Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Dreams, GeekWorld, Humanities, Memories, Myth and Story, Weather +Climate

Strange Weather

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Fall                                                 New Autumn Moon

A strange weather time.  A storm system and winds blowing in from the east.  Our weather systems almost always come from the west, following the planet’s rotation and the jet stream, but this raggedy storm system got stuck over Wisconsin and has begun to retrograde, head back west.

The quiet of night.  A healing time, the darkness.  A moment when the cares of the day can slide away and the still, small voice can speak.  The body can collect itself, relax, replenish.

Think of sleep.  Almost a third of our lives, maybe 25 years, think of that, 25 years asleep.  We are all, in this sense, Rip Van Winkle, unaware as the world changes around us.

In the sleep time our minds create the worlds we inhabit, pluck scenes from stored memories, movie clips, fears and joys, wishes and needs.  Vivid life, times of ecstasy and insight flow through our brains, a stream of cobbled together life, chunks of invention.  We are each novelists while we sleep, drafting narratives with characters about whom we care deeply.

Here’s the tricky part.  If I understand modern neurology, we do the same thing when we’re awake.  Our minds take sensory data and create worlds.  Narratives form so we can keep the world we create coherent, so we can remember the plot of our lives.

There are parts here that elude me, standing just outside my peripheral understanding.  Who is that watches the movie?  Who is the narrator?  Where is the narrator?  Is he a reliable or an unreliable voice?  Can we count on this movie?  By that I mean does it conform to what we, at least in a common sense way, take as real.  True.  Out there.

 

Aging, Art and Culture, Bees, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Work, Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story

Breaching the Walled Garden of the Self

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Fall                                               Waning Harvest Moon

Prepping for a presentation on Spiritual Resources for Humanists.  Reading books, articles, letting ideas slip past as I get ready to sleep, keeping my antennae out for what feeds me now.

The book I mentioned before, All Things Shining, has convinced me of one thing.  It’s important to know why we need resourcing in the first place.

The title offers a rationale, unpacked.  Humanism embraces a world shorn of its medieval metaphysics; the Great Chain of Being has met Nietzsche’s Bolt Cutter, God is dead. God is dead, of course, was not an argument, but an observation, a sensitive man’s awareness that the God drenched era of the ancien regime had been drained by the empirical method, reason and the strangely acidic effect of the Protestant Reformation.

This world, a world with a strangled sense of the sacred, gave birth to the angst and anomie of the existentialist 20th century, a world with no center, or rather, a world with millions of centers, each person a godhead struggling with their own creation.

What can buttress the Self that must navigate these empty places?  Does our supernatural vacuum hold enough air to nourish the isolated self?

We stumble toward wonder, toward joy, hope for a glimpse of the sacred, of the moment that can lift us out of our isolation and put us in communion with others, with the natural world, with the stars which birthed the very atoms which constitute us.

These things we seek not out of some vestigial institutional memory, an anachronistic impulse to live again in a God drenched world.  No, we seek these things because the essential paradox at the heart of our lives is this:  we live alone, the only one with our world; yet we live together, up against galaxies of other worlds, sometimes with other worlds so close that they seem to intersect with ours.  We seek the venn diagram, a mandorla labeled self and other, where the other is another person, a flower, a sky, a lightning bolt.

So, spiritual resources in this context, then, would be those fragments of culture that can weaken or penetrate the walled gardens of our Selves, not in order to breach the walls, but to let in companion armies, allies in our quest.

The quest seems to similar to the one Sir Gawain faced when he beheaded the Green Knight and, in a year and a day, had to bend his own neck before the Green Knight’s sword.  That is, we somehow must will ourselves into a vulnerable, ultimately vulnerable position, to those we have beheaded.  Interestingly, as the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight proposes, this vulnerability is not only, perhaps not even mostly, a human to human one, rather, it is human to the whole Green world.

So we seek allies who will keep us strong in our vulnerability, mighty in our humility.  We seek at least love.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Politics

Partners and Co-Creators

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Fall                                                       Waning Harvest Moon

Went out and picked raspberries for pancakes this morning.  With a definite chill in the air the garden felt different, a bit sleepy, ready to bed down for the cold season.  After a month or so of feeling burdened by it, wanting it to disappear, my spring affection reappeared.  This patch of earth, these beds, work together with the plant world and Kate and me.  We share a joint stewardship of this property, each in our way committed to making it healthy, beautiful and bountiful.

The soil has given of its nutrients, its water holding capacity, its sturdiness as a base for roots and stems.  The plants have combined the chemicals of the soil with that water and pushed themselves up and out of the earth, then blossomed and in many cases fruited.  Kate and I weed, tend the soil, watch the plants, picking bugs off of them, pruning, replanting.  We also harvest and, when the harvest ends, we replenish the soil with composted manure and mulch.

When we use the plants and their produce, we take the leaves and stems and other unwanted parts and put them in a compost bin to return to the soil.

This complicated working partnership among many different parties here is, in microcosm, the partnership we humans have with the natural world and the world of soils, air, water and sunshine.  It’s significant to note that the one unnecessary party to this the work is the human race.

Plants will grow.  Rain will fall.  The sun will shine.  Soils will improve.  Fruits and vegetables will be made and distributed, all whether humans enter in or not.  We exist only as part of a richly integrated chain of being and we exist as its wards, not benefactors.

We do have the capacity to intervene, but too often, far too often, when we do intervene, we disrupt what nature does willingly and foul the process, in the end harming ourselves.

I wish our gardens and our orchard were more than supplements to our diet, but that is all they are, to be otherwise would require a commitment to the work I no longer feel able or willing to give.  Even so, as a supplement, this growing of flowers, potatoes, tomatoes, beets, carrots, leeks, beans, onions, lettuce, chard, spinach and peas, this caring for bees and harvesting honey, does keep us intimately engaged as partners with the natural world, a partnership so often hidden from view in this, the most capitalistic of all possible worlds.

Aging, Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story

More Fun With Ovid

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Lughnasa                                                 Waning Harvest Moon

More fun with Ovid.  The curtain has begun to roll back a bit more.

Many of my friends have second and third languages, but until now I only had the one.  A bit of French.  A little Hebrew.  A little Greek.  But nothing solid.  The ability to look on a page filled with Latin words, words I would once have brushed over with little attempt at comprehension, and see meaning emerge delights me.

The words still look strange to me, foreign, but now they carry a pulse of meaning, one I can get if I look a bit longer, or turn to a book.

The same work I mentioned above, All Things Shining, that critiques Western individualism, has a section on the decline of craft, the disappearance of embodied learning, of skill at making.  Again, I find myself pushing against their analysis and in this instance Latin came to mind.

To translate requires a subtle knowledge of the original language and an idiomatic grasp of the home language.  This type of intellectual work is a skill, a craft like that of. woodworkers or, the example used in the book, wheelwrights.  It requires a mind numbing series of early, simple steps that build only gradually into a suite of skills.  My guess is that the traditional seven years to move from apprentice to journeyman is not far off for Latin.

 

Aging, Family, Great Wheel, Retirement

Changes

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Lughnasa                                                  Waning Harvest Moon

May I present Autumn?  It comes to us in russets and golds, grays and rain, with some chill and occasional warmth.  Autumn continues our seasonal review, following the spectacular summer with its heat and its emphasis on differing shades of green, a color wheel of blooms and food.

Autumn, like our earlier season, Spring, is a time of change, the gradual transition from the heat and bombast of the growing season to the bleak outer landscapes of the fallow months.

Autumn also marks the beginning of the academic year, a moment of new beginnings, a springtime of the inner world.  This part of the season has its own holiday, Michaelmas, the holy day for the Archangel Michael, and the traditional opening of the English academic year.

In my life change has blown in with the cold rain.  Mark will leave us sometime in the next few days, before the end of October.  The growing season has wound down with only potatoes, beans, leeks and chard left in the garden.  A long vacation grows closer by the day, less than a month away.

There is, too, a growing sense that a major life change may be imminent.  Just what it will be is unclear, though it feels like retirement may be in the cards, joining Kate in her journey beyond the world of work.  How would that manifest in my life, long ago cast off from the port marked Employment?

Leaving behind the era of productive engagement with the world feels premature for me, but a new freedom may emerge.  It may longer be necessary to lash myself to the mast while sailing between the Charybdis of success and the Scylla of ambition.

Mystery.  The once hidden ocean of mystery lies beyond the current horizon.  And I’ve already set sail.

Aging, Retirement, Travel, Weather +Climate

A Jumbled Up Day

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Lughnasa                                         Waning Harvest Moon

Finalized the Rio plans today.  Gonna stay in Ipanema, within a block of the beach.  Chose away from the ocean since we will have spent 39 days on it.  Plenty.  Our Brazil visas are classy, nice pictures, gold striping and good for ten years.  A bargain for $180 each.

Dentist today.  Regular cleaning.  My current dentist, Mahler, retires in two weeks.  Two years or so ago his partner, then my dentist, Moghk, retired.  The older you live the more the health professionals you’ve counted on begin to leave practice.  A bit unsettling. My internist of 20 years moved to Colorado three years ago.

The cloud gray skies around noon today appealed to me.  More of the coming inside, writing and research weather that I love.

We’ll miss much of it this year, but we have chosen to cruise during the peak hurricane season.  That’s why the prices were so good.  I’ve begun paying attention to NOAA.

Aging, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

The Woollys of September

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Lughnasa                                                       Waning Harvest Moon

Woolly Mammoths on reading.  We had a meeting focused on current books, readings underway or accomplished during the summer.  Guys brought out books recounting the Battle of Little Big Horn hour by hour, the agony of the war in Vietnam, a Chinese classic with the attendant multiple volumes, the built in adaptive structures in the below consciousness part of our awareness.  Woollys are readers.

We also learned Charlie has a solid offer on his condo atop a warehouse district building.  Scott has still not come back to Minnesota from his time in Colorado and Utah.  Frank still doesn’t like the nuns in the Catholic school he attended.  Bill’s focused on Regina’s needs rights now.  Stefan attended the Men’s conference this year and brought back Zack, an aspiring actor and writer, who read a powerful example of his work.

Ode’s knee has gone from good to worse and now will require a third operation.  Frank’s new granddaughter is roly-poly. Warren, in the humor highlight of the evening, realized he had not yet signed up for Social Security.  Why humor?  Well, he does cover aging for the Star-Tribune and has done so for a long time.

We also discussed, a favorite topic, our retreat.  Some want to be near water, others want tradition at the Dwelling or Valhelga.  We agreed on the last week of April, the first week of May.  That’s a start.

 

Aging, Health

Weighty

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Lughnasa                                            Waning Harvest Moon

It took me 3 tries to give up smoking after 13 years, and I was able to do it then only after I’d quit drinking.  Neither was easy, but they pale in comparison to the next, similar challenge.  Over the last few years I’ve gradually added a pound here, a pound there, until all of a sudden, to paraphrase Everett Dirksen, I’m talking about real weight.

Now, I’m not obese, but I have passed certain personal barriers and seem headed further south.  This means I have to deal with this somehow.

A while back I wrote about the simple method of losing weight.  Eat less food.  I did it. Lost 6 pounds and felt great.  Problem is, I found them.  Then added a couple more.

That out of control feeling has begun to sneak up on me.  Not a personal favorite.  At some point here a hook, a handle on eating has to be found; but, right now I’m not seeing it and we’re headed for a cruise, which means 24/7 food available.

My personal creed has always been not to die of something preventable.  So far, so good.

 

Aging, Family, Travel

Life Lesson Learned

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Lughnasa                                               Waxing Harvest Moon

Looks like Mark was more right.  Not sure yet, because all the data isn’t in, but he understands the culture of English language schools and I don’t.  Life lesson learned here.  The lesson?  20 years of experience beats book learnin’ and casual travel.  Sorta makes sense, doesn’t it?

No matter what happens with the visa, Saudi situation, Mark’s time here will come to a close in the next few weeks.  We leave for our cruise in October and he doesn’t have a job here.  I hope he still ends up in Saudi.  We’ll see.

Mark and I are here by ourselves for the next 5 days.  Kate got on the 7:40 am Northstar this morning, headed for the Hiawatha Line and MSP.   Having the Northstar close by has dramatically changed getting to and from the airport.  Now, we can board a morning commuter train, catch the light rail to the airport and when we get back, we can reverse field and end up within a short drive of our home.  Just like a big city.

Aging, Asia, Family, Memories

Growing Up

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Lughnasa                                        Waxing Harvest Moon

Mark’s (my brother) days here will end on September 16th provided the Saudi visa process works and it’s on track, though a track with a terminus very near his flight date.  He flies from Minneapolis to Chicago, Chicago to Amman, Jordan and onto Riyadh.

He will spend a few days in Riyadh in an orientation program for new teachers at the English Gate Academy after which he reports to his teaching post.  He asked for Hal’in, but his assignment is not yet certain.

We sat on the couch tonight, after having watched some TV, and did a favorite family thing, trading memories of when we were young, especially memories we did not share.

I told him of climbing up on a chair to find, to my dismay, a door knob above a shelf I could not see over at age 3 or 4.  It looked like a big eye looking back at me.

In the basement of the same place, an apartment building where I lived with Mom and Dad, there was a coal chute. (“Coal?” Mark asked, a bit wide eyed at this ancient heat source.) The coal room connected to the big pot-bellied furnace through an augur that would turn on whenever the thermostat called for more heat.  In other words unpredictably.

When I was down there with Mom while she did the laundry, I would play.  Until the coal augur came to life.  It was loud and came on with surprising swiftness.  The furnace would hiss as the new coal fed the fire.  Made me think of a dragon.

Mark remembered sleeping in Mom and Dad’s bedroom until he was 5 or so, then moving upstairs in our house on Canal Street.  When I went off to college, he took my corner room, the one with a window facing west and another facing south.  Out that west facing window, at midnight, a Nickle Plate train would rumble down the tracks, and sound its warning signal for the crossing on Monroe Street only two and a half blocks from our house.  Mark remembered the train, too.

I’m not sure why I recall this and I don’t know if it was true, but I believe the last steam engine in US pulled its train through our town, sounding its steam whistle every midnight.  Right there on Monroe Street.