THE THINGS THEY CARRIED IN THE SUMMER OF 1970 / SUMMER OF 2008

This is the sixth of the seven drawings by RTN, which were sent from Vietnam in 1970 on the front of mailed letters.

Still on dial-up and very limited in terms of internet access. Thought I would try to upload some photos. It took longer than usual, but now I know I can upload photos if I'm willing to wait the extra time.

From my Zen Calendar, the entry of a few days ago:

"And I would answer you. . . that to prepare the future is only to found the present. . . for the sole true invention is to decipher the present under its incoherent aspects and its contradictory language. . . You do not have to foresee the future, but to allow it. . .

(ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY)

The present:

TAKE WHAT YOU HAVE GATHERED FROM COINCIDENCE

I've been without an Internet connection since June 26. I made a deliberate decision to take a vacation from email, blogging, and internet searches when my modem stopped working. My internet provider gave me several options, including free dial-up. I chose to wait 10 days for a free replacement modem to arrive and to decline the dial-up option. That modem arrived yesterday.

A technician spent an hour with me on the phone, trying to reestablish an internet connection. He was unable to do that and determined, as I had suggested early in the phone call, that the replacement modem was defective. This morning I decided to use the free dial-up connection while I wait for another free replacement modem. I had not bothered to set up the dial-up before now because my recollection was that dial-up is impossibly slow. I'm not going to try to download any pictures until I have a DSL connection again.

The vacation from the Internet has been good for me. The weather has been beautiful, and I've been in good spirits for the most part.

This morning, after checking through and beginning to respond to my backlog of email, I received an email from a friend who sent this timely poem:


Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world's harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can't see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

(Jalaluddin Rumi)


A few hours after reading that poem, I opened my copy of MEDITATIONS OF JOHN MUIR: NATURE'S TEMPLE, compiled and edited by Chris Highland. Chapter 18 is called "All the Air Is Music." It consists of a paragraph about a brave little water ouzel, taken from the writings of John Muir. At the bottom of the page it says:

"We have fallen into the place where everything is music.' -- Rumi

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #5

The drawing was made on the front of an envelope sent by RTN from Vietnam in 1970.

When I first saw RTN in the Intensive Care Unit at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto on April 10th, his eyes were closed. When his sister told him I had come to be with him, he slowly opened his eyes. His left eye was the deep blue I remembered. His blind right eye looked very much like the sky in the photo below. I don't know how he became blind in that eye.

He was heavily sedated, and I'm not sure how well he could see me with his left eye. I held his left hand with my right hand. His hand held mine. His blind eye was surprisingly beautiful, like a late afternoon sky with a mixture of white clouds. I was reminded of what Alice Walker wrote in "Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is The Self" about her daughter's response to first noticing her mother's blind eye:

She studies my face intently as we stand, her inside and me outside her crib. She even holds my face maternally between her dimpled little hands. Then, looking every bit as serious and lawyer- like as her father, she says, as if it may just possibly have slipped my attention: "Mommy, there's a world in your eye." (As in, "Don't be alarmed, or do anything crazy") And then gently but with great interest: "Mommy, where did you get that world in your eye?"

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #4

Life is short. Art long. Hippocrates. View from my porch at 5 p.m.:






















Oboe with view of cattails:

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #3

Drawing on the front of an envelope mailed from Vietnam by RTN in 1970 and the view today at 5 p.m. I wish you could see all the swallows and that the cattails are moving like the ocean.

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #2

It's one of those overcast 7 a.m. Pacific Northwest June mornings that looks better in black and white than in color.






















Chapter 1, page 49, From SEVEN CHOICES, by Elizabeth Harper Neeld, PhD:

THE TERRAIN OF OUR ACTIVE GRIEVING

Life As It Was
The Event of Loss
Life and Loss Integrated
Freedom from Domination of Grief

IMPACT: Experiencing the unthinkable
CHOICE: To experience and express grief fully

SECOND CRISIS: Stumbling in the dark
CHOICE: To endure with patience

OBSERVATION: Linking past to present
CHOICE: To look honestly

THE TURN: Turning into the wind
CHOICE: To replan and change our lives to include but not be dominated by the loss

RECONSTRUCTION: Picking up the pieces
CHOICE: To take specific actions

WORKING THROUGH: Finding solid ground
CHOICE: To engage in the conflicts

INTEGRATION: Daylight
CHOICE: To make and remake choices

I just realized that I have come to the third choice and entered that process.

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #1

After receiving the "I Love You" Series, I received seven more images, either drawn on the front side of envelopes which were addressed on the back side, or as part of handwritten letters. I believe that most of these drawings arrived in the early days of RTN's time in Vietnam. We wrote a letter to each other every day that he was gone. Ten months after he returned from Vietnam, we separated for a second and final time, remaining friends. Not long after that, I burned the approximately 335 letters he had sent from Vietnam, saving only his drawings. I knew that if I carried those letters with me, I would never go on with my life. Nevertheless, the grief that followed that separation lasted a long, long time. As hard as I tried, I never completely went on with my life. I'm still working on that, only now beginning to feel the holy ground beneath my feet again.


THE LOVING TIME

It reads like a fairytale
and that's what it was
Young man in his prime
young girl from the cross
The most perfect of strangers
and then the night closed in
and the holy ground took care of everything

Now she was a fine one
and he was a handsome man
One look was enough
and away they ran
They spend many happy hours
and then the night closed in
and the holy ground took care of everything

Oh what's the use in complaining
In for a penny in for a pound
I remember the loving time
and nothing else really counts

And I recall the promise they made
With a faith I can but admire
That she'd be the one he adored
and he'd be her hearts desire

It didn't come true in the end
they went their separate ways
He couldn't change what he was
she wasn't ready to wait
They couldn't live in the daylight
they let the night close in
and the holy ground took care of everything

I remember the loving time
and nothing else really counts

(Lyrics by Noel Brazil, sung by Mary Black -- If you'd like to listen to a clip, scroll down here)

A view of today:

NOTES FROM RTN FROM VIETNAM 1970

TIME PASSES SLOWLY

Time passes slowly up here in the mountains,
We sit beside bridges and walk beside fountains,
Catch the wild fishes that float through the stream,
Time passes slowly when you're lost in a dream.

Once I had a sweetheart, she was fine and good-lookin',
We sat in her kitchen while her mama was cookin',
Stared out the window to the stars high above,
Time passes slowly when you're searchin' for love.

Ain't no reason to go in a wagon to town,
Ain't no reason to go to the fair.
Ain't no reason to go up, ain't no reason to go down,
Ain't no reason to go anywhere.

Time passes slowly up here in the daylight,
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right,
Like the red rose of summer that blooms in the day,
Time passes slowly and fades away.


Copyright © 1970 Big Sky Music
Bob Dylan

LATE IN THE DAY LOOKING SOUTH

FIRST PERENNIAL BLOOM

LIGHT ON THE PATH

FATHER'S DAY 2008 / 7 A.M.

FATHER OF NIGHT

Father of night, father of day
Father, who taketh the darkness away
Father, who teacheth the bird to fly
Builder of rainbows up in the sky
Father of loneliness and pain
Father of love and Father of rain

Father of day, Father of night
Father of black, Father of white
Father, who build the mountain so high
Who shapeth the cloud up in the sky
Father of time, Father of dreams
Father, who turneth the rivers and streams

Father of grain, Father of wheat
Father of cold and Father of heat
Father of air and Father of trees
Who dwells in our hearts and our memories
Father of minutes, Father of days
Father of whom we most solemnly praise

(lyrics by Bob Dylan, 1970, from the album "New Morning")

SEVEN CHOICES

Am reading Seven Choices again. My ability to concentrate is slowly returning.


















Chapter 2

SECOND CRISIS:

STUMBLING IN THE DARK

I want to go home, to ride to my village gate.
I want to go back, but there's no road back.

Mei Sheng and Fu I
First Century B.C.

(from Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World: Seven Choices, Elizabeth Harper Neeld, Ph.D.)

Dalai Lama's thoughts on China -- 1998

LATE AFTERNOON SUN

“Although the past may not repeat itself, it does rhyme.” -- Mark Twain

HIRED

It's a black and white and grey morning as the summer solstice approaches.

This is the first morning since RTN died that I have had some of my usual energy again. Last night I dreamed that I was hired to do pencil drawings of objects that were found buried in sand. I was working alongside a man who is the same age I am. His drawings were very good, and he gave me encouragement. The first object I found in the sand was a small black plastic toy horse from my Roy Roger's Ranch set, which I given as a child and which was one of my favorite toys.

With a little more Google searching this morning, I found this and this, too.

Hello COWBOY in the sand?

Maybe the dream is the result of having carefully looked through BOB DYLAN: THE DRAWN BLANK SERIES yesterday morning. The drawn-and-then-painted images remind me how much I love working with gouache and watercolor. I liked Bob Dylan's drawings when I first saw them in his first book of lyrics in the 1970s and then again in 1994 in DRAWN BLANK. I like the way Bob Dylan has added vivid color to the drawings he made from 1989 to 1991 or 1992, some of which were drawn in New Orleans. His drawings and paintings speak to me. They say, "She's got everything she needs, she's an artist."

Or may it was a result of having found this by way of a link at RConversation, the blogger who first inspired me to create a blog of my own.

THE SKY WAS WHITE

Thunder and lightning at 6 p.m., followed by high wind and heavy rain.

STATE OF TRANSITION / ETERNAL SELF

Today's Zen Calendar says:

A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition.
(Juan Ramon Jimenez)

Yesterday was:

You, before me standing,
Oh, my eternal self!
Since my first glimpse
You have been my secret love.
(A Zen Monk's Song Of Samadhi)

I am feeling too fragile to respond to your kind comments or write any more of this story just now. Thanks so much for stopping by. What a long journey from Miramar Beach to the 159th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion to the VA Palo Alto Health Care System to this moment where my heart is so heavy.

SECOND LETTER 1970

As with the first letter, the felt-tip pen drawing was on the front side of the envelope. It was addressed on the back side of the envelope and had this return address:

P.F.C. R.N.
(His social security number)
Co. A. 159th ASV. BN
101st ABN. DIV.
A.P.O. SF. 96383

I found this about Company A, 159th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion, where RTN served as a helicopter mechanic.

We were 19 years old when RTN was drafted in the spring of 1969. I was working and living at home with my parents and two sisters and spending as much time as possible on the weekends at the coast with him, short of staying overnight with him in the room he rented in Montara. I had dropped out of college at University of California at Irvine after six quarters, having realized that all I wanted to do was to be with RTN. Studying art and English literature seemed pointless when I had no intention of being a teacher, which was my parents' goal for me. Because I was so shy and lacking in self-confidence, I couldn't begin to imagine standing in front of a classroom and teaching anything. I had no college goal and very little confidence in myself as an artist after my experience as an art student. What I wanted to do was to move back to Northern California, live with RTN and get a job -- any job where I could be "invisible." Besides, I had decided that I couldn't continue to accept money from my father for any kind of schooling while living with RTN, which was what I saw as our next step. My plan had been to get a job so I could support myself. I had a vague dream of being an artist while holding a job and living with RTN.

Without much trouble, I had found a job in a small company in Burlingame, operating an injection molding machine that produced radio knobs. Even in 1969, the commute from Redwood City to Burlingame on Highway 101 involved bumper-to-bumper traffic. On the radio I would frequently hear John Lennon (scroll down for clip of Instant Karma) singing:

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon youre gonna be dead
What in the world you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin to do
Its up to you, yeah you

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin
Join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Laughin at fools like me
Who in the hell dyou think you are
A super star
Well, right you are

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Evryone come on

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Evryone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When youre evrywhere
Come and get your share

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Come on and on and on on on
Yeah yeah, alright, uh huh, ah

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
On and on and on on and on

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun

As I try to tell this story as I remember it, difficult memories are surfacing. That is good. I want to remember the whole story.

What I just remembered is that RTN was making a living at that time by dealing hard drugs, had used IV amphetamines and had aspired to be a Hell's Angel, having seen the movie, "The Wild One," starring Marlon Brando. His friends were drug addicts. Profoundly naive, I was unable to see just who it was that I loved more than I loved myself. Like the young woman in "The Wild One," I wanted someone to take me away from the small life I thought I was living. In the movie, though, the young woman sees through "Johnny," confronts him and goes on with her life. He respects her for that and choses to continue his life as an "outlaw."

Unlike her, I didn't confront RTN at that level until August of 2002. He had been honest with me during the months of his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer and subsequent remission of that cancer. His friends, he had told me, were practicing junkies and alcoholics. He had referred to himself as an "outlaw, especially if I have to be." I called him in Modesto where he was living with his elderly parents, several of his brothers, his sister-in-law, a nephew and a niece. After my first few words, telling him I had something serious to talk about, he hung up on me after saying, "Goodbye Amanda." I was both devastated and relieved. We did need to say goodbye to each other. We weren't going to live happily ever after, as I had always imagined. It had taken me 36 years to accept that. Two months later, I received this letter:

Dearest Amanda,

Although you may choose not to know me these days . . . . .
Thank you for popping your head up and saying hello in so many wonderful ways. You have done well my friend. You have also grown some very deep roots, as I have. I really can't ever see myself ever leaving N. California for any length of time. Anyway, we all have things to do. I'd like to thank you for all your love. Please, take all my love and get on with your life.

Love Always,
R

*If things are okay or if things are not well* please call me. xox R. (this line was inserted later with a different pen)

P.S. This letter needs no response. If I ever meet up to your standards, I'll let you know. By! xoxox R.

















("Woman Trying To Remember What She Is Trying To Forget," drawn in chalk pastel by AM, in the early 1980s)

JAN 16 1970

One December winter afternoon in the month before RTN was to leave for Vietnam for what would be almost a year, we drove south from Miramar to Pigeon Point Lighthouse, north of Santa Cruz. Instead of walking on the bluffs, we sat in my secondhand 1965 VW Bug and looked out at the ocean. To my surprise and dismay, RTN quietly said, "I'm not expecting you to wait for me. I'm going to be gone for a long time." To that I said in protest, "There's nothing in the world I want to do more than wait for you."

In my memory, he was relieved to know that I would wait. When I think back on that moment, though, it has occurred to me that he was attempting to break up with me. It had never occurred to me that our relationship would not continue while he was in Vietnam. We made a pact that we would write each other every day that he was gone. That idea was his.

Above are both sides of the first letter I received from him. Unlike the letters that followed, it has a stamp. The nearly 365 letters that followed were marked "Free" where a stamp would have been.

THEIR SONGS NEVER CEASE

The reproduction doesn't do justice to this drawing done by RTN while he was in Vietnam. Still, you get the idea.

"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm,
waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like
worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their
songs never cease."

John Muir (1838-1914)

DECISION

Do your work, then step back -- the only path to serenity.

Today's quote from my Zen Calendar is from the Tao Te Ching.

This pencil drawing was made during the year when I was 17 years old, having met RTN on the beach at Half Moon Bay, California, on December 14, 1966. RTN was a surfer and a high school drop-out. He was the third-born son in a family of 10 children. His older brother, the second-born son, was serving in the Army in Thailand. His youngest siblings were fraternal twin boys. RTN's arm was in a cast when I met him. He had broken it in a fall off a bridge near where we met. I was a shy young woman with extremely low esteem who had never had a boyfriend and who was sending out college applications with a desire to study art and literature. I was in the early stages of a serious eating disorder, the oldest of three daughters in a family that appeared from the outside to be stable.

We both liked to draw. We both liked Bob Dylan. We both loved the ocean. We became friends. We discovered that we had been born within 24 hours of each other. I was the "older" one. We walked along the beach together, talked and laughed. I would borrow my parents' car and drive from Redwood City to Miramar Beach in hopes of finding him walking on the beach, which was not far from where his family lived. We didn't "date," but I drove to the ocean on as many weekends as I could during the winter and spring of my senior year in high school.

As part of a commitment made in 1966 to drawing something every day, I made the above drawing from a photo of Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. It doesn't look like Dennis Wilson, nor does it look like RTN did then, but there was a resemblance which spoke of someone who had experienced something that haunted him.

The drawing has been with me since 1967. Sometime in December of 1983 during a heavy rainstorm, water from the roof of my studio space began to seep onto the drawing, which was thumb-tacked to the wall of my studio. I was horrified to see that the water had stained my drawing. Not a good sign. The drawing was part of what little was left of my connection to RTN. Then, on December 28, 1983, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys drowned. I hoped that RTN was still alive. We were 34 years old and had been apart for twelve years because he had hit me in one of the rages that he experienced after returning from Vietnam. I couldn't live with the fear of his violence or with his increasingly destructive drug and alcohol abuse, but I didn't stop loving him.

In those early years, I once asked him why he had been attracted to me. He said, "Because you are an artist."

Brian Willson: Satyagraha

After reading a post by robin andrea at Dharma Bums, I found this short video. Thanks so much to robin andrea for directing my attention to Gandhi, satyagraha and Brian Willson.

MEMORIAL DAY 2008

Flowers drawn by RTN while in Vietnam in 1970.

The Little Nash Rambler

BEEP-BEEP

1961 Nash Metropolitan

This morning as I was waiting for a traffic light to change, a tan and white Nash Metropolitan crossed the intersection. I laughed out loud in delight because that was one of the used cars RTN had during the early years of our friendship. He painted colorful designs (much like those of his I will soon be posting) on the hood of his car. I don't remember the last time I saw a Metropolitan in Bellingham.

This afternoon, I remembered a set of "dream words" from RTN, from a few weeks ago, which puzzled me but make perfect sense now. What I heard in the dream was:

Gunnage.
Courage?
Beep-Beep!

I thought that was odd and funny, and it reminded me of RTN's sense of humor, but I hadn't made the connection between those dream words and a song from the 1960s about a Nash Rambler and a Cadillac. Although the YouTube video doesn't show a Nash Metropolitan, I believe that the song was written with the Metropolitan in mind.

RTN and I used to start laughing about something and be unable to stop. I'd love to laugh like that again. Seeing that Metropolitan today brought that back to me. My heart is beginning to heal.

Bob Dylan - Just Like A Woman

If you have the time, listen through to the end for the harmonica solo.

A LITTLE GIRL

Today is Bob Dylan's 67th birthday. I believe that my mother's favorite Bob Dylan song was "Ring Them Bells."

Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams,
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
Cross the valleys and streams,
For they're deep and they're wide
And the world's on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride.

Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow,
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know.
Oh it's rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow.

Ring them bells Sweet Martha,
For the poor man's son,
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one.
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep.

Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf,
Ring them bells for all of us who are left,
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through.
Ring them bells, for the time that flies,
FOR THE CHILD THAT CRIES
WHEN INNOCENCE DIES

Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the top of the room,
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom.
Oh the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they're breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong.

Copyright © 1989 Special Rider Music

My old friend, RTN, who also listened to Bob Dylan from early on, was in many ways like my mother in that he struggled with anger through most of his adult life. He, like my mother, was a user of amphetamines and Oxycodone, although mostly illegally. He once told me that he was "a veteran of the anger wars." In the year before my mother died, she told me that she was tired of being angry. Until I was 45 years old, I didn't identify myself as an angry person, but I was frequently hungry. I used food to take the edge off any anger that surfaced. Right after RTN died on April 20, I felt numb. As the days go by, I am feeling the anger that is a part of grief. Bob Dylan spoke for many of us when he wrote about "tears of rage, tears of grief."

I don't miss their anger, but I do miss my mother and my old friend. That's my mother in 1920. Her father had returned from World War I in 1919, having served as a doctor.

They say prayer has the power to heal
So pray for me, mother
In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell
I am a-tryin' to love my neighbor and do good unto others
But oh, mother, things ain't going well
(from "Ain't Talkin'" -- Bob Dylan, 2006)

RFK FUNERAL TRAIN

I found this at wood s lot.

40 years ago.

SWEET LADY

Although I was praised by my mother for my drawing of a horse when I was five years old, she was enraged when I showed her this when I was six years old, not long after the second of my two younger sisters was born. My mother was overwhelmed, trying to take care of three young daughters. My father was often away on business, was experiencing setbacks in his career and had had a spinal fusion as well as having had his gallbladder removed. It was a difficult time in their marriage to say the least.

My recollection is that she screamed at me for using up an entire box of stars. Additionally, I had cut out magazine images of a woman in bed alone during the day, images that resembled my mother, who suffered from narcolepsy and severe migraine headaches. In 1954, my mother began taking prescription Dexedrine, which may well have contributed to her hair-trigger rages. She took oxycodone for her headaches.

My sisters and I learned early to avoid her anger by being quiet during her frequent naps and attacks of migraine headaches. Until my mother died, I never understood her anger. It frightened and bewildered me. After her death when I was 45 years old, I began to experience my own anger for the first time and understand how much she suffered from her anger. She didn't want to be an angry mother. Angry or not, my mother saved my collage/drawing.

In 1955, Walt Disney first released "Lady and the Tramp" to the movie theaters. At 6 years old, I could think of nothing that would bring me more happiness than to be a sweet dog like Lady and be loved by a handsome dog like Tramp. My mother wasn't happy. I did everything within my power to avoid her anger but I failed. I didn't want to grow up to be like my mother. I never played games about growing up, getting married and having children. Although my family wasn't Catholic, I had a friend who was Catholic and who had a nun doll. I asked for a nun doll for Christmas but was given a very sad-looking bride doll who appeared to be only a child.

I escaped by way of the colorful world of Walt Disney movies, through books with illustrations, in my love of animals and in the freedom I had to wander alone in the fascinating California oil field/desert environment where we lived at that time. My mother instilled me with a fear of anger, but she also provided me with escapes from that fear that she, too, must have experienced.

My mother was a Sweet Lady who suffered in ways that I didn't understand as a child. Before marrying my father, she had married a "Handsome Tramp." That marriage, one I didn't know about until I was 17 years old, ended within a year.

Each time I tell this story, I learn more about my mother, my life as a child and the part that art played in our lives. Her dream from childhood was to be a writer. I don't know if she was able to write at all when my sisters and I were very young, but by the time I was in grade school, I remember that she was writing short stories and encouraging me to write poems and stories, as well as to draw.

As I do this thinking back again, my desire is to remain aware of my creative and holy ground in the present.

If Not For You - Dylan/Harrison Duet

JUST TO BE ALIVE

For the benefit of those new to my blog, and I hope for older readers, I'm going to do a re-run of my retrospective, now a 42-year retrospective. Last time around, that process resulted in new paintings, drawings and insight into my older work.

My fate as an artist was sealed with the above drawing which I made when I was 5 years old and for which I was praised. I am grateful to my mother, who was an accomplished horseback rider, for saving this orange, purple and red-violet horse. I wonder why I chose the color blue for the number 5.

This time, I am including the drawings and paintings of my old friend, RTN, making this a two-person retrospective, given that he has been the inspiration, in one way or another, for all my art work. In a letter from the VA Hospital, he wrote that he was proud of me for my art work and hoped I would continue my work as an artist.

Last week, I finally was able to go to the photo lab in downtown Bellingham so I could order some prints of my old friend and his art work to send to his sister. As I was standing at the counter trying to explain my project, I heard Bob Dylan singing. I stopped talking to listen to him sing. When I tried to talk again, I couldn't because I started crying. The young woman clerk was playing Bob Dylan's album, "New Morning," which is what I listened while my old friend was in Vietnam and what we listened to during the short time we lived together in 1971. The clerk was playing the ALBUM (!) on a turntable and handed the album cover to me. More than a coincidence. How else could that happen? "New Morning" is a great album. Ends with a beautiful song to God called "Father of Night." The song that made me start to cry is "If Not For You."

Now it's "New Morning In The North Country."

Tomorrow is a Long Time

TIME OUT OF MIND

Oboe is still asleep at 5:30 a.m., but I've just finished reading the recently published A FREEWHEELIN' TIME: A MEMOIR OF GREENWICH VILLAGE IN THE SIXTIES, by Suze Rotolo.

"Time heals, after all -- although the clock that marks that kind of time has no hands." (Suze Rotolo, p. 299)

I'm grateful to Suze Rotolo for her graceful ability to look back from that clearly creative place where she continues to thrive, deeply rooted in the present.

IN A TIME OF CHAOS

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility -- James Thurber

I need to take time out.

PRAYERS FOR MYANMAR

(Drawn in 2005, using a computer track pad, by Old Girl Of The North Country)

MEMORY

I believe that my old friend and I spent a night on the beach shown in this woodblock print soon after he returned from Vietnam on December 8, 1970. We had driven from the small cottage we rented for $110 a month in the hills of Redwood City. Late in the day, near sunset, after parking the car on a turnout on the coast highway, we walked across the headlands and made our way down to the beach. Of course, this was illegal. We were on private land, but it was getting dark, and we decided to sleep at the bottom of the cliffs, in a safe place above the tide line. My old friend and I gathered driftwood, and he built a fire in the sand in a sheltered niche. As the smoke rose, we heard a shriek. When we looked up, there was an owl in the sky. It didn't seem like an auspicious sign. I felt as if we were in a Robinson Jeffers' poem. The night was cold and windy. We didn't sleep well. In the morning, we walked back up to the road where a highway patrolman was waiting for us. He asked us what we were doing on the headlands. He pointed out that we had been walking on private property but didn't cite us for trespassing.

No artist comes closer to my experience and vision of California than Tom Killion, whose woodblock print is shown above.

Many thanks to wood s lot for his link to POETS ON THE PEAKS: SNYDER, MUIR, KEROUAC, WHALEN

BY THE LIGHT OF CATTAILS

Last night in my dreams, my old friend said, "Understand."

Joan Baez - Gracias A La Vida

Gracias A La Vida

Bob Dylan - Let it be - Joan Baez

Joan Baez - Farewell Angelina

The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
("Farewell Angelina," Bob Dylan, 1965)

BOB DYLAN - Farewell Angelina

Just a table standing empty
At the edge of the sea
(from "Farewell Angelina," Bob Dylan, 1965)

Listening to Bob Dylan this early a.m.

Bob Dylan - Boots of Spanish Leather - Helsinki live

Bob's 2003 version, if you have the time.

Boots of Spanish Leather - Nanci Griffith

Listen all the way through, if you have the time.

INTO THE MYSTIC

Oh, I'm sailin' away my own true love,
I'm sailin' away in the morning.
Is there something I can send you from across the sea,
From the place that I'll be landing?
(Boots of Spanish Leather, Bob Dylan, 1964)

My old friend painted this sometime in the 1970s. I believe that he painted it while he was an art student in the first few years after he returned from Vietnam.

I had another one-word dream last night. This time my old friend, who died on April 20, said, "Shore."

MISSISSIPPI BIRD

Does anyone know what kind of bird this is?

"When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up
thy head!"

-- William Blake

KINSHIP

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
-- William James, psychologist and writer (1842-1910)

CLOSE TO THE GROUND (LISTEN)

My heart says that Michelle Obama is a woman whose words can be trusted. She refers to herself as "the cynic in the family."

"Are we the way we are because of the way things were or are things the way they are because of the way we were?"

My old friend's mother posed this question to me in 2001, a few years before she died.