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)

INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

Did anyone else hear the thunder between 4 o'clock and 5 o'clock this morning?

See I-Ching, Hexagram 25. Wu Wang / Innocence (The Unexpected).

AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

William Blake

("Calendar Series: 38th Month / Innocence (The Unexpected)," painted by Old Girl Of The North Country, using gouache and watercolor, 1988)

RETURN OF THE TREE SWALLOWS

TWO INNOCENTS WITH EXPERIENCE (2000)

All desire. No forgiveness.
Years later it was early spring with red-winged blackbird,
Goldfinch, faithful Canada goose on the trail
And return of the tree swallows.

“The tree swallow glides in circles,
Ending each glide
With 3 or 4 quick flaps
And a short climb.”*

Then I remembered.
He was sitting close to me.
Mr. Solitary Crow skipped by us like a child.
We laughed until we were children again.

This was how I experienced love.
I was innocent of forgiveness.

* from A Field Guide to Western Birds, second edition, 1961, by Roger Tory Peterson, p. 159.

("People Listening" (1984) and "Two Innocents with Experience" (2000), by Old Girl Of The North Country)

When I looked out at Scudder Pond yesterday afternoon, the tree swallows were flying back and forth in the sunlight above the golden cattails.

SAN FRANCISCO MOONDANCE

Woke up. Read for awhile. Couldn't go back to sleep. Toasted some raisin bread and dipped it in olive oil. Found the above image on Sausalito Cam.

"Dear friend, all theory is gray
And green the golden tree of life."
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

ANOTHER DAY IN THE WORLD HERE

DAY AFTER TOMORROW

I got your letter
Today
An' I miss you oh so much here

I can't wait
To see you all
And I'm counting the days dear

I still believe that there's gold
At the end of the World

An' I'll come home
To Illinois
On the day after tomorrow

It is so hard
And it's cold here
And I'm tired of taking orders

And I miss old Rockford town
Up by the Wisconsin border

What I miss you won't believe
Shovellin' snow,and rakin' leaves

And my plane will touch down
On the day after tomorrow

I close my eyes
Every night
And I dream
That I can hold you

They fill us full of lies
Everyone buys
'Bout what it means
To be a soldier

I still don't know how I'm s'posed to feel
'Bout all the blood that's been spilled

Will God on his throne
Get me back home
On the day after tomorrow?

You can't deny
The other side
Don't wanna die
Any more than we do

What I'm tryin' to say
Is, don't they pray
To the same God
That we do?

Tell me
How does God choose?
Whose prayers does he refuse?

Who turns the wheel
Who throws the dice
On the day after tomorrow?

I am not fighting
For justice
I am not fighting
For freedom

I am fighting
For my life
And another day in the World here

I just do what I've been told
We're just the gravel on the road

And only the lucky
Ones come home
On the day after tomorrow

And the summer
It too will fade
And with it brings
The winter's frost dear

And I know
We too are made
Of all the things
That we have lost here

I'll be twenty - one today
I been savin' all my pay

And my plane
Will touch down
On the day after tomorrow

And my plane
It will touch down
On the day after tomorrow

(For some unknown reason, to hear Tom Waits sing this, I had to click on "Clank Boom Steam"

Update from March 25, 2008: Thank you to jsk for letting me know that Linda Thompson can be heard singing this song on "Versatile Heart"

My friend in the VA Hospital in Palo Alto was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit over Easter Weekend. Please send love and kindness to him today as well as to all veterans of war and to soldiers throughout the world. We are all in this together.

SPRING EQUINOX MORNING

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.

(from "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks, 1974) Click and scroll down to hear Bob sing

I remember a Steve Goodman concert where he sang, "When the red, red robin comes Bob, Bob Dylan along, along . . .")

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN

"He who has wheat, share it." (African proverb)

The Four Noble Truths

The truth of suffering:






















The truth of the cause of suffering:






















The truth of the cessation of suffering:






















The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering:






















Is there a word stronger than "war," a word better able to express the reality of suffering?

If you want to survive this present period of institutionalized madness with your heart intact and our humanity authentic, by all means read this book -- Joan Chittister

"I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself." (Elie Wiesel, from an interview in O : The Oprah Magazine November 2000)

"Self-Portrait of an Old Friend as a Young Man," drawn in pastel on paper by Old Girl of the North Country in 1982 from a photograph sent to her from Vietnam in 1970.

One last thing I forgot to say. Sometimes, while doing yoga poses, spontaneous images or thoughts come to me. This morning while doing Savasana (the corpse pose), the last pose, I suddenly "saw" a soldier after a war. He was at peace. In peace. Being peace.

REMEMBERING MY DAD

My dad died on St. Patrick's Day in 2003, about a month after he turned 89 years old and just a few days before the Iraq War began. For the past ten days, I've been thinking about a post in memory of him along with this photo of him holding me, his firstborn daughter, on the day of my baptism. My first thought was to post some of his woodcarving. Posted are:

A flower carved into a redwood block.

A roadrunner carved from a piece of driftwood he found on a nearby beach.

Two views of a piece he called "Gorilla," carved from redwood.

A piece he carved in redwood and painted and titled "Wake Up!"


















































































































Then I found this audio clip read by William Stafford that reminded me of my Dad, especially because William Stafford was also born in 1914, the year World War I began. A post by Solitary Walker led me to the Mendocino Botanical Gardens and reminded me of my dad's love of gardening and the landscape where he and my mother lived for many years after my dad retired.

This morning I found this prayer he wrote exactly nine months before he died:


MY DAILY PRAYER TO MY ALMIGHTY GOD

You are above all creation.

In it You have created all universes and everything in them.

In it You have created millions of stars and planets, far apart.

In it You have created the greatest physical force in our Universe, the magnificent sun.

In it You have created the planet for us all to live on, the Earth.

In it we have You, the sun, oceans, mountains, caves, rivers, lakes, rain, snowflakes, waterfall, forests, land, air waves we cannot see, every living creature and the most powerful force of all, Love.

Thank You my Almighty God for everything on our planet, Earth.

I ask You, my Almighty God, to forgive me for any harm I have done.

I ask You, my Almighty God, to forgive anyone who harmed me, whether I knew it or not.

You are above all human beings that You have created.

No one on Earth can be compared to You, my Almighty God.

Amen.

Dad, thank you for being my father.

RED DUCK DREAM

Painted in gouache and watercolor on a watercolor paper block by Old Girl Of The North Country in 2006.

























"So-called sentimental, transcendental dreaming seems the only sensible and substantial business that one can engage in."
(John Muir)



















"Series of Dreams", written by Bob Dylan in 1991

Scroll down to MP3 samples, Disk 3, Song 16

And from my Zen Calendar today:

"Tell the Truth but tell it slant . . .
The Truth must dazzle gradually
or every man be blind."
(Emily Dickinson)

OBOE WITH SOME BOOKS I'M KEEPING

The thin blue book in the lower center of the photo is a well-worn copy of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali that I bought after my mother died in 1994, at which time I made a deeper commitment to my yoga practice. This translation and commentary by T.K.V. Desikachar is titled "PATANJALI'S YOGASUTRAS: AN INTRODUCTION.

Here is what T.K.V. Desikachar wrote about Yoga Sutra 1.2, which in Sanskrit is written:

yogascittavrttinirodhah

"What is Yoga? It is a word with many interpretations and connotations. Patanjali defines his understanding of the word."

-- Yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively towards an object and sustain that direction without any distractions --

"The object can be a concrete object either external to ourselves or part of ourselves. It can be an area of interest, a concept, or something beyond the level of the senses, such as God."

Although I had bought of copy of B.K.S. Iyengar's translation of the Yoga Sutras sometime in the 1970s, it was not until the 1990s that I was able to read the Yoga Sutras without being annoyed by any mention of "God" or anything that might be what I considered a code word for "God." What helped me with that was the comment of a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, "There is no God and there is no not-God." Since 1994, I have bought and studied five other translations, all as different as are the numerous translations of the Tao Te Ching.

Now that I think of it, it was my mother who introduced me to yoga sometime in the 1960s when she bought this book by Richard Hittleman:















Interesting that the cover design uses the yin/yang symbol.

As my mind goes back to those years, I am recalling that the first time I heard about yogurt was from Jack La Lanne (the "intro" made me laugh with delight) who, along with Richard Hittleman, had a TV show during the time I was growing up.

FOG AT 7 A.M. / 32 DEGREES

Yesterday I completed the emptying of my storage unit. I feel as if I have moved away from a place where I lived longer than I needed to. It's a good feeling. Still have to sort through the last of the possessions that I brought home yesterday, most of which are books, some of which belonged to my mother and father. As I was carrying them into my home I thought, "If I didn't have all these books, it would be much easier to move." I'll be wearing a dust mask as I sort through them, letting go of those that I can't read again anyway because of my sensitivity to book mold. Most of the books were in my storage unit for that reason, but I wasn't ready to let them go completely. I remember how difficult it was to let go of my father's moldy papers from his college days because letting them go felt like a betrayal of him.

A few days ago, while sorting, I found these handknit socks which were a gift from the mother of a former classmate who came from Turkey to study at our local community college in the early 1980s. I love them. They keep my feet warm on this chilly foggy morning.






















Update: A clear sunny day at 11:30 a.m. after the fog burned off. It's 55 degrees out on the porch now. I forgot to say that the fog this morning was filled with the sound of the Canada Geese who arrive here this time of year. The swallows usually arrive within the next week. This is the week my daffodil bulbs will begin to bloom.

I am finding that I am able to let go of approximately half of the books which were in the storage unit. That half will go to "The Friends of the Library" who will sell them, and the money will go to the public library. My delight in the other half of the books is still strong, and I've made room for them.