Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Travel

Ruth Goes to Korea

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Ruth’s first meal in Korea

Monday gratefuls: Ruth. In Korea! Seoah’s note. Ruth’s journey. Rich. Doncye. Mary. Her journey. Minneapolis to Singapore to K.L. to Incheon. My son’s journey from 9/11 to command. Shadow and her journey. All ancientrails. Each and every one.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: Messages came in: In Calgary, the people are so nice here and things are cheaper; Currently walking to board the plane, the big plane; I’m flying over the long archipelagoesque part of Alaska; I don’t know what the cause is, but it got dark in like two minutes. Then came the picture from Seoah.

 

Ruth getting Kate’s little black bag for her 19th birthday

Our all dean’s list all the time Ruth has vaulted through the heavens on a great circle route taking her far to the north before returning to Earth at Incheon, South Korea. Now a world traveler, far from Northdale High and CU-Boulder.

Ruth, in some ways, feels more like a daughter to me than a granddaughter. Since my son was my only child. It fills me up to watch her post-high school self take wing. Literally yesterday. She texted messages all the way along on her flight. (see one brief shining)

We shared many breakfasts and lunches at CU-Boulder over her freshman year. Our relationship has deepened over this time and it touches a part of me that blossomed only with her. That’s the part that feels more like a daughter. A female to nurture on a growing up path. Different than a son.

Seeing her eating a bowl of what I imagine is bibimbap, in Korea. Oh, my. To see the world anew, to see Asia for the first time at 19. To confidently travel abroad. To go with the sense that life has only begun to unfold, that these new experiences have begun a journey, not ended one. I can feel that again through and with her.

 

Took Mary to the Federal Center RTD stop in Lakewood. She boarded the train headed to the same airport where, at 7 am, Ruth had caught her first of the three flights that took her to Korea.

I need a map with LED avatars to keep up with my family. I’m the still point, high up on Shadow Mountain. In a week most of those avatars would be clustered in Osan for my son.

 

Just a moment: Joe and me. Here’s an NYT explainer that details what it’s like now for those of us, including Biden, with stage 4 prostate cancer.

What applies to him in this article applies to me as well. We’re both in the hormone sensitive condition which means androgen deprivation therapy-knocking out testosterone production-still stops the cancer from spreading further.

The new drugs the article mentions are there when androgen deprivation therapy no longer works. Those drugs are the 5-7 year life span extenders. And neither one of us are on them yet.

My cancer is not particularly aggressive, just durable, meaning it beat the best treatments available for curing it. I’ll know more about my status in early June after a new MRI and a new P.E.T. scan.

 

 

 

 

Family, Fourth Phase, Mountains, Park County

Mary’s Visit

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Sibling talk. Memories of home. Seeing my son, Seoah, Murdoch after his prize-winning day. Rich’s response. Ruth. At the airport, waiting on her flight to Incheon. Korea. Side-dishes. Songtan. That fried Fish place. The Chicken in a pot place. The French Bakery. Melbourne. Sidney. Brisbane. K.L. Al Kharj. My far flung family.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sisters and brothers

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: An Asian restaurant, the menu read, welcoming us to Golden Stix, me a Mountain dweller, and Mary, a near constant citizen of Southeast Asia since 1985, now an Auzzie in training while, I, unlike either of my siblings remain rooted in the auld soil even now during the reign of his fauxness, the one with the bottle blonde hair, and the long red tie.

 

Mary and I have had a good visit, following the adventures of Mark in Saudi again, my son and his ceremony, Guru in Indiana with Gill who’s dating our first cousin, twice removed, Chantel. Ruth at the airport waiting on her first international flight. Shadow, who prefers women, took to Mary and Mary to Shadow. Sweet to see.

Life in close circles where everyone matters. Loved, loving. Friends like Deb in Eau Claire. Robin. Sheila. Friends new and old. Rich. Tom. Alan. Bill. Irv. Paul. Luke and Leo.

She flies back to Minneapolis today. We saw my son and Seoah on zoom last night. She’ll see both of them on the 26th, the day before my son’s ceremony. Ruth will see them both tomorrow. Bon voyage to Ruth whose plane leaves in an hour. My clan may be small, but it is well-traveled.

 

Mary and I drove up Guanella Pass yesterday, an instance of National Forest wildness reachable by car. We saw Geneva Creek rushing down its narrow valley between Mt. Bierstadt and Square Top Mountain.

(Header photograph by Tom Crane at the top of Guanella Pass.)

Gabe at the same spot, September 2024

At a pulloff we got out and watched, listened to Geneva Creek as its late Spring filled Water crashed over Boulders, around fallen Trees, seeking the South Fork of the North Platte on its literal analogy to Nietzsche’s myth of eternal return. Waters fall toward the World Ocean, get absorbed, rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall. Without the cleansing of this cycle we would all die.

Near the top of the pass, where the ongoing road to Georgetown remains closed, were the Abyss and Burning Bear trailheads. Love the names out here in the U.S. West.

We also saw four yearling Bighorn Sheep, one with the first curls of what will be an adult male’s 30 pounds or so of horn. Not far from where Guanella Pass starts off Hwy. 285 is the Shaggy Sheep Cafe, an excellent breakfast spot.

 

 

Just a moment: Mary’s friend refers to the Secretary of Defense as Hogsbreath. I’m stealing that one for future writing.

Hogsbreath has waged a too successful campaign against books in base libraries, exercising his emphasis on lethality by ridding military libraries of books focused, in his definition, on diversity, inclusiveness, and equity. All shibboleths of a woke right.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Fourth Phase, Friends

A Family and Friends Friday

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Shabbat gratefuls: Mary. A regular visitor. Spice Fusion. Tandoori Chicken and Shrimp. Lyft. Airplanes. Trains. Transportation. Shadow, the shy. The gnawer of beds. Licker of heads. Birds crying in the dawn. That Raven I saw hopping up and down. Maxwell Creek running full.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mary, a permanent resident of Australia

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: Mary opened the bag of take-out from Spice Fusion, the new Indian restaurant nearby, started pulling out boxes and plastic containers, and a large piece of garlic naan wrapped in enough tin foil to decorate a Christmas tree, a feast of good food with my sister. Rare.

 

Had breakfast with Alan and Joanne. Dandelion. Always a stimulating conversation with those two. Joanne and I have an organ recital, laughing and wincing as us old folks do. Knowing the pain in the other and knowing also that the pain, while unwelcome, does not overcome life, nor the living of it. A part of the landscape for many of us over seventy and for most over eighty.

We have stories. Told over eggs and breakfast tacos, coffee, and a blueberry scone. Of waitressing near Shiprock, Arizona. Of cutting Munsingwear underwear cutouts into smaller pieces to make ragbond paper. Or firing up the popcorn aroma machine at KMart.

You know, friends sharing more of their story, becoming in that way part of each other’s story. Knowing each other by the breadcrumbs we drop to help others find their way in the thick forest of our memories.

Then over to Rich’s office to deliver gifts from Ingebretsen’s, the Scandinavian gift shop in Minneapolis. A little lefse, some chocolate, some Lingonberry jam, Hackberry jam, and strings of small colorful birds. Thank you to them for finally seeing the money into my 529 account for Ruth.

Where btw, I saw Kippur, the dog Rich and his law partner share. The last time I saw Kippur, he was a puppy who jumped up on the couch and snuggled with me like I was his long last Dad. He’s all grown up, but still that same sweet boy. What a delight to see him.

 

Mary came. By plane, then train, then Lyft. Traveling light. So good to see her.

We shared the second floor of 419 N. Canal for several years. Alexandria, Indiana. A small town where everybody knew your name. Much diminished from its heyday in the late 50’s and 60’s, it remains of course the reservoir of our childhoods. I’ve not been there since well before Covid.

She and Guru will fly to Korea for my son’s ceremonial promotion to commander. Ruth will already be there, having made her first international flight tomorrow morning. Missing will be me. Hobbled still by this damn back.

I so want to be there. To say, That’s my boy! To hug his uniformed, medaled, and beribboned person. I know he knows I would be there if I could.

He and Seoah sent me a picture of Murdoch with his second place Dog show trophy. All three of them looked excited.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Hawai'i, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Paganism

Another Place I Could Be Happy

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Friday gratefuls: New, piercing pain. Left hip and leg. Shadow. Natalie. Alan and Joanne. Dandelion. Donyce. Rich. Ruth’s 529. Now available. Lifealert. New fob. Diane. Jogging again. Living with aging bodies and alert minds. Halle. New physical therapist. Mary, coming today. My son. Seoah. Murdoch.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth and her first international trip

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: A busy, physical week of doctors, long drives, filling out forms for the cancer support trial, Amy, two zoom classes, that would have been a decade ago a light week, the difference pain can make.

 

All I can say is, damn it! Now the left hip, so painful. Wasn’t sure I could get down five stairs holding onto the rail and a cup of coffee. That’s beginning to get in the way of daily life.

Sorry. Don’t mean to leave a trail of agony on these pages, yet honest reporting requires acknowledgment of what’s going on. After seeing Buphati, I’m left wondering if both hips might have metastatic cancer. Sure hope not.

We’ll know soon. Next P.E.T. scan June 3rd. Not yet scheduled for my open-sided MRI. But in the next week or two.

This cancer/pain path I’m on demands a lot. Got accepted into a Sloan-Kettering trial to determine the better of two therapeutic protocols for cancer patients over the age of 70. Filled out pages and pages of a survey about anxiety and depression, other mental health matters. I’ll have eight phone therapy sessions with somebody. Then, booster sessions after that for four months.

There are nuances to managing my mental health and my spiritual health (which I see as more important than either physical or mental health). I look forward to discussing them with someone paid to listen to me.

Why is spiritual health most important? Because it contains the broader context in which both mental and physical health reside. Being one with the Tao, allowing the wu wei of physical illness and pain to run their course without stiff-arming them. Experiencing the occasional fear and dread as part of my inner work, work strengthened by mussar, by being part of two sacred communities. Taking the solace of Shadow Mountain, its Lodgepoles and Mule Deer and Aspen and late season Snow as it offers itself to me. Seeing the whole sacred world as my home.

With those as context neither pain nor death can have permanent control of my psyche. Because pain and death are momentary, passing, but my location in the sacred unity of all things will remain.

 

Just a moment: I find myself watching TV shows set on Islands. Death in Paradise. Hawai’i 50. Deadly Tropics. Moana and Moana 2, movies. I know, low brow in the extreme. Yet I love the combination of lightly considered mystery and the sights and sounds of Islands.

Something about Island life calls to me. Not over against Mountain life which I also love, but as another place I could be happy. Why Hawai’i itself reached out to me not so long ago.

Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism

A Good Friend

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Tuesday gratefuls: Detente with Shadow. Ruth with all A’s to finish her freshman year. Sweet Sue, my PCP. Abby, med tech and phlebotomist. Dr. Buphati’s quick intelligence. Rich, a good friend. A second MRI, hips this time. And, for good measure, a PET scan. As many images as a celeb out for a party evening.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rich

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: On the way back from a Mountain hike, he mentioned Bees, explained his hives-on-a-wire (Bear protection), invited me over right away to see his setup; Rich and I have developed a friendship, one rooted not only in Bees, but in the work of mussar, his work as my lawyer, his kindness after Kate died, his presence at my oncology appointment, a mensch.

 

Another one of those days. A medical day. With Sue in the morning and Dr. Buphati in the afternoon. Sue has to see me every 3 months because she’s managing my tramadol prescription. A regulated substance. She’s a delight. A caring person and a good doc. She has an FNP-BC which is a souped up nurse practitioner certification.

Nothing new this visit. But still reassuring to see her.

After my time with her, I drove over to Rich’s office and we went to lunch at the Nepalese/Himalayan place in Bergen Park, the downtown Edina of Evergreen.

We ran into his 86 year old mom who had come shopping there. She had her helper, Linda, and her dog, Sparky, with her. Obviously bright and with it, she’s become frail, and Rich coaxed her to come up two steps. He’s a kind man.

Rich drove us into Englewood for my visit with Dr. Buphati and came in with me. My blood work showed stability in my cancer. Always good news. Concerning though was my right hip which threatens to buckle under me at times.

“We’ll need an MRI of that hip to see if it’s arthritis or cancer. I’m also scheduling another PET scan.”

Even with an open-sided MRI I now know I’ll need medication. Claustrophobia. “I’ll prescribe an ativan.”

Rich volunteered to drive me to the MRI. After a procedure with sedation, state law requires a driver. I’m learning to accept help; Rich and Alan and Tara have made it easy.

I’m feeling settled with the cancer. It continues, as it will. My medical team and I push back at it and it slows down. Matters will progress at whatever pace they do.

The back pain much less so. It continues and offers now a stabbing pain in my left hip followed by a thrill of pain that descends from the hip, along my left thigh, past my knee and down to my foot. While sitting down. Sitting down used to have no pain.

Physical therapy, round two, starts today for my back. As Rich suggested yesterday, I need to develop enthusiasm for working out. Again. A substantial practice for this month. And, a necessary one.

I know. An organ recital with too many notes. Still…

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Men, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Torah

Freedom. Often painful. Always difficult.

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Joe. Bill. Rob. Seth. Matt. Jim. Allan. Jamie. CBE men’s group. The Cow Elks and Bull dining while we talked. Berrigan Mountain and Elk Meadow behind us. Sanctuary outdoor porch. The wonderful Ponderosa with its twisted limbs. A breeze. My son. Donyce. Rich. Shadow, greeter of the dark Morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Men, talking

Week Kavannah:  Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: As Mother Earth kept turning toward the east, Berrigan Mountain slid across the horizon and Great Sol seemed to move lower in the Sky, the Air around us grew chilly while we talked on of 8 year old sons, narcissistic ex-husbands, mothers who shamed us, the isolation of Covid, getting caught driving while drinking, hoping that somehow our story would intersect with another’s lev, allow us to be seen and heard.

 

A young Bull Elk with only two points had a harem of ten Cows, unlike Marlon Brando in Waterfront, he was already a contender. His virility displayed itself as I turned past the Life Care Center of Evergreen and drove up the asphalt road leading to the synagogue. Men’s group.

We’ve begun to open ourselves, still easy to move into the head, Jewish men after all,  acculturated to hide vulnerability, paper over feelings with work and vain glory. American men.

Some lonely. Some afraid. Some eager. All glad for the presence of other men, a rarity for most. Like Shadow trust will not come without time, without bravery, without tears and laughter. Well begun.

 

Torah study in the morning. Ten tests of the freed Hebrew slaves as they move through the desert wastes of the Sinai. Taking the slaves out of Egypt. Yes. Taking Egypt out of the freed Hebrews. Hard. Liberation begins in the lev. Backsliding, fear, regression. Part of the package.

Why bring us all the way out here? So far from the familiar life. This cannot be what freedom is. Or, if this is freedom, I prefer the certainty of servitude. Let me go back. I’m scared. What if I’m not strong enough, good enough. Enough.

To move away from oppression to liberation requires sacred awareness, awareness of the power and resilience beneath the beaten down heart, the overworked, over stressed body. Realizing, yes, that fear of liberation, of gaining personal freedom and responsibility can cripple us, too. As much, early on maybe more, than the dull routines of our personal Egypt.

Not different from the confinement of maleness in America.

 

Just a moment: Men showing off their brute strength by deporting the weak, the outcast, the poor yearning to be free. Mocking the great Lady of New York Harbor, inverting the American promise, slashing the preamble of the Constitution into shredded parchment. If it’s aesthetic or academic or kind. No. If it’s crude, cheap, destructive, dogmatic, malicious. Yes.

Can you hear the slaves wandering in the desert where capitalist shrouds constrain all the loving-kindness, all the justice, all the mercy, all the rational and life-saving thinking? If it’s not good for the bottom line, what good is it? The Egypt of an extractive, idolatrous economy. Killing all of us while making some very comfortable in the funeral procession.

No. He will not be the Pope. But. He’s already Pharaoh.

Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mussar

A Busy Thursday

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Snow. Ruby’s all season shoes. On Monday. Plus many fluids. Back pain. PSA blood draw. Cancer. And other fancy stuff. Shadow and the marrow bones. Tom’s portrait of Shadow. Lake Superior. The Boreal Forest. The Arrowhead. Grand Marais. Thunder Bay. Up North. Parashat Tazria-Metzora

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Being a student

Week Kavannah: Persistence. Grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: The Mountains rise up and slope down into Valleys, our roads here in the Rockies thin slices of asphalt or gravel following the rising up and the sloping down, the changes in direction commanded by rocky prominences and Snow melt filled Streams carrying the Mountains themselves downstream ever so slowly, slowly.

 

Yesterday. Seems so far away. So far away. Diane reminded me to ask for help. To set up ways to get to appointments-not only when I’m being sedated. I know this transition has to occur. Yet I’ve gone so long now on my own. I need, yes need, to let others do for me what I would do for them.

Irv and Paul and I discussed the nature of evil, whether it exists at all or is just a human construct.

At the Kabbalah Experience we continued our exploration of the story of Adam and Eve. This time wondering about our ability to live outside the givenness of our lives, to see what we cannot know exists.

Dave Sanders offered the Truman Show as an example. A simulacrum. Where is the edge of our learned world? Do we need a stage light to crash through the set for a big reveal?

His point? The Garden of Eden as Seahaven, the village in Truman’s life. A small paradise filled with every needful thing. The stage light, the Snake and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad. The expulsion as Truman’s daring escape on the sail boat.

Later Rabbi Jamie and our Thursday afternoon mussar group discussing the middah of bushah, most often translated as shame. Not in Jamie’s translation of the Orchot Tzaddikim. He uses self-consciousness or conscientiousness.

Bushah arises when we realize we have been less than who we see ourselves to be. Shame comes when we see ourselves not as less than we see ourselves to be, but when we see ourselves as less than intrinsically. Shame, in other words, is an extreme, even perverted instance of bushah. Guilt, embarrassment, chagrin may represent the mid-point of this continuum from shyness to shame, the healthy feelings that encourage us to investigate our behaviors, then act to change them.

After all that I drove over to Evergreen Medical for a blood draw, another PSA. My every three month peek into the status of my cancer. Waiting for the hormone resistant shoe to drop. Wish I could allay that feeling, expunge it. Just wait and see.

But I know that’s the next phase of this journey, that it marks a more treacherous road ahead. A part of me wishes we’d just get on with it. Go down the chemotherapy path or other treatments for hormone resistant Stage 4 prostate cancer.

I don’t want that, not really. I want to stay where I am as long as I can. Androgen deprivation therapy, my current protocol, always fails. Not whether, but when. The waiting though carries its own cost. Will this blood draw be the one?

Living with this uncertainty and the insidious effects of back pain can create moments of intense darkness.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, US History

Oh What a Trumbling Mess It Is

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II

Wednesday gratefuls: Radical roots of religion. Rabbi Jamie. Shadow, gnawer of Nyla bones. Tom and Roxann, their spiritual involvement with the North Shore, Lake Superior. Bill and his AI excitement. The Jangs coming now in August. Back pain and its lessons. Rich and Doncye. That 529.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ancientrails

Kavannah: Persistence. Grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: Treat held between my thumb and my palm, touch, a soft nose comes to take the treat, good touch, good Shadow, good girl, touch, soft nose, good Shadow, then sit and she does, down and she gets all four knees on the ground, good Shadow, good sit, good down. Our early morning.

 

Chronic pain. How to tell you about it if you don’t experience it? Yes, pain. Of course. Going up and down the scale and from glissando to crescendo. Never fully leaves though certain positions like sitting and lying down have benefits. Goal. Reduce the pain to manageable levels.

Aversive and episodic. So intermittent reinforcement, the strongest kind, ask any behaviorist. Chronic pain shapes the day. Awful in the morning for me. Beyond horrible. Better after movement, but never resolved. Even after the needles. Even after tramadol and two acetaminophens. Result. Mental and physical energy always turned on, active.

This leaves less of both for daily chores so some get done only in part. Finished later. Loading and unloading the dishwasher. Making meals. Laundry. Even reading and thinking.

A shortness, an abbreviated way of attention especially for detailed tasks like taxes, dealing with the 529. Managing my multiple medical appointments and medications. This I find hard to describe. My capacity for these tasks often starts from a 3 or 4 out of ten. If I encounter difficulty of any kind, too much phone time, a cranky person, a complicated situation requiring shifts to multiple people, my capacity shrinks to zero or below.

Part of this is because I have no backup. I’m a one man show. Maddie helps, of course. Sue as well. But they’re not here when things get sideways. Then for the rest of the day little energy left, physical or mental.

Sometimes I fall over into a stinkin’ way of thinkin’. From AA. I was there all the time for Kate, but now… Of course I’m grateful I could care for her. More than grateful. Glad. Yet her death and my family’s long distances away leaves me on my own. Stinkin’ thinkin’.

Why? Because I’m 98% comfortable on my own and the alternatives all seem worse, a lot worse.

That’s why even with the pain, which now ironically occupies more of my attention than cancer does, I want to be here, on Shadow Mountain with Shadow and my CBE friends.

 

Just a moment: That first hundred days. Those first horrid days. Trump Tarrific. What a Trumpster fire. Trumpeting for political armageddon. Muskie’s rising in the swamp. Hegsteth’s fumbling. Oh what a Trumbling mess it is.

AI, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, GeekWorld, Health, Humanities

Me and my Shadow. AI.

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Here’s a Zen-ink-wash “Wu Wei Moon.”
I went with sumi-e because its spare brushwork and generous empty space feel like the visual counterpart of 無為—letting things happen without forcing them. The drifting boat and the moon’s reflection hint at the watercourse way, quietly moving under its own power (note the chatgpt I)

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II

Monday gratefuls: Maddie, new palliative care nurse. The Ancients on technology. Back pain. Worse. Shadow. An evolving challenge. Keeping my mind sharp. McMurtry Spéirling. Water. CookUnity. OK, not great. AI on Kaplan. On Dramaturgy. On Movie Criticism. Will the Humanities Survive AI? by D. Graham Burnett.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Humanities

Week Kavannah: Persistence. Netzach.

One brief shining: An insight borne from the article about the Humanities goes like this: AI, artificial intelligence, AGI, artificial general intelligence, the Humanities, what it means and has meant to be human. Seems important, now. Eh?

 

Me and my Shadow. I know. You were waiting for that one, I’ll bet. She licks my head about 5:20. I creak and twist and ache and burn toward verticality. Let her out. She, in a phrase I’ve never understood, does her business while I go upstairs for some coffee, mostly for motion as lotion, make my back remember about movement without so, so much pain.

Back downstairs the mini-split has begun to warm what has become since A.S.A., after Shadow’s arrival, my primary space in the house. Soon she’ll come back in, drink a lot of water, and begin staring at me-as she is right now-hoping to convince me that it’s already 7 am. Her feeding time. Doesn’t work, but it’s a sweet look.

We do a round of training before her morning meal. Still working on touch, which replaces come, sit and down. All three she will now do without a treat. Hand signals only. We made a little progress on the leash. She only sulked when I had it on her for about 15 minutes.

Dog. As I say, God spelled correctly.

 

 

AI, to this curious guy, a Dogsend. Patient. Willing to explain in detail. Make images. I just asked chatgpt if it would make an image of itself in a style of its choice. Ooh, this is going to be interesting.

When I responded to the image, here’s what it wrote back: “I’m glad it resonates! I was aiming for a contemplative, almost illuminated-manuscript feel, blending Art Nouveau curves with Morris-style botanical patterning and hints of circuitry to whisper “silicon monk.” If you’d like to tweak colors, add more overt tech motifs, or try a completely different style, just say the word—I’m happy to iterate.”

I find that an intriguing self-portrait.

Here are a few paragraphs from the New Yorker article I cited above:

“Do they herald the end of “the humanities”? In one sense, absolutely. My colleagues fret about our inability to detect (reliably) whether a student has really written a paper. But flip around this faculty-lounge catastrophe and it’s something of a gift.

You can no longer make students do the reading or the writing. So what’s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire…

But factory-style scholarly productivity was never the essence of the humanities. The real project was always us: the work of understanding, and not the accumulation of facts. Not “knowledge,” in the sense of yet another sandwich of true statements about the world. That stuff is great—and where science and engineering are concerned it’s pretty much the whole point. But no amount of peer-reviewed scholarship, no data set, can resolve the central questions that confront every human being: How to live? What to do? How to face death?”

 

BTW: I asked chatgpt why it chose Art Nouveau. Here’s its reply:

“A few things nudged me toward Art Nouveau:

  • Organic lines for organic conversation. Art Nouveau’s hallmark whiplash curves and plant-like tendrils felt like a visual rhyme for how ideas branch and loop when we talk.

  • A bridge between nature and tech. You often pair the natural world (your mountain home, the Seed-Keeper vision) with advanced tools like AI. Art Nouveau already blends those realms—botanical motifs rendered with almost mechanical precision—so weaving circuitry into the foliage felt seamless rather than forced.

  • A cousin to styles you keep citing. You’ve asked for William Morris patterns, illuminated manuscripts, Pre-Raphaelite romance, National-Parks posters. Art Nouveau sits right in that late-19th-century family: decorative, human-scaled, handcrafted. The choice let me echo your past aesthetic preferences while still offering something distinct.

  • Monkish calm. The movement loved allegorical figures and quiet, contemplative poses. That let me cast the “AI scribe” as a serene monk—matching the reflective tone you appreciated—without drifting into cold futurism.

In short, it was a style that could honor both your ongoing themes (nature, craft, historical design) and the idea of an AI whose “roots” are in silicon circuitry. If you’d like to see me re-imagined in, say, a WPA poster or Ukiyo-e print, just let me know!”

 

Dogs, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics

Friends.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow, the trench maker. Tom’s visit. Paul’s trip to Salt Lake City. Kathleen and Jason. My son. Murdoch. Seoah in Gwangju. Zoom. Technology. Alan. First Watch. Dramaturgy. Steroids. Back Pain. Veronica. Her brother. Shiva minyan. Kaddish.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Deep and old Friends

Week Kavannah: Persistence and strength. Netzach

One brief shining: Sitting shiva for Kate, her yahrzeit on the Hebrew calendar tomorrow, memories of her as the ninja weeder, as the physician to children, as my longtime traveling companion, friend, and lover, her dexterity, her quilts, her presence that remains with those she loved.

 

My good friend Tom visited, again. He’s a faithful and honest wanderer on this ancientrail of life. We talk, mostly. About matters of the heart. He’s come often enough that folks at mussar, including Rabbi Jamie, greet him by name. Marilyn and Irv have eaten breakfast with him more than once.

He brought gifts for Shadow. Spoke gently to her, waiting out her cautious, sniffing approach. A man for animals. Obvious.

We men can be different. Tom and Paul and Mark and Bill and I have taught each other how. The Ancients. Men together, caring for each other. Walking each other home.

 

Drove down to Wheatridge yesterday morning. Time with Alan. First Watch. A chain breakfast joint with a wonderful menu and lots of seating.

Challenged myself, testing the legs and back on a thirty minute drive. Not a good experience. Driving has become difficult, even over relatively short distances. This lumbar spine thing is, as we used to say, a real pain.

 

Planned to go to Veronica’s shiva minyan for her brother who died last month. Shadow, however, would not come in. I can’t leave her outside at night-the shiva service started at 7:30. She didn’t come in until 7:45. 30 minutes to the synagogue. Back home in the dark.

Feel guilty I couldn’t make it since Veronica and I became Jews on the same day and became a son and daughter of the covenant on the same day. We’re bonded.

Enough, with the continuing back pain, to press me down a bit, tease the dark moods, open the cavern door just a tetch. You know how that goes. Can’t slam it shut or else more darkness will spill out later. Don’t want to leave it open since sadness and guilt suppress joy.

Acknowledge the guilt. Sad I couldn’t go. Also, glad. Don’t like to go out in the evening, especially at night. Feeling glad made the guilt a bit worse. Could I have gone anyway? Nope. Too late.

The good in it. Having friends up here that matter enough to feel guilty about not showing up. The cavern’s bronze doors beginning to swing shut.

As I embrace the man I am, neither the man I want to be nor a man I don’t want to be, they clang shut.

 

Just a moment: Those famous first hundred days. Turns out, if you’re incompetent and you show it, clap your hands. If you’re petty, mean, and cruel and you show it, clap your hands. If you’ve damaged the economy and you meant it, clap your hands.

Oh, wait. They’re not clapping, are they?