Josephine's mandalas: #18 of 21

1/18/91

Gulf War

U.S.
Iraq
Kuwait
Baghdad
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Israel
Tel Aviv
Jerusalem

(click on image for additional details)

am's notes:  On January 18, 1991, Iraq launched SCUD missiles on Israel. The U.S. deployed Patriot missiles to Israel and Saudi Arabia.  See Gulf War link above for additional context for this mandala.

This process of sharing my mother's mandalas is transformative. Perhaps it is time to begin to make some mandalas of my own.  I do have two drawings (one from 1999 and one from 2007) that would be my mandala #1 and #2. They were inspired by a book about healing that I bought in 1999 during a time of turmoil and little inner peace in my life.

It has just occurred to me that I made my first mandala in 1999 in a room in a motel on the north end of Arcata, California, just off of Highway 1 and that I also stayed in Gualala during that time and worked on the exercises in the book there as well.  

As the end of 1999 approached, I had been seriously thinking about moving to Humboldt County, and I stayed there for the most part from late September to the end of October, also spending about a week in Gualala in Mendocino County, which was another place I thought I might like to live. The events leading to my being in a motel room in Arcata are coming back to me now.  

In spring of 1998, I had found myself feeling so distraught that I left my work station at the Catholic hospital where I was employed as a transcriptionist, and I went to talk with a social worker who was employed in Pastoral Care as a chaplain.  She was a Roman Catholic nun from the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.After talking with her, I went to the non-denominational hospital chapel (with its wooden altar built by a fine woodworker who identified as both Jewish and atheist) and sat quietly in meditation until I was able to return to my work station. As a result of leaving my work station without letting anyone know where I had gone, I was sharply reprimanded and sent for mandatory counseling through the hospital's employee assistance program and from there I was referred to a Gestalt therapist in Bellingham.  Now I'm wondering if that therapist was the one who suggested the book to me. 

Since the spring of 1998, I had been working with that therapist on emotional issues after the suicide of a former boyfriend (we were together briefly in our early 20s) on his 50th birthday in December of 1997 in Bellingham and also because of my increasingly strained and demoralizing relationship with my father after my mother's death and my distress in connection with my Richard's rapid descent into late stage alcoholism which had involved prison time.  I had distanced myself from Richard for my own safety, but he remained a constant presence in my psyche.   

As a result of living with Richard during the first five months after his return from Vietnam in 1970 and as a result of a terrifying episode while talking with him over the phone on Veterans Day 1989 during the Gulf War, as well as my anguish in response to the Gulf War,  it became increasingly clear that I was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.  

In the spring of 1999, in a futile attempt to sort out the mess that my life had become, I abruptly quit my job at the hospital and cashed out my IRA that I had been building up for 14 years.  I thought that a new career or moving back to California, specifically Humboldt County, might be the answer.  Spending a month in Humboldt County seemed like a good idea.  Certainly the solace of the ocean and the redwoods would heal me.  

Because I found myself in severe emotional distress despite being in one of my favorite places on the earth, I went to the hospital in Eureka and talked with a hospital chaplain who referred me to a counselor in Arcata who helped me during that month in which I realized that I was in no shape to move alone to Humboldt County.  

Just now, I found my copy of the book that prompted me to make my first mandala.  My notes in the book show that I bought The Mythic Path, by David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner, in July of 1999 and that I may have finished the exercises in January of 2000.  The last page that I dated was January 23, 2000.  In December of 1999, against my better judgment, I had impulsively contacted Richard in California and was shocked to learn that he had been diagnosed with oat cell carcinoma in his neck and throat and had undergone drastic surgery at Stanford University Hospital.  To my dismay, there was no word from him again until September 2001 when he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and I flew to California to visit with him at his parents' home, where he was living at the time.  In spring of 2002, his cancer went into remission, and he began drinking heavily and using drugs again. Again, for my own safety, I had to keep my distance from him.    

In 2007, in a time of increasing inner turmoil and intermittent severe migraine headaches, close to a year before my Richard died, I went through the exercises in the book again and made a second mandala. With a little research, I see that I was moved by this poem at about the same time.  

Now in 2014, I can say that my daily experience contains close to an equal measure of inner peace and inner turmoil.  The yin-yang symbol has meaning for me.  Oneness.  The balance of darkness and light. Dynamic.  Alive.  

For so much of my life, I had very little sense of having any inner peace and only experienced unceasing inner turmoil.  Right now I'm wondering how life was for my mother.  What was the balance for her? I don't think she found the peace she sought, but she did continue her creative output in a way that has eluded me since the First Gulf War.  

The years between 1980 and 1989 resulted in nearly 200 drawings and paintings coming through me.  What a shock to do the math and see that 25 years have gone by since that unprecedented period of creativity.  I will be 65 years old in October.   

Then I remembered this:

"From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things.  When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs.  But all I have done before the age of 70 is not worth bothering with.  At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress.  At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist.  At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before.  To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age.  I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign myself "The Old Man Mad About Drawing."

-- Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)

Since December 2006, blogging has been keeping my creative energy alive, although it has resulted in only a few drawings and paintings.  Here are my top 10 blog labels:

• Bob Dylan (73)
• gouache (46)
• Arches watercolor paper (41)
• 42 years: a book of changes (39)
• watercolor (38)
• Appleworks6 "Painting" (22)
• my mother (19)
• ocean (18)
• George Harrison (16)
• mandala series (16)
• gratitude (13)
• gouache and watercolor (12)
• let them speak for themselves (12)
• thomas merton (11)
• Georgia O'Keeffe (10)
• John Muir (10)
• Martin Luther King Jr (10)
• Vincent Van Gogh (10)
• life drawing (10)
• walking (10)

   Here are the last twenty of a long long list of labels identified with a single post: 

• wood s lot (1)
• working at home (1)
• working or playing or something else?(1)
• works in progress (1)
• writing (1)
• x = x (1)
• yahi (1)
• yana (1)
• year of the horse (1)
• years (1)
• yikes (1)
• yoga teacher training (1)
• yogascittavrttinirodhah (1)
• you can't catch death (1)
• young poets (1)
• yusef komunyakaa (1)
• zen (1)
• βιος (1)
• 和平 (1)
• 鲍勃•迪伦 (1)

Here is one of the first bloggers who found my blog and commented. I've been hoping she would post on her blog again.  She wrote the poem that meant so much to me in 2007.  Her posts are worth waiting for.  Look back through her archives for "pictures, poems and other souvenirs and artifacts."

Thank you to anyone who read this far.  I didn't expect to write so much when I sat down 6 hours ago. 

Thank you to my mother for giving me a perspective on keeping the creative process alive in times of turmoil.  

Porch meditation:  Summer-blooming Amaryllis

Josephine's mandalas: #6 of 21

1/31/90

Twinkle Twinkle, little cell .....
You've done your work and done it well
When I die, you'll drift to sea ......
And wait there for another me ..... (-:

(click on the image for additional details)

This mandala was made on a Wednesday, within 24 hours of the previous one.

Up until the last year of her life, my mother had planned to be cremated and have her ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. My recollection is that she had made arrangements with the Neptune Society.  This was a sore point with my father. He wanted her ashes to be buried alongside his ashes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his mother and father and younger brother were buried. Almost exactly a year before she died, she gave in to his wishes and changed the details of her will.

It has always seemed to me that her freed spirit remained in and around Gualala. Three days after she died, a Black Phoebe appeared on the ocean side of my parents' home. I had never consciously seen a Black Phoebe before. It sat on the porch railing and peered at me as I stood near the door to the porch, talking on the phone with one of my older cousins who had been close to my mother. The Black Phoebe remained for sometime, seeming to be calling to us in the house:



Twice when I returned to Gualala for visits after my father had sold their home and moved to Bellingham, I had encounters with a Black Phoebe. Both times I was out walking and felt greeted by a Black Phoebe who stood on the soft dirt path and looked at me in what I perceived to be a friendly and fearless manner. Black Phoebes are dear to me now.

I like the single bright red star and the shimmering energy of this mandala with its radiating words.

After both of my parents had died I had an unexpected dream of seeing them joyfully reunited on the sloping hillside outside their home in Gualala. In the dream image, they were free of the differences that had kept them at odds with each other -- at least during many of the years I observed of their 46 years of marriage. They seemed to truly love each other in my dream.

This is what their home looked like in 1974 before more houses were built on their street. My Dad is looking south out of the living room window. My impression is that this was the happiest time in their lives. Their three daughters were grown. My father had retired and enjoyed gardening and woodcarving. My mother loved their new life in Gualala and had an abundance of creative energy. As always, she was never without a book to read.


My mother is sitting just to the south of house.

My father did the finish work on the addition to
their house which included a garage, a master
bedroom and an art room for my mother.

My mother took the paintings she had done in the
early 1960s and hung them up in the garage.


I am guessing that this photo was taken in 1974.

It just occurred to me that, in these photos, my mother 

is 7 years younger than I am now. I am 9 years

younger than my mother was when she made her

mandalas. My mother's mother died when my

mother was 20, and her father died when she was

29. She didn't have her parents for as long I 

did. 

It is also occurring to me that looking at my mother's 

mandalas is bringing thoughts of my father and of

my parents' marriage to my mind.

Thanks to whiskey river for this reminder.

Josephine's mandalas: #5 of 21

1/30/90
      .

   .  .  .
      .

ORION
GLORIFIED
FOREVER
OR BITING
AROUND AND
AROUND AND
AROUND ...

After my mother died without warning of a massive heart attack on December 3, 1994, on the day before her 46th wedding anniversary, I found one of her books of poetry bookmarked at a poem by Kenneth Rexroth.  The poem had been written to his daughter.   The book was sitting in a prominent place, in what appeared to be a deliberate manner.  Underlined was:

Believe in Orion.  Believe
In the night, the moon, the crowded
Earth.  Believe in Christmas and
Birthdays and Easter rabbits.
Believe in all those fugitive
Compounds of nature, all doomed
to waste away and go out.
Always be true to these things.
They are all there is.  Never
give up this savage religion
For the blood-drenched civilized
Abstractions of the rascals
Who live by killing you and me.

(from "A Sword in a Cloud of Light")

("Boy with Amaryllis and Orion," a track-pad drawing by am, from the winter of 2008)

I'm looking for patterns in the dating of my mother's mandalas.  She made the first two of her mandalas on consecutive Wednesdays and the other two on a seemingly random Thursday and a Tuesday.  I wonder what kind of mood prompted them or what events in her life.  I can't remember exactly when it was that she showed her mandalas to me, but I am fairly sure that the series was complete when I first saw them. I understand that she showed them to my sisters, too. It isn't likely that she showed them to my father because he was opposed to her interest in Judaism. After he expressed his disapproval, she continued celebrating Jewish holidays in secret and found solace in the seasons of the Jewish calendar.

It seems that when she made this mandala, she was acknowledging and pondering paradox.

My mother loved the night sky.  Gualala is a coastal town which is a 3-1/2 hour drive north of San Francisco -- a splendid place for night sky viewing.  That is one of the few places I have been where the stars and the Milky Way can be seen as our ancestors must have seen them. With nothing blocking her view of the sky from the zenith to the western horizon, she could study the moon and stars and constellations and planets and befriend them.  The last time I saw my mother she told me in a matter of fact way that she had no friends.  "That's just the way it is," she said.  But when she died, her friends grieved deeply.

Even though Bellingham is a small town, the city lights are bright enough that night sky viewing is limited -- even when the frequent cloud cover lifts.  Only the brightest stars are visible here.  The clearest night sky here doesn't come close to the brilliance of the night sky in Gualala.

On one visit to Bellingham many years ago, my mother was drawn to a pretty little yellow house up above a busy street that runs between where I live and downtown Bellingham.  She said, "I'm going to live in that yellow house someday."  With her red hair and freckles, she didn't mind cloudy or rainy days, but I know that she would have missed seeing the stars if she had moved here.

After about a week of 80 degree weather, things are back to normal here in the coastal Pacific Northwest with a light rain that has been falling all day today.  It wouldn't be unusual if it cleared up by evening. It's always startling to see the first leaves falling in late July.

I'd like to take a walk but am hesitating due to the rare occurrence of thunder and lightning that is predicted.

Before dawn on the day that my mother died, Orion was setting.  It was just above the horizon in the western sky.  My star book says of those pre-dawn hours , "Don't search for the Milky Way:  it is too close to the horizon to be seen well."

Gualala memories / Robinson Reef view

Just came across this video.  After my sisters and I grew up, my parents had a house in Gualala, California, for 25 years until my mother's death in 1994.  The first part of the video shows where I used to walk in Gualala Point Regional Park.  It was about a 3-mile walk south from my parent's house to Gualala Beach.  I would see grey whales, pelicans, sea lions, wild flowers, ice plant, crows and ravens, phoebes, rabbits, squirrels, and lizards. Looking at the video footage reminded me how much love I still feel for that landscape and how much I enjoyed visiting with my parents in those years.  I haven't been there since September of 2001.

My sister brought this to my attention:



That is the lot in front of the house my parents used to own.  A two-story house would likely block the splendid view from that small one-story house.  Hard to imagine that someone would buy a lot and build a house that would block the view of their close neighbors in an isolated and sparsely populated coastside community.

On the other hand, that lot was for sale when my parents bought their home in 1970.  Many people must have thought twice about building in front of someone else under those circumstances.

GRATITUDE AT 6:18 A.M.

Some more things I found while sorting through my storage unit:

Two photographs of the view from my parents' living room during their retirement years when they lived in Gualala, California. My middle sister gave these framed photos to me many years ago. After my parents had both died, I put the photos in my storage unit. Now I'm ready to look at these morning and evening views again.

and this from a magazine clipping:

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions and kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread

only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye
(page 35, Ions Noetic Sciences Review, April-July 1999)

and this, marked by my mother in a book (MIND IN THE WATERS) she sent to me for Christmas in 1975:

"So many things fail to interest us, simply because they don’t find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do then is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a place in it at the same time."

José Ortega y Gasset