"... She's got everything she needs, she's an artist, she's free to look back if she wants to..."

"... And reads us stories out of the I Ching ..."

Yesterday YouTube churned up a song I remember well from 1967, the year I bought the Richard Wilhelm copy of the I Ching for three reasons.  One was that Bob Dylan had mentioned it in an interview, second was that Country Joe and the Fish mentioned it, and third was that my college roommate had a copy and taught me how to use pennies to consult the I Ching.

Today Blogger let me know that someone had visited one of my old posts which mentions the I Ching:

"It is very difficult to bring quiet to the heart."

"True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward. In this way rest and movement are in agreement with the demands of the time, and thus there is light in life."

For some reason today, my attention was drawn to my blog archive:

Interesting to see that during my first year of blogging I posted almost every day of the week and that ever since I have not come close to that.  The smallest number of posts were during my last year working as a medical transcriptionist before I retired.  The largest number of posts were the year after the year R died.  Given that this is only August of 2021, I'm well on my way to an unusually prodigious year of blogging.

December 8, 2021, will be the 15th birthday of my blog.  I find it astonishing to think about all that has come to pass during these years and am grateful for the lasting connections made with blog friends near and far in this unforeseen community.

 

BALANCE / HEALING HANDS / SACRED MUSIC

(35-minute drawing time, 5:50 to 6:30 a.m., using two "Paused" images from the PBS film "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet." The first image is of a hospital nurse and the second image is of her hands holding the hands of an elderly man in her care while they talk. Click on the pictures for a clearer image. I haven't figured out why the image degrades when I save it. I used the Appleworks6 "Painting" program on an iBookG4 while listening to nothing except what was in front of me.)

(Today, while writing, I am listening to "LIVE: Ravi Shankar at the Monterery International Pop Festival. Two friends and I were there in 1967 and heard this performance.

On Sunday, June 18, 1967, two other 17-year-old young women and I drove from Redwood City, California to Monterey, California for the afternoon concert of Ravi Shankar at what came to be known as the Monterey Pop Festival. We had just graduated from high school a few weeks earlier. Two of us had been to the Magic Mountain Music Festival, earlier in June. As it states in one of the links, Monterey was the first "widely promoted" rock festival in the world, but the first rock festival was the Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain Music Festival which took place at the summit of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County.

None of us were familiar with the music of Ravi Shankar, but the only tickets left were for his concert on Sunday afternoon. As it turned out, we were extraordinarily fortunate to have heard that astonishing and memorable concert. The beautiful and complex energy of Ravi Shankar and his friends performing the sacred music of India couldn't have been more moving. The music lifted me, carried me and set me down again in amazement. I have listened to this concert again and again, always with renewed awe and gratitude.)

I have a perpetual calendar with daily images of quilt patterns. The names of quilt patterns fascinate me. Today's pattern is called "Balance."

When practicing yoga postures, balance is not a fixed state. Early in my practice of yoga postures, I thought the goal was to be as still as a statue. I felt like a complete failure in those poses which required balance. Then one day, while my yoga teacher was demonstrating a pose that involved balance, I noticed that her foot was not still at all but making constant tiny adjustments which resulted in balance. From then on, although I still found it difficult to balance on one foot, I gave up the idea of being motionless in a balancing pose. In fact, in some of the balance postures I am constantly about to fall dramatically, one way or the other. I let that be okay.

The same goes for a balanced life. Not easy, but I keep practicing.