Sending love near and far

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.

Sending love to all, near and far.

"Is America Possible?"/ "... Whatever you do, we are going to let our light shine ..." / Young tree finds a home / "... A passion so intense ..."

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While doing my yoga practice this morning I listened to "Is America Possible?", an interview with Vincent Harding by Krista Tippett from 2011 and then read the transcript because there was so much I wanted to remember.  I've been going to the "On Being" archives nearly every day and listening to the interviews under the category of "Across Generations."

Vincent Harding:  "My own feeling that I try to share again and again, Krista, is that when it comes to creating a multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious, democratic society, we are still a developing nation. We’ve only been really thinking about this for about half a century. But my own deep, deep conviction is that the knowledge, like all knowledge, is available to us if we seek it ...

... That was so much part of the way in which the songs try to encourage us not simply to be reactors. So that instead of saying, “You honky governor, you’re no good, and we’re gonna do this or that to you,” the basic, deepest word was, “Whatever you do, we’re gonna let our light shine ..."

....Whenever somebody jokes about “Kum Bah Ya,” my mind goes back to the Mississippi summer experience where the movement folks in Mississippi were inviting co-workers to come from all over the country, especially student types, to come and help in the process of voter registration, and Freedom School teaching, and taking great risks on behalf of the transformation of that state and of this nation. There were two weeks of orientation. The first week was the week in which Schwerner and Goodman and their beloved brother Jimmy were there. And it was during the time that they had left the campus that they were first arrested, then released, and then murdered.

The word came back to us at the orientation that the three of them had not been heard from. Bob Moses, the magnificent leader of so much of the work in Mississippi, got up and told these hundreds of predominantly white young people that, if any of them felt that at this point they needed to return home or to their schools, we would not think less of them at all, but would be grateful to them for how far they had come.

But he said let’s take a couple of hours just for people to spend time talking on the phone with parents or whoever to try to make this decision and make it now. What I found as I moved around among the small groups that began to gather together to help each other was that, in group after group, people were singing “Kum Bah Ya.” “Come by here, my Lord, somebody’s missing, Lord, come by here. We all need you, Lord, come by here.”

I could never laugh at “Kum Bah Ya” moments after that because I saw then that almost no one went home from there. They were going to continue on the path that they had committed themselves to. And a great part of the reason why they were able to do that was because of the strength and the power and the commitment that had been gained through that experience of just singing together “Kum Bah Ya" ..."

Krista Tippett:  I was listening to the BBC in recent weeks, and they’re watching us from afar. They were interviewing a journalist about this moment in American history, which seems very tumultuous and the question was, “Is it really more violent and more despairing than it’s been before or does this happen repeatedly?” And the comparison was made with the 1960s.

They said, look, there was a lot of social turmoil then. There were assassinations, right? I mean, many assassinations. But this journalist said — and I just want to know what you think — he said that he thought the difference between the 1960s and now was that even though there was incredible tumult and violence, it was at the very same time a period of intense hope, and people could see that they were moving towards goals. And that that’s missing now. What do you think about that analysis?

Vincent Harding:  Hmm. Krista, I think that is such a complicated kind of issue that I can only pick at it and tease it out and play with it in the best sense of play. I think that what I see now is the fact that all over this country, wherever I go, and, of course, where I go tends to be sort of self-selective because I am most often going into situations where people are operating out of a sense of hope and possibility, where in their local situations, whether it be Detroit, or Atlanta, or a campus someplace, or a church community in Philadelphia, that there are women and men and young people who are operating out of hope.

My sense is that, in the ‘60s, there was probably a larger kind of canopy of hope that we could see, and we could identify, and that people could name and focus on. Now, we are in particular spots, locations, sometimes seemingly isolated. But I feel that there are points, focal situations, where that is still available and where people are operating from that.

So I think that it is not simply the matter of hope or no hope. I have a feeling that one of the deeper transformations that’s going on now is that for the white community of America, there is this uncertainty growing about its own role, its own control, its own capacity to name the realities that it has moved into a realm of uncertainty that it did not allow itself to face before.

And I think that that’s the place that we are in, and that’s even more the reason why we’ve got to figure out what was King talking about when he was seeing the possibility of a beloved community and recognized that, maybe, for some of us, that cannot come until some of us realize that we must give up what we thought was only ours in the building of a beloved nation. Can there be a beloved nation? Why don’t we try and see?

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In the last few days, I woke up in the middle of the night with the thought that I would buy a Coral Bark Japanese Maple and donate it to Big Rock Garden to take the place of another Japanese maple that had died.  I'd been watching the frail ailing Japanese maple for some time and kept hoping that it would spring back to life.  I talked with one of the many volunteers who give their time to various sections of Big Rock Garden and gave her my phone number.  I was contacted by a retired couple who volunteer their gardening skills and who had also hoped that the maple I was watching would rebound.  I brought a young tree for the couple to see and we walked around Big Rock Garden, looking for possible locations for it.  My hope was that it could be planted in the same area as the one that had died.  Yesterday I went up to Big Rock Garden to see where it had been planted and made a video with my cell phone camera,

Here are the photos the volunteers sent to me:

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(Once again, the fonts resist uniformity.  Why not?)

Revivals

When to my melancholy

All is folly

                 then the whirr
of the hummingbird
at intervals throughout the day

is all that’s sure
to stir me, makes me
jump up, scattering

papers, books, pens—
                                    To the bay window,
and certainly,

there he is below it
true-aimed at the minute cups of
Coral Bells, swerving

perfectly,
the fierce, brilliant faith
that pierces the heart all summer

and sips bitter insects steeped in nectar,
prima materia
of gleam-and-speed-away

A passion so intense

It driveth sorrow hence ...

Update: It's A Troubling Day as Roe vs Wade is overturned / "... Receiving Hexagram 54 often reflects a very insecure, frustrating situation ..."

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Bellingham, much like the days I remember in the summer of 1972, living on the San Francisco Peninsula.

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Yesterday's early morning light

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My Japanese Coral Bark Maple gift to Big Rock Garden yesterday

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Yesterday, this part of the summer sky reminded me of California

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This late afternoon sky yesterday is more typical of Western Washington on the occasional sunny summer day.

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Today, stunned.  Remembering January 22, 1973, and the years that followed.  

Another harsh reminder that I cannot take anything for granted.

Morning in the woods and Big Rock Garden

 After stopping to listen to the birds, I turned around just in time to see a Great Horned Owl fly over the trail and up into a tree deep in the woods.  A little further on, I saw a hummingbird land on the trail, stop to peck at something and then fly up and away.

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Walking through Big Rock Garden, I saw a rabbit and other living things.

The solitary Sierra redwood tree:

Orange rhododendron blooms that reminded me of the orange roses that Robin and Roger saw in Arcata:

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Along the trail, I encountered a classroom of small children from the nearby elementary school walking to Big Rock Garden with their teacher and their teacher's aide.  Closer to the top of the hill, there was a small group of high school boys with disabilities walking with their teacher in the direction of Big Rock Garden.  On my way down the hill, I stopped to talk with a woman from my neighborhood who frequently walks through the woods.  For the most part, I didn't see other people.  The woods were filled with birdsong.

"Una de las canciones mas sinceras y tristes que escribió John Lennon"

"Una de las canciones mas sinceras y tristes que escribió John Lennon."

From the YouTube channel of Gibran Leal.

Inspired by Joared's post today.

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Yesterday I stopped by the public library to pick up the audio book for Last Chance Texaco, read by the author, Rickie Lee Jones. I read the book last week and wanted to hear it in Rickie Lee Jones' voice. I put the CD in my car player before I drove away from the library. When I was almost home, I decided to keep driving for at least the duration of the first of the thirteen CDs. I drove east along the south shore of Lake Whatcom and 35 minutes later stopped at Twin Sisters Viewpoint on Highway 9 where I took these photos:

Thirty minutes later I was in the town of Nooksack, as far north as I would go that day, just a few miles from the U.S / British Columbia border. Twenty-five minutes later I was home, having listened to all of the first CD and then listening to the first part of the book a second time. This is a view from the parking lot of my condominium, looking into the sky to the north, when I arrived home.

If you look closely at the middle of this photo from my porch you can see the tip of one of the Twin Sisters peeking over the hills to the east:

It was an emotional journey through the past and the present, listening to the stories from the life of Rickie Lee Jones along some of her songs, on an extraordinarily beautiful May afternoon in a spring that has been frequently cold and overcast but not often raining,

Polly and I went to the circus

Polly got hit with a rolling pin
We got even with the circus
We bought tickets but we didn't go in...

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On my way home, I stopped at Big Rock Garden for an hour walk.  I walked through the garden and then up to the top of the hill where there is a bench and a view of the snow-covered Canadian Cascades: 

Look for the snowy peaks in the distance, near the middle of the photo: 

An eventful day.

Some but not all of the things I think about when I am walking in the woods wearing a mask

A friend who has been learning to speak Spanish for some time and making good progress sent me a link to Lydia Machova's TED talk about people who have the ability to learn multiple languages.  For the first time in my life, I am trying to learn Spanish with my heart instead of my mind.  I even said to another friend a few months ago, "What's different this time is that I am having fun!  There is no teacher, no pressure.  I am not being graded."  I am not paying anyone any money.  I'm fascinated by the idea that each polyglot she spoke with learned in their own unique way, but all of them approached a new language with a sense of delight and curiosity and playfulness.  They learned multiple languages on their own quirky terms.

It has occurred to me that what she says about learning language can apply to learning anything.  I've been making progress in playing my autoharp, too.  Something has shifted.  Something has changed.  Something has opened up.

While I was out walking, I picked up two books from a free book-sharing stand.

I've read Lucy Grealy's book before but was struck by the book cover in this time of masks and feel compelled to read it again.  Alan Lew was mentioned by Stephen Levine in a book I just re-read, Unattended Sorrow.  Flipping through One God Clapping as I walked along, I was started to see that Alan Lew lived in Gualala, California, the unincorporated town where my parents lived overlooking the ocean near the Gualala River from 1974 until my mother's death in 1994. 

While I walk, I often think about what I would like to post on my blog.  Lately, I haven't been able to find a focus.  There is so much I want to say, but I can't find a way to make my thoughts hold together.

This song by Bob Dylan came to mind and I thought about my complicated mother who died in 1994.  I realized that, this week, while out walking in the woods I have stopped to talk with three women I know who are my age and who don't have children.

Lines from Bob Dylan songs are always playing in my mind as I walk, "... Lies that life is black and white, spoke through my skull ..." (from "My Back Pages")

Approaching Big Rock Garden, I had heard the sound of what I thought might be an owl.  I hear it calling almost every time I walk in that part of the woods.  Up ahead was a couple with binoculars looking up.  It turned out that they were seeing an owlet.

In the next tree was an adult Barred Owl, vocalizing every so often.  A mother and her three young sons stopped to see the owl.  We all kept our distance from each other and gazed upward and talked a little bit.

I continued on to just beyond the eastern edge of the woods, coming to an elementary school surrounded by a hurricane fence.  A rabbit was leaving the school grounds.

Before going back into the woods, I walked down a short trail that features a wooden bench with a fine view of Lake Whatcom.  When I was married, I lived just down the street from the bench.  The old house had a magnificent view of Lake Whatcom.  There was nothing but woods for several miles behind our house.  That was a long time ago. 

I was ready for the last part of my 2-hour loop walk, ready to visit Big Rock Garden and was thinking about a rock in Big Rock Garden with a piece that fell out of it.  See the center of the photo.

I had placed the piece from the rock in the center of a concrete slab nearby a few days ago.  Someone used the piece to make a stack of rocks.  I picked up some cones and made a hexagram, with the intention of going home to see which hexagram I had formed.

It was Hexagram 8 -- Holding Together:

What is required is that we unite with others, in order that all may complement and aid one another through holding together.  But such holding together calls for a central figure around whom other persons may unite.  To become a center of influence holding people together is a grave matter and fraught with great responsibility.  It requires greatness of spirit, consistency and strength. (p. 36 of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching)

Not far from this someone had created:

The six sticks make Hexagram 1 -- The Creative:

When an individual draws this oracle, it means that success will come to him from the primal depths of the universe and that everything depends upon his seeking his happiness and that of others in one way only, that is, by perseverance in what is right (p. 4)

I remember this song:

"... Peace will come With tranquility and splendor on the wheels of fire ..."

(Bob Dylan, lyrics from the 1978 album titled "Street Legal")

Come walk with me / Walkin' down the line

After having no energy for walking for most of this social distancing time, the beautiful weather in the last few days encouraged me to begin my spring and early summer pattern of walking up to the top of the hill where I live and home again.  On the first day I went without face covering but realized that without face covering, I couldn't risk foot trails or the narrow under-the-road tunnel.  Bellingham is a walking and biking town with access to a network of trails in every neighborhood.  Throughout my walk I saw people of all ages, about half of them wearing face coverings, everyone maintaining social distance, many on bikes, many with dogs.  There was an abundance of smiling and waving and hellos.

Walking up the street through my neighborhood I saw this.

Here's a view of downtown Bellingham from part way up the hill.  What look like mountains to the west are islands in the Salish Sea.

At the highest point on the hill I can see the Canadian Cascades.

Walking out of Northridge Park into the hillside neighborhood for a block or so, there is an unobstructed view of the Canadian Cascades.

Walking back down the hill.

Crossing the street because I am not wearing face covering and the under-the-road tunnel is narrow.

The under-the-road tunnel.

Down the hill.

I stop, assuming that Big Rock Garden is closed, but it isn't.

The photo above shows a solitary redwood tree that is dear to me.

From this vantage point on our hill, we can see the next hill to the south which is where Western Washington University is located.  When I walked home down this street on Sunday, the air was so clear that the mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula could be seen in exquisite detail, but I didn't take my camera for that walk.

Almost home.

My door is to the left.

Later.  Oboe sleeping in the sunshine on my porch.

Mandala #47 finished.  

Ready to begin Mandala #48.

Today just before 6 p.m. in 2008 was the last time I saw R before he died.  In those last few days before R died, I felt that June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash were close by in spirit, understanding fully what I was experiencing and giving me courage. 

Sending love near and far.