A gift to be shared

If, like me, you aren't able to watch all of this at once, don't let that stop you from beginning to watch.  Although, knowing that your lives are full, I was going to recommend simply watching the part where Rena Priest speaks, now I recommend watching the entire 90 minutes.  Every moment of the Lummi portion of the ceremony, which took place not far from where I live, moved me deeply in one way or another.

“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.” - Rumi 

(quoted by Rena Priest during the ceremony)

Here is more of her poetry, which includes this poem:

DAFFODILS

After Wordsworth

 

The Indigenous poet

writes life-affirming poems

about daffodils.

Her audience says,

“But you’re oppressed.”

The Indigenous poet

writes poems of outrage

about oppression.

Nobody cares.

She gets depressed.

The Indigenous poet

gets requests for poems

about being Indigenous.

“But, all my poems are

about being Indigenous.”

The Indigenous poet

isn’t considered

an Indigenous poet,

because, “Shouldn’t you

write about genocide?”

The Indigenous poet

tries to write poems

about genocide.

Her poet spirit dies.

(Genocide gets the job done.)

The Indigenous poet says,

“Stang tse temxwila!”*

and writes about daffodils,

and the untouchable beauty

of living a poet’s life

 

---

* “What the hail.” This is the closest we get to a swear word in 

Xwlemi Chosen (Lummi Language).

Someone I loved

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

—Mary Oliver

With gratitude to Beth.

Gift

On my birthday last year, October 1, a friend left a card and a container of blooming red and yellow tulips at my front door.  When the tulips had finished blooming, I put the bulbs in a larger pot.  When tulip season, as I know it, came and went, I wondered why the bulbs hadn't come up.  Turns out they are late bloomers, blooming this year just after Mother's Day.  Now I'm curious about the out of focus stalk of volunteer flowers in the foreground of the first photo.  Any day now they will open, too.

Along with my Shasta Daisies and Sweet William:

Light in dark times / An open window to the Pacific Ocean / A Mother's Day gift

Coast Salish lands

Make sure to watch the video at 2 of 10 in the photo section of the article.

On Mother's Day, an old friend who is a year older than I am and is being treated for breast cancer suggested that we take an hour's drive to the beach just beyond the Deception Pass bridge.  More than 40 years ago, I had walked on the beach in the first photo but until Mother's Day this year, I had no knowledge that there was a beach with waves just around the point.  The Deception Pass State Park West Beach looks out on the Strait of Juan de Fuca and out to the Pacific Ocean and then way way out across that vast ocean to Asia.

For years I have had a recurring dream that there is a beach with waves just down the road from Bellingham.  It is an exhilarating dream, filled with hope and promise and joy.  In the dream, I always ask myself how I could not have known that the open ocean was so close by.  Waking up from that dream was always bittersweet, and I would find myself yearning to return to my birthplace on the western side of California, where the open ocean is always so near.

A dream come true on Mother's Day.  There is a window to the open ocean, and that window is only an hour's drive from Bellingham.

Sweet that the land and sky and waters of the Coast Salish people are no longer threatened by the presence of coal port.

Sweet that the gift of good news came so close to Mother's Day.

The mother of us all.  Mother Earth.

Gift

Late yesterday afternoon, the phone interview with the transcription supervisor took place. It went well. It is likely that I will be hired and begin working 34 hours a week at home in March.

I was having a hard time believing that the interview went so well and that I will be probably be employed again. I felt kind of dazed. Then I was surprised to see everything outside lit up in a break from the spring-like rain. I went out on my porch and stood there for a few minutes looking around at the illuminated scene. Then I noticed a faint rainbow forming out to the east!

FOG AT 7 A.M. / 32 DEGREES

Yesterday I completed the emptying of my storage unit. I feel as if I have moved away from a place where I lived longer than I needed to. It's a good feeling. Still have to sort through the last of the possessions that I brought home yesterday, most of which are books, some of which belonged to my mother and father. As I was carrying them into my home I thought, "If I didn't have all these books, it would be much easier to move." I'll be wearing a dust mask as I sort through them, letting go of those that I can't read again anyway because of my sensitivity to book mold. Most of the books were in my storage unit for that reason, but I wasn't ready to let them go completely. I remember how difficult it was to let go of my father's moldy papers from his college days because letting them go felt like a betrayal of him.

A few days ago, while sorting, I found these handknit socks which were a gift from the mother of a former classmate who came from Turkey to study at our local community college in the early 1980s. I love them. They keep my feet warm on this chilly foggy morning.






















Update: A clear sunny day at 11:30 a.m. after the fog burned off. It's 55 degrees out on the porch now. I forgot to say that the fog this morning was filled with the sound of the Canada Geese who arrive here this time of year. The swallows usually arrive within the next week. This is the week my daffodil bulbs will begin to bloom.

I am finding that I am able to let go of approximately half of the books which were in the storage unit. That half will go to "The Friends of the Library" who will sell them, and the money will go to the public library. My delight in the other half of the books is still strong, and I've made room for them.

Painting from Memory / Evolution of Forgiveness (2006)

Woman with Hands Full (1986)

Thanks to Bob Dylan.

Painting in America (1986)

Still not feeling well. Looking forward to feeling better in a few more days. 

When I look at this painting, though, I remember what vitality feels like. I gave this painting to a friend who liked it almost as much as I did. I remember identifying with the words of another artist friend when he said that he couldn't imagine anyone liking his paintings MORE than he did. Of course, this goes against what is sometimes said, that artists are never satisfied with their work. Most often when I look at these images painted so long ago, it is as if I am looking at the work of someone else. I wonder how the image came into being, where it came from, what it means. I try to remember. Maybe I am satisfied with my work because it seems more like a gift received and shared than something I willed into being. 

In the past few days, I have been reading Dreams from My Father and The Scarlet Letter. My cousin had recommended The Audacity of Hope on her blog and that led me to read Dreams from My Father. The second book, recommended on another blog I visited, is one I first read when I was very young, many years before I knew that my own great-grandmother (my father's grandmother) had been born "out of wedlock" in 1853, three years after The Scarlet Letter was published. I am moved by both books. 

In the words of my mother as a little girl, "Books is my friends. I will stick by their sides until I die."