Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Literature, Mussar

Contentment and Joy

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Snow. 4-5 inches. Powder. Or, as the skiers say: Pow. Vikings win. The Ancient Brothers. Walking Each Other Home. Mark in K.L. The Brickfields. The lives of all the Wild Neighbors. Everywhere. And, all the domesticated Animals. The Great Wheel. The Tarot. Kabbalah. Living in joy. Cosmic voids. Sculpture. Rodin. Brancusi.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: First substantial Snow of the season

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: At night I crank open the casement window over my bed, letting in the  smell of Lodgepoles and Grass as the Night Air streams over my head, when Snow begins to fall like it did last night Snowflakes come through the screen, shower me in a light experience of the weather outside, and often, like last night, make the window hard to close.

 

Without knowing. Without certainty. I claim today my joy and my contentment. I seek today those moments that delight my heart, tickle my inner child. Like my Lodgepole Companion holding the powdery Snow as an early seasonal decoration. Thinking of lights, Christmas and Diwali and Hanukah and Kwanza and Yule. Remembering sliding down the hill at the end of Monroe Street and taking my sled over the jumps we kids created. Of the farm outside of Nevis, Minnesota on a Snowy day, air-tight stove crackling with good, dense Oak logs, the cook stove boiling water for coffee. Of standing by the Shadow Mountain kitchen window with Kate by my side, watching the Snow come down. How lucky we are to live here, she would say. Yep, I would reply.

Also enough coffee in the pot this morning for a full cup. The mini-splits keeping the house warm. An early Dawn, at least according to the clock. Life, this precious and wonderful gift.

Reading, that most amazing skill. Example: The Emptiness of the Universe Gives Our Lives Meaning. I loved this short piece. The cosmologist Paul Sutter chose for his life work the study of cosmic voids. The apparently empty spots between and among galaxies, local clusters, superclusters. How innovative and creative, to study negative space. It’s as if an art historian chose to study only the negative space in sculpture, in paintings. Or a musicologist specializing in rests and stops.

I am content. I’ll have Fire in the Fireplace tonight. Toss some Pinōn on for a scent treat, thinking of the clay stoves in the corners of rooms in New Mexico. I’ll have a good book, probably An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns-Goodwin recommended by Marilyn.

I’ll take in what Dr. Buphati has to say at 2:30 today and I will see it as the next steps necessary to claim the life I have yet to live. Not as the first steps toward death. Which comes anyhow.

Realized the other day that after my Bar Mitzvah, literally the day after when I had my unsettling telehealth visit with Kristie, I’ve been living with the notion of a shortened life span, an inner focus on decline. So much so that I gave up exercising. Wanted to privilege spontaneity.

My year of living Jewishly had its capstone moment and I voluntarily took the steps down into my Cloud of unknowing. And reified it. Since that day, June 12th of this year, until last week, I’ve had a focus on less than, what would soon be missing. Me. I made a pivot from a deep plunge into Judaism to a dive into the shallow end of lack. Broke my heart for a while.

Then I began to understand that the Cloud of unknowing was the true and only way to view life. Whether shorter or longer, I don’t know. As has always been the case. I came up from the mikveh a Jew. I came up from the shallow end of lack attentive again to today, to this life as I have it now. As I will until I don’t.

Herme Harari Israel

Fourth Phase

Claiming a New Name

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Richard Alpert Dream. Fourth phase name. Herme Harari Israel. Diane and her Uzbekistan trek. Mom. Dad. Mary. Mark. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Kepler. Gertie. Rigel. Vega. Snow still on the ground. Late Fall. The fallow season well begun.

Sparks of joy and awe: Medicare part D

Kavannah: PERSEVERANCE   Netzach נֵצַח  Perseverance, tenacity, grit; literally “to last”

One brief shining: Zoom yesterday included Diane and the land of Uzbekistan, Ann and the probable length of my life, Julie and the joyful reality of Medicare Part D saving me $24,000 in 2025, all from the comfort of my home, linked to San Francisco and Littleton and Denver by the power of the internet, mine coming through the satellite dish on my roof, courtesy of Starlink, to my mild regret-soothed by the weakness of Centurylink.

 

I am claiming  my fourth phase name: Herme Harari Israel. The fourth phase is that portion of life after career and family, after a span of healthy retirement years give way, if not to decrepitude, to a knowing that death is the next major life event. I entered the fourth phase with my cancer diagnosis in 2015.

Herme, my neon sign of the Hooded Man* from the Wildwood Tarot. I had Herme made to symbolize my life without Kate’s physical presence, my journey through mourning and grief, my introverted nature. He also captures the essence of a life long ancientrail alluded to in my last name, Israel: He who struggles with god. An often lonely journey, mostly in my interior Wildwood.

Harari, as my friend Paul learned, means, in Hebrew: man of the mountain. Self explanatory.

Israel was the name I took a year ago this November 28th after three times submerging in the mikveh. Jacob got the name Israel after wrestling with the angel at the Jabbok Ford.

 

*After the difficulties and tribulations when confronting the ancient forces, we need a moment of calm and reflection on life. However, the intricate, complex battles in life can make us feel confused and turned upside down in the search for deep knowledge.

The Hooded Man (The Hermit, Robin – i – The – Hood, the hermit in the deep forest) will bring persistent light in the middle of the winter as well as use his wand to dig deep and accumulate knowledge. His lantern illuminates the darkest frightening crises in every soul, repels misunderstandings, and opens the way to the door to The Great Tree. He knows that knowledge is the light and can only be cultivated through self-sacrifice and self-discipline. He points out the secrets of the deep forest and helps those seeking ways to cultivate their minds to go deeper into the forest. The Great Tree is one of the symbolic powers of the forest, which contains countless secrets and treasures of erudition.  #9, The Hooded Man tarotx.net

Family, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Crossing the Veil

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Samain and the 1% Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: 17 degrees. Snow. Hard Freeze. 1991 Halloween Blizzard in the Twin Cities. My son and Zack White. Trick or treating, but home early. The soft capture of the Celtic Faery Faith. Mom’s yahrzeit. Wild Neighbors. Elephants. Persons, too.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

Kavannah:  CLARITY   Tohar  Clarity, lucidity

One brief shining: Mom, I remember, always smelled good, wore red lipstick, smiled a lot and hugged me, took me to the ice cream parlor when I got good grades, explained what she thought Dad meant, then in October of 1964 while volunteering at a funeral dinner, had a stroke, lingered for seven days and died.

Mom, Dad, Me. Maybe 1951

Life can change oh so fast and in unexpected, totally unexpected ways. Mom was 47. In good, even robust health. But she had unknown aneurysms at her temples and in the forehead region of her brain. One burst and leaked blood down through her brain and began to clot around her medulla oblongata. The part of the brain that connects it to the spinal column. Survivable today with clot busting drugs. Not then.

Her yahrzeit falls today because this is a leap year on the Jewish lunar calendar, pushing everything almost a month ahead on the Gregorian calendar. And, as it happens, right onto Samain. The time in the Celtic Faery Faith when the veil between the worlds thins and access to the Otherworld and from it is most possible. Dia de los Muertos, same idea. Also. All Souls day comes soon on the Christian liturgical calendar, November 2nd this year.

About twenty years ago I took a class on ritual and the teacher, whose name I don’t recall, said she thought these beliefs about the veil thinning came from the falling of the leaves on deciduous trees. Opening forests up, making those things hidden by leaves during the growing season suddenly visible. Maybe.

Or, maybe she had it backward and the veil is a mental construct, a knowing about the truth of the sacred, the holy always present, always visible to us, about which the falling of the leaves jolts us each year into a temporary state of mystical union with the world as we already know it. But have trouble realizing without a big reminder.

I’m partial to the second idea. Reading an interesting book, just started, All Things are Full of Gods: the Mysteries of Mind and Life. David Bentley Hart. He’s a neo-Platonist*. Both Judaism and neo-Platonism believe reality is one.

In both systems of thought nothing is ever lost. It may transform, but all is all becoming. Changing, moving forward and backwards, up and down, changing, changing, yet the stuff of reality remains constant, never destroyed. Like E=Mc squared.

You might believe, and I do on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays that this creates an opening for continued existence of a soul, a person’s essence, after death. Since today is a Thursday and Samain, I’m going to visit with mom, light her candle, look at the photographs I have of her. One of us will cross the veil, remember that oh yes you’re always with me. Hug each other. Smile. Maybe I’ll see Kate, today, too.

*Neoplatonists following Plotinus believed that the individual soul, considered as intellect, is divine. However, the soul is outwardly expressed in terms of a personality that is particular and thus less divine. There is a risk, then, that a soul endowed with an intellect can lose sight of its own divine nature.

Neoplatonism is based on the principles that: 

“Mind precedes matter” 
Reality depends on a highest principle, often called “the One” or “God” 
The One
The One is a supreme principle that is absolutely simple and undetermined. It is beyond being, and cannot be named or described. 

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

The Obstacle is the Way

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Mabon and the 3% crescent of the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Teshuvah. The Shema. A unified metaphysic. Cancer. Prostate and all other forms. Oncologists medical, radiational, and urological. The Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos.* Rebecca in India. Mark still in K.L. Mary and Guru, too. Songtan, South Korea. San Francisco. The Twin Cities. Maine. The Rocky Mountains. Boulder. Denver. Where my close people live.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cold Air

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Turned off Union Avenue, found a parking spot, crossed the small bridge over the I’m sure well intended faux creek, into the zombie office building, one of hundreds, maybe thousands in the Denver metro, found the elevator and pressed 4 in the five story building, got out and walked down the long hall, empty office spaces splayed out on either side, only two occupied on the whole floor, Locomotive Services and Mile High Hearing, where my newly refurbished hearing aid got returned to me, bluetoothed to my phone of course as it would be, right?

 

A few now barriers to being clear as the Scientologists say:

1. Government ban on Kaspersky antivirus and password manager has forced me to get a new password manager. Bitwarden. I found a way to transfer all my passwords to it, but it’s new to me and doesn’t work the same way Kaspersky did. Means I often to have to stop for something formerly automated. A first world problem for sure. But…

2. That 529 that will help Ruth pay her college bills? I’ve gotten everything into them, twice. Except. They don’t like the declaration my lawyer sent them saying I inherited 100% of Kate’s assets. They want a small estate affidavit. For estates under seventy-nine thousand dollars or so. Doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been at this since early August. Unresolved.

3. Herme. My time of mourning, early grieving neon sign depicting the Hermit from the Wildwoods Tarot deck has gone dark. Need to call an electrician.

4. My once upon a time reliable handyman, Vince, has ghosted me on a few tasks. Do I start a relationship with someone new? Always something of a hassle. He also does my snowplowing. ?

5. Only non-first world issue here. See Buphati, my new medical oncologist, again this Monday. He’ll give me my PSA to see if I fit into castration resistant or castration sensitive diagnostic criteria. He will also update me on the DNA of my cancer cells and whether there’s some treatment modality available.  Also, when I’ll need another PET scan. Probably, too, how, if at all, radiation factors in to my next treatments.

Just a moment: As we will have to learn how to adapt to full on climate change, we may have to learn how to live in a dramatically changed nation. My teeth gnashing, dooms day for democracy feelings are gone. I’m ready to push into the next phase of our nation’s history. If necessary.

  • THE FATES and their roles
  • Clotho: The spinner, who spun the thread of human fate
  • Lachesis: The allotter, who dispensed the thread
  • Atropos: The inflexible one, who cut the thread to determine the moment of death 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

No. Yet, Yes.

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon  (Yes, I missed Sunday.)

Monday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. Alan. Blackbird Cafe. Kittredge. An unsystematic theology. Snow in the forecast. Gray white Skies. Skeletal Aspens. That evening zoom with my son, Seoah, Murdoch, Ruth and Gabe. A family moment. Diane back in the USA. Mark still in K.L. Kate, always Kate. Irv and Marilyn. The Night Sky. Kepler and Gertie.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: That moment with Ruth

Kavannah: Compassion rachamin

One brief shining: We were all there, this patched together family, Ruth in my red leather chair, Gabe on its ottoman, me in my blue Stickley chair, my son, Seoah, and Murdoch on zoom in Songtan, Korea talking and laughing as my son opened his birthday present from me, Seoah told Ruth she was beautiful, Gabe mentioned theater as an interest of his, and I luxuriated in the normality, the sweetness of a family joined together with almost no blood ties, but love, oh yes, love.

 

So much yesterday. Forgot to post. Ancient Brothers. Ruth and Gabe. Going out for lunch with Alan only to discover after waiting for a bit that muscle relaxants had put him to sleep.

 

Learned that two of the Ancient Brothers had the power of positive thinking, Dale Carnegie, as a deep and lasting influence. Another conceptual therapy. How to train the mind toward a positive and successful mindset. Felt a slight twinge of envy. If I’d had something like that, would I have persevered in marketing my books? Might I be published by now?

In my case I’ve always gone for mantras and prayers and rituals that investigate my life, my inner life, and encourage me to act, yes, though success fell long ago outside my grasp. Not sure why. Of course there was school. Where success was long past being a goal and had become an expectation. One that tired me out, wore me out, burned me out. And btw my Dad had me read Dale Carnegie because he believed I needed to learn how to get along with people. I did. But because he required me to read it, I pushed its lessons away.

Even writing. I wanted to get published. At first a lot. And publication would have been success of a sort. I did try, but I let I can’t get there become truth. As one of us said, if you believe you can or if you believe can’t, either will be true. I let myself believe my writing wasn’t good enough. That no agent, no publisher would want it. I tried to achieve 100 rejections in a year. Couldn’t stay with it. Didn’t stay with it. I stopped trying.

Those stories where the young writer sends manuscript after manuscript over the transom, never admitting defeat, always crampons on, ice ax in hand scaling the slippery cliff to publication. Not me. I used to be embarrassed by this fact. That’s how I decided it was my writing and not my perseverance. Easier to take, I guess.

So here I sit at 77 with no artistic successes to my name. On me. Perhaps on my talent. Not really sure. That’s not to say I haven’t led a satisfying and purposeful life. I have. Cue the no blood ties family. The gardens and dogs and earthy life of Andover. Of political battles fought and won. Organizations created. Deep thinking maintained, emotional stability attained and sustained. Personal relationships made and sustained. My life with Kate.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Writing

Not sure at all

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Garbage out. No garbage back in. Shirley Waste. Nights in the thirties. Jennie’s Dead. Dead. Phantom Tollbooth. Most excellent. Coffee in the morning. Mineral Water. Spoons. Forks. Knives. Especially Japanese knives. Fruit. Clementines. Grapes. Bananas. Honeycrisp Apples. Pears. Tomatoes. Dragon. Jack. Durian. Asia. Begging bowls.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Mind. Whatever it is.

Kavannah: Netzach in its sense of persistence

One brief shining: Sitting on a knife edge, no, wait, standing on a narrow path, chasms on either side, a Mountain Meadow at the end of the path, I’m walking shakily, old man legs weakened by sarcopenia and easy distraction, needing to cross yet another hazard in the video game Life, will I keep on exercising? Or, not.

 

When I considered stopping my cancer treatments, I stopped exercising. Felt a whoosh of freedom. I have time in my days for creative work, taking care of domestic tasks, living my life of tasks, of agency. Why, you might ask? Well, I exercise, which I have done since turning 42, 43, now only in the mornings. It’s when I have energy.

Dilemma and the source of the freedom feeling. That’s also when I feel good to write, make phone calls, pay bills, do difficult reading, load and unload the dishwasher, pick up around the house. I also have regular breakfasts which break into the morning as well.

By early afternoon, two or three at the latest and that if I had a full night’s sleep-which I usually do-my energy wanes into watch TV, read fiction, light tasks. Often a nap.

You can see the problem. Does the exercising provide enough benefit to me to use up valuable morning energy? When life has begun to look shorter. Which I admit could be wrong. I feel like the answer to this question is yes, it does. Because. Vitiates sarcopenia. Lifts my mood. Improves my heart rate. Helps my bowels.

But. I also want to write. In particular. And writing requires a rhythm. Which I find best now in the mornings. The fog of the afternoon and evening is subtle. Some of the obfuscation comes from fatigue. Pure physical weariness. Better now with the celebrex, but still enough to slow me down. Some of the obfuscation though, and this is the critical one, is mental. Not in my mind doesn’t work as well then, at least mostly not that. But a sort of brake, a diminishment of will.

Example. Today I need to call the MnSaves folks to continue the process-the now toooo looonnnggg-process of transferring Ruth and Gabe’s education money into my name. I can handle the phone call, the waiting, the repeating of information, the yet one more thing to do in the morning. I won’t do it the afternoon. If I absolutely had to, I could, but I don’t feel emotionally ready to put up with bureaucratic bullshit later in the day.

Example. I tried to workout in the afternoon a couple of weeks ago. Made sense to me since I used to workout at 4 pm for about twenty years. Nope. My body does not want to do that.

It is true that I can engage others just fine though. Like MVP Monday night. Like Mussar at 1pm on Thursdays. But. If I do that more than once or twice a week, or if, like Monday I don’t get to sleep until late, it cuts into my morning time.

Not sure how to handle this. Not sure at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Love is more powerful than discomfort.

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Grandma. At Chief Hosa lodge

Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Monday gratefuls: Boulder. Ruth. Snarfs. The Flatirons. The greens as Great Sol sank below the horizon. Grandpopping. Podcasts. One on crime and disorder. Another on Walter Benjamin. Falling. Of the Aspen Leaves. The dry Willow Leaves blow away, many carried downstream by Maxwell Creek. Samain only 10 days away. Simchat Torah Wednesday.

Sparks of joy and awe: UC Boulder

Kavannah: Compassion  Rachamin

One brief shining: Ruth and I sat at a blue metal table on Pearl Street, Boulder’s main drag, our paper wrapped sandwiches spread out in front of us, mine a french dip sans jus, hers something with nothing animal, a few cars drove by since we were far from the Mall, Leaves finished with their seasons work lay scattered on the sidewalk as we spoke of painful childhoods, death, deception, and treachery.

 

Our initial impetus for moving to Colorado came after I attended an Ira Progoff retreat in Tucson. In a meditation on the next stepping stones of my life I realized Kate and I needed to be here in Colorado for the kids. Reinforced on the drive back when I showed up at Jon and Jen’s with no warning to Ruth. She saw me, turned and ran back in the house. That was April of 2014.

Kate agreed. We gave ourselves two years to make the move. Momentum took over though and by that October Kate had been in Colorado as our scout, finding a house. I knew I would dither and Kate was decisive. 9358 Black Mountain Drive. In the Mountains as we both wanted. Jen called it Mountain fever and was mad that we’d not moved closer. We however were not coming to be babysitters, but grandparents.

Andover and its gardens, its bees, its orchard, its woods had become too physically demanding for us. Kate had retired three years before. It was an inflection point for us. We still had four dogs: Kepler, Rigel, Gertie, and Vega. As the Winter Solstice neared Tom Crane and I got in our Rav4 with tranquilized Kepler, Rigel, and Vega. Drove straight through. Rather, Tom did. We talked the whole way only stopping when one mammal or another had to pee. Kate left a day or so later in a van I had packed full with items we didn’t trust to the movers. She had Gertie with her, feeding her Whoppers on the way out. Well. Parts of Whoppers. Which Kate reported Gertie approved.

In the Garden Andover

Leaving the Twin Cities after forty years, a bit longer for Kate, was tough. I had friends, especially the Woolly Mammoths, and I had immersed myself in the cultural life of the Twin Cities: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra where Kate and I met. The Science museum which Joseph and I loved. The Children’s Theater, The Guthrie, the MIA, the Walker. Both of us had spent hours and yet more hours planting, weeding, living with dogs, caring for bees and extracting honey. Sitting by the firepit. Just being together in a place we shaped from our first days there.

Yet. The call of being with our grandkids as they grew up in what we knew were challenging circumstances with an angry mother and father felt compelling.

Kate and Ruth developed a strong, strong bond. Kate helped Ruth learn to cook, sew, be a Jew, and a young woman. I took Ruth on adventures to museums, the National Western Stockshow, hikes in the Mountains. Gabe, too. When Kate died, then Jon, Barb, Jen’s mother aka Tennessee Grandma, and I were left. Barb had to move to into an assisted living spot and sees the kid’s less.

I would have gone to Hawai’i in spite of all this had I not figured out that my son and Seoah’s return there was not certain as I’d initially thought. Glad it turned out that way. Ruth and I have become close, Gabe as well. I’m an important, stable, calm presence in both of their lives. They both love Shadow Mountain Home, being up here.

Now I drive to Boulder once or twice a month. Gabe comes up and stays for a couple of nights. Critical for them, I believe. And, me. When I think about them, about my son and Seoah, about Mark and Mary and Diane, then about cancer, I can see keeping up with treatments as long as they are life extending. Love is more powerful than discomfort.

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase

My Recipe

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Sunday gratefuls: My good and fulfilling life. Dogs. All Dogs. Especially Kep, Gertie, Rigel, and Vega. The Colorado Dogs. Kate, always Kate. Her smile. Ginny and Janice. Laughing. Television. A lot of very good material in Jennie’s Dead. That silly fan light. Neon gone dark for now. Vince. Fingers that still type with ease. Eyes that see. Ears? Well…

Sparks of joy and awe: Senses

Kavannah: Joy

One brief shining: It’s his birthday week, my son, far away in Songtan, Korea, turning 43 in the same week as his CT scans and blood work, checking for damage caused by Hep B which he contracted at birth, leaning in to his work keeping our ally safe, mentoring his airmen and women, prepping for the switch to command next year, Murdoch follows him from room to room, sleeping at his feet.

 

On Friday I drove down the hill to Mile High Hearing, lower, much lower than I am here on Shadow Mountain, to see Amy, my soccer coaching audiologist. Three year mark on the Phonak which works very well for me. Warranty ending. No thanks to extended warranty. I get to send it back to the folks at Phonak for a refurbishing. What’s a refurbishing, I ask? Oh, they basically replace everything with new parts. Huh? Then I figured it out. They’re three years away from this model technologically. This is a way to cheaply enhance their products with now outdated parts, making it more likely I’ll choose Phonak again. Smart.

I have a loaner hearing aid now. How bout that?

 

First. Know yourself. Live from that self. Be authentic. Take the hits, take the applause but stay true to who you are. As life begins to lengthen, do more and more of what brings you joy. Shed the gloom as best you can. Knowing that life flees so rapidly.

Second. Be content with the Self that you are. Be content with what you have. Learn the meaning of the word enough. Act on that.

Third: Work, yes work, at sustaining and maintaining key relationships: partner, family, friends. Spend time with all of them, time with laughter and tears and wonderings and dreams.

Fourth: Meditate on your corpse. Take a dia de los muertos attitude toward death. A phase change. And, a certainty. Sad and painful when it’s ones you love, a one person journey for your authentic, unafraid Self. Celebrate this punctuation mark. Grieve it. And greet it.

Fifth: Dance and clap. Twirl and grin. Laugh as much as you can. Do what hones the gifts you have. Use those same gifts for the world and for your own health.

Sixth: Don’t worry about your legacy. Hold your life and your health lightly. See number four.

That should do it. My recipe for a fulfilling and good life. Whether it’s a happy one or not doesn’t matter. Happiness and hope are illusory, momentary, wisps of the heart. Stick to what matters. Living your life. You’re the only one who can and we all need the unique presence you are.

Fourth Phase, Memories

Ante smart phone and hearing aids

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Yiddische kopf. Alan and Joanne. Dandelion. Ginny and Janice. Aspen Perks. Ruth tomorrow in Boulder. Being a Jew. Always. In my round about way. First Snow. Coming down in the straight lines of Mountain Snow on Shadow Mountain. Gold and white. Green and white. Black Mountain white. Steel gray skies. Lodgepoles showing off their get rid of the too heavy snow load tricks. The good life. Life itself. The Tree of life. Kabbalah. Sukkot and the Sukkah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Torah

Kavannah: Friendship

One brief shining: Got there, to the Dandelion, early as I usually do, to discover I’d left home without my hearing aid, my phone, and my glasses; geez, I thought, trying to parse out why I’d done that, concluding the first chill weather of the season-it was 35 out-and thinking more about outer wear: let’s see, fleece, large jacket like flannel shirt over my sweatshirt had occupied my attention, pushing away going through my usual Mountain pilot’s checklist, will remember them all today. In fact I already have my loaner hearing aid in and my phone beside me.

 

 

To continue that thought for a moment. Yes, I leave things behind. Have all my life. Not a trick of old age, but of hurried living. Why I’ve had patience as a kavannah so much of late. Anyhow when I got to the restaurant early, the woman who manages the place who knows I’m sunny side up on my eggs, greeted me, gave me coffee and cream, and I went to my usual table to sit and wait for Alan and Joanne. Poured cream in the coffee. Got some water from the cooler. Set out my silverware and napkin. Then.

No phone. What do I do? Realized I’d come early to restaurants all my life, too. And most of that time without a cell phone to amuse me. To make me feel like I had something of significance to do while I waited. What did I do then? Often I’d have a book. Sometimes a notebook and pen. I’d read or take notes, write a poem, sketch.

This day Great Sol was in my eyes. I turned away from his glare, thought about lowering the shade but decided Mother’s spinning would put her lover above the roof line soon enough. As it did. I put my hands in my lap and sat there. Saw the only other guy in the room suddenly stand up and make what I took to be basketball mimes: a hand over his head blocking, a slight turn and and a ball released toward the basket. I guessed basketball not only because the hand movements were familiar, but his height. Maybe 6’5″ or more. A big guy.

Looked at the rows of root beer, soda, mineral water in the glass front standing cooler, how neat they were, awaiting the days shuffling and rearranging. The guy from the linen supply truck came in and gathered up moisture absorbing rugs, rags used in the kitchen, went out, came back in with fresh rags in a clear plastic bag and fresh rugs over his shoulder.

Read the chalk board. Tomato Soup. Poblano and bacon quiche. Apple cinnamon rolls.

Alan and Joanne came in the door. Oh. Well. That’s what I used to do. Pay attention.

Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism

Writing and Connecting

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Sukkot. Lab tests. Jennie’s Dead. Clipping out a large section. Sleep. Lunch with Joanne on Friday. 44 degrees. The Leaves. Blowing in the Wind. Colonies of Aspens with Golden Leaves. Colonies of Aspen already skeletal. The changes of the Arapaho National Forest. My home. Less than three weeks until our long national nightmare either gets worse or better. The smell of just brewed coffee.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tom’s visit

Kavannah: Yirah

One brief shining: Phlebotomists with butterfly, I. V. needles, phlebotomists with the more usual empty barreled needle, both swapping out one plastic tube, then another, sometimes another and another, an alcohol swap, a small piece of gauze and a piece of tape or a brightly colored wide wrap and bob’s your uncle, more of my vital fluids are ready for a centrifuge, a slide, a reagent that give up messages in the bottle.

 

Been reading Jennie’s Dead. It has two long sections I wrote because I got excited about translating Ovid on my own, a story in the Metamorphosis about Zeus and a council of the gods. I wanted to use that material because I myself had wrested it from the Latin into my native tongue. I like it, too. A piece in Jennie’s Dead that gives backstory to the power of Typhon, the many armed, snake-legged giant who challenged Olympus and cut out Zeus’ sinews. However. It complicates the narrative flow and is, at least to the me reading Jennie some year’s later, extraneous. To this story. Might become one of its own. Like I want to write a story focused only on Lycaon, the ancient Arcadian King turned into a Wolf by Zeus. I overcomplicated an otherwise good narrative with a sidebit about American Immortals as Emanuel Ezekiel named them. Superior Wolf.

So now Jennie’s Dead will become a straight forward narrative about good witches trying to survive against a very strong mage, one with the powers of Loki. Needs more character development, more backstory. I have time to do that and I will as soon as I finish my reread. Probably this week.

 

The new year, 5785, has found me reaching out to Derek, my neighbor. Long neglected. Calling Joanne and setting up lunch. Stopping my silliness with not liking phone calls. Leaning into my writing, privileging it. Doing some cooking. Not resolutions. After effects of teshuvah, returning to the land of my soul. No longer mired in grief. Seeing the cancer clearly. Changing but not terminal. Also ongoing effects of the pain reduction occasioned by the celecoxib and the tramadol. The support I feel from palliative care.

A good bit of spontaneity thrown in, too. Doing things just because. Because they’re fun. Fun has not been high on my list. Not that I don’t have any. I do. Just didn’t seek it out in a casual, playful way.

Being a Jew has given me a new lens through which to view being human. It’s given me a new understanding, especially Reconstructionist Judaism, of the word religion.* Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionism, said the great need of contemporary life was belonging.

I converted due to my strong friendship links at Congregation Beth Evergreen. I imagine it is strong bonds like these that draw people into religious communities and it’s certainly those that keep them there. Understanding religion as deriving from the Latin religare*, meaning to bind or connect, may have been taken in the wrong sense. That is, religion is more about binding and connecting humans to one another than it is about dogma or belief.

 

*The English word “religion” originated from the Latin word “religio,” which meant “obligation,” “bond,” or “reverence.” However, the exact meaning of this term is still subject to debate among scholars. Some experts suggest that the word “religio” may have derived from the verb “religare,” meaning “to bind” or “to connect,” while others argue that it may have originated from “relegere,” which means “to read again” or “to carefully consider.”  Wordorigin