Babar and Celeste

After dropping into a Yoga class at the studio where I first practiced Yoga, I have resumed a vigorous early morning asana practice. At the end of this morning's practice, as I was in the corpse pose, something in me said to draw the elephants from one of the two pillows I bought on the morning of March 21, 2008, a few hours after I had learned that Richard had a Stage IV brain tumor.

It's been a long time since I have felt like drawing, but I am newly inspired by Suze Rotolo's Art Books:





















The inspiration may also have come from,

















a copy of which sits close to where I practice the asanas (-:

or

"... the elephant in the room of my life ..."
(from A Freewheelin' Time, by Suze Rotolo)

Love Minus Zero / No Limit

Yoga Sutra I.2

Yoga is the uniting of consciousness in the heart.


Yoga Sutra I.33

To preserve openness of heart and calmness of mind, nurture these attitudes:

Kindness to those who are happy.

Compassion for those who are less fortunate.

Honor for those who embody noble qualities.

Equanimity to those who actions oppose your values.

The brain, thought to be the provider of thoughts, develops much later than the heart. The heart remains independent in its rhythm until near the time of birth, when the central nervous system takes over the regulation of the heart. From then on the heart is reliant on the brain, and subsequently feelings seem to combine with thoughts and become virtually indistinguishable.

(from A Woman's Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras: The Secret Power of Yoga, by Nischala Joy Devi)

Listen.

What I love about yoga is what I learned from my first yoga teacher, that yoga is not a competition and that it does not matter how flexible one is, but it does matter that one experiences where one's limits are and explores them.

Message from the South Pole / Hi Amy

Look here. I love this webcam (-:

Wood Ducks, Bald Eagles, Canada Geese / Nesting Time

This morning, because of the light in the sky, I took the above photo looking to the southeast from my porch. You can see the light grey gravel trail into Whatcom Falls Park. Looking at the photo, I noticed two Wood Duck (Listen) nesting boxes. Looking up just now, I saw one of the Bald Eagles (Listen) carrying branches to their established nest that I can see in the cottonwood grove to the northeast.

Yesterday I took the photo below. For some reason, the zoom worked better in black and white. The bird in the nest yesterday did not have the white head of a mature Bald Eagle. Now I'm wondering why a "yearling," if that is what it was, would return to its nest of birth. Could it have been an Osprey? That seems unlikely.






















This morning a group of Canada Geese (Listen) arrived at Scudder Pond. A clear sign of spring!

Suze Rotolo (1943-2011)

Artist

"We were very curious, and we were both in search of poetry, and we fed each other's curiosity."

(Suze Rotolo, from NPR interview in 2008)

Thank you for your messages. Truly. Suze.

A woman of heart and mind, loving, loved.

Of songs written long ago, she says:

"I can recognise things. It's like looking at a diary. It brings it all back. And what's hard is that you remember being unsure of how life was going to go - his, mine, anybody's. So, from the perspective of an older person looking back, you enjoy them, but also think of them as the pain of youth, the loneliness and struggle that youth is, or can be."

Did you see the full moon on this cold frosty morning?

As I was driving down the hill at 6:45 to meet with friends for our Saturday morning breakfast get together, I was startled to see the full moon. I can't remember the last time I saw such an impressive setting full moon. So often, most of the phases of the moon are behind a cloud cover here. There are no stopping places on that road down the hill, but there were few cars on the road, and I did stop and hurriedly tried to take a picture through the windshield, not noticing that the flash setting was turned on. Not what I had hoped for, but that's okay. Funny how all those full-moon-shaped images were created by the flash. If you click on the photo you can see the traffic lights and other city lights, even the Vining Street sign. Makes me think of paintings by Whistler, Monet, Van Gogh and Mondrian.


Surprisingly, there were still no cars behind me, and I was able to get this second image, without the flash.















Listen

"...into the day's brilliance."

This human being, each night nevertheless
summoning--with a breath blown at a flame,
or hand’s touch
on the lamp-switch--darkness,
silently utters,
impelled as if by a need to cup the palms
and drink from a river,
the words, ‘Thanks.
Thanks for this day, a day of my life.’
And wonders.

...

And drifts to sleep, downstream
on murmuring currents of doubt and praise,
the wall shadowy, that tomorrow
will cast its own familiar, clear-cut shadow
into the day's brilliance.

(from "Human Being," by Denise Levertov)

(Photo with boulder with long morning shadow taken this morning as the sun first appeared over the hill to the east of Boulevard Park on Bellingham Bay)

!Mumford and Sons!/ Bob the jazz singer / Maggie's Farm

(from "The Jazz Singer," 1927)

Listen to Mumford and Sons and the Avett Brothers first, if you haven't heard this already, and then watch as Bob comes on at 5:09, miming with his arms the ghost of Al Jolson.

Curious, I found the following in this article about the film, "The Jazz Singer":

As he finishes the jazzed-up song 'Blue Skies,' his stern father enters, sees the pair, expresses deep upset, and shouts "Stop!" (not a title this time). (The film returns to its silent-type nature following the outburst.) Sara questions her husband's speechless reaction: "Papa, have you no word for your son?" The elder Cantor glares: "You dare to bring your jazz songs into my house! I taught you to sing the songs of Israel - to take my place in the synagogue!" Jack tries to get his father to understand his more contemporary viewpoint: "You're of the old world! If you were born here, you'd feel the same as I do - - tradition is all right, but this is another day! I'll live my life as I see fit!"

His traditionalist father can't believe his disrespectful son: "You talk that way to a Cantor - - it's sacrilege!" Sara attempts to soothe the two of them: "Don't forget, Papa, it's your birthday - - and Jakie's come home." Jack has remembered his father's birthday with a present: "And I didn't forget it was your birthday, Papa" - it's another prayer shawl. Jack wants his father to know about his great success: "I'm doing fine, Papa, and I'm going in a big Broadway show." His father is shocked to know that he deeply loves jazz music and performs profane music: "A singer in a theatre - you from five generations of Cantors!" Jack defends his music: "You taught me that music is the voice of God! It is as honorable to sing in the theatre as in the synagogue! My songs mean as much to my audience as yours to your congregation!"

There was a Valentine on the trail

Listen

"We will begin to feel and will come to know the vastness of our emotions, but we will not be slaves to them."
(Anonymous)

My father would be 97 years old today

If my father were still alive, he would be 97 years old today. My father was a senior in high school when this photo was taken.

Here is some of the music he would have heard between during the 1930s. In 1932, he was the same age that my nephew is this year. Amazing!

Happy Birthday Day, Dad!

A Moonlit Day in February

Listen

(I haven't finished listening to this

but wanted to share it anyway)

With a love like that / February 9, 1964

Listen

A Love Like That

Even
After
All this time
The sun never
says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that.

It lights the
Whole
Sky.

- Hafiz

Go outside

Listen

(Filmed not too far south of Bellingham)

In the first 20 minutes of a 40-minute walk in the rain, before circling back home

During that 40 minutes, I didn't see many people out walking. Two young women jogging on my way out and two young women with infants in strollers with plastic coverlets on my way back.

When Leo Kottke met Bob Dylan

Thanks to kjm for inspiring me to find this.

New Morning Koan / What would you say to Dr. Bob?

A few weeks ago my sister told me that our sister and our 18-year-old nephew went to see Bob Dylan in concert at Bumbershoot in Seattle in September. This third-hand story is that as Bob Dylan began to sing, my nephew's face became puzzled, deeply puzzled. He looked at my sister questioningly, making funny faces at her. Before long, she said to him, "You don't have to stay if you don't want to." He was immensely relieved and left the concert. I would be curious to hear his version of this story. The story is that my sister didn't stay for the whole concert either. The last Bob Dylan concert I went to was so loud it hurt my ears, but it's good I stayed for the astoundingly moving acoustic version of "Girl from the North Country" that was the final encore. That was in the mid to late 1990s in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Here is another take on Bob Dylan that I came across yesterday, written by a man who was born in 1966, when Bob Dylan was 25 years old:

Good question

I laughed out loud when I read these words of Todd Snider:

"...but you see here i go . . . now i'm starting to talk to the very bob dylan_the same way i talk to my nephew about bob dylan._in that spastic way that reminds me of an old far side cartoon_where the two gorillas are under a banana tree gorging on bananas_when one turns to the other and says_"you know man, i know we're supposed to like bananas. being gorillas and all_but i think its different for me. i mean, i really like them"_that's how most true bob dylan fans sound when they start trying to explain him..."

Listen

(Crescent moon and Venus before dawn on January 30, 2011)

Three stories about walking south and three stories about walking north / Experiments in consciousness and imagination and delight

consciousness. 1. the state of being conscious; aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

imagination. 1. the action of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.

delight. 2. something that gives great pleasure.

Listen

Thanks to this blogger for the link to the wonderful music.

At the beginning of a 40-minute walk in Whatcom Falls Park yesterday morning

"All my life I have been haunted by the fascinating questions of creativity. Why does an original idea in science and art "pop up" from the unconscious at a given moment? What is the relation between talent and the creative act, and between creativity and death? Why does a mime or a dance give us such delight? How did Homer, confronting something as gross as the Trojan War, fashion it into poetry which became a guide for the ethics of the whole Greek civilization?"

(from the preface to The Courage to Create, by Rollo May)

The rain's not so bad, and you can hear the birds singing

New Year of the Trees 2011

Listen

Tu Bishvat

Thanks to Rachel for the link.

Janis Joplin's 68th Birthday today

Listen.

Pacific / Ocean of Compassion

Listen.

The Point Reyes National Seashore on the Pacific Ocean in Northern California is hidden in a cloud bank this morning but not forever.

Martin Luther King Day 2011 / Walking

From page 59 of Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit:

"A photograph of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march has been on my refrigerator for months, and it speaks of this inspired walking. Taken by Matt Heron, it shows a steady stream of marchers three or four wide moving from right to left across the photograph. He must have lain low to take it, for it raises its subjects up high against a pale, clouded sky. They seem to know they are walking toward transformation and into history, and their wide steps, upraised hands, the confidence of their posture, express the will with which they go to meet it. They have found in this walk a way to make their history rather than suffer it, to measure their strength and test their freedom, and their movement expresses the same sense of destiny and meaning that resonates in King's deep-voiced, indomitable oratory." (my italics)

Last night just before sleep, I opened my copy of Wanderlust: A History of Walking, which I just started reading in the last week, and saw the above words. Thanks to Solitary Walker in the Midlands of England for mentioning the book on his blog.

Snowy day clouds to the east

This was the view on January 9, best seen by clicking on the image. This morning the rain has returned, and most of the snow and ice are gone. Yesterday I took an hour walk in the snow and ice in Whatcom Falls Park. Sure felt good to be walking.

Listen

A friend mentioned Stephen Levine a few days ago. It was in the early 1980s that another friend recommended Who Dies?, a book that I have read and re-read for its wholehearted wholeheartedness that honors heartbreak and renewal in equal measure. It brought me to tears and laughter, sometimes at the same time.

It is where I first read:

"The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it." (Sri Nisargadatta).

Winter Light

when asked if you care about
the world's problems, look deeply
into the eyes of he that asks
you, he will not ask again.

(from "Advice for Geraldine on Her Miscellaneous Birthday," Bob Dylan, 1964)

Beethoven

Listen

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. -James M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)

(Quote from A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg)

January 6, 2011 / Epiphany

Happy 18th Birthday, Lee!


Listen

New Year's Day 1/1/11

You and Art

Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.

Year after year fits over your face--
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;

And you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.

(from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems by William Stafford)






















A wolf? A coyote? A dog? From one of the Yosemite webcams on December 25, 2010.

Dear Blog Friends,

Looking forward to another fruitful year of reading your blogs and blogging! Here is where I started in 2006. My 4th blog birthday was December 8.

Kind wishes for 2011 and always,
am

P.S. At the top of this post is "Boy with Amaryllis and Orion," one of my trackpad drawings from January 2008.

William Blake said / A multitude of holidays

"You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough."

Dear blog friends,

From tomorrow until New Year's Day, I will be on a blog break and will not be posting or commenting on my blog or on anyone else's blog.

Which brings me to the thought that if there ever was a film about fierce grace, it is "Big Bad Love." I'm not recommending it but just want to say that it spoke to me in a way nothing else could have. When I was looking for a photo for this post, I came across the above photo which shows who and what the film is about.

Richard's sister, Dorothy, sent me two CD's of acoustic guitar music by Nori Tachibana, currently of Northern California. She said that Richard wanted me to have them. That's what I'll be listening to as fall and winter deepen into the multitude of holidays that may be celebrated in late November and throughout December if one wishes. I'll be listening to holiday music from a variety of religious and spiritual traditions, too, including Bob Dylan's "Christmas in the Heart."

Must Be Santa
Debe ser Papá Noel
必须是圣诞老人
Moet de Kerstman zijn
Doit être le père noël
Sein muss Weihnachtsmann
πρέπει να είστε Άγιος Βασίλης
Deve essere il Babbo Natale
サンタクロースはあるなる
Deve ser Papai Noel
должен быть Санта Клаус
산타클로스는 이어야 한다

Little Drummer Boy

May love bless and keep you during the holiday season!

Kind wishes from your blog friend,
am

B-R-A-U-T-I-G-A-M / Your Catfish Friend

I just finished re-reading You Can't Catch Death: A Daughter's Memoir by Ianthe Brautigan. After I read these words, followed by a quote from her father's last book,

"I'm glad I had the courage to wander alone with sharp objects tempting the release of a pain that has resided in me for so long. I have found that from my walking in painful places long enough, the knife edges, formerly so sharp, become dull. All they are good for, in the end, is to spread butter on toast for breakfast I will eat with my child. My flesh is safe. My father is safe. My words are safe in this pale new dawn that I share with my father.

"Where did that kid go, Mother?"
"I don't know, Father."...
"I don't see him anywhere."
"I guess he's gone."
"Maybe he went home."

--R.B., SO THE WIND WON'T BLOW IT ALL AWAY

I went to a bookstore to find that book. When I asked the young clerk if they had any books by Richard Brautigan, she asked me how the name was spelled. I spelled it for her. She said, "Hmmm. There is one book about places to visit in Orange County." I asked her what spelling she was using.

She said, "B-R-A-U-T-I-G-A-M?

So we tried again and found two books, each a collection of three of his novels and one including his last novel.

I mentioned this experience in the company of a group of friends this morning and one proceeded to quote this poem:

Your Catfish Friend
by Richard Brautigan

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."

A Birth and a Return and Picasso in November

Every Saturday morning at 7 a.m., I meet with friends for breakfast at a nearby restaurant. Today there was especially good news from three of the youngest. One announced the birth of his first child, a son. The other talked about a celebration the night before of the return of one of his friends from Afghanistan. Another spoke of his teenaged son's long-anticipated visit to the Picasso exhibit in Seattle. There was much talk of love and hope and gratitude from these young men in the midst of the many sorrows of our times.

Veterans Day 2010

The true end of a war is the rebirth of life;
the right to die peacefully in your own bed.
The true end of war is the end of fear;
the true end of war is the return of laughter.
(Alfredo Molano)



































I am so tired.
I am so very tired of this war.

(From Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam (published 2002), by Walter Dean Myers, a Vietnam veteran)

My thoughts today are on veterans of all wars and their loved ones and are especially focused on veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and their loved ones. May they find the true end of a war. May we all find the true end of a war.

"Seeing the Divine in the Human"

Listen to Luxman (Lakshman) Das (to the left of Bob Dylan)

Listen to Purna Das (to the right of Bob Dylan)

Listen to Bob. I think I hear their influence in the sound of his voice here.

(Quote from YouTube's "King of the Bauls." Close-up from the cover of my vinyl album of "John Wesley Harding" from 1968.)