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  • Continuance and Remembrance

    Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

    Her 75th.

    Wednesday gratefuls: Kate. Her yahrzeit. Ode. Yahrzeit candles. Ebony and Vine. Pulled pork. 15 degrees. Geez. High fire danger. Kep. Who kept me warm last night. A year with no new firsts. No first birthday with no Kate. No first Hanukkah without Kate. No first anniversary without Kate. Changing of the heart.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ode

     

    When I came upstairs this morning the yarhzeit candles, which I lit around 7 am yesterday, were still burning. I love this Jewish custom and added to it. The candle for that third entity between us, our marriage. As those first yahrzeit candles burned down, the last first, I could feel a weight lifting. My life feels a bit freer. Maybe a lot. Will take some time to tell.

    Yesterday was a busy day. Looking into the astrological meaning of Neptune. Investigating the significance of mem heh, “what”, in the Haggadah and in the Tree of Life at Chochmah, the sefirot of wisdom. Ode’s arrival.

    We chatted for a while and then both took a nap. We old guys. An early dinner at Ebony and Vine where Mark ran into a waiter from Jamestown, North Dakota. “My name’s Odegard.” “Oh! I know Odegards! Good to hear a name from home.”

    Came back and talked some more. It is like they say. True friends, no matter how long apart, pick up the conversation from where it left off. He gave me a sweet of gift of decal edged thank-you cards with Ode’s trademark leaves spray glued to the front: a Gingko, a Cottonwood, a Maple, an Oak, and a Fern.

    Felt like a good way to experience Kate’s yahrzeit. Two classes from the Kabbalah Experience, which I would never have found without her long ago conversion to Judaism. Then a good friend dropping by on his way to Tucson, staying the night.

    Remembrance and continuance. The very nature of grieving. Its core. The ritual of the candles. Ode’s memory of Kate making a big salad for the Wooly’s gathered at our house. A salad made from vegetables grown in our Andover garden. “Then she sat down and ate with us.” That was unusual because spouses did not eat with us on our meeting nights. But she was Kate and she lived her life as she wanted. I loved her for it.

    I feel different on this side of her first yahrzeit. Lighter. There was that strange joy I mentioned yesterday. It continues. A sense of completion rather than loss. We made promises that we kept. We stood with each other in tough times and in good ones. We weathered flaws that bothered our marriage and grew stronger from them.

    Today her memory is truly for a blessing.

     

     

     

     


  • Certainty

    Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

    after the election, 2016

    Saturday gratefuls: Hoo, boy. Workout on Friday. Good, but hard. Two sets. Wondering whether I need to go to 3. Got my cardio up. Well up. 300 minutes in the last week. 5 hours. Love the energy boost a working or partly working thyroid gives. Jackie. Haircut. She’s a sweetheart. She said of Kate, “I miss her flipping you off.” Me, too.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: April

     

     

    Decided two things. 1. Write Ancientrails and workout. See where the day goes after. 2. Make one new recipe and one new salad each week. On 2. Still trying to navigate cooking for one, yet liking to cook. Difficult. Finishing the first phase of kitchen reassemble today and tomorrow. Gonna. Get. It. Done.

    Even though my energy level has improved a lot, my stamina is still not great. Plus I find myself easily overwhelmed with trying to imagine a good way of replacing items in the cabinets. Plan to push past that and finish. Things can always get moved later if I don’t like their location.

    I would also like to get the remaining common room papers at least moved out of the room, set up the Roomba. Let the common room enter its useful period. May hang some art if I have energy left. Still have to call Dave for the couch reupholstery. And Peter needs to come and hang two lamps. Chandelier coming later.

    Plan to get some firewood today, too. Not a lot, enough for two or three fires. See how my lungs handle it. Should be ok, but…

     

    To Speak for the Trees is a feminist work of top order. Also a work about claiming and owning your own gifts. And, not coincidentally, a powerful expression of the Celtic cultural deposit. Very similar to the First Nations in kind and quality. In fact, the Celtic experience in the British Isles has many similarities to the Native experience in the U.S.

    Although their near genocide happened much further back in time. The Romans drove them into Wales and up into Scotland, down into Cornwall. The Vikings attacked what is now Ireland. Where the red hair comes from. Then the Roman Catholic Church, allied with the Anglo-Saxons, drove the ancient Celtic faith often literally underground, building their churches over holy wells and other sacred spots. The bastards.

    The old Celtic culture lasted longest in Wales, parts of Scotland, and in the Gaeltalk part of Ireland. Brittany and Galicia, in France and Spain respectively, as well.

    Beresford-Kroger writes of her education in the old ways in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s as the final waning of Druidic lore and the old Celtic culture. She is in my pantheon of heroines. Be like Diana.

     

    Setting out on another semester of classes at the Kabbalah Experience: Sefer Yetzirah III and Diving Deep into the Stars or Astrology and Kabbalah III. Having fun with these. Guess you could call it a quasi-hobby. Quasi because it’s too serious for fun and too much fun to be serious. I really like these classes, the strange world they open up. And, as David says, even if you’re agnostic about astrology you’re still learning something about yourself, aren’t you? I am.

    Because I’ve dipped a foot (way more than a toe by this point) into Kabbalah, astrology, and tarot, when I saw the sign for new moon intuitive readings, I thought, what the hell? $20 for 15 minutes. Just down from Jackie’s hair salon.

    Put my money down. Get quiet, then when you’re ready, say your name three times. Charles Buckman-Ellis. Charles Buckman-Ellis. Charles Buckman-Ellis. You’re at a big turning point. Well, yes. You’re a strong psychic, you could do this work. Oh? I need to lean into certainty. That’s probably true. Ha ha.

    After I told her Kate died a year ago, she said Kate reassures me, wants me to know that’s she fine, better than fine. Dancing. She taps me on the left shoulder sometimes. She wants me to live my own life. I have a strong core and that new life has begun to blossom. Mary, the psychic, mentioned a rose, but I saw a lotus opening.

    Not sure what to make of it. Some of what she said made me think she had read something of me. The part about certainty in particular. And, the time of a big turning point. Though I suppose we’re all always at some turning point or another. Still. I liked hearing  Kate reassured me even if I doubted it. Because I’d like it to be true. An odd time, definitely worth $20.

     

     

     

     

     


  • What Then?

    Spring and Seoah’s Citizenship Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Thanks to folks we maybe never got around to. David Scruton, first anthropology professor. Bill and Gloria Gaither, high school teachers who’ve gone on to, well, glory. And lotsa cash. Bob Lucas, my boss at the Presbytery back in the day. Sent two off, the third later this morning. Gratitude is never out of time. Energy still good. Blood work tomorrow. Oncologist a week from today.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gratitude

     

    Energy remains up. And, surprisingly, the shortness of breath I would get from moving around without much exertion is gone, too. Guess that thyroid is pretty important. Getting things done.

    As I get them done, I wonder what will happen when I’m finished. What then? I’ll have a remodeled kitchen, a more comfortable and usable common room with art where I want it. My space downstairs will be finished. The loft organized.

    Beginning to suspect that all this work, though welcome and delightful, has been a distraction. Or, perhaps better, a way to process grief through physical changes. As Kate’s yahrzeit approaches and the weather tries to be springlike, as the common room, the kitchen, and my level move closer to the finish line, I feel like I’m going to hit a moment of so much freedom that I will be overwhelmed.

    After the big do in April, I’m going to head off into Colorado for some road trips. I need to get offa this mountain, down where the air is thicker, and go from here to there. I have a list, one Jackie, my hair stylist, and I came up with last fall.

    It includes Marble, Gunnison, Dinosaur National Monument, Royal Gorge, Sand Dunes National Park, Grand Junction, and visiting hot springs. Not all on one trip of course. Four Corners is another. Then there’s hopping over to Utah.

    In mid summer I’m heading to Hawaii. I plan to be there over Seoah’s birthday which is on July 4th. Do something patriotic with the new citizen and her spouse. Might try to visit my sis in Japan later in the year, then hop over to Taipei for the National Museum.

    This week David Sanders and I will discuss his thoughts on what I might be up to next. Could be more of the same, I suppose. Could be more intentional. Writing. CBE work. Paint. Entertain. Could be something I’m not planning on right now.

    Class reunion in September, maybe. Visit Minnesota on the way there or the way back.

    Actually I have no idea what I’m doing right now. Putting one foot in front of the other, doing this and that with Kep and the family, with CBE. Waiting, too. Sadness and grief occupy some time as well.

    Life. Going on. As it does.

     

     

     

     

     


  • It’s a New Day

    Imbolc and the Seoah Citizenship Moon

    Tom and Bill, Guanella Pass

    Friday gratefuls: Jon’s ok. Ruth, growing up. That weird sandwich. Not so ok with my stomach. The anniversary. The people who helped me through it. Chicken soup. Soul. Mine. Trying to find it. Searching for soul. Lev and the mouth. Tom’s 74th. Astrology. Tarot. Kabbalah. Jon’s art. My writing. Water from the Chalice Well. Carolyn Levy. Seoah and her interview this morning.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grief and its depth

    Tarot:

     

    Kep’s raggedy look. I brush him and brush him and brush him. Taking off as much fur as any dog probably has on them at any one time, yet he has still more. And yet more comes. The second coat of a cold adapted dog breed. A damned nuisance.

    On the other hand. He doesn’t slobber. Which both Vega and Rigel did. Their Coyote Hound inheritance. Both the constant shedding and the slobber were new to Kate and me. Irish Wolfhounds and Whippets don’t have either. We had to adjust. Still adjusting.

    5 degrees again this morning. This last couple of weeks have reminded me of Minnesota, creating the sort of icy conditions better suited to flatland. Colorado drivers don’t understand it. After 40 years in Minnesota, my instincts are intact. Won’t say an icy curve can’t catch me off guard, but I’ve got a better chance than most of the folks I routinely drive with.

    Made it through yesterday. Remembering. Loving the remembering and being saddened by it and gladdened by it. I did what I said I would. Moved Kate’s ashes and her signature red glasses to a niche behind my computer, behind me right now. Rigel, too. Both weighed about the same. Rigel’s big paw print in plaster of paris and a sweet card from the folks at Sano, acknowledging Rigel as a very sweet dog who will be missed. By us all. My two ladies, now elsewhere, gone from here. Not from the soft squishy thing in my skull however.

    I can feel yet more plate tectonics in my soul. Subduction pushing up long buried hopes and dreams while carrying surface worries and false paths below. Something about writing going down. Something about people and this house rising. The grief orogeny changing the once flat plain of my old life. New peaks and valleys coming into existence, old ones disappearing.

    Cousin Diane said something that stuck with me. Sounds like prioritizing exercise is important. Yes. Broke a logjam in my thinking that kept pressing writing and exercise into a face off for my time. Health comes first. I should know this already after watching Kate’s steady, sad decline. But, I didn’t have it. I’m going to get my 30 minutes plus in five days a week. We’ll see how the rest of the schedule takes shape with that as the priority.

    Realizing right now that I have lived through a major life crisis with the folks at CBE. They knew Kate well. And, me. They knew we came as a pair. If she was there, I was there, and vice versa. Except for board meetings and when I did physical work. They were with us through her long illness and are now with me in my grief. Holding me in love and kindness.

    Told David again, I don’t want to convert. Might be a little bit repetitive on that one. But, I said, I’m so drawn to the people, the tribe. Not the torah or the kabbalah or the talmud or even the regular services, but the community. I told him about dating three Jewish women at the same time after my divorce from Raeone. Not sure why, just happened. Well, probably not.

    He said something very interesting. Sometimes those kind of things happen after events in a past life. Oh. That felt oddly right. Something to explore as this new life, this new day, makes me feel good.

    This video surprised me by being a prompt, a hope, a dance I want. Not there yet, but on the way. A new ancientrail.

    “Dragonfly out in the sun you know what i mean dont you know
    Butterflies all havin’ fun you know what I mean
    Sleepin’ peace when day is done that’s what I mean
    And this old world is a new world and a bold world for me” Nina Simone

    Kate loved dragonflies and butterflies, so here you go:


  • Results not guaranteed

    Imbolc and the Seoah Citizenship Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Snow. Kate. Our 32 plus years together. Her laugh. Her wry humor. Her keen intelligence. Her knowledge of cooking and medicine. And classical music. Her. Kep, snuggling this morning before we got up. MVP. Forbearance. Savlanut. Diane. March on Shadow Mountain.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Diane, cousin and friend

    Tarot: How can my new life emerge from my grief?

    spread: current situation, obstacle, advice

    Cards: queen of stones, bear. seven of stones, clearance. three of arrows, jealousy.

     

    And so the anniversary heads into the evening. Early, starting this blog. Talking to Diane. Then, 30 minutes on the treadmill. After. David Sanders. A talk about art and life. About Faure’s requiem and Up on Cripple Creek. Over to mussar to be with friends. Drive to Marshdale Burger and get an improbable burger/corned beef, sauerkraut and thousand island dressing with tater tots. Mountain health food.

    On the way back get a call from Ruth. Jon had a seizure in the class room and got taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Ruth leaning into the situation, handling it. Still uncertain as to what caused the seizure.

    First anniversary without my Kate. Peopled with friends and family. Soothing. A few tears at mussar. Some last night thinking about, something. Something random. Kep came up, his worried look on, nuzzled me. I kissed his furry head.

    David and I talked about a sheet I filled out for him, a sheet of open ended questions. We got through two of the questions. Life is… Short, art is long. Two favorite songs. I remembered why Faure’s Requiem meant so much to me.

    Carolyn Levy and I went to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The cello concerto left me in tears. Grieving my marriage to Raeone, to being alone, to not knowing what came next. A heart thing. Deep. In fact I think it may have been the night I decided Carolyn wasn’t the one. A smart, beautiful, talented woman. Just not for me.

    Up on Cripple Creek includes this line: A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one. And I know that to be a lie. A drunkard’s dream would be a nightmare, one bringing disability and death.

    Dave said I was a wonderful person and a wonderful teacher. Therapist talk, yeah, still nice to hear.

    32 in gematria, both David and Jamie said, is heart. Kabbalah has a saying, have the heart and the mouth in line with each other. Authenticity. Yes. Today, this 32nd celebration of our wedding is all about heart for me. I speak that celebration on these pages. To her, wherever she may be. To myself, still here. To Jon, in University hospital. To Ruth, acting like a grown-up.

    As Mindy said, one of the things she learned after the death of her husband was that she had to become friends with sadness. Yes. Sadness tells the heart’s tale. Its yearning for that which was, which now cannot be. Yet, it also speaks of the depth of love, the honor of a long time together, the truth of two hearts that beat as one.

    Don’t know what the evening holds with Jon. With Ruth and Gabe. Whatever it is, it is an extension of our marriage, our choice to be here with them. Living our promise. Enough. Results not guaranteed.


  • Soul

    Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Forgot Wednesday. David Sanders. Jodi. The new kitchen. The furniture rearranging and moving. Herme going on the wall sometime in March. Along with that Arts and Crafts chandelier being hung. Kep. A very good boy. Rigel, returned to her constellation. Kate, always Kate. Snow and Cold. A Minnesota winter week for Shadow Mountain. Great sleeping.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The heart/mind

    Tarot: The Knight of Bows

     

    I’m a fence sitter when it comes to ideas. I can hold the polarities, as kabbalah teaches, but when it comes to saying yes to something like the soul, I shy away.

    Seems it went like this. Freshman philosophy at Wabash. All those proofs for the existence of God that Father Ed gave me my senior year of high school. That I loved. That seemed clear and irrefutable. Pretty refutable. After that, Camus.

    Reinforcing Camus was the flat earth metaphysics of the logic positivists and the linguistic analysts. Wittgenstein: That of which we cannot speak, we must be silent. I inhaled.

    No god. Or, if there was one they weren’t very good at their job. Anyhow, I became an enlightenment guy, empiricist full stop. Skeptical, sometimes veering into nihilism, sometimes cynicism. Actually, a sort of lonely place.

    Appleton, Wisconsin. Married, deeply unhappy. Working in a paper mill cutting rags to make paper for the U.S. Treasury. Drinking way too much. Trying to live with the open marriage I entered into willingly. In my head. But not in my heart. In a city I could not embrace.

    Judy and I decided to part ways, but not divorce. I’d find politics and the church. The politics led me to seminary. A Kierkegaardian moment gave me a window into the Christian faith without having to accept the metaphysics. I’d live as if I believed.

    Worked. I took a deep, deep dive into Christian theology, ethics, mystical thought. Practiced several forms of mediation like lectio divina, the Jesus Prayer, contemplating the ineffability of God.

    Worked until it didn’t. I began searching in my heritage, my Celtic heritage for writing ideas. Found the Great Wheel of the Seasons. This time I not only inhaled. I held it in. Got giddy. A new way of looking at the world, an animistic way, a pagan way. Not Christian. Oops.

    Not like Judaism. Where your belief in God is your business. Even for Rabbi’s. Had to bale. Lucky I met Kate. She gave me a parachute out of a difficult situation. Kate though.

    She was a flat earther, too. A scientist. A mathematician. A healer. And my love. She took to the animist idea, the live close to the earth, live with animals. Dogs in particular. Bees. We loved each other into the land of Andover. Growing vegetables. Planting an orchard. Making our own cutting gardens. Seeding much of our front yard with prairie flowers and grasses. Harvesting honey. Building a fire pit for those cool Minnesota evenings.

    Kate was also a Jew. A convert when she was thirty. A Jew of the heart. She went to a service at Temple Israel and began to cry. She felt at home. Kate was not a cryer. Probably a mystical experience in retrospect.

    During our Andover years we worshiped Mother Earth and Father Sun. In the old way. By working with them to grow food, to enhance the beauty of our home. Those years with hands in the soil, seeds and seedlings our tools, made me-and her-into confirmed animist/pagans.

    Until we moved to the Mountains. It was time to take on new masks and tasks. We stumbled upon Congregation Beth Evergreen late in our first year here. Kate found a home for her Jewish soul. And I found a home for my animist/pagan one.

    All this to get to one sentence: I’m going to live as if evolutionary panentheism and the notion of a soul are true. Said another way, I’m going to live into them.

     

     


  • Charlie’s Difficult, Wonderful Week

    Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

    At the VRCC, Jan. 2018

    Thursday gratefuls: Rigel. Her death. Kep. That hole in my heart. Tom. Here. Cannabis. Leah. Marilyn and Irv. Susan Marcus and Thoreau. Rich Levine. Dr. Palmini. VRCC. The new kitchen. The new furniture and lamp. Snow. A good bit. Stopped early morning. Plowed Black Mountain Drive. Bright Sun. Robin Egg’s Sky. White Lodgepoles and a white Black Mountain.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rigel’s death. And, her life.

     

    My life flows on in endless song,
    above earth’s lamentation.
    I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn
    that hails a new creation.    The Hymnary

    Yes, it’s surprising, but this is how I feel. Eager for the new creation while sad about Rigel, about Kate, about the life that included them in the body. No, I’m not moving out of the present moment. I anticipate nothing. I regret nothing. I yearn for nothing.

    Part of this equilibrium I have Tom Crane to thank for. He came here, to Shadow Mountain. And cousin Diane Keaton, my best person when Kate and I married. I speak with her once a week. Part of it has to do with the Great Wheel which has turned for Kate and Rigel and will one day turn for me. Part of it has do with the loving and loved members of Congregation Beth Evergreen and the Ancient Brothers. They hold me in a fine net of their care, mystic cords of love.

    And, of course, part of it lies within me. One now turned toward the earth rather the heavens of the old three story universe. One reading the torah of mother nature, listening to midrash about her. Her oral torah loosed in the songs of birds, the bugling of the elk, the silence of snow falling.

    Leaving now for breakfast with Tom. More in a while.

    Kate, Nov. 29th, 2019

    No, the deep sorrow has not left me. If someone says something kind about Kate or the conversation turns to death and dying, sometimes tears will press up, coming from a holy well of honor for her, for us. This will, I imagine, lessen over time. It did with my mother. It has with each of the dogs. Vega’s death took the longest to assimilate because she died suddenly and after we had been gone for four weeks.

    Tom’s willingness to be here and his actual presence has, as my Jewish friends say of the deceased, been for a blessing. We know each other. Pain. Flaws. Joys. Anguish. Inner compasses aligned.

    Kep and I have begun to negotiate life after Rigel. Just us boys. He comes up to the loft, but he’s not eager to stay. He likes to roam. Gertie would lie down on her bed, from time to time gaze up at me, and leave with reluctance.

    Tom, Durango, Co.

    Today is body-mind-spirit day. Breakfast with Tom. Therapy with David Sanders. Annual physical with Kristine Gonzalez. New workout with personal trainer, Deb Brown.

    Did not finish this yesterday. So, I’ll just go on from here.

    David Sanders called me an exceptionally intelligent person. Nice to hear. In these tough days a few compliments help. He also noted my breadth of knowledge. OK. Enough back patting. He convinced me to send him some of my work. I sent him the first fifty pages of Superior Wolf. And, I admitted that I probably had a book in me about the Great Wheel, tactile spirituality, the ur-religion. Feels like he moved the meter in my head back toward creative work.

    Saw Kristine Gonzalez, my new primary care provider. What a delight! She loves taking care of folks over 65, listened to me, discussed my health with me like an adult. To my Bill Schmidt inspired question about what I needed to do to love (meant live, but this works, too) until I’m 90, she said, “Just do it. Your prostate cancer is under control. You should be able to.” A big sigh of relief to be in a smaller medical practice and with a competent, caring doc. I told her Kate would have liked her a lot.

    Dave and Deb, owners of On the Move Fitness

    Then, over to On the Move Fitness for a kick start to my workout routines which I’d let slide. Deb is the person who lost her husband David to glioblastoma in June of 2020 as the Covid pandemic began to wrap its coils around our lives. Dave and I bonded over cancer recurrences and now Deb and I have over grief. She gently guided me back to a new routine. Slowly, slowly.

    By the time I got home I was exhausted. Called Tom and said so. He graciously agreed to let me rest. He’s coming here for breakfast before his board meeting, then we’ll probably head over to the Happy Camper. Might go to Scooter’s for lunch.

    One of the upsides of all the angst this last year has been an immersion in love. Folks from all parts of my life from high school to college, family to friends, Minnesota to Colorado, Evergreen to Conifer, Judaism to Christianity have reached out, offered or given me support. It’s had the result I’ve needed. I’m not alone. I’m both needed and accepted as I am. Good to know at 75.

     

     


  • Mind Blown

    Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Past lives. Near death experiences. Mystical experience. Reincarnation. Ode. Cooking. The meister chef, Tom. Cabbage and beef soup. Catfish. Chicken potpies. Rigel. Drinking. Ruth, so much better. Jon, too. Gabe, puzzling. My mind twisting round. The lamp, Ruth assembled. Swapping out coffee tables, the new one down here. The old one upstairs.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Reincarnation

     

    Mind. Blown. Where to? Don’t know. That ship haha has sailed. Into the area of the map famously identified by: Here there be monsters. Or, angels. Or, Grandma. Or, the Otherworld.

    My buddy, Ode, who has long insisted that reincarnation is a fact, long proven, as might a friend of both Terence and Dennis McKenna, has finally pushed me aboard the good ship Beyond. As most of the scientists in the video below claim, I don’t know where the ship has set sail for, nor how to interpret the evidence in a definitive way. But I’m aboard, maybe as a reluctant stowaway, but I want in on this journey.

    No accidents. Not sure this idea and the idea of post mortem consciousness belong together; however, it is the case that for the last four years plus I’ve studied kabbalah, an ancient Jewish mystical philosophy that includes reincarnation as a reasonable and accepted part of its world (otherworld) view.

    Astrology, too, as well. A brand of this even more ancient discipline called Evolutionary Astrology which presupposes reincarnation and strong hints about yours revealed by the nodes of the moon in your natal chart.

    You might say, well, Kate’s dead so these ideas have more traction? Or, this is the day before your 75th birthday. What better time to throw on a sash that reads, Reincarnated! An escape hatch at last.

    Those could influence me, I suppose, but all my life I’ve thought on my own, accepting ideas and rejecting ideas because they listen well in my inner chambers of judgment. Or, because they seem like nonsense. The video below listens well there.

    An old and strong aspect of my thought could be called flat earth humanism, or as Ed in the video rightly calls it, physicalism. Materialism in its fancy philosophical dress clothes. Existentialist me, a Camus influenced college part of me, faced the darkness unafraid. Willing to make my own meaning. Living because I wanted to live, not because I had to and not because anyone told me how.

    That Alexandria First Methodist guy, a young one, had some notion of the afterlife. My mother’s death at 47 took it to the grave along with her. Not fair. Not fair at all. Therefore neither just nor loving, both attributes of the one, the true, the mighty.

    A while later I picked up the Christian mantle again and threw it over my shoulders, but this time I was not interested in the next world, but this one. How might we live here? Right here amidst war, the Vietnam War, economic injustice, racial and gender discrimination? I found answers in old Jewish notions of just kingship and a New Testament that demanded extension of love and compassion to the poorest and most despised among us.

    Nowadays the Great Wheel, that pagan metaphor of life’s seasons, including the long fallow one in which we temperate folks find ourselves right now, guides my thinking. I can fold this post mortem idea into it.

    This is a willed rejection of Wittgenstein in the Tractatus when he says: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. I shared this chivalric reticence, its honesty, for a long, long time. Now I feel it reveals fear rather than expressing a stoic truth.

    Over the course of the next few years I plan to continue my study of kabbalah, astrology, and tarot. I ordered the three books of Edward Kelly. Gonna read them. I’m also reading two new anthropological books reassessing human development from physical, historical, and genetic perspectives. Taoism is in there, too.

    The Rockies and the complicated textbook about life and change that they are teach me everyday. Pursuing these investigations because they interest me. I may have a book in there, some way of showing others how the natural world can teach us what we need to know about life, and now perhaps, death.

    Gotta do something with this extra time the oncologists have given me. May as well be of some use.

    And, happy birthday to me!


  • This Will Pass

    Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: That Urbandale rocker. The new coffee table. The new lamp. Here at the Hermitage. Many items put in cabinets, fussing will be required. A plan slowly coming together. Feels wonderful. Rigel did not eat today. Her footpads. The two delivery guys from Modern Bungalow. “Do you have wildlife up here?” Looking at 4 Mule Deer in the front. Kids. Ruth’s first day back after the hospital. Snow coming down gently. Night fell.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Salmon a la Ode

     

    Tired of feeling tired. I get only a few things done. Sit down. Nap. A few more. Not enough. I imagine it’s either the Erleada or the Erleada/Orgovyx combo. So hard to suss out though. Sarcopenia from not working out. Other meds. Getting good sleep so that’s not it.

    Next week, two days after my 75th, David Sanders and the question, what’s this guy gonna do with the rest of his life? 11 am. At 1 pm I have my annual physical with Cynthia Gonzalez. First time I will have met her. Fatigue high on the list. At 3 pm Deb Brown at on the move fitness. Need to get moving, doing resistance work. Balance. Flexibility. I’ve never felt the need more.

    This 74th year, February 14 2021 to February 14 2022, on the planet has had more than its share of challenges. For all of us. Some have added a few more. Like me. Widower. Single guy living alone. Remodeling, refurnishing. Rigel’s health. Jon’s. Ruth’s. Life. As it flows on in endless song.

    Feeling it all today. Ruth’s struggles. Jon’s. Rigel’s. They could add to the fatigue, too, of course. My response to them, that is.

    The two young guys who delivered the Modern Bungalow order. A handsome 20 something Black man and a handsome 20 something Latino. Felt like they’d been cast in a movie, the new diversity sensitive films. Just guys. Friendly and helpful. Awed, as we all are, by wild Life. This delivery will remain in their minds, perhaps later draw them to the mountains.

    With weariness comes a touch of melancholy. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t erase.

    Snow means low Fire danger. Yeah. Also, beauty. 6-9 inches. Means Vince will be here. He might try the Snow raking.

    Lots of moving parts in caring for a house, dogs, a life. Called the home call vets. Will get word tomorrow am about a visit. Rigel’s lethargic. I bought stick on pads for her paws which should help improve her mobility, but she’s hardly moved since I put them on. I got XL, but they’re not big enough. If they seem to help, I’ll go XXL.

    At this moment life feels a little hard, a little too much. Ruth. Jon. Rigel. The fatigue, the lack of stamina. This will pass.


  • Education and Snow and Drugs

    Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: David Sanders. Rebecca. Claire. Bonnie. Elisa. Snow. Coming down hard. Shingles vaccination. Safeway pickup. Rigel’s meds. Kep’s good appetite. Kabbalah Experience. Their classes. The kitchen. Mostly remodeled. The Mountain roads in the Snow.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Language, mediator or creator? Or both?

    Tarot:

     

    2/2/22 -4

    Today. Trash out early in advance of snow too deep to move the bins through. First push for Vince, tomorrow. See how he’ll do. I’m hopeful.

    Talked about soul mates in Torah and the Stars. Is there some one, perhaps only one, who can complete you? Kate considered me her soul mate and I considered her mine. Took me a lot of relationships to find her. Worth it. In the class following Torah and the Stars,  Sefer Yetzirah II, David Sanders quoted Eric Fromm: love is being committed to the growth of another. Excellent. Kate and I fit that definition in so many ways.

    It also allows for the sort of love I have with Kep and Rigel, with my ancient brothers, with Jon, Ruth, and Gabe. The sort of love that CBE has shown to me.

    I felt energized after the two classes. I needed it because I still had to go back to Safeway, after a jaunt there around 8:30 am to pickup groceries and drop Rigel’s prescriptions at the pharmacy. After Mark Odegard’s bout of shingles, I committed myself to getting the vaccine(s). Did it. Got the first one. Two months later, the second one.

    Picked up Rigel’s meds, muscle relaxant and oxy, got a poke in the right arm. Which hurt, btw. Came back home.

    Next up tomorrow: getting started on kitchen reorganization. I plan to savor the opportunity to organize plates and silverware, herbs and spices, bread box and coffee maker. Getting them in places that will not recreate the clutter I had before the work began. When I see how long that will take, not long I imagine, I’ll call Modern Bungalow and schedule the furniture delivery.

    Ellen Arnold, Jamie’s mother, served on a subcommittee of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) vetting the new social studies standards for Colorado Schools. She asked those of us in the Thursday mussar group to read the ADL’s positions and to comment to the school board.

    This is what I submitted:

    As an old man who’s seen the changes in our country since the early 1960’s, I’m proud to be part of a state that takes history seriously. But.

    The ADL’s comments on these revisions, which I have read and with which I agree, make me remember the adage that history is written by winners. While this may be true in the short term, the job of historians and educators is to balance the winner’s version with the facts of how others were affected by the winner’s victories.

    This would include at least the facts about Native American deaths and cultural cancellation by the United States Government. It would include at least information about slavery congruent with the information in the New York Time’s 1619 project. It would include factual information about the Yellow Peril era and the subsequent incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. It would include factual information about US colonialism in the Philippines. It would include information about the Holocaust, Nazi’s, and other genocides that have occurred, e.g.the Armenian, the Rwandan, and the Cambodian.

    This is far from trivial. The history that we learn in school becomes the bedrock against which we measure the veracity of competing claims in political campaigns, in discussions with friends, in making business decisions.

    The trust given to you is not only to the truth, although it should first be that, but it is also a trust given to you by those not educated, by those not born, by all of us who need informed fellow citizens to make our democracy work. Don’t put the shackles on young minds. Set them free with the truth. Please.