Category Archives: Fourth Phase

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

Tears and Laughter

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Susan. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her house. Beautiful. Jamie. Rich. Elephant Company. Tara. Marilyn. Ron. MVP. Going to bed late. Dreams of travel. lodging. As some pundit observed, long tie guy has flooded the zone with too many bad picks all at once. Orion, my buddy. The Mountain Night Sky.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Habeas Corpus for Elephants

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: We sat in Eames chairs around a large Camelot table, a spotlight outside revealing a beautiful outcropping of Rock, 15 foot glass windows, the east facing wall, showing the glittering lights of Denver, down the hill and far away, while we talked about anavah and sinah: love and hate, trying to find purchase in our lives for growing both as soul traits, character traits.

 

Every once in a while, like last night at Susan Marcus’s architect designed home, I feel blessed, blissed to sit with people smarter than me as we try to figure out how to lead our lives in a soul-full manner. How we can we express the essence of ourselves as sacred beings, using the medieval practice of mussar as a guide.

In those conversations we move from our lives into learning, from learning back into our lives. We struggle with the usual things: parents, children, marriage, existential angst while trying to place them within the context of developing our ability to practice humility, enthusiasm, love, hate (or repulsion), our ability to let the light of our own divinity shine unobstructed. Not easy work, but done with love and compassion. Confidentiality. Honesty.

A lot of laughter, occasional tears. Befuddlement is common. And, admitted. Gotta say I love being a Jew and part of Congregation Beth Evergreen.

Also, food. Last night butternut squash soup, chicken wings, cowboy caviar, a fancy salad, hummus, carrots, and for those who drink, a red wine labeled, 7 Deadly Sins.

 

Just a moment: Harder than I thought it would be. Getting back into working out. Deciding this time to privilege weight training, resistance work over cardio. My heart rate has remained excellent, but my muscles have given way even more to that old devil, sarcopenia. Where once I opened jars and bags with practiced ease, I now often have to resort to tricks and accessories. Not acceptable. And remediable.

Plan to make sure my resistance routine is solid, making gains. Then, I’ll add back in the cardio on my treadmill. Self-care, it’s not just a river in Egypt. Oh, wait…

 

In spite of myself l find a habit gained during 45’s reign of error returning. Opening the New York Times to see what he’s done now. Who’s he appointed? Why? Of course the why question has no answer. Whim. Some strange political calculus. An indecipherable conclusion based on misinformation.

When the revolutionaries take over the government, they usually turn out to be same as the old boss. Since this is a revolution based at root on greed and fear, it may stretch things farther than any of us hope, certainly more than we want, but the U.S.A. has and will recover. That is my Seed-Keeper faith and one I will help make happen.

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Judaism, Korea, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Herme’s Journey

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Sunday gratefuls: Tom’s safe trip. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch coming January. Then, a trip to Korea in May. Followed by the Jang family visit here in late summer. Snow. Whippets. Irish Wolfhounds. German Wirehairs. Akitas. Breeds I love. Asia. Korea. Malaysia. Australia. Thailand. Cambodia. Saudi Arabia.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leftist politics

Kavannah: Perserverance

One brief shining: A Mountain retreat, a home on granite, gneiss, and schist, raised above sea level by 8,800 feet, overlooking Black Mountain with its ski runs, Lodgepoles and Aspen colonies, in the Arapaho National Forest and drained by Maxwell Creek to the north and North Turkey Creek to the south, home to my day-to-day life in these middle years of the 2020’s.

 

On a lighter note today. Current TV favorites: Tracker, Sealteam, Fire Country. Reading anew Nexus by Harari. Also, Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad. Best movie I watched recently: hmm. None come to mind. Oh, Late Night with the Devil. Weird. I can no longer understand dialogue in movie theaters so I have to watch what’s available on streaming services with closed captions. Favorite meal last week, filet mignon with Tom at Evoke 1923 last Friday.

Herme’s Journey. Still on this path. I’ve finished another reading of Ovid. Also, the Odyssey. Am in the fourth book of the Iliad. I’m reading the parsha of the week most weeks along with commentaries. Also books that challenge me like Nexus. Keeping mental knives sharp.

My commitment to regular times with family and friends has increased. I zoom, breakfast, lunch, and on the rare occasion eat dinner with them. Also expanding my circle of friends, not by much, but adding Veronica for example.

The lunar calendar of Judaism meshes well with my pagan sensibilities and my focus on the Great Wheel. Trying to integrate the two in meaningful ways. An ongoing project.

Am working on a new meditative practice, focusing on a work of art for ten minutes or more, then reading art historical material about it. An NYT idea.

And more. All this is to stimulate, reinforce my lifelong journey. See what bubbles up.

 

Just a moment: Talked with my son and Seoah yesterday. There is a sweetness, a visceral joy in seeing them, hearing them. My heart lifts and my sense of well-being, already good, increases. Murdoch hears my voice, but does nothing. Nothing to smell here, so meh.

That sense of well-being. I’ve noticed Luke and Jamie initiate hugs when we see each other. There’s something about that that fills my soul, too. Ron and Rich. Tom. Ruth, Gabe. I hope the others feel the same way about my participation. Hugs are a way of claiming intimacy and saying yes to it.

Will not know for some time what the most abhorrent of adventures will look like, feel like. Cabinet picks? An unserious man taking an unserious approach to the job in the whole world that has the most economic and military power.

Committed to the seeds of decency, honesty, love for the other. Still and always.

 

Art and Culture, Fourth Phase, Politics

Seed-Keepers

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Tom. Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Ginny. Rick. Great Sol. A blue Colorado Sky. The West. The Rocky Mountains. No Bike Park. The Mountain Meadow remains. Colorado. Livin’ in a Blue State. Mark. Mary. Diane. Riley. Richard. Cut Throat Cafe. Happy Camper.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Eagle at Tom and Roxann’s

Kavannah: Friendship

One brief shining: Why did you put on what you’re wearing today, Mindy asked, and we went around the room, learning one wanted to cover her stomach, another takes a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so she had on what she had on Wednesday, another wore brown jeans and a green t-shirt to look like a tree, and when it came to me I said, I bought a pair of Keens, a lot of white socks, a bunch of jeans, and several plaid flannel shirts so I don’t have to think about it.

 

BTW: I asked chatbotgtp to create An American themed image of a group called the Seed-Keepers whose role is to honor the spirit of liberal America. Anti-racist, anti-misogynist, and anti-homophobic. I’m more interested in the Seed-Keeper theme than anything else

Seed Keepers, Chatbotgt at my request

Seed-Keepers. Who among you might become a Seed-Keeper? If you take on this role, expect it to last at least four years, perhaps longer. You can be a solitary Seed-Keeper, dedicated to remembering and speaking who we are as a country and as a people when not driven by fear and demagoguery. One of our Seeds, there are so many, lies in our history. Perhaps you will be the one who goes back to the beginning of our nation and learns in even more depth how we came to be. Warts and all. 3/5ths clause and fugitive slave clause and white, propertied men as voters, the electoral college and all. Enslavement, too. Jim Crow. The Indian Wars. Yet, too, the Civil War. Checks and balances. Federalism. The Federalist Papers. How we became a city on a hill attracting new citizens from afar.

Or, you might choose to have a Seed-Keeper group. Perhaps one interested in the American Renaissance (as I am) when American thinkers and artists began to tease out the distinctive features of living on this amazing land. Reading together the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Parker, Whitman, Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Mary Fuller. Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Not to ignore either painters and sculptors like Mary Cassatt, Bierstadt, Henry Tanner, Church.

Seed-Keepers #2

What might you do as a Seed-Keeper? You might gather those close to you for story evenings, perhaps around the fireplace to discuss questions like what does it mean to be an American? What has it meant? What does it mean in a time dominated by reactionaries and autocrats? You might write essays, letters to the editor about how the other half of the 2024 electorate sees things.

You might locate yourself in the work of a state Humanities council and help them introduce American Seeds through their speakers and book groups.

I’m sure you have more and better ideas than these. A Seed-Keepers primary role is to hold the liberal to radical ideas that make America a nation in which all want to live and to pass those ideas along to family, friends, and others in a digestible manner.

I’m gonna keep spinning up this idea, see if it can gain traction. No where near done with it.

Fourth Phase, Garden, Memories, Minnesota, permaculture, Plants, Politics, Seed Keepers, Weather +Climate

It will be us. And, it will be so.

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: My sweet, kind Ancient Brothers. The Seed-Keepers. Veronica. Ruth. Gabe. Samain. The fallow time. Snow. Boulder. Snarfs. Shadow Mountain. Election 2024. Clarity. Warming. The Great Sol Snow Shovel. Tara. My Lodgepole companion. A Colorado Blue Sky.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Lunch with Ruth

Kavannah: contentment and joy

One brief shining: Strange to recalibrate a life at 76 yet I did just that a year ago this month, having my penis-my penis!-pricked (hah), disrobing and immersing myself in the mikveh, explaining my reasons for embracing a new way of life to a beth dein, house of judgement, and taking a new name, Israel, one who struggles with God.

 

Israel. Part of my nom sacré, Herme Harari Israel. My fourth phase name. In the direct toledot, generations, of Abraham and Sarah. My now forever ancestors. This name also signals my continuing pagan life as the hooded man of Shadow Mountain. Feel free to refer to me by any name you wish.

The Moon of Growing Darkness. A bit of explanation. You may think this refers to the election of long tie guy, but no. It refers to my joy as the days grow shorter and the nights increase, headed toward the Long Night, the Winter Solstice. Yule in the pagan way. My affection for the dark, for the night long proceeds long tie guy, proceeds cancer, proceeds Judaism.

No, I’m not an owl. I love the mornings when my strength and intellect and creativity peak. But as much I love the darkness. Might have begun during those fall days in Andover when I would dig out and replenish the soil in the flower beds that arced around our lower level brick patio.

As I worked, Folk Alley radio played in the background and a chill Minnesota fall day would make the task a deep joy. Lying not far from the tarp onto which I put the Soil would be brown bags full of Corms, Rhizomes, and Bulbs. With the Tulip Bulbs, I would place them in slightly raised rectangular wire baskets, place them at the right depth, then shovel Soil back over them with a bit of Organic matter mixed in. The Rhizomes,  new Irises that Kate had chosen, might go in next to the Tulips. On the next tier up of this three tiered bed I would sprinkle Daffodil Bulbs and plant them where they landed, going for a mass of yellow in the Spring.

The Crocus Corms would go into the bed next to the front porch and that would come a bit later. This was a twenty year ritual, one I looked forward to because I loved the thought that within the nurturing Soil, beneath the Snow, tucked in warm against the bitter Minnesota Winters were these small capsules, no less amazing, perhaps more amazing than a space capsule, of life, holding within them enough nutrients and ancient wisdom to throw up a stalk when the temperatures signaled safety, push out leaves that would begin to gather more food for the all important Flower, that seductive botanical invention that draws Pollinators, and would, in time, die back as Seeds formed. Even though most of these Flowers never propagated by seed.

How could a gardener not be in love with darkness? Seed-Keepers will work in the darkness of the coming red tie guy years. Tucked in warm against the bitter autocratic Winter, small communities ready to send up stalks when the political temperature is right. Then to send out Leaves and power a movement into Flowering. It will be us and it will be so.

Yes, we had Morels in our Woods
Aging, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

May you feel safe and secure

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Sunday gratefuls: Great Sol warming the Snow until it rises into Air. Lodgepole Branches almost cleared. Colorado Winters. A backyard though with 20″ or so piled around the Lodgepole Trunks. Headlines and shaking heads. Gathering ourselves for what must come next.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jackie

Kavannah: contentment and joy

One brief shining: Studied Torah yesterday online with Jamie and Luke and Irene, Avram and Sarai leaving Ur of the Chaldeas and heading off into the unknown, Avram’s thoughts gathered from wondering about the Stars and their origins pushing them out of a place where Gods had faces and could be carried from place to place into a place and an encounter with a world and life unknown to them.

 

Yes, a dangerous, felonious, misogynist who runs with a crowd of would be Kluxers has changed again the double meaning of the White House. A brute fact as philosophers and scientists alike would say. Yes, he has shown the world a decided and never gone shadow side of American life. Some of us fear the other and when pressed hard enough by circumstance dire or perceived to be so we allow it to surface, even take control.

In this election both sides. Both sides feared. Feared the other and allowed our shadow sides to guide us through the political maneuvering that led to Nov. 5, 2024. Those of us who thought long red tie guy was the problem let our fear out as scorn, as dismissal, as heads shaking. No, it can’t happen. They’re too stupid and he’s too venal.

The other side feared us, too. Because they thought we might win again, continue pressing on them the things they feared. Symbolized by trans folks, LBGT folk, women who demanded control over their bodies and their lives, strangers piling across the borders hoping for some of what they held onto so tenuously.

The oligarchs had lessons in Europe about how to play their instruments. The cello of immigrants diluting and cheating. The oboe of women’s traditional roles. The drums of racial purity. The piccolo of blood and soil nationalism. Violin cadenzas of sexual normality.

And we stood aside, complacent in our truth. Holding onto disparagement of the ignorant others. Wrapped in our cloaks of decency and righteousness. In that sense true elites. An aristocracy bred of our ignorance of the economic lives of others.

We ignored economic hardship of those essential workers. Remember them? The grocery clerk. The convenience store worker. The bus driver. The Amazon warehouse employee. The police officer and the snowplow driver. The former factory worker turned Walmart greeter or holding down a McJob.

And we lost our way.

I hope the seed-keepers among us can call to mind the mother aghast at her supermarket receipt. The commuter who cringes at the cost of yet another tank full of gasoline. The renter whose housing costs rises into a choice between home and food. The anguish of one facing illness only to become burdened by regular unpayable bills showing up in the mail.

Long red tie guy has promised to cure these ills. He will not. He cannot because his fealty is to his narrow slice of peers, people who do not have these problems. He only played the Piper’s tune. The Billionaires March instead is what he hears and follows.

There are miles to go. Miles to go before we sleep and as we walk each other home let those miles be filled with love, justice, and compassion. Or, as a group of my friends presciently claimed years ago: Leadership.

 

 

 

Fourth Phase, Politics, US History

Never Forget

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Shabbat gratefuls: Yet more Snow. Election week. At least it’s over. Tara. Weariness. San Francisco. St. Francis. Authenticity. Rabbi Jamie. Avram and Sarai. I am content with who I am. I am content with what I have. Mezuzahs. The Winter of our discontents.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The quiet after a big Snow

Kavannah for election week: contentment and joy

One brief shining: While talking to Tara on zoom, a knock on the front door, Vince carrying a King Sooper’s bag with milk and English muffins, two friends seeing me, helping me; the very thing I believe we need to nurture right now, holding each other close, bearing each other’s burdens.

 

Not going to go scree here. Yet I can’t help this much. Story header in the NYT: the Elites Had It Coming. Yeah? Showing up the elites by putting U.S. oligarchs like Trump and Musk and Adelson and Thiel in charge of dismantling the barriers between themselves and yet more rapaciousness? A burlesque. A 1920’s black and white dark comedy.

 

Marilyn recommended An Unfinished Love Story: A personal history of the 1960’s. Started reading on Sunday or Monday. Almost done. I graduated from Alexandria-Monroe High School in 1965. After the Civil Rights movement was well underway and as Vietnam began to grow like a cancer, killing my friends and our “foes” alike.

The 60’s were my decade of becoming a man. It was a bumpy ride. I was in it from a less lofty perch than Dick Goodwin and Doris Kearns, both of whom worked closely with Lyndon Johnson, LBJ. Goodwin as a speech writer and Kearns as a Whitehouse Fellow who wrote her first, well-received work on LBJ, in 1976.

Sixty years ago. 1965. Almost. 65 years ago, 1960. The sad irony of reading about the dreams of the Kennedy years and their realization under LBJ in the Great Society legislation, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act. The sad, sad irony of reading about that era as their inversion gained power, not by a coup, not by cheating at the election booth, but by the will of 74,264,010 of our fellow citizens.

On every page I turned I found fellow feeling with the aims and intents of the actors, JFK, LBJ, MLK, Bobby Kennedy, John Lewis, the Freedom Riders, the anti-war protesters of whom I was one. Sure there were disagreements as to emphasis, tactics, but what shines from these pages is a belief that government has a distinctive and necessary role in redressing wrongs, ones like entrenched racism, ones like stopping an ill-advised war. Ones like rebuilding America’s inner cities, cleaning its water and air of pollutants, giving national recognition to American art and artists.

Sixty, sixty-five years ago. In my decade of high school and college, of growing up from a small-town boy to a man committed to those same ideals. Ideals learned from the politics of that time. And now. This Tuesday last. A shocking repudiation of all of them as white supremacists and misogynists and felons and nativists plan to use the same government for their unjust and bigoted policies.

Hard to fathom. That I’ve lived through this transition and may not live to see it die away.

 

Aging, Asia, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Seek-Keepers, Shadow Mountain, US History

An American Sannyasa

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Snow, and more Snow on the way. Harris and Waltz. Liberals. And, radicals. Politics. Changing in big ways. History. Always moving and shifting. The One, taking it all in and forming a new world. Cold nights. Diane. Tom. Irv. Paul. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Shadow Mountain. A Snow globe week.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Purpose

Kavannah for election week: contentment and joy

One brief shining: May have seemed odd to you that I chose contentment and joy as my intentions for election week, that most fractious and unhappy of weeks for one side or another, may have seemed odd especially to have continued with them after the elevation of an anti-liberal mean of our collective culture; yet, I have found them good for me, instead of being angry about a situation now beyond my reach, I have been able to draw to myself a lesson about my life’s purpose.

 

A while back I borrowed the idea of a fourth phase of life from the Hindus.* I don’t define it in the same way, but I find the idea of a stage after retirement-our version of the forest dweller stage-makes sense.

The commonality between my view and Hinduism’s lies in death and acceptance. Readiness for death and seeing it as not only somewhat imminent, but as welcome.

This week I not only learned that the orange one will be our next President. I also learned that my cancer is not aggressive, and not hormone resistant. Which gives me a longer possible lifespan. And, I’m glad. Even so. Death lies over the horizon, but not nearly as far as it used to.

I would not know if I was fully enlightened and I’m not detached. I may have some wisdom but that’s for others to know, not me.

The rise of a populist anti-liberal agenda, a rise that came with unexpected force, has clarified my fourth phase. Though I am a Forest dweller and though that remains a central part of who I am, I passed, as I said a week or so ago, into Sannyasa when diagnosed with prostate cancer. Over the almost ten years since then I’ve been conflicted at a core level.

Some of the conflicts. In but not of Judaism. No longer an activist but feeling like I should be one. Wanting to hike in the mountains but being constrained first by shortness of breath, now by a gimpy back too. Wanting to travel more. But. See s.o.b and back. Learning to live without Kate and without dogs.

Resolutions. Converted to Judaism. Election 2024 has made see my role in culture and politics. I am a seed-keeper, not an activist anymore. (If this isn’t cultural appropriation. I hope not because it fits so well.) Hiking and traveling. Can do some with good drugs and patience, but it’s never gonna be easy for me again. I have lived into a life without Kate and without dogs. Difficult, of course. At times it still is. Yet I have a Herme Harari Israel life defined now:  An introverted Mountain man who struggles with God. However you want to fill the God bucket. Or, even if you want to live it empty.

So I will continue to write. Continue to read. Continue to study mussar and be with my CBE friends. Continue to love them and my other friends and family. All this is enough for me. My fourth phase. An American Sannyasa.

 

*Brahmacharya The student stage, when one focuses on learning and gaining knowledge. This stage is the time before puberty and up until marriage.

Grihastha The householder stage, when one is occupied with family and household matters. This stage is when one starts a family and maintains a healthy marriage.

Vanaprastha The forest dweller stage, when one retires from business as usual.

Sannyasa The stage of renunciation, when one is wise and fully enlightened, detached from everything, and ready for death. A Sannyasi is a religious ascetic who has renounced the world by performing their own funeral and abandoning all claims to social or family standing. 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Seek-Keepers, Shadow Mountain

Join the Seed-Keepers

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Thursday gratefuls: The Snow. Lodgepoles branches beginning to droop. Black Mountain white hard to see from my office window. Cold Nights for restful sleep. My Wild Neighbors know nothing of elections, only feel the results, often years later. This Rocky Mountain Natural heaven will remain, beautiful and magnificent. So will the lakes of northern Minnesota. The gales of November will still strike Lake Superior. Great Sol continues to brighten the shoreline of Maine first of our land blessed Nation. The Pacific laps on the beaches of Oahu, Kilauea breathes Fire and Rock, new Land rises just off the Big Island. Pele was not destroyed by the election. Nor the One who gathers all to its embrace and creates novelty, wholeness. This Land, our Land, from Pine Ridge to Ship Rock, shared still with all those who came here before us and who will be here after we are. Gratitude itself.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends

Kavannah: contentment and joy

One brief shining: The power of conversation, of holding each other, of being with each other, of walking each other home has never been more profound for me than in these waning days of 2024 as my nation shifts out from under my feet, giving voice to the cruel and frightened, and threatening those whom I love, who mean more to me now than they did three days ago.

As I’ve said to some, I read a Robert Reich quote yesterday: “The resistance starts now!” And thought. No. Not for me. That was my 2016 response, yes. At 77, another, different response seems called for. At least for me.

Doesn’t mean I don’t think Trump and his MAGAT’s should not be resisted. I do. For sure. Just not by me.

I feel an obligation to a different version of the now and to the future. In this now I want to expend my reduced energy on those I love: family and friends. To be there for them, to support them in whatever way I can.

I also feel an obligation toward and for the future. In part it is now. That is, as an elder I  need to keep my values visible, not through political action anymore, but through one-to-one, and small group moments. Through my writing. Through reading and keeping current on political thought, on the currents of the times.

Also, I will continue to donate money to organizations doing what I consider radical work. The Land Institute, seeking perennial feed grains. Seed Savers Exchange. The regenerative farming movement. The Wildlife Sanctuary. Congregation Beth Evergreen. The natural rights legal movement. The chiampas and axolotl restoration work in Mexico. In my view these organizations and others like them work to soften the blows of climate change, to change the way humans live on and with Mother Earth.

And, too, I will through reading keep up with them and what they’re doing.

Buddy Tom Crane suggested Seed Keepers as a name for this work, echoing a new novel of the same name, The Seed-Keepers. I’m going to adopt this name for my work and hereby name myself a Seed-Keeper. If you want to be one, too, let’s talk.

Herme Harari Israel

Acting, Cinema and Television, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, US History

I know

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Wednesday gratefuls: Generator. Electricity. Snow. America. Our coming time of growing darkness. Harris. Troubled. Elections. Democracy. My son. Mountains. The West. Minnesota. Colorado. The Left Coast. History. Coffee. Prostate Cancer. Hibernation. Bears. Mountain Lions. Mule Deer. Elk. Wild Neighbors.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends and Family

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: The oxygen concentrator coughed and turned off as the fan’s light blinked on, then off, I waited a moment, and heard the chug-chug-chug of the generator kick on as the automatic transfer switch did its job and the oxygen concentrator returned to duty and the fan bathed me in light. Time to get up.

 

There will be time, too much time, to sort out the implications. Yes, he won. I know. Yet I still seek this week contentment and joy. I will still enjoy and celebrate the holidays of light and the one of darkness, most important to me. Thanksgiving will find me looking back over my gratefuls, finding the ones appropriate to that day.

I love my son, Seoah, Murdoch. Mary and Mark. Luke and Leo. My Ancient Brothers. Ginny and Janice. Marilyn and Irv. Alan and Joanne. Tara and Arjean. The MVP group. CBE. This country. Now more than ever. All Dogs and Wild Neighbors. All members of the Tribe wherever they may be.

Relinquishing my equanimity, my joy, my contentment to the fevered anxieties of those losing their status and power. No. I will not do that. This morning on a Snow covered Shadow Mountain I am at peace. Neither angry nor despairing. Ready though.

A suffering world has drunk the toxic waters of he who would save them. The USA has not shrugged off this trend, instead it has leaned into it. As always when history turns this way, the need for those who will carry the flag of justice and democracy and freedom through and beyond these days reaches its high tide.

We need each other. We need to stand up and to sit down with each other. To continue our lives. To embrace beauty and wholeness. To seek and find the sacred in each moment and in each person we meet.

We must not raise the cup of bitterness and despondency. Instead pour it out and refill the cup with whatever gives your life fullness, satisfaction. This is what we will need to ensure our children and grandchildren inherit a world not driven by fear.

 

Just a moment: Found out yesterday that I’m not in hormone resistant prostate cancer. At least not yet. My PSA has continued to go down, though it’s not yet undetectable. Means my metastases are not growing.

This news was welcome and it came on Election Day.

 

Watched the tenth and final episode of 1883 yesterday, too. Cried through it all. This is transcendent television, showing what the medium can do. Over these next four years I want to channel Elsa’s spirit of embracing the moment, embracing joy and pain, seeing this wild and often strange world for what it is. Our home.

 

Herme Harari Israel

 

 

Cinema and Television, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Shadow Mountain, US History

Seeking Contentment and Joy. Losing them.

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Sadness. Unhappiness. Dismay. Prostate cancer. Dr. Buphati. That P.A. Kristie. Contentment. Joy. Pain. 1883. Ilsa May. Her role as Elsa Dutton. Cold Nights. Snow. Wild Neighbors. The West. Comanche. Lakota. The Great Plains. Buffalo. A Wild and undiscovered country still. The West of my heart.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Home

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: In a small office at Rocky Mountain Cancer Care I experienced dismay, unhappiness, a strange intersection of politics and self care, and again, as I did on the drive home three weeks ago from RMCC, I felt alone, this time in the usual patient’s chair listening to the P.A. say they had no PSA for me.

 

First jolt was seeing a P.A. instead of Dr. Buphati. I liked him, was counting on his knowledge to guide me through what came next. She offered to go get him. She said she did not care either way. This was the strange intersection of politics and self care. I wanted to see Buphati, but I didn’t want to deny her skills, her right to be there. Feminism strong in me. In medicine especially. Kate.

Second jolt. We have no PSA for you. I deflated. This appointment was supposed to define the next steps in a journey that had made confusing turns over the summer and early fall. Why not? How can you not know?

She said (I don’t remember her name, if it even got through the fog.) I just got assigned.

Then I got unhappy and said so. I’m unhappy and disappointed. I don’t understand how after three weeks you don’t have it. My expectations about knowing what comes next had me in knots. I wanted, no needed, to know and I couldn’t. But why? In the end it didn’t matter.

Go ahead, I waved my hand dismissively. Still trying to reorient. She handed me the results of the DNA results for my cancer cells. Nothing of significance. That means no clinical trials, no targeted therapies. Oh. I took the papers, glanced at them, wondering where my readers were. Nothing of significance. Oh.

In the end she went to get Dr. Buphati. Who came in masked, as was she. Making it difficult for me to hear. He agreed I had every right to be upset. That somehow the lab didn’t have the results. I told him my upset had started back in June when my PSA went up after my drug holiday. Then went down after going back on Orgovyx. My visit to the radiation oncologist who said I had hormone resistant cancer. After which Kristie said, no. Not without rising PSA on two drugs. Erleada came next. This was the PSA measure that would tell the difference. But there were no test results.

We talked for a bit more. His knowledge and clarity helped me calm, but the dismay and the sadness had already burrowed their way into my feelings of the moment. When the phlebotomist, a kind Latina, young, asked me how I was, I said feeling down. And I was. She knew that already. Helped me put on my jacket.

I wanted contentment and joy. They were/are my intentions for this week, but I lost them at the words no PSA results. I wanted to be calm, clear, kind. But I wasn’t. I felt let down by Dr. Buphati, by RMCC. No mussar moves came to mind.

So the valet got my car and I drove away toward the Mountains, wanting only to be home.

 

Just a moment: That was yesterday. I got some Chicken wings, cole slaw, and Potatoes at Safeway, drove to Shadow Mountain, and binged 1883. Soothing myself. Letting myself feel sad, disappointed.

In 1883 I witnessed one of the best dramatic performances I’ve seen. Ilsa May, a young actress, plays Elsa Dutton who turns 18 as her family makes their way as part of a wagon train headed to Oregon. Her arc from bonneted, piano-playing Tennessee girl to cowgirl, then wife of a Comanche warrior and becoming a warrior herself was an alembic for my feelings. In seeing Elsa take the real agonies and the ecstasies of young maturation I rode with her. Seeing a way through the self-inflicted responses I had. Better this morning. Much better. Thanks, Elsa.