Monthly Archives: May 2014

Colorado, Our Land and Home

Get It Sorted

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Beltane                                                        Emergence

Let the sorting begin. Today, the Jon-built garden shed. A book suggested removing every object from its place, then sorting them into keep (move) and discard. Discard can be sell, donate, trash. Gonna start that process with the motley collection of garden tools we have acquired over many years of trying out this one and that one, while never eliminating any. Well, not only garden tools. There are old tarps, flower pots, wire, chemicals, and other things, lots of things.

And the planting, too. A wonderful day for getting those onions and leeks in the ground, fertilizing the bulbs. We’re going to put less emphasis on putting food by over the next couple of growing seasons. Just more things. To move.

Decluttering twenty plus years of accumulation will take us several months at a reasonable pace. I want this move to feel good, so I don’t want us to wear out at any point. This is a long distance hike, not a walk down for the newspaper. I also want it to build good feelings as we molt much of our carapace, not so that we can build a bigger shell, but so we can build a better one.

 

Health, Politics, US History

Flare For the Obvious

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Beltane                                                                           Emergence Moon

File under duh:

BOSTON — The death rate in Massachusetts dropped significantly after it adopted mandatory health care coverage in 2006, a study released Monday found, offering evidence that the country’s first experiment with universal coverage — and the model for crucial parts of President Obama’s health care law — has saved lives, health economists say.

Woolly Mammoths

Red Stag, Woolly Mammoths, Wild Boar’s Teeth

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Beltane                                                                     Emergence Moon

Woollies gathered at the Red Stag tonight. Tania was our waitress. She had three molars of a wild boar and a small Minnesota map in metal around her neck.

Tom, Stefan, Warren, Bill, Scott and myself. This was the first gathering since I wrote here about the move and there was conversation, affirmation, questions. The consensus seems to focus on adventure. I agree.

Warren reports that their move to the other house, 4 doors down, is almost complete though his big organ remains to be moved. He’s excited about putting the other house up for sale. Stefan is back from L.A. after spending time with Taylor, the ambitious young artist. He has a strong financial backer, seems to have his feet on the floor and a lot of motivation to succeed. Music is a tough racket and music in Hollywood defines one end of the tough spectrum.

Tom’s micro-wave, four fingers over the black cast, got our attention. He says if all goes well, and it seems to be, the cast will come off this week and he’ll get a removable brace. It stays on for two months, but can be removed for the shower, hand washing. He’s very pleased at that possibility.

Scott’s son and his partner have offered Scott an adventure trip which they will pay for. He’s trying to decide where to go and got ideas around the table. Mankato was the first one. Then, if he wanted to juice it up, North Mankato.

The retreat starts next week Thursday. We’re all looking forward to the time together.

Colorado, Feelings, Travel

Still No Wind

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Beltane                                                                 Emergence

In spite of what I said yesterday I’m still in the doldrums. Still feeling out of touch with now, wishing for some magic transport portal that would accomplish this move in a flash. The resistance I have is not about the decision, that makes sense, feels good. Moving. And prior to moving, culling, sorting, packing, staging, selling, buying. I’ve done it, more times than I care to count, but it’s been 20 years and that’s a long, long time. Longer than I’ve lived anywhere. All that time to accumulate. Stuff.

And the resistance is, as I said the other day, premonitory. What can I do today? Gather all the garden tools, put them on a tarp and divide them into keep and donate. After that’s done, I can plant the onions and leeks. Then, we can go into the garage. Same discipline. Sort. Divide into keep and donate. That’s what I can do now. I can’t hunt for land or property. I know that. So we can do the incremental things that will make it possible for us to move forward.

Imagine those pioneers faced with a homestead full of things and a Conestoga wagon to put them in. That must have been a challenge. Or, all those nomadic peoples who pick up and move every season. Packing light’s a necessity. So, it can be done. I know it.

Commentary on the news, Minnesota

Minnesota Whacko

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Beltane                                                                   Emergence Moon

John David LaDue.  Byron White. An RV with extra cargo. Geez, Minnesota. A dedicated Columbine-massacre aspirant, a cold-blooded killer of teens and that smell, oh, that’s just the body we left there. We told you not to open the front compartments. Each one of these stories makes national and international news because, because they’re so damned odd.

How about the knife and axe throwing kid who has a storage room filled with bomb-making materials, more guns that needed to take down a white-tail and carefully thought out plan to kill his family, deploy a diversion and then slaughter as many classmates as possible. A quiet kid.

The aging security professional who parked his truck away from home then sat in wait for the burglars who’d targeted him. No, I’m not excusing the burglary. I’m commenting on the predator nature of the trap and the vermin comments and the gap between wounding and killing. Of several hours.

Get the guys together for a bachelor party, hire an RV and drive it to the Kentucky Derby. What could go wrong? Nothing, really, except for renting a vehicle that had a 23-year old man’s corpse in a front storage area. I liked the groom’s spirit though. They rented a hotel room, watched the Wild in the Stanley Cup playoffs, then headed north to watch the Derby at Canterbury.

Now we all know there were many other sane and good things going on here over the last couple of weeks but to the outside world we completely whacko. And not in a funny, haha, sort of way. Nope, in a psychopathic violent sort of way.

Whatever happened to the place where everybody’s good-looking and the kids are above average? Let’s see. Keillor grew up in Anoka. Where was the RV owners home again? Oh. Anoka.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Inspiration

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Beltane                                                                 Emergence Moon

The Inferno Ballet and the courage it took to tackle the project has inspired me. I have an Ovid/Metamorphoses novel in me, one that excites me. I’m not ready to write it and won’t be soon, too much translating and reading yet to do, but I’ve decided that unless or until Missing gets representation and sells, I’m going to work on the Ovid novel.  Who knows how much time any of us has as we move toward what friend Tom Byfield calls the Great Perhaps.  Once the little Medicare card goes in the wallet you know the sand will run out. Not might. But will. So, I don’t want to die not having tried to tackle a big, the big, project I have in me. And that’s how Ovid feels.

(Turner, Ovid Banished From Rome)

I’m still going to work on the short stories, revising and submitting, and I’m still going to go back and revisit other novels, revising those that seem worth it and submitting them, too, but from now on my primary creative energy has a Roman stamp on it. This will create synergy between my Latin work and my writing, a synergy I wanted way back four years ago when I started learning Latin. Now I’m able to make it hum.

 

 

Art and Culture, Poetry, Writing

To Hell and Back

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Beltane                                                              Emergence

Dancers. Kinesthetic wonders. The James Sewell ballet troupe are lithe, strong, fluid. Many of the things they did with their bodies revealed possibilities I had not kenned. Several a male dancer with take a female dancer on his back, then they would move, him bent over slightly, her resting on his back with no holds on either part, just weight and angle keeping her in place. Or, deadlifts of a prone woman on the floor to hip height. The Inferno was 70  minutes long and the number of calories expended by the troupe would keep me thin for a couple of months, maybe longer.

Then there was the audacity of it. The level of creative challenge in taking a solid, 800 year old literary masterpiece and interpreting it in an essentially silent, physical medium is immense. This was a brave work. The score and the dancers took on us on a journey through the Inferno, going lower and lower, down the New York Subway into the infernal regions. The Sewell inferno is set, loosely, in New York City.

This story of damnation and mid-life crisis is timeless and the Sewell Ballet has done it well. Worth seeing.

 

Art and Culture, Colorado, Feelings

Calming

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Beltane                                                              Emergence Moon

The first wave of emotions has passed. I feel present now. Those onions and leeks which I did not plant yesterday will go in on Monday and Tuesday instead, along with some fertilizer for the daffodils. Big life decisions take a while to incorporate and this one is not done with me, I know. But for today, it is.

Kate and I are going into the Cowles Center to see the Inferno danced by the James Sewell Ballet. Several years ago, when the writing stalled, I spent a year reading the classics, among them Dante’s Divine Comedy. This is one of the masterworks of western civilization, especially its depiction of Dante and Virgil’s journey through the Inferno. I did read on, finishing the trilogy with the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. It’s ironic, and I’m hardly original in observing this, that the Inferno is what has held reader’s attentions the most over the years. Damnation interests us more than redemption.

 

Art and Culture, Travel

The Monthly

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Beltane                                                                    Emergence Moon

A sickle Emergence Moon has risen in the west, just behind a tall poplar. Above it is Jupiter. A month plus a little ago, March 27th, I was on the road out of Holbrook, Arizona at 4 am. The mesa country was cold and the night was deep. Up in the sky hung a crescent of the Hare Moon and in its cusp was Venus.

(Spring Scattering Stars, Edwin Blashfield,1927)

Crescent moons are among the signal aesthetic gifts of the universe, especially when combined with a bright planet, especially Venus or Jupiter. The heart that cannot be moved by a black sky, a silver sliver of moon and cradled within its arms a fellow traveler, is a heart that has lost its wonder. I recall thinking as I drove on I-40 that morning last March that much of the beauty of southwest Native art came from clear views just like the one I was seeing.

It’s not hard to imagine those early ancestors of ours, on their trek out of Africa, looking up in wonder at the very same sight.

Colorado, Family, Feelings, Third Phase

A Gentle Tsunami

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Beltane                                                                      Emergence

I’ve put myself into a shocked, off center state by our decision to move. Assimilating the idea and its consequences have left me lackadaisical about Latin, less interested in the garden, a schlump relative to writing except for this blog. This won’t last long. It’s a response to the gentle but powerful emotional tsunami washing up on my Minnesota shore, a flood that I realize will wash most of what has been my life here back out to sea. And, it’s premonitory, a reality in the distance, yet it has enough force to rock me.

I’m letting it, right now, take me out of the now and buffet me with imagined sequelae, some wonderful, some sad, some exhilarating, some anxiety producing.

Wonderful. Living near the grandkids, the Rockies, the West. More faces at holidays and birthdays. A new place to absorb, to see, to learn, to become part of.

Sad. Saying good-bye to the Woollies, this house and its gardens, the Walker, the MIA, the Guthrie, the memories of 40 years.

Exhilarating. Writing in a new natural environment, one that will give me years of stimulation as will the lived history of the region. Staghounds in our future, dogs of the West.  A new home and land.

Anxiety producing. You know. Packing, unpacking. Money. Adapting to a new place. Finding medical care, insurance.

All this swirls around, causing emotional collisions that spark off each other, create radiants of feeling. It’s the early days of a love affair, one that will go the distance. God, how great, how frightening, is that?