"... and your very flesh shall be a great poem ..."

In the preface to Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman writes to himself and the men of his time:

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body."

For some reason, that got me thinking about Emily Dickinson and wondering if Walt Whitman read any of her poetry before he died in 1892. She died in 1886. Only a few of her poems were published in her lifetime, but some of her poetry was published posthumously in 1890.  She would have been aware of Whitman, but he may or may not have read any of her poetry.  I searched around a little and found this at Poets.org:

"Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumor of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice." 

The little videos at the top of this post show the street next to where I live. Turning left, one goes down a steep hill which leads to downtown Bellingham. Turning right, one can keep driving east for about 50 miles until one arrives (as far as one can drive into this section of Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest) at Artist's Point parking lot which is already closed this year due to snow: 

(photo credit:  Jeff Katzer)

This morning when I woke up in the dark at 5 o'clock, I could hear the wind.  When I went out on the porch to look to the east, the sky was unusually clear.  I could see the crescent moon and Orion.  The temperature is in the 50s this afternoon, with sunshine, wind, and absolutely clear sky.  The humidity is unusually low at 27%.  Ideal weather conditions, as far as I am concerned.  A good time for walking and everything else.  This is the time of year when my flesh feels like a great poem!

One more thing:

Listen.

The way it is, the way it was, and the way it will be

This view of Bellingham Bay and sky changes by the minute, but the water, shoreline of the Lummi Peninsula, and sky have been here for a long long time. Makes me think of a Mark Rothko painting:

This was a narrow motorbike trail on the way to Whatcom Falls when I first arrived in Bellingham in spring of 1974.  Now it is part of the extensive trail system that runs through Whatcom Falls Park.  Most of the trails are graveled.  Otherwise, they would be muddy messes throughout our long rainy Pacific Northwest winters: 

Through the trees you can see Derby Pond, created by damming Whatcom Creek:

The beauty of landscape architecture:

A moment of reflection:

Thank you for all the comments on my previous post.  You've all given me much to consider about the changing nature of landscape -- for reasons both relating to human intervention and otherwise.

Having grown up in Northern California and having spent my time between age 17 and age 23 as often as possible on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, I walked along vast sections of shoreline that showed no evidence of human intervention and major evidence of the power of the ocean to change the contours of land.  Since my last post, I have been highly conscious that so many of the places I walk in and around Bellingham are a mixture of the wild order of nature and of human orderliness.  On the other hand, take a look at this map of Whatcom County (White Rock, Clearbrook, and Abbotsford are in British Columbia, 25 miles north of Bellingham):

There are parts of eastern Whatcom County that are truly wild and pathless, and the 1895 photo below of Lummi Island, which is west of Bellingham across Bellingham Bay, shows a Lummi Indian camp and a glimpse of the way the shorelines looked then.  Not wild and pathless, but not meddled with to a great extent either.  

(photo credit)

Interesting to see that the shore appears to be covered with stones similar to ones on the newly engineered beaches.  Now I am guessing that the landscape architects used photos like this for reference when they reconstructed the current beaches on Bellingham's shores.  Looks as if I was wrong in my original perception that the engineered beaches are not in character with the historical landscape.  I believe I owe an apology to the landscape architects for criticizing their work.

The self-portrait was taken in the mirror of the fairly new restroom near the children's playground which is near the red, orange and golden trees in the photo of the parking area in Whatcom Falls Park.  Kind of looks like I might be in meditation hall or a chapel.  I like the effect of the scratches on the mirror.  That's my new camera!

Last week I started free Microsoft Word classes at the Goodwill Job Training and Education Center and will take a class in Excel in January and possibly a class in cashiering;  

It's not easy to find a job in Bellingham at age 64 with my job background as a medical transcriptionist, but I am going to find a way to support myself for the rest of my life.  If I can focus my energy on weaving, that can be a source of income as well.

Just yesterday I applied for health insurance, and it was affirmed that, because of the Affordable Care Act, I am eligible for free health insurance through the State of Washington until next October when I will qualify for Medicare and will have to pay for Part B and can chose to pay for Part C and Part D, if I wish.  I've been without health insurance since the end of August of 2011 and am fortunate to be in good health.

Next week I begin volunteering to comfort babies in a childcare and learning center.

That's it for today.  Need to get going so that I will arrive at the classroom early and be ready to go when the lessons start.  

From wood s lot:

Sojourns in the Parallel World
Denise Levertov
b. October 24, 1923

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension--though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal--then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
--but we have changed, a little.

The Art of the Engineered Beach and the True Meaning of Life

As I understand, the stones and pilings on this section of shoreline on Bellingham Bay were brought in from elsewhere and arranged esthetically by beach engineers in what seems to me to be the spirit of Japanese rock gardens rather than the natural appearance of the shores of Bellingham Bay.  I've written about this aspect of Bellingham's shoreline before.  In a few weeks, a new section of engineered beach will be completed and open to the public.

"They were intended to imitate the intimate essence of nature, not its actual appearance, and to serve as an aid to meditation about the true meaning of life."
(from the Wiki article on Japanese rock gardens)

I'm experiencing something like cognitive dissonance.  Can you tell? The beaches are gratifying to my sense of design and yet I'm deeply aware that the nature of the shoreline of Bellingham Bay has been radically altered from its original state time after time since the first Europeans arrived here in 1792.  I wonder how long this Japanese rock garden phase will last.

When I arrived in Bellingham in 1974, there was little easy access to the shoreline of Bellingham Bay, and much of that shoreline was devoted to the logging and pulp mill industry.  Bellingham Bay is looking much healthier than it did in much of the second half of 20th century, and the relatively recently accessible shoreline is enjoyed by residents and visitors from around the state, the nation and the world.  

Being

Thanks to Doonesbury video archives.

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

E.E. Cummings

Well we all shine on like the moon and the stars and the sun

Listen on John Lennon's 73rd birthday.

The trees were shining in the late-day light yesterday, and there was a gull way up there in the dark clouds.

Sean Lennon is 38 years old today.  Yoko Ono was 80 years old last February.

Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
(John Lennon, lyrics from "Instant Karma")

Ocean Poem

In the ocean of compassion I sank like a stone,

With no self to protect, breathing out like a koan.

(inspired by Solitary Walker)

Everything looks more like itself

“The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not a solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible.”

—Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, (Vintage Books, New York, 2007) p. 25

(quoted from Parabola)

Everything looks different and more like itself with my new camera, a Canon PowerShot ELPH 115 IS.  

Thanks to everyone who continues to stop by.  I'm grateful for your blogs and your visits here whether you comment or not.  

Green Over Blue / Simple Gifts

Green Over Blue, Mark Rothko, 1956

I don't express myself in paintings.  I express my not-self.
(Mark Rothko)

The same might be said for music.

Yesterday I made a decision and bought an Oscar Schmidt 15-chord autoharp made in 1976 and began tuning the 36 strings.  Halfway through the challenging tuning, I stopped and went out for a walk with my Canon PowerShot SD550 Digital Elph in hand because it was a pristine sunny day with blue sky, big white clouds, and yellow leaves everywhere.  To my great surprise, every photo I took was overexposed and had vertical lines covering it:

I've had that camera since shortly after I started my blog in December of 2006.  It's been a great little camera.  Interesting that it would suddenly have problems the day I bought an autoharp. The video function on the camera is still working.  Below is a view of Derby Pond from the trail at a spot close to the little dam and wooden footbridge.  You can hear the water running over the dam, and the waterfall beyond that:

  

Here is my new used autoharp with Bryan Bowers playing "Simple Gifts":

Thanks to bev for the inspiring me with her string instruments!

The Welder of Rainbows Up in the Sky

I'd love to see the seven welded gates of Bob Dylan.  The gate in the photo above reminds me of the rainbow I saw this afternoon.  There was a rainbow yesterday late in the day, too.  

Beyond the horizon, behind the sun

At the end of the rainbow life has only begun.

(lyrics from "Beyond the Horizon," by Bob Dylan)

βιος post #1190 / An Inadvertent Series of Lessons

Today's lessons include How to type in Greek on a computer:

We just never know where internet searches may lead us.  Early this morning when I checked my email, I saw this subject line:  Check out Journal of Surrealism and the Americas.  Although I was about to delete it, wondering why I was receiving this particular unsolicited email, something prompted me to open it.  We all know how this goes. Within seconds I realized that I had read something from the JSA before and must have given them my email address, and I was engaged with reading 'My World is Surreal,' or 'The Northwest Coast' is Surreal, by Charlotte Townsend-Gault (educated in England, taught in Scotland, Nova Scotia, and currently teaching in British Columbia) and was soon compelled to find out about Giorgio Agamben.  Part way down the Wiki page on Agamben, I came across this:

"bare life" — zoe (Gk. ζωή), as opposed to bios (Gk. βίος): qualified life

βίος looks like  Blog, doesn't it?

When I tried to copy and save "βίος" in a Word document, it copied as:  ____

Of course I couldn't let that stop me, and in the process I learned how to type in Greek letters on a computer and discovered that the Greek letter sigma's capitalized form is Σ and that it has two lower case forms -- σ and ς. The former is used within a word, and the latter is used at the end of word.  Ιt took me a little longer to figure out that in order to type the final Σ, I would have to use the  "w" key.

In the midst of these rich lessons, my attention was drawn outside to where I listened to the wind beginning to thrash the cattails before the drenching rain began.

And now another lesson in listening :



I had to play this a second time before I began to hear the high notes of "Amazing Grace" woven into the droning.

If you'd like to know more about Koomei, click here.

That's all for today.  Thanks for stopping by.

Born in 1949 / We travel like an ox

I buyed me a little dog

Color it was brown

I learned him how to whistle

Sing and dance and run

His legs they were 14 yards long

His ears they were quite broad

Around the world in a half a day

And on him I could ride

Sing Tattle O’Day

I buyed me a little bull

About four inches high

Everybody feared him

That ever heard him cry

When he began to bellow

It made such a melodious sound

Until all the walls in London town

Came tumbling to the ground

Sing Tattle O’Day

I buyed me a flock of sheep

I thought they were all wethers

Sometimes they yielded wool

Sometimes they yielded feathers

I think mine are the very best sheep

For yielding me increase

For every full and change of the moon

They bring both lambs and geese

Sing Tattle O’Day

I buyed me a little box

About four acres square

I filled it full of guineas

And silver so fair

Oh now I’m bound for Turkey

I travel like an ox

And in my big chest pocket

I carry my little box

Sing Tattle O’Day

I buyed me a little hen

All speckled gay and fair

I sat her on an oyster shell

She hatched me out a hare

The hare it sprang a handsome horse

Full fifteen hands high

And him that tells a bigger tale

Would have to tell a lie

Sing Tattle O’Day

Yesterday something happened.  I've been feeling an underlying sense of progressive depression and fatigue for some time now, and yesterday morning I just didn't want to get out of bed and chose instead to enter into a form of meditation and soon drifted back into sleep.   

I dreamed a dream that didn't make me sad.  Because I was dreaming that I was in bed, I didn't completely realize that I was dreaming until I woke up. In the dream, I was awakened from sleep by a frightening commotion and loud voices and a tempest strong enough to force my body to move down my bed in the direction of my open bedroom window. 

For a few seconds, I fought being moved from my bed and then remembered a dream I had in October of 1998 while traveling on the coast of Northern California.  In that dream, I didn't realize that I was dreaming either because the dream also involved me being awakened from sleep while in bed. In that dream, I dreamed that I awoke to the sound of Hell's Angels on motorcycles outside the rented cottage where I was staying on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean in southern Mendocino County. I awoke in terror, feeling myself being pulled by my feet from my bed by an invisible force at the foot of the bed.  The feeling in that dream was similarly and oddly familiar, and felt like a memory from my childhood.  The dream room in that previous nightmare was filled with a subdued golden light which should have been reassuring but was not.

Still thinking that I was awake, as I fought the tempest and recalled that previous nightmare which had seemed to be based on a childhood memory, I noticed that everything in my vision was illuminated by a white light, and my distress shifted to the curiosity of lucid dreaming.  

Understanding clearly that it was within my power to make a decision to relax and see what would happen, I did just that.  Instead of finding myself flying out the open window, it was as if the tempest went through me, and then I woke up.  

I've felt disoriented and aimless since 2008 when Richard died. Or was it when the First Gulf War started in August of 1990 or was it in December of 1970 when Richard returned from Vietnam or was it somewhere way back in my childhood?

When I woke up this morning, I found that I suddenly had the ability to focus my energy enough to sit down at my work table for the first time in a long long time and listen to Another Self Portrait while I prepared a plan for warping my inkle loom and then warped the loom and began weaving.  

Listening to Another Self Portrait this morning inspired me to look through my CDs for the rest of the Bootleg Series, and I found I was missing Vols. 6 and 7 and promptly bought them both on iTunes and began assembling a Bootleg Series random playlist for listening while I am doing creative work. So far the playlist is over 10 hours long! 

After August 1990, as I began to exhibit symptoms of PTSD similar to those which many Vietnam veterans began to experience at that time, I found that preparing to do creative work only upset me. What was once the source of my solace had been transformed into a dark place that I could no longer tolerate.  

Although I had frequently been inspired by listening to Bob Dylan's voice in the past, I haven't been able to bring myself to do that for years when I have sat down in an attempt to do art work. In the past few weeks, I've come to realize that I can listen to the alternative versions and live versions of songs sung by Bob Dylan and can feel something new instead of reliving the past.  

P.S. I'm still playing my ukulele daily, inspired by George Harrison:

If not for turquoise rings and new ways to sing old songs on a foggy Sunday morning in September 2013

A few days after Richard died in April 2008, I was walking in the woods, and on the trail I found a silver ring with a round piece of turquoise set in it.  Although I tried to find its owner, I was unsuccessful and put the ring away.

A few weeks ago I had a dream where I said to Richard, "Let's do things differently this time."  He looked intently at me for a few moments and then said, "Yes."  It is the second time this year I have had a dream of having that conversation with Richard.

Not long after the dream, I remembered the turquoise ring I had found in the woods, remembered where I kept it, and tried it on.  It fit tightly on my ring finger.  

Kept with that ring was another turquoise ring that is adjustable:

I don't remember where or when I bought the second ring, although it might have been during the 1990s.  It occurred to me that the adjustable ring would look good next to the tight ring if I had the tight ring sized, and if I wore the adjustable ring below that ring.  

When Richard came back from Vietnam in December of 1970, his mother asked that I wear a ring on my wedding ring finger when we visited.  She had told his younger brothers and sisters that we had married upon his return.  We had made no plans to marry, but I had a silver ring encircled with squares of embedded turquoise and wore that. My mother had given me the ring (made in Arizona by a Native man named Elias, which is my father's father's name), after she had visited a friend in Arizona some years earlier.

I don't remember when I stopped wearing that turquoise ring on my wedding ring finger, but I do know that I continued to wear the ring for a few years afterwards, after Richard and I had separated.  It was sometime in 1972 that I took the turquoise ring off to wash my hands at the sink in the restroom of the insurance company where I worked as a kitchen helper and cashier in the cafeteria.  One of my co-workers went into the restroom right after I did.  When I went right back to look for my ring, it was gone.  My co-worker, a woman in her 50s who had one artificial leg and a tragic life story, denied having seen it.  I didn't believe her, but I let it go.  

Anyway, two weeks ago I took the ring I had found in the woods to a jeweler to be sized.  I am not a person who wears rings or necklaces or other jewelry.  My ears are not pierced.  

When I went to pick up the ring at the jeweler's store a few days ago, I was wearing the adjustable ring.  I slipped the newly sized ring on above it. The two rings looked beautiful together.  As I was looking at the rings, I thought I heard Bob Dylan singing.  When I listened closely to the background music in the jewelry store, I heard this:

"We always did feel the same

 We just saw it from a different point of view

 Tangled up in blue."

Those who were reading my blog in 2008 may remember this from a post a few weeks after Richard died:

"Last week, I finally was able to go to the photo lab in downtown Bellingham so I could order some prints of my old friend and his art work to send to his sister. As I was standing at the counter trying to explain my project, I heard Bob Dylan singing. I stopped talking to listen to him sing. When I tried to talk again, I couldn't because I started crying. The young woman clerk was playing Bob Dylan's album, New Morning, which is what I listened to while my old friend was in Vietnam and what we listened to during the 5 months we lived together in  early 1971. The clerk was playing the ALBUM (!) on a turntable and handed the album cover to me. More than a coincidence. How else could that happen? New Morning is a great album. Ends with a beautiful song called Father of Night. The song that made me start to cry was If Not For You."

My fingers just aren't made for rings anymore, unless they are adjustable.  Later in the day, the newly sized ring, which had been fine in the morning, was in danger of slipping off.  I don't want to lose that ring and will keep it in a safe place where I can look at it and think about doing things differently this time.  

I'm still listening to Another Self Portrait, deeply grateful to be hearing new versions of those songs I remember from 1969-1971 and appreciating how Bob Dylan has taught me to see how everything, not only music, can be open to interpretation and transformation.

In the unemployment line in Madrid

Watch for the woman with the purple headband, 2:54 to 3:00.

Listening to Seamus Heaney while thinking about the United States and Syria on September 1, 2013

(Marie and Seamus Heaney in 2009)




The form of the poem, in other words, is crucial to poetry's power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry's credit: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being.

(Seamus Heaney, from his 1995 Nobel lecture)

Sacred Work / Quite Early Morning

The goal of singing a song is not to reach the end as quickly as possible.  It is a state of creating harmony, beauty, growth and understanding.  The goal of work, as a sacred art, is to use the need for a product or service to develop the greatest possible power on the object, and the users.  Sacred work puts the mind on service to the heart as well.

(Tom Bender, from Silence, Song and Shadows)

QUITE EARLY MORNING
Don't you know it's darkest before the dawn
And it's this thought keeps me moving on
If we could heed these early warnings
The time is now quite early morning
If we could heed these early warnings
The time is now quite early morning

Some say that humankind won't long endure
But what makes them so doggone sure?
I know that you who hear my singing
Could make those freedom bells go ringing
I know that you who hear my singing
Could make those freedom bells go ringing

And so keep on while we live
Until we have no, no more to give
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones stronger
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones stronger

So though it's darkest before the dawn
These thoughts keep us moving on
Through all this world of joy and sorrow
We still can have singing tomorrows
Through all this world of joy and sorrow
We still can have singing tomorrows

Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1969)
(c) 1969 by Fall River Music Inc.

March on Washington Meditation / 1963-2013

Listen Live today from Washington, D.C.  Just heard Shirley Caesar and others singing "How I Got Over".

Right here, right now

Listen to a short documentary with music and interviews.

Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) / Talking 37th Dream with Rainbow (2013)

"... 'Copper Kettle' stood out on the original Self Portrait.  Dylan's commitment to this instant folk song -- it was written in 1953 -- was too strong.  But now, with the same vocal, on the undubbed master, you are in a different world. Here, Bob Dylan really does disappear.  1970 disappears.  The sixties never happened.  A moonshiner is telling you why he does what he does:  so he can lie back and think about nothing, forever.  The voice is so clear, so convincing, so plainly the voice of someone who has weighed life's choices and made his, that it shames your own compromises.  With the guitars so slight they could be hands waving in the air and Al Kooper's piping organ, which would be erased on Self Portrait, coming up slowly as the voice of the singer's nighttime dreams, it's as if the words too have disappeared, as if the song doesn't need them, as if the singer can communicate without even opening his mouth, by pure will."

(from the booklet written by Greil Marcus, accompanying the two-CD Another Self Portrait (1969-1971)

Everyone who was there has their own story of the years 1969-1971, when Bob Dylan recorded these songs.  In spring of 1969, my beloved Richard was drafted into the U.S. Army.  We were 19 years old.  He was in Vietnam for year of 1970.  We turned 21 years old in October of that year.  In 1971, we lived through the dark aftermath of his year in Vietnam and separated, "both agreeing it was best," just after our 22nd birthdays that year.  We listened to Bob Dylan's music before, during and after those years.  In one of the last letters I received from Richard, he asked, "How's Bob doing?" My copy of the CD arrived in the mail today.  I'm listening to it right now.

Richard was someone who weighed life's choices and made his.  I have tried not to compromise my life as a result.   I hear Richard's voice in Bob Dylan's voice.  Always have.

I recommend Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) The Bootleg Series Vol. 10.   I can't imagine someone not loving these recordings, but I know by now that not everyone will.

Here's Bob Dylan's 1970 version of "Copper Kettle":



You'll have to buy Another Self Portrait to hear the version without overdubs.  You won't regret it.  I promise.

Restless

If

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams
Everybody sees their self walkin' around with no one else
Half the people can be part right all of the time and

Some of the people can be all right part of the time but
All the people can't be all alright all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours", I said that

-- Bob Dylan (lyrics from "Talking World War III Blues")





"Good luck to ya"




Update:  Blue Moon