Spring Holds Out For a Better Contract

Beltane                                                                         Emergence Moon

Great line from Paul Huttner at MPR’s Updraft blog:  The season formerly known as spring… The plants in our vegetable garden really want to grow. I can tell. But the temperatures aren’t giving them much of a chance.

While at the Woolly retreat this weekend, the transplants from Seed Saver’s Exchange will probably come.  The timing is right; or, at least the timing should be right. But, we may have to shelter the plants awhile until the soil warms up a bit more.

Did my workout this evening, at least the high intensity aerobic part, and my back has calmed down. I’m glad this isn’t a week or week + long event.

Walk

Beltane                                                                     Emergence Moon

In preparation for What is your walk? A few items, resources for thinking.

Chaucer’s great work is a tale told by pilgrims, as is Pilgrim’s Progress. In Dante, Virgil and Dante walk first through the inferno, then the purgatorio, then paradiso. The Way of a Pilgrim is a classic of Russian Orthodox spirituality which focuses on a wandering starets who developed the Jesus prayer.

 

O.E.D.  walk

as v.

1. Walk. o.e. to roll, to toss. (obs.) m.e. to journey, move about on foot.

2. to go from place to place, to journey, to wander, to go (one’s way)

6. chiefly in religious use, after bible examples: to conduct oneself, to behave (ill or well, wisely or unwisely). sometimes with reference to path or way.

as n.

1. an act or spell of walking or going on foot from place to place

b. travel, wandering (obs)

6. relig. lang. manner of behavior, conduct of life

eytmology

walk (v.) Look up walk at Dictionary.com“travel on foot,” c.1200, a merger of two verbs, 1. Old English wealcan “to toss, roll, move round” (past tense weolc, past participle wealcen), and 2. wealcian “to roll up, curl,” from Proto-Germanic *welk- (cognates: Old Norse valka “to drag about,” Danish valke “to full” (cloth), Middle Dutch walken “to knead, press, full” (cloth), Old High German walchan “to knead,” German walken “to full”), perhaps ultimately from PIE root *wel- (3) “to turn, roll” (see volvox).

The shift in sense is perhaps from a colloquial use of the Old English word or via the sense of “to full cloth” (by treading on it), though this sense does not appear until after the change in meaning. In 13c. it is used of snakes and the passage of time, and in 15c. of wheeled carts. “Rarely is there so specific a word as NE walk, clearly distinguished from both go and run” [Buck]. Meaning “to go away” is recorded from mid-15c. Transitive meaning “to exercise a dog (or horse)” is from late 15c.; meaning “to escort (someone) in a walk” is from 1620s. Meaning “move (a heavy object) by turning and shoving it in a manner suggesting walking” is by 1890. To walk it off, of an injury, etc., is from 1741. Related: Walked; walking.walk (n.) Look up walk at Dictionary.comc.1200, “a tossing, rolling;” mid-13c., “an act of walking, a going on foot;” late 14c., “a stroll,” also “a path, a walkway;” from walk (v.). The meaning “broad path in a garden” is from 1530s. Meaning “particular manner of walking” is from 1650s. Meaning “manner of action, way of living” is from 1580s; hence walk of life (1733). Meaning “range or sphere of activity” is from 1759. Sports sense of “base on balls” is recorded from 1905; to win in a walk (1854) is from horse racing (see walk-over). As a type of sponsored group trek as a fund-raising event, by 1971 (walk-a-thon is from 1963)

 

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.