Sky and flowers / Resisting the plague of the absurd

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people are resisting the plague of the absurd.  

Gratitude to the young people who carry the songs forward so lovingly / The holy ground took care of everything / Love waits forever

It is a joy to me to listen to covers of songs from my youth, especially this one that R gave to me during his year of experiencing war in Vietnam.  What love has given to us, no one can take away.  

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About 20 years later I heard "The Loving Time."  

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This morning I looked for a cover of "The Loving Time" song by the young people.  I found one.

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It is good to revisit these songs this morning and feel grateful to have loved and been loved.  Not everyone has had that experience.   

And yet, in the lyrics of Bob Dylan you will hear, "Love waits forever, for one and for all."

A timeless tree with deep roots / "Home"

A Bob Dylan song with deep roots, interpreted by a young woman in 2021 with some lyric changes that speak to her experience.  

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Taylor Spring bringing it all back 

"Home":

"... I got lost on the river, but I got found."

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Last night I dreamed that at the end of a long journey, I found myself looking into a vast aquarium at a large blue fish who looked out at me with a steady gaze.  I began to cry.  I woke up weeping.

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Yesterday YouTube churned up a short video devoted to helping students understand what calculus is.  The goal was not to teach calculus but to explain why one would want to learn calculus.  For some reason, I decided to watch it, and was delighted to understand what calculus is.

I remember going back to college when I was in my late 20s and vowing to attempt to learn math from the point at which I had not been able to understand it.  I was good at math until 7th grade when New Math was introduced.  My father who was good at math did not understand New Math and was unable to help me understand it.  I remember my 7th grade teacher taking me aside and saying that she was puzzled by my poor math grades because I was clearly intelligent, having scored in the 99th percentile on the verbal portion of my aptitude tests that she had looked at.  From then on,  I continued to do well in English classes and struggle in math classes, despite the fact that New Math didn't last long in my school district.

In my return to the study of math, rather than learning math in a traditional classroom, I chose to learn in what was called a math lab where I could work independently, at my own pace, and ask for help when needed.  Much to my surprise, math was easy and fun, and I quickly finished the courses up to the point of calculus and was considering taking calculus.  Baffling to me to this day, my former husband who had scored 800 on the math portion of the SAT test, scoffed at my enthusiasm saying, "Why would you want to do that?"  Even more baffling is that I lost my excitement and momentum when I heard those words. 

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When I saw the blue fish in my dream, I remembered the YouTube video and instinctively used a calculus formula which proved, without a doubt, that the blue fish and I had exactly the same volume despite our different physical appearance.

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Last night I was playing around with my autoharp, specifically A minor and D minor.  Suddenly I was playing the first few chords of something that I couldn't identify, having no idea what the lyrics were.  A few minutes ago, I went over to my autoharp and played  A minor and D minor again and again until I was able to identify that it was reminding me of Bob Dylan's song "Lost on the River." 

The song goes with the dream.

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Take what you have gathered from coincidence.  Thanks so much, Bob, wherever you are.

 

The way out is in / "A Noble Truth is a sacred creed" / Sounds of Silence / A voice from Kyiv / When the trees marched

Please Call Me By My True Names

From Plum Village App, regarding the talk on "War and Peace" with Brother Phap Huu and Jo Confino:

They also discuss inherited war traumas; the importance of maintaining compassion and balance during these times; the limits of compassion; going beyond our ‘roles’ and ‘labels’; channeling anger; practicing when we feel ‘on the edge’; racism and discrimination; coming back to our humanity; cultivating love, peace, and nonviolence, every day. And: can we bear arms without hatred?

A Noble Truth is a sacred creed (Bob Dylan)

Thich Nhat Hanh was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1967.

Thich Nhat Hanh's memory was evoked at a recent memorial service for a friend of the Lummi Nation.  Listen at 18:54:

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It's so far out, the way out is in (George Harrison, lyrics from "Any Road")

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Sounds of Silence

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A voice from Kyiv

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In the Woods

"Everything is threatened, but meanwhile

everything presents itself:

the trees that day and night

steadily stand there ..."

Denise Levertov 

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Just now I remembered when the trees began marching in the Ring trilogy, by J. R. R. Tolkien.  These trees at Big Rock Garden are within walking distance of my home.

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Nonviolence is not a tool.  Nonviolence is a way.

...

You may have to put somebody in jail.  You may have to stop.  You may have to even fight but your way of doing it doesn't come to destroy and hate but it is to establish peace.  It is to establish a relief of suffering.

(Brother Phap Huu)

"... Listen to the elders ..." / Douglas James (Sit ki kadem) / "O, the great sky!"

It was well worth my time to listen to everything Douglas James, Lummi elder, has to say.

If you don't have time to listen to all Douglas James has to say, click above for the short film that comes after he speaks and listen to Bill Tsi'li'xw James, hereditary chief of the Lummi people.

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O, the great sky! 

(from "Silent Spring," by Denise Levertov)

My father loved gardening

It's been 19 years since my father died on St. Patrick's Day.  Our relationship was fraught with profound grief, beginning in my early childhood, when he was often absent.  My few childhood memories of him are that he shamed me and was critical of me, leading me to be believe that I was ugly and that no one would ever marry me.

Fortunately, my last visit with him was a good one.  It was his 89th birthday.  I was 53 years old.  As I walked out of the door of his assisted living apartment in West Seattle, he said, "I'll see you at Easter."

I've come a long way since 2003 in understanding intergenerational trauma and the effects it has on father-daughter relationships.  My relationship with my father now is better than it ever has been as I learn to parent myself in ways he could not and let my wounded father rest in peace.

In 2008, just before R died, I wrote this in remembrance of my father.  Blogger has altered the way the photos are seen in the post.  You'll need to click on them to see them in their entirety.

My Abutilon is in full bloom.  The rainbow on March 15 just before sunset was the most beautiful I've ever seen from my porch.

It's still dark outside but I can hear birds chirping because it's early spring and the sun will be rising soon.

Remembering fearless Oboe / Overcoming stage fright from the beginning / Last night's dream

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Last night's dream:

Once again I was surprised and overjoyed to find myself at the ocean, walking across a broad sandy beach to have a closer view of the waves.  Suddenly, without any warning, the ocean was far below me.  The sand and ocean in front of me had dropped hundreds of feet.  Turning in mid-air, I found a tenuous handhold and was able to hang on to the sheer cliff of hard packed sand.  Looking down, I saw that the tide had nearly reached the bottom of the cliff of sand, although there was still some beach left.  Briefly I considered letting go, confident that I would be able to sustain the fall.  Thinking again, it was clear that even though I would survive the fall, the tide was coming in and I would be in danger of drowning or at least spending a long time in the cold ocean water because there was no way to climb up the sheer cliff and no exit either way, north or south, from the beach.  I turned my attention back to the sandy beach I had just walked across with such joy.  I didn't have the strength to pull myself up onto the beach again, but I had the strength to keep holding on.   A young woman appeared out of nowhere.  I told her I needed help getting back on the beach.  She anchored herself as best she could and reached out her hands for mine.  She wasn't convinced that I could be helped and was concerned for me, but I told her not to worry.  With her help, I was able to scramble back up to the beach.  

That's when I woke up.

It's occurring to me that the ocean in my dream was to the east.  Most of my experiences of the ocean have been that it is to the west.  

Tears have been welling up with unexpected frequency in the past month.  Sacred tears.  Just in time.

More about The Persistence of Human Beings Working Together

from Chris La Tray's blog:

I mentioned a couple weeks ago how I’d been asked to volunteer my time as a subject for some budding documentary filmmakers. The short film (about 5 minutes long) they made over the course of three intense days is available for you to watch. Here are some details:

Nine talented young filmmakers came together from across the state of Montana to make this powerful short, learning the ropes of documentary filmmaking and the power of working together as a team. Students joined from Harlem, Whitefish, Ronan, St. Ignatius, Polson, and Missoula area for the 2022 Teen Doc Intensive during the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

I love that three of them were also from James Welch Country. Harlem, just a few miles off the Fort Belknap Reservation. The end credits, seeing all the tribes represented by these beautiful young people … it’s almost more than I can take.

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Today is Sophie's 27th Birthday   With the loving persistence of her mother and others, Sophie persists.

Sophie loves the ocean.

 

The Persistence of Song / The Persistence of Human Beings

This film is the story of a man’s lifelong search for authentic Yiddish folk music and of his unique archive, which was presumed to be lost forever. Moyshe Beregovsky, a musician and scholar, crisscrossed Ukraine with phonograph in hand during the most dramatic years of Soviet history in order to record and study the traditional music of Ukrainian Jewry. His work began in the 1920’s and led to his arrest and imprisonment in a Stalinist labor camp in 1950. Most of those he recorded on hundreds of fragile wax cylinders were shot by the Nazis and tossed into countless mass graves. Ultimately, Beregovsky succeeded in saving the musical heritage of the centuries-old Yiddish civilization. He rescued the Living Voice of his people from the flames of the Holocaust but paid for it with his life.

Song:

"Hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey..." / Perpetual war with rumors of peace of heart and mind

Waking up this morning, remembering voices in a time of war in the early 1990s, I heard the words "rich man's war" in my mind.

RICH MAN'S WAR

Hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey...

Rich man’s war
industrial streets, class lines
money talks, turning language to paper pieces
rich man's war free man's society.
Raging violent insecurity
nuclear man, nuclear woman
unclear how to act.

Rich man's war
Pershings cruising Europe.
America Russia
governmental nuclear views
industrial allies cutting the world
as though they cannot see blood flowing

Rich man's war
Central America bleeding
wounds same as Palestine and Harlem
Three Mile Island in El Salvador
Pine Ridge in Belfast

Rich man's war
the poor, starving for food
starving for land, starving for peace
starving for real.

rich man's war
attacking human, attacking being
attacking earth, attacking tomorrow

Rich man's war
thinking of always war
thinking of always war.

With machines for ancestors
new unborn generations
chemical umbilical chords are only wiring
in your electrical progress
human lives burnt offerings to the god greed
with lies for ancestors

There is no truth in some futures
rulers of minds feeding next generation's souls
to the control machine.
Sacrifice ritual for the proper technology
with isolation for ancestors

There is only the present bought by the credit material uses
forging chains binding you to destruction
compliments of your deities
the industrial priest.

Hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey...

No more than neon flash
trying hiding in neon mask
have to face who we really are
at some point we had no choice.
Distant star distant light

In real world we are human being
in shadow of real world we are
being human.

Neon mask for neon flash.
Distant thunder distant cloud
passions reign
drenched in possession
what we take is hard to do
what we do is hard to take
some ones are crazy or maybe we take turns
dreaming about some kind of life we say
"it could have been different".
But it wasn't because we weren't
no matter what, it turns out the same
a lot of things we said weren't true
industrial stories in an electric instant
neon mask neon flash neon flash.

Thing is nihilistic desires
civilized gone insane
didn't imagine it turning like this
some things start good and go bad
some things get bad and stay bad.
Are we caught in between living a lie or
not living at all?
Eliminated choices lost in dreams we let go
memories we never got to have
something else to think about...
Waking up in industrial society
surrounded by angry days
going through motions
of not being.
Wanting the best but not expecting it.
Surviving paid for in dreams
feeling like a world alone
serving god with the devil to pay.
Feeling like something in no place
what goes on in hell anyway?

Thing is, it has to do with heart.
we have to understand what hearts are for
before we can get back to heaven or paradise
or the power in our mind.

Hay ah iy a hey e ya hay...

 

"Sunrise"

 

"Sunrise," by Joy Harjo, read by Chris La Tray

JOY HARJO

Sunrise

Sunrise, as you enter the houses of everyone here, find us.

We've been crashing for days, or has it been years.

Find us, beneath the shadow of this yearning mountain, crying here.

We have been sick with sour longing, and the jangling of fears.

Our spirits rise up in the dark, because they hear,

Doves in cottonwoods calling forth the sun.

We struggled with a monster and lost.

Our bodies were tossed in the pile of kill. We rotted there.

We were ashamed and we told ourselves for a thousand years,

We didn't deserve anything but this—

And one day, in relentless eternity, our spirits discerned movement of prayers

Carried toward the sun.

And this morning we are able to stand with all the rest

And welcome you here.

We move with the lightness of being, and we will go

Where there's a place for us.

Concurrence

Concurrence

Each days's terror, almost

a form of boredom -- madmen

at the wheel and

stepping on the gas and

the brakes no good --

and each day one,

sometimes two, morning-glories,

faultless, blue, blue sometimes

flecked with magenta, each

lit from within with

the first sunlight.

(Denise Levertov, from a collection titled The Life Around Us)

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Maybe it was Robin who posted this video some time ago.  YouTube churned it up for me today,  My tears of joy and rage are close to the surface these days.

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The earth is leaning sideways

And a song is emerging from the floods

And fires. Urgent tendrils lift toward the sun.

You must be friends with silence to hear.

The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful-

They are the most rare.

~ Joy Harjo from "Singing Everything"

Song and poetry for a dark time as spring comes again

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Experiencing tears of rage and tears of grief alternating with tears of joy and tears of relief as spring slowly arrives in the far northwestern corner of Washington State.

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Ah, the wars they will be fought again
The holy dove, she will be caught again
Bought and sold, and bought again
The dove is never free

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

"Masters Of War" (Bob Dylan) Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build all the bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks. You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly. Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain. You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you sit back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud. You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins. How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do. Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul.

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Bertolt Brecht in 1939 (Watch on YouTube to be able to read the tiny words)

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"In a Dark Time," by Theodore Roethke (first published in January 1960).

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"Take care of each other."