Monthly Archives: December 2016

Dogs, Family, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

The Holidays

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Winter                                                                   Cold Moon

20161229_161534The grandkids have been here since December 23rd, with the exception of one day. That means a full house, lots of zigging and zagging. Adding Hanukkah to the mix leaves empty boxes, unfurled wrapping paper and gifts cluttered in the living room. Lots of watches this holiday: Ruth, Gabe, Kate all got watches. Too. There were legos, several games like Pandemic, Mexican Train, Rock of Archimedes, Mille Bourne, an assortment of clothing items like socks, ski jackets, t-shirts and the odd book or dvd.

While their presence here is a blessing and one of the really good things to happen as a result of the divorce, it gets pretty stressful with five people in the house, two under 11. Not to mention that Kate has had a wounded me to care for, in addition to the other work she does for the grandkids like laundry and cooking. We will miss them when they leave tomorrow, but both of us will require some time to decompress and get back to our usual, slower old folk rhythms.

20161229_161617_001Gabe enjoys the dogs, sometimes too much. Yesterday he squeaked and squeaked and squeaked a nerf football at Kepler. Eventually, Kepler told him to stop that. He did.

Ruth and Jon went skiing again yesterday, a wonderful warm day with reasonable numbers of folks at A-Basin even though it was New Year’s weekend. Ruth loves to help. She offers to get the mail, feed the dogs, help make supper, buy presents. And then does just that.

Her audition for the Denver School of the Arts is January 7th. She has an hour before an admissions committee. By herself. At age 10. She has a portfolio of work she’s done, a lot of work, much of it prints. That weekend I’m going to take her to this place, The Inventing Room. She’s been there and loves its emphasis on nitrogen fixing of food.

The knee. So much better now. Still achy, but not bad. Biggest problem now is that it still interrupts my sleep. My workouts for p.t. are a lot of bending the knee, straightening the leg, strengthening muscles that support the knee. I have to do 3 sets. Since my p.t. is scheduled at 7:30 a.m., I’ve shifted my workout from the afternoon to the mornings. I’ll likely keep it there since it’s much cooler then in the summer.

 

 

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Health, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Yamantaka for the New Year

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Winter                                                              Cold Moon

Existentialism is a philosophy for the third phase. No matter what other metaphysical overlays you may have the tick-tocking grows louder as you pass 65. When this clock finally strikes, it will take you out of the day to day. Forever. Strangely, I find this invigorating.

In case you don’t get it the occasional medical bomb will go off to make sure you pay attention. Last year, prostate cancer. This year, that arthritic left knee. Kate goes in for an endoscopy on January 3rd. She’s waiting approval for a biologic drug to help her rheumatoid arthritis. All these are true signs of the pending end times, but they are not the end itself. These medical footnotes to our lives press us to consider that last medical event.

I’ve followed, off and on, the Buddhist suggestion about contemplating your own corpse. I imagine myself in a coffin, or on a table somewhere prior to cremation. This is the work of Yamantaka, the destroyer of death, in Tibetan Buddhism. I’m not a Buddhist, nor do I play one on TV, but I became enamored of Yamantaka while learning about the art of Tibet and Nepal at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

yamantaka-mandala
yamantaka-mandala

This mandala is a profound work of art on view in the South Asia gallery (G212). Adepts of Tibetan Buddhism use this mandala as a meditation aid to make the journey from samsara, the outer ring representing the snares that keep us bound to this world, and the innermost blue and orange rectangle where the meditator meets the god himself. The impact this work and the portrait of Yamantaka that hangs near it have had on me is as intimate and important as works of art can evoke.

Death is more usual, more understandable, more definitive than life. Life is an anomaly, a gathering of stardust into a moving, recreating entity. Death returns us to stardust. Yamantaka encourages us to embrace our death, to view it  not as something to fear but as a friend, a punctuation point in what may be a longer journey, perhaps the most ancientrail of all. Whatever death is, aside from the removal of us from the daily pulse, is a mystery. A mystery that has served as muse to artists, musicians, religions and poets.

Yamantaka has helped me accept the vibration between this life and its end. That vibration can be either a strong motivating force for meaningful living (existentialism) or a depressive chord that drains life of its joy. I choose joy, meaningful living. Perhaps you do, too.

 

Politics

Toxic Exhaust

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Winter                                                         Cold Moon

These are the waning days of 2016, a year whose toxic exhaust will follow us into the New Year and well beyond. The past, as someone said, is prologue and in this case the book that will get written beginning in 2017 has Gothic political thriller for its genre. In the best case the book will be a dark comedic adventure, in the worst case it will be the memoir for a grand experiment in democracy.

twilight-zone

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

P.T. and Hanukkah

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Winter                                                             Cold Moon

Katie, my physical therapist, is young, only a year and a half into her career. She’s thin and a somewhat recent transplant from Florida. Colorado and its mountains, its snow, even its trout streams are her playground. She went snowshoeing on Hoosier Pass yesterday, the road from Fairplay goes over Hoosier Pass to Breckenridge. It’s high, you can access altitude above the tree line. She did, being out there “a few hours.” Afterwards, she said, she fished. Fly fishing. Which she took up a year ago with classes and a membership in Trout Unlimited.

She tells me my flexion and extension are remarkable. She says, too, that the stiffness and achiness that I have is typical. “It’s not scar tissue or anything else like that, it’s the body’s reaction to the surgery. It will pass. You’re doing very well.” That was nice to hear.

As the day winds down and night falls, the knee begins to kick out pain again. Feeling better, I’m going up and downstairs more often, walking more, generally putting the knee to work. By day’s end it’s tired of the effort and says, “Slow down. Stop.”

We’re on the sixth night of Hanukkah, many candles have burned to get us here. Lots of wrapping paper and delighted squeals. Opened boxes litter the coffee table and the couch, gift sign. Ruth got skins for her skis today. These get put on skis when you want to go up the mountain, rather than down. Gabe got Pokemon cards and a sketch book.

Hanukkah requires some discipline, apportioning presents so there are some left for the end of the 8 days. Jon enforces a strict two-present openings a night rule for both kids. Kate recites the Hanukkah blessing in Hebrew while Ruth and Gabe try to follow along.

Our three generation household runs pretty smoothly in spite of the usual sibling rivalry.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Rambling

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Winter                                                       Cold Moon

When I worked for the church, the days between Christmas and New Years were an enforced break. No church wanted Presbytery executives in that time frame, everyone was coming down from the Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas push. I took to using the time for research, usually on one topic. In those days it was organizational development, urban politics, a political issue coming to prominence, matters related directly, in some way, to my work.

This might be a way to use this enforced down time. Until the knee pain goes away and I’ve returned to a more normal routine, I could use the time to research a given topic. Not sure what yet, but something will occur to me.

Realized the other day that I’ve gone from an office halfway underground in Andover to a second story loft on a mountain. The Andover house was a walkout. The basement was open to the outside on two sides and built into the earth in front. Here on Shadow Mountain I look out at Black Mountain to the west and can see the sunsets. In Andover I saw sunrises.

Weary of the whole pain, stiffness thing. I know it’s part of the healing process. I know it’s going to recede and eventually vanish. Yet yesterday it got to me. Too damned long with a painful knee, reminded of its presence at every step, every sitting and rising. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t get comfortable sitting or lying. Next morning now and I got some sleep last night so feeling better.

 

Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Not Snowed

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Winter                                                New (Cold) Moon

Though our Shadow Mountain winter has had little snow so far, west of the continental divide has had substantial storms. Snowpack is at 115% of normal. Important for us in Colorado and nine other states. These storms have also put snow on ski resort runs, already late in their opening.

Jon and Ruth skied A-Basin yesterday. She wore a new winter coat received the night before for Hanukkah. Jon fell and whacked his head, torqued his neck, but fortunately no concussion, no broken bones. They both remarked on the high winds up slope. “They take the fun right out of it.”

The snow here will continue melting under moderately warm upcoming weather. No big snowstorms in the forecast either. So far, very slow.

I drove for the first time a couple of days ago. Weaned off the narcotics. Felt good. Trouble sleeping. Still have aches in the knee, can’t figure out a good drug regimen. Of course, I had trouble sleeping pre-op, too. I might be returning to my usual sleep challenged life.

Family, Feelings, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

Illness and Recovery

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Winter                                            Moon of the Winter Solstice

The ancientrail of illness and recovery continues here on Shadow Mountain. Yesterday it brought an unusual moment, a highly emotional tidal wave crashing through my early Christmas morning consciousness.

The immediate trigger was, I think, the pile of Hanukkah presents on the coffee table beside me. The Christmas spirit that still flows around this secular, pagan heart saw them. And rejected the moment. What followed was a period of dislocation, the closest analogy I can give is culture shock.

What was I doing in this house with this holiday underway? Mom, Dad, Mary and Mark rose up. I missed them all, a lot. Further the friends from Minnesota. Why was I here in cold Colorado, in the mountains, when my family and friends were dead or far away?

The logic of these feelings did not account for Kate, who worked the New York Times crossword across the room. Nor did it account for Jon, Ruth and Gabe. Nor the dogs. These were dramatic, histrionic feelings, slouching toward despair and isolation and loneliness. I cried for the distance I felt from the house, from my life here.

In talking with Kate about this later in the day she offered an interesting perspective. After my Minnesota trip in September, I began to forego my workouts which had become too painful. The decision to replace the knee had been made not long  before that trip. Oddly, at some point the act of sitting became painful which made using the computer in the loft all but impossible.

Then on December 1st I had knee surgery. Since then, 3 weeks plus, I’ve lived with pain and meds, often so disoriented that I lost track of sentences midway.

Kate thinks I may have lost my self. The self that cut down the trees, cut up the slash. The self that writes. The self that hikes. The self that engages easily with the world. That self was lost in the last few months, diminished, then vanished. The journey from the trauma of surgery to healing and beyond has displaced at least my sense of self.

All this came to a confluence yesterday. Still not sure what to make of it though the crying felt cleansing. I’ve not had the same feelings since then.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

The Morn

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Winter                                                            Moon of the Winter Solstice

twas-the-night-before-christmas-a-visit-from-st-nicholas-by-clement-c-moore-with-pictures-by-jessie-willcox-smith-published-1912-3Christmas. Today. Right now the electricity of children twirling in their beds after a sleepless night, the clatter of little feet racing down stairs, bleary eyed parents waking up, wondering why all of this has to happen so early in the morning cause psychic vibrations to pulse through the country, hitting even the top of Shadow Mountain. If they were lit, they would put the northern lights to shame.

It’s sweet in its way though there is a slight tinge, ok maybe not slight, of greed, of concupiscence being lodged in innocent hearts. This morning I’m traveling with the innocence of wonder and hope and pleasure, the sounds heard through the night of reindeer on the roof, some sort of clattering in the chimney or on the stairs or in the elevator shaft. As I do, I realize this is a true aspect of American culture, not practiced by all Americans to be sure, but enough that the magic of Christmas morning is a part of us we all recognize.

druid santa
druid santa

While it happens elsewhere, up here on Shadow Mountain we woke up to a light dusting of snow, a cloudy sky and the dying crescent of the winter solstice moon occluded, but partially visible. It would not surprise, in this mood, to see a long string of reindeer push up above black mountain, a victorian sleigh attached and a jolly old elf holding the reigns. I would be pleased in fact.

Whatever the inner push that moves you this morning, take a moment to drink in the flavor of this old family holiday, so disconnected from the notion of incarnation, but not too far from pagan joy in the evergreen tree and its brave lights.

Faith and Spirituality, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Roots

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frosty-santa-1951Winter                                                                Moon of the Winter Solstice

Christmas eve. I could measure my distance from my roots by the casual, almost unaware attitude I have to these two days. When I was a child, I had the same Santa dreams, the sleepless nights, the hopeful journeys downstairs to the Christmas tree that now infect millions of children worldwide. Tonight we celebrate the first night of Hanukkah. It’s not the Jewish ritual that marks the distance but my overall lack of engagement in Christmas music, decorations, gift buying, church going.

Though there is one way that I am not distant from my roots, not distant at all. It came to me yesterday. I got a heart level glimpse into the mind and will of my two-year old self. It was that two-year old who ignored, because he couldn’t understand, the doctors who said he’d never walk again. Paralyzed on the left side for six months and spending some time in an iron lung, the conclusion was that I’d missed the chance to walk, could not relearn it.

polio-posterMy mother and my Aunt Virginia helped me. At the family farm in Morristown, Indiana I drug myself along the sofa, my head often collapsed on the floor, getting rug burns as I pulled it along with the rest of my body. They helped, but it was only that young boy who could move his legs, drag his body along. He did it. Since then, I have identified walking upright in the world as a major theme of my life.

The connection came during my physical therapy, walking for the therapist so she could check my gate. That little guy, so far away now in time, brings tears to my eyes. I’m grateful to him for the chance I have now at 69 to regain use of my left knee.