Yearly Archives: 2019

Great Wheel, Holidays, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Cheery, eh?

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Evergreen Chorale and their Season of Light concert at Colorado School of Mines. The Undertones, a choral group from Northwestern. The Denver Children’s Choir. The folks who built 470, 285, 6. The geology that built the Front Range. The snow last night. All the brave lights and the coming darkness.

Haven’t mentioned it much this year, but we’re in holiseason. The Evergreen Chorale’s holiday concert. The trees lit with colored lights up and down Black Mountain, Brook Forest Drive. The not-so quiet desperation of brick and mortar retailers. Dreidels and menorahs. We’ve passed through Samain (almost), dia de muertos, all souls, Thanksgiving, Divali, the Posada, most of Advent. Some big ones still ahead: the Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, New Years, Epiphany.

Here in the mid to northern latitudes the gradual lengthening of the darkness has created fear and some mad ideas. Like, daylight saving time, for example. Some of this fear has gone into each Christmas light, each Divali light, each menorah lit for the holidays. We want to say: We are human. We can fight the darkness. Beg Sol to return with sympathetic magic.

Here’s the thing though. We can’t fight the darkness. No matter how many bonfires we ignite, how many strings of lights we hang, how many courageous songs we sing to the many gods we hope will bring us out of the darkness, the Winter Solstice comes. Its darkness compels us to consider the so-far away apocalypse, the one we know is coming.

About a billion years from now Sol’s luminosity will have grown bright enough to boil our oceans and disperse our atmosphere. Well before our star expands into the red giant phase, much further along in its lifespan, Earth will no longer be inhabitable. This is the end, my friends, and the winter solstice reminds us of the forever darkness.

Will humanity have migrated far enough away to survive? Hard to say. Most of the sci-fi ship propulsion systems are very, very far from practical. Maybe we can get far enough away by hopping from home to home: Mars, then Enceladus, then ? Maybe not. Perhaps this strange, weird experiment, life, will wink out then, never to be repeated.

No Christmas lights, no Divali lamps, no menorah will save us then. Of course the personal apocalypse of each of us alive now will have long passed, so the Winter Solstice can remind us of that, too. We are temporary, fragile, unique, wonderful. Why can’t that be enough?

Aging, Cooking, Family, Holidays, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate
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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jon and Ruth skiing. It was a powder day and Ruth said, “I needed that.” Jon’s 51 years. Seoah’s vegetable pancakes. The cattle that gave us the delicious New York Strip steaks for Jon’s birthday meal. The baker that made the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The laughter around the table last night.

Jon’s birthday was on the 10th, but we celebrated last night since Ruth’s play was that evening. I’d post pics but I’m still struggling with downloading pictures from my host server using FTP. It’s simple, they say. Oh, yeah, I say. Someday I’ll get it.

We got a bit of snow yesterday. When it came, it came straight down like rain in the Midwest. It still amazes me since I can’t recall, though it must have happened, a no-wind snowfall in Minnesota. This type of snow is so beautiful. It comes down quietly and layers itself on roads and roofs and the land. Giving us white trees, snow covered rock, enough snow for skiing, snowballs, snowpersons.

Ruth said skiing in powder is harder physically, but way more fun. She pointed to her hip and said, “It was up to here most of the time. It’s more difficult to turn.” “All that resistance?” “Yes.”

Gabe was here while Jon and Ruth skied. Family. And friends. Family first, SeoAh says. An Asian tradition for sure. Not so sure about the U.S. Does wealth make family less “first”? That is, is family first essentially welfare in a society where there may be no other? My guess is that wealth decreases the gluons that create strong extended families. Doesn’t eliminate them, but makes them less effective. What do you think?

Today I have to finish my work on tzedek. Justice. And, do a painting about hope. Later.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Judaism, Memories, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Long one. About god. or, God. or, Gods. or, nope.

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Tony’s Market. And, for all the animal lives represented there. For the wonder of our gastro-intestinal system, all the various foods it will process. A Jewish prayer of gratitude includes those openings in our body that open and close. “Blessed… who has formed man with wisdom and created within him many openings and hollow spaces. It is obvious and known before Your Seat of Honor, that if even one of them would be opened, or one of them would be sealed, it would be impossible [to survive and] to stand before You.”

On that note. While watching and watching and watching and, still watching, Resurrection: Ertugrul, (I’m on episode 250 or so), an Allah saturated drama, and while keeping my inner lens clear in the house of Judah, I’ve begun to think again about God.

Nope. Still gone from my belief system in any form, yet with both Judaism and Islam prominent in my life right now, I’m wondering what I saw in the idea to begin with.

The notion of divine beings, either one or many, monotheism or polytheism, has occurred over and over again, in culture after culture. The early Mongols and Turks, for example, followed Tengrism: “Tengrists view their existence as sustained by the eternal blue sky (Tengri), the fertile mother-earth spirit (Eje) and a ruler regarded as the holy spirit of the sky. Heaven, earth, spirits of nature and ancestors provide for every need and protect all humans. By living an upright, respectful life, a human will keep his world in balance and perfect his personal Wind Horse, or spirit.” Wiki

My introduction to this human need for something beyond us came in the form of United Methodism, a branch of the Protestant reform movement over against Roman Catholicism. The Christians, of course, got their monotheism from the Jews and both were subjected to the firmest flattery, imitation, when Mohamed discovered Allah and the Q’uran.

Since I was in 1950’s America, in small town 1950’s America, in Midwestern 1950’s small town America, and since I was below the age of reason, I fell in with Yahweh, or El, or Elohim, or Hashem, or Adonai. And, because this was the Christian version, his son. Confusingly, too, like the Tengrists, there was a holy spirit: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost. Wow.

As I recall, God was sort of the back up band for Jesus in Methodist belief. Sure, he (and He was a he) was the metaphysical underwriter for all things Christian, but belief focused on his boy, his frontman, Jesus. When I prayed, though, my prayers went to an amorphous, cloud of unknowing sort of God, perhaps one more like Brahma than anything else. Distant, important, yet soothing. That there would be such a, what?, being, process, wonder, that would listen to me was, well, wow.

But the question I’m wrestling with here is what need to that fulfill for me? Why go once a week, often as many as three times a week, to a funny looking building, and learn songs, texts, folktales (like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, for example)? What was I getting out of it? My parents? That guy in the robe up front?

No question faith was precious to many, many people I knew. If, however, as I now believe, there is no metaphysical underwriter, no need for a frontman, what purpose does believing there is one have? I’m no neo-atheist wondering about everybody’s imaginary friend and how they could be so duped, that’s arrogant and naive at the same time. It’s obvious that faith fulfills an important psychic role for many, though that faith gets directed toward Odin, or Hecate, or Yahweh, or the sky-father and the earth-mother, toward the Great Spirit, or the plethora of Hindu avatars.

The notion of faith, of giving up psychic freedom to an external influence, one to be either propitiated or submitted to, or both, and the attendant notion of following a path of sorts, an ancientrail if you will, laid out by stories from an oral tradition, or immediately ossified in so-call sacred scriptures, is so common as to almost be a universal in human life. I say almost only because I’m not familiar with all cultures. My suspicion is that it is at least a possibility in all cultures and lives.

In one sense faith means that, somehow, the psychic resources you can muster on your own are inadequate. But, inadequate for what? For developing a Self? For being sure of the world? For understanding how to treat other humans? Or, the natural world? For a sense of safety and security? For personal validation?

Whatever the reasons, and they are pluriform, the answers get called into question by global reality. Is it Brahma or Yahweh? Allah or the Tao? Is it sky-father or Thor? Each of these entities claim total subjection of the believer. It may feel less heavy than that most of the time, but when metaphysical push comes to shove, often around death and the afterlife, the Hindu couldn’t imagine relying on Yahweh. Or, a Muslim relying on the Tengrist’s Sky-Father.

But, when you have a totalizing claim, whether monotheist or polytheist, it cannot be breached by another totalizing claim. Otherwise, how could it have the meaning ascribed? And, since there are many totalizing claims, somebody’s wrong. Without question. Let’s call this the bedrock algorithm for questioning religion. If your faith claims are true, then mine aren’t.

Reconstructionist Judaism has hit on a clever response to this algorithm. We’re going to back off the universal claims, but own the unique culture the Jewish answers created. There’s a strong and tribal tradition that dates back thousands of years. It’s one way of living within this human existence, but very far from the only way.

Reconstructionist’s, for example, eschew the notion of the Chosen People, for exactly the reasons I’m proposing here. Many, probably most, set to the side the metaphysical claims, but listen carefully to ritual, to “sacred” text and its multiple interpretations, to the history of the Jewish people, to the current lived reality.

This is a different solution than the U.U.’s. The U.U.’s have the same algorithmic questions, but toward all faiths. U.U.’s have a curriculum which gives away their fundamental stance: Creating your own theology.

Which is, of course, different from the atheist or agnostic, the pagan or the simply don’t care at all. But, and I’ll stop here for today, if faith is such an important component of human life, what happens when it gets watered down or dismissed entirely. What if you can’t create your own theology?

Aging, Art and Culture, Family, Feelings, Friends, Memories, Painting, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths, Writing
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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Friday gratefuls. Deb and Dave at On the Move Fitness. Seoah’s life joy. The inventor of kettlebells. Treadmills. dumbbells. Television. The transformer. The circuit board. The CPU. Software. Sputnik. Laika. Koko. Any random elephant, giraffe, lion, hyena, rhino, cheetah, zebra, hippo. All of them.

Back to the future. New workout from On the Move. Stepup. TRX pushup. TRX row. Kettlebell one arm shoulder press. Quadraped with a three second hold. Reverse crunch circles. Bridge hold. Step and hold, balance. Deb recommended high intensity cardio for the COPD. Did them up until the radiation started in June. I’ll get back to them, slowly.

She pointed out that the COPD will make me feel fatigued. Oh, yeah. Sarcopenia from aging and sarcopenia from lupron, too. No wonder I’m feeling like that guy on the back of the comic book. You know, the one getting sand kicked in his face? Not much to do but keep exercising, wait for the lupron to drop away. Maybe June of next year.

The Mayans considered the last 5 days of the year as useless days. I used to take that week and do a research project on something of interest to me. Now I’m going to expand that time to December and this year I choose painting. I will poke around in color theory, mixing paints, continuing to paint using shades of intense blue as background. Composition, too. I’ll take Ruth to Meiningers art supply store. Might pick up some new Princeton brushes, some new Williamsburg paints.

Then, there’s the issue of the next decade. The 20’s. Whoa. I’ve lived well into the future. But. Where’s my time traveling Delorian? My transport portal? My brain implants? Why haven’t I met a cyborg yet? You know, like from this year’s Blade Runner.

For the first time I’ve considered whether I’ll live out the decade. Hardly impossible. I’d just have to reach 83 and I know two guys that have already made that or very close to it. Frank’s already there. Bill will be on April 8th. But, who knows? Of course, dying is always possible, but with cancer and copd, my clock may have sped up.

If I knew I would die in the next decade, what would I do differently? Anything? Not sure. I’d like to travel more. See more of Colorado. Make it to Taipei and see the National Museum. Paint more. Write more books. But I already do those things. Love more. Laugh more. Again, not new. Maybe it will be the proportion of those things. Or, maybe something new will appear. Whatever happens, it will be the 2020’s! Buck Rogers time.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Family, Literature, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Late, late night.

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Off to Brave Alice in Wonderland last night. Ruth’s 8th grade play. She gets her head chopped off and plays a bishop. My kinda gal. It meant we didn’t get home until almost 8:15.

Boy. Am I outta shape on the nightlife thing. (and, I know. 8:15’s not really late, is it?) It is to my body. Slept in till almost 8:30 am. Made me feel loggy, lazy. Just got up here to the loft at 10:15. About 5 hours later than usual.

Weird happenstance. Apparently Denver has two middle schools named MauCaliffe and they are in with in 2.5 miles of each other. Guess which one I went to first? Yep.

Seoah, who’d never heard of Alice in Wonderland, let alone the middle school adaptation, enjoyed herself thoroughly. She made grilled cheese sandwiches and sliced apples for us since we had to go in early. 4:00 pm for 6:00 pm performance. Getting through Denver between 4 and 6 pm is a slow crawl.

Another weird thing. Seeing all the Christmas lights in Denver, a lot, from outside the Christmas veil. I live somewhere the Winter Solstice, Hanukah, and the ghosts of Christmas past. The only December holiday I fully own now is the Solstice. The darkness, the solitude, the longest night on top of Shadow Mountain with Black Mountain rising to our west.

On the Move Fitness has a treadmill out of service so I’m doing my warmup here, then leaving for my 11 am appointment. Gotta hit the belt.

Colorado, Cooking, Family, Jefferson County, Mountains, Park County, Third Phase, Travel

Platte Canyon Drive

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Seeing Kate cheered by her fellow Bailey Patchworkers at their holiday luncheon yesterday. A drive yesterday along the Platte River Canyon from Bailey to the Shaggy Sheep. The partly running, partly frozen North Fork of the South Platte River. The black squirrel that played along its banks. Finding my heart so exposed.

While Kate had lunch with the Bailey Patchworkers at the Riverbend Restaurant in Bailey, I drove out to the Shaggy Sheep, headed toward Kenosha Pass, Fairplay, and the Pacific Ocean. The Platte Canyon runs from Bailey to the Kenosha Pass which, at 10,000 feet marks the transition to the high plains of South Park, a broad expanse of relatively flat land all above 9,000 feet. The Platte Canyon is around 7,700 feet above sea level, carved out by the South Platte River’s north fork. That makes it a gorge, as well as a canyon, since Highway 285 follows the fairly straight run of the river. A gorge always has a river like most, but not all, canyons.

Sometimes the mountains on either side of the canyon floor come close to the road, gray and rocky, closing the canyon off from the sun. At other points the South Platte runs through long, but narrow fields and pastures. Glen Isle, a beloved and historic resort with a round main building, is on the canyons western side. North Fork Ranch, an Orvis approved dude ranch, features fly fishing, kicking back, horse rides. It’s just beyond the small National Historic site of Shawnee.

Not much further along 285 is the national YMCA camp, Santa Maria, with its not so obviously needed statue of Jesus on a cliff face high above the camp. I passed it looking up at the statue, wondering why it was there.

My destination was the Shaggy Sheep, a restaurant opened by New York City chef fleeing the city. It’s a quirky, but good menu. It has, however, also quirky hours since it sits 14 miles west of Bailey and nowhere near any other towns. Georgetown can be reached between, oh, say, May and November, by the Guanella Pass not far from the Shaggy Sheep, and Jefferson, a very small town in South Park, is a few miles on beyond the Kenosha Pass. Billing itself as a casual mountain cook house, the Shaggy Sheep depends on tourist traffic which slows down in the winter months. Closed Monday-Wednesday during the winter, I learned.

The drive out there was the point though so I wasn’t disappointed. I turned around, drove back to the Riverbend and had a hamburger with truffle fries followed by an excellent canoli. Since I was waiting on Kate and forgot to bring a book (a rare occurrence), I read the articles of impeachment plus commentary and other stories on the NYT.

The wonder of living here is the chance to take a trip through the Platte Canyon just because. Or, up the Guanella Pass to Georgetown. Or, over the Kenosha Pass into South Park and onto Fairplay. And still be home for supper.

Aging, Dreams, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, World History

Tears

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Samain and the Full Gratitude Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: The Geminid Meteor Showers, peaking on Dec. 13th. Kate. Always Kate. The cooling as we move deeper into December. Chickens and their eggs. Seeing, really seeing. Colors. Especially dark blues. Princeton paint brushes. Glass. A wonder on its own. [after finishing this. Lupron.]

As I wrote before, lupron clouds the source of my feelings. Here are three things this week that have moved me to tears.

  1. Most recent. Reading about the North Dakota capital’s county commission voting to continue admitting immigrants. Compassion trumps Trump.
  2. The videos of women singing the rapist is you (see video below) in protests across the world. Claiming your own power makes you powerful.
  3. A dream I had the other night in which my mother hugged me.

People coming down on the side of compassion instead of cruelty. My heart stands with them, wherever and for whatever reason. Right now the North Dakota vote says no to humans in cages, to separated families, to the cold hearts and small minds resident in the White House. When humans act like humans, I’m shaken in a good way.

Empowerment, especially taking back power stolen by the patriarchy or whiteness or greed, reaches deep into me, makes me feel glad. Over againstness in the name of women, of people of color, of the poor is a sacred duty, a holy duty. When an oppressed group faces off against their oppressor, my heart sings, overwhelms me. Bless them all.

My mother died 45 years ago, her yahrzeit is in October. Since then, I can recall no dreams of her. I must have had some, but they disappear on waking. For the first time I remember in those 45 years, I dreamed of her. She was mute, curled in an almost fetal position, but awake and aware. She hugged me, smiled. I felt her warmth and her love. Her physicality.

She lay in a position very like the one in which I last saw her. We rode up together in an elevator for a surgery that failed to save her life. She was on a gurney. Her eyes looked away from me, but I could tell the stroke had made that the way she could see me best. Her lips moved and she said, “Son.” The last word I ever heard from her.

Tears come as I write this. The power of feeling her close to me, of her hug, so long gone. A dream long suppressed or repressed.

It felt to me as if the grief of her death had finally come to resolution, as if she were forgiving me and blessing me. Forgiving me for living on. Blessing me for living on. Breathtaking.

Maybe the lupron does not cloud the source of my feelings. Maybe it opens me, flushes out excuses I give myself for not being moved.

A confusing time for me. But. Not without its merits.

Commentary on the news, Feelings, Friends, GeekWorld, Health, Politics, Third Phase, US History

Impeach

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Monday gratefuls: Facebook. Yes, I know how evil it is, but I love it anyhow. Keeps me up with friends from faraway-in distance and time. Internet. Wow. Keeps on enthralling me (literally [sigh] and figuratively). This desktop computer that works. Always. My handheld computer which I rarely use as a phone. Electricity, whether from IREA, our solar panels, or our generator. And, by free association, Nicholas Tesla.

I’d like to apologize to all of you who read this about my near constant airing of my existential crisis. Must get old, but it’s on my mind. This is an online journal, meant to be an airing of what’s up, what’s current in my life and thinking. Not trying to be commercially friendly. Still, I like readers, so I hope I don’t lose you to the scattered thoughts about this guy’s attempt to grab hold of life. Again. And, again.

So. Whaddya think of this impeachment thing? I don’t know how to read it. Impeachment will happen, I’m sure. Removal from office will not. I’m pretty sure. In that case will we have accomplished anything as a body politic or will we have (or, have we already) baked the Trump bloc into our lives?

The separation of powers is, to me at least, sufficient reason to have proceeded. Congress needs to reassert its fiscal, policy, and military roles against an increasingly imperial presidency. Which, if we’re to be honest, Obama did a lot to nurture, too.

The shifting stances of the propagandists who want to keep Trump in office are not as friendly to democracy as we need them to be. The Trump faithful, an unreasoned but strong cult, is strengthened, not weakened by impeachment; they are driven more into each others arms. DJT right or wrong. Political differences, yes. Political battles, yes. But a devotional attitude toward this guy, no.

Where does all this lead us? I come from the rust belt. I know its politics, its people. I’m one of them. Those of my hometown who follow the Trump are many, but not varied. They have lost well-paying factory jobs, now in the long ago 1970’s, and nothing comparable has replaced them. Their community, Alexandria, which thrived while General Motors had Delco Remy and Guide Lamp in Anderson (25,000 jobs), has become a wasteland of dollar stores, boarded up businesses, and many homes with deferred maintenance. Where do they find hope?

The children of my classmates, who’ve known only this depressed economy, have a right to their disenchantment. We’ve earned it as a country by ignoring their needs. Their parents voted Democrat, understood strong unions, but the day the factories died, so did their political will. Trump has stepped into their hearts and into their children’s hearts. He and his kind will not be easily dislodged from them.

Not hopeful about this at the moment.