Song and poetry for a dark time as spring comes again

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Experiencing tears of rage and tears of grief alternating with tears of joy and tears of relief as spring slowly arrives in the far northwestern corner of Washington State.

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Ah, the wars they will be fought again
The holy dove, she will be caught again
Bought and sold, and bought again
The dove is never free

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

"Masters Of War" (Bob Dylan) Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build all the bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks. You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly. Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain. You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you sit back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud. You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins. How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do. Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul.

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Bertolt Brecht in 1939 (Watch on YouTube to be able to read the tiny words)

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"In a Dark Time," by Theodore Roethke (first published in January 1960).

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"Take care of each other."

More of one thing leading to another / "Something nameless which is beyond language because it's instinctive and then you can't do it."

 

Listening further. (from 4:00 to 22:12)

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Transcribed by am from the interview:

"I am someone who doesn't have faith in terms of religious faith but before I woke up out of my coma, I had the most extraordinary experience.  I mean, to make it easier to sort of explain because I can't really explain but I know, absolutely, that at that point I was given a choice, "This way it's going to be very hard.  Are you sure you want to go this way?  Or go this one, it's going to be very easy and it's all going to be fine" and I don't want it to sound like some people might, like, choose not to live and, like, I don't know [am's note:  The interviewer interrupts Clemmie's train of thought here] and it's going to be hard but it's your choice and the amazing thing was that I was given that choice."

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Reminded of this:

Love Itself
The light came through the window Straight from the sun above And so inside my little room There plunged the rays of love In streams of light I clearly saw The dust you seldom see Out of which the nameless makes A name for one like me I'll try to say a little more Love went on and on Until it reached an open door Then love itself, love itself was gone All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance I'll try to say a little more Love went on and on Until it reached an open door Then love itself, love itself was gone Then I came back from where I'd been My room, it looked the same But there was nothing left between The nameless and the name All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance I'll try to say a little more Oh love went on and on Until it reached an open door Then love itself, love itself was gone Love itself, love itself was gone

-- Leonard Cohen (from "Ten New Songs," released October 9, 2001)

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Then I listened to what the only nephew of one of my oldest friends and the only child of one of my newest friends had to say about what inspired him to become a musician and listened to him play the piece by Bach that made all the difference in his life:

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Then I remembered:

Unbeknownst to me because we had been out of touch since August 2002, my R had a brainstem stroke in September 2007 and was in a coma for two weeks in a VA hospital in Northern California.  When he came out of the coma, he was unable to speak or feed himself or walk.  He was blind in his right eye which looked like a beautiful clear blue sky with a few white clouds.  

Something, inexplicably, prompted me to send a Christmas card to one of his two younger sisters that December.  She replied with a note letting me know about his stroke, saying that she had had no way to get in touch with me, and suggested that I call the VA Hospital because, she wrote, "He would love to hear your voice." My attempts to do that weren't successful.  I decided to write to him.  That was the key.  Although he couldn't speak, he was able to read and to write but with great difficulty.  He wrote down what he wanted to say, and a compassionate nurse wrote down what she thought he was trying to say and had him sign it.  Next to what he wrote he drew a rose.  He could draw better than he could write.  How grateful I am to that nurse who took the time to write that letter for him and mail it to me!

After listening to Clemency Burton-Hill, I am absolutely certain that my R was given a choice to live long enough so that I could be with him in the last days of his life, let him know I love him and say goodbye.  He went back into a coma after I said goodbye and died a week later.

Now I am in tears.  Grateful to my R.  Grateful to Clemmie.  Grateful to be alive.  Taking nothing for granted.  

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Mother and sons in displaced persons camp in Kabul.

With gratitude for food banks and the volunteers who make them possible / "Hineni"

 

(Drawings of food bank items by Shayna Rudoren)

From this article:

“I get here and the room is empty,” he said to explain why he named the pantry Manna, “and then by 10:30, there’s food in it. And then by 1 o’clock there’s not.” At the end of every day, he continued, “I’ve got nothing left — I’ve got nothing emotionally, I’ve got nothing physically, I’ve got nothing spiritually — I’m done. And somehow in the morning, there’s something there. To me that’s divine.”

Mike is a different story.

“I’m an agnostic,” he told me. Between confirmation in ninth grade and his 60th birthday, Mike said, “I was in a church probably a dozen times.” But his wife is a spiritual person, and when they were living in the Bronx, they got involved in St. Paul’s Lutheran Evangelical Church in the Parkchester neighborhood. Mike helped run the food pantry there, too, before they moved to Bloomfield, N.J., in 2019, and connected with Park United. 

“For me, it’s not religious,” he said. “I really don’t give a whole lot of thought to a Supreme Being. Maybe I should but I don’t. What the church has done for me is it’s provided me with good work to do.”

That’s hineni.

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"... Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my Lord

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During the second half of 2019 and until our local food bank closed due to the pandemic, I stood in line there once a week because I was going into credit card debt for the first time in my life in order to buy groceries.  Not serious debt but something I needed to address before it did become a problem.  

Our local food bank was set up like a grocery store.  We would stand in line, be checked in at a counter by volunteers, and then would get a grocery cart which we would fill with all the food we could put in the boxes we brought for that purpose.  The boxes were supplied by the food bank.  We were encouraged to take a box and use it each time we visited.  Because of the generosity of local stores and local farmers and the many people who support the food bank, I had an excellent selection of fresh produce, rice, beans, oatmeal, and nut butters to choose from.  There were also milk and other dairy products, eggs, bread and rolls, tortillas, meat, canned and baked goods, which for one reason or another, I can't eat but are basics for so many people.

There were people of all ages who came to the food bank up to two times a week.  I heard people speaking Spanish and Russian or Ukrainian.  Several of the volunteers had name tags that indicated that they spoke Spanish.  My guess is that there was probably a volunteer who spoke Russian or Ukrainian.

With the pandemic, the food bank building was closed but the volunteers continued to come to the building to fill boxes of food that people could pick up outside the building from their cars or on foot.  Volunteers (many of them friends of mine) stepped forward to deliver boxes of food to people without cars or people who had any other reason that might keep them from being able to have access to food.   Because I have to be careful about what I eat, I was fairly sure that I wouldn't be able to eat much of what went in the boxes.  A friend who did deliveries offered to bring me a box as an experiment.  There was nothing in the box that I could eat.

Fortunately, since the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. government has been giving those of us who quality for EBT cards nearly twice as much food credit.  With that help and the three stimulus checks, I am no longer going into debt.  I've adjusted my spending down and am sure that I will have enough to live on even when the EBT amount drops back down to what it was before the pandemic.

If I did not own my condominium outright, I could not live on as little money as I live on.  Before I retired, I called our local senior information center, told them what my low-end Social Security income would be and asked if it would be possible for me to live on that amount of money in our county.  I was assured that I could if I lived simply and made use of the many safety nets for low income people.  

I am considered "poor," but I don't feel "poor."  I deeply aware of how fortunate I am to have everything I need and want.  My life is rich and full.  I couldn't be more grateful.

The Magi, a multigenerational family gathering, a little baby, a Sufi dancer / Leonard Cohen / Michael Blumenthal on the value of art

"Dylan said that, although he was born and raised Jewish, he never felt left out of Christmas during his childhood in Minnesota. Regarding the popularity of Christmas music, he said, "... it's so worldwide and everybody can relate to it in their own way."

Ever since "Christmas in the Heart" was released in 2009, this video has been part of my December experience which includes World AIDS Day, St. Nicholas Day, Bodhi Day, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa and, in some years, Ramadan, as well as numerous beginnings and endings in my life and the lives of those I love.

Reading Sabine's post today, "Be Kind," for some reason reminded me of "The Little Drummer Boy".  I had not watched and listened to it yet this year.  After watching and listening, it occurred to me once again that the family gathering with the children and the little baby and adults from several generations might well be an interfaith gathering.  In past years what had also caught my attention was the presence of the Magi at the beginning of the video and a single Sufi dancer at the end of the video. 

With a little Googling, I re-read the lyrics and see that Bob Dylan changed:

I have no gift to bring
Pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give our king

to:

I have no gift to bring
Pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give a king

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I remembered what Leonard Cohen said in 1988:

"I'm very fond of Jesus Christ. He may be the most beautiful guy who ever walked the face of this earth. Any guy who said "Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek" has got to be a figure of unparalleled generosity and insight and madness.. . A man who declared himself to stand among the thieves, the prostitutes and the homeless. His position cannot be comprehended. It is an inhuman generosity. A generosity that would overthrow the world if it was embraced because nothing could weather that compassion. I'm not trying to alter the Jewish view of Jesus Christ. But to me, in spite of what I know about the history of legal Christianity, the figure of the man has touched me".

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Thank you to Sabine for drawing my attention to Michael Blumenthal's poem, "Be Kind," which led me to his talk on the value of art. 

With love to blog friends, near and far. 

Forever / Leonard said so

"... there are children in the morning / They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever ..." 

(Leonard Cohen)

This morning when I got up at 4 a.m., thinking of the children of the world near and far, I saw that the Abutilon bud I had been watching this past week had opened during the night. 

The day the Buddha sat down

Maybe some of you have seen this already.  It just came to my attention yesterday.

Today while beginning my December tradition of reading a chapter a day of A Winter Walk, I saw that some December since 2006 (when the book was published), I had made a note about Bodhi Day, which comes on December 8.

I had written:

The day the Buddha sat down.  He was 29.

On first watching the video and not paying close attention, I didn't realize immediately that the walking person was a young woman.  I was struck by what I thought was the vulnerability of a very delicate young white man whose physical presence seemed to have little to do with the voice of an edgy elderly Jewish/Buddhist man as his death approached.  Now that I know that the walking person is a young woman, everything shifts.

This November was the month when I finally cried long and hard and felt relief.

Here is what November looked like in Bellingham, Washington, this year:

Another yearly tradition is purchasing a Nikki McClure calendar.  I bought my 2020 calendar as soon as it was available.  The November page for 2019 celebrates a quiet family moment, and it gave me a sense of peace each time I looked at it.  Maybe I will give it a permanent place on the wall next to my drawing table when January 2020 arrives.

It was only on a second viewing of "Happens To The Heart" that I saw that the sitting figure rose into the air.  Too much like Mary's Assumption.  Oh well.  I experienced that rising with a sinking feeling. I wonder what Leonard Cohen would have thought of that image accompanying the end of his haunting song.

Then I remembered William Blake's words:

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

And this:

If you don't realize the source, 
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from, 
you naturally become tolerant, 
disinterested, amused, 
kindhearted as a grandmother, 
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, 
you can deal with whatever life brings you, 
and when death comes, you are ready.” 

― Tao Te-Ching

Alive Alive-O / Dead To The World, Alive I Awoke

Veteran's Day Sunrise 2016 (revisited a few days later)

(Unable to make the fonts uniform.  Oh well.)

I've been away at Facebook, not posting much here.  Now I am choosing to return here.  In a few weeks, I will have been posting here for 10 years.  That's a substantial part of my life.  When I began to blog, I was at a turning point in my life, stuck, haunted, needing to move forward.  I'm grateful for the community I have found through blogging.  I'm grateful for this place where I can post my art work, my poetry, the music I love, memories, dreams, photographs, and all that gives life meaning.  I've come a long way since 2006 and learned so much from you, my blog friends.

As you know, I don't call myself a Christian or anything else, but this came from a Christian source (plough.com), and I found it to be enlightening regarding the life of Che Guevara:

"What exactly was the heart of Che’s vision, that it still animates young people around the world? His words on the revolutionary power of love hint at one answer. So, perhaps, does a poem found in his backpack after his death:

Christ, I love you,
not because you descended from a star,
but because you revealed to me
man’s tears and anguish;
showed me the keys that open
the closed doors of light.
Yes, you taught me that man is God,
a poor God crucified like you.
The one at your left,
at Golgotha – the worst thief –
he, too, is God.

León Felipe"For some reason, it reminded me of something Leonard Cohen wrote about Jesus:  "He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone."

Nameless Day / December 22 / Love Itself / Holy Places

 From The Wisdom of Trees, by Jane Gifford:

One day remains completely unaccounted for in the Celtic Calendar, December 22nd, known as the "Nameless Day."  This is the extra day that features in so many folk tales where the story takes place over a year and a day.  On this day, when the King of the Waning Year was dead and the New King of the Waxing Year not yet born, it was the custom to fast to appease the goddess in her darkest aspect so that she would permit the sun to return to the world and the cycle of the year to recommence.  This darkest of days has neither tree nor name and is sacred to Morrigan, goddess of death and destruction.  Her name means Great Queen in Irish.  She appears in Arthurian legend as Morgan le Faye, sister of King Arthur: "le Faye" means "the Fate." This dark queen took the form of a raven and was feared and respected by everyone.

                                    "Love Itself"

The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.

In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door –
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.

All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door –
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.

Then I came back from where I’d been.
My room, it looked the same –
But there was nothing left between
The Nameless and the Name.

All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door –
Then Love itself,
Love Itself was gone.
Love Itself was gone.

From "Holy Places," the December 22nd chapter of A Winter Walk, by Tolbert McCarroll:

... A child's intuitive sense of the sacred often helps us understand spiritual fundamentals.  When my daughter, Holly, was almost seven, a fatally ill infant came into her life.  We all knew the child would die, but it was a shock when it happened.  Holly received the news one morning as she was setting out to school. She told me that we would need to do something before she could go to school. "We have to go to a place where people pray," she announced.  I walked her to a nearby Catholic church where a Mass was in process and asked if this would do.  "No," she said, "we have to wait 'til the priest leaves." In the after-service silence of that space, Holly somehow came to terms with the death.  I think she also said good-bye.  After a while, Holly told me, "We can light a candle and leave now." We did ...

"They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever." (Leonard Cohen)

Listen

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Kate McGarrigle's son, Rufus Wainwright, singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in the movie, "Shrek," seems just right today.

Shrek: Fiona? Are you all right?
[Stands up and looks at herself, then at Shrek]
Princess Fiona: Yes. But, I don't understand. I'm supposed to be beautiful.
Shrek: But you are beautiful.
[They kiss and live happily ever after]

I'm preparing to weave again. The colors have been chosen.

And you can see on my table a book about self-publishing I bought from our local independent bookstore, Village Books. The bookstore has a machine now that will print books, including self-published books, with a perfect bound binding. At this time, the machine is not set up to print illustrations but can print a full-color cover. I'm giving some thought to printing up some copies of a less-expensive poetry-only version of my book, with a full-color cover featuring one of my paintings.

The book about self-publishing was written by Lindsey McGuirk and Rod Burton. Lindsey McGuirk is the person in charge of the book-making machine at Village Books. Rod Burton is a graphic designer who has designed a variety of books.

DOUBLE PORTRAIT WITH LIGHT

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. (lyrics from "Anthem," by Leonard Cohen from the album called "Future," 1992)

("Double Portrait With Light," painted by Old Girl Of The North Country in the early days of 2000)

BELLINGHAM SPECTRUM SERIES: BLACK #1 (2007)

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

-Leonard Cohen