"No Time To Think" / "Bob Dylan goes to see us"

In death, you face life with a child and a wife
Who sleep-walks through your dreams into walls
You’re a soldier of mercy, you’re cold and you curse
“He who cannot be trusted must fall”

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety
You fight for the throne and you travel alone
Unknown as you slowly sink
And there’s no time to think

In the Federal City you been blown and shown pity
In secret, for pieces of change
The empress attracts you but oppression distracts you
And it makes you feel violent and strange

Memory, ecstasy, tyranny, hypocrisy
Betrayed by a kiss on a cool night of bliss
In the valley of the missing link
And you have no time to think

Judges will haunt you, the country priestess will want you
Her worst is better than best
I’ve seen all these decoys through a set of deep turquoise eyes
And I feel so depressed

China doll, alcohol, duality, mortality
Mercury rules you and destiny fools you
Like the plague, with a dangerous wink
And there’s no time to think

Your conscience betrayed you when some tyrant waylaid you
Where the lion lies down with the lamb
I’d have paid off the traitor and killed him much later
But that’s just the way that I am

Paradise, sacrifice, mortality, reality
But the magician is quicker and his game
Is much thicker than blood and blacker than ink
And there’s no time to think

Anger and jealousy’s all that he sells us
He’s content when you’re under his thumb
Madmen oppose him, but your kindness throws him
To survive it you play deaf and dumb

Equality, liberty, humility, simplicity
You glance through the mirror and there’s eyes staring clear
At the back of your head as you drink
And there’s no time to think

Warlords of sorrow and queens of tomorrow
Will offer their heads for a prayer
You can’t find no salvation, you have no expectations
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere

Mercury, gravity, nobility, humility
You know you can’t keep her and the water gets deeper
That is leading you onto the brink
But there’s no time to think

You’ve murdered your vanity, buried your sanity
For pleasure you must now resist
Lovers obey you but they cannot sway you
They’re not even sure you exist

Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism
Fools making laws for the breaking of jaws
And the sound of the keys as they clink
But there’s no time to think

The bridge that you travel on goes to the Babylon girl
With the rose in her hair
Starlight in the East and you’re finally released
You’re stranded but with nothing to share

Loyalty, unity, epitome, rigidity
You turn around for one real last glimpse of Camille
’Neath the moon shinin’ bloody and pink
And there’s no time to think

Bullets can harm you and death can disarm you
But no, you will not be deceived
Stripped of all virtue as you crawl through the dirt
You can give but you cannot receive

No time to choose when the truth must die
No time to lose or say goodbye
No time to prepare for the victim that’s there
No time to suffer or blink
And no time to think

Copyright © 1978 by Special Rider Music

What a woman who works the tunnel between the buses and the backstage area at an arena outside of Atlanta remembers about Dylan is not that she saw him; what she remembers is "I was not allowed to look at him."

He was, of course, on his way to the stage when he passed her averted eyes—on his way to be looked at and listened to. It sounds like a paradox typical of Bob Dylan, worthy of Bob Dylan, but it's really pretty straightforward as an exercise of star power. The crossed relationship between Bob Dylan and his audience is the most enduring one in all of rock 'n' roll, and it keeps going—and will keep going to the last breath—because from the start he laid down a simple and impossible rule:

We don't go to see Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan goes to see us.

(quoted from here)

("Flashback," linocut by am, 1970s and "I Watch Movies," drawing made with computer trackpad by am, 2007)

Being

What I am I am, and say not.
Being is the great explainer.
(Henry David Thoreau)

Pete Seeger (1919-2014)

Thank you, Pete Seeger.

Learning to play "Black Waters"

Negative Capability, that is, when [Amanda] is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
(John Keats)

That's a song written by Jean Ritchie for the Appalachian dulcimer.  I like the way it sounds on my recently purchased 1976 Oscar Schmidt 15-chord autoharp.

Following up on song lyrics / Masked and Anonymous

Today some of the lyrics from George Harrison's final album came to my mind out of nowhere while I was puzzling over how to deal with my severe sensitivity to perfume, which is causing me some problems as I try to move forward with my life by taking classes that will give me a better chance in the workplace as a woman who is going to be 65 years old this year and will have to work for the rest of her life.  Certain perfumes trigger 3-day headaches for me, and I have had to leave class twice and have already missed a class due to a 3-day headache.  I approached the teacher with my problem, and he suggested wearing a mask.

OK.  I found a respiratory mask that made me laugh out loud.  Okay.  I'll bring a mask to class and put it on if someone shows up wearing perfume.  I can't wait for the mask to arrive in the mail by way of London.

Still thinking about the George Harrison lyrics, I did more searching and found this which readers in England may have seen before.  I'd not come across it until now:



Here are the first lines from "Brainwashed," by George Harrison:

It was on the longest night
God God God
An eternity of darkness
God God God
Someone turned out the spiritual light

Thank you, George, for sharing your spiritual journey and unquenchable sense of humor!

A Birthday in January / Happy Birthday to Ya

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968)

Talking about a Painting Class Dream

Not having painted in years and not expecting anyone to show up, I had put up flyers around town for a painting class I am offering at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. At 8 a.m., the first students appear. (When the teacher is not ready, the students appear).

My painting class is being held in a vast field with a long banquet table that is large enough for more than 30 people.   Not far beyond the table is a dark brown barn. There is a mysterious tour bus parked in between the place where I live (near the entrance to the field) and the banquet table.  A young man tries to enter the bus, but I stop him.  I don't know who owns the bus, but I feel responsible for it.  I continue to wonder why the students are arriving so early.  As I usually do, I assume I am the one who is mistaken. More and more students arrive.  I am tall, but they are all taller than I am. Soon, all the places at the table are taken, and the students are talking with each other.  Even so, more students are streaming into the field.  I get up from my place at the east end of the table and ask the arriving students when they think the class is supposed to begin.  My voice is quiet, and none of them appear to to hear me.  They all have earnest faces.  I do not look like a teacher.  They are looking for the teacher.  

I feel tremendous inner pressure to be a good teacher for them but have no idea how to begin teaching the class.  These students know more about painting than I do.  One of the students, a man in his early thirties, has set up a display of his paintings on the sides and in front of the barn.  His small painting of waves breaking on an ocean shore comes to life.  I say, "Your painting comes to life."  He is the first student who can hear my voice.  His smile is confident.  His large paintings on all sides of the barn are darkly optimistic and abstract. I am sure that he doesn't realize that I am the teacher. Nobody does.  Then it occurs to me that I am not the teacher at all. These students are my teachers.  They are waiting for the teacher to appear.  

(The painting above is from my Calendar Series from the late 1980s and is titled "42nd Month:  Gifts of Love from Imaginary Brothers")

Zora Neale Hurston

"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." 

(Zora Neale Hurston)

A vision for the first day of 2014

"... And the coho are there -- speaking to us with their presence, telling us what they need.  Not a neat and tidy little stream, but messy and dynamic -- with dark places and slow, murky side-channels to hide in. We are learning, ever so slowly, to think less like humans and more like fish.  It is a complex journey, and now at the end of this first project, we extend our deep gratitude to the coho for returning to Baker Creek, and for keeping the faith alive in the Mattole River watershed ..."

(from Sanctuary Forest in Whitethorn, Humboldt County, California)

In keeping with a splendid tradition, Val McKee's luminous art work graces Sanctuary Forest's 2014 calendar:

*"This ain't 'Dances With Salmon,' you know"

If you have 39 minutes and 20 seconds and want to listen, this interview is well worth your time.

Excerpt from the interview with Sherman Alexie, a poet, short story writer, novelist and performer who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington State and who currently lives in Seattle:

Bill Moyers:  So what do you mean by blasphemy?
(note:  Sherman Alexie wrote a book called Blasphemy)

Sherman Alexie:  I don't believe in your God.  And "your" means the royal "your."

Bill Moyers:  Do you believe in your God?

Sherman Alexie:  No (laughs).

Bill Moyers:  What do you believe in?

Sherman Alexie:  Stories.  Stories are my God.

* This blog post title is a quote from "Smoke Signals," a film by Sherman Alexie.  There is a clip from "Smoke Signals" during the introduction.

Black and White Sunrise / The Voices of Crows and Winter Birds / Pumpkin Boat in Bellingham

Christmas Eve meditation / There is Something, and everything is possible

"You undoubtedly know that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a progressive Christian and champion of civil rights and the social gospel. You may also know that he spoke out against the Vietnam War, harshly criticized U.S. foreign policy, and questioned the capitalist system that produced poverty. But do you know his theology?

Right up until Dr. King's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled to support striking sanitation workers, the civil right leader worked--not as a secular activist but as a Baptist minister--to awaken the conscience of a nation. What was the meaning of Jesus for Dr. King? Did he see Jesus as divine? How did he interpret the Bible?"

(from the Tikkun article ,"King's God:  The Unknown Faith of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," by Robert James "Be" Scofield)

Transcript for the speech above:  A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967)

Then I got to thinking about Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers' connection with the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr.:

And Bob Dylan and Santa Claus:

And the Sufi dancers at the end of this video that was released the same year by Bob Dylan:

And Nelson Mandela.

And Chief Seattle:

"Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of  our people."

And Rosa Parks:

"God has always given me the strength to say what is right ... I had the strength of God and my ancestors with me." (from The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks)

And I remember the words of an elderly Jewish woman who was a friend of mine, "I don't have to be a Christian in order to be moved by the life of Jesus."

I have no religious affiliation, and I am not Buddhist, atheist, agnostic.  I am among those who can relate to what an elderly atheist friend of mine said in her last years -- that she didn't believe in a traditional God, but that she did experience, in her heart, Something that had brought peace to her in the last 14 years of her life.

"... And to see you're really only very small / And life flows on within you and without you..."

(George Harrison, from "Within You Without You")

"... the possibility that there might be something significant in the little things around them."

(from A Winter Walk, by Tolbert McCarroll)

"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible."

(From Going Home:  Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk)

Winter Solstice 2013 / Picasso painting with light / Woman Turning Toward the Light

I stood out on my porch as the sun rose at 8:01 this
Winter Solstice morning.  There was melting snow
on the ground below.

Later I checked some of my favorite webcams for
Winter Solstice Day images.

Yosemite Valley:

Big Sur:

Laguna Beach:

Mendocino:

Ocean Beach (San Francisco):

Then I found this photo of Picasso painting with light:

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite else. It is remarkable how little the 'willing' of the artist intervenes. 
(Pablo Picasso)

Woman Turning Toward the Light (1985, chalk pastel drawing by am):

Seven years of healing through blogging

December 8 was the seventh anniversary of my blog.  Some of you know the history of my blog.  For those who don't, I'll tell that story again. Look here for my first posts in December 2006.  My blog's first name was "Old Girl of the North Country."  After being haunted by memories dating back to December 8, 1970, when my Richard returned from almost a year in Vietnam, it was suggested that I do something new on that day, something to give me another way of looking at December 8.  I decided to create a blog where I could present a 40-year retrospective -- my art work up to 2006.  My hope was that by looking carefully at my art work and sharing it, there would be insight and healing and that perhaps I would be inspired to paint again.  I had no idea if anyone would ever read my blog.

In September 2001, Richard's mother had told me that Richard had written down the lyrics for "Girl of the North Country" and had written my name next to them.  He was living with his parents during a time he was undergoing chemotherapy for what was thought to be terminal lung cancer.  By 2006,  Richard's cancer had been in remission for four years.  For my own physical and emotional safety, I was not in touch with him but thought of myself as his Old Girl of the North Country.

Although blogging has brought unforeseen healing to me, including a change in the name of my blog, I have had an usually difficult time this December, with unexpected edginess and anger and grief surfacing.  I hadn't been able to come up with a idea for a post after December 5 and the death of Nelson Mandela, until today when I saw the Doonesbury strip with Alex and Toggle and their twin babies.

Alex and Toggle are dear to my heart.  Their life is unfolding in a way very unlike the way my life with Richard unfolded, and I am grateful to witness other possibilities for veterans and their loved ones than those Richard and I experienced:

During Richard's first nights home he had nightmares, and to his immense dismay and to my bewilderment he punched me in the eye in the midst of one of his nightmares, as I lay sleeping beside him.  In 2008, Richard died in a VA hospital from complications related to Agent Orange exposure, tobacco abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, and cancer.   I was able to be with him in the ICU during the last days of his life.

Toggle met Alex about a year after Richard died.  Toggle reminds me of what I loved about Richard.

Richard gave me a copy of "All Things Must Pass" for Christmas in 1970.  This morning I had just happened to listen to "Wah-Wah" and was listening to the rest of the songs when I went to the Doonesbury website to see the comic strip for today.

Waah!  
Waah!

...

Waah!

"Is that ... harmony?"

I love the smile on Toggle's face.

Thank you for reading my blog.  Thank you for your blogs.  Blogging is a way of my life for me now. I haven't gotten back into painting, but I am beginning to do some weaving and am playing the autoharp, dulcimer and ukulele and am happy to be spending time taking care of babies in a volunteer position.  I have plans to take classes and take care of babies as a job in the future.  I wonder if Alex would hire me.

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains,
but to live in a way that respects and enhances the
freedom of others.
(Nelson Mandela)

Time for a walk

Here you can see where the creek becomes a waterfall.

Just beyond this is the WPA bridge.

Just a few minutes walking distance from my home I can enter Whatcom Falls Park by way of the trail that goes alongside Scudder Pond, which is what my porch looks out on.  On a full day, I may just walk for about 10 minutes and then turn around.  Other days I can walk for several hours on the forest trails and beyond to the acres of cemetery to the south of Whatcom Falls Park.  On the day after Thanksgiving, I walked a loop that takes about hour, going down the west side of Whatcom Creek and circling back across the WPA bridge to the east side and heading north from there.

From pages 9 and 10 of A Winter Walk, by Tolbert McCarroll:

A nineteenth-century farmer referred to winter as "our season" because daily life was not dictated by when to plant or harvest.

It is in the cycles of the year that many of us find our spiritual paths -- not in the doctrines or dogmas of religious institutions.

With gratitude for an answer to a Thanksgiving Day question

Tazhii Da'Aghat
(People Are Eating Turkey)

Note:  The diacritical mark is missing under the first '"a," and the "t" is an approximation of the Navajo letter in that spot.

When I looked outside in the early morning light, I was grateful to see a few stars and the crescent moon instead of the usual November cloud cover.  My Thanksgiving tradition in recent years is to eat breakfast with and spend the early part of the day with my eccentric group of friends and to take a walk, usually by myself, in the afternoon.  I'm not a vegetarian, but I rarely eat turkey on Thanksgiving.  This year I bought some locally made bratwurst to eat today.  It's not uncommon in Whatcom County for people to celebrate Thanksgiving with a salmon dinner.

Hope everyone has a peaceful day today, whether celebrating Thanksgiving or not.

The Lost Horse Story and the Clock With No Hands

Yesterday, after waking up with a bad cold that just won't go away and is preventing me from volunteering with the babies at the daycare, I called and was surprised to be able to make an immediate appointment to see a nurse practitioner at the low-income clinic where I receive my medical care. After twenty minutes of driving through slow morning traffic, I arrived at the clinic. Some remodeling is being done there, and the large painting of Caesar Chavez by Alfredo Arreguin that is like a healing icon for me was no longer in its usual place in the busy waiting room.  I asked about the painting and was assured by one of the bilingual receptionists that it would be returned to the office after the remodel.

Soon, one of the many kind and compassionate medical assistants who work in this clinic called my name and accompanied me to an examination room where she asked questions, listened to the story of my lingering cold, weighed me and then took my temperature and blood pressure.  While she was entering information into a laptop on the counter, I suddenly became aware of the words "the lost horse" on the narrow spine of a book that was mixed in with a stack of magazines next to where I was sitting.  Reaching up, I fished for the book and found it to be what I had guessed it might be -- a children's book:

What I hadn't counted on was that it was by Ed Young, a children's book writer I am familiar with for his book titled Voices of the Heart:

The medical assistant, having completed her duties, let me know that the nurse practitioner would be by shortly.  She left the room, closing the door.

Already familiar with the Chinese folk tale which begins with the loss of a horse, I quickly read the story (take a look inside the book for a glimpse of the story, if you'd like) which does not contain the traditional Chinese moral that a loss may turn out to be a gain and a gain may turn out to be a loss.  Instead, it shows a young man and his father continuing to be open and conscious of the changing nature of life.

A few minutes later, the nurse practitioner knocked on the door and came in to ask more questions and examine me. To my great relief, she didn't automatically prescribe antibiotics, and she said that chances were pretty good that my cold would go away on its own.

On my way home I stopped at the Community Food Co-op to buy some food and continued on home to take a look at Vania Heymann's video "Like a Rolling Stone" which I hadn't been able to access earlier that morning because of internet slowness.  As with some of my many experiences with Bob Dylan's creative offerings over the years, my first impression was bewilderment.  I felt annoyed and couldn't roll along with it at all, but then there was that decisive moment of shifting consciousness where I suddenly remembered "TV Talkin' Song," followed up on that thought, and then returned to play with the interactive video with its many "channels." My favorite channel so far is the one with rapper Danny Brown.  I'd never heard of him before.  Because I don't watch TV, I don't have a clue as to the identities of most of the people who lip-sync "Like A Rolling Stone." It turns out that channels will continue to be added, and it appears that a channel was added not long before the video was released.  It contained recent devastating world news items in a surreal and unsettling way.

On the other hand, although I don't watch TV, I'm sitting in front of a computer screen for much longer periods of time than I ever sat in front of a television and for years I was paid to sit in front of a computer screen for a good part of my day.  Can I really say that I am not attached to something even more compelling than TV ever was?  Who am I fooling?

While playing with the channels on the video, a memory came to me from the early 1970s. I can recall walking from the outdoors into someone's living room and hearing Bob Dylan's voice coming from a record player and completely filling the smoke-filled air.  There was a TV turned on for all to see, but the sound was turned off. Bob Dylan's music was the soundtrack for whatever was on TV, some of it inane, some of it devastating.

This morning I came across these anonymous words:

"You never let me forget that this is a life-or-death situation, but paradoxically, you showed me how to laugh and have fun."

Just now I remembered another lost horse story.  Odd how creativity and illness are intertwined for me.

Time heals, after all -- although the clock that marks that kind of time has no hands.
(Suze Rotolo, from A Freewheelin' Time:  A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties)

Back home to Bellingham with its Village Green mural / Needing time

Last night I was relieved to receive an email from my friend who flew to the Philippines on October 30th after the unexpected death of her father. She writes that she is doing well despite being exhausted and is taking time to regain her energy after her return to Bellingham.  She just wants to sleep for now.

Early this morning, I finished re-reading Doris Lessing's Alfred and Emily, published in 2008 when she was in her late 80s, after she had received the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Although Doris Lessing is referring to the post-war days of World War II with the words below, I imagine that my friend might relate to these words:

"No, we did not at once 'take it in'.  This news was too horrifying to 'take in', just like that:  we needed time."
(p. 268, Alfred and Emily)

"Now I would say we were like people recovering from an illness:  we were numbed, stunned, because we hadn't really 'taken in' the years of war."
(p. 269, Alfred and Emily)

With Gratitude to Doris Lessing (1919-2013)

The Golden Notebook (1962)
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980)
The Diary of a Good Neighbor (1984)
Alfred and Emily (2008)

“Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.”
-- Doris Lessing

Marcel, Walt, and That Extraordinary Beloved Mockingbird named Bob

After having followed a link at wood s lot to Paintings in Proust (Vol. 1, Swann's Way) and reading from Proust, it occurred to me that the rhythm of Marcel Proust's voice was reminding me of Bob Dylan's voice in his 2004 memoir titled Chronicles:  Vol. 1.  

By Googling "Bob Dylan" together with "Proust," I found this and this and then came upon this:

"The men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected."

(Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove)

"... I left town at dawn with Marcel and St. John ..."

(Bob Dylan lyrics from "Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)" from the album titled "Street Legal.")

Back in the beginning of 2003, I belonged to an informal group of people who met once a month to read and discuss poetry.  For one month, Walt Whitman's poetry was chosen as a focus.  Among other poetry by Walt Whitman, I read his Civil War poems.  During those early months of 2003, a movie titled "Gods and Generals" was released. I would not likely have watched it if my Richard hadn't recommended it and had I not learned that the movie included a song written by Bob Dylan called "'Cross the Green Mountain."  Not long after that when I found the lyrics of "'Cross the Green Mountain" via Google, I was startled to read:

A letter to mother 

came today

Gunshot wound to the breast

is what it did say

But he'll be better soon

He's in a hospital bed

But he'll never be better

He's already dead

That sounded to me a whole lot like one of Walt Whitman's Civil War poems that I had just read.  Sure enough, it was:

Open the envelope quickly,

O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,

O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken

mother's soul!

All swims before her yes, flashes with black, she catches the

main words only,

Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry

skirmish, taken to hospital,

At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah now the single figure to me,

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and

farms,

Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,

By the jamb of a door leans.

Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks

through her sobs,

The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,)

See dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.

Alas, poor boy, he will never be better, (no may-be needs to

be better, that brave and simple soul,)

While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,

The only son is dead.

Now I'm wondering if I noticed what I noticed before Bob Dylan's mockingbird tendencies began to arouse controversy in July of 2003.

"... Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle ..."

"... I celebrate myself, and what I assume, you shall assume,

for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you ..."

"... You are also asking me questions and I hear you,

I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself ..."

"...Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems ..."

(from "Song of Myself," by Walt Whitman)