"... Sky full of fire, pain pourin' down ..." / California in November 2018

Photo dragged from beth's blog

Lyrics in post title from Bob Dylan's song titled "Mississippi," released on September 11, 2001.

Oh Shenandoah / River imagery / Bob Dylan's voice

I prefer Bob Dylan's version of "Oh Shenandoah" but was moved by the river imagery in the first video, and that prompted me to look for Bob Dylan's version on YouTube.   I am always puzzled when I hear someone say that they like Bob Dylan's songs but not his voice.  There is something in his voice throughout the years that has held my attention in a way few other voices have.  Considering how much Bob Dylan's voice has changed since I first heard it in the early 1960s, maybe it is not the voice itself but that something in his voice. Try muting the voice on the river video and listening to it with Bob's voice:




These other lyrics come to mind:

"... It was for her I crossed the water ..." (from the version of "Oh Shenandoah" that Bob Dylan sings)

"I crossed that river just to be where you are ..." (lyrics from "Mississippi" on "Love and Theft")

The water is wide, and we can cross over.  That's the story I hear Bob telling in these songs.

Bob Dylan and Walt Whitman as Inadvertent Yoga Nidra Teachers and Fierce Grace and White Horse With One Ear (Drawn From Memory) / Black Horse Blues

Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinkin' fast
I'm drownin' in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me
(lyrics from "Mississippi," by Bob Dylan in 2001)

It is said that Yoga Nidra helps us develop a deep capacity to meet any and all circumstances we may encounter in life.  Part of the Yoga Nidra practice is a welcoming of contrasts into awareness -- a splintered sinking ship along with a heart that is light and free and not weary, and eventually being able to experience them as one -- to experience fragmentation and wholeness simultaneously.

Throughout the decades, the songs of Bob Dylan have explored contrasts as they coexist as two necessary parts of the whole:

"She knows there's no success like failure and failure's no success at all."

(lyrics from "Love Minus Zero / No Limit, by Bob Dylan -- 1965)

"I've been meek and hard like an oak."
(lyrics from "Buckets of Rain" -- 1974)

"I came to a high place of darkness and light.  A dividing line ran through the center of town."
(lyrics from "Isis" -- 1975)

"Alarm bells were ringing to hold back the swelling tide.  Friends and lovers clinging to each other side by side."
(lyrics from "Tempest" -- 2012)


As many of you know, with my experience in 1970-1971 of having lived with a dearly loved man from the early December morning he arrived home from Vietnam until the following May, I am a veteran of that shattering aftermath of war, and I continue to come to terms with the depth and breadth of those life-changing months and am just now beginning to appreciate the Fierce Grace that came to me at a young age.   I thought I was alone in what had happened to me and the man I loved and who loved me.  Now I know I wasn't alone.  Never was.

Recent drawn-from-memory sequence with my PC's "paint" program -- printed and scanned to my MacBook:

 

A Yoga Nidra pairing of contrasts could be the above sequence of drawings, done in the present time of relative tranquility, with the drawing below where I faced ongoing emotional turmoil over three consecutive Augusts, dating the scratchboard drawing three times in frustration at not being able to find my way.  The third August was four months after the death of my beloved friend and veteran.  Nearly five years have passed since his death.

I like the way the drawings look together on this page and how they interact in the context of Yoga Nidra.

Walt Whitman could have been talking Yoga Nidra when he made this acknowledgement of the truth of human wholeness:

"Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then I contradict myself.  I am large.  I contain multitudes."

IN THE PATH OF KATRINA / MISSISSIPPI COASTAL PATTERNS TWO YEARS LATER

ALLIGATOR SEEN FROM A SMALL BRIDGE AT GULF COAST NATIONAL SEASHORE IN OCEAN SPRINGS, MISSISSIPPI

When I was a child I was quite frightened by the crocodile that had swallowed a ticking clock and stalked Captain Hook in the Walt Disney version of PETER PAN. As a young woman, I saw drugged-appearing crocodiles who never seemed to move at all in their habitat in the Steinhart aquarium in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Along with seeing my first cardinal, I saw my first alligator last week. I remember my father, while visiting me when he was in his 70s, having his picture taken next to a buffalo. He said he had never seen a live buffalo before.

While preparing for my trip to visit my sister in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, I went to a bookstore to find a book to read during the long plane trip I would be taking. I almost bought a new copy of MOBY DICK, a book I read during the late 70s or early 80s and still consider one of my favorite books. Instead, I bought LESSONS IN BECOMING MYSELF, by Ellen Burstyn. I found out later that Ellen Burstyn tells a story in her book where she takes her son, at his request, on a sports fishing boat off the coast of California, a trip in which she brought along a copy of MOBY DICK. As she was reading, the fishing boat came close to a whale who then spouted. The spray of water landed on her and her book. She looked down at the wet page and read the following words, "Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? . . ."

I like her book. It was just the book I needed during my time on the airplane and in Mississippi. When I finish it, I'll go back to the bookstore and buy MOBY DICK.

Although I've never seen THE EXORCIST and have no plans to see it, I have seen and appreciated Ellen Burstyn in:

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
RESURRECTION
WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD
THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN

Toni Morrison, author of BELOVED, wrote for the back cover of the book: "I deeply admire Ellen Burstyn's scrupulous honesty and the urgency with which she pursues enlightenment. An extremely moving story of a fully lived life."

What I have found particularly interesting is Ellen Burstyn's affinity with Sufis and Carl Jung. Here is an interview with her.

"To Become One With The Thing I See"

The Art Of Walter Inglis Anderson

A Painter’s Hurricanes

A Family Of Artists Picks Up the Pieces

"The heart is the thing that counts, the mingling of my heart with the heart of the wild bird; to become one with the thing I see." …
(quote from here.)

(photo taken in my sister's backyard in Ocean Springs, Mississippi)

An Opening (2002)

Yesterday I felt as lost as I had felt in 2002 when my old friend was so ill with cancer, but today I have my sense of direction back again. Looking at these old paintings stirs up unresolved feelings, but also helps me with their resolution. It does help to admit that I am lost and to ask for help. Help arrives in one form or another. That is my experience.

When I look at this painting, I remember the song, "Mississippi" from Bob Dylan's album, "Love and Theft," released on September 11, 2001.