Monthly Archives: July 2023

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

The Magic of the Ordinary

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Wednesday gratefuls: Rebecca and her 45th high school reunion. Joan and her son who has started to receive social security. Alan and his tenderness. Abby and her passion. Deborah and poetry. Tal and his sweet empathy. Deborah as Wonder Woman. Acting class last night. Working on Herme. Growing, changing. Taking shape. The purpose of life. Figuring it out. Letting the anxiety through. Letting light in. Anxiety opened a Leonard Cohen crack.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love.

One brief shining: Drove down the hill to pick up my new hearing aid at Mile High Hearing, saw Amy and left for Dave’s Chuck Wagon Diner over on Colfax seven minutes away anxiety bubbling after having given myself two new cancers and one autoimmune disease then deciding that was ok I could handle it when all of sudden the purpose of life bubbled up and I knew what it was: to burn away everything but love.

 

Usually the first and loudest critic of my own work I believe I’ve found the purpose of life. Kinda hubristic, yeah? Still. The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love. Sounds right to me. Ha. How bout that? Nothing like having decided cancer(s) were on their way to claim my body but not my soul. That got the old philosophical engine cranking over then purring.

I even give myself a pass on the anxiety. I’ve been sick long enough and spent enough time placing it into perspective, one foot before the next, that sometimes a bit of new data can upset my inner balance. So. You’re ok, Charlie. Or as Dr. Gonzalez said when I sang the worried song in an e-mail to her: You’re fine. I see this all the time. Oh. All right. Zip up and trust your doctors. Kate’s right there with me.

 

Emotions have been close to the surface for the last couple of weeks anyhow. Not sure why. Kate coming into memory and tears almost there, too. Joy at seeing Luke and in the acting class last night. Deep curiosity reading a one volume history of contemporary Korea. Expansion of my heart at seeing blue Sky. Satisfaction with my home. Awe at the beauty and wonder of the Mountains and the Wild Neighbors.

 

Life has begun to take on a magical component. How to describe it? The ordinary shifts subtly toward the extraordinary. That Lodgepole. Is it waving at me? The mist rising from the road last night. Transported me to an Other World. Kate’s Creek now has a mystical presence in my life as place of healing. The Wild Neighbors who share their lives with me on occasion I see as spirit messengers. Even the anxiety I felt over the last few days. A crack that let the light shine in.  How can I keep from singing?

Perhaps the transition from this world to the next lies not as far away as we think.

 

Friends, Health

The hits just keep on coming.

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Tuesday gratefuls: Amy. Mile High Hearing. My hearing aid is back. Labs. Gamma globulin. Luke. Leo. Dr. Gonzalez. Tara. A great workout. Friends. Charlie H. Sadness. Arjan. EE. Working on electric planes. Bright Sun. Energy from the Great God Sol. Fatigue. Cancer. Worry. Trust your doctors. Kate. Whose memory is a blessing. Ruth and Mia. Gabe. Writing heals.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writing

One brief shining: This green coffee mug the one with the Nicollet Island Inn stamp comes from our 25th anniversary dinner there celebrating that night after our wedding we spent in a room at the Inn before checking onto Panam flight for Rome and the Hotel Internazionale at the top of the Spanish Steps. A sweet and precious memory.

 

Writing heals. At least for me. Yesterday got my lab results back and they don’t look great. Low gamma globulin. Could be an early sign of leukemia or multiple myeloma. Could be other things, too. None of them welcome. They came in just before I took off for dinner at Tara’s last night so I hadn’t had time to let them sit, absorb the shock. Was gonna do that when I got back, but Tara asked about my health and it sorta spilled out. With my worst fears and least considered thoughts. I’ve known Tara a long time and I trust her a lot on the emotional level. Otherwise I might not have talked about my worry. But I did. Felt bad about throwing that in at the end of a dinner party.

As I have learned over the last couple of years plus since Kate’s death, I’m most able to deal with upsetting information on my own, in my house. The phrase that echoes is: the hits just keep on coming. From WLS Chicago radio of the 60’s. I have a way of recentering, gaining perspective when at home by myself. I’m not saying I repress or deny. No. I am saying that I can step up to the day, or night as it might be, and say this right now is where I am and what I have to deal with. Yes, later there may be something else, but I will face it when or if it comes.

This day is sufficient unto itself. I can live in no other place, ever. Today I have to retrieve my errant hearing aid, have breakfast with Luke and get my chart reading from him, then work on Herme in class tonight. That’s what Tuesday is. I’m living this day.

And this. Death is not an optional experience. Whether it comes now, in the next few months, or the next few years. No medical report, no illness, no treatment, no doctor can change that. I’m ready if it’s today or ten years from now. However, as I’ve said, I’d prefer to wait. Even so. No amount of worry or fussing can do anything except make that day more difficult, more fraught. I refuse to die unhappy with the length or quality of my life. So I won’t.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Woolly Mammoths

A bit more on conversion

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Monday gratefuls: Out of thin Air. The Ancient Brothers on the elemental. A good nap. Nights growing longer. Living in the temperate zone. Allergens. Itchy eyes, runny nose.  Peripheral vision. Vision. Taste. Hearing. Touch. Smell. Building our own personal reality. Rabbi Jamie. Dick. Tara and Arjan. The many folds and valleys, neurons and synapses of our brains. The wonder of the whole nervous system. Cancer. Prostate Cancer.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The mind-heart. The lev

One brief shining: This morning the Lodgepoles exude health needles green bearing new green cones alongside older light brown ones shooting into the blue Sky with puffy white Cumulus drifting through and Black Mountain’s gentle presence not far away my home world.

 

The Ancient Brothers talked through the four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. A week for each. Five different perspectives on each element. Paul, the careful researcher. Mark, the personal with a creative twist. Bill, often the religious or poetic. Tom, literary and scientific, poetic. Myself, the personal with a religious twist. Our differences are what make these Sunday mornings. Same topic through different lenses. All valid. All interesting. All enriching. A lesson here about the nature of the human community. We need you to show up as you. You’re the only one who can.

 

Also a clue here about my reason for converting. In the Word to Deed class Jamie gave this past Saturday we discussed the Ma Tovu, a prayer said upon entering a synagogue or other house of worship:

How lovely are your tents, O Jacob; your encampments, O Israel!
As for me, through Your abundant grace,
I enter your house to worship with awe in Your sacred place.
O Lord, I love the House where you dwell, and the place where your glory tabernacles.
I shall prostrate myself and bow; I shall kneel before the Lord my Maker.
To You, Eternal One, goes my prayer: may this be a time of your favor.
In Your abundant love, O God, answer me with the Truth of Your salvation.    Wikipedia

While discussing the first three verses, I offered a slightly different reading than the others. Jacob represents the individual, Israel the collective. Or, said another way, the personal and the communal. As for me I take as the individual who, through the abundant grace of a collective or community (Your in this case referring back to the first line) enters with awe into a place made sacred by the community itself. This made me think of why I love CBE, the sacred nature of the connections I’ve made there. I now had a horizontal rather than a vertical view of sacred community. Not infused with holiness from above or without, but created from within the magic and mystery of human connection, human relationship.

To go on. O Lord I read as a Self, a Soul. The rest is an inner prayer. I love this body and this community in which I dwell. The place where glory tabernacles. I am a humble member of this community which makes me who I am. To you, the Eternal soul/Self, I pray, hoping this is a time of your favor. In the abundant love I feel in this community I find the truth of your salvation. [salvation=healing, wholeness]

As Bill said yesterday morning when I recounted some of this, he said, that’s what makes the Woolly’s special. And, it is. We find the sacred, the mysterious, and the grace filled not in some dogmatic prison but in the everydayness of our lives. With the people we come to love, with the people we come to trust with our most intimate selves. And with the places that give us the same feelings.

So converting is not really about a religion per se, it’s making a claim about who my people are. I have at least three religions by this count: Judaism, The Woolly’s/Ancient Brothers, and my family.

 

 

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah

Calligraphy and OMG channel

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Air. Thin air. Earth. Wind. And Fire. Elemental, my dear Watson. Sherlock Holmes. Perry Mason. Hercule Poirot. Daiglish. Mystery. Mysteries. Books. The written word. The spoken word. Acting. Herme. Han Shan. Whitman. Rilke. Rumi. Oliver. Harrison. Lee Child. CJ Box. Richard Powers. Idris Elba. Ethan Hawke. K-dramas. The lev, the mind-heart. The Moon. The  Sun. Our Home.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writers

One brief shining: A Mountain morning blue Sky above Black Mountain curving behind the Lodgepoles in my Yard a cup of coffee and water on the desk my fingers dancing on the keyboard not only an extension of the curves and folds of my brain but of my lev saying things before I think them reading what I have written to know what I’m saying the joy of writing.

 

 

Calligraphy. An art almost unknown to Americans, even more so to millenials who have famously not been taught cursive writing. When Kate, my son, and I went to China, I remember we went to a national museum in Beijing. I was excited because I had always found Chinese art compelling. Disappointed. The exhibits were all calligraphy. Mostly long sheets of rice paper [made from mulberry leaves] with the squiggles and wiggles of Chinese cursive ideograms. Unintelligible. It took a while for me to realize the power of what I’d seen. How I wish now I could return to that exhibit.

Oddly, many at CBE remember me for a project during one Kabbalah class focused on the Hebrew alphabet. Using sumi-e brushes and black ink from Japan I drew many of the Hebrew characters in a flowing cursive, put a small verse beside them, then signed with my chop I purchased when in Beijing. The small red mark of my name contrasted with the black of the aleph and bet and vav and nuns. I set up tables and had everyone try the experience of using sumi-e brushes.

Mark Odegard sent me an image of a Han Shan, Cold Mountain, poem he had done by a Chinese calligrapher. What a beauty. Made me want to own a nice piece of calligraphy for my home. Searching for one.

 

Had a bad time Friday evening and Saturday morning. I let the worm of anemia enter my omg channel. Usually I get diagnostics back from my blood work the next day on Quest Diagnostics. The result of the latest round of blood draws, taken Thursday, has not been posted. I think some maintenance issue on the Quest website. However, it left me wondering about anemia with no helpful information to counteract speculation. Internal bleeding? Probably not, although not to be ruled out. Low iron or vitamin B? The blood tests will show. So I went to the logical place next: leukemia. I have cancer already, why not two kinds rather than one? With no data my mind went down that road pretty easily.

Here’s the thing. I’m not afraid to die, but I’d prefer later thank you very much. Still. Could be now? Right? I’m ok with that, yes, but again, not my preference. I went over the legacy such as it is. My writing. Friendships and family. This stand and that for justice. Perhaps a few original ideas not well developed. Got sadder as I thought. The evening was chilly, rainy. Gloomy. Outside mirroring inside.

Took me a bit of time to right the ship. Not long but not before I’d had a persistent gnawing angst for a few hours. Didn’t disturb my sleep however.

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

How bout that

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Saturday gratefuls: Pavilion L at Denver Health. Travel Clinic. Those two nurses. Typhoid vaccine. Immunocompromised. Joe Mama’s. Alan. Driving down the hill. A cool but clear day so far. Rain yesterday. Rabbi Jamie’s 18th anniversary. The potluck. Ice Cream from Liks. Seeing Sally, Ann, Ellen, Dick, Alan, Cheri, Helen, Rich, Kim, Rich’s mother, Irene, Elizabeth, Susan. A community. My community. An informal conversion. Me. Crossing the Threshold. A ritual. Herme, a one man show. Anemia. Weariness.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Alan and me

One brief shining: Yesterday in a ten foot wide breakfast place Joe Mama’s Alan and I managed a feat worthy of an updated Buster Keaton sketch wherein I arrive early and take a seat at a two-topper right ear against the wall and back to the door order coffee looking at the menu until I decide to text Alan thinking he’s found the place as hard to locate as I did only to discover a text had come in from him saying the same huh so I turn around as Alan gets up from the table behind me where he’s been sitting for ten minutes having just read my text. Oh.

 

Still laughing about that one. Once a month I drive down the hill and go to breakfast with Alan somewhere in the west Denver metro. This time it was Joe Mama’s. A clever name. I missed it twice. It’s situated between Celebrity Tattoos and The Glass Pipe Shop in a tiny strip mall on busy Colfax. My deaf left ear to noise, my right ear protected by a wall sound comes to me much more clearly, with or without hearing aids. So my back to the  door since the two-tops were only on the right side as you enter. Alan missed me when he came in and we sat like teenagers across the table from each other texting unaware of the other’s presence. Funny.

 

Finished a session with Rabbi Jamie on Jewish prayer. Can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I am. I’m gonna convert. Or, join up. Or, whatever. It wasn’t so much about this session as it was a journey of the heart, a long one. A really long one.

 

Just sent this note to Jamie:
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to go through the conversion process. Not so much to convert, I believe I’ve already done that in my heart, but to get more of the shared language of Judaism. That way I can appreciate the opportunities at CBE much more.

Been on my mind for a while, but the recent work with metaphor and this morning’s work with the prayers has opened a way in for me at the human, non-metaphysical level I hadn’t felt before.
Said I was done with joining things. Well, I was. Now, I’m not.

 

Let me give you a brief synopsis of the journey: As an anthropology student, I had an assignment to visit a synagogue and write it up from an anthropological perspective. It felt very foreign to me. Somewhat foreboding. At the same time I was dating a Jewish girl and met her parents. He was a jeweler, but very well read in philosophy which was also my major at the time. That really impressed me.

After my first philosophy class at Wabash demolished Christian proofs for the existence of God, I exited the Christian faith and became an existentialist vis a vis Camus.

You know already, most of you, about my seminary and ministry experience focused, I now know, on the God as judge metaphor. God judged our society and found it wanting when it came to caring for the poor, the other, the downtrodden. So did I. So do I.

I was a Christian. Yes, I was. But the glue that held me there was weak from a theological perspective. Justice has other roots than the New Testament demands for loving the neighbor. So when I felt the need to leave, it was not a difficult change. Especially since I’d found Kate and she me.

At the time I found Kate I was also dating Caroline Levy and had a connection, never acted on, with Ellen Sue Stern. All three Jews. I had also made a vow to myself during college that I would not seek spiritual guidance outside the Western tradition. Why? Because culture is so powerful I believed we could only reach profound understanding with Western inflected religious tradition.

I mostly followed that. No Buddhism. No Hinduism. Well, almost none. Taoism however did exert a pull on me. And remains an integral part of my essentially animist approach to finding the sacred.

Then Kate and I moved to Shadow Mountain and because of her earlier conversion found Congregation Beth Evergreen. I became an embedded pagan over the last eight years first as Kate’s husband and then on my own right. I was happy with that until this morning. Now I want to move all the way inside the miskhan, the sacred temple that is the Jewish people.

I’ve probably known I would do this since Patty told me Have a nice Easter and unbidden rose within me no, I’m a Passover guy. That was my clue that I’d converted in my heart already.

So I’m gonna do it. Yes, I surprised myself here. Happy to do so. Consistency as my evergreen buddy Ralph Emerson says is the hobgoblin of small minds.

 

Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Nudges

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Friday gratefuls: Kristen. An honest doc. And, sweet. Sammie, her nurse. A sweet young woman. Quest Diagnostics. My phlebotomist there, 50 years in the business. Also a sweet lady. Lucky me to have such a great team, along with Kristie and Dr. Eigner, looking after my health. Mussar. God is Here. Myths to Live By. Joseph Campbell. The book that made Jamie choose to become a rabbi. Tal. Herme. Janet. Rebecca. Ellen. Ann, a wonderful artist. Alan, breakfast at Joe Mama’s later this morning. Marilyn and Irv. Good friends. Brunch at their house yesterday. Licks and Lila, their two pups.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends

One brief shining: Influences come into our lives often quietly unbidden sometimes unknown until they blossom into a nudge, a gentle tap on the shoulder or a dramatic push like Myths to Live By or that verse from Micah do justice love mercy and walk humbly with your God which took me from Appleton, Wisconsin to seminary.

 

Got some insight on the two Charlies from yesterday’s post. Turns out I’ve become anemic since my last round of labs. Combine that with low T and my chemo drug. No wonder I’m dragging by mid-afternoon. No clear reason for it either. More labs drawn yesterday. The phlebotomist and I have become friends. I see her that often. Medical stuff. Necessary, but also a nuisance.

 

At mussar yesterday Jamie talked about the one book that made him want to become a rabbi, Myths to Live By. A Joseph Campbell work. Haven’t read it so I ordered it. Put that book together with a Reconstructionist background and Rabbi Jamie comes into clear focus. A man driven by myth, the truest expression of human reality. A better and more solid, more lasting influence than mine. For sticking with the choice.

Made me reflect on my own choice to go into the ministry. It wasn’t just this verse from the prophet Micah: Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God, but it was the core of the push. It was the beginning of the 70’s. The Vietnam War still raged its ugly way across that divided nation. While dividing ours, too.

I met the Reverend Curtis Herring in Appleton. An insistent voice against the war in a very conservative section of Wisconsin [Joe McCarthy once represented this area in Congress and is buried in the Appleton Cemetery. As is Harry Houdini, btw] Reverend Herring convinced me to give seminary a try. I did.

Like, I imagine, Rabbi Jamie once the decision to attend rabbinical school or seminary is made, no matter the original impetus, a certain amount of occupational socialization begins to occur. Yes, United Theological Seminary had a distinct and active left political student body. That drew me there and got me started, but the intellectual heft of a two thousand  year old tradition also captured my attention.

Twenty years later I wandered out of the ministry in a haze, blessing the universe for having Kate show up at just the right time in my life. My initial impulse, a justice oriented ministry, had proved a great fit for me until I began to focus more attention on the church side of the equation. I no longer believed in the resurrection, the power of God, or the staying power of the church as an agent of social justice. In the Christian world that meant get out.

Had I entered the ministry from Rabbi Jamie’s mythic impulse I might have stayed longer. Reconstructed the resurrection. The God metaphor. Found a way to ground the justice work more in local congregations. As it was, I had no choice but to leave an institution in whose root ideas I no longer had faith.

Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase

A tale of two

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Thursday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Their two pups. Heidi. Psilocybin. Dr. Gonzalez today. Mussar. My wedding ring Kate bought in Taos. Amazing changes in my sense of self. Dogs. Kep and Rigel, their memories a blessing. Kate, always Kate. Jon, a memory. Our Planet. Its travels with us as passengers. Shorter travel to Korea and Israel. An open heart. A clear mind. Tara. Luke. Leo. Vastness. Wildness. Wilderness. Ocean depths.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The World Ocean

One brief shining: A moment to remember the Titan and its now dead passengers perhaps we could call them explorers who lost their lives on the real final frontier a watery realm extending all the way round Mother Earth and little known in any detail yet why I wonder pay to risk your life in this way. Why?

 

Understanding Whitman more and more. I am large, I contain multitudes. Sometimes I don’t recognize the person I was moments or hours before. Sure my twenty year old self and I are different in substantial ways. But my morning and afternoon selves? Oh, yes. Morning Charlie has energy. Readiness. Eagerness. Writes. Makes breakfast. Works out. Takes on challenging chores like calling United Healthcare for the seventh time to deep six that ghost bill of $429. Makes a typhoid vaccine appointment. Visits friends. Opens himself out to the world.

While late afternoon and evening Charlie. Sits. Watches TV. Reads. Often chooses, most often chooses, to stay home. Do little. Much more passive. Has less energy. I wonder if this is habit, some of it surely is. I wonder if this time of day could be different? Could it be a creative time? My buddy Ode works hours at his art each day. How I admire that. Not sure who this Charlie is. Not really. Sometimes I feel like I’m living my life in the mornings and observing my life in the late afternoons and evenings.

Or, am I just testosterone challenged? Using up my available energy in the morning? I don’t have that same disturbing fatigue I had until my thyroid stimulating hormone got right. Even so, I become smaller, less somehow. Is it age? An effect of my cancer drugs? I think back to Kate’s long illness when I had to be on literally 24/7. Did I use up some story of energy or will or ambition then?

You’ve guessed by now that I’m uneasy with this tale of the two Charlies. As if one is right and the other wrong. Yet. Is that just the American curse of worth by achievement? Who you are is what you do? Han Shan says: A thousand clouds, ten thousand streams, here I live, an idle man. That’s a Taoist perspective with which I largely agree, or think I do. Han Shan wanders the green Peaks by day and sleeps by the cliffs at night. There was a whole tradition of Chinese scholars who found this life way not only ok, but valorous. After the working life, come to the Mountains and live with the Tao, letting life and nature flow over you.

Perhaps the way to integrate the two Charlies is to accept both of them, not as better or worse, but as different responses to the Tao as it flows here on Shadow Mountain.

Acting, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends

A Shortie

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Wednesday gratefuls: Hail. Rain. Cool weather. Again. Acting class. Tal. You’ve got such a great presence. Joan. Police. Being flushed. Erleada. Herme. Cold Mountain. Poetry. Mountains and Rivers. The Tao. Chi. A great workout. Again. My home. My son and his wife. K-dramas. Tom. Diane. The Ancient Brothers. Zoom keeping us together. Alan, into the city for breakfast this week. Fog. Dewpoint. The mist on the road last night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The mind/heart. Lev

One brief shining: Alfred North Whitehead a favorite metaphysician [what? you don’t have a favorite metaphysician? Hurry. They’re on sale this weekend!] developed a metaphysics based on becoming a process view of reality rather than a static one suggested by a metaphysics of being so he knew to begin with that the heart and the mind, the body were not separate but a dynamic whole sending sensory data in and pushing actions feelings thoughts out.

 

Late night last night. Not in bed till 9:45. Acting class. I spent a good part of the day continuing work on Herme, my character study. 2 edits of my introduction established Herme and Gaius Ovidius as key figures who introduce the themes of Mountain life, chosen seclusion, and Chinese Rivers and Mountains Poetry. Right now it’s at about 15 minutes. Probably enough for the class and our showcase. Not long enough for presentation to larger audiences. Tal’s excited about Herme and would like to help me develop it into a one person show.

Got up late, too. 7:55 for an 8 o’clock call with Tom. That’s shaving it close. Combine a late night and a workout day, 100 minutes. Result? A slow afternoon and evening.

 

That’s all I got. Morning’s a better time all round for me.

 

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Holidays, Judaism, Korea, Politics, Travel, US History

Happy Birthday to the good ole U.S.A.

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Tuesday gratefuls: Acting class tonight. First half of Israel trip paid for. Herme introduction rewritten. Parchment paper ordered. No Fireworks up here. Good for Dogs. Fire. Air. Thin air, melting into thin air. My feet and toes. Holding me up since 1947. My ankles and calves and thighs. Mobility. My pelvis, butt, penis and testicles. Sitting, twisting, elimination. No joy at this point in my life. My thorax. Holding important stuff in. My arms and fingers. Dexterity for all my needs. My shoulders and neck. Supporting my head. My head, mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. Eating, hearing (sort of), seeing, smelling, taking in oxygen, a case for my brain. All these years forgot to be grateful for that which is closest.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My body

One brief shining: Can you imagine the evolution of the eye or the slow changes necessary to create a thumb perhaps you are the one who can follow the path from our One-Celled ancestors to a beating heart maybe you grasp the folding and intricate interlacing of brain matter neurons synapses the marvel of language as it first sat on the first tongue to express a thought through sound oh this everyday miracle our body ourselves our home for life.

 

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July. Today is Seoah’s Yankee Doodle birthday. What a great birthday for a naturalized U.S. citizen. Seoah and my son. Ruth and Gabe. My immediate family. Mark in Saudi Arabia. Mary to return to Malaysia and South East Asia. They are my hope for this country. Them specifically and what they represent.

Seoah, a Korean by birth and a citizen of Korea until two years ago. She married my son, a Bengali by birth. Both now naturalized citizens of the U.S.A. My son serving this country in the military. Both abroad, in Korea, protecting not only the U.S.A. but much of Asia as well. This is, in these two people, the most fundamental promise of America. That you can come here from wherever you were born, no matter the circumstances, and become a citizen, a full-fledged participant in the colorful tapestry of American life.

Or consider Ruth and Gabe. On their mother’s side Jewish, their grandfather a Romanian Jew from Bucharest and their grandmother of an immigrant Jewish family as well. Third generation. On their father’s side Norwegian ancestry four generations removed from Bergen. They are also both Gen Z, the most politically aware generation since the Boomers. They will need to be with the crushing weight of adaptation to climate change they will have to carry.

Mary and Mark. The expat life. Being American on foreign soil. Contributing to the lives and welfare of Saudis, Thais, Malaysians, Japanese, and Singaporeans. Representing the American ideal of a world known for its inclusion rather than its chauvinism. Representing our country to other cultures. Being the good American rather than the ugly American.

How can I not be hopeful when I can see in my own family the very America I hold so close and dear. Especially on this day.

 

Acting, Denver, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Hermitage, Literature, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel, Weather +Climate

Learning my lesson. Again. And, yet again.

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Monday gratefuls: Tal. Lid. Luke. Leo. Dick. Ellen. Rabbi Jamie. Laura. Lisa. Sagittarius Ponderosa. Roaming Gnome Theater. Aurora. Bad memories. Not blessings. Angry Chicken. Korean hot pot. Sundays. Shabbat. Seoah. Murdoch. Storms coming. The wettest June on record here. Keeping that Fire risk low. Traveler’s insurance. Allianz long term care insurance. Kristen. Travel medicine. Travel. Welcome to the journey.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shakespeare

One brief shining: Read some of the Tempest and Midsummer Night’s dream this morning reminded of the packed and punchy nature of Shakespeare his plays and his poems words all tight ricocheting off each other building meanings until like a Han Shan poem one line changes the meanings of all that came before a genius so luminous I feel like kneeling down before him to say, Master!

 

Ooh boy. I keep learning and relearning the same lesson. Which I suppose means I’m not learning at all. Anyhow. Drove into Denver yesterday, then into Aurora near Jon’s old house. Left here about 11:45. My plan. Go to Stanley Market, eat at Rosenberg’s deli, then make the short trip from there to Roaming Gnome theater for the matinee performance of Sagittarius Ponderosa.

About half way down the hill on 285 I saw all the cars streaming west, latecomers to the usual Friday boat and camper show headed to South Park and the interior of the Rocky Mountains. What’s this? Oh. July 4th traffic. Folks taking the week, leaving late to avoid the Friday afternoon traffic jams so common here. Wait. July 4th weekend.

Oh. Stanley Marketplace. Will be packed. I might not get served in time. I had given myself an hour to eat after arriving. Began to run through alternatives. The Bagel Deli just past I-25. That could work. Pulled into their parking lot. Nope. Folks waiting outside. Confirmed my hunch about Stanley Marketplace. Well. New York Deli not far from that spot. Will be too busy, too. A holiday weekend.

I had wanted to eat lunch at Rosenberg’s, then pick up some dinner at the Angry Chicken after the play. I love their Korean fried chicken, but it’s way too far to go unless I’m close by. Turned north as 285/Hampden became Havana. An Asian inflected part of the Denver metro. H-Mart nearby. Lots of pho shops. A Korean hot pot and barbecue restaurant. Hmm. May not be as invested in the holiday weekend. Could be easier to get in and get out.

It was. I had never had hot pot before though it’s similar in nature to Khan’s Mongolian barbecue in the Twin Cities. Tables with induction coil wells over which a pot of broth sits. You pick up soup ingredients on your own, take them back to the table, and put them in the heating broth. Waitress delivers the meat in thinly sliced rolls on long platters. Spent more than I wanted to but I learned how to do it. Will be useful when I hit Osan. Could have been tasty but I was in a hurry and didn’t really realize the potential of the hot pot.

Got to the theater a bit late. They had waited for me. But not long. Sag was already underway. In the small darkened space I fumbled my way toward a seat. Dick and Ellen Arnold were seating in the same four chair row.

The play itself. Can’t tell whether my hearing made it difficult to follow or whether it was the script. Or, the direction. Anyhow it had funny moments, tender moments, and commentary on the difficulty of communicating our selves as we know them to others, especially family members. Perhaps my expectations were too high?

Anyhow I left quickly after the play was over at 3:30. Not before greeting Luke, Leo, Tal, Dick and Ellen, Jamie and Laura. Realized I leave things early because the hubbub afterward makes it impossible for me to hear.

Drove to the Angry Chicken on Havana. Blessedly on the way home. Put in my to go order. Ten wings and some corn salad. Waited twenty minutes. Plastic bag in hand I left.

Then drove back across the south Denver Metro in 90 degree heat, AC blasting. This is the lesson. I left the Angry Chicken at about 4:30. With the hard part of the drive ahead of me. I’d already been gone from home for almost five hours. Exhausted. Still in the city. The drive wasn’t torture. Not exactly. But it was uncomfortable, unpleasant. I was worn out, wanted nothing more than to be home. In my chair. At 8,800 feet. Cooler. Quieter. Way less busy.

I can’t drive that far anymore for that long and not get exhausted. Just can’t. I know it. But not well enough. Not sure what to do about it either. Stay home? Nope. Need human connection, some out of the house moments. Go with others? Maybe.