Spring and the Mesa View Moon
Friday gratefuls: The end of radiation. No more drives to Lone Tree. No more creepy Hal machine up close to my head. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Snow on its way. Cold night. Slept well. Kate’s yahrzeit. Recognized at the service tonight. Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Erleada in the mail. Dreams. The dream group. Next Friday. Ready almost for the threshold. Gabe and the dog treats.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The end of radiation
One brief, shining moment: The intimate assassin took some hits over the last three weeks, suffering under high intensity radiation delivered through the Cyberknife aperture deep into my body, shriveling his forces, perhaps delivering the same death blow he sought for me.
Finit. For now. Maybe for good. But cancer has its devices and as Dr. Simpson admits we just don’t know all we need to know. I will not miss the drive to Lone Tree, a freeway adventure from start to finish. Lots of trucks. High speed Colorado pickups expressing their anxiety about life through rapid movement.
Not sure whether it was the radiation or the long drive or the constant reminder that I have cancer but this last three weeks wore me out. Slept 10 hours two nights ago and again last night. Plan to take today and the weekend as lower energy days. Though.
Gabe’s big birthday dinner is tomorrow tonight. I got a text from him this morning asking me to clean out some spilled dog treats in the back seat. He’s psyched up as we used to say. Going to Benihana with his friends. And his grandpa.
And. Kate’s yahrzeit is today. 30 Nisan. As the Jewish month of Spring phases into the month of light. I’ll go to the service tonight. Stand for the kaddish in honor of her.
Sunday I’ll be at the synagogue from 1:30 to 4:30. 1:30 is an informational meeting about a trip to Israel in October. At 3 pm I have the first Dismantling Racism class.
Maybe I’ll extend those lower energy days into the next week, come to think of it.
James Pogue’s book Chosen Country covers most of the recent rebellions in the West, starting with Clive Bundy’s against BLM restrictions on cattle grazing on BLM lands. He has a chapter on a miner’s stand against BLM’s finding of noncompliance for his gold mine and cabin. Security organized by the Oath Keepers and III percenters. The book’s focus is the Malheur occupation in Oregon.
After reading Jeff Sharlet’s Undertow, Imami Perry’s South to America, Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, Matthew Rose’s A World After Liberalism, Wes Jackson’s Becoming Native to This Place and dipping into Stephen Wolfer’s The Case for Christian Nationalism, Vibrant Matter by Joan Bennet, Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, I’m beginning to get a clearer picture of the roiling currents muddying the waters in the U.S. right now. Not ready yet to talk much about what I’m learning, some of it’s still organizing itself in my mind.
I know this much. There is no easy political fix for any of this. Though I do see some possible alliances that might bring folks together in very strange bedfellow ways. More on this to come as I keep reading. Talking.
