Category Archives: Art and Culture

Art and Culture, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Hermitage, Judaism, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Neverending Story

Leave a comment

Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Good friends. Tom, always a good conversation. My son and compartment syndrome, the bloody treatment. Seoah shooting a 90 at screen golf. My son an 85. Two athletes. Plus Murdoch. Hamas. Israel. Palestine. The diaspora. The Joseph story. The Jacob/Israel story. The Abraham story. Bereshit, Genesis. Beginnings. Ganesha. Krishna. Vishnu. Shiva. Snow plows and their drivers. My mail carrier, Mark.

(N.B. I capitalize words associated with what I consider the living world, a practice of honor I picked up from the Potawatomi in Braiding Sweet Grass. [except for humans] Also, I include in my gratefuls the dark as well as the light since both make up our whole life and contain a seed of holiness. I learn this from the sacred nature of reality as One. It does not mean that I love, say, Hamas.)

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Breakfast with Marilyn and Irv

One brief shining: At Primo’s Cafe I scooched between a diner’s chair and a giant Santa, right hand raised in what I imagine is a greeting gesture though it looks more like he’s waving to other outsized folks like Johnny Inkslinger, Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox, or perhaps very large Reindeer, a Rudolf with a nose the size of a softball.

 

Conversations. Tom. Marilyn and Irv. Diane. Alan and Joan. Luke. My life requires time alone the most, yet it also requires conversation, connection, the intimacy of knowing and being known. Yours too I’ll bet. The second one, I mean. Most don’t need as much alone time as I do.

I’m lucky enough to have regular folks to meet over eggs, potatoes, and bacon in the breakfast spots available here in the Mountains. And others I meet in the cloud, that mysterious realm just on the other side of my computer screen that contains people I know. Like Tom and my cousin Diane, my Ancient Brothers: Paul, Mark, Tom, Bill. The Thursday mussar group. A blend of the cloud and IRL.

Judaism contains its own cloud. What Christians often called that great cloud of witnesses, referring to the dead. In Judaism the Rabbis speak over the ages through the Talmud, the Midrash, and the stories of their lives.  The rituals and traditions of Jewish life, the Torah, the Kabbalah, even the blood of the ancestors carry their own message. As well as the history of the Jewish people. That great cloud of witnesses places my temporary life in a broader and longer context. Comforting and challenging.

Each book I pick up becomes a dialogue between the author and me, between the story and me. In this way my life might be said to be a constant conversation with interlocutors living and dead.

Then there is the world of my wild neighbors and the planets, Great Sol, and other galaxies. A conversation exists between that very young Mule Deer Doe that comes to eat grass in my yard and me. She looks at me through the window with gentle, puzzled eyes. Among those three Mule Deer Bucks who welcomed me here. That Elk Bull watching from the side of the road in the rainy night. Black Mountain and its changes. The running Streams and the Arapaho National Forest. Crows, Ravens, Magpies. The Snow as it marches across Mt. Blue Sky to Shadow Mountain.

A neverending story you might say.

 

Art and Culture, Health

Missing Art

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Choosing Judaism. Nov. 28th. Temple Emmanuel. Mikveh. Beit din. Blood letting. Rabbi Jamie. Mezuzah hanging Nov. 21. CBE. Luke. Feeling better. Leo. And his friend the Corgi puppy. Gracie, Anne’s dog. Marilyn and Irv’s Australian Shepherds. Kippur, Rich’s new dog. Kep. My sweet boy. And Kate. Always her. Rembrandt’s Lucretia. Goya’s Dr. Arrieta. Beckmann’s Blind Man’s Buff. Kandinsky. Bacon. Close. Augustine. Aquinas. Chardin. Tillich. Whitehead. Evans-Wentz.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Blind Man’s Buff

One brief shining: Missing this morning access to the Art Institute, those hallways filled with art become good friends, relationships that repaid frequent visits with new insights: Goya gripping the sheet as Dr. Arrieta treated him, Lucretia bloodied by her own hand after being raped, the tall red figure with flowing yellow hair in the Kandinsky, new acquisitions, new shows being installed.

 

On the personal health front. Yet again. My first labs after stopping all treatment for prostate cancer. Undetectable PSA! Still rock bottom low testosterone. Good news. And the echocardiogram. Nothing serious as near as I can tell from the report. Dr. Gonzalez will let me know.

Back to normal. Do back exercises. Workout. Try to eat right. Maintain low stress levels. See friends. Write. Read. Sleep. Repeat. All calm here.

Goya, Self Portrait with Dr. Arrieta, 1820         Minneapolis Art Institute

As you might have noticed, I’ve felt nostalgic this last few days for my time as a docent at the MIA, the Minneapolis Art Institute. Art occupied an important spot in my life before my twelve years at the museum and only became more important during that time. I grew to understand and appreciate a much broader range of artistic expression across many different cultures and time periods. What a lucky dude I was to have that experience.

I’ve been a sort of Twin City’s snob here in Colorado. The Denver Post is not a good paper. I really don’t think it is, but when Marilyn told me she wrote for it, I backtracked, owning prejudice. Not that the Star-Tribune is a Des Moines Register or New York Times, but still… Also, the art scene here. Especially the Denver Art Museum. Not an encyclopedic museum. Stuff hung poorly. Bah. Humbug. No Guthrie or Children’s Theater. No St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Also, further in to any of these things from Conifer than from Andover.

Result? I’ve let my art world experiences wither. An important part of my life gone. Want to remedy that. Not the Denver Post. But the DAM. Live theater. Jazz. Which is quite good here. Means scheduling time to go and actually going. A bit harder solo, but not much. I don’t mind night driving. I don’t like it, but I’m not impaired. I have the money, the time. And, the art world I can visit during the day. Maybe schedule an art day a month? Something like that.

Ever since I quit the MIA because the docent role had changed and not to my liking, I’ve had this feeling. Now almost eleven years, perhaps a bit more. Time to wrassle this bear to the ground.

Art and Culture, Humanities

Ars longa, vita brevis

Leave a comment

Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan and Joan. Rabbi Jamie. Ginny. Nancy. Bright, bright Great Sol, a blue Colorado Sky, and Snow capped Lodgepole Branches. No myeloma. Yeah! All those gobulins in the green. Mary. A together gal. Sarah. Annie. A brain bleed. Jerry with foot surgery. BJ and Schecky. In their own personal Idaho. The Minnesota gang. The Ancient Brothers. Community. Burning away everything but love.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mary

One brief shining: Mary said, yeah I’ll chase a little white ball in the grass for three or four holes then I start throwing it.

 


Pieter van Steenwyck (Dutch, b. ca. 1615–d. ca. 1654),  Ars longa, Vita brevis

 

 

Back to the humanities for a second. See yesterday’s post. Even if the humanities get pushed out of higher education or so cut back they’re unrecognizable, they will never die. Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long, life is short. Museums will hold the rich deposit of artists long dead and maintain their curatorial and conversatorial roles. Operas will be sung. Classic music will be played. Libraries will remain. Books will get written and read. Poetry, too. Jazz clubs will buzz with food and improvisation. Movies will get made.

There are even now artists painting. Sculptors sculpting. Writers writing. Composers composing. Off in some elementary school somewhere some boy has become enchanted with the cello, a girl with drumming. An old man hits the keyboard writing books. An old woman takes up her paint brush and begins. That video camera for Hanukah inspires a Cannes winner.

Jacob Wrestles the Angel, Odeon

Art expresses the soul and cannot be banished or diminished. Sure, the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence. The Nazis and their Fahrenheit 451 moments. Those dimwits banning books from public schools. Of course. But the great flood of human imagination and creativity runs over them, through them, in spite of them. When I feel moved to write or read, I do it. I’m a drop in that flood. Perhaps you are, too.

Art will out. To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park: Art will find a way.

Here’s a related subject. Or, perhaps the same subject. Revelation. Talked with Marilyn and Irv yesterday about revelation. Marilyn said she touched the Western Wall in Jerusalem and felt a shock, a moment of dissolution (my word). In that moment she realized this was her history, her place in the world.

What is the source of revelation? Is it the sacred? Whatever that is. Is it something beyond our ordinary perceptions momentarily revealed? Where is its locus? Out there? Or, in here? In the rock of the Western Wall or in Marilyn? In the great Bull Elk I saw in the rain or in me? Or is revelation like the Christian Orthodox icons? The Orthodox pray through the icon, not to it. Are these revelatory moments iconic, that is, a moment we can see through, or, maybe better, that sees through us?

The book God is Here by Toba Spitzer pushes us to find God or the divine or the sacred by employing different metaphors: water, voice, rock, fire, clouds. She roots her exploration first in the Jewish tradition. The pillar of fire and the pillar of smoke. Rock of ages. Let justice roll down like an ever flowing stream. Suggesting as she does that water or rock or fire as metaphor can help us experience different facets of God, that we’re not stuck with God as judge, God as patriarch, God as angry old man. Though those metaphors can be useful, too. Her point lies in broadening our palette of metaphors.

icon:    archangel michael

I think she’s provided us with tools for experiencing revelation. For opening ourselves to the world around us as a conduit for the sacred. Not about God. No, it’s about what God is about. We could say God is an artistic rendering of the power and the beauty and the mysterium tremendum that we too often, all too often lose in our pursuit of wealth or fame or in the dulling grind of daily life. God is a poetic expression of the jolt from the Western Wall, the strangeness and awe of seeing a Bull Elk watching me in the rain, the wonder revealed in the James Webb images, in the fantastic realms of quantum mechanics, of the love in a young girl’s heart. Or that jazz riff that grabbed your soul. Mary Oliver asking you, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?

Don’t you want to embrace the wonder?

Art and Culture

Oh, my

Leave a comment

Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Alan and Joan. Thursday mussar. Diane. Mark and Mary. Saudi and K.L. Snow. 18 degrees. A Mountain Winter morning. Mini-splits keeping me comfortable. Dante. Petrarch. Spinoza. Mary Wollstonecraft. Ovid. Homer. Giotto. Botticelli. Michelangelo. Davinci. Hokusai. The Kano period artists. Song dynasty ceramics. One-corner Ma. Fan Kuan. Picasso. Mozart. Hayden. Faust. Rilke. Frost. Collins. Oliver. August Wilson. Chekov. George Bernard Shaw. Horace. Cole. Bierstadt. Emerson. Thoreau.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art

One brief shining: In 2002 and for several years after I attended Monday morning lectures, continuing education, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and afterward we could wander the halls of a closed museum, attending to the art with no visitors, only the workers from registration and cleaning, sometimes up on the scissor platform gently vacuuming dust from the wonderful Chihuly Sun burst in the lobby or feather dusting a Rodin, hanging a new work, doing the behind the scenes work that kept the museum fresh.

 

I have two thick notebooks filled with notes from those mornings. Art historians would regale us with stories of artists whose works were in our collection or do a deep analysis of a particular work, get us ready for a new show. That was my version of heaven. And heaven only got better when the lectures ended and the docents and guides would file out of the lecture hall, most to go on about their day but a few, always me at least, would turn left into the Japanese galleries and see the majestic painting of Cranes dancing and the suit of Samurai era armor in red lacquer. Or perhaps right into the gallery for the Tea Ceremony with the Tea House built in Japan, disassembled, then built again by the same artisans in our museum.

Two hours, three hours sometimes a whole morning and early afternoon would go by as I visited old friends like Rembrandt’s Lucretia, the Doryphoros, the Jade Mountain, that spectacular ancient Chinese pottery bowl (see right) which is one of if not the favorite piece of mine in the whole museum. Its beautiful proportions, its simplicity, and its devotion to its material. Over 6,500 years old.

Oh, I could wax nostalgic about those Monday mornings for pages and pages. A time of pure bliss. As a docent on those mornings, I had a collection better than any billionaire and all at my disposal. And quiet.

However, I have more than nostalgia on my mind here. The humanities. The liberal arts. Dying now in many of our universities and colleges. When I chose colleges, I wanted a liberal arts education. That’s why I chose Wabash. It was one of those small liberal arts colleges that held fast to that ideal. As I did. At 17. And before.

In my first semester I took philosophy, contemporary civilizations, German, and English. I satisfied my mathematics requirement with symbolic logic. The Red Masque, a theater group which I joined, did medieval morality plays on the streets of Crawfordsville. I was so happy intellectually.

The liberal arts still make my heart-mind, my lev, rev up. My curiosity stops me even now in front a work of art, a new poem, the new translation of the Odyssey, the graceful Latin of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, listening to chamber music, seeing or performing in a Chekov play.

But what good is it? Ah. That’s the rub these days. It used to be the answer to that question was obvious. Learning the poems of Robert Frost, reading Goethe or Tolstoy, knowing how to appreciate a 6,500 year old clay pot, seeing a play by O’Neill allowed you to entertain different ways of being, of being human. And that was important for it was known that we humans tend to stray off the path of decency and justice if we focus too much on making things, earning money for the sake of earning money.

This simple and straightforward rationale for the liberal arts has fallen into disrepute as the world shines its adoring spotlight on Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, the factories of China, and the MBA. The most popular major in the U.S. right now? Business.

Is there anything wrong with following a career path in higher education? Of course not. Many always have. Perhaps most. But a few, a few wanted to continue the long march of art, of poetry, of theater, of music, of literature either by producing it themselves or by studying it and then teaching it to new generations. Not much money to be made there. Never in history and still not now. Yet…

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Korea, Travel

A Songtan Flaneur

Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Seoah feeling better. My son with a sore throat. I’m ok for now. No longer immune compromised. The streets of Songtan. Grilled Fish place. So many restaurants. So many Koreans. Ha. Back still improving. Workout again today. My son’s very long days next week. The 1311 bus to the subway station in Songtan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Korea

One brief shining: Stood at an intersection yesterday and watched the light turn green, the digital timer with 20 seconds ticking down, thought for the first time if that was enough time to make it; it was.

 

Obvious. Signs in Hangul. Street signs. Restaurant signs. Plant shops. Grocery stores. Clothing stores. Hair salons. The street signs all have transliterations in the English alphabet. Some of the shops and restaurants may have a word or two in English. Most not. Seoah says English literacy declines steadily from Seoul on south. Makes sense. Fewer encounters with English speakers the further south you to. Like Gwanjiu where Seoah’s mom’s seventieth birthday was held. And her home village of Okwga.

Less obvious. Iron chopsticks. Long spoons for soups. The many, many restaurants with the shiny hanging powered vents over the  charcoal or gas cooking pit for every four chairs. The Orthopedic hospital on the second floor of a non-descript office building soon to have Screen Golf on the first floor. The efficient city bus and subway system. Good taxis if you speak Korean.

Even less obvious. The large number of fit Koreans, flexible in old age, limber and athletic when younger. Their work ethic. Honed I imagine in centuries of stoop labor where survival meant the rice crop had to come in. The children in their uniforms walking home after school.

The rolled up thin cuts of beef and pork in the butcher shops. For grilling. Or hot pot cooking. The restaurants with octopus signs. Where you can eat live octopus. The all crab restaurant with the aquariums out front, large crabs clawing and moving against the glass. The various sorts of kimchi. Cabbage. Cucumber. Pickled vegetables.  The multiple side dishes at every traditional meal.

Bowing. Calculating status by age. By wealth and clan. Complicated calculus likely opaque to even a seasoned Korean expat.I think I mentioned here a few weeks back that Seoah’s dad’s first question to me was, “How old are you?” He’s my elder by five years.

Something non-Korean speakers cannot parse is the difference between formal and casual language. If speaking to an elder, formal language is always used until the elder indicates casual language is all right. When meeting new people, formal language again is used and often doesn’t change if or until a friendship forms. I can’t parse this as non-Korean speaker so I don’t know much more about it.

Clans. Bongwans. Those with a common village of origin and paternal ancestor. Bongwans appear to be less important today due to the churn of modern society, but it seems they can still influence business networks and perhaps job seekers.

There’s more, but that’s the Songtan flaneur’s observations for today.

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Korea, Painting, Travel

Seoul. Day 2.

Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Seoul. Bongeunsa Temple. Coex Mall. The KiaF art show 2023. Shogun. Hotpot and barbecue. The subway. The bus. Songtan. Murdoch. My boy. Seoah and her brand new bag. Walking pain free. Healthy walk. Gangnam. A pleasant, Goldilocks day. The Silla Dynasty. The Joseon Dynasty. Deep history in the center of ultra modern Seoul.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Healing

One brief shining: Overhead hundreds of white lanterns each with a different prayer the noonday sun creating deep shadows beneath in regular lines as we walked up the path to Bongeunsa Temple.

 

Second day in Seoul. Caught the Seoul Train around 9:30 am yesterday. Snagged a seniors and pregnant women’s seat while my son and Seoah had to stand. Even in Songtan two hours or so from Seoul the light rail had already filled up.

Right here is the moment for my shout out to Korean medicine. On Tuesday of last week I saw the sharp toothed orthopod (as Kate would have called him). Got a diagnosis, some muscle relaxants, and an initial deep massage, shock wave therapy, electrotherapy, lumbar traction.

Still tender when I returned on Thursday for another round of massage and procedures. Saw the doc again. We agreed that Mr. Lee was really good and that he had hurt both of us in the interest of healing. Laughing. Doc said I could do some light jogging on Saturday.

I walked about six blocks on Friday, heel first, head up, stomach in. Did the hip rotation exercises and the spine stretching. Went out again that evening with my son and Murdoch. Tired by the time I got back, but not in pain.

These folks took what looked like a trip shrinking back and hip spasm and turned it around in a week. They gave me the  tools necessary to not only recover, but in fact walk better than I have in years. As long as I walk healthy as Mr. Lee wanted and get back to my core exercises, I will not return to the me before the hip pain, but will become a better me protecting my back and keeping it strong. Not bad for two sessions.

On Saturday my son, Seoah and I went to Gangnam. You might remember this neighborhood from the Gangnam dance moves made popular a few years ago. If you don’t, here’s a wiki with a how to do them lesson.

Gangnam harbors the Seoul fashionistas among whom I count my daughter-in-law Seoah. She lived and worked in Gangnam. She dresses and lives Gangnam style. An upmarket, brand conscious I can be more beautiful than you lifeway. Seoah walked out of the house this morning to go play golf with my son at an Army golf course on Camp Humphreys. She had on a short green skirt, like a tennis skirt, a white top with Malbon written on it. She carried her new Malbon leather golf bag. A golf diva.

She’s also a caring and thoughtful daughter-in-law, protective of my son, her father-in-law, and Murdoch. A delightful and happy person.

 

The three of us came up from the underground into the bright light of a Gangnam Saturday. We walked a block and were on the grounds of Bongeunsa Temple, founded in 794 during Korea’s three kingdoms period. Seoul and Bongeunsa were then in the Silla Kingdom.

Surrounded by glass and metal high rise apartment complexes and just across the cross walk from the fabled COEX mall Bongeunsa has not given up its peaceful and medieval feel. A large complex of temples, statuary, and monastic housing. Walking on its grounds transported me to a time before even Sejong the Great.

A monk walked into a small side temple and began chanting. His sonorous tones called out the Buddha spirit from tiled roofs, elaborate painted and decorated eves, the courtyards. Filled them with an ancient religiosity. In spite of the healing I mentioned above going uphill and stairs still proves difficult so I sat on the steps of this little temple as my son and Seoah explored. Listening to the monk my former brother-in-law Bob Merritt came back to me. Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. Something like that. Nichiren Soshu Buddhism.

What came next? COEX mall right across the street. And my first chance to do something art related. KiaF Seoul is underway in the mall’s large exhibition space. KiaF’s second year. This enormous show brings together galleries from Seoul, other cities in Korea, L.A., Paris and around the world focusing on Korean artists.

The purpose? Expose KiaF attendees to the broad range of Korean contemporary art and. Sell art. Galleries had bigger and smaller sized exhibition spaces, some as small as a cubicle, some as spacious as a gallery itself.

When visiting a gallery, the owners and their staff would brighten, ask questions. What do you like about that piece? Um. It’s religious iconography. And it’s fun. Breaking away before the pitch got more traction.

Acting, Art and Culture, Beyond the Boundaries, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Reimaging revelation, Science, Wild Neighbors, Writing

Joy

Leave a comment

Summer and the Herme Moon

Monday gratefuls: Herme. The Seeker. Gaius Ovidius. Han Shan. Writing a very short play. Acting. Distractions. Procrastination. Writing again. Working on revelation. Sacred. Divine. Holy. Spiritual. Religious. Worship. Inspiration. What do these words mean? Are they still important? Judaism. Sarah. BJ. Family. Ruth and Gabe. Marina Harris. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Korea. Adapters. Travel. Love. Burning it all away but love. Life’s purpose.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the religious life

One brief shining: Here it is the Lodgepole out my window I look at it and see all its Branches arranged towards the East where Great Sol becomes seen each morning no need for western facing Branches due to the shade of others those Branches toward Great Sol right now hold Needles and Cone, survival and reproduction of the species, unseen but known to me is that most magical and necessary of all transformations/transubstantiations photosynthesis gathering in the nuclear fusion power of Great Sol, combining it with carbon dioxide and water, then stepping it down into sugars and oxygen and fixed carbon. A miracle of the ordinary. The ordinary as miracle.

 

Oh. Speeding into my mind since last Tuesday night Herme and the nature of revelation. Prompting a creative torrent can’t keep up with it. Have to slow down. Stop. Read. Watch television. Burning through my photosynthetically captured energy reserves. Glad my thyroid stimulating hormone has given me the ability to use the energy as long as I can. More than glad. Joyful.

 

This is so much fun. Considering how to lace lines from Han Shan into my own written dialogue, stage directions, settings. Imagining how to advance the plot, how to have a smash bang ending. Yippee! Having to figure out how to represent each character distinctively. When I have trouble having to do that for one character. Gotta thank Alan for suggesting acting classes. I’ve learned so much about myself. About talents and skills long buried. Not gone. Which makes me happy.

Acting combines the intellect and the emotions, the lev heart/mind, into a sharpened tool with the whole body. The voice. Movement. Posture. Cadence. Emphasis. Volume. All important. Plus memory. Putting it all into the mind and retrieving it as necessary, remembering per Meisner how to live truthfully in an imaginary situation.

 

Also going to sleep thinking about revelation. What does it reveal? How? When? How do we know it when it’s happening? Waking up with revelation still on my mind. Seeing revelation through my window.

The book of Nature, of super nature, always open to one page or another. Great Sol in the Sky. The Lodgepole out my window. The first six inches of Top Soil. Feeling the Oxygen breathed out by the Lodgepoles going into my lungs. Another miracle. The transfer of Oxygen into my blood stream so the energy gained from Plants and Animals can transubstantiate into my organs, flesh, bones, lev. How marvelous! How wonderful.

These are the ordinary encounters, yes, but still inspirational. Perhaps they don’t rise to the level of revelation. The line between revelation and an ordinary miracle is still not clear to me. Perhaps an ordinary miracle involves the intellect more. I can look up photosynthesis, read about it, yet its role in our life of very life is so intimate, so critical, and so ignored that seeing where it is happening, right now, opens my heart in wonder.

Yet it does not have the jolt, the jitterbugging of the Rainy Night Watcher. That was a hairs on the skin rising up goosebumps moment. I take from those indicators that my body/lev responded holistically. No mental processing. No slotting of the experience or wondering about Elks. Rather an oh this is happening to me right now! Wow. What? Gosh. A frisson of fear. I can still see him dimly lit at the side of the road, watching, his Antlers spread wider than the space of the two Lodgepoles just behind them.

Loving this, too. Reimagining revelation. Yes. That’s the key.

 

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah

Calligraphy and OMG channel

Leave a comment

Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Air. Thin air. Earth. Wind. And Fire. Elemental, my dear Watson. Sherlock Holmes. Perry Mason. Hercule Poirot. Daiglish. Mystery. Mysteries. Books. The written word. The spoken word. Acting. Herme. Han Shan. Whitman. Rilke. Rumi. Oliver. Harrison. Lee Child. CJ Box. Richard Powers. Idris Elba. Ethan Hawke. K-dramas. The lev, the mind-heart. The Moon. The  Sun. Our Home.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writers

One brief shining: A Mountain morning blue Sky above Black Mountain curving behind the Lodgepoles in my Yard a cup of coffee and water on the desk my fingers dancing on the keyboard not only an extension of the curves and folds of my brain but of my lev saying things before I think them reading what I have written to know what I’m saying the joy of writing.

 

 

Calligraphy. An art almost unknown to Americans, even more so to millenials who have famously not been taught cursive writing. When Kate, my son, and I went to China, I remember we went to a national museum in Beijing. I was excited because I had always found Chinese art compelling. Disappointed. The exhibits were all calligraphy. Mostly long sheets of rice paper [made from mulberry leaves] with the squiggles and wiggles of Chinese cursive ideograms. Unintelligible. It took a while for me to realize the power of what I’d seen. How I wish now I could return to that exhibit.

Oddly, many at CBE remember me for a project during one Kabbalah class focused on the Hebrew alphabet. Using sumi-e brushes and black ink from Japan I drew many of the Hebrew characters in a flowing cursive, put a small verse beside them, then signed with my chop I purchased when in Beijing. The small red mark of my name contrasted with the black of the aleph and bet and vav and nuns. I set up tables and had everyone try the experience of using sumi-e brushes.

Mark Odegard sent me an image of a Han Shan, Cold Mountain, poem he had done by a Chinese calligrapher. What a beauty. Made me want to own a nice piece of calligraphy for my home. Searching for one.

 

Had a bad time Friday evening and Saturday morning. I let the worm of anemia enter my omg channel. Usually I get diagnostics back from my blood work the next day on Quest Diagnostics. The result of the latest round of blood draws, taken Thursday, has not been posted. I think some maintenance issue on the Quest website. However, it left me wondering about anemia with no helpful information to counteract speculation. Internal bleeding? Probably not, although not to be ruled out. Low iron or vitamin B? The blood tests will show. So I went to the logical place next: leukemia. I have cancer already, why not two kinds rather than one? With no data my mind went down that road pretty easily.

Here’s the thing. I’m not afraid to die, but I’d prefer later thank you very much. Still. Could be now? Right? I’m ok with that, yes, but again, not my preference. I went over the legacy such as it is. My writing. Friendships and family. This stand and that for justice. Perhaps a few original ideas not well developed. Got sadder as I thought. The evening was chilly, rainy. Gloomy. Outside mirroring inside.

Took me a bit of time to right the ship. Not long but not before I’d had a persistent gnawing angst for a few hours. Didn’t disturb my sleep however.

Art and Culture, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Mountains, Mussar, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Memory

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Leo. Luke. Leslie. Her daughter, Megan. Jamie Bernstein. Ellen Arnold. Leo’s bone. Rain. Good Rain, drought go away Rain. The flooded out Italian Grand Prix. My son, his wife, and Murdoch. Residents of Korea. A new Day, a turned Earth revealing a brilliant Sun in a clear blue Colorado Sky. A cool night. Good for sleeping. That $60 bill from Centura.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Black Mountain

One brief shining: August 3rd bone scan long billed to me at $5,000 or so now reduced to $60 which I paid yesterday May 20th after the uneven teeth of the bureaucrats of AARP Insecure, Optum Care, and Centura meshed, moving the whole process to a different gear one that recognized the contractual obligations that left me free of responsibility a mere ten months after the initial attempt to wring thousands out of my bank account.

 

Leo lies on my rug up here in my home office. Chewing on a meaty marrow rich bone his dad left with me. A happy dog. Luke’s in New York at a cousin’s wedding upstate. Leo came Thursday night and will be here through Tuesday. It’s a delight to have a furry presence in the house. And, like a grandchild, one that will go home after a few days.

Speaking of grandchildren. Gabe’s coming up today with his buddy Seo. When I take him home we’ll stop at Twist and Shout a vinyl record store on Colfax. My grandchild insisting on going back to a technology I left behind long ago. One of the inevitable ironies of aging I guess.

 

While Robin and Michele hung my art, I got breakfast at Aspen Perks. After I drove over to Bailey. A Happy Camper run. It was a Rainy, Foggy morning the Mountains capped with Clouds and Mist, sometimes obscured altogether. On these rare mornings I often feel like I’m in the Smokies, not the Rockies. Expect to see signs for boiled peanuts, old race cars put out to literal pasture, a stars and bars flying from a local flagpole. Nope. Conifer Ranch. Rural electric co-op headquarters. I’m on 285 South which runs not to Asheville, North Carolina, but Santa Fe, New Mexico. Passing through the Platte River Valley.

Weather can transport me far away. Another for instance. A humid, not too cool early morning reminds me of Hawai’i where I often got up at 5:00 am to get my exercise in before the heat of the day. When the rains pounded down the other day and thunder roared directly overhead, I was back in Andover glad the weather was watering my vegetables, the orchard, the flowers. The Great Wheel turns and returns. The seasons flowing out from each other round and round, the cycle of life.

 

Leslie’s sudden plunge into hospice has stayed on my mind. I posted this on April 28th.

“It was my first time back to Thursday mussar since January, maybe earlier. I’d attended on zoom some, but with Kep’s decline and the snow and other things, I hadn’t felt up to the drive. Two of the women, Leslie and Rebecca, both kissed me on the head! Not sure what that was about though it was clearly a sign of affection.”

Less than a month ago. Cancer. As I said.

 

 

 

 

Art and Culture, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Memories, Mussar, Shadow Mountain

A Bastard

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Friday gratefuls: Rain. Leo. Luke. Robin and Michele. Hanging art. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain which I cannot see. Fog. Rain drops on Lodgepine Needles.  Walking outside with Leo in the rain. Thatching in Japan and in England. Crafts as history, as DNA of a culture. Korea. Israel. Ecuador. Travel. Mark, the Teacher. Mary, the Teacher of Teachers. The Middle East. The Far East. South America. Cultures and their diverse answers to the human questions of meaning, eating, reproducing, governing. Leslie. Cancer. Charlie H. Charlie B-E. Karen. Judy, may her memory be for a blessing. Kep and all the dogs taken by cancer.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Duchenne Smile

One brief shining: Cancer a bastard an intimate assassin who lies in wait hidden somewhere in spots too difficult to see like a sniper on a rooftop or an umbrella spiked with polonium or that ring with a small latch which carries poison to put in the cup of an unsuspecting dinner guest, an impolite guest within my body, within the body of many others, including Leslie who went in thinking hepatitis and came out in hospice care for metastasized liver cancer. As I said. A bastard.

 

Leslie went to the doctor, then to the hospital for a hepatitis workup. Nope. Liver cancer, metastasized. Instead of going home with medication she went home to hospice. As I said.

Had an 8:30 am call with my radiation oncologist. No immediate after effects. Check with us in a year. A continuing story. As with Charlie H. and Karen. So, so many others. Not an isolated experience. At all.

 

More art hanging happening today. More to come. Reflected on the reasons for art in a home. Not only beauty. Maybe not even primarily beauty. Memory. That poster of the French island Charon. Given to Kate and me as a present by the owner of the laundromat where we did our wash in Paris. The somewhat treacly but also beautiful in its way painting of the sea turtle. Kate’s aesthetic and her totem animal. That dancing prophet in the blue robe with the big beard. A symbol of what the Presbytery thought of me. A gift when I retired. The Hermit neon. How I felt in the months after Kate died. Those stone sculptures. Bought in Siem Reap. Made by Cambodians learning the ancient art on display in the temples of Angkor Wat. The wooden plaque with a Moose, a Bear, and a Beaver. A gift for Kate’s 75th.

Jerry’s paintings the two large scale semi-impressionist works of landscape in on near Bellews Creek, N.C. are beautiful and make a huge splash on the walls. Even there. Painted by Kate’s sister’s husband. For her town home. Moved after that to our first home together on Edgcumbe Road in St. Paul onto our 20 year home in Andover and finally making the trek to Shadow Mountain.

And all those works of Jon. Beautiful in their abstract way. Even more now. A testament to the rebellious and innovative print maker he was.

Of course memories. Photographs. Yes. Those too. Art. So important in my life. Maybe in yours, too.