Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Mussar

Again, gevurah

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The Off to College Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Parsha Devarim. A milky blue and white Sky with gray Clouds stacked in rows in the northeast. Overnight Rain. 48 degrees. A cool Mountain Morning. Veronica. GOES-19. Most recent project on which she worked. Her description of the Falcon Heavy rockets landing. Her joy in seeing the launch. Gevurah. Cancer. Friendship.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

One brief shining: Not sure what to do with myself as my confidence in my body erodes, breathing hard while coring an apple, walking a short distance, from the garage to the house say, and needing a rest, wondering what’s making me so weak, what’s making it so hard to breath, not inspirational, why I need to find gevurah yet again today.

Kavanah: Gevurah   Strength, ability, willpower

 

Have to figure out a practice for gevurah. In mussar a practice is a way of strengthening a middot, a character trait. For example, if your middot is chesed, loving-kindness, you would look for opportunities throughout the day to make another’s burden lighter or at least a way to share it with them. Or, carry some groceries into a house. Run an errand. Send a kind note. Express your love or admiration for someone.

This does two things. First, it helps you recognize those moments in life when an opportunity to express loving-kindness arises. Second, it helps you actually express loving-kindness when those moments arise. Mussar believes in building from the outside in. That is, the more you see chances to exercise a middot and act on them, the more habitual they will become. Changing your character not through psyche wrangling like in therapy, but more in the way an athlete builds skill in there sport. Practice. Practice. Practice.

So. What might be a good practice for me to learn how to experience my gevurah in this August 10th, 2024 life? First, I might search for moments when I express strength but might otherwise gloss over or ignore it. Like writing. A strength I have here on Ancientrails is persistence, honesty, typing skills. Or, a more simple example. I make a good bagels and lox sandwich. Have several different ways to cook eggs. Another, I said the blessing and lit the candles for Shabbat last night. A ritual reminder of my Jewishness, of the light that comes in and through me through the divine nature of my brain and body, to take a day for rest and replenishment of my spirit. When I find these moments, celebrate them, large or small.

Second, search for opportunities to express my gevurah. Take on tasks in bite size chunks. And complete them. Think, consider, weigh, analyze. Write. Write some poetry. Write about what I’m learning on Herme’s journey. Through the Tarot cards I pull each morning.

Just a moment: Considering the number of men with prostate cancer. That I know: Steve, Dave, Mike. Me. Charlie H. Dick R. Wondering about organizing them. But to do what? Support each other? Sure. But. Maybe to consider how being a man has affected our approach to cancer? That sounds more interesting.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Kabbalah, Mussar

Gevurah

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The Off to College Moon

Friday gratefuls: Jamie. Mussar. His translation and commentary. A smoky, wet Sky. The Olympics. Cardboard beds. Laurie and her Chi-town food truck. Chili cheese dogs. Evergreen. Evergreen Chamber Orchestra at Cactus Jack’s. Clean Ruby. Veronica. Dandelion. Ginny and Janice breakfast tomorrow. Ron’s mussar session on Gratitude. Yirah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth off to college

One brief shining: The lev shaped table for mussar had only Jamie and Ellen around it when I came in, kippah in place, I remembered, with my too big phone and mussar notebook which I put on the table along with my ART hat from a long ago show at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Jamie smiled, so did Ellen.

 

Kavanah: STRENGTH   Gevura (g-voo-RAH) Strength, ability, willpower      Fifth Sefirah = restriction & boundaries; severity & justice; left hand pushing away (opposite Chesed/Kindness)  (חוּמרָה Chumra, CHOOM-rah: Strictness, stringency, rigour; from חמר to matter/have weight)  (חַיִל Chayil, CHAI-ul: Capability, valour, heroism)

[חוּלשָׁה Chulsha, chool-SHAH: Weakness, frailty, disability]

 

Picking intentions for the day that run counter to any negative feelings I’m having. In this case all the words in straight brackets: weakness, frailty, disability. Not been a great week. Too many of my lives have had an off feeling, physically. Shortness of breath. Though. I do live at 8,800 feet, have a paralyzed left diaphragm, allergies, and there’s been smoke in the air. The back issues seem more pronounced. And of course, the decadal favorite: cancer. Mostly I’m up, living my life and loving it. This week. The Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday lives and this August 9th life from what I can tell not so much.

I feel passive. The low T fatigue, I suppose. Have to accomplish tasks in bits and pieces. Only one at a time. Laundry. Make a meal. Straighten up. By the afternoon my go meter has pegged. Drained out. Sure. I can and do read. Write. Could paint but I haven’t. Default mode is either read fiction or watch TV.

I don’t know if this is whining. I don’t think it is. It’s not meant to be. Descriptive of a lassitude born not so much of ennui but of physical depletion occasioned by various ills my body has become heir to. May be some melancholy as a psychic sauce to ladle over it all. Don’t think I’m depressed. Not sure.

All in all. Neither satisfied nor happy. Nor dissatisfied or unhappy. A sort of blah tending toward brown or gray.

I see Sue Bradshaw on Monday, a six month checkup, and I plan to raise the shortness of breath and back with her. Another blood draw on the 19th. That will give some definition to my current cancer status. Not sure there’s a lot medicine can do for me on the first two. Hopeful about the cancer.

So you can see. The middot, the character trait of strength, Gevurah. What I need to find as often as I can in this August 9th life. In as many spots as I can. Experiencing some here. Writing is a strength. Putting the real out of my head and onto the screen. Naming and owning where and who I am.

Lunch with Veronica. A strength. Shabbat and Havdalah. New strengths.

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Memories

Witness

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The Off to College Moon

Thursday gratefuls: MVP. Ruth. Diane. Tom. The up over and the down under. Bangkok. Songtan. Melbourne. Orca Island. San Francisco. Robbitson. Shorewood. Minneapolis/St. Paul metro. Evergreen. Conifer. Genesee. Denver. Lakewood. Luke and Leo. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Rain, Rain. Come again. And again.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Harris/Walz

One brief shining: Sitting cross legged beneath the big painting by Jerry, the Blue Ridge Mountains landscape, Ruth explained how she and her roommates needed to solve a mistake, housing at UC Boulder had put two young women and one young man in the same room, but the conversation swiftly turned to classes: American history to 1865, Political Science 101 in the election year of all election years, studio arts, ways of knowing and finally whether to get a parking spot-no-and a possible library job-yes.

 

Kavanah: PEACE  Shalom (shuh-LOME) שָׁלוֹם   Peace, quietness, wholeness

 (קוֹר רוּחַ Kor Ruach, core ROO-ach: Calm, composure, literally a “cool spirit”) [בֶּהָלָה Behala, beh-ha-LAH: Fear, alarm, panic]

 

Smoky Sky, cool Air, decent Rain yesterday. A feeling of Fall, premature, yes, but welcome, very welcome anyhow. Four seasons. The Great Wheel turning once again. Nights lengthening. My favorite half of the year not far away.

This August 8th life incorporates these changes, makes the late night from MVP feel integrated with this resurrection moment, this reincarnation of my neshamah. The milky gray of the Sky has combined with my Vaad of last night, reflected in the heavens. The MVP group was the last round of folks I brought into my most recent cancer news since Ruth and I discussed it yesterday.

The August 7th life filled my cup while accentuating my sorrow. Yes, sorrow. That dark sadness from the last few days (lives) remains. Its tendrils gathering, pooling. A sense of foreboding. And. Ruth came up. We worked on transferring the MinnesotaSaves college fund money to my name. Ruth filling out the forms with her neat handwriting, discussing with the MinnesotaSaves folks what we needed to do. When we finished with that, I took a nap while she filled out a job application for work/study at the UC Boulder main library.

When I got up, I made lox, cream cheese, and bagels with onions and capers. I know. A little on the nose, but, hey! We both enjoyed them

Her excitement about her classes triggered those oh so sweet  memories of the first days of a new semester, a new quarter when a new field of study lay before me. Or, a deepening of a favorite area. And dealing with a roommate issue, so first days of college.

Having her here felt warm, loving. Though I did end up tired.

And that before I drove to Evergreen for MVP. Which went until 9:45 pm. Discussing responsibility and gratitude. Family. My vaad. Rich, Susan, Joanne, and Ron as witnesses. Not fixers. Not even empathizers, but listeners and seers. Though I have to face this alone internally, I am not alone. I’m in the company of those walking me home. As I walk them.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health

The Gothic Parade

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The Off to College Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Soaking rain yesterday. A Red Squirrel in the Lodgepoles. A Mule Deer Doe eating lunch and taking a siesta in my backyard. Elizabeth’s Dog. Dying. Exploring Reconstructionism. Flagging off the Book Club for Elizabeth. Tim Walz, eh? May he live long and prosper the Democratic ticket this fall. 45% containment on the Quarry Fire. Hot flashes return.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Concern for a dying Dog and her human companion

One brief shining: Elizabeth looked upset when she opened the Zoom call for the CBE bookclub, her eyes red and concern lightly etched in her face, Ellen said she was sorry about Elizabeth’s Puppy, yes, Elizabeth said to me, my vet told me today my Dog has only two weeks to live, my heart sank, I’m so sorry, another two folks came on the call, one who said, maybe we shouldn’t do this tonight, another saying we’ve all been through this and it’s so hard, yes, and with that we set aside the book club in favor of loving-kindness.

Kavanah: CLARITY  Tohar (TOE-har)  טֹהַר

 

Made me think of Gertie licking my face for thirty minutes days before she died. Vega looking up at me when she got the bloat. Finding Tor in the tall Grass. So many. Each one a wrenched and torn lev. Kate signing I love you. Mom saying, Son. Death is hard.

Sure, I can face my own. That’s easy because it belongs to me and I won’t be around to experience the aftermath. I remember Kate saying, I know my death will make people sad. Yes, sweetheart. So sad.

I’m having a difficult time right now. Not depression, but maybe melancholy. Shortness of breath seems worse. My back. Well. Not being able to walk easily. Thinking about wheelchairs and riding the carts in airports. Of course, the cancer that I seem to now be fighting with much less effective treatments. Probably growing. An occasional whisper in my inner world, “I’m dying.” My reserve tank remains full. I’m not desperate. Still. The life of August 6th, 2024 has the God of decay in its timeworn husk.

I imagine all of us face this at some point. That life, that God which collects all of the difficulties and struggles we have, real and imagined, and sets them out on our psychic Main Street in a Gothic parade. Black streamers, black confetti, those glass-sided Victorian hearses and a marching band playing dirges. Presents them to us in a slow moving black and white movie reel. We stand there with a black ribbon waving and tears falling. The reaper gives slow waves from the back of a dark PierceArrow.

The temptation of course is to turn the dial toward a colorful, cheerful homecoming parade, or that ticker tape day for the Apollo 11 crew. I urge you to resist. The dismal parade has its purpose. We grow not by denial but by acceptance, not by repression but by acknowledgement. We know our humanity best when we let our feelings, our fears and anxieties out. When we can celebrate them all as real and true.

Each of the issues that are mine: shortness of breath, diminished mobility and pain, cancer are real. Pushing them away will not energize the efforts I need to make.  Amelioration does not come through ignorance. So I have to keep them all present, close. Those prickly feelings that make me turn away, want to flee, or shut down? Though the path they push me toward is not the one I’ll choose, their presence forces me to see. To feel. To act.

O.K. Maybe we could insert a couple of clown cars and a Cirque du Soliel act or two in the dismal parade. For color.

 

Just a moment: Tim Walz. How bout that?

 

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel, US History, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

See. Feel. Taste. Hear. Smell.

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The Off to College Moon

Monday gratefuls: Seeing with the lev. Charging the lev. Dow down. Orange one weakening. Kamala strengthening. Heat. The Quarry Fire. 35% containment 14 hours ago. The Ancient Brothers. Bill and Moira. Tom. Paul. Ode. On the best book, movie, music, airplane, art. Yeah, Tom snuck in airplanes. Finishing books. Books. Light-Eaters. Numbers. Reconstruction.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The life of August 5th, 2025

One brief shining: Three weeks ago a junior college student outsmarted local police and the Secret Service to send a bullet or shrapnel pinging off the Orange one’s right ear and Joe Biden saw himself as the eventual victor, today we await the Vice-Presidential pick of sitting Vice-President Kamala Harris in a presidential race turned shall we say, on its ear, showing that the Wizard of Odd pulling the strings behind the curtains of 2024 has yet more strange and wonderful events for this year of years. On the edge of my chair.

Kavanah: Kavanah: PERSEVERANCE  Netzach (NETS-ach)  נֵצַ

 

A bit more on the playing cards in the spokes of my lifecycle.* Not going with the three-story universe in the Emerson quote, I imagine he didn’t either, otherwise, yeah. Though. I find less hiddenness. More ordinary sacred moments, events, discoveries. Both in my lev and out there in my Lodgepole Companion, Great Sol, Wild Neighbors, even the physical stuff that makes up my house. All there as Annie Dillard says, holiness holding forth in time, a husk of many colors visible on lifting the eyelids after a night and the 1/60th of death.

Each life a holy life lived by us among and with gods of all times and all sorts. That so young fawn on its wobbly legs. The toddler racing toward her mommy. The Dog smiling at his human partner. Rascal. Findlay. Leo. The beating of my heart. The Quarry Fire. The sacred is not always safe. Thunderstorms. Hurricanes. The Atlantic Oscillation.

And how about this one. People I love living their lives on this spinning Planet so far away: Melbourne. Bangkok. Songtan. San Francisco. Minnesota. Maine.

The older and more clear eyed I become I wonder how wonder cannot be seen. Wonder dances in front of us, behind us, beside us, within us. Right now. In this god, August 5th, of the pantheon we name 2024.

How about hand/eye coordination. Consciousness. Love. Breath. Tides and Tidal Pools. Mountain Streams and Trout. Skyscrapers and elevators. Cars and bridges. Airplanes and rocket ships.

Do we have to make it so hard to know awe? No, we do not. We can and often do because our gaze slips away toward the next chance. We split ourselves out of this moment, this day by focusing our attention on a yesterday we regret or a future we fear. We sigh and turn away from the Dog’s thumping tail, the Fish that has swum up to the aquarium glass, the child that has gripped our hand in theirs so self-involved that what is present does become hidden to us. We, like Pharaoh, harden our hearts. That last plague no longer in our awareness.

The remedy? See what you’re looking at. Feel what you’re feeling right now. Taste with your whole body. Smell the coffee. Yes. Smell the coffee. Hear the Downy Headed Woodpecker pounding on your home.

 

*Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god. I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.   Annie Dillard.
Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Hermitage, Holidays, Judaism, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain

My ancientrail

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The Off to College Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Willville. August 20th. On her own. With a net. Returning to the Solar System. Gaia. Great Sol. Space. Vastness. Galaxies. Huge. Galaxy Clusters. Huger. The Universe its ownself. Our home. Our tiny, tiny presence in our galaxy, our local cluster, the whole of everything. And thanks for all the fish.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shabbat

One brief shining: Reading the parsha, the end of Numbers, then the book on Reconstructionism for class and for the CBE bookclub, lighting the candles, and saying the berakhot, the blessing over them, settling in to my Shabbat, sleeping, then rising, resurrected, granted another life, the life of August 3rd, 2024, lived with friends Marilyn and Irv, with more books and some TV until the day fled, the life was over, and I went down into the 1/60th of death again.

Kavanah: PERSEVERANCE  Netzach (NETS-ach)  נֵצַ

 

I cobble things together. Not exactly syncretism. I have no larger design in mind. Discovering useful ways of understanding, framing, defining. I’m finding the life of August 4th, 2024 a contemplative one. Coming as it does after Shabbat and graced by the presence of my Ancient Brothers. Better for me than living in the moment. Living a full life, one day at a time. AA resonance. Jewish inflection. Expansion of the be here now idea to a waking day. Carpe diem fits. Though it might be a bit aggressive. How about cradle the day, or enjoy the day, or embrace the day?

This all fits well with the lesson of Yamantaka. Meditating on my corpse. Seeing death for what it will be. For me. Not a time to fear but to include in the ongoingness of life. Whether darkness or reincarnation or sudden awakening in a different form. As significant as birth. As love. As justice. As compassion.

Eudamonia comes from the Greeks. Aristotle. A cleaner, more as I experience the flow life way of approaching life’s purpose. Especially considering the longue dureé, how very important and mostly insignificant I am and will be. How I was before I was. If I was. The Mexica idea. Life is a dream between a sleep and a sleep.

Being a Jew. Bathing in the waters of the mikveh. And in the community I find at CBE. And in the long, rich tradition of Jewish thought and ritual. Saying the shema in the morning and in the evening. Studying mussar. Friends.

Hanging with the Ancient Brothers. With Diane. Friends and family over the years. Mary and Mark. My son and Seoah. Dogs.

The Great Wheel and the pagan eye that finds the sacred, the divine right here on the surface of things where Tomatoes grow and Iris bloom and Rain falls and Wildfire burns.

Following the Jewish liturgical year and the Great Wheel. Cyclical time. Not linear. More important to me. Though aging matters, too. I’m fond of the years I’ve lived. And the many, many lives known one day by one day.

Of course, Taoism. Another way of understanding the unitary, yet always evolving one in which we move and live and have our becoming.

With these ideas, these notions, this framing I find each day, each new life, a miracle. A time to savor. To not waste. To know as ichi-e ichi-go, once in a lifetime. And all beautiful. Wabi-sabi.

My tao. My ancientrail. Herme’s journey.

Colorado, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Plants, Weather +Climate

The Quarry Fire

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Joanne. Dandelion. The Baglery. The Quarry Fire*. Firefighters. Hotshots. Planes and helicopters. Deer Creek Canyon Park and road. Smokey’s hand on HIGH at Shadow Mtn and Hwy 73. Histapkut. Hygge. Gazpacho. Berries. Bacon. Mountain living. All Critters great and small. That Fawn. Her Mom. A day of decisiveness. The best. Metinut

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A Blueberry pancake at Dandelion

One brief shining: Texts arrived wondering about how much smoke I had here on Shadow Mountain, not much, I replied, but the scent, yes; sent me to Watch Duty, the app that shows Wildfire locations and posts updates, where I saw that in this instance it will not be the consolation of Deer Creek Canyon, but its horror, the desolation of Deer Creek Canyon.

Kavanah (intention): Intentionality   Metinut (mitt-ee-NOOT)  מְתִינוּת

Mindfulness, presence, intentionality (literally to “move slowly”)    [חִפָּזוֹן Chipazon, chee-pah-ZONE: Hurry, rush, haste]

Parentheses=synonyms  Brackets=antonyms

Ten years this Winter Solstice on Shadow Mountain. For the first time a Wildfire, a forceful and strong one, has broken out in territory familiar to me. Known. So, not abstract. No, it’s not close and most likely will not become close. But. Makes the passage way between the Scylla of Wildfire and the Charybdis of home owners insurance more fraught.

The Quarry Fire* seems to have a human cause, one discovered up a trail in Deer Creek Canyon Park, a park where I have exercised. Mountainous, steep terrain, and, bonus: Rattlesnakes! All fleeing the heat, too, I’m sure. Firefighting is not for the weak minded or the fearful.

Many of my medical allies practice in Littleton and Lone Tree, making Deer Creek Canyon Road a reasonable alternative to Hwy 470. If I’ve had a trying visit, like my one a week ago with Kristie, I take the Wadsworth exit and head west, away from the metro area and toward the twisting turns and steep Mountain sides, Deer Creek running along the road for much of the way. The route ends near Myers Park Ranch, a large park right across from the Chamber of Commerce’s Welcome to Conifer sign.

It upsets me to have a road I’ve associated with healing and perspective become a centerpiece to Fire and devastation. The Fire crews have had a tough time achieving containment. Now in its second day the Quarry Fire has only a four percent containment. Whole subdivisions of people have had to evacuate and many of them now wait out the next stages of this burn in the gymnasium of Dakota Ridge High School.

 
 

Just a moment: On a lighter note I had breakfast with Alan and Joanne at the Dandelion Cafe. A much improved menu from our first visit there. Lot of laughing. Serious conversation. Delight in being together. Got up late this a.m. so I had to consider my kavanah for the day on the drive over and back. Finally settled on intentionality, especially the Hebrew meaning of “to move slowly”. What I want today and tomorrow and Sunday.

 

*Last updated: 11:22 a.m. on August 2, 2024

Latest Updates

  • Fire is about 431 acres and growing; 4% contained
  • 575 homes evacuated across 5 subdivisions
  • Firefighter safety is a top priority
  • Fire conditions: dry fuels, hot temperatures, steep and rocky terrain, extremely dry, with many rattlesnakes in the area
  • Firefighting resources:
    • About 155 firefighters on the ground, including the San Juan Hotshots Crew
    • Two air tankers and three helicopters
    • 23 fire rigs
    • Limited resources available due to other active fires
Feelings, Fourth Phase, Writing

The Ancientrail

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Mussar. Smiling Pig. Diane on Orcas. Mary down under. Mark in Phnom Penh. My son and Seoah in Songtan. Me on Shadow Mountain. Nineteen and a half years of Ancientrails. Books. Teshuvah. Tikkun Olam. Workouts done by Tuesday. Erleada, again. Fatigue. Ruth. Bob’s Your Uncle. Voles. The Olympics. That surfer photo. Caitlin Clark.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: This amazing Planet

One brief shining: Sat down at the Smiling Pig, a barbecue joint in Bailey, looked out the window and saw Mt. Bailey on the right, Crooked Top Mountain on the left as Hwy 285 came down Crow Hill in a straight line with my table before a sudden curve to the right as it dives into the Platte Valley formed by the North Fork of the South Platte River, without the concrete barrier an out of control semi could spoil my lunch of barbecued chicken wings, smashed potatoes, and baked beans.

Kavanah (intention): DECISIVENESS   Charitzut (char-ee-TSOOT)   חֲרִיצוּת

Decisiveness, assertiveness, industriousness; literally “pointed/sharp”

Its poles- (שְׁקִידָה Shkida, shkee-DAH: Focus, application, diligence)  [עַצלוּת Atzlut, ahts-LOOT: Inactive, hesitant, not present]

 

Been thinking about the long and winding path of Ancientrails. For over nineteen years, since February 2005, I’ve written this daily. Almost all days. 7118 from then to now. Over 8,000 posts. When last I counted, over 7 years ago, two million words. It’s changed over the years. As I’ve changed. Begun in the aftermath of an Achilles tendon repair-a nighttime fall in Bangkok the November before-its original purpose was to put my journal on line. A web log. A blog.

Some of the changes along the way have come from the difference between a private, hand written journal and a public memory cache. I deep sixed a job offer from a UU congregation by writing about my interview on here. I’ve made a few people mad, probably hurt a few unknowingly. My son told me to delete his name entirely due to his moving up in his chosen career. On occasion I ended up in a surprising controversy. One time over a few posts about my first wife, Judy. Seems she could tell our story in short stories, but her fans didn’t like my version.

An old situation, one I hadn’t known existed, involved a girl from my high school class, Margo, who felt she’d been passed over for valedictorian. Who knows, I admitted. She could be right. The patriarchy was alive and well and unchallenged in 1965.

Mostly I’ve shared thoughts about politics, paganism, family, the messy contents of my thinking. In the process I’ve written myself into many insights, finding that writing about a problem provides critical distance, allows just enough objectivity to heal some wounds, deal with some troubles. I’m thinking here of Kate’s illness and death. Cancer. The oh so strange of American politics.

Writing this whatever it is has become a morning prayer, a confessional, a soapbox, a place of wondering and questioning. I write it, then read through it as a post, editing lightly. Probably won’t quit until I can no longer write.

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.