Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home

Bonus Post on Paganism and Judaism

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Summer and the sliver Summer Moon Above

 

From the beginning of my turn toward paganism I identified it as an ur-religion. That is, one all of us could embrace even if we layered on top of it another tradition like Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism.

I’m still there. Why? My paganism locates the sacred, the holy, the divine in the stuff within me and around me. That is. The Lodgepole. Leo sleeping beside me on the rug. My lev. The Soil beneath me and the Rock beneath it and the core of the Earth beneath that. The Robin and the Magpie. The Fly and the Katydid. The Morel and the Candensis. The Worm and the Snake. The Stream flowing and the Pond resting. Beavers and Marmots. Mountain Lions and Bears. The Microbiome in my gut. The Mitochrondia in our Cells. Our Galaxy. Those Galaxies. Dark Matter. Multi-verse Worlds.

I believe this non-dogmatic, non-sectarian sort of paganism crucial to caring for our Planet as we go through the fiery apocalypse of Climate change. And, it is not in conflict in any way with my Judaism which insists on a unitary view of all things. All things contain a shard of ohr, or holy light, holy energy. All things.

I choose Judaism for my human and humane interactions. I choose paganism to undergird and focus attention on the World which holds us like a Bird’s nest holds fragile Eggs.

 

Asia, Dogs, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Korea, Literature, Politics, US History, World History

Korea and Reading

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Sunday gratefuls: Leo. Lying here beside me. Luke out having fun. Books. Oh, did I mention books? Korean history. Seoah. Murdoch. My son. Working hard. Korean schools. American schools. Having a dog in the house. Korea. The Korean civil war. The armistice. Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Un. Presidents in South Korea. Chaebol. Zaibatsu. Samsung. LCD. Hyundai. Different ways of organizing economies. And nations. Trump’s legal trouble. The House G.O.P. The Extremes. Showing us a path to nowhere.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Knowledge

One brief shining: Leo lies here on the green rug with Cypress Trees, I write this blog letting my fingertips move over my split keyboard, all while a bright blue Colorado Sky backdrops Black Mountain its Lodgepoles and Aspens, there is no sound except the slight click of the keys.

 

More reading in Cuming’s history of Korea. Two chapters on the Korean civil war. He believes we should have let them fight it out, burned out the divisions and reordered their culture. As we had to. As Vietnam had to. Instead we put in amber the tensions and conflicts present after the Japanese Occupation ended. If I read Cuming’s account correctly, the North would have won the civil war, probably easily without us. Even with our involvement they came close. Then Koreans themselves would have had to sort out a new political order. Instead we have my son and his colleagues still in country, maintaining a very fragile and often fraught peace.

It was a time of big power conflicts, especially the USSR and the US. The architects of the idea of containment Dean Rusk, George Kennan, and Paul Nitze influenced the U.S. role in the war. Containing the Soviets, not China.

Korea is more than you know. Much more than I knew.

 

Realizing I privilege reading over most other activities. If I’m on a topic, an enthusiasm, I’ll sometimes read for hours at a whack. For days on end. Cup of coffee at hand. Now with my reading glasses perched on my nose. When I get tired, as I did yesterday, I watched a TV program, a K-drama just to stay in the the mind-world and went back to Cuming’s afterward. I’m neither a fast nor slow reader, I adjust my pace to the material. If it’s difficult, I’m slower. In the middle, as history usually is, I go a bit faster. With fiction I gallop.

Right now, as you can tell, I’m on Korea. When I finish Cumings, I’ll start another, the Two Koreas. Though. I might go back and reread the earlier chapters in Cumings. His long synopsis of Korean history before the late 19th century fascinated me since it contained so much that was new. For me.

Also, I’m building a conversion library. I already have a lot of books on Judaism, but I’m going to organize the ones I need for my study and put them up here in the home office. Had to order others. Looking forward to that reading, too.

 

Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

The Hermit Kingdom

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Saturday gratefuls: Leo coming up for the night. Fruit salad. Sleep. Good sleep. Korean history. Changing my view of northern east Asia. First full draft of Herme complete. For the acting class. Going to work with it today. Finding my sweet spot with exercise, reading, eating out with friends. A full life. Brother Mark and his rental car. The trap of desiderata. Opening myself further. Living on Shadow Mountain. In my mostly finished home. All the Creeks, Streams, Rivulets, Ponds, Marshes of the Mountains

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Change

One brief shining: A therapist lives in my finger tips ready to take on any inner problem dice it up, spread it out on the page for consideration and evaluation then continue on through a resolution that often ripples through my lev in a way I can feel in my chest, the issue put in a new context, revealed as an old pattern, or tucked away behind my ear as a learning to keep close.

 

Went part way down the hill to Morrison. The Cow. Alan and I met there for breakfast. It was a Friday, but the damned place was so busy. We had to wait twenty minutes. The closest sort of Mountain town to Denver Morrison sits right next to the famous Red Rocks Amphitheater. Downtown has plenty of places to hoover up tourist cash. The Cow among them. Apparently the only breakfast place though. Which makes sense since Red Rocks Concerts are evening affairs.

Alan’s first question when I told him about my planned conversion? When’s your bar mitzvah? Hadn’t thought about that. Maybe around my birthday next year?

 

Spent most of yesterday reading in a one volume history of Korea, Korea’s Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings. I’m about halfway through and finding it fascinating. He focuses on contemporary Korea, but had to give an overview of earlier Korean history to put this time period in context. I’ve learned so many new things. How little I know about Asian history for one. I mean I knew I didn’t know much but the vast field of my ignorance has never been more obvious. It matters, too. Not my ignorance specifically but the general ignorance of Americans about Asia and its long, long history.

Up until the end of the nineteenth century Korea was the little brother to China. Korea’s king went to the Emperor of China for investiture and the two nations had cordial relationships, including significant trade. But. China took no role in Korea’s internal affairs nor its external affairs except to serve as a deterrent to outside invaders. Korea kept itself to itself, repelling foreigners with force. That’s how it came to have the title the Hermit Kingdom.

Did you know we had a military government in Korea from 1945 to 1948, immediately following the collapse of its Japanese occupation? Or, that the communists who were influential in the North were Russians, not Chinese? I didn’t. Only a hint of the insights and new facts I’ve gained.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health

Look Round

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Thursday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie. Judaism. Rebecca. Alan. Leo coming up on Saturday. Luke. The balance of my inner life. The things that throw it off. Weather. Lab results. Anxiety. Self-doubt. The soul. And its compass. No, better. Its gyroscope. Still strong. Moderate fire risk. My home. A sanctuary. As are the Mountains, CBE, the Ancient Brothers. Books. The U.S.A. Korea’s Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings. Reading. Thinking. Loving. Health. Sleep.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The soul’s gyroscope

One brief shining: The question is not will you get pushed around and down by the winds of change that blow through your inner life, of course you will, rather the question is have you created a strong gyroscope that knows how to keep you steady even when your inner balance shifts off course.

 

Gyroscope. “A gyroscope is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity.” [ Ancient Greek γῦρος gŷros, “round” and σκοπέω skopéō, “to look”] wiki

My inner gyroscope became a strong stabilizer thanks to my now long ago meditation on my own corpse, occasioned by work with the Tibetan Buddhist mandala of Yamantaka that hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Tibetan gallery. Not the only aspect to my inner stability, no, but what I consider the most important.

Often characterized as the Tibetan Buddhist God of Death, Yamantaka really wants to aid you in coming to terms with your own death. This is very important in Tibetan Buddhism since the ability to be tranquil at the time of your death affects your possibilities for reincarnation. That is, what your next reincarnation will be.

I’m no Tibetan Buddhist but I recognized a good practice when I saw one and began a long period of meditating (visualizing and staying with the visualization) of my own corpse. It took a long while but I became comfortable with the image of my dead body. I’m sure the actual Tibetan practice is more involved and more subtle than what I did, but the effect for me was to gradually relieve me of any fear of death. It did not relieve me of wanting to live. To the contrary. Life became more vibrant, more precious.

I’ve now encountered three what I would count as good deaths: Kate’s, Judy’s, and Leslie’s. That is, they all accepted the truth of their final illness, saw it for what it was, and lived at peace in the final days before their deaths. That does not mean they did not want to live. Of course, they did. Leslie said when told of her liver cancer, “Well, that sucks.” And, it did. Judy Sherman said often, “This beast will kill me. But not today!” Kate was so calm (when she was not experiencing air hunger) that she could reach out to the respiratory therapist who had just stuck a long needle in her wrist and drawn blood from an artery there and say, “Kenton, good job with the ABD.” (arterial blood gas draw). She saw the outcome of this phase of her long illness and chose to die. As did both Leslie and Judy.

In the Greek sense of gyroscope they took a look round and saw things as they were, did not let denial cloud their judgments, knew this was not abnormal, rather so so normal. Their inner gyroscopes were strong, keeping them steady even at the end.

How is your inner gyroscope?

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

The Magic of the Ordinary

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Wednesday gratefuls: Rebecca and her 45th high school reunion. Joan and her son who has started to receive social security. Alan and his tenderness. Abby and her passion. Deborah and poetry. Tal and his sweet empathy. Deborah as Wonder Woman. Acting class last night. Working on Herme. Growing, changing. Taking shape. The purpose of life. Figuring it out. Letting the anxiety through. Letting light in. Anxiety opened a Leonard Cohen crack.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love.

One brief shining: Drove down the hill to pick up my new hearing aid at Mile High Hearing, saw Amy and left for Dave’s Chuck Wagon Diner over on Colfax seven minutes away anxiety bubbling after having given myself two new cancers and one autoimmune disease then deciding that was ok I could handle it when all of sudden the purpose of life bubbled up and I knew what it was: to burn away everything but love.

 

Usually the first and loudest critic of my own work I believe I’ve found the purpose of life. Kinda hubristic, yeah? Still. The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love. Sounds right to me. Ha. How bout that? Nothing like having decided cancer(s) were on their way to claim my body but not my soul. That got the old philosophical engine cranking over then purring.

I even give myself a pass on the anxiety. I’ve been sick long enough and spent enough time placing it into perspective, one foot before the next, that sometimes a bit of new data can upset my inner balance. So. You’re ok, Charlie. Or as Dr. Gonzalez said when I sang the worried song in an e-mail to her: You’re fine. I see this all the time. Oh. All right. Zip up and trust your doctors. Kate’s right there with me.

 

Emotions have been close to the surface for the last couple of weeks anyhow. Not sure why. Kate coming into memory and tears almost there, too. Joy at seeing Luke and in the acting class last night. Deep curiosity reading a one volume history of contemporary Korea. Expansion of my heart at seeing blue Sky. Satisfaction with my home. Awe at the beauty and wonder of the Mountains and the Wild Neighbors.

 

Life has begun to take on a magical component. How to describe it? The ordinary shifts subtly toward the extraordinary. That Lodgepole. Is it waving at me? The mist rising from the road last night. Transported me to an Other World. Kate’s Creek now has a mystical presence in my life as place of healing. The Wild Neighbors who share their lives with me on occasion I see as spirit messengers. Even the anxiety I felt over the last few days. A crack that let the light shine in.  How can I keep from singing?

Perhaps the transition from this world to the next lies not as far away as we think.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Woolly Mammoths

A bit more on conversion

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Monday gratefuls: Out of thin Air. The Ancient Brothers on the elemental. A good nap. Nights growing longer. Living in the temperate zone. Allergens. Itchy eyes, runny nose.  Peripheral vision. Vision. Taste. Hearing. Touch. Smell. Building our own personal reality. Rabbi Jamie. Dick. Tara and Arjan. The many folds and valleys, neurons and synapses of our brains. The wonder of the whole nervous system. Cancer. Prostate Cancer.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The mind-heart. The lev

One brief shining: This morning the Lodgepoles exude health needles green bearing new green cones alongside older light brown ones shooting into the blue Sky with puffy white Cumulus drifting through and Black Mountain’s gentle presence not far away my home world.

 

The Ancient Brothers talked through the four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. A week for each. Five different perspectives on each element. Paul, the careful researcher. Mark, the personal with a creative twist. Bill, often the religious or poetic. Tom, literary and scientific, poetic. Myself, the personal with a religious twist. Our differences are what make these Sunday mornings. Same topic through different lenses. All valid. All interesting. All enriching. A lesson here about the nature of the human community. We need you to show up as you. You’re the only one who can.

 

Also a clue here about my reason for converting. In the Word to Deed class Jamie gave this past Saturday we discussed the Ma Tovu, a prayer said upon entering a synagogue or other house of worship:

How lovely are your tents, O Jacob; your encampments, O Israel!
As for me, through Your abundant grace,
I enter your house to worship with awe in Your sacred place.
O Lord, I love the House where you dwell, and the place where your glory tabernacles.
I shall prostrate myself and bow; I shall kneel before the Lord my Maker.
To You, Eternal One, goes my prayer: may this be a time of your favor.
In Your abundant love, O God, answer me with the Truth of Your salvation.    Wikipedia

While discussing the first three verses, I offered a slightly different reading than the others. Jacob represents the individual, Israel the collective. Or, said another way, the personal and the communal. As for me I take as the individual who, through the abundant grace of a collective or community (Your in this case referring back to the first line) enters with awe into a place made sacred by the community itself. This made me think of why I love CBE, the sacred nature of the connections I’ve made there. I now had a horizontal rather than a vertical view of sacred community. Not infused with holiness from above or without, but created from within the magic and mystery of human connection, human relationship.

To go on. O Lord I read as a Self, a Soul. The rest is an inner prayer. I love this body and this community in which I dwell. The place where glory tabernacles. I am a humble member of this community which makes me who I am. To you, the Eternal soul/Self, I pray, hoping this is a time of your favor. In the abundant love I feel in this community I find the truth of your salvation. [salvation=healing, wholeness]

As Bill said yesterday morning when I recounted some of this, he said, that’s what makes the Woolly’s special. And, it is. We find the sacred, the mysterious, and the grace filled not in some dogmatic prison but in the everydayness of our lives. With the people we come to love, with the people we come to trust with our most intimate selves. And with the places that give us the same feelings.

So converting is not really about a religion per se, it’s making a claim about who my people are. I have at least three religions by this count: Judaism, The Woolly’s/Ancient Brothers, and my family.

 

 

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah

Calligraphy and OMG channel

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Air. Thin air. Earth. Wind. And Fire. Elemental, my dear Watson. Sherlock Holmes. Perry Mason. Hercule Poirot. Daiglish. Mystery. Mysteries. Books. The written word. The spoken word. Acting. Herme. Han Shan. Whitman. Rilke. Rumi. Oliver. Harrison. Lee Child. CJ Box. Richard Powers. Idris Elba. Ethan Hawke. K-dramas. The lev, the mind-heart. The Moon. The  Sun. Our Home.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writers

One brief shining: A Mountain morning blue Sky above Black Mountain curving behind the Lodgepoles in my Yard a cup of coffee and water on the desk my fingers dancing on the keyboard not only an extension of the curves and folds of my brain but of my lev saying things before I think them reading what I have written to know what I’m saying the joy of writing.

 

 

Calligraphy. An art almost unknown to Americans, even more so to millenials who have famously not been taught cursive writing. When Kate, my son, and I went to China, I remember we went to a national museum in Beijing. I was excited because I had always found Chinese art compelling. Disappointed. The exhibits were all calligraphy. Mostly long sheets of rice paper [made from mulberry leaves] with the squiggles and wiggles of Chinese cursive ideograms. Unintelligible. It took a while for me to realize the power of what I’d seen. How I wish now I could return to that exhibit.

Oddly, many at CBE remember me for a project during one Kabbalah class focused on the Hebrew alphabet. Using sumi-e brushes and black ink from Japan I drew many of the Hebrew characters in a flowing cursive, put a small verse beside them, then signed with my chop I purchased when in Beijing. The small red mark of my name contrasted with the black of the aleph and bet and vav and nuns. I set up tables and had everyone try the experience of using sumi-e brushes.

Mark Odegard sent me an image of a Han Shan, Cold Mountain, poem he had done by a Chinese calligrapher. What a beauty. Made me want to own a nice piece of calligraphy for my home. Searching for one.

 

Had a bad time Friday evening and Saturday morning. I let the worm of anemia enter my omg channel. Usually I get diagnostics back from my blood work the next day on Quest Diagnostics. The result of the latest round of blood draws, taken Thursday, has not been posted. I think some maintenance issue on the Quest website. However, it left me wondering about anemia with no helpful information to counteract speculation. Internal bleeding? Probably not, although not to be ruled out. Low iron or vitamin B? The blood tests will show. So I went to the logical place next: leukemia. I have cancer already, why not two kinds rather than one? With no data my mind went down that road pretty easily.

Here’s the thing. I’m not afraid to die, but I’d prefer later thank you very much. Still. Could be now? Right? I’m ok with that, yes, but again, not my preference. I went over the legacy such as it is. My writing. Friendships and family. This stand and that for justice. Perhaps a few original ideas not well developed. Got sadder as I thought. The evening was chilly, rainy. Gloomy. Outside mirroring inside.

Took me a bit of time to right the ship. Not long but not before I’d had a persistent gnawing angst for a few hours. Didn’t disturb my sleep however.

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

How bout that

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Saturday gratefuls: Pavilion L at Denver Health. Travel Clinic. Those two nurses. Typhoid vaccine. Immunocompromised. Joe Mama’s. Alan. Driving down the hill. A cool but clear day so far. Rain yesterday. Rabbi Jamie’s 18th anniversary. The potluck. Ice Cream from Liks. Seeing Sally, Ann, Ellen, Dick, Alan, Cheri, Helen, Rich, Kim, Rich’s mother, Irene, Elizabeth, Susan. A community. My community. An informal conversion. Me. Crossing the Threshold. A ritual. Herme, a one man show. Anemia. Weariness.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Alan and me

One brief shining: Yesterday in a ten foot wide breakfast place Joe Mama’s Alan and I managed a feat worthy of an updated Buster Keaton sketch wherein I arrive early and take a seat at a two-topper right ear against the wall and back to the door order coffee looking at the menu until I decide to text Alan thinking he’s found the place as hard to locate as I did only to discover a text had come in from him saying the same huh so I turn around as Alan gets up from the table behind me where he’s been sitting for ten minutes having just read my text. Oh.

 

Still laughing about that one. Once a month I drive down the hill and go to breakfast with Alan somewhere in the west Denver metro. This time it was Joe Mama’s. A clever name. I missed it twice. It’s situated between Celebrity Tattoos and The Glass Pipe Shop in a tiny strip mall on busy Colfax. My deaf left ear to noise, my right ear protected by a wall sound comes to me much more clearly, with or without hearing aids. So my back to the  door since the two-tops were only on the right side as you enter. Alan missed me when he came in and we sat like teenagers across the table from each other texting unaware of the other’s presence. Funny.

 

Finished a session with Rabbi Jamie on Jewish prayer. Can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I am. I’m gonna convert. Or, join up. Or, whatever. It wasn’t so much about this session as it was a journey of the heart, a long one. A really long one.

 

Just sent this note to Jamie:
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to go through the conversion process. Not so much to convert, I believe I’ve already done that in my heart, but to get more of the shared language of Judaism. That way I can appreciate the opportunities at CBE much more.

Been on my mind for a while, but the recent work with metaphor and this morning’s work with the prayers has opened a way in for me at the human, non-metaphysical level I hadn’t felt before.
Said I was done with joining things. Well, I was. Now, I’m not.

 

Let me give you a brief synopsis of the journey: As an anthropology student, I had an assignment to visit a synagogue and write it up from an anthropological perspective. It felt very foreign to me. Somewhat foreboding. At the same time I was dating a Jewish girl and met her parents. He was a jeweler, but very well read in philosophy which was also my major at the time. That really impressed me.

After my first philosophy class at Wabash demolished Christian proofs for the existence of God, I exited the Christian faith and became an existentialist vis a vis Camus.

You know already, most of you, about my seminary and ministry experience focused, I now know, on the God as judge metaphor. God judged our society and found it wanting when it came to caring for the poor, the other, the downtrodden. So did I. So do I.

I was a Christian. Yes, I was. But the glue that held me there was weak from a theological perspective. Justice has other roots than the New Testament demands for loving the neighbor. So when I felt the need to leave, it was not a difficult change. Especially since I’d found Kate and she me.

At the time I found Kate I was also dating Caroline Levy and had a connection, never acted on, with Ellen Sue Stern. All three Jews. I had also made a vow to myself during college that I would not seek spiritual guidance outside the Western tradition. Why? Because culture is so powerful I believed we could only reach profound understanding with Western inflected religious tradition.

I mostly followed that. No Buddhism. No Hinduism. Well, almost none. Taoism however did exert a pull on me. And remains an integral part of my essentially animist approach to finding the sacred.

Then Kate and I moved to Shadow Mountain and because of her earlier conversion found Congregation Beth Evergreen. I became an embedded pagan over the last eight years first as Kate’s husband and then on my own right. I was happy with that until this morning. Now I want to move all the way inside the miskhan, the sacred temple that is the Jewish people.

I’ve probably known I would do this since Patty told me Have a nice Easter and unbidden rose within me no, I’m a Passover guy. That was my clue that I’d converted in my heart already.

So I’m gonna do it. Yes, I surprised myself here. Happy to do so. Consistency as my evergreen buddy Ralph Emerson says is the hobgoblin of small minds.

 

Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase

A tale of two

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Thursday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Their two pups. Heidi. Psilocybin. Dr. Gonzalez today. Mussar. My wedding ring Kate bought in Taos. Amazing changes in my sense of self. Dogs. Kep and Rigel, their memories a blessing. Kate, always Kate. Jon, a memory. Our Planet. Its travels with us as passengers. Shorter travel to Korea and Israel. An open heart. A clear mind. Tara. Luke. Leo. Vastness. Wildness. Wilderness. Ocean depths.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The World Ocean

One brief shining: A moment to remember the Titan and its now dead passengers perhaps we could call them explorers who lost their lives on the real final frontier a watery realm extending all the way round Mother Earth and little known in any detail yet why I wonder pay to risk your life in this way. Why?

 

Understanding Whitman more and more. I am large, I contain multitudes. Sometimes I don’t recognize the person I was moments or hours before. Sure my twenty year old self and I are different in substantial ways. But my morning and afternoon selves? Oh, yes. Morning Charlie has energy. Readiness. Eagerness. Writes. Makes breakfast. Works out. Takes on challenging chores like calling United Healthcare for the seventh time to deep six that ghost bill of $429. Makes a typhoid vaccine appointment. Visits friends. Opens himself out to the world.

While late afternoon and evening Charlie. Sits. Watches TV. Reads. Often chooses, most often chooses, to stay home. Do little. Much more passive. Has less energy. I wonder if this is habit, some of it surely is. I wonder if this time of day could be different? Could it be a creative time? My buddy Ode works hours at his art each day. How I admire that. Not sure who this Charlie is. Not really. Sometimes I feel like I’m living my life in the mornings and observing my life in the late afternoons and evenings.

Or, am I just testosterone challenged? Using up my available energy in the morning? I don’t have that same disturbing fatigue I had until my thyroid stimulating hormone got right. Even so, I become smaller, less somehow. Is it age? An effect of my cancer drugs? I think back to Kate’s long illness when I had to be on literally 24/7. Did I use up some story of energy or will or ambition then?

You’ve guessed by now that I’m uneasy with this tale of the two Charlies. As if one is right and the other wrong. Yet. Is that just the American curse of worth by achievement? Who you are is what you do? Han Shan says: A thousand clouds, ten thousand streams, here I live, an idle man. That’s a Taoist perspective with which I largely agree, or think I do. Han Shan wanders the green Peaks by day and sleeps by the cliffs at night. There was a whole tradition of Chinese scholars who found this life way not only ok, but valorous. After the working life, come to the Mountains and live with the Tao, letting life and nature flow over you.

Perhaps the way to integrate the two Charlies is to accept both of them, not as better or worse, but as different responses to the Tao as it flows here on Shadow Mountain.

Acting, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends

A Shortie

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Wednesday gratefuls: Hail. Rain. Cool weather. Again. Acting class. Tal. You’ve got such a great presence. Joan. Police. Being flushed. Erleada. Herme. Cold Mountain. Poetry. Mountains and Rivers. The Tao. Chi. A great workout. Again. My home. My son and his wife. K-dramas. Tom. Diane. The Ancient Brothers. Zoom keeping us together. Alan, into the city for breakfast this week. Fog. Dewpoint. The mist on the road last night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The mind/heart. Lev

One brief shining: Alfred North Whitehead a favorite metaphysician [what? you don’t have a favorite metaphysician? Hurry. They’re on sale this weekend!] developed a metaphysics based on becoming a process view of reality rather than a static one suggested by a metaphysics of being so he knew to begin with that the heart and the mind, the body were not separate but a dynamic whole sending sensory data in and pushing actions feelings thoughts out.

 

Late night last night. Not in bed till 9:45. Acting class. I spent a good part of the day continuing work on Herme, my character study. 2 edits of my introduction established Herme and Gaius Ovidius as key figures who introduce the themes of Mountain life, chosen seclusion, and Chinese Rivers and Mountains Poetry. Right now it’s at about 15 minutes. Probably enough for the class and our showcase. Not long enough for presentation to larger audiences. Tal’s excited about Herme and would like to help me develop it into a one person show.

Got up late, too. 7:55 for an 8 o’clock call with Tom. That’s shaving it close. Combine a late night and a workout day, 100 minutes. Result? A slow afternoon and evening.

 

That’s all I got. Morning’s a better time all round for me.