Imbolc and The Moon of 3/4’s
Friday gratefuls: David Sanders. You’re the most articulate person I’ve ever met. Another person the night before, someone I admire: you’re the man I want to become. Geez. Yet. Nice, too. Therapy. Again. For me. For Ruth. Therapy Nation. Languishing. Mourning. Grieving. Bright Sun. Blue Sky. Black Mountain. Wireless mouse and keyboard. Wow.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth and Seoah
Living. As far as I know, it beats dying.
Noticed my ax sitting near the window. Behind it is a painting, a Renaissance replica, in the shape of a cross. Jesus crucified. Above them hangs the red dragon on a green and white background, the flag of Wales. All the way on the bookshelf’s top is a human skull, an anatomy lesson tool. Up there, too, is a seven candle menorah, a replica of the Temple Menorah from the First Temple.
The ax I can no longer wield. Too weak. Poor stamina. The painting I love as art and appreciate as metaphor. The flag is a roots thing. Captain Ellis from Denbigh,Wales. Our Welsh forefather. Though. None of my genetic work has teased out any Welsh blood. The skull. Not the only one. A beaver, a black bear, a Sabre tooth tiger (faux, but still cool). What lies beneath.
Ruth returned home. Spent the last two days with me. She looks much better, less stressed. Medication changes. More knowledge about how to self regulate. A volunteer turn on her part which suggests a much higher likelihood of benefit. She was nervous about going back to school today. As she often says, Makes sense.
Took her, Gabe, and Jon to Katsu Ramen. Was gonna be Domo, Ruth’s favorite, but it’s closed due to omicron. This was her 15th birthday meal. From last year. I took Gabe to his favorite, Benihana, last month. This little family. Sweet and, it seems, taking steps to heal from years of trauma physical and trauma emotional.
A good time together then I drove back home, all the way across the Denver metro and up the hill to Shadow Mountain.
Rigel. Not eating. Won’t let me give me her pills. I called a different vet, a local home call vet who does acupuncture, other things. We’ll see if she can help. Rigel also occasionally retches, like there’s something stuck in her throat. I don’t know what’s going on. She’s gone to the door to the Otherworld many times and always turned around and walked back. I’m neither hopeful nor despairing. Today, she’s alive. I’ll do what I can today.
Had my first therapy appointment in many years yesterday. Dr. David Sanders, who founded the Kabbalah Experience and teaches the class on the Sefer Yetzirah that I’m taking right now. We met on zoom. Which I preferred to going in, wearing masks. Trying to hear.
Some tears. Talking about Kate. About our life together, our love, our commitment to each other’s growth. Focusing on life after Kate. As David asked, “What does this 74 year old man have left to do with his life?” Exactly.
I’m paying the bill myself. No insurance. Because I want to. May be weird, but it makes me feel good. And I can. Feels more like its mine, not mine and the damned Advantage Care. No pleading for help. Getting it.
All boxes of kitchen stuff off the common room floor. Ruth won the contest. Common Room. A good one. The Common Room is a spot where we can gather, enjoy a fire in the fireplace, have a meal. Be together. Congratulations to Ruth!
Feeling on the cusp of change. But, I’ve felt that way for a while. Even so. A sort of forward leaning, yet in the moment feeling.
May sit in my new rocker a while today. Read. Maybe even light a fire. I want to read even more and I hope this new furniture arrangement in the Common Room will encourage that for me.
Enough for today. See you on the flip side.
Saturday gratefuls: Award Winning Pet Grooming. Beautiful Rigel. Shaggy Sheep’s carnitas taco. South Park and the Continental Divide. Beautiful with Snow. McKesson Biologic. Erleada. Happy Camper. Cheeba Chews. Making dreams come. Driving on a Snow packed highway. Like old times. Park County. The Mountains. The Valleys. The blue, blue Sky. Warmer. Getting stuff done.
In a very real sense I don’t live in Colorado, I live in the Rocky Mountains. Colorado is the Denver Metro, the big ranches on the Eastern Plains, and the even bigger ranches in the Western part of the state. Here the dominant reality is Mountains. Streams. Valleys. Pines and Aspen. Mule Deer, Moose, Elk. Mountain Lions and Marmosets. Sudden changes in weather that can breathe bone chilling cold, bursts of vehicle covering Snow, hot and dry winds, and glorious clear blue Sky.
Friday gratefuls: Racism. Anti-Semitism. Sexism. Caste consciousness. Hate. Love. Justice. Resistance. Struggle. Le lucha. The long dureé. Vince. Snow. Ruth and her commitment to herself. Jon and his love for her. Betty Whiteout and Ctr Salt Delete, names for Minnesota Snowplows.
Started putting things in cabinets and drawers. Gonna have to get creative since I lost two drawers in the remodel. Going to the container store tomorrow. Pots, pans, dishes, bowls, cups, infrequently used items like soup tureen, large serving dishes, punch bowl, even appliances will have plenty of room. Towels and dishrags, too. Often used items like forks and spoons and steak knives, spatulas, tongs, wooden spoons, as well. But the not so often used things like thermometers, Kate’s extensive collection of single use kitchen devices, e.g. cherrypitter, pomegranate deseeder, not so much. I look forward to solving this problem. Seriously.
Got to take Rigel to Bailey today for Award Winning Pet Grooming. Gonna go first to 
Felt a sag in my excitement about the new kitchen as I start to reorganize it. Realized it was the midday blues. Gonna get back to exercising, starting today. Better energy when I work out. Was gonna go to On the Move Fitness, but wrote Deb a note and said, “I’ve got the Omicron jitters. Let’s schedule a zoom session.” Probably over cautious. But. I’m not now, nor have I been sick for the last two years. In less you count prostate cancer, of course.
Wednesday gratefuls: David Sanders. Rebecca. Claire. Bonnie. Elisa. Snow. Coming down hard. Shingles vaccination. Safeway pickup. Rigel’s meds. Kep’s good appetite. Kabbalah Experience. Their classes. The kitchen. Mostly remodeled. The Mountain roads in the Snow.
It also allows for the sort of love I have with Kep and Rigel, with my ancient brothers, with Jon, Ruth, and Gabe. The sort of love that CBE has shown to me.
Next up tomorrow: getting started on kitchen reorganization. I plan to savor the opportunity to organize plates and silverware, herbs and spices, bread box and coffee maker. Getting them in places that will not recreate the clutter I had before the work began. When I see how long that will take, not long I imagine, I’ll call Modern Bungalow and schedule the furniture delivery.
The ADL’s comments on these revisions, which I have read and with which I agree, make me remember the adage that history is written by winners. While this may be true in the short term, the job of historians and educators is to balance the winner’s version with the facts of how others were affected by the winner’s victories.
Tuesday gratefuls: Winds. Swaying Lodgepoles. Cold and Snow coming. Polar Vortex slumping all the way down to Shadow Mountain. Bowe and his work today. Fatigue. Erleada. Mighty chemicals fighting prostate cancer on my behalf. The Assistance Fund. Cheese curds from Wisconsin Cheese Brothers. Night. Sleep. Electric blanket. Pillow. Kep and Rigel with me.
The North Node is the “cure” to the troubles of the South Node. If, like me, you have a South Node in Sagittarius, the North Node, directly across the face of the natal chart clock, is in Gemini. If I came into this life trailing wispy baggage of dogmatism, dark magic, rigid certainty, (all likely as dark sides of Sagittarius) then, the Gemini positives of listening and learning from others will help free me from that baggage. I’ll become a more well-rounded, healthy person.
The astrology class has begun to make more sense. Part way into the third class, not bad. I learned the symbols for the Planets and the Sun signs. Learning what the houses suggest in a reading will take me a bit longer. The aspects? That’s a bit further away for me. But I’m making progress.
This is heady stuff. Right up my alley. The focus right now is on the nature of language and letters and words. A lot of this class proceeds by story, a common way of learning in the Jewish world. Here’s one story from today’s class:
The focus for this class was that last sentence. The flying letters returning to their point of origin. What does it mean? It begins a conversation about the origin of the alphabet (alef-bet, the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet), the relation of letters to word, words to reality. The letters flew? Where did they go? I thought they went to the second tablet, the one Moses brought down from Sinai. Apparently I was in agreement with the Talmud. But there was also a middle point, a sort of letter and word limbo, where they resided for a bit.
I love that Jews love learning. And offer so many opportunities. A rich playground for a guy like me. Why am I studying this? I don’t know. It’s interesting. It’s complex. It bonds me to different groups of people, some living in New Mexico, D.C., Denver, the Mountains.
Dropped Kep off at Sano at 7:30 this morning. Drove down Shadow Mountain in a medium intensity Snow. Those Blizzaks grip the Snow. Much better than that damned Ice. Which I avoid even on level Ground. Up here, I just don’t move when it’s icy.
Start working out again. That’s body level prozac. Keep learning, keep studying. That’s mind level prozac. Lean into wu wei, that’s spiritual level prozac. And call me in the morning.