Daily Archives: June 17, 2014

Aging, Colorado, Friends, Humanities, Politics, Sierra Club, The Move, Third Phase

Young

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Beltane                                                               Summer Moon

How do they get so young? Had my meeting with the organizer for the Franken campaign. She graduated this spring from American University. 20 years old if that. She wanted to know how I got involved in politics. So I told her my story, watching the Stevenson-Eisenhower returns in 1952. She was born in 1994 or 1993. The time difference would be the same for me for an event in 1906/1907. Hmmm.

We chatted for about 45 minutes. She was energetic, hopeful, trying to be realistic and tough, yet still eager. A hard combination to pull off. She’ll get there though, I imagine.

The interaction taught me something. Probably something I’ve learned several times, but I’m learning it again. It was fun and revitalizing to meet someone new, to talk about stuff I care about, to get out of the house in the evening.

One real downside of living up here all these years, with few places where folks just go to hangout (none, really) and with no folks to go hangout with anyhow, is the tendency to get in a rut. Stay home, watch tv in the evening. I love Kate and watching tv, winding down in the evening, is a pleasant and even important part of our time together. Our lives during the day have the garden or sewing or writing or Latin or the dogs, never boring, fulfilling.

But. What I’m reminded of is the need to engage others, new folks, on a regular basis. When we move to Colorado, I’ll see to it. Politics. Art. Gardening. It does highlight a criteria for our new home (a favorite parlor game for us these days. Oh, and it should have…) I came up with a couple of weeks ago. A community where we want to be.

Andover’s not bad, it’s just not much at all. And politically it’s very conservative. Political leanings are not everything, of course not, but they do speak to a wider range of compatibility and I’d like to have at least some of that where we live next.

Colorado, The Move

Realtor Reality Show

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Beltane                                                                    Summer Moon

Third realtor interview today. A guy from Ramsey (another ‘burb connected to us to the northwest) who left large real estate companies to found his own. A thoughtful guy with a sound approach and a 5.5% fee. A possibility. It will be a while before he gets back to us, week after next due to a vacation that starts tomorrow. I’m especially interested in his valuation since he understands this market and has sold real estate for 28 years.

Not sure why but I find this process enervating. It doesn’t feel productive to me, even though it’s very important to the success of our move. Or, maybe, it’s just today. Once we’ve selected a realtor things will start moving, though still at a pace we can maintain since next March remains the date for putting the place on the market.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, Third Phase

Between

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Beltane                                                                            Summer Moon

Janus. The two faced god, one face looking to the past, the other toward the future. Hence, January. “…the god of beginnings and transitions,[1] and thereby of gates, doors, passages, endings and time.” Wiki  The door to Janus’ temple stood open during war and closed to indicate peace.

Got to thinking about Janus this morning in light of  Bill Schmidt’s comment about liminal spaces. Janus is presented as the god of liminality, of the time between war and peace, beginning and ending, inside and outside. But. As I thought about the image of Janus, he looks back into the past where lie regrets and failures and loss. At the same time he looks into the future where there is anxiety and hope and maybe despair. The one thing he is not is the god of liminal spaces. No, he’s the god of regret and worry. That thing that he cannot do is see the present, be in the now, for he is eternally fixated on the flow of time past or the onrush of time future.

More. As Bill suggested, to live is to be in liminality, between life and death, yesterday and tomorrow, this project and the next one. We can define, interestingly, liminality as the now since the now we inhabit has a position after a moment and before the next one.

The Celts reserved a special place for the liminal, seeing it as a magical time. So Celtic magic often happened at dawn or as evening fell. But in the understanding I’m presenting we can work our magic in the liminal space we inhabit. Right now. This is not an idle metaphor, but an expression of the magical reality of the now, of inhabiting liminal space always.

Whatever it is, we can bear it for this moment. At least for this moment. We may not have been able to bear it a moment ago and we don’t know whether we will be able to bear it in moment, but, right now, in this fleeting doorway where we stand poised between then and the future, right now, we can marshal our resources and get through the moment. With practice our capacity to live in this space between becomes usual, ordinary and we know in our body that regret is gone, in the past, and that anxiety is of the future, not yet.

As Stewart Brand puts it so nicely, we live in the long now.

 

Colorado, Politics, The Move

Tuesday, Tuesday

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Beltane                                                                           Summer Moon

Last realtor interview today. More packing. Some mulching.

I do have an odd meeting tonight. A young woman (just graduated from American University) working as an organizer up here for Al Franken wants to meet and listen to my story. Translation: she wants money and work from me. I told her though neither were likely since I volunteer with the Sierra Club, that I do support Al.

When I told her that I knew Paul Wellstone, it was as if I’d said I knew Jesus personally. (who come to think of it, was Jewish, too) Oh, my. Well, I’d like to hear about that. And you’ve done organizing, too! So we’re having coffee at a local Caribou.