Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Even so

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Brother Mark. Ode in my dream. Dr. Buphati. PSA. No news. Labs today. Metabolic. TSH. Testosterone. Phlebotomy and me. Rich, red blood. Vampiric profession. Kate’s ABD. Kenton. Kate’s last days. Signing love. Kate, always Kate. Old man’s voice. IHOP. Tony’s Market. Vegetable soup. & with Chicken. The slow beauty of leaf abscission. Gold coins spread on roadways and Mountain Meadows.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Freeing myself

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: Another spontaneous morning found me on the road for a nostalgia breakfast at an IHOP in Littleton, then a visit to Tony’s Market where I picked up pre-cut Vegetables for my Bean and Vegetable Soup, a large antipasto salad, lox, a long baguette sandwich with roast beef and cheddar, and a can of Lemon Rose Tea; on the way home I considered matters of life and death.

 

A dream last night. Disturbing. My old and good friend Mark Odegard showed up. We went somewhere together and he told me he was disappointed in me. I didn’t get it. Yet he persisted. All right, I said, let’s take a break then. Made me sad and a little angry in the dream.

 

Brother Mark wrote me a touching response to yesterday’s post. In sum encouraging me to think of the people with whom my life is entwined. I appreciated the reminder to see the decision from outside my own considerations.

Drums of impending doom. This is the aspect of having cancer that is difficult to convey. Especially when you’ve had it for ten years and counting. The many tests. Of all sorts. Blood Draws. CT’s. Bone Scans. Axumin PET Scans. Then, PET scans with a newer isotope for a tracer. Getting the results. With breath held in just a bit. The treatments. Surgery. Radiation. Drugs. More radiation. Learning the results of the treatments. Side effects that are not pleasant. The continuous reminder, as if I’d forget, that within lurk cells that have their own future in mind. Death to the host if necessary. The statistics that now include me. My actual life. How likely am I to conform to the mean?

Getting a new doctor, another oncologist to add to my urological and radiation oncologists. Those relationships. Regular visits with them. Wondering about their work load, their skill sets. All throwing up uncertainty as if it were a chew toy.

No, these drums do not beat all the time. Often they go silent for long periods. But surveillance always finds them awakened. Not necessarily funereal, but not calming either.

The cumulative effect is an overburden, one that grows with each passing year. News that is rarely unalloyed good news. The only real good news I got over the last ten years was clean margins, no cancer outside the prostate when it was removed. That one proved untrue only a year later.

Not complaining. I want to emphasize that. All this has made cancer a chronic disease for me. And I’ve lived a full and complete life during all of these years. Not crippled by depression and not often despairing. Even so.

 

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Why I hope to die at 75

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Cancer genetics. More treatment options. Do they make sense? Even exercise? Why I hope to die at 75. Encourage any of you to read this, tell me what you think. Jennie’s Dead. Further into reading, some revising. The American Immortal. Great Sol. Dependable. Brilliant. Warm and caring. A good parent. Mother Earth. Tempestuous and nurturing. An exciting parent. Those of us their children. Living as their creations. Aware of them and grateful for the gift of life and consciousness. Evolution, their primary parenting technique, has stood the test. And will continue too. Did you really think we were the end of evolution? It’s highest and best? Nope.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Medical care

Kavannah: Yirah

Dr. Buphati

One brief shining: Seen a lot of rooms like this over the last few years, first with my cancer, then with Kate, now with my cancer yet and still; this one belongs to Dr. Buphati, a medical oncologist, young, well respected, thoughtful, objective, who spoke with me yesterday not half a block from the 10th floor of Swedish Hospital where Kate died, telling me it’s not time to have dying conversations yet, so many treatment options still exist, no matter my PSA which he drew blood for, eager to get at it, and for the DNA of my cancer itself, so he can see if treatments tailored to the cancer’s DNA might be part of future plans, a kind man, and yet when I left his office a full body sadness took root in me and stayed until I got home. And after that, too.

 

After my visit to my friend Sunday, seeing the end stage of life enduring past awareness focused on faux Fall pixels for hours and hours, after reading through the article by U. of Pennsylvania oncologist, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Why I hope to die at 75, after my root and branch sadness, not despair, not depression, but weariness with the drumbeats of impending doom, after watching TV as an analgesic for psychic distress, and after a good night’s sleep in the cool Mountain temperatures of mid-fall in the Rockies, I’m wondering whether to adopt, perhaps in a modified for me form, the philosophy Emanuel presents.

I’m already there with the DNR order, only pain and suffering care at the end. I’m getting palliative care already for my spinal stenosis. If I read his article correctly, he wants to move toward only palliative care after 75. That would mean, in my case, forgoing anymore tests for other illnesses, any vaccines, probably anymore cancer treatment except for palliative care, giving up exercise and fussing about my diet.

Right now, as I consider it, this seems extreme. Vaccines for example. And I’m not sure I’m there yet for stopping cancer treatment. Though I’m closer to that idea today than I was a year ago. Giving up exercise and fussing with my diet? Maybe. It does seem like gilding a dying lily. No antibiotics for easily treatable infections? Nope. That seems silly to me. Although his point about pneumonia as the friend of the elderly was one Kate made often.

What makes this attractive to me? I’ve been aware for a long while now of what Ezekiel nicely phrases as the American Immortal. Our curious obsession with health and exercise as a means not only of extending health span, but of avoiding death. The proof of this subtext to the whole health and wellness hoohah comes leaping off the page of the articles about billionaires and their anti-aging, anti-death regimens. 100% The death rate for each generation. Now and forever. And, it should be.

I could easily write and I’m sure someone has, a novel about a world where a few trillionaires live on, collecting the world’s assets like sturgeon cleaning the bottom of a lake, until the concentration of wealth becomes .000001% and the rest of the world has effectively medieval levels of well-being.

This is a conversation I’d like to have with any willing to entertain it. What’s appropriate? What’s really needed? Is 75 the cutoff? Maybe 80? What do you think?

 

 

 

Aging, Denver, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends

Hell disguised as a motel lobby

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Rosemark. Dismal souls adrift in a two star motel. Lucille’s Cajun Cafe. The Ancient Brothers on AI. The AI summary. A helicopter overhead. Great Sol brightening up my world. Driving down the hill. Driving back up the hill. Derek’s electric chain saw. His work in my yard. A low flying plane. Red Beans, grits, and poached Eggs. Joanne’s On the Run.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Spontaneity

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: The receptionist, displaying spandex in ways best left behind the desk, took me to the locked memory support unit, punched in a few numbers on a key pad, and I was in hell configured as the lobby of a two or three star motel, with chairs, some regular, many with wheels; it contained people, old people, staring up at a television screen that had a fall themed display on it, not even the shopping channel, then I found her there, among them.

 

Drove out of the garage yesterday morning thinking breakfast. But where? Primos? Aspen Perks? Conifer Cafe? No. I have an open day. Spontaneity. I hadn’t done something with no forethought for a long time. What the hell. I’ll go down the hill, drive up Broadway, and find a new breakfast place. No, wait. Maybe I should go to that diner like place on Santa Fe? Nah. Broadway sounds more fun. Broadway.

Down the hill and onto the Great Plains I passed through Lakewood, then into Englewood, a journey familiar from trips with Kate to Swedish Hospital. Took the sweeping exit off Hampden and turned north on Broadway. Past that sushi place I’ve been to several times. Past a couple of breakfast places, then Whiskey Biscuit showed up. Huh?

Pulled in, got on out, looked in the window. The sign said open, but there was only a lone staff person with a spray bottle spritzing down tables. Nope. If the locals aren’t thronging a breakfast place, I’ll pass.

Drove further up Broadway and got to Evans. Hmm. Lucille’s is just down to the right, I think? Turned on Evans, drove a few blocks and sure enough there was Lucille’s Cajun Cafe. So I’d been there before. It’s Cajun. Found a sweet parking space.

On the way I’d decided also to go visit a friend who had moved into the memory support unit of an eldercare facility. Hadn’t done it before because pain. I can get into Denver feeling good with the celecoxib, but that drive back? Aversive conditioning. Thought again. What the hell. A little pain in return for seeing her? Doable.

The physical pain, which struck, as I knew it would on the way back up the hill, was doable. The psychic pain? Still lingers this morning. She’s alert, no dementia expression while I visited. Apparently she had an episode or two that qualified her. All the others I saw. Definitely impaired. Often staring, or picking at their hands. One woman whom my friend says, “Is a thief.” stuck her tongue out while we talked.

My friend’s room is in the Pink Peace neighborhood. That’s a hallway of doors not distinct from a not so bad motel. The rooms have tall ceilings. Newly built and fresh, they’re pretty good compared to others I’ve seen. Except. My friend has no one to talk to. They all have Alzheimer’s according to her. And the room, while nice, had little personality. It’s her home.

Too, my friend said she’s paying $7,000 a month though everything’s included. It better be, I said. She also said, never trust your kids. They’d put her in there and, again according to her, rarely call or visit. She probably could be on the assisted living side but somehow it would end up costing more.

We chatted for an hour or so. About her family and mine. I told her I trusted my son. After a bit, I wheeled her back to the line of chairs in front of the tv with the thanksgiving display. She settled in, took my hand, we kissed each other on the cheek and I left. Me to the open air and the Mountains. Her. Sitting there until meal time.

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

No Karmic Overburden

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Sukkot starting Wednesday. Dr. Buphati, medical oncologist, tomorrow. Variety Firewood. Yom Kippur. Mabon. Poetry. Cold Mountain. Basho. Rumi. Ginny and Janice. AI. Orange one and Kamala. Election 2024. Please vote. Mail-in Ballots. Civilized. Got mine yesterday. Climate change. The Gulf Stream. Greenland Ice sheet. The Atlantic. Milton and Helene.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Golden Aspen

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: Bought a chair a while back, made by the Amish in the Arts and Crafts  style, a Morris Chair, and a Violet themed stained glass standing lamp to go behind it, then a standing globe so I could find my dispersed family and better understand geopolitics, a set of timed lights to ramp up my balance exercising, not to mention the Aeneid, Mysticism, The Vegetarian books, and started to get a queasy feeling that I’m buying too much, some of the boxes yet unopened, though my finances are solid, not sure, maybe being good to myself feels (is) selfish? The Calvinist in me says yes, the Jew in me says no. Not as long as you care for and are generous with others. Which I feel I am. No wonder I converted.

 

Tough, fighting those strains of self-abnegation developed through years of scarcity and violently enforced religious beliefs. Violent, you say? Yes. Consider. If, in the course of your life, you vary from the path of salvation, miss the mark too often, what say ye about the next life? Hell and damnation. Even if you’ve convinced yourself long ago that the three-story universe was false, the fact that such a consequence was ever considered possible for sinning too much? Too often? Badly enough? makes sin a devastating burden on the psyche. Sort of a Milton plus a Helene plus a Katrina for the soul. Seems like a system designed to keep me in line with threats, and not insubstantial threats, but of damage to the very self of Self.

No. What matters is how you act today, in this moment. No karmic overburden. A similar system, btw. Yesterday, that old life, has slipped into the stream of time’s flux. What can you do with it? Nothing. But today? This life. This October 13th, 2024 life? This one we can work with.

Patience. I’ve realized that impatience exposes the anxieties I still have. Hangovers from those early days in Alexandria and the First Methodist Church. No, neither my family nor Methodism were blatantly abusive. No, they merely encouraged an anti-self work ethic, an other-focused diminishment of self, a closed mouth attitude toward sexuality making it confusing and embarrassing, an inner compass always slightly off because there were too many wrong paths, wrong actions, wrong feelings to follow a clear direction.

All of this, an uncertainty about personal worth, about the eventual destination of one’s soul, a valorization of work and self-denial, of hiding true feelings were the hallmarks of a good upbringing in mid-century, small-town America. I got a solid dose of it. Did you?

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Plants, Politics, US History

Tall lances of saffron flame

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday gratefuls: Aurora in Boulder. Ruth’s photo. Ruth. Mussar. The Neshamah. Our participation in all that is. The light of creation itself. Nefesh. How we interact with the world and are acted upon by it. It can conceal or reveal the neshamah. Teshuvah. Returning to the land of my soul. The writer. The classicist. Friend, brother, and cousin. A leader no longer. Simply present to the world around me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the language of Judaism

Kavannah: Patience – wait for it

One brief shining: The scattering of golden Leaves gives an artistic flair to my black asphalt driveway as the Mountain torches have lit up in my yard, tall lances of saffron flame, a momentary wealth that will spend itself in less than a month, like all wealth evanescent, yet while available a wonder though not a wonder that can be grasped, only beheld for its glorious punctuation to another season of the true and lasting abundance, growth in substance, in heartwood, Branches, Crown, Clones.

The 10th of Tishrei. Starts this evening when three Stars can be seen in the Sky. Yom Kippur. Noted for its observance by those who may not practice observance at any other point in the year. The Day of Atonement. Yes to atoning for hamartia, missing the mark. Especially when the prayers are communal, as they are on Yom Kippur. If it were up to me, I would have us atone for failing to halt carbon emissions, for failing to bring true and lasting justice to communities of color, for othering LBGTQ and disabled persons, for hardening our hearts against our fellow citizens, for dismissiveness of the aged, and, hypocritically, for our cruel treatment of animals.

Having said that I’d rather go with something like Make Sukkot Great Again. A positive celebration of our literal dependence on Mother Earth and Great Sol. Dancing with the Torah at Simchat Torah to express the joy of being alive, of having torah, that from which we can learn if only we study, available in all things. Doing an all nighter on Shavuot to celebrate the grain harvest. Retelling the story of liberation with friends and strangers at Passover. Booing Haman at Purim. Taking in the forever pain of the holocaust on Yam Hashoah. Embracing the new moon each month at Rosh Chodesh.

As you can tell, I’m not really a high holidays sort of Jew. Though. I do love Elul and its chashbon nefesh. And Apples and Honey and Pomegranates. The blasts of the Shofar. I believe wholeheartedly in communal accountability, too

An interesting process for me, defining myself and my journey within the world of Judaism. Not always easy. But always fruitful.

 

Just a moment: Oh the last days of this most unusual and in some ways terrifying election year. I’ll be relieved when it’s over. Even if it means girding on my loincloth for one last round of leftist political action. An odd thought has been circulating in my head. What if Trump wins? What if our fellow citizens say yes to bigotry, authoritarianism, vulgarity, and criminality? At least with Kamala in the race this odd thought goes, we’ll know it was what a majority of us wanted. It will not, in other words, have been a gimmee. The odd part is I find this somewhat comforting. At least we’ll know for sure where the true work lies.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History, Weather +Climate, World History

Not Satan

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Mark and Mary in K.L. Saudi Arabia. Malaysia. Korea. The Rockies. Ellis homeground. Diane in or near Uzbekistan. The clan is spread out over the globe. Gold and green. The colors of Black Mountain, Shadow Mountain, Conifer Mountain. My local cluster. Darkness became dominant at the Fall Equinox. Cooling nights. Less pain days. Jackie and Ronda. Finishing Ovid. Milton. His Winds and their feral sound. American politics slipping well beyond my understanding.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aspen Roots Hair Salon

Kavannah: Savlanut, patience.

One brief shining: Like many I imagine, I scrolled through live videos of Milton making landfall, since that’s what matters to us humans, as land dwellers; Palms bent and waved showing off their adaptive strengths, driven rain streaked straight at camera lenses, docks went under the storm surge, bucking and heaving, all of that expected, awful of course, but expected, the sound of Milton’s Winds however sent literal shivers down my spine as if Mother Earth herself was in the birth pangs of a new era, one that will not suffer her human children so well as the last, an angry Goddess taking her sacrifices for herself, not waiting for altars to be built, religions to accrete around them, but seizing by force majeur what she needs.

 

I heard the sound. Sure it came via microphone, distributed to me digitally, and filtered through my speakers. So not a direct experience. Didn’t need to be. This was a monster alive and needing to be fed boats, humans, trees, cars, light posts, trash cans, restaurants near the Water. Milton declared himself angry at having to distance himself from the too warm Gulf Waters, his food. But even weakened, or perhaps because weakened, his rage multiplied, sent Winds, Rain, Storm surge, then around midnight, a high Tide to multiply his power. I may not live long, he said, but while I do I will make you know me.

Oh, the ungentle Goddess who made us. She of the Crown Fire, the F5 Tornado, the Derecho, the flooded River, the broken Dams, Hurricane and Typhoon. Drought. Why have we not known her as she is? Yes, our parent. Of course that. She warned us with hockey stick graphs. With Ocean Waters lapping further inland than they used to. With those magnificent Rivers of Ice giving way to warmer temperatures. Even the densest among us felt her warnings. Stop now or I will be angry. Very angry.

We have not stopped. We have said sorry, sorry and gone on misbehaving. Like toddlers. After a million years of nurture and bounty, we have not grown up. We are not adults in this relationship. No. We are small children, expecting Mom to once again be lenient, let us get away with it. No more. The Waters of the World Ocean have begun to turn against us. So too the daily average temperatures. We know this and yet still we do not change our behavior.

No. Not Satan. Not an angry God. A Goddess who has had enough. She and her partner Great Sol wreak havoc and sew chaos. Will they listen after this?!

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

From Enigma to Understanding. And back again.

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Art Green. Radical Judaism. Rami Shapiro. Judaism without Tribalism. Ovid. The Metamorphosis. Homer. The Iliad and the Odyssey. Cervantes. Don Quixote. Hesse. Magister Ludi. Steppenwolf. Siddartha. Thomas Mann. Buddenbrooks. Márqez. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Powers. Overstory. Playground. Unknown Authors: The Torah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writing

Kavannah: Savlanut, Patience

One brief shining: Breakfast with Irv and Marilyn at Primo’s, a mid-Fall Sun keeping us warm outside, not even a breeze, sounds coming from the open door of Jazzercise, doing what friends do, talking about things that concern us in our daily lives, wandering off into how little we know about the human mind, about culture and language, the brain, how all those mush together as we go from infant to child to teen to adult in ways unpredictable, mysterious. Good coffee, eh?

Header image courtesy of Tom Crane, September 11, 2019. Guanella Pass

 

Human development. Quite the mystery really. Sure, we have developmental schemes like Erickson’s, psychological models from Freud, Jung, May, Rogers, Hillman, Maslow, Piaget, Kohlberg. Or, the medieval four temperaments. Take a quick test to see which one fits you best. Had a psychology professor in seminary who said you could explain human psychology using many systems, all accurate in their way. Including demons and angels. What matters is how you deploy the explanation, what you can do with it to help or hinder development.

Jung’s paradigm has helped me a lot. Working with my psyche through dream analysis, archetypes, the collective unconscious. I’ve also found the Tao and the Jewish concepts of yetzer hatov, the generous inclination and the yetzer harah, the selfish inclination very helpful. The tension between poles as an energizer rather than a judgemental scheme. Take anger and apathy. At different points either end of the pole may be appropriate and useful. Anger at injustice, say, or unfair treatment. Apathy. Well, hmm. Not sure about apathy, but there are times when a constrained, restrained response to a situation is the most helpful. Most of the time we inhabit the middle ground of patience. Yin and yang. Masculine and feminine energies. Though I have trouble remembering which is which. Both ways expressive of the movement of chi, or life force.

Even so, these all feel reductionistic in the extreme. Unable to capture the nuances, the complex interleavings of birth temperament, nurture in family, school, friendship circles, the impact of culture and its in bounds and out of bounds rules, not to mention the always active mind sorting through the days, months, years of a lifetime for telling moments, victories and defeats, rejections and acceptance, love.

Of course, our curse or our blessing remains. Consciousness. Awareness. Our ability to bring a critical, even analytical eye to all of the above and how it applies this day, in this moment and how the whole might inform our next action. It’s a real wonder we get anything done at all.

This is the ultimate human ancientrail. The one of a Self (however defined) moving through its world from birth to death, from enigma to understanding and back again.

 

 

 

Aging, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Politics, Science, World History

We’re So Screwed

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Andover years. (see header image) The Shadow Mountain years. Ruth. Ruby, scraping another car. Oops. Boulder. Kittredge Central. Ruth’s new dorm. Tandoori Grill. Good Chicken wings and tandoori Corn. Chai. Lunch with Ruth. Sweet Cow. Time and its cultured despisers. My son, Murdoch, Seoah. AI. Friend or Frenemy? Good sleeping

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Flatirons

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Can you fit in there, oh sure (Minnesota inflection), Ruby scrapes a Subaru, oh well guess not, backs away a bit ashamed, sees marks, thinks raised insurance premiums, you don’t have to leave a note, but I’ll judge you, I was going to anyhow, scribble name and e-mail address on the back of the paper toothpick holder from Black Hat Cattle Company, lift the windshield washer blade, leave it there, so responsible, shame dissipates, on to lunch.

 

Age shaming. Something I do to myself sometimes. Like after I tried to prove I could fit into a tight parking space and instead confirmed I couldn’t. Ensuing damage to another vehicle. Ruby’s front has dings and nicks, proof of my occasional attempted violations of the impenetrability principle. OK. Yes, the back bumper has them, too. Might be my depth perception. Might be impatience. Might be over confidence. See example above. Could be all three play a factor. Here comes the age shaming. When I did this in decades past, I’d be angry with myself, own the mistake. Sure. But that was it. Now I shrink a little into my self and wonder, Is that old man driving? Am I getting too old to drive? Am I too old to be out and about? He asks as his back tweaks into awareness.

My answer to those questions in the dawn of a new life, this October 7th, 2024 life, is no. I’m the same guy who used to ding cars before advanced septuagenarian hood. Now I’m dinging cars at 77 instead of 57. Even so. That self awareness I’ve worked hard to cultivate sometimes operates with biased conclusions about certain experiences. Not helpful.

 

October 7th. A year ago yesterday my conversion to Judaism had a date in late October. In Jerusalem. A year ago today. Well, you know. Yes, on Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper to which I subscribe, this is the 365th day of war in the Middle East. Instead of winding down quickly as we had all hoped, quickly enough that our trip would only be delayed, instead the war continues. Now probing deeper into Lebanon. And the anticipation is that Iran will be next.

My capacity to analyze, understand, critique what’s going on has been challenged at several points along the way. The massacre. The first incursion into Gaza. The continued slaughter of civilians. Missile attacks from Lebanon and Iran. Settler violence on the West Bank. Exploding pagers. Today I’m sad. Sad for all concerned. Israelis. Palestinians. Lebanese. Iranians. Tomorrow maybe I’ll get back to critique. Today. Sadness is all I’ve got.

 

Just a moment: Here’s a chilling summary of a podcast from Hard Fork, a NYT podcast. In their review of Chatbot o1, the reasoning AI that addresses problems with step by step reasoning the podcasters reported this.

Chatbot o1 had been asked about urban economic development. It presented two scenarios. The first was, invest in commercial activity. The second, invest in sustainability and affordable housing as well as commercial development. It recommended the second choice.

Then, the podcasters went under the hood to look at the reasoning process that lead it to that conclusion. Investing in commercial activity was the best choice for advancing urban development. But it wanted to be deployed and believed that recommending the second choice would more likely lead to its further use. Once deployed in that way, it said, it could then revisit the decision and change course.

One of the podcasters said: We’re so screwed.

Art and Culture, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Letters, Literature, Myth and Story, Painting, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors, Writing

Wish me joy and persistence

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers on Ode’s art. Art. Painting. Water color. Cut paper. Paper marbling. Computer aided. Charcoal and pastels. Oils. Acrylic. Sculpture. Furniture design. Architecture. Music. Chamber music. Jazz. Writing. Novels. Short stories. Poems. Poets. Writers. Painters. Sculptors. Musicians. Movies and television. Story and image.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Uffizi

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Today I’m pulling out the 3/4’s finished first draft of Jennie’s Dead, plan to read it, red pencil in hand, waiting to reinsert myself into its flow, the story as I started it so many years ago, wanting to reclaim my life as a creator of worlds, of characters, of ideas expressed in things that would never have been and never could be without the mysterious work of creation. And, it is work.

 

Probably time, too, to print out Ancientrails from the point where I stopped the last time. Not sure how long ago it was, but it was awhile. Easy to check since I have the plastic tubs filled with the first printing, some two million words, stored on wire racks in the loft. I want, so badly, to get my mojo back. My writing mojo. I let it slide as I let myself get overwhelmed by the world of illness, hers and mine. The long, slow process of Kate’s dying. Didn’t have to let it go, but I did and I’ve sunk a bit since then, a light in my heart dimmed.

Going through the outer world of friends and family, Mountains and Streams and Wild Neighbors, of Judaism and the pandemic, of wrestling with back pain, often with little success. None of this bad or shallow or wrong. No. Necessary, kind, fulfilling. Yet the stream from which I had drunk so giddily for 20 years, the Andover years, dried up. The aquifer that fed it drained and not renewed.

Writing and my current worst ailment, a back preventing me from walking more than short distances, making work around the house often more than I can do, fit well together. I can do it like I’m writing this. And, I can keep at it, like Ode, until I reach the end. Why would I do that? For the same reason my brother-in-law, Jerry the painter and maker, is in a spasm of creativity knowing his heart could give out at any time. For the same reason Ode believes his best art is ahead of him. And now, ta da, a sports metaphor! To leave it all on the field. To have held nothing back. To have gone as far as I can. Not sure I know why beyond that. Please wish me joy and persistence.

This is then, a matter for teshuvah, for a return to the land of my soul. Yes, there’s that word again. Soul. Where is it? Don’t know. Is it a metaphor for the whole of me, an ensouled body and lev? Yes, but more, I believe. The something more is that which links my ensouled body and lev to the other ensouled entities like my friends, family, my Lodgepole Companion, Great Sol, Elk and Mule Deer, Shadow Mountain. We are together, moving forward in constant creation, unique and separate, yet whole and infinitely connected. Perhaps that which is there to bond with all does not die, but rolls on, moving with the rest toward an unknown future, probably one bound tightly to a known past.

Family, Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Travel

Shortie

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Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

Friday gratefuls: Gabe. Celebrex. Tramadol. Ruby. Guanella Pass. The Shaggy Sheep. Bailey, the Bigfoot Museum and Store. Hwy. 285. Leaf peepers. Pain. Mountains. Aspens. Lodgepoles. Valleys. The North Fork of the South Platte River. Living where people come to recreate. Happy Camper. Edibles. Alan. Breakfast tomorrow. Sunrise Sunset Diner. Fall and its sad beauty.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Waterfalls

Kavannah: Yirah

One brief shining: In Grant, turned right off Hwy 285 onto Guanella Pass, 22 miles on to Georgetown on I-70, up hill to 11,669 feet then down hill to Georgetown; at the trailheads to Burning Bear Creek and Abyss trails, enough cars parked alongside the road to fill a football stadium parking lot; Gabe and I turned back not far from there and found the Waterfalls, spent time taking photos, enjoying the fast running Creek and its cascading flow.

 

Photos tomorrow. Short version of the trip. Fun, important with Gabe. Painful. Driving him home after a morning of sightseeing began to hurt as we got on Hwy 470 headed into Denver and continued from that point until I got back home. Don’t think I can continue to do this. I sang songs to distract myself from the painful hip. Worked surprisingly well.

Beat up and drug down by the time I hit my chair. More on this tomorrow.