• Category Archives Feelings

  • The New Way

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                                                              Samhain Moon

    Latin today, a good lesson.  I forgot basics, stumbled around, thought I had it when I didn’t.  So why keep banging my forehead against the solid wall of the Roman language?  There’s no reason, no necessity.  Just like the MOOC’s I’m taking are not necessary.

    When Kate pressed me on taking two MOOC’s at once, I replied, “I never took less than 18-20 credits a quarter in college.  Graduated with way more credits than I needed.”  She looked at me. “You’re not in college anymore.”  There’s that.

    In my defense I did set one aside, so I only took two instead of three.  That’s progress, right?

    No, there’s something deeper going on here, I know that.  Learning keeps my mind vital, alert, attentive.  It helps me jump out of ruts into new territory.  I’ve always been curious what’s beyond the limits, the city limits, the college rules limit, the religious limits, the limits of the universe.  Liminal spaces are my favorite, places where two worlds intersect, a little blurry, mostly undefined.  In the past, the now distant past, I used to get there chemically, now books and movies and essays and thoughts and the shovel and the quiet mind and the open heart, they get me there instead.

    I want to stand on the shore looking out, stand on the peak looking over the valleys, stand at the mouth of the cave looking in, then follow my gaze.  See what’s beyond safe ground. I hope I never lose that desire.  In fact, I hope I have it when I’m facing death, wondering what’s just beyond the safe ground of life itself.  But not, as my ENT doc said, for a long time.


    Faith and Spirituality Feelings Humanities Latin

  • Old Friend

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                                                              Samhain Moon

    You seem to be sinking into melancholy again.  No, I’m not.  Yes.  You are.

    Oh.  Well.  October is often gray as my consciousness begins to mirror the sky.  It is in my way to miss the dimming of the lights arrival and not notice when it leaves.  Kate reminds me.  Then I feel heavy as if weights descended within from head to foot, slowly, taking attention and vitality with them as they slip down.

    “Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to visit you again” has always seemed so apt. There is that strange feeling of comfort, of familiarity, as the mind’s interior collects, becomes heavier.  It is, almost always, a prelude to a period of heightened creativity, but there is the tunnel, sometimes long, sometimes short, that must be negotiated first.

    That manhole cover is off and I’ve begun climbing down the ladder into the labyrinth.  I’ll need an Ariadne sometime soon.

     


    Feelings

  • Wholeness

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                                  Harvest Moon

    Mabon eve.  The night before the fall equinox.  Tomorrow the light loses its struggle to own more than half of the day, a gain achieved back at the Summer Solstice in June.  From this point on the light diminishes and the darkness increases to its zenith at the Winter Solstice.

    Been meaning to report on an interesting feeling I had at the Woolly meeting on Monday night.  I took two pies Kate had baked:  ground cherry and raspberry, both of fruit from our garden.  I also took a box of honey from our  hive, Artemis Honey with the label made by Mark Odegard.

    When I left, after having sold 18 pounds of honey, I had a feeling of wholeness, that’s the best way I can describe it.  I had worked all season on the garden, the orchard and with the bees and somehow that evening I felt one with it all.

    When I told Kate how I felt, I said it felt like something private was made public, that those two worlds knit together in one moment.  She said she got a similar feeling when she took food for a group, as she did so often for work and as she does now for her sewing days.

    It was a good feeling, however understood.


    Bees Family Feelings Garden Great Wheel Woolly Mammoths

  • Loaf

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    8/10/2013     Lughnasa                                                 State Fair Moon

    Caught up on my e-mails.  Walt Whitman said of summer that he would “loaf and invite his soul.”  That’s what I want to do for a few days now.  Missing 3.0 is out of my hands at the moment.  Loki’s Children has not started up again, Latin’s in abeyance, most of the garden chores are caught up.  A rare moment between.  Loaf, I like the word.  For now.


    Feelings

  • Kona

    Posted on by Charles 2 Comments

    Summer                                                                  Moon of the First Harvests

    Kona died this morning.  Both Kate and I spent time with her just before she died.  She was alert and responsive to the end.  She died knowing we loved her and in the crate she knew as her safe place.

    (Kona)

    We cried, both of us.  Yes, in spite of an end obvious long ago, the actual loss still opens a chasm between the living dog and the dead one.  That chasm represents the never will agains.  And those made me cry.  I would never again feel her nuzzle into my hand.  Never again see her smile.  Never again see her run the trails in our woods.

    Her corpse no longer retained her; it was a symbol now, not a reality.  This is a wonder to me.  When I spoke with her about a half hour before she died, she looked at me, put her nose in my palm, caressed me with her muzzle.  Kona was 100% there.  Then, she was gone.  The light left her eyes and her body no longer moved.

    The wonder is this, that life has a magic about it, seen most clearly after it is lost.  That which was Kona was there, then not.  Yes, her memories live on, that’s true.  But Kona does not.  The personality, the somewhat aloof I’m living life as I intend to personality of the sighthound, has vanished.  Just like that.

    (Rigel, Gertie, Kona)

    Life is a miracle, ordinary in its profusion and ordinary as long it exists, yet when it has gone, then we know.  So, each death gives us a moment to reflect on the precious gift we have.  The one carrying us forward into tomorrow.  A gift others give to us, too.  Each death is an opportunity to affirm and celebrate life and living.

    Kona’s father was a whippet champion named Drum.  When we picked up Hilo and Kona from the breeder, the puppies and the parents were watching Animal Planet.  We brought them home and they began a series of escapes from the property, going under the chain link fence in pursuit of prey or delight, often both.

    We held them on our laps when they were young.  Hilo would squirm, sit up, stretch, jump down.  Kona, the much larger of the two, would lie quietly, happy to be there.  

    In her early days Kona was a predator.  I remember one day Kona came up on the deck, dropped something there, then ran back out into the woods.  The something was the still warm and clear eyed head of an adult rabbit.  Why she brought it to the deck I don’t know.   Over a long period Kona would kill rabbits and we would pick up the dead rabbits, put them in a plastic bag and dispose of them.  This never deterred Kona.  She just kept at it.

    Hilo died three years ago of kidney failure and was never much of a hunter.  She liked to be with her people.  Kona kept to her self, finding places to sit nearby, sometimes with us, often not.  She kept her own counsel and determined what her day would be like, pretty much independent of us.

    After her death this morning, I went out into the garden and sat on one of the raised beds.  Gardens heal.  Surrounded by life and life producing food, the cycle of life was concrete.  Kona fit into this cycle.   It helped me remember that at some point the light in my eyes will go out, too.  And, more.  That will be fine, it will fit into this cycle.

    (Vega and Kona)

    Kona had privileges the other dogs didn’t.  She would go with me into the garden, mainly because we could count on her not to dig holes in the garden beds.  She would also be outside on our brick patio with us because we could count on her to stay around the house.

    She has been part of our lives for 12 plus years, as real and regular a part of our lives as we are to each other.  True she was a dog, but as a companion and fellow traveler on this pilgrimage she was with us, part of our pack as we were part of hers.

    We travel on now with one less pilgrim immediately in our presence, yet at the same time, the whole pack with us, all 17 dogs, two parents and two sons.  Amen.

     

     


    Dogs Faith and Spirituality Family Feelings Friends Our Land and Home 📎and tagged

  • Primal

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                                 Moon of the First Harvests

    Kona lives though her mobility has been greatly diminished.  She is, however, alert and responsive.  We get down with her and talk to her on a regular basis, letting her know that we love her and are with her in this part of her journey, too.  It’s the light in her eyes, the Kona-ness of her presence in those eyes, I think, that forces me not to put it out.  At least that’s a big part of it.  Another part is not breaking trust.  She has trusted me to care for her all these years.  To care for her.  Not kill her.

    If you differ with me on this, I understand.  I can see how caring might reach to euthanasia, the whole control around end of life debate has many testimonies to that effect, even in humans.  Why I feel so strongly on this is not clear.

    It’s strength oddly enough reminds me of one other moment in my life, the one in which I knew I needed to be a parent.  It was a strong, primal feeling, dominant.  The need became overriding, pushing other concerns into the background.  It wasn’t compulsive, at least I don’t think it was, but it was so urgent.  The best word I can use to describe it is primal, that is, it came from a part of me so deep that it bypassed subconscious and conscious thought to arrive full borne in my psyche.

    The same process has surfaced in me around euthanasia.  I have no reasons, no arguments, no explanations.  For me, it is forbidden.

    Just to be clear, really really clear: there are no religious or political sentiments attached in either case.  This is something from the veldt or the cave.


    Dogs Faith and Spirituality Feelings

  • Being Human

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                             Moon of First Harvests

    The morning after.  The Woolly feeling lingers here, a gentle mantle over the back, around the fire pit where we gathered.  A primary, perhaps the primary, purpose of the Woollies is to see and be seen.  No invisible men allowed.  We have bum knees, wonky shoulders, weak legs, poor eyes and sore backs.  These are acknowledged, not for sympathy, but for recognition that we are each the sore back, the poor eyes, the weak leg, the wonky shoulder, the bum knee.  And that we are none of us only or even mostly our ailments, more and mostly we are the ones who have spent this 25 year+ journey together, time that included wholeness, able-bodiedness and now includes physical decline.

    We’re not exactly a support group.  We don’t try to fix each others problems (usually).  We do go in for empathy, but not too much because too much focuses the group on one while the whole has been and is the most important.  We’re not a group of friends, or, at least, not only a group of friends, rather we are fellow pilgrims, traveling our ancientrails in sight of each other, calling out from our journey and hearing the other call out from theirs.

    Though our ancientrails intersected less in times past, as we move into third phase life they intersect more and more.  How to make this transition.  How to create a life anew when work is no longer the primary lodestar.  How to look death in the face, unafraid, even welcoming.  No, not suicidal welcoming, but unafraid of what is common, ordinary, part of the path.  We look at each others hearts, hear the pulse of each other’s blood.  This is what it means to be human.

     


    Aging Faith and Spirituality Feelings Retirement Third Phase Woolly Mammoths

  • Watching As the Lights Go Out

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                                        Solstice Moon

    When we gathered last night at the Woodfire Grill, five of us Woollies talked, catching up on family, discussing current events, laughing.  Then, the talk turned serious and deep, as the fly fisherman said, “existential.”

    A sister-in-law, a chiropractor, called one of us and told him she was retiring.  “Because,” she said, “I’ve been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s.” That brought silence around this table where the youngest was 64 and the oldest 80.  As is his way, this one wondered how to be present to her, not to fix her, but to aid her in her present situation.  How might he stay present to her over time, perhaps learning enough to alert her children, who live far away when things become dire?

    I pointed him to a website I recently added here, under the link’s title, Third Phase, called Watching the Lights Go Out.  Here’s this 68 year old retired physician’s description of its purpose:

    “In September of 2012 I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. This blog is the story of my day-to-day life with this illness and my reflections upon it. We tend to be scared of Alzheimer’s or embarrassed by it. We see it as the end of life rather than a phase of life with all its attendant opportunities for growth, learning, and relationships. We see only the suffering and miss the joy. We experience only the disappearing cognitive abilities and ignore the beautiful things that can appear.”

    One of us has an obvious anxiety about this since he has a mother with Alzheimer’s and definitely does not want to place that kind of burden on those who would be his caretakers. What will I do, he asked, if this becomes me?

    We turned to the writer who cared for his mother-in-law, Ruby, who tipped over into Alzheimer’s after open-heart surgery.  He has interviewed many Alzheimer’s sufferers and said that after a couple of years of sometimes intense existential dread, there comes a peace with the disease.

    “But I don’t want to not care!” said the one of us who was anxious.  “That leaves my caretakers with the burden.”

    This conversation continued, all of us trying to put ourselves in the situation of watching the lights go out.  It was not pleasant, but neither was it hopeless, because we had friends around the table.

    A primary inflection of this whole conversation was readying ourselves to live into this and other dark realities that loom not far down the stair case of aging.

     

     


    Aging Feelings Friends Health Third Phase Woolly Mammoths

  • Eudaimonia

    Posted on by Charles 2 Comments

    Summer                                                                     Solstice Moon

     

    A word about pursuing happiness.  Or meaning.  Yes, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  I know.  Right there in the founding documents.  An ur-right.  One equivalent to survival and liberty.  Well, who wouldn’t be pleased to find happiness?  I doubt I would.

    Now this may be because I have a northern European genetic predilection to dysthmia, could be.   And, in fact, I think that’s the case.  This is not, however, my point here.

    Happiness doesn’t strike me as a desirable state, at least not for any length of time.  Why?  Because it has the flavor of arrival, of sufficiency, of finished, of done.  Happiness comes to the human life like the finish line model of retirement, once we get there that’s all we need. After that, we coast.  Play golf.  Smoke cigars.  Travel.  Watch TV.

    No, I’ll go for a more Greek idea, eudaimonia.  Composed of two Greek worlds, eu (good) and daimon (spirit) Aristotle and the Stoics after him promoted it as the end of human life. As such it has often been translated as happiness or welfare, but perhaps a better phrase is human flourishing.  Or, without getting fancy, why not good spirit?  Both have an active turn, taking us toward enrichment, fullness, striving within a humane ambit.

    Now there you have an internal state worth cultivating.  It’s the difference between a noun and a gerund.  Happiness vs. flourishing.  I would much rather flourish than be happy.  Much.


    Faith and Spirituality Feelings

  • The Sweetest Sound

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                                        Solstice Moon

    Apparently this decompression thing will take a bit longer than one day.  Slept in this morning, late start.  Worked out last night and that often means a longer sleep the next day.  I’m pushing myself now, more reps with lighter weights.  Taking a weight until I can do 20 reps twice, then moving up.  That means more work per set and a longer time with the body at a higher heart rate.  All for the good of the team.  Team Self.

    There is a feeling of satisfaction, a deep joy.  Though they differ from culture to culture, there are certain basic roles that define us.  Raising children is one.  Being a grandparent is another.  These are old roles, ancientrails common to all cultures.  Who does them may change from place to place, but in our culture it is usually the core couple of a nuclear family that fulfills both roles.  Blended families bring nuances to those roles that are real, but they don’t change the roles themselves.

    Cries of grandpop! in the small voice of children has to be one of the sweetest sounds the human ear can hear.  Better than Mozart or Led Zepplin or I do or here’s your diploma.  Why?  Because they come from innocence, unfiltered and largely unexamined.  They are an unconditional affirmation.  I know this because I here these words from Ruth and Gabe with whom I have no genetic link.  That’s one of the nuances from the blended family.  Yet even Ruth, who wanted to meet her Dad’s real (biological) father and therefore her real (biological) grandfather, greets me with the same lack of reserve.  I fill the role, am the role.

     


    Family Feelings