Judaism, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel

Experiencing the World

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kamala. Tim. Blue. Red. Orange obstacle. The obstacle is the way. Great Sol. MVP. Angst. Love and pain. Humility. Elephants. Free will. Or, not. Stan Draghul memorial service. A man focused on experiences not things. Wondering about my own memorial service. Yahrzeits. The Yarhzeit wall at CBE. Judaism. A way of being and staying human.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Deep friendships

Kavannah: Joy

One brief shining: Stan’s son Adam said there was a lockbox in his hospice room, though “knowing my Dad the code was pasted on the bottom;”  he opened the lockbox after Stan died and found all of his passports; opening them at the memorial service he held up the changing pictures and leafed through the visa pages: China. Nepal. Israel. South Africa. Cambodia, “all over the world,” a man hungry for experience.

 

 

I only knew Stan a bit from mussar days pre-pandemic. He never returned after Covid got legs. Each of his children, his friend/partner, his long time nurse (Stan was a family practice doc), and a friend from his men’s group all spoke of him with consistency and admiration.

As often happens to me, I left the service wishing I’d known him better, much better, than I did. A person could write an interesting book attending memorial services for a year and offering life lessons from the lives summed up in them. With Stan I would say choose compassion, kindness, keen intellect, curiosity, wanderlust, love of family and profession. Traits. Ways of being in the world. Available to all, but certainly manifest in Stan’s life.

Afterward. A meal. Eating with Marilyn, Joanne, Tara, Jamie, Ginny, Sally, and Janice. You know. Croissants split and filled with Chicken salad. Baguettes sliced with raw roast beef. Vegetables with humus. Fruits. Strawberries. Blueberries. Wonderful grapes.

The morning.

 

The evening. Instead of holding MVP in the Sukkah-it was too cold-and the Evergreen Chorale was practicing its Christmas concert in the sanctuary, we moved to Jamie’s parent’s house. Not far away. A profound evening of deep sharing, lots of laughter. Probably not enough tears. Heartfelt and honest. A source of Joy. Every one around the table: Jamie, Marilyn, Ron, Rich, Joanne a good friend.

Rich, as he does from time to time, threw a real oddball into the conversation. He has some role, not sure what, in a Colorado Supreme Court case being heard Thursday:  Petitioner-Appellant: Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc.,
v. Respondents-Appellees: Cheyenne Mountain Zoological Society and Bob Chastain. The issue before the court:
Does the petition make a prima facie case that Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo are entitled to release?
Did the district court have subject-matter jurisdiction?

Missy, Kimba, Lucky, Loulou, and Jambo are African Elephants being held at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs.

Too, the Court meets in one of its community settings: Wolf Law School at UC-Boulder. Right where I dropped Ruth off Sunday evening after sandwiches at Snarf’s. I’m gonna go. Provided I get up in time and can find parking. Oral arguments are at 9:15. Boulder’s about an hour away. Rich said to get there early. I’m thinking 8:15. Which means leaving here at least by 7:15. Then, the critical piece finding a parking place on campus on a school day. Ruth will help me. We might go together.

This falls under my new act spontaneously commitment made when I returned to the land of my soul. Does mean, to my regret, that I will miss Simchat Torah which is Wednesday evening. Got to hit the hay early before an early Thursday morning.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Love is more powerful than discomfort.

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Grandma. At Chief Hosa lodge

Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Monday gratefuls: Boulder. Ruth. Snarfs. The Flatirons. The greens as Great Sol sank below the horizon. Grandpopping. Podcasts. One on crime and disorder. Another on Walter Benjamin. Falling. Of the Aspen Leaves. The dry Willow Leaves blow away, many carried downstream by Maxwell Creek. Samain only 10 days away. Simchat Torah Wednesday.

Sparks of joy and awe: UC Boulder

Kavannah: Compassion  Rachamin

One brief shining: Ruth and I sat at a blue metal table on Pearl Street, Boulder’s main drag, our paper wrapped sandwiches spread out in front of us, mine a french dip sans jus, hers something with nothing animal, a few cars drove by since we were far from the Mall, Leaves finished with their seasons work lay scattered on the sidewalk as we spoke of painful childhoods, death, deception, and treachery.

 

Our initial impetus for moving to Colorado came after I attended an Ira Progoff retreat in Tucson. In a meditation on the next stepping stones of my life I realized Kate and I needed to be here in Colorado for the kids. Reinforced on the drive back when I showed up at Jon and Jen’s with no warning to Ruth. She saw me, turned and ran back in the house. That was April of 2014.

Kate agreed. We gave ourselves two years to make the move. Momentum took over though and by that October Kate had been in Colorado as our scout, finding a house. I knew I would dither and Kate was decisive. 9358 Black Mountain Drive. In the Mountains as we both wanted. Jen called it Mountain fever and was mad that we’d not moved closer. We however were not coming to be babysitters, but grandparents.

Andover and its gardens, its bees, its orchard, its woods had become too physically demanding for us. Kate had retired three years before. It was an inflection point for us. We still had four dogs: Kepler, Rigel, Gertie, and Vega. As the Winter Solstice neared Tom Crane and I got in our Rav4 with tranquilized Kepler, Rigel, and Vega. Drove straight through. Rather, Tom did. We talked the whole way only stopping when one mammal or another had to pee. Kate left a day or so later in a van I had packed full with items we didn’t trust to the movers. She had Gertie with her, feeding her Whoppers on the way out. Well. Parts of Whoppers. Which Kate reported Gertie approved.

In the Garden Andover

Leaving the Twin Cities after forty years, a bit longer for Kate, was tough. I had friends, especially the Woolly Mammoths, and I had immersed myself in the cultural life of the Twin Cities: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra where Kate and I met. The Science museum which Joseph and I loved. The Children’s Theater, The Guthrie, the MIA, the Walker. Both of us had spent hours and yet more hours planting, weeding, living with dogs, caring for bees and extracting honey. Sitting by the firepit. Just being together in a place we shaped from our first days there.

Yet. The call of being with our grandkids as they grew up in what we knew were challenging circumstances with an angry mother and father felt compelling.

Kate and Ruth developed a strong, strong bond. Kate helped Ruth learn to cook, sew, be a Jew, and a young woman. I took Ruth on adventures to museums, the National Western Stockshow, hikes in the Mountains. Gabe, too. When Kate died, then Jon, Barb, Jen’s mother aka Tennessee Grandma, and I were left. Barb had to move to into an assisted living spot and sees the kid’s less.

I would have gone to Hawai’i in spite of all this had I not figured out that my son and Seoah’s return there was not certain as I’d initially thought. Glad it turned out that way. Ruth and I have become close, Gabe as well. I’m an important, stable, calm presence in both of their lives. They both love Shadow Mountain Home, being up here.

Now I drive to Boulder once or twice a month. Gabe comes up and stays for a couple of nights. Critical for them, I believe. And, me. When I think about them, about my son and Seoah, about Mark and Mary and Diane, then about cancer, I can see keeping up with treatments as long as they are life extending. Love is more powerful than discomfort.

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase

My Recipe

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Sunday gratefuls: My good and fulfilling life. Dogs. All Dogs. Especially Kep, Gertie, Rigel, and Vega. The Colorado Dogs. Kate, always Kate. Her smile. Ginny and Janice. Laughing. Television. A lot of very good material in Jennie’s Dead. That silly fan light. Neon gone dark for now. Vince. Fingers that still type with ease. Eyes that see. Ears? Well…

Sparks of joy and awe: Senses

Kavannah: Joy

One brief shining: It’s his birthday week, my son, far away in Songtan, Korea, turning 43 in the same week as his CT scans and blood work, checking for damage caused by Hep B which he contracted at birth, leaning in to his work keeping our ally safe, mentoring his airmen and women, prepping for the switch to command next year, Murdoch follows him from room to room, sleeping at his feet.

 

On Friday I drove down the hill to Mile High Hearing, lower, much lower than I am here on Shadow Mountain, to see Amy, my soccer coaching audiologist. Three year mark on the Phonak which works very well for me. Warranty ending. No thanks to extended warranty. I get to send it back to the folks at Phonak for a refurbishing. What’s a refurbishing, I ask? Oh, they basically replace everything with new parts. Huh? Then I figured it out. They’re three years away from this model technologically. This is a way to cheaply enhance their products with now outdated parts, making it more likely I’ll choose Phonak again. Smart.

I have a loaner hearing aid now. How bout that?

 

First. Know yourself. Live from that self. Be authentic. Take the hits, take the applause but stay true to who you are. As life begins to lengthen, do more and more of what brings you joy. Shed the gloom as best you can. Knowing that life flees so rapidly.

Second. Be content with the Self that you are. Be content with what you have. Learn the meaning of the word enough. Act on that.

Third: Work, yes work, at sustaining and maintaining key relationships: partner, family, friends. Spend time with all of them, time with laughter and tears and wonderings and dreams.

Fourth: Meditate on your corpse. Take a dia de los muertos attitude toward death. A phase change. And, a certainty. Sad and painful when it’s ones you love, a one person journey for your authentic, unafraid Self. Celebrate this punctuation mark. Grieve it. And greet it.

Fifth: Dance and clap. Twirl and grin. Laugh as much as you can. Do what hones the gifts you have. Use those same gifts for the world and for your own health.

Sixth: Don’t worry about your legacy. Hold your life and your health lightly. See number four.

That should do it. My recipe for a fulfilling and good life. Whether it’s a happy one or not doesn’t matter. Happiness and hope are illusory, momentary, wisps of the heart. Stick to what matters. Living your life. You’re the only one who can and we all need the unique presence you are.

Fourth Phase, Memories

Ante smart phone and hearing aids

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Yiddische kopf. Alan and Joanne. Dandelion. Ginny and Janice. Aspen Perks. Ruth tomorrow in Boulder. Being a Jew. Always. In my round about way. First Snow. Coming down in the straight lines of Mountain Snow on Shadow Mountain. Gold and white. Green and white. Black Mountain white. Steel gray skies. Lodgepoles showing off their get rid of the too heavy snow load tricks. The good life. Life itself. The Tree of life. Kabbalah. Sukkot and the Sukkah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Torah

Kavannah: Friendship

One brief shining: Got there, to the Dandelion, early as I usually do, to discover I’d left home without my hearing aid, my phone, and my glasses; geez, I thought, trying to parse out why I’d done that, concluding the first chill weather of the season-it was 35 out-and thinking more about outer wear: let’s see, fleece, large jacket like flannel shirt over my sweatshirt had occupied my attention, pushing away going through my usual Mountain pilot’s checklist, will remember them all today. In fact I already have my loaner hearing aid in and my phone beside me.

 

 

To continue that thought for a moment. Yes, I leave things behind. Have all my life. Not a trick of old age, but of hurried living. Why I’ve had patience as a kavannah so much of late. Anyhow when I got to the restaurant early, the woman who manages the place who knows I’m sunny side up on my eggs, greeted me, gave me coffee and cream, and I went to my usual table to sit and wait for Alan and Joanne. Poured cream in the coffee. Got some water from the cooler. Set out my silverware and napkin. Then.

No phone. What do I do? Realized I’d come early to restaurants all my life, too. And most of that time without a cell phone to amuse me. To make me feel like I had something of significance to do while I waited. What did I do then? Often I’d have a book. Sometimes a notebook and pen. I’d read or take notes, write a poem, sketch.

This day Great Sol was in my eyes. I turned away from his glare, thought about lowering the shade but decided Mother’s spinning would put her lover above the roof line soon enough. As it did. I put my hands in my lap and sat there. Saw the only other guy in the room suddenly stand up and make what I took to be basketball mimes: a hand over his head blocking, a slight turn and and a ball released toward the basket. I guessed basketball not only because the hand movements were familiar, but his height. Maybe 6’5″ or more. A big guy.

Looked at the rows of root beer, soda, mineral water in the glass front standing cooler, how neat they were, awaiting the days shuffling and rearranging. The guy from the linen supply truck came in and gathered up moisture absorbing rugs, rags used in the kitchen, went out, came back in with fresh rags in a clear plastic bag and fresh rugs over his shoulder.

Read the chalk board. Tomato Soup. Poblano and bacon quiche. Apple cinnamon rolls.

Alan and Joanne came in the door. Oh. Well. That’s what I used to do. Pay attention.

Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants

A Pagan Covenant

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday Gratefuls: The Sukkah. Harvest festivals. Celebrating the intimate link among humans, Great Sol, Mother Earth, and Seeds. Fall. The sweet, sad, soulful song of Aspens and their gold. Hygge. Coming soon to Shadow Mountain. Rabbi Jamie and his high holiday sermons. Ruth, who wants to eat together again. Sunday. Boulder. Kate, my love. Talking to her. Laurie and her Chi-town food truck. Tulsa King. On the Run. Phantom Toll Booth. The Iliad. Homer.

Sparks of joy and awe: The Harvest

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: The CBE sukkah has wood lattice on its three sides, mesh grass matting for a roof, and three children’s decorated tapestries, with a lulav always on the table, the four species: branches of myrtle, palm, willow bound together and the etrog, a large citrus fruit separate from them, the branches waved north, south, east, west, up and down, while saying a bracha, a blessing, the etrog picked up at the end a blessing and a ritual which has a theme of Jewish unity, sure, but more to the point represents the moment in time, the harvest, which Sukkot celebrates.

Seed Savers Exchange is one of the oldest and largest heirloom seed conservation organizations in the world.

Email: diane@seedsavers.org

Corn pickers and combines. Gathering in their mechanical dinosaur ways Corn, Wheat, other Grains. A rhythm with which I grew up. Farms all round my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana, around my mom’s hometown of Morristown and on the land between the two to the south, to Muncie on the east, to Elwood on the west, and Marion on the north. I learned early to always slow down on a gravel road if a hill blocked the view in your direction of travel. There might be a lumbering mechanized giant moving very slowly just over the crest of the hill.

Later the grain trucks would back up to silos when the market was right and carry the harvest to elevators and their huge silos which held many farmer’s crops for loading on grain cars for dispersal to the General Mills, Kellogs, Cargills of the world. So ordinary. Common. Mundane. Usual. Wasn’t until l moved to the Rockies that I found myself apart from the rituals of agriculture.

Oh, once in a while I’ll see a tractor harvesting hay off a Mountain Meadow, but that’s rare enough to be remarkable. There are Cattle in eastern and western Colorado, a few up here in the Mountains, but that’s ranching. It works to different rhythms and has slaughter as its grain truck to the elevator equivalent.

As long as Kate and I lived in Andover, we observed the fall agricultural rituals albeit on a much smaller scale. Tomatoes. Potatoes. Onions. Beets. Carrots. Beans. Raspberries, Ground Cherries, Honey Crisp and Macintosh Apples, Pears, Cherries, Honey. Whatever we planted. Flowers, cut Flowers, too.

Kate would can, dry, and we both would bottle honey. Then go out to the firepit and throw a few logs on, sit with the dogs milling around, and enjoy quiet time together. The harvest season. A feast. A moment when the covenant among Soil, Seeds, and human toil revealed its promise.

Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism

Writing and Connecting

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Sukkot. Lab tests. Jennie’s Dead. Clipping out a large section. Sleep. Lunch with Joanne on Friday. 44 degrees. The Leaves. Blowing in the Wind. Colonies of Aspens with Golden Leaves. Colonies of Aspen already skeletal. The changes of the Arapaho National Forest. My home. Less than three weeks until our long national nightmare either gets worse or better. The smell of just brewed coffee.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tom’s visit

Kavannah: Yirah

One brief shining: Phlebotomists with butterfly, I. V. needles, phlebotomists with the more usual empty barreled needle, both swapping out one plastic tube, then another, sometimes another and another, an alcohol swap, a small piece of gauze and a piece of tape or a brightly colored wide wrap and bob’s your uncle, more of my vital fluids are ready for a centrifuge, a slide, a reagent that give up messages in the bottle.

 

Been reading Jennie’s Dead. It has two long sections I wrote because I got excited about translating Ovid on my own, a story in the Metamorphosis about Zeus and a council of the gods. I wanted to use that material because I myself had wrested it from the Latin into my native tongue. I like it, too. A piece in Jennie’s Dead that gives backstory to the power of Typhon, the many armed, snake-legged giant who challenged Olympus and cut out Zeus’ sinews. However. It complicates the narrative flow and is, at least to the me reading Jennie some year’s later, extraneous. To this story. Might become one of its own. Like I want to write a story focused only on Lycaon, the ancient Arcadian King turned into a Wolf by Zeus. I overcomplicated an otherwise good narrative with a sidebit about American Immortals as Emanuel Ezekiel named them. Superior Wolf.

So now Jennie’s Dead will become a straight forward narrative about good witches trying to survive against a very strong mage, one with the powers of Loki. Needs more character development, more backstory. I have time to do that and I will as soon as I finish my reread. Probably this week.

 

The new year, 5785, has found me reaching out to Derek, my neighbor. Long neglected. Calling Joanne and setting up lunch. Stopping my silliness with not liking phone calls. Leaning into my writing, privileging it. Doing some cooking. Not resolutions. After effects of teshuvah, returning to the land of my soul. No longer mired in grief. Seeing the cancer clearly. Changing but not terminal. Also ongoing effects of the pain reduction occasioned by the celecoxib and the tramadol. The support I feel from palliative care.

A good bit of spontaneity thrown in, too. Doing things just because. Because they’re fun. Fun has not been high on my list. Not that I don’t have any. I do. Just didn’t seek it out in a casual, playful way.

Being a Jew has given me a new lens through which to view being human. It’s given me a new understanding, especially Reconstructionist Judaism, of the word religion.* Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionism, said the great need of contemporary life was belonging.

I converted due to my strong friendship links at Congregation Beth Evergreen. I imagine it is strong bonds like these that draw people into religious communities and it’s certainly those that keep them there. Understanding religion as deriving from the Latin religare*, meaning to bind or connect, may have been taken in the wrong sense. That is, religion is more about binding and connecting humans to one another than it is about dogma or belief.

 

*The English word “religion” originated from the Latin word “religio,” which meant “obligation,” “bond,” or “reverence.” However, the exact meaning of this term is still subject to debate among scholars. Some experts suggest that the word “religio” may have derived from the verb “religare,” meaning “to bind” or “to connect,” while others argue that it may have originated from “relegere,” which means “to read again” or “to carefully consider.”  Wordorigin

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Even so

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Brother Mark. Ode in my dream. Dr. Buphati. PSA. No news. Labs today. Metabolic. TSH. Testosterone. Phlebotomy and me. Rich, red blood. Vampiric profession. Kate’s ABD. Kenton. Kate’s last days. Signing love. Kate, always Kate. Old man’s voice. IHOP. Tony’s Market. Vegetable soup. & with Chicken. The slow beauty of leaf abscission. Gold coins spread on roadways and Mountain Meadows.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Freeing myself

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: Another spontaneous morning found me on the road for a nostalgia breakfast at an IHOP in Littleton, then a visit to Tony’s Market where I picked up pre-cut Vegetables for my Bean and Vegetable Soup, a large antipasto salad, lox, a long baguette sandwich with roast beef and cheddar, and a can of Lemon Rose Tea; on the way home I considered matters of life and death.

 

A dream last night. Disturbing. My old and good friend Mark Odegard showed up. We went somewhere together and he told me he was disappointed in me. I didn’t get it. Yet he persisted. All right, I said, let’s take a break then. Made me sad and a little angry in the dream.

 

Brother Mark wrote me a touching response to yesterday’s post. In sum encouraging me to think of the people with whom my life is entwined. I appreciated the reminder to see the decision from outside my own considerations.

Drums of impending doom. This is the aspect of having cancer that is difficult to convey. Especially when you’ve had it for ten years and counting. The many tests. Of all sorts. Blood Draws. CT’s. Bone Scans. Axumin PET Scans. Then, PET scans with a newer isotope for a tracer. Getting the results. With breath held in just a bit. The treatments. Surgery. Radiation. Drugs. More radiation. Learning the results of the treatments. Side effects that are not pleasant. The continuous reminder, as if I’d forget, that within lurk cells that have their own future in mind. Death to the host if necessary. The statistics that now include me. My actual life. How likely am I to conform to the mean?

Getting a new doctor, another oncologist to add to my urological and radiation oncologists. Those relationships. Regular visits with them. Wondering about their work load, their skill sets. All throwing up uncertainty as if it were a chew toy.

No, these drums do not beat all the time. Often they go silent for long periods. But surveillance always finds them awakened. Not necessarily funereal, but not calming either.

The cumulative effect is an overburden, one that grows with each passing year. News that is rarely unalloyed good news. The only real good news I got over the last ten years was clean margins, no cancer outside the prostate when it was removed. That one proved untrue only a year later.

Not complaining. I want to emphasize that. All this has made cancer a chronic disease for me. And I’ve lived a full and complete life during all of these years. Not crippled by depression and not often despairing. Even so.

 

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Why I hope to die at 75

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Cancer genetics. More treatment options. Do they make sense? Even exercise? Why I hope to die at 75. Encourage any of you to read this, tell me what you think. Jennie’s Dead. Further into reading, some revising. The American Immortal. Great Sol. Dependable. Brilliant. Warm and caring. A good parent. Mother Earth. Tempestuous and nurturing. An exciting parent. Those of us their children. Living as their creations. Aware of them and grateful for the gift of life and consciousness. Evolution, their primary parenting technique, has stood the test. And will continue too. Did you really think we were the end of evolution? It’s highest and best? Nope.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Medical care

Kavannah: Yirah

Dr. Buphati

One brief shining: Seen a lot of rooms like this over the last few years, first with my cancer, then with Kate, now with my cancer yet and still; this one belongs to Dr. Buphati, a medical oncologist, young, well respected, thoughtful, objective, who spoke with me yesterday not half a block from the 10th floor of Swedish Hospital where Kate died, telling me it’s not time to have dying conversations yet, so many treatment options still exist, no matter my PSA which he drew blood for, eager to get at it, and for the DNA of my cancer itself, so he can see if treatments tailored to the cancer’s DNA might be part of future plans, a kind man, and yet when I left his office a full body sadness took root in me and stayed until I got home. And after that, too.

 

After my visit to my friend Sunday, seeing the end stage of life enduring past awareness focused on faux Fall pixels for hours and hours, after reading through the article by U. of Pennsylvania oncologist, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Why I hope to die at 75, after my root and branch sadness, not despair, not depression, but weariness with the drumbeats of impending doom, after watching TV as an analgesic for psychic distress, and after a good night’s sleep in the cool Mountain temperatures of mid-fall in the Rockies, I’m wondering whether to adopt, perhaps in a modified for me form, the philosophy Emanuel presents.

I’m already there with the DNR order, only pain and suffering care at the end. I’m getting palliative care already for my spinal stenosis. If I read his article correctly, he wants to move toward only palliative care after 75. That would mean, in my case, forgoing anymore tests for other illnesses, any vaccines, probably anymore cancer treatment except for palliative care, giving up exercise and fussing about my diet.

Right now, as I consider it, this seems extreme. Vaccines for example. And I’m not sure I’m there yet for stopping cancer treatment. Though I’m closer to that idea today than I was a year ago. Giving up exercise and fussing with my diet? Maybe. It does seem like gilding a dying lily. No antibiotics for easily treatable infections? Nope. That seems silly to me. Although his point about pneumonia as the friend of the elderly was one Kate made often.

What makes this attractive to me? I’ve been aware for a long while now of what Ezekiel nicely phrases as the American Immortal. Our curious obsession with health and exercise as a means not only of extending health span, but of avoiding death. The proof of this subtext to the whole health and wellness hoohah comes leaping off the page of the articles about billionaires and their anti-aging, anti-death regimens. 100% The death rate for each generation. Now and forever. And, it should be.

I could easily write and I’m sure someone has, a novel about a world where a few trillionaires live on, collecting the world’s assets like sturgeon cleaning the bottom of a lake, until the concentration of wealth becomes .000001% and the rest of the world has effectively medieval levels of well-being.

This is a conversation I’d like to have with any willing to entertain it. What’s appropriate? What’s really needed? Is 75 the cutoff? Maybe 80? What do you think?

 

 

 

Aging, Denver, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends

Hell disguised as a motel lobby

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Rosemark. Dismal souls adrift in a two star motel. Lucille’s Cajun Cafe. The Ancient Brothers on AI. The AI summary. A helicopter overhead. Great Sol brightening up my world. Driving down the hill. Driving back up the hill. Derek’s electric chain saw. His work in my yard. A low flying plane. Red Beans, grits, and poached Eggs. Joanne’s On the Run.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Spontaneity

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: The receptionist, displaying spandex in ways best left behind the desk, took me to the locked memory support unit, punched in a few numbers on a key pad, and I was in hell configured as the lobby of a two or three star motel, with chairs, some regular, many with wheels; it contained people, old people, staring up at a television screen that had a fall themed display on it, not even the shopping channel, then I found her there, among them.

 

Drove out of the garage yesterday morning thinking breakfast. But where? Primos? Aspen Perks? Conifer Cafe? No. I have an open day. Spontaneity. I hadn’t done something with no forethought for a long time. What the hell. I’ll go down the hill, drive up Broadway, and find a new breakfast place. No, wait. Maybe I should go to that diner like place on Santa Fe? Nah. Broadway sounds more fun. Broadway.

Down the hill and onto the Great Plains I passed through Lakewood, then into Englewood, a journey familiar from trips with Kate to Swedish Hospital. Took the sweeping exit off Hampden and turned north on Broadway. Past that sushi place I’ve been to several times. Past a couple of breakfast places, then Whiskey Biscuit showed up. Huh?

Pulled in, got on out, looked in the window. The sign said open, but there was only a lone staff person with a spray bottle spritzing down tables. Nope. If the locals aren’t thronging a breakfast place, I’ll pass.

Drove further up Broadway and got to Evans. Hmm. Lucille’s is just down to the right, I think? Turned on Evans, drove a few blocks and sure enough there was Lucille’s Cajun Cafe. So I’d been there before. It’s Cajun. Found a sweet parking space.

On the way I’d decided also to go visit a friend who had moved into the memory support unit of an eldercare facility. Hadn’t done it before because pain. I can get into Denver feeling good with the celecoxib, but that drive back? Aversive conditioning. Thought again. What the hell. A little pain in return for seeing her? Doable.

The physical pain, which struck, as I knew it would on the way back up the hill, was doable. The psychic pain? Still lingers this morning. She’s alert, no dementia expression while I visited. Apparently she had an episode or two that qualified her. All the others I saw. Definitely impaired. Often staring, or picking at their hands. One woman whom my friend says, “Is a thief.” stuck her tongue out while we talked.

My friend’s room is in the Pink Peace neighborhood. That’s a hallway of doors not distinct from a not so bad motel. The rooms have tall ceilings. Newly built and fresh, they’re pretty good compared to others I’ve seen. Except. My friend has no one to talk to. They all have Alzheimer’s according to her. And the room, while nice, had little personality. It’s her home.

Too, my friend said she’s paying $7,000 a month though everything’s included. It better be, I said. She also said, never trust your kids. They’d put her in there and, again according to her, rarely call or visit. She probably could be on the assisted living side but somehow it would end up costing more.

We chatted for an hour or so. About her family and mine. I told her I trusted my son. After a bit, I wheeled her back to the line of chairs in front of the tv with the thanksgiving display. She settled in, took my hand, we kissed each other on the cheek and I left. Me to the open air and the Mountains. Her. Sitting there until meal time.

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

No Karmic Overburden

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Sukkot starting Wednesday. Dr. Buphati, medical oncologist, tomorrow. Variety Firewood. Yom Kippur. Mabon. Poetry. Cold Mountain. Basho. Rumi. Ginny and Janice. AI. Orange one and Kamala. Election 2024. Please vote. Mail-in Ballots. Civilized. Got mine yesterday. Climate change. The Gulf Stream. Greenland Ice sheet. The Atlantic. Milton and Helene.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Golden Aspen

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: Bought a chair a while back, made by the Amish in the Arts and Crafts  style, a Morris Chair, and a Violet themed stained glass standing lamp to go behind it, then a standing globe so I could find my dispersed family and better understand geopolitics, a set of timed lights to ramp up my balance exercising, not to mention the Aeneid, Mysticism, The Vegetarian books, and started to get a queasy feeling that I’m buying too much, some of the boxes yet unopened, though my finances are solid, not sure, maybe being good to myself feels (is) selfish? The Calvinist in me says yes, the Jew in me says no. Not as long as you care for and are generous with others. Which I feel I am. No wonder I converted.

 

Tough, fighting those strains of self-abnegation developed through years of scarcity and violently enforced religious beliefs. Violent, you say? Yes. Consider. If, in the course of your life, you vary from the path of salvation, miss the mark too often, what say ye about the next life? Hell and damnation. Even if you’ve convinced yourself long ago that the three-story universe was false, the fact that such a consequence was ever considered possible for sinning too much? Too often? Badly enough? makes sin a devastating burden on the psyche. Sort of a Milton plus a Helene plus a Katrina for the soul. Seems like a system designed to keep me in line with threats, and not insubstantial threats, but of damage to the very self of Self.

No. What matters is how you act today, in this moment. No karmic overburden. A similar system, btw. Yesterday, that old life, has slipped into the stream of time’s flux. What can you do with it? Nothing. But today? This life. This October 13th, 2024 life? This one we can work with.

Patience. I’ve realized that impatience exposes the anxieties I still have. Hangovers from those early days in Alexandria and the First Methodist Church. No, neither my family nor Methodism were blatantly abusive. No, they merely encouraged an anti-self work ethic, an other-focused diminishment of self, a closed mouth attitude toward sexuality making it confusing and embarrassing, an inner compass always slightly off because there were too many wrong paths, wrong actions, wrong feelings to follow a clear direction.

All of this, an uncertainty about personal worth, about the eventual destination of one’s soul, a valorization of work and self-denial, of hiding true feelings were the hallmarks of a good upbringing in mid-century, small-town America. I got a solid dose of it. Did you?