Aloha

Samain and the Radiation Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadow who behaves like the wind or water carving a stream bed. Wu wei all the way.  Neck brace, trigeminal nerve problems. Wouldn’t ya know. Maddie. Conversion. Tom’s last campaign. Christopher. Paul. Sylvan. Putin. Zelensky. Rubio. Hegseth. Tara and Eleanor coming today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Shema

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  SERENITY   Menucha     Serene, literally “at rest/comfortable”                         “In Jewish tradition, ‘menucha’ (מְנוּחָה) signifies a profound state of spiritual and physical rest, tranquility, peace, and fulfillment, going far beyond merely ceasing work. It is a core concept tied to the Sabbath (Shabbat) and the ultimate spiritual destiny of the soul.” Gemini

Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: A day, several years ago, at Da Fish Shack on the Island of Kauai, listening to the waves of the wide Pacific hit the shore just beyond the front door, an extra week on Kauai time, a slower primal time that speaks of Volcanoes grown tall, then dormant, then extinct traveling on their ride or die, the great Tectonic Plate carrying this quiet rural place toward China, no hurry though.

 

Hawai’i. A place of so many memories. That first year at the Maui Weston, securing permission from the sugar company to climb the old, old Mountain toward the Lahaina L. Didn’t make it. Got lost, legs bleeding from thorny bushes, sweating with exertion and heat. Found the car, feeling wonderful. While Kate dutifully sat in class after class.

The morning walk into Lahaina, long before the fire, following the Shoreline, finding a restaurant and ordering Mahi-Mahi and poached eggs.

Much, much later. Hickam AFB on Oahu. May, 2021. Kate dead less than month. Crying at Joseph and Seoah’s table. I miss her so much.

Kate dressed fancy, Island fancy. Making our way through the cool evening, past so many rental cars, to Mama’s Fish House. Maybe celebrating my birthday. Reading on the menu the name of the one who caught the Ono, the Ahi, the Opakapaka, Mahi-Mahi. Holding hands. Deep in love. Then. Now.

Walking into the lobby of the Mauna Kea for the first time seeing the white Sand Beach and the blue Water framed by its entry way teak pillars. A hotel built around art collected by Laurence Rockefeller while traveling the Pacific Rim.

Later that evening after dining outdoors, walking away from the hotel to the underwater lights highlighting the gentle flying of Giant Manta Rays, their wide mouths making them look like an organic simulacrum of a 1950’s car design.

Standing next to Halemaumau, then deep, the home of Pelé, goddess of Volcanoes. Palm Fronds, empty liquor bottles, colorful leis scattered round its rim.

Later walking on sharp Lava out toward the Lava streams, moving toward the Water, giving the lie to they aren’t making any more of it. Steam boiling up from the much cooler Pacific as the Big Island got bigger still.

We loved Hawai’i, Kate and me. Like so many. Leis made of memories and gentle moments together.

 

Even Fiction Requires Logic

Samain and the Radiation Moon

Monday gratefuls: Todd. Alise. Jenna. Dr. Carter. Ruth. Cold outside. Shadow, the hugger. Football. Basketball. Christopher. Paul. Minnesota nights. Rum River. Carlos Avery. Boot Lake SNA. Lake George. Cedar Creek research facility of the UofM. Oak Savannah. Great Anoka Sand Plain. Glacial River Warren. The last Ice Age. Woolly Mammoths. Sabre Tooth Tigers.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Pukaskwa National Park

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  SERENITY   Menucha     Serene, literally “at rest/comfortable”                         “In Jewish tradition, ‘menucha’ (מְנוּחָה) signifies a profound state of spiritual and physical rest, tranquility, peace, and fulfillment, going far beyond merely ceasing work. It is a core concept tied to the Sabbath (Shabbat) and the ultimate spiritual destiny of the soul.” Gemini

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: A bit of Snow covers the backyard, Dog tracks crisscrossing it near the backdoor, Artemis rests, holding  only Garlic planted in early November, over the leech field tall Grasses, now brown; that leaning Lodgepole Derek cut down stacked in logs to season since it blew over while still alive, the Aspen beyond my bedroom window skeletal, the fallow time has come.

 

Dog journal: So. Now she comes in when she will, but does come in, in her own time. This, my Shadow, is enough for me.

The continuing adventures of Donald: Hegseth denies. Well, of course, he does. The Weasel. Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to disparage Weasel kind. Nope. He’s the fourth grader caught with his hand in the teacher’s candy jar. T’wasn’t me, miss. I swear.

I trust Washington Post reporters far, far more than that guy who never saw a tube of pomade he didn’t like.  Deny. Deny. Deny. If, in this case, as the JAG lawyers said, this “second tap” is a war crime, and/or outright murder, I’d hide under my desk, too.

Under the norms of a long ago America-what’s that? It’s been less than a year? Really?-this scandal would sink Hegseth and the President he rode in on. Today? Might mean more square footage for the Great Gatsby Gilded ballroom. Or, some other deflection like, for example, hey, Bondi, investigate Democrats in the Epstein files.

Oh, no. I’ve got it! He could pardon the former President of Honduras, a convicted narcotrafficker, while returning to the Rooseveltian days of gunboat diplomacy against the President of Venezuela, because, well, because Maduro is a, what is it? A narcotrafficker.

No, you could not make this stuff up. Not because people wouldn’t believe it, but because even fiction has to have an internal logic. And, this guy, red tie guy, acts by whim and fancy with a healthy dose of greed and self-interest to season the stew.

I read The Bulwark on Substack, a collection of conservatives, real conservatives, who find all of this as despicable as I do. In their Thanksgiving Day post, Trump is Exploiting Tragedy to Burn This Country Down, JV Glass and Sarah Longwell, in reacting to red tie guy’s screed against immigrants from poor countries as his response to the despicable murder of Sarah Beckstrom, referred to a long post on Truth Social, in which among many, many horrible things, the President (or, more likely, his ghost Stephen Miller) discuss denaturalization for naturalized American citizens. Both Joseph and Seoah are naturalized citizens.

 

Here are excerpts from that post compiled by Chatgpt:

  • Trump wrote he would “permanently pause migration from all ‘Third World Countries.’” Reuters+2VPM+2

  • He said the pause would allow “the U.S. system to fully recover.” VPM+1

  • “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.” AP News+2VPM+2

  • He pledged to “terminate” millions of admissions made under the previous administration, including those he described as “illegal admissions … signed by … Sleepy Joe Biden’s autopen.” MarketScreener+1

  • He promised to end all federal benefits and subsidies for non-citizens. MarketScreener+1

  • He vowed to “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility” and deport any foreign national deemed a “public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western civilization.” MarketScreener+2Reuters+2

  • He wrote that many foreign-born U.S. residents “are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.” AP News+1