A walk up the street to Big Rock Garden

Entering Big Rock Garden

"Intuition Free," by Ann Morris

"Turtle," by David Marshall

Korean War Children's Memorial

"Three Musicians," by C.A. Scott

Looking back into the garden

Walking home, down the hill

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” 
(Maya Angelou)

My Great Nephew (-:

Born this morning at 5:30 a.m. in Seattle, Washington!

Catching rainbow trout / Bob Dylan's 73rd birthday

"Thank you for everything.  I have no complaint whatsoever."
(quote from a story about a Buddhist nun)





Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife
Catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids that call me Pa
That must be what it's all about.
("Sign on a Window," by Bob Dylan, 1970)

And this from May 2014.

And something about The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob.

Happy 73rd Birthday, Bob.  Gracias por tu musica!

In Which We Take Flying Lessons from Mother Earth and Father Sky and We Don't Laugh at Each Other

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

(lyrics by Bob Dylan from "Father of Night")

They say prayer has the power to help
So pray from the Mother
In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell
I'm trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others
But oh, Mother, things ain't going well

(lyrics by Bob Dylan from "Ain't Talkin")

Damnation! / DamNation / Watching the River Flow / Roll on Columbia / All the little birds will come again

Coincidence?  My mother has been in my thoughts frequently since Mother's Day.  This morning I received an email from Bellingham's Mt. Baker Theater, announcing the showing of the film, "DamNation."

Google definition of "damnation":

1. (in Christian belief) condemnation to eternal punishment in hell.
2. Expressing anger or frustration.

My thoughts went back to when I was a toddler, and my mother was around 36 years old.  I remembered hearing the first words I can recall my mother saying.  She wasn't angry or frustrated with me (as far I could tell), but she was steamed up about something.  She was vacuuming our small apartment and cursing, "Damnation!  God damn it to hell!"

In one of my last conversations with her (when she was almost 78 years old) she told me that she was tired of being angry.  

Maybe my mother just needed to cry.

People disagreeing on all just about everything, yeah

Makes you stop and all wonder why
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
Who just couldn’t help but cry
Oh, this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow

(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Watching the River Flow."

The source is clear and bright,

the tributary streams flow through the darkness.

To be attached to things is an illusion:

To encounter the absolute is not yet enlightenment.

(Shih-T'ou)

P.S.  I'm giving some thought to a post inspired by The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob.  My name is am and I am a Dylanologist.  My guess is that only Dylanologists will be reading this book (-:

Coincidentally (or not) one of the Dylanologist websites left a comment (a clarification) on my totem pole post while I was in the process of reading The Dylanologists.  A comment from a Dylanologist website is a first for me. The only Dylanologist website I subscribe to is this one.

I take Bob Dylan at his word in his song "Mississippi":

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.

P.P.S.  Another connection to my mother, revisited today:

"Although I didn't pick up all the details on the first watching, the second time I did notice many significant details I had missed the first time including the Scandinavian knitting pattern that my mother had used when she made a pillow for me many years ago":

Mad River Rising from daniel houghton on Vimeo.

"All the little birds will come again when winter ends ..."
(music by Michael Chorney and Anais Mitchell)

My mother with hollyhocks in the summer of 1917 in Hastings, Minnesota

For jarvenpa, with much gratitude, for reminding me of this photo.

Mother's Day Weekend Meditation 2014

Remembering my mother.  Remember how creative she was as a writer of short stories, a poet, a seamstress, a painter, a printmaker, a batik artist, a stained glass artist, and a pattern knitter.  Remembering her love of horses and how gracefully she was able to ride horses and that she gave that up to get married and have children when she was 33 years old.  Remembering her lifelong love of books and her passion for art and music.  Remembering the time she thanked me for introducing her to the music of Bob Dylan.  Remembering taking her to see "The Last Waltz" and how much she loved that movie.  Remembering that she thanked me for introducing her to the writing of Ursula K. Le Guin.  Remembering her spiritual journey from Christianity to Judaism.  Remembering what an extraordinary woman she was.  

Remembering how terrified of her I was from early childhood and how angry I was at her from about age 37 until the day she died suddenly, with no warning signs, of a massive heart attack in December of 1994 when I was 45 years old.  Remembering that my first words to my youngest sister upon hearing over the phone, while at work, the shocking news that our mother had died that morning were:

"Now she can't hurt me anymore." 

Just before I spoke those words I looked out the window at the hospital where I worked, and I had a vision of a dark cloud lifting and disappearing from my sight.  Remembering how I could feel truly safe with my mother only after she died.  It was only after she died that I could feel safe enough to begin to love my mother.  

Not everyone can understand that, but I know that I am not alone in my experience.  My mother would understand.  She was angry at her own mother, and then when my mother was in her first year of college, her mother developed gallbladder cancer and wasted away to a living skeleton before dying.  My mother grew to love her mother after her mother died.  I am just like my mother in that way.  I don't have children of my own and was never even pregnant, but this weekend I am due to become a Great Aunt.  My only nephew's girlfriend is due to give birth tomorrow on Mother's Day.  As she gives birth, she will be born again as a mother.  

I am sending all my love to my nephew, his girlfriend, and their baby who is so close to being born.

My heart goes out to the Nigerian girls and their families.

What is complete   

The valley spirit never dies.

Call it mystery, the woman.

The mystery,

the Door of the Woman,

is the root

of earth and heaven.

Forever this endures, forever.

And all its uses are easy.

(Chapter 6, from an English version of the Tao Te Ching, by Ursula K. Le Quin)

Double rainbow on a sunny day with Albert Einstein and Charles Simic

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse 

while all the others were making ships. 

(Charles Simic, poet -- b. 1938)

Walking meditation in color and black and white / Reading meditation

Thank you to wood s lot for this:

Children Selecting Books in a Library

Randall Jarrell

With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright.
The child's head, bent to the book-colored shelves,
Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering,
Moving in blind grace ... yet from the mural, Care
The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist,
Seizes the baby hero by the hair
And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children,
Words of a doom as ecumenical as dawn
But blanched like dawn, with dew.
The children's cries
Are to men the cries of crickets, dense with warmth
-- But dip a finger into Fafnir, taste it,
And all their words are plain as chance and pain.
Their tales are full of sorcerers and ogres
Because their lives are: the capricious infinite
That, like parents, no one has yet escaped
Except by luck or magic; and since strength
And wit are useless, be kind or stupid, wait
Some power's gratitude, the tide of things.
Read meanwhile ... hunt among the shelves, as dogs do, grasses,
And find one cure for Everychild's diseases
Beginning: Once upon a time there was
A wolf that fed, a mouse that warned, a bear that rode
A boy. Us men, alas! wolves, mice, bears bore.
And yet wolves, mice, bears, children, gods and men
In slow preambulation up and down the shelves
Of the universe are seeking ... who knows except themselves?
What some escape to, some escape: if we find Swann's
Way better than our own, an trudge on at the back
Of the north wind to -- to -- somewhere east
Of the sun, west of the moon, it is because we live
By trading another's sorrow for our own; another's
Impossibilities, still unbelieved in, for our own ...
"I am myself still?" For a little while, forget:
The world's selves cure that short disease, myself,
And we see bending to us, dewy-eyed, the great
CHANGE, dear to all things not to themselves endeared.


Also see: 12-year-old wisdom

And this:

Meditation in the rain on the 5th day of May

Isis, oh, Isis, you're a mystical child

What drives me to you is what drives me insane

I still can remember the way that you smiled

On the fifth day of May in the drizzling' rain

(lyrics from "Isis," by Bob Dylan -- the phrasing and music in this recording sound like the original but the voice doesn't sound like Bob Dylan.  There is a discussion on YouTube as to the identity of the vocalist.)

(pastel drawing on paper, by am, early 1980s and rainy day film clip taken at Derby Pond not far from Whatcom Falls in Whatcom Falls Park.  Whatcom is a Lummi Indian word meaning "noisy, rumbling water") 

Talking About What Is Not Broken

Early this morning we learned that a friend of ours, one who had struggled with alcoholism for many years and had tried with all his heart to stop drinking, died at home in his bed sometime early yesterday after having taken a cab to a grocery store the previous night so that he could buy some vodka and find some peace. He is not the first friend that I have lost as the result of alcoholism and won't be the last. Yesterday morning I woke up feeling out of sorts. I went down to Bellingham to look out at the water, not knowing that our friend had died. We are both fragile and indestructible, and the earth and the sky and the water share that with us.

This morning and always I want to honor our friend's life and that spirit in him, and in all of us, which is not broken. His kindness, his generosity, his gentleness, his courage, his perseverance, his love for his family and friends remain with us.

 

("Talking About What Is Not Broken," gouache and watercolor, 1989, by am. The paintings go side by side, but I was unable to figure out how to place them that way.)

My sister talking to a bunny on Easter morning

"... it could even be like a myth ..."

How many ways down have does a stroll of the man before you to call a man to him?
(Dashboard translation of a Dashboard translation of "How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?")

Storm The From Shelter:



When I woke up this morning, I could hear "Shelter From The Storm" in my mind.  What jumped out at me were the words, "If I could only turn back to the clock to when God and her were born."  A Zen question came to me.  Who is the mother of God and her?

Thank you to whomever turned back the clock of "Shelter From The Storm."

Bringing it all back to "Twas" and "Nalyd Bob."

Happy Birthday, John!

When I visited Yosemite Valley in early October of 2008, I turned around after reading a large sign that said that John Muir once stood on that spot, and I took the above photo.  Yosemite Valley is dear to my heart.  It has to be seen to be believed.  No photo can capture what it feels like to be in Yosemite Valley.

From the John Muir link above:

And just FYI, John Muir loved wilderness, but he was no misanthrope. He had many friends with whom he corresponded to regularly. And he was married with a wife and two children! Both girls accompanied their father on walks in the nearby hills of the family's Martinez, California ranch, and Muir named two of the area's peaks after them -- Mt. Wanda and Mt. Helen

Easter weekend meditation / Something of a Zen koan / Long before the sky would open

... And Jesus was a sailor

When he walked upon the water

And he spent a long time watching

From his lonely wooden tower

And when he knew for certain

Only drowning men could see him

He said, "All men will be sailors then

Until the sea shall free them"

But he himself was broken

Long before the sky would open

Forsaken, almost human

He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with him

And you want to travel blind

And you think maybe you'll trust him

For he's touched your perfect body with his mind ...

(Leonard Cohen, lyrics from "Suzanne")  

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary.  It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

(John Lennon)

... You don't need no passport

You don't need no visa

And you don't need to designate or emigrate

Before you can see Jesus ...

... You don't need no church house

And you don't need no temple

You don't need no rosary beads or them books to read

To see that you have fallen

If you open up your heart

You'll see he's right there

Always was and will be

He'll relieve you of your cares ...

(George Harrison, lyrics from "Awaiting On You All"-- 1970)

We don't ask for more cathedrals.  We don't ask for bigger churches or fine gifts.  ... We ask the Church to sacrifice with the people for social change, for justice, and for love of brother.  We don't ask for words. We ask for deeds.  We don't ask for paternalism. We ask for servanthood.

(Cesar Chavez -- Christian, farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist -- speaking in 1968)

If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth.  If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning.  And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

(Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking in 1955)

Sweet silver angels over the sea

Please come down flying low for me

One time I trusted a stranger

'Cause I heard His sweet song

It was gently enticing me, there was something wrong

When I turned, He was gone

Blinding me, His song remains reminding me

He's a bandit and a heart breaker

My Jesus was a cross maker.

Sweet silver angels over the sea

Please come down flying low for me

He wages war with the devil with a pistol by His side

He's always chasing him out of windows

And He won't give him a place to hide

But he keeps His door open wide

Fighting him, He lights a lamp inviting him

He's a bandit and a heart breaker

My Jesus was a cross maker.

Yeah, Jesus was a cross maker.

(Warren Zevon sang "Jesus Was A Cross Maker," written by Judee Sill)

Martin Scorsese's Jesus in "The Last Temptation of Christ" was a cross maker:

Judas:  If you were me, could you betray your master?

Jesus:  No.  That's why God gave me the easier job -- to be crucified.

Vietnamese Zen Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a book called Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers.  

Although I was raised as a Christian (first in the Lutheran Church and then in the Episcopal Church), I stopped going to church when I was 18 years old.  From that time on, I have explored many religions and spiritual traditions and am grateful for their teachings, but I have not chosen to affiliate myself with any of them.  

I do find the story of Jesus to be a mysterious and compelling one -- something of a Zen koan -- and I continue to listen with all my heart when certain people talk about their understanding of and trust in Jesus.

"... just like you always smiled before ..."

(Cropped from a drawing by Allen Say from Emma's Rug)

Last night I dreamed that I standing in a small cozy kitchen at night. A young girl to the left of me at the kitchen table was drawing in pencil on a piece of drawing paper.  We were talking about the process of learning to draw.  Bob Dylan was sitting quietly and staring into space across the table to the right of me.  I was saying that learning to draw is like learning to play the guitar and takes practice.  Bob Dylan looked up sharply, made eye contact with me and said with a quizzical smile, "Uh, yeah."



Monologue by Bob Dylan from the early 1960s:

“First time I ever worked in East Orange, New Jersey.

Folks never go to East Orange, New Jersey; it’s a horrible town. I went there to play in a coffee house in East Orange, New Jersey. It was a chess playing coffee house out there. It was so bad…uh…so bad, people playing chess out there. Uh…that’s all they thought about out there was chess and chess and chess. People come up to me, you play your song, you play you a real quiet song. In the middle of the song you hear “Check”, [female laughter in background] And “Hey, that was a good move” and all kinds of stuff like that.

Hey folks it was so bad I had a little dream out there the first night I worked about this chess playing stuff. I dreamed I went to work out in East Orange, New Jersey, and, uh, about time I quit in two days I went there to ask the guy for my money. I says, “Can I have some money, I worked two days for ya?” He says, “Uh… Well OK, we don’t pay you money around here though” I says “Uh, yeah?” He says “Well” he says, uh, ”Yeah, we pay ya chess men”, I said “Uh, well give me my chess men then, I worked two days”. I sort of…didn’t really figure, I thought he was lying at first, but I took it anyway. He gave me a king and a queen for working two days. I said “Fine, that’s OK”.

So I took my king and queen and went down to a bar, nearest bar I could find. I walked in the bar and I ordered a pint. I… I got on the bar, “Bartender”, I says “Can I have a pint?” I’ll be damned if he didn’t give me a pint. He asked me for the money. I gave him my king and queen. I’ll be damned, you know he took that king and queen, threw it under the counter, and brought me out four pawns, two bishops, and a rook for change.

That’s a little story about East Orange, New Jersey.”

Now let's listen to the frogs singing in the night:

Prayer

A song written by Warren Zevon and sung by Jill Sobule.

With Gratitude To A Person With Questions And A Sense Of Humor

Talking Late Afternoon Light with Rainbow and Great Spirit

A Lummi friend told me about this website some time ago, and just recently I have subscribed to their daily meditations for elders via email:

Elder's Meditation of the Day April 9
"Everything really is equal. The Creator doesn't look at me any better than He looks at the trees. We're all the same."
--Janice Sundown Hattet, SENECA
Sometimes humans think we are the center of the Universe. Sometimes we think we are above or better than other people or things. The Great Spirit made a set of Laws and Principles by which all things should live. Everybody and everything lives by the same Laws. We are all made of atoms just like the trees. The life force in the middle of the atom is the life force of the Great Mystery. It is the same for everything. We are all equal in the eyes of the Creator.

Great Spirit, today, I will respect your handiwork.

Common sense and a sense of humor needed

Above is "Typists," a painting in gouache from 1966, by Jacob Lawrence.  I've attached a copy of that painting to the drawer on my work desk.  Jacob Lawrence captured the essence and dignity of the nature of the demanding work many of us now do on computers.

I've started working on an online refresher course so that I can find work later this year.  Although the refresher course will be the equivalent of a full-time job, I plan to continue to volunteer one afternoon a week helping take care of babies in the daycare.  The babies inspire me.  I love them.  I like the freedom that volunteering gives me to just be there for the babies and to help the early childhood educators in whatever ways I can.

Funny to think that the only way I've been able to make a living for any length of time is by typing, and that when I took typing in high school in 1966, it was all I could do to get a "D" grade.

Deja vu.  Pretty scary. With Oboe by my side, I'm going to give typing and editing medical reports at home another try.  One day at a time.  I am good at what I do, but I have let PTSD overwhelm me again and again.  Next time I feel like quitting, I'll think twice and get help to put things in perspective. At my age, I'm not going to get many more chances.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.  A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

(William James)

Talking Cricket During The First Days of Spring

Jiminy Cricket was billed as "the only conscience with a sense of humor."




Funny how the mind works.  I looked at Jiminy Cricket's top hat and thought of this:



Coincidence? On March 28, 2007, on his Theme Time Radio Hour, Bob Dylan played "I'm No Fool," by Jiminy Cricket:

Chop the water
Pump the hay
Shoe the eggs
Water the pump
Butter the cow
Water the milk
Churn the horse
Milk the grain
Sow the shoe
Pitch the field
Water the plow
Chop the eggs



which reminded me of this:

It is spring again.  The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Flowering Quince Meditation

 


















Inspired by The Solitary Walker.

Something I can say in black and white and grey

Perhaps the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.

(Wallace Stevens)

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart.  We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves!  Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or a bear's, cover the soul.  Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
(Meister Eckhart)