"Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts. I wasn’t sure whether I was too soon or too late for the purple lupine which can be so spectacular in these headlands, but milkmaids were growing on the shady side of the road on the way to the trail, and they recalled the hillsides of my childhood that first bloomed every year with an extravagance of these white flowers. Black butterflies fluttered around me, tossed along by wind and wings, and they called up another era of my past. Moving on foot seems to make it easier to move in time; the mind wanders from plans to recollections to observations."
I'm grateful to have been born into and grown up experiencing the landscape of California. It brought a joy that is still with me all these years since I left, never imagining that I would spend the rest of my life living a thousand miles to the north in Western Washington which has its own beauty but is not my first love. Eastern Washington does look much the way coastal California did when I was young but only for part of the year, and the Cascade Mountains separate Western and Eastern Washington. Eastern Washington has snow in the winter and extreme heat in the summer, unlike the coastal region of Northern California where I grew up, never far from the Pacific Ocean. I continue have dreams where I rejoice that I am living near the Pacific Ocean.
A first cousin who lives in Florida sent me a copy of The Seed Keeper, which takes place where our first-generation American grandfather was born in 1871 in Minnesota of Norwegian immigrants, in the wake of the Sioux Uprising of 1962 and subsequent hangings of 38 Dakota men.
These two books explore complexities of history, present-day life, and relationships within the vast human family. They offer no easy answers. Both books celebrate the many faces of love. In each book, the expressive beauty of the natural world is ever present to be experienced amidst interpersonal, social, political and spiritual unrest.
and
Beyond The Lion Gate was written by my blog friend, Morelle Smith who lives in Scotland. I've bought several of her books over the years and continue to find the writing on her blog and otherwise, whether poetry or prose or novel or book review or essay, to be compelling. The photos on her blog from her travels and from Scotland are sublime.
Last night I dreamed I looked in the mirror and saw Amelia Earhart. In 1979, I was fortunate to see and hear Joni Mitchell perform this song in Vancouver, B.C.
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#23
23 so far in a series of 53 tiny mandalas drawn with my non-dominant left hand. When I was working on #23, I was feeling angry and sad and scared. Something shifted in the process of drawing #23. Something prompted me to fill the entire picture plane but once I had done that there was still no resolution. When I woke up yesterday morning, I knew I needed to cut the mandala out and create an open space, free of anger, sadness and fear, while still honoring those emotions. The Chinese character in the center is the word "hand."
Barbara Earl Thomas has been an inspiration to me since I first learned about her on the cover of a Real Change newspaper and found that if I traveled south about 100 miles, I could see her art work in person.
A few days ago, a Bellingham friend texted me a photo of art work by Derrick Adams from an exhibit at the Henry Gallery on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. She and her husband had driven a friend 90 miles to the UW Medical Center for a procedure and, while waiting for the procedure to be over, had walked over to the Henry Gallery to see what they could see.
Immediately after receiving the text, I went to the Henry Gallery website and was rewarded with the information that the exhibit featured both Derrick Adams and Barbara Earl Thomas, which led me to the above video and immense gratitude for the many unexpected gifts that come when needed.
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I'm going forward into 2022 with the intent of drawing the circle for each new mandala with my right hand using a colored pencil but completing the rest of the mandala with a 6B pencil using my left hand.
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Today when I talked again with the friend whose random visit to the Henry Gallery with her husband led me forward to Barbara Earl Thomas, she told me a story about having had a strong desire some years ago to hear Beethoven's Third Symphony in a concert hall, She had taken a class at UC Davis in 1969, taught by John Cage, in which the students were asked to color the musical score of Beethoven's Third Symphony, using a different color for each musical instrument. John Cage knew the symphony by heart and could easily tell if a student had actually listened closely to the entire symphony. My friend said that in doing the assignment, she found that she was able to learn the symphony by heart.
She envisioned that the symphony might be performed in New York City or Boston and was willing to travel that far but found that it was not being performed, within her timeframe, in either place. She searched the internet and found nowhere that it was being performed.
Some time passed. One day she went out to her mailbox and found a flyer for the Bellingham Festival of Music, announcing that Beethoven's Third Symphony was going to be performed at the Western Washington University concert hall right here in Bellingham.
Oh let your little light shine Let your little light shine Shine on Wall Street and Vegas Place your bets Shine on the fishermen With nothing in their nets Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas Shine on our Frankenstein technologies Shine on science With its tunnel vision Shine on fertile farmland Buried under subdivisions
Let your little light shine Let your little light shine Shine on the dazzling darkness That restores us in deep sleep Shine on what we throw away And what we keep
Shine on Reverend Pearson Who threw away The vain old God kept Dickens and Rembrandt and Beethoven And fresh plowed sod Shine on good earth, good air, good water And a safe place For kids to play Shine on bombs exploding Half a mile away
Let your little light shine Let your little light shine Shine on world-wide traffic jams Honking day and night Shine on another asshole Passing on the right! Shine on the red light runners Busy talking on their cell phones Shine on the Catholic Church And the prisons that it owns Shine on all the Churches They all love less and less Shine on a hopeful girl In a dreamy dress
Let your little light shine Let your little light shine Shine on good humor Shine on good will Shine on lousy leadership Licensed to kill Shine on dying soldiers In patriotic pain Shine on mass destruction In some God's name! Shine on the pioneers Those seekers of mental health Craving simplicity They traveled inward Past themselves... May all their little lights shine
Sitting inside with the air cleaner on, along with an air conditioner, what came to mind was Joni Mitchell's song that I first heard in April 1970 when I was 20 years old. Turning to YouTube, I found this cover that I love, posted in the last few days.
The unhealthy air due to fires is teaching me to appreciate being able to go outside and breathe fresh air -- one of the simple joys of life that is not available for the time being.
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PM2.5
x3
PM2.5 concentrationin Bellingham air is currently 3 times aboveWHO exposure recommendation.
This is an improvement from yesterday's 9 times above but fire season is not over and continues to jeopardize the health of countless sentient beings throughout the world.
It is occurring to me that when I left the San Francisco Bay Area late in the summer of 1973, there were days when the air quality was not all that different from what I am experiencing today. In those days, the source of the pollution was not smoke from fires. Much of the air pollution from 1974 is gone from the west coast of the United States, but now we are dealing with a form of unhealthy air that is beyond control and is world-wide, affecting environments where other forms of compromised air are minimal or non-existent.
Living in a world where smoke-free air cannot be promised is sobering, to say the least. So much that can no longer be taken for granted.
Is it ever a good idea to take something or anything for granted?
This early morning I suddenly remembered a poem I first read when I was 18 or 19 years old, at which time I had determined that I was decidedly not religious. From that poem I understood that one does not need to be a religious person to live gratefully and fully in the presence of beauty. My desire all those years ago was to become an artist.
I remember reading this that Hokusai wrote when he was about the same age I am now. It was early in my blogging days, when I was 57 years old, that I came across that quote. Although I had experienced an extraordinary amount of creative energy for art work and poetry during the 1980s and early 1990s, I could no longer find it in me after the abrupt death of my mother in December 1994. There were brief periods where I thought the energy for art work had returned.
It is occurring to me today that my creative energy was totally channeled into blogging until September 2014 when something prompted me to do what my mother had done when she was about the age I was in 2014. Inspired by Carl Jung, my mother began a series of mandalas.
This morning, as I look at my almost-finished mandala, #62 in a series, I have found an expanded version of that quote by Hokusai and an unexpected gratitude to my mother for inspiring in me a love of art and books and the beauty of the world:
"From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was fifty I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the age of seventy is not worth bothering with. At seventy-five I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am eighty you will see real progress. At ninety I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At one hundred, 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."
That Nova was a moderate star like our good sun; it stored no doubt a little more than it spent Of heat and energy until the increasing tension came to the trigger-point Of a new chemistry; then what was already flaming found a new manner of flaming ten-thousandfold More brightly for a brief time; what was a pin-point fleck on a sensitive plate at the great telescope's Eye-piece now shouts down the steep night to the naked eye, a nine-day super-star.
It is likely our moderate Father the sun will some time put off his nature for a similar glory. The earth would share it; these tall Green trees would become a moment's torches and vanish, the oceans would explode into invisible steam, The ships and the great whales fall through them like flaming meteors into the emptied abysm, the six mile Hollows of the Pacific sea-bed might smoke for a moment. Then the earth would be like the pale proud moon, Nothing but vitrified sand and rock would be left on earth. This is a probable death-passion For the sun's planets; we have no knowledge to assure us it may not happen at any moment of time.
Meanwhile the sun shines wisely and warm, trees flutter green in the wind, girls take their clothes off To bathe in the cold ocean or to hunt love; they stand laughing in the white foam, they have beautiful Shoulders and thighs, they are beautiful animals, all life is beautiful. We cannot be sure of life for one moment; We can, by force and self-discipline, by many refusals and a few assertions, in the teeth of fortune assure ourselves Freedom and integrity in life or integrity in death. And we know that the enormous invulnerable beauty of things Is the face of God, to live gladly in its presence, and die without grief or fear knowing it survives us.
-- (John) Robinson Jeffers, (1887-1962), Poet, writer; born in Pittsburgh, Pa. He attended six colleges and universities in Europe and America, studying medicine and forestry among other subjects.
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Painting Dream (2000 -- 50 years old)
No one can paint this desire.
No one can paint this forgiveness.
Her hand drawing his.
His hand drawing hers.
They carry silence between them
as if it were a newborn child.
In my dream we were an old man and an old woman walking by the ocean.
Who painted this desire?
Who painted this forgiveness?
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I remember looking up from drawing and hearing my mother praising me for this drawing of a horse I made when I was 5 years old. I am grateful that she saved it.
A few days ago, a friend texted me a photo of Joni Mitchell while I was taking a long walk with another friend. My startled first thought was that Joni Mitchell had died. I looked up and took this photo:
Thank goodness my first thought was wrong. It turns out that my friend had been watching a documentary about Joni Mitchell, thought of me, and took a photograph from a paused DVD image. Last night I went to sleep at around 6:30 and woke up at around 1:30, instead of my usual 3 a.m. waking time. Although I used to need up to 10 hours of sleep every night, my sleep pattern has shifted to 7 hours at night, more or less, with a 1- to 2-hour nap during the day. I wake rested both times. I fall asleep easily both times. I dream both at night and during naps. My bedtime varies. It all works out.
Wide awake so early this morning, I decided to work on my daily Spanish lessons on Duolingo. When I finished them, I went to YouTube to see what had come up for viewing and was rewarded with this cover version of "Come In From The Cold."
Then what caught my attention was that the documentary my friend had watched was in the sidebar, with Spanish subtitles! Double synchronicity!
" ... Oh y todo que siempre quisimos solo era entrar desde el frio ..."
Just as I love when women perform their interpretations of songs written by Bob Dylan, I love when men interpret Joni Mitchell's songs from their perspective.
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Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. How grateful I am to have had their music enriching my life since I was a teenager, reminding me over and over again that there are no easy answers and to live fully in that context.
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... I am a lonely painter. I live in a box of paints ... (Joni Mitchell lyrics from "A Case of You")
"... Those crazy crows always making a commotion ..." (from "This Place," by Joni Mitchell)
Back in 1967, as we became friends while attending University of California at Irvine, Deven introduced me to the music of Joni Mitchell. "This Place," released in 2007, is a good accompaniment to the mandala for Deven.
Deven and her beloved Kevin (who also created mandalas) making music in the 1980s, and that's their dog, Star:
A few days ago, I started re-reading a book written by a Zen teacher with Jewish roots. He had visited a Trappist Monastery and was startled by the anger and violence that appeared along with joy and wonder in the Psalms that were sung on a daily basis. He talked with the monks about the anger and violence and listened to their perspective that human emotions find healing through expression. He decided to investigate the Psalms for himself (just as Joni Mitchell investigated for herself the story of Job and that particular definition of "God").
Throughout these translations that came of his investigation, Norman Fischer replaces the word "God" with the word "you." His perspective is that of a Zen teacher encountering life and death in all its fullness and mystery and sorrow and joy and intimacy.
Here is what he says about the "you" that he addresses in his own poetry and (I am extrapolating) in his translation of the Psalms:
"The person to whom my poems actually seemed to be addressed was someone much more silent and much more profoundly receptive than any human being could possibly be. This person wasn't a person at all. It was nobody, nothing, and it wasn't anywhere or at any time. It was even beyond meaning. So poetry is important to me not because it gives me a chance to express myself, or to communicate, but because it is an encounter with that which is both so close to me that I can't see it and so far away I can never reach it. Poetry evokes the unknowable."
Journeys bring power and love
back into you. If you
can't go somewhere,
move in the passageways of the self.
They are like shafts of light,
always changing, and you change
when you explore them.
(Djalal Ad-Din Rumi)
Last Sunday, I drove nearly the entire length of the state of Washington to meet with a friend from childhood and her husband of at least 40 years (whom I had not met before) and their shy sweet Bernese Mountain Dog. In order to adopt a puppy, they had driven up from their home in a small community which is located high in the mountains of southeastern California. We met in Carson, Washington, a tiny town located on the Columbia River gorge.
My old friend and I met when we were 12 or 13 years old. We used to walk to junior high school together. In high school, we took long walks from our homes in suburban Redwood City, California, into the beautiful grassy hills to the east of Redwood City. We walked there in the days before Highway 280 cut through those rolling hills, before the hills were filled to the brim with houses, while the Vietnam War was still raging. We were not part of the "in crowd." We were both odd and eccentric and enjoyed each other's company. My family went to church. Her family didn't. I remember the time she brought me to a Buddhist festival in Palo Alto. We belonged to a small loosely connected group of young women who lived within walking distance of each other and went to the same high school. Below is a photo of three of us. If my memory serves me well, the photo was probably taken at the 16th birthday gathering for my old friend. That would have been in 1965. We are all wearing "Beatle" hats. Her father was a psychiatrist. Their home was filled with books.
Here are the senior yearbook photos of my friend and me. Neither of us enjoy being in front of a camera:
My parents chose that photo of me because they paid for the photos. I'd love to see the rest of photos and see what was not chosen by them.
After we graduated from high school in 1967, one of the things my friend did was become a surfer, and she spent weekends surfing in Santa Cruz. Another thing she did was go to Stanford University, following the tradition of both of her parents. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in English Literature, she went to law school and had a long career as a lawyer. Her husband was a conscientious objector and, as a result of his alternative service in a library which had early computers, he had a long career in the field of computers.
In 1967, I left Redwood City to attend the University of California at Irvine, studying Art and English Literature. My friend and I kept in touch. She visited Irvine. I visited her at Stanford. It was the time of protests against the Vietnam War. The man she loved achieved conscientious objector status. The man I loved was drafted in April of 1969. He was a high school dropout and a surfer. We considered going to Canada. He met with draft counselors in Oakland on the day before he went to Vietnam but felt sure that he would not be granted conscientious objector status. He did not want to go to prison (although he ended up in prison years later for drug and alcohol-related offenses). He did not want to go to Canada. He made the fateful decision to go to Vietnam, serving as a helicopter mechanic, returning as a drug-addicted war-haunted man in December of 1970. We lived together for nearly 5 months. We separated in the first weeks of May 1971 after a terrifying episode where the violence of the war that haunted him was directed at me.
In 1973, in an attempt to go on with my life, I left California. My friend and I gradually lost touch with each other, although I did visit her at her law office in the early 1980s, and she contacted me
in the early 1990s.
A year ago, during the December holidays, she wrote a note letting me know that she and her husband had moved from the San Francisco Peninsula to a remote place in the Sierras.
That note led to our respective journeys to Carson, WA.
What got me started on this post was reading this article about Daniel Berrigan who died yesterday at age 94.
You have to struggle to stay alive and be of use as long as you can. (Daniel Berrigan) I've also been listening to George Harrison's final album and wanted to share these thoughts from George Harrison:
Lyrics from "Brainwashed":
The soul does not love. It is love itself.
It does not exist. It is existence itself.
It does not know. It is knowledge itself. How to Know God, page 130
And then I've also been meaning to share Joni Mitchell singing "God Must Be A Boogie Man."
The phrasing of the first two lines of "This Place," written by Joni Mitchell in 2007, has sounded hauntingly familiar to me for the last few days when I have listened to it while driving in my car. This afternoon I suddenly realized that it has echoes of the first two lines of "Spirit on the Water," written by Bob Dylan in 2006:
How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be? -- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Welcome to "37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)".
The photograph currently at the top of my blog was taken from my porch before sunrise on October 29, 2023.
"OLD GIRL OF THE NORTH COUNTRY" (the earliest name for my blog -- http://oldgirlfromthenorthcountry.blogspot.com
) came to life in early December of 2006 so that I could post a 42-year retrospective of my paintings and drawings and through that action, create a new relationship with the day the man I loved returned from Vietnam in December 1970. For a while (sometime after spring of 2008, which is when he died) my blog was "TALKING 37TH DREAM WITH RAINBOW (RUMORS OF PEACE)". For a number of years, it's been "TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)." As of April 12, 2017 my blog was titled "37TH DREAM / TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE/LOOKING UP)". Somewhere along the way it became 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE).
To begin viewing the retrospective with narrative, scroll down to December 8, 2006, on this page:
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. -- Martin Buber (1878-1965)
It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is.
-- Robinson Jeffers
The true end of a war is the rebirth of life; the right to die peacefully in your own bed. The true end of war is the end of fear; the true end of war is the return of laughter.
-- Alfred Molano
Enjoy every sandwich -- Warren Zevon (1947-2003)
Not in God's wilds will you ever hear the sad moan, "All is vanity." No, we are paid a thousand times for all our toil, and after a single day spent outdoors in their atmosphere of strength and beauty, one could still say, should death come — even without any hope of another life — "Thank you for this most glorious gift!" and pass on.
-- John Muir (1838-1914)
Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do? Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well. Hugh Fennyman: How? Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.
