Yearly Archives: 2014

Family, Health
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Beltane                                                                   Emergence Moon

A combination of back pain, percocet and melancholy has dulled the mind. It’s like thick gray wool packed in at the temples, crowding thought, squeezing it into channels too narrow. Concepts and ideas get clogged, adhere to each other, don’t come apart, so writing is more like picking cotton than fly fishing in a cold running stream. And, my fingers tremble a bit, unable to collect the bolls of thought, at least ones that might go together.

Hell might be such a state permanently in place, where the ideas and the concepts, the feelings are there, somewhere, but so difficult to access, to string together. It erodes the sense of self, makes character a matter of chance acquisition rather than moral choice.

This morning the gray wool packing has diminished, though the mixed metaphors here may not show it. The back’s better, though still stiff and painful. I can’t imagine Kate’s life where a certain amount of this pain never leaves her. The pain distracts me, at times it’s all I have energy for; yet, I know it will pass. For her, it is resident.

 

 

General
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Beltane                                                                  Emergence Moon

Been taking brain befuddlers over the last 24 hours to reduce the pain in my back. Works pretty well, but leaves me with less than a complete train when it comes to thought. Not liking this effect is one of the strongest guards against addiction, that and limiting use to times of genuine pain.

Like the low-lying mental cumulus the back pain comes once in a while. Limits movement and reminds me to appreciate those hours when it is absent.

 

Friends, GeekWorld, Woolly Mammoths

Charge It

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Beltane                                                           Emergence Moon

This post is for friend Tom Crane who bought a Chevy Volt a couple of years ago and, in engineer fashion, has been keeping data about it ever since. Here’s a link to an NYT article today: Owners Who Are Happy When the Engine Doesn’t Start. This article itself references three blogs:  Volt Stats, Volt Fan Site, and CarKnow.  This last one is for those who want to hack their rides.

The era of the all-electric car is not yet upon us, but the consumer fleet will move that way as responses to climate change push us further into electricity as the dominant energy source for more and more things.

Kudos to all of those who are willing to pioneer these changes. May they breed others.

General
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Beltane                                                              Emergence Moon

We’re only 4 days away from the average date of the last frost. That means in a couple of weeks the warm weather crops like tomatoes and peppers can go in the ground. Once they’re planted along with a few others like herbs, beans, peas, egg plant and ground cherry the work of the garden and orchard shifts to nurture.

Then we weed, drench the soil, spray with the International Ag Labs products, watch for bugs, thin. This year will be first with a full program for the orchard, so much of the work there will be new.

 

Family

Mothers

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Beltane                                                               Emergence Moon

Tomorrow is mother’s day. As we age, the number of mother’s around us multiplies. First, there’s your own mother. Then, there’s your wife (or  yourself) (and perhaps multiples). She (you) can be a mother. That’s the case for me. Plus Raeone. (ex-wife) And mother. Then your kids get married. And have kids. More mothers. No wonder Hallmark went for mother’s day.

As reader’s of this blog know, my mother’s been dead since 1964, 50 years. That’s a long time without a living mother. Still, the other mothers in my life make the celebration noteworthy. So, here’s to Kate, Jen, Barb, Raeone. Happy mother’s day all. And to Gertrude.

General
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Beltane                                                                                           Emergence Moon

The onions and the leeks peek out above the soil, all planted now, a bit late, but it’s been a weird spring. Yesterday while exercising to keep my body strong, my back did a thing. A painful thing. Not the result one looks for when working out. That means the planting of the onions involved more pain than the task needs to entail. Still, they’re in the ground, ready for the watering mother earth has prepared for later this afternoon.

Faith and Spirituality

Native Terran

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Beltane                                                             Emergence Moon

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. – Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

A cartoon, I think it was in today’s paper, had two E.T. figures with their spaceship in the background. Two humans were in conversation with them. “But,” the E.T. said, “you’re from space, too.” Oh, yeah. The chicken is an eggs way of making more eggs. We often don’t realize that the way we understand things is not the only way to understand something. A truism perhaps, but a profound one.  Another example is the Mexica view that death is the normative (real) state and life is a dream.

Which makes me wonder what I’m missing. A friend sometimes asks himself, “What if:  you were a  bodhisattva  who is knowingly choosing to experience these feelings as part of the process of aiding the healing and enlightenment of all sentient beings?” This in response to the pall I’ve spoken of over the last day or so. This is a perspective shift, taking another, unusual angle from which to view a situation.

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Friends, Poetry, Third Phase, Travel

Three Things

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Beltane                                                                         Emergence Moon

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.                                  Mary Oliver, Blackwater Woods

This life here. This land. These friends. The memories. All mortal. And I love them all. For forty years I have held this life, in its glad moments and its sad ones, against my bones, knowing I did depend on it. For twenty years I have held this land and the life here with Kate against my bones knowing I depended on both of them. For twenty-five plus years I have held the Woollies and Kate against my bones knowing my life depended on them. The dogs, too. Later, the docents, friends from the Sierra Club and elsewhere. All against my bones.

Now, and here is the gray cloud lying close to my mental ground, the ravens and the crows flying there, the catafalque. The weight. The heaviness. The mudstuck boots. Now, the time has come to let them go. All but Kate and the dogs.

No, of course there will be times. Times back here. Times together. Moments driving down the same streets, sitting in the same homes. But then as a visitor, a man from far away. No longer here. But there.

Mary says when the time comes, let them go. Yes. I’m doing that. She didn’t say anything about being glad. And I’m not. I’m sad in the deepest reaches of my bones. But, it is time, and I will let them all go.

 

General
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In a not so placid place, boots still stuck in the mud, clouds gray and close to neural ground. With canceling the bonfire I gave myself room to workout this evening which usually lifts my mood. We’ll see. That’s in a half an hour.

Feelings

A Mudsucked Boot

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Beltane                                                                Emergence Moon

I have, uncharacteristically, started and stopped with this post several times. There’s a sleep deprived pall hanging over me, bringing the low-hanging, gray cumulus inside, almost to my psychic ground. It’s hard to see. Catafalques. Black-draped carriages. Heavy. Weighted.

This is the time of the mudsucked boot, the slow drudge through the mindscape where ravens and crows predominate. The pace of movement is measured, no second-lining, no upbeat notes. Where all this originates, I know not. That it comes once in a while is a certainty.