Yearly Archives: 2023

Mountains, Plants, Poetry, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Mountains

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Monday gratefuls: Rock fish. Panko. Mixed vegetables. Potatoes. Cooking. The Ancient Brothers. Psychedelics. Colorado. Leaning into the new psychedelic era. My green back yard. Vince. Pine pollen on the driveway. The start of allergy season for me. Cold Mountain. My character for acting class. October 8th. Men and aging. Men and grief. A high blue Sky. The curve of Black Mountain. The solidity of Shadow Mountain underneath me. Maxwell Creek and Shadow Mountain Brook carrying water off of Shadow Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The treadmill

One brief shining: A deep sadness on reading in the Colorado Sun of the huge numbers of Elk, Mule Deer, and other wild neighbors who died over the winter due to starvation caused by the very snows which we all celebrated with the Colorado mantra we need the water and yes we do but at this cost I don’t know.

 

After reading that article the deep sadness came over me as I realized it might explain why the bull Elks have not been back for my Dandelions. Imagining them lying dead of starvation somewhere on Black Mountain. I hope I’m wrong, yet this is the first time since 2019 they’ve not shown up when the Dandelions were in bloom. It filled my heart to see their big bodies at rest after a meal. To watch them put their heads down and clip off the Dandelions and their greens. To stare as they jumped so easily from one side of the fence to the other. Perhaps some of their children will find my back. I’m leaving my gates open now, too. No more dogs to contain. Let the wild critters in.

Watching those three grow from younger and smaller Bulls to their majestic full size made seeing them each year even more special. Like everyone one up here, well, most everyone, I want our wild neighbors to thrive, live their best lives. Seeing those Bulls over a period of years gave me a personal glimpse into their lives. Like cousins you see once a year at Thanksgiving I saw them grow, got to know which one was twitchy, which one would spend the night here, which ones would leave and come back the next day.

 

Below are three poems attributed to Hanshan, or Cold Mountain. From this site

Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2006 All Rights Reserved.

This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.

 

Where’s the trail to Cold Mountain?

Cold Mountain? There’s no clear way.

Ice, in summer, is still frozen.

Bright sun shines through thick fog.

You won’t get there following me.

Your heart and mine are not the same.

If your heart was like mine,

You’d have made it, and be there!

 

 

A thousand clouds, ten thousand streams,

Here I live, an idle man,

Roaming green peaks by day,

Back to sleep by cliffs at night.

One by one, springs and autumns go,

Free of heat and dust, my mind.

Sweet to know there’s nothing I need,

Silent as the autumn river’s flood.

 

 

I traveled to Cold Mountain:

Stayed here for thirty years.

Yesterday looked for family and friends.

More than half had gone to Yellow Springs.

Slow-burning, life dies like a flame,

Never resting, passes like a river.

Today I face my lone shadow.

Suddenly, the tears flow down.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

The Sacred

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Trips becoming more and more real. Vince, my man. Kat. More connected, more grateful than ever. Tom. Mary. Sarah and BJ. Kate and the sweet picture with my daughter-in-law. Kep, my furry friend, a blessed memory. Rigel, too. Gertie, Vega. The Colorado companions. Cleaning off the art table. Getting back to painting. Sumi-e. Korean. Our journey around the sun, through the galaxy, and with the Milky Way itself. All the wild Babies out there right now, learning about life and its wonders, its perils.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Life finds a way

One brief shining: Water amazes me in every way liquid solid steam all different the liquid and the steam states capable of powering engines, generating Electricity, carving Mountains, carrying nourishment from one Continent to another, aqua vita not only whisky but aqua vita, a metaphor for the flow of ch’i and the reality of the flow of ch’i, either fresh or salty a wonder on which to float, in which to dive, over which to paddle cradled in Lakes and Ponds and Rivers and Oceans, delivered by pumps and pipes, everyday necessary, water, wow.

 

Had a down day in the afternoon again. Watching too much TV. Not tackling household tasks. Then I thought. Wait a minute. Yesterday I met with friends for breakfast (even though they didn’t show up, I did), had my car detailed, read many more Cold Mountain poems. Read some other poets of the Rivers and Mountains school of Chinese poetry. My character study began to take shape. Read two chapters in the excellent book God is Here. Made connections with Keshet (rainbow), the Israeli travel agency.

Still on the old achievement treadmill once in a while. Maybe more than once in a while. Enough, already. And I mean ENOUGH already! I’ve done enough, have enough, am enough. Always. No matter what I do or don’t do. I am. Or better I am becoming. Without the lace and frills of degrees or salary or salutes or celebrations.

I’m OK, You’re OK. The World’s OK. To go back in time to the self-help cliches of the early 70’s. This is the day the big bang has made let us rejoice and be glad in it.

 

God is Here takes our perceptions shaped by the word God and puts them through the metaphorical ringer. Changing them, adding to them, recognizing the metaphors as signals for new ways of approaching the sacred, the divine. Though I’m on board with new ways of describing what we mean when we use the word God or its other names like Elohim, Hashem, Adonai, YHVH, I still feel like we’re holding the wrong end of the stick. In other words I think we should talk about why water has a sacred valence. Air. Fire. Earth. Humans. Trees. Rocks. Dogs. Cows. Bacilli. Why do we need to fill in the vacuum created by the word God? Why not acknowledge the sacred nature of all things and learn how to talk about divinity itself in their terms. This is neither panpsychism nor pantheism nor panentheism. This is a version of animism.

 

Holding some disappointment that the Elk Bulls have not come. At least not when I was looking. I’ve held off having the yard mowed to preserve their favorite food. I miss seeing them.

 

Dreams, Friends, Travel, US History, World History

Still reading

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Alan. Irene. The dreamers: Bèrengér. Jane. Sarah. Susan. Bright Sunshine. Blue Sky. Jon Bailey, coming to detail my car. Tickets bought for Korea. Ode. Psilocybin. Marilyn. Her trip to Italy. Water. The Watercourse Way. Cool night. This ring I wear that Kate bought for me. Kate, her sweet memory. Tears. Ukraine. Biden. Trump and his indictments. May his clothing soon match his hair color. Deneen. Regime Change. God is Here. Consciousness.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Knowing how to read

One brief shining: The Alexandria Carnegie library had a ramp going down to the children’s library in the basement and on hot Summer days when I was young I would go there and walk slowly through the coolness of the ramp and its tall concrete walls imagining what adventures I would find once I pushed open the glass and wood doors that opened in to the stacks where I had already found The Silver Llama a wonderful tale of Peru and the high Andes, what other far away place awaited me.

 

Breakfast with Alan at the Bread Lounge. Picked up a loaf of multi-Grain Sourdough, sliced. Had to hurry back up the Mountain for the monthly meeting of the dreamers. Jane in England. Bèrengér in Germany. Sarah in Santa Fe. Susan in Half Moon Bay, California. Irene on Upper Bear Creek Road, Evergreen. All connected through the collective unconscious. Through night time signals from our inner world.

 

After, I read some. Bought tickets to Korea. Now I’m committed to visiting the same continent twice, though at points over 5,000 miles apart. 6,000 if you drove. A drive would be interesting, wouldn’t it?

Beginning to fantasize, prepare myself for travel. So look forward to seeing my son and his wife, their dog. Visiting Korea. Even the flight itself. Packing. Buying travel guides. Asking friends and taking advice from those who know the area.

 

Here are the threads. Know nothings. A book on this nativist movement in the 19th century is in the mail. Nativists. And, by definition, anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. Secretive. When asked about their work, they would often answer, “I know nothing.” Anti other. The KKK. Secretive. Under the sheets. Anti other. The formerly enslaved, Jews, Catholics. The Birchers. Added anti-communism to the mix. Presented the movement with new tactics like front organizations, running for office at school board and city council levels, chapters across the nation, anti-democratic. They are a bridge between the Know Nothings, the KKK, and the new far right.  The new Far Right. Anti-immigrant. Nativist. Often dog whistle anti-semitism, black and brown racism. Anti-globalist. Implied by their nativism. Much more variegated. Christian nationalists. White supremacists. Militia and anti-gun control folks. The Bundy, sovereign citizen movements in the West. Posse Comitatus. Survivalists and preppers. Those yearning for the apocalypse. For some damned reason.

Deneen’s works Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change attempt to provide a scholarly rationale for shoving aside classical liberalism and replacing it with some form of new ancien régime. An oxymoron IMHO. However his critiques of our current situation have bite. Recommending reading.

As Goya and Michelangelo reputedly said: I am still learning.

 

 

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase

I do not.

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Friday gratefuls: Tom. Alan. The Bread Lounge. Rebecca. Luke. Buying tickets today for Korea. Talking to my son last night. Kep, my sweet boy. Kate, her memory a blessing. Dandelions. Bunch Grass. Green Green Green. Not brown brown brown. Blue Sky. Warner Robbins. Oklahoma City. Rabbi Jamie. God is Here. Metaphors. Kindness. Chesed. Anshel.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mountains Green

One brief shining: Over the last few La Nina years by now the Meadows would have turned brown, the Lodgepole Needles would look starved of moisture, Smokey the Bear would have had his paw at High or Extreme Fire danger, my back yard would be desiccated, but this year, this building toward La Nino year has seen so much Rain the Mountains and Valleys and Meadows have plants in abundance all in different shades of green from the deep green of faraway Mountain sides covered with Lodgepoles to the brilliant chartreuse of the Aspens as they leaf out, blazing against their darker brethren like they do in the fall when their Leaves turn gold to Grasses and Flowers with the rich healthy green of Photosynthesis at its peak.

 

Conversation with myself. Going out and being with folks, especially at CBE makes me happy. My practice this whole month for the middot of simcha, joy, was to go to one more event at CBE. I’ve done that and it did make me joyful. Yet when two of my favorite CBE’rs were doing a gig on something I care about, Gun Violence, I couldn’t rouse myself to go. Evenings out. Driving at night. Late to bed. As I said before. Can’t quite get the handle on this one. It’s easier to go out at night now that the days are longer and the roads aren’t Snowy and Icy. That lowers the threshold for getting my butt out of my chair and in the car. Even so. I guard my early mornings because that’s when I have good physical and mental energy. Another event tonight. Gospel music shabbat. Already figuring out why I can’t be there. Even though I would enjoy it.

This inertia traps me as it might you. As we age, our energy supply does dwindle. And mine has chemically induced torpor. Low testosterone and the side effects of my chemotherapy drugs. Still. A life ruled by not doing begins to fade away, reduce itself to habit and routine. Why I’m pushing forward with travel plans in spite of impulses to not go, stay home where it’s comfortable. My goal as I may have said here before is to live until I die. Not become some sit around guy with no focus and no energy.

Let me be clear however. This does not mean I feel a need to accomplish anything of note. I do not. Been there. Done that. No, this refers to a state of being alive as one engaged with the natural world, with others in appropriate proportions, with getting up in the morning and being glad for another day.

Jefferson County, Judaism, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Travel

Silver threads

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Shirley waste. A solid workout, resistance & cardio. A weighted blanket. An electric shaver. Joe Pickett on TV. Mark’s new apartment. Psilocybin spores on the way. Reading the Rivers and Mountains poets of China. Finding my character. Cold Mountain. The Threshold ritual. Nights out. Booked flight to Israel. Oct. 25 thru Nov 10th. Excited. Getting some tips from a friend of Tom’s. Will probably buy Korea tickets this week or early next. On the road again.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Travel

One brief shining: Violet who served me breakfast said my hat and my shirt made a nice outfit which I assured her was totally coincidental she laughed as if that were not possible and I’d made an attempt at modesty later she looked at my book, Birchers, and asked me what genre was my favorite hers she offered was love stories if the book doesn’t make me cry I don’t like it.

 

Got hungry while writing, realized I had little I wanted in the house so I took myself to the Conifer Cafe. That’s three times including last Saturday. Unusual. Got to make a grocery order, get some breakfast variety available. Evening meals, I’m good.

Was gonna go to the synagogue last night for Richard Levine and Rabbi Jamie’s conversation about gun violence. Didn’t. No good reason except I didn’t want to drive to Evergreen or get home late. Late being 9:30 or 10. Acting class on Tuesday found me hitting the bed at 10:10. Don’t like that.

 

Finally cracked the code for booking my flight. Get in at midnight. Stay in Tel Aviv that night, then a taxi to the group hotel in Jerusalem the next day. A friend of Tom’s had recommended Eddie, a tour guide, but he’s booked. Not sure whether I need a guide or not, but he sounded worth exploring. Korea in late August will see me in the Far East. Israel the Near East. Asia is a big continent.

 

How bout those Nuggets? Jokic and Murray both with triple-doubles. I’m taking the Nuggets in 5. Next Grand Prix is in Canada.

 

I’ve been reading books like Fever in the Heartland, Why Liberalism Failed, Birchers, Christian Nationalism, Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West so you don’t have to. Got Regime Change by Patrick Deneen in the mail yesterday. He also authored Why Liberalism Failed. Regime Change offers a road map to a post-liberal future. He says.

Not in my lifetime. He believes liberalism has two Satanic horns one Democrat and one Republican but still festooning the head of his fiery majesty and moving in unison when he thrusts his pitchfork. In brief he believes both Democrats and Republicans are classical liberal parties bent on expanding the amount of space each individual has for self-expression. Republicans work toward economic freedom and international markets while Democrats expand social realms like sexuality, racial engagement in the demos, and programs for the poor.

Deneen sees right through their often bitter electoral contests (academic x-ray vision) to focus on their mutual expansion of government as the guarantor of free markets here and abroad, human rights based on sexual and racial differences, leveling programs for those left behind economically.

I imagine if woke wasn’t already taken, he’d be saying Wake Up America.

There are many threads here. Beginning to come together. Later.

Acting, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

The Slow Crossing

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: The Mule Deer in the back. The merry, merry month of June. Tal. Joan. Lid. Rebecca. The Bacchae. The Iceman Cometh. Tennessee Williams. The Dybbuk. Phaedra. Racine. House of Leaves. Mark Adams. Tip of the Iceberg. Issa. Haiku. Theater. Acting. Building a character study, presenting it in a project. The gospel singing at CBE last night. The Great Sol is so so lit. Trains. Booking a flight to Tel Aviv. Mark in an apartment. In Hafar. Those two Elk along the road last night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Visitation of the Mule Deer

One brief shining: Those Elk the three one with only one antler come now to eat Dandelions instead this morning it was one Mule Deer inside my fence her buddies looking at her from outside it while my heart admitted mild disappointment wondering when those big Bulls would get here having come four years in a row I enjoy their visit.

 

A definite shift, a threshold crossing under slow way. I’ve added go anywhere days to my calendar. Yesterday after a solo breakfast at Primo’s I turned onto 285 headed toward Bailey instead of back toward home. Took the first exit and turned left instead of right to Staunton State Park. S. Elk Creek Road. What a beautiful drive. Elk Creek meanders back and forth across the road doing ox bows in a large Meadow just off 285 then crosses to become a fast moving wide Stream creating white Water as it smashes itself against Rocks again and again.

The homes on the first stretch had a similar style. They used the bark board cut at a saw mill when starting to mill a whole tree as siding. They perched on solid slabs of Rocky Mountain basalt (I think) looking down on the action generated by the Stream below. The Valley sides are exposed Rock in many spots. Tall Ponderosa Pine throw shade at the road. The road itself vacillates between asphalt, gravel, and graded rocky Soil. I had to turn around fifteen minutes into my drive because two county road levelers took up the whole of a barely two lane stretch of road.

Elk Creek road is one of my new favorite places up here. That’s the way of the Mountains. You learn the roads you use a lot, the Mountains and Streams, the Valleys, the way homes arrange themselves down in the Valley and up in the Mountains. You begin to imagine that’s the way the Mountains are. But no. Only an exit away a totally different experience exists, one you would never know unless you turned down that road, drove along it for awhile.

That’s true of Blue Creek Road which interests Brook Forest Drive. Maybe four miles toward Evergreen on a road I take several times a week. I turned up Blue Creek Road six months ago. Wow. Open meadows. Large horse farms. Big houses. Each road has its own character, a character defined by the different folds and peaks and Valleys and Streams that Mountains create.

Learning, exploring. Even in my own smallish section of the Rockies. That’s part of the slow way of the crossing.

 

GeekWorld, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Day to day

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Great Sol. Light on the Needles of the Lodgepoles out my window. Black Mountain clear against blue Sky. The Elk Calves and their Moms on Lower Shadow Mountain Drive. That big Mama Bear and her two Cubs on Warhawk. It’s kiddy rearing time for our wild neighbors. Airline Websites. Travel details. Early Spring weather. Waiting for the sudden jump to Summer. Dandelions. Those three Elk Bulls. Waiting on their arrival. Soon. Travel agents. Crows and Ravens. Canada Jays. That fat Chipmunk. The Rabbits who live under the Shed. Mountain Lions.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Bear Cubs

One brief shining: In the Spring here in the Mountains Flowers emerge later Trees leaf out later but the Elk birth their Calves, the Mule Deer their Fawns, the Moose their Calves, the Mountain Lion their Kittens, the Black Bears their Cubs, the Fox their Kits while the Mountain Streams rush down, carrying the Water of Snow Melt and later Rains, while the temperatures fluctuate between warm and cold, while the days become longer and the nights shorter the Mountains and the Forests become a nursery for our wild neighbors.

 

In the morning I turn off my electric blanket, close the bedroom window, pick up my life alert button from its charging station, unhook my cellphone from its cable, turn off the oxygen concentrator, and go out into the next room for my hearing aid. I take my first pill of the day, synthroid for my funky thyroid, washing it down with some tap water. I set my phone’s alarm for one hour after the time I took they synthroid. That alerts me to take my morning meds which include my chemotherapy. Grabbing my phone I head upstairs to write Ancientrails in the home office. I often finish around the time my alarm rings, some days, like today writing takes longer.

Today I had to strip the sheets from the bed so Ana can put clean sheets on, arrange the blankets. Also I had to refill my seven day plastic pill containers. Took up some of the time I would have been writing.

I’m very aware of how dependent on electricity I am. Blanket. Charging for my phone, my life alert button, my hearing aid. The oxygen concentrator. And, medications. I’m alive thanks to the batches of pills I throw down each morning and evening. Life with cancer and hypertension. Life up high. 8,800 feet.

Bear comes next week to do the annual maintenance on my Kohler generator. It kicks in when heavy snows or lightning strikes take out my feed from C.O.R.E. Without it I would have no well-water, no cooking on my induction stove, no lights, no computer access. Electricity is the chi for my day-to-day life.

My life is quite a distance from the hibernating Bear in a rocky cleft or the Mountain Lion in their den. I am softer, less resilient than they are. Even though I can find food perhaps more easily, I require an automobile for the task while they rely only on their paws and their instinct. Which of us is more likely to survive global warming?

 

Cooking, Judaism, Myth and Story, Sport, Travel

Worth the Journey

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Rains. The cool nights. The Spanish Grand Prix. Those Nuggleheads. Max Verstappen, a phenom. Royal Gorge Railroad. Another rail journey with Tom. Israel trip becoming complicated. A bit. The Great Sol breaking up the gray Sky with Light. Brother Mark photographing his time in Hafar. Looks like a Nebraska small town with sand and Muslim architecture. Oh, and Arabic. Travel. Korea. A busy June. Life’s picking up its pace for me. And, why not?

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cool nights

One brief shining: Tried to figure out a way to make Chicken tenders edible so I got out the tenderizer and smacked them a couple of times each, put a poultry brine in a gallon Ziploc and stuffed them in, let them sit in the fridge for a couple of days, put chorizo to cooking in my cast iron skillet, added the drained Chicken tenders and some cut up cooked potatoes, a short time for the Chicken tenders to heat through, then plated them with the potatoes and some collard greens.

 

Turned out well. The chorizo spiced up the bland Chicken tenders and the smacking and the brining plumped them up. Not overcooked, seasoned. A good meal.

Ate it while watching the second half of the Spanish Grand Prix. Max Verstappen drives to the front of the field from the pole, builds up enough of a lead to ensure that a pit stop won’t cost him his position and starts lapping the field. He makes it look so, so easy. Yet he’s so far in front of the best drivers in the world, the perfect union of man and Red Bull machine. Red Bull has won all of the Grand Prix’s so far this season, Sergio Perez has won two and Verstappen the rest. Dominance. It won’t last though. In a sport as demanding as Formula 1 it never does.

 

Looks like I may be in Israel on my own for five days before the group tour starts. I plan to fly in on October 27th, check in early to the group hotel. If a group trip to Petra happens before the trip, I’ll be on that, too. If not, more time to experience this ancient city. I love being on my own, wandering where I want, finding this and that, meeting locals, eating street food or in out of the way restaurants. This will be my first time in the Middle East, a place I studied extensively while in seminary and has been constantly present in my life since Joseph deployed to Bahrain, Mark started teaching in Saudi Arabia, and Kate and I joined CBE.

With me on this journey will be memories of New Testament stories like the Mount of Olives, the sites of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection (The Church of the Holy Sepulcher), the garden of Gethsemane-that stained glass window in Alexandria First Methodist where my family sat all those years-as well as the Dome of the Rock where Muhammed landed after his night journey and then ascended to heaven. Jewish inflections too. The first temple site is coterminous with the Dome of the Rock. The wailing wall. The holocaust inspired push to create a contemporary homeland for the Jews. So much else of which I am ignorant.

Not to mention the crusades. A key focus of medieval piety. And early anti-Muslim bigotry. Lots of historical streams running this through this one spot on the globe.

Worth the journey.

 

Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Torah

The Hardest Problem

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Kate, her memory, her sweet and blessed memory. Jon, a memory. Another cool Night, good sleeping. 41 this morning. Spanish Grand Prix. Nuggets game 2 tonight. Another gray Morning with Clouds slipping over the peak of Black Mountain. Reading the Bacchae and the Iceman Cometh for monologues. Dionysus. God as metaphor. Consciousness. The hard problem. The waning Shadow Mountain Moon. Ingenuity, the little helicopter that could. On Mars. American space exploration. Yes. The James Hubble.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Consciousness, hard problem or not

One brief shining: So the brain takes in information from the senses to predict how to survive in the next few moments its job for millions of years and in the process has to build a map of reality-remember though the map is not the territory-and then move our enfleshed DNA to find food, hide from a predator, find a willing partner for reproduction all the while keeping track of its own reactions to better enhance its performance and in the process creating a narrator who can sift through and identify learnings, help in non-immediately crucial tasks like talking and laughing and wondering thus creating the Self?

 

Been having lots of various ideas over the last week or so. One of them tentatively expressed above. A summary of this article in Quanta, What Is the Nature of Consciousness?. Then a building notion, one nurtured over years of skepticism tempered by yearning. About God. Got this new idea from a book I’ve bought but not read, God Is Here. By a Reconstructionist Rabbi. Its thrust is to update metaphors about God. Fair enough. They need it. But, I realized. What if even an update has the wrong end of the stick? Makes more sense to me that God is the metaphor. Satan, too, for that matter. As Shiva and Vishnu and Brahma and Ganesh and Kali. Allah. The Tao. Chi. Prana. Soul.

Metaphors for this ages old dance between organism and environment. What is Fire? Water? Earth? Air? Death? Love? Sex? God as a metaphor for the wrestling organisms do with a problem even harder than consciousness, how to survive in an often hostile world, a world accessed only through the mediation of the senses, a world we cannot know directly-Kant’s ding an sich, the thing in itself-yet in which we must move and love and have our becoming. A mystery compounded of mystery. The ineffable world critical to our next action. Did that work last time? Why? Will it work again? Why? Is there a way to optimize my/our reactions to ensure our life? At least for now?

One of my favorite Torah stories: Jacob wrestling with the Angel at the Jabbok Ford. Yes. Our moment to moment struggle. Leaning into behaviors that have served us in the past yet finding ourselves blocked by new circumstances, ones inscrutable based on our learnings to this point. Or Abraham and Isaac. What must we be willing to give up to continue. To make our next actions a bit more likely to avoid serious injury or death? And, critically for God as metaphor, who or what says this behavior is the right one? That is, the one most likely to advance our DNA into the future?

Guess this work is appropriate to Sunday morning. Would not preach in a Presbyterian church, but a UU church or a Reconstructionist synagogue might hear it.

Family, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Travel, US History

Small Town Life

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Mark deep in the sands of the Arabian Peninsula. Mary coming here on June 16th. Korea. My son’s new apartment. Huge. Working on details for Israel pre-tour. A gray Sky. An El Nino on its way. Better weather for us here in the Mountains. Acting class. My monologue. Hunting for restaurants in Jerusalem. Traveling. An Ellis family trait. Marina Harris. Ana. Furball Cleaning. Taking myself out for breakfast. Aspen Perks. Reading Birchers. Finished Fever in the Heartland. Reading One Thousand Nights and the Mahabarata. Took a break from Korean, back to it today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: This year in Jerusalem.

One brief shining moment: Gray skies put a shroud over Black Mountain and the bowed Branches of the Lodgepoles seem subdued this weather so different from June of years past when hot dry Winds raced across Shadow Mountain drying out the Grasses and the Needles of the Lodgepoles pushing Smokey the Bear to move his pointing paw into the high or extreme Fire danger positions now we Mountain dwellers can relax a bit as his paw remains where it has been since Winter-on low.

 

Taking a break here. Off to Aspen Perks with Birchers.

Met Murphy and Pete again. I slid into the booth with them. Murphy’s a South Carolina transplant as of four years ago. A handyman, but obviously well educated. He’s got a New England accent, slight, but as he said his wife reminds him he was lucky enough to marry a Southern gal. She’s a horse trainer currently back in South Carolina working with horses they still own. They sold their property but kept some horses. Near a little town just across from Augusta, Georgia in South Carolina.

Pete’s around my age, maybe a bit older. He’s a native Coloradan. Born in Denver. A happy right winger to Murphy’s gregarious lefty. Just before we got up to go I said my son was in the military. Pete had indicated he was, too. Yeah I said I was an anti-Vietnam war protester and my boy goes in the military. Pretty sure I saw Pete wince but he was headed up to pay and we were all leaving. Some stories remain fraught. Will have to have that conversation with Pete next time.

Nice to make a random connection up here. Like with Kat. Whom all three of us agreed is a top of the line waitress. She warned me, while they could hear, that these two are dangerous. Small town life.

 

Almost getting ready to spend real money on the Israel trip. I’ll go 6 days early. Explore Jerusalem on my own and take a before the tour starts trip to Petra with others who want that as a side journey. First step is an airline ticket. Then travel insurance. After that the two installments for the group tour.

 

Saw the new apartment near Osan. 4 bedrooms. Looks even bigger with little to no furniture in it. My daughter in law sent me a video. Murdoch followed her often showing up in the shots.

 

With Birchers and Fever in the Heart Land I’m beginning to get a great historical perspective on the odd and fraught political moment in which we find ourselves. A clear lesson is that there is no underestimating the darkness of the human heart when it fills with fear and narrows its intake valves.