Yearly Archives: 2019

Dogs, Family, Health

Ouch

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Winter and the Future Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: the folks at OnPoint Urgent care, especially Leah and Trevor. Jon, for coming a long ways. Adrenaline. Murdoch and Kepler, that they didn’t kill each other. The replacement of Kate’s feeding tube. That 2019, not a great year for us, will soon be in the rearview.

Life odder than fiction. Here’s a story. A while ago a dog came to visit for a year. His name is Murdoch. He’s young, bouncy, a genuine joy. On Sunday he bounced his way down the stairs and got tangled up in Kate’s feeding tube while she was walking on the lower level stairs.

Pop. The feeding tube came out. Not out of the feeding bag, which hung suspended from her shoulder, but from her body. Geez. It’s the second time a feeding tube has come out, so it wasn’t quite the shock it might have been, yet it’s still her primary source of nourishment.

Call the oncall doc. Go visit your primary care doc on Monday. We did. They found a place to have a new feeding tube put in, but I only heard Adventist hospital and took us to the one closest to the doctor’s office. Wrong one.

Found the right one about a half hour late, but the doc had been working on someone else anyhow. Kate went in and came back out in twenty, thirty minutes, new tube in place, able to take nourishment again. Not a pleasant process, but not a huge deal either.

By the time we got home we’d been out of the house since 10 am and the clock had ticked over 6 hours plus. It was close to 4:30 pm. We were tired. It was a long day already.

I asked Kate to let Gertie and Rigel out while I put the Rav4 in the garage and let out Murdoch who had spent the time in the loft. He was bouncy and happy and at the door when I got up here, so I let him out. Meanwhile, unknown to me, Kepler had squirted out the door with Rigel and Gertie. Uh oh.

When I came out of the loft door after putting Radical Judaism and my notebook on the table next to the computer, I heard squeals. There, in the snow, in 20 degree weather, a brown, black, brown, black furry action movie was underway. Kep and Murdoch, finally in the same space, had done what we feared, gone for each other.

I ran down the stairs, deposited my book, Automatic Eve, and my phone on the cement landing at the bottom, and rushed over to the two fighting dogs. Never intervene in a dogfight. Well, sure. Unless the dogs look like they’re going to kill each other. And, these were two Akitas, bred to guard. When they bite, they’re serious about it.

Besides, who would want to call their son in Singapore and say, sorry about Murdoch? Not this guy, for sure. So, I intervened. It was red in tooth and claw. Kepler and Murdoch had already wounded each other and were snarling, way past growling, as they grappled. Collars came off in my hand. No handle.

I sat on their heads. Kepler had Murdoch’s lower jaw in his mouth. My scarf was all I had. Taking it off I tied it around their jaws, limiting their movement. Kate couldn’t help. Too far out in the yard for her oxygen. Besides, the feeding tube.

It went on about 10 minutes. Not sure I helped at all because I finally had to give up and stand up. They sort of quit on their own.

In the melee however I sustained a bite. The worst bite the p.a. who sewed me up said she had ever seen. Oh, good. It was a triangular gash, opened to the fatty tissue underneath and with a fortunately intact, but visible blood vessel right in the middle.

Jon came to the emergency room and helped me. I drove myself there and back. Got home about 9:30 pm, ten or eleven stitches later. Leah, the p.a., sewed my inside skin together first, then closed the gash. Lidocaine kept it from being impossible for me.

Not sure about doggy injuries though I know Kep’s rear left leg is hurt and Murdoch has a slash on his cheek. I left for Urgent Care after we got the dogs situated and when I got back everybody was asleep.

Come to me, 2020. 2019 be gone.

Art and Culture, Family, Health, Painting, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Artistes

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Winter and the Future Moon

Monday gratefuls: (I like this practice, so I’m going to continue it for awhile. Maybe keep it here.) Being with Ruth yesterday. Going to Meininger’s Art Supply with her. The stuff in Meininger’s. Stanley Market Place. Maria’s Empanadas. Coming home to the mountains after driving in the city. The bare rock on Berrian Mountain. The flocked trees.

Took Ruth to Red Herring Art Supply. Again. Seoah was with us the last time. Like last time, it was closed. The holidays. We drove along Colfax, “the longest street in the U.S. that doesn’t turn into a highway,” she said. Makes me think of Lake Street. Colfax runs through several ethnically diverse neighborhoods and changes its character as it does. Near its ends, west and east, are old tourist motels now the cheaper equivalent of SRO’s.

We took it into downtown Denver, turned right at the State Capitol Building, and followed Broadway to Meininger’s, Colorado’s primary art supply store. Ruth educated me again. Explaining the use of mediums for oil paints, why she likes synthetic brushes, and a type of paper on which you can do oil painting.

We bought some of that paper, a small bottle of medium, and some brushes. The next time she comes we’ll cut up some of the paper into sizes she would like to use.

The ancientrail of art is not only for the gifted. Making things with our hands is a primary human act, from houses to Space Shuttles, quilts to sculptures. When creating objects that reflect our inner life, make the world beautiful, show and enhance our ability to see, we expand our own life.

We got Gabe a Chromebook for Hanukah, a very low end, yet still useful laptop. Jon predicted he would be, “very happy.” After he opened it up, Gabe said, “I’m so happy.” Sometimes grandparents are the wish genie.

We both have concerns about Jon. Still. He inherited depressive genes from the Johnson line, maybe the Olsons, too. Very bright, creatively gifted, incredibly self sabotaging. And, 51. I hope in this next decade he can find the traction he needs.

His art is wonderful, colorful and conceptual, using old smashed metal pieces he finds along the road as objects to print. His grasp of politics, of the workings of his school, of home renovation is keen. When he’s not down, he’s a lot of fun. He skis and makes his own skis.

Tough, very tough, situation.

Aging, Family, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Easy, boy

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Winter and the Future Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth’s mint candy. Her delight in staying with us. The snow storm that could. All the delivery people in the mountains. Rest time from working out. Being easier with myself. The clear, cold sky.

Ruth. Our favorite granddaughter. Our only granddaughter. She stayed Friday night after a day of skiing with her Dad. She slept with Rigel and Murdoch since the guest room now belongs to them. But, they were willing to share.

It snowed yesterday. An unpredicted round which exceeded six inches. A frequent poster on Pinecam.com, Weather Geek, lives on nearby Conifer Mountain. He says we’ve had 55 inches this season, before yesterday’s snow. Say 61 inches now. 5 feet, 1 inch. Deep enough to bury Kate. That’s since October.

Being easier. Over the past year plus I’ve been pushing, pushing, pushing. Do this. Get that done. Keep doing this. And that. And that. Don’t let up. Keep moving. Realized I’d put myself in an impossible situation.

Even though they’ve reduced in the last month or two, doing the activities of care giving put me in a peculiar tension. I viewed all the domestic activities as necessary, good in themselves, but as barriers to creative work, work I did for me. The tension between caregiving and writing, caregiving and painting, caregiving and reading made me devalue the domestic, not resenting it, but feeling pulled between the needs of my Self and the needs of our home. When I talked about this with Kate, she said yes, the housewife’s dilemma.

Though it came rather late, my solution was to be easier on myself. To let up on the pedal. Immediately things got better. It was enough, this cooking. This workout. This grocery pick-up. The tiredness was ok, not something I needed to shoulder past, but an indication that it was time to rest.

I’d robbed myself of the satisfaction in cooking, shopping, running errands, and in the creative work by feeling always pulled between them. This is life now. Kate and the dogs and the house. They come first. The rest is bonus, important, but secondary.

Anoka County, Colorado, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Death and Resurrection

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Winter and the Future Moon

Saturday gratefuls: The snow, coming down hard. The temperature, 17. All 8,800 feet above sea level. Two weeks of consistent workouts, 5 days, 3 resistance, two with high intensity training. Ruth’s being here. (she’s sleeping with Rigel and Murdoch right now.) The Hanukah meal last night. Hanukah. Whoever conceived and executed Resurrection: Ertugrul. The internet.

Been thinking a bit about resurrection. Not as in Resurrection: Ertugrul, which is about resurrection of the Seljuk state, but in the New Testament mythology. Birth, life, death, resurrection. Christmas, Ministry, Black Friday, Easter. The Great Wheel. Spring, growing season, fallow season, spring. Osiris. Orpheus.

Death is being overcome every spring. Life emerges, blooms and prospers, then withers and dies. A period in the grave. Spring. Resurrection is not only, not even primarily, about coming back from death. Resurrection is a point in the cycle of our strange experience as organized and awake elements and molecules.

Saw an analogy the other day. Twins in the womb. Talking to each other about whether there was life after delivery. How could there be, one said. What else is all this for, said the other. Do you believe in the mother? Yes, she’s all around us. I can’t see her, so I don’t believe in her. How would we get food after delivery? How would we breathe? I don’t know, but I believe we’ll do both.

We know, too, the story of the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the butterfly.

Might resurrection itself be an analog of these ideas? Could be. Easier for me to comprehend is the death of a relationship, the period of mourning, then a new one, different from the first, but as good or better. The death of a dream. Having to sell the farm, a period of mourning, then a new career, different, but satisfying, too. The death of a certain belief system. Say, Christianity. A period of confusion and mourning. Then, a new way of understanding. The way things are. Consciousness and cycles. This comes; that goes.

A Minnesota life. Well lived and full. Dies. A period of mourning and confusion. A Colorado life. Different, but satisfying, too. The gardens of Andover. The rocks of Shadow Mountain. The lakes of Minnesota. The mountains of Colorado. The Woolly Mammoths. Congregation Beth Evergreen.

Are there other resurrections? Of course. Is there a resurrection like that of Jesus? Unknown. I choose to celebrate the resurrections that I know, rather than the ones I do not. The purple garden that emerged in the spring. The raspberries on the new canes. Those apples growing larger from the leafed out tree. This marriage with Kate, a notable resurrection of intimacy in both our lives.

What is dying? What are you mourning? What resurrection awaits?

Health, Kabbalah, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase
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Winter and the Future Moon

Friday gratefuls: Quest labs. Einstein Bagels. Tony’s Market. Walgreens. The Shell station carwash. Ruby, the new Rav4 and its heated seats. The cattle that gave their lives for the meat at Tony’s. Kate’s good seal on her feeding tube last night. Jon and the grandkids coming up for a brisket meal after skiing.

Went to Quest labs yesterday, order in hand for the sensitive PSA test that will tell how well the lupron has worked. As I walked into the lab, everything seemed ordinary, the parking spot behind the Audi, the automatic doors that slid open, the stairs up to the lab. The friendly young lady with the needle.

And, of course, it all was ordinary. Except. This was about cancer. Mine. I’ve become familiar with the dissonance between the ordinariness of these visits and my stake in their outcome. It produces an out of body feeling, not anything dramatic, but a sense that this is happening to someone else. Not true, however.

Will find out soon. My next lupron injection is on January 6th. Great fun. One more in the glutes.

While out I bought bagels, a couple of ribeyes for a New Year’s surf and turf meal, some adhesive bandages, and got the car washed. Just more errands. More ordinary.

Signed up for another kabbalah class, this one using Art Green’s Radical Judaism. Art is a mentor of Jamie’s, still alive in his eighties. His book appeals to me. My own thinking has gone along similar lines though Art’s done a systematic job. Not my style. I lived out my changed attitude toward religion and tradition, writing about it only in shorter pieces. Looking forward to this.

Thought readers of this blog might appreciate these:

The Eleven Awareness Practices of Kabbalah Experience

  1. Pay attention to what shows up as a reflection of what you still need to learn and grow into.
  2. Be present to the moment. This includes fully processing emotions that come from the past and how plans for the future impact your present living.
  3. Accept reality as it is. Live with a deep sense of gratitude. Seek and offer forgiveness in your everyday experiences.
  4. Live by setting intention. Be open to possibility—one door closing opens another. Measure success by effort not by outcome.
  5. Hold opposites and recognize that those qualities you may judge in others are mirrored in you. Seek common ground with others.
    6. Set limits to access greater intimacy and focus in your relationships.
    7. Expand your concern and love for the “other”.
    8. Recognize the multiplicity of masks you wear (so they don’t wear you).
    9. Perceive and understand the metaphors that underlie your life choices.
    10. Witness the masks and metaphors and enter a state of no-thingness.
    11. Flow in the paradox of being and non-being in every moment.

Politics, US History

Liberal and Conservative Together

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Winter and the Future Moon (it will take us into 2020. expect a flying car on your roof.)

Boxing Day gratefuls: for liberals and conservatives. for the divine ohr within you. for all those who, with Ram Dass, got walked home in 2019. for this still great nation and its painful troubles. for the decade now ending. for pick-up service at King Sooper. for The Happy Camper and Colorado’s marijuana laws.

Columnist Max Boot of the Washington Post wrote, in a column extolling the mores of Downtown Abbey, that it shows:

“…a humane, instinctual conservatism that embodies the wisdom of philosopher Michael Oakeshott: “To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to Utopian bliss.” Present-day “conservatives” must rediscover this sensibility if they are to rescue their movement from its populist-nationalist abyss.” washington post

This is a crie de couer and I hear it. If we reverse the dialectics, to be liberal, then, is to prefer the unknown to the known, the untried to the tried, mystery to fact, the possible to actual, the distant to the near, the superabundant to the sufficient, Utopian bliss to present laughter.

Not quite. I do not prefer the unknown, the untried, mystery over fact, the possible, the distant, the superabundant, or Utopian bliss. No. I, too, live mostly with the familiar, the tried, fact, the actual, the near, the sufficient. In fact, I live mostly within these “conservative” parameters. It would be difficult not to.

Trump, whom Boot was decrying rather than liberals, is neither liberal nor conservative. He is a reactionary. It’s right there in his motto: Make America Great Again. Unpack Great. He meant then and means now, an America untroubled by women, by visible minorities, by unions, by environmentalists and their regulations, by governmental niceties like taxes and legislation and democracy and, especially, by the rule of law. He meant an America who is a friend to the authoritarian and in struggle with its allies.

The reactionary is a foe of the liberal and the conservative alike. We can join arms because in the end we both want a civil society. Yes, I may want, too, a more just civil society than even Obama’s America. I may be more comfortable with the mysteries of the universe, with the unknown, with the untried, but that is because I know we can be better than we are. That does not mean I prefer them. It means they are tools, time telescopes to see a better future.

Certainly, a future without Trumpian disdain for decency and justice, yes, at least that. But also a future without an upstairs/downstairs division. A future where the old can age with dignity and without fear. A future where the world marks collaboration and opportunity as ascendant values over political competition. Most of all, right now, an anti-dystopian future where the capitalist class is not allowed to rend and tear our planet without regard to human prospects.

I’m with Boot though. First our nation must be delivered from the “populist-nationalist abyss” into which it has sunk. This may not be the Mariana’s Trench of our history, but it’s as far beneath the surface as we’ve been in my lifetime. This maelstrom of greed and envy and unchecked desire is anathema to both those who prefer the familiar and those who yearn for an unfamiliar, but just society. Let’s rise up from this pit together. Then we can argue again, check each other’s baser impulses, and get back a world that has a future.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Painting, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Merry, Merry Meet

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Winter and the Gratitude Moon, waning sliver

Christmas gratefuls: the silence on Black Mountain Drive. Black Mountain itself. The stars above Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. Our home. This loft, a gift from my Kate, now five years ago, and still wonderful. Kate and her increased health. The sacred side of Christmas. The pagan (also sacred) side of Christmas.

When I went out for the paper this morning, it was dead quiet. No dogs barking. No cars or trucks on the road. No mechanical noises. The sky was the deep black of the cosmic wilderness, lit only by bright lights: planets, stars, galaxies. Silent night, holy night.

Those shepherds out there tending their flock, sheep shuffling around. A baa and a bleat here and there. Visitors on camel back. All that singing. As imagined, probably not a quiet night.

Here though, this dark Christmas morn. The deer are asleep. The elk, too. Pine martens, fishers, foxes, mountain lions might be prowling, but part of their inheritance is silence. Black bears went to sleep long ago. Millions of insects are quiet, too. The microbes in the soil, the growing lodgepole pines, the aspen organisms, their clonal neighborhoods, bulbs, corms, rhizomes all alive, all quiet.

Silent night, holy night. Yes. Sacred night, holyday night. Yes.

I read this long essay on consciousness by the president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. In it he says this:

” Yes, there’s this ancient belief in panpsychism: “Pan” meaning “every,” “psyche” meaning “soul.”…basically it meant that everything is ensouled…if you take a more conceptual approach to consciousness, the evidence suggests there are many more systems that have consciousness—possibly all animals, all unicellular bacteria, and at some level maybe even individual cells that have an autonomous existence. We might be surrounded by consciousness everywhere and find it in places where we don’t expect it because our intuition says we’ll only see it in people and maybe monkeys and also dogs and cats. But we know our intuition is fallible…”

Even silence, since it presumes an awareness of noise, is a proof of consciousness. All that consciousness around us here on Shadow Mountain. The trees and wild animals, grasses and microbes, dogs and humans, all here, all experiencing a self.

I take panpsychism a bit further than Koch with the kabbalistic idea of ohr, the divine spark, resident in every piece of the universe and the process metaphysical view of a vitalist universe creatively moving toward greater complexity.

This waking up mornin’ we can see the baby Jesus as an in your face message that, yes, of course we are holy. Yes, of course the universe sings to us from the depths of the sea, the top of the redwoods, and the person or animal across from us this morning. And, to get downright personal, from within the deep of our own soul.

Asia, Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Judaism, Memories, Mountains, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

A Holiweek

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Winter and the Gratitude Moon

Saturday gratefuls: For this spinning, traveling planet. For ways to get from one spot to another: cars, trains, planes, bicycles, feet. For the new Woolly Calendar, produced again by Mark Odegard. Over 30 years. For cities like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Denver. And for those of us who live outside of them.

The long dark Solstice night still wraps Shadow Mountain, quiet and black. For those lovers of the summer this marks a key moment as the night begins, gradually, to give way to the day. Six months from now the Summer Solstice will celebrate the longest day, which marks the moment when the day gradually begins to give way to the night. A cycle that will last as long as mother earth does.

A cycle that can remind us, if we let it, of the way of life. That darkness comes, fecund and still. That light comes, spurring growth and movement. That we need both the darkness and the light, both are essential. When dark periods enter our life, they are usual, normal and will pass. When light periods enter our life, they are usual, normal and will pass.

Our time with Seoah ends today. She heads off to Singapore for a year, leaving Denver this evening. We’ll head out to the airport early. It’s Christmas travel weekend and the airport will be buzzing.

Her English is much better and she studies hard. She hopes that her time in Singapore will push her all the way to fluency. Mary has a Korean friend who will help Seoah hook up with the Korean community there and English language tutors.

Hanukah starts tomorrow night. The first candle. Tuesday is Christmas Eve, then Wednesday, Christmas Day. Festivals of light. Showing our human preference for the day, for the growing season. Showing our confidence in the long ago, when the Maccabees revolted, kicking the Seleucids out, entering Jerusalem, and rededicating the Second Temple after its profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes. And, when the miracle baby, Jesus, entered this world, like the Shekinah.

A holiweek. Filled with candles, presents, songs, family. The most sacred part of this holiweek is the coming together of friends and family.

Aging, Anoka County, Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Retirement, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Travel, US History

The West

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Seoah and her light presence as a guest, Murdoch again, the Grandmother Tree at CBE, the night drive up Brook Forest, then Black Mountain drives, the fox that crossed our path, the mule deer doe standing, looking toward the road, the nightlife of the wild, the ultimate wildness of the heavens

December 20, 2014 “The enormity of this change is still a little hard to grasp. We’re no longer Minnesotans, but Coloradans. We’re no longer flatlanders but mountain dwellers. We’re no longer Midwesterners. Now we are of the West, that arid, open, empty space. These changes will change us and I look forward to that. The possibility of becoming new in the West has long been part of the American psyche, now I’ll test it for myself.”

December 18, 2019 The usual mythic significance of the West, where the light ends, where souls go when they die, seems quite different from its American mythos as almost a separate country, an Other World where you could leave Europe behind, leave the East Coast behind and rejuvenate, remake yourself. (yes, Native Americans were here already. But I’m talking about the frontier, the Old West, the place where Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, and lots of versions of John Wayne lived. And, yes, the Spaniards on the west coast and as far north as what is now New Mexico. The Russians, too.)

Seems quite different. Yes. However, “the possibility of becoming new in the West.” The American mythic West is about where souls go when they die, when they die to a past that had not prospered in the East, to a life no longer well lived, to a life lived in the all too usual way, to a life of boredom.

What would we become? When would the West become home? When would this house on Black Mountain Drive become home? All those boxes. All that altitude adjustment. And, we would gradually learn, an attitude adjustment to mountain life.

We have become people of the mountains, in love with them enough to adapt our lives to thin air in spite of the difficulty it presents to us. We have become people of the tribe, of clan Beth Evergreen, part of a strange and intriguing religious experiment, a new community. That was part of what people sought in the West. A chance to build community anew, to different rules.

We have become embedded in the lives of our grandchildren, of Jon. They love the mountains, too. Our choice, to live close, but not too close, has had its challenges, but has worked out well. It’s hard for us to provide day to day support for Jon and the kids. We’re too far away and too physically challenged (of late). We are, however, a mountain refuge for them, a place away from the city where they can come to refresh. We’re also on the way to A-basin, Jon’s favorite ski area.

When we travel now, the return no longer involves a turn north, toward the Pole, but a turn West, toward the mountains and the Pacific. Our friends in the north, in Minnesota have stayed in touch. We’ve not gotten back much; it’s so good to still have solid connections.

We change altitude frequently, often dramatically during a day’s normal routine. No more mile square roads, farmland templates. No more 10,000 lakes. And, up where we live, in the montane ecosystem, no deciduous trees except for aspen. No more combines on the road, tractors, truck trailers full of grain and corn headed to the elevators. (yes, in Eastern Colorado, but we’re of the mountains.)

The pace of life in the mountains is slower. Many fewer stoplights, fewer stores, less nightlife. Service of all kinds is slower, too. Plumbers. HVAC guys. Mail folks. UPS. Fedex. Denver Post. Painters and electricians. Once we quit expecting metro area level of service, especially in terms of promptness and predictability, life got better. The mountain way.

Our life in the West has also been shaped, profoundly, by medicine and illness. Tomorrow.

Art and Culture

A Nocturne

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

A note on hope. Been working with the idea of hope for our next mussar class on Thursday. Painting it. Not sure about the piece I’ve done, but I’m sure about the process that got me there.

Hope. Hmm? John Desteian, my Jungian analyst of many years, used to say, “Don’t get me started on hope!” What is about hope that got him riled up? I don’t remember. Wish I did. But ever since I’ve had a skeptical attitude toward hope.

Biggest issue with hope? It puts the self into the future, takes it away from the present. At least the usual senses of it. I hope I graduate from high school. I hope I’ll meet a guy. I hope I’ll get better someday. I hope Trump will disappear from the White House.

Hope doesn’t matter. What matters is the action you’ll take right now based on your values. I want to learn something. I don’t say, I hope I’ll know more Latin in the future. I say, how do I find somebody to teach me Latin. I hope I graduate from high school. Go to class, do the work, keep your grades up. All stuff to do in the now.

Hope might even cause you to distort your values in its name. I hope I’ll graduate from high school. I need good grades. Sally writes good papers, maybe I can get her to do mine for me.

Hope by itself is evanescent, a wisp, perhaps at best a distraction from whatever doesn’t exist now that you hope will exist in the future.

But what about such big hopes as freedom? If I’m in a Trump concentration camp, doesn’t it make sense to hope for release? No. You need to figure out what concrete steps you can take right now. I want to be free and here’s what I’m willing to do about it is a very different statement from I hope to be free from here.

So the painting. I began imaging a bright light, perhaps an area of cadmium yellow and titanium white somewhere in the upper left. A bank of darkness, ivory black or a deep shade of blue, would dominate the bottom and strands of lighter colored pigments would snake up from it, never quite reaching the light. It would be just out of reach.

I kept the bank of black, made the dominate color cerulean blue, and added rectangles of orange, egyptian violet, cerulean blue, and phthalo green. At the end of the painting, I accidentally created swirls in the blue background and added them throughout the background.

Not sure whether this relates to the first idea at all. Probably not. In fact, I may start tomorrow morning and work on the earlier idea. Not sure why I didn’t use it. Oh, well. I like the second, finished one, but it really doesn’t go very far toward the idea of hope, bah humbug.