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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Sora's voice in the darkness before dawn

When I woke up at 5 a.m. a few mornings ago, I went out on my porch as I usually do to look and to listen and to smell the fresh morning air.  I heard a loud and distinctive bird voice I couldn't immediately identify. Turns out I was hearing a Sora who continued to cry out intermittently in the darkness before dawn.  You will hear the Sora's voice three times in the short video.

Sora photo from Wikipedia

We Are Augustines

"Mama, You Been On My Mind" may have inspired "Chapel Song"

Gualala memories / Robinson Reef view

Just came across this video.  After my sisters and I grew up, my parents had a house in Gualala, California, for 25 years until my mother's death in 1994.  The first part of the video shows where I used to walk in Gualala Point Regional Park.  It was about a 3-mile walk south from my parent's house to Gualala Beach.  I would see grey whales, pelicans, sea lions, wild flowers, ice plant, crows and ravens, phoebes, rabbits, squirrels, and lizards. Looking at the video footage reminded me how much love I still feel for that landscape and how much I enjoyed visiting with my parents in those years.  I haven't been there since September of 2001.

My sister brought this to my attention:



That is the lot in front of the house my parents used to own.  A two-story house would likely block the splendid view from that small one-story house.  Hard to imagine that someone would buy a lot and build a house that would block the view of their close neighbors in an isolated and sparsely populated coastside community.

On the other hand, that lot was for sale when my parents bought their home in 1970.  Many people must have thought twice about building in front of someone else under those circumstances.

Artichoke Picker (1960)

Print by Emmy Lou Packard (1914-1998)

Ceremony / To Try To Have Some Healing

Listen to the entire story.  It takes some time.

"Great Spirit, Great Mystery, the things which are thine are powerful and numerous."
(song from "Dakota 38")

Silar Hagerty:  With Smooth Feather Productions, when we decided to give these films away, no strings attached, when we made that shift, it did feel like in some way the universe supported that.

Silas Hagerty:  For me, the word ceremony means calling in help from something greater than yourself.
(from "To Try To Have Some Healing:  A conversation with Silas Hagerty," Parabola magazine, Spring 2013)

Hills, trees, and sunlit meadows in the clouds

"For What It's Worth" at the end of "Jimi Thing" / Dave Matthews Band

Begin listening at 5:39.

Valentines Can't Buy Him Or Her / Remembering my Richard (1949-2008) and Bob Dylan's Suze Rotolo (1943-2011)

Double self-portrait of am and R in early 1971.  R set up the camera.  It had been only a short time since his return from Vietnam. We were walking across a meadow to a small pond to the west of Skyline Boulevard and to the east of Half Moon Bay, California, as the sun set over the Pacific Ocean horizon several miles away.

Listen

"Together"

"... you're the missing verse in my song ..."

Listen
"Love waits forever for one and for all"
(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Beyond the Horizon," from "Modern Times")

My father would have been 99 years old yesterday

That's my father in the middle.  He had two brothers and two sisters.  His youngest sister had her 90th birthday in December.  They all grew up in Minnesota.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Listen

Soon / George Gershwin Tribute

Birds singing in black and white in Bellingham / 24 hours at Westminster Abbey -- just across the border in Canada

Westminster Abbey in Mission, B.C., has hosted retreats for Zen Buddhists from Vancouver, B.C. as well as retreats for AA groups from the United States.  I have no religious affiliation and felt welcomed and at home there.  The meals, prepared by the monks, are delicious.  The atmosphere is peaceful.  The property is beautiful.  A true refuge.  My simple private room looked out across the Fraser River valley to snowy mountains.  

"We can start / Moving forward"

And many thanks to Sabine for posting this:

I love the internet

The sheer

dull

scintillating

infantile

anarchy

of

it

all.

Boisterous Brughel medieval market.

Futuristic Middle Ages

Directed
by

Friar Tuck.

And offset, whispers
of
Robin
lurking
in
wood.

I love the internet.
Cos it's ours.

 http://barringtonkevin.blogspot.com/

(where I left my warm winter gloves while happily making video clips)

Funny how, for me, being relaxed and happy sometimes goes hand in hand with losing things.  If that's the price for joy, I'm willing to pay.

Play them both at the same time for full effect of standing on the bridge and looking upstream and then downstream.

Emily Dickinson in Red, White, Black and Grey

Trackpad painting by am

Boy riding home / No longer alone

... We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country -- all of us --
facing the stars
hope -- a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it -- together

(from "One Today," inaugural poem by Richard Blanco, 2013)

(trackpad drawing by am from January 2008)

Invocation

Arise / Meditation on ice fog with Red-winged Blackbirds singing on the Sunday of Martin Luther King weekend

If you don't have time for this long rambling post but do have a few minutes, just scroll down to the bottom and listen to a cover of "Blackbird" by Rachel Ann Cauilan.

 

Today's meditation began with waking up in the early morning darkness to the continuing ice fog here in Bellingham and recalling and then looking for George Harrison's song about a fog upon L.A. on YoutTube and noticing that George Harrison is wearing white face makeup as he sings "Blue Jay Way," and recalling Bob Dylan's white face make-up in 1976 during the Rolling Thunder Review Tour:

and going to Google Images for more examples of white face makeup:

Geisha:


Kabuki:

Queen Elizabeth I:

From "Les Enfants du Paradis:

Peggy Alston (from "Zooman and the Sign"):

Heath Ledger (during filming of "The Dark Knight" in 2008):

and then reading:

Thought for the Day

and then documenting the fog here with Red-winged Blackbirds singing:

and then documenting the sun breaking through the fog while hearing George Harrison singing "Here Comes the Sun" in my mind:

and looking out from my porch again a little while later to see blue sky and sunshine:

Last of all I found this.  I'm glad I listened all the way through this heartening video:



"... all your life you were only waiting for this moment to arise ..."

Thank you to Rachel Ann Cauilan whose blog I discovered just now after listening to her acoustic cover of "Blackbird."

Remembering Janis' 70th birthday today on Martin Luther King weekend / Musica universalis

Interesting how Janis Joplin's birthday and Martin Luther King weekend coincide.  I can picture Janis as a beautiful and wise 70-year-old woman, free of the drugs and alcohol that took her life and bright spirit from us in 1970.

I love hearing the young people singing their songs as well as the songs we first heard so long ago.

Martin Luther King would have been 84 on January 15.  I can picture him, too, a vital spiritual leader with so much life ahead of him and ten years younger than Nelson Mandela is today.



And then I came across this to complete my meditation for today.

Focusing / Pier meets voyage

Thanks to Keara for her comment that reminded me that for a while I have meant to post these two videos as an introduction to focusing -- something I have found not only useful but enlightening in the past year or so.  The book on focusing by Eugene Gendlin is inexpensive,  and I feel it is much more than worth the price.

Above is a drawing I did in September of 2006 using the Appleworks painting program and my computer trackpad.  That was three months before I started this blog and became quickly drawn into the world of blogging.  Even though there are only a few blogs I read regularly, and I don't post as regularly as I did at first, blogging continues to be a source and outlet for my creative energy.

Celebrating the life and heart of a writer

"Perhaps, I fear, this decision deprives society of one great programmer in favor of one mediocre writer. And let’s not hide behind the cloak of uncertainty, let’s say we know that it does. Even so, I would make it. The writing is too important, the programming too unenjoyable.

And for that, I apologize."

(Aaron Swartz)

Although I don't know much at all about Aaron Swartz -- only becoming aware of him as a result of his suicide -- I am moved by his writing.

(The above gouache on paper is a work in progress by am.  I am wondering why I find it so hard to sustain a painting and drawing practice, even though painting and drawing are things I am good at.  At this time in my life, I would rather write something on this blog or answer email or read a book or take a long walk or practice yoga or get together with friends most mornings at 7:30 a.m. for a breakfast of sorts.  It's not that painting and drawing are unenjoyable, though.  It's something else that hinders me.  What could it be?)

"So let us go forward, quietly, each on his own path, forever making for the light."
(Vincent van Gogh)

"...life is for learning ..." / "What are you doing?" / Gratitude

Just found the following video today.  What a treasure!  I attended that performance in October of 2009:

http://vimeo.com/50411931

That's my nephew, Lee, at 2:36, singing:

Well maybe it's the time of year
Well maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am
But life is for learning

We are stardust
We are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
(Joni Mitchell lyrics, 1970)

Some of you have already seen the above photo from 1971.   I had just turned 22 years old and felt much older than that.  My life had taken a dark turn.  It would be years before I would see any light in that darkness.  I had lessons to learn in the darkness.

At 63 years old (and feeling younger than that), I still have plenty to learn.  Even the darkest days now are so much lighter than they were in the years between 1971 and 1987.  It was in May of 1987, as I was traveling through Half Moon Bay, California, that there began to be light in that darkness.  My life took a turn that let the light in.  It was just as I was about to do something I had done many times before -- always expecting a positive result, always experiencing negative consequences.

A question came to my mind as I stopped my car a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean.  The question was like a koan because I couldn't come up with an answer.

My mind ceased talking, and I began listening for something in the darkness.

The question, as I recall it today, was, "What are you doing?"

Below is "Woman with Hands Full," in chalk pastel, watercolor and gouache, by am, from sometime around 1987 when light appeared in the darkness.

I'm grateful today for both the light and the darkness.  My life is full.

All You Need Is Love

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.
There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time - It's easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
(Lennon-McCartney)

Today is my nephew's 20th birthday.  His favorite music comes from Sam Cooke, The Beatles, and The Head and the Heart. 

For anyone who hasn't seen the video below before, that's Lee on the left singing "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher."

Happy Birthday, Lee!

Love always from your Aunt Amanda.

Memory from July of 1969 / Ocean Beach January 2013

 I remember going to the Family Dog on the Coast Highway (San Francisco, California -- Ocean Beach) in July of 1969 to hear "It's A Beautiful Day" in concert.  I was 19 years old.  This could be the poster for that evening concert.  

Good to see Ocean Beach this morning via the magic of the internet.

(It takes about 15 seconds for the live webcam image to appear)

New Year's Day 2013 / The Head and the Heart -- Down in the Valley (Acoustic)

"... that moment of illumination ..."

Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, along with our busy thoughts. Imagine if all things that are perishable grew still. And imagine if that moment were to go on and on, leaving behind all other sights and sounds but this one vision which ravishes and absorbs and fixes the beholder in joy, so that the rest of eternal life were like that moment of illumination which leaves us breathless.
 -- Saint Augustine

The original of the colorful painting below ("Sal Si Puedes") from 1993 by Alfredo Arreguin of Seattle, Washington, with its rendering of Cesar Chavez, the United Farmworker's Eagle, and the Virgin of Guadalupe among other images associated with Cesar Chavez, hangs on the wall of the waiting area of the place where I receive my medical care because I am do not qualify for affordable medical insurance.  I am moved to the core every time I see it.  I think of it often:

A few weeks ago I asked the young man working at the reception desk how he would translate "Sal Si Puedes."  He paused and then said, "Come out if you like."  Interesting that another translation is "Escape if you can." The image above only gives a very rough approximation of the power of this painting.  The painting is about 3 x 3-1/4 feet in size, and the colors are deep and rich and evocative and healing.

"I dreamed I saw St. Augustine"

Cesar Chavez, Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Day:

Visions of Johanna meditation on a foggy morning a few days before 2013

Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law, Johanna, with Vincent's nephew, Vincent.

"Vincent undertook to nurse a victim of a fire in the mine. The man was so badly burned and mutilated that the doctor had no hope for his recovery ... Van Gogh tended him forty days with loving care and saved the miner's life.  Vincent [said Gauguin] "believed in miracles," in maternal care.

(from The Eye of Spirit:  A Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad, by Ken Wilber)

"The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix) -- Vincent van Gogh 

The view from my porch this morning:

Glimpses of the younger generation of kindred spirits to Bob Dylan:

"And Madonna, she still has not showed

We see this empty cage now corrode

Where her cape of the stage once had flowed

The fiddler, he now steps to the road

He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed

On the back of the fish truck that loads 

While my conscience explodes

The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain

And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain"

(the last verse of "Visions of Johanna" -- Bob Dylan, 1966)

Paintings by Marc Chagall:

The Blue Fiddler

The Fiddler

From page 300 of Writings and Drawings of Bob Dylan, published in 1973:

Senegal Yellow / Cobalt Blue / Titanium White

After working through early rock and roll and then the Beatles, Tim Buckley, Laura Nyro and James Taylor, I started above painting (still in process) while listening to the "Songs of Leonard Cohen," released December 27, 1967.  I had forgotten how much darkness and bitterness and alienation there is in many of those songs.  My selective memory had embraced the tender moments and blocked out everything else.  I was 18 years old when that album was released.  My recollection is that Richard introduced the album to me, and that we listened to it in the months before he was drafted in spring of 1969. 

 Thank you, blog friends, for your continuing comments.  I hope to be more conversational soon.  My life is unusually full right now.

(Hmmmm .... the video of my painting in process appears to be uploaded, but when I publish there is a white space where the video should be)

(Update:  Now I can see the video)

Round Dance

It was on Christmas Day, when I got together early in the morning with a group of friends for breakfast, that I first heard about the Round Dance flash mobs from a man who grew up on a reservation in Montana.

Here's something from www.powwows.com and something from Idle No More.

"Can the fishes see it's snowing?" / Little Drummer Boy

... Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.

"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.

"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"..."

... Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

(from "A Child's Christmas in Wales")

Everybody's Hurting

Work in progress / artists' studios / winter birds / wanting to work

Artists' studios

When I looked out a little while ago this morning, I thought I saw a person with a brown corduroy jacket and yellow hat standing at the edge of Scudder Pond.  I thought I could see the figure moving.  When I got my binoculars out, I saw that what I had thought was a person's head was the few remaining bright yellow leaves on a small tree, and that the brown corduroy jacket was the tree's dark wet branches and trunk.  The blurred photo only gives a general idea of what I saw.  As I look out right now without binoculars, it stills looks to me as if a tall thin contemplative man is standing there on the trail.

The gouache and watercolor painting up at the top of this post is something I'm working on.  It's something about a dialogue at the ocean at night.  I think I like it better transformed by my computer into a black and white image.  I began working on it more than a week ago, while listening to music from my past, organized in chronological order beginning with music I heard when I was 10 years old or younger:

This week I visited the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham where I saw a traveling exhibit of California Impressionist paintings.  I was drawn to the landscapes of places familiar to me but much changed since they were painted so many years ago before California was so densely populated. The images below are of the California my Minnesota-born parents moved to in the late 1930s and early 1940s and that my father's father traveled through as a young man from Minnesota in the early 1900s. As far as I know, my grandfather only made that one visit to California and the West Coast, living the rest of his life in Minnesota, although he did visit relatives in Norway in his later years.

Arroyo Seco Bridge in 1912:

Arroyo Seco Bridge in recent time:

Today here in Whatcom County there is snow in the foothills to the east.  Here's the view from the porch this morning.  You can hear the Chickadees and Red-winged blackbirds singing:

"I definitely look for things to inspire me or to get me wanting to do work.  It doesn't come all that naturally.  The thing that's helped me the most has been figuring out when I could work best.  This thing about working best in the morning with nobody around, I figured out a long time ago.  If it weren't for that I probably wouldn't get half as much done."

(Dale Chihuly)

Celebration of Life / Ravi Shankar (1920-2012)

1967:


2012:

"Drawing A Sun Where There Is None"

Thanks to Doonesbury for the inspiration today.

"The way that I work is by doing a lot of work.  And out of that come ideas, refinement, more work, more ideas."
(Dale Chihuly)

As it turns out, Dale Chihuly has suffered from from depression and bipolar disorder since his 40s. Didn't know that until just now as I did a little Googling about him.   I'd always assumed he had inexhaustible energy for his work and felt envious.

There is a long-standing pattern in my life of setting out to work again and again and finding myself physically or emotionally derailed.  A few days ago after I got out my paints, I developed a headache and an upset stomach.  I have not felt well since that day, and my sleep has been disturbed.  As Sabine wrote,  "It is what it is."

Here are some of my linoblocks from the 1970s and early 1980s, my first years in Bellingham and a time of emotional turmoil and grief and searching for direction as well as experiencing periods of creative energy:

The second to the last linoblock is "Drawing A Sun Where There Is None."

The rest are untitled.

I may need to paint or weave or play music whether I feel good or not, as I seem to be able to blog whether I feel good or not.

That is a sobering and freeing thought.

Into the Mystic / Painting Music / Weaving Music

"Of course music is spiritual.  It couldn't be anything else."
(Van Morrison)

Color key (getting ready to paint something) / Listening to old rock & roll / Looking to the east

Took inventory of my paint tubes and made a color key:

While working on the color key, I listened to a collection of old rock & roll songs.  It must have been when I was 7 years old that I first heard this:

When I went out on the porch, I saw this:

You can hear a Steller's Jay at the end of the clip.

This November Light

Listen

Still in quiet mode.  Thank you for continuing to stop by.

Falling and Illumination

A few days ago, a friend and I took a long walk up steep Hillsdale Road to the gradual climb of Toad Lake Road and down to Toad Lake and then part way up Squalicum Mountain Road and back (check Google Maps if you would like to see just where this is in Bellingham, Washington).  As we were walking north along Toad Lake Road, my friend looked up and noticed a golden rain that appeared to be falling out of the deep blue sky.  I looked up and then down and saw a few tiny flat seed pods sticking to my fleece jacket.  We looked up and to the west side of the narrow road and to where there was a small stand of trees with a few leaves left on them.  The seeds were illuminated by the sun as they fell from the trees. The afternoon light and the timing were just right.  In all the years I have lived in Bellingham, I've never consciously seen this before.

When I got home I went to Google, certain that I could find out what kind of tree had released the shower of gold.  I entered words like "golden rain" and "trees" and "seed fall" but came up with nothing that seemed to refer to anything like what we had seen.  Then I went to Google Images and entered "tree seeds" and quickly discovered that the golden rain was most likely from alder trees.

I didn't have my camera with me, but I doubt a camera could have captured that experience.

As the days get shorter and darker, my spirits lift inexplicably, and playing the dulcimer is giving me unexpected added joy.  I'd like to be able to play like Robert Force but am happy just to be learning what I can:

Listen.

Whenever I take a picture of myself taking a picture of myself, I think of Imogen Cunningham.

More about Imogen Cunningham.