Imbolc Valentine Moon
from the Updraft Blog: “Today’s MPR News weather spy Jay Austin is a professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and the Large Lakes Observatory. He sends along the news this morning that Lake Superior has completely frozen over, a month ahead of schedule for years when the big lake reaches complete ice cover.
Here’s the brief but attention getting email Jay sent my way this morning.”
Superior is completely ice covered
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Friend Tom Crane was talking about how the bucket list might be different. “Imagine if your bucket list was things like looking in the eye and telling everyone you cared about that you loved them deeply and had for a long time.”
In my view you better have your bucket list imprinted in the daily way of things or it means little. Why save up to the end things you can do today?
A bucket list is a close relative of the finish line model of retirement. Wait until you no longer have work dragging you down, then do all the fun stuff. Bucket list. Wait until you know you’re going to die, then do all the fun stuff you didn’t have the courage to do before.
Tom’s idea is better. Let’s consider those things that would make our life and the lives of those around us more rich, more peaceful, more fruitful. Then, do them.
This, by the way, is the guiding notion of eudaimonia. Here’s a repeat passage from a post last summer:
Composed of two Greek worlds, eu (good) and daimon (spirit) Aristotle and the Stoics after him promoted it as the end of human life. As such it has often been translated as happiness or welfare, but perhaps a better phrase is human flourishing. Or, without getting fancy, why not good spirit? Both have an active turn, taking us toward enrichment, fullness, striving within a humane ambit.
Now there you have an internal state worth cultivating. It’s the difference between a noun and a gerund.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Scott got reservations at David Fong’s, a long time Chinese restaurant in Bloomington. David Fong, Yin’s brother, started a chow mein takeout on the same location about 50 years ago. This was eating in a Chinese restaurant on Chinese New Year’s, not eating a New Year meal. The food was very good, especially since Scott came complete with recommendations from Yin as to what we would like. Handy.
Frank, Warren, Tom, Scott and I were there. We shared our steak kow, mongolian beef, lo mein, honey crusted walnut shrimp, pot stickers and a crumbly chicken dish whose name I can’t recall. You put the chicken in a lettuce leaf, sort of like a taco. All of them were tasty.
We spent a lot of time talking about grandkids. Scott and I had a similar experience of five-year old grand-daughters who decided we were not “real” grandpop’s because we were not the biological father of their parent. As with Ruth, this has passed in Scott’s case, too.
Tom has set up an intriguing question for our February 17th meeting: What does it mean to be a male in our culture? He has also asked that we bring three images of men that will start off our conversation. I’ve got a few posted here, but as I’ve gone hunting for images it made me wonder if there is a book called the male image in art. Lots of such books for females, many of nudes, but of men? A quick google search in the books section shows none. Probably are some, but that they’re not obvious says something.
Another thought that occurred to me, and it relates to third phase life for men, is this, what is our image of a man at home? That is, beyond the guy with the fly-rod, golf club, barca-lounger, or woodshop. And these are based on the silly, even pernicious idea of third phase life for men as the replacement of work hours with a favorite leisure activity.
With no positive image of a man at home it’s difficult to understand how to be at home when one has left traditional work life behind.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
This quote is from a Star-Tribune article about Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s recent death from an apparent heroin overdose:
“You can’t take your sobriety for granted,” said Dr. Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer at Hazelden. “This is a lifelong illness. People have got to stay wary for the rest of their lives.”
From the outside this seems like it shouldn’t be true. You get sobriety under your belt, you have experience and knowledge, why should you get into trouble? Because the thing that alcoholics do normally is drink. The thing heroin users do normally is use. Not to use, once you’ve passed over into addiction, is the abnormal condition. That means that sobriety is a lifelong commitment to an abnormal standard.
It can be done. I’ve done it. So far. At times, the farther away from 1976 that I get, a thought wanders through: is it really true? That’s a slippery thought and treatment teaches us to stay out of slippery places. But the point is that it has to be countered even now, 38 years sober.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Not feeling down exactly, but restless, a bit aimless. I imagine it’s a mild cabin fever, with the delightful elements of Latin, writing and taking classes losing some of their joy. Leaves me without the push I need to finish things.
P90X helps. It provides a new body work routine, mixing up that regular portion of my day, but it can’t replace the garden chores and work with the bees. I’ve not got outside much at all during the time of the polar vortex and in the past during such cold snaps I have.
This will lift.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
So much for solidarity with the grandkids. The Broncos got broke by the Seahawks. I missed it all. May be slipping away from guy cred, I know. That’s Peyton Manning there on the ground next to that nasty hoss.
Instead, Kate and I finished the 10th episode of the 9th season of the British cold case series, the Waking Dead, the finish of the series. It took dedication, perseverance and stamina to watch them all, but we did it. We’ll always have Waking the Dead. But not Superbowl 48.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
We cut the cord some time ago. No more cable tv. We use Roku and through it Netflix and Hulu Plus to get all the television we want. Movies round out our visual entertainment.
That means we no longer have cable television channels carrying the rites of America’s high holy day, the Super Bowl. So, on this Sunday of Sundays, I’ve been reading a Kay Scarpetta mystery, took a nap and generally indulged on my rest day. No workouts on Sundays.
It does leave me feeling faintly like a heretic. I pretend I’ve given up the old religion completely, have no use for it, but of course what I really mean is until the Vikings get a team. I’ve never been a church goer, my attendance more like the evangelicals who get all their preachin’ over the television. But, I never send’em money. I draw the line at making contributions to billionaires and the millionaires who work for them.
Kate’s a big fan of the opening and closing events of the various Olympic games. I’m not. She will find a way to watch them. We watched the Indianapolis 500 at Tanner’s Sports Bar. Maybe we’ll do something like that. These are the particular, the unique events that it does not make sense to load up onto Hulu or Netflix for their flavor is in their immediacy, the unknown.
I’m not feeling deprived. Not at all. But I am aware of that holiday feeling in the air and not being part of it.
N.B. Go Broncos! Have to maintain solidarity with the grandkids.
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Realized the other day that our age in years is actually shorthand for an odometer of sorts. This odometer measures our lifespan in miles, miles around the sun. 585,000,000 miles or so a trip. At 67 that comes to 39,195,000,000 miles on this old body.
Looked at that way the 32,000 miles we have on our Rav4 doesn’t amount to much, does it? That’s roughly 1,600,000 miles–a day. Or, we may as well keep going, I have the calculator warmed up, 66,700 miles an hour. Better speed than I get out of my Rav4, too. But, what the heck, lets do a minute: 1,100. And, for a complete picture. A second: 18 miles. Each second.
That means, when I count off 6 seconds for my first infusion of Master Han’s 2013 pu’er, I’ve traveled 108 miles while I waited. That’s a different perspective on how long it takes to make a cup of tea.
All of this is a convoluted way of saying that my 67th birthday is only 12 days away. It has me thinking about that annual pilgrimage waypoint we all celebrate as our birthday. It’s really a cairn stuck beside the imaginary line we travel as our home planet rockets its way around the nearest star. It is a reminder of the cyclical, rather than the linear nature of time. Yes, we count the trips, but in fact each trip is the same as the last one. (sort of. astronomical realities may vary.)
Imbolc Valentine Moon
Ancientrailsgreatwheel.com is officially open today. All Great Wheel postings, formerly posted here at ancientrails.com, will now be found at Great Wheel. The first, the Imbolc entry, is on there now.
I’ve been posting to Great Wheel for some time, but decided to open it on Imbolc, the closest Great Wheel holiday to when Bill Schmidt helped me launch the website itself.
Winter Valentine Moon
Necessary but not necessarily pleasant work this morning. Kate and I went through our health care directives, making sure they still reflected what we wanted. Mostly. We then read through our wills with a similar purpose in mind. They’re seven years old. We need to ask the boys what, if anything, they might want in our estate so we can enter that in a list for them. We knew this seven years ago and somehow haven’t gotten around to it. Is that Denial I hear rushing by?
We looked, too, at our trust instruments. They, too, are mostly ok, but I still haven’t added Kate to our Vanguard account. Again, I’ve had seven years to do it. I promised I wouldn’t take any more than that amount of time before I got it done.
We also discussed funeral/celebration arrangements, coming to no firm conclusions, but with progress. Asked some time ago to donate my body to medical science so they can investigate my inner-ear bones–no, seriously, I intend to but haven’t gotten around to filling out the forms. Can you hear the beautiful blue Denial in the background?
After this we made a list of matters around the house that need attention. We’ve lived here 20 years and though we’ve kept with major things: new furnace, air conditioner, roof, siding, dishwasher for example, there are many smaller things. Our outdoor trim needs painting and in some places replacement. A lock here. A light fixture there. Handyman sort of things. We have a guy. A few garden things. Laying down woodchips in the vegetable garden. Pruning the orchard. Javier work.
Painting living room, kitchen, hall and master suite plus repairing that settling crack we’ve had for, what? 20 years? Finishing Touch painters.
Changing light bulbs and cleaning out the garage. Kate and me.
After all this responsible adult stuff, we went for lunch at Azteca, our favorite Mexican joint.
