A music-oriented friend of mine and his grandson are having good mornings

"... Remember the feeling as a child, when you woke up and morning smiled? ..."

(Gerry Goffin and Carole King)

Today when I woke up at 4 a.m., morning smiled.  I could hear the Beatles singing in my mind, "Good Morning, Good Morning."  I wonder if those two young men in the YouTube video are fathers now.  I wonder if they listened to the Beatles when they were young boys of fathers who listened to the Beatles.  A music-oriented friend of mine, age 71, has been spending time regularly with his grandson who is nearly two years old and deeply loved.  He has been texting photos of mornings when he visits his grandson in the home where his grandson lives with his parents and 5-year-old sister.  In one of the photos he texted, his grandson is sitting next to three guitars, listening to music.  In another, he is looking intently at an open book that he is holding, and in another he is resting his head on his grandfather's chest as they relax on a couch, apparently watching a movie together.  The photos are heartening.  I don't have permission to post them here, but I want to say that they are part of the inspiration for this post.

Arise / Meditation on ice fog with Red-winged Blackbirds singing on the Sunday of Martin Luther King weekend

If you don't have time for this long rambling post but do have a few minutes, just scroll down to the bottom and listen to a cover of "Blackbird" by Rachel Ann Cauilan.

 

Today's meditation began with waking up in the early morning darkness to the continuing ice fog here in Bellingham and recalling and then looking for George Harrison's song about a fog upon L.A. on YoutTube and noticing that George Harrison is wearing white face makeup as he sings "Blue Jay Way," and recalling Bob Dylan's white face make-up in 1976 during the Rolling Thunder Review Tour:

and going to Google Images for more examples of white face makeup:

Geisha:


Kabuki:

Queen Elizabeth I:

From "Les Enfants du Paradis:

Peggy Alston (from "Zooman and the Sign"):

Heath Ledger (during filming of "The Dark Knight" in 2008):

and then reading:

Thought for the Day

and then documenting the fog here with Red-winged Blackbirds singing:

and then documenting the sun breaking through the fog while hearing George Harrison singing "Here Comes the Sun" in my mind:

and looking out from my porch again a little while later to see blue sky and sunshine:

Last of all I found this.  I'm glad I listened all the way through this heartening video:



"... all your life you were only waiting for this moment to arise ..."

Thank you to Rachel Ann Cauilan whose blog I discovered just now after listening to her acoustic cover of "Blackbird."

Waterfall on Whatcom Creek / Beatles 1963

Listen. It must have been in the summer of 1963, when I first heard "Please Please Me," on the radio, before the Beatles came to the United States. Didn't know who was singing but immediately loved the song and felt like dancing.

With a love like that / February 9, 1964

Listen

A Love Like That

Even
After
All this time
The sun never
says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that.

It lights the
Whole
Sky.

- Hafiz

Untitled Ocean #3 (1996)

Calendar Series: 33rd Month / Watermelon Seeds, Alphabet and Numbers for Richard Brautigan (1988)

To listen to Richard Brautigan read from IN WATERMELON SUGAR, click here. 

Hmmm .... that doesn't work. If still interested, go to: http://brautigan.cybernetic-meadows.net/tiki-index.php?page=The+Watermelon+Sun 

In 1967, during my freshman year of college, I had read TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA. That book, bought at its 1967 price of $1.95, along with IN WATERMELON SUGAR, is still on my bookshelf, one of a handful of books from that period in my life that I still own. I did read his earlier novel, A CONFEDERATE GENERAL FROM BIG SUR and read a few of his later books of poetry but didn't find there what I had found so peculiarly moving in TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA and IN WATERMELON SUGAR. 

I have never forgotten the boy he wrote about who was a "Kool-Aid wino" or what I think of as his "ode to Alcoholics Anonymous" titled "Trout Death by Port Wine" or the places he created which were called "IDEATH" and the "Forgotten Works." I was 17 years old. Richard Brautigan was "older and wiser," an imaginary older brother, much as Bob Dylan seemed to me in those years. I wanted to be as creative as they were. It has been said that there were "girls who wanted to marry a Beatle" and then there were "girls who wanted to BE a Beatle." As a 14-year-old girl, I had wanted to be a female equivalent of a "Beatle," which to me meant using creative energy in a lively and thoughtful way, although I wouldn't have had those words for that longing back then. 

In September of 1984, Richard Brautigan, after suffering from years of alcoholism and depression, shot himself in the head. His body was found a month later at his home in Bolinas, California. I had not thought about him in years and was saddened but not completely surprised at his suicide. His daughter, Ianthe Brautigan, wrote lovingly of her father in You Can't Catch Death, published in May of 2000. 

As a tribute to Richard Brautigan, one of his friends told this story. 

This link doesn't work either. 

If still interested, go to: http://www.brautigan.net/text/anonymous-tributes.html 

There is a poem by Richard Brautigan set into the pavement in San Francisco at Folsom Street and Embarcadero.

In 1989, not long after I painted "Watermelon Seeds, Alphabet and Numbers for Richard Brautigan," a friend of Richard Brautigan, Keith Abbott, published a book of his memories of Richard Brautigan, which he titled, DOWNSTREAM FROM TROUTFISHING IN AMERICA. Keith Abbott read from his book at our local independent bookstore. After the reading, I thanked him for his book about Richard Brautigan and gave him a photo of my painting tribute to Richard Brautigan. He took it and thanked me politely.