Pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give our king
Pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give a king
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Thank you to Sabine for drawing my attention to Michael Blumenthal's poem, "Be Kind," which led me to his talk on the value of art.
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Thank you to Sabine for drawing my attention to Michael Blumenthal's poem, "Be Kind," which led me to his talk on the value of art.
"Do you remember the happiest day of your life? What about the saddest? Do you ever wonder if sadness and happiness can be combined, to make a deep purple feeling, not good, not bad, but remarkable simply because you didn't have to live on one side or the other?"
Ocean Voung
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Looking east in mid-December:
And if you have time, listen to this music from the county where I live (population 229,247 in 2019). Whatcom County took its name from a Nooksack word meaning "noisy waters."
This blog's first post was on December 8, 2006, when I was 56 years old, unemployed and, to be honest, unemployable, living simply on what should have been my retirement resources, with all the free time in the world and able to do little or no art work. I was not without friends or moments of peace, but each day was long and bleak due to what was then diagnosed as PTSD but has been diagnosed in recent years as a trauma-related disorder and complicated grief. For years I had been receiving various types of counseling and, in between appointments, I made intermittent calls to a crisis line. Although I was not suicidal, I was often in emotional distress. It was on one of those calls to the crisis line in December 2006 that it was suggested to me that I do something entirely new and positive on December 8 (the day R returned from Vietnam in 1970) instead of re-living the trauma of that day yet another time.
Inspired by a first cousin once-removed who at that time had a political blog, I had begun reading blogs and commenting on blogs for about a year using my first laptop, an iBook G4, purchased in 2005. The first blogs I read and commented at had their roots in her extensive blog list.
Taking the suggestion of the crisis line volunteer to heart, I made a decision to go to the Blogger website and set up a blog for the purpose of doing a retrospective of my art work up to 2006. My intent was to revisit my lifetime of art work, one piece at a time, which meant revisiting my life while trying to keep my focus on living in the present in a healthier way.
After a few days of posts, I was delighted to receive my first comment. The blogs I read at that time all focused on a combination of nature photography, poetry, literature, and music.
After more than 20 years of living alone because that was the only way I felt safe, I had a few months earlier brought home from a local shelter a cat that I named Oboe. She was a year old and found it fascinating to watch me at my laptop from the kitchen counter. Her fleece bed was on the desk off to the side of my laptop.
It has occurred to me while writing today that the series of events that led to my healing were buying that iBook G4, learning to use the iPhoto tools, reading and commenting on blogs, adopting Oboe, and starting my own blog.
By the time I finished my retrospective posts, I had begun doing a little bit of art work, had begun to share music from YouTube, and had began to share photos of the view from my porch and views from my long walks in Whatcom Falls Park, Lake Padden, and along Bellingham Bay.
From the day I started my blog, my life changed for the better, not without ups and downs but without that which had haunted me for so many years -- unattended sorrow. Stephen Levine's book, published in 2005, may well have led the way to the day that I decided to begin blogging.
Up until December 7, Mandala #55 had been going extremely well and then suddenly it wasn't. I had hoped to finish it on December 7 and stayed up late working on it but went to bed tired and discouraged because something about it just wasn't right. I didn't sleep well and dreaded waking up to see it still unresolved. It is a terribly unsettling feeling when I something I am working on is not going well. Fortunately, in the morning it didn't look as bad as it had looked the night before and I was able to finish it and feel peace. Although I'm not completely satisfied with the way it photographed, it looked beautiful on my wall where I photographed it in the December morning light.
And it looks good next to the last two mandalas. I've drawn the circle for the 11th mandala.
December sunrise:
Thank you, blog friends, near and far.
72 years ago my parents were married on December 4. This photo was taken by me in 1978 when they were in their 60s and I was in my late 20s, during one of my visits to California. My middle sister emailed this photo yesterday. It brings back good memories of them.
The back cover of "Wonderwall Music" was created using a photo of the Berlin Wall:
When R and I began to live apart in May 1971, I rented a room in a house where four other people lived. R and I continued to spend time together on a regular basis until October 1971, when our separation became a permanent one. The house was owned by a man who was a high school teacher (second from the left). He had three children. His older daughter is standing in front of him, his younger daughter is at his side, and his son (or was the boy his ex-wife's son whom he had adopted during the marriage?) is at the top of the photo. Next to his son is the daughter of the woman in the middle of the photo. The high school teacher had also rented out a room to a couple, the man on the far left and woman in the middle. That couple and the man on the far right had met at San Jose State University and had grown up in Southern California. The man on the far right, holding a kitten, is standing behind a dog that is barely visible. He had a degree from San Jose State University in photography. He was the one who set up the camera on a tripod to make this photo possible. I'm standing next to him. He slept outside in a tiny open air playhouse that had been built for the high school teacher's children and was only large enough for him to arrange a sleeping bag with cushion underneath, along with his few belongings. This was Northern California, where the weather was such that a person could sleep comfortably outside during all seasons of the year. Note the low brick wall behind all of us.
As part of the rental arrangement, I was to be a sort of nanny for the high school teacher's two pre-school girls on the afternoons that their mother brought them to stay at their father's house before he came home from work. I am struggling to recall how the son fit into the picture that day. He didn't live in the house. Perhaps he was there because this group photo was taken to serve as a surprise birthday gift for a woman who also lived in the house. Until just now, I had forgotten about her. She was my age but in a relationship with a man who was in his 40s and lived somewhere else. At the time I thought that was a little odd because at 21 years old, 40-year-old men were "old" and unattractive to me.
During those months, I would often put "Wonderwall Music" on the turntable because I found it oddly comforting during that time of emotional anguish as I tried to find some balance and direction. While listening to "Wonderwall Music" on the turntable downstairs, I would work at making macrame wall hangings in my room.
One day, Justine, the older of the two little girls came to me and asked if I would play the "up-and-down" record for her. I tried to guess which record she was referring to. We looked through house's record collection until she identified my copy of "Wonderwall Music" as the up-and-down record. Still baffled, I put it on the turntable for her to listen to. She pointed to the way the record needle went up and down. It turned out that my copy of "Wonderwall Music" had somehow become warped, although it was still perfectly playable. Only a small child would be able to easily observe the needle going up and down!
It still delights me that Justine was so adept at describing exactly what she observed -- an up-and-down record -- and was as drawn to listen to "Wonderwall Music" as I was. When I left California in 1974, I lost touch with all of the people in the photograph. I do know, though, that the man on the far right went on to start a building crane business and was one of the first responders in the wake of the devastation in New York City on September 11, 2001.
I wonder where Justine is today. She would be in her 50s now. I wonder if she remembers "Wonderwall Music." While writing this post, I've been listening to "Wonderwall Music," grateful to have found the entire album on YouTube. I'll be listening to it later today as I work on Mandala #54, with immense gratitude to George Harrison.
Something occurred to me about the possibility of making a 2021 Mandala calendar available to those blog readers who are interested, assuming that I complete four more mandalas in the next few weeks. Given the cost of having calendars printed in addition to shipping costs, I could simply attach 12 photos of the mandalas in an email to anyone interested. The images could be sent via email to one's local print shop and made into a calendar. What do you think? I have Robin's email address. Anyone else interested can email me:
ellamuir[at]msn[dot]com
Happy Birthday to Sabine, born on November 29, 1957, if I am not mistaken. On one of my perpetual calendars, I had written "Sabine's Birthday 1957."
Last Sunday in a socially distanced masked visit with my friend, she brought it out and asked if I would like to borrow it. (Given my growing awareness of the alarming surge in COVID-19 cases in our county since my visit with her, I have decided to refrain from any more socializing during the next few months.)
It may have been in a bookstore in Santa Cruz in 1970 that I eagerly looked through Grapefruit, Yoko Ono's small book of instructions and drawings, for the first and only other time. The book had evolved from her 1964 limited edition version (500 copies), with an added introduction by John Lennon and new instructions including pieces such as "SKY EVENT for John Lennon," which ended with:
"Do not talk loud or make noise, as you may scare the sky"
and was followed by:
"SKY event II
(IMAGINARY SKY EVENT - refer to SKY EVENT for John LENNON)
Do the sky event in your mind
THEN go out into the street and take photos to document the event
If the sky event in your mind takes place in another city,
ask a friend in that city to take photos for you."
My recollection is that I was delighted by some of the instructions and disturbed, dismayed, even horrified by others. I didn't buy the book and blocked out the instructions that upset me. Reading the book in its entirety this week, I remembered some of the instructions as if I had read them yesterday, some even more delightful, some even more upsetting ("ON RAPE"). The following set of instructions intrigued me, but I had only a vague recollection of ever reading them before. In 1970, of course, I didn't have Google Translate and would have puzzled over the German word, only able to guess what it might mean in the context of the instructions.
CARD PIECE I
Walk to the center of your Weltinnenraum.
Leave a card.
CARD PIECE II
Cut a hole in the center of your
Weltinnenraum.
Exchange.
CARD PIECE III
Shuffle your Weltinnenraums.
Hand one to a person on the street.
Ask him to forget about it.
1964 spring
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Google Translate:
Weltinnenraum: Diesen Raum der Erfahrung, der sich in der Präsenz ereignet auch zwischen Mensch und Welt nennt der Dichter Rainer Maria Rilke Weltinnenraum
Weltinnenraum: The poet Rainer Maria Rilke calls this space of experience, which also occurs in presence between man and world
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The photo at the top of this post caught my attention because, coincidentally, I had made similar marks on one of my recently completed mandalas.
For some reason, in the context of "weltinnenraum" that poem came to mind. During my early years of counseling for PTSD, a Gestalt counselor I worked with for several years quoted this to me, changing Rilke's "man" to "woman":
Winning does not tempt that woman.
This is how she grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
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If I understand the word correctly, I sense that COVID winter is opening up weltinnenraum.
"... One single space pervades all beings here:
an inner world-space. Silently, the birds
fly through us still. Oh, I who want to grow,
can gaze outside: a tree will rise inside me ..."
Just now I was able to finish Mandala #52 while listening to Zhenni Li Cohen and Matthew Cohen. There is an interview with Zhenni and Matthew at 31:16, during the intermission. I'm inspired by this young couple who are passionate about playing music and about each other.
For the first time ever, I have been able to show you a new mandala in its true colors! Until today, I have not been satisfied with the way my camera registers the colors in my mandalas. As an idle experiment, I photographed my most recently completed mandala in the natural light that is coming through my windows on this stormy coastal Pacific Northwest day. Although the result was somewhat washed out, the colors were surprisingly accurate, and so I went into my MacBook Pro's photo editing function and found that I could bring the colors up to what I had always wished for!
Although I was not consciously making a Star of David, that is what appeared as I worked on the mandala in my usual intuitive manner that is something like jazz improvisation. In the center of the mandala I had drawn a small blue triangle and was simply working from the center outward, playing with the possibilities that occurred to me, when I realized I had made a rolling Star of David.
As of today, I've completed six mandalas this year and have started working on Mandala #53. Who knows? I just may complete twelve in time to make a calendar for 2021.
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Yesterday I looked up and became aware of a female Downy Woodpecker for the first time. She stayed at the feeder long enough for me to find my camera and get numerous images of her through my window. This was the best image. The red-topped males are frequent visitors at my feeder. The female has her own beauty.
I wish my old friend, Deven, were still alive and could hear her only nephew play the viola so beautifully. He reminds me so much of her.