Category Archives: Tarot

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Tarot

Changes

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Moon of Seoah’s Naturalization

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley waste. Vince and his laborer. Moving day. Kristine Gonzalez. Kep, my buddy. Rigel, consciousness shifted. Kate. Always Kate. The Ukraine. Russia. Biden. Democrats. He who shall not be named, but will be put in jail. I hope. Sun. Solar power. Snow coming. Warmish weather. Projects. Phases.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Young muscle

Tarot: Knight of Vessels, Eel.

 

And so the day comes round at last. The shifting of furniture, the changing of the house from its care for Kate days to its Hermitage days. I keep hearing in the back of my head, “You’re erasing me.” You said this when I first began to move things in the kitchen to better reflect how I cooked.

Kate, I’m not erasing you. You will be present throughout the house and the loft. In the common room a wall dedicated  to art that you loved. Including Jerry’s big landscape. The bronze statuary. An arts and crafts clock with a turtle tile. In the bedroom the Bailey Patchworker’s quilt remains on the bed. Your sewing room will become a family gathering/celebration space. In the loft your ashes will sit behind my computer, so you’ll be with me while I work. I’m thinking about stenciled Irises in the kitchen. I can see the expanded Iris garden from the loft window. And, the lilac bushes await spring for their second year of growth.

More. Our anniversary comes next week. I’m going to celebrate. Not sure yet, but it will be you and me somehow. Also, the April Big Celebration will include plenty of time for your yahrzeit. No, you are gone as a body, but not as a memory or a presence. Your love, your intelligence, your knowledge, your passion lives on in those of us who loved you and all the patients and their parents you served over many years. Your friends at CBE and Kate’s girls, the Bailey Patchworkers, and the Needleworkers. Each one carries a piece of you in their heart.

But, yes, I am changing things to meet the new life that has emerged after your death and Rigel’s. More conversation around the fireplace. More family and friend meals. Holiday celebrations in your old sewing room. A more Arts and Crafts lower level, a better appointed guest room.

Hey, guess what? You know that thing we couldn’t figure out on the stairway upstairs from the lower level? It’s for cd’s. It held all of the cd’s!

Your life and mine. Intertwined. Now and forever until the end of the universe. No erasing possible.

Vince D’Orio and his brother Preston have come to move everything. Nice guys. Vince replaced John who replaced Ted, all since you died. Vince is the best of the three. He’s young, energetic, personable, friendly, and eager. His brother the same.

Do you think it means something that his brother Preston showed up with a Woolly Mammoth on his hat? Vince’s family came to Long Island from Sicily, then moved to Albuquerque. Now the D’Orio boys are both in Colorado. Vince lives on Warhawk. Preston in Henderson.

Now they’re moving stuff around in our house here on Shadow Mountain. Oh, yeah. And then there’s the house. Which you found. Which you chose because of it’s loft space for me and my library. My eyrie, you wanted to call it. It’s that, too.

You live in my heart and in my memory as a blessing.

 

 

Asia, Astrology, Cooking, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Shadow Mountain, Tarot

Mind Blown

Leave a comment

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!

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Weather +Climate

A Master Class. Kitchen. Erleada. Ruth.

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

Today -4 6:45 am

Thursday gratefuls: That below zero crunch in the Snow. Minnesota. Abraham Lincoln. Rich. Judy. Marilyn. Tom. Irv. Fresh Snow beauty on Black Mountain. On the Lodgepoles. On the Hermitage. Master Class in Black History. Back to reading. Loading coffee cups in the new shelving. Figuring out how to use the Speed Brew Bunn. (for high altitude)

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Money

Tarot: The Hooded Man, #9 of the Major Arcana

 

Loaded coffee cups into the pantry cabinets, smaller than the old ones, but probably better this way. While feeding the dogs. I’m getting underway. More this morning.

Vince came to plow the driveway. He has a six wheel ATV. An odd-looking thing. But powerful. He did a great job, including eliminating the small ridge of snow in front of the front door that both Josh and Ted left. I think Vince is a find. He also does landscaping.

Connected with Ruth yesterday. She’s in the Denver Springs psych hospital. Voluntarily. She sounded good. Joking, asking me to give Rigel and Kep a hug for her. She wants, really wants, to get her psyche calmed down. I hope she’s able to do that. I love her so much and it makes me hurt to see her in trouble.

The ? Room

Decided I’ll schedule the Modern Bungalow delivery for my birthday. A way to celebrate with a major change in the front room. I don’t know what to call that room. Great room sounds pretentious. Living room doesn’t feel right. It has a breakfast nook and a fire place. The area around the fire place is a separate space. I don’t know. Any ideas out there?

a repeat. but apt.

Been watching a Master Class in Black History on Amazon Prime. It’s excellent. I got to know Cornel West a bit at the 1974 Liberation Theology Conference in Detroit. I also met Angela Davis when I worked on the West Bank. There were a few members of the communist party who lived on the West Bank and were active in neighborhood politics. I can’t remember the couples name right now, but they held a do for Angela and invited me. This would have been in the mid-1980’s. Very much worth watching.

BTW: I agree with everything I’ve heard so far on the program. Knew some, but also learned a lot.

Felt a sag in my excitement about the new kitchen as I start to reorganize it. Realized it was the midday blues. Gonna get back to exercising, starting today. Better energy when I work out. Was gonna go to On the Move Fitness, but wrote Deb a note and said, “I’ve got the Omicron jitters. Let’s schedule a zoom session.” Probably over cautious. But. I’m not now, nor have I been sick for the last two years. In less you count prostate cancer, of course.

The Erleada, which I’ve been taking for 6 days now, did drop my energy level at first but that seems to have waned. Also a few hot flashes. Not bad. Not good. Oddly, just as I typed Erleada, the phone rang. McKesson Biologic Pharmacy. They’re the folks that handle my Orgovyx script, too. Kind and competent. My favorite combination.

And, ta dah! $10 a month rather than $3,000 or $650.

-30-

 

 

Astrology, Colorado, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, US History, Weather +Climate

Education and Snow and Drugs

Leave a comment

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.

Astrology, Cooking, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Weather +Climate

Imbolc

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon (that’s 3/4 of a century for me on February 14)

Tuesday gratefuls: Winds. Swaying Lodgepoles. Cold and Snow coming. Polar Vortex slumping all the way down to Shadow Mountain. Bowe and his work today. Fatigue. Erleada. Mighty chemicals fighting prostate cancer on my behalf. The Assistance Fund. Cheese curds from Wisconsin Cheese Brothers. Night. Sleep. Electric blanket. Pillow. Kep and Rigel with me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Kitchen. Almost remodeled.

Tarot: Nine of Bows, Respect

 

Bowe installed all of the hardware, my magnetic knife holder, a light can in place of a fan, and noted the still unfinished parts of Brian’s work. There are a couple of glitches, but I think they’re minor. Will be fixed. I love it. The hardware makes the whole. If I’m honest, what I love best are the under cabinet lights. I can see!

The kitchen invites me in. Says, work here. It’s your space. I’m proud of the design and the work to realize it. I plan to start loading the cabinets tomorrow. Too tired tonight. Even modest labor like putting things in cabinets does wear me out right now. I go slow.

This is so exciting to me. A part of the new life comes into reality. Chef mois. A lot of self-education over the next few months.

 

Time learning more about South Nodes and North Nodes. South Nodes present our “karmic” past. Things unfinished, things done wrong, things involved in tragedy or heartache, things that tip over into this life. Unfruitful reactions to circumstances. Spots of difficulty in career or marriage or self-awareness. This hinges on your ability to believe in past lives, of course. Tough for me. But, I’m learning it anyhow.

The North Node is the “cure” to the troubles of the South Node. If, like me, you have a South Node in Sagittarius, the North Node, directly across the face of the natal chart clock, is in Gemini. If I came into this life trailing wispy baggage of dogmatism, dark magic, rigid certainty, (all likely as dark sides of Sagittarius) then, the Gemini positives of listening and learning from others will help free me from that baggage. I’ll become a more well-rounded, healthy person.

Still unsure about all this, but over the last couple of weeks the houses, the planets, and the Nodes have become clearer to me. It’s a complex, maybe overly complex, art form, astrology. It does help me to remember that astrology and astronomy were one pursuit in ancient times.

And, too, learning something has its own value. The kabbalistic frame for astrology remains elusive for me. I’ll get there with it.

 

Ruth

Ruth remains under Children’s Hospital’s psychiatric care. She’s been there since dinner Saturday night up here. I’m not sure the exact nature of her crisis, but her being there still underscores its seriousness.  I can’t visit. I’m not on her list. I’ve got a call in, but the psych folks have not called me back.

No idea when, or even if, this will resolve. Having a grandchild, Ruth especially, with severe mental health problems. Sad. Hopeful. Puzzled. Loving. How can we help her right the ship? I don’t know.

 

Rigel, being beautiful, July, 2018

Rigel’s getting new drugs, or rather, more of the recently prescribed drugs: oxycodone and a muscle relaxant. They help some. As Dr. Palmini said, “We’re not trying to get her into Division I athletics.”

Final note: These Winds have blown all the time I’ve been writing. I saw 35 mph on my anemometer. Some gusts higher than that, I’m sure. The Winds of change. A cold weather system is on the way and these Winds are its harbinger.

 

Anoka County, Beyond the Boundaries, Cooking, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, General, Health, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, The Move, The West, Weather +Climate

The Consolation of the Natural World

1 Comment

Yule and the Moon of the New Year, at 4% Crescent

The Webb in its L2 orbit:

“Telescope deployment is complete. Webb is now orbiting L2. Ongoing cooldown and eventual instrument turn-on, testing and calibration occur. Telescope mirror alignment and calibration also begin as temperatures fall within range and instruments are enabled.

The telescope and scientific instruments started to cool rapidly in the shade of the sunshield once it was deployed, but it will take several weeks for them to cool all the way down to stable operational temperatures. This cooldown will be carefully controlled with strategically-placed electric heater strips. The remaining five months of commissioning will be all about aligning the optics and calibrating the scientific instruments.” NASA

Monday gratefuls: Mental health care for teens. Jon’s care for Ruth yesterday. The tenderloin roast. Yumm. The blizzard in Maine. The cold in Minnesota. The mind numbing 45 degrees we had here today. Ode in Mexico. Peak TV. All the wonderful series on now. Righteous Gemstones. Pennyworth. Bulgasal. Hotel del Luna. Qin Empire. New Book-Becky Chamber’s, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Life

Tarot:

 

Tom asked me this morning how I got along so well with prostate cancer. With grief. With living alone. OK, he didn’t ask those last two, but I figure he implied them.

When first diagnosed in May of 2015, six months after we moved to Colorado, cancer hit me hard. I sat there in Eigner’s office listening. Who me?

When I got in the car to drive back home, the first thought was: Don’t drive when in the grip of strong emotions. Oh. Yeah. Sat there for a minute wondering if it was a good idea to pull out of the parking lot. But. How am I gonna get home?

The mountains were still new to me then. Amazing me each time I went somewhere. Still true, yes, but then my amazement was new, too. I chose to drive back Deer Creek Canyon Road, a sort of back way from Littleton to Conifer.

Turning left about three miles north of the Denver Botanical Gardens, I began the trek up the site, millions of years ago, of the Rocky Mountain Orogeny.  Rocky Cliffs rose from the Earth and the road began to climb as Cliffs and Streams and Boulders began to dominate. Colorado Blue Spruce, Ponderosa Pine, Lodgepole Pine. Aspen. A few Willows and Dogwoods along Deer Creek

Numb. Yes, numb. But then. These Mountains. The layer cake of their formations. One strata on top of another pushed up, up, up out of the Bedrock during the Laramid Orogeny, 80 to 55 million years ago. This Rock was ancient then, resting in place, awaiting the slow changes that come even to the seemingly obdurate.

These facts were fresh with me because, as is my way, I’d been reading a lot about the Rockies before and after our move. I like to know where I am. And how it got to be there.

Huh. It hit me. I’m such a Mayfly. Even my cancer is such a small thing. Big to my life, sure, but in the scope and sweep of these Mountains, Granite and Gneiss and Marble and Shale exposed after a long, long sleep. A sweep of the second hand.

As is also my way my Body went out to the Mountains, following them as I drove. Embracing them as teachers, as guides on this Planet we share. I gradually became calm, understanding that my life and the life of the Mountains are not separate, but joined. Now and forever.

There is a Great Wheel not wedded to the Seasons of temperate latitudes, but one wedded to the creation, life, and inevitable doom of this Rocky, Watery place we call home. I am part of that Great Wheel’s turning. As are each of you who read this.

Before what I have long called the Consolation of Deer Creek Canyon, I experienced the Consolation of the Great Anoka Sand Plain, the shore of the Glacial River Warren. There in Andover I planted, Kate weeded. Flowers and vegetables grew. Dogs ran here and there in the Woods. Bees flew in and out of the Gardens, the Orchard.

Each fall I would find Folk Alley radio on the internet, turn it up so I could hear on our small brick patio outside the lower level. There I would replenish the soil with compost and other nutrients. Digging out onto a tarp, then shoveling it back in. When that was finished I would open the boxes of Bulbs, Corms, and Tubers and Rhizomes. They would go in the Soil, with a bit of fertilizer, at the right depth, then get tucked in with a hard pat. Next Spring there would be Lilies, Tulips, Iris brightly signaling a new growing season.

I loved that work on those fall afternoons. I’d often hear the Andover Marching Band practicing. The Garden of course had its rhythms. It was finishing as I planted the perennial Flowers.

The Garden fed us all year. Fresh veggies, canned veggies. Fruits, too. Raspberries, Honey Crisp Apples. Plums. Cherries. The Bees gave us Honey.

The Garden was part of me and I, after the eating the produce and the Honey, was part of it. I call this the true transubstantiation.

In all Seasons I would hike to my Tree in the Boot Lake Scientific and Natural Area. I would sit with my back against it, looking at all of its Children who grew in an irregular circle around it. I sprinkled Tully’s ashes there. She was a sweetheart and I wanted to honor her.

I’ve gone on too long. The point is, I long ago found my place in the Natural World, its bounty, its death, its ongoingness. And as the Mountains along Deer Creek Canyon reminded me, that was and is enough.

Health, Tarot

How Can I Cope With Cancer?

Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of the New Year

Tarot question: How can I cope with cancer? The spread: 1. Context. 2. Where to Focus 3. Outcome

The cards: 1. Ten of Vessels, Happiness. 2. Ace of Vessels, the Waters of Life. 3. Seven of Bows, Clearance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes. The context, my current life is happy. I’m not flourishing, but I am happy. To move from happiness seems odd, but not if I move toward the real potential life has. I’m a eudaimaniac, a seeker of a flourishing life. Always. And I will happily (hah) barter away happiness for flourishing.

I believe this means I need to focus on life, its possibilities, not on cancer. Pretty much what I do anyhow, but after a visit about cancer mutations, new and expensive drugs, and metastasized cancer cells. In my body. Throws me off a bit, makes me wobble. Need to restart the gyroscope.

The key to a flourishing life with cancer is clearance, cutting away what I don’t need. Focus on what’s important. Friends. Family. CBE. Creativity. Stories and narratives written by and/or experienced by me. A comfortable and beautiful Hermitage. Exercise and healthier eating. Travel. Not done yet. Not at all. One drug in front of the other. That’s the way.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Writing

Melancholy Knocking at the Door of my Heart

Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of the New Year

The Webb is at L2! Friend and Engineer Tom Crane says this is the best illustration of L2 and the Webb’s orbit he’s seen. Easier for me to understand full screen.

BTW: A Webb scientist said the fuel saved by an efficient launch and insertion will extend the projected life of the Webb from 10 to 20 years!

 

Tuesday gratefuls: Kep at Sano. Rigel tolerating her meds somewhat better. Susan saying you are a lovely human being. What a nice thing to say. Gabe has all his books except 1984. I told him I remembered 1984. Languishing. May be. Gray and overcast. Me, not the weather. Snow. Cold. (by Colorado standards. 15F) The Webb at its home away from home.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Orbital dynamics

Tarot: 1. The Wanderer (the Fool), 0 of the major arcana.  2. Ace of Stones, the foundation of life. 3. Page of Arrows, Wren.     Past Self-Present Self-Future Self

Brief interpretation: In the near past I had to leave my old life for the life of a wanderer, a peregrinatio seeking a new way of being in the world. I’ve reached a point where the foundation for that new life has begun to emerge, one as much in the Otherworld as in this one. This next life aborning will have study, the hooded man, chesed, imagination, and love as its guiding values. I’m going with this one.

 

Dropped Kep off at Sano at 7:30 this morning. Drove down Shadow Mountain in a medium intensity Snow. Those Blizzaks grip the Snow. Much better than that damned Ice. Which I avoid even on level Ground. Up here, I just don’t move when it’s icy.

Kep’s abscess did not reduce much with the antibiotics. Might mean it’s a tumor rather than an abscess. He has x-rays and a biopsy if necessary at 1 pm. Prostate cancer has taught me to not get ahead of myself with disease. Right now I know nothing. So, I’m not worried. Very much.

Rigel and a bull Elk in our back a day before my first radiation treatment.

Rigel’s meds have not helped in any obvious way, but maybe a bit more time with them? At first they increased her wobbliness. Not what we wanted. Now though she seems to tolerate them. She’s begun eating again. Very sensitive tummy, my Rigel.

Having both of my companions with potentially severe medical issues does push me toward despair. I try not to stuff it nor get overwhelmed by it. Let it in. Yes, that makes sense you’d feel that way, Charlie. But. Going further with it will complicate rather than solve anything. So. Let it go now.

I had a lot of chances to practice this attitude during Kate’s long illness. Don’t stuff. Don’t hang on. Let those potentially negative feelings pass on by. Wave as they exit.

Giovanni Battista Ciolina – Melancholy Twilight (1899)

Perhaps related to the mood alterations of these passing clouds I have felt melancholy knocking on the door of my heart, asking for permission to enter. Not working out. Not writing. Closing the day down around noon. Conclusion-hopeless asshole. Oops.

Then I remember, judge yourself as whole person, and favorably. Love yourself, then your neighbor. I try to look at myself as I would look at someone else going through the same situations, thoughts. What would I say then?

Hell, melancholy dude? You have a right to be depressed. It’s been a tough fucking year. Melancholy would fit the facts. But you’re not really melancholic. Pre-melancholic. And there’s no need to go there.

Start working out again. That’s body level prozac. Keep learning, keep studying. That’s mind level prozac. Lean into wu wei, that’s spiritual level prozac. And call me in the morning.

I want to be a “lovely human being.” That’s as good a goal as I can imagine. I also want to be me: authentic me. And have those two as the same. Could happen.

Coronavirus, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Judaism, Mountains, permaculture, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Tarot

Land, Sea, and Sky

Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of the New Year

Where’s the Webb? 99.79% to L2 at 8 am MST. 1900 miles to go. Mission Day 30. Speed now: 450 mph.

Next

“L2 Insertion Burn

Mid Course Correction Burn (MCC2) – Begins L2 Insertion

Nominal Event Time: Updated: Launch + 30 days

Status: Schedule and Post MCC2 Coverage

Activities to plan and execute MCC2 – the insertion burn for Webb’s L2 orbit. MCC2 corrects any residual trajectory errors and adjusts the final L2 orbit.

The James Webb Space Telescope is launched on a direct path to an orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange Point (L2), but it needs to make its own mid-course thrust correction maneuvers to get there. This is by design, because if Webb gets too much thrust from the Ariane rocket, it can’t turn around to thrust back toward Earth because that would directly expose its telescope optics and structure to the Sun, overheating them and aborting the science mission before it can even begin. Therefore, Webb gets an intentional slight under-burn from the Ariane and uses its own small thrusters and on-board propellant to make up the difference.

There are three mid-course correction (MCC) maneuvers: MCC-1a, MCC-1b, and MCC-2. This final burn, MCC-2, which inserts Webb into its L2 halo orbit.” NASA.

 

Monday gratefuls: Marina Harris and her cleaning crew. Alan’s recovery from Covid. His role in the Colorado Ballet. The Ancient Brothers Ode to Joy this morning. Ali Baba’s gyros. Cancer. Prostate and otherwise. Rigel and her meds. January. Winter in its fullness in Minnesota. Colorado has cold December and snowy February, March, April.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

Tarot: will require its own post.

 

This damned event keeps getting new legs, fresh legs. In history the U.S. response to Covid will confound future generations. Why didn’t they take it seriously? Even after so many dead. So many hospitalized. So many left with lingering troubles.

Not to mention of course the number of the unmasked, unvaccinated who want to take over the government. I’ve become news shy. Like many of you, I know. Who wants to read about the brutal murder of Caesar or the Beer Hall Putsch? That is dangerous, of course. It is the uninformed and the passive who underwrite with their absence the fevered path of the few.

There is a small herd of Mule Deer Does who’ve been coming up the utility easement to eat needles off slash Derek dumped there. When they’re here, the scene becomes instant backwoods. An over the river and through the woods tableau. They’re here right now. The Buck, an eight-pointer, was here this morning. Neither Kep nor Rigel paid attention. Just as well. A chance encounter between a Dog and a Buck can result in injury or death for the doggy.

Kep noticed them. He walked through Snow, looked. Gave a short yip and came toward the house. The Deer munched Pine Needles, secure on the other side of our fence. Kep came in.

Rigel has begun to hesitate to walk up the five stairs to the kitchen level. She’s fallen, slid several times and she has the new meds on board. They’re supposed to help, but it appears to me that they’re making her feel strange. Doesn’t help confidence.

With Rigel’s legs and arthritis and spinal owies becoming more evident. With Kep’s nose undergoing x-rays and possible biopsy on Tuesday it looks like my companions may have rough water ahead. Since they are my grief counselors, sleeping partners, and the biggest part of my interaction with the living world, their troubles are very much my troubles. I’m not getting ahead of anything. Just aware that they, like Kate, like me, are mortal creatures. Like Abraham Lincoln.

Simcah Torah, Congregation Beth Evergreen. 2021

Thinking about donating money. What it means. How I decide. Most of my donations go to Congregation Beth Evergreen. There I’m saying yes to community, yes to friends, yes to thousands of years of history, yes to a religious culture cultivated by this unusual gathering. I don’t feel like I’m supporting the church. I’m supporting the chemistry of a place that accepts me and loves me as I am.

Otherwise I give a bit here, a bit there. Some to Dog shelters, some to performing arts organizations, some to politicians and some to political organizations.

Deciding that next year and thereafter I’m going to focus my giving beyond CBE in a different way. My largest non-CBE donation was to the Land Institute where Wes Jackson and his crew push toward perennial Crops and no-till agriculture. I’m gonna lean toward these radical solution organizations, ones working with the Soil, with Plants, with agriculture. I value the courage it takes to stand against farming practices that seem so entrenched as to be unmovable. And I value the creative thinking that the Wendell Berry’s, the Mary Oliver’s, the Aldo Leopold’s, the Thomas Berry’s, the Wes Jackson’s represent.

So this year. CBE and those working on long-term, universally applicable solutions to systemic problems in agriculture and protection of our World: Land, Sea, and Sky.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Shadow Mountain, Tarot

I love these people

Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of the New Year

Where’s the Webb?  98% of the way to L2. 16000 miles to go. 465 mph. Cold side: -344. Hot side: 128. Mission day: 29. The last day of the trip. Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!

Sunday gratefuls: Susan and her organizing. Jamie, Rich, Irv, Marilyn, Ron, Tara. Judy. Jewish caroling. The Tree of Life. Jon. In need. Ruth, in crisis. Gabe. Being Gabe. Rigel’s meds. Not helping so much. Kep’s either so far. Abraham Lincoln, in the back of Rich’s Volvo. That dying dog look. Tears from me. Safeway pickup. Ali Baba and their gyros. Ruby, chugging along, a petrol burning antique.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Abraham Lincoln. His journey ending.

Tarot: later

 

Went Jewish caroling in Golden. Up on Meadow Run Drive where Judy lives. I hum. Besides, I didn’t know the words. They were in Hebrew. Judy has ovarian cancer and is in yet another round of chemo. The MVP Mussar group, gathered by Susan Marcus, sang to her and delivered a Tree of Life silver scarf pin. Judy had made cookies and tea, so we went in and sat around her lovely dining room table, teak, I think, and chatted for a half an hour.

I love these people. That’s what came to mind as I drove back up the hill to Conifer. We’re in this crazy thing called life together.

most of Gertie

Ron had Abraham Lincoln in the car with him because Kim had come home via DIA and he had to pick her up. Abraham Lincoln accepted the attention as we leaned in the  back to pet him. His face alone would have told me he’s in serious trouble. Seeing him took me to tears with no stopping go. Dogs are so stoic. They do, I realized, live until they die. That could easily be a quote from Abraham Lincoln, or Gertie, or Vega.

Before Judy’s I had lunch with Jon at Ali Baba’s, not too far from Judy’s house. Ruth had a mental health crisis yesterday in school. Not sure exactly what happened but she got very anxious and lashed out at an administrator. She went home to Jen’s house to cool down. They’re with her this week.

ballgame with Jon

Jon’s still running short of money. I helped him a bit this month. He’s in a better mental place. Sarah may come out in the Spring and help him clean up his house. “If I get a bed, things will be closer to normal.” He’s lived in his house for five years with no bed. He sleeps on an old couch.

On the way back from Golden I stopped at Safeway and picked up my grocery order. A full day for me. Driving. Human interaction. Dog interaction. Wu wei-ing my way along. Feeling it all. Glad to be where I was. At Ali Baba’s with Jon. At Judy’s with the mussar group. At Safeway picking up groceries. Here at home with Kep and Rigel.

alchemical marriage

I can feel the Hooded Man and the Queen of Vessels leaning in to each other. Listening. Applauding each other for the actions and feeling they bring to interactions. Soon we may have a hand-fast marriage. A trial for a year and a day. Often entered into on Beltane in auld Ireland.

Here’s an old Christian hymn  lyric: I’ve got joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart to stay. I would say that’s where I am now. And grief. And love. And patience. All down in my heart, down in my heart to stay.