Yule and the Quarter Century Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Snow. More. Another full night’s sleep. In a row. Art Green’s Guide to the Zohar. Mysticism. Art. Lascaux. Venus figurines. Minoan. Grecian. Phoenician. Early Christian. Egyptian. Hittite. Babylonian. Roman. Celtic. Norse. Anglo-Saxon. Qin, Han, Tang, Song dynasties. Goryeon. Kang school in Japan. Ukiyo-e. Nayarit. Jalisco. Benin. Early Hindu. Nepalese. Tibetan. Nahuatl. Mayan.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art
Kavannah 2025: Creativity
Kavannah this week: Chesed (loving-kindness)
Rachamim practice: Listening for the melody of others
One brief shining: Love that kid, my now 43 year old son, seeing him across 9,000 miles, his hair a bit longer on top, a fade on the sides, talking about Seoah at the gym, Murdoch staying on base for their trip, Hawai’i-a mutual dream, his transition to command, the nod to the Vikings living up to expectations, a visit to Minnesota to see his mom, old friends, skiing and his racing turns, sore legs.
No. Got that out of my system yesterday. Mystical me. Today, let’s talk literature. Nah. How about art? Haven’t gone on that ancientrail for quite awhile. Chatbotgpt and I have had fun over the last few weeks co-operating on image making. I provide the idea, 4o provides the image. With wildly varying results, as you’ve already seen.
A bit of nostalgia. Trafficking in the past these days as I continue to write stories in the Storyworth app. 14 so far. Story is too grand a word for these 500 words or so excursions on roadways back into the last millennium. The last century. More like lightning flashbacks, brief illuminations of moments of a life.
Thinking this morning about those Monday mornings as a guide, a docent in training, then a docent when I could go in for a lecture in art history by an expert in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts lecture hall. After. I loved the in depth, detailed way of looking that art historians and curators brought to specific objects.
Never thought of it this way before but a lot of my life has been about seeing, really seeing, what was in front of me. Yesterday I discussed the revelation I find in each and every instance I encounter. Sometimes I see clearly, sometimes, most often, through a glass darkly. Perception clouded by bias, distraction, assumption, all those ills to which the human sensorium is heir to.
Anthropology offers a sort of x-ray vision into human behavior, how culture shapes us, defines us, supports and limits us. Philosophy sees questions where others see answers.
Radical politics means looking into the truth of our economic and political relationships with one another and seeing the patterns, the flaws that create distortion, inequity. Gardening opened my eyes to the language of plants, how they express themselves, tell us what they need. Our long interrelationship with them. Having so many Dogs over the years opened my eyes to their distinctiveness, their majesty as fellow creatures, my deep love for them.
Living in the Mountains has turned me toward Wild Neighbors, toward Rock. Pines. Aspens. Fox and Moose. Beaver and Marmoset. Toward Mountain Streams in their dramatic seasonality.
Judaism has given me new lenses for viewing friendship, metaphysics, history, tradition, and myself.
Kate. In a true love affair which helped her understand herself in new ways, to see herself, not just her profession as she helped me see and be my whole self.