• Surrender

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth and Gabe here for spring break. Blood pressure. This laptop. Ancientrails. Black Mountain and Great Sol. A Mountain morning. Herme. The Monsoons in K.L. The Desert and the white Camel Bull in Hafar. That Mule Deer Doe back again yesterday. Hunting for Grass beneath the Snow. Simple Pinto Beans. Pretty good.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grandkids

    One brief shining: Soaked the Pintos for six hours, drained them, covered them with Water, added a Bay Leaf, slab bacon, and half an Onion, hit P for the power setting on the stove, brought the Water to a boil, then backed it off to 3, a gentle simmer, one hour later added Salt, Cayenne, and Paprika, waited another hour, stirring occasionally, the beans softened, chopped the bacon into bits, returned it to the Beans. Tasty.

     

    Cooking more and more with Beans. Easy. Freezable. Lower on the food chain. Fire up my Zojirushi Rice cooker at the same time. Rice and beans. Filling and nutritious.

    I make most of my meals, some as easy as lox and cream cheese on English muffins, some more difficult, but not much. The freezer lets me extend a batch of Beans, some Greens, even hamburger into many meals.

    Rarely eat out by myself anymore. Breakfasts and lunch with friends maybe two, three times a week at most. Once in a while I’ll get a Subway or food from Fountain Barbecue or the Evergreen Market. But not often. The way life has evolved. I enjoy either reading or watching TV while I eat and both are easier at home.

     

    Suppose this goes back to the bechira points question of yesterday. Am I hiding out or living comfortably? Feels like the latter. But is it?

    Also relates to the broader implications of surrender. Not resignation. Not submission. More wu wei, the Taoist notion of going with the flow, not trying to control events but to discover their patterns and to move with them.

    Perhaps, too, it relates to thoughts about chi, love, the sacred consciousness, becoming as the underlayment of the universe. If I am surrendering to the flow of chi in my life, to the patterns of becoming, leaning into love of self and others as my prime directive, then how I’m living is fine. That is, it matches the movement of essential energies intersecting and shaping my day to day existence.

     

    You know, as I’ve been writing here, as often happens a crystallization of thought, of learning has precipitated out onto the page and in my heart. My current life of friends, family, Judaism, and a rich home life does feel right and good.

    Even when I decide to stay home rather than go to an event. Those events are not the key moments. Not anymore. Probably never were. No, the key moments find me in a booth at Aspen Perks or Primos, or the Bread Lounge, or the Parkside, or Thai 202. With Ruth and Gabe, Ginny and Janice, Marilyn and Irv, Tara, Rebecca, Alan. Or on zoom with Tom, Diane, the Ancient Brothers. Or talking with my son and Seoah. Going to mussar, not the event so much as the time with the people there.

    Other key moments find me painting, writing, reading, cooking by myself. This is me. Now. Walking myself, my friends, and family home.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Shadow Mountain

  • Choice

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Monday gratefuls: 9 degrees. Yet more Snow. The Dark. The Quiet. Ruth and Gabe coming up for Spring Break. Chamber Music. Inertia. Ginny and Janice. Bechira points. Kehillah. Mark still in Hafar. Exercise. The rain in K.L. Torrential. Travel. Pleasure. Guilty pleasure. Nuts. Pistachios. Salted peanuts. Alan and BBQ. Reney. Shiva.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: What’s App

    One brief shining: Said to my friends I’m done with winter but winter is not done with me and sure enough around three pm yesterday the Snow came again, hard, like rain in straight lines, the cold came too as the temperature fell into single digits making the night perfect for more Snow; in bed I felt Snow melt on my head, my window still slightly open.

     

    Open Snow and Weather5280 keep me informed. Open Snow has a handy feature that gives a Snow to date number for very specific areas. Intended for skiers tracking powder and the best Mountain conditions, it also works well for Mountain microclimates like Shadow Mountain. As of last night’s storm, we had 11 inches of new Snow bringing our running total to 136 inches for the year so far.

    Down in Denver they had blizzard warnings. Ruth and Gabe had planned to come up today and stay through Thursday. They’re on spring break. Probably not gonna happen today. Maybe tomorrow. April is their mutual birthday month with Ruth turning 18! on April 4th and Gabe 16 on April 22th. This is Ruth’s last semester of public school. College next fall.

    Beautiful, yes. I can see that. Yes, I’ve stayed too long without a break. Not the winter’s fault.

     

    Which brings me to bechira, a Hebrew word for choice, especially as choice signifies free will. Mussar tradition talks about bechira points, choice points where we can exercise free will. According to Jewish tradition they’re not as common as you might think, though they’re not rare either. A bechira point occurs when the yetzer hara, the selfish inclination, and the yetzer hatov, the good inclination conflict. That is, when we choose between a selfish course of action, one we know is not the direction we need to go, and a good choice, one that enhances our life and the lives of others. In that moment we know, are conscious of, a choice. It is that knowing, that awareness that makes it a bechira point.

    Let me give you two examples. Yesterday I had a ticket for a chamber music concert at St. Laurence Episcopal. Which is about as close to me as possible. Less than ten minutes. And I love chamber music. At 2:30, the concert was at 3:00, I looked at the Snow. I thought about parking in a small lot, being crowded into a small sanctuary. Sank back into my chair and continued watching a not very good movie.

    The night before. The Purim speil at CBE. 7 pm. I wanted to go, intended to go. But as the time approached the same concerns cropped up, parking and a crowd. Added to that night time driving. I stayed home. Again.

    In and of themselves neither choice was a big deal. It’s the pattern, the bechira point pattern, that matters. These choices reinforce my inertia, my Covid hangover fear of crowds, my I like it here where everything is comfortable tendency.

    Here’s another way to consider this. I’m making choices that make sense for this time of my life, for my vulnerability as a cancer patient, for my safety. I need to consider the valence to give these choices, don’t I? They are still bechira points. The question becomes whether they are moving me forward in my life or hindering me. Right now I’m not sure I can tell.

    Making clear and healthy decisions drives our lives forward, advancing our capacity to love ourselves and to bear the burden of the other. It is the awareness of choice points that allow us to exercise free will. Otherwise we have become habitual, conditioned, acculturated.

     

     

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Feelings Fourth Phase Health Judaism Mussar Shadow Mountain Weather +Climate

  • New Identities

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Yet more Snow! Today. Blue Colorado Sky with scattered white Cumulus Clouds. The Ancient Brothers. Hafar. K.L. S.F. Maine. Minnesota. Jackie in Bailey. Aspen Roots. Kissing Frogs. Movies. Nights. Days. Resurrection. A new life. The Shema. Full days. Travel. Dogs. Marilyn and Irv. The Socrates Cafe. Meeting new people.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Questions

    One brief shining: Each month I drive eight minutes from Shadow Mountain to Aspen Park, going by the new bakery the Wicked Whisk and my old personal trainer at On the Move Fitness, past the physical therapists who got me through knee surgery, to the never in my time up here full suite of offices and business that contain the Pinball place, the massage folks, a live theater, Thai 202 which makes the wonderful Crying Tiger, and hop up the stairs to Aspen Roots where Jackie cuts my hair and tells me she loves me which I say back.

     

    Long enough now. Long enough for relationships to have come and gone. And for some to remain. My tenth year on Shadow Mountain, begun last Winter Solstice. This is where I live, a Coloradan, a Westerner, a Mountain dweller. All distinct identities created by geography and geology and the human imprint on both.

    As a Coloradan I inhabit a former red hate state, transitioning to a blue progressive state. As a Westerner, I have heeded Horace Greeley and gone west though not as a young man, but as an older one. Greeley, Colorado* is named after him. The Western identity has a good deal of complexity to it as does Mountain dweller.

    To be a Westerner means to enjoy the benefits of manifest destiny, of the push west of the frontier, the railroads, those seeking gold, those fleeing law or custom or poverty in the the East. Of those who slaughtered the bison and the indigenous populations who lived here before we arrived. Those who clear cut the Front Range to build Denver and the many, far too many, hard Rock mines that pollute the Creeks, Streams, and Rivers here. The Western U.S. We who arrived later are not innocent. Yet no one is innocent. Either here or there.

    What happens now. What we do today. Who we are in this moment matters, too. We are the stewards, the fellow travelers in this magical wide open place. We are responsible for what happens here as are the Wild Neighbors, the Forests and Streams. The descendants of all those who lived here long ago and all those who altered the landscape not so long ago. We must build the sustainable way for humans to live here for as long as human beings can live.

    The Mountain Dweller is the most personal of these three identities and the most narrow, representing that place where I live and love and have my becoming. Each day my eyes open to the top of Shadow Mountain, to the taller prominence of Black Mountain, to the Lodgepoles and Aspens that cover them both. My lungs take in the scarce air of 8,800 feet as I set aside my nighttime oxygen canula. Often Mule Deer will be around, hunting for grass.

    To go anywhere. To see Jackie at Aspen Roots. To get groceries at Safeway. To breakfast with friends. To the synagogue. To the doctor. I drive on Mountain roads. Two lanes, blind curves, sudden changes of altitude, vistas opening and disappearing.

    Mountains whose names I do not know rise on either side, the Streams that drain them flowing often near the road itself. Sometimes I am up high and able to see for miles, then I go down into constricted views of only Rock and Trees. All the while, not far off the road Wild Neighbors living their wild lives. Beavers damming Streams, their Ponds. The Mountain Lion on a rocky shelf waiting for Elk or Mule Deer to walk below. In my own way I appear and disappear from view around curves, into a valley, only to suddenly reappear in Evergreen.

    How have these three identities changed me from the sea level view of life that was my birthright as a Midwestern boy? I’ve become more of a spectator of life outside of the Mountains. Back east. Or on the coasts. They are not close to me, and their struggles seem far away. My world has become more focused. There are fewer people out here, less urbanization, less agriculture. In those senses the Colorado/Western/Mountain world was unfamiliar to me.

    I live within a smaller world altogether. My fourth new identity, that of a Jew, makes this world, this more narrow and circumscribed world, a friendly and friend full one. As has the nine years plus of living here, making connections like Jackie. And now the Socrates Cafe. This is important because, like most of us who live up here, going down the hill is not appealing. And that’s where the bon vivant of urban life plays out. Even for those things I enjoy I have to factor in a long drive in and a long drive back. Most often the positive gain is too weak to justify the hassle.

    For me. Today. This Colorado guy, this Western guy, this Mountain Man has found his spot and become one with it.

     

     

    *Greeley began as the Union Colony of Colorado, which was founded in 1869 by Nathan C. Meeker, an agricultural reporter for the New York Tribune as an experimental utopian farming community “based on temperance, religion, agriculture, education and family values,” with the backing of the Tribune‘s editor Horace Greeley, who popularized the phrase “Go West, young man”.[7][8][9] wiki


    📂This entry was posted in Colorado Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Jefferson County Judaism Minnesota Mountains Plants Shadow Mountain The West Travel US History Wild Neighbors

  • Not so Ancient rails

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Jackie. Purim Spiel. Socrates Cafe. Those ski runs on Black Mountain. Maxwell Creek running free. Kate’s Creek. Her Valley and its trail. Bechira points. Kehilla, community. Choosing others. Starlink. DSL. The Internet. Leviticus. How to sacrifice and why. John Connolly. Kindle. Phonak. Better hearing through science. The Roger.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shabbat candles

    One brief shining: Moods, swinging to and for like pony tails, like jump ropes, like Lodgepole Branches in a wind, switching from side to side, up to down, occasionally twirling like a Dog’s tail, almost able to achieve lift off, then settling down between the legs in a sulk.

     

    I’ve settled now on two sources for my less than buoyant inner weather. First, cabin fever. Too long in the Mountain Winter. Second, lack of exercise. Gonna remedy the second one first.

    Alan encouraged me to go somewhere by train, offering, no insisting that he would chauffeur me from Shadow Mountain to Union Station and bring me back home. I’m giving that serious thought. Where I go matters less at this point than whether I go. Barriers: all those pills. Having to deal with my supply of Depends. Extricating myself from my not very confining schedule. Packing. Money. And the least of these is money. The biggest of these is inertia. A body that sits in his chair is most likely to remain in his chair. Get up, old man! Get up.

    Drifted off there for a moment. Over to Amtrak. Here to San Francisco. San Francisco to points south, maybe New Orleans, circle back to Denver? Roomettes are pricey but they do include all meals. Of course, cabs and hotel rooms when staying overnight somewhere. Meals. Still. Traveling by train. I really like it. Would take me away from all this and into a different reality for a while. Worth it.

    Or, Denver to Chicago. Chicago to New Orleans. New Orleans to LA. LA to SF. SF back home. Or. Denver to SF. SF to Seattle. Seattle to Minneapolis. Minneapolis to Chicago. Back home. Mmmm. ?How to achieve lift off.

     

    Never thought I’d feel in synch with the Royal family, but hey! Cancer. Doesn’t matter your station in life, the body rules. And what happens to it is what’s happening to you. This earthly, better earthen, vessel is heir to this shock and that, this moment of joy and that one of despair.

    I understand the shock and awe of a cancer diagnosis. The ripple effect such news has on the psyche, on family, on friends. Cancer not only impacts an individual but also a kehillah, a community of concern. Even though cancer no longer means a death sentence, at least not always, that message has not settled in. The big C.

    Perhaps not a death sentence, or at least not as sudden a death as in times only recently past, it still pulls you into a long, often upsetting series of treatments and wrangles with insurance companies. I suppose the Royal family may be spared that last one. Good for them.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on the news Health Travel

  • The Storm

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Finally solved the technical difficulties. Pictures of Shadow Mountain home during and after the storm. Somewhere between 3 and 4 feet of snow.


    Arcosanti Bell

    Garage and Loft

    Looking toward Black Mountain Drive

    Out my office window

    Lower level, Snow well over windowsills

    After

    After

     

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Shadow Mountain Weather +Climate

  • Swings

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Diane. Rebecca. Mussar group. Rabbi Jamie. Evergreen Market Cooking School. A usual busy Thursday. Alan and Tara tomorrow. Shabbat. Then, Socrates’ Cafe. Jackie. Purim Spiel. Sunday. Ancient Brothers. Evergreen Chamber Orchestra. Busy guy. Bechira. Choice point. Kehillah. Community. Resurrection. New life.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Choosing how I feel

    One brief shining: Got a call two nights ago from Joanne, hello Charlie, do you still want the Shema on your tallit, yes I do, thank you, you’ll look spiffy.

     

    Over the next few days I’ll have lunch with Rebecca, breakfast with Alan, attend Thursday afternoon mussar, have a session on Jewish holidays with Rabbi Jamie, learn knife handling skills at a cooking school, continue work on my torah portion with Tara, participate for the first time in the Socrates’ Cafe, go to a Purim spiel at CBE, discuss pleasure with the Ancient Brothers, and attend a chamber music concert at St. Laurence Episcopal. Gosh. Cramming human interaction into a four day weekend. More than I usually do in a month.

    All the while last week’s storm slowly sublimates, Great Sol beams it up, up, up into Water vapor. Half of my driveway looks like the leading edge of a Glacier with striations of Snow laid down at different points of the storm compacting each other, creating a layer cake look. In the back where the white has no disturbance the drifts and shallow areas quietly lose their height, as if they were a slowly deflating balloon.

     

    My revenant from yesterday has moved on or sunk back in. This morning I’m glad to see Great Sol, glad to see my Lodgepole companion, glad to sit here on the third level of Shadow Mountain Home, and write.

    Moods swing. Sometimes like that big, big swing in Bangkok*. A huge swing, over 90 feet high, featured in a ceremony with Hindu origins. Certain Thai folk would swing and swing and swing trying to reach a bag of coins placed on a pillar. Occasionally one would reach out for the bag of coins, miss, and fall to their death. Mood swings can have us reaching for a bag of feelings just out of our grasp, feelings that would either make us finally all right, or doomed.

    So many suicides, I’m sure, were people on the Giant Swing, hoping for relief, any relief, from suffering, reaching for it. On a less dramatic note we can allow our moods to engulf us for a minute, an hour, a day, a week and while there to wreck havoc on our sense of well-being.

    I’ve learned some tricks to deal with them. Tal’s How do I feel? Writing blog posts. Knowing that they’re moods and not permanent conditions. An awareness that they come and go. Perhaps talking of Michelangelo. Prufrock let his  mood take over.

     

    *According to ancient Hindu mythology, after Brahma created the world he sent Shiva to look after it. When Shiva descended to the earth, Naga serpents wrapped around the mountains in order to keep the earth in place. After Shiva found the earth solid, the Nagas moved to the seas in celebration and made the earth stable completely. The Swing Ceremony was a re-enactment of this. The pillars of the Giant Swing represented the mountains, while the circular base of the swing represented the earth and the seas. In the ceremony Brahamanas would swing, trying to grab a bag of coins placed on one of the pillars. wiki

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • I sense you’re slipping…

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Bill and Carol. Lea?, Lila? and Rider. Covid booster. The Morning blessings. The Shema. Snow. Slowly sublimating. (Which, I just learned, takes 7 times the amount of energy that boiling water does!) Knife handling at Evergreen Market. Rebecca. Safeway. John Connolly. Books. Still arriving. Breakfast. Waking up.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dogs

    One brief shining: Wandered in to the Safeway, past the Ugli fruit and the Dragon fruit, past the eggs and the dairy case, walked up to the counter, I have a 10:30, all we have is Moderna, that’s fine, off to the small waiting area with chairs, ten minutes later a quick oddly painful jab, thank you.

     

    Still wrassling a sense of diminishment, a sullen colored mood that feels like a slight weight on my shoulders. Thrashes my self, my soul leaving them tired, exhausted even at the start of the day. Dawn does not come up rosy fingered, but scratching against the darkness, bleeding into the Forest, silhouetting Black Mountain rather than revealing. Makes me want to sit down, lie down. Go back to sleep.

    Might be my long exercise drought. Two weeks ago I stopped because I didn’t want to irritate my bowels while they healed. Then the snow came and I can’t get up to the loft. Sleep is not as good. Not bad, but not good either. Or anemia. Or some mysterious dark haired revenant from my shadow. Could be cabin fever, too. Lot of staying in over the last couple of months. Might need a vacation. Probably do. Almost certainly do. So what’s stopping me?

    Inertia. My back. Winter’s tenacious though now tentative grasp. In other words, nothing.

    Whatever it is, I feel like that guy in the old Pogo cartoons who walked around with a rain cloud over his head. Not. Much. Fun.

    I also know this will not last. If Kate were here, she might be telling me, “I can sense you’re slipping into melancholy.” Guess she is here in my heart, telling me that, isn’t she?

     

    Just a Moment: Could also be the steady fall of disappointing rain from America’s election 2024. Friends are going to Costa Rica to check out land. In case 45 turns into 47. Intelligent, rooted friends. Don’t want to live out their sunset years under an autocrat. Not hard to understand though I feel no pull in that direction.

    Or, maybe the politics of Israel, the U.S., Palestinians. When was the last time a majority leader of the Senate spoke for regime change in a country that has been and is our ally? I agreed with Schumer, btw. Netanyahu bought and paid, literally, for this disaster and sustains his time in office only through the cheapest of political maneuvers.

    Might it also be articles titled like this: Why we shouldn’t give in to climate despair.

    Sure these everyday on the frontpage news items are not Zoloft for my mood.

     

    And yet. I’m not my reactions to the news. I’m not my fatigue. I can choose a different path. So. I will.

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Family Feelings Fourth Phase Politics US History World History

  • Makes me sad

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Purim Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Vince and his helpers. Jill the needler. Acupuncture. Safeway and pickup. Furball Cleaning. Mailing taxes. The Equinox. Spring. A good Winter. Ruby in the deep Snow. The occasional frozen dinner. TV. Young Sheldon. True Detective with Jodie Foster. Deadly Tropics. Bull. The Furies. Alexandria First Methodist. Hometown memories.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The calm after the Storm

    One brief shining: Take off all my clothes, get up on the table with the clean sheet, stick my face in the round bit built for it, wait for Jill, soon needles go in on my feet, along my legs, clustered on the right side of my back, this time some of them connected to an electrical device that sends current into my body, twitching and tapping my muscles greet it.

     

     

    The church I grew up in. Sold as a venue for events and making art and whatever else occurs to the new owners. Makes me sad I wrote to Mary and Mark. Sister and brother. Don’t expect the video will interest too many of you, but the very first part does show the church as it was before this woman and her husband bought it. The sanctuary is still mostly intact. My family sat in the third pew about halfway in under the large stained glass window of Jesus at Gethsemane.

    Another mid-America tale this one not so much the rust belt apres the foreign cars story as an older one of faith and sexuality gone toxic. Used to be the big church in town. The woman in the video says it has 24,000 square feet. I believe it. Alexandria First Methodist had the largest church building in town and probably the largest membership while I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s.

    It survived Rev. Clayton Steele’s oh so stereotypical fleeing to California with the organist or choir director. It survived the tumult of the late 1960’s and early 70’s. But it did not survive the question of ordaining queer folk. Ironically one of the key supporters of LBGTQ+ ordination was the son of Clayton Steele, a local dentist. The entire Methodist church, once the biggest denomination in the U.S., fractured, too. So not odd that Alexandria’s franchise went as well.

    As a result, the church was on the market.

    I had Boy Scouts, Sunday School, Sunday worship in this building for the years I lived in Alexandria. Which were all but the one and a half I lived in Oklahoma as an infant. Through 1965. When I left for college. My mother had her stroke in that building. While helping serve a funeral dinner. Confirmation. Communion. Tenebrae services. Christmas Eve and Easter. Regular, weekly attendance. As significant a part of life as school.

    Once a month we had a church supper in the basement. To this day I remember Mrs. Stafford’s grapes. Green grapes coated first, I think, with egg white then rolled in sugar. Of course, fried chicken and mashed potatoes and peas. Jello, too, with a variety of foodstuffs embedded. My least favorite? Olives.

    Now that I see this video I understand for the first time desacrilizing a church building. The building is not the church. No, it’s the people. However. Over time, like the Velveteen Rabbit, if enough people love a building, worship and pray in it, experience weddings and funerals there. the building becomes real, too. And when discarded, as Alexandria First now is, its reality continues adhering to that pew, those lights, those night time immersions in darkness during the Tenebrae services.

    Protestants, with the exception of the Episcopalians, don’t desacrilize, but I wish they did. It would make this easier on my heart.

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Family Feelings Fourth Phase Memories US History

  • Coulda. Shoulda.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Clogged sinuses. MST darkness. The Night Sky. Orion. Aquarius. Betelgeuse, ready to go Nova. James Webb. SpaceX. Odysseus, tilting on the Moon. That day in July when Neil Armstrong stepped off the Moon lander. JPL. Caltech. MIT. Engineering. Putting science to work. Tom. Bill. Helen. Veronica. Arjean. Tara. Hebrew.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Old movies on the Criterion Channel

    One brief shining: Put on my old guy velcro Snow boots, gathered up one of my Leki hiking poles, and set off on a Snowy adventure, would I make it all the way to the garage, lifting my feet, then setting them down in Snow to my waist, up down up down until I reached the door, yes, made it!

     

    I will not be able to go to the garage for a while through the sewing room door. I went out to it yesterday to retrieve the garage door opener so I can get in and out through the sliding garage doors. Shouldn’t be too long since we have 50’s in the forecast this week.

    Feeling a bit diminished by not being able to handle the Snow myself. That silly guy thing. I wouldn’t have been able to do it even if the snowblower worked. Heavy, wet spring snows clog it up. Not to mention my SOB issues. No, not that. Shortness of Breath=SOB. Besides, I already have a snow plow guy. So why?

    Oh, you know. What I could do. What I used to be able to do. I used to be able to run. I used to be able to power all the work in my garden with my legs and my upper body. I used to be able to handle a chain saw. Move slash. Buck trunks. I was a guy in the still strong days. So why not now? I don’t want to be only a mind on two legs. My self critical self wrecker says, nah. You coulda. Shoulda.

    Guess this is one with the questions I posed the last week or so. I need to flip the kayak. Get back to the oxygen in my life as it is. Right now. Here and now. A life filled with friends, ideas, wild neighbors, a willingness to go down that unexpected path all the way.

    Yes. Because. That guy, that strong younger guy, is my past. I’m not weak, not since I got back to resistance work, but I’m no longer that guy physically. That guy is the past. This guy with the yarmulke, reading the parsha, observing Shabbat, he’s my present. This guy who sees the yearling Does, feels the companionable presence of the Lodgepole out my study window, loves Great Sol torching the top of Black Mountain each morning. He’s my present.

    This guy, the one who plows through books about politics, about Jewish holidays, about the Rights of Nature, about Animal Wisdom. He’s my present. And this particular guy is a through line from the young one who like the deceased author David Wallace might get in a taxi and say, “To the library. And step on it!”


    📂This entry was posted in Feelings Fourth Phase Memories

  • Snow and Colds

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Lighting the candles. Big Snow. Cold night. Cold recovery underway. My torah portion. Bechirah. Choice points. Kehillah. Community. Next MVP. Me. Rich Levine. Ron. Tara. Susan. Jamie. Joanne. Rebecca. Alan. Luke and Leo. Snow burden on the Lodgepoles already diminished. Snow all round the house. 3 feet for sure. Four in some spots.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: A very, very Snowy Mountain Morning

    One brief shining: Roll over after waking up, raise head to see out the window, and Snow above the window sill, look again, same, oh right the big storm, Snow stretching out beyond the window to the Lodgepoles and fences in back, driveway buried in front.

     

    Though compacted some by weight the Snow remains impressive here. According to neighbors, Conifer got hit more than the rest of the state. Not sure I believe that though we sure got a lot. One guy had 65 inches on his tape measure. I know I got over three feet, less than four. Think of the Wild Neighbors who still have to forage through all of this. They have to eat each day, too. The burden of life.

    My regular plow guy, Vince, had surgery a couple of weeks ago and is having a tough recovery. He texted me before the storm, said he and his backup guy would come checkout my driveway. Well. Texted Vince yesterday. The backup guy is stuck in his own driveway. Ah.

    Onto Next Door Neighbors. Guys with heavy equipment have posted, one on Shadow Mountain. I’ve messaged them, maybe they can dig me out. Not a big deal really. Plenty of food, house is warm. And in true Colorado fashion this will all melt during the next week anyhow. Still, I’d like to get out and see the sights.

     

    My cold has faded away, leaving me fatigued and feeling off. Haven’t got the bounce back jolt of energy yet. Looking forward to it. For now, shabbating anyhow.

    When ill, at least for me in the acute phase, my world narrows. I become the slight fever, the runny nose, the aching body and not much else. Maybe hunger sneaks in around the margins. There’s even a sense that my eyes have a more compact field of vision. Everything contracts.

    So the experience of recovery becomes a widening, a gradual reembracing of thought, of other concerns like that to do list on my phone. Marveling at Great Sol on the vast expanse of white Snow. Letting the world beyond my own skin back into visibility.

     

    Just a moment: I have pictures of the Snow but due to technical difficulties, I can’t post them yet. Too unnecessarily complicated to explain. But soon.

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Feelings Fourth Phase Health Weather +Climate