"...life is for learning ..." / "What are you doing?" / Gratitude

Just found the following video today.  What a treasure!  I attended that performance in October of 2009:

http://vimeo.com/50411931

That's my nephew, Lee, at 2:36, singing:

Well maybe it's the time of year
Well maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am
But life is for learning

We are stardust
We are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
(Joni Mitchell lyrics, 1970)

Some of you have already seen the above photo from 1971.   I had just turned 22 years old and felt much older than that.  My life had taken a dark turn.  It would be years before I would see any light in that darkness.  I had lessons to learn in the darkness.

At 63 years old (and feeling younger than that), I still have plenty to learn.  Even the darkest days now are so much lighter than they were in the years between 1971 and 1987.  It was in May of 1987, as I was traveling through Half Moon Bay, California, that there began to be light in that darkness.  My life took a turn that let the light in.  It was just as I was about to do something I had done many times before -- always expecting a positive result, always experiencing negative consequences.

A question came to my mind as I stopped my car a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean.  The question was like a koan because I couldn't come up with an answer.

My mind ceased talking, and I began listening for something in the darkness.

The question, as I recall it today, was, "What are you doing?"

Below is "Woman with Hands Full," in chalk pastel, watercolor and gouache, by am, from sometime around 1987 when light appeared in the darkness.

I'm grateful today for both the light and the darkness.  My life is full.

The "Where Will Your Spirit Walk?" Koan

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering -- Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817) 

Some of the most painful days of my life were spent at the ocean or in my own home, including my childhood home as well as the place Richard and I lived for about five months after his return from Vietnam, and other places that I called home, the last of which is this place I have called home since October of 1984.  

Jane Austen's quote opened up something in me -- the realization that even when my perception was that I was experiencing nothing but suffering, it was in contrast to having previously experienced transcendent joy. 

Richard has never been far from my thoughts since we met as 17 year olds.  If we had had a traditional marriage and a long life together, today would have been our 44th anniversary.  

In this moment, though, I can feel something shifting in connection with the suffering I experienced in relationship to him.  The suffering is in the past. There is an unexpected opening for joy in its place in the present, born of that timeless transcendent joy I experienced so long ago when I first met Richard.    

My experience is that one does not love a person the less for having suffered in connection with that person's alcoholism, drug addiction, or mental illness. 

All suffering, nothing but suffering.  All joy, nothing but joy.  I can remember experiencing moments of both with Richard.  Without our joy, our suffering would have had no context. Without our suffering, our joy would have had no context.

In recent years, I have met others who have suffered in ways I can't even imagine, and yet they speak of the joy in their lives as well as the suffering.

The film clip ends in the place in my living room where I practice the asanas.  For me, yoga is where joy and suffering meet in a place of love. 

Did you hear birds outside, Oboe's voice, the sound of the electric fan in the kitchen, and the sound of the clock ticking?  It wasn't until the third time I watched the clip, that saw I Oboe!

Now I am reminded of an old post of mine, "Like a rolling koan," and William Blake came to mind:

"Man was made for joy and woe

Then when this we rightly know

Through the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine

A clothing for the soul to bind."

(William Blake)

and this, which was playing on the radio in my VW in July of 1968:

We were married on a Tuesday afternoon, a few minutes walk from this section of Miramar Beach, California.  Half of Richard's ashes were scattered by his brother not far from this place where we met as 17 year olds:

Photo credit:  Ana Preza

As Leonard Cohen observed, many loved before us.  Many will love after us.  Love is a story that keeps unfolding through the generations.

For my 63rd birthday in October, I'm looking into a visit at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, the place where Georgia O'Keeffe first stayed for a month in 1934 when she was 47 years old.  She moved to New Mexico when she was 62 years old.  That was in 1949, the year I was born.  She lived in New Mexico for 37 years until her death at 98 years old.

Georgia O'Keeffe said, "When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore ... unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone."

Where will your spirit walk?

"... what is your Original Face?" (Eno, Sixth Patriarch of Zen)

(Today I can't seem to figure out how to get the fonts and font sizes to match.  Perseverance furthers.)

Walking down to Bellingham Bay / Thinking about Luis Bunuel and Dalton Trumbo

Johnny Got His Gun and Dalton Trumbo are still on my mind. After re-reading Johnny Got His Gun, for the first time since Richard recommended it while he was in Vietnam in 1970, I've been checking out related DVDs from the public library. A few days ago, I watched "Trumbo"(2007) and was reminded that Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplays for "Exodus" and "Spartacus." Yesterday I watched "Johnny Got His Gun" on DVD. Although it was first released in 1971, this DVD with additional features was released in 2009. I don't remember seeing "Johnny Got His Gun" when it was released on September 22, 1971, but I am guessing that Richard did see it.

Richard's last weeks of life in a VA hospital in spring of 2008 appeared to be much like those of Joe Bonham in Dalton Trumbo's 1971 film, "Johnny Got His Gun."

In 1971, when Dalton Trumbo directed "Johnny Got His Gun," he added to and changed the story from what he had written in his book in 1939. Scenes with Joe Bonham's contemplations on Jesus were written by Luis Bunuel.

Of all the changes and additions that strengthened an already powerful testament against war, what stood out for me was the scene near the end of the film where the military hospital doctors and staff were standing at Joe Bonham's bedside after Joe had finally been able to communicate with them by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code, "S.O.S. Help me." The commanding officer had asked Joe what he wanted, and Joe had replied, and the commanding officer had denied Joe's requests. At that point, Joe began to bang his head against his pillow, saying "Kill me" over and over again in Morse code.

The commanding officer then turned to the chaplain and said, "Don't you have some message for him, Padre?"

The priest shook his head.

The officer said, "You could at least tell him to put his faith in God, couldn't you?"

The priest said, "I will pray for him for the rest of my days, but I will not risk testing his faith against your stupidity."

The officer said, "Well, you're a hell of a priest, aren't you?"

The priest said, "He is a product of your profession, not mine," and walked out of the hospital room.

Now that is a mysterious statement. The koan here is, "What is the product of the priest's profession?" Certainly Dalton Trumbo had given some thought to that when he wrote that scene and asked Luis Bunuel to write words for Jesus to say earlier in the film.

The two following paragraphs are from a Wikipedia article about Luis Bunuel:

In a 1960 interview with Michele Manceaux in L'Express, Buñuel famously declared: "Thank God I'm an atheist."

However, he repudiated this statement in a 1977 article in The New Yorker. "I'm not a Christian, but I'm not an atheist, either," he said. "I'm weary of hearing that accidental old aphorism of mine, 'I'm an atheist, thank God.' It's outworn. Dead leaves. In 1951, I made a small film called "Mexican Bus Ride," about a village too poor to support a church and a priest. The place was serene, because no one suffered from guilt. It's guilt we must escape from, not God."

I'm feeling Richard's serene presence today. It is nearly four years since he died. We are not suffering from guilt. We are too poor to support a church and a priest. We do not walk alone anymore. I think that the word God is a koan.

A sunlit wood where the true way was a koan

At 20 years beyond what may have been the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a sunlit wood where the true way was a koan.
(with many thanks to Dante Alighieri)

This film clip shows the approach to the children's fishing pond and the little bridge over the fishing pond dam on Whatcom Creek You can hear the water rushing over the dam as well as a small waterfall just beyond the dam. You can see a little of the fishing pond. Nice surprise to see a man and his young daughter out enjoying the sunny day.

"...not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart..." / A Memorial Koan

Listen to Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 30, 1967:


"Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love (am's italics). I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are brothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America."



In this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr., remembers and relates to the anxious and sorrowful Jesus taking up his cross and then a few moments later speaks of an angry God. The angry God part of Christianity and Judaism has always troubled me. People are asked to be nonviolent. The violence is left up to God? I don't think so. The whole thing sounds like a koan, doesn't it?

Still meditating on Buddha's empty hands and Mahalia Jackson singing "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands," remembering that Martin Luther King, Jr., nominated Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, for the Nobel Peace prize in January of 1967 and that Thich Nhat Hanh had urged Martin Luther King, Jr., to publicly and peacefully oppose the war in Vietnam.

Meditating on the thought that it is not easy for any of us, including President Obama and Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh, to live up to these ideals, and that a memorial to Martin Luther King during the troubled presidency of Barack Obama speaks of the inner koans that President Obama and all people of conscience must live with each day no matter what their spiritual perspective.

From the Nobel lecture by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say "We must not wage war." It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace."






















"The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure. To live it you have to explode. In that last hour of need, we entirely agreed, sacrifice was the code of the road."
(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)"

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."
(Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself")

(Pastel on paper, "Self-Portrait of an Old Friend as a Young Man," drawn by am in the early 1980s from a photo sent to me by my friend, Richard, taken of him in Vietnam in 1970)

BOB'S KOANS / LIKE A ROLLING KOAN

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

(from "Like a Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan, 1965)

Yesterday when I walked into the grocery store, I heard the 1965 recording of Bob Dylan singing "Like a Rolling Stone." Although I've heard that song countless times since I was 15 years old, I heard it again as if for the first time.

The "sound" of the song (not the scornful taunting words) has always had a kind of celebratory quality for me. At 15 years old, I didn't feel anger directed at me as a young woman. Instead, inexplicably, I felt a sense of being included -- that someone cared enough to ask me how I FELT.

On hearing that song with its koan-like questions as a 15 year old young woman, I experienced the parodoxical feeling that although I often felt I was "without a home," I certainly wasn't alone anymore.

There was something in Bob Dylan's voice and range of songs covering the spectrum of emotions that gave me peace of mind for years after that, well into my 40s. I never stopped listening to him, but gradually the "peace of mind" feeling was replaced with a "trouble in mind" feeling. In recent years, I've had to learn to find "peace of mind" within myself but have never felt entirely alone since first hearing what to me is a beloved, bewildering and distinctly expressive voice.

Hearing that voice yesterday gave me a "trouble in mind" feeling.

("Woman With Her Hands Full," gouache, watercolor and pastel on paper by am, 1984)