Monthly Archives: August 2010

Asia, Cinema and Television

Ran

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Lughnasa                                      Waning Grandchildren Moon

Got too much sun.  A bit woozy this afternoon.  Us fair-skinned Celtic types can’t stand much of our nearest star and I exceeded my dose.

Going to see Ran this afternoon in Edina.  Akira Kurosawa’s Lear. I haven’t seen it, though I’ve seen many of his others.  This is a remastered edition supposed to be in spectacular shape.  Afterward we will eat at Raku, a new Japanese place in Edina, with Matt Welch, curator of things Japanese and head of curators at the museum.  Matt is a great communicator and educator so it should be a fun evening.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends

Gnothi Seauton

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Lughnasa                             Waning Grandchildren Moon

Came back home from the Black Forest tonight with the moon roof open and both windows rolled (ha), electronically pushed, down.  It was humid warm evening and it reminded me of similar nights in Indiana, nights of driving with the windows down, Radio 890 from Chicago blasting out the latest Beatles or Stones or Dave Clark Five, dust from gravel roads flowing in contrails behind our family’s 57 Ford.  A night for nostalgia, for reentering old places and memories of cows upside down in the road, corn stalks talking in whispers, a moon too big for the sky illuminating it all.

Got on a line of thinking.  I don’t listen to much these days on the radio or lectures, I just drive and think, or just drive.  In this case the matter of religion floated to mind, as it often does for me, this time in relation to the way other Woollys are in the world.  It’s so easy for me to wonder why I don’t have the compassion of Frank or the commitment to my body that Stefan has to his, or the serious way with which Warren approaches his reporting and his care taking for his parents, or Bill’s detachment.

How this related to religion in my thinking was this.  It dawned on me that religion depends on taking who you are already and changing it, molding it this or way that:  away from desire, toward your neighbor, making duty to family or state most important, making rituals done right critical and the list goes on and  you know the others.  Don’t sin.  Do justice.  Meditate.  Retreat.  Don’t do this or do that.

Then, this thought crossed the frontal lobe.  I’ve had a major struggle just becoming who I am.  I want to become more of who I already am, not what another person has made themselves into over time.  The last half of this is not a new thought to me, but the first, that I want to become more of who I am rather modifying myself in some way, is new.  It’s fine that others have valuable aspects to their personality that I don’t have.  I need to have the ones I have, to be who I am, as well as I can be.  This means accepting parts of me that I would prefer to push away:  impatience, diet, elitist thinking, racist attitudes.  Please note:  accepting them doesn’t mean endorsing them or not attempting to undo their harmful effects, it just means not beating myself up over who I am.  Who I really am.

The oracle at Delphi had “know thyself” and “nothing to excess” inscribed in the forecourt of the temple of Apollo. To know thyself means owning the strong and the weak, the pleasant and the unpleasant, the uplifting and the degrading within ourselves.  That is, I believe, enough.

Aging, Garden

A Two-Person Garden

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Lughnasa                                    Waning Grandchildren Moon

Kate and I have shifted our bedtimes and risings to 6:30.  This allows us to get out to work in the garden when it’s still the cool of the day.  This morning Kate continued to restore the original look and feel to the orchard while I finished up the mulch in the front, moved her growing mound of pulled weeds and gathering lettuces and kale for today’s meals.

There was, too, the matter of the original guild plantings in the orchard.  Guilds complement each other and, in this case, the fruit tree under which they grow.  Over the last two years we’d let the clover go, after a two year effort prior to that eliminating what Paula, owner of Ecological Gardens, called, “…that damn quack.”  The good news:  no quack back.  The bad:  clover all over.  In the process we lost some of the plants in the guilds.  I know what they are now and will replace them over the next couple of weeks.

It was also weed identification day, so I spent time in the orchard, my “Weeds of the Northeast” in hand, shuffling through the pages trying to find a match.  The ones I could not identify I have concluded for now are plants that have a place.

We’re now going to work an hour to two in the mornings together.  That should be enough to manage.  I used to be able to care for our perennials in an hour a morning, but our various plots have grown beyond that.  It’s a two person yard now and Kate’s wonderful recovery has added her back to the team.  Yeah!

Today perennial bulb orders to go in, too.  Over the vegetable and bee years, the ramping up years, I’ve pretty much left the old perennial beds to themselves, only occasionally working them and then  usually when the situation demanded, rather than requested, me.  Now we’re a bit further along with the orchard, the vegetables and the bees and I want to return some attention to the bulbs and perennial flowers that I love.  Bulb planting happens in October when the rest of the garden has died away, so there’s little conflict in time for that chore.