Category Archives: Aging

Aging

The Tilt-A-Whirl and the Labyrinth

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Imbolc    Full Wild Moon

When I woke up yesterday, my right eye began to jiggle back and forth.  The room began to sway.  OMG as the kid’s say.  I stumbled to the bathroom, hitting a painting on the wall.  My insides tried to come outside and a cold, clammy sweat broke out all over my body.  Yikes!

At first I thought.  Flu.  So I waited for everything to calm down.  Everything did not calm down.  That was I hollered for Kate.  “Kate!”

She came and took in what was going on.  “Smile for me.”  she said.  A peculiar response unless your spouse has a medical degree.  I smiled my most winning smile.  “That’s a test for stroke.”  Oh.  I passed.   Thank god.

“Where’s your blood pressure cuff?”  I keep one to take my pressure every now and then.  She got it.  122/62.  Strange for a guy with essential hypertension.  But good news to her.

She had me diagnosed.  Labyrinthitis.  A viral infection of the inner ear that plays havoc with balance.  Each time I moved my body put me into state I had experienced in full only once before.  That time came when I found myself in an airplane bathroom during  high turbulence.  The stewardesses though I was having a heart attack.  Hell, so did I.  But not Kate.  She got me a wheel chair, we got off the plane and waited until I calmed down.

This deal though did not allow the body to calm down.  I had one position that did not produce vertigo and nausea.  I stayed in for the whole day.

Kate got me some fancy anti-emetics that helped a lot.  She said it would lift in a day and it has.  I can move around now, but slowly.  And, oh, by the way she also said, “You can’t drive for six weeks.”  Six weeks!

Well, better grounded than dead, I always say.

One more piece:  the Jungian in me jumped at the chance to read the article on Jewish labyrinths in the new Parabola that came the same day.  More on that later.

Aging, Woolly Mammoths

Retirement Parties, Funerals, and Hospitals

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Winter   Waxing Wild Moon (a wonderful thin crescent turned upward toward Venus, the bright evening star)

Went into Mary Broderick’s retirement party this afternoon.  A fine affair with the obligatory good noises and a gracious speech by Mary.

It seemed, though, a bit formulaic, a ritual with parts:  the buffet with an assortment of snack-like food, people milling around wondering how that one there knows our Mary, tables set out with small candles (though in this case they were small lights made to look like flickering table candles), a receiving line.  It was clear Mary moved these folks to good ends.

The flavor of the whole had a heavy dose of institutional Catholic.  The decor while updated (by Mary) had a non-ostentatious feel, but a studied one.  Mary mentioned the several Catholic organizations with whom  she worked, thanking them.  I wondered how someone of her vitality and intelligence could thrive within the often sclerotic bureaucracy of Catholicism.

It all had a Northeast flavor, the old Northeast, a Catholic immigrant neighborhood where caring for each other was the norm.  A mix of good will, old ways and downhome charm.

Aging, Weather +Climate

Weather Boring

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Winter      New Moon (Wild)

The weather here has gone into a stable, cold pattern.  Just not very interesting.  No storms. No new snow.  No new ice.  No winds.  No warmth.  Some way below freezing cold, but been there done that this year.  It’s not been terrible for me because I don’t have to get out of the house and drive to work every day, fight the cold.  I’ve not even felt cabin fever set in and it usually does for me about now.  Must be the internet and substantial projects here at home.

Funny thing.  When I write about weather here, it’s more interesting than when I write on my Startribune weather blog.  When I get on the weather blog page, I feel the need to go all meteorological.  The comments I’ve gotten though have come when I’ve given a bit more commentary.  I just copied the paragraph above and stuck it in my latest post for the Trib.  Context matters.

Going into Minneapolis today for Mary Broderick’s retirement party.  Retirement parties, funerals, hospital visits.  That’s the golden years.

Aging, Great Work, Myth and Story, permaculture

I Have Not Mentioned Adam

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5  rises 29.92  NWN0  windchill 5  Winter

Waning Wolf Moon

A full day Permaculture workshop.  This guy, who takes a nap every day around 1pm, suffers in mid-day at day long events.  In addition, I find that my mind gets overloaded, takes in too much.  It’s not that I can’t absorb and eventually integrate the material, but the pace of absorption has changed over time.  I need space between intake and digestion.  A day’s worth of basically new material wears me out.

When I came back, Kate asked me what I’d learned and I had troubling with a clear answer.  The exhaustion played a factor, yes, but the tumbling pieces, the changing paragdigms and the altogether novel still raced around inside, had not come down to a place of rest. Tomorrow, next week.  Better.

Rest tonight.  Then I’ll work on Adam tomorrow.  I haven’t mentioned Adam yet, have I?  He’s taken over my thinking lately. What was it like, I wondered?  What was it like to wake up, come to consciousness, breathe that first breath? What happened in the mind and heart of Adam when God blew into his nostrils?

Aging, Politics, Weather +Climate
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8  bar rises 30.11  0mph WNW  windchill 4   Samhain

Full Moon of Long Nights    Day  8hr  47m

I hear you saying often that you’re not turned on to politics. Well let me bring to bear the lessons of history. If you’re not turned on to politics the lesson of history is that politics will turn on you.—Ralph Nader, Countdown

Yes, Nader is right, but I wish he’d take his own lesson to heart.  Quixotic campaigns that drain the vote of the left and left independents have had their day.  Until or if the left can mount a credible candidate we should support the Democrats.

In this and many other ways I can tell I have reached old fogey status.  Twice in the last couple of weeks I’ve sent notes to the Sierra Club’s legislative committee that reveal, to me later, and probably to each member at the time, my more conservative approach.  With a $5+ billion budget deficit I think we should pitch our stuff in light of savings to the state budget.  Instead my colleagues queue up to decide which expletives are more appropriate for sulfide mining.

Used to be me.

We’ve had a cold December so far, considerably below normal.  This is the weather most of us here yearn for and miss as the winter’s have grown warmer.  The snow stays on the ground; the air is crisp.   Sleeping becomes a treat, a warm bear-in-the-den snuggle.

I have finally caught up, again, with my various chores including all the outside ones.  That feels great, but it does mean I have to reorient my daily activities and I’m still in the in-between place about that.  Soon.

Aging, Family

Hunkering Down

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33 bar rises 29.77  N 6mph windchill 28  Samhain

Waxing Crescent of the Dark Moon

The October financial storm gathered under the Blood Moon.  Obama’s election comes during a waxing Dark Moon.  Just interesting is all I’m saying.

The red car in the Sandhills of Nebraska.

red-car-trip061450.jpgPicked up the red car from its most recent series of procedures.  This time it got new front constant velocity boots.  They protect the main bearing from wear caused by road debris.  Two new aluminum wheels should solve the slow leak problem the back tires have experienced.  Various bulbs and other smaller matters–oil change, too–thrown in for the trip.  Each visit it comes closer and closer to Theseus’s ship.

Kate continues to suffer with her cervical vertebrae pinching a nerve.  She’s so stoic, so careful.  Right now she’s stopped taking the prednisone which helped because she wants the imaging studies to be unaffected.  She can’t find a way to position herself that doesn’t hurt.  Like hell.

Got tools for protecting the trees in our new orchard.  Later today or tomorrow I’ll install them and begin to put down the black plastic and straw to kill weeds along the forest’s edge.  Much cooler weather now, but it is still a good time to do this kind of work.

This week will be the last for working outside for a while.    I’m ready to hunker down and get some reading and writing done.

Aging, Family

Lunch Reminder

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83  bar falls 29.97  4mph NE dew-point 64  sunrise 6:21  sunset 8:11 Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

Took Kate out to lunch at Bennigans to say thanks for cooking Monday night.  While there we watched a group of wheel chair bound residents of the Anoka Care Center load onto a transit bus after lunch.  A reminder of the ravages aging can create.  A good prod to exercise and healthy diet.

Didn’t get outside yet today and I have to get those daylilies moved so I can move the iris.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Our Land and Home

Belt Up

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69  bar steady 30.10  0mph  E  dew-point 58   Sunrise 8:58  Sunset 7:23   Summer

Waning Gibbous Thunder Moon

Follow up on the yak dumplings.  More and more my mouth likes things against which my lower digestive system rebels.  Yak meat roiled my stomach.  A familiar feeling these days, days in which I have fallen far from the grace of the nutrisystem weight loss this winter and subsequently have created various insults to my stomach and intestines:  fatty food, not enough fiber, too much food.  Like that.  Makes me feel yucky.

As I said yesterday, I don’t like victim status, but I am increasingly aware that my body is the victim of internecine warfare in my mind.  One part of me, the earthy bodily part, sends a sensation signal to the brain, “Boy, wouldn’t X be good right now?”  Another part of me, sometimes the Superego/father and sometimes Healthy Man, says, “No.  Not right now.  Too much.  Bad for the heart, blood vessels, stomach wall.  No.”  Then, too often, earthy body picks itself up and goes to the refrigerator.

I experience this, sometimes, as an actual dialogue in which one part of my mind shushes the other.  My hunch is that consistent eating habits lie in empowering the Healthy Man, but I need to figure out how to do that.  This feels like an old struggle to me, one I have played out in relation to alcohol and tobacco, but girding my loins for battle has, so far, not proved powerful enough against my appetites.  What is girding the loins anyhow?  What is a gird?

According to  Princeton Word Net,  gird is to put on arms or to put on a girdle.   Girdle meant, one source says, belt originally. OK.  So I put my belt on do battle with weight. Gotta admit that sounds logical.

This whole process literally drives me nuts.  In spite of all the good stuff I do, if I see myself as losing this struggle, I get down on myself.  Not a positive place to be.

On a brighter note Home Depot beckons.  The stump grinder.

Aging, Cinema and Television, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Literature

An Instant Classic

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63  bar steep rise 29.64 6mph N dew-point 58  Summer night

Last Quarter of the Flower Moon

As always, the movies come later up here above 694, inside the pick-up section of the Minneapolis metro.  Tonight it was “No Country For Old Men.”  This movie is an instant classic according to many reviews.

Talk about an oxymoron.  An instant classic.  That’s where the frisson is, yes, but I have a suspicion that just beyond the irony of such a juxtaposition lies a realm in which critics believe in their capacity to know a classic when they see one, even if it has only six months of theatre runs under its belt.  I don’t believe in such a capacity; but, I do believe it is of the nature of criticism to imagine its existence.

This is a fine movie.  It has a story line that takes you by misdirection.  As the movie unwinds into its fullness, the obvious assumption is that it is a mystery, a how will they catch him yarn.  Anton Chigurh and his compressed air weapon, used in stock-yards for killing live stock, cuts a wide lane of violence down the center of the screen.  The opening scene shows the remains of a drug deal that has killed at least eight people.

The plot seems to follow the results of this shoot out when it really follows Sheriff Bell, Sheriff of Terrel County in west Texas.  His story is a meditation on aging and on the violent criminal action that follows in the wake of the international drug trade.   He is an intelligent, compassionate man bewildered by crime he no longer understands.  In the final scene, which took me by surprise, he recount two dreams about his father.

A classic?  Hell, I don’t know.  I’m not even sure the movies that film historians claim are classics are classics.  I feel more confident in defining literary classics.  There I feel I know one when I see one.  With movies?  Difficult.  Casablanca?  Yes.  Singing in the Rain?  No.  Wizard of Oz?  Maybe.  Birds?  No.  Why?  Too sleepy to explain.  This movie a classic?  Probably not.  But it is a damned fine movie anyhow.