Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II
Tuesday gratefuls: Pain and lump resolved. Shadow, the feral dog. United Health Care paying for my P.E.T. scan. Shadow coming in. Potcake Dogs. Harry Dresden. Jim Butcher. The Morning Service. The Woodward. TACO. Darkness my old friend. Immigration/Holocaust. Cruelty, Vengeance, and Greed as a philosophy of governance.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Natalie
Year Kavannah: Wu Wei
Week Kavannah: Patience. Savlanut.
Tarot: The Woodward. ? How shall I live my life today.
One brief shining: Yesterday around six p.m. a sharp, yet diffuse pain in my abdomen, a lump there roughly over the site of my steroid injection yielded a bit to the touch, not hard, an emergency or not, I couldn’t tell so I called the on call doc of my practice who said it didn’t sound like one, but if it gets worse, call him back. It didn’t and the lump is gone this morning. Wha?
Yeah. These things happen after hours. By rule. No Kate in the house anymore to reassure me. How would I get to the E.R.? Who would I call? Exposed the everyday vulnerability of all of us who live alone. Things are fine. Until they’re not.
The doc last night reassured me, said he’d leave a message for the front desk, have them call me, get me seen. Glad I have these folks in my hip pocket.
Drive myself or call a friend. Driving myself saves time. Have to find a friend at home and able to come. Then, it takes them time to get here. You get it. No obvious best answer.
Tarot: The Woodward, major arcana #11 in the Wildwood deck.
“The Woodward represents emotional support when we fall into a state of out of control, out of reason, when we encounter destructive challenges.
When individuals are pulled out of their comfort zone, they will be deprived of every emotion they once had when they were in a stable state. During that depriving process, individuals will have to seek within them their own true strength.”
Well. Gee. The message. Don’t tip over into anxiety. Call the on call doc. Which I did. Go see a doctor today. Which I will do. Don’t fuss. Act.
Dog journal: Natalie came yesterday. It was raining so we worked on a command called place. It involves a towel or some other well defined spot. I reward Shadow when she comes on the spot, then draw out the time she stays on it by slightly delaying the next treat.
Natalie told me Shadow acted like a feral dog. Like a Caribbean Potcake Dog, or a wild Dog fed from the leavings in a pot. She’s smart, learns things in one or two passes, but she’s also very suspicious. That means when a negative thing happens, like when I accidentally stepped on her left paw, she learns right then to avoid that situation.
Classic anxiety. Generalize from a negative experience, then protect against it by avoidance. Slowly, slowly.
Just a moment: Concentration camps like Alligator Alcatraz, then depriving immigrants of due process before deporting them, sometimes to countries where they don’t speak the language and have no family connections.
No, there might not be gas chambers. Yet. But a minority group has been singled out for rough treatment, taken from their homes, and disappeared from the U.S. Which minority will be next?
As Linda Greenhouse says in this New York Time article: We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty. New York Times, 7/14/2025
And I have to also recognize this former Israeli, former member of the IDF, now a genocide scholar’s article: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.
I will not be a fellow traveler. I will not let my voice be on the wrong side of history.