Sansin

Imbolc and the waning Shadow Mountain Moon

Friday gratefuls: For a return to my orbital goal post. Murdoch, bouncy and happy yesterday at Bergen Bark Inn. The Village Gourmet. Dogsondeployment.com, maybe a solution. Chocolate rocks. Jon made it to the E.R.

Moving from the bewildering and sad to the chaotic and absurd. Jon called about 10 last night from the Emergency Room. Yes, really. He’s been sick since last week and that screws up a diabetic’s response to insulin. His blood sugar got very high. He called an ambulance and had himself transported to E.R. He was afraid of dying.

We waited on his lab tests. Don’t yet know what they showed, but the docs transferred him to the hospital. We’ll see him today after Kate’s appointment with hand therapy and her surgeon. I know. Strains credulity, doesn’t it?

In other family news. Septuagenarian adds another year. Valentine’s day. Anti-climatic given recent happenings here, but there you are. The calendar ticks over despite events. 73 seems, unusual. Not sure why. An odd number. Perhaps a bit mystical: 7 and 3.

As I’m entering this phase of aging, the numbers seem to have less and less significance. Days, weeks, years. Artificial, like borders for nations. Irrelevant, too. I’m alive or not. In this moment, alive and typing.

Tom wondered in a recent e-mail about a name for our house. Our place in Andover was Seven Oaks after seven oak trees clustered on a small rise southeast of our home. In looking up matters related to Korean birthdays I found the name of the Korean mountain gods, Sansin. When I came to close on the house over Samain 2014 and on the day before I started radiation, mountain spirits visited me in the form of mule deer and elk bucks. So. Sansin. Full name, Honoring the Sansin of Shadow Mountain.

The Sansin of Shadow Mountain has blessed me through direct visitation twice. We belong here, in this place, on this mountain. I can feel the god’s presence, a massive bulking, a dense collection of ohr on which we have our home. Becoming native to this place.