Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Hermitage, Plants, Tarot, Wild Neighbors, Writing

Herme’s Pilgrimage

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Irene. The Dreamers. Yud Heh Vav Heh. Chai. Aleph. The Shield (Star) of David. Tarot. Woodland Oracle Deck. Orange one. Older one. Our country. Right and wrong. Love it, don’t leave it. The 1960’s. The Peaceable Kingdom. Judy. The Goat. The Aurora in the Lake. Steppenwolf. Cooking and heating with wood.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dreams

One brief shining: The thickly polyurethaned round table had a jigsaw cutout of a house and a Mountain, outside Bear Creek ran full and strong; as I drove to the Blackbird for breakfast with Ginny and Janice, I’d noticed the sign, In Case of Flash Flood Climb to Safety; as a result, I looked again at Bear Creek, saw its strength contained for the time within its banks and was glad.

 

This new, integrative journey, Herme’s Pilgrimage I think I’ll call it now, has me reaching back into closets stored with varied kinds of knowledge. The story of Zeus, Hermes, and Lycaon. Of Baucis and Philemon. The South Node on my astrological chart. The Wildwood Tarot. The Tree of Life. Kavanah. Teshuvah and Tikkun. Resurrection. Reincarnation. The Tea Ceremony and the way of Chado. The Great Wheel.

As I wander on this pilgrimage, knowing how to read a Tarot spread will come up alongside quantum mechanics. Sun sign next to the sephirot on the Tree of Life. A roku Tea cup and a tallit. How these will resonate, reverberate. What fun, eh?

Today the Tarot and Oracle cards have my attention as does the parsha Shelach, Numbers 13:1-15:41.

Beaver and Birch, Woodland Oracle Deck

The Woodland Oracle suggests drawing a card a day to become familiar with the deck. Seemed like a good plan. So I did. The Beaver and the Birch.

Upright the Beaver and Birch suggests a focus on home, doing the decorating, maintenance that create a home. This felt propitious because Herme’s Pilgrimage focuses on activity I can do at home. Also, the Beaver works hard, creating not only a home and a dam with their hard work, but a Pond as well.

The pond can represent the work of Herme’s Pilgrimage. A layer that reflects the Sky, the rational world of appearance, and a depth below where matters of myth and legend, religious practice, and poetry lie.

The dam suggests the barrier, the boundary I need to construct so I can focus on letting the Pond fill up and surround my home. I will leave my home by swimming through the Pond and return the same way.

The Woodland Wardens represented in the 52 cards of the deck combine Animals and Plants. Jessica Roux, the creator of the deck, says she was inspired by the Victorian language of Plants as well as the Creatures themselves.

Whatever focuses my attention, sends it down unimagined paths, has value to me. Tarot and oracle decks have that capacity for me. Music, too.

Wanting to go as far down the Rabbit hole, into the Pond, and through the Looking Glass as I can.

 

 

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health

Happy people say pyt med det.

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: A good, hard workout. Monoecious and dioecious plants. Lodgepoles and Aspens. The Arapaho National Forest. That Yearling Mule Deer eating alongside the road. Rain. Thunder. Lightning. Full Streams. Floods in Minnesota and Iowa. Drought eliminated. Less Fire risk here. Mark in Thailand. Mary in Melbourne. My son, Seoah and Murdoch in Songtan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Totoro

Totoro

One brief shining: Thunder cracked over Shadow Mountain yesterday afternoon, rain poured down drenching the shallow Soil, the Granite that sits beneath it, allowing Plants to draw nutrients into their Root systems, send it up by capillary action to Stalks, Trunks, Branches, and Leaves, the coming down going up.

 

Easy. And, a mistake. The aches, pains, creaks and groans of the aging body. The serious diagnosis. The certainty of death not far in the future. Easy to let these common realities of age bring us down, send us into the place where doubt and fear rule. Not too long a step from there to depression.

Easy. And, a mistake. Moods. Again. That’s the first sign of trouble. A mood that drags us into the past and what could have been but is no longer. Or, that sends us, heart racing, toward that future day when that same heart or the lungs or the cancer will take over, finish. Or, that simply lets us sit focused on present pain and discomfort. Moods. Transient and manageable.

Pyt med det. A Danish phrase that means it doesn’t matter. Or, don’t worry about it. Consider this Finnish saying, Some have happiness, everyone has summer. Another Finnish saying: Whatever you leave behind, you will find in front of you. According to this article people in Finland and Denmark, two of the nations ranked at the top for overall happiness, use these phrases as a mental shield against bad moods and spiraling unhappiness.

Take care of things as they come up. Don’t let them cook. I had to give a friend some news I feared he might take badly. Could have, and at another age, might have delayed the call. Waited until the elusive right time. Sat down and made the call. He was ok with it. Oh. Well. When I say or do something I regret, I deal with it quickly and openly. Whatever you leave behind, you will find in front of you.

That bum shoulder, the knee pain, a back that ouches, even a terminal diagnosis. Sure. Could bring you down. However, right now, which is the only moment you have, you can choose another frame. They don’t matter. Pyt med det. Easy for the Danes to say, eh? Well, we only die once and even chronic pain has its better times. Some have happiness, everyone has summer. A summer of lessened pain will come. No need to focus on it in this moment then, let the dance of the seasons bring summer to you.

Death. Not a stranger to me. To you. To all of us. The Tibetan Buddhists work to get a calm, relaxed attitude toward death. They believe the process of reincarnation takes its first cue from how you greet your end. That matters. So. When death comes round too soon, trying to blow your house down, tell her to cease and desist. Because right now is not the time. And promise to show up when it is time.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Hermitage, Holidays, Humanities, Kabbalah, Latin, Letters, Mountains, Myth and Story, Plants, Poetry, Tarot, Travel, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors, Writing

Herme’s Journey

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Summer and the waning Bar Mitzvah Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Great Sol. Shadow Mountain. TV. Books. CD’s. Jazz. Mozart. Telemann. Bach. Coltrane. Monk. Parker. Gregorian Chants. Rock and roll. CD player. K-dramas. Netflix. Amazon Prime. Mhz. Starlink. Conversation. Listening. Seeing. Really listening. Really seeing. The Aspen out my bedroom window. The dead Lodgepole.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The lesser light-the Moon

One brief shining: When I go now to an airport, when I even imagine going to an airport, I recoil, seeing the old Native American punishment, running between rows of TSA employees, airline boarding agents, and crabby fellow sufferers all diminished by the experience, yet needing to pass along, like some fraternity hazing ritual, the same misery to the pledges not yet seated in their too narrow and too jammed together seats. And paying often thousands of dollars to do it.

 

Still enjoying a post bar mitzvah push sense of opening, of new possibilities. Herme’s Journey, which I imagined after the dream workshop last month, got sidelined a bit by the week of the ritual, guests, celebration, and the week of physical recovery that followed that one. Though. Kavod for the Trees (Honoring the Tree) has kept it alive.

Herme’s Journey followed thoughts and feelings triggered by my Wabash dream. That dream encouraged me to reenter the life vision I had when I started college almost 60 years ago. To embrace that dream of a long period, lifelong in my hopes of those years, as a student, then a scholar. With libraries and writing instruments my primary tools. With ideas and their expression as my life work.

Herme, you may recall, is the name I gave to the neon sign I had made of the Hooded Man Card* from the Wildwood Tarot Deck. The name I gave to myself in the wake of Kate’s death, of a mourner then a griever, then… I wasn’t sure what.

Herme’s Journey blends the Hooded Man Card with the first card of the Tarot Deck: The Fool. The major arcana of a tarot deck tells a story of the Fool’s journey, begun blithely, a bindlestaff over one shoulder, a dog alongside, stepping off into the unknown. In the Wildwood deck** the Wanderer’s journey is through the Wildwood. Yes. My journey, too.

The Wanderer is a beginner, the beginner’s mind at play in the fields of the psyche. Herme’s Journey is my Wanderer’s path, a beginner’s path, but one begun with the age and experience of an old man. So, Herme’s Journey.

What lies along this path? Still unclear though Trees play a central role. As does the Great Wheel of the Year and the Jewish Lunar Calendar. As the pilgrimage unfolds, I plan to explore Kabbalah, my long period of work with Ovid’s Metamorphosis, poetry and literature, myth and legend, fairy and folk tales, religion, and the arts: music, painting, sculpture, theater, dance, opera.

What will come? Again, unknown. It will be the path, not the destination. What I will do is read a lot, write, travel, think, listen, see, taste. Talk.

 

*The Hooded Man stood at the winter solstice point on December 21, along with the earth and the sun in the night. This is the time to be alone and contemplate life. This card describes the gates of death and rebirth, deep inside the Earth.  Hooded Man

**A central theme of the Wildwood Tarot is the interconnection of humans with the wild, with animals, and with the calendar cycle.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Humanities, Latin, Letters, Literature, Writing

Tsundoku

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Workout. Bechira point. Good choice. Herme’s Journey. Each Tree. Each Rock. Each Stream. Each Valley. Each Meadow. Each Ocean. Each Volcano. Each Dog. Each Person. Great Sol. The Great Wheel. Sukkot. Pesach. Shavuot. Tu B’shvat. Lunar months. Lunar calendar. Cyclical time. The phases of the Moon. Cognitive effort.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Accepting

One brief shining: Check out the stack, pick up a current favorite like Storm Before the Calm (thanks, Tom), sink into that Stickley chair, find the dust jacket flap marking where reading left off, open the book, and proceed to learn, in this case that there are cycles in our national life, that Friedman’s way of parsing two of the big ones may offer hope for the grandkids. Smile quietly.

Reading. What a revolution in my life when I learned how. Of course, Dad read. And wrote. Being a newspaperman. Mom I can’t recall though I imagine she read, too. Exemplars of a sort. Enough anyhow. All three of us: Mary, Mark, and I read.

Interesting word, read. It can mean something as simple as understanding a Stop sign or an effort as complicated as following the story of War and Peace. When I say we read, I don’t mean we can read, I mean we actively use the skill to learn. As Mark Twain said, There is no difference between a man who can’t read and one who doesn’t read.

Yes, if you know me, you know I have a book thing. Kate said to me once, “Most people go to a library. You buy the book.” Well, yeah. A habit formed first at Guilkey’s Newstand with comic books and then all of Ian Fleming, then whatever looked good. When I had a little money, I bought books. When I had enough money, I bought more books.

Do I read them all? No. Tsundoku is the Japanese word for the stack(s) of books you’ve purchased but haven’t read. These articles in Big Think: “I own too many books” and in Maria Popova’s Marginalia: “Umberto Eco, Why unread books in our library are more valuable to our lives than read ones.” explain.

My favorite rationale from these articles? Tsundoku is an antidote to the Dunning-Kruger effect, the tendency of ignorant people-Twain’s those who don’t read-to believe they know and understand vastly more than they do. Orange 45, I’m looking at you.

Those unread books apply a force field to any upwelling of know-it-allness. Why, right here, I don’t know much about Herodotus, or the life of Edward Hopper, or the American Prometheus. My ignorance extends to Clausewitz, Severe Weather, and the plays of Plautus. Perhaps I’ll get to them, some day. But even if I do there will still be the volume on the journeys of Captain Cook, or that other one about the geology of the Plains. Or… You get the idea.

I love the content of books and not the books themselves so my library contains no first editions, few signed books. It does contain the complete works of Emerson, more than one translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and lots of science fiction along with, well, many many others.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

A Doubled Trunk, Grown Over Tree #6

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah

Tree number 6 grows near the dead Lodgepole. Like the Lodgepole Companion it lacks Branches at certain points on its trunk. The most notable feature of this tree though is what appears to be two Trunks grown together, fused now, and joined as one.

Around the Trunk opposite to this photo another, less obvious obtrusion suggested to me that my hunch was correct. When Splintered Forest came through and marked Lodgepoles for Fire mitigation, they always marked those Trees with two Trunks. They have a tendency to split apart under the pressure of high winds.

I also found several instances of what looked like Fungus, maybe Lichen. I didn’t see this on other Trees nearby and it made wonder what about this Tree attracted them.

Tree number 6 grows in a small cluster of other Lodgepoles though at some distance from its neighbors. While it is similar to the other Lodgepoles it, too, has distinctive features-Fungus, double trunk grown together, its location.

As I’ve worked on this project, somewhat episodically, a strange thing has begun to happen to me. As I drive down the hill toward Evergreen, I don’t always see the Forest. Now I see its individual Trees. Not always, but often.

I love photographs of Animals that show their distinctive personality, their uniqueness. Yes there are Dogs. But only one Kepler, Gertie, Rigel, Vega. Cattle, Horses, Sheep, Mule Deer, Elk, yes, but each one has their own history, their own unique way of being in the world.

There is an interesting foreground and background awareness going on related to this. Individual Lodgepoles. Individual Aspens. Individual Willows and White Pine and Ponderosa. That Mule Deer, curious about me, who looked in my bedroom window. I find identifying and appreciating unique individuals a good balance to the tendency to lump members of a species together.

Yet. There is a deeper oneness in which all individual, unique beings participate. We are constitutive of that oneness even as we are unique and identifiable. Our change and growth is the change and growth of the one. We are, at a deeper level, part of each other in a profound, yet too often invisible way. Somewhat like the Root system of the Trees I’ve met.

Honoring ourselves can lead us to honor what appears to our limited senses to be an other.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Memories, US History

New Harmony. Fireflies.

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: The Billy Joel/Paul Simon shabbat. Veronica. Tom. Paul. Joan. Irv. Kaddish. Yahrzeits. Numbers. Parsha Beha’alotcha. Lisa. The James Webb. The Hubble. Euclid. The context provided by the Cosmos. Storm Before the Calm. Election year 2024. The June 22, 2024 life. Mezuzahs. Orion. Betelgeuse. Rigel. Vega. Polaris. Arcturus.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our magnificent, short, wonderful life

One brief shining: Each summer the ceiling fan in my bedroom makes sleep possible, yet it refused to turn on, so I called Altitude Electric who sent hipster bearded Karsten; no bueno, no bueno, he said to the work of the previous electrician who installed this fan, as he pulled its main body out of the ceiling and sparks flew, tripping the breaker.

 

Home. This and that. Ceiling fan that doesn’t work. Grass needed cutting for Fire mitigation. Marina calling to ask how my roof was doing. Mini-split filters need cleaning. You know.

 

Rappite Buildings, New Harmony***

On some long ago trip back to Indiana I made a brief stop in New Harmony. It sits north of Evansville in the far southern part of the state and far enough west to be on the Wabash River with Illinois on the opposite bank.

Whoa. What a place. Founded by Rappites, followers of a German Christian theosophist* and pietist, George Rapp, the Harmonist Society created three model communities, two in Pennsylvania and one in Indiana, now New Harmony. They held goods in common and were so successful in their business endeavors that Rapp sold Harmony, Indiana to Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist. Rapp felt their secular success was compromising their religious mission.

Rapp moved the Harmonists back to Pennsylvania while Owen found a number of scientists, artists and educators who left Philadelphia on a riverboat, bound for New Harmony. It became known as the Boatload of Knowledge. Owen was a utopian who wanted to create a socialist society in his New Harmony experiment. The experiment failed, but not before the United States Geological Survey was founded.

Roofless church gate

In its latter day existence New Harmony has become a conference center, an open air museum with buildings from the Rapp and Owen eras preserved. It includes, too, a large labyrinth created by the Harmonists.

Phillip Johnson’s roofless church, a non-denominational walled compound, stands across the street from the Red Geranium Restaurant. Behind the Red Geranium lies Paul Tillich Park, the burial site of one of the twentieth centuries most prominent Christian theologians.

There is a short street that runs between the roofless church and Paul Tillich Park. One evening on a subsequent visit to New Harmony I left the Red Geranium at dusk after a tasty dinner. Strolling I went into Paul Tillich Park, read some of the inscribed boulders, left the Park and continued down the road. It didn’t go much further until it entered a grove of Maple and Oak and Beech Trees which arched over it.

Tillich Grave Site

Fireflies. Thousands of them. Lit the arched space over the road, giving it depth and wonder. My then immersion into Celtic lore meant I could only see this as an entrance to the Otherworld. Walking towards the grove, I imagined myself coming out in Faery where time passes differently and returning years later to a changed New Harmony.

Instead I chose to stop and enjoy this amazing sight.

 

 

 

*Christian theosophy, also known as Boehmian theosophy and theosophy, refers to a range of positions within Christianity that focus on the attainment of direct, unmediated knowledge of the nature of divinity and the origin and purpose of the universe. Wiki

**Philadelphia Academy of Sciences…President William Maclure, “father of American geology,” had gathered (members of the Academy) them all aboard the keelboat Philantropist [they used the French spelling]: scientists, artists, musicians, and educators, some bringing along their students, and all were eager to settle in Robert Owen’s New Harmony community on the Indiana frontier. JSTOR

***By Leepaxton at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9065488

 

 

Commentary on the news, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Science, Torah, Weather +Climate

Talmud Torah

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Sleep. The fan. Rain. Vince. Jamie. The dead Lodgepole. Books. Storm Before the Calm. Orgovyx on the way. Juneteenth. Love. Justice. Compassion. Irv. The Ancient Brothers. A dull white Sky. Little Breeze. The Mountains with their green clothes on. Rock outcroppings. Mule Deer. Elk. Fawns and calves. The life of June 21, 2024. Sweets from Durango via Melbourne. Where it is the Winter Solstice.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Low Fire Danger-in late June

One brief shining: Opened a pocket-knife I bought when the shoe store in Evergreen went out of business, slit the tape on the box from Durango Chocolates, discovered a sealed foil bag, inside it paper shredded insulation, then two cool packs-colder than ice!-and below them a box wrapped in clear plastic announcing chocolates inside, the knife again, the box has yet more shredded paper inside covering a melt in your mouth chocolate bar, sea salt toffee, and Bear balm; a bar mitzvah present I received a day before the Winter Solstice in Melbourne where Mary sat with her computer and ordered it.

 

Started torah study with Rabbi Jamie yesterday. Once a month we’ll read the parsha of the week and Aviva Zornberg’s commentary. The current torah readings are in the book of Numbers. Her commentary, “Bewilderment” will be what we use for now. Jamie’s also going to share a weekly commentary he gets from Art Green, his mentor and former president of the Reconstructionist Seminary.

This is a rare privilege for me. He and I decided to continue our monthly sessions that had been focused on conversion lessons and turn them into torah study. When I was in seminary, the classes on the New Testament and the “Old Testament,” now the Tanakh for me, were my favorites. Something about studying source materials, getting to know them and their stories really well. About revelation and its history. About literature, ancient literature. About myths and legends. About adapting their meanings to the contemporary world. That fascination is still there.

If I remember, I’ll share some from our sessions.

Yesterday we discussed how to interpret God since neither of us are supernaturalists. How do we make sense of the character god’s role? Didn’t get far with that, but as I’ve thought about it since I found myself wanting to go back to Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s book, God is Here, about metaphors for god. Lowercase god is the way Rabbi Rami Shapiro differentiates the henotheistic deity of the Torah from the One who is all who is us who is becoming new right now and always.

 

Just a moment: Heat. Across the U.S. Across the world. High heat. Record breaking heat. Don’t hear much, except in Florida, about climate change deniers. Down there in that puzzling state DeSantis has perfected the nah nah nah nah response to Black history, queer life, and climate change. If you don’t talk about them, they’re not real. DeSantis hasn’t passed the object permanence stage of human development. That’s when babies learn that peek-a-boo’s a game, not the way things are. Poor Florida.

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays

The Longest Days

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Orgovyx support. Alan. Joan. Irv. Marilyn. Jamie. Luke and Leo. Covid. Paul. Tom. The life of June 20, 2024. Summer. Solstice. The growing dark. Dogs. Toby. Findlay. Gracie. Leo. Licks and Lila. Zeus. Boo. Thor. The Soil. Cancer. Growing season. The Full Bar Mitzvah Moon tomorrow. The asteroid belt. Mars. Io. Europa. Callisto. Ganymede. The Galilean Moons.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Yin and Yang

One brief shining: After learning that my insurance company would charge me seven-hundred and fifty three dollars a month copay for the drug Orgovyx, which stops my cancer while the plan and execution of the new radiation take place, I ceased to live in the moment, in the life of each new day, and projected out a depleting bank account, old old age with limited resources; as Jack Benny said when the robber put a gun in his back, “Your money or your life!”. And after a pause from Jack Benny, “I’m thinking about it!” (thanks to Tom for this bit of comedic history)

 

Learned yesterday that Orgovyx support looked upon my credit report and pronounced it adequately inadequate to pay for the drug. Yay! So, I’ll get the drug for free. Hot flashes here we come.

As I’ve written here, this has been a harder encounter with cancer news. Again, I’ve been projecting more metastases, more radiation, more hassles with insurance. And, at the same time trying to stay in this day, this new life, the moments of it as they come and go, talking of Michelangelo. Will I wear my trousers rolled?

That may be the real learning. The wrestling back and forth with cancer has brought me to a new appreciation for the rabbinic ideas of each morning a resurrection, each day a new life. The more I live into them, with them, the better I am at isolating this day as the only life I have. Each moment in this new day as an ichi-go, ichi-e moment.

What about tomorrow? There is no tomorrow, only a new life on the day you rise up from the grave, wipe the sleep from your eyes, and start life over. A day fresh with possibility and time and precious experience.

 

Just a moment: The Summer Solstice. The holyday polar opposite on the Great Wheel from the Winter Solstice. Light and dark. Heat and cold. Growing season and fallow season. Summer and Winter. T-shirts and down vests. Working and resting.

I’ve long rejected the Summer Solstice as an overly exuberant presentation of Great Sol. This year I’ve begun to, are you ready for this, see the Light. Sorry. Anyhow, I emphasized the Winter Solstice in my heart and diminished Summer. Perhaps necessary to rebalance what I see as a too strong embrace of Summer days and too little appreciation for the joys of a Winter night. Yet the gardener in me always celebrated Summer, the season of vegetables, of bees hard at work, of evenings with Kate by our Fire pit.

So today. In this June 20th, 2024 life I dance around the bonfires, too, joyful about chlorophyll and photosynthesis, about the growth in all the Lodgepoles and Aspens, about Elk Calves and Mule Deer fawns, about the Light which streams down on us, Great Sol’s beneficence granted to us all, the just and the unjust.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Judaism, Politics, Sport, Wild Neighbors

It’s a New Day, It’s a New Life…

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Taking out the garbage. Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’. 46 degrees this morning. The Mule Deer Doe resting in my back yard. The shema. Lunch with Ruth and Gabe. Insurance and cancer. Sullen Sky. Gyros. Kafta Kabob. Irv. Ode. Bill. Zoom. Guns at CBE. Concealed carry? Rich. Tara. Veronica. Diane’s great card.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Summer Solstice tomorrow

One brief shining: On the Summer Solstice Swedes get naked and dance around huge bonfires, a form of sympathetic magic I suppose, celebrating Fire with Fire, heat with heat, the growing season still needing Great Sol; sure and I get that, but I celebrate it in a quieter, less obvious way since the Summer Solstice, the longest day, also marks the gradual triumph of the dark-the night grows minute by minute after this sweaty Solstice, moving toward the longest night of the year.

 

Each morning I wake up and look out in the back. Hoping for an Elk or a Mule Deer to be there. This morning, far back in the tall Grass growing over my drain field lay a Mule Deer Doe, gently gazing around, comfortable and quiet. I find a satisfaction in these instances. Unearned, of course. Even so. For a while my temporary property feels safe enough, welcoming enough for a rest, a moment in a life lived on the move hunting for nourishment, avoiding Mountain Lions, drinking from our Mountain Streams. Ichi-go, ichi-e.

May our lives as we live them provide safe harbor for the souls of others, Mule Deer and humans alike.

 

Conversation with Ruth yesterday over lunch. She’s pro-Palestinian, anti-IDF war, pro-Israel, anti-Hammas. Same as me. She’s frustrated because her peers, even her Jewish peers, reduce thought about the war in Gaza to slogans and simplistic analysis. As she says, it’s complicated. Luke, of Leo and Luke, has become so pro-Palestinian that he bridles at the mere mention of a pro-Israeli sentiment. Others at CBE want the IDF to eliminate Hamas and do whatever it takes to accomplish that. Easy to see where eliminate Hamas no matter what it takes and the River to the Sea have taken root as contrasting driving forces.

As I talked with her, I imagined her in her dorm room holding these debates with her roommates, others from down the hall. A teeny bit of envy crept up. I loved that part of college. Loved it so much that I never quit with the radical questioning of that time. She’s so bright and thoughtful. A rapidly maturing mind at work. Amazing and gratifying to see.

 

Just a moment: Willie Mays is dead. 93. Baseball back when. Back when I listened to the Brooklyn Dodger’s games on the transistor radio I clipped to my belt while delivering the Alexandria Times-Tribune. There was a purity in my love of the game which Willie Mays played so well. My son still has it, bless his heart.

I imagine in fact that some of the MAGA nostalgia comes from remembering those days of the 1950’s, the time after World War II when American life exploded with children and UFO sightings. And the next decade with NASA and high-finned cars. Easy to remember the 104 stolen bases of Maury Wills and forget the budding war in Vietnam, the Jim Crow south, women in the kitchens and gay folks in the closet.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

Life of June 18 2024

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: My phlebotomist. Blood draws. The drive to Evergreen. Beauty everywhere. Wild neighbors, too. Like the Mule Deer Buck with velvet on his antlers. Eating some of the luxuriant green Grass. Healthy green Meadows, Leaves on Aspens and Willows, Needles (leaves) on Lodgepoles, Ponderosa, Spruce. Streams running at non-melt speed.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The look on the Mule Deer Buck’s face. Curiosity.

One brief shining: A rubber tourniquet tied above my right elbow the phlebotomist reaches for the cannula, inserts the needle with practiced care, venipuncture achieved, she takes a test tube with a rubber cap and inserts it into the cannula, my median cubital vein continues pumping blood back toward my heart unaware that my venous return has been rerouted for a different purpose, dark red blood fills the test tube; the cannula needle comes out, a swipe with alcohol, a tuft of gauze, some tape, and Bob’s your uncle, I’m done.

 

One solution to my sagging spirits. Focusing on the resurrection of awakening and the new life it portends. For now anyhow I’m living my life one day at a time. Within that day I live ichi-go ichi-e, each moment unrepeatable, unique. I will never again write this blog on June 18 2024 at 10:38 am. This is the only time I have, this day. This moment. No matter what my cancer decides to do or is able to do I still have right now, right here.

Even the blood draw this morning, so ordinary and repetitive, gave me an opportunity to tell the phlebotomist how much I appreciated her skill. The Evergreen Medical Center has switched from Quest Diagnostics to Lab Corp for their lab work. I told her I hoped she got the job. She smiled. That means a lot.

As I drive down Brook Forest Drive toward Evergreen I pass Kate’s Creek and Kate’s Valley. Of late I’ve begun to chat with her as I get near there. Sometimes newsy sort of talk. Finished my bar mitzvah! You would have loved the service. Other times. This last P.E.T. scan. Ouch. Has me a bit drug down. What would you say? Oh. Trust your doctors. Yes, I have. And, as you knew, it does help my obsessing. Yes. Yes. I do zip up, too. Each time passing the Valley or hiking up alongside Kate’s Creek is an ichi-go ichi-e moment.

I can feel it. The knowledge of ichi-go ichi-e infusing me. Giving me the grace I need to stay anchored to this June 18th life. If I lose touch and project out the whac-a-mole thoughts about radiating metastases, I can feel the finger on the keys, the elbow on the arm rest, see my Lodgepole Companion dining on the morning Light. Remember that this life, this June 18th life is the only life I have.

 

Just a moment: Where the Sycamores stand along the Wabash and the sound of the 500 roars through May and high school basketball comes as close to religion as anything secular, the Republican party broke ranks and put a MAGA stooge in as their Lieutenant Governor nominee over the wishes of the gubernatorial candidate.

Guess what this MAGA candidate said on the day after January 6th? “…Beckwith said that God had told him: “Micah, I sent those riots to Washington. What you saw yesterday was my hand at work.” He also claimed that the “progressive left has taken over the Republican Party in Indiana.”   read more in Michelle Goldberg’s piece in today’s NYT.