Monthly Archives: April 2020

Kabbalah, Letters, Literature, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Not a vice

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy II

Thursday gratefuls: Overcast early morning. Kate, progress. Seoah and I at the grocery store. The clan that gathers on Tuesday mornings. That cool night. The howls. The coronavirus. Reshaping our lives, our history. Other plagues that teach us how to live with this one. History. Eduardo and Holly. Jude. Zeus and Boo. Even the new pine cones, still green on the Lodgepole branches. Pine pollen, tree sex about to get underway.

Gathering information. It eats up my time. Right now I have 30 tabs open in Firefox. Each tab is either an article or a video or an image I want to both read and collect. Most of them are from this morning.

Evernote is my enabler since it will save whatever I want. There are thousands of articles, youtube videos awaiting me there. And, I go back to them. I can find that article I remember from a couple of years ago. Or, all the notes on translating Ovid I took in 2013.

Now that I’m writing about it I look around my bookshelves and see the same inclination. Then, there’s that horizontal file cabinet and all the file-tubs on metal shelves. Travel souvenirs, small sculpture, a collection of snowglobes, art on the walls, stacked against the bookshelves. Some made by me.

Kate found this perfect space where my collections and I can be together with a view of Black Mountain and the Lodgepole Pines. I can sit inside my own mind, both its external and internal manifestations.

Started out writing this as a negative, a confessional piece about this vice I have for collecting. As I wrote, I thought, no, not a vice, just my way of being in the world.

On the Kabbalah zoom yesterday Jamie changed his name to I Am cloaked in a Jamie. When I saw that, I changed mine to Student masque. These are both instances of the Kabbalistic understanding of masks. We put on and take off masks all day, all life, perhaps all eternity long. Life is a mask for the elements held together in the shape of you. Your body is a mask for your neshama, your soul.

The student is a mask I wear, one I love. I put it on often, when I climb the stairs to this loft, it’s most often the student whose feet carry me. Other masks? Husband. Father. Friend. Nature lover. Pagan. Leftist. Advocate. Grandpop. Museum goer. Traveler. Abandoned boy. Dog companion. Fearful boy. Writer. Reviser. Gardener. Bee keeper. Scholar. Futurist.

The student loves to learn, to know. He is open, taking in new things, organizing them, saving them for future reference. He’s critical, too, as he has been taught, weighing evidence, comparing sources, looking for holes in the argument or how to shore up the argument.

Not a vice, just a mask.

Cooking, Dogs, Family, Kabbalah, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Soul

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy II

Wednesday gratefuls: Garbage men and women. King Sooper pick up today. Tony’s meat bundles that I collect on May 4th. Kate’s problem solving with her sewing machine. Rigel climbing up on the bed and plopping down right between us. Her head on my pillow. The cool night. Balmy days. The pine pollen to come. The coronavirus. What has it revealed today?

In dog news. Rigel tried for a daily record, scoring three loft treats in one day. Last night I brought Mark’s stimulus check up to the loft for safe keeping. I rarely go upstairs after supper, but Rigel was there, going for a third treat, a triple dip she rarely accomplishes. As house meany, I didn’t let her in the loft. She doesn’t know how expensive those treats are. All rabbit dog treats are not cheap.

Seoah gave us a reprise of her wonderful Swedish meatballs. Not even Ikea or the Swedish Institute in Minneapolis does a better meatball. These are really, really good. May have eaten a couple too many.

We still have snow in the backyard. Less and less everyday, but a yard cleanup is getting necessary. Like Minnesota, when the snow melts, detritus slowly sinks toward the ground. When I looked out the back window this morning, I saw an orange leg with green feet. Part of a dismembered dog toy. We see now what the dogs managed to smuggle outside during our winter snows.

Today in Kabbalah we’ll discuss soul. A tough topic. Bound up with centuries, even millennia of freight. I’ve begun using the word again in the last year after decades of setting it aside as too gnostic, too three-story universe, too weird. In the moment I believe soul refers to the whole of you, the best you, your buddha nature. With Art Green I believe soul represents the link between what seems to be the individual and the one. How all that works, I still don’t know.

Art has a nice piece on it. He shares my misgivings and also puts the afterlife aside as an unknown. The soul is God’s breath which gives us life. The last breath before we die returns to the one and afterward we offer up our elements to the elements. My paraphrase.

Commentary on the news, Dreams, Health, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Slow to Wake

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Spring and Corona Lunacy II

Monday gratefuls: Sweet potato pizza. No, really. Seoah found it on a Korean youtube cooking channel. Kate’s good days. Sleep. Lots of it. Bernard Cornwall and the TV adaptation of his Saxon novels: The Last Kingdom. The blue sky. The sun. Black Mountain. Cogency.

Sleep. Until 6:45. Usually up at 5:30 (or, 4:30 in the true time). Dreaming, unwilling to rise. Even though Kep jumped on me. Rigel barked. Kate poked me. Couldn’t. Get. Up. Finally. Still not awake. Writing anyhow.

Don’t know what to say next.

Check on the idiot. Who spent seven hours tweeting, retweeting. On Sunday. A nod to his evangelical sycophants? Not sure about that, but I am sure, after having read a Washington Post article that this guy is decompensating. He seems scared, isolated, unsure of what to do next. Imagine the prison a high profile, powerful job like President could be if you no longer felt you could do it. Instead of anger I’m beginning to feel sorry for DJT. Out of his depth, no tools. Months more in office with a crisis like no other roiling the waters.

If you love him, let him go. How his followers, his base base, should act toward him now.

Got further on reorganizing the loft. A periodic task which, when complete, energizes me. Will finish this week if the banker boxes come.

Of course, I have to wake up first. Soon. I hope. Things to do, but no places to go.

Great Work, Music, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History, Woolly Mammoths

Echoes of Peace

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy II

Buddy Scott Simpson found this in Judson Baptist’s newsletter. (Minneapolis)

Echoes of Peace

This song was inspired by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and all the tribes, nations, people coming together in North Dakota to protect the water and halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. More about what’s happening: www.sacredstonecamp.org

“We are the river, and the river is us. We have no choice but to stand up.”
— LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Founder of Sacred Stone Camp, Cannonball, ND

Lyrics

All my relations, come
Every nation, come
All my relations under the sun
We are one

We are praying, come
We are praying, come
We are the song and we are the drum
We are one

We are the river, come
We are the river, come
We are the boat, the paddle, the shore
We are one

Mni wičoni, sing (Mitakuye Oyasin…)
Mni wičoni, sing
Mni wičoni, “water is life” for everything

We are the water, sing
We are the water, sing
We are the water
We are where all life begins

We are the ancient ones
We are the ancient ones
In your breath and bones we sing on
We are one

We are the meadow, come
We are the meadow, come
We are the lark that sings
the new day has begun

We are the new day, run, run, run
We are the new day, run, run, run
We are the old and we are the young
We are one

Mni wičoni, sing (Mitakuye Oyasin…)
Mni wičoni, sing
Mni wičoni, “water is life”
for everything

We are the water, sing
We are the water, sing
We are the water
We are where all life begins

We are the earth and sky
We are the thunder cries
We are the fire,
We are the light in your eyes

We are standing strong
Like a rock, like a stone
On this sacred ground we belong, we are home

All my relations, come
Every nation, come
All my relations under the sun
We are one

—Sara Thomsen

Mni wičoni (Mni wi-cho-nee) —Lakota for “water is life”
Mitakuye Oyasin —Lakota for “All My Relations”

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Health, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

So Lucky

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Spring and Corona Lunacy II

Friday gratefuls: New tricks for an old dog. Appreciative inquiry. Kate on the board, planning for the next five years. Kate sewing. Kate smiling. Kate. Seoah and her sadness. The coronavirus, what has it done for you today? My life’s quieter, less strained. Got me into spring organizing for the loft. Has laid bare the true fault lines in our country: economic and racial inequity, the emissions which poison us and are overheating our planet, yet another wave of know nothingism. The virus is only a medical crisis and it will pass.

This morning about 5 am I came awake as I usually do around that time. The electric blanket warmed me, the cold night air streamed from my open window. Rigel was asleep, her head between mine and Kate’s, her long body stretched out. Kep curled up at the end of the bend. Kate was asleep, too. I laid there for about a half hour, feeling so lucky. So lucky.

About 5:30 Kep jumped on me, as he does every morning, eager and happy, pressing down, saying hello, good morning, let’s get up! Rigel, a very heavy sleeper, lifted her head. Oh, no. Not now. Let me sleep a little longer. Come on, Rigel, time for breakfast, let’s get up, big girl! Her head sinks back to the bed. Nope. Not right now.

Rigel! Get up. Time for breakfast. She slowly rises and shakes herself, standing on Kate’s legs. All right, all right. I’m coming. I let the two of them out by the downstairs door. They run off, their bladders full, like mine. We’re all just mammals, doing what us warm blooded animals do after waking.

The early morning goes on. Let them back inside. The clink of food in dog bowls. Treats. Kep goes back down to sleep with Kate. Rigel stays in the sewing room. I get the paper, put it at Kate’s place. Pour some cold coffee into the big Santa Claus mug, grab my phone. On the way out of the house and up to the loft I turn on Kate’s upstairs oxygen, make sure the canula is around the newel post nearest the downstairs.

There’s a light coating of snow. I felt it during the night on my head. That open window. A bit of ice on the stairs up to the loft. Careful with my feet, that hard-earned Minnesota knowledge of how to walk on slippery surfaces.

It’s around 6 when I open the door, switch on the lights. Things are in a bit of disarray, more so than usual that is, because I’m rearranging furniture. Yesterday and the day before I moved my computer to a different spot. It had been in the same one for almost five years. Books related to Judaism going on a freshly cleaned off bookshelf. Reading chairs now with their backs to the window overlooking Black Mountain and Black Mountain Drive.

When my order of five banker’s boxes get here, I’m going to store all my object files from my docent days in them, take the boxes downstairs to the garage. Never used them. The plastic bins they’re in now will receive the two million words of Ancientrails printed out last fall. The pages will have cardboard year separators like a comic book store. That will free up the desk which Kate used for study during medical school. It will go parallel to the art cart and on the rug. On it will go my painting and sumi-e supplies, freeing up the whole surface of the art cart for painting, working with ink.

The manuscript of Jennie’s Dead is on the round table next to the computer, partially edited, awaiting more work. It’s only now, in retrospect, that I can see through the cloud that settled over me, a fog hiding the creative impulse, the simple joys.

So lucky.

Coronavirus, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, US History

HOWL

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy

Tuesday gratefuls: All those protesters, Corona Lunacy in full bloom. Seoah shopping at Safeway. The vast amounts of creative energy flowing into peak TV. Game of Thrones. The earlier rising of the sun. Kep and Rigel, still on the 4:30 am clock. Now 5:30. Cool air. Books. Books. The coronavirus, cutting right through the veneer of civilization in the U.S. Friends. You know who you are.

Howling. 8:00 p.m. Go outside. Howl. Continue until it fades. Since early in the lock down neighbors throughout Conifer: Kings Valley, Aspen Park, Evergreen Meadows, up here on Shadow, Conifer, and Black Mountains, we go out at 8 and howl. Doesn’t last long, two minutes, three minutes, but the sound is authentic enough to get Rigel’s attention.

Started out in support of the medical personnel. Now, though. I’m here. I’m here. Still alive. Still ok. This is us. Like the old ladies in the Italian city who threw open their windows and sang into the plague. But this is the mountains, not the land of opera. So, we howl.

Reminded me. A night several years ago in January, north of Ely, on a lonely road leading into the forest. I stood with the eight other students and howled into the night. The wolves answered us. This was a week long educational program put on by the International Wolf Center.

Howling is about solidarity, about personal presence, about territory. It’s also a bit silly up here, and fun.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Friends, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The West, Writing

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Covid

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy

Monday gratefuls: Kate in her sewing room. Making cloth masks. With pockets for coffee filters. So good. Oh Death by Ralph Stanley. Talking about death with my old friends on Zoom. Mario, it’s still too abstract. More real in our 80’s or 90’s. Glad he thinks so. The Riyadh, Singapore, San Francisco, Rocky Mountain connection. Got out Jennie’s Dead, started reading. Will start writing when I’m caught up. Feeling better overall.

Might be the imminence of spring. Might be the space between bloody January and today. Might be Kate’s incremental improvements with her fingers and her leaking problems. It certainly is not the current state of Covid-19 testing. Whatever it is, maybe just my cyclical psyche ready for a new era, I’m feeling strong.

Organizing my loft. Again. A periodic task necessitated either by a long down period like this last one or a time of full on work like I’m entering now. Another facet of this change might be an inverse response to cabin fever. I can’t go out, so I may as well go in.

Brother Mark sent me a picture from a rally, a sign that said, Give me Liberty or Give me Covid. These folks understand liberty and freedom in their most restrictive meaning. Liberty means you can’t tell me what to do and freedom means only freedom from, not freedom for, too.

Both have more expansive connotations. Liberty is also the ability to choose for others, to use your power, your resources on behalf of your neighbors. Freedom is not only freedom from the unreasonable intrusion of the state or the opportunity to follow your own dreams wherever they may lead. It’s also freedom to choose community responsibility. Freedom to vote, to organize, to lift up your nation. To stay in your home not only on your own behalf, but also in service to your elders, to the vulnerable.

Give me liberty or give me Covid illustrates too well the blinkered version of Lady Liberty, the one proclaimed by those yellow flags with the snake. That liberty means stay the fuck outta my way. Or, else. Misunderstanding the nature of liberty can be fatal. That sign proves it. Not sure how, or even if, this truncated view of two basic American values gets remedied. Especially if the false choice between liberty and illness gains traction.

What do you when the treasonous bastard encouraging these already misguided folks is the President? Save your sacred Second Amendment, he says. And the connection to all of this is what? Shoot the sick ones? As a New York Times story title says: Head of Government Encourages Anti-Government Protesters. This is where Kristallnacht came from. We’re way past the turn off for a reasonable resolution to this stand off.

What comes next? No idea.

Poetry

Still Alive

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy

Sunday gratefuls: 25 days of physical distancing. Flattening the curve. Beau Jo’s pizza. Rigel’s smile after I took her with me to Evergreen. Kep wanting to get up at 5. Little Gertie, a sweet girl. Snow showers yesterday. The wet whooshing sound of the occasional car on Black Mountain Drive. Braiding Sweetgrass, the grammar of animacy. Capitalizing the names of plants and animals to show their life force.

Buddy Tom Crane found this oh so pagan poem. I loved it and want to share it.

Time for Serenity, Anyone?
by William Stafford

I like to live in the sound of water,
in the feel of mountain air. A sharp
reminder hits me: this world still is alive;
it stretches out there shivering toward its own
creation, and I’m part of it. Even my breathing
enters into the elaborate give-and-take,
this bowing to sun and moon, day or night,
winter, summer, storm, still—this tranquil
chaos that seems to be going somewhere.
This wilderness with a great peacefulness in it.
This motionless turmoil, this everything dance.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Politics, Third Phase, US History, World History

Never again

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy

Saturday gratefuls: Brenton and his concern for Murdoch. Nursing assistant skills I’ve learned. Kate’s reduced leakage. Rigel, that rascal. Her spring fever digging at the edge of our deck. The solar snow shovel. Thursday’s snow all gone on the roadways. Remembering Mom and the garden spider at our breakfast table window. Trips to Stratford, Ontario.

Watching Orwell come alive again. Still. With Trump. Using the word liberated to incite insurrection against legally elected government officials. LIBERATE MICHIGAN! Even Minnesota. Calm, orderly, polite, compassionate Minnesota. Treason is a capital crime, a crime emanating from our capitol. Playing to his base in the basest way possible: hand out money, fan understandable frustration into the flames of unrest. Friends, it’s alternate universe time.

Life in the slow, slow, sloth lane. While all that swirls around, we eat breakfast, feed our dogs, shake our heads.

And in the third year of a faux monarch’s reign came a plague, not just here, but all across the world. Before this plague our country, beautiful and vibrant, had become ugly, violent, cruel. Now we’re sick and dying. What the hellfire and brimstone preachers called Old Testament times. Yet it is not long ago, not in a world of different customs and languages, but in our time, in our nation. It makes my heart sick. My head ache.

How can we teach our grandchildren that this is not what a nation is? When the Wizard of Oz pulls the curtains aside himself and makes clear that all he has are levers and knobs and steam whistles where competency need to be, what do we say to them? How do we explain that we have stood for freedom, for true liberation, for inclusion, compassion for the poor, the sick, and the elderly?

It was true in my memory, I’ll say. No, of course it was never all this or all that, of course not, but never did we have a party and a President who made it their holy crusade to pollute the rivers and skies, cage children, glorify sexual predation, and those made ill by race hatred. Never did we have a President and a party who praised our enemies and blamed our allies. America, like any nation, has always had greed, servants of Mammon, but rarely have we turned our government into a mechanism for siphoning money from the poor into their hands.

No, I’ll say, this is not us. It just is not us and it will require your good will, your good sense, your compassion, your sense of justice to make right. I hope you, Ruth and Gabe, can muster all these, can grow into the leaders who remedy the failures of this time. I will support you and any of your generation who are able.