Category Archives: Family

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health

Coiled Around It In a Flash

September 1, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Seoah. My son. Dawn. A milky gray blue Sky. 47 degrees. Leo and Luke. Lakewood. Autism. Cash on hand. The Beatles. Mary and Mark, their ex-pat lives. Mary between K.L. and Melbourne; Mark between humid, libertine Bangkok and arid, rule bound Saudi Arabia. Ode in Glacier, seeing, then drawing. Travel. Taipei. Seoul. Songtan. Taos. Santa Fe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Celebrex

Kavanah: KINDNESS חֶסֶד Chesed Kindness, sharing, helpfulness Fourth Sefirah = expansion & unboundedness; love & mercy; right hand pulling closer (opposite Gevurah/Strength) (טוּב-לֵב Tuv Lev: Good-heartedness, benevolence, charitableness)

One brief shining: At Luke’s in Lakewood yesterday I watched Sacha, his Ball Python, move around her aquarium home, forked tongue piercing the air as her sinuous moves carried over a Tree branch, dipped her nose into the water, then slipped around and behind a large rock, always the tongue out, sniffing the air; she’s hungry, Luke said, looking for the live rats I give her.

Sacha, named after Sacha Mama, a Peruvian forest guardian deity, gets fed in a plastic bucket. Luke quickly throws in a live rat, about every two weeks. She’s coiled around it in a flash, he said. Sometimes the rat’s eyes bulge until it quit thrashing. Sacha releases the rat and feels it with her head until she determines where the head is and proceeds to consume it head first, moving it through her body as she goes into S-shaped constrictions to crush all of its bones. Takes her about two days to digest her meal. Gentle Luke. Primal Sacha. Nature red in tooth and scale.

Gabe’s coming up today. We’ll go searching for wild Raspberries along Kate’s Creek. Hope we find some since he loves eating wild fruit. Tomorrow we head over to UC-Boulder and pick up Ruth. We plan a sushi meal on the Pearl Street Mall in honor of Jon, who died two years ago on September 4th. It’s important that I celebrate with them since we’re Jon’s surviving family.

Afterward, I’ll take Gabe home to Galena Street in northeast Denver and hopefully drive home against returning Labor Day traffic. The Celebrex makes all of this possible with much less stress on my body. Which I very much appreciate.

Just a moment: Another surprising word about chronic pain. First, my shortness of breath has diminished. Not sure why though it might be that the fatigue caused by pain led my respiratory muscles to tire, too. Second, it’s not perfect, but I don’t need it to be. I still feel little jolts and tweaks in my hip. What’s different is that my back and core aren’t struggling to contain the pain, tightening and holding in awkward positions.

I’m still amazed at how much pain relief has done to help my quality of life. Only beginning to appreciate what it might mean if I can continue to use the Celebrex. We’ll check kidney and liver functions in a month and if they’re ok, every three months after. I may have to buy Cheryl, my phlebotomist, a cake. She says she’s gonna retire in January, but I hope not. She’s smooth as buttah.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Heirs

August 28, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Diane. Brother Mark’s Bangkok walks. Water Monitors. Cattle Egrets. Wild Neighbors in urban areas. Rebecca leaving for India and the Buddhist nunnery. Joanne. Her new book with two Buddhist therapists. Pain. Cranking it down without addiction. Whippets. Sight Hounds. And those who love and breed them. Dogs. Oh, OK. Dogs again.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sight Hounds

Kavannah: Friendship אַחֲוָה Achava (חֲבֵרוּת Chaverut: Partnership, camaraderie) (אַחְדוּת Achdut: Unity, solidarity, togetherness)

One brief shining: A few decades ago, maybe 4, a group of middle-aged men who knew each other somewhat well ate dinner together in an Indian restaurant in Minneapolis, joined by two other men who did not know each other, but had slight acquaintance with one or two of the others; might have been a poker night or a get together to watch the Vikings lose another big game, instead it was the beginning of 40 year plus bonds of friendship among the Woolly Mammoths, who surprisingly still live up to their motto: We’re not extinct yet.

Keep forgetting to post this. If you wanted to mail drugs worth $800 for a thirty day supply, how would you package them? Wegman’s is a compounding specialty pharmacy. Inside this colorful wrap sat my first doses of this round of Erleada. Clever, eh? And it gives the healthy message Ms. Thurston gave me in the first grade: Charles Paul, eat your vegetables. A twofer. Fun with cancer!

Had a session with my folks at Bond and Devick, financial advisors, RJ now for over thirty five years. They keep Kate’s IRA rollover steady. When the market goes up, you go up a little; when the market goes down, you go down a little. We’ve been with them since Penny Bond formed her firm, then hired RJ later on as her first employee. RJ just stepped down as owner/President, but keeps client contact and portfolio work. The IRA churns out what a 19th century British novel would refer to as a stipend and a nice one at that. With my Presbyterian pension and Social Security, I have more than adequate monthly cash. And. I will leave a tidy sum to my heirs: Ruth and Gabe, Seoah and my son. My heirs? That’s a weird phrase to write out loud.

The corpus has indeed gone up a little, down a little, always growing a bit but staying in the same basic range. Kate, always Kate, left me better off than she found me in so many ways, not the least financially. A shame that she didn’t get to enjoy the money she earned for longer. Thankfully, we had long ago passed the mark of mine and hers. We were together in all ways, no barriers between us. When she died, so did a part of me. A part now, in the way of the Soil, fertile ground for my new life after her death.

I suppose, come to consider it, that is the point of having heirs.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Politics

Eternal True Love

August 26, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Monday gratefuls: UC Boulder. Willville. Dushanbe Teahouse. The Flatirons. Starting out on her own, Ruth. The liberal arts. Studio arts. Philosophy. Political science. 50 degrees. Good sleeping. Dogs. Whippets. Home. The temperature differential of altitude. 31 degrees yesterday! 84-51. College. Learning. For its own sake. Hillel. The sweetness of seeing a girl grow into a young woman.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Boulder

Kavanah: BEAUTY תִפאֶרֶת Tiferet Beauty, harmony, balance. Sixth Sefirah: Reconciliation, synthesis, integration; the Heart (between Chesed & Gevurah)

One brief shining: Ruth sat across the small metal table from me, eagerness and doubt flowing through her like Boulder Creek which ran beside us, advice from her uncle, struggling with her mom, excited for a U.S. political history class and her first class in her major studio arts the next day, and ordered genmaicha, a tea approved by the Tokugawa Shogun, its history recounted to her by me, showing that first burst of undergraduate sophistication. She hoped. Oh, the places she’ll go.

Took the first step to get a Whippet. Well, first two steps. I applied to adopt a Whippet/Australian Cattledog mix and sent an e-mail to Horsetooth Whippets. Sent this with slight modifications to both of them:

“My wife died three years ago. Over the years we had 6 Whippets and 9 Irish Wolfhounds plus two IW/Coyote Hound mixes. Sighthounds appealed to us with their independent, yet loving manner.

Rigel, my last hound, died a year ago. I’m 77 and not strong enough to care for another big dog. But I have plenty of energy and love for a Whippet sized dog, plus obvious long familiarity with dogs. I speak dog.

You may wonder about my age. I do, too, sometimes. I have two friends who are willing to sign a document as a friendly home if I die or become incapable of caring for a dog. I also have a codicil in my will gifting $10,000 to whomever takes over care of any animal living with me when I die.

I miss the warmth and love that comes from having a canine companion.

My wife and I always acquired litter mates. 3 x 2. For companionship. We found that made for a better doggy world for them. I’m open to purchasing two.”

Partly a recognition of my more limited mobility. I won’t be traveling as much. And my related but different homebodiness. Mostly though. I miss having a dog. I am alone, but not lonely. That’s true as far as it goes and describes a state of becoming that satisfies me. Especially with all of my friends. Yet having a dog to care for, a dog that would care for me back, to have again eternal true love as is normal between a dog and their human companion would enrich my life. And, hey, I’m all for enrichment.

Just a moment: Soon, maybe this week, the grind toward November begins. Harris still with momentum. 45 still off the front page or below the fold. (below the first screen?) His campaign has staggered away from Biden’s abdication, flummoxed it seems. Won’t last. However he can pull it off the orange one will, like the bad penny, turn up again. It’s still a close, close race. No certainty to either side.

Sure, Kamala is ahead in national polls. But we’ve learned to our frustration that winning the so-called popular vote is too often insufficient. The electoral college is, as we used to say in the 60’s, where it’s at. That’s why her leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin matter more. Go, blue.

Family, Feelings

A Dog? & UC

August 25, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Ginny. Janice. Flannel. Cool mornings with a hint of the wheat harvest in Nebraska, the Aspen leaves beginning to consider gold to celebrate the season, Wild Neighbors readying themselves for mating. Heat no longer dominate. At least for now. That .4 PSA, may it go lower and yet lower, ye unto undetectable. Laughter. Joy.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ginny and Janice

Kavanah: LOVE אַהֲבָה Ahava Love, affection, intimacy; from אהב to bring/give to another

One brief shining: Joanne and Alan both came forward, smiled a smile of relief after our breakfast when I got the news of my lowering PSA, asked for hugs and got them there in front of the Parkside as Debbie watched with her kind Whippet eyes, her graceful black and white body alert but comfortable with her human companion nearby, tender times in fractions of minutes.

Have a hankering, maybe even a yearning for a Whippet now. After I met Debbie, from Cheyenne, Wyoming, her human said, Buck and Iris, Emma and Bridget, Hilo and Kona each came to mind. Their muscled, athletic bodies. Their love of the chase. Of running for the sheer joy of it. Of introverted Emma walking out to the end of the fallen Cottonwood, surveying our yard from its height. Of fleet Hilo looking back at me as she took off away from the fence she’d just mastered. Of Buck with a squirrel in his mouth, confused. What do I do with this? Delicate Iris. Strong Bridget and Kona.

Little Hilo, the smallest of them all, nestled under my armpit each afternoon for our naps. Sweet, kind dogs. No meanness in them. Small enough that I could manage them. So torn about getting a Dog or Dogs. Yes. No. Yes. No. Could I even be granted Dogs? At 77.

Leaning into the idea right now.

Just a moment: On Baseline Road, across a heavily protected bicycle lane, I turned into the neighborhood known as Willville. In one of its newest towers, 700 students, sits Ruth’s first floor room with three freshmen residents: Ruth, Rayne, and Atoshoka. Ruth has a loft bed while the other two sleep on floor level beds. The room, from a picture Ruth showed me, is narrow, barely big enough for one imho. There several other towers. Willville houses thousands of UC Boulder students. It requires a bike or bus ride or walk to get to the main campus.

I took her to the Dushanbe Tearoom, a gift to Boulder from its sister city of the same name as the Teahouse, the capital of Tajikistan. She ordered genmaicha and I had a white silver needle tea. We sat outside near a branch of Boulder Creek, very narrow, up which Catherine, our waitress, said a scuba diver swam a week or so ago. Odd, even for a college town.

Ruth’s eager to get to work. She sees herself as academically inclined and I agree. She’s at the university for knowledge and training in studio arts. Not an MBA. Not an engineering or science degree, but a BFA.

Oh, the first days of college life when the world and life opens wider and wider. Of course there’ll be bumps and scrapes, why wouldn’t there be? But they’re part of the broader education.

So exciting for her. And for me.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Myth and Story, Politics

An Unserious Man

August 23, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Laurie and her Chicago stories. And her chili cheese hotdogs. The Pearl. Ruby. Ruth on campus. Kepler, my sweet boy. Kate, always Kate. The blue Sky above, Shadow Mountain Home beneath. Kamala. Her tagging of 45 as an unserious man. Joanne and Alan at the Parkside. Labcorps. Marilyn and Irv.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kamala and Coach Walz

Kavanah: Serenity Menucha

One brief shining: A lesson in patience has come my way, the comparatively (to Quest) slow pace of getting my still not available PSA and testosterone numbers sent me down on Wednesday, forced to adjust my attitude, to open my heart to waiting, which has taught me to consider my desire for knowing, for knowing now, for knowing what comes next, for knowing estimates of my life span, that desire changes neither my PSA, what comes next, or my life span. Oh.

The story of the Pearl resonates with all who hear it. Though. Realized after recounting this at mussar yesterday Oysters are not kosher. No fins or scales. I’m not observing kosher, perhaps obviously, yet I did have to stop and consider this. If I were to observe kosher, and I have no plan to right now, it would be along the lines of ethical eating. Which is the function of kosher observance in traditional Jewish life. I do eat far less red meat than in the past, partly health and partly to eat lower on the food chain. Use less resources.

Still working on finding a jeweler or silversmith. Harder than I thought it would be. Evergreen Goldsmiths could have done what I wanted, but they closed. Going to the Silver Arrow gallery to see if they have recommendations.

No results from Labcorp. Not sure what’s going on. Practicing the midot of serenity. Does it make me serene to get agitated about not having these numbers? No. Will asking my docs to look into it help with my serenity? Yes. So I did that just now. Inner calm. Yes.

Just a moment: Listened to the opening twenty minutes or so of Kamala’s speech. Trump as an unserious man. Oh, yes. An epithet so true and so weakening. I hope it gains viral currency. I found her speech fine, but not exceptional. Not a barn burner as we might say in our suddenly spotlighted Midwest. So I stopped listening. Don’t need a barn burner. Need steady, stable, democratic small d. A return to normalcy. Never thought I’d write or believe those words.

She seems to have captured the zeitgeist perfectly. Hyperbolic promises and overheated rhetoric play into the bombast and chest-thumping of the MAGA style. We do not need more of that. We need to take this narrow window Kamala recognizes and keep the orange one in his billionaire fantasy world, his tasteless Trump Tower and gauche Mar-a-Lago. There to await the consequences of his criminal activity as his various trials come to fruition and his debts to his victims come due.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Kabbalah, Mussar

Learning. Still. Always.

August 22, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Irv and Marilyn. Tara. Labcorps. Medicine. Medicines. Healing. Suffering. Pain. Puppies. Toddlers. Rainbows. Ponies. The periodic table of the elements. Starliner. Oh, my. Polaris. Betelgeuse. Vega. Rigel. Arcturus. Andromeda. The Milky Way. That far away, older than old Galaxy. The vastness of space. The particularity of you. Ruth’s first full day on campus.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Pearl

Kavanah: COMPASSION Rachamim

One brief shining: A pearl means a parasite or some other irritant has caused an Oyster to encapsulate it in layers of nacre, hiding it safely away from the living animal within its shell; Kate loved pearls and had earrings, necklaces, so it is not a stretch at all to believe that she would surprise me with one on her eightieth birthday, perhaps telling me that death is just such an irritant to the living, that grief creates a pearl of compassion and wisdom to compensate for its insult to life.

Ruth’s first day. At college. Rather, at university. The University of Colorado, Boulder. Go, Buffaloes. Coach Prime. Funny at these big universities that basketball and football often define their public perception while their true work starts on days like these. Young minds, fresh from public education for the most part, begin to use the tools they acquired there to begin thinking on their own. Learning from, delighting in the deep deposit of human knowledge and culture, of skills and techniques created by others who preceded them. For higher education is not about building with the tools of others but wielding them on your own. If it’s not that, then it’s vocational education. Which is important, wonderful, and necessary. But. It. Is. Not. The. Same. Thing.

I’m so excited for and with Ruth. Opening the mind to new ideas, new information, new ways of thinking and understanding. What a rush. A rush that has never dimmed nor diminished for me in the 59 years since I walked on to the campus at Wabash College. We are many things, we human beings, but most of all we are creatures who learn and who use what we learn to make our lives richer, deeper, more just, healthier, more robust.

A note on pursuing da’at, knowledge. Which I have done and will continue to do all my life. I trapped myself yesterday, obsessively pressing the button for Labcorps results. Nothing so far. Quest always got my results up the next day after my blood draw. Had to switch to Labcorps because Evergreen Medical did. A different pace, a different system. Won’t change the results, but I’ve been frustrated, wanting to KNOW. When I know will not change the results. In that sense it really doesn’t matter.

Pushed myself down, down yesterday waiting, clicking, checking my e-mail. Forgot in the pursuit of knowledge the a priori middot of serenity. Shattered it for the day. A lesson. One I find very difficult to learn. The folly of desiring knowledge. Too much.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Politics

Luminescence

August 20, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth, off to college today! Good workout yesterday. The Democratic National Convention. Joe and his years. Joe and his tears. Kamala. Tim. AOC. Go, blue, go. Politics. A frisson of hope. A dollop of excitement. A Discovery of Witches on Netflix. Finishing the filet mignon from my dinner with Kate and her pearl. Tara. Dandelion.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth, her journey of independence which starts today.

Kavanah: KNOWLEDGE Da’at (DAH-aht) knowledge, sensibility, awareness; from ידע to experientially/cognitively know

First Sefirah = כֶּתֶר Keter, KEH-tare: Top of head, superconscious mind, literally “crown” (between Chochmah/Wisdom & Binah/Understanding) This is kabbalah.

One brief shining: Still wrapped in the pearl’s luminescence Monday took me into an intimate place with my grief and with remembrance, a few tears as I recalled our life together, more smiles as I remembered making salads from our vegetables, eating toast with honey from our bees, evenings spent hanging out with our dogs, often Irish Wolfhounds on our laps, Hanukah nights with Gabe and Ruth on Shadow Mountain, driving down the hill to Congregation Beth Evergreen together.

As I go into the lab today, get my vein punctured again, small vials of blood filled by the beating of my heart, this lab test’s importance weighs a bit on my lev. Yes, I need and want the da’at, the knowledge, it will bring. Yet it could bring knowledge of a shortened life span. If so, that’s ok, I have no need to last longer than I can. Memories of Kate’s final days comfort me. Not that she wasn’t suffering. She was. But she was resolute, loving, and brave, too. A role model about how to face the end, not with a whimper, but a bang.

Does not change this life, this August 20th life. Which I woke into around 6 am. Opening my eyes from the small death of sleep to an unpromised resurrection. As I have for over 77 years. May continue to do so for years more.

See Tara for breakfast this morning at the Dandelion. Like a workout seeing friends restores me as I hope to do for them. Seeing. Being seen. Hearing. Being heard. Touching. Being touched. The essential food of the soul.

Just a moment: So happy to see Kamala and Tim, even Joe, above the fold. And that other person not there at all. The squatter removed from land he had begun to imagine was his alone.

I did not look forward to spending the last of my golden years under a Trumpist storm of bigotry, lavish capitalism, and the decline of U.S. status in the world. Of course, that’s still a real possibility, but now it’s a fight, not a giveaway. I’ll go with Kamala’s: When we fight, we win!

Mixed feelings here about protesters at the convention. Deja vu all over again. Except. In 1968 the U.S. had intervened militarily in a civil war. Based on the domino theory which imagined countries becoming communist if touched by red fairy dust. Makes me wonder what those old war mongers thought was so appealing about communism, but that’s another story.

Here the protesters have sided with the Palestinians against Israeli aggression. I agree with the facet of their argument that contends Israel has gone too far. Way too far. Where we part company is in the protesters willing blindness to the suffering of Jews over time, the reason for Israel’s existence, and the horrific nature of the Hamas attack on October 7th. This is a story with no heroes, no glory, no victory.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mountains, Reimaging revelation, Weather +Climate

The Pearl

August 19, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Monday gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Sarah, BJ, Pamela. The Ancient Brothers. The Bistro. Oysters. Filet mignon. A Pearl. The Otherworld. Another dimension. Rain, Rain, please stay and come again another day. Shadow Mountain Drive, Shadow and Conifer Mountains, the Evergreen Meadow in the Rain. Mist and shades of green. My Otherworld.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Pearl

Kavanah: Serenity Menucha

One brief shining: Drove over to Marshdale, a burb of Evergreen, as Rain pelted the Lodgepoles and the Aspens, rendering Shadow Mountain and Conifer Mountain green misty hulks of risen Rocks, to the Bistro, a small fine dining restaurant that Kate I and went to for special occasions, her 80th counted, walked in with my hood up as the Rain came down, got my usual table against the wall; Stacy came around and I ordered a 6 Oyster appetizer, both Kate and I loved fresh Oysters, proceeding from left to right I used the little fork to pry loose the meat, tipped the shell, and slurped them down, except at the sixth and last one, I bit down, what?, and pulled out of my mouth a tiny pearl.

I looked at it with my unaided eyes, having left readers behind as I often do, and held it up to Stacy. Is this what I think it is? I’ll take it to the chefs. Yes, the chefs considered opinion, a pearl. She returned it in a small clear plastic cup that might contain sauce in another situation.

Texted Ruth with a picture. What’s that? A tiny pearl I found during my birthday celebration for your grandma. Oh, she joined you. Dad does that sometimes with me.

A sense of the uncanny settled over the meal. Thunder roared outside, Rain hit the windows of this charming restaurant with its low wooden beamed ceiling. Did Kate reach across the table and take my hand? Did I tell her happy 80th and see her smile? I had intended to order the house salad but instead ordered a caprese salad by mistake. A salad Kate and I first had in a small cafeteria in the Vatican on our honeymoon. We loved it and made it often with our own heirloom tomatoes. We called it Popeteria salad.

At the table with me I had my Kindle on which I’m reading Lev Grossman’s latest, The Bright Sword, his retelling of the Arthurian legend, and in it a main character had just stumbled into the Otherworld. So had I.

The Pearl from Kate, what else could it be, I’ll have set in a ring to wear on my ring finger or as a pendant for a necklace.

On her 80th birthday. Kate. Reached out and gave me a gift. A Pearl of great price.*

^{*Luke 13: 45}“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, ⁴⁶who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Family

Kate’s 80th. A few images of her

August 18, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Tom. Bill. Ode. What we were when we were young. B.J. and Sarah. Kate, always Kate. Her 80th birthday. Today. Life as it has happened. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Songtan. 106 degree heat index days. Warm nights. Goose bumps on my arms this morning from the chill. Rabbi Jamie. Veronica. Luke. Leo. Great Sol. This August 18th life, 2024.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth, excited for college. Moving into the dorm on Tuesday

Kavanah: Serenity Menucha

One brief shining: You might wonder how I focus on the kavanah of serenity, what do I do during the day to bring myself back to a serene place instead of one of turmoil, distraction, or concern; and I would answer, by asking myself throughout the day, this August 18th life, does this bring me serenity and paying attention, close attention, to the answer.

Silly Kate, a big part of her personality

Pensive Kate. Also a big part of her personality

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Politics

A Journey

August 17, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Bagel table. Morning services. Brother Mark. Coffee. Water. Bagels. Lox. Cream cheese. Kate, always Kate. Great Sol. Diane. Shabbat. Lighting the candles. Studying Torah. Lev Grossman’s latest, The Bright Sword. Stories. However told. On television, movies, in books, by friends, by ourselves. The way we make sense of it all.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Stories

Kavanah: SERENITY Menucha (min-oo-CHAH) Serene, carefree, literally “at rest/comfortable”

[Daga, dah-GAH: Worry, care, concern]

One brief shining: Went to King Sooper’s yesterday, a grocery store in Aspen Park, took two checks, cashed the checks with the young woman there, how do you want your money, easiest way, she counted it out to me; it represented the breaking of my relationship with Century Link, former internet provider, and yet more dividends from my time in Andover’s electrical cooperative, as I folded the bills for my money clip I thought about the symbolic nature of money, not only as value but as evidence of a relationship, as proof of obligation, as transmitter of shared commitments.

Still feeling a bit dark, heavy. Will pass as this life, this August 17th life, goes on. Finding mornings, right after I get up, weighted. As the new life unfolds, begins to take on its character, in part shaped by my kavanah, in part by human interaction an easing of the weight, a passing over into a new chance at living, one unburdened by yesterday, and with few glances at tomorrow. Living.

Today, in this life, for example, I made coffee. Which I can smell right now as it finishes. Realizing I have less time to write than I like because I drive to Evergreen in thirty minutes for the Bagel Table and the morning service. I’ll see Rabbi Jamie and who ever else shows up. People I care about and who care about me. An elixir strong and potent. Later, Ruth’s coming up for a zoom call with my son. What a treat for me to have them both here at 5 today.

This life will gain its fullness through those encounters, as it will through the hours, the necessary hours alone. The way of a social animal who needs both presence and absence.

Just a moment: Kamala has put four sun belts state in play. Recent polls. Another lightening of the load. Who knows what will happen between now and the life of Election Day 2024. But at least I no longer feel tied to the mast of a sinking ship. Somebody plugged a hole in it. Thanks, Joe. Sometimes saying no means saying yes. Giving up means saying I’m all in. Sometimes leaving means staying. A bit of the Tao for today, for this August 17th life.