THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #5

The drawing was made on the front of an envelope sent by RTN from Vietnam in 1970.

When I first saw RTN in the Intensive Care Unit at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto on April 10th, his eyes were closed. When his sister told him I had come to be with him, he slowly opened his eyes. His left eye was the deep blue I remembered. His blind right eye looked very much like the sky in the photo below. I don't know how he became blind in that eye.

He was heavily sedated, and I'm not sure how well he could see me with his left eye. I held his left hand with my right hand. His hand held mine. His blind eye was surprisingly beautiful, like a late afternoon sky with a mixture of white clouds. I was reminded of what Alice Walker wrote in "Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is The Self" about her daughter's response to first noticing her mother's blind eye:

She studies my face intently as we stand, her inside and me outside her crib. She even holds my face maternally between her dimpled little hands. Then, looking every bit as serious and lawyer- like as her father, she says, as if it may just possibly have slipped my attention: "Mommy, there's a world in your eye." (As in, "Don't be alarmed, or do anything crazy") And then gently but with great interest: "Mommy, where did you get that world in your eye?"

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #4

Life is short. Art long. Hippocrates. View from my porch at 5 p.m.:






















Oboe with view of cattails:

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #3

Drawing on the front of an envelope mailed from Vietnam by RTN in 1970 and the view today at 5 p.m. I wish you could see all the swallows and that the cattails are moving like the ocean.

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #2

It's one of those overcast 7 a.m. Pacific Northwest June mornings that looks better in black and white than in color.






















Chapter 1, page 49, From SEVEN CHOICES, by Elizabeth Harper Neeld, PhD:

THE TERRAIN OF OUR ACTIVE GRIEVING

Life As It Was
The Event of Loss
Life and Loss Integrated
Freedom from Domination of Grief

IMPACT: Experiencing the unthinkable
CHOICE: To experience and express grief fully

SECOND CRISIS: Stumbling in the dark
CHOICE: To endure with patience

OBSERVATION: Linking past to present
CHOICE: To look honestly

THE TURN: Turning into the wind
CHOICE: To replan and change our lives to include but not be dominated by the loss

RECONSTRUCTION: Picking up the pieces
CHOICE: To take specific actions

WORKING THROUGH: Finding solid ground
CHOICE: To engage in the conflicts

INTEGRATION: Daylight
CHOICE: To make and remake choices

I just realized that I have come to the third choice and entered that process.

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED #1

After receiving the "I Love You" Series, I received seven more images, either drawn on the front side of envelopes which were addressed on the back side, or as part of handwritten letters. I believe that most of these drawings arrived in the early days of RTN's time in Vietnam. We wrote a letter to each other every day that he was gone. Ten months after he returned from Vietnam, we separated for a second and final time, remaining friends. Not long after that, I burned the approximately 335 letters he had sent from Vietnam, saving only his drawings. I knew that if I carried those letters with me, I would never go on with my life. Nevertheless, the grief that followed that separation lasted a long, long time. As hard as I tried, I never completely went on with my life. I'm still working on that, only now beginning to feel the holy ground beneath my feet again.


THE LOVING TIME

It reads like a fairytale
and that's what it was
Young man in his prime
young girl from the cross
The most perfect of strangers
and then the night closed in
and the holy ground took care of everything

Now she was a fine one
and he was a handsome man
One look was enough
and away they ran
They spend many happy hours
and then the night closed in
and the holy ground took care of everything

Oh what's the use in complaining
In for a penny in for a pound
I remember the loving time
and nothing else really counts

And I recall the promise they made
With a faith I can but admire
That she'd be the one he adored
and he'd be her hearts desire

It didn't come true in the end
they went their separate ways
He couldn't change what he was
she wasn't ready to wait
They couldn't live in the daylight
they let the night close in
and the holy ground took care of everything

I remember the loving time
and nothing else really counts

(Lyrics by Noel Brazil, sung by Mary Black -- If you'd like to listen to a clip, scroll down here)

A view of today:

NOTES FROM RTN FROM VIETNAM 1970

TIME PASSES SLOWLY

Time passes slowly up here in the mountains,
We sit beside bridges and walk beside fountains,
Catch the wild fishes that float through the stream,
Time passes slowly when you're lost in a dream.

Once I had a sweetheart, she was fine and good-lookin',
We sat in her kitchen while her mama was cookin',
Stared out the window to the stars high above,
Time passes slowly when you're searchin' for love.

Ain't no reason to go in a wagon to town,
Ain't no reason to go to the fair.
Ain't no reason to go up, ain't no reason to go down,
Ain't no reason to go anywhere.

Time passes slowly up here in the daylight,
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right,
Like the red rose of summer that blooms in the day,
Time passes slowly and fades away.


Copyright © 1970 Big Sky Music
Bob Dylan

LATE IN THE DAY LOOKING SOUTH

FIRST PERENNIAL BLOOM

LIGHT ON THE PATH

FATHER'S DAY 2008 / 7 A.M.

FATHER OF NIGHT

Father of night, father of day
Father, who taketh the darkness away
Father, who teacheth the bird to fly
Builder of rainbows up in the sky
Father of loneliness and pain
Father of love and Father of rain

Father of day, Father of night
Father of black, Father of white
Father, who build the mountain so high
Who shapeth the cloud up in the sky
Father of time, Father of dreams
Father, who turneth the rivers and streams

Father of grain, Father of wheat
Father of cold and Father of heat
Father of air and Father of trees
Who dwells in our hearts and our memories
Father of minutes, Father of days
Father of whom we most solemnly praise

(lyrics by Bob Dylan, 1970, from the album "New Morning")

SEVEN CHOICES

Am reading Seven Choices again. My ability to concentrate is slowly returning.


















Chapter 2

SECOND CRISIS:

STUMBLING IN THE DARK

I want to go home, to ride to my village gate.
I want to go back, but there's no road back.

Mei Sheng and Fu I
First Century B.C.

(from Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World: Seven Choices, Elizabeth Harper Neeld, Ph.D.)

Dalai Lama's thoughts on China -- 1998

LATE AFTERNOON SUN

“Although the past may not repeat itself, it does rhyme.” -- Mark Twain

HIRED

It's a black and white and grey morning as the summer solstice approaches.

This is the first morning since RTN died that I have had some of my usual energy again. Last night I dreamed that I was hired to do pencil drawings of objects that were found buried in sand. I was working alongside a man who is the same age I am. His drawings were very good, and he gave me encouragement. The first object I found in the sand was a small black plastic toy horse from my Roy Roger's Ranch set, which I given as a child and which was one of my favorite toys.

With a little more Google searching this morning, I found this and this, too.

Hello COWBOY in the sand?

Maybe the dream is the result of having carefully looked through BOB DYLAN: THE DRAWN BLANK SERIES yesterday morning. The drawn-and-then-painted images remind me how much I love working with gouache and watercolor. I liked Bob Dylan's drawings when I first saw them in his first book of lyrics in the 1970s and then again in 1994 in DRAWN BLANK. I like the way Bob Dylan has added vivid color to the drawings he made from 1989 to 1991 or 1992, some of which were drawn in New Orleans. His drawings and paintings speak to me. They say, "She's got everything she needs, she's an artist."

Or may it was a result of having found this by way of a link at RConversation, the blogger who first inspired me to create a blog of my own.

THE SKY WAS WHITE

Thunder and lightning at 6 p.m., followed by high wind and heavy rain.

STATE OF TRANSITION / ETERNAL SELF

Today's Zen Calendar says:

A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition.
(Juan Ramon Jimenez)

Yesterday was:

You, before me standing,
Oh, my eternal self!
Since my first glimpse
You have been my secret love.
(A Zen Monk's Song Of Samadhi)

I am feeling too fragile to respond to your kind comments or write any more of this story just now. Thanks so much for stopping by. What a long journey from Miramar Beach to the 159th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion to the VA Palo Alto Health Care System to this moment where my heart is so heavy.

SECOND LETTER 1970

As with the first letter, the felt-tip pen drawing was on the front side of the envelope. It was addressed on the back side of the envelope and had this return address:

P.F.C. R.N.
(His social security number)
Co. A. 159th ASV. BN
101st ABN. DIV.
A.P.O. SF. 96383

I found this about Company A, 159th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion, where RTN served as a helicopter mechanic.

We were 19 years old when RTN was drafted in the spring of 1969. I was working and living at home with my parents and two sisters and spending as much time as possible on the weekends at the coast with him, short of staying overnight with him in the room he rented in Montara. I had dropped out of college at University of California at Irvine after six quarters, having realized that all I wanted to do was to be with RTN. Studying art and English literature seemed pointless when I had no intention of being a teacher, which was my parents' goal for me. Because I was so shy and lacking in self-confidence, I couldn't begin to imagine standing in front of a classroom and teaching anything. I had no college goal and very little confidence in myself as an artist after my experience as an art student. What I wanted to do was to move back to Northern California, live with RTN and get a job -- any job where I could be "invisible." Besides, I had decided that I couldn't continue to accept money from my father for any kind of schooling while living with RTN, which was what I saw as our next step. My plan had been to get a job so I could support myself. I had a vague dream of being an artist while holding a job and living with RTN.

Without much trouble, I had found a job in a small company in Burlingame, operating an injection molding machine that produced radio knobs. Even in 1969, the commute from Redwood City to Burlingame on Highway 101 involved bumper-to-bumper traffic. On the radio I would frequently hear John Lennon (scroll down for clip of Instant Karma) singing:

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon youre gonna be dead
What in the world you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin to do
Its up to you, yeah you

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin
Join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Laughin at fools like me
Who in the hell dyou think you are
A super star
Well, right you are

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Evryone come on

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Evryone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When youre evrywhere
Come and get your share

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Come on and on and on on on
Yeah yeah, alright, uh huh, ah

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
On and on and on on and on

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun

As I try to tell this story as I remember it, difficult memories are surfacing. That is good. I want to remember the whole story.

What I just remembered is that RTN was making a living at that time by dealing hard drugs, had used IV amphetamines and had aspired to be a Hell's Angel, having seen the movie, "The Wild One," starring Marlon Brando. His friends were drug addicts. Profoundly naive, I was unable to see just who it was that I loved more than I loved myself. Like the young woman in "The Wild One," I wanted someone to take me away from the small life I thought I was living. In the movie, though, the young woman sees through "Johnny," confronts him and goes on with her life. He respects her for that and choses to continue his life as an "outlaw."

Unlike her, I didn't confront RTN at that level until August of 2002. He had been honest with me during the months of his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer and subsequent remission of that cancer. His friends, he had told me, were practicing junkies and alcoholics. He had referred to himself as an "outlaw, especially if I have to be." I called him in Modesto where he was living with his elderly parents, several of his brothers, his sister-in-law, a nephew and a niece. After my first few words, telling him I had something serious to talk about, he hung up on me after saying, "Goodbye Amanda." I was both devastated and relieved. We did need to say goodbye to each other. We weren't going to live happily ever after, as I had always imagined. It had taken me 36 years to accept that. Two months later, I received this letter:

Dearest Amanda,

Although you may choose not to know me these days . . . . .
Thank you for popping your head up and saying hello in so many wonderful ways. You have done well my friend. You have also grown some very deep roots, as I have. I really can't ever see myself ever leaving N. California for any length of time. Anyway, we all have things to do. I'd like to thank you for all your love. Please, take all my love and get on with your life.

Love Always,
R

*If things are okay or if things are not well* please call me. xox R. (this line was inserted later with a different pen)

P.S. This letter needs no response. If I ever meet up to your standards, I'll let you know. By! xoxox R.

















("Woman Trying To Remember What She Is Trying To Forget," drawn in chalk pastel by AM, in the early 1980s)

JAN 16 1970

One December winter afternoon in the month before RTN was to leave for Vietnam for what would be almost a year, we drove south from Miramar to Pigeon Point Lighthouse, north of Santa Cruz. Instead of walking on the bluffs, we sat in my secondhand 1965 VW Bug and looked out at the ocean. To my surprise and dismay, RTN quietly said, "I'm not expecting you to wait for me. I'm going to be gone for a long time." To that I said in protest, "There's nothing in the world I want to do more than wait for you."

In my memory, he was relieved to know that I would wait. When I think back on that moment, though, it has occurred to me that he was attempting to break up with me. It had never occurred to me that our relationship would not continue while he was in Vietnam. We made a pact that we would write each other every day that he was gone. That idea was his.

Above are both sides of the first letter I received from him. Unlike the letters that followed, it has a stamp. The nearly 365 letters that followed were marked "Free" where a stamp would have been.

THEIR SONGS NEVER CEASE

The reproduction doesn't do justice to this drawing done by RTN while he was in Vietnam. Still, you get the idea.

"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm,
waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like
worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their
songs never cease."

John Muir (1838-1914)

DECISION

Do your work, then step back -- the only path to serenity.

Today's quote from my Zen Calendar is from the Tao Te Ching.

This pencil drawing was made during the year when I was 17 years old, having met RTN on the beach at Half Moon Bay, California, on December 14, 1966. RTN was a surfer and a high school drop-out. He was the third-born son in a family of 10 children. His older brother, the second-born son, was serving in the Army in Thailand. His youngest siblings were fraternal twin boys. RTN's arm was in a cast when I met him. He had broken it in a fall off a bridge near where we met. I was a shy young woman with extremely low esteem who had never had a boyfriend and who was sending out college applications with a desire to study art and literature. I was in the early stages of a serious eating disorder, the oldest of three daughters in a family that appeared from the outside to be stable.

We both liked to draw. We both liked Bob Dylan. We both loved the ocean. We became friends. We discovered that we had been born within 24 hours of each other. I was the "older" one. We walked along the beach together, talked and laughed. I would borrow my parents' car and drive from Redwood City to Miramar Beach in hopes of finding him walking on the beach, which was not far from where his family lived. We didn't "date," but I drove to the ocean on as many weekends as I could during the winter and spring of my senior year in high school.

As part of a commitment made in 1966 to drawing something every day, I made the above drawing from a photo of Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. It doesn't look like Dennis Wilson, nor does it look like RTN did then, but there was a resemblance which spoke of someone who had experienced something that haunted him.

The drawing has been with me since 1967. Sometime in December of 1983 during a heavy rainstorm, water from the roof of my studio space began to seep onto the drawing, which was thumb-tacked to the wall of my studio. I was horrified to see that the water had stained my drawing. Not a good sign. The drawing was part of what little was left of my connection to RTN. Then, on December 28, 1983, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys drowned. I hoped that RTN was still alive. We were 34 years old and had been apart for twelve years because he had hit me in one of the rages that he experienced after returning from Vietnam. I couldn't live with the fear of his violence or with his increasingly destructive drug and alcohol abuse, but I didn't stop loving him.

In those early years, I once asked him why he had been attracted to me. He said, "Because you are an artist."