Letting Go

My mother moves to "Memory Care" today

Eris, the Goddess of Chaos and I sit in the bunker in Washington DC monitoring the situation in Williamsburg VA where my mother is being moved into "Memory Care" today.

My mother moves to Memory Care today

I’m grateful to have been informed ahead of my mother’s move today within the Charter Senior Living facility down in Williamsburg, VA. I’ll be staying here in Washington, DC until my sister thinks that a visit will not be disruptive to the process of moving Mom into this more structured and intensive care stage as she continues to decline, cognitively.

There are many ways to make one’s exit from life. I often comment that this is all a game of “Beat the Reaper” and we are all temporary flashes on the surface of eternity.

Turning my attention to mySelf

Currently, I am listening to the YouTube about Kierkegaard’s philosophy again. I just got to this place:

The demonic and enclosed reserve explores one of Søren Kierkegaard’s most sophisticated psychological insights, first detailed in his 1844 masterpiece, The Concept of Anxiety. Rather than a literal reference to fallen angels or the occult, Kierkegaard redefines the demonic as a profound psychological and spiritual state of self-imposed isolation and paralyzed freedom. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The Core Paradox: Anxiety About the Good

• Freedom as Unfreedom: The demonic individual suffers from an intense anxiety about the good. They actively perceive true freedom, moral transparency, and spiritual growth as threats to their current state. [1, 2]

• Turning Away: When confronted with the opportunity for healing or positive transformation, the individual retreats, viewing salvation not as a release but as a loss of control. [1, 2]

Mechanics of Enclosed Reserve (Indesluttethed)

• The Spiritual Prison: Also translated as “shut-upness” or “inclosing reserve,” this is a state where the individual closes themselves up within themselves, sealing off their inner world from external reality. [1]

• The Communication Barrier: The individual becomes completely incapable of, or hostile to, genuine, open communication (2:17:30). They guard their internal misery with demonic cleverness to ensure it remains completely hidden. [1, 2]

• Defective Communication Styles: This inner prison typically manifests externally in one of two distorted extremes:

  • Complete Muteness: Dropping into absolute silence to avoid exposing their true spiritual distress (2:18:16).

  • Compulsive Chatter: Engaging in superficial, nonstop talking as a defensive smokescreen to prevent any real or meaningful conversation from taking place (2:18:28).

Trauma, Pride, and the Artistic Class

• The Cycle of Trauma: This condition often takes root after an individual experiences severe emotional or spiritual trauma (2:18:50). Instead of processing the pain openly, they choose the predictability of a known, internal suffering over the vulnerability required to heal (2:19:02).

• Intellectual and Artistic Pride: Kierkegaard noted that highly intelligent people, philosophers, and artists (like poets) are uniquely vulnerable to this sickness (2:22:58). They often construct brilliant, hyper-complex internal systems of thought or art to justify their isolation and mask their spiritual stagnation (2:20:38). [1]

The Path to Salvation: True Disclosure

• Breaking the Prison: For Kierkegaard, the only cure for the demonic condition is revelation and disclosure (2:23:42).

• The Vulnerable Leap: Healing requires a painful crisis that forces the individual to break open their enclosed reserve, share their true self with another, and accept the vulnerability of divine grace (2:23:42).

This section really hit home with me. Part of “The Work” here has been a matter of taking “The Vulnerable Leap” as I process the inevitable losses of life.

Turning my attention to my marriage

The narrator is talking about “ethical love” vs “aesthetic love” and I believe that my marriage has become “ethical” with the hurdles we faced from the outset. It has helped me grow as a person and that growth continues. I am a “Work-In-Progress” as is “Harrowings” itself.

If this resonates with anyone, I’d appreciate hearing from you!

Lynn and I are living here under the clouds of smoke wafting into the area. The plan today is to get a hair cut. It is a symbolic “letting go” of something physical as I’m letting go of my life in Williamsburg, VA. I’ve been letting go of much of my past life.

What is preserved is in my writing which I find to be an exercise in becoming increasingly authentic as I move from dawn to dusk and back again. Every day is another day in the bonus round of the game of “Beat the Reaper” as I call it. I’m on a journey, after all, from “I” to “otherwise” as are we all.

Turning my attention to my father:

Harrowings has, as one of its major foci, the work of my late father who managed to avoid “the Reaper” until April 7, 2024. Just now, I posted a note that helps to keep one of his uncredited works alive - an engagement calendar produced in 1976 for the Bicentennial:

The left-hand side shows a drawing, probably by Vernon Wooten, of a “minute man” with the caption “Sixty-five Minute Man” -

William Wood, a minute man in Captain Nicholas Lewis’ s Company applied to this Board, & desired that he might be discharged & permitted to return home; and upon examination it appears that the said William Wood is Sixty five years old, and that he had entered into the service from a motive of serving his country; It is ordered, that he be discharged from doing any further duty in said Company; & that he be permitted to return home to his Family.

—Journals of the Council of Virginia

July 18, 1776

On July 19, it is noted that that “Officers of the Virginia Regiment offered a bounty to anyone.who would enlist as a regimental fife major.”

On July 22, it is noted that “Congress ordered the exchange of British prisoners of war of equal rank for Col. Ethan Allen and his men.”

These bits of information help “put flesh on the bones” of people who would otherwise be lost to history was a major part of my late father’s long life. He was still at it when he passed away and, for me, writing about his work is part of “connecting at distance,” so to speak. It’s all part of “The Work” as I call it.

I think it’s appropriate now to reamplify an article that I wrote early in this journey:

I am so grateful to all of you who have interacted with me over the course of these past months since the founding of the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC. Looking forward to hearing anything you all have to say in response to this post. Let’s have a conversation:

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