In order to continue posting my artwork, I've created a Substack page:
https://ellamuir.substack.com
No need to subscribe. I'm not looking for paid subscribers. There is a free subscriber option if you'd like to be notified when I post on Sundays.
Sending love to all who happen to stop by here.
P.S. If you are looking for Old Girl From The North Country or http://oldgirlfromthenorthcountry.blogspot.com, this is the blog that evolved from it after 2008.
Still finding a need to share in a simple way what moves me and heals me, I'll be posting what I find on Tumblr from now on. It's part of that something new that my psychotherapist suggested for April 2024. I'm not deleting this blog because I want to honor the healing years from December 2006 to April 2024 and the world-wide community of friends I found here whose blogs I will continue to read and leave comments on.
During this week in April 1968, R kissed me for the first time. We were 18 years old. During this week in April 2008, I began driving from Washington to Northern California to be with R at the Palo Alto VA Hospital during the last days of his life. We were 58 years old.
This blog's first post was when I was 56 years old, nearly 18 years ago! That was on the 36th anniversary of the day R returned from serving a year in Vietnam in the U.S. Army as a helicopter mechanic. A wise older woman, knowing how haunted I was by all that had transpired since R's return in 1970, gently suggested that I do something different on the anniversary of R's return from Vietnam. Starting this blog was something different from anything I had done before.
The first name of this blog was "Old Girl of the North Country." The focus of the blog was a retrospective of my art work from the year I met R while still in high school until his death in 2008. All of that art work was inspired in one way or other by R's presence and absence in my life. After that I posted photos taken from my porch and from my long walks in and around Bellingham, with R never far from mind. Through the years, I've enjoyed posting music and other offerings from YouTube and other sources that inspired me and which I wanted to share. In the last year, I've been posting my Tiny Mandala Series (drawn with my non-dominant left hand) which is still a work in progress.
This past week when I met with my psychotherapist and mentioned that the anniversary of R's death was approaching, she gently suggested that I do something different to mark the coming days. Today I took a walk up the hill to Big Rock Garden and took the above photo which shows one of the many blooming rhododendrons and, in the background, two lovely evergreen trees and the Empress tree which will soon be blooming.
As I was walking down the hill from Big Rock Garden, I realized that it was in April fifty years ago, that I came to live here in Bellingham.
I'm committing to living fully in the present, making the most of the last years of my life, beginning today.
Tiny Mandala #42 of 52 (inspired by the Chinese character for "to stand upright.")
Harpo the Nomad in a quiet moment. He's a lively fellow. Good company.
It's been a long long time since I've had much to say on my blog. My social energy is increasingly limited. I'm a true introvert. Given that the blog was created to help me work through "Prolonged Grief Disorder" before I even had that diagnosis along with a diagnosis of "Trauma, Not Otherwise Specified," I'm realizing that I'm ready to let this be my last blog post, although I'm not deleting my blog. I'm grateful to all who have visited my blog through the years. You've all played a major role in my healing.
I'll continue to read your blogs. You are dear to me.
A near-total eclipse is nothing like a total eclipse. Grateful to have seen one total eclipse in my lifetime. I was just as astonished and emotional as the people in the above video when I witnessed a total eclipse in Fossil, Oregon, in August 2017.
It's worth taking a trip to experience one, if one doesn't come to you.
Witnessing this video and seeing the possibility of gradual freedom from emotional baggage was healing for me and brought these three old songs to mind:
“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.”
From Temryss Lane's GoFundMe page for Willie and Aline:
My dear Uncle Willie Lane and Auntie Aline's home burned down early on the morning of March 19th. Thank the Creator, they escaped the flames with their lives and second degree burns. Lifetimes of memories, cultural treasures, the smoke house (where my Uncle traditionally smokes salmon), their car, tools, clothes and their livelihoods went up in flames.
If you know Aline and Willie, you know they are in service to the community, exponentially generous, kind and loving, dedicated to helping people heal on their paths to wellness. Any offering you can make so they can purchase a new home and get on their feet again, would not only support them but benefit the entire community.
They have their lives and the clothes on their back. They lost everything else, including Aline's car. If you'd like to donate clothing items, old cell phones, a car, other necessities you can drop them at the Lane Family Home at 2877 Lummi Shore Rd.
Hy'shqe si'am! Our family feels so grateful Willie and Aline are safe and know that together we can help them rebuild their lives. Thank you for your generosity and support.
"Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts. I wasn’t sure whether I was too soon or too late for the purple lupine which can be so spectacular in these headlands, but milkmaids were growing on the shady side of the road on the way to the trail, and they recalled the hillsides of my childhood that first bloomed every year with an extravagance of these white flowers. Black butterflies fluttered around me, tossed along by wind and wings, and they called up another era of my past. Moving on foot seems to make it easier to move in time; the mind wanders from plans to recollections to observations."
I'm grateful to have been born into and grown up experiencing the landscape of California. It brought a joy that is still with me all these years since I left, never imagining that I would spend the rest of my life living a thousand miles to the north in Western Washington which has its own beauty but is not my first love. Eastern Washington does look much the way coastal California did when I was young but only for part of the year, and the Cascade Mountains separate Western and Eastern Washington. Eastern Washington has snow in the winter and extreme heat in the summer, unlike the coastal region of Northern California where I grew up, never far from the Pacific Ocean. I continue have dreams where I rejoice that I am living near the Pacific Ocean.
The camera on my cell phone distorted the blues in this mandala. I wish you could see the true colors. Nothing I did with the edit function could remedy the discrepancy between the actual mandala and the photo image.
This reminds me of my recent experience with replacing the lenses in my glasses. The optician asked if I would like the new lenses on my old frames to have a blue light filter to protect my eyes during the hours I spend looking at my laptop. I said, "Sure." It took me about a week looking through those new lenses to realize that the blue light filter gave the world a yellowish tint, making everything, especially the sky look the way it looked before I had cataract surgery. The yellowish tint had a decidedly depressive effect on me. One afternoon I took the glasses off and realized that the world looked so much better. When I compared the view through the blue light filter and the true color of the sky, I was appalled by the way the filter diminished the beauty of the color of the sky. The relief I experienced at seeing the true color of the sky was astounding.
When I called the optician's office, I was assured that they would replace the lenses at no cost. They had forgotten that they had told me that my frames could not sustain another change of lenses because those frames are 50 years old. All was not lost, however. Now I have a pair of glasses with lenses that are protecting my eyes (albeit with the color distortion) for the hours that I sit at my laptop, and I bought a new frame and had clear lenses inserted that allow me to see the true colors that I love so dearly.
I love this song. Always will. It brings healing tears every time I hear it.
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Grateful to have found Devin Kelly's Substack through a link from Sabine's blog and to have read the essay he linked to in today's post.
One of the joys of my life is seeing the drawings and paintings of grade school children. The first photo shows a semi-permanent display at a bus stop next to the public library. The last three photos are of the rotating art work that is displayed at Trader Joe's grocery store. Currently on display are drawings of Frida Kahlo.
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Every year there is a Children's Art Walk in downtown Bellingham where the street windows of the downtown businesses feature the work of Bellingham's young artists.
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Just finished Tiny Mandala #40:
On to #41:
Gave away to an artist friend one of the fifty-three 4 x 4 pieces of printmaking paper that I've been using for the Tiny Mandala series. Now I will have one Tiny Mandala for each month of the year.
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Although we've had some sunshine, it's still quite cold here. Shortly after I took this photo, Harpo moved to a few feet forward to a sunny spot near the porch door where he stretched out in the sun.
Well worth your time if you haven't already seen this 57-minute film which was brought to my attention recently. Our public library had a copy that I just finished watching this morning before sunrise.
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I want to be remembered as the person who helped us restore faith in ourselves.
I learned a long time ago that I can't control the challenges the creator sends my way, but I can control the way I think about them and deal with them.
(Wilma Mankiller)
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During the long healing process, I fell back on my Cherokee ways and adopted what our elders call "a Cherokee approach" to life. They say it is "being of good mind." That means one has to think positively, to take what is handed out and turn it into a better path.
"The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky."
(from Their Eyes Were Watching God)
"She jumped at the sun."
(from the narration of the excellent PBS documentary)
"Woman Looking Up," from 1984, was inspired by having read one of Zora Neale Hurston's books. I'm grateful to have read Their Eyes Were Watching God in the 1980s at a time when I needed a perspective on life that could sustain me for years to come and then to be reacquainted with Zora Neale Hurston through this documentary.
"New Morning" was released a few months before R returned from Vietnam in early December 1970. As with all Bob Dylan albums, I listened to it again and again. In those days, I was listening to albums on my turntable and could put albums on continuous repeat for hours on end. After R died in 2008, something astonishing happened. I wrote about it on my blog a month and a day after R died:
Last week, I finally was able to go to the photo lab in downtown Bellingham so I could order some prints of my old friend and his art work to send to his sister. As I was standing at the counter trying to explain my project, I heard Bob Dylan singing. I stopped talking to listen to him sing. When I tried to talk again, I couldn't because I started crying. The young woman clerk was playing Bob Dylan's album, "New Morning," which is what I listened while my old friend was in Vietnam and what we listened to during the short time we lived together in 1971. The clerk was playing the ALBUM (!) on a turntable and handed the album cover to me. More than a coincidence. How else could that happen? "New Morning" is a great album. Ends with a beautiful song to God called "Father of Night." The song that made me start to cry is "If Not For You."
Now it's "New Morning In The North Country."
The first time I heard the words "cosmic sea" was in the song "If Dogs Run Free" on that album. This early morning, the words "cosmic sea" came to me again, and then I remembered the poem Patti Smith wrote in response to "If Dogs Run Free" and was overjoyed to find this:
have you seen
dylan's dog
it got wings
it can fly
when it lands like a clown
he's the only
thing allowed
to look dylan in the eye
(from Patti Smith's poem)
"Down the street the dogs are barking and the day is a-getting dark ..."
(lyrics from Bob Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings")
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It's 3 a.m. here. After 6 hours of sleep, I woke up just before midnight and have been awake since then. It's been a fruitful time. The first day of the Year of the Dragon. My mother was born in 1916, a Year of the Dragon. She made a large stained-glass window of a dragon that looked very much like the dragon on the Google doodle for today. After my mother died, her stained-glass dragon was given to a Chinese woman friend of hers.
This is where I found that quote and here is more of what I read today.
Planting trees early in spring, we make a place for birds to sing in time to come. How do we know? They are singing here now. There is no other guarantee that singing will ever be.
Years ago I began having a recurring dream that I was away from home but not in any danger. Usually I was alone but not always. As it began to get dark, I started to return home. Always I would eventually realize that it was impossible to get home before dark. Sometimes home was a thousand miles aways. Sometimes it was only a few blocks away, but there were insurmountable obstacles between me and home. Unsettling as this was, I began to be philosophical and accept the truth.
A few nights ago that dream came to me again:
This time I was not all that far from home, just a few miles east of my home at the west end of Lake Whatcom, the 14-mile-long lake that is just a few minutes walk away.
(A few afternoons ago, looking east from my porch towards Lake Whatcom and the mountains beyond)
I was walking west in a counter-clockwise direction toward home. After some time passed, I was surprised to see that the landscape no longer looked familiar. It appeared that I was in Eastern Washington rather than Western Washington. I love the landscape in Eastern Washington and although I was surprised, I wasn't disturbed. Still, it was getting late in the day and I realized how far from home I was.
Unlike what I had been seeing in Western Washington, I saw no trees anywhere. I saw beautiful bare hills and blue sky. Looking out on what I still considered to be Lake Whatcom, I wondered if there were a bridge ahead where I could cross and get back to Western Washington, which now was east of where I had walked.
Ahead of me, a small resort appeared in the distance, set on a hillside. There weren't many people there, but I felt sure that someone would be able to help me find my way home again. Each person I spoke with was kind but unable to guide me back to Western Washington before dark.
Once again I felt philosophical, accepting that I would not able to get home before night. I seemed to be in a safe place with safe people. As I walked down the hillside toward the lake, I saw a woman I didn't know who was walking up the hill. As she approached, she smiled and said, "Hi Amanda."
I was startled because I couldn't imagine how she could know my name and then I realized I was dreaming.
I knew I would wake up and be home.
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Last night before I went to bed I found the video of the two people dancing. It brought me joy. My night was filled with dreams. I slept much longer than usual. The only dream I remember is the last one. In that dream, it was night and I was in safe place with safe people when I was told that someone had come in the night looking for me and that she was out on the porch waiting to talk with me. This is a person who shouldn't be driving at all, much less driving at night. This is a person with compromised judgment due to early dementia. This is a person I care about and feel concerned for but feel sadly inadequate in terms of being able to help her. I knew I would have to gently and respectfully confront her about her driving and let her know once again that my ability to help her is limited.
Coincidentally, she was once a dancer. This is my vision for her:
In April 1971 Morrison and his family moved to Marin County, California, before he recorded his previous album, Tupelo Honey.Their new home was on the side of a hill in rural countryside close to San Francisco, with redwood trees nearby.
"Redwood Tree" is a song of reconciliation, which seems to graft Van's Belfast childhood onto California, where redwoods actually grow, "Keep us from all harm", an invocation to the spirit of the ancient wood.
(Brian Hinton)
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Could that song have inspired the creation of the largest redwood forest outside of the United States"
Having grown up in the company of redwood trees, not all that far south of where Van Morrison and his family lived in 1971, I'm delighted to learn that Van Morrison, too, experienced redwood trees as protectors. My request to my family and friends is that my ashes be placed at the base of a local coast redwood tree, one of very few in this part of the world and dear to me.
How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be? -- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Welcome to "37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)".
The photograph currently at the top of my blog was taken from my porch before sunrise on October 29, 2023.
"OLD GIRL OF THE NORTH COUNTRY" (the earliest name for my blog -- http://oldgirlfromthenorthcountry.blogspot.com
) came to life in early December of 2006 so that I could post a 42-year retrospective of my paintings and drawings and through that action, create a new relationship with the day the man I loved returned from Vietnam in December 1970. For a while (sometime after spring of 2008, which is when he died) my blog was "TALKING 37TH DREAM WITH RAINBOW (RUMORS OF PEACE)". For a number of years, it's been "TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)." As of April 12, 2017 my blog was titled "37TH DREAM / TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE/LOOKING UP)". Somewhere along the way it became 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE).
To begin viewing the retrospective with narrative, scroll down to December 8, 2006, on this page:
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. -- Martin Buber (1878-1965)
It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is.
-- Robinson Jeffers
The true end of a war is the rebirth of life; the right to die peacefully in your own bed. The true end of war is the end of fear; the true end of war is the return of laughter.
-- Alfred Molano
Enjoy every sandwich -- Warren Zevon (1947-2003)
Not in God's wilds will you ever hear the sad moan, "All is vanity." No, we are paid a thousand times for all our toil, and after a single day spent outdoors in their atmosphere of strength and beauty, one could still say, should death come — even without any hope of another life — "Thank you for this most glorious gift!" and pass on.
-- John Muir (1838-1914)
Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do? Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well. Hugh Fennyman: How? Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.
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