Category Archives: Art and Culture

Aging, Art and Culture, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Science, Third Phase

Cancer Returns

April 15, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Rushing Waters Moon

Had to go at this head on, today, while it’s fresh. When I got to my appointment with Anna Willis, Dr. Eigner’s P.A., the first person in the room was Eigner himself. Grayer and thinner, he smiled, shook my hand. When I said it was good to see him, he said, “It’s good to see you, too, but I’m not happy about the reason.” When I told him my anxiety made me move the decimal place on my PSA, his relief was obvious, “Thank god.” Anna came in about then.

They both remembered me. Anna remembered my glasses and our visits. Eigner remembered me partly because I’d sent him a couple of emails over the years thanking him, telling him about my life. It was one of the warmest visits I’ve had in a doctor’s office and that felt good.

Davinci_roboticArm_skyRidge_Low — Davinci robotic arm, Sky Ridge (where I had my surgery)

Turns out though. “When you’ve been perfect (a .1 psa which means essentially undetectable) and that changes, it’s scary.” He went on to say that it most likely does mean a recurrence, a relatively rare thing for those who choose prostatectomy, even rarer if the pathology report read, as mine did, clear margins. Clear margins means no cancer was found on the outside of the prostate. The best news.

Dr. Eigner took out a piece of paper and drew a sort of oblong on it. “This is the prostate. They can’t take sections from every part, so they take representative slices. If the cancer is between those slices, it won’t show up on the path report.” Oh, shit.

Since it is three and a half years since my surgery, and since the number for the uptick is relatively small, it means the recurrence is probably local, that is, in the area where the prostate used to be. That’s good news, much better than metastasis.

The plan is to redo my PSA in three months, doing the super sensitive one that can take the numbers 3 or 4 places rather than just two. If it’s still rising, I’ll get a referral right away to the oncologists to discuss radiation. “We’ll just go in there and kill it,” he said. “If you were older, I’d tell you not to do anything. This will take ten years to manifest anyhow, but at 72 you’ve still got a lot of life ahead of you.” That’s my opinion, too.

Radiation has some potential downsides, so I hope we don’t have to go that route. But, as I said to Kate, I’ve always chosen treatments that offer the best chance to remain active, and alive. I chose repair for my torn Achilles even though it means two months of no walking and crutches for a good while after. I chose knee replacement over other treatment options because I wanted to continue exercising. I chose a radical prostatectomy because that gave me the best shot at a cure. Likewise here, if radiation is the option that gives me the best chance to survive and thrive, I’ll choose it. No doubt.

All that’s the rational side, and that’s pretty damned important because these are high risk, high reward decisions. But they’re not all of it.

On the way back from Eigner’s I drove through Deer Creek Canyon. When my biopsy confirmed my prostate cancer in 2015, I drove Deer Creek Canyon, too. Going through there I felt the rock, rock so old that our human scale word ancient is quaint. This rock rose millions of years ago and it will slowly soften, the rough edges frozen and thawed, rained on, plant roots will crack them, and Deer Creek will carry the pebbles and sand to the Platte River on its way to the Gulf. Not only will I be dead long, long before then, it may be that the human race will have ended itself well before then, too. This comforts me.

Laramide Orogeny, 70 million years ago, begun. 35 million years ago, ended. Built the Rockies

William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” came to mind. See the opening stanza below.* He goes on to make the point that the earth itself is a great tomb, holding all those who once lived. Again, this comforts me. Death has not chosen me for a special fate. No, death itself is a universal for all who live. It seems harsh and cruel, yet it is, rather, the opposite. Death ends suffering. Allows the world to carry many creatures, but not all at once.

Here there were Utes and Apaches, Comanches, too. And even they were not the first. Older humans preceded even them. And before all came the Rockies, then the trees, the lodgepole pines and the ponderosa and the bristle cone, the aspen. Mountain lions, deer, elk, rabbits, raccoons, pikas, prairie dogs, bison, moose, wolves, fox, martens, fishers, beaver. All here before humans, most will be here after we are gone. I can look at the lodgepoles in my front yard and know that their direct ancestors flourished here thousands of years ago and will do so after I’m dead.

All this brackets whatever troubles I may experience, even cancer. And cancer may be that friend that carries me off to the mighty sepulchre. Or, it might be something else. Whatever is my death-friend will not be an enemy, but the specific cause of my life ending. And that is, for all of us, in spite of our fears, a good thing.

Kindred Spirits by Asher Durand William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Cole

* “To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language; for his gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

And eloquence of beauty, and she glides

Into his darker musings, with a mild

And healing sympathy, that steals away

Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight

Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,

Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—

Go forth, under the open sky, and list

To Nature’s teachings, while from all around—

Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—

Comes a still voice—

Yet a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears…

The oak

Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould…

Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,

The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

All in one mighty sepulchre.”

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television

Roma

March 31, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Recovery Moon

First, it’s not about gypsies. Roma is a neighborhood in Mexico City.

Second, it’s not a thriller, or a mystery, or a comedy (except perhaps of manners), or a drama. It’s not fantasy, anime, or horror. I would call it cinema verité, a slice of life, in this case a short period in the life of Cleo, an indigenous woman who serves as a maid to the deteriorating family of a physician. She and Adela, another maid, wake up the children, kiss them and love them, make meals, clean the house, and work from morning until night.

Cleo is affectionate, a para-mother, to the four children, three boys and a girl. They love her back and the relationship among them is strong enough that, despite not knowing how to swim, she wades into the Bay of Campeche to save Sofi from drowning as threatening waves break all around them.

The film is told with Cleo and her life as its center, and a good part of it covers the evolution of her pregnancy, the result of one afternoon with Fermín. Fermín’s full frontal nudity, while brandishing a staff in martial arts fashion, serves to highlight what I perceived as the strongly feminist theme. His is the only nudity in the film.

Cleo’s pregnancy ends in the birth of a dead girl. The physician moves away from his home, leaving his wife, her mother, the four kids, Cleo and Adela in the family house. After a drunken drive into the garage with the oversized, masculine body of a Ford Galaxy, the wife says to Cleo, “We’re all alone Cleo. We women are always alone.” Her mother is there, alone. Cleo and Adela are there alone.

Cleo tells Fermín that she’s late while they are at a movie. He says, “That’s good, yeah?” She looks a little bewildered, but nods. “I’m going to the bathroom.” He disappears. When she finds him much later, he’s moved back to a village and trains there. She asks him if he has a minute. He shouts at her, brandishes his staff, “It’s not mine. If you come back, I’ll beat your face in.”

Though the film consistently portrays the physician’s family, including his wife, as caring for Cleo, “We love you, Cleo, very much.” there is always the underlying dynamic of employer/employee. “Will you fire me?” Cleo asks when informing the wife of her pregnancy. “Of course not.” The story from Cleo’s point of view suggests several different times that her position could be precarious, even if the family does love her.

We don’t see films focused on servants. Especially not films that take a more or less neutral attitude toward servitude like Roma. Yes, we see the threat to Cleo, but we also see the families genuine affection for her, the children’s, too. She displays no anger at her life, nor does Adela. Her most negative emotions come after the birth of her dead girl. She sits and stares.

The black and white film, the setting in the early 1970’s, and the depiction of an infamous police riot against protesting college students give Roma the patina of a story from long ago, as if the participants were sitting around a campfire somewhere recounting that year that Cleo got pregnant. In that sense, and in its third person style, gives the viewer a distance from the events in the movie, like watching a newsreel.

This is a powerful, well-observed film. It drew me in to Cleo’s world, made me ache with her, want more for her, appreciate her love for the children, which, of course, drew a double line of irony under her unsuccessful pregnancy.

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Judaism, Memories, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

The Velveteen Rabbit aspect of human identity

March 23, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Recovery Moon

Bat and Moon, 1930s Takahashi Bihō. MIA — Bat and Moon, 1930s
Takahashi Bihō. MIA

The Recovery moon illuminates Black Mountain this morning. The ski runs carved out on the mountain are white strips reflecting back moon shine. A light breeze moves the lodgepoles and a thin dusting of snow covers the solar panels. Early spring in the Rockies.

Kate made a salad last night. We bumped into each other in our galley kitchen for the first time in months. She also tossed her friendship quilt from the Bailey Patchworkers into the washing machine. She’s beginning to emerge from a long time in the chrysalis of illness. Wow.

Since the recovery moon seems to find us both on the uptick, my doctor’s nurse called with lab results, actually a second call due to confusion there occasioned by a weeks long problem with their computer systems. The first call came when I was still pretty sick and I didn’t pay close attention. This time I did. My PSA has moved up from .o1 to .012. Doesn’t seem like much, but when your prostate’s gone, it’s supposed to stay at .1, which is effectively .0. A recurrence is defined, for those of us who had our prostate’s removed, when the PSA hits .2. Concerning, but not yet a problem. Further testing required.

Rabbi Jamie called last night, wondering how we were. We were both steady and frequent attenders of things at CBE up until Kate’s bleed on September 28th. I continued until my own illness which began in early February. Since then, I’ve only been back for the chicken soup cook-off. Our sudden disappearance from the synagogue’s life caused him to say last time he talked with Kate that the schul isn’t the same without us. Kate was on the board and I was teaching religious school. We both attended mussar on Thursdays. We went to services less frequently, but showed up at education and special events, too. We’ve woven ourselves into the fabric that is CBE.

Chapter House from Notre-Dame-de-Pontaut,12th century French MMA

Community, like friendships, is reciprocal. You put your left foot in, then your right foot, then you shake it all about. With others doing the same thing. Over time we get to know each other, see each other, acknowledge each other. The line between thee and me is both more and less than we usually think. It’s more in that we don’t know our own selves well, our own depths eluding even the most introspective and life examining of us. How could others see into that, then? It’s less in that our perception of ourselves is constantly poked and prodded by interactions with others. In fact, much of our personhood gains definition as we sit down to coffee with someone, engage in critical thought, listen to music, sing with them. In community, in friendships, in family we become who we are.

At CBE, as with the Woolly’s, the docents, the political folks I’ve worked with, and our family, who I am has been in dialectical tension with both individuals and the collective. I’ve had to consider how Frank Broderick’s anti-Catholicism fits into my mostly positive assessment of religious life. I’ve offered ideas at CBE and had them put into action, changing myself and others in the process. As I got to know my fellow docents, I observed how they related to the art, to the art history we learned, to the museum visitors we guided on tours. And, how I was as a docent shaped itself in response.

Woolly Mammoths instructed in glass blowing

In the instance of the Presbyterian ministry the two millennia plus history of Christianity was a body of thought and actions within which I had to find my particular place just like the thousands of year old history of art demanded I find a personal patch of ground on which to stand in relation to it. Both interactions shaped me and I, in turn, in small, individual ways reshaped both Christianity and the history of art. Not making a big, hubristic claim here, just observing that the dialectical tension affects both parties though not in equal ways.

This is, I suppose, the Velveteen Rabbit part of human identity formation. We rub ourselves up against people, animals, things and in the process we become real. And, we serve that same role for others. It’s an awesome responsibility. How do I, in my interactions, encourage the best in others? Or, do I? But that’s a question for another day.

Art and Culture, Family, Health, Politics, The Move, Third Phase

I miss them still

March 21, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Recovery Moon

Today is Kate’s pulmonology appointment. Another key moment on this journey. Is she fit enough for surgery to place the j-tube? Does she have some lung disease? And, a week delayed.

The cold. My cold, that is, and it’s follow on sinus infection has begun to lose its grip. Glimpses of normalcy, breathing freely. Is this it? The end to this seven weeks of this and that rattling around in my blood stream, squeezing my lungs, filling my head? I sure hope so. May do a little dance.

Ironies. Judge Gorsuch, a Colorado deep conservative appointed to the court by he who shall not be named, has sided with the liberal judges on a Yakima Indian treaty dispute. Being a Westerner, he’s been exposed to much more Indian law than any other member of the court. Not sure where he stands on public lands. Guess we take what we can get in this moment of conservative judges dominant in our judiciary.

Weather here unremarkable. Warmer, blue skies, great clouds.

On art. 12 years at the MIA opened my heart, my mind to the strange world of art. Not that I hadn’t visited before. Ever since I spent time in the small museum on the campus of Ball State I’ve haunted museums, art fairs, galleries. But then I was an art appreciator in a very random way. I had little context, little history of the art I saw. After my two year class on art history in preparation for being a docent, I had at least a modest grasp of the history of world art. As I prepared for tours, went to continuing education, that knowledge grew.

I’ve been frustrated since leaving the MIA with my inability to interact with art on a regular basis. That’s one reason I started painting. I wanted that intimacy I had while at the MIA. For a few years after my docent training, the museum, closed on Mondays, allowed docents to be in the museum that day. That meant a chance to experience the art with no crowds, almost no other people.

I loved those Mondays and would wander happily through the Chinese paintings, the Japanese teaware, the 19th century galleries filled with Delacroix, Goya, Courbet, Gerome, Cole, Church, Bierstadt. I could spend time with Rembrandt’s Lucretia, Dorphyoros, Goya’s Dr. Arrieta, as much time as I wanted.

To know a work of art well you need to see it in person, spend time with it over weeks and years. Let it speak to you as the artist hoped it would with color, with shape, with composition, with subject matter, with brush strokes and chiaroscuro, with its own, often centuries long story. The works become your friends, acquaintances who teach you, let you be your self, but also be affected at a soul level. I miss that still though my friends from the MIA live on in my memory, with me here on Shadow Mountain.

Art and Culture, Family, Health

Malaise

March 19, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Recovery Moon

Kate’s above 84 pounds now! The tpn is working and the results are what we expected. We got Kate’s pulmonology appointment rescheduled for this Thursday. Gupta will decide on her fitness for surgery for the j-tube and we’ll get his reading of the ct scan. Potential interstitial lung disease. An important day.

This Thursday she goes on a 14 hours on, 10 hours off schedule with the tpn feeding. They couldn’t go down to 12 and 12 due to the volume of the feeding solution. That will give her 10 hours without the black bag to carry around.

I wish I could report my cold was resolving, but it isn’t. Seems to have slipped over into a sinus infection. Just one more turn of the screw. Oh, well. Major issue. More malaise. This aspect of illness I’d never truly appreciated before. The body needs to devote its energy to fending off the intruders which means it has little left over for daily life. After now having been sick myself for over six weeks (with a brief recovery respite before the cold showed up), I get the burden that Sjogren’s and malnourishment has visited on Kate. I saw it before, of course, but now I get it in my body.

Goya's, Self-Portrait with Dr. Arrieta. Mpls Museum of Art — Goya’s Self-Portrait with Dr. Arrieta. Mpls Museum of Art

Malaise is a side effect, but it’s damaging, too. Every aspect of living takes more effort. Getting up. Staying up. Walking to the mail box. Cooking. Taking care of the dogs. All done on legs that don’t want to be standing, with arms that don’t want to lift, with hands that ache. In the short term the malaise is good because it signals your body to rest. I’ve got this, but you need to slow down while I fight.

Over a longer duration, six weeks now for me, and months now for Kate, it drags us down mentally. I can’t do the things I love, or only in short bursts, not good enough for, say, painting or writing. Even important self maintenance like cooking can seem too much. When I neglect those sorts of things, I feel bad. And the feeling can soak in, change the inner weather. In this regard I marvel that Kate has been able so often to stay centered, to adjust to the constant malaise, the constant weakness. It requires mental strength, constantly applied.

This painting, my favorite at the MIA and, I discovered, Kaywin Feldman’s too, (Director of the MIA now headed to the National Gallery) shows extreme malaise. The way Goya’s hand grips the sheet, so slightly, his head tilted over, the wan coloration of his skin. Barely visible, even when in the painting’s presence are shadowy figures, look to Arrieta’s right elbow, just over Goya’s left shoulder, are ghostly figures. His ancestors? The dead, whom he felt he might join? Or the sense of evanescence he feels, part way in this world, part way out of it?

But. the malaise and these illnesses will pass, just as they did for the grateful Goya. Someday, sooner I hope, rather than later, I’ll be motoring along at a more usual speed. Able to cook, work, go to CBE occasionally. That’s my future and I look forward to it. But, today. Moving slow, swimming in molasses.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The Move, Third Phase

Became Native to This Place

February 28, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

we're waiting to transition to a feeding tube placed in the jejunum — we’re waiting to transition to a feeding tube placed in the jejunum

UPS delivers vitamins and bags of nutrients for Kate. On Tuesday we got a box with a styrofoam container, two gel packs to keep things cool, bubble wrap filling the container, about 12x12x12. Two vials of vitamins. Next day, two more boxes, same size, syringes, nutrient bags, batteries (a fresh 9 volt goes into the pump every day), saline flushes, heparin locks, tubing for the pump that connects to Kate’s picc line.

The logistics of this tpn feeding are remarkable. Not only do they have to ship us the right amount of stuff, it has to get here on a timely basis. And, the nutrient bags have a mixture that is tuned according to Kate’s labs, which can change on a weekly basis. Somebody has to coordinate all that and make sure the counts are right, the nutrient’s up to date, and that it gets here so we can use it. But, you can’t send too much at once because the tpn might be stopped, or certain things, like the vitamins and nutrients might spoil.

tpn4 It’s no wonder medical costs are high. All of these things are one use only: syringes, nutrients, saline flushes and heparin flushes (each in their own individual packing), batteries, tubing, alcohol wipes, even the packaging for the deliveries. The need for sterility drives most of this. Kate’s picc line ends near her heart in the superior venous cava, which means there is a direct link between the outside, non-sterile world and that vip organ. Even the tiniest mistake in sterile procedure could have disastrous, catastrophic results. No pressure, eh?

I’ve gotten more facile with the various steps required to change out Kate’s nutrient bags. She draws the vitamins out of their vials using syringes. She and Julie, the home health nurse, make that look easy, but my fingers don’t find it so. As Kate said, my dexterity is in my brain, not my fingers. The rest of it, I can do. I could figure that one out, too, but with Kate’s expertise, why?

20181230_064700 Grieving now. Looking at things around the house with that critical, ok what do we need to do with this in order to sell the house eye. Driving up the mountain considering how many more times I’ll be able to see Black Mountain on my left as I climb Shadow Mountain to our home near its peak. Not anxious about it, just sad.

Place is very important to me. Andover taught me that. Even though we lived there twenty years I never made my peace with the suburban blandness. No there there, was the way I put it. Oh, yes, our property had a definite sense of place, but it was set in a context that numbed the mind. At least my mind. Here, the opposite is true. I love the mountains, the vistas, the curves in the road. The weather. The ever changing face of Black Mountain.

As the John Muir quote on my e-mails says, “You are not in the mountains, the mountains are in you.” It’s an aesthetic sensibility. Over my years at the MIA I learned how important aesthetics were to me. Always have been. Deep in my soul. Perhaps it’s even the root of my pagan leanings, the aesthetic link I feel between myself and the natural world.

Art and Culture, Astrology, Colorado, Cooking, Family, Health, Kabbalah, Mountains, Painting, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

So Beautiful

January 29, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

Our snowpack. Needed for the trees and our well — Our snowpack beside the front door. Needed for the trees and our well

Another 6 or 8 inches of snow yesterday. Snowiest January since 1993. The northern half and eastern quadrant of Colorado watersheds have above average snowpack. Critically, the Colorado Headwaters area is at 116%. The south western quadrant of the state though is below average in two spots, including the Durango area where the big fires burned last summer.

So beautiful. The lodgepoles carry snowy covers on their branches. The deer, rabbits, fox that come through our yard leave their tracks.The rising sun colors the snow on Black Mountain, right now a light flush pink. Bright blue sky behind the mountain.

Not so good for those of us animals who need carapaces and wheels. This is the google traffic map from yesterday. Rush hour. Add in altitude and you get a real mess. This is when commuting to Denver from Conifer separates the brave from the foolish.

metro roads 1 28

Kate’s initiated a get-out of the house plan. She said last week that she felt isolated and alone, so we’re going to go somewhere each day. Yesterday we went to the post office. Today, the King Sooper Starbucks for Kate while I pick up some groceries. Tomorrow? Who knows?

Last week I painted the creation of the universe, the shattering of the ohr. Followed it with the creation of the waters. Next up: land. I tried to show an island in my first attempt. Not so good. I like the first two, I’m starting over today on land. I’m going to get somehow to Eden and humans and that tree. Will take awhile. Hard to say in the abstract paint language I’m using. But, that’s part of the fun.

Astrological learning has been on hold. Painting, exercise, and Kate have gotten my focus along with CBE. Gonna get back to it, though. Probably a reading with Elisa’s astrologer, John, to kick off the next phase of my learning.

Just entered the Chicken soup cookoff at CBE. Gonna get some practice today, picking up soup supplies during the grocery shopping at King Sooper. Taking some to a friend, leaving some behind for Kate and me. Kate loves my chicken soup. My heirloom recipe came off the Golden Plump packages when I bought chickens in Minnesota. Here, I do it from memory.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Cooking, Dogs, Family, Health, Third Phase, Travel

Sweet Cream Pancakes and more

January 27, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

When Mark and Tom were here, we tried to recapitulate our Durango trip breakfast at the Rustic Station. Turned out they only serve breakfast on weekends. Yesterday was my monthly run to the Happy Camper for cannabis. Thank you, Centennial State. Since it was Saturday, I decided to have breakfast at the Rustic Station, just down the hill, the really, really big hill from the Happy Camper. And, I did. These are why. Sweet cream pancakes. Not my usual fare, but they are amazing.

Kate had a not so good day yesterday. Nausea. When that happens, it effects her emotionally. Disappointment. Frustration. Reinforcing her down state. She got better as the day went on, but it had taken its toll. Not sure why.

We’ve started on the 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. We have, too, a 2,000, a 3,000, a 4,000, and a 5,000 piece puzzle. Kate thinks it will take us ten years to complete them. Depends, I suppose, on how much effort we put in.

Back to my six day rhythm of workouts, three resistance, three cardio. Don’t always make the six, but that’s the benchmark. I hit it a lot once I’ve gotten back into it. Always makes me feel better. Three big motivators: increased health span, feel better in the moment, habit.

My Korean cooking chops are modest, but improving. Bulgogi on Friday, a dumpling soup last night. Tonight some pork and cabbage, potatoes. H-Mart also had one nostalgic food for me: smelt. I love fried smelt and when the smelt used to run in abundance on Lake Superior, out of the cold streams that flow down the Sawtooth Mountains, I used to make them a lot. Then the smelt diminished and I haven’t had them for a long time. Kate says I can have all them to myself. Just fine. A beaten egg, seasoned corn meal or bread crumbs, cooking oil. Lunch.

Gertie’s still sore, but she’s running around, wagging her tail. She came up the stairs to the loft yesterday afternoon in spite of the wounds on her haunch. We’re cleaning her wounds with hibi-cleanse. Kate used it before her shoulder surgery.

Gert’s been bitten by many different dogs. Not sure what makes her so bitable. She can be annoying. As for yesterday, we both wondered whether her more feeble habitus, arthritic left leg, blind in one eye and decreasing vision in the other, might make her more vulnerable. Kep’s still the omega in our little pack and he may be looking to move up in the hierarchy. Hope not, because that would suggest more to come.

sps Brother Mark seems to be finding a home in Saudi Arabia, at least an ex-pat style home. It’s nuances are more clear to him, being up north in Arar the weather is more clement and there’s access to other Middle Eastern countries like Jordan, Syria, Iraq. As he said, “Not everybody gets a chance to live in a medieval kingdom.” True that.

Jon has a new show going up on Wednesday, the annual Aurora art teacher’s exhibition. He has several new pieces in it. I will attend, leaving a bit early from religious school. On Friday he, Ruthie and I will wander Santa Fe for the First Friday art crawl. Santa Fe north of Sixth has many galleries, museums, studios. Food trucks come down. It’s fun. I’ve only been once, but I really liked it.

Art and Culture, Family, Mussar, Myth and Story, Third Phase, Writing

The Days of Our Ancientrails

January 25, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

Chez Kate and Charlie under snow, yesterday

Never thought of it this way before, but Ancientrails is a soap opera of sorts. Or, ugh, a reality show. We have recurring characters: Kate, Jon, Ruth, Gabe, SeoAh, Murdoch, Murdoch’s dad, Jen \, Rabbi Jamie, Mark, Mary, Tom, Bill, Paul, Mark O., Alan, Rich, Tara, Marilyn, Sally, Areil, Anshel, CBE, the religious school. Differing locales: Shadow Mountain, Evergreen, down the hill, Minnesota, Maine (through the magic of zoom), Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Korea, Georgia. Various story lines: Mark and his ESL adventures in Saudi, Mary and her jet setting life, Kate’s illness, the bees at CBE, wildfire danger, Tom’s business, Ode’s art, the dogs and their escapades (comic relief), the Rocky Mountains, the occasional bout of world travel, SeoAh and Murdoch, my meandering through various thought worlds and aesthetic ones, the nature of my soul. What will happen next?! Don’t change that dial. Or, better, don’t touch your remote. Something new, something unexpected is coming up.

Went to mussar yesterday. Only Ariel and Sally showed up. Three former Midwesterners braved a modest snowfall. I find myself saying often up here, “If we didn’t go out in weather like this in Minnesota, we’d never go anywhere in the winter.” Coloradans are weather wimps, especially when it comes to cold, icy conditions. It’s like the meme I reposted yesterday on facebook from a Florida weather station: Limit your children’s outdoor time. Dress warm. Temperature of 53 tomorrow.

camels Brother Mark, whose grasp of Saudi culture has become nuanced, reported a couple of days ago on a visit to a new camel herd cared for by Bedu. (Bedouins, I think, in local parlance) In his own words: “There was a stud white bull camel, many brown and white female camels,, and gamboling young camels. Gamboling, stretching their young legs out. One poor fellow had lost the lower part of his left front foreleg, but, was getting by on three legs. I met this Bedu fellow. I said I was from America. He said, “Donald Trump.” He then sort of urged me to see the camels. I went forward a bit, but stopped, as I did not want to invade the camel’s space. The Bedu said the stud bull was Saddam Hussein. The camel with the shortened foreleg was Trump.” Humor is cross cultural and international.

Bought this at last year's show — Bought this at last year’s show

Jon and his fellow art teachers in the Aurora school system have a gallery show once a year. He’s had new work, his prints of found metal objects, in it last year and this one. He figured out a new method for using Intaglio inks that allows him a lot of the same opportunities for color, color blending afforded by oils. He’s a true artist, committed to his vision, a vision that is unique as is his method. Jon finds crushed metal objects along the roadside, takes them home, cleans them up, inks them up, then runs the roller of his press over them with a sheet of print making paper between the roller and the object. Like the best art the result is surprising and beautiful.

Kate got to work on a jigsaw puzzle yesterday, folded laundry, watered the plants. She’s also talking about getting out more. This is taking arms against a sea of troubles. May she, by opposing them, end them.

Tomorrow’s post: a visit to H-mart without SeoAh.

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Painting, Poetry, Third Phase, Writing

On Working at Your Best

January 22, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

20181214_081606 Painting. A long, long ancientrail. Walked by so many. A few well, more journeypersons, and the rest of us.

Mediocre. An interesting idea, mediocre. If you’re working to your best capacity, your work is wonderful. Mediocre arrives on your doorstep when you begin comparing your work to others. I’m a writer of wonderful novels and short stories. I create wonderful paintings. Am I going to be hung in the National Gallery? No. Any gallery? Probably not. Am I going to make the NYT times best seller list? Unlikely. Have I done less than my best? No.

Success, I’m gradually beginning to learn, is not about the other. It is about yourself. If Michelangelo painted like me, he’d be mediocre because he had the skill to paint well. If Tolstoy wrote like me, same. Where do I fit? Hell if I know. I’ve had the chance to work at my best level in two fields where criticism is a given. I’ve learned to quiet my inner critic, to stay away from sweeping generalizations about my books, my paintings. Now you may read them, look at them, and say, “He’s no Song Dynasty landscape artist.” Or, “He’s no Marquez.” And you would be right. I’m just and only me.

breathe thich-nhat-hanh-calligraphy This does not mean I’m uninterested in the quality of my work. Hardly. I want it to be the best I can do. Do I always work at my best level? Of course not. But I do as often as I can. Which is most of the time. I’ll leave the judging to others. I did write that novel. Several, in fact. I did create that painting. Several, in fact. Enough for me. Could I have done this without Kate? No. But Kate is in my life and I in hers. Both of us have sought the best for each other, have sought to create a home environment that encouraged our best work.

Quilting, making clothing, writing novels, and painting are not the only things we’ve done. Kate healed children. I worked hard at social justice, at following a small r religious path. Both of us have raised kids, learned how to be grandparents. Grew much of our own food, our own flowers, our own fruit, our own honey. There is no accounting, no form of critique that can measure these things. They are past. And we don’t live then. We live forward, on the ancientrail that leads into the time beyond this moment. What we have done is not what matters anymore. What matters now is what we do today, right now. As my buddy Bill Schmidt says, “Show up.”

crane2 Life allows no do overs. We can reconsider, reframe, reevaluate, remember, but we cannot change yesterday, or any yesterday. We can make choices right now.

Today I chose to use turpentine to wipe out, literally, work I did yesterday. And, I’ll do new work on that painting today. I’m not doing over what I did yesterday. I’m going in a new direction today.

It feels to me like I’m beginning to get this, to accept the truth of the past, of my intentions, and to find a path with no attention to results. Not sure why but this excites me. A form of liberation, I guess. Not giving up, just going forward. Working at my best. Nothing else is possible, except apathy. And that’s not me.