The Mountain Summer Moon
Monday gratefuls: Durango’s Animas River chocolates. Mary down under. Mark in Phnom Penh. Seoah and my son in Songtan. Diane in the Mission. Me on Shadow Mountain. Here comes the Sun. Great Sol feeding us all. Vanquishing the night. Warming us. The Beatles. Led Zepplin. The Doors. Buffalo Springfield. Bob Dylan. The Who. Jefferson Airplane.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Wide World
One brief shining: Slipping into a favorite chair, a book nearby with its flap marking forward progress, turning on the reading light, finding a pair of glasses, I open the book to the spot behind Jupiter where the Bunker World has taken up residence, and travel the last few centuries with the strange world of the Three Body Problem.
Full transparency. Cancer worries. Not following Kate’s advice. Been reading research again. Metastases. Castration resistant prostate cancer. Lethal. Readying myself for those words: there is no more we can do. Opening my heart to the final days. How will I react? With grace and good humor is my intention. Then. Full stop! No. Today is the life of July 8th, 2024 and the only life I have. Live it.
O.K. But first. I’ll run a time limited check on that research. Just in the last year. Ah. Many more options available now. Extending life. Better outcomes. Yes.
Mind. I don’t have castration resistant prostate cancer yet. I’m just trying to wreck my day to day composure with imagining that it’s coming. Even so I did calm myself by learning that there are other treatments beyond androgen deprivation therapy.
It’s a delicate balance between living the life of this day, this brand new wakin’ up mornin’ life granted to me, and staying in touch with the cancer, staying alert to what my treatment demands. Denial and suppression are not workable strategies for me. Yet, neither are depression and despair.
So I go weeks without paying much attention to this fell beast living in my body, then a few days of reading research, prepping myself for what may never happen. Though cancer is an obvious candidate it may well be something else that carries me off to the surprise after life.
And on that cheery note, I’ll just ask: How was the play?
Just a moment: The flipside. Herme’s Pilgrimage. Herme took a Wildwood World Tree reading yesterday and found, again, that the cards show a positive, strong context for his journey.
The tarot itself is part of the pilgrimage. A way to move past stuckness, to gain energy, to foresee challenges and strengths. So as Herme works into his soul for the meaning behind, within, and adjacent to Trees, he feels buoyed up, supported.
Here’s a poem Bill Schmidt found. It resonates.
When I am Among the Trees by Mary Oliver
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
