Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon
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.
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.
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.
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.
Class reunion in September, maybe. Visit Minnesota on the way there or the way back.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 astrology class has begun to make more sense. Part way into the third class, not bad. I learned the symbols for the Planets and the Sun signs. Learning what the houses suggest in a reading will take me a bit longer. The aspects? That’s a bit further away for me. But I’m making progress.
This is heady stuff. Right up my alley. The focus right now is on the nature of language and letters and words. A lot of this class proceeds by story, a common way of learning in the Jewish world. Here’s one story from today’s class:
The focus for this class was that last sentence. The flying letters returning to their point of origin. What does it mean? It begins a conversation about the origin of the alphabet (alef-bet, the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet), the relation of letters to word, words to reality. The letters flew? Where did they go? I thought they went to the second tablet, the one Moses brought down from Sinai. Apparently I was in agreement with the Talmud. But there was also a middle point, a sort of letter and word limbo, where they resided for a bit.
I love that Jews love learning. And offer so many opportunities. A rich playground for a guy like me. Why am I studying this? I don’t know. It’s interesting. It’s complex. It bonds me to different groups of people, some living in New Mexico, D.C., Denver, the Mountains.