Imbolc and the almost full Ancient Moon
Tuesday gratefuls: Tom. My Lodgepole companion waving their branches with an early Morning Breeze. That faint blush of Great Sol on the peak of Black Mountain. Senate Navy Bean soup. Pretty good. Famous Dave’s cornbread. My kitchen. Dr. Jill and her needles. Acupuncture. Mourning and grief. Evening and Morning, the first day. Safeway pickup.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: My Lodgepole companion
One brief shining: Stripped down to my underwear I crawled up on the massage table, stuck my face in the small ring jutting out from it, and lay there as Dr. Jill placed needle after needle after needle after needle, most with barely a prick, some though a bit more, as Dr. Ma says, she must have forgotten to sharpen those.
Yes, another round of needling with no laughter. No Whale noises, thirty/forty minutes of lying down being one with the Chinese way. Dr. Jill felt up and down my spine, pushing here and there, then inserting a needle, a few in my leg. Sounds like something I will do every two weeks for a while, then maybe once a month. Stenosis doesn’t get better, the only treatment for it outside of surgery is symptomatic relief: physical therapy, acupuncture, NSAID’s, Lidocaine patches, steroid injections. Though I’ve ruled out that last one.
Ana came yesterday, spiffed up the house. Having my house cleaned helps me in ways beyond sanitation and hygiene. Self-care. A clean house concentrates the mind, removes a distraction. An anxiety prophylactic. Same thing with organizing, re-organizing. Going to have Ana and Lita do my loft next time. I’m ready to get back up there for more than workouts.
Had an interesting experience up there yesterday morning. I decided to look at my library as an outsider, what did it say to me about me? I started on the shelves devoted to Minnesota, the Great Lakes, natural history, glanced at my Civil War collection. Onto Hawai’i and the U.S.A. Biographies of Tesla. Oppenheimer. Einstein. Atomic era history. American history, the West. A shelf of books about the Enlightenment, natural theology, emergence, the American Renaissance. A few on Astrology. So many books. Plays. Emerson’s complete works. A few Russian novels. Reference books including the OED and the Grove Dictionary of Art.
Of course there’s poetry, religions, especially Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and philosophy. Roman and Greek works. Latin texts. A shelf of Ovid related books. Celtic history, mythology. Magic. Great Britain. Novels, a whole bookshelf. Travel guides, military history, gardening and horticulture. Meteorology. And, of course, Art.
As I walked slowly around the perimeter of the loft, I began to feel my self emerging, the one knit together over all these years, all those interests. Yes. This is me, or the tapestry of selves that through memory constitute my ever changing identity. A koan. If all these are my self, who now am I?
This felt good, warm, self-acknowledging. Whether they have any practical benefit, my books, my passions have enriched my life, taking me to places I would not have been able to go alone. They have nourished my soul.
