Monthly Archives: July 2024

Fourth Phase, Fungi

The journey. Not the destination

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Dragging the bins. Psilocybin. Decameron. Enthusiasm. Leaning into leaning in. Reading. Poems from friends. Torah. Fantasy. Mystery. Trees. Quercus. Absent from my biome. Lodgepoles. Aspen. Willows and Dogwood along Maxwell Creek. White Pine and Blue Spruce along Kate’s Creek. The Olympics. Paris. Hotel D’Anglais Terre. Our honeymoon.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The mind on hallucinogens

One brief shining: Opened the baggie, snack sized, and pulled out a dried up mushroom stem which I held for a moment, not quite believing its power, then I began to chew on its dessicated flesh, like eating straw, washed it down with some seltzer water and waited for the show to begin.

 

Synergy. A wowzer. Lots of colors, twisting trees, hallucinations on my cabinet doors. Lasted almost five hours. Whee. Kept thinking, geez I should do something profound with this. I tried. Thought about death for a bit. That was ok. Same as usual. Not an issue. Couldn’t distract myself from the marching trees, the Wild Bill’s Western Show that set up in the back with a tilting of its perspective whenever I changed my point of view.

Aside from the fun there was a sweet moment when a Mule Deer Doe and her spotted fawn wandered into the back yard. Reality (I think) as wonderful as the psilocybin. The fawn wobbled a bit, not familiar yet with holding herself up on those short legs. Her mother ate gently as the Mule Deer do.

What I wanted to do was watch nightfall. I’ve become entranced by the changing light through the Lodgepoles in my back yard. It reminds me each evening of the Nordic painters who watched Great Sol’s light dim through the forests of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The Trees frame the changing light in small panes created by Branches and the distance between Tree Trunks. The light itself goes through changes in both color and intensity, fading slowly, so slowly as Mother Earth turns the Rocky Mountains away from Great Sol for the rest and cool of nighttime.

My fascination with this transition predated my psilocybin journey. By many years. The Celts see dawn and dusk as times of magic, liminal times when boundaries open a bit, allow us to work with them. Jews begin their day at dusk. We light our shabbat candles 18 minutes before sundown. I remember many evenings in Hawai’i watching the vast Ocean light up, waiting for the green flash.

As the day grew fainter and the panes of light among the Trees changed colors, I watched. Quiet. Accepting the beauty and majesty. Feeling it reach me, let me become part of the transformation. Near the end of the Synergy’s energy, I felt a distinct sense of oneness with nightfall and the wavelengths of light that came with it.

 

Just a moment: Taking off in a moment for the Smiling Pig in Bailey. Barbecued chicken wings. A taking it easy and slow day.

Plan to read my current book and enjoy the mountains on the drive over there.

Feelings, Fourth Phase

Face your fears

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: High Summer. Faery. Boggarts. Nixies. Pixies. Nyads. Dryads. Leprechauns. Banshees. Druids. The Greenman. The Hooded Man. Herme. Lugh. Ceriwden. King Arthur. Lancelot. Guinevere. Percival. The Green Knight. The Decameron. Canterbury Tales. The Middle Ages. Castles. Holy Wells. The Otherworld. Heaven and Hell.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Otherworld

One brief shining: Interesting, I thought, as I stepped away from the form with all the boxes and the e-mail explaining how to obtain and/or use other forms, all to transfer money from one college fund account to another, and my heart rate went up, a pressure to the temples, and I felt silly and repulsed; where, for the first time I wondered, did this-what I would have to call hyperanxious attitude toward forms and bureaucratic complexity-originate?

Kavanah (intention): Loving kindness (toward myself and others )

 

Face your fears they say. A trope in tales of derring-do from Thelma and Louise and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to the Green Knight and excursions into faery. I have lots of fears. How I got diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder long ago. Let me count the ways. Claustrophobia. Being so concerned about having to prove my identity that I refused to go to stores when writing checks was still a thing. Diving off the high board. Large crowds. Having real conversations about sex. Asking women out on dates. Well, girls, too, at an earlier point. Singing or chanting in public. Carrying the Torah. On occasion things that go bump in the night. And, yes, filling out forms and the precision necessary to satisfy bureaucrats of any sort.

This last one has crippled my life. I failed to fill out the application form for a Danforth Scholarship. Which I would have gotten. Money for graduate school. How I filled out applications for graduate school, I don’t know. Brandeis and Rice University. Accepted with no money. Sooo. Have an account with Vanguard that Kate wanted me to add her, too. I tried, but I could never get the forms done. Would never be able to do my taxes if not for the accountant who takes my information and puts it in the right boxes.

My teeth clenched and my breath came a little faster as I wrote this. Geez. Guess my version of hell would be having to fill out endless entry forms when I got there. Yes, I see the humor in all this. Makes it worse, somehow. Silly. Sure. And, yet…

Over the years I’ve gotten more adept at navigating my life around paper shoals and form rapids. More adept. Not adept. When looking at all the stuff they want to transfer this money to my name from Kate’s. How rigid and rule bound the process is. Yes, protective. Sure. Also obstructive.

Where did this come from? Not sure. Has something to do, I imagine, with my anti-authoritarian impulses. Which come largely from my way of taking in Dad’s presence in my life. Not Dad himself. No, I’m old enough and honest enough now to know who’s responsible for how they take another’s actions towards them. Don’t think this explains very well the formophobia that I have. But it’s real. Still kickin’ at 77. Gosh, Gee whillikers. Shuffles feet and looks side to side.

BTW: Still no good at asking women out. Probably stalled around junior high. Check writing now ok. Claustrophobia. Active. Singing and/or chanting in public. Active. Things that go bump in the night. Only rarely.

Dying, on the other hand. Long ago accepted.

I was trying to write my way to some insights here. Didn’t succeed. Why they’re still around, I’m sure.

After reading for editing: I see a fear of ridicule, of not being seen and therefore of not being real. Of vanishing before power I have no control over. Of giving over validation of my Self to someone or something else. Maybe polio? Maybe reinforced by Mom’s death? By the iron lung?

Feeling a burst of empathy for the fearful guy within me. Need to rock him, sing him a lullaby. Tell him everything will be all right. Has been all right. Is all right.

Judaism, Mussar

As Michelangelo said, “I’m still learning.”

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Monday gratefuls: Ruth, the young woman. Alan. Cheri. Rabbi Joe Black. Eitan Kantor. David Ross. Jewish music. Downtown Denver. Walking. Breathing. High Summer. Lugnasa on its way. Stoic and Genuine Seafood. Oysters. Fish and chips. Union Station. Restaurants. Amtrak. Destination for the W line. And the A line. And all the RTD lines. Getting back home, up the hill. Cooler and cleaner air.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth, the soon to be college student

One brief shining: The server put a small metal ring on our table, then brought a platter filled with shaved ice, four Granite Bay oysters, two small dishes with melted garlic butter and horseradish in ketchup; Ruth said, I feel awkward since she had never eaten an oyster but we put the horseradish/ketchup sauce on, slipped the oysters down with a gulp and she said, it tastes like the ocean.

Kavanah for the day (intention): Charging the heart with Responsibility – Achrayut (אחריות)

 

 

A bit of explanation is in order here. Since becoming a member of CBE-well before my conversion-study has marked my path. Kate and I went together to mussar on Thursday afternoons and to the MVP group once a month. Mussar means discipline, instruction, ethics and it focuses on developing character traits* as a way of living a holy life, a moral life.

Practicing mussar has three potential elements. The first is a kavanah, an intention, for the day. This means throughout the day we seek opportunities to engage the character trait named in our intention. Today, for example, I plan to focus on some financial matters I don’t want to deal with. But need to. So my overall intention focus will be responsibility.

This will encourage me to pay attention not only to working all the way through the financial matters, but also to seek opportunities to do something for someone else. When we have an intention, we also have a practice. That is, I will look for chances today to be of service to someone or I will create chances. The practice is the second element.

The third element is journaling about my experience in the evening. I want to become more intentional about my mussar practice, so I’m adding my daily kavanah to Ancientrails.

There are three other areas of intensive study. Kabbalah. Torah. And, the study I did for my conversion sessions. I studied kabbalah for a while, then stopped. Will begin again in the fall. Now doing Torah study with Gary Riskin as a Men’s Torah Study and once a month with Rabbi Jamie.

Can you see why Judaism appeals to me?

One more thought: Judaism has a layered understanding of the soul. Two layers jump out in this conversation. The first is neshamah. The neshamah notion is equivalent to buddha nature, I am, made as sacred reality. We are a neshama, a pure and sacred soul. Nothing can change this because the neshama represents the very way you are part of the ongoing becomingness that is all reality. The nefesh is how the particularity, the uniqueness that you are as part of that becomingness, develops itself in and through your life. The nefesh is the seat of mussar practice.

 

 

 

* There are many lists of character traits. Here’s one from the Mussar Center:

1.  AWE  Yira (year-AH)  יִרְאָה

2.  BALANCE  Izun (ee-ZOON)  אִזוּן

3.  BEAUTY  Tiferet (tee-FAIR-et)  תִפאֶרֶת

4.  BROTHERHOOD  Achava (ach-ah-VAH)  אַחֲוָה

5.  CAREFULNESS  Zehirut (zeer-OOT)  זְהִירוּת

6.  CLARITY  Tohar (TOE-har)  טֹהַר

7.  COMPASSION  Rachamim (raw-chuh-MEEM)  רַחֲמִים

8.  CONSCIENCE  Busha (boo-SHAH)  בּוּשָׁה

9.  CONSIDERATION  Adivut (ah-dee-VOOT)  אֲדִיבוּת

10.  CONTENTMENT  Histapkut (he-stop-KOOT)  הִסתַפְּקוּת

11.  COURAGE  Ometz Lev (OH-mets lev)  אֹמֶץ לֵב

12.  DECISIVENESS  Charitzut (char-ee-TSOOT)  חֲרִיצוּת

13.  DEVOTION  Chasidut (chah-see-DOOT)  חֲסִידוּת

14.  FAITH  Emuna (em-oo-NAH)  אֱמוּנָה

15.  FAITHFULNESS  Ne’emanut (neh-mahn-OOT)  נֶאֱמָנוּת

16.  FLEXIBILITY  Gemesh (GEM-esh)  גֶמֶשׁ

17.  FREEDOM  Chofesh (CHOE-fesh)  חוֹפֶשׁ

18.  GENEROSITY  Nedivut (nid-ee-VOOT)  נְדִיבוּת

19.  GOODWILL  Ratzon (ruts-OWN)  רָצוֹן

20.  HOLINESS  Kedusha (kid-oo-SHAH)  קְדֻשָּׁה

21.  HONESTY  Yosher (YO-share)  יוֹשֶׁר

22.  HONOUR  Kavod (kuh-VODE)  כָּבוֹד

23.  HOPE  Tikva (teek-VAH)  תִּקְוָה

24.  HUMILITY  Anava (ah-nuh-VUH)  עֲנָוָה

25.  JOY  Simcha (SIM-chah)  שִׂמְחָה

26.  JUSTICE  Tzedek (TSEH-deck)  צֶדֶק

27.  KINDNESS  Chesed (CHEH-sed)  חֶסֶד

28.  KNOWLEDGE  Da’at (DAH-aht)  דַּעַת

29.  LOVE  Ahava (aha-VAH)  אַהֲבָה

30.  MERCY  Chemlah (chem-LAH)  חֶמְלָה

31.  MINDFULNESS  Metinut (mitt-ee-NOOT)  מְתִינוּת

32.  MODESTY  Tzniut (ts-nee-OOT)  צְנִיעוּת

33.  ORDERLINESS  Seder (SAY-dare)  סֵדֶר

34.  PERSEVERANCE  Netzach (NETS-ach)  נֵצַח

35.  PATIENCE  Savlanut (sav-lah-NOOT)  סַבְלָנוּת

36.  PEACE  Shalom (shuh-LOME)  שָׁלוֹם

37.  PLEASANTNESS  Noam (no-AHM)  נֹעַם

38.  RESPONSIBILITY  Acharayut (ach-rye-OOT)  אַחֲרָיוּת

39.  RIGHTNESS  Tzedaka (ts-DAW-kuh)  צְדָקָה

40.  SELF-CONTROL  Perishut (pree-SHOOT)  פְּרִישׁוּת

41.  SERENITY  Menucha (min-oo-CHAH)  מְנוּחָה

42.  STABILITY  Yesod (yee-SODE)  יְסוֹד

43.  STRENGTH  Gevura (g-voo-RAH)  גְבוּרָה

44.  THANKFULNESS  Hod (hode)  הוֹד

45.  TRUTH  Emet (em-ET)  אֱמֶת

46.  UNDERSTANDING  Bina (bee-NAH)  בִּינָה

47.  WISDOM  Chochma (CHOCH-mah)  חָכְמָה

48.  ZEAL  Zerizut (zree-ZOOT)  זְרִיזוּת

Art and Culture, Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Music, Weather +Climate

Weather and Joy

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Alan. Cheri. The Inspire Concerts. RTD. Federal Center Station. St. Anthony Hospital. New knee, me. New shoulder, Kate. Ruby. 96, high in Denver today. The Ancient Brothers. Kamala. The orange comb over. These disunited States. Rain. Hale. Luke. Leo. Ginny. Janice. Great Sol. Cancer drugs. Jewish music. Today with Ruth.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

One brief shining: Short splats increased to faster, staccato impacts the skylights enlarging the sound, then the Hail, small at first, then larger pounded pounded pounded with the insistence of the natural world not recognizing barriers, pounding against them with the kind of fury increased by falling from a great height as Leo and I looked outside seeing balls of Ice bounce around on the black driveway.

 

A lesson in Mountain Microclimates. While Leo and I enjoyed a hard Rain with Hail, Luke only needed a transparent umbrella at the wedding being held on the west side of Black Mountain in Staunton State Park. Not very far as the Moose walks. Up and down Black Mountain. From their home in the State Park to our yards here on Shadow Mountain, the next Mountain over.

As the bride walked down the aisle, Luke said, the heavens parted and shone a bright light directly on her. Heaven sent. We take in the awe, perhaps dismiss it as random, as unmotivated and therefore meaningless except in a Hollywood sort of way, but yirah is yirah. Wherever and whenever. Yirah is a human emotion, a middot, too, one known in the lev, in the mind-heart. Experienced not in its source but in its recipient.

I enjoyed the thirty minutes or so of heavy Rain, conditioned by decades of Midwestern life to know the nurturance of a good Rain. Good for the crops. Leo wasn’t so sure about the Thunder. He didn’t tuck his tail between his legs, but he did pace. Some Dogs can have an outsized response to Thunder.

Tira, a Wolfhound bitch who lived with us in Andover, once impaled herself on a fence gate and clawed apart and bit, too, a license plate on the Tundra parked just across from the gate. I ran out when I found her and lifted her 160 pound body off the gate in one move. Adrenaline. Fortunately the wound was not deep. Her teeth and front paws though. Bloody.

 

Just a moment: Will elaborate tomorrow, but I spent a joyful day with Ruth today. We walked to Alan and Cheri’s from Union Station. Painful, but doable. So irritating to have this impediment. Walking has been my favorite way to see a city. Now I have to walk some, rest some. Walk some, rest some. Made it to Spire Condominiums across from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Up 38 floors to 3810, Alan and Cheri’s place, for another home based concert. Rabbi Joe Black, senior Rabbi at the huge Temple Emmanuel, sang. As did Eitan Kantor, a local Jewish musician. And a pianist and song writer whose name I don’t have. More on this tomorrow.

Health

On the other hand

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Trees. Those old Ponderosas off Hwy. 73. The things they have seen. Tara. Kristie. Lab Corps. Jessica Roux. The Beaver and Aspen print. Woodland guardians. Herme’s journey. Life. Aging. Mussar. Kabbalah. Neuroscience. Sensory data. Intelligent receipt of that data. The inner world of mind. Charging the heart.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lev

One brief shining: Oh, yes, coffee please, I said, as I sank into the booth, lower than I expected with the table further away than seemed convenient, while I waited on Ginny and Janice, the two look alike sisters brought a thick porcelain cup of coffee, utensils wrapped in a napkin, and laminated menus, restoration and reconstruction as always with close friends. About to happen.

 

Saw Kristie yesterday afternoon. She feels I’m in castration sensitive territory, not castration resistant. “I don’t diagnose that until you’ve been on both Orgovyx and Erleada and your PSA starts to rise.”

Back on Erleada now as of this morning. This is the gold standard androgen deprivation therapy. Yet another blood draw later in August. That might tell the difference between castration sensitive and castration resistant. Castration sensitive means a less dramatic prognosis than Dr. Leonard’s assessment of castration resistant.

Even so. She and Dr. Leonard present my case to the tumor board* on August 9th. This is not the first time my treatment options have gone before a tumor board. My numbers and imaging don’t fit in neat categories. Things could get complicated after this.

Let me explain. Kristie is a urological oncologist. Dr. Leonard is a radiation oncologist. I’ve seen Kristie for three years. Though I’ve seen Dr. Leonard only once, I have seen other radiation oncologists before him. Depending on the outcome of the tumor board, Kristie may refer to me yet a third oncologist, a medical oncologist. Kristie, Dr. Leonard, and the medical oncologist I would see are all on the tumor board.

A medical oncologist has a much larger toolbox/armamentarium than Kristie does. 4 times as large she told me. They are, I imagine, what we usually think of when we say oncologist. I’ve gone a different route due to the prevalence of prostate cancer and its resulting first treatments by urologists. Seeing a medical oncologist opens up other drugs, especially chemotherapy, to my care.

I know. Who knew? Tumor boards? Different kinds of oncologists? Salvage therapy? Which means any treatment after the best and generally successful treatments like a prostatectomy and radiation don’t affect a cure. Castration sensitive and castration resistant forms of cancer? A throwback to the days before androgen deprivation therapy drugs when an orchiectomy was the only way to lower testosterone; castration achieved levels of low testosterone are the metric against which ADT success is measured.

In summary. I may be in a less dire category but we don’t/won’t know right now. Maybe in a month. Maybe later. I’m back on the drugs I was on before my drug holiday, but may need supplemental treatment by a medical oncologist and a radiation oncologist.

The roller coaster of the last three weeks has drained me. I’m tired out. Partly thanks to being on the drugs again. Partly due to uncertainty, partly due to the need to level myself emotionally. Friends and family have helped a lot in that regard. You know who you are. Thanks.

 

*”A tumor board is a group of physicians and scientists who meet to discuss treatment options for individual cancer patients. Typically, those involved come from different backgrounds, specialties, and expertise, and may include surgeons, radiation oncologists, pathologists, and medical oncologists, so that fresh and differing perspectives can be discussed and knowledge can be shared.”  cancercommons

Art and Culture, Asia, Dreams, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams  Fan Kuan. C. 1000 ACE

Friday gratefuls: Lab Corps. New test results. Uh, oh. Kristie, later today. Mussar. The wonder of neuroscience and even more the functioning of our minds. Hello, in there, hello. The haze in our days. Not ours. Alan. Vincent, cooking at the Parkside. A dream. Art. Caravaggio. Giotto. Michelangelo. Botticelli. DaVinci. Rembrandt. Hokusai. Fan Kuan. Warhol.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fan Kuan

One brief shining: Each time I see Fan Kuan’s painting, my relationship to Mother Earth pops back into the foreground; in the bottom right, difficult to see in most reproductions, a group of travelers cross toward the left on their journey as the enormous face of the Mountain with its signature Waterfall and  hairy prominences rises above them; mist floats up where the Waterfall disappears toward the Mountain’s base, and hidden among the Trees, homes and monasteries, humans in a natural world so vast we understand at once who and where we are within it. Taoism.

 

The consolation of Fan Kuan’s painting. We come into this world as a birthed animal, fitted out to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell. To take into ourselves data from the world. And, fitted out to conjure our own data in the confines of our singular minds. Here Fan Kuan has shared with us a novel way he put together his experience of Song Dynasty China, its Mountainscapes, its mystery, its beauty. One of the wonders of art is its ability to allow us a glimpse inside the mind and heart, the lev, of another person.

After my diagnosis with cancer in 2015 I drove along the Deer Creek Canyon road and began to understand what Fan Kuan expresses. We travel along a short short road, we humans and our Mayfly lives. We wander along that road within eyesight of the apparently unchanging Mountains, the mist of a future clouded by our unknowing. Yet on that journey we have the chance, if we take it, to know ourselves not as apart from the Mountains and Streams, but as part of them. For me that makes the journey home, our mutual journey, both exhilarating and inevitable.

I had a dream last night. A busload of people with cancer were on their way to a university. I am on the bus. We discuss our cancers, our journeys. We stop near the campus at a large house and everybody gets out. As we enter the house, the home of some well known professor, and sit down, a man comes in, maybe the professor. He puts his hand on the shoulder of the man next to me. “Dead,” he says. He moves to me, puts his hand on my shoulder, “Dead,” he says. In my heart I already knew it. He just confirmed it. This dream is the same as Fan Kuan’s painting.

Triggered I’m sure by my recent visit to Dr. Leonard, the radiation oncologist, and lab results which show my PSA continuing to rise in spite of the Orgovyx. I see Kristie this afternoon. Together we’ll decide what happens next.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Politics, Travel, US History

International Dialogue

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Stien. Koontz. Ootz. The Netherlands. Arjean. Tara. Susan. Irv. Marilyn. Cade. Vincent. Eleanor. Kilimanjaro. Zugspitz. Jungfrau. Olympus. Conifer. Evergreen. Labcorp. Great Sol. Data. Mussar. Neshama. Nefesh. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Leo. Paulaner N.A. Kate, always Kate. Ruth and the Inspire Concert Sunday. RTD. Uber.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

One brief shining: Could I have a short spade, please; Tara handed me a gardening trowel and I knelt down in her curved bed of Carrots and Beets, plunging the trowel in beside the missing Beet plant and felt the Earth give way, yes, there was a tunnel there, something, maybe a Vole, had burrowed in and eaten it from below.

 

Interesting lunch at Tara’s. Met Arjean’s family: Stein, Ootz, and Koontz. And, his mother whose name I didn’t get. They’re visiting from the Netherlands. BTW: Don’t rely on those spellings. They’re phonetic, which means based on my hearing. Always a risky basis for sounds.

Asked Koontz, Arjean’s brother, about how American politics looked from Europe. Next question, he quipped. He went on to say what I’ve heard in many other places including Korea and Singapore. In essence, it really matters to us, but we can’t do anything about it. As an example, he mentioned NATO. Well, yeah.

Koontz also said there was some talk in Europe about deserving a vote in American elections since they impact Europe in such critical ways. Made me think of the Chinese taxi driver I talked to in Singapore in 2004, the day before election day. He shook his head and said, “When America sneezes, we get pneumonia.”

Stein, Arjean’s nephew, is in his third year of university pursuing a business degree. He’s also starting a clothing business as a middleman between Chinese garment manufacturers and a European customer base. When I asked him about the stresses of doing both at the same time, he looked over at his dad, Koontz. A bit sheepishly. Oops, I said. I withdraw the question.

After the meal Tara and I went downstairs to look at her garden. She’s had vegetable eating animals taking out Beets, Lettuce, Raspberries, and Tomato plants. She wanted to get my opinion about what was going on. That was when I asked for the trowel. I found the tunnel right away. Some critter has dug their way to a meal, perhaps several meals. She also has rabbits, I think. Her fence keeps the Deer out. They’re the animal that can really devastate a Mountain garden. They’ll eat everything down to the ground. Well, Elk, too.

Had no solution for her save putting in raised beds for next year’s garden. Would help her back, too.

 

Just a moment: A lighter heart. Some hope. Kamala wouldn’t have been my first choice, but she’s sooooo much better than Biden. Since I’ve long thought this election would hinge on turn out, I feel good since she will be able to energize the Democratic base.

Diane and I talked politics this morning. She feels lighter, too. That feeling alone may be enough to swing the election our way.

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Belonging, holy

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Wednesday Gratefuls: A bright golden haze on the Meadow. A blue, smoky Sky above. Kamala Harris. 45, a man of chaos and hate. Election 2024. A political clown car. Labs. Middle Earth. Hobbits. Ruby. Cool nights. Good sleeping. A big workout yesterday. 160 minutes done for the week already. Lunch at Tara’s. Stories. Books. TV. Movies. Theater. Ovid. The new translation.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ovid

One brief shining: Still glad, all these years later, I bought a Landice treadmill, lifetime guarantee, brought it here from Minnesota with my dumb bells, balance boards, and yoga mats to create a small home gym outfitted now with stall mats, a wall mirror, a TRX mounted to the ceiling, and the TV which accompanies my workouts with stories as I do cardio, stretch, lift weights.

 

Whimsy. Eudaimonia. Life of July 24, 2024. A response to the Ancient Brother’s question of the week: “All things considered are you happy? Why? Why not? What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy?” From Maine’s own man from away, Paul Strickland.

I’m sometimes happy. Sometimes not. In my world happiness is more a mood, a transient state induced by, say, a chili-cheese hot dog, seeing a toddler, finding myself lost in a book. Maybe the afterglow of a lunch or breakfast, a good workout. I don’t seek happiness, it happens to me in this moment or that. Always glad when it does. A bath of endorphins is good for the soul.

What I do seek is eudaimonia. Flourishing. Seeking satisfaction rather than achievement. As I consider it, not an ideology, but a way of integrating my sense of Self, my I am becoming, with life as it flows in and around me. Except in the academic world, and then without much true ambition, I’ve sought results that stem from my values. Those results, and/or the effort to realize them, matter to me. Success and failure are temporary states, neither definitive, neither more than a collective opinion.

I want to emphasize integration. Though I find Maslow’s later hierarchy profound since it added a stage beyond self-actualization, I’ve been anti-transcendence for a long, long time. It implies leaving my Self, my I am, my neshamah behind for a purer, bigger place or experience. Nope. This body. This history. This mind. Damaged and flawed it has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the dizzying heights of accolades, sublime moments of intimacy, and the joy of being alive.

Integration says nope I’m where I belong, among that and whom to which I belong and among whom I am a vital, unique presence. Valuable for my uniqueness, not for my capacity to leave my uniqueness behind for some spiritual space. My journey beyond self-actualization then lies in friendships, intimacy. In understanding how my Lodgepole companion and I share home ground. How the Mule Deer and the Elk, the Black Bears and the Mountain Lions are my neighbors. As in, Love thy neighbor as thyself. How as a human animal I am not only part of Mother Earth’s family, I have evolved from long ago kin whom I share with the Lodgepole and the Elk. I do belong here. Right here. Not out there or up there or behind that veil. Right. Here.

 

 

Art and Culture, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Poetry, US History

Too much with us

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Lab orders. Cancer. Ruby. Blackbird Cafe in Kittredge. Potato cakes. The fantasy homes along Bear Creek between Evergreen and Kittredge. All Stone exterior. All Log exterior. That one with the Waterfall. Bear Creek full yesterday after heavy Rains on Sunday. Coffee. Milk. Seltzer Water. The Shema. Unitary metaphysics. This spinning Planet.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Homes. Of all sorts.

One brief shining: The kind phlebotomist wanted to help me; but, I’d forgotten my lab orders and she couldn’t find any in her computer system, after I’d driven a half an hour to get to her since my doctor’s office happens to be between lab companies this week; she flipped up the soft arm of the phlebotomy chair and I squeezed out, shaking my head at my own error, not bringing my copy of the orders.

 

Been musing for a while about certain things that cannot be done via computer. Any medical visit that requires puncturing the skin. A physical exam in a doctor’s office. The delivery of physical objects purchased online. A kiss. A handshake. A hug. Driving down the hill and back up again. Flying in an airplane. Travel that involves dining and sleeping. The list could go on.

Too often these days we give the lie to Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us, late and soon…” Instead we settle for the faux experience. Remember Alvin Toffler in his book, The Third Wave? High tech, high touch. Yes. The more we use technology, the more we need in person, face to face, skin to skin. We feel, often without knowing it consciously, with Wordsworth again: “Little we see in Nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away.” With A.I. advancing as it is, we may also find ourselves paraphrasing him: We have given our minds away.

I’m no technoLuddite. Hardly. I have three computers. I’m writing this blog on my computer, expecting you to read it on yours. I spend at least three plus hours every week on Zoom, more some weeks. I no longer read a physical newspaper, relying instead on the digital versions of the NYT and the WP plus other news outlets. My shopping, like most of us who live in the Mountains or in rural America, happens online. My front door, your front door has become a receiving dock.

Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
Kindred Spirits  1849
Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant

Yet. The interplay between the online world and the world of physical objects, especially humans and other Animals, Forests and Oceans, Mountains and Lakes has made revisiting the Romantic artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries a useful corrective.

In the United States Romanticism coincided with pre-Civil War and post-Revolution thought, the period often known as the American Renaissance. The Romantic turn toward the individual, the irrational, the natural produced works like Emerson’s essay, Nature, and Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.

This period of American intellectual and artistic life wanted to discover a non-European, American style in literature, poetry, painting. Melville’s Moby Dick. Painters like Church, Durand, Cropsey, Cole. A fruitful period to rediscover for our current ailment.

Denver, Family, Fourth Phase, Politics, Sport

Buy me some peanuts…

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The Mountain Summer Moon

Monday gratefuls: Friends. Family. Coors Field. RTD. The W Line. Walking. Lidocaine patch and two nsaids. Cool weather. The Rockies. The Giants. Homeruns and broken bats. Hot dogs and pretzels. Shaded seats. The umpire pulling his arm in fast. A strike! Gabe. Who likes baseball. My son, who does, too. A long sleep afterwards. Life of July 21st, 2024. Play.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grandsons

One brief shining: Seats 12 and 13 in section 135, shaded throughout the whole game, hard wooden seats, narrow aisles, cupholders and a baseball diamond lit by Great Sol spread out below with the umpire squatting using his whisk broom on home plate, the catcher in his armor down on one leg waiting, while designated hitter Charlie Blackmon, he of the luxuriant black beard, swings his bat, then, Batter up!

 

The Rockies are in competition for the least capable team in the major leagues. They played the Giants, one rank above them in the National League West. Only the also hapless Marlins are further out of a division race. 28 games to the Rockies 22. Still. It was baseball, major league baseball. And it was sun hat day! I gave mine to Gabe to give to Ruth.

View from section 135

The new rules have sped the game up. I found I liked it better. No more drift into the setting sun as pitchers chawed, spit, pondered, and us fans waited. Might go a bit more often. With a lidocaine patch and a couple of nsaids my back was not impossible though it was a 23 minute walk from the train to Coors Field. Glad to have a seat at the end of the walk.

First time taking the light rail in for a game. Did it because Coors Field is not too far from the end of the W line near Union Station. No driving in downtown. Cheaper than parking and much less hassle. Will do it again next Sunday when Ruth and I go to the Jewish music concert at Cheri and Alan’s. $5.50 round trip. Uber then to their home on the 38th floor of the Spire Condominiums.

Gabe and the straw hats. He’s a kind kid. Enjoyed spending the time with him.

Warming up

Had a hot dog, sang take me out to the ball game, stood for the Anthem and, again, for God Bless America played by a trumpeter from the Air Force Academy band. Reflected on the years when I wouldn’t stand for the Anthem. I do now, but for a very different reason than before Vietnam. It’s important for those who, as I saw on a hat of a Never Trumper, want to make red hats wearable again.

 

Just a moment: And, he’s outta there! Another curve ball for election 2024. Though not an unexpected one. What is unexpected. How all this will effect the campaign. Who will be the candidate? Probably Kamala, but not necessarily. And can any one put the orange jinn back in the lamp? If they can, I personally volunteer to carry the lamp to the Marianna’s Trench and drop it over the side of the boat.