Oboe with me at my art and music table

The practice of Zen is not limited to the meditation mat. The practice of Zen is our entire life and is the very thread that binds our different lives together. Discovering this truth is called awakening, and it takes a circuitous route.
(Janet Jiryu Abels)

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
(Simone Weil)

Whether it is the time or the method, true labor is half initiative and half knowing how to let things proceed on their own.
(January 8,  from 365 Tao: Daily Meditations, by Deng Ming-Dao)

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

Curious / Watching / Listening

Three years ago:

"Don't let people talk you into doing what's easy or comfortable. Listen to what's inside of you and decide what it is that you care about so much that you're willing to risk it all."

Barack Obama
May 19, 2007
Southern New Hampshire University Commencement

In my eyes, he's holding steady with an impossible job. When I read The Audacity of Hope in 2007, I learned that he has ideas about nuclear energy and about war that I don't share. Reading Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics, by Joe Biden, gave me pause. For example, on the Vietnam War, “I wasn’t against the war for moral reasons; I just thought it was a stupid policy.” Still I voted for Obama and Biden. We can agree to disagree and still go forward together.

President Obama is a bridge builder. I don't feel that his love for the people of the United States of America is in vain.

Although I am one of the 5,000,000 Americans without a job, my heart is not heavy in the way it was before.






















Nocturnal downpour
Wakes the lovers,
Floods the valley.
(Deng-Ming-Dao, 365 Tao, p. 30)

OBOE AND STARRY NIGHT / COEXIST

Thanks so much to everyone who has left comments in the last few days. My heart and mind are occupied with my friend, Richard, who is in the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California, as I maneuver my way through my first days back at school since 1984. I am finding it difficult to focus on studying but will be studying the Anatomy and Physiology text and workbook later today.

Yesterday, before my first class at 8 a.m., I drew "Oboe and Starry Night" on my iBookG4 using the Appleworks6 Painting program and the keyboard trackpad. This morning I spent my yoga drawing time trying to create a customized palette for "painting" in Appleworks6. I learned some useful things about making custom palettes but after saving the palette I had designed, I was unable to open the file. Not to worry. I'll give it another try. I enjoyed the process.

This morning I don't have classes but am planning to call the Palo Alto VA hospital pastoral care office to talk with a chaplain (to help center me in my heart) and then leave another message at the nursing station for my friend who is unable to speak after having a stroke. Then I will give his sister a call. Yesterday I sent him a care package with a card. Not sure what I can do from here except continue to love him and wait for a message from him. My family and friends, near and far, have been helpful during this time.

When my friend was at the VA hospital in the past, I learned that there are a variety of chaplains, including a Zen Buddhist chaplain on call. I didn't think to ask if there was a Taoist chaplain, but this time I think that might be the one I would like to talk with. During the time my friend had been given a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer in 2001, he appreciated that a friend gave him a medallion which was the Yin/Yang symbol with a Christian cross superimposed on it. If there were a medallion like the "COEXIST" bumper sticker that I see occasionally, that's the one I would want because it incorporates symbols from many spiritual traditions, and if there were a symbol for atheists and agnostics, I'd like that on the medallion, too.

In the past, I talked with a Protestant chaplain from the VA who happened to be a woman and who just happened to be there when I called and who was kind, compassionate, open-minded and couldn't have been more helpful to me at that time.

This morning, while trying to create a customized paint palette and while writing this post, I have been listening to "All Things Must Pass". That was Richard's Christmas present to me in 1970, seventeen days after he had returned from Da Nang, Vietnam, arriving at San Francisco Airport at 2 o'clock in the morning. He had heard the album in Vietnam and had liked the song "My Sweet Lord," thinking that George Harrison was singing "my sweet Laura." As I remember, I gave him some things I had made while he was in Vietnam. Richard liked the picture on the cover of the boxed double album which showed George Harrison sitting on a wooden stool, looking intently into the camera, surrounded by smiling dwarf or elf or leprechaun lawn ornaments, in the midst of a vast lawn with trees at the edge.

That morning we drove from Redwood City over to Half Moon Bay where his family lived on a hill with a view of the ocean. At that time, six of his nine siblings were still living at home. I remember the houseful of people and the Christmas tree . . .

See what I mean about having trouble focusing on the present? I have to keep reeling myself back to the present. As Janis Joplin said, it's all the same day. Seamless. Vast. George Harrison's songs on "All Things Must Pass" speak to me today in a very different way from the way they spoke to me in 1970. I wonder how many young men came home from the war this December. I don't think that coming home from war has changed throughout history.

I am finding that writing, drawing, doing yoga are helpful when I am feeling unsure of what to do next.

Okay. My question for myself is, "What do I need to do NOW?"

A PLACE TO DRAW / A PLACE TO PAINT

(1/2 hour drawing, 5:00 to 5:30 a.m. -- 6B pencil on heavy weight, medium tooth surface, 9 x 12 Canson drawing pad, while listening to "Chants of India," which plays for approximately 1 hour and is a work of love by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison)

















"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it
most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it,
loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image." ~ Joan
Didion

(Gouache and watercolor painting titled, "Calendar Series: 42nd Month / Gifts Of Love From Imaginary Brothers," painted by Old Girl Of The North Country in 1989)

I've been enjoying reading Loren Webster's recent posts on the Tao.

VIEW FROM WOOD-PLANKED FOOTBRIDGE IN PLAIN, WASHINGTON

A monk asked Wei-kuan: "Where is Tao?"

Wei-kuan answered: "Right in front of us."

"Why don't I see it?" asked the monk.

"Because of your egotism."

"But if I cannot see it because of my egotism, can you see it?"

"As long as there is 'I' and 'thou,'" said the master, "this complicates everything and there is no seeing Tao."

"Then when there is neither 'I' nor 'thou,' is it seen?"

The master replied: "When there is neither 'I' nor 'thou,' who is here to see it?"

(Zen mondo)