Fall Harvest Moon
As extraordinary in a positive way were the last week’s dreams, so were last night’s extraordinary in a dark way. Guns and violence, dogma challenged and overturned an orgy of resistance. It was cathartic, visionary, albeit a bit troublesome. Yet, also like the last week’s dreams, these were memorable. Colorful, full of characters, rich scenes.
Fall Harvest Moon
Dreams. Since the operation, frequent dreams have come my way. Peculiar, in the way of dreams. Like standing in the center of a boulevard in a hot, small town, somewhere exotic–the Yucatan, Ecuador, Panama–chastising myself for not taking the shuttle back to the retreat center in the jungle. Then, I’m in the lobby of the retreat center. “What? How did I get here?” “Sir, you walked in only moments ago.” “Yes, but how. Did. I. Get. Here.” No answers. A very puzzled me.
After that there were airline tickets, an airport, a plane to somewhere.
Another, set in a city, somewhere with multiple apartment buildings across from a park with a low concrete wall. I went in an apartment, up to the flat of an older man. “We are both quite intelligent, my wife and I,” he said. “We make our livings with our minds.”
When I noticed footlong, segmented reptiles crawling along the floor, he said, “Gila monsters. That’s g-geela, not heel-a. We find them amusing.” They crawled all over.
In the same apartment building I found myself calculating selling our current house and buying a large condo. This place was nice with wood interiors, a large common room and other owners who seemed a lot like us.
More than the content of the dreams though, is their pleasant, exploratory nature, a nature so inviting that I find going to sleep rivalling waking life as an interesting experience. My dreaming life and my waking life have some inter-bleed. This is an extraordinary and new experience for me. You may have experienced it before, but I haven’t.
It’s as if I have two different realities, one somewhat predictable, the other changeable and magical, but both very real. Real meaning in this case believeable.
(Odilon Redon, The Barque)
These are not hallucinations, I don’t have new ones while I’m awake, rather the images and feeling tones of the dreams offer an alternate place, an alternate realm in which I also exist.
Fall Harvest Moon
OK. So, I did my aerobics tonight. Back at it and it feels good. Still can’t lift, but I can do the treadmill, working toward the high intensity workouts I’ve been doing. On Sunday I’ll put in the Empress Wu hosta, several kinds of reblooming Iris and an early spring through summer batch of tulips. I’ll also add the small bar to my aggressive colony and turn it to the smallest hole, allowing the bees out during winter, but not allowing mice to get in.
Fall Harvest Moon
I’m a geek of sorts. I love computers, have owned many and, in fact, plan to buy another one soon. Technological triumphalism, however, like most ecstatic extensions of an idea falls flat with me. Technology will not solve our energy problem, at least not without substantial non-technological work such as conservation policies and actions, political barriers to fossil fuel use. Technology does not make us smarter. It gives us information quicker so that our intellectual reach expands but we still use our old mental processes.
With that caveat let me say that technology is truly wonderful. I just spent half an hour with Mark and Mary again, connecting Minnesota, Saudia Arabia and Singapore with not only voice, but video. It was a chance to catch up on each other’s lives, to take the pulse of each other with visual feedback as well as verbal. This astonishes me.
Fall Harvest Moon
File this under what was he thinking? I have a bulb order upstairs and it will need to go in the ground this week. It will be cold this week. Be careful what you wish for. Both the bees and the bulbs need attention, not to mention that last $%#@! breach in the orchard fence by Vega the wander dog.
The bulbs can for sure go in under the 30 pound lifting restriction. I prefer to dig with a shovel first, then plant; but, I can use a trowel, the old way. Still, I don’t feel up to it today and the weather. Well, it is changing. And you won’t need a weatherman to tell you by tomorrow.
Local weather mage, Paul Douglas, says it’s fire and ice. Fire watch over much of the state today, plowable snow possible in the north tomorrow. Not to mention a possible 10″ of snow for Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Looks like Sunday is the bulb and bee day.
Fall Harvest Moon
This hanging in between, between the trauma of the operation and a recovered back to normal state, has begun to wear on me. Already. I’ve forced myself, as I said below, to go slow, rest. Now that the pain has almost totally subsided, that’s not so easy. When there was an ouch or two or more to deal with, I reached into the reserve we all carry for those things and pushed through it.
(former web page vanished)
In the time while I’m still vulnerable to undoing the repair that has been done and beyond the pain, this time, my guard goes down. Fatigue and unrealistic expectations begin to set in. I remember this from my Achilles repair, too. As I got closer to the end of the two months in a cast and on crutches, my desire to throw them away, cut off the cast and get on with it was extreme.
The main effect I see now is mental. I’m physically fatigued and my body still has work to do on integrating that mesh which leaves my mental acuity less than I need. Latin just seems too hard.
Fall Harvest Moon
Decided to take the rest of this week for convalescence. Gonna lie low, read, not push myself. There’s no award for best recovery ever anyhow. I generally stay to a fairly firm work schedule, work hard am, nap, work hard late afternoon, evening relax. Just setting that aside for a bit.
Fall Harvest Moon
The pain from the operation has mostly dissipated. Now I have to pay attention and not lift 30 pounds for a month. Sounds easy, but most lifting for me is automatic. See it. Do it. Like last night. A bag filled with 8 jars of canned produce, several apples, some raspberries, tomatoes and a green pepper. Just yanked up the Katy made bag, put it in the truck and took it out at the destination.
Then, at home, later. Oops. Sure hope I don’t have to go through this all again because I’m not paying attention.
Still experiencing a bit of the wuzzies, but that’s much improved with reduced and, as of today, no use of the vicodin. Which I really like. This addictive personality I have likes to flex its muscle every now and again.
Fall Harvest Moon
The Woollies gathered tonight at Scott Simpson’s house. Our usual first Monday meeting night. Unusual to be in a home for this meeting. (usually held in a restaurant) Scott and Yin felt a quiet home would be better for a time with Bill Schmidt.
It was.
Bill continues his centered, positive perspective while acknowledging tears and grief. We listened to him. Ate a meal together.
Main thought/feeling from the evening. How rare and precious it is to be part of a group of men who could come together with a member who has lost a spouse, the day after, in fact, and be important enough to matter. This time, this meeting was, in many ways, like other times we’ve been together, focused on the situation of one of us in a tough or delicate situation in our lives.
Those other times, the retreats, the casual gatherings have glued us together now with a bond not seen normally outside of families. Bill needed us and we needed to be with him.
A gift beyond measure and one we have given to ourselves, over and over again. Thanks, guys. I was proud of us tonight.
Fall Harvest Moon
“I can not image being in Bill’s shoes tonight – trying to accept the finality of her (Regina’s) death and the terrible silence that must be filling the space with the passing of his lover.” Stefan Helgeson by e-mail
Stefan is a poet and a good one. His phrase, terrible silence, stuck with me, rattled around. Death causes our friends and lovers to go mute. They can no longer respond to us. No more tenderness exchanged at bed time. No more joint decision making. No more grocery lists. Just. Terrible silence.
This is true and it lasts. My mother has been deaf to my questions and care for now over 48 years, longer than she was alive. Death is final and final in a brutal way. It brooks no second chances, no wait a minutes. It finishes what life has wrought.
Then we are left with memory. It is no wonder the ancient Greeks, those of Homer’s era, believed true immortality came only through the poet. The poet could provide aid to memory, verses hammered out in a form for easy recall. The poet chose the words and the perspective through which an individual, from Achilles to Paris, would be remembered for all time. This alone bestowed immortality.
We have more tools. Cameras. Voice recordings. Easily available pen, ink, paper. Computers and digital storage. But, I don’t know that we have better tools. Though a picture may be worth a thousand words, it doesn’t mean as much as a thousand well-chosen words.
So, for all of you who read this and knew Regina, write. Write about her. She wrote. Now take up the pen and write. In this way Regina can live for a thousand years.