Daily Archives: April 15, 2025

Feelings, Fourth Phase

I see myself

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Veronica. Saigon Landing. Tonight. Pain doc. SPRINT PNS. Steroid injections soon. Pain. Weariness. Good mornings. Fatigued afternoons. Waning evenings. Shadow bouncing and running. AI 2027. AI. A world beyond our imagining not far away. A world so far away we cannot imagine. The early universe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Pain relief

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: Hobbled by back pain I moved slowly toward the steps, up and in to the Mountain Pain Center building, doors an obstacle, walking an obstacle, fuck this, I thought, damned back, afterward over to nearby Tony’s Market for an Italian Sub and then home, my day finished around 11 am.

 

When the Ancients gathered on Sunday, I had asked for each person to tell us how they see themselves. Speaking for myself I said I was weary. Back pain limiting my mobility, my stamina. Causing inertia to set in earlier and earlier. Wrassling with prostate cancer, now for eleven years. Also, the week of Kate’s death four years ago.

Not depressed. Tired of it all. Just tired.

I see myself as a small town boy who has gone through many transformations. Student. Protester. Draft resister. Husband. Husband. Husband. Alcoholic. Rag cutter. Seminary student. Worker with the developmentally challenged. Manager. Organizer. Dad. Gardener. Bee Keeper. Dog lover. Writer. Grandpa. Friend. Docent. Actor. Woolly Mammoth. Doctoral student. Mountain dweller. Caregiver. Jew. Old man. Shadowed. Cancer patient. World traveler. Brother. And others I’m not remembering right now.

I see myself as confident, secure in who and what I am. A good friend, a devoted husband, companion to Shadow. An intelligent man, seeking always the hidden, the obscured, the sacred. Creative. Curious. A family man to the bone.

I also see the dark places within me. The man who is afraid of pain. The man who is shy, reticent in social situations. The man who would rather stay home, read, watch TV than interact with the world. The angry man who, though modified a lot over the years, remains. Impatient with stupidity, cupidity, rudeness, injustice. The man who wishes for something, some sort of recognition, yet also does not care about it. The man who judges too quickly and often not on the side of merit.

There is also the man of whimsy, of folderol. The man who laughs easily and often. Who sees the irony of life and smiles at it. The man who looks deep into the eyes of the Mule Deer, the Elk, Shadow and sees fellow travelers on this ancientrail of life.

I see myself, too, as accomplished. That my life has had, has, purpose and meaning. That I have made a difference, small differences in the large sweep of history, yes, but differences none the less.

I see myself now as a man in the fourth phase of his life. Beyond retirement. With an illness that could be terminal. Death as the next big event. There is a liberation in this phase, a freedom from worry, a sense of wrapping it up.

Politics, The West, Weather +Climate

Water, Water Somewhere

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Monday gratefuls: Cold Night. Snow. Shadow. Good friends. Here and there. Family. Here and there. Daniel Silva. Gabriel Allon. Painting conservators and restorers. Peter Paul Rubens. Caravaggio. Da Vinci. Michelangelo. Hopper. Bierstadt. O’Keefe. Rothko. Kandinsky. Creativity.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rothko

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: The muddy Colorado runs in torrents through northwestern Colorado, carrying in its rush the waters of Snow packed on Mountain sides, deposited over the Western Winter, but will it, can it be enough for Las Vegas, Tucson, Phoenix, the Diné Nation, L.A., and even parts of the Baja.

 

With the end of Winter in sight the question, the every Spring question in Colorado. How’s the Snowpack? This is God’s own Water Bank, stored and frozen for use throughout the Water year. Its politics more fraught than those of the Education Department or USAID. Its impact? On lives in the millions, crops, economies of the West.

This year critical Snowpack like the Upper Colorado River Basin is at 84%. We could still get more Snow, plump it up, but time has begun to run out. The pact that governs Water distribution in the Upper and Lower Basin states resets this summer.

Already hampered by the Gap, an error in the original pact that divided up Water allotments using peak years never again realized, and now beyond the breaking point due to rapid urbanization in the Southwest and Southern California, the pact will require a King Solomon.

Current Water law is a labyrinth of rights based on who got there first, second, third. This makes it impossible to rationalize the allotments. The Upper Basin and Lower Basin states have their own politics to consider. Many senior Water rights are in the Upper Basin states: Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico. While much of the development has occurred in the lower basin states of Nevada, Arizona, and California.

Thus the states of Wyoming and Colorado in particular produce most of the Water through their Snowpacks, but the largest consumers of the Water inhabit the Lower Basin states.

Changes to Water law face years of precedent and controversy. It will not happen easily.

Having a lower percentage of Snowpack exacerbates the problems and can be anticipated as climate change alters and warms Winter weather.

 

Just a moment: The rejection of the judge’s ruling. The president of Salvador saying of course he would not release the wrongly imprisoned man. Our government, our “Justice” department saying nah, ne, na nah to the judge. Cruelty and our way or the Salvadoran prison way as policy. No longer a question what we have come to. This is what we are. Mean. Insensitive. Immune to the rule of law. Capricious. No way to run a country, especially this country.