Someone I loved

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

—Mary Oliver

With gratitude to Beth.

No Time to Spare

The news of Ursula K. Le Guin's death at age 88 just came to me.   It was a few days ago that I had finished reading her book of essays, No Time to Spare, borrowed from the public library.  Each essay was taken from a blog she started a few years ago.  As always, since I was 21 years old and read A Wizard of Earthsea, she challenged me to think deeply and she brought me to tears and to joy.  What a lively free spirit, living on through her writing.

From a post I wrote in 2010 on the writing of Ursula K. Le Guin:

"We have to learn what we can but remain mindful that our knowledge does not close the circle, closing out the void, so that we forget that WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW remains boundless, without limit or bottom, and that what WE KNOW may have to share that quality of being known with what denies it.  What is seen with one eye has no depth ..."   

(Quote from Always Coming Home, by Ursula Le Guin, but the capitalization is my mother's.  She typed that out for me on a little piece of notepaper with a drawing of Rattlesnake Grass from California's North Coast and enclosed it in a letter she wrote to me during the 1980s.  I may have posted this quote before, but I feel like posting it again because I love it.  The photo was taken a few days ago from the trail just before the small bridge over Whatcom Creek at Derby Pond). 

























And this:

"They walked softly here. So will the others, the 

ones I seek.

The only way I can think to find them, the only 

archaeology that might be practical, is as follows:

You take your child or grandchild in your arms, or

borrow a young baby, not a year old yet, and go 

down into the wild oats in the field below the barn.

Stand under the oak on the last slope of the hill,

facing the creek. Stand quietly. Perhaps the baby

will see something, or hear a voice, or speak to

somebody there, somebody from home."

                  

                 Towards an Archaeology of the Future

Thank you, Ursula. 

"...where we together weathered many a storm..."

(photo from early March from California's Lost Coast webcam)

... nowhere you can be that you weren't meant to be ...
(John Lennon, from "All You Need Is Love")

"But I also miss the mountains and rivers of my childhood. I miss my old friends. So I return now and then, when I can not still the longing in my heart.

The funny thing is, the moment I am in one country, I am homesick for the other."
(Allen Say, from Grandfather's Journey, p. 31)

Listen

















(view in early March from my porch in Northwest Washington)

Love Minus Zero / No Limit

"We have to learn what we can, but remain mindful that our knowledge not close the circle, closing out the void, so that we forget that WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW remains boundless, without limit or bottom, and that what WE KNOW may have to share the quality of being known with what denies it. What is seen with one eye has no depth ..."

(Quote from Always Coming Home, by Ursula Le Guin, but the capitalization is my mother's. She typed that out for me on a little piece of notepaper with a drawing of Rattlesnake Grass from California's North Coast and enclosed it in a letter she wrote to me during the 1980s. I may have posted this quote before, but I feel like posting again it because I love it.The photo was taken a few days ago from the trail just before the small bridge over Whatcom Creek at Derby Pond)

Walking home in January 2010

Listen to this from 1970:

"On our way back home. We're on our way home"

And from 1985, in Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, pages 21-22, and an excerpt from a song from an unnumbered page that is two pages beyond page 523:

"Walking down to Hard Canyon Creek, I felt old, as if I had been away longer than four days, longer than the month in Kastoha-na, longer than the eight years of my life. I washed in the creek, and came back up the meadow in the twilight. Gahheya Rock was there, and I went to it. It said, "Now touch me." So I did, and so came home. I knew something had come to me that I did not understand, and maybe did not want, my walk had been the golden hill; the coyote had sung to me; and so long as my hand and the rock touched each other I knew that I had not gone wrong, even if I had come to nothing."


_____Stammersong
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
From the Library at Wakwaha.


I have a different way, I have a different will,
I have a different word to say.
I am coming back by the road around the side,
by the outside way, from the other direction ...

...There is a valley, high hills around it.
There is a river, willows on its shores.
There are people, their feet are beautiful,
___dancing by the river in the valley.

STAND UNDER THE OAK

"They walked softly here. So will the others, the 

ones I seek.

The only way I can think to find them, the only 

archaeology that might be practical, is as follows:

You take your child or grandchild in your arms, or

borrow a young baby, not a year old yet, and go 

down into the wild oats in the field below the barn.

Stand under the oak on the last slope of the hill,

facing the creek. Stand quietly. Perhaps the baby

will see something, or hear a voice, or speak to

somebody there, somebody from home."

                  

                 Towards an Archaeology of the Future

(page 114, WAY OF THE WATER'S GOING:  IMAGES OF THE

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA COASTAL RANGE, with 

photographs by Ernest Waugh and Alan Nicholson

and text from Ursula K. Le Guin's ALWAYS COMING HOME)

("Person with Questions," gouache and watercolor on 

Arches watercolor paper, painted by am in the early 1980s)

Thank you to all who continue to visit NEW MORNING 

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY. I am grateful for your

presence.

A VIEW INTO MY HOME AT 5:45 A.M.

After a long difficult spell which began during the Gulf War, a time when I became unable and then unwilling to draw or paint, I bought a digital camera in 2005. Thousands of photos later, I continue to be amazed at what a simple digital camera can do. This morning I stood out on my porch in the dark and took the above photo through the window of what has been my home since 1984 when I left married life. It was difficult to leave a house with a garden and view that I loved. I began to live alone for the first time. I have been content living alone for a long time in a tiny place with a small second-story porch garden and an expansive view. It feels new to me over and over again. Like Georgia O'Keeffe after Alfred Stieiglitz died, I can live alone as an artist and not be lonely. In October of 2006, I adopted a talkative cat named Oboe. I can't truly say that I live alone anymore :-)

One of my favorite books about home and a "sense of place" is ALWAYS COMING HOME, by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Here is the first photo I took with my digital camera:

















It's part of the cover of this book for children. At the time I bought my digital camera, I was a volunteer shelf-reader in the section for children at our local library. Each week during those three years, I brought home an armload of books written for young children and read at least one before I went to sleep each night. Unfortunately, I began to develop frequent severe headaches from a form of mold that lives in library books and have had to limit my time spent in libraries. Otherwise, I would love devote a part of my reading time to all those splendidly illustrated children's books which only take a short time to read. I wish I'd kept a list of those I read. It's possible that my online public library account would have saved all those titles.

Helpi'mlost (2002)

Helpi'mlost did not turn out as I had hoped, but I saved it because sometimes feeling "lost" is exactly what happens as I am painting. With this painting, I admitted I was lost and let that be okay. It might be a prayer. Not the end of the world. It seems to be related to a recurring dream that I am walking alone toward home as the sun is setting, but then I realize that home is not a place I am going to reach before dark. This painting shows what "not home" looks like. The colors are unsettling to me. Maybe this is someone else's home, but I don't feel comfortable there. In the recurring dream, I keep walking anyway in the fading light with my vision of home.

Untitled Ocean #2 (1995)

Here is a web page which has images of a coastal region I love and still miss after living in northwest Washington for 33 years. I left California 34 years ago, spending the winter of the oil embargo living in Wayland, west of Boston, not too far from Walden Pond. Washington is dear to me, but the unpopulated coastal areas of of northern California are dearer.