Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Fourth Phase, Fungi

The journey. Not the destination

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Dragging the bins. Psilocybin. Decameron. Enthusiasm. Leaning into leaning in. Reading. Poems from friends. Torah. Fantasy. Mystery. Trees. Quercus. Absent from my biome. Lodgepoles. Aspen. Willows and Dogwood along Maxwell Creek. White Pine and Blue Spruce along Kate’s Creek. The Olympics. Paris. Hotel D’Anglais Terre. Our honeymoon.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The mind on hallucinogens

One brief shining: Opened the baggie, snack sized, and pulled out a dried up mushroom stem which I held for a moment, not quite believing its power, then I began to chew on its dessicated flesh, like eating straw, washed it down with some seltzer water and waited for the show to begin.

 

Synergy. A wowzer. Lots of colors, twisting trees, hallucinations on my cabinet doors. Lasted almost five hours. Whee. Kept thinking, geez I should do something profound with this. I tried. Thought about death for a bit. That was ok. Same as usual. Not an issue. Couldn’t distract myself from the marching trees, the Wild Bill’s Western Show that set up in the back with a tilting of its perspective whenever I changed my point of view.

Aside from the fun there was a sweet moment when a Mule Deer Doe and her spotted fawn wandered into the back yard. Reality (I think) as wonderful as the psilocybin. The fawn wobbled a bit, not familiar yet with holding herself up on those short legs. Her mother ate gently as the Mule Deer do.

What I wanted to do was watch nightfall. I’ve become entranced by the changing light through the Lodgepoles in my back yard. It reminds me each evening of the Nordic painters who watched Great Sol’s light dim through the forests of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The Trees frame the changing light in small panes created by Branches and the distance between Tree Trunks. The light itself goes through changes in both color and intensity, fading slowly, so slowly as Mother Earth turns the Rocky Mountains away from Great Sol for the rest and cool of nighttime.

My fascination with this transition predated my psilocybin journey. By many years. The Celts see dawn and dusk as times of magic, liminal times when boundaries open a bit, allow us to work with them. Jews begin their day at dusk. We light our shabbat candles 18 minutes before sundown. I remember many evenings in Hawai’i watching the vast Ocean light up, waiting for the green flash.

As the day grew fainter and the panes of light among the Trees changed colors, I watched. Quiet. Accepting the beauty and majesty. Feeling it reach me, let me become part of the transformation. Near the end of the Synergy’s energy, I felt a distinct sense of oneness with nightfall and the wavelengths of light that came with it.

 

Just a moment: Taking off in a moment for the Smiling Pig in Bailey. Barbecued chicken wings. A taking it easy and slow day.

Plan to read my current book and enjoy the mountains on the drive over there.

Feelings, Fourth Phase

Face your fears

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: High Summer. Faery. Boggarts. Nixies. Pixies. Nyads. Dryads. Leprechauns. Banshees. Druids. The Greenman. The Hooded Man. Herme. Lugh. Ceriwden. King Arthur. Lancelot. Guinevere. Percival. The Green Knight. The Decameron. Canterbury Tales. The Middle Ages. Castles. Holy Wells. The Otherworld. Heaven and Hell.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Otherworld

One brief shining: Interesting, I thought, as I stepped away from the form with all the boxes and the e-mail explaining how to obtain and/or use other forms, all to transfer money from one college fund account to another, and my heart rate went up, a pressure to the temples, and I felt silly and repulsed; where, for the first time I wondered, did this-what I would have to call hyperanxious attitude toward forms and bureaucratic complexity-originate?

Kavanah (intention): Loving kindness (toward myself and others )

 

Face your fears they say. A trope in tales of derring-do from Thelma and Louise and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to the Green Knight and excursions into faery. I have lots of fears. How I got diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder long ago. Let me count the ways. Claustrophobia. Being so concerned about having to prove my identity that I refused to go to stores when writing checks was still a thing. Diving off the high board. Large crowds. Having real conversations about sex. Asking women out on dates. Well, girls, too, at an earlier point. Singing or chanting in public. Carrying the Torah. On occasion things that go bump in the night. And, yes, filling out forms and the precision necessary to satisfy bureaucrats of any sort.

This last one has crippled my life. I failed to fill out the application form for a Danforth Scholarship. Which I would have gotten. Money for graduate school. How I filled out applications for graduate school, I don’t know. Brandeis and Rice University. Accepted with no money. Sooo. Have an account with Vanguard that Kate wanted me to add her, too. I tried, but I could never get the forms done. Would never be able to do my taxes if not for the accountant who takes my information and puts it in the right boxes.

My teeth clenched and my breath came a little faster as I wrote this. Geez. Guess my version of hell would be having to fill out endless entry forms when I got there. Yes, I see the humor in all this. Makes it worse, somehow. Silly. Sure. And, yet…

Over the years I’ve gotten more adept at navigating my life around paper shoals and form rapids. More adept. Not adept. When looking at all the stuff they want to transfer this money to my name from Kate’s. How rigid and rule bound the process is. Yes, protective. Sure. Also obstructive.

Where did this come from? Not sure. Has something to do, I imagine, with my anti-authoritarian impulses. Which come largely from my way of taking in Dad’s presence in my life. Not Dad himself. No, I’m old enough and honest enough now to know who’s responsible for how they take another’s actions towards them. Don’t think this explains very well the formophobia that I have. But it’s real. Still kickin’ at 77. Gosh, Gee whillikers. Shuffles feet and looks side to side.

BTW: Still no good at asking women out. Probably stalled around junior high. Check writing now ok. Claustrophobia. Active. Singing and/or chanting in public. Active. Things that go bump in the night. Only rarely.

Dying, on the other hand. Long ago accepted.

I was trying to write my way to some insights here. Didn’t succeed. Why they’re still around, I’m sure.

After reading for editing: I see a fear of ridicule, of not being seen and therefore of not being real. Of vanishing before power I have no control over. Of giving over validation of my Self to someone or something else. Maybe polio? Maybe reinforced by Mom’s death? By the iron lung?

Feeling a burst of empathy for the fearful guy within me. Need to rock him, sing him a lullaby. Tell him everything will be all right. Has been all right. Is all right.

Art and Culture, Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Music, Weather +Climate

Weather and Joy

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Alan. Cheri. The Inspire Concerts. RTD. Federal Center Station. St. Anthony Hospital. New knee, me. New shoulder, Kate. Ruby. 96, high in Denver today. The Ancient Brothers. Kamala. The orange comb over. These disunited States. Rain. Hale. Luke. Leo. Ginny. Janice. Great Sol. Cancer drugs. Jewish music. Today with Ruth.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

One brief shining: Short splats increased to faster, staccato impacts the skylights enlarging the sound, then the Hail, small at first, then larger pounded pounded pounded with the insistence of the natural world not recognizing barriers, pounding against them with the kind of fury increased by falling from a great height as Leo and I looked outside seeing balls of Ice bounce around on the black driveway.

 

A lesson in Mountain Microclimates. While Leo and I enjoyed a hard Rain with Hail, Luke only needed a transparent umbrella at the wedding being held on the west side of Black Mountain in Staunton State Park. Not very far as the Moose walks. Up and down Black Mountain. From their home in the State Park to our yards here on Shadow Mountain, the next Mountain over.

As the bride walked down the aisle, Luke said, the heavens parted and shone a bright light directly on her. Heaven sent. We take in the awe, perhaps dismiss it as random, as unmotivated and therefore meaningless except in a Hollywood sort of way, but yirah is yirah. Wherever and whenever. Yirah is a human emotion, a middot, too, one known in the lev, in the mind-heart. Experienced not in its source but in its recipient.

I enjoyed the thirty minutes or so of heavy Rain, conditioned by decades of Midwestern life to know the nurturance of a good Rain. Good for the crops. Leo wasn’t so sure about the Thunder. He didn’t tuck his tail between his legs, but he did pace. Some Dogs can have an outsized response to Thunder.

Tira, a Wolfhound bitch who lived with us in Andover, once impaled herself on a fence gate and clawed apart and bit, too, a license plate on the Tundra parked just across from the gate. I ran out when I found her and lifted her 160 pound body off the gate in one move. Adrenaline. Fortunately the wound was not deep. Her teeth and front paws though. Bloody.

 

Just a moment: Will elaborate tomorrow, but I spent a joyful day with Ruth today. We walked to Alan and Cheri’s from Union Station. Painful, but doable. So irritating to have this impediment. Walking has been my favorite way to see a city. Now I have to walk some, rest some. Walk some, rest some. Made it to Spire Condominiums across from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Up 38 floors to 3810, Alan and Cheri’s place, for another home based concert. Rabbi Joe Black, senior Rabbi at the huge Temple Emmanuel, sang. As did Eitan Kantor, a local Jewish musician. And a pianist and song writer whose name I don’t have. More on this tomorrow.

Art and Culture, Asia, Dreams, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams  Fan Kuan. C. 1000 ACE

Friday gratefuls: Lab Corps. New test results. Uh, oh. Kristie, later today. Mussar. The wonder of neuroscience and even more the functioning of our minds. Hello, in there, hello. The haze in our days. Not ours. Alan. Vincent, cooking at the Parkside. A dream. Art. Caravaggio. Giotto. Michelangelo. Botticelli. DaVinci. Rembrandt. Hokusai. Fan Kuan. Warhol.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fan Kuan

One brief shining: Each time I see Fan Kuan’s painting, my relationship to Mother Earth pops back into the foreground; in the bottom right, difficult to see in most reproductions, a group of travelers cross toward the left on their journey as the enormous face of the Mountain with its signature Waterfall and  hairy prominences rises above them; mist floats up where the Waterfall disappears toward the Mountain’s base, and hidden among the Trees, homes and monasteries, humans in a natural world so vast we understand at once who and where we are within it. Taoism.

 

The consolation of Fan Kuan’s painting. We come into this world as a birthed animal, fitted out to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell. To take into ourselves data from the world. And, fitted out to conjure our own data in the confines of our singular minds. Here Fan Kuan has shared with us a novel way he put together his experience of Song Dynasty China, its Mountainscapes, its mystery, its beauty. One of the wonders of art is its ability to allow us a glimpse inside the mind and heart, the lev, of another person.

After my diagnosis with cancer in 2015 I drove along the Deer Creek Canyon road and began to understand what Fan Kuan expresses. We travel along a short short road, we humans and our Mayfly lives. We wander along that road within eyesight of the apparently unchanging Mountains, the mist of a future clouded by our unknowing. Yet on that journey we have the chance, if we take it, to know ourselves not as apart from the Mountains and Streams, but as part of them. For me that makes the journey home, our mutual journey, both exhilarating and inevitable.

I had a dream last night. A busload of people with cancer were on their way to a university. I am on the bus. We discuss our cancers, our journeys. We stop near the campus at a large house and everybody gets out. As we enter the house, the home of some well known professor, and sit down, a man comes in, maybe the professor. He puts his hand on the shoulder of the man next to me. “Dead,” he says. He moves to me, puts his hand on my shoulder, “Dead,” he says. In my heart I already knew it. He just confirmed it. This dream is the same as Fan Kuan’s painting.

Triggered I’m sure by my recent visit to Dr. Leonard, the radiation oncologist, and lab results which show my PSA continuing to rise in spite of the Orgovyx. I see Kristie this afternoon. Together we’ll decide what happens next.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Politics, Travel, US History

International Dialogue

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Stien. Koontz. Ootz. The Netherlands. Arjean. Tara. Susan. Irv. Marilyn. Cade. Vincent. Eleanor. Kilimanjaro. Zugspitz. Jungfrau. Olympus. Conifer. Evergreen. Labcorp. Great Sol. Data. Mussar. Neshama. Nefesh. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Leo. Paulaner N.A. Kate, always Kate. Ruth and the Inspire Concert Sunday. RTD. Uber.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

One brief shining: Could I have a short spade, please; Tara handed me a gardening trowel and I knelt down in her curved bed of Carrots and Beets, plunging the trowel in beside the missing Beet plant and felt the Earth give way, yes, there was a tunnel there, something, maybe a Vole, had burrowed in and eaten it from below.

 

Interesting lunch at Tara’s. Met Arjean’s family: Stein, Ootz, and Koontz. And, his mother whose name I didn’t get. They’re visiting from the Netherlands. BTW: Don’t rely on those spellings. They’re phonetic, which means based on my hearing. Always a risky basis for sounds.

Asked Koontz, Arjean’s brother, about how American politics looked from Europe. Next question, he quipped. He went on to say what I’ve heard in many other places including Korea and Singapore. In essence, it really matters to us, but we can’t do anything about it. As an example, he mentioned NATO. Well, yeah.

Koontz also said there was some talk in Europe about deserving a vote in American elections since they impact Europe in such critical ways. Made me think of the Chinese taxi driver I talked to in Singapore in 2004, the day before election day. He shook his head and said, “When America sneezes, we get pneumonia.”

Stein, Arjean’s nephew, is in his third year of university pursuing a business degree. He’s also starting a clothing business as a middleman between Chinese garment manufacturers and a European customer base. When I asked him about the stresses of doing both at the same time, he looked over at his dad, Koontz. A bit sheepishly. Oops, I said. I withdraw the question.

After the meal Tara and I went downstairs to look at her garden. She’s had vegetable eating animals taking out Beets, Lettuce, Raspberries, and Tomato plants. She wanted to get my opinion about what was going on. That was when I asked for the trowel. I found the tunnel right away. Some critter has dug their way to a meal, perhaps several meals. She also has rabbits, I think. Her fence keeps the Deer out. They’re the animal that can really devastate a Mountain garden. They’ll eat everything down to the ground. Well, Elk, too.

Had no solution for her save putting in raised beds for next year’s garden. Would help her back, too.

 

Just a moment: A lighter heart. Some hope. Kamala wouldn’t have been my first choice, but she’s sooooo much better than Biden. Since I’ve long thought this election would hinge on turn out, I feel good since she will be able to energize the Democratic base.

Diane and I talked politics this morning. She feels lighter, too. That feeling alone may be enough to swing the election our way.

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Belonging, holy

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Wednesday Gratefuls: A bright golden haze on the Meadow. A blue, smoky Sky above. Kamala Harris. 45, a man of chaos and hate. Election 2024. A political clown car. Labs. Middle Earth. Hobbits. Ruby. Cool nights. Good sleeping. A big workout yesterday. 160 minutes done for the week already. Lunch at Tara’s. Stories. Books. TV. Movies. Theater. Ovid. The new translation.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ovid

One brief shining: Still glad, all these years later, I bought a Landice treadmill, lifetime guarantee, brought it here from Minnesota with my dumb bells, balance boards, and yoga mats to create a small home gym outfitted now with stall mats, a wall mirror, a TRX mounted to the ceiling, and the TV which accompanies my workouts with stories as I do cardio, stretch, lift weights.

 

Whimsy. Eudaimonia. Life of July 24, 2024. A response to the Ancient Brother’s question of the week: “All things considered are you happy? Why? Why not? What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy?” From Maine’s own man from away, Paul Strickland.

I’m sometimes happy. Sometimes not. In my world happiness is more a mood, a transient state induced by, say, a chili-cheese hot dog, seeing a toddler, finding myself lost in a book. Maybe the afterglow of a lunch or breakfast, a good workout. I don’t seek happiness, it happens to me in this moment or that. Always glad when it does. A bath of endorphins is good for the soul.

What I do seek is eudaimonia. Flourishing. Seeking satisfaction rather than achievement. As I consider it, not an ideology, but a way of integrating my sense of Self, my I am becoming, with life as it flows in and around me. Except in the academic world, and then without much true ambition, I’ve sought results that stem from my values. Those results, and/or the effort to realize them, matter to me. Success and failure are temporary states, neither definitive, neither more than a collective opinion.

I want to emphasize integration. Though I find Maslow’s later hierarchy profound since it added a stage beyond self-actualization, I’ve been anti-transcendence for a long, long time. It implies leaving my Self, my I am, my neshamah behind for a purer, bigger place or experience. Nope. This body. This history. This mind. Damaged and flawed it has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the dizzying heights of accolades, sublime moments of intimacy, and the joy of being alive.

Integration says nope I’m where I belong, among that and whom to which I belong and among whom I am a vital, unique presence. Valuable for my uniqueness, not for my capacity to leave my uniqueness behind for some spiritual space. My journey beyond self-actualization then lies in friendships, intimacy. In understanding how my Lodgepole companion and I share home ground. How the Mule Deer and the Elk, the Black Bears and the Mountain Lions are my neighbors. As in, Love thy neighbor as thyself. How as a human animal I am not only part of Mother Earth’s family, I have evolved from long ago kin whom I share with the Lodgepole and the Elk. I do belong here. Right here. Not out there or up there or behind that veil. Right. Here.

 

 

Denver, Family, Fourth Phase, Politics, Sport

Buy me some peanuts…

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Monday gratefuls: Friends. Family. Coors Field. RTD. The W Line. Walking. Lidocaine patch and two nsaids. Cool weather. The Rockies. The Giants. Homeruns and broken bats. Hot dogs and pretzels. Shaded seats. The umpire pulling his arm in fast. A strike! Gabe. Who likes baseball. My son, who does, too. A long sleep afterwards. Life of July 21st, 2024. Play.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grandsons

One brief shining: Seats 12 and 13 in section 135, shaded throughout the whole game, hard wooden seats, narrow aisles, cupholders and a baseball diamond lit by Great Sol spread out below with the umpire squatting using his whisk broom on home plate, the catcher in his armor down on one leg waiting, while designated hitter Charlie Blackmon, he of the luxuriant black beard, swings his bat, then, Batter up!

 

The Rockies are in competition for the least capable team in the major leagues. They played the Giants, one rank above them in the National League West. Only the also hapless Marlins are further out of a division race. 28 games to the Rockies 22. Still. It was baseball, major league baseball. And it was sun hat day! I gave mine to Gabe to give to Ruth.

View from section 135

The new rules have sped the game up. I found I liked it better. No more drift into the setting sun as pitchers chawed, spit, pondered, and us fans waited. Might go a bit more often. With a lidocaine patch and a couple of nsaids my back was not impossible though it was a 23 minute walk from the train to Coors Field. Glad to have a seat at the end of the walk.

First time taking the light rail in for a game. Did it because Coors Field is not too far from the end of the W line near Union Station. No driving in downtown. Cheaper than parking and much less hassle. Will do it again next Sunday when Ruth and I go to the Jewish music concert at Cheri and Alan’s. $5.50 round trip. Uber then to their home on the 38th floor of the Spire Condominiums.

Gabe and the straw hats. He’s a kind kid. Enjoyed spending the time with him.

Warming up

Had a hot dog, sang take me out to the ball game, stood for the Anthem and, again, for God Bless America played by a trumpeter from the Air Force Academy band. Reflected on the years when I wouldn’t stand for the Anthem. I do now, but for a very different reason than before Vietnam. It’s important for those who, as I saw on a hat of a Never Trumper, want to make red hats wearable again.

 

Just a moment: And, he’s outta there! Another curve ball for election 2024. Though not an unexpected one. What is unexpected. How all this will effect the campaign. Who will be the candidate? Probably Kamala, but not necessarily. And can any one put the orange jinn back in the lamp? If they can, I personally volunteer to carry the lamp to the Marianna’s Trench and drop it over the side of the boat.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

We’re All Just Walking Each Other Home.

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Life. Living. Death. Dying. Leo. Luke. Tara, a good friend. Sleep. Exercise. Red Beans and Rice. Chicken wings. Apples and mandarin Oranges. This July 20th wakin’ up mornin’. A new life, a new day. Great Sol. Blue Sky. Uncle Joe Biden at a crossroads. Recovering from Covid, but not from his debate performance. Our United States.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: 2024.

One brief shining: Two Tanakhs open on Rabbi Jamie’s round office table we roamed back and forth through the book of Numbers, from the spies and their devastating report on the promised land to Moses striking the rock at Meribah and Balaam’s donkey explaining there was an angel in the road that would have done Balaam harm.

 

Restored inner calm. Had breakfast with Alan and Joanne, then lunch with Tara. Just being in relationship with them, talking about usual matters like oh my god the election 45 Joe turnout and a positive story from Alan. Alan read that Joe has been waiting until the Republican Convention is over to step down. Maximum impact. Joanne talked about the conflicts and troubles of early CBE history after Rich’s sunny recollections last Wednesday night. Joanne and I traded stories about Japan and Korea. Ate. Saw each other.

Alan has the role of innkeeper in Ovation West’s upcoming Man of La Mancha. He even has a solo. He’s also getting into directing, taking up a work of the Executive Director of the Evergreen Players who is a playwright as well. Joanne’s new book on extreme mental states, written with two Buddhist therapists and edited by Marilyn Saltzman, is done. The Bread Lounge.

Lunch with Tara at Brook’s Tavern. An emotional one. We talked about my cancer news. Tara is so empathetic. And honest. She got me to commit to a visit to Taipei on my next journey to Korea. No excuses. She also invited me over to their house on Wednesday afternoon to meet Arjean’s brothers visiting from the Netherlands. Marilyn and Irv, Susan and her daughter will be there.

Talking to Tom at 8 this morning. Diane at 3 this afternoon. I am not alone, now, or in the future. This journey has companions, as I am a companion on the journey of others. Ram Dass: We’re all just walking each other home.

 

Just a moment: So. How bout the folks wandering around the Republican Convention with bandages over their ear? Eh? Like the orange one, their hero. Their avatar of Yahweh Sabbaoth, Lord of Hosts. Only the orange one’s hosts are the Proud Boys, the 3 percenters, and the KKK. 45 is, for sure, satan, the Hebrew word for adversary. He’s a thug with a gold plated toilet.

 

Downy Woodpeckers have attacked my house. Again. A problem with a cedar sided house. When I have it stained, I also have the painters patch up the holes the little buggers leave in their search for a meal. I’m mentioning this because someone’s going at the house right now in the back. It’s loud.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

The Next Day

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Friday gratefuls: This July 19th, 2024 life. Life. Neshama. Nefesh. Being a Jew. Studying with Rabbi Jamie. Balaam’s ass. The power of speech. Kristie. Dr. Leonard. The Ancientrail ahead. The Mule Deer Doe that comes to my back yard. Furball Cleaning. Stevinson Toyota. Ruby. Her faithfulness. Cancer. Mortality. Orgovyx and Erleada. Living while dying. All of us.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Honesty

One brief shining: Poached eggs with creamy yellow hollandaise sauce sitting in a bed of red Beans, a small dam of cheesy grits keeping the Beans separate from the white grits, a cup of black coffee, a large biscuit, and a glass of clear water, the buzz of other diners and the clink of silverware, as the three year old girl looked back at her parents, heard them call, turned and in a fast walk went away from them, exploring the restaurant as her mother got up smiling.

 

Serious gear turning still clanking and whirring. How do I feel? Anxious. How do I feel? Uncertain. How do I feel? Calm. How do I feel? Grounded. How do I feel? Happy. How do I feel? Gifted. How do I feel? Aware. How do I feel? Here.

Slept fine. Went to bed thinking about a defined outer limit for my life, woke up still thinking about it. The world has a different flavor now. Not bitter though. Sweeter. A wrap my arms around it and smile for the privilege sweetness. Yes, I am jangly and wobbly, sure. But. I am. And I will be.

Are there uncertainties that loom? Oh, my.

For example. Dr. Leonard (radiation oncologist) suggested not doing any radiation. Because he believed medical intervention should have a positive purpose. Oh? It becomes, he said, a lot like whack-a-mole. The very phrase I’d been using for my radiation. What he wants to do is put me back on Erleada, follow me as usual with the PSA and testosterone assays. If my PSA goes up, as it might, we’ll reconsider. Same with the testosterone. Otherwise he wants to repeat the P.E.T. scan in four to six months to see how the cancer progresses. Or, doesn’t.

He wants, I think Kate would say, for the cancer to declare itself. Then we could radiate the spots where it seems strongest. Along with other, lesser spots. This could be an off again, on again process as I move forward.

I have another blood draw next week and I speak with Kristie again. Where this is going should be clearer then. I’m eager to get yet better clarity because there are matters I’d like to decide or at least start the process for deciding. Like travel. Like what to ask of my son and Seoah. Like, oh, I don’t know.

Don’t need to get my affairs in order. They’re pretty much there. Will. Advanced medical directives. Estate plan.

Might consult my financial advisors. See what if anything this news means for money management.

As for the rest? Continue living in my usual way. Write. Read. Visit with friends. Take in the Mountains and greet my wild neighbors.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Humanities, Judaism, Latin, Letters, Literature, Myth and Story, Science, Torah, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

Liberal Arts, their necessity

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Gabe and Ruth. Beau Jo’s. Pizza. Cool nights. 22 degree difference: Lakewood to Shadow Mountain, 92-70. Abert’s Squirrel and Red Squirrels running. Chipmunks. Rabbits. Marmots. Fishers. Pikas. Prairie Dogs. Mice. Ravens. Crows. Magpies. Corvids.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

One brief shining: Outside along the fence, there, peripheral vision alerted me, found it, a hopping form, bushy tail, then another, Red Squirrels, smaller all black pointy ears, running between the Lodgepoles, an Abert’s Squirrel, a very squirrely morning.

 

Excited. I got a new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Plan to read it through as part of Herme’s Pilgrimage. Stephanie McCarter from the University of the South. Not as ground breaking as the new Iliad and Odyssey by Emily Wilson, but fresh eyes and a woman’s perspective. Looking forward to grounding myself again in Ovid’s world of epic poetry, shapes changed into bodies, metamorphosis.

You could call me a classicist. Not in the academic sense, I don’t have the languages, but religious and ancient classical texts do have a gravitational pull for me. In translation I’ve read and returned to the Bible, Homer, Chinese literary classics like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Greek philosophy, the Talmud, Roman and Greek playwrights and poets like Ovid, Beowulf, the Norse sagas, Dante.

When I say I’ve returned to them, I mean I will read them more than once. Which I don’t tend to do with more modern works. Say after the Renaissance.

You could call me, too, conservative. I also keep returning to religious institutions and religious life. There’s a strong part of my inner journey that’s fed by books like the Torah, the New Testament, Tao Te Ching, Chado: the Way of Tea. Even the Great Wheel emerges from the long ago past.

The vast deposit of human literature allows us to hop into a Jules Verne’s contraption of the mind, find long ago cultures like the Zhou Dynasty, Renaissance Florence, the Shogunate in Japan, village life in the old Celtic world, and for a time live in them, seeing the sights, considering the patterns of thought, the imaginative creations of other ways for being human.

The wonder and magic of reading.

Our era has begun to focus education away from the liberal arts which introduce us to philosophy, history, literature ancient and modern, languages, music and theater, poetry. We have a science and business tropism, a tendency to bend our institutions toward technology, toward business, toward matters concerning the practical arts like engineering, medicine, corporate agriculture.

Of course those practical paths undergird our day to day lives. Necessary to us all. Yes. But, and here’s where the classical world, the conservative nature of the liberal arts and religion comes into play, to what end do we sustain human life? For what purpose do we earn profits? What is a humane approach to political economy?

Without poetry and chamber music, without the voyage of Odysseus, without the journey of Dante, without the often ancient debates over the purpose of community, of nationhood, of war, of humanity itself, without Lao Tze and Confucius, without Zen and animist faiths like Shintoism and Western paganism we have no compass points to guide our white coated brethren, our C-suite compatriots, our decisions between a Trump and a Biden.

Aimlessness leads to corruption, mendacity, and general rot. We are, right now, reaping the whirlwind of this shift in basic education.