Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Cinema and Television, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Friends, GeekWorld, Health, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Zoombies

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Monday gratefuls: Rigel’s appetite. Kep’s centeredness. Our home. Kate feeling better last night. Chicken and blueberries and asparagus and beets. Our front, cleaner, more natural after the stump grinding. The night sky, visible now at 5 a.m. 36 degrees this morning.

Cold here overnight. Down to 36. Refreshing, invigorating. Up early, 4:30 a.m. with enough sleep. I go to bed early, around 8 p.m. The night Sky. Don’t see it much when I get up later, around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. though that’s changing as the Great Wheel turns toward the vernal equinox.

Kate had a hard day yesterday with shortness of breath and not feeling well. I moved a TV into the bedroom. She can watch NCIS and Blue Bloods while resting. She feels better lying down. Our agreement is that the TV goes off when I come to bed. This is a change from her last year and a half when she read through books in a day or two, filling shelves of books she had read.

Rigel’s appetite, boosted by the prednisone she’s on for fever control, is good. She’s gradually returning to her old habits, a couple of cups of dry food with some wet food mixed in. Since her time in the hospital, she’s eaten a lot of canned food. It all has to be single protein, rabbit. That makes it expensive, three to four dollars a can. And she’s a big dog.

Zoombies. Don’t know why I haven’t seen this word yet, but it’s my neologism now. This is the zoombie apocalypse, characterized by so many seen but not felt. I don’t find that zoom eats my brain, but I do know it can cause a deadening if done too much. Many working at home have overloaded.

Yesterday the old zoombies met for what Paul calls our church. The topic was staying healthy as we age. A table with four legs: diet & exercise, relationships, sleep, and regular medical care. Couldn’t remember medical care as the fourth leg so I added curiosity. That works, too. So, five legs.

What we’re trying to do is lengthen healthspan, that period of life where you can do what you want to do with minimal interference from frailty or disease. As we age, so many of us experience dire insults that don’t kill us, but do render us weaker, less able to engage in our lives as we used to know them.

Ideas from the zoombie session: exercise bands, going to the club, cleanses of various sorts, walking, physical labor, interval training, workouts from a trainer, staying in touch with loved ones, with friends, with dogs.

I mentioned curiosity because it acknowledges mystery, wonder, and an openness to the future without trying to control it.

Here’s to your health, your loved ones health. May you live long and prosper.

Aging, Coronavirus, Family, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Dealing With A Rough Patch

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Almost reorganized living room. Kate’s hands. Dreams. Rains. Cool. The life we live. Nyquil. Pollen. Tramadol. THC. End of the staycation tomorrow. Perry Mason on HBO. Wet earth. Petichor. The tragedies and joys of our days.

Dreams. Trying to find third gear in a GTO going up a snowy hill. A new phone, different design, metal plate beside the screen. Meeting folks in a coffee shop. Choppy memories.

Kate’s going through a rough (rougher) patch. Breathing more difficult. Feeling weak. Not eating much. Scares me. Good thing we see the doc tomorrow. Hard to know how to be. Honest? This scares me. Me, too, she says. Or, should I try to remain upbeat, better tomorrow, some new drug?

Not wanting to send her down, but not wanting to be dishonest either. I find it hard since my default is to go with the clearest, most real. Not sure what helps her. Me.

It’s been a cool week plus here, nice sleeping. That’s helped both of us. On the other hand the cooler, cloudier weather also dampens the inner weather.

Derek works hard, moving logs first on a dolly, then with his jeep over to his house and his wood pile.

Good seeing Mary and Mark this morning. Things are still in between for them both. He’s awaiting the late August, early September startup of his school in Riyadh. She’s waiting for Malaysia’s borders to open so she can go there into 14 days of quarantine. After she’ll be with Guru until the next academic year in Kobe, Japan. Retired. Sorta.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Third Phase, Writing

Living

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Friday gratefuls: The Norsemen, a funny sendup of the Vikings. (which I also liked.) Derek’s continuing to cut up and cart away our felled trees. Children of Time, a sci fi book about terraforming, genetic manipulation, and the end of earth’s history. Spiders and ants and humans, oh my. Peter Praski who fixed our fan and our lights. Alan’s commitment to the political process. Sally’s thaw. The Mussar crowd.

Still on vacation. Enjoying my focus on domestic chores like putting up smoke detectors (10-year batteries. Thanks, Tom.), laundry, getting the fan fixed, the stumps ground down, windows washed, and gutters cleaned. Cooked a bit, not up to my pre-Seoah standards. Out of practice. Will improve.

Pleased with the healing of the angry skin around Kate’s stoma site. Gradually. Gradually. Next up we have to knock down the nausea that ruins her days. Not sure how to do that, but we’re gonna focus on it. Help her have more strings of better days. So dispiriting when she has to leave the breakfast table to lie down.

Still feeling that limbo Kate talked about. In between. Not at a threshold, not in a liminal space, though I’ll appreciate that when it comes.

Getting things cleaned up and reorganized has been good. Feels good. My mind has fewer anchors like, oh, when will I get around to that? That being those books and papers on the bookshelf in the living room. That being getting the final trees down for fire mitigation. That being the gutters that need cleaning. That being the disorganized state of the loft.

As I pull up the anchors, I can feel the engine beginning to rumble below decks. No idea of the destination when I can finally slip away.

A friend recently talked about all the volunteer work he’s been doing since retirement seven years ago. Do I still need to feel productive, he asked? Maybe there’s something deeper going on here?

Has made me think about our American obsession with work. A Calvinist slant to our hearts. If we work, we’re good. If we don’t work, we’re lazy. Or, bad. Makes retirement a conundrum. Work is over with. Let’s get to it, then. Get to what?

Work. In my imagination a post-neolithic revolution idea. Tend the field. Care for the animals. Fix the house. Govern the village. I’m sure the hunter-gatherers had their obsessions, too, but I don’t think it was work. In the third phase we try to leave work behind us only to reinstate it covertly. Or sometimes vertly.

My suspicion is that we all need something that gratifies us, satisfies us, gives us a chance to be who we are. I cast off the mantle of work for those things and name them living.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Here We Go

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Trash pickup. Significant rain yesterday and last night. Coolness. Kate’s reading. Right now, All the King’s Men. Her honesty. The deepening of our time together. Mutuality. More of that. Turbination. Money. CBE. Zoom. Lights. Electricity. Solar panels. My keyboard. The third phase.

Week I, vacation. Missing my workouts but staying true to my vacation. Putting up ten-year smoke detectors. Cleaning the oven. Going to the bank. Putting together a new laundry hamper with Kate. Cleaning the living room, the garage. Focused on domestic tasks.

But. There’s a flaw in the ointment. Kate reports feeling erased as I reorganize the kitchen, pick up more of the chores. That’s a strong word, I said. Well, we can’t do this if I’m not honest. I agree.

Mutuality is the key. She feels like she’s lost her partner role. I don’t. I see her pay the bills, fold the clothes, make masks, deal with her multiple medical issues. When I can’t figure out how to put up the smoke detector, she knows. When I need to know how to clean the oven, she knows. Her brilliant mind is intact and needed. By both of us.

Her grasp of medicine, which she wears lightly, makes our life so much less fraught. She can discern the serious from the don’t worry about it. Her honesty, which is a core quality for her, means no guessing.

Part of what’s happening is that the Lupron is gradually losing its grip on my hormones. That means I have more energy. Combine that with Kate’s big improvements: leakage fixed, stoma site healing, lung disease stable, stent in place. Relief and joy come more often.

As I feel better, I want to do more around the house. But that gives rise the being erased feelings in Kate. You can see the dilemma. Communication and thoughtfulness on both of our parts is necessary. Mutuality being the key.

Marriage. A pilgrimage. An ancientrail with ecstasy. And despair. Joy and fear. Anger and reconciliation. A pilgrimage toward the true holy grail, humanness. Still on the trail, backpack secure, walking stick in hand, cape wrapped round my shoulders. Here we go.

Aging, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Third Phase, US History, Woolly Mammoths, World History

It’s Not Even Past

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Sunday gratefuls: The Laramide Orogeny. The chance to see its starting point frequently. The chance to see the actual end of the Great Plains frequently. Stump grinders. Arborists. Lawn service folks. Asphalt. The Snow plows and their drivers. Jackie, our hair stylist. (Not that I have much left to style.) Seoah’s 5th day in quarantine. Only 9 to go. Kep’s hotspots healing.

The Past.  Our own, our family’s, our country’s, our specie’s.  How do we view the PAST regarding forgiveness, compassion, learning, loving, and, perhaps most of all, how we live in this one precious day of this one precious life NOW?

Buddy Tom Crane’s prompt for our meeting this morning on zoom. Old Friends. Bill, Mark, Paul, Tom, me. Over 30 years of jawin’.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner Whatever else the past is it only exists right now. Because everything that exists exists right now. At least from the perspective of our consciousness. Free beer tomorrow.

Ever learned anything? Faulkner’s right. Ever been in a relationship? Ever lived? Time’s arrow is an argument in physics. Maybe everything exists all at once. Or, maybe everything moves in the direction of less entropy. But, is that time? Don’t know.

What I do know is that until I could entertain the memory (a ghost from my past) of Vega looking up at me, willing me to do something about her bloat, I was trapped by the fear it caused. Glancing away from it. Pushing it out of consciousness. She died. And, I could do nothing. I loved her, she trusted me, but I couldn’t save her.

Finally, I went the whole way into the memory. Touched her again. Felt her stomach. Reassured her. Remembered that awful time at Sano when Kate and I knelt inside the metal crate. “Her heart stopped,” the vet said.

Now Vega romps through my doggy memories, being a rascal, chewing our shoes, peeing on our rugs, but also delightful and loving and funny. I had lost her to my fear.

So, the past is with us. And, within us, the past can change. Or, rather, our acceptance of it can change. When I went into treatment for alcoholism, I had years of hangovers, drunken one night stands, the grief over my mother, fear cutting jagged holes into my day to day to life. Fear that receded when the God Dionysus took over.

That guy, the one I’d been since the purple Jesus parties at Phi Kappa Psi in 1965, had to widen his arms, embrace all the pain, all the missteps, all the avoidance and denial. Had to come out of his own groundhog hole, look for the sun, as he had done many, many times. And, finally find it. Yes, I can live in the light, seeing all of who I’ve been, gathering all of it in close. Not in judgment, but in acceptance. Because, though I can’t change the past, how I live with it can change me.

Here’s a point where I get confused. That I. The Buddhists: no self. My kabbalah experiment with watching the watcher. Many selves, many masks. The long march from infancy to old age. Who was that masked man? At 40? At 30? At 10? Was he me? Or, do I have to believe that I somehow arrived at this point in my life sui generis? No past, no self. Just this accretion of cells that somehow insists on having a history? Let’s say Buddhism has a low view of the Self. Kabbalah a fractured one.

My common sense understanding? A solid Self. And what is that Self? The one who can access, retrieve memories that only this body has experienced. Yes, it’s true that this Self is not the one who experienced those memories. It exists in this moment, shaped by those experiences, yet changed by its survival into the now. And, it is not the self of the next moment since it will be changed yet again. No self? OK. Many selves, many masks? OK. A solid Self? OK. All at once, expressing a different view through the prism of consciousness. OK. After all, William James called consciousness a “blooming, buzzing confusion.”

Aging, Anoka County, Coronavirus, Denver, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

At Her Funeral

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Thursday gratefuls: Gauze sponges. Wax o-rings for Kate’s leakage. Stoma powder. The chance to care for Kate. A forty degree morning on Shadow Mountain after 92 degrees in Denver on Monday. That silly Rigel, not acting her age. At all. Kep, the serious. Dog groomer today. The Kabbalah class. Folks liking my presentation. Workout yesterday.

Pine pollen season. Yellow streaks on the asphalt. Pollen lying on wooden tables, adding some color. The winds rushing through the Lodgepoles, shaking loose enough for a yellow storm. Part of the turning of the Great Wheel. That I could do without personally. But, how would we get baby Lodgepoles otherwise? Sneeze and bear it.

Wildfire danger remains high. Dry, Windy. Yesterday the Humidity in the loft was 2%, outside 6%. The arid West. A positive note. It was 80 degrees up here and a slowly rotating fan was all I needed to stay cool. Rigel, we’re not in Andover anymore.

A woman in my kabbalah class wants my Grammar of Holiness read at her funeral, “…whenever that may be.” A strong positive reaction to it from the class. Rabbi Jamie’s going to reprint in the synagogue newsletter, the Shofar.

Always thought my reimagining faith project would be a book, a radical theology with chapters and footnotes and acknowledgements. Nope, two pages. There it is. It feels said to me. We’ll see if I continue to feel that way.

After reading several pieces about Covid and underlying medical conditions, Kate and I have decided to become coronavirus hermits. Our hermitage, Shansin, on top of Shadow Mountain. We’ll ride it out with as little flesh and blood contact as we can stand. Would sound bleak, but Zoom helps, and we’re introverts, happy with each other, ourselves, and our dogs.

And, given recent news, I will add: white, privileged, financially secure, and aging with good medical care.

Still no word from the Singapore government. Seoah may fly there next Tuesday. May not. Covid has impacted lives in so many different ways. This is just one of them, but it’s personal, right here.

From Shadow Mountain, where the sun is rising and the morning is cool.

Aging, Health, Science, Third Phase

Cyberknifed

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Wednesday gratefuls: Spaghetti. Marco Polo. China. Cool morning. Kate’s physical. Telehealth. Dr. Gidday. The loft in the morning. The heat. Wildfire. Trees. Lodgepole Pines. Aspen. Colorado Blue Spruce. Dogwood. Lilacs. Iris. Shrub Roses. The New York Times. The Washington Post. The spread out Keaton Clan. The Human Narrative. Holy Land. Holy Water. Holy Air. Holy you.

One year ago today: Cyberknifed. 1st of 35 treatments.

Since then. Luproned. Hot flashes. Suppressed testosterone. Fatigue. Weakness. In the pursuit of a cure. 9 months later now, after the end of radiation. I think much more about the Lupron than I do about cancer though cancer is always present. The Lupron reaches out and touches me while the cancer is either gone or asymptomatic. It feels gone to me.

Think today, for a moment, if you will, of all those impacted by cancer. Those living with it, trying to cure it. Those caring for them. Their families, their friends.

Cancer is global just like Covid. Deadlier, too. 9.7 million deaths in 2017.

Aging, Anoka County, Colorado, Cooking, Coronavirus, GeekWorld, Jefferson County

Imminent

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Saturday gratefuls: Our Kenmore 19 Frostless Freezer. Its good years of service. A good temporary solution to its imminent demise. Crowhill Appliance. Dave, the tech. Seoah’s help. Kate’s smile when Rigel lay down on her quilt. The gift of pleasant days. Pine pollen. Fish. Curtis Spitler Ellis. Gertrude Eliza Ellis. Judy. Raeone. Saturdays.

Symptoms of a pandemic. Remember all those folks buying toilet paper? Even though Covid doesn’t have g-i effects? Or, the whole PPE scandal with no masks for medical personnel? Out of stock items on Amazon like hand sanitizer, toilet paper? Discovered another one yesterday.

On Wednesday Seoah told me about an alarm going off in the garage. I spent my usual minutes of frustration trying to find it. Not the cars. What else could it be? Oh. The freezer. Temperature alert. Red light flashing. Uh-oh. Remember those meat bundles I bought from Tony’s? Yep. In danger.

I looked at it. Opened the door. No frost buildup. The meat might have just started to defrost. I pushed the quick freeze button, shut the door, and the alarm went off. OK. On Thursday it was beeping again.

We bought this freezer near the time we moved to Andover. That was 1994. It’s been a good mechanical servant for all those days. I even hit it with the car once and it kept on ticking. Had an incident last year when it frosted up. I removed everything, left it open for a day, and the frost melted. I loaded it back up and it continued to work. Until Wednesday.

Time for a new freezer, it seemed. I started looking first at Consumer Reports. OK. GE makes good freezers. I hunted for them online. Looked at Best Buy. Ah. They have it. $900. Reasonable. Wait. That button changed from yellow to gray. Oh, out of stock. Well, understandable. It’s a good one.

I checked Lowes. It was out of stock there, too. Appliance Factory. Out of stock. Specialty Appliances. Home Depot. All out of stock. Ok. I looked for one of the others Consumer Report recommended. Out of stock, too. Decided to check for any old freezer. Out of stock. Kate suggested I look for a chest freezer. Out of stock.

There is nowhere in Colorado that you can buy either an upright or chest freezer. I suspect that’s true everywhere. According to a salesman I talked to, only two manufactures of freezers remain, Amana and Frigidaire. They make all the other brands. Not sure what that means for all the Consumer Reports subtle gradations. Anyhow, they’ve told all their customers there will be no stock again until early to mid-fall.

That put me in a funk yesterday. I like to solve problems and when I have a problem that seems unsolvable. Not good. Hundreds of dollars of top quality meat in a dying freezer. Damn.

Went to bed for a nap. See if some sleep might refresh the circuits. While waiting to go to sleep, I remembered the freezer in our refrigerator. It’s a pull-out bottom freezer and has a fair amount of space. I imagined the packages of meat I’d bought from Tony’s. Huh. They should fit.

My funk lifted. Today Seoah and I will switch the lower value foods stored in the refrigerator with the meats in the dying Kenmore. When I asked Dave, the tech from Crowhill, how long he thought the freezer would last, he said, “A day. A month. Several months.” And shrugged.

They don’t do compressor repairs anymore. That’s because at $900 to $1,000 they’re more costly than a new unit. If, of course, you can find one. I thought briefly about going ahead, but then realized I’d have a brand new compressor in a freezer over twenty years old. Other stuff in it is old, too.

We’ll continue using the Kenmore until the compressor ceases to function. If we lose some popsicles, frozen veggies, or tater tots (yes, sue me. I like’m.), that’ll be ok. It was the thought of losing all that meat and not being able to do anything about it…

And, when Amana and Frigidaire crank back up, we’ll get ourselves a new freezer. Sometime this fall.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Great Work, Health, Minnesota, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, US History, World History

Wow

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Wednesday gratefuls: Kate’s interstitial lung disease is stable. Now for almost a year! Her stamina let her, yesterday: go in for her pacemaker check, her blood work for her physical, and into Joann Fabrics to shop for mask making materials. She also got up early and got on the Clan call. Can’t imagine her doing this six months ago. The snow came. The snow went. Still cool though.

Yesterday was busy. Got up for the Clan call, ate breakfast, then talked with Michele, the home health care nurse, about Kate’s feeding tube. Nap. Then 4 hours plus going to Kate’s heart doc, the lab for her bloodwork, and finally to Joann Fabrics. No time to write.

Still tired this morning. My stamina’s not what it was either.

Understanding what’s going on right now? Priceless. And, impossible. The strong ropes of disruption woven by the coronavirus, the economic crisis, and, now, the rising and welcome wave of unrest will weave themselves together into a hawser capable of hauling us all into a new future.

There will be discontinuities with the past. Masks and social distancing will persist for months, as will staying at home for the older ones among us. How we can care for the hourly wage workers displaced, for the small businesses that go bankrupt or are severely damaged, for the economy as a whole could take years to sort out. The Black Lives Matter movement may unlock the biggest changes of all. And, of course, climate change continues its role as a disrupter of the past.

I’m excited about all of this. America, the world’s indispensable nation, has failed to live into its dreams of a racially diverse nation. That may be changing right now. We’ve never valued the low wage worker, dismissed them from our health care system and a path forward. These same workers saved our lives at risk to their own. Not by choice in most cases, but that’s the point. They work where they do because these are the jobs of our day. Important jobs. Each and every day. Small businesses, not Walmart or Target or Kroger’s or Wendy’s or McDonalds, make a place unique, local. They’re in deep trouble now which could mean a greater homogenization of our retail businesses unless economic reforms gain more traction.

Yes, it’s scary. No, the change will be neither consistent nor smooth. But it’s happening. We are responsible for guiding it in productive and valuable ways. Making sure we rid ourselves of the great divider is most important, but even a Democratic sweep in November won’t ensure success. A change of governance is essential, but insufficient. You and I need to watch, pay attention, act. For the rest of our lives.

Wow. What a time.

Aging, Family, Friends, Mussar, Our Land and Home, Poetry, Shadow Mountain, Talmud, Third Phase

I witness. I wait.

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Thursday gratefuls: MVP last night on calmness of soul. Calmness of soul. Kate’s many improvements, her seder practice. Seoah’s frittata. Rain. Thunder. Another cool morning. Pictures of nearby bears on Nextdoor Shadow Mountain. One really big guy. Cataracts maturing. The morning sun, rising bright.

I have no clue how others see me. For some reason. Weird to discover this at 73, but there you are. The person my ancient friends described a couple of weeks ago? Huh? I mentioned this to Kate and she said, well, you’ve never cared how others see you. True. And, not true. I mean, I want to be seen favorably; but, I’m not willing to pay for it with my integrity. No one wants to be reviled. At least I don’t think so. Not sure what this means, but it feels strange to realize.

Got pretty far behind on the Talmud. Questioning my commitment. Is it worth the amount of time required? Maybe not for me. I can’t tell if this question has arisen because I’ve let it slip, 7 days now, or because I find it interesting, but only sometimes. Maybe not enough to keep at it for seven and a half years? Yes, I like long projects. But. I also have to like the long project itself. Leaning toward bagging it.

Loft reorganization report. Yes, you might be surprised to know that this is still underway. Getting much closer, but the fiddly stuff toward the end always takes a while. Filing. Redoing some decisions. Maybe this week? Really looking forward to a finished job.

Why so slow? A major job. Paying attention to other things led to me piling books and papers here and there. Not exactly new, but I let it go on for a while. Then. OK. This is too much. Things have to change. Passed that point well over a month ago. I’m moving furniture, books, files, painting and sumi-e brushes, inks, paints. Had to clear off the tops of the book shelves to accommodate new additions to my library.

Also, I can only work on it for a limited period of time until I get weary. This is a psychic thing I don’t fully understand. Yes, there’s a lot of mental energy in deciding what to do with this and that, where that file or set of files needs to be, which books go together, how I can set up my painting and sumi-e to best support my work. OK. Maybe that explains it actually. Well, that plus Lupron.

Oh. Final introspection. My practice for calmness of soul is, whenever I see my image-mirror, zoom, elsewhere-I will recall this phrase from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself: I witness and I wait. See below.

From Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait