Sunday, February 26, 2023

February 26, 2023: Another mysterious left-handed mandala / Reruns: January 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 2007 ("The heart forgives when it accepts and acknowledges conflict without blame.")




These mandalas are on white Bristol board, but the white background on Blogger is a much brighter white.  Maybe they will look more white when I get them professionally scanned.



*

After the Fire” 

You ever think you could cry so hard
that there’d be nothing left in you, like
how the wind shakes a tree in a storm
until every part of it is run through with
wind? I live in the low parts now, most
days a little hazy with fever and waiting
for the water to stop shivering out of the
body. Funny thing about grief, its hold
is so bright and determined like a flame,
like something almost worth living for.


*
Reruns:



*



*



*



*



With music from 1988:


Thursday, February 16, 2023

February 16, 2023: "... joyous, heady discussion ..." / Reruns: February 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, 2007


On Valentine's Day, I took a walk in the woods of Whatcom Falls Park.  Lately I've been choosing the counter-clockwise loop walk which takes me about an hour.  On Valentine's Day, something prompted me to walk in the clockwise direction.  On my way back up the north side of Whatcom Creek, something else caused me to pause and look down at the creek from a spot that I don't often look down when I am walking in a counter-clockwise direction.  Directly below me, there was a Great Blue Heron standing on a large boulder that jutted out into the creek.  I've only seen a Great Blue Heron in Whatcom Falls Park twice before, once standing in its nest and the other time flying over the large stone bridge built as a WPA project next to Whatcom Falls itself.  

When I mentioned this to my first cousin who lives here in Bellingham, she said, "That was R greeting you for Valentine's Day."  Of course, I was moved to tears.  

Earlier that day I saw my first spring flower and later in the day I saw a pair of Bald Eagles land in one of the cottonwood trees near the shore of Lake Whatcom.  

I remember the Valentine's Day in 2002 when R called from California and left a phone message saying,  "Will you be my Valentine today?"

*

 “The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the flesh is pressed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes - Women Who Run with the Wolves

*



Earlier this year, I listened to the edited version of this interview.  There is so much more in the unedited versions of the On Being interviews.  I am fortunate to have the time to listen to them while doing my yoga practice.

*

Novelist Marilynne Robinson and physicist Marcelo Gleiser are both passionate about the majesty of science — and they share a caution about what they call our modern “piety” towards science. They connect thrilling dots among the current discoveries about the cosmos and the new territory of understanding our own minds. We brought them together for a joyous, heady discussion of “the mystery we are.”

*

Marilynne Robinson:

Yeah. But you don’t know who’s in control and you have the feeling that there is some sort of intrinsic control emerging. In the sense, for example, that if you’re creating a character and you ask him to do the wrong thing, use the wrong language, or leave when the conversation isn’t over, he refuses. And I’m sure that when you’re doing something like that you just, you take a wrong turn and it tells you it’s a wrong turn in some way.

*

Marcelo Gleiser:

Absolutely. You know you’re going wrong. You completely do. And that’s what’s hard about science and about fiction writing is that sometimes you’re forced to go where you don’t want to go because otherwise you are violating a certain law. And it’s just horrifying, right, because you really want to prove something, but you can’t, because it’s wrong. And you really believe in it, but that’s not good enough, right? And that’s sort of the ruthless aspect of science in a sense that — I don’t know, maybe as fiction you have a little more freedom than we do in that sense.


(from On Being transcript of interview of Marilynne Robinson and Marcelo Gleiser)

*

Now for the reruns:

Friday, February 10, 2023

February 10, 2023: Inner World and Outer World / Reruns: February 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 2007




*

Still working on Mandala #76



when asked if you care about
the world's problems, look deeply
into the eyes of he that asks
you, he will not ask you again (Bob Dylan, from 

"Advice For Geraldine On Her Miscellaneous Birthday")

*

Now for the reruns.  Art work from 1984-1987:




*



*



*



*



*



*

Timeless musical inspiration from 1986:


Saturday, February 4, 2023

January 4, 2023: With gratitude to Rebecca Solnit / Reruns from January 30, 31 and February 1, 2, 3, 4, 2007: Mona Lisa and the Clown and the Cool Rain of the Law (1985), Woman Trying to Remember What She is Trying to Forget (1986), Painting in America (1986), Full Moon, Chair and Planter Rising (1986), Church of the Holy Contradiction, and Untitled Scene (1986)



Krista Tippett on Rebecca Solnit:

“When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers,” Rebecca Solnit writes. “And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.” In this moment of global crisis, we’re returning to the conversations we’re longing to hear again and finding useful right now. A singular writer and thinker, Solnit celebrates the unpredictable and incalculable events that so often redeem our lives, both solitary and public. She searches for the hidden, transformative histories inside and after events we chronicle as disasters in places like post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

*
Rebecca Solnit:

"... And then if you went south, there was a really great public library. And the minute I learned how to read, it was as though I’d been given this huge treasure. Every book was a box I suddenly knew how to open, and in it, I could meet people, go to other worlds, go deep in all kinds of ways. And I spent my childhood in the hills and in the books. So that was not maybe what people think of conventionally as spirituality, but that was my company, my encouragement, my teaching, my community ..."


"... And New Orleans, for years afterwards, had all these people — church groups — and I saw amazing Mennonite builders rebuilding houses, and Habitat for Humanity. And I kind of loved it. It was a whole spectrum, from Catholic charities to the Mennonites to pretty radical anarchists and people working with Common Ground, which was in some ways founded by the Black Panthers and young white supporters and became a project that did a lot of different things. And not all of it worked out perfectly, but some of it was amazing. And it became really a part of the conversation. But they founded the first really good clinic for people who needed emergency care, who needed their diabetes medicine or their tetanus shot or their wound disinfected. And that split off into Common Ground clinic, which is still going strong more than 10 years later. And that’s the kind of indirect consequences that I find so interesting to trace, is that here’s something that came out of Katrina that’s still helping people every day ..."


"... People in this culture love certainty so much. And they seem to love certainty more than hope — which is why they often seize on these really kind of bitter, despondent narratives that are they know exactly what’s going to happen. And that certainty just seems so tragic to me. I want people to tell more complex stories and to acknowledge that sometimes we win and that there are these openings. But an opening is just an opening. You have to go through it and make something happen. And you don’t always win, but if you try, you don’t always lose..."


(from the Rebecca Solnit interview from the On Being Archives under the topic of "Creative Life")

*

Now for the reruns.  During the last days of January and the first days of February 2007, I was not feeling well due to one of the frequent colds I used to get.  In my early days of blogging, I found that even if I didn't feel well enough to do anything else, I was able to post something on my blog, if only a drawing or painting.  It is a revelation to read what I wrote at this time in 2007, a year before R was in the last months of his life in the Palo Alto VA Hospital.  I had not yet heard of Rebecca Solnit.  It was a blogger from the Midlands of England (Solitary Walker) who introduced me to Rebecca Solnit through her book, Wanderlust: A History of Walking.  

In the fall of 2007, I had thought that I might be able to become a yoga teacher and attended a 2-week yoga teacher training.  I was wrong.  At that time I had been out of touch with R since August of 2002, but he never left my mind and heart.  During the yoga teacher training we had both had our 58th birthdays, having been born within 24 hours of each other in 1949.  He was born in Hackensack, New Jersey.  I was born in San Francisco. 

I found out in December 2007 that while I was in the yoga teacher training, R had suffered a brainstem stroke, been in a coma for two weeks, and was in a stroke rehab unit. 

*

Click on the dates if you are curious to know what I wrote about each drawing or painting.




*



*



*



*



*