Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Coronavirus, Friends, Health, Politics, Third Phase

Sad and Ashamed

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Saturday gratefuls: Alan. The Ancient ones. Venus in the sky with diamonds. Thanksgiving. Smaller, this year. Trump. Revealing how precious and how fragile our democracy is. Kate. Good days. All those who read Ancientrails. Thank you. The gas heater in the loft. La Nina. Keeping us dry. And, aware. Holiseason. Lighting up lives across the globe. Next up, an American Thanksgiving.

Friendship. So important. At times so difficult. I made a mistake with a group of friends, introduced a close friend from another part of my life, and it didn’t go well. I misread the signals, assumed too much. Now my close friend and I will have to be embarrassed together. I feel ashamed and sad. Today I talk with the friend, a Colorado friend, and tell him that he’s no longer welcome, except as a possible guest. Tough duty. Lost some sleep last night.

Friendship bonds. In this case the old and deep bonds between my group of friends are so significant that having another present changes the dynamics. In an unhelpful way. I missed this because I’m friends with all of them. I assumed and it did in fact make an ass out of me. 73 and still adulting. Gosh. I want to remain friends with everyone. We’ll see if that’s possible.

The orange bother. Wonder if he uses a (very large) tanning bed or tan in a bottle. He’s trying to remove the loss lines from this bummer of an election for him. Don’t imagine the tanning salon will help. No amount of cosmetology, even if the stylist is the inimitable Rudy Giuliani, will make them disappear. Trump looks as foolish as tan lines in November.

Thought I might be ready to analyze this mess of an election, but I’m not. Reading the commentary makes cringe. So far. That will pass. I want to consider what Trump’s depredations mean for our future as a nation. Not yet.

Covid. Feels like the nation is Evel Kneivel. All we have to do is jump the time between today and next spring when the vaccine roll out will jumpstart the end to this episode of “Do You Feel Sick!” That’s a long time and there are many holidays ahead. Many college kids coming home. Many kids wanting Grandma and Grandpa. Many older folks who’ve been good about staying inside since March now look at holidays with no kids, no grandkids, no friends. This is hard.

Winter squash. Wild caught salmon, Cook Inlet. Orange, tomato, onion, olive, and caper salad. A nice, healthy supper.

Had a bit of weirdness yesterday. Got up from doing planks and pelvic raises on the ball. My heart rate jumped up and didn’t fall when I sat down. Called my medical expert on the intercom. Probably orthostatic hypotension. A blood pressure drop when suddenly going from sitting on lying down to standing. I’ve been exercising regularly since my early 40’s. Used pulse rate monitoring most of that time. Pretty familiar with how my body responds to exercise. This was different. Unless it persists I would write NBD in my chart. No Big Deal.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Family, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Weather +Climate

Oh, I See

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Sunday gratefuls: Snow. 8 degrees. More Snow, more Cold drooping down from the north, screaming in later from the west. Rigel and Kep. Kate. Our dialogue about doing things together. A warmer day yesterday. Happy Camper. Safeway. Ruby.

A light Snow, crystalline, falls outside. The temperature has dropped to 6 degrees. We are in a belt, once again, that could get up to 12-14 inches. Any amount of Snow and cold comes as a relief, not only here on Shadow Mountain, but also for those affected by the East Troublesome Fire and the Cameron Fire, well north of us, up in the Rocky Mountain National Park part of the state. I hope it’s enough to douse them, or at least bring them under control.

My favorite coffee mug has the Polar Express on it. I got it when Kate and I took then 7 year old grandson Gabe to an evening on board a Christmas train. He remarked, “We don’t celebrate this!” and huffed at the whole production. I got mad. Couldn’t he back off and enjoy the elves coming through with hot chocolate? Nope.

Gabe is not an observant Jew, even now several years later at the age of 12. But, he held fast that night. I admire it. I can say that now, but then, I thought, you ungrateful little killjoy!

You see this coming, right? What was really going on there? I loved Christmas. I loved the Polar Express. I did not associate it with Christianity by that point, but Gabe certainly did. Christmas is the great temptation for Hanukkah kids. Partly why Jewish children do so well at Hanukkah these days in terms of presents. Look! We have 8 days, they only have one night.

Not Christmas. Nope, Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel. Not Silent Night. No Christmas Tree. No Santa Claus. No The Night Before Christmas. A clear demarcation line between them and us. Kate and I that night were them. Gabe defended his faith and his culture. Again, good for him.

Fast forward to a Hanukkah at our house a year or so later. My knee replacement had just happened. I was home but medicated, morphine. Big pain.

As Ruth and Gabe went through the stack of presents on the coffee table, I was hit with a sudden wave of despair. What was I doing here? Why was I celebrating Hanukkah? I’m a Christmas guy. How did I let myself get into this?

The same kind of holiday dysphoria, I think, that Gabe experienced on the Polar Express. Huh. What goes around, comes around.

Since that moment, which passed as the morphine went away and the knee healed, I’ve realized the exasperated finger needed to point back at myself. Both incidents indicated a deep longing, a childhood longing, for a holiday I knew as mine.

I love Santa Claus, twinkling lights, hot chocolate, candy canes. And, yes, the Christmas Tree. I don’t love the hassle of the Christmas Tree or the materialistic orgy. No. That was easy to leave behind. What are the presents for anyhow? Proof of love? What kid needs that? Or, at least, what kid should need that?

The whole mishmash of mistaking parental love for the giving of gifts let me walk away from Christmas. Kate helped of course because she got tired of decorating MY Christmas Tree. Can’t blame her for that.

I don’t need the whole crass side of Christmas. Neither do you, I imagine. Maybe nobody does.

But. Boy, do I need the songs and the lights and all that stuff about Santa and the North Pole. And, the Tree. This year I’m going to pick a Lodgepole in our yard as my Christmas Tree. No, I’ll not cut it down. Maybe I’ll find a living Evergreen Tree to have inside, a small one.

Its that Evergreen connection that makes religious sense. Evergreen, a resurrected God. See? I’ll continue this, but I want to post now, so I can get breakfast before my time with the ancient ones.

Aging, Colorado, Commentary on the news, Cooking, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Fattening, Not Flattening

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Wednesday gratefuls: New wheelchair. #19! Better comfort for Kate. Covid days and Covid nights. With the flu on its way. Hunker down, USA. A gift from Ancient One, Tom Crane. Safeway. Picking up groceries in my jammies. Cool weather ahead. And, snow! Drive down that fire danger. Yeah.

On the drive down the mountain to Safeway the Sun angle, the brown and gold Grasses, naked Aspen among the Lodgepole sent me back to trips to Aunt Marjorie’s house for Thanksgiving. Over the hills and through the woods.

Picked up some squash today. Yum. Also, thought I indicated I wanted 5 tomatoes. Got five pounds instead. Chili tonight. Safety wise pickup is the gold standard. As it is in terms of limiting impulse purchases. However.

The third surge of the first wave has come up hard against the rocky shore of pandemic fatigue. We have fattened the curve, instead of flattening. And, we are at it again. This time though with a broader reach in regions. That dovetails with three accelerants: the seasonal flu, cold weather and more indoor gatherings, winter holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah.

By the time 2021 arrives two months plus a little from now we might be ready to skip ahead to 2022.

The fall after college, 1969, Judy and I moved to Appleton, Wisconsin. My bakery job had me up at 4 am as my first Wisconsin winter closed in. The owner, almost joyous for a Norwegian (I now know.), used to sing, “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.” Yeah. But, he was the boss, you know. I can still hear him. Seems like the perfect song now.

Or, this. The weather outside is frightful, the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve GOT NO PLACE TO GO, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! (caps mine, ya know.)

Did I forget to mention the election? An election is coming. Like winter. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Local satellite gathers dust from meteor. The Lockheed-Martin works off Deer Creek Canyon Road celebrated as their designed and built OSIRIS-REX blew on asteroid Bennu and collected (they hope) dust in an extended ring.

There is a robust space industry in Colorado and it will get much bigger if Trump’s Space Force decides to permanently locate its headquarters here. It has a temporary headquarters in Virginia but there are already several sites here: Buckley AFB, Peterson AFB, Schriever AFB with 10 of its fifteen units in the state already.

Back to writing. Kate read the first half of Jennie’s Dead and her response to it jarred me back to the keyboard. I can’t exercise until next Monday so the time is easy to find. I feel good, like I know I should. Writing buoys me up.

Aging, Coronavirus, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The Move, Third Phase, Travel

Mountain Recluses

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Fall and the RBG Moon. Orion, Mars, Venus, and the Great Dog

Monday gratefuls: Ancient friends. Their journeys. Learning and education. Life. All those drops for my eyes. Peanut butter and Rigel. Carne asada, twice baked potato, and salad. Safeway pickup. That snow yesterday. Mom’s yahrzeit on the 17th.

A bright, sunshiny day in the high 50’s. I worked at my computer. Turned around. A gray day. Snow blizzarding down, swirling. 39 degrees. Colorado. An hour later. No snow. Blue sky. Sunny. Black Mountain absorbed it all.

My ancient friends keep talking about the Ground Hog day nature of their lives. Not so for me. Each day has its own challenges. Our meal times vary. Sure, there are equivalent actions at familiar times: feeding the dogs, a.m., coming up to the loft, writing this blog. Breakfast, change Kate’s bandages. Noon or so nap. Evening dog feeding, some television. In between these though I could be reading, painting, writing.

Our life had a cloistered feel even before the pandemic. That’s intensified, for sure. We don’t have the occasional meal out. No movies. No CBE. Zooming with family, friends, synagogue classes. Yes, not the same as in person, as we all know now.

Both of us though are introverts. Kate even more so than I. Happiness is a book, a project, a downtime hour painting or sewing, watching a movie. Of course we love our kids, our grandkids, our friends, the folks at CBE. We would like to see them more often. But, not too much more often.

Mountain recluses. That’s us. Just got a novel, A Life of Li Bai. Either at retirement or upon banishment Chinese literati took up mountain living, usually as recluses. Li Bai, a Tang dynasty poet exiled in the time of the An Lushan rebellion is a mountain poet.

Here’s one of his memorized by generations of Chinese schoolchildren:

Thoughts in the Silent Night (静夜思)

床前明月光，   Beside my bed a pool of light—
疑是地上霜，   Is it hoarfrost on the ground?
舉頭望明月，   I lift my eyes and see the moon,
低頭思故鄉。   I lower my face and think of home.

And another famous poem (in China) by Han-Shan, or Cold Mountain, Poem 302:

出生三十年， I’ve been in the world for thirty years,
當遊千萬里。 And I must have traveled a million miles.
行江青草合， Walked by rivers where the green grass grows thick,
入塞紅塵起。 And entered the frontier where the red dust rises.
鍊藥空求仙， Purified potions in vain search for immortality,
讀書兼詠史。 Read books and perused the histories.
今日歸寒山， Today I return to Cold Mountain,
枕流兼洗耳。 Pillow myself on the creek and wash out my ears.

The pandemic has changed our lives, but not that much. Li Bai or Han Shan could have lived here.

The Consolations of the Mountains. Our wild Neighbors. The dark night Sky filled with Stars and Planets and Galaxies. The Lodgepole Pine and the Aspen. The dancing, sparkling Streams. The sturdy Rock. The thinner Air. Shadow Mountain home.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Shadow Mountain

Clarity

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Fall and the RBG Moon with Mars, Orion, and Venus

Thursday gratefuls: Steady hands, Dr. Gustave. Cataract surgery, the new lens. Kate. Cool weather coming. Alan. Susan and Marilyn who will keep Kate company during my surgery. Aspen gold among the Lodgepole green.

Right eye. Slice, dice, remove old lens, insert new. Clarity in both eyes. Cherry Hills Surgery Center is a standalone building just off Hwy. 285. Cataracts, corneas, other procedures peculiar to the eye. Alan will stay in his Tesla. He bought a new infotainment upgrade so he will be back home in his living room if he wants.

This surgery will improve my eyesight in several ways. No need for glasses to drive. Sunglasses, I’ll still wear. No glasses for TV. Colors brighter. Cheaters for reading. As it looks right now, I will only need cheaters. I got three of them for $10. Much cheaper than my old ones. By a factor of almost 100. I suspect I will be able to see better in low light, too.

Eventually cataracts cause blindness so improving my vision while preventing blindness offers something medicine rarely does. A body better than the one before.

Kate had a tough day yesterday. Her rheumatoid arthritis kicked up, making her right wrist painful, red, swollen. Her upper arm became swollen, red, and hot. That subsided over night. I do not like leaving her when she’s having trouble. Surgery has its own demands. I’m glad Susan and Marilyn offered to be with her, at least by phone. Marilyn is close, in mountain terms, so if Kate needs medical care, she could take her.

Did not watch the Presidential Vice’s debate. I could have streamed it through the New York Times or the Washington Post. But, no.

Rigel refuses her meds and bites down when I try to open her jaw. Will need new strategies if we go the whole 12 weeks.

The RBG Moon stands above Orion’s right shoulder while Mars, as close it ever comes to earth, twinkles over Black Mountain. Venus shines in the east. When warriors fight, they fight for love. Of country. Of family. Of an idea. This sky, this warrior sky, filled with love. A strong night sky.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

RBG and Mars

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Fall The Full RBG Moon and Mars

Saturday gratefuls: Kate’s better breathing, stamina. Easy Entrees Oktoberfest meal today: Pork Schnitzel, Bavarian Pretzels, and German Cucumber Salad. Prosit! Sukkot. The Sukkah is up at CBE. Harvests all round the world. Confirmation on masks, social distancing, staying away from crowded enclosed spaces. My new lens. My new cheaters. Fall. It’s courage and sadness.

The alignment this morning of the full RBG Moon and Mars happened just over Black Mountain, a bit to the northwest. Beautiful in the early morning sky. Mythic, too. The warrior God of ancient Rome and the warrior Woman. Anima and Animus. The full power of masculine and feminine writ large. A good time to remember that this miserable administration has only a few weeks to its reckoning.

No. I don’t relish Trump’s struggle with Covid. Not when I view him as just a man. I neither wish nor celebrate suffering on anyone. Sure, I might joke about it, but in the end, no.

As a scumbag President, cheerleader for the Proud Boys and the Klan, as a misogynist, a racist, a mocker of the disabled, and as an ignorant man in a job that requires learning though, I’m glad he’s sidelined. May he be out of the picture long enough to ensure his defeat.

Saw Dr. Gustave yesterday. Still at 20/25 for distance. He seemed disappointed. I’m not. Things are so much clearer. Colors are brighter. The World has a certain freshness to it. It seems younger. Cataract surgery gives me a boost mentally.

Had to sign permission for my right eye to get cut. Acknowledge that I still had blurry, hazy vision in it. Forms and checklists, scheduling. The usual morass of American medicine.

I won’t rant. I won’t. Yet, for all the questionnaires, all the releases signed, the same ones over and over, the system, well, no, not a system, the chaotic, entangled delivery of medical care here in these United States, medical care itself is often thwarted rather than delivered.

If you’ve followed this blog at all, you may recall my struggles with the axumin scan and subsequent imaging. Kate still has no wheelchair. She went in Wednesday and got prepped for an unnecessary procedure, called off before it was about to start. Why? What caused her shortness of breath that has now abated? Will we get a referral to Dr. Taryle to answer those questions? Unclear.

The referral system demanded by insurance carriers is at the heart of all this trouble. It’s the way we curb medical costs. They say. It’s the way they guard their profit margin, I say. Wish we could just get Marine One to pick us up at our front door and deliver us to the doctor or the hospital. That we could get the same kind of care as the President. That all of us could get that kind of care.

Delay, denial, and skepticism are the main tools of this failed institution. Sure, there are doctors who know what to do, hospitals that deliver excellent care, but how can we access them? The burden of making the system move too often falls to the sick one. This is cruel and inhumane.

Hoping for a massive and radical change in how Americans receive medical care. Vote. That’s a start.

Aging, Colorado, Coronavirus, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

WTF

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Family, near and far. Friends. Ancient and new. ADT. Androgen Deprivation Therapy. It’s not just Lupron anymore. For Charlie H. 27 degrees this morning. The Denver Post. Decompensation in full public view. The orange excrescence. Dez and the wheelchair. Kate. And her anger.

What a long strange trip it’s being. Geez. Took Kate to Swedish for her thoracentesis. We found the ambulatory care unit hidden down a corridor tacked on to the main building, but leading further, past the ACU. Hospitals are often like English buildings with various floors built at different times, different buildings, too, then all stitched together with elevators and hallways.

I wheeled Kate into Room 9, really a small stall covered with a curtain, where Alice, the nurse, cared for Kate. Alice. Hmm. They hooked Kate up to the hospital oxygen, took her blood pressure, and her O2 saturation. We’d already decided that I would go eat breakfast, so I left for the cafeteria.

Where there had been a number of tasty options, there were now breakfast burritos wrapped in tinfoil, fruit in cups, some with yogurt, scrambled eggs in small plastic containers. I went with the breakfast burrito and blueberries buried in yogurt.

Not bad. I stayed in the cafeteria awhile because it was big, airy, very few tables spaced far apart. Not many people. Safer. Weird to think about personal safety in the hospital, but. Covid.

I find a place in one of those hallways connecting two buildings, no one there, but with a convenient, lonely chair. Kate called after about twenty minutes.

Come get me. I’m done. Oh. It was before 10:30, the time of her procedure. Huh. I got up and walked down the ACU corridor again, past medical oncology, and cardiac testing reception. Wondered briefly what it was like to spend your working life in such a dismal looking space.

When I got there, Kate surprised me. The ultrasound tech came and said there is no pleural effusion. What? She had an IV in, four pokes, she has terrible veins, and she looked angry. As well she might. We’d come in Friday evening, about an hour and a half round trip, for a drive up Covid test. Then we’d come Tuesday for the ct scan. Another hour and a half plus the contrast, and a long ride across other corridors and into other buildings to find an available cat scan machine.

Now we’d come in a third time in six days. Parked. Gotten tested at the lobby with the temperature gun, received green and white pre-screened for Covid wrist bands, checked in, schlepped to the ACU. Kate had been hospital gowned. a sheet gotten for her to cover up, and a nurse had taken four tries with a very sharp needle to insert an IV. Then, nada.

Alice. Indeed. We’d gone down the hospital looking glass.

We have an appointment with Taryle for next week. WTF, doc?

Also, still no wheel chair. We’re renting one. Though. Dez, Lisa Gidday’s nurse, says she’s on it. I believe her.

Aging, Dreams, Family, Feelings, Garden, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Springtime of the Soul

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Thoracentesis. Valet who got our car from a distant garage. The imaging employee who found an unused machine for Kate’s catscan. Phase two of the three stage plan done. Remembering to take out the blue foam. Clear vision. Michaelmas yesterday. Cool morning.

Michaelmas. The Saint’s Day of the Archangel Michael, he of Lucifer ejecting mythic fame. God’s great warrior. Also the name of the first term in British colleges and universities.

But best of all, the springtime of the soul. Rudolf Steiner. The growing season has finished. The external world had its glorious moment at the Fall Equinox, the celebration of the harvest. The body will be fed.

We turn our attention inward after Michaelmas. The nights grow longer, the angle of the sun shortens, and the days grow cold. Courage and sadness. A touch of melancholy encouraged.

When we drove down the hill yesterday, golden leaved Aspens had burst out among the Lodgepole Pine green. Framed by a typical clear blue Colorado sky the beauty made me gasp.

The beauty, the chill in the air. We know its brevity, like the beauty of the young. Those Aspen speak from the sides of Black Mountain, Conifer Mountain, Shadow Mountain. We are done now. Good bye. See you on the flip side. Their golden glamor a farewell to summer.

We know it. Many falls. The outrageous, over the top color of a Midwestern fall. The remnant of the Big Forest, the one that stretched from the east Coast to the Plains. Before the modern era a squirrel could travel tree to tree from the Atlantic to the Great Plains without ever touching the ground. So much melancholy in those colors, the abstract landscapes of a vivisectioned ecosystem.

Piles of Leaves in the yard, on the Forest floor. Running, jumping, landing in the piles. Dogs racing into them, through them. Do you remember, as I do, burning Leaves in the street? An acrid smell combining with earthy wetness. A strong seasonal memory.

One day soon Winds driven by the Cold slumping down from the Arctic will strip them all, Maple, Oak, Ironwood, Elm, Ash, Locust, Hickory, Sycamore, dislodge their Leaves and the tree naked against the coming winter. The Aspen gold rush will disappear and only the ghostly gray-white of their Trunks and Branches will remain.

A woman I learned ritual craft from thought this denuding of the deciduous Trees might explain Samain and the Celtic belief that the veil thinned between this world and the next during the transition.

Kate’s sister Sarah married Jeremiah Miller. A painter. Before I met her, Kate bought two of his very large paintings. One hangs in our bedroom. In it the Sky is a gunmetal blue and its complement of cumulus Clouds show as reflections in a Pond. Both Sky and Pond show through a Forest of bare Trunks and Branches, a before Winter comes scene we see all year.

This turn of the Great Wheel follows the gradual waning of the Light until the longest Night, the Winter Solstice. What better time for introspection, for the Soul to rise?

May this season of the Soul’s Springtime give you what you need for the next months and years of your journey, your ancientrail.

Aging, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, GeekWorld, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Minnesota, Mussar, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Paying the Price

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Monday gratefuls: Groveland. The Ancient Ones. The ancientrails of wondering and friendship. The Darkness. The Stars, now steady. Kate’s stoma site. Getting clear and healthy. Kate. Just Kate, always Kate. Exposure. Fear. 28 degrees this a.m. The Gold in them thar Hills: Aspen. Magwa, the hero Rat. The clan.

So what happens to me. I over prepare. I go deep but the subject has only so much time. I’m disappointed. Did I give them anything? Did I intervene too little? Was I defensive? Will they want me back? Especially yesterday with It’s Beyond Me.

Zoom of course. Perhaps my choice of style, a discussion rather than a straight presentation. The inherent ambiguity of the topic. Felt off when it finished.

Also, I need this. I need to try something new. Learn something new. Be in this zoom moment as an actor, not only a passive observer.

Watched Social Dilemma on Netflix. The second of three documentary recommendations from the ancient ones. Again, not much new. Still, disturbing. I’m writing this in Firefox, using duckduckgo as my search engine. I practice good hygiene on Facebook and still love the old friends and Irish Wolfhounds. I heard the young, bright manipulators, but did not hear the path forward. Unless it’s regulation. Which is a duh unless you hate regulation as evil government intervention. I’m for it.

As I changed Kate’s bandage yesterday, we talked. I’m wondering how we can lift ourselves out of, or away from, this medicalization? I mean, I don’t want to see you as a patient all the time, but with all these appointments and treatments, it’s hard. Our life is not that. Yet, it is.

Right then, Rabbi Jamie called, wondering how Kate was? She mentioned this thought I’d just had. He listened. He had some time before Yom Kippur and wanted to connect with some folks. They miss us. We’ve been absent even from zoom mussar for over a month.

Covid. Makes all this hard. Kate can’t go to Patchworkers or Needleworkers. We don’t go to mussar at CBE. Or, services. Or the occasional program. It will soon be Sukkot and the booth is up, but we’re not there to participate. Yes, this is life now. Yes, it has its price.

God, this is cheery.

Aging, Family, Health, Science, Third Phase

Apres

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate. Our ancientrail of man and woman together. Dr. Gustave and his wife, the artist Lindsay Smith Gustave. The cataract, the eye. Its evolution from one-celled life. The hand and the eye together. Art. Seeing and making. UFO’s in Ode’s mind. The threat to our democracy. Our opportunity to act.

In the car to see Dr. Gustave. One day after. Bright light. Eye still dilated. Colors more intense, more clarity. Less sfumato. In closing the dominant left eye, the one with the new lens replacing its cataract, I can return to the sfumato that the cataract created. Damned if I don’t prefer it in some ways. Aesthetically it’s pleasing to me, the gentle blending of colors, their slight smokiness, which I couldn’t identify before. Guess I’ll have to high these eyes to a gallery of Renaissance painting after the second one’s done.

You had an extra large cataract. Yes! So I take out a cataract shaped like a walnut and I slip in a lens shaped like a plate. When the two sides of the eye close over the plate, there can sometimes be a fold. If you get a straight line in your vision at night, that’s the fold. No matter. If it’s still there, we’ll just laser it out.

This morning, here in the loft, as I look at my banks of track lighting, they have a lance of light through them at about a sixty degree angle. It does not impair my vision. We’ll see.

My distance vision is already 20/25 and will get to 20/20 in time. I could watch TV without glasses last night. This computer screen is far less fuzzy than it was on Wednesday.

At the lower left of my left eye, I have a sensation of light. Not a big deal. If it hung around though…

No resistance work for a month. Can do aerobics. No heavy lifting. (see the resistance work) Not sure what I’m gonna do with the Chewy order when it comes.

Watched a live, real time video of cataract surgery last night. Takes about 8 minutes or so. Involves slicing the mature organelle into quarters, then vacuuming them up with a teeny vacuum. The lens slips in through a tiny incision, unfolds, then gets straightened out, flattened. The edges of the eye right there are polished to prevent problems later.

All this time a retractor has the eyeball served up like an over easy egg. John, the nurse anesthetist, told me not to fight the retractor. I didn’t. Didn’t even know it was there.

Surprisingly tired both Thursday and yesterday.

Around 4:15 p.m. Kate and I drove into Swedish hospital. She had to get a drive up Covid test before her catscan on Tuesday and the draining of the fluid on her lungs the next day. Really hope this gives her some relief, She needs it. Meanwhile the stoma site has begun to heal. Almost normal looking.