Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

Verdant

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mary on her way. Ruth getting her driver’s license. Coming up here tomorrow. Possibly bringing Mary. And Gabe. Cool, Rainy Nights continue. Mussar. God is Here. Monotheism. Boo. Animism and polytheism. Yay. Marilyn and Irv. Good friends. Ribeye steak. Potatoes. Mushrooms. Mixed Vegetables. Peaches. Verdant. The Mountains in June. Unusual and beautiful.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Green

One brief shining: When I look out my window to the back, I see wet Lodgepoles, red bark standing out against green Bunch Grass pocked with yellow Dandelions, Kate’s Lilacs growing taller, the gray white Aspen with its chartreuse Leaves, Rocky Soil damp with the Rains, but no Elk Bulls, no Mule Deer, an occasional Rabbit and Chipmunk.

 

In the eight and a half years I’ve been up here on Shadow Mountain the Mountains have never been so green. The Mountain Meadows have Grass in abundance, a buffet for our Wild Neighbors after a difficult, painful Winter. I’ve noticed for the first time that the chartreuse Leaves of the Aspen light up the Lodgepoles in Spring (or, Summer, not sure which is which) as they do in their gold clothing in the Fall. We’ve had cool, Rainy weather since late April. Not what other folks have experienced, I know. Glad for us though.

All the Mountain Streams would have diminished by this time in a normal June, yet they remain full. Not raging like they did at the end of May but still sending heavy amounts of Water over their Rocks and Falls. Flooding down the hill at several locations though not as bad as 2012.

 

I could, I know, spend the rest of my life following Mountain roads, visiting New Mexico, Utah and northern Arizona. There is so much to see so close to me. Places people come from all over the world to see. The many national parks in Utah, the four corners area, Rocky Mountain National Park, Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Santa Fe, Taos, Dinosaur National Monument. Too many to point out. And perhaps I will spend a year focused on doing just that. But not this year. This year and at least part of the next I’m going overseas, seeing new parts of the World. Yay!

 

The travelers coming to Shadow Mountain Home have changed schedules. Mary will be here tomorrow in the morning. BJ and Sarah won’t arrive until Sunday at the earliest. Mary leaves Sunday morning. Ruth will pick up Mary from her hotel near the airport after her midnight arrival. Ruth has her driver’s license! She’ll be coming up in her car. Ivory, our old Rav4. Which has no air conditioning. A good year for her to get used to it. A new era has begun. Ruth can drive on her own.

 

Going over to Kittredge for breakfast with Alan. The Blackbird Cafe. In a place where an old favorite restaurant used to be. First time. Summer or its early Springlike equivalent makes driving so much easier up here. I need these times with my friends.

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories

Subdued

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Acting class. Abby, her passion. Alan, his commitment to stretching himself with Lear. Joan for her brilliance and breadth of knowledge. Rebecca trying comedy rather than drama. Tal, a wonderful teacher. Cold Mountain. The Chinese scholar and Mountain recluse. Follower of the Tao and the Buddha. Poetry. Kristie. Drug holiday. Money in the bank for my airline tickets. A rich and satisfying life. Eudaimoniac. That planet in the night Sky as I drove home. More Rain. 39 this morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Acting

One brief shining: Standing up there in front a sheaf of Cold Mountain’s poems in my hand I began to read, to inhabit this long ago Chinese hermit who wandered his Mountain, slept in a Cave, and wrote poetry that still shocks the heart, watching as his words landed, jarring the acting class as they had me the first time I read them.

 

An odd moment that affected me the whole evening. I chose to go to Sushi Win for a meal before acting class. Kate and I went there often when she was still able to get out and about. When she wasn’t, I would go pickup spring rolls for her. The best anywhere in her opinion. And mine, too.

When I got in and ordered, the music was from my high school days. The classics the young Vietnamese guy behind the counter said when I thanked him for playing them for my meal. He hadn’t of course played them for me.

I sat down and looked out the window at the Mountainscape. Remembered I sat here one evening in 2015 and called Kate to tell her I’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer. I don’t remember where she was, but she wasn’t at home. I also remembered the photograph now hung on the wall leading to the guest room. Kate smiling with her arm around my shoulder. Seated across from us Joe and Seoah, her arm around his shoulder. At Sushi Win, too.

Reading during this meal-two spring rolls and the Sushi Win special roll, hot tea-Regime Change by Patrick Deneen, the author of Why Liberalism Failed. Still much I don’t find compelling or with which I actively disagree, but his arguments do limn a major fracture in our nation. And suggest some core uncomfortable truths about our current reality. The biggest one with which I agree so far is our abandonment of the working class.

Drove over to the synagogue. Greeted Tal. Sat down to wait for the others to come since I was the first student there. The CBE social hall. Folding chairs in a semi-circle with their backs to the window wall. Outside the amphitheater built during the pandemic. Alan came in and touched my shoulder. Abby and her mother. Joan. No Lid this evening. Car trouble. Rebecca swept in commenting about fire mitigation, raking pine needles. Marilyn and Debra came late.

At one point Alan leaned over and said to me you’re not very talkative tonight. Oh. I wasn’t. Subdued. Realized then that the memories at Sushi Win had turned me inward. Toward Kate. Toward long ago high school years. I hadn’t noticed. Still a bit subdued this morning.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

The Sacred

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Trips becoming more and more real. Vince, my man. Kat. More connected, more grateful than ever. Tom. Mary. Sarah and BJ. Kate and the sweet picture with my daughter-in-law. Kep, my furry friend, a blessed memory. Rigel, too. Gertie, Vega. The Colorado companions. Cleaning off the art table. Getting back to painting. Sumi-e. Korean. Our journey around the sun, through the galaxy, and with the Milky Way itself. All the wild Babies out there right now, learning about life and its wonders, its perils.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Life finds a way

One brief shining: Water amazes me in every way liquid solid steam all different the liquid and the steam states capable of powering engines, generating Electricity, carving Mountains, carrying nourishment from one Continent to another, aqua vita not only whisky but aqua vita, a metaphor for the flow of ch’i and the reality of the flow of ch’i, either fresh or salty a wonder on which to float, in which to dive, over which to paddle cradled in Lakes and Ponds and Rivers and Oceans, delivered by pumps and pipes, everyday necessary, water, wow.

 

Had a down day in the afternoon again. Watching too much TV. Not tackling household tasks. Then I thought. Wait a minute. Yesterday I met with friends for breakfast (even though they didn’t show up, I did), had my car detailed, read many more Cold Mountain poems. Read some other poets of the Rivers and Mountains school of Chinese poetry. My character study began to take shape. Read two chapters in the excellent book God is Here. Made connections with Keshet (rainbow), the Israeli travel agency.

Still on the old achievement treadmill once in a while. Maybe more than once in a while. Enough, already. And I mean ENOUGH already! I’ve done enough, have enough, am enough. Always. No matter what I do or don’t do. I am. Or better I am becoming. Without the lace and frills of degrees or salary or salutes or celebrations.

I’m OK, You’re OK. The World’s OK. To go back in time to the self-help cliches of the early 70’s. This is the day the big bang has made let us rejoice and be glad in it.

 

God is Here takes our perceptions shaped by the word God and puts them through the metaphorical ringer. Changing them, adding to them, recognizing the metaphors as signals for new ways of approaching the sacred, the divine. Though I’m on board with new ways of describing what we mean when we use the word God or its other names like Elohim, Hashem, Adonai, YHVH, I still feel like we’re holding the wrong end of the stick. In other words I think we should talk about why water has a sacred valence. Air. Fire. Earth. Humans. Trees. Rocks. Dogs. Cows. Bacilli. Why do we need to fill in the vacuum created by the word God? Why not acknowledge the sacred nature of all things and learn how to talk about divinity itself in their terms. This is neither panpsychism nor pantheism nor panentheism. This is a version of animism.

 

Holding some disappointment that the Elk Bulls have not come. At least not when I was looking. I’ve held off having the yard mowed to preserve their favorite food. I miss seeing them.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase

I do not.

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Friday gratefuls: Tom. Alan. The Bread Lounge. Rebecca. Luke. Buying tickets today for Korea. Talking to my son last night. Kep, my sweet boy. Kate, her memory a blessing. Dandelions. Bunch Grass. Green Green Green. Not brown brown brown. Blue Sky. Warner Robbins. Oklahoma City. Rabbi Jamie. God is Here. Metaphors. Kindness. Chesed. Anshel.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mountains Green

One brief shining: Over the last few La Nina years by now the Meadows would have turned brown, the Lodgepole Needles would look starved of moisture, Smokey the Bear would have had his paw at High or Extreme Fire danger, my back yard would be desiccated, but this year, this building toward La Nino year has seen so much Rain the Mountains and Valleys and Meadows have plants in abundance all in different shades of green from the deep green of faraway Mountain sides covered with Lodgepoles to the brilliant chartreuse of the Aspens as they leaf out, blazing against their darker brethren like they do in the fall when their Leaves turn gold to Grasses and Flowers with the rich healthy green of Photosynthesis at its peak.

 

Conversation with myself. Going out and being with folks, especially at CBE makes me happy. My practice this whole month for the middot of simcha, joy, was to go to one more event at CBE. I’ve done that and it did make me joyful. Yet when two of my favorite CBE’rs were doing a gig on something I care about, Gun Violence, I couldn’t rouse myself to go. Evenings out. Driving at night. Late to bed. As I said before. Can’t quite get the handle on this one. It’s easier to go out at night now that the days are longer and the roads aren’t Snowy and Icy. That lowers the threshold for getting my butt out of my chair and in the car. Even so. I guard my early mornings because that’s when I have good physical and mental energy. Another event tonight. Gospel music shabbat. Already figuring out why I can’t be there. Even though I would enjoy it.

This inertia traps me as it might you. As we age, our energy supply does dwindle. And mine has chemically induced torpor. Low testosterone and the side effects of my chemotherapy drugs. Still. A life ruled by not doing begins to fade away, reduce itself to habit and routine. Why I’m pushing forward with travel plans in spite of impulses to not go, stay home where it’s comfortable. My goal as I may have said here before is to live until I die. Not become some sit around guy with no focus and no energy.

Let me be clear however. This does not mean I feel a need to accomplish anything of note. I do not. Been there. Done that. No, this refers to a state of being alive as one engaged with the natural world, with others in appropriate proportions, with getting up in the morning and being glad for another day.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel

Lunacy

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Kristie. Prostate Cancer. Orgovyx. Erleada. Drug holiday. Chatbotgpt4. A marvel. Adirondack chairs. Cool nights. Whacking all the moles. My son, working hard. Always. Advocates at AARP Advantage. Psilocybin. Gabe’s new yellow Converse tennies. Murdoch. Kep, my sweet boy. Kate, her memory a blessing. Jon, a memory. Hearing aid hard reset. Amy, my audiologist, following her soccer world to New Zealand. KFC. Mark in Hafar, Saudi Arabia. Getting ready for summer. Diane in the Hoosier State. Fever in the Heartland. A must read for all Hoosiers. Hate. Demagoguery. Trump was not the first.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The night Sky, the Shadow Mountain Moon with Spica, the brightest star in Virgo. May 30th.

One brief shining: Entering a zone of yearning a place captured by that German Romantic painting Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog if you turned him around right now he would have my face my hand would be on his cane and I would be happy with all that hair while looking at the Mountains in the distance in my case the Continental Divide wondering what crossing this threshold will bring into my life and eager to find out.

 

Here’s an aha you may have had long ago. Probably did. Insights don’t come on any particular schedule. The Gregorian calendar, which fixed the problems of the Julian. Ubiquitous now. The calendar of business. The standardization of the year. But at what cost? A heavy one, I think. It abstracts time, pretending we can define a day, a particular day, with a number and a month’s name, a so-called year. Of course we can. We do. But this is only a framing of natural cycles, ordering them according to our need for precision instead of admitting the messiness of accounting for time using the phases of the Moon as Lunar calendars do.

If we continued to use Lunar calendars, we would be attuned to the Moon, to the night Sky. We would have to acknowledge with the addition of leap months that time has no precision as well as no real linearity. Each month the Moon waxes and wanes. And it continues this lighting up and darkening down every time our Earth turns. We can walk outdoors and see its dark new Moon phase or wonder at its brightest fullness during the Autumn. Each lunar month the Moon repeats while on the Earth it graces with its lambent light seasons change. Then themselves repeat.

A Lunar calendar would remind us each month of the Moon’s presence its current phase. Then we could notice its phases against the backdrop of Spring’s build up to the growing season. See the Moon rise over Corn and Wheat fields, over Gardens lovingly tended. Watch as the Harvest Moon again shines down on the combines and the Corn pickers. Feel the Winter season’s Solstice that dark night and its relationship to the phase of the Moon.

We would once again feel our lives writ in the language of the Great Wheel. Birthed in the Spring. Growing strong and tall in life’s Summer. Maturing in the Harvest time. Becoming Sage and Elder as whiteness comes to our hair and to our fields. Then repeats in our grandchildren and their children until the fallow season for the Earth herself.

Acting, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

What a character

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Alan. Noi. Lid. Joan. Marilyn. Rebecca. Tal. The character study acting class. Deborah and Abby, too. My passport, expiring 2029. The Conifer Cafe, tamale and egg with green chili. Ode, trippin’ thru Colorado. Psilocybin spores. On their way. Happy Camper. How do I feel. Or, personal inventory. The amphitheater at CBE. Finding a hermit character. Stretching the Self. My son and his wife. Murdoch. My dishwasher. Refrigerator. Induction stove. Sink. Solar Panels. Mini-splits, heat pumps.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Being There with Peter Sellars

One brief shining: We sat in a semi-circle in the social hall of Congregation Beth Evergreen the Rabbi’s son teaching us to move as an ensemble, to balance the space, and how to sit with a cracked egg running down our head loosening each part of the body it touched, running our tongues around our mouths to taste our last food, sniffing trying to smell ourselves, putting our hands on our knees to notice how it felt to the touch, listening listening listening as usual I could not hear much, finally opening our eyes and seeing something we hadn’t seen before looking looking looking closing our eyes and drawing it in our mind’s eye a Lee Strasberg exercise outside the usual Stanford Meisner work Tal prefers.

 

Yes. Back at it again. Acting class. Third one with Tal. I skipped the Winter semester. This one is character study. Met Noi a local artist and photographer. Lid, who identifies as non-binary and has their happy place in a city park in Nebraska. Alan is in it, coming in a bit late and when asked what his happy place was said having breakfast with Charlie. Joan Greenberg, the author of several published novels including her most well-known, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. Like Alan a long time member of CBE. Rebecca a former oil and gas lawyer is also in the class as she was in the two other classes I took. Deborah and Abby also in the class were not there last night.

At some point we all have to pick a character. Tal last night went through archetypes often used in playwriting classes: the Caregiver, the Hero, the Sage, the Jester, the Outlaw, the Ruler, the Member, the Lover, the Creator, the Explorer. Alan would like to study Lear. I’m interested in a hermit character, a Chinese scholar/sage type. Wanting to explore myself and my current situation. Might work this character study into my planned Crossing the Threshold ritual on October 8th.

These classes push me into a different place. More emotional. More thoughtful about my body as an instrument of artistic expression. Into the Charlie who took many theater classes as an undergraduate. Who did modern dance. Acted in high school and seminary. Who went with the family to Stratford, Ontario many summers to Shakespeare on the Festival stage. Who had season tickets so many years to the Guthrie. All the memorable performances there. A place of modest discomfort sometimes. Growing edge.

BTW: my happy place is my home.

Acting, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Hermitage, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Sport, Weather +Climate

Life in its brilliance and in its everdayness

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: My passport. The post office. Kristie today. Acting class tonight. The Heat and the Nuggets. The Monaco Grand Prix. Max Verstappen. Fernando Alonso. Esteban Oco. My son and his wife. Fever in the Heart Land. Thanks, Ode. A quiet, restorative Memorial Day. A good workout. Korea on the schedule. Israel getting closer to dialed in. Ecuador still in the planning phase. All the poems coming in from the Ancient Brothers. Ritual ideas.  Acting class tonight. Diane in Indiana.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Great Sol, lighting up a Shadow Mountain Morning

One brief shining: Or, the Great Soul, Sol, source of light, source of power, source and sustainer of life itself why shouldn’t the Human soul, the Animal soul, the Plant soul, the Mountain soul be like their progenitor brilliant, a source of sustenance and warmth, a source of chi, a source of energy, yet every so often eclipsed by the turning of our inner lives, still there yes, waiting only for what Jews call teshuvah, a return to the ohr, the light of the sacred within us and to our sacred path, this orbit around our true God.

 

Got to get going, pick up my passport from its safe spot at the Ken Caryl branch of Wells Fargo. Safety deposit box. In case of fire, down the hill. Going to eat breakfast out, come home and try to take down the last outstanding bill, then talk to Kristie, my oncology P.A.

I’ve succeeded in reducing $14,000 worth of medical bills to $240. A victory although one I shouldn’t have had to win. One refractory $429 bill. Turned over for collection. Nope. Have disputed it, am disputing it, will dispute it until they back down. Could tell you the story, but trust me it’s only about one hand not knowing what the other one is doing.

A day of life chores. You know the kind. They come up like whack a mole. As you finish off one round of them, another few arise. By 76 you’ve seen them come and go, talking of Michelangelo. Even the most persistent and troublesome of them get dealt with, fade into the blob of things past no longer necessary to consider. I wear my trousers rolled while whacking each mole.

 

I’m loving the Sunshine, the blue Sky, the warmth of approaching Summer. Thought  yesterday though. Would I love the summer without the backdrop of winter? Could I tell the good without the bad? Would I know beauty without the ugly? I know we wouldn’t need a word for justice without injustice. Rasputin belonged to a Russian sect that believed the more you sinned the more God was able to bestow grace upon you. That’s the sort of rationalization that makes for a strange life.

 

Nuggets versus the Heat. I’m excited. Might try to find a tv package that will let me watch the NBA finals. I love basketball. And F1. Watched the whole Monaco Grand Prix yesterday. Wow. That Max Verstappen. Is. A. Monster.

 

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Hermitage, Judaism, Korea, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History, World History

Introversion. Remembering.

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Indy 500. The Monaco Grand Prix. Grandsons. Granddaughters. Kate, missing her this Memorial Day. May be for those fallen in war, yes, but I take it too for those fallen from that most terminal of diseases: life. A second bright blue Sky in a row. The thirst quenched Lodgepoles green and healthy. Aspens beginning to Leaf out. The Iris emerging from the Soil. Kate’s Lilacs have bud’s. Korea. A high apartment. Moving day for my son and his wife. Baseball, America’s game, like basketball, now played all over the world. Neither though as big as soccer.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gabe, his sweet smile

One brief shining: Sometimes I doubt my introversion since I enjoy being with people, talking, listening, laughing, learning then I have a week like last week Dismantling Racism, lunch with Marilyn and Irv and Heidi, dogsitting Leo, getting Kep’s remains, Rabbi Jamie, then Rebecca, Leslie’s funeral, Ode and Dennis that night, a missed massage due to traffic delays in Evergreen, mussar, breakfast with Alan in Denver, three hard workouts, and then baseball with Gabe even with some down time interspersed the emotional intensity of last week drained my social battery, left me with no charge and I thought oh I see yes you introverted guy.

 

Glad to have a full day here on Shadow Mountain with nothing to do. Saturday the same helped but baseball wore me out all over again. The driving. All the people. Those hard seats. Dealing with parking. Yeah. Fun, sure. But also. Oh, my.

Days with nothing on the calendar shine for me. I can work on Ancientrails, cook for myself, maybe do some chores. Read. Watch a movie. Hike. I’ve begun too putting these on my calendar: go anywhere days. Also days with nothing in them but days I can get up in the morning and drive to Gunnison, see the Black Canyon. Stay overnight somewhere if I want. Short trips, beginning to see Colorado. None yet but coming up this summer.

Today has these elements: breakfast, workout. Watch the Monaco Grand Prix on F1 TV. Recorded. Make some lunch or not. Dinner if not. Start reading Fever in the Heartland. Thanks, Ode. Get outside some.

 

A word about Memorial Day. Imagine all the graves, all over the world. The dead from wars of all kinds. Colonial wars. Wars for land, for slaves, for God and country, blood and soil. Wars of liberation. Wars between Kings, between countries, between tribes. Economic wars where the winners scoop up all the wealth and leave hardly any for the gleaners who work in filling station convenience stores, bag groceries, run the cash register at Walmart, Petsmart, Subway. We speak here of lives cut short, lives worn down death coming from exhaustion and depression.

Dennis Ice. Richard Lawson. Others from my high school killed in Vietnam. So. Damned. Senseless. Those WW I and II veterans who lie in Europe in the fields of Normandy, in the Argonne Forest, along the Maginot line, in Germany and Italy and northern Africa. The victims of the Holocaust. Also memorialized here this day.

We remember of course to acknowledge sacrifice, yes, but can we also remember to learn? I hope so.

 

 

Colorado, Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mountains, Sport

October 8th. Baseball.

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Gabe. The Rockies. The Mets. Rockies win! 11-10. Driving down the hill again on a beautiful Colorado day. Back aching as I drove back after a lot of time in a non-comfy stadium seat. Ancient Brothers this morning, poetry on aging, on celebrating and reflecting aging. I plan to post these poems over time here. Rains have paused. The Streams have begun to catch up, not quite so swollen. A catch in my throat as I crested the last Mountain on I-70 before the Continental Divide becomes visible. Home.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The games men and women play

One brief shining: Why Gabe asked did we have to leave the Rockies game at 3 well I said I haven’t spoke to my son and his wife since they left Hawai’i and they have can talk at 5:30 pm Colorado time which means I have to take you home, drive back home up the hill before then. Oh. He said.

 

The Ancient Brothers responded to my request for poetry. Lots of poetry discovered and read. About aging. About living until you die. About the common fate we share with the families of all living beings. Reading or reciting as Paul does so wonderfully gave these poems the shape and resonance of both the poet’s voice and the Ancient Brother who read them. A special and powerful morning.

In part adding possible content for the October 8th Crossing the Threshold ritual I plan here at my house with Rabbi Jamie. Trying to figure out how to honor and name this time of life for men, men who have gone past career and the raising of family with health and vitality yet who have no cultural road map, no role to help guide their Winter season.

In part digging into each Ancient Brother’s experience and claiming of this time, a time I referred to as the best time of my life. To nods. Yet it is a mystery, a cultural lacunae. Undefined and for many confusing, dispiriting.

With your help perhaps we can figure out a ritual to help us move from the time of succeeding and achieving, of building and developing, of nurturing children to the time of… What? Fading out? Easing into oblivion. Or something more, something richer and deeper. If you have ideas for such a ritual, please forward them to me. If you have more poetry, other content that might either be read during such a ritual or inform it, please send them along.

Also. If you want to come on October 8th, this is an invitation. The more we have the better the moment will be.

 

Picked up Gabe a Rockies cap stuck amidst his luxuriant locks bought for him by Uncle Joe last year at a game. We drove to Coors Field, found parking, got into our shaded seats and proceeded to eat hot dogs, peanuts, and ice cream. One game a  year is more than enough given that diet.

Speaking of rituals. Going to a baseball game, at a stadium. A most American though hardly only American outing. Ticket takers. Seats cascading down toward the green diamond. Blue Sky above. Vendors with hot dogs pretzels beer cotton candy Rockies shirts baseball bats ice cream in small plastic Rockies’ hats. All manner of folks in and around, up and down. Young mothers with babes in bjorns. Grandpas with grandsons. Those certain late 20’s, early 30’s women who have the body and aren’t afraid to share it. The loud and beery regular fans. America, the mixture of all for all. In that sense so wonderful.

Asia, Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Plants, Travel

Distance and depth

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Saturday gratefuls: My son and his wife, moving into a house. Korea, far away across the waters of the Pacific. Alan and Tom. Diane. Leslie, composting. Marilyn and her grandson in Italy. Josh who grew the Cubensis. Memorial Day Weekend. The Indy 500. The Monaco Grand Prix. Shrimp and grits from Lucille’s. The Nuggets. Psilocybin. Mark and Dennis in Paonia. The Lodgepoles out my window, moved by a slight Wind, waving their Cones at me. Lightning and Thunder last night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Flashes of Lightning

One brief shining: Yesterday afternoon around four pm the psilocybin peaked and the Aspens with their upturned Branches praised the Sun by producing small yellow green Leaflets while the Lodgepoles bowed their Branches in perpetual prayer, both worshipers of the Great Sol, giver of energy and heat, and I did the same by standing on my driveway feeling the light that had traveled millions and millions of miles warm me.

 

Korea is a long way away. 6,196 miles according to Travelmath. That is, as we would say in Indiana, a f’r piece. During my psilocybin experience yesterday afternoon I got hit with a deep wave of love for my son and his wife, then a sense of how far away they now are. Really far. I looked up driving distance on Travelmath and it said, complicated. You might even have to swim. True that.

The military produces these long distance relationships over and over again. This is my son’s second deployment to Korea. He’s also been in the Middle East several times. Not to mention all those years in Georgia. And that one year in Singapore. Then, Hawai’i.

Glad for Kakao and Zoom, e-mail. Even Facebook. Connecting us.

 

While I got the mail yesterday, I walked over to the Iris bed which I had expanded at Kate’s request. Her purple Irises have begun to emerge. Some of her ashes fed them on August 18th of 2021, which would have been her 77th birthday. Tears came unbidden as I remembered the purple garden I planted for her 65th. Psilocybin seems to lure emotions to the surface with the least of stimulations. I enjoyed that part of the experience a lot. Sadness does not block joy and Kate’s memory is a blessing, however it comes up.

 

Lucille’s Creole Cafe has three spots in Denver. Kate and I used to go down once in a while for beignets, cajun breakfasts. Alan and I went to the one on E. Evans. I had a huge cup of their cafe au lait and breakfast with poached eggs, red beans, and cheese grits. Ordered shrimp and grits to go. The Cafe itself is light and airy, filled with New Orleans jazz posters and memorabilia. Our waitress had on a t-shirt that read, Friends with Benedicts.

It was fun to drive down the hill on a bright blue Colorado Morning. Felt like I was going on a mini-vacation. Lucille’s added to that.

 

Taking Gabe to the Rockies game tomorrow. The all new spiffy New York Mets are playing.