TENDRE PRESS live: “Dance of the Decades”

March 17, 2026

Once I was fully immersed in this massive recap project, I began to realize that it was one way that a woman of advanced age (now 83) could recognize, and even enhance, the fruits of growing old, rather than just getting old.

Actually, I had been primed to develop this attitude since my 30s, when I recognized that “the body is primary.” The origins of this attitude were practical: Having “failed” after one year at the professorial job I landed after graduating with a PhD in philosophy from Boston University in 1973 — judged as “too experimental” for a college that labeled itself experimental in then hippie California — I decided to follow my bliss, which meant that my recent fascination with astrology might one day “pay off” for me as a consultant. However, I knew I wouldn’t get rich, and I certainly couldn’t count on a steady weekly or monthly income. Instead, I had to gear down; live as simply as possible and trust the universe. Plus: keep my body in shape, since I couldn’t afford health insurance!

Yes, that’s how “the body is primary” mantra began. And for me, at this point in my increasingly long life, daily practice includes two full hours of what I call “physical culture” — 4 mile walk, yoga, chikung, tai chi.

So far, with a body that cooperates, the sky’s the limit!

I aim to challenge mind and heart and spirit in diverse ways, all for the sake of continuously opening space. In other words, I’ve always operated on the necessity of eventually breaking any frame, even that of my current “identity” at any point in life. Here’s an essay I wrote back when I realized that I had morphed into a “violent peace activist.”

OPENSPACE IS A VERB

Oops! Just noticed that the above essay is not yet in the tendrepress.com archive. Lots more essays to add there. I estimate 400 in all.

What’s wonderful about tackling such a legacy project when one is growing old at 83, is that the wealth of memories just never stop flowing, flowering, resonating. Simply, I have never, ever, experienced, on an ongoing basis, such a rich territory to explore. And exploration, as a double Sagittarian, is my middle name!

Here’s my Dance of the Decades, from tendrepress.com.

 

TENDRE PRESS (now live): backstory

March 16, 2026

Over this past weekend, I decided it was time to make the infinitely revamped and transformed tendrepress.com website live. This, after an extremely long process, more like an epoch in my personal life, the last nine years.

Backstory:

I happened to be looking back through old essays in file cabinets and was utterly startled, indeed dumfounded, to recognize that probably 95% of the hundreds I’ve composed, both published and unpublished, all of which integrate personal experience with collective themes, were not only extremely well-written (in my terms) but still, damn it, relevant to life on this planet!

I say damn it, because right away, I knew that I had to somehow work with my work again. To recapitulate what this singular individual soul had expressed into our suffering world before I “died.” Sounds dramatic, I know. Is it narcissistic? Likely. And very fitting for this Saturn/Neptune in early degrees of Aries moment.

Indeed, the self-centered “narcissist” in each of us needs to raise her fiery hand and shout out loud, without a care in the world:  ME. I BEGIN! Yes. To begin again, to start over, after nobody knows how many thousands of years have passed since Saturn and Neptune both reached 0° of Aries at the same time.

Start again, start over, and, I would add, I call out to especially us old ones who have lived consciously, growing old rather than just getting old: let us recapitulate our lives with the goal of sharing what many decades of life on earth have gifted us with, the glimmering gold of wisdom now gracing the bottom of our souls, with other, younger generations, the ones who will inherit this earth.

Yes, no matter who we are. For the young ones, still of “employment age,” I advise: ignore old tottering structures, systems; ignore the fact that “jobs” are scarce. Instead: what calls out to you personally? What would you do now that would begin to fulfill the purpose for which you were born?

If your response to these questions is bafflement, then know: it is time to plumb the depths of yourself, to let go of mere approval of, “identity” for, others; time to allow who you really are to surface and express into the world, no matter what. You might find yourself alone for awhile; if so, know that you are not really alone; young pioneers are sparking everywhere.

Do that. Become a pioneer, an entrepreneur; Now is the time. We have no choice, We simply must begin (Aries) again, with both direction (Saturn) and vision (Neptune). In fact, folks, the sky’s the limit! And each of us needs to set our own trajectory into the infinitely spacious present moment that opens wide, to receive each of our offerings.

Okay, enough ranting. But then “rants” too, are part and parcel of Saturn/Neptune in Aries. Sudden spurts of energy with a certain direction, arising from nowhere . . .

Back to backstory:

I kept looking back through hundreds of decades-old essays .  . . Soon I also recognized that I was a much better writer and thinker than I am now. Not surprising. After all, I was in my prime. From 1985 on, when I got my first computer, a used Apple IIe, instantly, the flow of  thought from beyond into language through brain to fingers on keyboard, was steady and seamless. And much much faster, than even my electric typewriter! Given my Mars in Sagittarius exact opposition to Uranus in Gemini, the lifelong frustration with translating synthesized, alchemized left brain real world experience with right brain intuition — into language and then expressed, to be shared with others, was suddenly solved.

I’ll be commenting further,  on this feat, and I do consider it a huge feat, to have actually managed to get this recap project out into the world.

tendrepress.com