"...The world is a Bridge..."

This morning, right after I woke up at 4 a.m., something that I don't usually look at on my wall caught my eye, and then I remembered that today is the day that my mother died suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1994. What I saw was my mother's calligraphy and ink drawing with a quote she was given by a friend:
















"Isa (Jesus), son of Mary said: 'The world is a Bridge , pass over it, but build no houses upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity; but the World endures but an hour. Spend it in prayer for the rest is unseen.'"

Original Persian:
-"عیسی پسر مریم (در آنان می شود صلح) گفت :' جهان است پل ، عبور بیش از آن است ، اما هیچ ساخت خانه بر آن او امیدوار است که برای یک روز ، ممکن است برای ابدیت امیدواریم ، اما ماندگار جهان اما ساعت آن را صرف در دعا و نماز برای استراحت است نهان ".'

That's my mother at Anchor Bay, California, just north of where my parents lived from the 1970s until her death in 1994. I believe she is in her 70s in that photo.

I am feeling close to her today, although it wasn't always that way.

A one-hour walk on the first day of December 2011 / Early Risin'

Taylor Street Dock at 8:45 a.m.:






















Looking out over Bellingham Bay:

















Looking back at Taylor Street Dock:

















Expanse of sky and islands from Marine Park:

















Expanse of water and islands from Marine Park:

















Partial view of Marine Park's flock of 13 wild geese:






















The 13th goose, a regular member of the flock of Canada Geese:

















Walking down the steep part of Taylor Street Dock on my way back:



Music for an early morning walk in the inland waters of Western Washington:

The day after Thanksgiving 2011 / Walking in the sunshine

Thanksgiving 2011 / Strong winds and rain and sunshine

It's a Bellingham Thanksgiving with many grateful people out walking early in the stormy morning on the Taylor Street Dock section of the South Bay Trail and a man playing Frisbee with his dog at Boulevard Park in the wind and rain, and a sunbreak late in the afternoon.

"... with sorrow and with great compassion..." / UC Davis and Portland

(The photo of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet came from here.)

I never watched "Kung Fu" when it was on American television from 1972 until 1975, the year the Vietnam War ended. "Kung Fu" is set in the years after the devastation of the American Civil War. Richard's sister, Dorothy, gave me the complete "Kung Fu" series on DVD when I saw her and her husband after visiting Richard's grave at the San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery in 2008. Dorothy, ten years younger than I am, watched "Kung Fu" on TV when she was in high school. While watching the episode called "The Demon God" a few days ago, I was startled to hear the following:

"You are the enemy who is not the enemy. We are of the many, not of the few. We are necessary and useful."

Caine says this to the scorpion who stung him earlier--the scorpion whose life he had just saved and who then showed him the way out of a place where they were trapped together.

If you are curious and have about an hour, this episode (in 6 parts) can be seen on YouTube. The theme of "the many and the few" runs through it. It is a decidedly awkward vehicle but timely, given American participation in another war is scheduled to end on December 31, 2011, and in light of the events of the past week at UC Davis, Portland, and around the world--the 99% and the 1%. Maybe I'm making too great of a stretch here, but the connection was there for me.

Thanks to Beth for this:

THE TOOLS OF FEAR

Weapons are the tools of fear.
A decent person will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint….

Our enemies are not demons
but human beings like ourselves.
The decent person doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor do they rejoice in victory.
How could we rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of people?
Enter a battle gravely
with sorrow and with great compassion
as if attending a funeral.

circa 550 BCE (Tao Te Ching)

May the policeman with the pepper spray be protected some day by the students he assaulted, and may he return that protection and human kindness by showing them a way out of a place they are both trapped.

Anything is possible.

About a week ago, I saw the body of a green bird with red on the top of its head. It was lying near the door of a small store I was about to enter. It must have flown at the window. There was no apparent injury. Gently picking the bird up, I tucked its tiny body into a soft resting place in the the ivy near the doorway.

Mappemonde / Map of the World

The Dog of Art

That dog with daisies for eyes
who flashes forth
flame of his very self at every bark
is the Dog of Art.
Worked in wool, his blind eyes
look inward to caverns and jewels
which they see perfectly,
and his voice
measures forth the treasure
in music sharp and loud,
sharp and bright,
bright flaming barks,
and growling smoky soft, the Dog
of Art turns to the world
the quietness of his eyes.

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

It may have been 1992 that a friend invited me to go to Seattle to the University of Washington to hear Denise Levertov read her poetry. While listening to her read, I drew what I could see in front of me. While going through all my belongings this past week, I found the drawing you see at top of this post. Not sure why I wrote "mappemond."

Here is Denise Levertov as a young woman:

and in her last years:

Marianne Aya Omac

Joan Baez mentioned Marianne Aya Omac in an interview, and so I went to YouTube. Listen:



I don't speak French, but I watched the video below all the way through. If you have time, listen for, "Wow. Wow. Wow" (1:50-2:11).



Word is that we are in for some snow here in Bellingham. Doesn't look like that today as I look out from my porch, where a single Cosmos is still holding on, and the temperature is right around 50 degrees.

Continuity / Following the thread

In the last few weeks, I've been going through all my belongings, trying to clear some space and orient myself. One of the first things I looked through were my father's slides which went back to 1948, when my parents married, and included images from my father's trips to Norway, the Orkney Islands, Alaska, China, India, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel after he retired in the mid-1970s. There are photos of me in my first year of life, 1949-1950. I am having many of these old photos scanned and put on disks.

A few days ago, I went through photos and negatives of my parents and my sisters, and of my parent's home and my father's garden in Gualala, California, dating back to 1971. Those photos came to me after my father died in 2003.

Yesterday I began going through a drawer of all my old photos and negatives, taken before I had a digital camera. The photos went back to 1974, which is the year I left California for a brief period of living near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, not because I didn't like California, but because I was curious, and my boyfriend at the time invited me to travel with him, and I was trying to put space between me and a traumatic period in my life. Little did I know that I would be haunted by the events of 1970 and 1971 as well as the events of 1974 to 1984 for years to come.

This morning I finished going through all those photos, letting many of them go, but keeping more than I had expected to want to keep. The photos from 1974 to 1984 are a record of years that are painful for me to remember, but going through them yesterday and this morning brought some genuine healing and a compassionate perspective on that deeply troubled part of my life from age 17 to age 34.

October 1984 to Veteran's Day 1990 was a period of new hope and what I thought was going to be boundless creative energy. Amazing to see myself in my mid-30s. Amazing to see how young I still was.

Beginning after Veteran's Day 1990, I began to exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. I stopped painting for the most part. In looking through the photos from the 1990s, I found the above photo of one of the few paintings I did during that time. I no longer have the painting. I donated it to a local fund-raising auction. Someone in Bellingham owns it now. At the bottom of the painting, it says, "This plan is not totally useless" and "The place where two rivers meet." The images that go with the words were from dreams I had just before the most creative period in my life, 1984 to 1990. Now, as l look more closely, I see that almost everything in the painting came from a dream in the early 1980s.

The last non-digital photos were in 2002. I was increasingly displeased with the photos I was taking with my cameras and didn't take any photos until 2005, at which time I bought my iBook G4 and then a digital camera.

My blog was part of my healing from posttraumatic stress disorder. I had been unemployed for the first of what was to be five years of unemployment, living on what was supposed to be my retirement savings. I quickly became a full-time blogger. My blog began on the 36th anniversary of Richard's return from Vietnam. By looking at my drawings and paintings from 1966 to 2006, I was able to see 40 years of my life as a artist. After presenting my 40-year retrospective, I began to presenting digital photographs, mostly taken from my porch and in and around Bellingham.

Through blogging, I came out of a long posttraumatic stress disorder-induced creative isolation, connecting with creative people in different parts of the United States and Canada as well as creative people in Europe and India. Today, I am happy to still be blogging with a handful of blog friends. You know who you are.

After Richard died in 2008, my blog lost momentum but kept on.

In 2010, I took the only job I could find as a medical transcriptionist, and found myself with little time for blogging and an increasing awareness of being exploited at an occupation that once offered a person a good hourly wage and benefits.

Now I am retired, without health insurance until I can receive Medicare, collecting a small Social Security check. I'm curious to see if I can live on that, and if not, I will need to find a way to supplement that income, as my savings is limited.

Still have a cedar chest of memories and a number of bookshelves to go through before I am through with this current sorting and letting go process.

Today I am feeling better than I have in years, with a measure of peace that I do not take for granted.

Thank you to robin andrea for the suggestion that made it possible for me to present the birds singing in November for you today:

Veteran's Day 2011 / Starting to go home again

While Richard was in U.S. Army basic training in Fort Lewis, Washington, I was excited to see the cover of Time magazine of June 20, 1969, with its banner of STARTING TO GO HOME. Naively, I thought that this might mean that he would not be sent to Vietnam after all. Richard was my world. He was my present and my future.

Richard was drafted into the U.S. Army in spring of 1969, three years after we had met on the beach in Half Moon Bay, California, as 17-year-olds. He strongly considered applying for conscientious objector status but in talking to a draft resistance counselor in Oakland, California, became convinced that he would not be granted that. He did not want to go to Canada or prison. He went to Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic in January of 1970. He returned from Vietnam on December 8, 1970. He had not been in direct combat, but something happened in Vietnam that he could never talk about. He said that there are some things that a person needs to keep to himself. He referred to himself as a veteran of the anger wars.

We never spent a Veteran's Day together, although he called me on the telephone from California on Veteran's Day evening in 1990, during the First Gulf War. Previous to that call, he had been talking about the possibility of visiting me in Washington. There seemed a possibility of a reconciliation for us. I was not immediately aware that he was drunk. As I became conscious of that, I am sure he could hear fear entering my voice. He sounded the way he had sounded during his first few months home from Vietnam, the way he had sounded just before he hit me in early May of 1970. He was enraged, terrifying, threatening. I froze and then began shaking so hard that I could barely hold the telephone to my ear. In a deeply menacing drunken voice, he kept repeating, "Tell me what you really think of me."

I struggled to find words. When the words arrived, I told him that I loved him, and hung up the phone in anguish, and then I called back a few minutes later in regret for hanging up on him. His mother answered. I told her what had happened. She said that he had passed out and suggested that I call back in the morning. She said that he didn't start drinking until later in the day. I have amnesia beyond that. I don't know if I talked with him the next day. I do know that he did go to A.A. after that, and that he did send me an amends letter in March of 1993, apologizing for his behavior on Veteran's Day 1990. He was sober for 1 year but left A.A. and didn't find sobriety again until the last 6 months of his life.

In 1990, twenty years after returning from Vietnam, he was working as a carpenter, living on and off with his parents, struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction, and PTSD. I have since learned that the First Gulf War was a breaking point for many Vietnam veterans. It was a breaking point for me as well. I began to remember, with fear and acute distress, the year that Richard was in Vietnam and the months we lived together after his return.

Now we hear again that our soldiers will be returning home. That it will all be over on December 31, 2011.

Despite extreme duress, the love that Richard and I shared did not die. Richard's ashes were buried on June 20, 2008, thirty-nine years after that Time magazine cover. In his last days, when he could no longer speak, Richard wrote on his notepad to his sister, "I just want to go home."

I've been going through all my belongings, letting go of what I don't need anymore, and in the last few days I came across the Time magazine I had saved since 1969. Until this morning at 4 a.m. when I woke up, I was wondering what I was going to write for Veteran's Day 2011.

This Veteran's Day, especially, I am thinking of those whose beloveds didn't live to become veterans, the new generation of war widows. Thinking, too, of the handful of war widowers, about whom I have heard nothing so far and who are surely grieving today.

Veteran's Day 2011 is a good day for sending love to all soldiers, veterans, and their beloveds, as well as the widows, widowers, girlfriends, boyfriends, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, friends, all relations. We are all in this together.














(The above is supposed to be a video with birds singing, but for some reason it uploads as a image only. Imagine birds singing on a November day)

... but I'm not the only one (-:

"Solitude: a sweet absence of looks."
- Milan Kundera

"We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers."
(Milan Kundera)

Thanks for the quote from Whiskey River.

I can claim membership in all of these categories.

As an artist and writer, I hope to be seen in the first way but safe and remote like Emily Dickinson or Georgia O'Keeffe, not a public figure.

At first I didn't identify with the second category but then realized that hosting a blog might put me into that category. I don't need that many known eyes looking at me. I'm happy with small internet gatherings of people I know through blogging. We are both anonymous and known through blogging. Paradox. Amanda Wald Rachie is a former name of mine, the one I used when I was most productive as an artist. My legal name doesn't appear on this blog.

I had hoped to spend my life with Richard in the third way of being seen.

I currently live in a variation of the fourth category, beyond my wildest dreams. I don't think we are that rare. Reading about the dreamers brought me the tears and laughter that comes with a powerful feeling of true kinship with those who live in the eyes of loved ones who have died and are not present in the sense they were previously but are not at all imaginary either.

I know there is a fifth category, that of people of who want to be seen by animals as well as people. I'm in that category.

And a sixth category, that of people who want to be seen by Mother Earth and Father Sky. I'm in that category.

I like what George Harrison wrote in one his last songs:

"... I keep traveling around the bend
There was no beginning, there is no end
It wasn't born and never dies
There are no edges, there is no sides
Oh yeah, you just don't win
It's so far out - the way out is in
Bow to God and call him Sir
But if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there."

and:

"... God God God
You are the wisdom that we seek
God God God
The lover that we miss
God God God
Your nature is eternity
You are Existence, Knowledge, Bliss ..."

And so there is a seventh category, for those like George Harrison, where wanting to be seen and heard by God is not perceived as imaginary or a matter of organized religion but as a real possibility in an eternity where anything is possible. I can join George Harrison in that creative and open-ended vision of God.

And an eighth category for those who see everything as One, where the looker and one looked at are One.

A ninth category? A tenth category? Beyond that?

Thanks to Milan Kundera for starting me on this riff of categories of being seen.

(Self-portrait on my 62nd birthday a few weeks ago, wearing the gift of a scarf from Dorothy, Richard's sister. Allowing myself to be looked at looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself, infinitely. Funny in the context of this post!)

Update:

A ninth category, suggested by robin andrea, "I would like to see myself as others see me." That is one I can relate to as well.

Before dawn / Oboe at the door to the porch

Cat / Sunrise with Geese in the Sky

"...Your work needs you as much as you need it. Your work begs your expression. You need to materialize it on a daily basis, from your enriched life--the better side of your nature. Without your personal focus and action, your magic cannot and never will exist. Think of all the great work you have left to do. Think of how necessary it is for people to see good work. "Work," said Kahlil Gibran, "is love made visible."

from The Painter's Keys

Yesterday, Halloween, I applied for early Social Security benefits and am curious to see if I can simplify my life enough to live on that. There is something of the excitement of graduating from high school. The working at a job part of my life may well be over, but there is still work to do.

Is the cat working or playing, or something else?

This morning I Iooked up from my laptop at 8:20 a.m. and realized that the sun still hadn't appeared over the foothills to the east. I noticed a flock of geese flying across the sky above where the sun would appear. Picking up my camera, I went out on the porch to make a video. Gradually it occurred to me that because daylight savings time extends so far into fall, sunrise on November 1st looks very much like sunrise on the winter solstice. Daylight Savings Time ends this year on November 6. Makes me wish I lived in Arizona or Hawaii, where there is no Daylight Savings Time. If you look closely, you will see the geese flying across the morning sky in V-formation.

Stecher Family Album

Finally got around to photographing images from an album that I believe was assembled by my grandfather. He identifies his mother, his aunts and uncles and cousins who lived in and around Boston and in New York state. His mother (my great-grandmother) was one of 11 children of Melchoir and Helene (Roethler) Stecher of Achern, Germany. After Helene died, Melchior decided to come to America with his younger children. His oldest daughter, Jacobine, remained in Germany.

Above is a photo of my great-grandmother who was born in Achern, Germany, in 1836. Her firstborn son died during a cholera epidemic in Boston. As far as my grandfather knew, his father simply disappeared. Below is a photo of my great-grandmother's younger sister, Caroline. Caroline died at age 34 in 1879. My great-grandmother died at age 59 in 1895. Her death certificate said that she was married (rather than widowed or divorced or separated) at the time of her death. I found a record on Ancestry.com that showed evidence of separation papers, but I was unable to obtain those records as they had been lost somehow. My great-grandmother looks world-weary compared to her younger sister, and no wonder. Family secrets and tragedy must have weighed heavily on her. I keep thinking that something will turn up on the internet some day to solve the mystery of my great-grandfather's disappearance. I was shocked to find on the internet that my missing great-grandfather's father, a retired weaver, committed suicide by hanging, at age 93, in 1891.






















There are no photos of my grandfather in the old album, but here is a photo of him in 1916, the year my mother was born, before he served in the Army as a doctor in World War I, and another with my grandmother in 1920:





































I've added a Flickr badge with photos from the album my side bar on the right with photos of descendants and in-laws of Melchior and Helene Stecher from Achern. Still have more photos to take from the album.

Late in the day, as I was working on this, I looked up and saw a rainbow:






















Update: Oh dear. I can't believe I spelled descendant as "descendent" on the URL for my Flickr page for the Stecher family photos.

As a dear person once said to me, "Welcome to the human race."

As a former medical transcriptionist, I have lived for many years with the expectation that my spelling be perfect. Little room for mistakes in that field. It feels very strange to realize that I can make spelling mistakes like everyone else now without taking a cut financially! I've been amazed again and again that not all people work at jobs where there is such a pronounced expectation of perfection.

You mean I don't have to be perfect?

What a relief!

With a big tree and a little tree, looking out across Bellingham Bay to the Lummi Nation on a grey November morning/ View from my parked car

Something for the eyes that can listen and the ears that can see (thanks to Loren for that last concept).

Drawing while eating in the hospital cafeteria / A different way of thinking

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same thinking that created them."

-- Albert Einstein


















Interesting to try to draw an oil painting with pencil on paper. "Aguas Verdes" is a large diptych (53" x 68") painted in oil on linen by Caryn Friedlander. It hangs in the St. Joseph Medical Center cafeteria in Bellingham, Washington, and is a renewing presence in a hospital setting.

Drawing what is in front of me

Woke up at 2 a.m. this morning and found this. Thank you to R. L. Bourges, a writer and photographer living in France.



Still awake at 5:49 a.m.

Birdsong and slow moving clouds / Early evening

Looking from my porch to the east:


















Looking southeast. Listen:

PTSD (All Over Again) / Alex and Toggle

Listen

We're all in this together.

We can send love and encouragement as well as experience, strength and hope, to the newest generation affected by American wars, represented in part by Alex and Toggle in Doonesbury in the last several days.

We do what we can, when we can

With Occupy Wall Street in mind, I challenged the small corporation I have been working for, at home, since March 2010. About a week ago, they asked me and my co-workers to re-do work that we had lost due to problems with their software, without compensation for the time we spent on the work that was lost.

When the news came down, I was so angry that I cried what can only be called tears of rage. As it is, we are not paid for at least 30 minutes a day for work we do because this is a "production-oriented work environment," where we are only paid for the lines of dictation we produce (picture farmworkers being paid for how much lettuce they can pick in a day). There is a long list of tasks we do that are considered part of the job but which don't produce lines and for which we are not compensated.

Who, you ask, would work under those conditions? This was the only job I was able to get at age 60, and until last week I considered myself fortunate to be working in a time when many people my age will never be hired again. From what I know of my recent co-workers, they are generally young women with children, women near retirement age who have lost their well-paying hospital jobs due to hospitals outsourcing to companies like this one in order to save money, and disabled people who cannot easily work outside the home. These are desperate times. It is not easy to get a job.

When I calmed down enough, I emailed the Human Resources Director and the Vice-President of the company, saying that I was not going produce lines without compensation, that their request was likely illegal, and that I was not going to fill out my time sheet until they compensated me for my time. It is my guess that they must have talked with their lawyers because it took several days before they responded to my email. The Human Resources Director told me that I would hear from the Vice-President with the company's decision. The Vice-President emailed me saying that I would be given what is basically a $3.25 credit for my time, but said nothing about changing their policy, which means that every time their software fails, I have to use unpaid time to get credit for time worked in good faith, while making less than $10/hour.

Because I am 62 now and can collect early Social Security, I made a decision on October 11 to retire rather than continue to fight a daily exhausting losing battle for near poverty wages. Medical transcriptionists who work at home need a Caesar Chavez. What was once a profession where a person could make a decent living has become something like being a farmworker before Caesar Chavez. I'm no Caesar Chavez, although I wish I were.

My Social Security benefits will put me below the poverty line. My challenge now is to find a way to make a living for the rest of my working life, which may be the rest of my life. I'm feeling shell-shocked. And relieved to have made a good decision.

I do what I can, when I can.






















From The Novice: A Story of True Love, by Thich Nhat Hanh:

...We began with what we knew and the few resources that we had. We did not expect anything from the government, because if you wait for the government, you will wait a long time.

...Sister Tri Hai practiced walking meditation all night so she could keep herself together and not lose herself in the fire. She went back to her true home within herself. Her true home is not in Paris, London or Tra Loc, because that home can be bombarded or taken away. Your true home is within yourself. The Buddha said, "Go home to the island within yourself. There is a safe island of self inside. Every time you suffer, every time you are lost, go back to your true home. Nobody can take that true home away from you." This was the ultimate teaching the Buddha gave to his disciples when he was eighty years old and on the verge of passing away..."

I read a mixed and somewhat sarcastic review of this book in Tricycle magazine. This is not going to be a bestseller. This is a story from Vietnamese Buddhist tradition, retold by Thich Nhat Hanh. The Dalai Lama says, "He shows us the connection between personal, inner peace, and peace on earth." I agree.

(At the top of this post is "The Typist," by Dubuffet. These days everyone is a typist)

Human Rights Campaign / Rivers and Roads

A young woman and a young man were standing near the two entrances to Bellingham's Community Co-op today, educating the public on the Human Rights Campaign. While I was eating my lunch on a tall stool at one of the window seats, I drew a picture of the young woman. What you can't see is the steady stream of people who stopped to talk with her in solidarity, to give their support and encouragement. I was just one of many witnesses to the dignity and courage of those two young people today, and one of many witnesses to the goodness of human beings.



Listen. You can thank my nephew, as I do, for sending us in the direction of these musicians and singers based in Seattle. His Facebook page has The Head and the Heart under favorite music. It's been a while since I've been so deeply moved by new music. Listen especially for when the woman starts singing.

With immense gratitude to Steve Jobs

Listen to "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" from 1964:

"... I gazed down in the river's mirror
And watched its winding strum
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song your strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum"

In 1979, when I was 29 years old (and had a different name), and personal computers were just coming up on the horizon, and I didn't want anything to do with them, I made the above linocut, inspired by a photo of Bob Dylan on the Basement Tapes album, never dreaming that Steve Jobs (another serious fan of Bob Dylan) would design a computer that would open up a world of creativity for me, including allowing me to compose a book of my art work and poetry and to self-publish it.

While I was out walking on the South Bay Trail along Bellingham Bay this morning, it occurred to me that the creative energy and gratitude in this song likely spoke to Steve Jobs.

If you have time, listen to this. I had heard this once before. It's worth listening to again.

Delayed reactions / Coincidence?/ "Tug on anything at all.."

I just watched the movie below with the voices in American English. Wonderful to find this beautiful film in many languages!

I have to say, though, that I was startled by the scene in the bath in this film, given that in American culture it is not a typical scene except perhaps in early childhood when the mother is absent, as in this movie where the mother is ill and in a hospital. I am not sure of the ages of the two girls, but the older girl appears to be about 10 years old. I do realize that this is traditional in Japanese culture, although I don't know much about this tradition, and the traditional personal boundaries that must be connected with it.

I do know that when I expressed concern in confidence to a mental health counselor on a crisis line that a 10-year-old was still taking showers with a parent of the opposite sex (I later learned that both parents thought this would be fine until the child was 12), the Mandatory Reporting Laws in the State of Washington required the crisis line mental health counselor to contact Child Protective Services, and there was an investigation and a confidential Educational Intervention to ensure that the parent stopped taking showers with the 10-year-old of the opposite sex and that she understood that what she was doing was not appropriate in American culture and not in the best interests of her child growing up in the context of American culture. The showers with the parent stopped, although the mother was, of course, angry about the intervention and argued that she had done nothing wrong. The child has grown up and is excelling in everything he does. Still, I do not like to think what would have happened had the showering continued until the boy was 12.

I wonder what the outcome would have been if I had expressed my concerns to the parents only. I do not have children of my own and, within 12 hours (delayed reaction) of learning of the situation with the showers, woke up in the morning with a sick feeling inside, and talked with a mental health counselor on a crisis line because I wanted professional clarification of my instinctive concern. The mother may never talk to me again, thinking that I was the one who called in Child Protective Services, and "tried to destroy her family."

My delayed reaction that morning, upon awakening and calling the crisis line, was that I did know that I couldn't imagine myself taking a shower or bath with my father when I was 10 years old.

And I do know that when I was 4 years old, when my mother was in the hospital giving birth to my youngest sister, my other sister and I were left for a week with a younger couple who were friends of my parents and who had two adopted sons close to my age, and that I was in the bathroom with my sister and with the man without his wife present. All I remember clearly is being in the bathtub without water, with my sister, and being angry at the man. I can see the 4-inch square bathtub tiles in my mind, and the man sitting on the floor next to the bathtub. This is one of my early childhood memories.

Many years later, a few months after Richard and I separated, I was in a department store at the customer service desk, and the woman who was helping me recognized my name. She was the wife who wasn't present when my sister and I were in the bathtub. She asked me about my life. I told her that I had just separated from my boyfriend who had just returned from Vietnam, and that the relationship had ended in violence. She said that she had just gotten a divorce from her husband who had become severely mentally ill and had been locking her in a closet when he would leave the house.

I get a chill today, this morning, just thinking of that. I have no memory of being hurt by that man, just of being angry at him. Now I am wondering again what happened in that bathroom that day in 1954 when I was 4 years old.

Coincidence or not, I am only beginning to thrive at age 62. It is never too late to heal.



(The painting at the top of the post is "Calendar Series: 15th Month/Night." I had it removed from its frame and scanned recently. The Calendar Series began with the 14th Month, inspired by the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Calendar of 1970, to which they had added a 13th Month. Richard was in Vietnam in 1970. The 13th Month was the month we were to be together again. I felt that I was lost in the 13th month for years. Now I am recalling that I starting the Calendar Series as a way of healing in the same way that I started this blog. Yesterday was the birthday of John Lennon and Sean Lennon, by the way)

"Tug on anything at all, and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe."
(John Muir)

Born during the same 24 hours in 1949 / Coincidence?

Yesterday was my birthday, and today would have been my old friend Richard's 62nd birthday. I have one other photo of us together, but that one is in silhouette as we are walking hand in hand in the direction of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean. If it weren't for Richard, I wouldn't have any photos of us at all. For both photos, he set up the camera and stepped into the picture.

Today when I was getting groceries, I ran into a man that Richard worked for as a carpenter in California a long long time ago. I don't see him around that often. What are the chances that some years ago, I would get out of my car to deliver some paintings to an art gallery and that a man would get out of the car next to me and offer to help and that it would turn out that Richard had worked for him? And that as he and his wife were in the grocery store parking lot today, he would recognize me and stop to talk on Richard's 62nd birthday?

Then, this morning, I was talking with Richard's sister, Dorothy, who had left a message yesterday for my birthday. She said she was driving on a back road in the coast hills on the San Francisco Peninsula and saw a solitary crow skipping along the road. She knows that whenever I see a crow skipping I think of Richard. I even wrote a poem featuring a skipping crow and innocence and forgiveness when Richard and I were both 50 years old.

TWO INNOCENTS WITH EXPERIENCE

All desire. No forgiveness.
Years later it was early spring
with Red-Winged Blackbird,
Goldfinch, faithful Canada Goose on the trail
and return of the Tree Swallows.

Then I remembered.
He was sitting close to me.
Mr. Solitary Crow skipped by us like a child.
We laughed until we were children again.
This was how I experienced love.
I was innocent of forgiveness.

If you have time, listen to something that spoke to Richard's heart and which speaks to mine.

"Distinguished yet youthful ..."

It's my 62nd birthday today.
I'm keeping it simple, as always.
This made me laugh in delight:






















Inside the card, it says:

A look not everyone
can pull off.

Happy Birthday






















"Woman With Hands Full," pastel drawing from 1986 by am, inspired by the "Basement Tapes" album cover photograph with Bob Dylan pictured below. Every drawing has to start somewhere...