Fall Harvest Moon
Gabe came in yesterday afternoon (He’s with us due to no school on Friday.) and said, “Grandpop, there’s birds in the sewing room.” Huh? Kate’s sewing room, the old garage remodeled by the last owner, opens to the outside and due to the bug free environment here–at least relative to Minnesota–we often keep the door open so the dogs can go in and out. Easier on all of us.
Sure enough, there were two small sparrow sized birds in the sewing room, fluttering and searching for places where they could see light, unfortunately mostly through windows. I opened windows, left the door open and began to talk to them gently, encouraging them to find their way outside. Gabe, unbeknownst to me at the time, had named them Jerry and Billy.
Jerry and Billy somehow found the window above Kate’s sewing machine a possible escape portal. Nope. Closed. Billy fluttered up by the top of the moveable bottom half of the window; Jerry chose the window sill, trying to push through the unexpected and unseen barrier with no luck.
Then. Rigel, who had come in the open door, looked over, saw the poor fluttering bird, ran over there and grabbed Jerry in her mouth.
Gabe, “Oh, no.”
Jerry seemed lifeless after Rigel took him in her mouth, not gently at all, and bit down. She took Jerry outside, finished him, then ate him, most of him. Gabe later buried the one wing and mostly empty body cavity in the front yard. He said, “I had fun burying Jerry.”
Hobbes said, “Life is mean, nasty, brutish and short.” I’m sure Jerry would agree.
Awe, or hitlamdut* in Hebrew, being a learner, being in a constant state of curiosity/awe, was the middah (soul trait) for last month, Elul. This month, Tishrei begins with Rosh Hashanah, and its tenth day is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. The period from Rosh Hashanah are collectively the Days of Awe, the High Holy Days in the Jewish liturgical year. Awe is central to the experience of the most sacred days of the Jewish year.
Orion returns as the Great Wheel turns into fall, the beginning of my favorite half of the year, reaching its high point (low point?) on the Winter Solstice. Each year since 1968 Orion has returned as a friend, a companion during lonely, dark nights. It gladdens my heart to see him since he only visits during this time. His return on this particular night was awe-some. Orion got me started on a month of awe.
Here’s an example. Kate and I enjoy eating at the New York Deli, an authentic Jewish deli that happens to be on our route into Jon’s house. We went there a couple of weeks ago and I ordered a white fish platter. It was huge. There was white fish, dollops of cream cheese, capers, tomatoes, onions, lettuce. On the side were two bagels, sesame seed as I had requested. Awe was on my mind so I looked at the platter. This meat came from a white fish that swam in some lake, it’s a freshwater fish, not too long ago. It had to be caught, selected, preserved (probably through refrigeration), processed, packed, stored and shipped. Then it had to be opened, divided and placed on my plate. Imagine all the individual people involved, all the different modes of transportation: boat, truck, maybe rail, maybe airplane. The cream cheese: specific cows were milked, the milk pasteurized (Louis Pasteur), chilled, then sent to a dairy somewhere and used to create the cheese which likewise had to be transported here to end up on the plate. You can see how this goes. The wheat in the bagel: sowen somewhere, cultivated over a growing season, combines in formation harvesting it, more transportation, milling, mixing the flour with eggs and yeast, baking. Growing the sesame seeds. The tomatoes. The onions. The lettuce. Do you see what an amazing, awe-some thing that white fish platter was?
A peculiar sequelae of my new schedule, afternoons remain inchoate. After the nap and before supper. Not sure yet what to do with that. Might be good for games and puzzles? I want to read then, too, and do Latin (or, Hebrew). Perhaps once kabbalah and Hebrew classes get cooking I’ll find this the natural time for that work. The issue is peculiar because once I’ve fed the dogs, gotten my writing done, finished items off my to do list and completed my workout, I’ve already had 7 plus active hours.
So what I’m proposing is not another religion with a different origin story, a different set of scriptures, different roots from, say, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam. And what I’m definitely not proposing is a reductionistic attempt to find out what all religions have in common, nor am I proposing a sort of tolerance for all faiths, an attempt to learn from each of them (though this is a good thing to do) and out of that shape a new faith.
So, what are some of those fundamentals? Prayer, worship, gods, ritual, art, revelation, congregations, sacred space, the notion of sacred, divinity, after life, morality and ethics. How might a radical approach take the long history of prayer, for example, and reshape it, reconfigure it, reuse it for the person who chooses to stand outside particular traditions, but still wants to paint? Or, what about gods? How does the notion of powerful, unseen entities with various agendas fit into the life of persons no longer monotheists, no longer willing or able to see many gods?
That’s especially important for workouts, which are easy to forego. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I do 20 minutes of cardio, then resistance work, then 20 more minutes of cardio. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, I do the high intensity cardio plus 50 minutes or so slower cardio. If I miss a Monday, I go on to the high intensity, slow cardio day. If I miss a Monday and a Tuesday, I still go to the 40 minutes of cardio, resistance work day. For me, keeping the same workouts on the same days of the week keeps me from feeling guilty (I’ve missed so many workouts, it doesn’t make sense to even try and get back to my schedule.) and guilt stops the process altogether.
The third phase is new. It used to be that 65 or so meant the end of a working life, retirement happened, then death, often before 70. Those that made it into their seventies were often burdened with serious medical problems that drained energy and created obstacles to doing much else.
70 is not the new sixty. It’s the new 70. What 70 is the new sixty really means is that for those raised in the 50’s, 70 now appears like age 60 did when we were kids. Big difference though…we’re in that sixties range of health, but we’re 70 and work has fallen away, the kids are gone. What do we do?
Yes, retirement and the life following it, the third phase as I call it, is just that, a new and different time of life, one in which the question of how do I live can have a radically different answer than in the first two phases. Who are you? Who do you want to be? If you want to be a person whose constant focus is recreation, who gets up in the morning for another day of adult recess, you can. If you want to be a dress designer after years as a forensic engineer, you can. Or, as in my case, the work before retirement age was satisfying, self-directed, so there’s little reason to change just because some age-related cultural turning point has been reached.
Sites of Los Angeles
Here in the mountains the streams have long ago drained off last winter’s snowfall; the aspen have turned golden. The cervids have begun their annual procreational dance. Sex is in the air. We have snow in the forecast for Monday and night time temperatures are in the good sleeping weather range for Kate and me. In Minnesota we could hear the Andover marching band practicing and here the high school football season is already well underway. Coats become an item of consideration when leaving the house.