• Category Archives Art and Culture

  • Herme’s Journey

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Sunday gratefuls: Tom’s safe trip. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch coming January. Then, a trip to Korea in May. Followed by the Jang family visit here in late summer. Snow. Whippets. Irish Wolfhounds. German Wirehairs. Akitas. Breeds I love. Asia. Korea. Malaysia. Australia. Thailand. Cambodia. Saudi Arabia.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leftist politics

    Kavannah: Perserverance

    One brief shining: A Mountain retreat, a home on granite, gneiss, and schist, raised above sea level by 8,800 feet, overlooking Black Mountain with its ski runs, Lodgepoles and Aspen colonies, in the Arapaho National Forest and drained by Maxwell Creek to the north and North Turkey Creek to the south, home to my day-to-day life in these middle years of the 2020’s.

     

    On a lighter note today. Current TV favorites: Tracker, Sealteam, Fire Country. Reading anew Nexus by Harari. Also, Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad. Best movie I watched recently: hmm. None come to mind. Oh, Late Night with the Devil. Weird. I can no longer understand dialogue in movie theaters so I have to watch what’s available on streaming services with closed captions. Favorite meal last week, filet mignon with Tom at Evoke 1923 last Friday.

    Herme’s Journey. Still on this path. I’ve finished another reading of Ovid. Also, the Odyssey. Am in the fourth book of the Iliad. I’m reading the parsha of the week most weeks along with commentaries. Also books that challenge me like Nexus. Keeping mental knives sharp.

    My commitment to regular times with family and friends has increased. I zoom, breakfast, lunch, and on the rare occasion eat dinner with them. Also expanding my circle of friends, not by much, but adding Veronica for example.

    The lunar calendar of Judaism meshes well with my pagan sensibilities and my focus on the Great Wheel. Trying to integrate the two in meaningful ways. An ongoing project.

    Am working on a new meditative practice, focusing on a work of art for ten minutes or more, then reading art historical material about it. An NYT idea.

    And more. All this is to stimulate, reinforce my lifelong journey. See what bubbles up.

     

    Just a moment: Talked with my son and Seoah yesterday. There is a sweetness, a visceral joy in seeing them, hearing them. My heart lifts and my sense of well-being, already good, increases. Murdoch hears my voice, but does nothing. Nothing to smell here, so meh.

    That sense of well-being. I’ve noticed Luke and Jamie initiate hugs when we see each other. There’s something about that that fills my soul, too. Ron and Rich. Tom. Ruth, Gabe. I hope the others feel the same way about my participation. Hugs are a way of claiming intimacy and saying yes to it.

    Will not know for some time what the most abhorrent of adventures will look like, feel like. Cabinet picks? An unserious man taking an unserious approach to the job in the whole world that has the most economic and military power.

    Committed to the seeds of decency, honesty, love for the other. Still and always.

     


    Art and Culture Asia Family Fourth Phase Friends Great Wheel Judaism Korea Mountains Shadow Mountain

  • Seed-Keepers

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Friday gratefuls: Tom. Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Ginny. Rick. Great Sol. A blue Colorado Sky. The West. The Rocky Mountains. No Bike Park. The Mountain Meadow remains. Colorado. Livin’ in a Blue State. Mark. Mary. Diane. Riley. Richard. Cut Throat Cafe. Happy Camper.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Eagle at Tom and Roxann’s

    Kavannah: Friendship

    One brief shining: Why did you put on what you’re wearing today, Mindy asked, and we went around the room, learning one wanted to cover her stomach, another takes a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so she had on what she had on Wednesday, another wore brown jeans and a green t-shirt to look like a tree, and when it came to me I said, I bought a pair of Keens, a lot of white socks, a bunch of jeans, and several plaid flannel shirts so I don’t have to think about it.

     

    BTW: I asked chatbotgtp to create An American themed image of a group called the Seed-Keepers whose role is to honor the spirit of liberal America. Anti-racist, anti-misogynist, and anti-homophobic. I’m more interested in the Seed-Keeper theme than anything else

    Seed Keepers, Chatbotgt at my request

    Seed-Keepers. Who among you might become a Seed-Keeper? If you take on this role, expect it to last at least four years, perhaps longer. You can be a solitary Seed-Keeper, dedicated to remembering and speaking who we are as a country and as a people when not driven by fear and demagoguery. One of our Seeds, there are so many, lies in our history. Perhaps you will be the one who goes back to the beginning of our nation and learns in even more depth how we came to be. Warts and all. 3/5ths clause and fugitive slave clause and white, propertied men as voters, the electoral college and all. Enslavement, too. Jim Crow. The Indian Wars. Yet, too, the Civil War. Checks and balances. Federalism. The Federalist Papers. How we became a city on a hill attracting new citizens from afar.

    Or, you might choose to have a Seed-Keeper group. Perhaps one interested in the American Renaissance (as I am) when American thinkers and artists began to tease out the distinctive features of living on this amazing land. Reading together the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Parker, Whitman, Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Mary Fuller. Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Not to ignore either painters and sculptors like Mary Cassatt, Bierstadt, Henry Tanner, Church.

    Seed-Keepers #2

    What might you do as a Seed-Keeper? You might gather those close to you for story evenings, perhaps around the fireplace to discuss questions like what does it mean to be an American? What has it meant? What does it mean in a time dominated by reactionaries and autocrats? You might write essays, letters to the editor about how the other half of the 2024 electorate sees things.

    You might locate yourself in the work of a state Humanities council and help them introduce American Seeds through their speakers and book groups.

    I’m sure you have more and better ideas than these. A Seed-Keepers primary role is to hold the liberal to radical ideas that make America a nation in which all want to live and to pass those ideas along to family, friends, and others in a digestible manner.

    I’m gonna keep spinning up this idea, see if it can gain traction. No where near done with it.


    Art and Culture Fourth Phase Politics

  • Knowledge Gaps

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Saturday (Yom Kippur) gratefuls: Teshuvah. The Book of Life. Almost sealed. Sukkot starts on October 16th. Kol Nidre. Gaza. The West Bank. Palestinians. Israel. Israelis. Hamas. Hezbollah. Lebanon. Iran. Egypt. Syria. Jordan. Saudi Arabia. AI. Yetzer hara. Yetzer hatov. Yin. Yang. Polarities within the Unity. Darkness and the dawn. Solar storms. Auroras.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Magnetosphere

    Kavannah: Patience  wait for it

    One brief shining: As the darkness gives way to dawn and dawn to full day, I watch Black Mountain throw off its night time cloak, stretch its Rockiness up to the light as Great Sol appears again in the East, Mother Earth having spun round once again, this ritual of rituals, light to dark, dark to light, matches and feeds the turning of the Great Wheel as this tilted Earth dashes through space around our Star.

     

    Cousin Diane should be in Tashkent by now. On tour with Overseas Adventure Travel after spending a few days with her Uzbeki friends. Sounds like quite a journey. A lot of it focused on the Silk Road, then and now. Bought a standing globe this week, something I’ve always wanted. Found Uzbekistan. Central Asia remains mostly a blank spot in my knowledge, its history and its contemporary, post Soviet Union reality. Perhaps Diane’s time there will educate me on her return.

    Reminds me of where I was with China, Japan, and Korea, Southeast Asia before my trip to Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia in 2004. Stimulated by a lecture in my Southeast Asia guide program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Bob Jacobsen showed slides of Angkor Wat, including the quarter mile long bas relief on the most well known temple there. It had the churning of the sea of milk.

    Bas relief from the 12th century Khmer civilization
    Another rendering

    That next year I entered docent training, a two year every Wednesday series of lectures on world art history. Given my recent trip to Southeast Asia and a trip with Joseph and Kate to China in 1999 I chose to focus a lot of my learning on Asian art, especially China and Japan. What I don’t know about Asia is still much vaster than what I have learned, but I do have a good baseline knowledge of Asian history, in particular the various arts of China and Japan.

    Of course brother Mark and sister Mary’s long residency in various parts of Southeast Asia, mostly Malyasia and Singapore, Mary, and Thailand and Cambodia, Mark, meant I already had a face turned toward those countries. And India, too. Though not as much. Then Joseph got stationed in Osan, Korea, met Seoah, married, and returned there a year and a half ago. Kate and I went to Korea and Singapore in 2016 for Joe and Seoah’s wedding.

    As China has rapidly developed, the world’s attention has belatedly turned toward Asia, too. When Joe, Kate, and I were in Beijing, the traffic was largely people on bicycles carrying charcoal briquettes and even refrigerators by pedal power. No longer. And only 24 years later.

    Not sure Central Asia will ever have such a moment. But. Things change in geopolitics and they’re changing at a rapid pace right now without a world hegemon.


    Art and Culture Asia Family Travel World History

  • Wish me joy and persistence

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mabon and the Harvest Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers on Ode’s art. Art. Painting. Water color. Cut paper. Paper marbling. Computer aided. Charcoal and pastels. Oils. Acrylic. Sculpture. Furniture design. Architecture. Music. Chamber music. Jazz. Writing. Novels. Short stories. Poems. Poets. Writers. Painters. Sculptors. Musicians. Movies and television. Story and image.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Uffizi

    Kavannah: Teshuvah

    One brief shining: Today I’m pulling out the 3/4’s finished first draft of Jennie’s Dead, plan to read it, red pencil in hand, waiting to reinsert myself into its flow, the story as I started it so many years ago, wanting to reclaim my life as a creator of worlds, of characters, of ideas expressed in things that would never have been and never could be without the mysterious work of creation. And, it is work.

     

    Probably time, too, to print out Ancientrails from the point where I stopped the last time. Not sure how long ago it was, but it was awhile. Easy to check since I have the plastic tubs filled with the first printing, some two million words, stored on wire racks in the loft. I want, so badly, to get my mojo back. My writing mojo. I let it slide as I let myself get overwhelmed by the world of illness, hers and mine. The long, slow process of Kate’s dying. Didn’t have to let it go, but I did and I’ve sunk a bit since then, a light in my heart dimmed.

    Going through the outer world of friends and family, Mountains and Streams and Wild Neighbors, of Judaism and the pandemic, of wrestling with back pain, often with little success. None of this bad or shallow or wrong. No. Necessary, kind, fulfilling. Yet the stream from which I had drunk so giddily for 20 years, the Andover years, dried up. The aquifer that fed it drained and not renewed.

    Writing and my current worst ailment, a back preventing me from walking more than short distances, making work around the house often more than I can do, fit well together. I can do it like I’m writing this. And, I can keep at it, like Ode, until I reach the end. Why would I do that? For the same reason my brother-in-law, Jerry the painter and maker, is in a spasm of creativity knowing his heart could give out at any time. For the same reason Ode believes his best art is ahead of him. And now, ta da, a sports metaphor! To leave it all on the field. To have held nothing back. To have gone as far as I can. Not sure I know why beyond that. Please wish me joy and persistence.

    This is then, a matter for teshuvah, for a return to the land of my soul. Yes, there’s that word again. Soul. Where is it? Don’t know. Is it a metaphor for the whole of me, an ensouled body and lev? Yes, but more, I believe. The something more is that which links my ensouled body and lev to the other ensouled entities like my friends, family, my Lodgepole Companion, Great Sol, Elk and Mule Deer, Shadow Mountain. We are together, moving forward in constant creation, unique and separate, yet whole and infinitely connected. Perhaps that which is there to bond with all does not die, but rolls on, moving with the rest toward an unknown future, probably one bound tightly to a known past.


    Art and Culture Feelings Fourth Phase Letters Literature Myth and Story Painting Shadow Mountain Wild Neighbors Writing

  • A Busy Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lugnasa and the Harvest Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Seeing long time friend, Scott Simpson. Dinner with Joanne, Rebecca, and Terry. Water treatment by Greg. Vaccine reaction. Early dark. Waking up in the dark. Stars through the Lodgepoles. Evergreen. Coal Mine Dragon Chinese. Los 3 Garcias. Tara. Ariaan. Eleanor, their new dog. Norbert, their old dog. Both very sweet. The Muddy Buck.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Scott in Evergreen

    Kavannah: Serenity Menucha

    One brief shining: Sat at one of the Muddy Buck’s white marble topped tables on the boardwalk in Evergreen, waiting for Scott, delighted to see Yin had come along, too, that special joy of greeting long time friends who’ve gone out of their way to see you, getting coffee with Scott and talking for an hour, knowing each other, seeing each other in the way only aged friends can, past the surface quickly and into things that matter.

     

    On Sunday at noon I got a flu vaccine and a covid vaccine. Left arm. Safeway pharmacy in the still novel to me experience of getting jabbed by pharmacy techs. I like it. No need to go to the doc. Collected my 10% off my next grocery order coupons, two, one for each needle. Sort of like the pediatrician’s lollipop for a good patient.

    Went home and about an hour later felt tired. 3 hours later up from my “nap.” Yesterday morning had to go back to bed, slept another two hours. I’ve never had a reaction to vaccines before, but I recognized this for what it was. Not a large price for protection from two diseases that can devastate the older body.

     

    The Geowater guy came, checked my water’s acidity, and swapped out my filter for a new one. Geowater has changed from its former aggressive upselling and now seems focused on customer service. A welcome change. Paid by check. Always feels anachronistic.

    Greg lingered, chatting. Couldn’t see why, but he must have liked me and/or had some extra time on his hands. We talked about the bike park, the spate of brutal wrecks a month or so ago on Hwy 285, Mountain living. After he left, I took another nap, a brief one, to be sure I would be rested for seeing Scott and for the later dinner with Rebecca, Terry, and Joanne.

     

    At 3:10 I hopped in Ruby and drove down the hill to Evergreen. Scott was kind enough to meet me in Evergreen at the Muddy Buck before a concert at Red Rocks. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, years for sure. Scott introduced me to the guide program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He talked about a recent Chinese tour he and Yin gave. Made me nostalgic for my docent days and the Institute’s Asian art collection.

     

    When the Muddy Buck closed at 5, Scott took off and I drove the short distance to Evergreen Lake and the Coal Mine Dragon Chinese restaurant. Where I met Rebecca, Terry, and Joanne. Rebecca leaves on Thursday for another four month stint at a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery near Dharamsala. She teaches English to the nuns and has become a beloved teacher over the last few years of her regular four month visits.

    I admire her grit. She’s four years older than I am, also has spinal stenosis, and makes the trip there and back annually. Terry gave her an early birthday present, hers is in October and she’ll be gone. A purple floppy Octopus. Like Kate, Rebecca loves octopuses.

    The four of us talked books and politics and Judaism. Joanne told a funny story. She always packed lunch for her late husband, Albert. One day she had nothing for dessert, so she put in four marshmallows, a candle, and a single match. At his work Albert found them, took out the candle, lit it, and began to roast a marshmallow. Oh, one of his co-workers said, I didn’t know that was a Jewish ritual.

    As I drove back in the dusk, Elk Cows lounged in the front yards near Brook Forest Drive, occasionally going down to Maxwell Creek to take a drink, perhaps eat a late meal of Kentucky Bluegrass. The rut is near.

     


    Art and Culture Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Health Judaism Shadow Mountain

  • Izun

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Off to College Moon

    Monday gratefuls: A Manny for Us. Alan. Local theater. Local playwrights. Better energy, mood. This August 12th, 2024 life with Great Sol beaming. And my lev quivering with a charge of joy and strength. Sue Bradshaw. Hitting 150. Finally using my Ninja blender. Fruits and Veggies. The Ancient Brothers, chewing the fat. Lobster pottin’. Still above ground and taking nourishment.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: from melancholy to joy

    One brief shining: Driving on 38th Street in Wheat Ridge, a Denver burb, oh, there’s the Fridge’s Experimental research farm, there a huge care center for Christian Scientists, there a bar/restaurant in a faux Swiss building, the Chalet of course, a huge Lutheran hospital complex wrapped around a cathedral style church, odd design choice for the ecclesiastical heirs to the 95 theses, a left turn into a strip mall with a pizza place, a martial arts spot picturing a bald white guy holding a metal sword and looking strange to me, and a plain door for the Wheat Ridge Theater Company where I spent an afternoon surprised by the depth of a local playwright.

    Kavanah for this August 12th life: BALANCE   Izun (ee-ZOON)   Balance, poise, moderation

    (Derech Ha’Emtzait, DARE-ech ha-em-tsah-EET: the middle path/way/course)   [Kitzoniut, keets-own-ee-OOT: Extremism, going to either end of a spectrum]

    NB: Mussar does not say that the poles of a character trait are bad. There are times when they are the appropriate expression of the middot. Imbalance on ones political or religious views can be harmful, destructive, yet there also times when the extremes serve a larger, necessary purpose. Or, say, times when being either very active or passive might be the better way.

     

     

    The word for balance in Hebrew is איזון, izun. Interestingly, the word for ear in Hebrew is אֹזֶן, ozen. Using my inner ear to try to catch the middle way between last week’s struggle and this week’s grace. What sound comes between? Is it middle-C? Good way to imagine it actually. I have a hard time these days hearing the high notes, children’s and women’s voices. Bass notes. Oh, they still come through pretty well.

    I would say I usually live life in the upper ranges of joy and happiness. I don’t understand musical composition well enough to use it accurately here, but I do plunge down to the bass notes once in a while. A mild manic/depressive oscillation I’ve always thought. I like this analogy though because bass notes, lower keys, are, at least I think they are, musically necessary for harmony, for a musically balanced composition. Life is like that. Taking the high notes and the low notes and arranging them along the staff lines of your movement through the day so that something beautiful takes shape.

    What kind of music are you making with this one Mayfly life you’ve been granted by awakening on August 12th, 2024?

     

    Just a moment: Gosh. Gee whiz. Where are the I can’t believe I’m reading this headlines? Where is he who should no longer appear in bold type? In hiding? Afraid of getting his behind whooped by a woman?

     


    Art and Culture Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Health Mussar Politics

  • My ancientrail

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Off to College Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Willville. August 20th. On her own. With a net. Returning to the Solar System. Gaia. Great Sol. Space. Vastness. Galaxies. Huge. Galaxy Clusters. Huger. The Universe its ownself. Our home. Our tiny, tiny presence in our galaxy, our local cluster, the whole of everything. And thanks for all the fish.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shabbat

    One brief shining: Reading the parsha, the end of Numbers, then the book on Reconstructionism for class and for the CBE bookclub, lighting the candles, and saying the berakhot, the blessing over them, settling in to my Shabbat, sleeping, then rising, resurrected, granted another life, the life of August 3rd, 2024, lived with friends Marilyn and Irv, with more books and some TV until the day fled, the life was over, and I went down into the 1/60th of death again.

    Kavanah: PERSEVERANCE  Netzach (NETS-ach)  נֵצַ

     

    I cobble things together. Not exactly syncretism. I have no larger design in mind. Discovering useful ways of understanding, framing, defining. I’m finding the life of August 4th, 2024 a contemplative one. Coming as it does after Shabbat and graced by the presence of my Ancient Brothers. Better for me than living in the moment. Living a full life, one day at a time. AA resonance. Jewish inflection. Expansion of the be here now idea to a waking day. Carpe diem fits. Though it might be a bit aggressive. How about cradle the day, or enjoy the day, or embrace the day?

    This all fits well with the lesson of Yamantaka. Meditating on my corpse. Seeing death for what it will be. For me. Not a time to fear but to include in the ongoingness of life. Whether darkness or reincarnation or sudden awakening in a different form. As significant as birth. As love. As justice. As compassion.

    Eudamonia comes from the Greeks. Aristotle. A cleaner, more as I experience the flow life way of approaching life’s purpose. Especially considering the longue dureé, how very important and mostly insignificant I am and will be. How I was before I was. If I was. The Mexica idea. Life is a dream between a sleep and a sleep.

    Being a Jew. Bathing in the waters of the mikveh. And in the community I find at CBE. And in the long, rich tradition of Jewish thought and ritual. Saying the shema in the morning and in the evening. Studying mussar. Friends.

    Hanging with the Ancient Brothers. With Diane. Friends and family over the years. Mary and Mark. My son and Seoah. Dogs.

    The Great Wheel and the pagan eye that finds the sacred, the divine right here on the surface of things where Tomatoes grow and Iris bloom and Rain falls and Wildfire burns.

    Following the Jewish liturgical year and the Great Wheel. Cyclical time. Not linear. More important to me. Though aging matters, too. I’m fond of the years I’ve lived. And the many, many lives known one day by one day.

    Of course, Taoism. Another way of understanding the unitary, yet always evolving one in which we move and live and have our becoming.

    With these ideas, these notions, this framing I find each day, each new life, a miracle. A time to savor. To not waste. To know as ichi-e ichi-go, once in a lifetime. And all beautiful. Wabi-sabi.

    My tao. My ancientrail. Herme’s journey.


    Art and Culture Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Hermitage Holidays Judaism Mountains Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Shadow Mountain

  • Weather and Joy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Alan. Cheri. The Inspire Concerts. RTD. Federal Center Station. St. Anthony Hospital. New knee, me. New shoulder, Kate. Ruby. 96, high in Denver today. The Ancient Brothers. Kamala. The orange comb over. These disunited States. Rain. Hale. Luke. Leo. Ginny. Janice. Great Sol. Cancer drugs. Jewish music. Today with Ruth.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

    One brief shining: Short splats increased to faster, staccato impacts the skylights enlarging the sound, then the Hail, small at first, then larger pounded pounded pounded with the insistence of the natural world not recognizing barriers, pounding against them with the kind of fury increased by falling from a great height as Leo and I looked outside seeing balls of Ice bounce around on the black driveway.

     

    A lesson in Mountain Microclimates. While Leo and I enjoyed a hard Rain with Hail, Luke only needed a transparent umbrella at the wedding being held on the west side of Black Mountain in Staunton State Park. Not very far as the Moose walks. Up and down Black Mountain. From their home in the State Park to our yards here on Shadow Mountain, the next Mountain over.

    As the bride walked down the aisle, Luke said, the heavens parted and shone a bright light directly on her. Heaven sent. We take in the awe, perhaps dismiss it as random, as unmotivated and therefore meaningless except in a Hollywood sort of way, but yirah is yirah. Wherever and whenever. Yirah is a human emotion, a middot, too, one known in the lev, in the mind-heart. Experienced not in its source but in its recipient.

    I enjoyed the thirty minutes or so of heavy Rain, conditioned by decades of Midwestern life to know the nurturance of a good Rain. Good for the crops. Leo wasn’t so sure about the Thunder. He didn’t tuck his tail between his legs, but he did pace. Some Dogs can have an outsized response to Thunder.

    Tira, a Wolfhound bitch who lived with us in Andover, once impaled herself on a fence gate and clawed apart and bit, too, a license plate on the Tundra parked just across from the gate. I ran out when I found her and lifted her 160 pound body off the gate in one move. Adrenaline. Fortunately the wound was not deep. Her teeth and front paws though. Bloody.

     

    Just a moment: Will elaborate tomorrow, but I spent a joyful day with Ruth today. We walked to Alan and Cheri’s from Union Station. Painful, but doable. So irritating to have this impediment. Walking has been my favorite way to see a city. Now I have to walk some, rest some. Walk some, rest some. Made it to Spire Condominiums across from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

    Up 38 floors to 3810, Alan and Cheri’s place, for another home based concert. Rabbi Joe Black, senior Rabbi at the huge Temple Emmanuel, sang. As did Eitan Kantor, a local Jewish musician. And a pianist and song writer whose name I don’t have. More on this tomorrow.


    Art and Culture Denver Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Music Weather +Climate

  • Travelers Among Mountains and Streams

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Travelers Among Mountains and Streams  Fan Kuan. C. 1000 ACE

    Friday gratefuls: Lab Corps. New test results. Uh, oh. Kristie, later today. Mussar. The wonder of neuroscience and even more the functioning of our minds. Hello, in there, hello. The haze in our days. Not ours. Alan. Vincent, cooking at the Parkside. A dream. Art. Caravaggio. Giotto. Michelangelo. Botticelli. DaVinci. Rembrandt. Hokusai. Fan Kuan. Warhol.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fan Kuan

    One brief shining: Each time I see Fan Kuan’s painting, my relationship to Mother Earth pops back into the foreground; in the bottom right, difficult to see in most reproductions, a group of travelers cross toward the left on their journey as the enormous face of the Mountain with its signature Waterfall and  hairy prominences rises above them; mist floats up where the Waterfall disappears toward the Mountain’s base, and hidden among the Trees, homes and monasteries, humans in a natural world so vast we understand at once who and where we are within it. Taoism.

     

    The consolation of Fan Kuan’s painting. We come into this world as a birthed animal, fitted out to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell. To take into ourselves data from the world. And, fitted out to conjure our own data in the confines of our singular minds. Here Fan Kuan has shared with us a novel way he put together his experience of Song Dynasty China, its Mountainscapes, its mystery, its beauty. One of the wonders of art is its ability to allow us a glimpse inside the mind and heart, the lev, of another person.

    After my diagnosis with cancer in 2015 I drove along the Deer Creek Canyon road and began to understand what Fan Kuan expresses. We travel along a short short road, we humans and our Mayfly lives. We wander along that road within eyesight of the apparently unchanging Mountains, the mist of a future clouded by our unknowing. Yet on that journey we have the chance, if we take it, to know ourselves not as apart from the Mountains and Streams, but as part of them. For me that makes the journey home, our mutual journey, both exhilarating and inevitable.

    I had a dream last night. A busload of people with cancer were on their way to a university. I am on the bus. We discuss our cancers, our journeys. We stop near the campus at a large house and everybody gets out. As we enter the house, the home of some well known professor, and sit down, a man comes in, maybe the professor. He puts his hand on the shoulder of the man next to me. “Dead,” he says. He moves to me, puts his hand on my shoulder, “Dead,” he says. In my heart I already knew it. He just confirmed it. This dream is the same as Fan Kuan’s painting.

    Triggered I’m sure by my recent visit to Dr. Leonard, the radiation oncologist, and lab results which show my PSA continuing to rise in spite of the Orgovyx. I see Kristie this afternoon. Together we’ll decide what happens next.

     

     


    Art and Culture Asia Dreams Feelings Fourth Phase Health

  • Too much with us

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Lab orders. Cancer. Ruby. Blackbird Cafe in Kittredge. Potato cakes. The fantasy homes along Bear Creek between Evergreen and Kittredge. All Stone exterior. All Log exterior. That one with the Waterfall. Bear Creek full yesterday after heavy Rains on Sunday. Coffee. Milk. Seltzer Water. The Shema. Unitary metaphysics. This spinning Planet.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Homes. Of all sorts.

    One brief shining: The kind phlebotomist wanted to help me; but, I’d forgotten my lab orders and she couldn’t find any in her computer system, after I’d driven a half an hour to get to her since my doctor’s office happens to be between lab companies this week; she flipped up the soft arm of the phlebotomy chair and I squeezed out, shaking my head at my own error, not bringing my copy of the orders.

     

    Been musing for a while about certain things that cannot be done via computer. Any medical visit that requires puncturing the skin. A physical exam in a doctor’s office. The delivery of physical objects purchased online. A kiss. A handshake. A hug. Driving down the hill and back up again. Flying in an airplane. Travel that involves dining and sleeping. The list could go on.

    Too often these days we give the lie to Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us, late and soon…” Instead we settle for the faux experience. Remember Alvin Toffler in his book, The Third Wave? High tech, high touch. Yes. The more we use technology, the more we need in person, face to face, skin to skin. We feel, often without knowing it consciously, with Wordsworth again: “Little we see in Nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away.” With A.I. advancing as it is, we may also find ourselves paraphrasing him: We have given our minds away.

    I’m no technoLuddite. Hardly. I have three computers. I’m writing this blog on my computer, expecting you to read it on yours. I spend at least three plus hours every week on Zoom, more some weeks. I no longer read a physical newspaper, relying instead on the digital versions of the NYT and the WP plus other news outlets. My shopping, like most of us who live in the Mountains or in rural America, happens online. My front door, your front door has become a receiving dock.

    Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
    Kindred Spirits  1849
    Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant

    Yet. The interplay between the online world and the world of physical objects, especially humans and other Animals, Forests and Oceans, Mountains and Lakes has made revisiting the Romantic artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries a useful corrective.

    In the United States Romanticism coincided with pre-Civil War and post-Revolution thought, the period often known as the American Renaissance. The Romantic turn toward the individual, the irrational, the natural produced works like Emerson’s essay, Nature, and Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.

    This period of American intellectual and artistic life wanted to discover a non-European, American style in literature, poetry, painting. Melville’s Moby Dick. Painters like Church, Durand, Cropsey, Cole. A fruitful period to rediscover for our current ailment.


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