"Lo and Behold" / Oddly enough

 

Early this morning I watched a library copy of Werner Herzog's "Lo and Behold:  Reveries of the Connected World."  Fairly quickly I realized that I had seen it before.  This time I took extensive notes, including noting my body sensations and emotions -- nausea, feeling chilled, feeling scared, feeling fear, feeling chilled, feeling chilled, and feeling chilled.  

After watching the film in which all the "experts" laughed nervously when admitting how dependent we have become on something as truly fragile as the internet, I went to my laptop and HA!, I abruptly lost my internet connection for the second time in the past two weeks.  Two weeks ago, several thousand XFINITY subscribers on my side of our town had no internet for most of a weekday at a time when more and more people depend on the internet in order to be able to work from home, not to mention working from anywhere else.  So much now depends on an internet connection.  I began to wonder if widespread internet outages are the wave of the future, like fires and floods and water shortages.

This time, though, it seems that it was just my very own corner of the internet that was down.  A kind XFINITY tech named Grace (!) spent close to an hour with me on my cell phone doing diagnostic tests.  It was determined that she needed to send an XFINITY technician to my home, and it was arranged for a technician to appear within the hour.

Within a few seconds of thanking her for her help and clicking on "End Call" on my cell phone, the internet connection was mysteriously restored and I cancelled the tech visit.  

Hmmmm ...

This experience has not been reassuring.

*

Gonna save my money and rip it up!
Lo and behold! Lo and behold!
Lookin' for my lo and behold,
Get me outa here, my dear man!

(Bob Dylan, "Lo and Behold")

The mysterious process of one thing leading to another

 

In one of the interviews in "Encounters" when a young man speaks of having found his "tribe" in the eccentric community at McMurdo, that led me to remember a local artist who lived for two years in McMurdo and to see if I could find a video about him.

"In 1997, he embarked for Antarctica where he spent two years managing a general store at McMurdo, an American science station. He says in Antarctica, all distractions were stripped away, and the desolate windblown landscape left him with little else to do than fill his sketchbooks." (excerpted from an article about Ben Mann.  Click here)

Had I not found a copy of "Grizzly Man" on DVD on the free table in the mailroom of the condominium where I live, I doubt that I would have watched it all the way through but in the context of having just seen two other Werner Herzog films and thinking back to the first Herzog film I saw in my 20s, "Aguirre the Wrath of God," "Grizzly Man" had unexpected lessons for me about the consequences of living in delusion, much as "Aguirre the Wrath of God" had taught me the same lesson in a disturbing and unforgettable way so long ago.  

With all this in mind, I met with a neighbor friend and took a 3-mile walk on the trail on the north shore of Lake Whatcom before coming back to work on this post until I could click on "Publish."

Perhaps the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.

-- Wallace Stevens

Celebrating Mandalas Made By High School Students / Mandalas As Blessings / Little Wheel Spin and Spin / Intense joy and sadness co-existing inseparably

Click here:  Mandalas!








That is something else new for me to listen to while working on my next mandala.

Buffy Sainte-Marie came to mind, too, from all those years ago:



One thing leads to another.



"This song comes from a strange zone where intense joy and sadness seem to co-exist inseparably."(Brendan Barry comment on YouTube)

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." (John Muir)

Self-Portrait with "you" / the mystery of encounter and relationship

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."

(the italics are mine -- am)

Survival Prayer / Talking About Raven

"Survival Prayer"

Recently I discovered and bought a copy of this splendid film directed by Benjamin Greené.  I'm not sure, but my guess is that he grew up here in Bellingham, Washington.

From his website:

"Benjamin Greené studied Neuroscience at Oberlin College and co-directed a documentary about the struggle for shelter and community in post-Katrina New Orleans.  After college, he spent two years in a brain-imaging laboratory before leaving academia to pursue filmmaking.  He went on to co-direct Bury Me in Redwood Country about the tallest and largest trees on the planet.  Survival Prayer is his solo directorial debut.  Benjamin is a 2012 graduate of Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School and an IFP Fellow participating in the Independent Filmmaker Labs.  He loves the process of turning ideas into films, leaning into the light, actualizing dreams."

(Gouache and watercolor, "Spectrum Series:  Green," painted in spring of 2007 by am)

Gathered From Coincidence On A Snowy Day

The Invisible Peak from Gary Yost on Vimeo.

A few days ago, I watched Werner Herzog's Little Dieter Needs To Fly after Dominic Rivron had mentioned it in a comment here on my blog.  Dieter Dengler lived on Mt. Tamalpais.  This morning after reading Sabine's thoughtful post, I moved on to the Doonesbury website and came across a video about the Coastal Miwok and their sacred mountain, Mt. Tamalpais.  If you don't have time to watch the entire video, go to the end of the video and listen to Sky Road Webb drumming and singing on the top of Mt. Tamalpais.

If you watch the entire video, look for Sacheen Littlefeather.

"If we take care of the mountain, the mountain will take care of us."
(from the credits at the end of "The Invisible Peak")