Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel

The Lure of Yesterday

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Summer                                                                   Recovery Moon

NYT had a video and an article, 36 hours in Siem Reap. This type of article is a regular feature and one that gives a wonderful, quick entré to a particular locale. My visit in 2004 is now 11 years ago and the Siem Reap of this video has many upscale tourist options that didn’t exist when I was there. The Siem Reap of 2004 was a sleepy village though studded with many smaller hotels and one big one, the Hotel D’Angkor. Hostels were as evident as tourist hotels. But the building boom had already begun and the Siem Reap of 2015 had its roots in 2004.

As such articles do, it featured a wide array of things to do from shadow puppetry performed in front of a fire and screen to dining in upscale restaurants, tours on tuk-tuks and shops featuring Cambodian village crafts. I suppose the article does its job as a teaser, a what if I were there, even briefly fantasy, but it glossed over, very lightly, the primary reason Siem Reap has become an international destination. Quite a feat, really, in a country ravaged by years of the Khmer Rouge and corrupt politicians.

Angkor. Angkor is a site containing over 70 temples, each built by a different ruler of the Khmer, and extending over many square miles. It is much more than Angkor wat, the supposedly eponymous temple. In reality Angkor wat just means Angkor temple. That direct translation does not differentiate the best preserved and fascinating temple closest to Siem Reap from all the others. Ta Prohm. Bayon. Banteay Serai. And many, many others.

Angkor is a built space that has carried the Hindu culture of the  Khmer deva-rajas, god-kings, who ruled between 802 a.d. and 1351 a.d., into our time and will carry it far into the future. The intricate bas reliefs, the monumental four-faced sculptures with the classical Bayon smile, the elephants carved in stone, the florid decor of Banteay Serai require time and reading to appreciate. Ta Prohm, an often photographed temple, has been left as the forest has reclaimed it, with kapok trees growing through doorways and over roof tops.

Outside many of the temples small bands of Cambodian musicians play traditional music. My first reaction was oh how wonderful, authentic music played among the temples of this ancient culture. Then I began to look closely at the band. Most were missing a foot or an arm or a leg or carried other scars from the many landmines that continue to plague the Cambodian people.

 

One of my most memorable travel evenings was spent on the outer stone wall of Bayon, watching the living temple across the way as monks clad in saffron and maroon hit gongs, lit incense Bayon and prayed along with passers by who came to worship. The sun set and the shadows changed the expressions of the four-faced sculptures said to be the likeness of Jayavarman VII, the last deva-raja, who converted to Buddhism. The monkeys howled, insects chirped and the deep bass of the temple gong reverberated. Incense scented the air.

Politics, US History, World History

Obama as Ex-President

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Summer                                                               Recovery Moon

What will Obama be like as an ex-President? We have so many right now that various modes are very visible: the George’s Bush, Carter and Clinton. The Bushes seem to emphasize the retirement model with George I sky-diving and George II painting, cutting brush. Clinton has maintained a high-public profile with his speaking, foundation and, of course, Hillary’s career, too. Jimmy Carter is maybe the most interesting model since he has used his post-Presidential years to become a trusted international interlocutor, especially around the issues of free elections.

These are, of course, fragmentary observations, based on one man’s perception, so they are not in any way definitive. Rather, they speak to a filtered and publicly formed image. Still, they seem instructive to me.

My guess is that Obama will become even more important as an ex-President than any of the others living now, perhaps more important than any ex-President ever. Why? When he is no longer President of all the people, he can begin to illuminate racism and its structural intricacies. Who better to know them than a black man who has lived at the peak of institutionalized power?

Further, since he is young and since his Presidential term will end as the demographics of the United States continue to press toward a more and more heterogeneous citizenry, his influence can only grow. Too, the repetitive instances of police violence toward black folk, made more visible now by portable cameras in cellphones and the immediacy of internet distribution, seem to have created a teachable moment for the U.S. as a whole. Part of my guess about Obama as ex-President was spurred by his oratory at the funeral of Clementa Pickney in Charleston. You can feel him becoming less inhibited by his office.

My hope is that he and his advisers can shape a post-Presidential life for him that will finally put the question of racial privilege, white racism, on the docket of our nation and keep it there until healing on both parts can begin.

This is not just an American problem, racism is a subset of ethnocentrism, which is a primary driver in conflicts and wars around the world: Tutus and Hutsis in Rawanda, Israelis and Palestinians, Sunnis and Shiites, ISIS and Christians, anti-semitism in Russia, Germany, France, apartheid in South Africa, Tibet and the Uighurs in China, India and Pakistan, the response to refugees in Turkey, Italy, Nigeria. Yes, of course, economics matter and so do politics, but look at each of these situations and try to extract the ethnocentric component from the economic, the political. The three intertwine and co-determine.

Obama could have an important role to play in addressing this global and historic flaw in human relations. He can’t solve it, but he can raise its visibility and keep it on the global agenda for a long time to come. May it be so.

News of the Strange, Our Land and Home

A Likely Story

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Summer                                                                         Recovery Moon

During the swirl of visits to various doctor’s offices before surgery I was not at my sharpest or most attentive. I lost my ART hat, the blue hat with the red ART. It was from a contemporary exhibit at the MIA and one of my favorites. Tracked it down at Eigner’s Littleton office. I visited him in Lonetree, Littleton and Englewood, so it wasn’t a snap to figure it out. Today I retrieved it.

After that I visited the shiny blue box of IKEA in Centennial. This was for yet another BILLY bookshelf in the birch veneer. While there I needed help and got it from a 57 year old guy who had an incredible story. Just how incredible I’m not sure since I’ve not been able to confirm it, but this is what he told me.

“I was a CEO, got cancer and lost my job. Ended up $1.2 million dollars in debt. Lost my house and lived out of my car for a year.”

“What company?”

“Pittney-Bowes. I’ve tried to get other jobs but the CEO jobs I’ve applied for turned me down because of my illness history and the middle management job interviews end at over-qualified. So now I work 100 hours a week, 40 here at IKEA and 60 at Broadway Pizza which is owned by a friend of mine.”

This guy was completely believable to me with the exception of his lack of bitterness. I mentioned that and he said, “What are you gonna do? You have to take life as it comes.”

When I got home and told Kate about this encounter, she asked why the CEO didn’t have good health coverage. Good question. The more I think about it I imagine this guy was like a few of the psychopaths I’ve met, able to tell a lie so convincingly that you become part of it.

I liked him, felt sorry for him and admired him. Strange event.

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel, US History

Week II Post-Surgery

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Summer                                                                   Recovery Moon

Week II post surgery. My energy improves daily though I’m not back to full stamina. The surgical stigmata, six wounds where the robot’s arms pierced my skin, are healing nicely. It no longer hurts to lie down on them. An unpleasant, but anticipated side effect of the surgery, temporary incontinence, seems to be clearing up much more rapidly than I’d imagined it would. And, most importantly, I’m presumptively cancer free, the only question being possible microscopic metastases. I test for that in early September.

The tomorrow wall has crumbled. I can now see into the future again. Yesterday I made Amtrak reservations for my 50th high school reunion in September. The overnight California Zephyr runs from Denver to Chicago and then a short ride on the Cardinal to Lafayette, Indiana where I’ll pick up a rental car and drive the rest of the way. I do it this way because the Cardinal gets into Indianapolis after midnight and this allows me a good night’s sleep, plus I can gradually re-enter Hoosier space driving familiar highways back to Alexandria.

camp chesterfield2
The Trail of Religion

Again this time, as I did for the 45th, I plan to stay at Camp Chesterfield, a Christian Spiritualist center. It’s a quirky, old, interesting place. And, it’s cheap.

The loft is ready for its second round of construction, more shelves, then more shelving. I’ve abandoned my attempt to get the books properly organized as I shelve them because I need to clear space for more shelves. I can sort and organize as much as I want come fall.

My psyche has not caught up to my body’s healing pace. Though the tomorrow wall has fallen, I still find my days somewhat chaotic, not sure what to do, then what to do next. We’ve had a continuing drip, drip, drip of other matters: cracked tooth, dying boiler, Kate’s very painful back that contribute. All those seem to be moving toward resolution. I’ve even found a plumber for the generator install, a niggling thing still hanging on.

I’ll find my psyche back to its usual eagerness over the next week or two. I look forward to it.

Again, gratitude to all of you who sent notes over the cancer season. It matters.

 

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Politics, US History

Bless Them All

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Summer                                                           Recovery Moon

I’d not even begun to read Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ new book, Between the World and Me, when I came across Cornel West‘s (picture) defense of his review of the book. I met Cornel at a Liberation Theology conference in Detroit. This was the late 70’s when all things seemed possible if we could just get organized. He was a young academic star on the rise.

Now he’s professor emeritus from Princeton in Philosophy and still teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York. West’s critique of Coates’ work lies in Coates’ unwillingness to connect his observations to the struggle for black liberation. West is an unreconstructed black and 1960’s activist who sees all things through the prism of praxis, saying must be connected to doing. Me, too, but he’s been far more faithful to the dream.

What interested me even more than Cornel’s critique of Coates was his critique of Obama as the first black president. He used it too as an example of a place Coates was not willing to go with his analysis. I don’t recall all of it but he called Obama out on drones, the closing(non) of Gitmo, the national surveillance state, and his support of the occupation of Palestine.

Some of us follow our thought where it goes and in so doing allow our actions to be guided by the most fiery, the most pure of our ideas. West is such a man. So was King and Malcolm X. I admire all 3. They stand as bright sentinels on the margins of our culture, illuminating the path of that broad arc toward justice. Often such people can seem irrelevant, too willing to forego gains for the sake of a further dream. And that’s a fair argument, but it discounts the larger ecology of the work.

We need pathfinders, ones who can see the way forward and cast light upon it. Others can make the day-to-day compromises that actually move society forward. Without our Wests and Kings and Malcolms, our Freidans and Steinhems and Stantons, the path ahead would remain hidden, tailing off in the dark edges of the future. Bless them all.

 

Minnesota, Mountains, The West

The Mountain Difference

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Summer                                                       Recovery Moon

The last few nights the clouds at sunset have been what seem to my eye a color of red peculiar to the west. They remind me of Riders of the Purple Sage or High Noon if it had been made in color. The sun goes down behind Black Mountain from our vantage point, so just beyond it the old west could still be banging saloon doors, its streets filled with dust as the cowboys ride in after payday.

I’m no geographical determinist, but to say that living on a mountain is different from living on the flat lands of the Midwest is only common sense. In Minnesota the variation in the landscape came from beautiful rivers, forests of deciduous trees sprinkled with conifers, lakes and ponds, wetlands and the changes going north wrought on all of these. It was not big sky country, but on the way home to Andover the dome of the sky was large and largely visible.

In the Front Range the variation in landscape follows an altitude gradient, different trees and different plants, wildflowers appear as we drive up from Denver the 3,600 feet that separates Shadow Mountain from the start of the high plains. The sky, once in the mountains, is visible in fragments determined by the height and shape of the mountains. The trees are mostly conifers and firs, green throughout the year, though the aspen grows well even at our 8,800 feet. Along the creeks willows and dogwood grow, deer and elk browse.

The changes are more subtle here and require some to time to absorb though the mountains, in their bulky looming make themselves known like the slow-moving, light blinking semi-trailers that crawl slowly up the highways into them. You have to move around them. In the fall there is no blaze of color, jack frost running from tree to tree calling out magenta, dark red, yellow, subtle browns. In the mountains there is green, the conifers and firs, and gold, the leaves of the aspen finished with their summer’s work.

 

Health, Our Land and Home

Crowning Achievement

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Summer                                                             Recovery Moon

Ever since my first crown years ago I can’t get the old gospel hymn, Crown Him With Many Crowns, out of my head when I go to the dentist with a cracked tooth. Aspen Park Dental sits just off 285, snugged in the mountains near the Safeway and a Starbucks. Nice folks. Dr. Higuchi got his degree at University of Iowa. A Hawkeye. Karen, the dental assistant, lives in nearby Pine Grove, and has a Great Dane. We talked about loving big dogs and their short life spans.

Back home to Shadow Mountain where lack of hot water dominated the rest of the morning. This time I found Ken, the only guy with a boiler license working up here. Ken, unfortunately, knows his business. Looks like a new boiler. Interesting reason, too. This high efficiency boiler was not made for altitude. At sea level it’s rated about 85%, not real high, but aiming in that direction. In the mountains it’s about 70%. The reasons relate to different flame setting requirements and difficulties with hard, acidic water. It has developed several problems, the sum of which would be too costly to fix given the likelihood of their recurrence.

Ah, well.

Faith and Spirituality, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Oh, You Were Lucky

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Summer                                                                        Recovery Moon

Been thinking about luck and fortune. The meanings are slippery and often adjust themselves to rationalization. For instance. I was lucky to find my cancer early enough for successful treatment. Well, yes. But. I was unlucky to find cancer at all. It was my good fortune to find, with Kate’s help, competent and caring medical professionals in Colorado. Again, sure. But. It was my bad fortune to need as much of their competence and caring as I did.

Over the last few days since the catheter came out I’ve had this thought, “Boy, was I lucky. I had cancer, but it was treatable. And, I found it and treated it quickly.” The facts are true. I had cancer. It was treatable. It was found and treated quickly. But lucky seems askew. Lucky would have been to have never had cancer at all. Lucky described my state prior to diagnosis, not after. After, it was data, decisions, actions.

I write this because I’ve been tempted to another line of thought, too. I was lucky; I had prostate cancer, not lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, any cancer that most often defies treatment. There is a tendency to diminish the severity of our own situation and compare it to the dire circumstances of others. This helps psychologically, but it changes neither the fact of my situation nor theirs.

Each situation is as it is. Cancer is bad, no matter what type, no matter its response or lack of response to treatments. This disease is not one, but many; it is polymorphous and diverse. I’ve had friends with terrible cancers that eventually caused death. I’ve heard the stories of many men who’ve had the same arc with prostate cancer that I have. And others who have died.

Lucky and fortune play no part, save as soothing conceptual anodynes. Facts. They are what matter. Love and friendship can give aid in real time and I’ve experienced it. But that was not luck. That was kindness, compassion.

Health, Science

Ah

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Summer                                                                Recovery Moon

I won the catheter pull! It’s gone and I’m implement free for the first time in 39 days. Could you hear the sigh of relief?

My urologist, Ted Eigner, explained my pathology report and the next step, an ultra sensitive PSA done 8 weeks after the surgery. Anything under 0.2 PSA signals no apparent lingering prostate cells kicking out antigens. As time goes forward and the PSA’s continue with good signals the confidence level of a cure goes up. It’s pretty high right now, but not 100%. The reason: microscopic escapees taking up residence elsewhere in the body. That’s what the PSA tests for. The gross pathology of the removed prostate indicates no cancer in the area: clear margins.

A friend who has been through breast cancer wrote with feeling about those two words: clear margins. Not too important to you until they become very, very important.

I consider this the beginning of the end. The end will come when I’m fully continent and have had my first PSA test results. Eigner says about 3 months. Not bad.

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Retirement, Third Phase

Third Phase Summary

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Summer                                                            Recovery Moon

The third phase. First phase: childhood/education through at least high school, maybe undergraduate college. Second Phase: career/family formation. Third phase: Post career with adult children. This last phase has become an extended and to some extent new part of normal life. In the recent past the third phase was often short, interrupted by illness and often marred by poverty and ended not long after it began, especially for men.

Advances in medical science, improved social security and medicare and the maturation of the baby boom generation have combined to push the third phase into greater and greater prominence. We live longer, with better health and improved economic conditions. Too, the large population bulge of the baby boom is forcing society to see the third phase. In the past it may have been possible to consign the aging third phaser to the margins of society, but with the huge numbers of those born between 1946 and 1964 third phase citizens will be a larger and larger percentage of the population.

This is exciting. It allows our culture as a whole to reconsider the third phase and its implications for both individuals and society. Since the third phase is post career/work and usually represented by a couple with no children at home, it places an inflection point on the question of individual worth. The normal external markers affecting self-worth are employment and children. Both of these are in the past for most third phasers. Or, at least the time when they dominated an individual’s life is in the past.

Though it may be frightening to some this means that we each get the opportunity to reshape our lives, often around activities more closely aligned to our own interests. Kate, for example, always a hand-worker and seamstress, now focuses on quilting. I was able, earlier than most third-phasers, to focus on writing, political work and the arts, interests which sustain me now in my late 60’s. Family is still important, of course, with grand children and the lives of adult children, but those interactions happen occasionally rather than daily. This allows a pleasant mix of intimate, family contact while ensuring enough time for independent activities.

The third phase continues to fascinate me as I see friends headed into it and experience it myself with Kate. Friendships matter even more, with the hard work of friendship done while family and career dominated, and become increasingly precious as those factors reduce in importance. In my case the Woolly Mammoths and the docent corps continue to enrich the third phase.