Yesterday I looked out on my porch and saw a brilliant golden daylily. Last fall, I dug up the bulbs because they had grown so crowded that there were very few blooms in June 2015. I replanted only three of the bulbs, thinking I would have plenty of blooms this summer. Although there are usually blooms in early June, they waited until August 3 this year. There is no bloom today for me to photograph, but there will be more blooms this week. Their appearance this year in the early days of August brings emotional healing to me.
This morning while looking for something else, I came across these photos that I took of myself in 1970, just after I had turned 21. That was the year I waited for the man I loved to return from the war in Vietnam. He had turned 21 on the day after I did. The photos were taken with the Minolta camera that he bought while he was in Vietnam and gave to me during those months of waiting during which I attended peace marches in San Francisco.
This afternoon a friend who is dear to my heart and who went to live in Canada during the Vietnam War said that we would be taking a walk again someday soon. He paused and then said, "Like the song." I said, "It's always about music, isn't it?" He laughed and said, "Yes."
We are 67 years young and old this year. Today is his birthday. Mine is in October.
Self-employment is not keeping me from walking, from my yoga practice or from drawing, but I have not found much time for my blog, although I continue to visit other blogs.
Still trying to identify a mystery bird who appeared on my porch railing as I was sitting on my yoga mat. I thought it was a small owl until it turned its head:
It caught my attention because it appears to be a young bird but is so much larger than any young bird I have ever seen on my porch.
Update: A friend who knows about birds has identified the mystery bird as a young European starling.
Because grief will come in measures, only grief alone will know And you'll see it on your family, on your own face it will grow And they'll try to keep you hungry, then they'll tell you to eat snow. You know pride can be a moving thing if we learn the strength of "NO!" We are children in the rafters, We are babies in the park, We are lovers at the movies, We are candles in the dark, We are changes in the weather, We are snowflakes in July, We are women grown together, We are men who easily cry, We are words not quickly spoken, We're the deeper side of try, We are dreamers in the making, We are not afraid of "Why?"
And of course, that's very traumatic. It's very traumatic for me. Before a shoot, I don't have a storyboard. I don't know whether this person will be angry at the world — or maybe at me — or if they will break, how to deal with vulnerability. You have to be ready for the whole human condition to play out. You go in so raw. You just have to make very quick emotional decisions.
And sometimes I get it wrong.
How so?
I went to a lady's house. Her name is Jessica [Gray]. Her husband wrote an op-ed criticizing America's policy. Shortly after that, he was killed in Iraq. They'd recently had a little girl.
I'm setting up my studio in her living room. I'm dealing with a woman's pain and courage, facing a new life that's going to be difficult. That becomes consuming. I saw the flag they'd draped over his coffin and I said, "Would you be prepared to hold the flag?" She said of course and took the flag out of the box.
I asked her, how would you feel wearing a piece of his clothing in tribute to him? She said, that's a good idea. She had received a box of his clothing, it was at the base of the bed but she had not yet had the courage to open it. All his clothes, his Army T-shirts were in the box. She said, maybe now is the time to open it.
And then I thought, oh — what am I doing here?
She undid one latch. I undid the other. And as she lifted the lid, she burst into tears.
I felt so ashamed. I really blew it. I thought, for the sake of a photograph, you went too far. I said, "I feel so ashamed. I didn't want to hurt you. Let's not do this. This was a bad idea."
She said, "You don't know why I'm crying. I've just realized they washed his clothes and I wanted to smell him again." She said, "The pain is there whether I open the box or not. Now the box is open and I think I would like to wear his T-shirt."
This is not the look of a victim. This is the look of a woman trying to pull all her strength together to face the future.
A mysterious song that has stayed with me for 38 years, especially the lines highlighted ingreen. The lyrics frequently come to me when I wake up in distress. I hear them sung out of context with the rest of the song, in fragments, and they bring with them something unerring and sustaining.
"Where Are You Tonight (Journey Through Dark Heat)"
There's a long distance train rolling through the rain, tears on the letter I write There's a woman I long to touch and I miss her so much but she's drifting like a satelite There's a neon light ablaze in the green smoky haze, and laughter down on Elizabeth Street And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone where she bathed in a stream of pure heat Her father would emphasize you got to be more than street-wise but he practiced what he preached from the heart A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted it to me the time and the place it would start.
There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage And she winds back the clock and she turns back the page Of a book that nobody could write Oh, where are you tonight ?
The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure, to live it you have to explode In the last hour of need, we entirely agreed, sacrifice was the code of the road I left town at dawn, with Marcel and St. John, strong men betitled by doubt I couldn't tell her what my private thoughts were but she had some way of finding them out He took dead-center aim but he missed just the same, she was waiting putting flowers on the shelf She could feel my despair as I climbed up her hair and discovered her invisible self.
There's a lion in the road, there's a demon escaped There's a million dreams gone, there's a landscape being raped As her beauty fades and I watch her undrape I won't but then again, maybe I might Oh, if I could just find you tonight. I fought with my twin, that enemy within, 'til both of us fell by the way Horseplay and disease is killing me by degrees while the law looks the other way Your partners in crime hit me up for nickels and dimes, the man you were loving couldn't never get clean It felt outa place, my foot in his face, but he should-a stayed where his money was green I bit into the root of forbidden fruit with the juice running down my leg Then I dealt with your boss, who'd never known about loss and who always was too proud to beg There's a white diamond gloom on the dark side of this room and a pathway that leads up to the stars If you don't believe there's a price for this sweet paradise, just remind me to show you the scars.
There's a new day at dawn and I've finally arrived If I'm there in the morning, baby, you'll know I've survived I can't believe it, I can't believe I'm alive But without you it just doesn't seem right Oh, where are you tonight ?
Although I'm quite fond of of words, right now I'm remembering, too, a much-loved local jazz musician and teacher, deeply kind and compassionate, who died a few years ago and of whom it was said at his celebration of life, "Music was his religion." No words, no thoughts, no God, no Buddha, no dharma, no sangha. Pure music alone sustained him, and the music he created lives on to sustain others.
In a beginning painting class in the early 1980s, I painted an image of Bob Dylan in watercolor. During the 1980s, I often used photos of Bob Dylan as a starting point for drawings and paintings.
Bob Dylan is 75 years old today. Happy Birthday, Bob! Thank you!
ADDENDUM: Just for fun, here are some songs collected by Bob about "Friends and Neighbors":
Just this morning I re-read the liner notes to Blood on the Tracks after a friend mentioned that he had just re-read them. I remember standing in a record store in Bellingham in January 1975 reading those liner notes and weeping and then going home to listen for the first of many many times. That was over 40 years ago.
The painting from 1990 above is titled "63rd Month / Talking 43-Hour Day With Roots Gathered From Coincidence."
This morning I woke up feeling something I couldn't define. When I focused on the feeling, not the words about the feeling, my body sensations were minimal but murky and unpleasant nonetheless. If pressed for a single word that matched the feeling, I could only come up with "flat." If asked for the color of the feeling, it would be a sickly tan. Suddenly I heard Janis Joplin singing, "Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train, feeling just as faded as my jeans ..."
With that, the feeling shifted because I could hear a human voice singing accompanied by musical instruments. The first time I heard that song was the morning my Richard arrived home from Vietnam. We were riding in my 1965 Volkswagen, on our way out to the coast to surprise Richard's family, who didn't yet know that he was home.
On my birthday last year, October 1, a friend left a card and a container of blooming red and yellow tulips at my front door. When the tulips had finished blooming, I put the bulbs in a larger pot. When tulip season, as I know it, came and went, I wondered why the bulbs hadn't come up. Turns out they are late bloomers, blooming this year just after Mother's Day. Now I'm curious about the out of focus stalk of volunteer flowers in the foreground of the first photo. Any day now they will open, too.
Make sure to watch the video at 2 of 10 in the photo section of the article.
On Mother's Day, an old friend who is a year older than I am and is being treated for breast cancer suggested that we take an hour's drive to the beach just beyond the Deception Pass bridge. More than 40 years ago, I had walked on the beach in the first photo but until Mother's Day this year, I had no knowledge that there was a beach with waves just around the point. The Deception Pass State Park West Beach looks out on the Strait of Juan de Fuca and out to the Pacific Ocean and then way way out across that vast ocean to Asia.
For years I have had a recurring dream that there is a beach with waves just down the road from Bellingham. It is an exhilarating dream, filled with hope and promise and joy. In the dream, I always ask myself how I could not have known that the open ocean was so close by. Waking up from that dream was always bittersweet, and I would find myself yearning to return to my birthplace on the western side of California, where the open ocean is always so near.
A dream come true on Mother's Day. There is a window to the open ocean, and that window is only an hour's drive from Bellingham.
Sweet that the land and sky and waters of the Coast Salish people are no longer threatened by the presence of coal port.
Sweet that the gift of good news came so close to Mother's Day.
How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be? -- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Welcome to "37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)".
The photograph currently at the top of my blog was taken from my porch before sunrise on October 29, 2023.
"OLD GIRL OF THE NORTH COUNTRY" (the earliest name for my blog -- http://oldgirlfromthenorthcountry.blogspot.com
) came to life in early December of 2006 so that I could post a 42-year retrospective of my paintings and drawings and through that action, create a new relationship with the day the man I loved returned from Vietnam in December 1970. For a while (sometime after spring of 2008, which is when he died) my blog was "TALKING 37TH DREAM WITH RAINBOW (RUMORS OF PEACE)". For a number of years, it's been "TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)." As of April 12, 2017 my blog was titled "37TH DREAM / TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE/LOOKING UP)". Somewhere along the way it became 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE).
To begin viewing the retrospective with narrative, scroll down to December 8, 2006, on this page:
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. -- Martin Buber (1878-1965)
It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is.
-- Robinson Jeffers
The true end of a war is the rebirth of life; the right to die peacefully in your own bed. The true end of war is the end of fear; the true end of war is the return of laughter.
-- Alfred Molano
Enjoy every sandwich -- Warren Zevon (1947-2003)
Not in God's wilds will you ever hear the sad moan, "All is vanity." No, we are paid a thousand times for all our toil, and after a single day spent outdoors in their atmosphere of strength and beauty, one could still say, should death come — even without any hope of another life — "Thank you for this most glorious gift!" and pass on.
-- John Muir (1838-1914)
Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do? Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well. Hugh Fennyman: How? Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.
