Category Archives: Dogs

Something’s gnawing at me

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Thursday gratefuls: MVP. Desire. Jealousy. Will. Willingness. Ron. Rich. Joanne. Marilyn. Susan. Laurie. Kaathe. Tara. Loving friends. The crescent Wu Wei Moon with Jupiter below. The Night Sky. Shadow. Ana. Clean House. CookUnity.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Cosmic Void

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

One brief shining: Gnawing, chewing, Shadow announces the coming of early morning, still dark, still fast asleep until the grinding of wood on Dog teeth, what is that, that noise, I want to sleep, no she says, stopping only for a moment, oh fine you win and I stumble out of bed after a late night.

 

Dog journal: Yes, I have a new alarm clock. Not a welcome one at the hour she chooses. Yet I left her alone last night while I went to the synagogue and she was fine.

She doesn’t clock the lateness of the hour when I return. Doesn’t adjust her waking to my sleep deprived brain.

She’s throwing her weasel in the air, squeaking it, chewing, twisting her head and the weasel in the predator’s death grip, breaking the spine. Mine aches in sympathy.

Her life and mine, intertwined and growing closer by the day, the hour. She will not chew on the bed, the nightstand, and the baseboard forever. Thank Dog.

 

Got my ears lifted, as we used to say in Indiana. Jackie’s letting her silver sneak out of her blondeness. Just a bit in front.

Rhonda sat cross legged on her chair, eating a lollipop, and laughing at meme’s on her phone. A budding thespian cured under the hair dryer, having asked Jackie at the last minute for a twenties hair-do. With finger rolls, whatever that it is.

I’m seeing Jackie every three weeks now, keeping my hair and beard under tighter management. Plus I get to see Jackie and Rhonda every three weeks.

(The weasel squeaketh yet. Now the skunk.)

 

MVP: To get at will and desire as core to our soul and our growth, I invented an exercise. After asking folks to use their best centering techniques to get into a calm place, I offered two instructions: first, pick a time period of significance: might be a day, a month, a year, a decade. Consider what challenges, barriers, joys it presents. They had time to settle into that.

Then. Imagine you are in a white room, sitting in a chair. A long wooden table is in front of you. I’m asking you to imagine five objects on it: a pile of cash, a book and a pen, a thread, a pair of scissors, and a tiny globe.

Once you have those objects clearly in mind, pay attention to which one attracts you. After you’ve done that, as you wish come back to the room.

When every one had returned, I asked them to imagine how the object they chose might help them during the time period they selected.

One person had chosen the time period between now and high school graduation for their grandkids. Their object was the thread which they saw as connecting them to their grandkids and to their extended family.

Another had chosen retirement and the book and pen. He talked about the challenge of getting to retirement so he could once again focus on his creativity. His writing.

Surprised the hell out of me that the exercise worked so well. Everybody enjoyed the explanation of it, too. The table was a doljabi table which Koreans use on a child’s first birthday to gauge the child’s future. I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

An evening of deep, intimate conversation. I felt so good when it was done.

 

 

 

 

Shadow. A Blue win!

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shadow. Whimpering. The only sound she makes. Ginny. Janice. Annie. Luna. Luke. Leo. MVP. Tonight. Hair cut. Jackie and Rhonda. Living with the body as it is. Susan Crawford. The Democrats of Wisconsin. Seed-Keepers all. Elon.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Early darkness

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

One brief shining: Amy clipped on the leash, allowed Shadow to guide her outside, I cheered as we came closer, step by step, to Shadow in the car with me.

 

Dog journal: The beaver has begun sawing on my bed. She won’t get far. It’s an IKEA. Sturdy. Nothing special until now. Shadow marked for all its time.

This morning I looked up from my pillow and Shadow stood between the bed frame and the wall. Good morning, I said. Soon she whimpered. At 5 am. Well, ok. Probably needs to go out. Nope. Just wanted to play.

Her morning energy level. A force of nature. Standing on her hind legs, reaching for my shoulders. Burrowing in between my legs. Nipping. Soft mouth, Shadow.

Amy came yesterday. Tall, gentle Amy. Got Shadow on the leash. We learned a new game, back and forth. I drop a treat, call her name, let her get the treat, then run a few steps away and do the same. After 5-10 times, end with touch, outstretched hand.

Amy is a good business woman. Her 45 minute sessions are 45 minutes. She works Shadow the whole time. And me. She summarizes the day’s work and e-mails it to me. Her payment system works and she sends out regular notifications of upcoming sessions.

 

Organ recital: Leaning toward giving the nerve ablation a shot. If I could get five to six months of relief… Still, needles. Spine. Back.

Gonna give p.t. a thorough shot first. If my referral can ever make it from Mountain View Pain to Luna home health care. Something not right somewhere. Too many phone calls. Sigh.

Wondering what the back pain tells me. Besides the obvious. A Jungian question. Nature’s way of telling me to slow down, take the watercourse way? Or is it a lesson in humility? You are now old. Perhaps focus on matters close to home? Ready myself for the future, whatever it holds?

 

Just a moment: Susan Crawford for the win in Wisconsin! So glad Wisconsin brushed off the crude and cynical exploits of Elon, the Cheesehead. He managed a patronizing, condescending, billionaire it’s all about the money campaign and lost big time.

A booster shot in the old blue arm for sure. Perhaps we liberals (well, ok. I’m a radical, but for the sake of unity.) can now remember that neither Harris nor Trump got 50% of the vote. Harris=48.3%. Trump= 49.8%. We are many, too. Even though it may not feel like it in the hazy, crazy times of the orange ones first hundred days.

Susan Crawford. Seed-keeper. Reminding us that a 2026 victory garden can grow from ideas and campaign tactics known already.

Do we need more focus on working class Americans? Oh, yes. We do. Does that mean we abandon progressive ideas in other areas? No.

Shadow’s Gift

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: MRI results. Hannah. Mountain View Pain Clinic. Luna Home Physical Therapy. Luke and Leo. Shadow. Toys for aggressive chewers. Our backyard. The Yellow Duck. Early Mountain mornings. Magenta Skies. Snow forecast. Amy coming today. Leash training.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow’s Gift

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

chatgpt

One brief shining: Luke’s website, Soulscape, includes a well-done Bird figure from Dungeons and Dragons, brown pants and green top to symbolize a Tree, his own versions of the Hebrew letters from age 10, several of his newer Hebrew letters in his distinctive white on black style, and a discursus on the letter lamed, a tour de force.

 

 

 

Dog journal: Over the course of our lives together Kate and I loved and cared for 17 Dogs. As you can imagine, I’ve seen many instances of Dog behaviors. None like the one I saw yesterday from Shadow.

Luke and Leo came over. Leo would make 5 of Shadow. He’s a very gentle and kind animal, slower at his advanced age of 12 than when I first met him.

After he and Shadow sniffed all the relevant parts of each other, they went outside to play. Shadow zooming in the back as she loves to do; Leo plowing through the Snow with his head. A lot of play bows, some chasing each other through the Lodgepoles.

When Leo had had enough, he wanted to go back inside, Luke thought for the toys. Leo remembers where the toys are when he comes over. As Luke thought, Leo went straight for the toy bucket. Shadow got a toy, too, and they played separately for a while. Then, Leo got tired of it all and laid down. Shadow continued to play for a bit.

Then she did it. Shadow picked up the toy Tiger in her mouth, went over and dropped it in front of Leo as if giving him a gift. I know it’s easy to over interpret Dog behavior, to project our assumptions about their behavior onto them. But I swear Shadow gave him the toy to play with.

One of the sweetest Dog moments I’ve witnessed.

 

Organ recital: MRI results are in. Oh, boy. My lumbar spine, from L2 to L5 is arthritic and the discs herniated. Lots of nerve pinching up and down. No wonder I’ve got pain.

The herniation I imagine is from the Andover gardening years. Stoop labor. A lot of heavy lifting.

Possible treatments include opiods. No. Physical therapy. Yes. Cane. Maybe. Steriod injections. Probably not. Nerve ablation. Maybe.

All symptomatic. No fixing this back. Problem is I’d need multiple sessions with needles into my spine for either the steroid injections or the nerve ablations. With the steroids, if they help, every three months at least. With the nerve ablations possible six month intervals.

Even so. Needles into my spine? That scares me from a pain perspective and from a That’s My Spine perspective. If it were one and done, sure. But episodically for the rest of my life?

Gonna go with more physical therapy right now. Ponder the needles.

Pain Doc and Chauvinist Economics

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Monday gratefuls: Shadow and her aggressive chewer toys. Perfect. Going in and coming out, less of an issue. Her spirit. Sitting at the Wicked Whisk with Ruth and Gabe. Talking. The spirit of Sound. And the spirit within us. Resonant. Days gone by. My son’s generous spirit. Korea. Murdoch. Luke and Leo coming up today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grandkids

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

One brief shining: In the empty bakery, sold out early of its French pastries, eating the last of the scones, the shortbread almond cookies, and drinking espressos from paper cups, Ruth and Gabe and I talked of parents who died too soon, the excitement of international travel, reincarnation, and the Reformation, as families will on a late Sunday morning when they’re Jewish.

 

Seeing the pain doc today. MRI results. Home P.T. referral. Not too hopeful, but looking for any help I can get. That’s not addictive or surgical. A short list.

Need it even more. The pain has moved across my lower back and now includes my left hip and upper leg. Hope none of it is cancer pain. I don’t think so, but I don’t really know.

Will get a copy of the radiologist’s report. Look for those incidental findings.

 

Luke and Leo coming up this afternoon. Luke will help get my Dell desktop setup. Leo and Shadow can have the backyard, get to know each other.

Once my new desktop functions I plan to introduce Shadow to the stairs. So far she has not learned to go up them and that has confined her to my lower living space. And pretty much me along with her.

I’m a bit reluctant to do it since there’s a whole new world of things to chew upstairs. She’s been really good about the furniture down here. Except for my nightstand. It was not well made.

If she has toys, she prefers them. Most of the time. Like a toddler she embraces distraction. I can put a new toy in front of her and she’ll choose (chews) that over a chair leg.

Right now she has a yellow duck in her mouth, squeaking. Every once in a while, duck held tight, she’ll look up and smile. Warms me.

 

Just a moment: Oh, spare me. Already. Third term floating out there. Can you run the country from a memory unit no matter how high end? Vance runs, then gives the scepter to the Boss. What will there be left to eviscerate?

Do you understand how tariffs raise money for us? Cars will get more expensive. Other goods, too. Inflation will rise. A possible recession. Of which Trump is not afraid. No doubt. All billionaires can continue making money even during a recession. A recession damages labor and those lower on the economic totem pole, i.e., the rest of us.

Reagan practiced supply side, or voodoo economics. Trump practices chauvinist economics and ignores their impact on anything but what his narrow America First agenda prioritizes. Yikes.

Sounds like a planned economy to me. Eh?

 

The Beaver Phase of Dog Development

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow. Kate, always Kate. Snow. Cool night. Throw a Dog a bone. Or a ball. Or a chewed up chew toy. Motion is lotion. Thanks, Diane. Safeway. Cookunity. Ruth and Gabe coming up today. Wicked Whisk.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: MRI

Week kavannah: wu wei

One brief shining: Last night a spiky snow filtered through the screen, settling on my pillow and the part of my head with the least hair, blown on a soft breeze from the north; I turned the electric blanket up to four, snuggled in, and went to sleep.

 

Dog journal: Teething hurts. Puppies pass through a developmental period I think of as the Beaver phase. My nightstand may yet sink a bit lower into the carpet. The coffee table has some damage. The right front leg on my chair. Most of the time I can redirect her energy to a bone, a Kong, a well-chewed toy.

Shadow’s done much less damage than I imagined. She stops when I ask her to or takes whatever distraction is on offer. Also, and most important of all, she does nothing when I leave her alone. This last amazes me and each time I come home to her sleeping beside my chair I throw up a prayer of gratitude to the god of Puppies.

We’ve bonded. Once I get her leash trained, soon, she’ll be with me when I go out. Colorado is the most Dog friendly environment you can imagine. Many restaurants have Water bowls for Dogs. Seating areas where you can dine with your Dog. No frowns or cold stares. Smiles instead.

 

A word about the Aural Journey. It’s in response to Bill Schmidt asking us to queue up some of our favorite songs. Too hard. I went with songs that had strong memories associated with them or ones that evoke deep emotion. If I did the same task right now, five different songs.

In fact. The Cocaine Blues. Ripple by the Dead. Any Gregorian chant. Don’t you need somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane. You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive, multiple singers. Or. One Toke Over the Line. The Times They Are A Changin. El Senor. Won’t Get Fooled Again. Or. Seven Spanish Angels. Pancho and Lefty. Riders in the Sky. Lucille. Honky Tonk Angel.

It’s a fun exercise. What are your five favorite songs?

 

Just a moment: In the first Trump administration I had a routine I called what has the idiot done now. It involved opening the sites for the New York Times and the Washington Post.

No longer. Now I call it what has the malevolent son-of-a-bitch done this morning. Thinking up clever punishments. So and so’s law firm cannot enter federal buildings. What? Increase tariffs just because. Deport. Deport. Deport.

A strategic crypto-currency reserve? The Gulf of America? Not on my map. We gotta have Greenland? The Panama Canal. Goodbye, Europe. Hello, China enemy number one, sole enemy.

His first hundred days. Oh, God.

Songs and Dogs

Spring and the Snow Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Audra. Open-Sided MRI. Chris. Engineers. Angry Chicken. Driving home into the Mountains. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Berriman Mountain. Lenticular Clouds. Cumulus. Cirrus. Rain and Snow.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Magnetism

Week Kavannah:  Ratzon.  Will, desire, pleasure.

One brief shining: Looking into Audra’s eyes, feeling her hand on mine, her thumb moving, not erotic, but intimate as Lorentz forces caused the big machine to pound and grind and whir in rhythmic waves of sound while the magnets created detailed slices of my lumbar spine.

 

Glad that’s over with. Should have adequate information about my lumbar spine. As I noted earlier, there may not be much to do though we can target any therapy with accuracy after this.

Ironically the drive in and out left me hobbling into the house when I got back.

Shadow takes my absence with aplomb. She does not chew things up, poop or pee. She seems to rest quietly beside my chair. A huge bonus. Could be otherwise.

 

Dog journal: Shadow sleeps under the bed at night. I opened the bedroom door a couple of days ago for her. Not perfect. She chews the bed slats, the carpet (which I intend to replace at some point), my nightstand. Doesn’t last long. Impacts my getting to sleep a bit. Worth it since she seems happy back in her original safe place here.

I flagged off Amy this last Tuesday. Didn’t have enough energy for her session and the drive into Sushi Den with Ruth. Chose Ruth. Desensitizing Shadow to the leash does not go well; I need Amy’s guidance. Next Tuesday.

Had her toys in a long wicker basket. Each night I would pick them up, put them back. Over the course of the next day she’d pluck them out, play with them. The used to be chipmunk, purple cat, a long red Kong and a small black one, four different balls including a glow in the dark one, and three individual socks: one of Seoah’s, one of my son’s, and one of mine.

Then she began to chew on the wicker. Going up to the loft to grab a large stainless steel bucket as her next toy bin. Chew on that, Shadow!

 

Just a moment: Bill Schmidt has asked us to load up our favorite songs for the Ancient Brothers. That’s gonna be tough.

The Doors. The Stones. The Beatles. The Animals. The Monkeys. Country Western. 50’s doo wop. Teen anguish songs. The Who. Led Zeppelin. Creedence. The Band. Dylan. Coltrane. Miles Davis. Thelonious Monk. Aaron Copland. George Gershwin.

Let’s do a trial run here. Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane. Wild Horses by the Stones. Satisfaction by the Stones. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band. The Weight by the Band. Venus in Blue Jeans. Teen Angel. Dead Man’s Curve. The House of the Rising Sun by the Animals. Blue Train by Coltrane. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. Ain’t No Grave Gonna Keep My Body Down. Going Down To the River To Pray. When Will the Circle Be Unbroken. See You in September. The Queen of the Silver Dollar. Jolene.

Well. It’s a start.

 

 

Shadow. Open-Sided MRI

Spring and the Snow Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadow, regressing. Sigh. A learning opportunity for me. Amy, coming today. Mood lifters. Open-sided MRI. Tomorrow. On the lower back pain track. Chronic pain. Teaching me something. Marrow bones. Working out. Back on. Mark and his walks in Al Kharj. Western medicine. Eastern medicine. Healing. Healers. Kate, always Kate. Jeffery Goldberg, war planner and editor in chief of the Atlantic.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow chewing her bone

Week Kavannah: Ratzon. Will, desire, pleasure

One brief shining: Throw a dog a bone, a marrow bone, teeth clamp on, grind, worry, scrape, tear and attention becomes total, focus on the bone, like throwing out an interesting idea in a group of Jews.

 

Finished The Black Widow by Daniel Silva and started the next one, House of Spies. An all out fiction, spy, Mossad read. Love these. Haven’t done one in a while. Always trying to be on, figuring out the world, politics, technology, science. Literally, give it a rest, dude.

 

Dog journal: Amy’s coming today. Leash training. I’ve not had much luck this week. Shadow shies away from the leash. Need to get this done so I can walk her in the back, have her practice commands. I also want to take her to the vet and to mussar. Without the leash, pretty tough.

She’s not quite small enough to pick up easily for me. About 30 pounds or so. Gone are the days when I could wrestle a Wolfhound into the backseat if I had to.

Shadow seems to be a night owl. She loves staying out late, not coming in after dark. And yes, that’s a regression. Last night I left her out and went to bed, no reason I should lose sleep. (except for Mountain Lions, but my yard is not conducive to them as hunters.)

When I let her in around 11:30, she saw the open bedroom door and made a quick run for it, got under the bed. Her preferred sleeping spot. Around 7 I felt a soft tongue on my hand. Looked over. A black and tan face smiling at me. You awake, dad?

Now, instead of eating, she’s trying her best to disappear a marrow bone. Sharp, strong teeth on our Shadow.

 

Open-sided MRI. I saw the pain doc on February 19th. Took a full month to finally get an appointment after flubbing by the doctor’s office. Tomorrow. Open-sided MRIs exist for two separate groups: the morbidly obese and the claustrophobic. I’m in the latter category.

With all the imaging I’ve had: bone scans, cts, petscans, x-rays I’ve never had an MRI. Glad to close the loop of available tech. Ha.

Even with excellent data about the cause of my back pain, it may not help. See this recent NYT article: What Works for Lower Back Pain? Not Much

I hope for something that would let me drive more, walk more than a block or two. Otherwise my mobility remains very limited. Sitting. No pain. Walking. Pressing on the accelerator. Pain.

Hunting for paths to joy

Spring and the Snow Moon

Monday gratefuls: Water. Lodgepole Bark, red in Great Sol’s early light. Aspen and their photosynthetic bark. Forlorn Grass, desiccated and brown as the Snow melts. Maxwell Creek. Cub. Blue. North Turkey. Bear. Kate’s. This wide world. All of it. Everyone in it. Daniel Silva. CJ Box. Authors. Poets. Painters. Musicians. Artists.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Working out

Week Kavannah: Ratzon. Will, desire, pleasure.

One brief shining: Realized that Ancientrails resembles my father’s column, Smalltown, USA, in that it focuses on daily life, his with a larger ambit, mine more personal, yet both with an occasional digression into the political or the humorous, printer’s ink and hot lead in both our veins.

 

Dog journal:  Another realization. A different female has me back at a long trained habit, putting down the toilet seat. Kate of course insisted as do women in most homes here. This time though putting down the toilet seat prevents Shadow from drinking out of the magic fountain.

Her ears stand forward. She plays all morning with toys she never puts back after taking them out. Maybe I can train her to do that? Shadow’s all puppy now. Secure in her home, her routines.

Once more. Happy I took the risk.

 

Inner life: Been down, thinking about death with every tweak and pain. Whether all this self care makes any sense. Remembering Judy and Kate both saying, enough.

Then. Come on, dude. Shadow. Friends. Family. The Mountains. Books to read. Movies to watch. Places to go. Ruth and Gabe’s still young lives. My son and Seoah.

Further. Worked out. Mood instantly better. Wonder why I resist this consistent mood lifter. One which has the added benefit of improving my overall health? A puzzle.

Gonna wrestle with this one. All the way until it gives me my Hebrew name, Israel.

In part? I’ve been too serious about my life. Always wanting, maybe faux-needing, to think I have something important, significant to do.

Joy is a religious obligation in Judaism. For good reason. This life, the one freely given, is not meant to be a trudge, a never ending journey of obligation and expectation. It’s meant to be filled with good food, good friends, family. Rich experience. This whole world, this creation, a gift so precious and wonderful. Life itself, a miracle of evolution. Amazing.

Think I’ll back off myself. Lighten up.

 

Just a moment: This morning I’m a happier guy. Peg it to my workout yesterday afternoon and my decision to take a staycation. Read 75% of Daniel Silva’s 16th Gabriel Allon novel, The Black Widow. Plan to read more today.

Subscribed to the Criterion Channel. Plan to start watching movies from it on a regular basis. Watching ghosts, as Paul’s mother described watching classic movies. There’s a cinephile buried in me, but not too deep.

I’m ready for a new pattern to emerge. Will be watching for it as I paint, maybe write a little more. No hurry. Hunting for paths to joy.

Muster Dogs

Spring and the Snow Moon

Sunday gratefuls:  Shadow, the muster dog. Eating. Above ground and taking nourishment. March. April. Spring, on its way, but not yet. Our Aquifer. Cracked granite. Mountains. Altitude. Climbing up to joy.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Muster Dogs

Week Kavannah: Ratzon. Will, desire.

One brief shining: This Shadow who shares my home and my life and my heart would be a muster dog in Australia, a Dog responsible for keeping mobs of Cattle together and moving toward corrals, slinking down low, nipping at hooves, barking as a language between two species, while Shadow and I must find jobs without mustering to keep her keen mind alert.

 

Dog journal: Muster Dogs have their own television show. In Queensland, the same state as Mary’s Brisbane, but much further north, close to New Guinea, muster Dogs replace the familiar herding work of the cowboy out here in the U.S. West. Shadow comes from this line of working Dogs.

Which means I have to find jobs for her. Training is a job and so is following the training. I imagine we have much more in our future life together.

Might get my buddy Vince to build some agility course apparatus, too. We’ll see.

I am already teaching her words. Water. Food. Outside. Toy. Not commands, communication. She may be able to develop a large vocabulary.

I’ve probably been inside too long. Might be cabin fever gnawing at my sense of ease. Buddy Mark Odegard takes care of cabin fever. Mexico. Hawai’i. Returns refreshed, ready to worry the inner bark of the Mulberry Tree into a fibrous paper.

How, I wonder, could I take a staycation, achieve some of those results. Spend all week reading fiction, going out to eat, taking drives in the Mountains. Maybe up to the loft to paint, do sumi-e? Write poetry. Quit thinking about medicine, disease, discomfort for a full week. Sounds sorta nice doesn’t it? Might do it this week. If it works well, maybe a fortnight.

Shift things up.

 

Just a moment: Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts. Trump Thinks He Can Win a War Against the Courts. He’s Deluded. Migrants Deported to Panama Ask: ‘Where Am I Going to Go?’ How DOGE is making government almost comically inefficient. Autocrats worldwide rolling back rights and rule of law — and citing Trump’s example. New Trump memo seen as threat to lawyers, attempt to scare off lawsuits. Putin commissioned a ‘beautiful portrait’ of Trump, U.S. envoy says.

Headlines in today’s New York Times and Washington Post. One day’s worth. The takeaway for me? Puzzlement. Frustration. Anger. Sadness.

How about the U.S. making the world safe for autocrats? Is that a rallying cry you can get behind? Me neither.

Or a President who has convinced Congress to put itself in handcuffs now taking on the Judiciary. A situation beyond the American experience.

Reminds me of a favorite kid’s game: King of the Hill. Fight your way to the top. Keep the other kids off. Declare yourself King.

 

 

A Shadow in my Life

Spring and the Snow Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Zornberg. Golden Calf. Talmud Torah. Luke and Leo, coming for a visit. Cool night. Shadow. Regression. Filling the swamp. Mastery. Death. Cancer. Back pain. Ruth, turning 19. Gabe, a junior. Mussar. Kavannah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Equanimity

Week Kavannah: Ratzon. Will, desire. [jealousy, envy]

One brief shining: How do you count the feeling, fleeting, that carries the mood of joy at Great Sol rising from behind the turning Earth; or, the pulse of emotion as light fades behind Black Mountain, another Mountain night suddenly upon you, one carrying a nostalgia perhaps for the light or a long ago yesterday.

Dog journal: I’ve spent the last few weeks majoring in Shadow. Shadow life. Shadow food. Shadow training. Shadow exasperation. Shadow induced laughter.

A lot of progress in so short a time. From chewing my oxygen tubing and my electric blanket cord to tossing socks in the air, tearing them apart. From hiding behind the coffee table to moving about the downstairs freely. Eating well. Alert.

Ears now flopped over in front, no longer pinned back. Our communication level advancing. Then, regressing. Training with Amy. Ginny and Janice’s kind help.

One bed destroyed, each bit of soft material wrenched out through holes made with sharp puppy teeth. One bed yet unpacked, awaiting a less violent reception.

A Shadow has come over my life and brought me joy.

Glad she’s here. Fretting about weight loss, 7 pounds in a few months. Brings those intimations of mortality, always close, up into my day. Shadow shenanigans making me look up. Not today, dark master. Not today.

Maybe I should try throwing a soft rabbit toy high in the air with my teeth. Works for her.

Had breakfast with Alan yesterday at the Bagelry. A Grateful Dead themed joint. The Evergreen Chorale in which he sings will do performances of Aaron Copeland’s American Songs next week. They also travel in June to NYC to sing, with other Chorale’s, in Carnegie Hall. Hooyah.

Discovered that the drive, breakfast, and getting gas for Ruby tweaked my back enough for an unusual midday Tramadol. Mistake. A two hour nap and a fuzzy afternoon. Pain is better than that. At least so far.

Also discovered that my MRI referral had been received, but to a provider that only had closed machines and claustrophobic me requires an open one. Sigh. Back to the beginning on that one.

I find Shadow and her care, right now, drains most of the remaining energy I have after domestic tasks like working out, prepping and eating meals, doing the taxes. That sort of thing.

This drain will not last as she matures, our relationship deepens, and our mutual understanding grows. For now though…

 

Just a moment: Blowing up Teslas, eh. I get it. I mean, Elon. Who is, as a Daily Show comedian reminded us all, an African American. An Afrikaner. With his fingers deep in the American Pie.

Want to say I disapprove. And the Midwest, middle class, nice white boy part of me-in other words most of me-does. Even so…