Talking 37th Dream With Rainbow (rumors of peace)

No Cat

2012-02-15T06:02:00.000-08:00

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”

-- Albert Einstein

(trackpad drawing by am)

Valentine's Day 2012 / Wislawa Szymborska 1923-2012

2012-02-14T04:58:00.001-08:00

Nothing Twice
(translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce,
you can’t repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you’re here with me,
I can’t help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It’s in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we’re different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

Poem via Alive On All Channels via Poets.org

Valentine's Day first sunlight on a breaking wave at the Lost Coast Webcam

Johnny Got His Gun, Revisited /A man who carries within himself all the seeds of a new order of things / The Heart Sutra

2012-02-13T06:14:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to know more about this trackpad drawing, read here.
When I did that drawing in December 2007, I had no idea that Richard had experienced a brainstem stroke and had been in a VA hospital for three months and that he was painting again.

Nearly two weeks ago, while in savasana (the corpse pose) at the end of my home yoga practice, thinking of Richard's last breath, I suddenly remembered Dalton Trumbo's anti-war novel written in 1939, Johnny Got His Gun.

A few days ago, the $7.99 copy I had ordered arrived at our local independent bookstore. It had been my intention to read the edition I had read in 1970 at the urging of Richard, who had read the book while in the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1970. I didn't want the edition with the foreward by Cindy Sheehan because I had checked out our local library's audiobook version of Johnny Got His Gun, read by William Dufris, and been unable to listen to that particular man's irritating voice read a book that I had read so long ago and had "heard" in Richard's voice. William Dufris' reading of Cindy Sheehan's foreward was particularly annoying to me. I wanted the edition with the introduction by Dalton Trumbo. I thought that was what I was ordering.

It turns out that, for the edition I had bought, the publisher had removed the introduction by Dalton Trumbo and inserted an introduction by Cindy Sheehan. With further Google research, I found that in 1991, there was an edition with an introduction by Ron Kovic, a well-known Vietnam veteran who felt the book told his story. That introduction was followed by Dalton Trumbo's original introduction from 1939 and an addendum by Dalton Trumbo in 1970. If you'd like to read those introductions, take a look here.

Now I'm puzzled. This is getting curiouser and curiouser. Dalton Trumbo was alive when the introduction by Ron Kovic was added and clearly chose Ron Kovic to write an introduction.

Why were those two introductions removed and Cindy Sheehan's introduction inserted? Why not just add Cindy Sheehan's introduction to this newer addition?

On the publishing history page of my $7.99 copy, it reads:

This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardback edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED

and:

Introduction copyright © 1970 by Dalton Trumbo.

What is going on here?

It was wrenching to reread Johnny Got His Gun. When we read it the first time, Richard and I were 20 years old, in the midst of the Vietnam War. I am convinced now that Richard was remembering that book in the last few days of his life when he was blind in one eye, not focusing well with the other eye, and barely able to move.

From page 83 of Johnny Got His Gun:

He was blind.

It was funny how calm he was. He was quiet just like a storekeeper taking spring inventory and saying to himself I see I have no eyes better put that down in the order book. He had no legs and no arms and no ears and no nose and no mouth and no tongue. What a hell of a dream. It must be a dream. Of course sweet god it’s a dream. He’d have to wake up or he’d go nuts. Nobody could live like that.

From page 240-241:

Why? why? why?

And then suddenly he saw. He had a vision of himself as a new kind of Christ as a man who carries within himself all the seeds of a new order of things. He was the new messiah of the battlefields saying to people as I am so shall you be ... He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality ...

That was it he had it he understood it now he had told them his secret and in denying him they had told him theirs.

He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like. Already they were looking ahead they were figuring the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight that war the would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn't fight ...

From the Heart Sutra:

No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of mind consciousness.

Cindy Sheehan's introduction ends with the words: "Why, why, why?"

(cover of first edition, 1939)

Meditation / A young man who was staying drunk on fear in the wilderness / A young woman who was not afraid of him

2012-02-11T10:13:00.000-08:00

Johnny: [opening narration from "The Wild One"] It begins here for me on this road. How the whole mess happened I don't know, but I know it couldn't happen again in a million years. Maybe I could of stopped it early, but once the trouble was on its way, I was just goin' with it. Mostly I remember the girl. I can't explain it - a sad chick like that, but somethin' changed in me. She got to me, but that's later anyway. This is where it begins for me right on this road.

During the 1960s, upon looking at some promotional photos of himself, Bob Dylan laughed and said, "I look like Marlon Brando, James Dean or somebody..."

What's my point here? Something about fear and courage. That series of film clips from "The Wild One" moved me this morning. This may make more sense after watching the entire YouTube video above. Maybe not.

"I always have respected her
for doing what she did and getting free."
(Bob Dylan, from "If You See Her Say Hello")

"How long can I stay drunk on fear
out in the wilderness?"
(Bob Dylan, from "When He Returns")

"Time heals, after all -- although the clock that marks that kind of time has no hands."
(Suze Rotolo, from A Freewheelin' Time, 2007)

(2007 trackpad drawing by am and February 2012 trackpad drawing by am)

Joy / Little pencil drawing (3 x 4-1/2 inches)

2012-02-10T14:54:00.000-08:00

"... go for walks, do mundane chores, never letting go of the koan of stymied creativity. And I still show up at my desk or studio when I normally would. Sometimes I just sit and do nothing. Sometimes I just read or stare out the window. Then, eventually, but always, I find the words, the colors, whatever music it is I need to go on. Then comes the joy."

(Terrance Keenan, from interview at the blog called Writing Our Way Home)

Here is where I found the above interview via Whiskey River.

My plan is to use my little drawing of a few days ago as a starting point for a computer trackpad drawing with working title of "Girl with Crow, Orion, and Cat on a Starry Night."

Antidote / "Kindness at the Crossroads"

2012-02-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

It took me years to realize that waiting for someone else to change is not fruitful and, besides, it's unkind to all involved.

Here's one wildly creative antidote to that, with lyrics here.

Thanks to Doonesbury's Featured Video.

And to Sabine for this:

Don't go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great elephant
who is already quietly at home.
Nothing to do,
Nothing to force,
nothing to want -
and everything happens by itself.

("Kindness at the Crossroads," a computer trackpad drawing by am from 2005)

Certain

2012-02-07T05:09:00.000-08:00

"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not."

-- John Keats, English lyric poet (1795 - 1821)

("Reconciliation Dream," gouache and watercolor, painted by am in 1999)

generosity and humility

2012-02-02T05:55:00.001-08:00

"Generosity can be as simple and sweet as a song worth sharing."
(quote from Sight Psalms)

The source for the photo is my sister in Mississippi who is a Methodist and sent me a link to Sight Psalms.

I remember the final Bob Dylan concert I attended in the late 1990s in a stadium in Vancouver, British Columbia. During what was to be the last encore, I was moved to get up from my seat, and I made my way down as close to the stage as I could get -- a long way from where our seats were. My friends remained seated. Bob Dylan was singing, "Girl From The North Country." Others had quietly left their seats as well, moved perhaps in the same way I was . As I recall, we were a small group of women, allowed to be as close to the stage as was possible.

Unlike the rest of the concert, the volume of the loudspeakers had been turned down to a level that was not excruciatingly painful to listen to. Bob Dylan began to sing clearly, unlike the way he had sung throughout the rest of the concert.

Bob Dylan would have been in his late 50s then. To my eyes, he was a surprisingly fragile-looking man. I was struck by a sense of the courage it took for him to put himself in such a vulnerable position. Then the words generosity and humility came to me spontaneously.

To me, in that moment, Bob Dylan was the embodiment of generosity and humility.

When I saw the above photo this morning, it occurred to me that Bob Dylan could have easily been that man at the piano in New Orleans except for a simple twist of fate. I see them as kindred spirits.

The gift of the encore for the last Bob Dylan concert I am likely to see has been a lasting gift.

If you have time and the inclination, listen to Bob Dylan in 1994 (a few years before we saw him in Vancouver), accompanied by the Tokyo New Philharmonic Orchestra.

"I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred"
(from "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall")

"... when the heart is right ..." / spontaneous thoughts in savasana / "I believe in the impossible."

2012-01-31T06:34:00.000-08:00

Ch'ui the draftsman
could draw more perfect circles freehand
than with a compass.

His fingers brought forth
spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
was meanwhile free and without concern
with what he was doing.

No application was needed
his mind was perfectly simple
and knew no obstacle.

So, when the shoe fits
the foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
the belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
"for" and "against" are forgotten.

No drives, no compulsions,
no needs, no attractions:
then your affairs
are under control.
You are a free man.

Easy is right. Begin right
and you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
is to forget the right way
and forget that the going is easy.
- Chuang Tzu
(Source: Whiskey River)

While in savasana (the relaxation pose that is also called the corpse pose and is done at the end of a yoga practice) yesterday, my mind drifted to Richard's last breath. Each time I breathed out, I began to think of Richard's last breath, and then for some reason I spontaneously remembered a book he had read in Vietnam and had encouraged me to read while he was there. It was called Johnny Got His Gun, an anti-war novel written by Dalton Trumbo. When I finished my yoga practice, I found this:

My grandfather served as a doctor in France in World War II. He was a witness to those images of war.

Then I found this about Johnny Got His Gun on Wikipedia:

"Joe Bonham, a young soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body.

Joe attempts suicide by suffocation, but finds that he had been given a tracheotomy which he can neither remove nor control. At first Joe wishes to die, but later decides that he desires to be placed in a glass box and toured around the country in order to show others the true horrors of war. After he successfully communicates with his doctors by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code (am's italics and am's note: The Morse code he signaled was S.O.S. or Help!!!), however, he realizes that neither desire will be granted; it is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in his condition."
(Source)

In Richard's last days, he was a prisoner in his body in a VA Hospital as a result of a brain stem stroke that occurred while he was drinking. He had been using drugs and alcohol since his return from Vietnam in 1970. The hospital staff had his hands tied down so that he could not remove the various tubes that were keeping him alive. When visitors were with him, his hands were untied. He had a tracheotomy tube and was on a respirator as well as a feeding tube. He had been unable to speak since the stroke seven months previously and had lost his limited ability to write in the previous week. He was blind in one eye. He was emaciated. He was only able to move with great effort but continued to try to remove tubes unless his hands were tied down. At one point, while I sat next to him, holding his hand, just before the last time I saw him alive and was about to leave, he lifted his head and began banging it against his pillow. Until yesterday, I would have said that Richard's last words were earlier that week, when he signaled "Thumbs up" to me, but now I am wondering if Richard was remembering Joe Bonham and signaling, "Help!!!"

This brought tears and dismay and confusion to me as well as healing. I felt close to Richard and could feel his presence and his words, "I love you. Always will." As I am writing this, I hear his words "Please take all my love and go on with your life."

This is part of my grieving and healing process. I know I am not alone. It is important for us to tell our stories related to war and its aftermath. I am sharing my experience, strength and hope for a future where there is an end to war. I hope that in telling my story, someone else will know that she or he is not alone.

"I believe in the impossible. You know that I do."
(Bob Dylan's lyrics, taken out of context. The words have a life of their own)

My thoughts are never far from veterans and their families. My thoughts are never far from all those who are still in the midst of war in Afghanistan.

Sabine's words keep coming to mind: "Live all you can: It's a mistake not to."

Update: Lots of synchronicity going on in the last 24 hours. Something of Richard's energy is here today with me, encouraging me to go on with my life, beginning with laughter. His heart is right.

I wasn't looking for the video below, but it came up when I went to YouTube after writing about war and grief and was trying to figure out why the video that I had embedded in my post was showing up as only a black rectangle.

Richard had a splendid sense of humor. He loved this movie that he watched with other veterans at the VA hospital in 2001 and wanted me to see it, too:

"When the heart is right
'for' and 'against' are forgotten."

Boy, Horse, and Pelican Escaping by Moonlight

2012-01-30T04:02:00.000-08:00

Horses were a great comfort to me in my childhood and youth, but it's been a long time since I've spent time with horses. Seeing the trailer for this movie moved me:

Take a look here on page 3 for an article on equine-assisted therapy for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on Oahu.

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the human heart can hold.
-- Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist (1900-1948)
(source for quote)

(Trackpad drawing by am)

Standing Bow Pose Revisited / Sweet Baby James Revisited

2012-01-29T07:37:00.001-08:00

It wasn't until 2007, when I was 57 years old and in a Yoga Teacher Training setting, that I ever tried the Standing Bow Pose, although I had taken my first yoga class in 1970 when I was 20. I think that my pose from 2007 or 2008 (the second photo) looks better than my pose this morning, but I haven't been doing that pose regularly and plan to add that to my home practice. A few weeks ago, I returned to classes at the B.K.S. Iyengar School of Yoga in Bellingham after many years of a regular home practice. It is good to be working with my old teacher again. She has suggested several poses for me to add to my home practice.

Last week, Richard's sister and brother-in-law sent me the James Taylor Greatest Hits CD which includes "Sweet Baby James," which, like yoga classes, first came into my life in 1970 when Richard was in Vietnam.

Listen

Visions of Montara

2012-01-28T15:31:00.000-08:00

When I found this photo a few days ago, it was just like being there. It's a long narrow steep ocean beach. After walking from the south end to the north and part way back on a sunny day, I used to make a nest for myself in the warm sand and sleep peacefully there. That was in the early 1970s. Much has changed in California since then, but the headlands, beach and ocean look just as I remember them. Many of my paintings from the 1980s and early 1990s were painted from memories of Montara Beach.

Source for photo

The ocean wild like an organ played
The seaweed wove its strands
The crashin’ waves like cymbals clashed
Against the rocks and sands

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
(Bob Dylan, from "Lay Down Your Weary Tune")

Listen

("Beloved Ocean With Fearless Room In True Colors"
by am)

Listening /Looking up and seeing crows in the cottonwood trees during the snowy days last week

2012-01-27T06:53:00.000-08:00

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

The snow is gone for now. Snow never lasts very long in the lowlands of the Pacific Northwest. I'm grateful for that. I will walk four miles in the snow but that's all. When the snow is gone, I walk freely again, but it always takes a little time to get my sense of well-being back. Something about snow pulls the rug out from underneath my usually good spirits.

A message from Oboe and Joseph Conrad / An insurmountable palindrome

2012-01-26T08:35:00.000-08:00

It's been cold here, and when I wasn't looking, Oboe stepped onto my warm laptop keyboard and wrote:

76666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666r55555555555555555555555adfCXZ$%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Something about a countdown, money and the approximately 500% of cats that she speaks for?

I've been noticing that "insurmountable palindrome" keeps coming up on the Stats on my Blogger "Search Keywords" list which shows me how people come across my blog using Google search words. Just now I found that Oboe has been Photoshopped, along with the cedar-wrapped Nash Metro that appeared on one of my posts on coincidences last July.

Oboe takes everything in stride.

“… the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is not an acquisition – and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain: to latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hopes, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.”
(Joseph Conrad)

Insurmountable palindrome: No X in Nixon.

What we are talking about when we talk about living with eating disorders

2012-01-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

"Return: The Turning Point" was painted in the first year of my recovery from bulimia and anorexia.

My blog isn't specifically about eating disorders, but I do mention my experience with them from time to time. This post and accompanying slideshow are inspired by Nicole who has been recovering from bulimia and anorexia for 18 months. Her blog shows that recovery from eating disorders is possible, and that it is not an easy road for any of us. Each of us has a different story, but we all have much in common in recovery as we find peace with food and with ourselves.

Nicole's photos from her years of living with eating disorders and her recovery inspired me to put this slideshow together.

I believe I may have been born with an eating disorder. My perception is that eating disorders are not about what a person weighs but about a person's difficult relationship with food.

When I was a baby, my first word was not "mama" or "dada." My first word was "cookie." I was what was called a "picky eater." It has occurred to me that it is likely that my mother gave me cookies because they were something that I would eat. I recall that many foods made me feel like vomiting, but I was always told to "at least take a bite." I remember my grandmother commenting to my mother when I was about 3 years old that I was "spoiled" because I wouldn't eat an egg she had cooked for me. My mother would give me only the yolk, because egg whites made me gag. I have many early childhood memories of craving sugar, of sneaking food, of hiding food, and of having adults force me to eat foods that made me gag.

I clearly remember being photographed at 2 years old in the first photo in the slideshow. My perception of myself at 2 years old, while that photo was being taken, was that I was a "bad" girl. I tried so hard to be a "good" girl but just couldn't meet the expectation. "Bad" girls were spanked, and I didn't want to be spanked.

I went on my first "diet" when I was 10 years old. I was not overweight, just taller than my peers and weighed more than anyone else in my 5th grade class, except for one friend who was shorter than I was and noticeably overweight. We went on a diet together. She ate only 1 apple and a cup of coffee a day and lost weight, and returned to normal eating as far as I knew, and didn't regain the weight. I wonder, though, if she went on suffer from eating disorders. Girls aren't overweight at 10 years old for no reason. I didn't lose any weight at that time because I couldn't stay on a diet. At 12 years old, I looked as if I were 16 years old. I kept trying one diet or another, thinking I was overweight. I wasn't. My weight would go up and down about 5 pounds. I became bulimic when I was 17 years old. My goal, beginning at age 17, was to lose 20 pounds. I did that once in 1970, becoming a borderline anorexic but returned to being a bulimic at a normal weight. When I was 21 years old, my boyfriend teased me that I had a "double chin." I vowed to lose weight and get rid of that "double chin." My dieting, binging and vomiting, continued throughout my 20s and early 30s. As you can see in the slideshow, my face and neck became swollen after throwing up regularly. I thought the swelling was "fat," and that only made me more convinced that I needed to keep throwing up to lose weight. Going back to college at age 30 made the bulimia worse. At 35 years old, I began to descend into anorexia again.

At 37 years old, I met a group of women who were recovering from eating disorders. I was at a normal weight, the same weight I had been at 17 years old. Most of the women were noticeably overweight. There was one woman, bulimic and anorexic, who had stopped throwing up six months previously and was at a normal weight. She was my role model as I began my recovery from bulimia and anorexia.

When I look through the photos in the slideshow, the change in me that began when I was 37 years old still astonishes me. I did not go through eating disorder treatment. I did not take any of the prescription medications that are routinely prescribed to people with eating disorders. What happened was that I had a role model for recovery, and I completely stopped eating trigger foods, i.e., any food that I couldn't stop eating once I started eating it. Alcohol was one of those foods. I could stop at one drink, but then I could not stop eating from the craving that the alcohol caused. That craving is a classic sign of a real alcoholic. Nobody told me to stop eating trigger foods. It was my decision. I found that there were plenty of foods that I loved that didn't trigger craving. I found that I could eat much more food than I had ever eaten since I was 10 years old, and I didn't gain weight.

My 50s were difficult years for reasons besides eating disorders. PTSD from the Vietnam War era caught up with me, and my sense of well-being was shaken to the core. I don't think I would have survived those years if I had been dealing with an active eating disorder. A friend of mine who had an active eating disorder during those years suffered a disabling stroke as a result.

The last photo shows how I look now. I look 62 years old and am grateful to have good health and nearly 25 years of freedom from something that took over my life for 27 years.

I doubt that anyone can recover from eating disorders in isolation. Nicole is hosting a blog that gives those of us with eating disorders a place to visit and know that we are not alone. I am much older than most of the visitors to Nicole's blog, but I can relate to much of what they say about themselves and their experiences.

In 1987, I was fortunate to find a small group of people in recovery in Bellingham in 1987. Those people were the key to my recovery. With Nicole's blog, one of many groups of people is forming on the internet to share diverse experiences with eating disorders and to share recovery.

My creative energy is going into writing this post today. I've been working on this since about 5 a.m., and it is after 1 o'clock now. It took some time to scan the old photos from a photo album, crop them, and then to create a slideshow on Flickr.

In this photo, I'm holding my hair up to see what I look like that way. I usually wear it down, or I wear a hat. I like being 62 years old, even on the days that are challenging.

May all bulimics and anorexics be relieved of suffering.

Drawing and painting in the early 1980s while listening to Steve Goodman

2012-01-23T06:35:00.001-08:00

The interview below takes some time to listen to. It is worth the time. Reminds me that a sense of humor goes well with creativity and is a source of well-being that defies failing physical health.

Steve Goodman is an inspiration. His albums were were among those I used to listen to while I was drawing and painting. There was always music playing while I was doing creative work back then.

From the Wiki article:

"Basically, Steve was exactly who he appeared to be: an ambitious, well-adjusted man from a loving, middle-class Jewish home in the Chicago suburbs, whose life and talent were directed by the physical pain and time constraints of a fatal disease which he kept at bay, at times, seemingly by willpower alone . . . Steve wanted to live as normal a life as possible, only he had to live it as fast as he could . . . He extracted meaning from the mundane." (the words of his wife, Nancy)

Steve Goodman died from leukemia in Seattle in 1984 at age 36. He nicknamed himself "Cool Hand Leuk."

(The gouache and watercolor and chalk pastel drawing is "Mona Lisa and the Clown and the Cool Rain of the Law," by am)

Refuge / The capacity to love arising from savasana (the corpse pose)

2012-01-22T05:19:00.000-08:00

(Source for the above quote)

This morning I woke up at 2 a.m. feeling some grief and PTSD-related emotional distress and then chose to enter into what turned out to be a three-hour meditation, mostly positioned in variations of the yoga pose named savasana, with some drifting back into sleep as well as trying to stay with body sensations and mental imagery, not the thoughts that had disturbed my sleep and stirred up my emotions. There were shifts in and out of distress, some tears, some moments of joy. Whenever I would become aware that I was thinking, I would focus my attention on body sensations and the imagery that arises from them. I found refuge in the capacity to love that arose from the savasana practice.

At 5 a.m. as I got up from the savasana meditation I noticed my copy of Gentle Wilderness: Sierra Nevada where it leans with its book cover facing my bed, on the bookshelf next to my bed.

I remembered sitting side-by-side on a couch with Richard, looking through his brother's copy of the book, page by page, reading John Muir's words and looking at the splendid photos. It was not long after he had returned from Vietnam. Richard had brought me to his brother and sister-in-law's apartment to look at that book. Richard had said, "I know you will love this book, too. You are a poet and an artist."

I remembered driving from Modesto to Yosemite with Richard on my 52nd birthday, after not having seen him since 1986, the year before my recovery from bulimia and anorexia began. It was the day before his 52nd birthday. He was not feeling well but wanted to drive up to Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada. As we approached the gates of Yosemite on Highway 120, Richard quietly said, "Amanda, I have suffered enough today. Let's go back to Modesto."

I remembered driving alone from Manteca to Yosemite on my birthday in 2008, a little more than five months after I had spent four days with Richard in the ICU at the Palo Alto VA Hospital during the week before he died. As I passed through the gates of Yosemite on Highway 120, I knew that this delayed and long-awaited experience would be an ongoing gift from Richard, and it has been just that. As I took in the landscape that John Muir and so many before and after him have loved, I experienced the capacity to love that I had first felt at the ocean, even before I met Richard. It was no coincidence that I met Richard while walking next to the ocean when we were both 17 years old. It was no coincidence that I felt love as I entered Yosemite that clear sunny day in October 2008.

It is always my hope that sharing my experience by telling these stories can benefit others.

I've been in the studio for about three hours today working on this post, grateful for the renewal of creative energy that comes with blogging and the recent desire to do other art work as well.

"You will always, for the rest of your life, feel some grief over this death. It will no longer dominate your life, but it will always be there, in the background, reminding you of the love you had for the person who died."
(Alan D. Wolfelt, from Understanding Your Grief)

Refuge / The Lost Coast of California / Shelter from the Storm / Update

2012-01-20T10:01:00.001-08:00

Every day, throughout the day, I visit here, in Humboldt County, via webcam. The two photos above came from that site. Birds can often be seen on the sea bluffs and in the sky. This week, especially, it has been a refuge from the snow and ice here. More often than not, it is sunny for part of the day at the Lost Coast, but even seeing the mist and rain at the ocean lifts my spirits.

I haven't been to the Lost Coast or anywhere on the open ocean since 2008, and I miss it. When I was in my early days of recovery from bulimia and anorexia in 1987, just thinking of the ocean would give me the strength to stop compulsively eating massive of amounts of food and throwing up afterwards.

When I am feeling out of sorts, I am grateful to be able to visit the ocean by way of this webcam as well:

Mendocino, California

Listening to Bob Dylan helped, too, in those early days of recovery:

Update, January 21, 2012, at the Lost Coast:

Björk from Iceland visits my studio via YouTube on Janis Joplin's birthday with a gift of creative energy / "You shouldn't let poets lie to you"

2012-01-19T08:35:00.000-08:00

The YouTube video below is about all I know about Björk from Iceland: "You shouldn't let poets lie to you." (3:29).

If you have time, it is worth listening to all that she has to say in this interview from 24 years ago, before so many households had computers in addition to TVs and before flatscreen TV.

In the video, Björk's television is sitting on a table that reminds me of the kitchen table from my childhood! Did anyone else have a kitchen table with a red top and a silver-colored band at its edge? Our family of five ate around that kitchen table for many years.

* * * *

Today is Janis Joplin's birthday. She was born in 1943.

If you wish, you can listen once again to Janis singing "Me and Bobby McGee," which was written by her friend, Kris Kristofferson.

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

The first time I heard this song was the day Richard returned from Vietnam early in the morning on December 8, 1970. I've told this story before, but I will tell it again in today's context. We were both stoned on bad acid cut with speed, given to Richard by his older brother who was also a veteran and had been in Thailand a few years previously. It was just after sunrise, and we were in my pale blue-green (anyone remember that color?) VW bug, driving out to Half Moon Bay to surprise his family who had no idea that he had returned from Vietnam.

Here's a photo my sister took of me with my 1966 VW before Richard returned from Vietnam:

I can't remember which of us did the driving that early morning when we were 21 years old, but it was most likely Richard. He had survived a year in Vietnam while functioning on various drugs--marijuana, speed, LSD, heroin--for much of that time. He went through withdrawal from heroin in Vietnam and never used it again. That day I was unwillingly in touch with my total inability to handle drugs and was suffering from extreme paranoia and relentless hallucinations that lasted for about 24 hours. Janis' voice of experience and understanding, singing ("Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train, feeling near as faded as my jeans...") from the car radio, broke through my shatteredness with about 4-1/2 minutes of relief from what was surely hell.

Janis Joplin had died the previous October 4th, alone like Amy Winehouse, suffering from alcohol and drug addiction. Jimi Hendrix, an Army veteran, had died under similar circumstances a few weeks before Janis.

Thank goodness for Janis' voice that day and always.

My surprise and relief at hearing Janis' voice singing a new song was much like that moment in my bewildering and often terrifying childhood, that moment when I was 6 or 7 years old, and my distress was interrupted by Mahalia Jackson's powerful voice, unafraid, coming from the television set.

It was like the moment I first saw Augustus Tack's painting titled "Liberation".

It was like the moment I learned about Ayin (nothingness/nothing left to lose) from a book and then was able to find that page again in that book this morning.

My creative energy is moving today.

One more chorus of Janis singing from her heart at 4:11 in the YouTube above:

... Lordy Lordy Lordy Lordy Lordy Lordy Lordy Lord
Hey, hey, hey, Bobby McGee

(That photo up at the top of this post was taken from my porch a few days ago when there was a sun break. Mostly we've been under a heavy snow-cloud cover. It was 50 degrees inside my home when I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning to begin work in the studio. It's almost 11:45 a.m. now. Almost 7 good hours in the studio! Time for my yoga practice and then some breakfast. I'm looking forward to a 4-mile walk in the snow with a neighbor, Jenny, this afternoon at 1 o'clock.)

Consent of the Networked / Speaking without words / Speaking with words

2012-01-18T09:44:00.000-08:00

For "Internet Censorship Affects Everybody" with Amy Goodman and Rebecca MacKinnon (author of Consent of the Networked, take a look here.

For more about the above painting of mine from June of 1989, take a look here.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
-- Viktor E. Frankl

Beginning by standing on the porch and looking out from the studio into the snow and the darkness at 5 a.m.

2012-01-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

A single streptocarpus flower, from a plant native to Africa, bloomed here yesterday on Martin Luther King Day:

Do not depend on the hope of results. … you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.”
-- Thomas Merton in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966, reproduced in The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton)

(Source: beautywelove, via crashingly beautiful)

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
-- Frederick Douglass, former slave, abolitionist, editor, and orator (1817-1895)

(Source: A.Word.A.Day)

And here is something I found at Sabine's blog, along with other news of interest today:

A morning's work in the mystical studio / Martin Luther King's Birthday 2012

2012-01-15T08:26:00.002-08:00

Yesterday someone from Ashtabula, Ohio visited my blog without commenting. I knew that because their visit showed up on my ClustrMap. According to the Wikipedia site, Jack Kerouac passed through Ashtabula in a Greyhound Bus in his novel On the Road, Ashtabula is listed as a train stop in "The Pilgrim (film)" by Charlie Chaplin, and the name Ashtabula means "river of many fish" in the Iroquois language.

Immediately my mind starting playing Bob Dylan's song "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go."

"... I’ll look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula ... "

I found many many cover versions of that song on YouTube. Here are two I especially like:

For me, Bob Dylan's songs are mystical and wide open to interpretation. Bob Dylan loved how Jimi Hendrix took "All Along the Watchtower" and sang it his own way. Bob Dylan continues to reinterpret his own songs. He's done that as long as I can remember. At first the reinterpretations bothered me, but I got used to them years ago and began to appreciate the way a song has a life of its own and eventually had to accept that Bob Dylan could even choose to sing his songs in such a way that it is nearly impossible to know what he is singing.

"Old Man and Old Woman at the Ocean" is the gouache and watercolor painting at the top of today's post. Some years ago I had a clear vision of Richard and me as an old man and an old woman, reunited at the ocean. Maybe it was the ocean of compassion. Maybe it wasn't us at all. Maybe it was. Maybe "twas in another lifetime." Who knows? That must have been in the late 1990s when I was out of touch with Richard. The vision gave me hope. Someone else might see something different in this painting. Let me know if you do.

Mystical:

"Having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence."
(from Merriam-Webster)

From that definition, could it be said that Zen koans sail into the mystic?

Here are life-long friends, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan:

Here's an older version of "Into the Mystic."

In my searching, I discovered that Jakob Dylan does a cover of "Into the Mystic" that can be found on YouTube.

And today, on Martin Luther King's Birthday in 2012, I learned this about Ashtabula on the above link to the Wikipedia article on Ashtabula:

"Ashtabula was founded in 1803 and incorporated in 1891. The city contains several former stops on the Underground Railroad which was used to convey African-American slaves to freedom in Canada in the years before the American Civil War. Among the stops is Hubbard House, one of the handful of termination points. Ex-slaves would reside in a basement of the house adjacent to the lake and then leave on the next safe boat to Canada, gaining their freedom once they arrived in Ontario."

"... Yer gonna have to leave me now, I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go."

Studio:

"The working place of a painter, sculptor, or photographer."
(from Merriam-Webster)

I've been working in the studio since 5 a.m. this morning. It's 10:30 now. Creating these blog posts gives me the same feeling I get when I paint or draw or weave or write a poem.

"Work is love made visible."
(Kahlil Gibran)

“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
(Martin Luther King Jr.)

Gardener with Ideas (from the 1980s) / Portrait of an artist at age 74 with 25 years of life ahead of her

2012-01-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

"I don't know where the ideas come from. They come from traveling, they come from working--probably from working more than any other single way. They come from talking to people, from looking at things, and I'm just fortunate that so often when one idea runs out there's another idea waiting in the wings."

-- Dale Chihuly, from Dale Chihuly: 365 Days, page 105.

Georgia O'Keeffe sketching in 1961 at age 74:

Starting with a child's koan and then going in and out of the shadows with something that is important to me

2012-01-12T12:25:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Beth for posting this on her Tumblr last week. She found it here.

"I think artists know quite often when they hit on something. In fact, artists really can't move ahead or go on unless they have that feeling. Sometimes you might have to fool yourself that you're doing something important, but unless you can make something important for yourself, you can't continue."

-- Dale Chihuly, from Chihuly: 365 Days, page 104.

"Most people think that shadows follow, precede, or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories."

-- Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928)

Listen.

Below are three of my linocuts from the mid-1970s, saved by my mother, rediscovered, and scanned on my new scanner:

1. "Nightmare"
2. "Flashback"
3. "Coming up from the shadows"

Thanks to everyone for your recent comments and encouragement.

Happy 19th Birthday Lee!

2012-01-06T11:06:00.000-08:00

Long may music, poetry, love, and hiking sustain you.

"Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable."
(Mahatma Gandhi)

Love always from your aunt.

Veterans for Peace, Jonathan J. Santos Memorial Chapter 111, Bellingham

2012-01-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

Veterans For Peace, Jonathan J. Santos Memorial Chapter 111, Bellingham

"We believe that the war is not ending - it is only shifting from the streets to the hospitals, the cemeteries, the community and our homes."

-- Michael Jacobsen, Vietnam War veteran; Evan Knappenberger, Iraq War veteran; and Carole Edrehi, Vietnam War Red Cross worker, are members of Veterans For Peace, Jonathan J. Santos Memorial Chapter 111, Bellingham. For more information, go to vfp111.org.

(Drawing of anonymous man from window seat at the Community Food Co-op on November 28, 2011)

"Boy Riding Home Before Dawn"

2012-01-04T07:41:00.000-08:00

Not all, but some of the drawings and paintings I have done are an attempt to describe what Virginia Woolf called "moments of being." "Boy Riding Home Before Dawn" was a moment imagined, continuing a story Richard told to me in 2001. Not the beginning of an endless happiness but happiness nonetheless.

The image was drawn in January of 2008, three months before Richard died. If you are a long-time reader at this blog, you've heard this story before, but I need to tell it again because it has a lesson for me today.

Richard's story was that late one night he went out walking down the hill in the direction of the ocean in Half Moon Bay, California. Before he reached the ocean, he noticed a horse standing in a pasture. After talking to the horse, he climbed over the fence and slowly and quietly approached the horse. He stood there talking to the horse at length, gaining its trust, and finally asked the horse if it would be okay for him to climb onto its back. The horse allowed him to do that. He told me that he took off his belt and was able to use it as a makeshift bridle.

At that point in his story he stopped to explain to me that although he had not known how to ride a horse at the time we went riding together in 1970 (in the first few months after he returned from Vietnam), he had learned later. At the time when we had rented the two horses and had ridden on the bluffs at Half Moon Bay, I had about four years of experience riding horses.

Continuing with his story, he told me that he rode the horse around the pasture for a little while and then opened the gate to the pasture and rode out into the night. He said that they went through the neighborhoods, out along the bluffs and then down to the long sandy beach. He said that they wandered for a good part of that night, and then they returned to the pasture, where he left the horse and went home and went to sleep.

He ended the story by saying, "When I went back the next day to see the horse, it was gone. I never saw the horse again. It was a magical night."

In the first days of January 2008, remembering Richard's story, I pictured that magical horse coming to him at night, coming to the bed where, depressed and anxious, he tried to sleep in the stroke rehabilitation unit at the V.A. hospital in Palo Alto. Richard was blind in one eye, unable to speak, breathing with the help of a tracheostomy tube, having difficulty swallowing and requiring tube feeding, and only able to walk with great effort. I pictured the horse talking to Richard, asking him if he would like to leave the hospital for a night ride. When Richard said, "Yes," the horse lowered itself down so that Richard could pull himself over onto its back. Once Richard was on the horse's back, he found that he had the energy he had had as a boy and that he was no longer in the hospital room but out on the hospital grounds. By the light of the full moon, he and the horse went out to the coast. They returned before dawn. Richard felt a peace of mind and heart that he had not felt since he was a boy. He asked for an easel and began to paint again.

When I woke up this morning, I was feeling depressed, still a little headachy and congested from a cold, wondering why, whenever I want to paint, there is some seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Mulling that over, I suddenly remembered the above scene from "The Hours," a movie that was released on Christmas Day in 2002, at a time when I thought I might never see Richard again or paint again. That movie put things in perspective for me.

I've been working on this post since about 7 a.m. It's 9:30 now. This is where my creative energy went this morning. So be it.

In the studio 2012 / Not alone / Welcoming the inner demons with love this time

2012-01-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

In August of 2006, I vowed to go back to the studio, sixteen (!) years after having lost nearly all creative momentum in the wake of the First Gulf War in 1990 and Richard's descent into the later stages of alcoholism. The earliest manifestation of the above scratchboard drawing was the result. A year later in August of 2007, I brought that scratchboard out, made a few more marks on it and dated it. In 2008, four months after Richard died, I brought it out, made a few more marks and dated it again and wrote, "This isn't working, is it?"

A few weeks ago, I came across the scratchboard again and scanned it with my new Canon printer/scanner, bought with the thought that it is time to pick up where I left off in the series of black and white drawings that ended a few months before Richard's death, with this moonlit image of Scudder Pond:

Today I have my first cold in years, along with a renewed desire to get back to work in the studio again in whatever form that takes.

It is just occurring to me that since December of 2006, this blog has been my studio. I have been working creatively and steadily, although not in the form I envisioned in August of 2006.

Interesting that as I was re-watching "Vietnam, Long Time Coming" yesterday, someone from Ho Chi Minh City visited my blog, and that yesterday I had about twice as many visitors to my blog.

Time heals, after all--although the clock that marks that kind of time has no hands.
(Suze Rotolo, from A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties):

One of the great features of studio life is the capacity for renewal. Daily love manifests itself and is a fairly reliable prod. Some projects can be measured in no time at all. Sometimes three or four projects can be performed and completed in a single day. Other projects progress over days or weeks, dependent on the uncanny sleep-work that lies between. “Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. (Ursula K. LeGuin):

In the arts, as in life, everything is possible provided it is based on love.”
(Marc Chagall):

Still, the joyful insists on getting a word in.
(R. L. Bourges):

A gift of love from Richard from January 2008, three months before he died, an artist to the end:

I saw a good moon rising just before 2012

2012-01-01T18:47:00.000-08:00

There is some hard won wisdom here, if you have time to listen to this emotional roller coaster of a documentary. Some of us were stuck, and this moved us forward in a way nothing else could have.

"Wisdom is a living stream, not an icon preserved in a museum. Only when we find the spring of wisdom in our own life can it flow to future generations."

(Thich Nhat Hanh)

Thinking of the future generations on this first day of 2012. Searching for my spring of wisdom. Listening. Paying attention. I saw a good moon rising.

Bodhi Day 2011 / "the turning-point"/ Laughing with the mystical crow / True spirit of Christmas update

2011-12-08T06:30:00.000-08:00

"Enlightenment - that magnificent escape from anguish and ignorance - never happens by accident. It results from the brave and sometimes lonely battle of one person against his own weaknesses."

(Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano)

Thanks to Beth for linking to the above quote.

Thinking about Buddha's enlightenment vigil this morning and The Four Noble Truths.

December 8, 1970, was a turning point, the day when Richard returned from his time in Vietnam, arriving at around 3 a.m. at San Francisco International Airport. We had no idea it was Bodhi Day. We certainly were not enlightened that day. I am still not enlightened, not even a Buddhist, but I have found a measure of peace in that I was with Richard in the last few days of his life and that he wanted me to be there. His last "words" to me were "Thumbs up."

Today while out walking by myself after getting together with friends for breakfast from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m., I saw the regular flock of 13 geese again at Marine Park. I looked in vain for the distinctive 13th goose. Sitting down on a large rock, I studied the group for about a half hour, thinking that the light was making it difficult to see the one goose that didn't match the rest of the flock. It's a mystery. They all looked like Canada Geese today. Then a single crow landed on a rock near the flock, looked pointedly in their direction and laughed in the way only crows can. I laughed, too, because just before I began walking, I had read "The Showings: Lady Julian of Norwich, 1342-1416," a long poem from The Stream & the Sapphire, by Denise Levertov, with this:

They were abashed,
stranded in hilarity.

But when she recovered,
they told one another:

'Remember how we laughed
without knowing why?
That was the turning-point!'

My heart is still with Richard after all these years.

December 15, 2011 update:

From Taradharma's blog

Standing Bow Pose / Looking out at Bellingham Bay

2011-12-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

Back in November, a metal sculpture of a woman in the Standing Bow pose, a variation of Natarajasana (King of the Dancers), appeared on a tiny island in Bellingham Bay near the Taylor Street Dock. All I can find out through Google searching today is in a Letter to the Editor of the Bellingham Herald where it is given a thumbs up by a local woman and referred to as guerilla art, with hopes that the City of Bellingham would allow it to remain there. A mystery. I couldn't find any other photos of it on the internet.

St. Nicholas Day 2011 in America / City of New Orleans koans

2011-12-06T06:38:00.000-08:00

December 6 is St. Nicholas Day

... Good morning, America, how are you?

Don't you know me? I'm your native son.

I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans. I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done ...

"When Amy came to Dingle"

2011-12-05T06:55:00.000-08:00

Listen.

I wonder how many people, men and women, hear Amy Winehouse's voice and know, without a doubt, that they are not alone on this earth. I remember hearing her voice for the first time. I was in a hurry. It was in the midst of war, inner and outer. I stopped to listen. It is an ancient voice. Astounding that such an emotionally vulnerable young woman carried the gravity and levity of that voice for as long as she did. I am moved by what she says at the end of this film clip about listening to Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin:

"... Gospel is so truthful. There is nothing that, you know, I mean I'm not religious, but there is nothing more pure that the relationship with, you know, your God or what you believe in, your faith, you know, there is nothing stronger than that, apart from your love of music, and so gospel to me is very inspirational."

A marriage that began today in 1948 / An extended meditation on our parents and their long marriage

2011-12-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

Our parents married on December 4, 1948. Our father was 34 years old. Our mother was 32 years old. Both had been married before and had to get special permission from a bishop to marry again in the Episcopal Church. When I was 17 years old, my mother told me that she had been married before. What a shock that was. We didn't know that our father had been married before until after our mother died. I don't know when or where this photograph was taken, but my guess is that it is in 1948, when they were engaged. This photograph was among a carousel of slides that my father showed me a few years after my mother died suddenly in December of 1994, the day before their 46th wedding anniversary. My father died on St. Patrick's Day in 2003.

I can almost remember them being this young. I hadn't looked at these photos since the year our father died. Our parents are just getting to know each other. They are hopeful.

Here are our parents in the 1960s, at age 50 and 52, in a somewhat solemn photo and a laughing photo taken in a photography studio:

and when they were in their 70s in the late 1980s in a photo taken by me:

Today I am feeling grateful for our parents-- our father with his gardens and his games of Solitaire and his world travels in retirement, our mother with her art work and her books and her cooking, our parents playing Scrabble, our parents enjoying life together for 20 years after we grew up--our mysterious and eccentric parents that I am only beginning to know now, in the years since they died.

"...The world is a Bridge..."

2011-12-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

This morning, right after I woke up at 4 a.m., something that I don't usually look at on my wall caught my eye, and then I remembered that today is the day that my mother died suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1994. What I saw was my mother's calligraphy and ink drawing with a quote she was given by a friend:

"Isa (Jesus), son of Mary said: 'The world is a Bridge , pass over it, but build no houses upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity; but the World endures but an hour. Spend it in prayer for the rest is unseen.'"

Original Persian:
-"عیسی پسر مریم (در آنان می شود صلح) گفت :' جهان است پل ، عبور بیش از آن است ، اما هیچ ساخت خانه بر آن او امیدوار است که برای یک روز ، ممکن است برای ابدیت امیدواریم ، اما ماندگار جهان اما ساعت آن را صرف در دعا و نماز برای استراحت است نهان ".'

That's my mother at Anchor Bay, California, just north of where my parents lived from the 1970s until her death in 1994. I believe she is in her 70s in that photo.

I am feeling close to her today, although it wasn't always that way.

A one-hour walk on the first day of December 2011 / Early Risin'

2011-12-01T14:37:00.000-08:00

Taylor Street Dock at 8:45 a.m.:

Looking out over Bellingham Bay:

Looking back at Taylor Street Dock:

Expanse of sky and islands from Marine Park:

Expanse of water and islands from Marine Park:

Partial view of Marine Park's flock of 13 wild geese:

The 13th goose, a regular member of the flock of Canada Geese:

Walking down the steep part of Taylor Street Dock on my way back:

Music for an early morning walk in the inland waters of Western Washington:

The day after Thanksgiving 2011 / Walking in the sunshine

2011-11-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving 2011 / Strong winds and rain and sunshine

2011-11-24T18:36:00.000-08:00

It's a Bellingham Thanksgiving with many grateful people out walking early in the stormy morning on the Taylor Street Dock section of the South Bay Trail and a man playing Frisbee with his dog at Boulevard Park in the wind and rain, and a sunbreak late in the afternoon.

"... with sorrow and with great compassion..." / UC Davis and Portland

2011-11-21T17:35:00.001-08:00

(The photo of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet came from here.)

I never watched "Kung Fu" when it was on American television from 1972 until 1975, the year the Vietnam War ended. "Kung Fu" is set in the years after the devastation of the American Civil War. Richard's sister, Dorothy, gave me the complete "Kung Fu" series on DVD when I saw her and her husband after visiting Richard's grave at the San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery in 2008. Dorothy, ten years younger than I am, watched "Kung Fu" on TV when she was in high school. While watching the episode called "The Demon God" a few days ago, I was startled to hear the following:

"You are the enemy who is not the enemy. We are of the many, not of the few. We are necessary and useful."

Caine says this to the scorpion who stung him earlier--the scorpion whose life he had just saved and who then showed him the way out of a place where they were trapped together.

If you are curious and have about an hour, this episode (in 6 parts) can be seen on YouTube. The theme of "the many and the few" runs through it. It is a decidedly awkward vehicle but timely, given American participation in another war is scheduled to end on December 31, 2011, and in light of the events of the past week at UC Davis, Portland, and around the world--the 99% and the 1%. Maybe I'm making too great of a stretch here, but the connection was there for me.

Thanks to Beth for this:

THE TOOLS OF FEAR

Weapons are the tools of fear.
A decent person will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint….

Our enemies are not demons
but human beings like ourselves.
The decent person doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor do they rejoice in victory.
How could we rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of people?
Enter a battle gravely
with sorrow and with great compassion
as if attending a funeral.

circa 550 BCE (Tao Te Ching)

May the policeman with the pepper spray be protected some day by the students he assaulted, and may he return that protection and human kindness by showing them a way out of a place they are both trapped.

Anything is possible.

About a week ago, I saw the body of a green bird with red on the top of its head. It was lying near the door of a small store I was about to enter. It must have flown at the window. There was no apparent injury. Gently picking the bird up, I tucked its tiny body into a soft resting place in the the ivy near the doorway.

Mappemonde / Map of the World

2011-11-19T16:03:00.000-08:00

The Dog of Art

That dog with daisies for eyes
who flashes forth
flame of his very self at every bark
is the Dog of Art.
Worked in wool, his blind eyes
look inward to caverns and jewels
which they see perfectly,
and his voice
measures forth the treasure
in music sharp and loud,
sharp and bright,
bright flaming barks,
and growling smoky soft, the Dog
of Art turns to the world
the quietness of his eyes.

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

It may have been 1992 that a friend invited me to go to Seattle to the University of Washington to hear Denise Levertov read her poetry. While listening to her read, I drew what I could see in front of me. While going through all my belongings this past week, I found the drawing you see at top of this post. Not sure why I wrote "mappemond."

Here is Denise Levertov as a young woman:

and in her last years:

Marianne Aya Omac

2011-11-15T06:17:00.000-08:00

Joan Baez mentioned Marianne Aya Omac in an interview, and so I went to YouTube. Listen:

I don't speak French, but I watched the video below all the way through. If you have time, listen for, "Wow. Wow. Wow" (1:50-2:11).

Word is that we are in for some snow here in Bellingham. Doesn't look like that today as I look out from my porch, where a single Cosmos is still holding on, and the temperature is right around 50 degrees.

Continuity / Following the thread

2011-11-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

In the last few weeks, I've been going through all my belongings, trying to clear some space and orient myself. One of the first things I looked through were my father's slides which went back to 1948, when my parents married, and included images from my father's trips to Norway, the Orkney Islands, Alaska, China, India, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel after he retired in the mid-1970s. There are photos of me in my first year of life, 1949-1950. I am having many of these old photos scanned and put on disks.

A few days ago, I went through photos and negatives of my parents and my sisters, and of my parent's home and my father's garden in Gualala, California, dating back to 1971. Those photos came to me after my father died in 2003.

Yesterday I began going through a drawer of all my old photos and negatives, taken before I had a digital camera. The photos went back to 1974, which is the year I left California for a brief period of living near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, not because I didn't like California, but because I was curious, and my boyfriend at the time invited me to travel with him, and I was trying to put space between me and a traumatic period in my life. Little did I know that I would be haunted by the events of 1970 and 1971 as well as the events of 1974 to 1984 for years to come.

This morning I finished going through all those photos, letting many of them go, but keeping more than I had expected to want to keep. The photos from 1974 to 1984 are a record of years that are painful for me to remember, but going through them yesterday and this morning brought some genuine healing and a compassionate perspective on that deeply troubled part of my life from age 17 to age 34.

October 1984 to Veteran's Day 1990 was a period of new hope and what I thought was going to be boundless creative energy. Amazing to see myself in my mid-30s. Amazing to see how young I still was.

Beginning after Veteran's Day 1990, I began to exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. I stopped painting for the most part. In looking through the photos from the 1990s, I found the above photo of one of the few paintings I did during that time. I no longer have the painting. I donated it to a local fund-raising auction. Someone in Bellingham owns it now. At the bottom of the painting, it says, "This plan is not totally useless" and "The place where two rivers meet." The images that go with the words were from dreams I had just before the most creative period in my life, 1984 to 1990. Now, as l look more closely, I see that almost everything in the painting came from a dream in the early 1980s.

The last non-digital photos were in 2002. I was increasingly displeased with the photos I was taking with my cameras and didn't take any photos until 2005, at which time I bought my iBook G4 and then a digital camera.

My blog was part of my healing from posttraumatic stress disorder. I had been unemployed for the first of what was to be five years of unemployment, living on what was supposed to be my retirement savings. I quickly became a full-time blogger. My blog began on the 36th anniversary of Richard's return from Vietnam. By looking at my drawings and paintings from 1966 to 2006, I was able to see 40 years of my life as a artist. After presenting my 40-year retrospective, I began to presenting digital photographs, mostly taken from my porch and in and around Bellingham.

Through blogging, I came out of a long posttraumatic stress disorder-induced creative isolation, connecting with creative people in different parts of the United States and Canada as well as creative people in Europe and India. Today, I am happy to still be blogging with a handful of blog friends. You know who you are.

After Richard died in 2008, my blog lost momentum but kept on.

In 2010, I took the only job I could find as a medical transcriptionist, and found myself with little time for blogging and an increasing awareness of being exploited at an occupation that once offered a person a good hourly wage and benefits.

Now I am retired, without health insurance until I can receive Medicare, collecting a small Social Security check. I'm curious to see if I can live on that, and if not, I will need to find a way to supplement that income, as my savings is limited.

Still have a cedar chest of memories and a number of bookshelves to go through before I am through with this current sorting and letting go process.

Today I am feeling better than I have in years, with a measure of peace that I do not take for granted.

Thank you to robin andrea for the suggestion that made it possible for me to present the birds singing in November for you today:

Veteran's Day 2011 / Starting to go home again

2011-11-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

While Richard was in U.S. Army basic training in Fort Lewis, Washington, I was excited to see the cover of Time magazine of June 20, 1969, with its banner of STARTING TO GO HOME. Naively, I thought that this might mean that he would not be sent to Vietnam after all. Richard was my world. He was my present and my future.

Richard was drafted into the U.S. Army in spring of 1969, three years after we had met on the beach in Half Moon Bay, California, as 17-year-olds. He strongly considered applying for conscientious objector status but in talking to a draft resistance counselor in Oakland, California, became convinced that he would not be granted that. He did not want to go to Canada or prison. He went to Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic in January of 1970. He returned from Vietnam on December 8, 1970. He had not been in direct combat, but something happened in Vietnam that he could never talk about. He said that there are some things that a person needs to keep to himself. He referred to himself as a veteran of the anger wars.

We never spent a Veteran's Day together, although he called me on the telephone from California on Veteran's Day evening in 1990, during the First Gulf War. Previous to that call, he had been talking about the possibility of visiting me in Washington. There seemed a possibility of a reconciliation for us. I was not immediately aware that he was drunk. As I became conscious of that, I am sure he could hear fear entering my voice. He sounded the way he had sounded during his first few months home from Vietnam, the way he had sounded just before he hit me in early May of 1970. He was enraged, terrifying, threatening. I froze and then began shaking so hard that I could barely hold the telephone to my ear. In a deeply menacing drunken voice, he kept repeating, "Tell me what you really think of me."

I struggled to find words. When the words arrived, I told him that I loved him, and hung up the phone in anguish, and then I called back a few minutes later in regret for hanging up on him. His mother answered. I told her what had happened. She said that he had passed out and suggested that I call back in the morning. She said that he didn't start drinking until later in the day. I have amnesia beyond that. I don't know if I talked with him the next day. I do know that he did go to A.A. after that, and that he did send me an amends letter in March of 1993, apologizing for his behavior on Veteran's Day 1990. He was sober for 1 year but left A.A. and didn't find sobriety again until the last 6 months of his life.

In 1990, twenty years after returning from Vietnam, he was working as a carpenter, living on and off with his parents, struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction, and PTSD. I have since learned that the First Gulf War was a breaking point for many Vietnam veterans. It was a breaking point for me as well. I began to remember, with fear and acute distress, the year that Richard was in Vietnam and the months we lived together after his return.

Now we hear again that our soldiers will be returning home. That it will all be over on December 31, 2011.

Despite extreme duress, the love that Richard and I shared did not die. Richard's ashes were buried on June 20, 2008, thirty-nine years after that Time magazine cover. In his last days, when he could no longer speak, Richard wrote on his notepad to his sister, "I just want to go home."

I've been going through all my belongings, letting go of what I don't need anymore, and in the last few days I came across the Time magazine I had saved since 1969. Until this morning at 4 a.m. when I woke up, I was wondering what I was going to write for Veteran's Day 2011.

This Veteran's Day, especially, I am thinking of those whose beloveds didn't live to become veterans, the new generation of war widows. Thinking, too, of the handful of war widowers, about whom I have heard nothing so far and who are surely grieving today.

Veteran's Day 2011 is a good day for sending love to all soldiers, veterans, and their beloveds, as well as the widows, widowers, girlfriends, boyfriends, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, friends, all relations. We are all in this together.

(The above is supposed to be a video with birds singing, but for some reason it uploads as a image only. Imagine birds singing on a November day)

... but I'm not the only one (-:

2011-11-03T09:30:00.003-07:00

"Solitude: a sweet absence of looks."
- Milan Kundera

"We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers."
(Milan Kundera)

Thanks for the quote from Whiskey River.

I can claim membership in all of these categories.

As an artist and writer, I hope to be seen in the first way but safe and remote like Emily Dickinson or Georgia O'Keeffe, not a public figure.

At first I didn't identify with the second category but then realized that hosting a blog might put me into that category. I don't need that many known eyes looking at me. I'm happy with small internet gatherings of people I know through blogging. We are both anonymous and known through blogging. Paradox. Amanda Wald Rachie is a former name of mine, the one I used when I was most productive as an artist. My legal name doesn't appear on this blog.

I had hoped to spend my life with Richard in the third way of being seen.

I currently live in a variation of the fourth category, beyond my wildest dreams. I don't think we are that rare. Reading about the dreamers brought me the tears and laughter that comes with a powerful feeling of true kinship with those who live in the eyes of loved ones who have died and are not present in the sense they were previously but are not at all imaginary either.

I know there is a fifth category, that of people of who want to be seen by animals as well as people. I'm in that category.

And a sixth category, that of people who want to be seen by Mother Earth and Father Sky. I'm in that category.

I like what George Harrison wrote in one his last songs:

"... I keep traveling around the bend
There was no beginning, there is no end
It wasn't born and never dies
There are no edges, there is no sides
Oh yeah, you just don't win
It's so far out - the way out is in
Bow to God and call him Sir
But if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there."

and:

"... God God God
You are the wisdom that we seek
God God God
The lover that we miss
God God God
Your nature is eternity
You are Existence, Knowledge, Bliss ..."

And so there is a seventh category, for those like George Harrison, where wanting to be seen and heard by God is not perceived as imaginary or a matter of organized religion but as a real possibility in an eternity where anything is possible. I can join George Harrison in that creative and open-ended vision of God.

And an eighth category for those who see everything as One, where the looker and one looked at are One.

A ninth category? A tenth category? Beyond that?

Thanks to Milan Kundera for starting me on this riff of categories of being seen.

(Self-portrait on my 62nd birthday a few weeks ago, wearing the gift of a scarf from Dorothy, Richard's sister. Allowing myself to be looked at looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself, infinitely. Funny in the context of this post!)

Update:

A ninth category, suggested by robin andrea, "I would like to see myself as others see me." That is one I can relate to as well.

Before dawn / Oboe at the door to the porch

2011-11-02T07:51:00.001-07:00

Cat / Sunrise with Geese in the Sky

2011-11-01T05:06:00.001-07:00

"...Your work needs you as much as you need it. Your work begs your expression. You need to materialize it on a daily basis, from your enriched life--the better side of your nature. Without your personal focus and action, your magic cannot and never will exist. Think of all the great work you have left to do. Think of how necessary it is for people to see good work. "Work," said Kahlil Gibran, "is love made visible."

from The Painter's Keys

Yesterday, Halloween, I applied for early Social Security benefits and am curious to see if I can simplify my life enough to live on that. There is something of the excitement of graduating from high school. The working at a job part of my life may well be over, but there is still work to do.

Is the cat working or playing, or something else?

This morning I Iooked up from my laptop at 8:20 a.m. and realized that the sun still hadn't appeared over the foothills to the east. I noticed a flock of geese flying across the sky above where the sun would appear. Picking up my camera, I went out on the porch to make a video. Gradually it occurred to me that because daylight savings time extends so far into fall, sunrise on November 1st looks very much like sunrise on the winter solstice. Daylight Savings Time ends this year on November 6. Makes me wish I lived in Arizona or Hawaii, where there is no Daylight Savings Time. If you look closely, you will see the geese flying across the morning sky in V-formation.

Stecher Family Album

2011-10-30T19:48:00.000-07:00

Finally got around to photographing images from an album that I believe was assembled by my grandfather. He identifies his mother, his aunts and uncles and cousins who lived in and around Boston and in New York state. His mother (my great-grandmother) was one of 11 children of Melchoir and Helene (Roethler) Stecher of Achern, Germany. After Helene died, Melchior decided to come to America with his younger children. His oldest daughter, Jacobine, remained in Germany.

Above is a photo of my great-grandmother who was born in Achern, Germany, in 1836. Her firstborn son died during a cholera epidemic in Boston. As far as my grandfather knew, his father simply disappeared. Below is a photo of my great-grandmother's younger sister, Caroline. Caroline died at age 34 in 1879. My great-grandmother died at age 59 in 1895. Her death certificate said that she was married (rather than widowed or divorced or separated) at the time of her death. I found a record on Ancestry.com that showed evidence of separation papers, but I was unable to obtain those records as they had been lost somehow. My great-grandmother looks world-weary compared to her younger sister, and no wonder. Family secrets and tragedy must have weighed heavily on her. I keep thinking that something will turn up on the internet some day to solve the mystery of my great-grandfather's disappearance. I was shocked to find on the internet that my missing great-grandfather's father, a retired weaver, committed suicide by hanging, at age 93, in 1891.

There are no photos of my grandfather in the old album, but here is a photo of him in 1916, the year my mother was born, before he served in the Army as a doctor in World War I, and another with my grandmother in 1920:

I've added a Flickr badge with photos from the album my side bar on the right with photos of descendants and in-laws of Melchior and Helene Stecher from Achern. Still have more photos to take from the album.

Late in the day, as I was working on this, I looked up and saw a rainbow:

Update: Oh dear. I can't believe I spelled descendant as "descendent" on the URL for my Flickr page for the Stecher family photos.

As a dear person once said to me, "Welcome to the human race."

As a former medical transcriptionist, I have lived for many years with the expectation that my spelling be perfect. Little room for mistakes in that field. It feels very strange to realize that I can make spelling mistakes like everyone else now without taking a cut financially! I've been amazed again and again that not all people work at jobs where there is such a pronounced expectation of perfection.

You mean I don't have to be perfect?

What a relief!

With a big tree and a little tree, looking out across Bellingham Bay to the Lummi Nation on a grey November morning/ View from my parked car

2011-10-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

Something for the eyes that can listen and the ears that can see (thanks to Loren for that last concept).

Drawing while eating in the hospital cafeteria / A different way of thinking

2011-10-25T09:12:00.000-07:00

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same thinking that created them."

-- Albert Einstein

Interesting to try to draw an oil painting with pencil on paper. "Aguas Verdes" is a large diptych (53" x 68") painted in oil on linen by Caryn Friedlander. It hangs in the St. Joseph Medical Center cafeteria in Bellingham, Washington, and is a renewing presence in a hospital setting.

Drawing what is in front of me

2011-10-24T05:24:00.000-07:00

Woke up at 2 a.m. this morning and found this. Thank you to R. L. Bourges, a writer and photographer living in France.

Still awake at 5:49 a.m.

Birdsong and slow moving clouds / Early evening

2011-10-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

Looking from my porch to the east:

Looking southeast. Listen:

PTSD (All Over Again) / Alex and Toggle

2011-10-20T06:34:00.001-07:00

Listen

We're all in this together.

We can send love and encouragement as well as experience, strength and hope, to the newest generation affected by American wars, represented in part by Alex and Toggle in Doonesbury in the last several days.

We do what we can, when we can

2011-10-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

With Occupy Wall Street in mind, I challenged the small corporation I have been working for, at home, since March 2010. About a week ago, they asked me and my co-workers to re-do work that we had lost due to problems with their software, without compensation for the time we spent on the work that was lost.

When the news came down, I was so angry that I cried what can only be called tears of rage. As it is, we are not paid for at least 30 minutes a day for work we do because this is a "production-oriented work environment," where we are only paid for the lines of dictation we produce (picture farmworkers being paid for how much lettuce they can pick in a day). There is a long list of tasks we do that are considered part of the job but which don't produce lines and for which we are not compensated.

Who, you ask, would work under those conditions? This was the only job I was able to get at age 60, and until last week I considered myself fortunate to be working in a time when many people my age will never be hired again. From what I know of my recent co-workers, they are generally young women with children, women near retirement age who have lost their well-paying hospital jobs due to hospitals outsourcing to companies like this one in order to save money, and disabled people who cannot easily work outside the home. These are desperate times. It is not easy to get a job.

When I calmed down enough, I emailed the Human Resources Director and the Vice-President of the company, saying that I was not going produce lines without compensation, that their request was likely illegal, and that I was not going to fill out my time sheet until they compensated me for my time. It is my guess that they must have talked with their lawyers because it took several days before they responded to my email. The Human Resources Director told me that I would hear from the Vice-President with the company's decision. The Vice-President emailed me saying that I would be given what is basically a $3.25 credit for my time, but said nothing about changing their policy, which means that every time their software fails, I have to use unpaid time to get credit for time worked in good faith, while making less than $10/hour.

Because I am 62 now and can collect early Social Security, I made a decision on October 11 to retire rather than continue to fight a daily exhausting losing battle for near poverty wages. Medical transcriptionists who work at home need a Caesar Chavez. What was once a profession where a person could make a decent living has become something like being a farmworker before Caesar Chavez. I'm no Caesar Chavez, although I wish I were.

My Social Security benefits will put me below the poverty line. My challenge now is to find a way to make a living for the rest of my working life, which may be the rest of my life. I'm feeling shell-shocked. And relieved to have made a good decision.

I do what I can, when I can.

From The Novice: A Story of True Love, by Thich Nhat Hanh:

...We began with what we knew and the few resources that we had. We did not expect anything from the government, because if you wait for the government, you will wait a long time.

...Sister Tri Hai practiced walking meditation all night so she could keep herself together and not lose herself in the fire. She went back to her true home within herself. Her true home is not in Paris, London or Tra Loc, because that home can be bombarded or taken away. Your true home is within yourself. The Buddha said, "Go home to the island within yourself. There is a safe island of self inside. Every time you suffer, every time you are lost, go back to your true home. Nobody can take that true home away from you." This was the ultimate teaching the Buddha gave to his disciples when he was eighty years old and on the verge of passing away..."

I read a mixed and somewhat sarcastic review of this book in Tricycle magazine. This is not going to be a bestseller. This is a story from Vietnamese Buddhist tradition, retold by Thich Nhat Hanh. The Dalai Lama says, "He shows us the connection between personal, inner peace, and peace on earth." I agree.

(At the top of this post is "The Typist," by Dubuffet. These days everyone is a typist)

Human Rights Campaign / Rivers and Roads

2011-10-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

A young woman and a young man were standing near the two entrances to Bellingham's Community Co-op today, educating the public on the Human Rights Campaign. While I was eating my lunch on a tall stool at one of the window seats, I drew a picture of the young woman. What you can't see is the steady stream of people who stopped to talk with her in solidarity, to give their support and encouragement. I was just one of many witnesses to the dignity and courage of those two young people today, and one of many witnesses to the goodness of human beings.

Listen. You can thank my nephew, as I do, for sending us in the direction of these musicians and singers based in Seattle. His Facebook page has The Head and the Heart under favorite music. It's been a while since I've been so deeply moved by new music. Listen especially for when the woman starts singing.

With immense gratitude to Steve Jobs

2011-10-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

Listen to "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" from 1964:

"... I gazed down in the river's mirror
And watched its winding strum
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song your strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum"

In 1979, when I was 29 years old (and had a different name), and personal computers were just coming up on the horizon, and I didn't want anything to do with them, I made the above linocut, inspired by a photo of Bob Dylan on the Basement Tapes album, never dreaming that Steve Jobs (another serious fan of Bob Dylan) would design a computer that would open up a world of creativity for me, including allowing me to compose a book of my art work and poetry and to self-publish it.

While I was out walking on the South Bay Trail along Bellingham Bay this morning, it occurred to me that the creative energy and gratitude in this song likely spoke to Steve Jobs.

If you have time, listen to this. I had heard this once before. It's worth listening to again.

Delayed reactions / Coincidence?/ "Tug on anything at all.."

2011-10-09T19:28:00.001-07:00

I just watched the movie below with the voices in American English. Wonderful to find this beautiful film in many languages!

I have to say, though, that I was startled by the scene in the bath in this film, given that in American culture it is not a typical scene except perhaps in early childhood when the mother is absent, as in this movie where the mother is ill and in a hospital. I am not sure of the ages of the two girls, but the older girl appears to be about 10 years old. I do realize that this is traditional in Japanese culture, although I don't know much about this tradition, and the traditional personal boundaries that must be connected with it.

I do know that when I expressed concern in confidence to a mental health counselor on a crisis line that a 10-year-old was still taking showers with a parent of the opposite sex (I later learned that both parents thought this would be fine until the child was 12), the Mandatory Reporting Laws in the State of Washington required the crisis line mental health counselor to contact Child Protective Services, and there was an investigation and a confidential Educational Intervention to ensure that the parent stopped taking showers with the 10-year-old of the opposite sex and that she understood that what she was doing was not appropriate in American culture and not in the best interests of her child growing up in the context of American culture. The showers with the parent stopped, although the mother was, of course, angry about the intervention and argued that she had done nothing wrong. The child has grown up and is excelling in everything he does. Still, I do not like to think what would have happened had the showering continued until the boy was 12.

I wonder what the outcome would have been if I had expressed my concerns to the parents only. I do not have children of my own and, within 12 hours (delayed reaction) of learning of the situation with the showers, woke up in the morning with a sick feeling inside, and talked with a mental health counselor on a crisis line because I wanted professional clarification of my instinctive concern. The mother may never talk to me again, thinking that I was the one who called in Child Protective Services, and "tried to destroy her family."

My delayed reaction that morning, upon awakening and calling the crisis line, was that I did know that I couldn't imagine myself taking a shower or bath with my father when I was 10 years old.

And I do know that when I was 4 years old, when my mother was in the hospital giving birth to my youngest sister, my other sister and I were left for a week with a younger couple who were friends of my parents and who had two adopted sons close to my age, and that I was in the bathroom with my sister and with the man without his wife present. All I remember clearly is being in the bathtub without water, with my sister, and being angry at the man. I can see the 4-inch square bathtub tiles in my mind, and the man sitting on the floor next to the bathtub. This is one of my early childhood memories.

Many years later, a few months after Richard and I separated, I was in a department store at the customer service desk, and the woman who was helping me recognized my name. She was the wife who wasn't present when my sister and I were in the bathtub. She asked me about my life. I told her that I had just separated from my boyfriend who had just returned from Vietnam, and that the relationship had ended in violence. She said that she had just gotten a divorce from her husband who had become severely mentally ill and had been locking her in a closet when he would leave the house.

I get a chill today, this morning, just thinking of that. I have no memory of being hurt by that man, just of being angry at him. Now I am wondering again what happened in that bathroom that day in 1954 when I was 4 years old.

Coincidence or not, I am only beginning to thrive at age 62. It is never too late to heal.

(The painting at the top of the post is "Calendar Series: 15th Month/Night." I had it removed from its frame and scanned recently. The Calendar Series began with the 14th Month, inspired by the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Calendar of 1970, to which they had added a 13th Month. Richard was in Vietnam in 1970. The 13th Month was the month we were to be together again. I felt that I was lost in the 13th month for years. Now I am recalling that I starting the Calendar Series as a way of healing in the same way that I started this blog. Yesterday was the birthday of John Lennon and Sean Lennon, by the way)

"Tug on anything at all, and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe."
(John Muir)

Born during the same 24 hours in 1949 / Coincidence?

2011-10-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my birthday, and today would have been my old friend Richard's 62nd birthday. I have one other photo of us together, but that one is in silhouette as we are walking hand in hand in the direction of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean. If it weren't for Richard, I wouldn't have any photos of us at all. For both photos, he set up the camera and stepped into the picture.

Today when I was getting groceries, I ran into a man that Richard worked for as a carpenter in California a long long time ago. I don't see him around that often. What are the chances that some years ago, I would get out of my car to deliver some paintings to an art gallery and that a man would get out of the car next to me and offer to help and that it would turn out that Richard had worked for him? And that as he and his wife were in the grocery store parking lot today, he would recognize me and stop to talk on Richard's 62nd birthday?

Then, this morning, I was talking with Richard's sister, Dorothy, who had left a message yesterday for my birthday. She said she was driving on a back road in the coast hills on the San Francisco Peninsula and saw a solitary crow skipping along the road. She knows that whenever I see a crow skipping I think of Richard. I even wrote a poem featuring a skipping crow and innocence and forgiveness when Richard and I were both 50 years old.

TWO INNOCENTS WITH EXPERIENCE

All desire. No forgiveness.
Years later it was early spring
with Red-Winged Blackbird,
Goldfinch, faithful Canada Goose on the trail
and return of the Tree Swallows.

Then I remembered.
He was sitting close to me.
Mr. Solitary Crow skipped by us like a child.
We laughed until we were children again.
This was how I experienced love.
I was innocent of forgiveness.

If you have time, listen to something that spoke to Richard's heart and which speaks to mine.

"Distinguished yet youthful ..."

2011-10-01T12:06:00.001-07:00

It's my 62nd birthday today.
I'm keeping it simple, as always.
This made me laugh in delight:

Inside the card, it says:

A look not everyone
can pull off.

Happy Birthday

"Woman With Hands Full," pastel drawing from 1986 by am, inspired by the "Basement Tapes" album cover photograph with Bob Dylan pictured below. Every drawing has to start somewhere...

Painting in America/Reconciliation Dream

2011-09-27T08:58:00.001-07:00

There's a long puzzling story here, but the drift is that the day after I decided to give away one of my paintings, "Reconciliation Dream," to one of my cousins on my father's side, an old painting of mine titled "Painting in America," appeared next to my front door with a note from someone I have not seen in years, who wrote that she wasn't expecting to see me again but wanted to thank me for giving it to her in 1986, and that it was time for her to let it go and for it to come back to me.

If you would like, take a look at North and South America and another previous post about "Reconciliation Dream."

I've been drawing again in the last few weeks, inspired by the spirit of Suze Rotolo and by Bob Dylan's recent exhibits of drawings and paintings that are clearly a result of his relationship with Suze:

"Her constant sketching inspired him to take up drawing and painting, and some of the songs relating to their relationship were written during a months-long separation while she studied art in Italy."

I've just been bringing my sketchbook with me when I go out, and I have been drawing what is in front of me when I sit down--a form of prayer and meditation. It feels very good to be drawing again just for the joy of it.

"... Oh, ev'ry thought that's strung a knot in my mind,
I might go insane if it couldn't be sprung.
But it's not to stand naked under unknowin' eyes,
It's for myself and my friends my stories are sung ...
(From "Restless Farewell," by Bob Dylan, 1964)

"It's for myself and my friends, these drawings are done."
(am)

"Thoughts on Nature as experienced in wartime..."

2011-09-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

Take a look at what I found this morning on my first day back at blogging--something Chris Highland wrote here:

"Particularly drawn to her thoughts on Nature as experienced in wartime, I was immediately impressed by her description of a friend, Jackie, who was, not surprisingly in the context of WWII, anxious and fearful. Jackie grew calm looking at “the things of nature” according to Anne. With the wind in the trees and the gathering of mountainous storm-clouds, she discovers within herself a happiness “that no one can take away.” Anne concludes this simple sketch of her troubled friend with her own wisdom gained in hiding: “Anyone who looks at nature, which is the same as looking into oneself, long and deeply enough, will, like Jackie, be cured of all despair.” This could not have been written better by John Muir or Henry Thoreau."(am's italics)

It's been a good blog break. Was able to put this slide show retrospective together, able to do the first drawings I've done in a long time, able to take a few more walks, and spend time with old friends and relatives near and far (email and otherwise!)

It was an old friend who now lives in Santa Margarita, California, who gave me a copy of Meditations of John Muir: Nature's Temple, by Chris Highland, first published in July 2001. Reading the beginning of that book again this morning and finding Chris Highland's blogs were the inspiration for this post today. I've got that book on the table where I blog and paint.

Beginning this evening, will be reading my favorite blogs and doing my blogging in the evening after I finish work. Mornings are the best time for drawing and walking and yoga before starting work at noon. The morning is passing quickly. It's difficult to get up from my laptop once I sit down here.

This is my 1000th (or 1001st--I'm not sure now) post since December 8, 2006.

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
(Thomas Merton)

Miles to go before I sleep

2011-09-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

On a day when my morning is full, sometimes I only have about 20 minutes before work to take a walk. In 20 minutes I can walk 1/2 mile and back from where I sit right now at my laptop at my art work table. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but it's not a snowy evening, and I'm not Robert Frost. It's a late summer morning, and I'll be 62 years old in a few weeks.

The little movie begins yesterday at the turning point, at the place I can walk to in 10 minutes. At that point, there are 3 trails to choose from, or I can turn around and go back home to start work at noon. My job does give me some flexibility, and I do have the option of starting work at 1 p.m., but then I have to work later into the evening, and that means I go to bed later and get up later. Easier to just start work at noon.

Anyway, what I am getting to is that I am going to take a blog break and won't be posting on my blog or reading any blogs for little while. I've taken a break from posting before but never from reading blogs.

Hope to use these weekday mornings for some drawing and painting and photography and to have more time for walking. Or maybe just being open to inspiration. Open to a good open-hearted direction.

You will all be in my thoughts, and I look forward to reading your blogs and posting again in a few weeks. Maybe I need to save my blog posting, reading, and commenting for the weekends in the future. We'll see.

If I get up now and take a walk, I can walk for about an hour before work. That sounds good.

Kind wishes,
am

chicka-dee-dee-dee / a Scudder Pond morning

2011-09-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Listen

If I ever moved away from Northwest Washington (I've been here for 37 years now, so that seems more and more unlikely) I would choose to visit this time of year. It's the time I love the best .

Yesterday a neighbor friend and I took an 8-9 mile walk up the hill to the north, down the hill to the west to Memorial Park (created during World War I and including the current war, 2003- ) and then the long gradual roundabout uphill way back to Scudder Pond heading east, then south, then east, then north. Lots of people out walking on this Labor Day weekend.

Dry, sunny, warm, slight breeze. The air smelled like ripe blackberries much of the way.

The world on its side / Birds and bells / Reclining Buddhas

2011-09-02T07:54:00.001-07:00

This is the second time I've made a little movie in vertical format, forgetting that Apple's iPhoto doesn't allow rotation when it comes to movies. YouTube is a horizontal format. A movie format. The wide screen rather than the narrow vertical screen.

As opposed to books which are mostly in vertical format. And iPads and iPhones, which are in vertical format, more like books, but they don't open like books.

My first computer was an iBookG4. It opened like a book, but was "read" in horizontal format like a movie. Laptops are books that open to become movies.

Why can't I make a movie and play it vertically, except on my camera? Or can I but just don't know how?

I can imagine a movie theater with a vertical screen showing vertical movies. Why not?

Funny, the places that the mind goes when noticing patterns and relationships.

Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
(Bob Dylan)

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
(Leonard Cohen)

The world looks different when you are lying on your side. If I recline like Buddha, I can watch my little movie as it was meant to be seen.

Oboe's Haiku

2011-08-31T07:54:00.000-07:00

When I adopted Oboe from an animal shelter around this time of year in 2006, the first thing I became aware of after bringing her home was that she is a talking cat. Could this be a series of haiku by Oboe?

Waterfall on Whatcom Creek / Beatles 1963

2011-08-29T07:15:00.000-07:00

Listen. It must have been in the summer of 1963, when I first heard "Please Please Me," on the radio, before the Beatles came to the United States. Didn't know who was singing but immediately loved the song and felt like dancing.

48 years ago today / Something more powerful than the mountain of despair/ Nonviolence

2011-08-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

On August 28, 1963, I was an almost 14-year-old girl, living 25 miles south of San Francisco, who had seen very few African-American people except at the distance that was generally maintained at that time, and on television as entertainers or as sports figures. Throughout my school years to that point, all the students were white along with a few Mexican-Americans. When I started high school that September, there were, as I recall, 3 Japanese-American students in my large high school. That was before President Kennedy was assassinated and before the Beatles but not before the Civil Rights Movement.

I remember walking into our family living room on what was probably a very hot California summer afternoon and hearing Bob Dylan singing on our black and white television set. I was only vaguely aware of Bob Dylan at that time, mostly through his songs as sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. I stopped to listen to him sing and understood that he was part of something powerful and peaceful that was happening at that moment. In my memory, I am alone in the living room. My parents had probably turned the television on, but I don't remember them sitting there watching the events. I don't recall my younger sisters, 13-years-old and 9-years-old, being there. Sad to say, I don't recall listening to Martin Luther King, Jr., speak, but I do remember a feeling that is very similar to what I am feeling today as I turn to video news sources (I don't have a television) and hear again something powerful and sustaining and nonviolent that has brought us through these last 48 years. Something that has probably always been with us and always will be with us, and which was voiced so eloquently by Martin Luther King, Jr., and those people who formed the American Civil Rights Movement and worked together. Not alone.

Listen.

A sunlit wood where the true way was a koan

2011-08-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

At 20 years beyond what may have been the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a sunlit wood where the true way was a koan.
(with many thanks to Dante Alighieri)

This film clip shows the approach to the children's fishing pond and the little bridge over the fishing pond dam on Whatcom Creek You can hear the water rushing over the dam as well as a small waterfall just beyond the dam. You can see a little of the fishing pond. Nice surprise to see a man and his young daughter out enjoying the sunny day.

"...not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart..." / A Memorial Koan

2011-08-24T08:12:00.000-07:00

Listen to Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 30, 1967:

"Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love (am's italics). I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are brothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America."

In this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr., remembers and relates to the anxious and sorrowful Jesus taking up his cross and then a few moments later speaks of an angry God. The angry God part of Christianity and Judaism has always troubled me. People are asked to be nonviolent. The violence is left up to God? I don't think so. The whole thing sounds like a koan, doesn't it?

Still meditating on Buddha's empty hands and Mahalia Jackson singing "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands," remembering that Martin Luther King, Jr., nominated Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, for the Nobel Peace prize in January of 1967 and that Thich Nhat Hanh had urged Martin Luther King, Jr., to publicly and peacefully oppose the war in Vietnam.

Meditating on the thought that it is not easy for any of us, including President Obama and Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh, to live up to these ideals, and that a memorial to Martin Luther King during the troubled presidency of Barack Obama speaks of the inner koans that President Obama and all people of conscience must live with each day no matter what their spiritual perspective.

From the Nobel lecture by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say "We must not wage war." It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace."

"The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure. To live it you have to explode. In that last hour of need, we entirely agreed, sacrifice was the code of the road."
(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)"

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."
(Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself")

(Pastel on paper, "Self-Portrait of an Old Friend as a Young Man," drawn by am in the early 1980s from a photo sent to me by my friend, Richard, taken of him in Vietnam in 1970)

Reconciliation meditation

2011-08-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Listening to the old songs by Donovan over the last few days has brought up unexpected feelings of grief and loss, and the realization that when I was 18 years old, I listened to Bob Dylan and Donovan in equal measure, with immense gratitude.

"I rejoice to hear he's well, but I must go inland. Thank you for the words you've brought of my banjo man."
(Donovan)

"Two riders were approaching. The wind began to howl."
(Bob Dylan)

"It ain't so bad. I'm just a lad. So many more things to do. I intend to come right through them all with you."
(Donovan, lyrics from "Celeste")

"Let us not talk falsely now. The hour is getting late."
(Bob Dylan)

My gut feeling is that it's not too late to be that hopeful and vulnerable and honest again. I am feeling a reconciliation of two parts of myself that had been estranged for 40 years.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

2011-08-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

As a teenager, I listened over and over again to Donovan's early albums along with Bob Dylan's albums and could never understand why some people couldn't hear the difference between their two distinct voices. Sometime around 1971 when Richard returned from Vietnam, I stopped listening to Donovan.

It was Bob Dylan's music that spoke to me then and continued to speak to me. He was not ethereal. He was deeply human and was making some serious mistakes, just as I was. He was also playful and paradoxical. He didn't appear as fragile as Donovan. I was fragile. I wanted whatever it was that Bob Dylan had that keep him going. Listening to his music kept me going.

Yesterday I spent some time watching the many YouTube videos of Donovan's early work. This is the one I liked the best. I love the old Donovan songs. That was a time of relative innocence for me and for many of us.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

by: W.B. Yeats

Went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

'The Song of Wandering Aengus' is reprinted from An Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London: Methuen & Co., 1921.

Convolvulus

2011-08-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

So far this summer, there have been two Convolvulus blooms from my "Children's Garden" seed mix. I love the mix of delicate flowers that I planted in May around my lavender plant in a planter on my porch.

"Most twining plants seem to follow the course of the sun and bind round a support from left to right, but the convolvulus will always twine against the sun, confounding all attempts to train it, even dying in the process. Characteristics: The flowers close in damp weather. Habitat: The plant is indigenous to Europe and eastern U.S. Production: The upper part of the herb is harvested during the flowering season and dried at temperatures of no more than 40°C in a well aired place."
- Joerg Gruenwald, Ph.D., PDR for Herbal Medicines

Listen

Tangled Up in Blue / The Old Guitarist

2011-08-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century

...

The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue.

...

But me, I'm still on the road
Headin' for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue.

(Bob Dylan, from "Tangled Up in Blue")

"The Old Guitarist," by Pablo Picasso:

Imaginary Brothers / No Easy Walk

2011-08-13T13:06:00.001-07:00

In Broken Images
Robert Graves
24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Thanks to wood s lot, July 26, 2011, for the poem by Robert Graves.

“You can see that ‘there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere,’ and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.” - Nelson Mandela, quoting Jawaharlal Nehru, from a presidential address to the ANC Transvaal Congress (also known as the “No Easy Walk to Freedom” speech) Transvaal, South Africa, Sept. 21, 1953.

("Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brothers," painted by am in the late 1980s)

Fair Nottamun Town / Passion / Paradox

2011-08-10T09:48:00.001-07:00

“Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

FAIR NOTTAMUN TOWN

In fair Nottamun town, not a soul would look up
Not a soul would look up, not a soul would look down
Not a soul would look up, not a soul would look down
To show me the way to fair Nottamun town

I rode a grey horse, a mule roany mare
Grey mane and grey tail, a green stripe down her back
Grey mane and grey tail, a green stripe down her back
There wa'nt a hair on her be-what was coal black

She stood so still, she threw me to the dirt
She tore -a my hide and she bruised my shirt
From saddle to stirrup I mounted again
And on my ten toes I rode over the plain

Met the King and the Queen and a company more
A-riding behind and a-marching before
Came a stark naked drummer a-beating a drum
With his heels in his bosom come marching along

They laughed and they smiled, not a soul did look gay
They talked all the while, not a word they did say
I bought me a quart to drive gladness away
And to stifle the dust, for it rained the whole day

Sat down on a hard, hot cold frozen stone
Ten thousand stood round me and yet I's alone
Took my hat in my hand for to keep my head warm
Ten thousand got drownded that never was born

(Medieval English Folk Song)

Nothing was delivered / Something was delivered / Yoga Nidra

2011-08-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

A few days ago when walking in the woods before work, I saw a man and a woman about my age (almost 62) walking slowly with trekking poles, coming up the trail from the fishing pond in Whatcom Falls Park. We smiled and said hello as we passed on the trail. When I reached the little bridge at the far edge of the fishing pond, I stopped to look over at the water spilling over the small dam and then turned around to go back home the same way I had come. It wasn't long before I saw the couple with the trekking poles, ahead of me on the path. As I approached them, I was looking in curiosity at their trekking poles. Just as I was about to pass them, I looked up and noticed that on the back of the man's dark blue T-shirt was a fairly recent image of Bob Dylan in concert with the words "Bob Dylan" above the image.

In wonder and delight, I said, "Bob Dylan," and they both turned around to look at me. The man said that they had seen Bob Dylan in concert in the last year. He said that he loved Bob Dylan's music but that Bob Dylan shouldn't be touring anymore. He said the concert was awful, and that he felt ripped off. He said Bob Dylan should just give it up. He sounded both angry and sad.

As far as he was concerned, it was the "Nothing Was Delivered Tour" (lyrics and audio clip).

A few weeks ago, a dear friend of mine died peacefully in her sleep at 86 years old. She was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and had been sober for the last 14 years of her full and rich life. She was one of the few women of her generation to earn a PhD and had a successful career in her field of psychology and active retirement years. She was a professed atheist, but said that even though she didn't believe in God, there was something that had removed the demons that had haunted her until 1996, at age 72, when she realized that she was a real alcoholic and, in her words, "It would be insane for me to take a drink."

Part of the Yoga Nidra meditation I have been listening to suggests considering that both of the following thoughts are true in the same moment:

Nothing needs to be done.
Something needs to be done.

Bob Dylan said:
"Nothing is better, nothing is best
Take heed of this and get plenty of rest"
(lyrics from "Nothing was Delivered")

and:

"Sometimes somebody wants you to give something up
And tears or not, it’s too much to ask."
(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Floater (To Much To Ask)"

As Solitary Walker commented on my last post, "And 'nothing' is always 'something', after all."

And that seems to be what Yoga Nidra is about.

("The Composer," drawn with chalk pastel on paper by am in the early 1980s)

Masked and Anonymous

2011-08-05T08:48:00.001-07:00

The apparent dilemma rests upon a false impression about the nature of nothingness as a state of mind. The ability to accept ourselves as nothing is not easily developed. It runs counter to all our desires for identity, for an apparently meaningful existence, one filled with hope and promise. To be nothing seems a form of psychological suicide. We cling to our somethingness with all the strength at our command. The thought of being a nothing is simply not acceptable. But the fact is that the person who does not learn to be as nothing cannot feel that he is but a plain, ordinary, everyday kind of person, who merges with the human race — and as such is humble, lost in the crowd, and essentially anonymous. When that can happen, the person has a lot going for him.
(Harry M. Tiebout, MD)

"I'm ready for to fade / into my own parade." (Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Mr. Tambourine Man")

"Mona Lisa and the Clown and the Cool Rain of the Law"
(watercolor, gouache and chalk pastel on paper, by Amanda Wald Rachie, from the early 1980s)

42 years: a book of changes / Here Comes The Sun

2011-07-31T20:40:00.000-07:00

Just came across this that I put together in 2008.

"Things that one carries ..."

2011-07-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

Worth listening to, if you have the time.

"Garry Trudeau was outside my office." (47:27)

"Oh, I awoke in anger. So alone and terrified." (Bob Dylan, from "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine")

Still thinking about Mahalia's image of God's hands holding everything (everything) and Buddha's hands holding emptiness, and now having seen that cartoon from Garry Trudeau, and recalling that at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California, where my friend Richard died, and where the Darrah Westrup works with women veterans, there was a Zen Buddhist chaplain available in spring of 2008. I wonder what he or she would say to a woman veteran.

From the Dalai Lama:

Q: You have said that according to Buddhist philosophy there is no Creator, no God of creation, and this may initially put off many people who believe in a divine principle. Can you explain the difference between the Vajrayana Primordial Buddha and a Creator God?

A: I understand the Primordial Buddha, also known as Buddha Samantabhadra, to be the ultimate reality, the realm of the Dharmakaya-- the space of emptiness [am's italics] --where all phenomena, pure and impure, are dissolved ...

And then I came across this, in contrast to Mahalia's imagery and the imagery of the Buddha's empty hands:

No one can keep us from carrying God
Wherever we go. (from the Persian Sufi, Hafiz)

"Things that one carries ..."

Sending love to Norway / Great Aunt Julia / Mystery ship / Dancing boy from Norway

2011-07-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

This last weekend my cousin invited me over to see her father's scrapbooks and photo albums that she had recently brought back from Montana, where her mother lived after her father died. Wonderful to see old photos from the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s of our fathers and uncles and aunts and cousins and great aunts and uncles, and grandparents and our great grandmother, Mary. I was surprised and delighted when my cousin gave me an oil painting she had brought from Montana of a sailing ship at sea, painted by our Great Aunt Julia:

Without thinking too much, we assumed the flags were Norwegian, which is our heritage on our fathers' side. When I looked around on Google, I discovered that the flags look more like flags of Iceland but don't have the white edge on the red-orange cross on the blue background that would made them clearly Icelandic.

Although I looked around on Google images for a similar sailing ship that Great Aunt Julia might have used as a model, I was unable to find one. Anyone know anything about sailing ships?

The painting is hanging over my art work table now. Our Norwegian great grandparents came to the United States (Minnesota) on a much larger sailing ship in the 1800s by way of Quebec. They came on a new ship that was not built for passengers, according what our grandfather wrote in the 1940s. Our grandfather was the first in his family to be born in the United States.

"... My parents left Norway [am's note: They were from Nordfjord] for America in May 1871. They had four children who were born in Norway, two girls died in infancy and two boys, Christian and Mons, who went with them to America ... The ship on which they crossed the Atlantic was called Argo. It was a new ship. It had made only one previous trip and that was to South America. They had to wait for it for over a week in Bergen, because they had to make new accommodations on the ship for emigrants, because the ship had not been previously built for that purpose ... My brother, Christian, at that time was only a little over five years old, and as mother could not look after him [am's note: He writes earlier that she was seasick for most of the trip] and he being somewhat wild at the time, had a wonderful time running around on the deck and even tried at times to climb the ropes connected with the sails because it was a sail-ship. It has been said that he would dance around like little boys of that age would do and the passengers enjoyed it very much and they encouraged him by throwing little pieces of money to him in order to have him continue ..."

(written by our grandfather in the 1940s)

I just found this on Google, from the passenger list of the Argo in May 1871:

Lasse Christian Rake 44 m farmer
Dorothea !! Rake* 37 f
Christian !! Rake* 5 m
Mons !! Rake* 2 m

Amazing what can be so easily found on the internet today.

Our grandmother Amanda and her sister Julia's grandparents (family name Kongslien) came from the area of Vang, Valdres in Norway in 1852. With a little searching, I could probably find that a passenger list for them, too, but I have to work today ...

Sending love to the people of Norway.

Read this from Sabine.

But she breaks just like a little girl / Amy Winehouse

2011-07-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

Amy Winehouse (1983-2011)

Took my breath away when I heard the news of her death on Saturday morning.

Just as it did when I had no idea who she was but first heard her singing, "No, No, No," in the background music in a doctor's office. Could that have been in 2007?

Yes, I'm sure it was. My friend, Richard, was still alive, and that could have been him singing.

Rest in peace.

Listen

No, No, No (1:03)

Listen (2:06)

“I’m not a natural born performer. I’m a natural singer, but I’m quite shy, really. You know what it’s like? I don’t mean to be sentimental or soppy but it’s a little bit like being in love, when you can’t eat, you’re restless, it’s like that. But then the minute you go on stage, everything’s OK. The minute you start singing.”
(Amy Winehouse)

"... when I come back, you'll know, know, know..."
(Amy Winehouse, from "Rehab")

Little garden by the cattail ocean

2011-07-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

The work of lightning

2011-07-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

"A vibrant painting: the size of the canvas allows for activities in seven plain dreamings following a lightning storm. The rich symbolism of the painting is supplemented with pleasurable use of colours." (from here, painting by Moses Fry)

Watch for the flash of lightning around 1:19.

Thunder on the Mountain

"I'm just average, common too
I'm just like him, the same as you
I'm everybody's brother and son
I ain't different than anyone
It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you."
(Bob Dylan)

“This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning."
(Buddha)

"And the world will live as one."
(John Lennon)

"Just then a bolt of lightning
Struck the courthouse out of shape
And while ev’rybody knelt to pray
The drifter did escape."
(Bob Dylan)

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work."
(Mark Twain)

Listen for the sound of young Bald Eagles

2011-07-17T14:16:00.001-07:00

0:05
0:43
0:53
1:13
1:24

And this about love and memory.

10,000 steps / Uphill all the way home

2011-07-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

You've seen this before but not in video. The image is pretty clunky, but you get the idea of the beginning of the path that leads past Scudder Pond and into Whatcom Falls Park. You will hear more birds as I get closer to Scudder Pond, which is to the right of the path. The first 5,000 steps are almost imperceptibly downhill until the very end of the path. It's clearly uphill all the way home.

Still thinking about Buddha's empty hands. The absence that is a presence. And Ayin (nothingness). And Mahalia Jackson singing, "He's got the whole world in his hands."

And walking, not running, on empty.

(In 1965, I was 15. In 1969, I was 19. In 2011, I am 61, which is the best so far. Funny how empty feels full now.)

Wind, birds, cattails and coincidences

2011-07-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, given a few unexpected hours of time off from my job, and inspired by a cedar-wrapped 1956 Metro on display at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, which brought back good memories of my friend Richard and the Metro that he had in 1968 or 1969, the front hood of which he decorated by hand with paint, I sat down with my watercolor and gouache paint tubes and brushes and did what I usually do after not painting for a long time, which is to just make some brush strokes on watercolor paper and see where they lead me. Playing with paint with nothing in particular in mind. I started with Payne's Grey, which looks black but is really a dark grey-blue. I tried to paint a horse, but it turned out looking like a cat. Then I filled in some areas with Cobalt Blue and then Chinese Red and then Permanent White. I accidentally dropped the paintbrush filled with Cobalt Blue and it fell in front of the cat who is walking up a red and white path. This kind of painting is like dreaming.

This morning when I was out walking up the hill with a goal of 10,000 steps or 100 minutes or 5 miles, I looked down and saw a single piece of a Rubik's Cube on the ground. I picked it up and was delighted to see that three sides were Payne's Grey and the remaining three sides were blue, red and white.

At the top is my first successful download of a video from my digital camera. Until today, all my attempts to post my own videos to my blog were unsuccessful.

Perseverance furthers.

Oboe dream

2011-07-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

Listen.

When was it? 2004? I dreamed that my old friend, Richard, a carpenter, had made an extraordinary musical instrument out of a variety of woods. He brought it to show to me. He looked more at peace than I had ever seen him since he returned from Vietnam in December of 1970. He demonstrated how the instrument worked by touching one type of wood at a time. When he touched the first one and we listened to the sound, he looked at me joyfully and said, "Oboe." That was all he said during the dream.

It must have been 2004 or later, because when I woke up I went to my iBook G4 and Googled "oboe." Sooner or later I came across Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," which had been a favorite of Richard's as a small boy, and I learned that the oboe was used for the duck's theme:

In the story's ending, the listener is told that "if you listen very carefully, you'd hear the duck quacking inside the wolf's belly, because the wolf in his hurry had swallowed her alive."

Reading those words, it occurred to me that, as a child, I always thought the duck somehow found its way out of the wolf's belly. For me, it may have been the end of the story but not the end of the duck.

Anyway, in late September of 2006, I decided to go to an animal shelter and find and adopt a cat that resembled the wood that Richard had touched in my dream and name him or her "Oboe."

That is Oboe sitting in the July morning sun just after 7 a.m. She will be approximately 6 years old in next month.

More about Oboe.

She speaks of the great kind spirit and of doubt

2011-07-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

If you have a free half hour during this long weekend for the U.S. and Canada, listen to Louise Erdrich.

"...I go through a continual questioning. And I think that is my assurance that if I was to let go of my doubt, that I would somehow have surrendered my faith. My job is to address the mystery..."

— Louise Erdrich (from interview with Bill Moyers, April 9, 2010)

Any day now, the golden day lilies will be blooming!

July 4th update: