• Category Archives Aging

  • A Family and Friends Friday

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.


    Aging Dogs Family Fourth Phase Friends

  • An Ode to Old

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Snow Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Ana. Furball Cleaning. Alan. Lucille’s. Learning a new city. Denver. Pain Perdu. Shadow. Amy, the trainer. Hospice work in Washington County, Maine. Paul. Cousin Donald. His cracked team of ideologues and greedy billionaires. Foxes. Henhouses. Black Bears and Mountain Lions. Red Flag days. High Winds. Low humidity. Dry fuel. The Wildland Urban Interface, the WUI. My home.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Getting lost

    Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.

    One brief shining: Alan and I sat outside at Lucille’s, the inside din of pans and loud conversations too much, the weather 70 degrees and a big fire in their fire pit combined with the sun for comfort while I ordered chicory coffee, French toast, a poached Egg to go with my hot Louisiana sausage, enjoying my long term friendship with Alan.

     

    Need to say a few things about aging and being old. Do not shy away from the truths of aging. It’s hard. Often.

    Fingers might hurt from rheumatoid arthritis. That knee that buckles when you get out of the car. What’s that? You can’t hear as well. Me, too!

    You might have Sjogren’s syndrome which dries out essential tissues. Your eyes might need cataract surgery or cornea transplants. Balance may not be what it once was. A problem with brittle bones from osteopenia or osteoporosis.

    What’s up, too, with all that packaging? The heaviness of things that used to be light. Or the shortness of breath.

    Here’s what I have to say about all of those. No fun. No fun at all. No romanticizing. These problems, like the ache in my back right now or the prostate cancer, make life more challenging, less easy. Every day. Sometimes every hour.

    Yet most cultures, not ours but most, have honored, even revered those who grew old. Elders. Sages. Wise ones. The one who knows the stories, the knowledge of plants, the ways of battle and of peace. The grandmother who councils young mothers. The ones who bless and counsel. Who settle disputes, pass judgment.

    Where does that leave us, the old ones of our synagogues and neighborhoods? OK, boomer. Not a request for advice. A slight aimed at those of us in the graying baby boom, some of us now in our late seventies.

    I don’t want to be a gray panther, a senior Olympian, a ripped octogenarian. A silver fox or a pickleball champ. Good thing, too. Since I’m unlikely to fit any of those American Immortal archetypes.

    I say we claim the role of elder. Like Tom bringing the young men together. Like Bill and his daily mitzvahs. Like Ode and Imogen. Like the Hospice work Paul does.

    Let’s show that the real challenges of aging, as with all elders, only prove the road, the long road we have taken. The scars from hard won lessons, loves won and lost. Bullies faced down. Hard relationships resolved. Children raised.

    Let us claim through our actions the role we have earned. We cannot, in other words, abdicate now to the golf course or the television or the trout stream. Especially at this time when the world needs us. Please.

     

     


    Aging Fourth Phase US History

  • Still Learning

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Snow Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Shadow. Cookunity. Cold night. Drinking the Golden Calf. Midrash. Torah. Religion and its ignorers. Ginny and Janice. Tethering. Salmon and white Bean salad. Battle Mountain, Joe Pickett. The many sided crystal of perspective. Lenovo laptop.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Midrash

    Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.

    Practice: Working on Seed Keepers, Seed Savers

    One brief shining: Working with AI, an odd by which I mean new and novel experience, to give form to a Seed Keeper’s Almanac, a self-help manual to recreate an America always longed-for, yet never lived in, a hybrid format in paper and on the web, replenished and renewed by its users, focused on dreaming America as neither an utopia, nor as a replica of a faux golden age, rather as a stewpot where different ingredients in different amounts blend together into a powerful, compassionate whole.

     

    An issue for me. How to reconcile my lower energy, dog-distracted, hermit favoring life with a steady felt need to stand upright in this most ridiculous and chaotic of times. Not be absent.

    I write, yes. I talk with friends and family, reinforcing their desires to get out there and do something. I’m part of a religious community dedicated to a just and compassionate world. Yet. What is mine to do?

    The more I futz with chatbotgpt, the more I find possibility in the idea, the bringing into reality of a self-help manual for that world I’ve worked for my whole life. A connected hermit. A dog-distracted but still alert old guy. Using my energy as I can.

     

    Thinking about those isolated from this dystopian new world disorder. Trappist Monks in the Gethsemane Abbey. Amish families around Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Subsistence farmers. Those of us old folks with adequate financial resources. (mostly. Though Social Security and Medicare…) Expatriates like Mary and Mark. Wilderness dwellers in the North Woods, in the Mountain Ranges of this great land. Oddly perhaps some Native American nations. Probably some recluses and communal living folks far off the grid.

    And, of course, the oligarchs.

    The rest, even cousin Donald’s base. Nope. Vulnerable. Without cover. That includes my son and Seoah. Ruth and Gabe. Luke. Ginny and Janice. Anyone unfortunate enough to be poor. Or different in a way that the oligarchs and their tattered army dislike.

    This struggle will continue for the rest of my life. That alone means something to me. A need to not kneel. Not acquiesce. A need to do what only I can do. Now.

     

    Just a moment: I had a no good week in part. Feeling down, dog defeated. Weak in body and mind. Took wrassling and seeing others to bring myself back to level.

    That’s ok, though. Learning how to live through the troughs as well as the highs is a key lesson. OK. Learning to live through the occasional abyss as well as the getting along just fine days. Glad I’ve advanced enough for that.

    Back to working out. For example…

     


    Aging Dogs Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Seed Keepers US History

  • They Call it Puppy Love

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the full Snow Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits. Shadow. Ginny and Janice. Luna and Annie. Leo. Gracie. My Lodgepole companion. The crooked Aspen outside my bedroom. The Mountain Lion family near Morrison. Black Bears. Soon. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox. Abert’s Squirrels. Red Squirrels. Rabbits. Voles. Mice. Marmots.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild Neighbors

    Week Kavannah:  Yirah. Awe.

    One brief shining: Tis an odd season this with taxes due next month, the wearing of the green celebrating St. Patrick who took Irish Wolfhounds to the Pope, big Snows covering basketball tourney roads, and hints of Spring with resurrection and liberation waiting to manifest.

     

    Always of two desires in these months. Crack wind, Winter blow, Snow. Stay longer. Fire in the fireplace. A good book. Cold nights for sleeping. Yes.

    Open vistas. Clear Skies. Mountain Wildflowers. Aspen Catkins. Lodgepole Anthers. Rabbit families. Chipmunks. Greening Willows and Dogwood. Mountain Streams in full voice, tumbling and turning. A sense of possibility strong in the Air. Yes.

    Dog journal: If you’ve never had a skittish puppy lay at your feet, head rested on your slipper. If you’ve never had a puppy wriggle up the side of your leg and look you in the eye with, yes, puppy love. If you’ve never had a puppy. I wish you had.

    Shadow incarnates love. Adoration. Companionship. Even the struggles and the outright exhaustion. All part of the joy.

    Puppies, like Wildflowers and Spring, remind us of the Great Wheel, Maiden-Mother-Crone, life begetting life. Old age and youth running next to each other in partnership. With love.

    Shadow. A small streak of black fur bounding through Snow drifts, racing around the perimeter, the fence line, all young muscle and limber movement, all newness. A potion to ease the aching joints and rigidity of 78 year old bones.

     

    Just a moment: I keep finding Seeds. Books about Seeds. Seed-Keepers. Seed Savers Exchange Catalogue. Seeds. The Seed Vault in Svalbard. Chapters in the Light-Eaters. Lectures in online botany classes.

    Recalling the spiny nubbin of a Beet Seed. The delicate Carrot Seed. The thick Pea. The Soil in an Andover raised bed leavened with compost and top soil, organic chemicals. Pressing the Seeds into the Soil. Feeling a frisson of future salads, side dishes.

    In remembering these things a sort of strange hope rises. That we, the faded flowers, now the Seed heads of yesterday’s generational garden will leave our Seeds of love, justice, and compassion to grow in the rich Earth of this once and future nation.

    Maybe we could create a Seed Catalogue for our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren. Even a Seed Savers Exchange for the ideas and actions that still hold the promise of a victory garden for diversity, for equality, for shared wealth and opportunity.

    Or a nation in exile limned in a new Whole Earth catalogue for those of us who hold fast to the notion that rapaciousness, cruelty, mockery, and misogyny have no place in America’s fields and beds. Plant these instead, these seeds of liberty and freedom with their attendant responsibilities.

    Plant this seed of love and that one of compassion. Fertilize with chi, illuminate with ohr, moisten with joy.


    Aging Dogs Feelings Fourth Phase Garden Great Wheel Great Work Politics Wild Neighbors

  • Awe as life slowly draws to a close

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Snow Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: DST. Ha. Shadow and her toys. Stubbornness. Seoah and her study of English. Joanne. Cool nights. Talmud Torah. Sefaria. Jamie. Luke and Leo. Computer help. Cookunity, Blackened Shrimp and Creamy Grits. Ways of eating. Regret. Remorse. Poets. Wendell Berry. Regenerative agriculture. The Andover years. Kate, always Kate.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sunseen

    Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

    One brief shining: Shadow moves her neck in the familiar prey killing way, holding tight and shaking hard, again, again, as she burrows her way into her brand new bed, filling the area around her with soft fluffs of white filler and small bits of cutup rubber foam. Another foe vanquished.

     

    Joanne called last night, after Havdalah, to thank me for her Shabbos meal, bean and vegetable and chicken soup. Kind of her. We talked about compost Worms, ninja weeders, and the joys of Mountain living.

     

    I’m up early, earlier than I want due to the imperial clock and its demands on my time. The air-fryer clock and the turtle clock have now returned to the correct time. You might have one or two such clocks. Most make the transition thanks to computer based chronoworkings. Some don’t. A couple I never change so they return to instant utility on these great wakin’ up mornings once a year.

    Most of you know my feelings on this matter so I won’t bore you.

    How can I keep from yawning?

     

    My practice for regret and remorse goes like this. Watch through the day for actions I regret, omissions of action, too. Name them and acknowledge the regret. Example: yesterday I didn’t work out. I regret that choice. What comes next? Remorse. OK. If I don’t want to repeat that regret, what could I do? I chose lean into netzach, perseverance and grit. When I consider working out today, I will raise netzach up, too. A reminder.

    My practice for yirah. Sit quietly. Close my eyes. Breathe slowly. Pay attention to the sounds. Shadow chewing on her toy. The mini-split fan. A car passing on Black Mountain Drive. Open my eyes. See Shadow move toward her food. Begin to eat. Lodgepoles in the back with Snow piled up around their Trunks. The Oriental carpets. My hands curved over the keyboard.

    Acknowledge the wonder, the intricate dance that is my immediate world.

     

    Just a moment: Ancient Brothers today on end of life planning. Not a fun topic, but an important one. Why? Because good end of life planning frees up life right now. No worries about who’s responsible for what. What will happen as health deteriorates.

    Surprised me by being both a pragmatic prod to each of us and a way of joining hands as we walk this final ancientrail together. We are not alone.

    How many of us have a context where we can discuss a topic like this in a sober, respectful fashion? Not many, I image. Gratitude to Bill, Tom, and Paul for sharing their work to date.

     


    Aging Ancient Brothers Feelings Fourth Phase Health Judaism Shadow Mountain

  • Aging Resistance

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the 78th Birthday Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Diane, healing. New computer getting setup. New ottoman. Studying parsha Bo. With Zohar and Zornberg. Finished reading Conclave. Now another Gray Man. PSA stable. Kidney functions a bit off. A1-C a bit high. Nothing too concerning to me. Vince. Alan coming to Conifer this morning. Talking with Tom. My life as a conversational flaneur. Moods. Emotions. Art Green. My son and Seoah coming. A birthday this month. Year of the Snake.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mussar friends

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Rachamim, compassion  practice-listen for the melody of the other

    One brief shining: Aging resistance, a less frenzied, hot breath sorta response, a more relaxed, we can survive this attitude, yet still feeling to me like my way is to call out certain actions, especially those injurious to the planet and vulnerable people, while also tending these seed packets: pluralism, globalism, economic and racial justice, feminism, importance of the common good, support for the individual and individualism.

     

    This political disaster feels different from the first Trump infection. Even though he may be sort of more organized with Plan 2025 held in his French fry greasy hand, his Burger King kid’s meal crown slouched rakishly on his orange haired head, and even though he and his cronies have-who can pass up the sports metaphor, football!-flooded the zone; as someone I read in the Washington Post said this is the imitation of competence. In reality it’s a scatter shot series of nods to the base: no to birthright citizenship, freeze all Federal money going out, hammer General Milley, Hegsteth, Kennedy, Gabbard.

    This is not governing. It’s the politics of petty revenge. We’ll have to wait for days, those famous first hundred days, to see the metamorphosis, if any, of our nation’s institution. At some point the executive order Sharpie, a Sharpie!, will have to rest and cousin Donald will have to try for legislation. Court fights will be ongoing. We don’t know what’s happening quite yet.

    This much I do know. My world, a world in which meanness and cruelty have a bad connotation, a world where the American dream of a people joined together by adherence to the idea of equal opportunity, equality before the law, of a nation that welcomes the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free, will not perish.

    We will tend with care the seeds of this remarkable and yes flawed experiment. Seeds like the Constitution. Also flawed, yet a reminder in its amendments and in the expansion of its protection through the courts, that it is our flawed document. Seeds like FDR’s New Deal which expanded the Federal Government’s role as protector of the least of those among us. Seeds like our liberal Christian churches, synagogues, mosques, Buddhist temples and retreat centers. Seeds like our academic institutions, like the NIH and the CDC. Seeds like our real history: slavery, slaughter of the indigenous, colonialism and those who have stood against these sins of our fathers and mothers now passed down to us the third and fourth and fifth and sixth generations.

    And we will tend to ourselves and each other. Not allowing despair to take hold for too long. Encouraging the forms of declaring our dream still alive and vibrant. Supporting those who take up direct action. Donating funds. Showing up at protests and marches. Maybe forming bookclubs that focus on American history, on the American renaissance, on American authors of all colors, gender preferences, and religious backgrounds.

    We are not down. We are not out. Our dream still guides this nation. We just have to  help people wake up to the chances to embrace it.


    Aging Commentary on the news Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. US History

  • Aging and its cultured despisers

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Phonak. Amy. Mile High Hearing. All body workout today. The Outpost. Emunah. Snow. Cold. A Mountain Winter. Still light on Snow. The Churning of the Sea of Milk. Angkor Wat. Siem Reap. Cambodia. The Mekong. Brother Mark on his way to Saudi. Eleanor, the Dog. Tara. Friendship. Men. CBE.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Eleanor, fluffy kind energy

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 7th life: Understanding. Bina

    One brief shining: How many moments of wind carrying cold air over my bald head have to happen for me to have a good night’s sleep; or, how high do I have turn up the electric blanket which pleases me for reasons I cannot define; or, how much peace in my stomach and in my heart leads my mind into slowing down and slipping away into human sleep mode.

     

    Here is the illustration inspired by Hokusai, depicting the essence of aging and Elderhood in a serene, nature-filled setting.

    OK. Here’s a new pet peeve. Super agers. No, I’m not dissing them, whomever they are, for having won a genetic or geographic (blue zones) or good luck lottery. Good for them. Banners and candles and whatever else goes with it. Huzzah! Might we learn something valuable from their lives? I suppose so.

    No. The peeve I have lies in the way we valorize certain individuals, lift them up as exemplars for what aging can be. That can have the effect, like all the hoohah about diet and exercise, of diminishing the perfectly normal aging most of us will experience.

    The vast, vast bulk of us, somewhere north of 99.9% I imagine, live our lives doing the best we can, making decisions that impact our overall health in many ways, some good some not so good and often living out the consequences of a genetic heritage in which we had no choice.

    Super agers. Centenarians. The tail of the bell curve, the one sloping to the right. Are they our role models? What about the poor bastards on the other end of the curve with disabilities of all kinds. With limited resources to realize the dreams of the American Immortal.

    I do not consider myself poor because I have less money than Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. And more importantly I don’t want to have that money. It’s not a perfect analogy of course.

    Would l want to have the supple brain and over-70 Olympian’s body of these wunderkind of the Sun City set? Yes. I would. Didn’t happen for me. Am I a less good person, is my aging somehow less than? No. I’m at 77 and-here’s the comparison I like-above ground and taking nourishment.

    What I’m pleading for here is a way to accept and celebrate aging in all its varieties, all its super and non-super manifestations. There’s no one way to do aging right. There’s your way and my way and, yes, the way of the .001%. Everybody who manages to slip past, say 65, deserves the honor and recognition of Elderhood, something our society, our individualistic, youth oriented, success infested society has drained away from us. To its peril.

    End of rant.


    Aging Feelings Fourth Phase

  • May you feel safe and secure

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Sunday gratefuls: Great Sol warming the Snow until it rises into Air. Lodgepole Branches almost cleared. Colorado Winters. A backyard though with 20″ or so piled around the Lodgepole Trunks. Headlines and shaking heads. Gathering ourselves for what must come next.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jackie

    Kavannah: contentment and joy

    One brief shining: Studied Torah yesterday online with Jamie and Luke and Irene, Avram and Sarai leaving Ur of the Chaldeas and heading off into the unknown, Avram’s thoughts gathered from wondering about the Stars and their origins pushing them out of a place where Gods had faces and could be carried from place to place into a place and an encounter with a world and life unknown to them.

     

    Yes, a dangerous, felonious, misogynist who runs with a crowd of would be Kluxers has changed again the double meaning of the White House. A brute fact as philosophers and scientists alike would say. Yes, he has shown the world a decided and never gone shadow side of American life. Some of us fear the other and when pressed hard enough by circumstance dire or perceived to be so we allow it to surface, even take control.

    In this election both sides. Both sides feared. Feared the other and allowed our shadow sides to guide us through the political maneuvering that led to Nov. 5, 2024. Those of us who thought long red tie guy was the problem let our fear out as scorn, as dismissal, as heads shaking. No, it can’t happen. They’re too stupid and he’s too venal.

    The other side feared us, too. Because they thought we might win again, continue pressing on them the things they feared. Symbolized by trans folks, LBGT folk, women who demanded control over their bodies and their lives, strangers piling across the borders hoping for some of what they held onto so tenuously.

    The oligarchs had lessons in Europe about how to play their instruments. The cello of immigrants diluting and cheating. The oboe of women’s traditional roles. The drums of racial purity. The piccolo of blood and soil nationalism. Violin cadenzas of sexual normality.

    And we stood aside, complacent in our truth. Holding onto disparagement of the ignorant others. Wrapped in our cloaks of decency and righteousness. In that sense true elites. An aristocracy bred of our ignorance of the economic lives of others.

    We ignored economic hardship of those essential workers. Remember them? The grocery clerk. The convenience store worker. The bus driver. The Amazon warehouse employee. The police officer and the snowplow driver. The former factory worker turned Walmart greeter or holding down a McJob.

    And we lost our way.

    I hope the seed-keepers among us can call to mind the mother aghast at her supermarket receipt. The commuter who cringes at the cost of yet another tank full of gasoline. The renter whose housing costs rises into a choice between home and food. The anguish of one facing illness only to become burdened by regular unpayable bills showing up in the mail.

    Long red tie guy has promised to cure these ills. He will not. He cannot because his fealty is to his narrow slice of peers, people who do not have these problems. He only played the Piper’s tune. The Billionaires March instead is what he hears and follows.

    There are miles to go. Miles to go before we sleep and as we walk each other home let those miles be filled with love, justice, and compassion. Or, as a group of my friends presciently claimed years ago: Leadership.

     

     

     


    Aging Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Shadow Mountain

  • An American Sannyasa

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Friday gratefuls: Snow, and more Snow on the way. Harris and Waltz. Liberals. And, radicals. Politics. Changing in big ways. History. Always moving and shifting. The One, taking it all in and forming a new world. Cold nights. Diane. Tom. Irv. Paul. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Shadow Mountain. A Snow globe week.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Purpose

    Kavannah for election week: contentment and joy

    One brief shining: May have seemed odd to you that I chose contentment and joy as my intentions for election week, that most fractious and unhappy of weeks for one side or another, may have seemed odd especially to have continued with them after the elevation of an anti-liberal mean of our collective culture; yet, I have found them good for me, instead of being angry about a situation now beyond my reach, I have been able to draw to myself a lesson about my life’s purpose.

     

    A while back I borrowed the idea of a fourth phase of life from the Hindus.* I don’t define it in the same way, but I find the idea of a stage after retirement-our version of the forest dweller stage-makes sense.

    The commonality between my view and Hinduism’s lies in death and acceptance. Readiness for death and seeing it as not only somewhat imminent, but as welcome.

    This week I not only learned that the orange one will be our next President. I also learned that my cancer is not aggressive, and not hormone resistant. Which gives me a longer possible lifespan. And, I’m glad. Even so. Death lies over the horizon, but not nearly as far as it used to.

    I would not know if I was fully enlightened and I’m not detached. I may have some wisdom but that’s for others to know, not me.

    The rise of a populist anti-liberal agenda, a rise that came with unexpected force, has clarified my fourth phase. Though I am a Forest dweller and though that remains a central part of who I am, I passed, as I said a week or so ago, into Sannyasa when diagnosed with prostate cancer. Over the almost ten years since then I’ve been conflicted at a core level.

    Some of the conflicts. In but not of Judaism. No longer an activist but feeling like I should be one. Wanting to hike in the mountains but being constrained first by shortness of breath, now by a gimpy back too. Wanting to travel more. But. See s.o.b and back. Learning to live without Kate and without dogs.

    Resolutions. Converted to Judaism. Election 2024 has made see my role in culture and politics. I am a seed-keeper, not an activist anymore. (If this isn’t cultural appropriation. I hope not because it fits so well.) Hiking and traveling. Can do some with good drugs and patience, but it’s never gonna be easy for me again. I have lived into a life without Kate and without dogs. Difficult, of course. At times it still is. Yet I have a Herme Harari Israel life defined now:  An introverted Mountain man who struggles with God. However you want to fill the God bucket. Or, even if you want to live it empty.

    So I will continue to write. Continue to read. Continue to study mussar and be with my CBE friends. Continue to love them and my other friends and family. All this is enough for me. My fourth phase. An American Sannyasa.

     

    *Brahmacharya The student stage, when one focuses on learning and gaining knowledge. This stage is the time before puberty and up until marriage.

    Grihastha The householder stage, when one is occupied with family and household matters. This stage is when one starts a family and maintains a healthy marriage.

    Vanaprastha The forest dweller stage, when one retires from business as usual.

    Sannyasa The stage of renunciation, when one is wise and fully enlightened, detached from everything, and ready for death. A Sannyasi is a religious ascetic who has renounced the world by performing their own funeral and abandoning all claims to social or family standing. 


    Aging Asia Fourth Phase Health Judaism Mountains Seek-Keepers Shadow Mountain US History

  • Contentment and Joy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Monday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Snow. 4-5 inches. Powder. Or, as the skiers say: Pow. Vikings win. The Ancient Brothers. Walking Each Other Home. Mark in K.L. The Brickfields. The lives of all the Wild Neighbors. Everywhere. And, all the domesticated Animals. The Great Wheel. The Tarot. Kabbalah. Living in joy. Cosmic voids. Sculpture. Rodin. Brancusi.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: First substantial Snow of the season

    Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

    One brief shining: At night I crank open the casement window over my bed, letting in the  smell of Lodgepoles and Grass as the Night Air streams over my head, when Snow begins to fall like it did last night Snowflakes come through the screen, shower me in a light experience of the weather outside, and often, like last night, make the window hard to close.

     

    Without knowing. Without certainty. I claim today my joy and my contentment. I seek today those moments that delight my heart, tickle my inner child. Like my Lodgepole Companion holding the powdery Snow as an early seasonal decoration. Thinking of lights, Christmas and Diwali and Hanukah and Kwanza and Yule. Remembering sliding down the hill at the end of Monroe Street and taking my sled over the jumps we kids created. Of the farm outside of Nevis, Minnesota on a Snowy day, air-tight stove crackling with good, dense Oak logs, the cook stove boiling water for coffee. Of standing by the Shadow Mountain kitchen window with Kate by my side, watching the Snow come down. How lucky we are to live here, she would say. Yep, I would reply.

    Also enough coffee in the pot this morning for a full cup. The mini-splits keeping the house warm. An early Dawn, at least according to the clock. Life, this precious and wonderful gift.

    Reading, that most amazing skill. Example: The Emptiness of the Universe Gives Our Lives Meaning. I loved this short piece. The cosmologist Paul Sutter chose for his life work the study of cosmic voids. The apparently empty spots between and among galaxies, local clusters, superclusters. How innovative and creative, to study negative space. It’s as if an art historian chose to study only the negative space in sculpture, in paintings. Or a musicologist specializing in rests and stops.

    I am content. I’ll have Fire in the Fireplace tonight. Toss some Pinōn on for a scent treat, thinking of the clay stoves in the corners of rooms in New Mexico. I’ll have a good book, probably An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns-Goodwin recommended by Marilyn.

    I’ll take in what Dr. Buphati has to say at 2:30 today and I will see it as the next steps necessary to claim the life I have yet to live. Not as the first steps toward death. Which comes anyhow.

    Realized the other day that after my Bar Mitzvah, literally the day after when I had my unsettling telehealth visit with Kristie, I’ve been living with the notion of a shortened life span, an inner focus on decline. So much so that I gave up exercising. Wanted to privilege spontaneity.

    My year of living Jewishly had its capstone moment and I voluntarily took the steps down into my Cloud of unknowing. And reified it. Since that day, June 12th of this year, until last week, I’ve had a focus on less than, what would soon be missing. Me. I made a pivot from a deep plunge into Judaism to a dive into the shallow end of lack. Broke my heart for a while.

    Then I began to understand that the Cloud of unknowing was the true and only way to view life. Whether shorter or longer, I don’t know. As has always been the case. I came up from the mikveh a Jew. I came up from the shallow end of lack attentive again to today, to this life as I have it now. As I will until I don’t.

    Herme Harari Israel


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