage, Judaism, Mussar

Chatbot helps me cook

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Imbolc the Waiting to Cross Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Tara. Pronounced Terra. Feelings. Sadness. Joy. Confidence. Trust. Vincent coming home. Her invitation to the second night Seder.  Aspen Perks. Poor food but a good place to eat. Quiet. That perky waitress. Kep. An early nudger today. My son. A joy. Becoming Native to This Place. Seeing Like a State. The Reason Liberalism Failed. Christian Nationalism. The changing state of our State.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A deep friendship

 

Tara. Whose name I pronounce as I read it. Tar-ah. But who pronounces it as she was given it, Terra. Gotta learn to say this. Hard. I pronounce as I read something. Not always right. Difficult to change.

We spent an hour plus talking. About her son Vincent who may return from a long stay in New York City next month. About my cancer. About Yamantaka. About matters of the heart. Tara has a profound honesty I appreciate.

She invited me to her second night seder. Her daughter, Julia, has college friends who want to come. So there will be a crowd. Glad to go. In this case I’m going to suck up my caution about covid. I’m tired of it anyhow. Still, it lingers and the in-person attendance at the Purim spiel on Monday suggests I’m not the only one.

Friends. Near and far. So happy to have them in my life.

 

CT scan today. To establish targets for my radiation. Five sessions. Two next week and three the week after. I hope it’s the same crew. I liked them. Kind. Caring. Not exactly looking forward to this, but it’s important. The drive is an hour both ways. That’s a hassle. And, there are non-trivial risks. What I choose to do with this one wild and precious life of mine. Keep it as long as I can.

 

Still playing around with the Chatbot. I made a potato and kale soup last night with chorizo. It blew up the roof of my mouth with its spiciness. Gonna take it tonight to MVP. What to do?

That sounds like a delicious soup!😋 According to web sources12345, some ingredients that are commonly used in kale and potato soup with chorizo are:

  • Chicken broth
  • Onion
  • Garlic
  • Smoked paprika
  • Salt and pepper

You could try adding more of these ingredients to your soup to reduce the spiciness. Alternatively, you could add some sour cream or cheese on top of your soup for a creamy contrast. Or you could add some lemon juice or vinegar for a tangy touch.

I hope this helps you enjoy your soup more. Let me know how it turns out.

A chatty response from Auntie Sydney. I can’t use any dairy because that violates kosher. No dairy and meat in the same dish. Really, the same meal. Gonna add more chicken broth. Then some vinegar if that doesn’t do the trick.

Can’t believe I’m using Microsoft search. It’s been so bad for so long. But, there you go. I did notice that I got ten queries this time. Wonder if they’re gradually upping the limits of the conversations.

I do like that it gives you the sources it uses. Not the same as evaluating them, but then that’s the reader’s task. As it always is.

 

Acting, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Korea, Mussar, Travel, Woolly Mammoths

New Labs

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Winter and the Valentine Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Alan. Housing matters cleared up. Mostly. Ron. Luke. Bread Lounge. Evergreen. The ice fisherfolk on Lake Evergreen. The 8 outdoor ice hockey rinks on it. Those 30 or so Elk hanging out. The drive down. Rocks. Mountains. Ice covered Streams. Lodgepole Pines. Ponderosa. Aspen. Chinook Salmon toast and that Dulce le Lecha croissant. Coffee.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jew with Guns

 

Going to Evergreen Players today to see one-act plays directed by Tal’s last directing class as an employee of Evergreen Players. Alan has one in the showcase. Ron Solomon’s coming, too. Looking forward to that. A matinee. That magic word in my world of the performing arts.

Ron sat down with Alan and me at the Bread Lounge yesterday morning. He’s a screenwriter cum entrepreneur. He was part of the writer’s room for Saved By the Bell, but he didn’t like L.A. He wrote a book about Navy Seals published three or four years ago. Now he’s running a company that helps wholesalers make sure their retail prices hold up in the marketplace.

Ron’s also in the MVP group. He’s a very smart guy. Been around CBE for  years. He mentioned that later in the day he and Dan Herman, past president of the Synagogue, had an appointment at a gun range in Golden with a group called Jews with Guns. I’m not getting on a train. The Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh pushed him over the edge.

I told them that if it came to it I’d get a rifle and help them defend the Synagogue. Friends are worth dying for. Family, too. A silly misadventure in Vietnam dreamed up by anti-communist old white men? Not so much. I’m no pacifist. Though Kate was. Thorough going. Miss her.

Alan’s house is sold. He was going home to pack after breakfast. They close on both deals next week. Move in February. Glad for him. Moving stresses. Not easy.

 

Glad I dropped back to learn Hangul. Still working at it, but when I get done learning Korean will be easier. Hope to get over there for a month next October. Though. CBE’s got an Israel trip planned at the same time. Always wanted to see Israel. This could be a good opportunity. Will clarify as we get closer.

 

The what will I pay for my cancer drugs circus still has its tent up. No word yet on the foundation the nice lady from McKesson told me about. I’ll have to pick up some more Erleada samples if I don’t get a call before Tuesday afternoon when I see Kristie.

Good news though. PSA still undetectable. Lab results came early this morning. Testosterone at 11. Low testosterone is 287 at which point fatigue becomes a factor. Alan’s getting his testosterone boosted for that reason. As for me. Well, I tire easily. But. My cancer doesn’t get its food. That’s the concept.

 

Ancient Brothers topic this morning is space. The space between and among us. Is it too far? Too close? Mussar has a lot to say about this.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mussar

Salvage. Catastrophic.

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Winter and the Wolf Moon

Friday gratefuls: The Assistance Fund. Bridgette. Urology Associates. Bond and Devick. Rich. Muddy Buck. Cancer. Bureaucracy. Government and private. Kep the unsteady. Jon, a memory and a hurdle. David, his father. Shirley, his step-mother. Jen. Friends. The staff of life. Coming home to the Mountains. Curvy roads. Snow. Lodgpepole and Aspens. Black Mountain. Climbing Shadow Mountain on Shadow Mountain Drive. The pregnant Mule Deer Doe that crossed my path on the way to Evergreen this morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the pregnant Mule Deer Doe, life in its wonder

 

Well. Somewhat better news. Still. So. I pay the full copays this month, around $3,000. That tips me over into catastrophic drug coverage. My portion goes to 5% or about $850 a month. Right now that’s the best deal I can get.

However. The Assistance Fund might pick me up again sometime during the year. If they do, they’ll backdate my account and repay me for all my expenses. Fingers crossed on this one. I’m on a long wait phone line right now to discover how my situation looks.

This is the problem with charity and philanthropy. Haven’t been on this end of it before. If things change or the funder decides on different priorities, no appeal, and as in this instance no notice. Just gone. We can’t count on the wealthiest among us to share our values or recognize our needs. That’s what government is for.

Erleada and Orgovyx. Salvage therapy. This charming term refers to all therapies given after the hope of a cure falls away. After the prostatectomy and the radiation failed to cure me, I landed in salvage land. In order to get my salvage therapy cost down I have to get into catastrophic coverage in my insurance plan.

Had to get an urgent cash infusion to cover the first month’s copay. Paying that should do the trick to put me in a drug cost catastrophe. If my position on the waitlist ends up getting funded, I’ll be made whole. No promises. No way of knowing. Just pay and wait.

Due to this problem I got kicked off McKesson Pharmaceutical’s account list. Result: Doc has to represcribe. Which means probably Monday at the earliest. Then a shipment has to get here. Good thing Urology Associates fronted me some samples. I should be able to cover the gap between the time all of this gets processed and a new shipment comes to my door.

 

Had a great breakfast with Rich this morning. He’s teaching a new course on applied philosophy and the Constitution at the School of Mines. Here’s a link to his syllabus. A smart guy. Obv. Also my lawyer. Estate planning and Jon’s probate.

We click intellectually and decided to meet more often. Maybe every two weeks.

Breakfast at the Muddy Buck in the tourist part of Evergreen. On our way out Rich greeted a guy he told me was a movie star from Evergreen. A former Seal who had a role in the movie Act of Valor. It might have been his story. I forget right now. A mammoth guy with lots of tattoos. and a Yeti t-shirt on.

 

Feelings, Health, Mussar

What? Anger.

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Winter and the Wolf Moon

Thursday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Cancer. Co-pays. High anxiety. Workouts. Kep the unsteady. Oh, man. Fear. Box breathing. Numbness. Rock. Deer Creek Canyon. Its consolation. Kate’s holy Valley. Kate’s creek. Need her today. Big Pharma. Big problems. Shadow Mountain. The Hermitage. Herme. Jon, a memory. Ruth. Gabe, the Legomaniac. Northfield High.

Sparks of joy and awe: The Sun

Correction: Ruth’s school has allowed her to make up her work in the two classes I mentioned. Glad for that.

 

Big news today. Yikes! Just got off the phone with McKesson pharmacy. Source of Orgovyx and Erleada, my two prostate cancer drugs. The Assistance fund has exhausted its money for prostate cancer. Oh? Your co-pays are now $800 a month for the Orgovyx and $2,000 a month for the Erleada. What?! The. Hell.

Had a shipment supposed to arrive today. I have two Orgovyx left. A bit more Erleada. Maybe a week. McKesson has faxed my doc forms for me to be added to the pharmaceutical company’s assistance plan. In this instance then the company will dispense my drugs.

This causes me some anxiety. Managing it with box breathing. By calling my doc. By writing this. Still. Stunned. Unsure. Uncertain what will come.

So many cancer patients have the same trouble. Fighting a terminal disease and insurance and big pharma. There is something wrong with this at a root level. Can you help me? Yes. But it’s gonna cost you. What if I can’t pay? Well. Buh bye then.

Not surprised. Not really. That this has happened right now. Today. Yes. But that there would come a kink in the system. No. A sad commentary on the state of medicine in our wealthy, wealthy country. Wonder if Bezos or Musk could shoot me a check?

This will occupy my day until it’s sorted. If it can be.

 

Anger. MVP last night. Some thought anger comes from fear. We agreed it rises up. I admit I don’t understand emotions. How and why they come. But they sure do. My anxiety above has an obvious trigger. Glad I’ve spent a lot of time on how to cope with anxiety. Anger though?

Before I went to sleep I came up with this idea. Anger comes when something or someone assaults my values. Then. Thinking as an anthropologist. What adaptive advantage does anger hold? Might be like joking behavior. Who and what you laugh at can identify the cultures or subcultures to which you belong. If you’re a Swede, you might make Norwegian or Finnish jokes. If you’re a Northerner. Jokes about Southerners. Southerners. About Yankees. So on.

It could be the same with anger. Those things which make you angry can identify the culture or subculture to which you belong. If seeing the Confederate flag flown from a pickup truck bed makes you boil? Probably a liberal Northerner. Obama in the Whitehouse. Probably a white supremacist. If you believe your spouse has belittled you and you get angry? The underlying value is self-worth. A challenge to it.

If you took a community and recorded every instance of anger for a week, I think you could identify the various solidarity groups in the community with ease. Shared values = shared anger. And anger means those values have been belittled or scorned.

A passing thought.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Hermitage, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The Move, Writing

Dutiful

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Winter and the Wolf Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Breakfast with Jen, Ruth, Gabe, Barb. Driving back up the hill. F1. The MIA. The Walker. The docent program. My many years there with good friends and art. Acting class. Creativity class. Origins of North America. Finding the volume of a Mountain. Korean. Pruning moving forward. Interior painting, early February. Probate. Still moving. slow. ly. The Good Life. Scott and Helen Nearing. Eudaimonia. Kristen Gonzalez. Psoriasis. Mark and the USPS. Mary in Kobe. Ancient Brothers.

Sparks of joy and awe: Eudaimonia

 

Human flourishing. Eudaimonia. Satisfaction. More important than happiness. Duty is just another word for cultural norms received and accepted. Obligations. On the other hand. Imposed. Why do we do what we do?

Assessing the life that is neither heroic nor mediocre. Since that’s where most of us end up. No need to measure ourselves against the ends of the bell curve. No need to measure ourselves. But can we be at peace with a life without comparisons?

As for me, I choose eudaimonia. Flourishing. Satisfaction. And, yes. Duty plays a role. Family. Sacrifice. Friends too. Being there. Wherever love is, there is duty. To be honest. Sincere. Kind. Helpful. To support the best for the other. Right down to the end. And by implication to support the best for yourself. Also, duty. The unexamined life is not worth living. Yes. A duty to yourself to know thyself. And to thy own known Self be true.

 

What’s interesting for me right now is how much a sense of duty has played in my life. Oh, no! The original oppositional defiant guy admitting to a sense of duty. I who even rebel against my superego. You can’t make me!!! Yes, duty.

A minor yet significant example. As a convinced feminist of the Betty Friedan/Simone de Beauvoir second wave. At the age of 26. In seminary. Went to the Rice Street Clinic late on a Winter afternoon. A scalpel I felt on the first cut slashed my vas deferens on both sides. Shutting down sperm from my testicles. Being responsible for my own contraception.

Another. One I’ve mentioned before. Fits here. No. I don’t want a Johns-Manville full scholarship to college. Managing people in a large corporation is not me. Will never be me. High school.

Once convinced of Vietnam’s sturdiness as a nation, one that had held back China for over 3,000 years. No. I will not fight, nor support that war.

After reading a convincing study about the future job prospects for Ph.D.’s. No to graduate school.

Family. Staying in the fire with Jon. Ruth. Gabe. Kate in later life. Mark. Yet also. Cut your hair or leave! Leaving.

These may not at first reading seem like duty. But they are. A duty to myself, to my own understanding of how to be present in the world.

When I realized Ruth and Gabe needed us in Colorado. Broaching the idea of a move. Kate on board. Following through.

Those two and a half acres in Andover. Leaving them better than when we bought them. How? Working it out with Kate over the years. Together. Staying the course with the full cycle of responsibilities throughout the year. Each year.

And, dogs. Living into their lives. With them from puppyhood to death. Oh. Sweet duty. Painful duty. Life realized in full.