Josephine's mandalas: #18 of 21

1/18/91

Gulf War

U.S.
Iraq
Kuwait
Baghdad
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Israel
Tel Aviv
Jerusalem

(click on image for additional details)

am's notes:  On January 18, 1991, Iraq launched SCUD missiles on Israel. The U.S. deployed Patriot missiles to Israel and Saudi Arabia.  See Gulf War link above for additional context for this mandala.

This process of sharing my mother's mandalas is transformative. Perhaps it is time to begin to make some mandalas of my own.  I do have two drawings (one from 1999 and one from 2007) that would be my mandala #1 and #2. They were inspired by a book about healing that I bought in 1999 during a time of turmoil and little inner peace in my life.

It has just occurred to me that I made my first mandala in 1999 in a room in a motel on the north end of Arcata, California, just off of Highway 1 and that I also stayed in Gualala during that time and worked on the exercises in the book there as well.  

As the end of 1999 approached, I had been seriously thinking about moving to Humboldt County, and I stayed there for the most part from late September to the end of October, also spending about a week in Gualala in Mendocino County, which was another place I thought I might like to live. The events leading to my being in a motel room in Arcata are coming back to me now.  

In spring of 1998, I had found myself feeling so distraught that I left my work station at the Catholic hospital where I was employed as a transcriptionist, and I went to talk with a social worker who was employed in Pastoral Care as a chaplain.  She was a Roman Catholic nun from the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.After talking with her, I went to the non-denominational hospital chapel (with its wooden altar built by a fine woodworker who identified as both Jewish and atheist) and sat quietly in meditation until I was able to return to my work station. As a result of leaving my work station without letting anyone know where I had gone, I was sharply reprimanded and sent for mandatory counseling through the hospital's employee assistance program and from there I was referred to a Gestalt therapist in Bellingham.  Now I'm wondering if that therapist was the one who suggested the book to me. 

Since the spring of 1998, I had been working with that therapist on emotional issues after the suicide of a former boyfriend (we were together briefly in our early 20s) on his 50th birthday in December of 1997 in Bellingham and also because of my increasingly strained and demoralizing relationship with my father after my mother's death and my distress in connection with my Richard's rapid descent into late stage alcoholism which had involved prison time.  I had distanced myself from Richard for my own safety, but he remained a constant presence in my psyche.   

As a result of living with Richard during the first five months after his return from Vietnam in 1970 and as a result of a terrifying episode while talking with him over the phone on Veterans Day 1989 during the Gulf War, as well as my anguish in response to the Gulf War,  it became increasingly clear that I was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.  

In the spring of 1999, in a futile attempt to sort out the mess that my life had become, I abruptly quit my job at the hospital and cashed out my IRA that I had been building up for 14 years.  I thought that a new career or moving back to California, specifically Humboldt County, might be the answer.  Spending a month in Humboldt County seemed like a good idea.  Certainly the solace of the ocean and the redwoods would heal me.  

Because I found myself in severe emotional distress despite being in one of my favorite places on the earth, I went to the hospital in Eureka and talked with a hospital chaplain who referred me to a counselor in Arcata who helped me during that month in which I realized that I was in no shape to move alone to Humboldt County.  

Just now, I found my copy of the book that prompted me to make my first mandala.  My notes in the book show that I bought The Mythic Path, by David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner, in July of 1999 and that I may have finished the exercises in January of 2000.  The last page that I dated was January 23, 2000.  In December of 1999, against my better judgment, I had impulsively contacted Richard in California and was shocked to learn that he had been diagnosed with oat cell carcinoma in his neck and throat and had undergone drastic surgery at Stanford University Hospital.  To my dismay, there was no word from him again until September 2001 when he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and I flew to California to visit with him at his parents' home, where he was living at the time.  In spring of 2002, his cancer went into remission, and he began drinking heavily and using drugs again. Again, for my own safety, I had to keep my distance from him.    

In 2007, in a time of increasing inner turmoil and intermittent severe migraine headaches, close to a year before my Richard died, I went through the exercises in the book again and made a second mandala. With a little research, I see that I was moved by this poem at about the same time.  

Now in 2014, I can say that my daily experience contains close to an equal measure of inner peace and inner turmoil.  The yin-yang symbol has meaning for me.  Oneness.  The balance of darkness and light. Dynamic.  Alive.  

For so much of my life, I had very little sense of having any inner peace and only experienced unceasing inner turmoil.  Right now I'm wondering how life was for my mother.  What was the balance for her? I don't think she found the peace she sought, but she did continue her creative output in a way that has eluded me since the First Gulf War.  

The years between 1980 and 1989 resulted in nearly 200 drawings and paintings coming through me.  What a shock to do the math and see that 25 years have gone by since that unprecedented period of creativity.  I will be 65 years old in October.   

Then I remembered this:

"From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things.  When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs.  But all I have done before the age of 70 is not worth bothering with.  At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress.  At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist.  At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before.  To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age.  I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign myself "The Old Man Mad About Drawing."

-- Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)

Since December 2006, blogging has been keeping my creative energy alive, although it has resulted in only a few drawings and paintings.  Here are my top 10 blog labels:

• Bob Dylan (73)
• gouache (46)
• Arches watercolor paper (41)
• 42 years: a book of changes (39)
• watercolor (38)
• Appleworks6 "Painting" (22)
• my mother (19)
• ocean (18)
• George Harrison (16)
• mandala series (16)
• gratitude (13)
• gouache and watercolor (12)
• let them speak for themselves (12)
• thomas merton (11)
• Georgia O'Keeffe (10)
• John Muir (10)
• Martin Luther King Jr (10)
• Vincent Van Gogh (10)
• life drawing (10)
• walking (10)

   Here are the last twenty of a long long list of labels identified with a single post: 

• wood s lot (1)
• working at home (1)
• working or playing or something else?(1)
• works in progress (1)
• writing (1)
• x = x (1)
• yahi (1)
• yana (1)
• year of the horse (1)
• years (1)
• yikes (1)
• yoga teacher training (1)
• yogascittavrttinirodhah (1)
• you can't catch death (1)
• young poets (1)
• yusef komunyakaa (1)
• zen (1)
• βιος (1)
• 和平 (1)
• 鲍勃•迪伦 (1)

Here is one of the first bloggers who found my blog and commented. I've been hoping she would post on her blog again.  She wrote the poem that meant so much to me in 2007.  Her posts are worth waiting for.  Look back through her archives for "pictures, poems and other souvenirs and artifacts."

Thank you to anyone who read this far.  I didn't expect to write so much when I sat down 6 hours ago. 

Thank you to my mother for giving me a perspective on keeping the creative process alive in times of turmoil.  

Porch meditation:  Summer-blooming Amaryllis

Josephine's mandalas: #17 of 21

12/11/90 - 12/18/90

Hanukah

Shalom

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight

Latkes
Gimel
Nun
Dreidel
Shin
Kislev 25
Menorah
Nes Gadol Haya Sham

(click on image for additional details)

This post is dedicated to Velveteen Rabbi.  I wish my mother were still alive so that I could share Rachel's blog with her and that I could talk with my mother in a way we couldn't while she was alive.

My mother let her inner turmoil as well as her inner peace be made visible in this series of mandalas created in the last years of her life.

Josephine's mandalas: #16 of 21

5/31/90

Anchor Bay

Maxine R.

"Vinny"

"Lady"

Jeni and Mike H.

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am's note:   Anchor Bay is a few miles north of where my parents lived in the southwestern corner of Mendocino County.  My parents enjoyed visiting the beach at the Anchor Bay Campground and brought family and friends to that beach.  The names on this mandala are those of a friend of my mother, those of two dogs, and those of the couple who managed the campground then, and manage it to this day, as far as I can tell.  

Josephine's mandalas: #15 of 21

5/30/90

Shavuot

6/1/90

Narcolepsy Mandala
(Following
I and II)
Finished
later in
day with
colors
and
notes.
(All of
the Roman
Numerals
were
done
during
"sleep")

Shavuot
49 days
Omer
to
Sinai
7 weeks

1. -- once
2. -- once
3. -- 2 times
4. -- once
5. -- once
7. -- once
8. -- 3 times
9. -- 5 times
10. -- 5 times
11. -- 2 times
12. -- 2 times
13. -- 3 times
14. -- 1
15. -- 1
16. -- 1
17. -- 1

VI
6 missing
No 6

The Ten Commandments - Exodus 20 - Moses

am's notes:  The 6th Commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Murder." The Ten Commandments are the first ten of 613 commandments given by God to the Jewish people.

Despite taking Dexedrine on a daily basis from 1954 until her unexpected death of a massive heart attack in 1994, it is clear that my mother never found complete relief from narcolepsy.  I'm not sure how she was able to stay awake during the time she held jobs in her 20s and early 30s, before marrying.  Before her daily dose of Dexedrine was prescribed, it must have been extremely difficult for her to struggle to stay awake while trying to be a wife and mother of very young children in the years from 1949 to 1954.  On the other hand, the emotional side effects of Dexadrine were devastating to her, and to us, her three daughters.  She was alternately giddy and full of amphetamine-fueled energy, unable to stay awake, prone to rage, and a creative well-intentioned mother.

It is intriguing that my mother's narcolepsy determined the course of her enigmatic 15th mandala. By the time she was 74, my mother was not taking as much Dexadrine as she had when we were growing up, but she took enough on a daily basis so that she could drive a car without having to worry about falling asleep at the wheel.

My Amaryllis plant only bloomed during winter the first year I had it. Every year after the danger of frost is over I put it out on my porch, and it blooms during July or August.  I took this photo a few days ago.  The first of the three flowers has not yet opened as of today, but it is getting close to opening.

Josephine's mandalas: #14 of 21

5/27/90

The music goes down and around

And it comes out here

1929-1930

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Josephine's mandalas: #13 of 21

4/10/90

Pesah ...

Exodus
Hametz
Karpas
Haroset
Maror
Haggadah
Passover
Wine
Beitzah
Elijah's cup
Afikomen   Seder
Salt

... Shemah, Yisrael, Adonai Eloheynu Adonai, Echad ...

... Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One ...

Josephine's mandalas: #12 of 21

                                              

                                        

5/9/90 - Full Moon AT APOGEE

Towards full -- waxing

Towards new - waning

Synodic Month:
1 revolution
from new moon
to new moon
29 days 12 hours

Luna  Diana

The
Moon

Hunter's moon  Harvest moon

Low tide  High tide

Elliptical
Wax
Orbit
Set
Earth
Rise
Satellite
Wane

Eclipse

New
Crescent
First Quarter
Gibbous
Full
Gibbous
Last Quarter
Crescent                      

Sidereal Month:

1 revolution in

relation to a fixed star

27 1/3 days

A . . Apogee - farthest from Earth
P . .  Perigee - closest to Earth

(click on image for additional details)

Josephine's mandalas: #11 of 21

3/11/90 (Adar 14)

Purim

O.T.
Book of Esther

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Josephine's mandalas: #10 of 21

2/23/90

You are looking at Jupiter watching the Dog nipping at the Hunter's heels as the Hunter pursues the Bull ...

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Josephine's mandalas: #9 of 21

2/22/90
Year of the Horse

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2014 is also a year of the horse (mă in Pinyin).

Josephine's mandalas: #8 of 21

2/16/90

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Josephine's mandalas: #7 of 21

2/10/90 - Turtle Island

- Tu Bishvat - (Shevat 15)

See 11/2/89

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For the rest of this series, I'm going to let my mother's mandalas speak for themselves.

Comments are welcomed (-:

Josephine's mandalas: #6 of 21

1/31/90

Twinkle Twinkle, little cell .....
You've done your work and done it well
When I die, you'll drift to sea ......
And wait there for another me ..... (-:

(click on the image for additional details)

This mandala was made on a Wednesday, within 24 hours of the previous one.

Up until the last year of her life, my mother had planned to be cremated and have her ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. My recollection is that she had made arrangements with the Neptune Society.  This was a sore point with my father. He wanted her ashes to be buried alongside his ashes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his mother and father and younger brother were buried. Almost exactly a year before she died, she gave in to his wishes and changed the details of her will.

It has always seemed to me that her freed spirit remained in and around Gualala. Three days after she died, a Black Phoebe appeared on the ocean side of my parents' home. I had never consciously seen a Black Phoebe before. It sat on the porch railing and peered at me as I stood near the door to the porch, talking on the phone with one of my older cousins who had been close to my mother. The Black Phoebe remained for sometime, seeming to be calling to us in the house:



Twice when I returned to Gualala for visits after my father had sold their home and moved to Bellingham, I had encounters with a Black Phoebe. Both times I was out walking and felt greeted by a Black Phoebe who stood on the soft dirt path and looked at me in what I perceived to be a friendly and fearless manner. Black Phoebes are dear to me now.

I like the single bright red star and the shimmering energy of this mandala with its radiating words.

After both of my parents had died I had an unexpected dream of seeing them joyfully reunited on the sloping hillside outside their home in Gualala. In the dream image, they were free of the differences that had kept them at odds with each other -- at least during many of the years I observed of their 46 years of marriage. They seemed to truly love each other in my dream.

This is what their home looked like in 1974 before more houses were built on their street. My Dad is looking south out of the living room window. My impression is that this was the happiest time in their lives. Their three daughters were grown. My father had retired and enjoyed gardening and woodcarving. My mother loved their new life in Gualala and had an abundance of creative energy. As always, she was never without a book to read.


My mother is sitting just to the south of house.

My father did the finish work on the addition to
their house which included a garage, a master
bedroom and an art room for my mother.

My mother took the paintings she had done in the
early 1960s and hung them up in the garage.


I am guessing that this photo was taken in 1974.

It just occurred to me that, in these photos, my mother 

is 7 years younger than I am now. I am 9 years

younger than my mother was when she made her

mandalas. My mother's mother died when my

mother was 20, and her father died when she was

29. She didn't have her parents for as long I 

did. 

It is also occurring to me that looking at my mother's 

mandalas is bringing thoughts of my father and of

my parents' marriage to my mind.

Thanks to whiskey river for this reminder.

Josephine's mandalas: #5 of 21

1/30/90
      .

   .  .  .
      .

ORION
GLORIFIED
FOREVER
OR BITING
AROUND AND
AROUND AND
AROUND ...

After my mother died without warning of a massive heart attack on December 3, 1994, on the day before her 46th wedding anniversary, I found one of her books of poetry bookmarked at a poem by Kenneth Rexroth.  The poem had been written to his daughter.   The book was sitting in a prominent place, in what appeared to be a deliberate manner.  Underlined was:

Believe in Orion.  Believe
In the night, the moon, the crowded
Earth.  Believe in Christmas and
Birthdays and Easter rabbits.
Believe in all those fugitive
Compounds of nature, all doomed
to waste away and go out.
Always be true to these things.
They are all there is.  Never
give up this savage religion
For the blood-drenched civilized
Abstractions of the rascals
Who live by killing you and me.

(from "A Sword in a Cloud of Light")

("Boy with Amaryllis and Orion," a track-pad drawing by am, from the winter of 2008)

I'm looking for patterns in the dating of my mother's mandalas.  She made the first two of her mandalas on consecutive Wednesdays and the other two on a seemingly random Thursday and a Tuesday.  I wonder what kind of mood prompted them or what events in her life.  I can't remember exactly when it was that she showed her mandalas to me, but I am fairly sure that the series was complete when I first saw them. I understand that she showed them to my sisters, too. It isn't likely that she showed them to my father because he was opposed to her interest in Judaism. After he expressed his disapproval, she continued celebrating Jewish holidays in secret and found solace in the seasons of the Jewish calendar.

It seems that when she made this mandala, she was acknowledging and pondering paradox.

My mother loved the night sky.  Gualala is a coastal town which is a 3-1/2 hour drive north of San Francisco -- a splendid place for night sky viewing.  That is one of the few places I have been where the stars and the Milky Way can be seen as our ancestors must have seen them. With nothing blocking her view of the sky from the zenith to the western horizon, she could study the moon and stars and constellations and planets and befriend them.  The last time I saw my mother she told me in a matter of fact way that she had no friends.  "That's just the way it is," she said.  But when she died, her friends grieved deeply.

Even though Bellingham is a small town, the city lights are bright enough that night sky viewing is limited -- even when the frequent cloud cover lifts.  Only the brightest stars are visible here.  The clearest night sky here doesn't come close to the brilliance of the night sky in Gualala.

On one visit to Bellingham many years ago, my mother was drawn to a pretty little yellow house up above a busy street that runs between where I live and downtown Bellingham.  She said, "I'm going to live in that yellow house someday."  With her red hair and freckles, she didn't mind cloudy or rainy days, but I know that she would have missed seeing the stars if she had moved here.

After about a week of 80 degree weather, things are back to normal here in the coastal Pacific Northwest with a light rain that has been falling all day today.  It wouldn't be unusual if it cleared up by evening. It's always startling to see the first leaves falling in late July.

I'd like to take a walk but am hesitating due to the rare occurrence of thunder and lightning that is predicted.

Before dawn on the day that my mother died, Orion was setting.  It was just above the horizon in the western sky.  My star book says of those pre-dawn hours , "Don't search for the Milky Way:  it is too close to the horizon to be seen well."

Josephine's mandalas: #4 of 21

11/2/89

(Shevat 15)

(For Tu Bishvat 02/10/90)

Trees are forever

(Click on the image for additional details)

Today I'm going to try something different.  I'm going to give a good look at my mother's 4th mandala and then take a walk and think about her mandala and then finish this blog post.  I'll be back in about an hour.

*

My mother rode horses when she was in her 20s and early 30s.  She did yoga in her 40s and tai chi in her 70s, but walking was not part of her life as far as I know.  My mother was a reader.  She traveled all over the world through books and magazines and films and television.

As I was walking in Whatcom Falls Park, which is deeply forested, I thought about the trees my mother drew on her 4th mandala and wondered if that was a tree from her childhood and what it meant to her.

The photo above may have been taken on her 7th birthday (April 30, 1923) in St. Paul, Minnesota.  While I was walking this morning I remembered the photo.  Until today, I would have said that she was standing next to her house in St. Paul, but looking at the photo now, I am guessing that she is in a public place -- maybe a park, maybe on church property.  Checking with the perennial calendar, I see that her birthday was on a Monday in 1923.  Perhaps the photo was taken at her school, although she does look as if she is dressed for church.  My guess is that her father took the photo.

My father planted two cherry trees side by side in our backyard in Redwood City.  I wonder if my mother asked him to plant them.  My father had planted an apple tree in another section of that backyard. When I was quite young and our family traveled from California to Minnesota, I remember an apple tree in the backyard of the house where my grandmother was still living after my grandfather had died.  I distinctly remember watching ants climbing on the tree.  I wanted to climb the tree but was discouraged from doing that.

My parents' home in Gualala was in Redwood country on the California's north coast, and my father planted a variety of evergreens on their property which previously had been a treeless grassy bluff.  I imagine, though, that there were lovely flowering trees in and around the town of Gualala in the spring.

I wonder if she had been thinking about the pink flowering almond tree that Thich Nhat Hanh writes about in his book The Energy of Prayer: How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice:

It was in November of 1989 that my mother created this mandala. November on the north coast of California can be something like summer here in the Pacific Northwest.  My memory is that there are flowers blooming all year in Gualala.  My mother was blooming in her 70s.

I just noticed the pink branches with dark flowers that are branching from the pink curved line at the bottom part of the mandala.

Below are some of the flowers that are just beginning to bloom on my porch today:

Here is Josephine's great grandson, Pablo, who is almost two months old.  That must be my nephew holding him:

Pablo is looking up at something in much the way my mother was when she stood next to that flowering tree in St. Paul, Minnesota, when she was 7 years old.

Trees are forever.

Josephine's mandalas: #3 of 21

... Flowers on the hilside bloomin' crazy...

Bob.....Dylan

(Click on image to see additional details.  I couldn't fit all of this mandala on my scanner.)

This mandala was made on a Tuesday -- exactly one week after the previous one.  I checked to find the day of the week on a perennial calendar.  Here's the song my mother was thinking about or maybe even listening to as she made this mandala:



Ever since Miley Cyrus recorded her version of that song, YouTube is full of covers in the style of Miley Cyrus.  It took me a while to find a cover that wasn't inspired by Miley Cyrus.  Miley Cyrus made the song her own (singing to herself on her cell phone!), just as Arnoldusk did in the video above, and just as so many others have done in the past and will do in the years to come. That's the beauty of songs written by Bob Dylan.

My mother made that song her own with this mandala.

My mother took great pride in her correct grammar and in her ability to spell.  Just noticed that she left the second "l" out of "hillside."  By the time she moved from the center of the mandala to the outer edge she must have been deep into her right brain with all those little flowers bloomin' crazy.

When she died, my mother still had long red hair (crimson hair?) with only a few grey hairs.  Was she thinking specifically about the image of the flowers or did she hear Bob Dylan or someone else singing this love song to her?  That's how I heard it.  I had long red hair when I was young.  I felt loved when I heard this song.  I felt that I would be missed when I was gone.  I thought about people I loved and would miss when they were gone.

In the last years of her life, my mother thanked me for introducing her to the music of Bob Dylan many years before that.  I'm not sure, but I think that her favorite Bob Dylan songs were on "Oh Mercy."  She loved "Ring Them Bells."

Here are the lyrics to "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go":

I’ve seen love go by my door
It’s never been this close before
Never been so easy or so slow
Been shooting in the dark too long
When somethin’s not right it’s wrong
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

Dragon clouds so high above
I’ve only known careless love
It’s always hit me from below
This time around it’s more correct
Right on target, so direct
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

Purple clover, Queen Anne’s Lace
Crimson hair across your face
You could make me cry if you don’t know
Can’t remember what I was thinkin’ of
You might be spoilin’ me too much, love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

Flowers on the hillside, bloomin’ crazy
Crickets talkin’ back and forth in rhyme
Blue river runnin’ slow and lazy
I could stay with you forever and never realize the time

Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud
But there’s no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

Yer gonna make me wonder what I’m doin’
Stayin’ far behind without you
Yer gonna make me wonder what I’m sayin’
Yer gonna make me give myself a good talkin’ to

I’ll look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
Yer gonna have to leave me now, I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

Copyright © 1974 by Ram's Horn Music; renewed 2002 by Ram’s Horn Music

(The original version was recorded in 1974 in New York City.  The song will be 40 years old on September 17, 2014.  I distinctly remember the first time I heard it.  The entire album was played for the first time on the radio before it went on sale.  I listened to it in my kitchen after doing the dishes.  My boyfriend at the time was not interested and occupied himself in the living room.  As soon as the album was available, I went down to the record store and bought my copy.  I was 25 years old and had been following the music of Bob Dylan since I was 14 years old.That would have been when my mother first heard Bob Dylan, too.  I played my Bob Dylan albums over and over again in my bedroom.  My father said that I was such a nice girl until I started listening to Bob Dylan.  I'm not sure when my mother bought her copy of "Blood on the Tracks."  I have a vague memory of her asking for a Bob Dylan album for her birthday or for Christmas.  Maybe I gave that copy of "Blood on the Tracks" to her.

Just yesterday I was out walking in Whatcom Falls Park with a friend, and as we walked through a group of young men and women, I noticed a young man wearing a white t-shirt with a black and white image of Bob Dylan on it.  I caught his eye and said, "Yay!!! Bob Dylan."  He smiled broadly and said, "Yeah!!")

Josephine's mandalas: #2 of 21

A house is a home A house is a home A house is a home A house is a home A house is a home A house is a home A house is a home A house is a home A house is a home

Statement or question?

(Click on image to see additional details)

What house or home could my mother have been thinking about?  As a 20-year-old woman in the 1930s she lived in Hermosa Beach, California, after moving from St. Paul, Minnesota, not long after her mother died of gallbladder cancer in bed at home.   My mother came to California with her father, her brother and sister-in-law, and her young niece.  She lived in several different places in L.A. County and entered a brief marriage some years before marrying my father in 1948 and moving to the Marina District in San Francisco where she and my father lived in an apartment until I was born in 1949.  A week after I was born, we moved south 20 miles to San Mateo where we lived in another apartment.  Mostly because of my father's job, we moved three times after that, ending up in Redwood City, California, in 1957, and that was where our home/house was for the next 16 years.

Could she have been thinking about all the houses and homes that she had lived in throughout her life?  I don't see any evidence of her last home in her drawing.  She and my father lived for 20 years in a small house on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean in Gualala, California, a tiny coastal town at the southwestern border of Mendocino County, right next to the Gualala River.  There was plenty of space between houses there, and the vast Pacific Ocean dominated the landscape.

I don't see any sign of the ocean in her drawing, but I do see what might be a river or lakes.  She grew up near the Mississippi River in the land of 10,000 lakes,  Maybe that is an image from her early memories in Minnesota.

Is the tilt intentional?  I thought I had looked closely at this mandala previously.  Just now I can see the entire image as a sun with a face.  There is so much to see in my mother that I couldn't see when she was alive.

Is a home a house?

Josephine's mandalas: #1 of 21

In my mother's 74th year she wrote words and made marks and drawings on the inside cover of a spiral notebook.  I am guessing that this was in the context of having been a volunteer who helped out with the children at Starcross Community, and then in the context of having felt drawn to learn about Judaism from the Mendocino Jewish Community because she had a strong sense that she had Jewish ancestors on her German father's side of the family.  On October 18, 1989, she began a formal series of mandalas, completing 20 more of them.  Her final mandala was dated July 12, 1991.  My mother died on December 3, 1994, and the mandalas came to me.  I scanned them at the end of December 2013 and have been meaning to post them ever since.

These mandalas came near the end of her lifetime of spiritual seeking.  My mother had narcolepsy and told me that she made some of these as she drifted back and forth between waking and sleeping.  In that dream state she would hear words in her mind and see images and record them in the mandalas.  

I can imagine my mother keeping a blog and reading blogs.  She was a lifelong reader and creative spirit.  She wrote short stories and poetry until she was about 50 years old.  She had dreamed of being a writer since childhood.  She did no more creative writing after that time, but she turned her attention first to watercolors and Japanese brush painting and then on to silkscreening, batik, stained glass, and finally to complex colorful pattern knitting in her last years.

Click on the images for all of the fine details.  I hope to post one of her mandalas every day for the next 20 days and hope to gain some new insight about my mysterious mother through that process.

Porch garden meditation 18 July 2014

Don't know the name of this flower, but that's okay.

Totem Pole Journeys

Another Totem Pole Journey will be starting on August 17, 2014.

Awareness meditation on the power of bearing witness and on being a compassionate witness

Awareness.
(The Buddha's reply when asked to sum up his teaching in a single word)

Talking 4th of July Blues with Antidote

The 4th of July is approaching.  Since 1970, it's been a day of vulnerability and bewilderment for me.  Difficult memories. Time to listen to this song again.  Thank you to my nephew, Lee, for introducing me to this song by The Lonely Forest, a band from Anacortes, Washington. 

"Toward true independence of the spirit"

"She speaks of the great kind spirit and doubt"

Fertile Land / Growing Veterans

Healing program for veterans

"On fertile land between Lynden and Bellingham, a nonprofit program is helping military veterans ease back into civilian life while growing healthy vegetables for the community at large.

The second growing season is underway for Growing Veterans, with a focus on building community support and developing long-range plans.

Chris Brown, the program's director, said raising organic produce on the three acres and in two large greenhouses plays to the veterans' strengths - including teamwork and a sense of camaraderie - and gives them a chance to overcome isolation and to support each other while they help the environment.

"Their favorite part of Growing Veterans is that they can feel they're part of something larger than themselves, again," he said.

About 15 veterans are regulars at the farm, which formerly grew produce for Bellingham Food Bank. Many other people donate their labor, and support from foundations, businesses, veterans' organizations and other community groups is crucial as Growing Veterans moves toward its goal of becoming self-supporting with more paying positions for veterans."

(from the Bellingham Herald, June 30, 2014)

"Long Night's Journey Into Day"

"Long Night's Journey Into Day," by Megan Rye, 2008

For quite some time I've saved this image, meaning to post it with a link to information on the artist, Megan Rye.  See the link to her webpage at the bottom of the link. I'm in the midst of my own journey, experiencing the return of a recurring anxious dream that it is getting dark, that I am alone without material resources and that I am trying to find my way home.  Home is nearly always thousands of miles away in these dreams.  This dream has recurred a substantial number of times recently, including last night.

As disturbing as these dreams are and as far away as home seems while I am dreaming, I am noticing that inside the current series of dreams I have choices and inner resources.  That was not an element of the earlier versions of the dream.

I've come a long way since last September when I suddenly began reliving the months before and after my Richard returned from Vietnam in December of 1970.  It's been a journey of healing.

A morning meditation in my porch garden with birds singing:

Splendid feathery clouds for Janis on Summer Solstice 2014

As I was about to get into my car this morning, I looked back toward my condominium home and saw those splendid feathery clouds which made me think of Janis and her feather boas and "Summertime."

Once again I am remembering the dream I had in 1999 in which Janis looked at all of us who are still alive and said these words,  "Please kiss the 21st Century for me!"

May your Summer Solstice move you to rise up singing! 

Father's Day 2014

A good memory of my Dad from many years ago. That might be the beach at Anchor Bay, California, near where my parents lived from 1974 to 1994 -- the year my mother died.

My father died in 2003.

Thank you, Dad, for everything.

"... the full engagement with this strange and shimmering world."

                       "If I Should Fall Behind"

We said we'd walk together baby come what may 
That come the twilight should we lose our way 
If as we're walking a hand should slip free 
I'll wait for you 
And should I fall behind 
Wait for me 

We swore we'd travel darlin' side by side 
We'd help each other stay in stride 
But each lover's steps fall so differently 
But I'll wait for you 
And if I should fall behind 
Wait for me 

Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true 
But you and I know what this world can do 
So let's make our steps clear that the other may see 
And I'll wait for you 
If I should fall behind 
Wait for me 

Now there's a beautiful river in the valley ahead 
There 'neath the oak's bough soon we will be wed 
Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees 
I'll wait for you 
And should I fall behind 
Wait for me 
Darlin' I'll wait for you 
Should I fall behind 
Wait for me

"There are things we take on faith, without physical proof and even sometimes without any methodology for proof. We cannot clearly show why the ending of a particular novel haunts us. We cannot prove under what conditions we would sacrifice our own life in order to save the life of our child. We cannot prove whether it is right or wrong to steal in order to feed our family, or even agree on a definition of "right" and "wrong". We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all. For these questions, we can gather evidence and debate, but in the end we cannot arrive at any system of analysis akin to the way in which a physicist decides how many seconds it will take a one-foot-long pendulum to make a complete swing. The previous questions are questions of aesthetics, morality, philosophy. These are questions for the arts and the humanities. These are also questions aligned with some of the intangible concerns of traditional religion.

Faith, in its broadest sense, is about far more than belief in the existence of God or the disregard of scientific evidence. Faith is the willingness to give ourselves over, at times, to things we do not fully understand. Faith is the belief in things larger than ourselves. Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments and at others to ride the passion and exuberance that is the artistic impulse, the flight of the imagination, the full engagement with this strange and shimmering world."
 - Alan Lightman

(Thanks to whiskey river for the Alan Lightman quote)

Earth And Sky Poetry Totem Pole / "Ich Habe Genug"

Ich

habe

genug