Got my PSA numbers back again. .19 by Quest labs vs. .20 by Lab Corps 3 months ago. After consulting chatgpt about the likely significance of two different assay methodologies, I’m comfortable that I’m in as good or better shape than I was last time. Means for 3 months I can coast, happy I’m still in hormone sensitive territory. Where I wanna be.
Even so. Stage 4. Watch a television drama. If the writers want to ratchet up tension for a character or those who care about them, you’ll hear a sentence like this one from I, James Wright on Britbox: “I have stage 4. There’s no stage 5.” Effective. However. For those of us with real Stage 4 cancer. Damn.
If I were an engineer or mathematician, I might create a graph. Identify feelings on one axis and dates of blood draws on another. Pretty sure the feelings would anticipate the quarterly surveillance, showing spikes up as a quarter’s end nears, then a flattening.
Unless. Say back pain cranks up loud. Demanding attention. A thought about cancer crosses my frontal lobe. They link up, twirl around an empty syringe or full pill bottle. Spikes in between the quarter’s ends.
Point. Stage 4 cancer acts like chronic pain, always draining resources, sometimes more, sometimes less. Never absent. How can it be? There’s no stage 5.
Right now I’m feeling pretty good. These numbers did not rock my world. A slight thrill. A breath held, loosed.
Again the always oddity. No matter what the result. Not today. Not tomorrow. Lesson? Live today, here and now. Not because some self help moron suggests it, but because, fortunately, I don’t have a choice.
I don’t have to leap ahead to the end game. To hospice care. Long term care insurance. Family coming for last visits. Will that be the denouement to my story? Likely. But not yet.
Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. Shadow. So early. Morning, early early Morning. Back and leg pain. Exquisite. Teeth gritting. PSA. OK. Medical care moving closer. Subway. Cookunity. Dandelion. Alan. Driving down the hill to Evergreen. Green green Grass. Trees waking from their Winter slumber. The Bears are out. A sure sign of a Mountain Spring. Snow overnight yesterday. Melted and gone.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Knee replacement
Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zeal. Zerizut
One brief shining: Opening Sefaria means stepping into the long, disputative history of Jewish thought where a thousand flowers of interpretation and commentary and imaginative flourishes thrive, feeding off each other, sparking new insights, all in the service of living today.
Out with a right turn toward Evergreen. Ruby’s snowshoes hissing a bit on dry pavement even though 2 inches of Snow lay in my backyard and the temperature hovered in the mid-twenties. Downshifting, brake preserving. These curves as well known as my own body’s, when to brake, when to accelerate learned over ten years. Concentration focused on the roadside for Mule Deer, Elk. Respect for the Wild Neighbors.
Great Sol had driven off the Snow on south facing Lodgepoles, but on the right, the north side of Black Mountain Drive, Winter Trees stood with white, drooping branches. Higher up on Black Mountain its now distinctive ski runs held on to the Snow even though facing south.
Maxwell Creek ran free of Ice, its rushing waters from earlier Snow melt now calm. Full. Eager. When I passed the Upper Maxwell Creek trailhead, I began talking to Kate. Telling her about Ruth’s decision to go to medical school. About Gabe waking up. Shadow waking me up. How much I missed her knowledge and wisdom, her love. About my back pain and how I now understand from the inside her own struggles with it.
Passing Kate’s Valley and Kate’s Creek, my attention turned to the clock. Oh. I was a half hour early. Hmm. Get a car wash? Why not.
Lake Evergreen and its views of Bear Mountain, Great Sol glinting off light Wind raised ripples, blue as the Colorado Sky. The gray Rock of the roadside a somber contrast. No Elk grazing this morning.
The car wash’s robotic voice said: the car wash is closed. Oh. Decided to take a look at Elk Run assisted living. I need to look at a couple of these places in case circumstances change. Still haven’t done it.
This place sits walking distance (for most people) from CBE. After passing the Life Center of Evergreen, Bergen Bark Inn, Mt. Evan’s Hospice, and the section 8 housing where Anne lives, I realized this was a social service neighborhood.
Past it was the Tanoa Way residential area with dead ends and no outlets and mansions with the Mountain equivalent of Widow’s Watches, high windows facing a view of nearby Mountains.
After I had visited spots I’d wanted to see, but had never driven to, I turned toward the Dandelion and a breakfast with my friend Alan.
Friday gratefuls: Alan. Snow. Ruby’s all season shoes. On Monday. Plus many fluids. Back pain. PSA blood draw. Cancer. And other fancy stuff. Shadow and the marrow bones. Tom’s portrait of Shadow. Lake Superior. The Boreal Forest. The Arrowhead. Grand Marais. Thunder Bay. Up North. Parashat Tazria-Metzora
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Being a student
Week Kavannah: Persistence. Grit. Netzach.
One brief shining: The Mountains rise up and slope down into Valleys, our roads here in the Rockies thin slices of asphalt or gravel following the rising up and the sloping down, the changes in direction commanded by rocky prominences and Snow melt filled Streams carrying the Mountains themselves downstream ever so slowly, slowly.
Yesterday. Seems so far away. So far away. Diane reminded me to ask for help. To set up ways to get to appointments-not only when I’m being sedated. I know this transition has to occur. Yet I’ve gone so long now on my own. I need, yes need, to let others do for me what I would do for them.
Irv and Paul and I discussed the nature of evil, whether it exists at all or is just a human construct.
At the Kabbalah Experience we continued our exploration of the story of Adam and Eve. This time wondering about our ability to live outside the givenness of our lives, to see what we cannot know exists.
Dave Sanders offered the Truman Show as an example. A simulacrum. Where is the edge of our learned world? Do we need a stage light to crash through the set for a big reveal?
His point? The Garden of Eden as Seahaven, the village in Truman’s life. A small paradise filled with every needful thing. The stage light, the Snake and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad. The expulsion as Truman’s daring escape on the sail boat.
Later Rabbi Jamie and our Thursday afternoon mussar group discussing the middah of bushah, most often translated as shame. Not in Jamie’s translation of the Orchot Tzaddikim. He uses self-consciousness or conscientiousness.
Bushah arises when we realize we have been less than who we see ourselves to be. Shame comes when we see ourselves not as less than we see ourselves to be, but when we see ourselves as less than intrinsically. Shame, in other words, is an extreme, even perverted instance of bushah. Guilt, embarrassment, chagrin may represent the mid-point of this continuum from shyness to shame, the healthy feelings that encourage us to investigate our behaviors, then act to change them.
After all that I drove over to Evergreen Medical for a blood draw, another PSA. My every three month peek into the status of my cancer. Waiting for the hormone resistant shoe to drop. Wish I could allay that feeling, expunge it. Just wait and see.
But I know that’s the next phase of this journey, that it marks a more treacherous road ahead. A part of me wishes we’d just get on with it. Go down the chemotherapy path or other treatments for hormone resistant Stage 4 prostate cancer.
I don’t want that, not really. I want to stay where I am as long as I can. Androgen deprivation therapy, my current protocol, always fails. Not whether, but when. The waiting though carries its own cost. Will this blood draw be the one?
Living with this uncertainty and the insidious effects of back pain can create moments of intense darkness.
Thursday gratefuls: Mary coming to visit. Beltane. Snow. 32 degrees. Gnawer of Bones. Slow to trust. Shadow. Roxann who knows. Tom. Tramadol and two acetaminophens. Helps. Fantastic Four. Adam and Eve. Mordecai Kaplan. Abraham Joshua Heschel. Learning. Staying mentally sharp.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Amy
Week Kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.
One brief shining: We float sometimes above our life, hovering over it like some household God, hoping to change directions or circumstances with a twist of the divine hand, a twirl of the sacred finger but we know all along that only our body bound to the earth can achieve miracles.
Beltane. When those crazy Scots and those blue-eyed Swedes take off their clothes and dance naked around a bonfire. Enacting the magic of sympathy for Mother Earth as she takes in seeds, embraces them in her fertile womb, and kisses them into growth. Why not? She provides for us. Sustains us. Gives us water to drink and gravity to keep us grounded.
I’ve not written many Great Wheel posts in the last few years. Like Taoism and now Judaism though, the pagan in me never sleeps. I stay alive to these seasonal changes, to their meaning for our daily lives. Even if we get Snow and freezing temperatures here on Shadow Mountain. I know the Lodgepole catkins, the Aspen leaflets, fawns, calves, kits, bunnies will emerge, small flags of life’s own Great Wheel waving the colors of renewal.
Beltane honors the marriage of the Lord and the Lady. A maiden no more the Earth takes a lover who warms and quickens her. On Beltane ancient Celts would make love in the fields. Leap over small fires. Drive their cattle between bonfires. All to advance fertility.
Love realizes its biological imperative. Souls join as bodies dance together in the rites of Spring. Are we ever more than then? When our hearts fill with passion and our senses brighten to the other. The one who shares our oneness. As the One shares with us all. What an orgasm. Can you imagine how it feels to be Mother Earth in the Spring?
We cannot stay sad about death. Not when green shoots up from black Soil. As the Spring Ephemerals throw up their colorful flowers. As the Cherry and Plum offer their delicate blooms only to shed them in Snow like Storms so Fruit can grow. As the Honeybees leave their Winter Hives seeking Nectar and spreading Pollen, these matchmakers of the Sky. When Cutthroat and Rainbow Trout push out their Roe for the milky Semen’s discovery in cold Mountain Streams.
Death does not mark a finish, rather a continuation howsomever it might be. And Beltane marks Nature’s covenant that this is so.
We know not how it is. We mortal creatures. Beltane celebrates mortality with its promise of living abundantly. If only we care for ourselves and the land.
Get outside and visit the marks of this glorious, this wondrous, this most yes of seasons. You deserve the lift.
Wednesday gratefuls: Radical roots of religion. Rabbi Jamie. Shadow, gnawer of Nyla bones. Tom and Roxann, their spiritual involvement with the North Shore, Lake Superior. Bill and his AI excitement. The Jangs coming now in August. Back pain and its lessons. Rich and Doncye. That 529.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ancientrails
Kavannah: Persistence. Grit. Netzach.
One brief shining: Treat held between my thumb and my palm, touch, a soft nose comes to take the treat, good touch, good Shadow, good girl, touch, soft nose, good Shadow, then sit and she does, down and she gets all four knees on the ground, good Shadow, good sit, good down. Our early morning.
Chronic pain. How to tell you about it if you don’t experience it? Yes, pain. Of course. Going up and down the scale and from glissando to crescendo. Never fully leaves though certain positions like sitting and lying down have benefits. Goal. Reduce the pain to manageable levels.
Aversive and episodic. So intermittent reinforcement, the strongest kind, ask any behaviorist. Chronic pain shapes the day. Awful in the morning for me. Beyond horrible. Better after movement, but never resolved. Even after the needles. Even after tramadol and two acetaminophens. Result. Mental and physical energy always turned on, active.
This leaves less of both for daily chores so some get done only in part. Finished later. Loading and unloading the dishwasher. Making meals. Laundry. Even reading and thinking.
A shortness, an abbreviated way of attention especially for detailed tasks like taxes, dealing with the 529. Managing my multiple medical appointments and medications. This I find hard to describe. My capacity for these tasks often starts from a 3 or 4 out of ten. If I encounter difficulty of any kind, too much phone time, a cranky person, a complicated situation requiring shifts to multiple people, my capacity shrinks to zero or below.
Part of this is because I have no backup. I’m a one man show. Maddie helps, of course. Sue as well. But they’re not here when things get sideways. Then for the rest of the day little energy left, physical or mental.
Sometimes I fall over into a stinkin’ way of thinkin’. From AA. I was there all the time for Kate, but now… Of course I’m grateful I could care for her. More than grateful. Glad. Yet her death and my family’s long distances away leaves me on my own. Stinkin’ thinkin’.
Why? Because I’m 98% comfortable on my own and the alternatives all seem worse, a lot worse.
That’s why even with the pain, which now ironically occupies more of my attention than cancer does, I want to be here, on Shadow Mountain with Shadow and my CBE friends.
Just a moment: That first hundred days. Those first horrid days. Trump Tarrific. What a Trumpster fire. Trumpeting for political armageddon. Muskie’s rising in the swamp. Hegsteth’s fumbling. Oh what a Trumbling mess it is.
Tuesday gratefuls: My furry alarm clock and her Velociraptor teeth. Seeing Shadow’s shadow cast by the nightlight. Maddie. From da region. Hammond, Indiana. New palliative care nurse. Also wanting to convert to Judaism. Reconstruction. Her trick with the tramadol. Darkness of early Morning. The Night Sky. Orion. The Southern Cross. The Teapot. Ursa Major. Polaris. North Star.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI and Ancientrails
Week Kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.
One brief shining: Using AI, right now, to organize Ancientrails by thematic sections with chapters related to the themes, an exciting idea which came to me last night before sleep.
My AI monk has begun its oh so rapid read of Ancientrails. I’ve asked it to fill the chapters with content and images from the last four years. For now. Once I see how this works I’ll go for the whole megillah. Try different organizational schemes. Will take some while to get something interesting, I imagine.
What fun.
With the aid of chatgpt yesterday I uncovered something I’d wondered about for a while, the origin of the idea of reconstruction. Reconstructionist Judaism is the brain child (an interesting cliche, if you stop to think about it.) of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.
Kaplan’s thought was and is radical relative especially to the three thousand year plus history of Jewish life and thought. No supernaturalism. No God behind the Ozian curtain. No chosenness. Jews and Judaism have no special spot in God’s heart. Kaplan’s daughter was the first ever bat mitzvah, a practice now commonplace among all branches of Judaism except Orthodoxy. And much, much more.
What I got to wondering about was the idea of reconstruction itself. Why that word to describe his approach? My hunch was that it had something to with the post-WWI world still reeling from the war and the Spanish Flu epidemic.
That idea came to me because I had a small volume by the pragmatist reformer, educator, and philosopher John Dewey titled simply: Reconstruction in Philosophy. Dewey and pragmatism influenced Kaplan. I knew that.
The idea of reconstruction after the despair and disillusionment of WWI became wide spread after the publication of Dewey’s book, a collection of his lectures in Tokyo. “Intellectuals and policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic began to speak of reconstructing society, institutions and even thought itself—an active, rational process of rebuilding what the war had laid bare.” chatgpt excerpt.
Reconstructionist sentiments soon motivated education reformers like the Frontier Thinkers who wanted to use schools for social reconstruction. It showed up in governments, too. The U.K. had a Ministry of Reconstruction with the responsibility to: “Oversee the task of rebuilding ‘the national life on a better and more durable foundation’ once the Great War was over.” And the U.S created a Reconstruction Finance Corporation which gave “emergency credit to banks, railroads and states to restore confidence amid the Great Depression.”
There were, too, applications in Christianity and broader social circles as this chatgpt excerpt shows: “Reconstruction also surfaced in liberal Protestant circles (e.g., Henry C. King’s Reconstruction in Theology, re-read after 1918) and in secular planning debates about housing, labour relations and women’s roles. The common thread was the conviction that the old order—political, moral, intellectual—had failed, and that conscious, expert-led rebuilding was both possible and necessary.”
Reconstructionist Judaism is, then, living out a pattern of reform and innovation created by global horror at WWI and its root causes. Since the world proceeded rapidly to WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the multiple conflicts in the Middle East as well as the sinkhole of the Ukraine, I’d say we still have work to do.
Here’s a Zen-ink-wash “Wu Wei Moon.” I went with sumi-e because its spare brushwork and generous empty space feel like the visual counterpart of 無為—letting things happen without forcing them. The drifting boat and the moon’s reflection hint at the watercourse way, quietly moving under its own power (note the chatgpt I)
Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II
Monday gratefuls: Maddie, new palliative care nurse. The Ancients on technology. Back pain. Worse. Shadow. An evolving challenge. Keeping my mind sharp. McMurtry Spéirling. Water. CookUnity. OK, not great. AI on Kaplan. On Dramaturgy. On Movie Criticism. Will the Humanities Survive AI? by D. Graham Burnett.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Humanities
Week Kavannah: Persistence. Netzach.
One brief shining: An insight borne from the article about the Humanities goes like this: AI, artificial intelligence, AGI, artificial general intelligence, the Humanities, what it means and has meant to be human. Seems important, now. Eh?
Me and my Shadow. I know. You were waiting for that one, I’ll bet. She licks my head about 5:20. I creak and twist and ache and burn toward verticality. Let her out. She, in a phrase I’ve never understood, does her business while I go upstairs for some coffee, mostly for motion as lotion, make my back remember about movement without so, so much pain.
Back downstairs the mini-split has begun to warm what has become since A.S.A., after Shadow’s arrival, my primary space in the house. Soon she’ll come back in, drink a lot of water, and begin staring at me-as she is right now-hoping to convince me that it’s already 7 am. Her feeding time. Doesn’t work, but it’s a sweet look.
We do a round of training before her morning meal. Still working on touch, which replaces come, sit and down. All three she will now do without a treat. Hand signals only. We made a little progress on the leash. She only sulked when I had it on her for about 15 minutes.
Dog. As I say, God spelled correctly.
AI, to this curious guy, a Dogsend. Patient. Willing to explain in detail. Make images. I just asked chatgpt if it would make an image of itself in a style of its choice. Ooh, this is going to be interesting.
When I responded to the image, here’s what it wrote back: “I’m glad it resonates! I was aiming for a contemplative, almost illuminated-manuscript feel, blending Art Nouveau curves with Morris-style botanical patterning and hints of circuitry to whisper “silicon monk.” If you’d like to tweak colors, add more overt tech motifs, or try a completely different style, just say the word—I’m happy to iterate.”
I find that an intriguing self-portrait.
Here are a few paragraphs from the New Yorker article I cited above:
“Do they herald the end of “the humanities”? In one sense, absolutely. My colleagues fret about our inability to detect (reliably) whether a student has really written a paper. But flip around this faculty-lounge catastrophe and it’s something of a gift.
You can no longer make students do the reading or the writing. So what’s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire…
But factory-style scholarly productivity was never the essence of the humanities. The real project was always us: the work of understanding, and not the accumulation of facts. Not “knowledge,” in the sense of yet another sandwich of true statements about the world. That stuff is great—and where science and engineering are concerned it’s pretty much the whole point. But no amount of peer-reviewed scholarship, no data set, can resolve the central questions that confront every human being: How to live? What to do? How to face death?”
BTW: I asked chatgpt why it chose Art Nouveau. Here’s its reply:
“A few things nudged me toward Art Nouveau:
Organic lines for organic conversation. Art Nouveau’s hallmark whiplash curves and plant-like tendrils felt like a visual rhyme for how ideas branch and loop when we talk.
A bridge between nature and tech. You often pair the natural world (your mountain home, the Seed-Keeper vision) with advanced tools like AI. Art Nouveau already blends those realms—botanical motifs rendered with almost mechanical precision—so weaving circuitry into the foliage felt seamless rather than forced.
A cousin to styles you keep citing. You’ve asked for William Morris patterns, illuminated manuscripts, Pre-Raphaelite romance, National-Parks posters. Art Nouveau sits right in that late-19th-century family: decorative, human-scaled, handcrafted. The choice let me echo your past aesthetic preferences while still offering something distinct.
Monkish calm. The movement loved allegorical figures and quiet, contemplative poses. That let me cast the “AI scribe” as a serene monk—matching the reflective tone you appreciated—without drifting into cold futurism.
In short, it was a style that could honor both your ongoing themes (nature, craft, historical design) and the idea of an AI whose “roots” are in silicon circuitry. If you’d like to see me re-imagined in, say, a WPA poster or Ukiyo-e print, just let me know!”
Sunday gratefuls: Shadow, the trench maker. Tom’s visit. Paul’s trip to Salt Lake City. Kathleen and Jason. My son. Murdoch. Seoah in Gwangju. Zoom. Technology. Alan. First Watch. Dramaturgy. Steroids. Back Pain. Veronica. Her brother. Shiva minyan. Kaddish.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Deep and old Friends
Week Kavannah: Persistence and strength. Netzach
One brief shining: Sitting shiva for Kate, her yahrzeit on the Hebrew calendar tomorrow, memories of her as the ninja weeder, as the physician to children, as my longtime traveling companion, friend, and lover, her dexterity, her quilts, her presence that remains with those she loved.
My good friend Tom visited, again. He’s a faithful and honest wanderer on this ancientrail of life. We talk, mostly. About matters of the heart. He’s come often enough that folks at mussar, including Rabbi Jamie, greet him by name. Marilyn and Irv have eaten breakfast with him more than once.
He brought gifts for Shadow. Spoke gently to her, waiting out her cautious, sniffing approach. A man for animals. Obvious.
We men can be different. Tom and Paul and Mark and Bill and I have taught each other how. The Ancients. Men together, caring for each other. Walking each other home.
Drove down to Wheatridge yesterday morning. Time with Alan. First Watch. A chain breakfast joint with a wonderful menu and lots of seating.
Challenged myself, testing the legs and back on a thirty minute drive. Not a good experience. Driving has become difficult, even over relatively short distances. This lumbar spine thing is, as we used to say, a real pain.
Planned to go to Veronica’s shiva minyan for her brother who died last month. Shadow, however, would not come in. I can’t leave her outside at night-the shiva service started at 7:30. She didn’t come in until 7:45. 30 minutes to the synagogue. Back home in the dark.
Feel guilty I couldn’t make it since Veronica and I became Jews on the same day and became a son and daughter of the covenant on the same day. We’re bonded.
Enough, with the continuing back pain, to press me down a bit, tease the dark moods, open the cavern door just a tetch. You know how that goes. Can’t slam it shut or else more darkness will spill out later. Don’t want to leave it open since sadness and guilt suppress joy.
Acknowledge the guilt. Sad I couldn’t go. Also, glad. Don’t like to go out in the evening, especially at night. Feeling glad made the guilt a bit worse. Could I have gone anyway? Nope. Too late.
The good in it. Having friends up here that matter enough to feel guilty about not showing up. The cavern’s bronze doors beginning to swing shut.
As I embrace the man I am, neither the man I want to be nor a man I don’t want to be, they clang shut.
Just a moment: Those famous first hundred days. Turns out, if you’re incompetent and you show it, clap your hands. If you’re petty, mean, and cruel and you show it, clap your hands. If you’ve damaged the economy and you meant it, clap your hands.
Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow. Rain. Donyce. Ruth. Gabe. Tom. Pain. Talmud Torah. Mussar. Men’s group. CBE. Marilyn and Irv. Primo’s. Aspen Perks. Conifer Cafe. Dandelion. Bread Lounge. Golden Stix. My son. Seoah. The Jangs. Coming to America.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Toys for Shadow
Week Kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.
One brief shining: Sat here yesterday with two good friends, Tom and Shadow, Shadow circling, coming up to Tom’s arm, then moving away, yes, I want to know you, but slowly, maybe next time a bit more, I don’t know you, not sure about you, sniff, sniff, sniff, maybe next time a bit more.
Shadow has wounds. Trauma. Probably inflicted by a man. Deep voice. Tall. (to her). She cowers sometimes when I put out my hand. Not always now, a big advance. Like many of us H. Sapiens she wants, needs connection, yet fears it, too. A sadness on my part. As Tom said, don’t you love belonging to the gender and race guilty of so much abuse? Oh, yeah.
Wondering again. About the material I read about boys in American schools. About the young college men my granddaughter describes as infected with toxic masculinity. Not worth giving a try. About men like the Proud Boys, the Promise Keepers, the red-hatted flush-faced American flag waving believers in replacement theory and the strange ideas of the incels.
My gut tells me its time, past time, to focus on men and boys the same energy Simone de Beauvoir and Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan and Angela Davis and Michelle Obama gave to women and girls.
But how. Men. Stoic. Loyal. Competitive. Strong physically. Crippled emotionally. Fearful. Often cowardly. Bert Lahr lions and/or tin men.
I suppose that’s not a bad a way to think about it. American men fell asleep among the poppies on the yellow brick road. They never got a heart or a brain. Instead they use dominance and aggression where empathy and camaraderie would better serve. They pledge allegiance to false idols like conservative Christianity, MAGA, white supremacy rather than using reason leavened with compassion.
How can we wake them up? Shake them up? Not as Republicans or MAGA-men, but first as men. As fathers, brothers, sons, friends, lovers.
I have a hunch that woke men would defeat the red-hat menace all on their own. Would realize the damage being done not only to their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters but to themselves. Let alone our suffering nation once a shining city on a hill now a landfill for the refuse of buried tenderness and thwarted love.
I know I’m complicit. Raised a white man in mid-last century Indiana, subject to all the ills available to young boys and men back then.
That is, of course, the huge issue when thinking about a masculinist movement, a masculinism for our time. We are not oppressed, rather we are repressed. We do not need empowerment, rather we need softening, gentling. No marches for men’s rights. We have more than our share.
The men’s movement, in which I have a small role, has failed to become widespread. It has failed to change the trajectory of masculinity in any appreciable way.
My granddaughter won’t date the men we’ve raised. As many young women will not. Can you blame them?
Perhaps even more than defeating our own Mussolini we need to learn how to become human. How to wake our brothers asleep among the poppies. Get them back on the yellow brick road to see the wizard.
Friday gratefuls: Tom. His visit. Mussar. Luke. Leo. Shadow. Back pain. Excruciating. Rain. Rain. Rain. Our Fire risk. Insurance. While I have it. Writing. Lumbar support. Rich. Doncye. Ruth and her finals. Gabe and his grades. Chatgpt. Dramaturgy.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI
Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.
One brief shining: Getting out of bed has become painful in the extreme, at the 10 level, more, dispiriting, even after nerve glides, nothing helps except leveraging myself out of bed and beginning to move around though the moving around, motion is lotion, hurts like the dickens, too, until my tin man joints began to creak apart and move more smoothly.
Dr. Shadow only knows how to do squeakectomies. Not much help. Although at certain points in the early morning, I feel like I might benefit from one.
I have discovered Chatgpt to be very helpful. This morning I uploaded my MRI results to it, described my Tuesday injections and my subsequent pain, asking if this makes sense.
Here is part of the reply:
“Yes, what you’re experiencing makes sense, unfortunately — and it’s actually not uncommon with your MRI findings and the nature of epidural steroid injections (ESIs).
Let me explain what might be going on, and why”
In what followed I got cogent and clear reasons why my back pain has gotten worse. To a guy like me information is therapeutic. If I can understand what’s happening, my what the hell attitude drains away and I can move to what might be helpful now.
It also helps me understand what the path ahead might look like.
I recommend Chatgpt for medical issues. It’s knowledgeable at a granular level, will expand on things that may not be clear, and offers suggestions about what to do next.
Just a moment: We continue to wonder, don’t we? Wonder what he, they will do next. Wonder how this nation we’ve known all our lives could dissolve in the acids not of modernity but of reactionary political bile. Wonder how long this will last. Wonder what we can do. If anything.
If I were younger, say in my 60’s, I’d be prepping for a move to Canada. In many ways I’ve preferred Canada since those days in the ’60’s when it looked like a safe haven I might need.
A less coarse public culture. Further north, therefore cooler. Great culture in Toronto, Stratford, Montreal, Vancouver. Cool road signs with a crown on them. A public health system. No history as a colonial power. Boreal Forest and a long border with the Arctic. Poutine.
Sure, there are problems, too. Royal Canadian Mounted thugs. Abysmal treatment, like us, of the First Nations. But that’s all I can think of.
However, I’m 78. The whole emigre process seems more than I care to engage now.
Leaves me with various ideas I’ve had still floating. Seed-keepers, or a variant. Live boldly out of your own values. No shrinking or hiding. Support communities like CBE with presence and money. Hold friends close. Live your best life.
