"... with my brother in peace ..."

"... Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace ..."

The memories which come to us through music are not accompanied by any regrets; for a moment music gives us back the pleasures it retraces, and we feel again rather than collect them.

-- Madame de Staël, 18th-century French novelist and essayist
From "Letters on Rousseau" (1788)

("Person with Questions," chalk pastel, gouache and watercolor, by am, from the early 1980s.

Memorial Day weekend 2012

Thanks to The Goat That Wrote, currently living in South Korea, for bringing the grassy tombs of the Silla Kings to my attention.  They remind me of the San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery, where half of Richard's ashes are buried.  There are approximately 30,000 graves in this cemetery which dates back to 1992.  The ashes of Richard's father and his mother are buried in an older part of the cemetery.  In the San Joaquin Valley, the late summer grass in the rolling hills is golden rather than green.  These photos were taken in October 2008, a little over five months after Richard died.

The older part of the cemetery was watered to a surreal green.  Grass had not yet been planted in the area of Richard's grave.

The first Columbine on my porch opened this week.  The name Columbine comes from a Latin word meaning "dove." 

Memorial Days are usually quiet days for me.  It's often a good day for a long walk.  This year I'll be getting together for an informal dinner with some friends in the evening of Memorial Day.  

My thoughts this weekend are with the new generation of widows and their children and with all those whose loved ones have died in war throughout history.

Listen

A long time ago Bob Dylan said, "I'm gonna get me a new Bob Dylan" and "I just wanna go home"

Today is Bob Dylan's 71st birthday.

... but my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me ...
(Bob Dylan)

Still not settled in.  Getting closer.  Here's today's view from the porch:

(chalk pastel drawing up at the top by am from the early 1980s, "The Composer")

When my mother was 41, my youngest sister was 3, and I was almost 8 years old

Today I am remembering our mysterious and creative red-headed mother who as a child loved her doll, walking in the snow in St. Paul under the light of street lamps, visiting family friends at a farm in Hastings, and roller skating.  She loved her brother, their dog named Lightnin', being a Girl Scout and going to Girl Scout camp, all books (especially Little Women), the blue and white wooden chest that her father built for her, and camping and canoeing with her father in Northern Minnesota. 

My mother's mother died at home of gallbladder cancer when my mother was in her first (and last) year of college.  

As an adult, my mother loved books, writing, horses, the book Where the Blue Begins by Christopher Morley, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the humor of Groucho Marx and Danny Kaye, the sculpture of Henry Moore, the paintings of Marc Chagall, classical music, the night sky, birds, baby lambs, pistachio nuts, chocolate, pattern knitting,  cooking, watching figure skating on television, KQED (public television), the writing of C.S. Lewis, the teachings of Judaism, and the Pacific Ocean.  She loved us, her family, in her unique and fierce and gentle way.  I wonder how she would describe herself and what she loved.

My father must have taken this picture.  I wonder where my 6-year-old sister was that day.  Maybe she is standing right next to him.  I can still feel the warm dry California sun on that September day at a riding stable, not far from our home on the San Francisco Peninsula when it wasn't such a crowded and expensive place for young families to live.

If my mother were still alive, she would have celebrated her 96th birthday on April 30th.

Thanks to my cousin, Beth, for sending the photo of my mother, youngest sister, and me, along with other photos recently.  

It won't be long before the long overdue repairs in my little condominium home of 28 years are complete.  Most of my routines are still disrupted but in a good way.  I feel as if I am traveling.  It will take some time before I am settled again.  

Right now, I am sleeping in my living room while the work on my bedroom begins.  Oboe is still being boarded at her veterinarian's office.  I miss her.

Although it wasn't clear to me until I began emptying my living space, the bulk of my possessions is framed paintings and books.  The books are all in boxes in storage right now.  The framed paintings (both mine and those I've collected over the past 40 years) are currently taking up much of the space on my living room floor and a large hall closet.  I'm thinking of keeping most of the paintings in storage when this project is finished.  I'm looking at everything with new eyes.  What to keep.  What to let go of.  Sorting out my life.  

Listening to Maurice Sendak / "Whatever you're meant to do ..."

Thanks to Sabine at http://interimarrangements.blogspot.com/ for posting this video of Maurice Sendak.

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the beginning of my freedom from bulimia, anorexia, and alcoholism.  The day before that there were five pelicans in the sky at the Lost Coast.  Yesterday, there were three deer.

"Whatever you're meant to do, do it now.  The conditions are always impossible."
(Doris Lessing)

Thanks to The Lost Coast Webcam for sublime moments on the north coast of California.

The happiness of watching the Lost Coast from hundreds of miles away while my usual routines are disrupted by long overdue repairs to my home

Dawn today

Sunset yesterday

Views throughout the day yesterday

Before dawn yesterday

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.
-- G K. Chesterton

Clearing out the underbrush / Time for a change / Oboe The Philosopher has some questions, and I do, too

Well, isn't this interesting, Oboe?

Tomorrow the workers will be here at 8 a.m. to begin work on long overdue repairs, and then we can have new carpet and new paint.

Today I thought I would post a few photos of Oboe in our nearly empty living space, and today is the day that Blogger has decided to change EVERYTHING.

Well ... why not?

42 years: a book of changes

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." (Albert Schweitzer -- philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate)

Today is four years since Richard died. His spirit continues to bring light to my spirit.

The double self-portrait was set up using a camera self-timer by Richard. Midway through 1970, the year he was in Vietnam, we spent 4th of July week on Oahu.

Half of Richard's ashes were scattered near El Granada Jetty at Half Moon Bay, California, where he used to surf, and near where we met as 17 year olds in 1966. I looked for some music that he might like to hear, and then it occurred to me that he might like to hear the ocean. The other half of his ashes is buried at San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery in Gustine, California.

His spirit is everywhere. A kindred spirit to Levon Helm.

With love and gratitude to Levon Helm in his last days and always

Listen to Levon Helm and The Band and The Staples Singers.

After Richard was drafted into the U.S. Army in April 1969, and before he left for basic training at Fort Lewis in Washington State, he took me to Winterland in San Francisco to see The Band. We were 19 years old. We loved their music. We danced. It was one of their first performances as The Band.

From Ralph J. Gleason's review:

"Somehow, four Canadians and an Arkansas country boy ("Give us a song, Levon," I can hear them saying at some Sunday West Helena picnic) found it in themselves to express part of where all of us are at now while expressing where they are at themselves in language and metaphor that can ignite explosive trains of thought inside your head."

Listen to "Ophelia"

("Woman Dancing," chalk pastel on paper, by am, from the early 1980s)

"... when the present meets the past ..."

Listen

Reminded of the past today and focusing on the present. It's been a peaceful morning. There is sunshine here, nearly 60 degrees on the porch, and the birds are singing.

"You cannot create a statue by smashing marble with a hammer, and you cannot by force of arms release the spirit or the soul of man."
-- Confucius

(photo by am, looking east from my porch in early April 2012)

Easter / Counting the Omer / April 8, 2012

It was in 1997 that I first heard Jeff Buckley singing (skip the ad) this version of Leonard Cohen's haunting and oddly transcendent song. I've never heard a version that moved me more. When I was a little girl we went to church every Sunday, and on Easter we sang a song that repeated the word hallelujah sixteen times.

"All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity."
-- from The Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather, 20th-century American author.

From my porch, I can hear the birds begin singing when it is still dark on these April mornings.

Here is where I first learned about counting the Omer.

("Baby Bird is a computer trackpad drawing by am from 2005, during the first year that I had a computer, my iBookG4).

Reliquary / Contemplation / Namaste

(Chalk pastel drawing from 1983, "Composer," by am)

"When I look at the pictures and hear the songs I also see and hear the story behind them. A still photograph morphs into a home movie and a scrawl on a page evokes a scene in a room or on a street. I hear a laugh coming from somewhere off to the side...

... A song, a poem, a book, a film, an exhibit are simply representations of a period, a place, a person. And because memory is the joker in the deck I try not to take the representations of the past too seriously. Life goes on for those who live it in the present. Nostalgia, cheap or otherwise, is always costly.

I see history as a reliquary—a container where relics are kept and displayed for contemplation. So much has been written about the sixties that the more distant those years become, the more mythic the tales and the time seem to be ..."

(from A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, by Suze Rotolo)



Today's view from the porch, with sounds of spring:



Namaste:

Oboe looking into the sun

To see takes time.
(Georgia O'Keeffe)

"...where we together weathered many a storm..."

(photo from early March from California's Lost Coast webcam)

... nowhere you can be that you weren't meant to be ...
(John Lennon, from "All You Need Is Love")

"But I also miss the mountains and rivers of my childhood. I miss my old friends. So I return now and then, when I can not still the longing in my heart.

The funny thing is, the moment I am in one country, I am homesick for the other."
(Allen Say, from Grandfather's Journey, p. 31)

Listen

















(view in early March from my porch in Northwest Washington)