Imbolc Hare Moon
-15 when Kate got up this morning at 7 am. -4 now, four hours later. Last winter stayed a long time, with cold and wet weather well into May. I hope this winter feels it’s already shown us what it has and will choose to make a timely exit. Still, the cold makes inside life fine and it keeps the pests away.
Imbolc New (Hare) Moon
For those of us who come down on the introverted side of the extrovert/introvert dialectic, an event like seeing the Dali Lama is a strain. When I got back this morning, it was like I had been at the MIA for a couple of tours. I was drained. Kate would remind me that I’m 67 and, yes, that’s true, but there’s an element of overstimulation, too much of a good thing. At the same time, an interesting morning and worth doing.
I have that slight tingle in my body that says, not yet fully recharged, even after a nap. That will pass. At some point I’ll be left with the image of the Dali Lama in his maroon visor, his remark about loving honey and being reincarnated as a bee, him refusing to bless the crowd, then greeting individuals with a blessing. Talking to Bill and Sister Irene. The long, long lines winding in toward the seating. The early Saturday morning drive.
At first, his blessing individuals after refusing to bless the crowd seemed contradictory, but as I’ve thought about it, maybe not. His answer to change is to point a stubby finger toward his heart, lying somewhere underneath those maroon robes. “First change yourself. Then show compassion to your family. Then your community. Then change will happen.” When he touches an individual, he expresses his personal compassion for them, his blessing. That he can do. To spread that same compassion to an abstraction, like a crowd seems inauthentic, to an individual, no.
I don’t agree with his emphasis on change your self first, nor do I agree with him on his conclusion that education is the answer to world peace. He crooked his index finger and said a tree that grows like this is difficult to change; but, he straightened it, one taught from the beginning…” This sounds right and makes sense in a facile, feel good way, but change is a social, communal affair that requires moving those in power to change their thinking.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with changing your own heart and educating the young in how to grow up compassionate. Hardly. Very, very worthwhile. But.
It will not and has not changed a regime like, for example, China’s ruling communist party. Nor would it have changed Hitler or Pol Pot or will it change the Tea Party crowd in the U.S. Congress. Changing these sorts requires organizing sufficient power to force them to change their ways. Not necessarily revolution, what I’m talking about is the essence of democratic politics, but this kind of change may require revolution.
And education without change in the structure of the economy and patterns of embedded classicism, racism and sexism will not and has not lifted groups out of poverty. Individuals, yes, from time to time, but whole communities? No.
Imbolc New (Hare) Moon
Up very early (for me) for a drive in to the Minneapolis Convention Center. Had to be there by 8 am. To get in line. For a speech that began at 10. Somebody famous, eh? You betcha. His Holiness the Dali Lama.
Frank Broderick got several tickets for his birthday and distributed them according to Frank criteria. I was in the second tier, but benefited from someone else’s not taking him up on the offer.
Two lines, each with hundreds of people in them snaked back and forth, distended caricatures of a pleasant day at your local international airport. After waiting in line for forty-five minutes to an hour, we went through the metal detectors and entered the auditorium. With no one ever checking our tickets.
This was the opening of a Norwegian slanted Noble Peace Prize forum, apparently in its 26th year. Who knew? The forum celebrates laureates and the Dali Lama, being one, was chosen for the keynote opening address.
This auditorium, A, is huge with hundreds, if not thousands of seats and the orchestra level seats were full and much of the tiered seating was full, too. This guy is charismatic, has a sort of rock star appeal.
He’s funny. At least I think so. He had several lines in his opening remarks where he laughed. But the acoustics were difficult and he speaks softly so following the thread of his talk proved beyond this hearing impaired guy.
I did get one part. He talked about his love of honey. “I might,” he said, lifting one hand and creating a small gap with thumb and index finger, “come back as a bee, I like honey so much.” He made these remarks because he apparently had a physical while here and was told as a precautionary measure to cut back on sweet things. Including honey.
He was easier to understand when he sat and took questions, fielded by Cathy Wurzer of NPR. The answer I liked best was, when asked if he would give the gathering his blessing, he hesitated. “I’m Buddhist. The blessing comes from within.”
Imbolc New (Hare) Moon
A day spent mostly with the query letter, an odd ritual in the publishing business, one involved in the finding of an agent. This is the next step for Missing and for me with my business hat on. I found the division of creative work mentioned in something I read a while back (which I believe I mentioned here) into three parts useful.
First, of course, is the creative, the artist who produces the work shoving aside the internal critic and censor, actively advancing an idea until it attains an initial shape. Then comes the editor/the revisor who takes a manuscript and cuts out the not story, leaving only the flesh of the thing. No fat. Finally, there is the business person who takes the work after the editor/the revisor finishes with it and sees it finds its market, its place in the outer world.
The synopsis of Missing (1,500 words) is done. I’ve copied out the first five pages. These go in the query, but follow the query letter itself. The query letter opens with a hook, a compelling one sentence compression of the work. A one paragraph synopsis follows that and, finally, a paragraph about word length, writing credits, state of the manuscript, or proposal in publishing speak.
I have a draft of the query letter now. It will sit for a bit, cool down, then I’ll revise it. That’s what I did today for the synopsis. It’s time for me to get this part right and I’m doing it.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Greg had to shift our work tomorrow to next Friday. This morning I plowed through 7 verses in 40 minutes. That’s getting closer to the pace I want. 13-16 a day. In fact, with that pace, two sessions the same day would get me there.
This is all chaff. I know that. Who cares whether an amateur succeeds in making what will probably be a poor translation of the Metamorphoses? Nobody. I care. And that’s what matters to me, but I’m not ignorant of the global insignificance of this work.
Same with the novel. Suppose it sells, does well. More chaff. If it doesn’t. Chaff. Working on climate change. Closer to wheat, less chaff. Still, my single contribution? Mostly chaff.
Why keep at any of this? Because it is what I’ve chosen to define my ancientrail. I don’t believe any of us have another path open to us. It’s either choose or have it chosen for you.
(Eleusinian mysteries)
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Fixed a minor tech glitch yesterday with the aid of a friendly resident of the Indian subcontinent. Our Roku went down. “It is because the remote is not pairing with the Roku, Charlie. Don’t worry, I’m here now to help you fix it.” Not kidding about the dialogue. Good service. Fix worked.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
After two + weeks of constant pain in my right pec, it’s begun to recede. Made an appointment with my doc, as I wrote earlier, but couldn’t get in to see her until next week. Now it seems that by then, I won’t need the appointment. As long I can tell an injury is healing, I’m ok with it. My desired result. Self-care wins every time in my world. (I did have advice from the concierge doc here at 153rd Ave. NW.)
(me at the end of P90X)
Workouts have begun to get more intense again and I can see myself back in the P90X full bore after the Tucson trip. My original hope was that I could finish the P90X (90=90 days) before Tucson, but the injury and my learning curve on the more complex moves combined to slow me down. No big deal. I’m going to continue learning the moves, doing high intensity aerobics alongside that, until I can work it fulltime.
| — | Thomas Jefferson |
| — | Emily Brontë |
| — | Dante Alighieri |
| — | Niels Bohr |
| — | Hegel |
| — | Aeschylus |
| — | Barbara Sher |
| — | John Locke |
| — | Francis Bacon |
| — | Lillian Hellman |
| — | Isaac Asimov |
| — | Buddha |
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Gadgets. Yes. I like them. My latest is my birthday present, a Basis watch. The basis keeps track of my steps (not so many in these winter days), calories burned (not so accurately for reasons I’ll make clear) and, most interestingly my sleep. 
Not quite sure how the sleep sensors work, but each time I nap or sleep at night the Basis records my sleep with several different variables: time in deep sleep, light sleep, REM sleep. It also records turns and turnovers and what it calls, interruptions. At 67 you can imagine what my interruptions are. These are done up in a neat graph that wouldn’t copy, but the overall data stream for last night is below.* (above is from their website)
But that’s not all. Overtime the Basis learns your patterns and gives you a sleep score based on 
length of sleep and all those other data points. It also measures, helpfully, heart rate during the day, in particular resting heart rate which is a good measure of fitness.
I initially thought it would record my heart rate during exercise and give me feedback about my workouts, but it doesn’t do that. I wanted to be able to upload my exercise data to the computer and save it, track my progress over time.
Though I’ve always exercised with a heart rate monitor (or at least I’ve done it so long I don’t recall when I started), the technology I had was only good for in the moment 
readings. That was good, but I wanted better data. When I found the Basis wouldn’t do what I wanted (I was not the only one who made this mistake as the forum on the Basis website demonstrated), I went to Polartech.
They make a great, inexpensive watch and chest band (transmits heart rate to the watch) which, when coupled with a data synch plate, transfers a great deal of relevant data from the watch to the Polartech personal trainer website. BTW: I have the FT7 which the link displays and explains, but I got it for $73, not $119.00.
This means I don’t wear my Basis during exercise. It didn’t do much helpful then anyhow. That means its calories burned per day reading is not accurate because it doesn’t reflect my workouts. Still, it’s sleep monitoring and throughout the day heart monitoring give it a place, too. Oh, and it tells time and the date, too.
Now I can monitor my sleep accurately, my resting heart rate and the intensity of my workouts. With the workouts I see calories burned, maximum, minimum and average heart rate, training load (call it intensity), time in various training zones and I get graphs over time plus a calendar/diary that records each workout in a calendar format. I like it.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Then again, there’s jazz. Not sure how it made its way into my soul. Sometime in my teens. Might have been that see-it tour I took with the Methodist Church to New York and Washington, D.C. Gene Krupa at the Metropole stands out as a memory, though just what I would have been doing there I have no idea.
Jazz, like the Coltrane piece I’m listening to right now, Body and Soul, comes along with big east coast city memories, including the wood paneled corridors of Washington, D.C. It feels like night time and carpeted hallways with people doing significant things, well past working hours. Smoke filled rooms, half-empty glasses with lipstick stains and cigarette butts smoking in ceramic ashtrays.
There’s also the stadium in Cincinnati where Coltrane shared the stage with Monk and Herbie Mann. Where the jazz went on and on and then we returned to the place we were crashing, somewhere on Mount Adams, maybe on Celestial Avenue or Paradise or Monastery Street. It had these kind of street names.
The combination of marijuana, the jazz festival, the late 60’s and Mount Adams makes for a peculiar set of memories, as if for a while I floated along on Celestial Avenue listening to tenor sax riffs, that wonderful complexity of Monk’s piano, the flute, the horn all marking a variation on the theme of heaven. Might have been.
(Cincinnati landmark Immaculata Church on Mt. Adams in the background)