Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Writing

Gonna Take That Wild Last Ride

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Imbolc                                         Waxing Wild Moon

Back at the novel today, 1,800 words.  There’s an uphill struggle to get back in the groove when I let a week or so slip by with no work on it.  Like navigating the turns in the fast luge track at Whistler, I get stuck at the start, but once the momentum picks up, I can dive into a chicane with confidence.  Back at it now headed down the track.

Self confidence is so fragile, at least for me, and I expect for many of us.  If I could graph mine’s rise and fall even in the course of a day, it would mimic a wild stock ride, selling up at one moment, then a run and a price in sudden decline.  And then the reverse.  Again.  Even now.

Example.  I came downstairs feeling pretty good about getting back to the novel.  Granted I skipped exercise tonight to keep on writing, but overall that felt good.  Then I went on Amazon’s website to check out an author Mark Odegard recommended, Dan Simmons.  Sure enough, he’s doing stuff enough like what I’m trying to do to make me nervous.  He’s already sold a lot.  I haven’t.

Now there’s a steadier core that chugs alone just underneath all this oscillation–the ego worried about its reception in the world–and that core is the one that, walking the garbage and recycling out tonight under a gorgeous waxing wild moon, reflected that no matter how gifted and accomplished, we all die, then sink away into oblivion.  Yes, a few don’t–Homer, Socrates, Qin Shi Huangdi, Confucius, Emily Dickinson, Boadicea, Teresea of Avila, Pancho Villa, Montezuma, Geronimo, Einstein, Chopin, Bach, Da Vinci for example–but the bulk of us, the 99.999999% of all who have ever lived, live in the best way we can, then slowly fade, first in body, then in memory, then we’re gone.

This one knows that the best life is the one we live on our own terms, not on borrowed hopes and dreams and not judged by externalities.  At 63 the core has become stronger and stronger, often balancing the ego’s surges and falls before they happen, but it is not yet dominant, at least not all of the time.  The devil of expectations still sticks a pitchfork into my ego every once and a while.  Predictably, my ego squeals.

If you have a chance tomorrow night, go outside and look at the moon around 9:00 pm if the night is clear.  The moon sat up there in the sky tonight, Orion off to its southeast, other stars around it like diamonds around a fat, lustrous pearl.  A work of art that needs no hand, but satisfies the eye.

Aging, Cinema and Television, Humanities, Letters

Whee!

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Imbolc                                    Waxing Wild Moon

Here’s a revelation it’s strange to have this late in life:  I enjoy learning for its own sake.  Now I knew that at one level or another before, it’s true, but here’s what I’ve just learned.  After I finished my workout this evening, I went back to working on Latin translation.  At first I approached the Latin like school, do the work, get it right, then do more work, get it right.  So on.

But tonight as I sat there puzzling out the meaning of the sentences and the word endings, I realized I was having fun.  This was no longer a goal oriented, hoop-jumping exercise, but something I simply enjoyed.  Like, I don’t know, playing checkers or basketball or chess or dancing.  Strange, huh?

Maybe it’s always been this way for me, I don’t know.  It feels like a secret, something I shouldn’t tell, but there it is anyhow.  At 63.  There’s always something new around the corner.

Kate and I had an African evening.  We finished the first season of the HBO series, The First Ladies Detective Agency.  We read all these quite a while ago.  The casting for the series is spot on and seeing the Botswana setting makes the stories come alive even more strongly than in the books themselves.  After we finished the last episode, we watched Duma, a story of a South African boy and a cheetah he raises from a cub.  It has the usual boy reluctantly returns animal to the wild, the animal comes back for one last hug sort of plot line, but with some unusual depth added by his long journey from Capetown back into the bush with Duma, the cheetah and a man he meets in the bush.  Both of them are well worth  watching.  Not my usual dark fare, but good anyhow.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Politics

Vitriol Set Aside

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Imbolc                                               New Moon (Wild)

I wrote a vitriolic piece on sulfide mining that the better angels of my nature said to set side for a bit and let it cool off.  Let me just say this:  if there is an issue in our time comparable to the Boundary Waters struggle of the mid-70’s, this is it.  While climate change is, admittedly, the uber issue of our time, in terms of local environmental politics, the question of sulfide mining and its nasty  side affects looms over all else.  I’m opposed to it, at least until they can demonstrate a safe  technique.

Birthday phone call from cyber mage Bill Schmidt.  Bill and I share a philosophical and theological education and a similar journey, one you might call, Leaving the Hermeneutical Circle.  That is, we have both stepped outside the tradition of interpreting Jewish and Christian scripture and tradition as pointing to a reality beyond themselves.  Neither one of us has a missionary sensibility like say, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, in fact, we both appreciate the need for folks to make their own way in these matters.  Still, it’s nice to have a friend who understands the  ancientrail.

Aging, Family, Holidays

Dinner with the Kids

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Imbolc                                   New Moon (Wild)

Kate and I went into the city to Azia for my birthday dinner.  An Asian fusion place, it has an interesting menu filled with crossover items like kannon steak and potatoes and an omakase (trust) sushi/sashimi meal.

The food was good, but the main thing we both noticed was that this kind of night time dining in the city is not our scene anymore.  I mean this quite literally.  We had a good 15 to 20 years on everybody–diners and staff–in the place.  It was fun to see that whole aspect of life that was so crucial when we were younger.  Reminds me that there are always couples out on the town, others in elementary school, some suffering through middle school.

As we pass out of life’s phases, we often leave them behind, no longer staying in touch with pre-school or college, say, once we enter the work-a-day world.  American society tends toward age segregation, a phenomena self-induced for the most part.

A good birthday, 63 trips around the sun done.  Or, as I heard on a TV show, “One year closer to the sweet release of death.”  Cheery thought that.

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Literature, Woolly Mammoths

Turning 63

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Imbolc                            New Moon (Wild)

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”- Franz Kafka

It’s not an especially significant birthday in the way of things.  63 is a lull between OMG I’m in my 60’s and 65, the all purpose retirement age in former times.  The lack of symbolic significance and its very ordinariness makes me happy to turn 63.  I have no expectations about life at 63.  So far, the 60’s have been kind to me.  I’ve lost no friends, no family.  With the exception of Kate’s back trouble, no one I know has a serious ongoing health problem.  Frank Broderick who at 77 is now in his 15th year after his first heart attack manages his cardio problems, proving that even yesterday’s fatal condition can now fit into a long life.

(Rembrandt self-portrait at 63)

Turning the prism one more  time 63 astonishes me.  Why?  Because of its very ordinariness and because of its lack of symbolic significance.  Not so long ago, say when I was in my teens, folks my age had begun to teeter toward a time of serious old age and disability.  That point in life is still not on the observable horizon for me.  In fact, it’s possible some number of us reaching this age will be relatively healthy and able until our final days.  Quite a change.

On a personal note I have made my peace with the world in terms of success.  What I’ve had, little but some, will do.  I enjoy the love of a good woman and five dogs here at home and the circle  expands to nuclear family and extended family and friends like the Woollies, the docents and the Sierra Club folks.  My days have meaningful labor that changes with the seasons.  I live in a country I love, a state, and a home.

Intellectually and creatively, it seems, I’ve just begun to come into my own, which means there are satisfying frontiers still ahead.

Then there is Kafka.  Kafka.  What an odd and yet appropriate quote from  him.  He knew with fine detail the absurdity of modern life, yet he  found aesthetics central to a life of real engagement.  Me, too.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Holidays, Weather +Climate

Not Wild. Not Yet.

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Imbolc                                    New Moon (Wild)

With the weather calm, blue skies and no wind, welcoming the Wild Moon seems a bit off point.  As February ends, though, and we head into March the character of the Wild Moon will show up.  Soon, the push and pull between winter’s resistance and spring’s temperate insistence will create storms as we oscillate back and forth until the sun’s rising angle makes spring inevitable.  The next  six weeks are a real meteorological festival when our latitudes entertain a host of weather’s finest celebrities:  sudden snow fall, driving rain, howling winds, sleet, ice and bursts of warmth.  Get ready to be entertained.  It will be, well, wild.

This morning the grocery store was full of shoppers with some aspect of Valentine’s day on their mind.  They bought candy, two for one ribeyes and items for their honey’s favorite meal.  As I checked out the clerk, a young woman with orange/red hair asked me if I had special plans for Valentines.  Yes, I told her, it’s my birthday and my wife and I will go out to eat.  What about you? I asked.  Oh, she said, I work until 2:00, then hanging out with friends I guess.  It’s a day for people that love each other to show that.  She  sounded a bit sad.

When I got back there were boxes inside from the mail, one from Singapore and two from Bonaire, Georgia.  One came yesterday from Denver.  Fun.

I’m dickering with Groveland UU to become a field instructor for an intern they want to hire.  It’s an old problem for me.  They don’t have much money, but the time commitment involves travel as well as an hour plus with the intern, once a week for nine months.  A lot of time for me.  Yet, mentoring is, I believe, an important part of our role as we get older, so I want to do it.

Aging, Garden, Weather +Climate

As It Is, So Shall It Be

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Imbolc                                         Waning Cold Moon

We have hoarfrost on fences, tree limbs, shed roofs.  I looked out yesterday afternoon and it fell to the ground like snow from two big cottonwoods.  Shrubs appear limned in light as the morning sun refracts through the hoarfrost on their branches.  We have a white, soft landscape that carries the long shadows of morning in their full definition.

This February has been outspoken in its winter voice.  The woodchuck in Pennsylvania saw his shadow, so we might have a February and early March filled with cold and snow.  That’s ok with me.

I’ve been waiting for the gardening bug to hit me, usually it happens around New Years.  It did a bit.  I got a couple of seed catalogs and spent time sifting through them.  Then, however, the feeling went away, submerged I guess by the unrelenting nature of this seasons winter.  Kate says it’ll return and I hope she’s right.  We’ve got a lot of garden that will need care soon, well, relatively soon.

Meanwhile I get messages from Mexico, Georgia, Singapore and Bangkok, places where winter either never happens or lands with a light brush.  Watching Burn Notice last night I felt for the first time a pang of envy at the easy way the characters moved the Miami climate.

It’s been a busy time for me, something I generally embrace, but I also love downtime.  I’d better not keep writing here or I’m going to write myself into a fit of melancholy, not what I want or need right now.  So, Vale, amici!

Aging, Humanities, Letters, Weather +Climate

Latin at Home with Snow

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Imbolc                                     Waning Cold Moon

If any of you want to hear about Blue Cloud Abbey, you need to know that I have experienced technical difficulties.  If and when I resolve them, I’ll post the retreat notes.

I let the snow going fast past my window and the MNDOT warnings and the weather predictions convince me driving in to St. Paul was not wise.  My eyes and I don’t find night driving compatible in snowy weather.  Headed out to Blue Cloud we drove for about an hour in the dark.  The snow coming straight at the headlights hypnotizes me, not a good state for driving.

Instead I worked out, ate supper, played with the dogs and got through the vocabulary in chapter 4 of Wheelock.  This chapter has second declension neuter nouns, predicate nouns and adjectives and the irregular verb sum.  This verb, whose infinitive is esse=to be, is irregular, just like in English and has to be memorized.

That was a full evening anyhow.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality

Contemplative

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Imbolc                                Waning Cold Moon

Ancientrails hits the road again this afternoon for sunny eastern South Dakota, high above the plains.  There I will reside, for three nights, in a local instance of a 1,300 year plus institution, the Benedictine Monks of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s interesting to me that the international website for the Benedictines has St. John’s in Collegeville as its host.  I have always found the monastic or even the hermetic life appealing which is why I eventually made my peace with Andover and its relative seclusion.

The quiet, contemplative atmosphere encouraged by monastics the world around and in various faith traditions serves a calm heart to a frenzied world, a place to which we can retire if we need.  I’ve had a long stretch with no regular  contemplative or meditative practice, this weekend I plan to enter a new phase, one appropriate to this time in my life.

Aging itself requires a contemplative spirit, an accepting spirit for the challenges that it holds include the inevitable and long shunned confrontation with death.  (Ironic note:  In the midst of this thought I got a robo-call from Congress Michele Bachman which I allowed to trigger upset.)

Kate and I need to check our answers for Chapter 2 right now.  Back at ya.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Floating Away to Blue Cloud Abbey

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Imbolc                              Waning Cold Moon’

Last day at home until Sunday.  Headed out to Blue Cloud Abbey, where Kathleen Norris wrote at least two books.  The Abbey’s buildings are 1960’s modernist, most like public elementary schools, save for the Abbey church which has some panache.  The Abbey church, the guest house and the monastic facilities sit on the highest point for miles.  After sundown, the lights of small towns faraway twinkle.

I’m looking forward to an actual retreat with some quiet time spent on meditation and my own spiritual path.  I haven’t done one of those in a long time, too long.  Love is on my mind, right now, so I’ll plan to spend some contemplative time with how it is in my life and how I offer it to others.  This Valentine’s Day, my 63rd birthday, feels like a spur to thinking about love, a bit unusual for me since I’m normally focused on my birthday.  Anyhow, I have a new Parabola focused on love that I’m taking with me.

Woolly Brother Mark Odegard has taken his magic bus to the shores of the  Pacific Ocean outside Puerto Vallarta.  His journey, a pilgrim’s really, takes him where his vision beckons.  I admire his willingness to open himself to the world and to others, a life lived embracing life.  Very Zorba.  And Zorba is one of my heroes.