Joan Baez - Gracias A La Vida

Gracias A La Vida

Bob Dylan - Let it be - Joan Baez

Joan Baez - Farewell Angelina

The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
("Farewell Angelina," Bob Dylan, 1965)

BOB DYLAN - Farewell Angelina

Just a table standing empty
At the edge of the sea
(from "Farewell Angelina," Bob Dylan, 1965)

Listening to Bob Dylan this early a.m.

Bob Dylan - Boots of Spanish Leather - Helsinki live

Bob's 2003 version, if you have the time.

Boots of Spanish Leather - Nanci Griffith

Listen all the way through, if you have the time.

INTO THE MYSTIC

Oh, I'm sailin' away my own true love,
I'm sailin' away in the morning.
Is there something I can send you from across the sea,
From the place that I'll be landing?
(Boots of Spanish Leather, Bob Dylan, 1964)

My old friend painted this sometime in the 1970s. I believe that he painted it while he was an art student in the first few years after he returned from Vietnam.

I had another one-word dream last night. This time my old friend, who died on April 20, said, "Shore."

MISSISSIPPI BIRD

Does anyone know what kind of bird this is?

"When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up
thy head!"

-- William Blake

KINSHIP

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
-- William James, psychologist and writer (1842-1910)

CLOSE TO THE GROUND (LISTEN)

My heart says that Michelle Obama is a woman whose words can be trusted. She refers to herself as "the cynic in the family."

"Are we the way we are because of the way things were or are things the way they are because of the way we were?"

My old friend's mother posed this question to me in 2001, a few years before she died.

LOOKING TOWARD SUNRISE

Deep peace of the shining star to you,
Deep peace of the running wave to you,
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,
Deep joy of the leaping fire to you.

- Irish Prayer

NORTHWEST MORNING SKY

In a recent dream, the message from my old friend was "Send Love."

OUTSIDE A CLOUD WITH WOOD DUCKS

View of San Francisco obscured by fog (see webcam)

Viewed from a different angle (see webcam)

When I looked out at Scudder Pond this morning, I saw my first mother wood duck with ducklings for this spring. The cherry tree across the pond is blooming in the early morning rain.

Scroll down here to hear clips from "Celebrations For A Grey Day."

HANDS FULL OF GRATITUDE

Just want to thank all for thoughtful and much-appreciated blog comments since my old friend died on April 20. Still feeling disoriented but not alone. His sister and brother-in-law mailed the portable wooden easel he used for painting while he was at the VA hospital and two paintings he did after his stroke, one titled "The Forest Floor" and the other "Plant My Heart." It's too early to share these here.

42 years is a long time to have loved someone. Feeling gratitude for the love that continues after death.

("Woman With Her Hands Full" -- gouache, watercolor and pastel, from the early 1980s, by Old Girl Of The North Country)

BEYOND THE HORIZON

1949-2008

My old friend died peacefully yesterday at 1:15 p.m. Many thanks to all for your kind thoughts and prayers during this time. The images and words come from a letter he wrote to me while he was in Vietnam in 1970.

NOT OUT OF SORROW, BUT IN WONDER

Encounter

As I continue to prepare to travel to California for a visit with an old friend in a VA hospital, I am feeling more sorrow than wonder. Czeslaw Milosz' poem "Encounter" offers me a shift in consciousness to that of wonder and even gratitude.

(photo taken in Half Moon Bay, California, in 1970, by the 20-year-old woman who was to become Old Girl Of The North Country in December of 2006)

GREAT HAPPINESS

Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding -- Yehuda Amichai

(photo taken at Half Moon Bay, California, in 1970)

COSMO

While searching for a poem or song to go with this flower, I heard one of my neighbors shout to his dog, "Cosmo!" My cat, Oboe, woke up, stood up and looked out the window. So I looked up the meaning of "cosmo" and found:

Greek, kosmos -- order, form, arrangement, the world or universe.

May soon be traveling to Northern California to visit with my old friend in the ICU at the VA Hospital. Thanks to all who have been stopping by here. I am having a hard time staying in the present.

Four things, among many, that have been helpful:

Stroke of Insight

How do you know?

Scroll down to hear Mavis Staples sing "Have A Little Faith"

Facing Death and Finding Hope

HERE COMES THE SUN

". . . they are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever . . . " (Leonard Cohen)