Damnation! / DamNation / Watching the River Flow / Roll on Columbia / All the little birds will come again

Coincidence?  My mother has been in my thoughts frequently since Mother's Day.  This morning I received an email from Bellingham's Mt. Baker Theater, announcing the showing of the film, "DamNation."

Google definition of "damnation":

1. (in Christian belief) condemnation to eternal punishment in hell.
2. Expressing anger or frustration.

My thoughts went back to when I was a toddler, and my mother was around 36 years old.  I remembered hearing the first words I can recall my mother saying.  She wasn't angry or frustrated with me (as far I could tell), but she was steamed up about something.  She was vacuuming our small apartment and cursing, "Damnation!  God damn it to hell!"

In one of my last conversations with her (when she was almost 78 years old) she told me that she was tired of being angry.  

Maybe my mother just needed to cry.

People disagreeing on all just about everything, yeah

Makes you stop and all wonder why
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
Who just couldn’t help but cry
Oh, this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow

(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Watching the River Flow."

The source is clear and bright,

the tributary streams flow through the darkness.

To be attached to things is an illusion:

To encounter the absolute is not yet enlightenment.

(Shih-T'ou)

P.S.  I'm giving some thought to a post inspired by The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob.  My name is am and I am a Dylanologist.  My guess is that only Dylanologists will be reading this book (-:

Coincidentally (or not) one of the Dylanologist websites left a comment (a clarification) on my totem pole post while I was in the process of reading The Dylanologists.  A comment from a Dylanologist website is a first for me. The only Dylanologist website I subscribe to is this one.

I take Bob Dylan at his word in his song "Mississippi":

Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinkin' fast
I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free
I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me.

P.P.S.  Another connection to my mother, revisited today:

"Although I didn't pick up all the details on the first watching, the second time I did notice many significant details I had missed the first time including the Scandinavian knitting pattern that my mother had used when she made a pillow for me many years ago":

Mad River Rising from daniel houghton on Vimeo.

"All the little birds will come again when winter ends ..."
(music by Michael Chorney and Anais Mitchell)

Swallow's Nest Mandala Revisited / "All The Little Birds"

This morning while reading at our local newspaper's website just before 7 a.m., I noticed this headline for an evening musical event.  For some reason -- unclear to me but significant in its outcome -- I clicked on the headline to read more.  These days I rarely go to any events in the evening because I go to bed very early so that I can wake up between 4 and 5 a.m. without needing an alarm clock and get 8 to 9-1/2 hours of sleep.  For that matter, I rarely go to live music events or public gatherings, preferring to spend my social time in walking and in meeting with friends daily at breakfast time.

There was something compelling about the intensity of the gaze of the young woman next to young man in the news article's photo, and the mention of "Child Ballads" drew me in further.  Next I clicked on the link to Anaïs Mitchell's website, while musing that she was likely named after Anaïs Nin. There I found myself moved by the fascinating shifting nature of the image on the cover of the album she had recorded with Jefferson Hammer.  Entering the website, I clicked on "Media" and went to her videos.  I scrolled down, and the words "Mad River Rising" caught my eye, as I had spent some time years ago near the Mad River in Humboldt County in Northern California.  What also caught my eye was the name "Daniel Houghton" as the director of the video and that the animation was done by students at Middlebury College in Vermont. On my mother's side of the family are people named Haughton who came from Ireland to Canada to New England, and I idly wondered if Daniel Houghton were a distant relative.  I also thought of bev and her new stringed instruments from Vermont.

This is a classic example of how I am drawn into the internet by chance clicks that lead me places I never expected to be -- where I feel things I never expected to feel, where things I never expected to heal can begin to heal through the creative efforts of others.

Before I left to meet with my friends, I had watched the first half of the video and found myself in tears but didn't want to be late for my friends.

Caught up in the stories of my friends, I forgot my tears until a few hours later when I returned home and finished watching the 13-minute video:



I didn't realize how much I had needed the relief of unexpected tears in these few days after the anniversary of my father's death in 2003 and the anniversary of yet another time that my Richard nearly died but was resuscitated in 2008.  He lived for another month -- just long enough for me to be able to visit with him in the ICU before he died in the afternoon of April 20, 2008.

Although I didn't pick up all the details on the first watching, the second time I did notice many significant details I had missed the first time including the Scandinavian knitting pattern that my mother had used when she made a pillow for me many years ago:

The pattern now seems to me to be of four little birds.

Here's the commentary for "Mad River Rising":



And footage of the Vermont flood of 1927:



Watching this little animated film today was healing for me on so many levels.  I take heart when I see what younger creative people are doing with their energy these days.  Although I won't be able to stay up late to hear Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hammer in person, I am grateful to have discovered them today through the magic of the internet.

(the photo at the top of the post came from a post of mine from 2010 called "Swallow's Nest Mandala.")