Just because / Basho in winter

"Hmm -- or sometimes hm or hmmm"

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Another year gone --

hat in my hand

sandals on my feet.

-- Basho

 

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I appreciated what Montana's poet laureate, Chris La Tray, had to say on his Substack yesterday, including:

"...All this is a long way to suggest I think the community aspect of what winter can be – I mean slow community, quiet community, not parties and commitments and all the hubbub around how we typically gather – seems on the wane, just like the community aspect of everything else in this hyper-individualist culture. That marketed individuality is a wedge the cruel manipulators of our world seek to drive between us because they know we are stronger as a bundle than as a collection of singles, so the distractions keep coming and coming and coming. Just look at the holidays: by the time the actual days of celebration arrive we are all so frazzled with the input of Everything that the last thing we want to do is be around each other. That’s tragic.

I didn’t set out to write an intentions piece yet here I am, sort of making one. I’d like to handle this differently in the coming year, figure out a way to be more in community than I have been … just a quieter, more relaxed, grateful kind of community, not a rambunctious and overwrought one, or one constantly based on planning projects or organizing more busy-ness. Ugh, it sounds awfully hard, though. If anyone has ideas, or examples of things you are doing, I’d love to hear them. I know this reads like a lot of rambling nonsense. I’m trying to figure out what to do too – I’m a guy who can count on one hand the number of visitors I’ve had at my house in ten years of living here – and I don’t have any answers. Perhaps you do.

Meanwhile, please take good care of everyone you can. There are a lot of relatives in our community who need us. We can do better at this ..."

Today at the ocean

Sunrise on Christmas Eve / Bob Dylan's hands (just because)

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Bob Dylan's hands:

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Addendum, relating to learning Bob Dylan songs and my experience in trying to learn Spanish as a second language.  Bob Dylan's voice and songs engaged me on an emotional level the first time I heard his voice at age 13.  Certain words and short phrases in Spanish are immediately memorable.  Dibujar.  ¡Por supuesto!  Claro que si.  Los impermeables.  ¿Por qué?  Mis abuelos.  Un chiste.  El bebe.  La biblioteca.  La escuela.  Los libros.  El agua.  El cielo.  El lago.  Azul.  Verde.  Amarillo.  Rojo.  El caballo.  La tormenta.  Todos los dias.  El mundo.  Escribir.  Leer.  Me gusta.  Llorar.  Las peliculas.  Vivir.  Una palabra.  Saber.  Los manos.  Los arboles.  Porque.  Quiza si, quiza no.

Where there is no emotion there is no life. If you have to learn something by heart and it is of no interest to you, there is no fire; it does not register, even if you read it fifty times. But as soon as there is emotional interest, it need only be read once and you know it. Therefore emotion is the carrier of consciousness; there is no progress in consciousness without emotion. 

~Marie Louise von Franz

(quote from Beth's Tumblr page today)

"... Well something's lost, but something's gained In living every day ..." / "Rule #24: When you eat real food, you don't need rules" / Winter Solstice 2023

As someone who struggled with an eating disorder from age 10 to age 37, this book serves as a gentle reminder that my nearly two decades of war with food are long over because instinctively I began to eat in the way that is suggested by Michael Pollan's 83 general rules.  

Rule 83:  Break the Rules Once in a While

Enjoy every sandwich.

(Warren Zevon)

Then there is Rule #52:  Have a glass of wine with dinner.

There is one personal rule I don't ever break and that is that I don't drink alcohol in any form anymore.  I used to drink wine and had no trouble stopping after drinking a small amount, but that small amount always resulted in an unbearable craving (a sign of alcoholism) that made it virtually impossible for me to stop eating.  I didn't want to be an alcoholic and so I turned to more and more food instead of more alcohol.  Of course, food couldn't stop a craving for alcohol. It was astounding to discover that my eating disorder disappeared when I stopped drinking alcohol -- that my eating problems were actually alcoholism.  Wine is a delightful healthy food for most people throughout the world but for alcoholics like me it only led to insatiable craving for food and years of unrelieved depression that ended 36 years ago in May 1987 when I had my last drink (a champagne breakfast in a restaurant with my parents), followed by my last bout of suicidal depression.  

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Winter Solstice.

The sun rose here at 8 a.m. and will set at 4:16 p.m.  

A turning point.

Celebrating the return of the light with friends near and far, while enjoying the improved quality of sleep I enjoy during most, but not all, of the long dark winter nights.  

Calendar Series:  28th Month (Return / The Turning Point)

-- am's painting from 1988

"... It stays pretty green ..."

(Joni Mitchell)

Women Holding Things

a love song to women
and at times everyone
(as exhausted as we all are
from holding everything)

it was born from a little booklet
made during the pandemic.
and then expanded upon.
with 86 paintings.
ruminations
and digressions
of course.

-- Maira Kalman

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"Woman With Her Hands Full"

(pastel drawing by am from the mid-1980s)

"Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools"

YouTube suggested this to me about a week ago.  I've been watching it when I had time and finished watching it just now.  I recommend it.  

"... I want to go to the sea today ... because it's that time in December"

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Still studying Spanish on a daily basis.  It's been a little more than three years since I learned about Duolingo and committed to fulfilling a nearly lifelong dream of learning a second language.  At this point, I have the fluency and joy of a three-year-old child learning a language, which is immense progress.  This came to my attention recently and has been encouraging.  My reading comprehension is far beyond my listening comprehension, although if a person speaks slowly I can understand much that I never dreamed I would be able to understand.  Although my accent is good (except for those rolled r's -- and even those are coming along -- something I never thought possible), my confidence in being able to speak is still a work in progress.  It's not difficult for me to come up with a large number of nouns and the "to be" form of verbs, but my ability to speak the way I would like to speak is limited.  I know that as long as I don't engage in daily conversation, my knowledge of Spanish will remain focused on reading and listening.  It has occurred to me that I am more of a reader and listener and writer than a conversationalist in English.  It's okay.  The joy of language is still there.

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Not sure where I learned about this website.  On a daily basis, thoughtful essays are suggested to me, some of which I read and many of which I have meant to share for some time now.  That day has come. When I read something on a specific topic, the website sends me more essays on that topic.  

Here's another essay. 

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It's that time of year when the cloud cover can be so heavy that it looks and feels like dawn or dusk all day long.  This morning there are openings where blinding light comes through the dark clouds.  Interesting to see that on 4.0x Zoom on my cell phone, the image is textured.

Growing up in the 1950s / Taking a December walk in the 2020s

Loved this TV show when I was a little girl.  With a little googling, I found that it was on TV from 1955 to 1960.  

One of my first drawings at 5 years old in 1955 was of a horse.

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In awe of California coast redwood trees

Life after the 2020 fire in the redwood forest in Big Basin.