We Shine

"Woman Turning Toward The Light" (gouache and watercolor and pastel on paper, by am, mid-1980s)

"Mandala #12" (colored pencil on paper, by am, work in progress -- June 23, 2015 -- started in mid-April, before cataract surgery -- I have new prescription glasses now and am grateful to have my drawing vision and energy back)



Shine

Oh let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on Wall Street and Vegas
Place your bets
Shine on the fishermen
With nothing in their nets
Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas
Shine on our Frankenstein technologies
Shine on science
With its tunnel vision 
Shine on fertile farmland
Buried under subdivisions

Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on the dazzling darkness
That restores us in deep sleep
Shine on what we throw away 
And what we keep

Shine on Reverend Pearson
Who threw away 
The vain old God
kept Dickens and Rembrandt and Beethoven
And fresh plowed sod
Shine on good earth, good air, good water
And a safe place 
For kids to play
Shine on bombs exploding
Half a mile away

Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on world-wide traffic jams
Honking day and night
Shine on another asshole
Passing on the right!
Shine on the red light runners
Busy talking on their cell phones
Shine on the Catholic Church
And the prisons that it owns
Shine on all the Churches
They all love less and less
Shine on a hopeful girl 
In a dreamy dress

Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on good humor
Shine on good will
Shine on lousy leadership
Licensed to kill
Shine on dying soldiers
In patriotic pain
Shine on mass destruction
In some God's name!
Shine on the pioneers
Those seekers of mental health
Craving simplicity
They traveled inward
Past themselves...
May all their little lights shine 

© Joni Mitchell 2007; Crazy Crow Music 

We

Shy

"The face is scarred and craggy like a strip-mined Appalachian mountainside. The eyes are dark and somber. So, too, are the old-fashioned suits and string ties that Johnny Cash wears onstage as homage to his longtime hero, rough-hewn, plain-speaking Andrew Jackson. Then there's the deep rumbling voice that would rather converse with God or the dogwoods than almost anybody else. When Cash does sit down to talk, there are long silences and faraway glances. "I'm a country boy, still," says the Arkansas farmer's son. "I'm a very shy and private man, but don't get me wrong. I can make it real good on a stage with 20,000 people out there. I like performing."
(from a 1986 article by Andrea Chambers)



He was suddenly being billed as the 'King of The Beatniks', and manufactured against his will, as some kind of public Guru for a movement that never existed. Jack was a private person, extremely shy, and dedicated to writing. When he drank, he became much more expansive, and this was the only part of his personality that became publicized.
(from a 1969 article by David Amram)

When I saw that interview with Jack Kerouac some years ago on YouTube, I had the oddest feeling that I was witnessing someone even shyer than I was. Shyness is excruciating.

A few days ago, I happened upon some film footage of Bob Dylan and Isaac Stern receiving the Polar Music Prize in 2000. Watching Bob Dylan's face, I was unable to find words to describe his shifting expressions, but I was reminded of the shyness of Jack Kerouac and Johnny Cash and searched for the images of those men that were coming to mind. 

In 1986, during the first few years after one of his last relapses on painkillers, Johnny Cash went out on a book tour for Man in White and made a stop at the independent bookstore in the small Northwest Washington town where I live. He was dressed in black and appeared quite uncomfortable, sitting hunched over at a small table in the middle of the crowded store as he signed copies of his book. There was a small line of people who had bought his book and wanted him to sign it. I didn't buy a copy of his book about Paul the Apostle (I regret that now and have just put the book on hold at our public library to make amends for my rudeness for not being open to what he had written), but I brought my copy of "Nashville Skyline," with its back cover featuring his poem about Bob Dylan, for him to sign. I'm not as shy as I used to be, but in those days I was quite shy and couldn't help but empathize with how extremely shy he appeared when he wasn't on stage. When I came to the front of the line, I handed him my album cover and asked if he could sign it for me. He slowly turned his head and looked up at me briefly. The curious expression on his face was something like that of Bob Dylan listening to the woman speaking about him at the Polar Music Prize ceremony. Without saying a word, Johnny Cash signed my album and handed it back to me without looking at me again.  I was moved to touch his shoulder and thank him. 

In the following year, I stopped drinking and began to recover from the eating disorder that had been part of my life since I was 10 years old and so painfully shy that I didn't know how I was going to make it through life. No wonder I didn't feel so alone after first hearing Bob Dylan when I was 14 years old, or felt an odd kinship while reading about Jack Kerouac in my late teens and, at 36 years old, witnessing Johnny Cash signing his book in a bookstore despite his shyness. 

Knitting and Weaving in the Land of the Coast Salish

If you have 52 minutes, I recommend this fine film which was released in 2000 by the National Film Board of Canada. If you don't have 52 minutes, watch from about 40:15 to 44:28.  That footage was filmed on location at the Lummi Nation.

Bellingham is side-by-side with the Lummi Nation, home to 2,114 people of solely Native American heritage, many of whom are of Coast Salish heritage. A Lummi friend of mine, who teaches at Northwest Indian College, travels with family members to other Coast Salish reservations where they are vendors for events on weekends.  Her sisters knit Cowichan sweaters and other items.

Take a look at the woven cedar mortarboards that are worn by this year's graduates of the Lummi Nation School and look for the traditional cedar bark hats worn by family and friends who have come to celebrate the graduates.

Turning Point in Early June 2015

Yesterday I was out on my porch with my camera. Turning around, I noticed my reflection in the window. Interesting to discover when I downloaded the photo that through my silhouette I can see photos of mother's mother and father, my mother, my father's mother and father, and my father, as well as my two sisters, my only nephew's father, and my nephew and his girlfriend and their now 1-year-old son, Pablo. Over my heart is the light I draw and paint by at my work table. If you look closely, you will see the carved red cardinal who perches on the light. The book is The Songs of Bob Dylan: 1966-1975 on a wooden music holder.  In front of that is one of the caned chairs that my mother's parents bought when they were first married in Boston in the early 1900s.  What appear to be white polka dots on dark blue is the pattern on my couch. On the couch is a colorful pillow with Fair Isle patterns knitted by my Scottish / German mother years ago. Sweet to see that my old dulcimer, made in Santa Cruz, California, in the 1970s, appears to be out on the porch with me, along with everything else, including the red Salvia plant that I bought and put in a planter in my porch garden this past week and the lush cattail pond, nearby dark hills, and lovely grey sky.

"... But more than that / I know / You’ll be alright / You’ll be alright ..."

Ever since I heard the news about a month ago that she was in the hospital, I have been thinking about Joni Mitchell and how much her music has meant to me since I first heard her in 1968, when I was 18 years old. I had looked for and found no updates on her condition, and a few days ago I went to her website to check again. I didn't find an update, but I found 300 pages documenting her art work. Although I knew that she was a painter, I had no idea how much work she has done throughout her life. The catalogue opens with pieces of undetermined dates and then moves year by year through her art work that can be dated, beginning with drawings when she was 3 years old in 1947.

It has taken me several days to look at all the art work and notes. That was time well spent.

Here are some of my favorites:

"Untitled" -- 1947

"Calico Cat" -- 1969

"Ladies of the Canyon" -- 1969

"Sweet Sucker Dance (Abundance and Decline)" -- 1976

"Georgia O'Keeffe" -- 1978

"A Chair in the Sky" -- 1978

"In the Park of the Golden Buddha" -- 1995

"Untitled" -- 2001

"Untitled" -- 2002

"Dreamland" -- 2004

Panel 2 of "Green Flag Song" exhibition -- 2007

Panel 17 of "Green Flag Song" exhibition -- 2007

On her website, I also found that a video documenting her exhibition of 60 new works in Los Angeles in 2007:

IF (Joni Mitchell's adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's poem)

If you can keep your head

While all about you

People are losing theirs and blaming you

If you can trust yourself

When everybody doubts you

And make allowance for their doubting too.

If you can wait

And not get tired of waiting

And when lied about

Stand tall

Don’t deal in lies

And when hated

Don’t give in to hating back

Don’t need to look so good

Don’t need to talk too wise

If you can dream

And not make dreams your master

If you can think

And not make intellect your game

If you can meet

With triumph and disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same

If you can force your heart

And nerve and sinew

To serve you

After all of them are gone

And so hold on

When there is nothing in you

Nothing but the will

That’s telling you to hold on!

Hold on!

If you can bear to hear

The truth you’ve spoken

Twisted and misconstrued

By some smug fool

Or watch your life’s work

Torn apart and broken down

And still stoop to build again

With worn out tools

If you can draw a crowd

And keep your virtue

Or walk with Kings

And keep the common touch

If neither enemies nor loving friends

Can hurt you

If everybody counts with you

But none too much

If you can fill the journey

Of a minute

With sixty seconds worth of wonder and delight

Then

The Earth is yours

And Everything that’s in it

But more than that

I know

You’ll be alright

You’ll be alright.

Cause you’ve got the fight

You’ve got the insight

You’ve got the fight

You’ve got the insight

©2007; Crazy Crow Music

Still no update on the Joni Mitchell website, but I found this. 

Sending love and gratitude to you, Joni.

Looking At Old Stories Without Words and Planting Seeds and Listening To A Dream on Memorial Day 2015

Early this morning, I planted seeds of yellow and red Zinnias out on my porch. It turns out that I did the same thing last year on Memorial Day. I had forgotten.

Bobu Diran: Forever Young / This Old Man

ボブディラン「フォーエバー・ヤング」の日本語詞です。
直訳ではないので、替歌です。

(Google translates: "Bob is the Japanese lyrics of Dylan, 'Forever Young.' Because it is not a literal translation, it is parody.")



ボブ·ディラン
(pronounced Bobu· diran)

Click on the Listen icon in Japanese and English.

Kindest wishes to you on your 74th Birthday and always, Bobu.

Porch Garden Meditation on Memorial Day Weekend 2015

I listened to Maira  and then went out on my porch again, just in time to see two deer walking by on the path below my porch:



Ich habe genug.

Alive in the mystery of kindness

We're not there anymore.  That was 40 years ago.



We're not there anymore either. That was 12 years ago.



We're not there anymore. That was 6 years ago.



We're not there anymore. That was this last Tuesday evening.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.” (Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies)

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness." (The Dalai Lama)

"... You a praying man, huh? What do you pray for? You pray for the world?" I never thought about praying for the world. I said, “I pray that I can be a kinder person.” (Bob Dylan, Chronices: Volume One -- from a conversation with "Sun Pie" near Raceland, west of New Orleans)

We

                                                  

"End Of The Line"

Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please
Well it's all right, doing the best you can
Well it's all right, as long as you lend a hand

You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring (End of the Line)
Waiting for someone to tell you everything (End of the Line)
Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring (End of the Line)
Maybe a diamond ring

Well it's all right, even if they say you're wrong
Well it's all right, sometimes you gotta be strong
Well it's all right, As long as you got somewhere to lay
Well it's all right, everyday is Judgment Day

Maybe somewhere down the road aways (End of the Line)
You'll think of me, wonder where I am these days (End of the Line)
Maybe somewhere down the road when somebody plays (End of the Line)
Purple haze

Well it's all right, even when push comes to shove
Well it's all right, if you got someone to love
Well it's all right, everything'll work out fine
Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line

Don't have to be ashamed of the car I drive (End of the Line)
I'm glad to be here, happy to be alive (End of the Line)
It don't matter if you're by my side (End of the Line)
I'm satisfied

Well it's all right, even if you're old and gray
Well it's all right, you still got something to say
Well it's all right, remember to live and let live
Well it's all right, the best you can do is forgive

Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please
Well it's all right, even if the sun don't shine
Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line

When finding my way is not getting my way / Getting out of my own way

Explorers, the historian Aaron Sachs wrote me in answer to a question, "were always lost, because they’d never been to these places before. They never expected to know exactly where they were. Yet, at the same time, many of them knew their instruments pretty well and understood their trajectories within a reasonable degree of accuracy. In my opinion, their most important skill was simply a sense of optimism about surviving and finding their way.” 
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Taking place now

“Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time.” 
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

I'm lost, and it's okay

“For me, childhood roaming was what developed self-reliance, a sense of direction and adventure, imagination, a will to explore, to be able to get a little lost and then figure out the way back.”

― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

looking forward to getting back to work on the mandalas

My cataract surgery went well. I have excellent distance vision in my left eye now, but most book reading and all drawing are not an option until I get a new pair of prescription glasses in June after the new lens has settled in. I started Mandala #12 before having cataract surgery.

Here is the mandala my mother made after her cataract surgery in the 1980s, when cataract surgery was a much more complicated and painful process than it is today.

The Sun Cut Flat

Solidarity

"Members of Lummi Nation and other Puget Sound tribes meet Thursday, April 30, near the site of a proposed coal terminal at Cherry Point to show solidarity against the terminal."
(from the Bellingham Herald)

Lost on the River #20

Shooting Star

Bob Dylan-Shooting Star (Oh Mercy 1989) from Antonis.A on Vimeo.

"... show me that river and take me across ..."

Oboe Loves the Morning Sun in Black and White and Color / The Color Kittens / Mandala #11

An old friend of mine who has a young grandson sent me a link to a YouTube reading of The Color Kittens, by Margaret Wise Brown, with accompanying delightful commentary from a child:



Last week I graduated from the medical transcription editing program with "High Honors" and was able to finish Mandala #11.

Undisciplined yoga practice / Sanskrit

Love

Color chart by Paul Klee.

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
(Marc Chagall)

New Morning / Tree Change Dolls / My Rebel / Panda and the red horse

With gratitude to a distant cousin in Norway who posted this on her Facebook page. As a child, I had no interest in dolls. I played with my stuffed bears and lambs and my collection of horses. In 1959, I was just old enough to avoid being given a Barbie doll as a gift, but I remember both of my sisters having Barbie dolls. I'd love to see Barbie dolls transformed in this way. A Tree Change Doll would feel at home with my stuffed animals and my collection of horses.

Added thoughts: Thank you, Sabine, for giving me a different perspective on Barbie dolls. As someone who didn't play with dolls, I never understood what playing with dolls was all about, much less Barbie dolls. Not playing with dolls was one way that I rebelled against my mother from an early age. I have a vivid memory of my mother bringing me to a toy store and showing me shelves of dolls behind glass and suggesting that I choose one. I remember how angry I felt towards her that day. I refused to choose a doll.  Now I'm wondering what that was all about. She loved her dolls and wanted me to love a doll, too, but dolls were not soft and comforting like my stuffed animals. I felt alienated from dolls.

While my sisters were playing with Barbie dolls, I was watching American Bandstand on television and listening to rock and roll music and dreaming of having a boyfriend who was a rebel who would "love me tenderly and always treat me good." My dreams were not of being a mother or a successful woman or even of being married, for that matter.  All I wanted was a boyfriend who loved me.  That would be enough.  I didn't love myself.  I could love him. Both of my sisters dreamed of being mothers, and one of them became a mother. Both of them became successful professional women, unlike me.

I finally love myself, regardless. We've all come a long way.

Here's my mother in Minnesota on a snowy day with one of the dolls she so loved:

Here is my mother a few years later:

Here I am with my father and Panda. Not sure if that is my first or second Panda. The first one was lost, and the story is that I was inconsolable. My father understood that I would not stop crying unless Panda was found, and he went out and bought another Panda for me. For that I am deeply grateful.

I remember, too, how much I loved my red horse. He, too, was lost but was not replaced. I remember thinking about him for some time after he disappeared. I missed him.                            

Something weird is going on here.  I can't fix the margins or move things around the way I would like.

Oh well. I should be studying for the final examination right now. Come to think of it, I still do have my red horse. I can still feel what it felt like to hold him. I felt brave and powerful, loved and loving, because of Panda and my red horse.

Faith

"Confrontation at the Bridge," by Jacob Lawrence

The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.

-- John Lewis

Meditation On Morning Light Through A Prism

The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heartbreaking beauty

Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.
- Robinson Jeffers

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I would still be in prison.
- Nelson Mandela

The healing of our present woundedness may lie in recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we all have to heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of human relationships: the strength of touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you as you are and finding in you an unexpected goodness.
- Rachel Naomi Remen

Black And White Spectrum Draws My Attention / Somewhere Within The Rainbow / Forever Young

All things are possible until they are proved impossible -- and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.

-- Pearl S. Buck

The young do not know enough to be prudent and therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it generation after generation.

--Pearl S. Buck

May you stay forever young.

-- Bob Dylan

Lost Coast

While on a brief break from working on the medical transcription editing online training program just now, I was right on time for sunset at the Lost Coast webcam.

There are 29 days left for me to finish the training program. I've been unemployed since 2011 and hope to be working part-time as a medical transcription editor sometime after I have cataract surgery on my left eye in mid-April.

My memories of time spent on the Lost Coast continue to sustain me.

Oboe And Her Shadow

"Inside @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz"

“The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.”
— Ai Weiwei

Small Hours

Thank you to Sabine for bringing "Small Hours" to my attention. It brought to mind Carlos Santana, and, sure enough, there is a connection. Carlos Santana has performed "I Don't Wanna Know About Evil," by John Martyn, but I like John Martyn's version better.



Yesterday morning the Canada Geese arrived in the fog. Each year around this time, I listen for their arrival. Other years I have seen them land in Scudder Pond or simply heard them flying over my bedroom, announcing their arrival.

ADDENDUM: February 17, 2015

Look here for something else that moved me: