Talking Cricket During The First Days of Spring

Jiminy Cricket was billed as "the only conscience with a sense of humor."




Funny how the mind works.  I looked at Jiminy Cricket's top hat and thought of this:



Coincidence? On March 28, 2007, on his Theme Time Radio Hour, Bob Dylan played "I'm No Fool," by Jiminy Cricket:

Chop the water
Pump the hay
Shoe the eggs
Water the pump
Butter the cow
Water the milk
Churn the horse
Milk the grain
Sow the shoe
Pitch the field
Water the plow
Chop the eggs



which reminded me of this:

It is spring again.  The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Flowering Quince Meditation

 


















Inspired by The Solitary Walker.

Something I can say in black and white and grey

Perhaps the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.

(Wallace Stevens)

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart.  We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves!  Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or a bear's, cover the soul.  Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
(Meister Eckhart)

Rainy March Day / Black and White and Grey

When I looked outside at the rain falling on Scudder Pond a little while ago, I noticed that there was a curious dividing line of dark and light on the water.

I came to a high place of darkness and light.
A dividing line ran through the center of town.
(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Isis")

You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was. 

(Irish Proverb)

Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí.  

(Irish for "Praise the young and they will blossom")

Everything was grist to the Mind’s mill; therefore they destroyed nothing.  Neither did they foster anything.  They seem not to have interfered in any way with any other species.

Metals and other raw materials needed for their physical plants and technical  experimentation were mined by their robot extensions in poisoned areas or on the Moon and other planets; this exploitation seems to have been as careful as it was efficient.

The City had no relation to plant life at all, except as it was the subject of their observation,  a source of data.  Their relation to the animal world was similarly restricted.  Their relation to the human species was similarly restricted, with one exception:  communication, the two-way exchange of information.

(Ursula K. Le Guin, writing about the "City of Mind" in Always Coming Home)

When I saw this video recently, I thought of the "City of Mind":



Love takes up where knowledge leaves off. 

(St. Thomas Aquinas) 

My Dad and Barney Google

My father was Norwegian and German, not Irish.  My DNA shows that I am 13% Irish.  He died of congestive heart failure at age 89 on St. Patrick's Day in 2003. While looking for an image with which to honor him today, I came across the above photo among his slides that had been transferred to a computer disk.  I don't recall ever seeing this particular photo before.  I thought I had looked closely at all of his old photos.  Odd how everything is tilted.  My father and I had a difficult relationship, although I know he was very proud of me.  I am his firstborn daughter and was named after his mother.  I am the only daughter who inherited his blue eyes.  Like him, I needed glasses beginning in grade school.  In many ways I was unlike him, and there was conflict. When I was very young and playing on the floor, I heard him say proudly, "She is going to be a lawyer like her grandfather."  I thought to myself, "I won't be a lawyer."

He was fond of these words:

"This the day the Lord has made.  Rejoice and be glad in it."

He said that the best movie he ever saw was "The Ten Commandments," with Charlton Heston.  

He loved gardening and archeology and playing Solitaire and traveling and good food and baseball and puns and Snoopy.  He loved his wife and his daughters and our dog, Star.  He was proud of the work he did as a systems analyst for Chevron.

I just remembered that he used to sing this song which he must have first heard as a 9-year-old boy:

He sang this song, too, from that same era:

When I remember my father singing these songs from his childhood, I feel some peace in connection with him.  I hope he found some peace in connection with me.  

I am grateful that my last visit with him was a good one.  I lit a candle for him today.  

Totem Pole / No self and No not-self

I'm just average, common too
I'm just like him, the same as you
I'm everybody's brother and son
I ain't no different from anyone
It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you

I was shadow-boxing earlier in the day
I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay
I said, "Fee, fie, fo, fum,
Cassius Clay, here I come
26, 27, 28, 29, I'm gonna make your face look just like mine
Five, four, three, two, one,
Cassius Clay you'd better run
99, 100, 101, 102, your ma won't even recognize you
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right out of his spleen ...
-- Bob Dylan, from 1964, "I Shall Be Free No. 10"



A sage has no self, yet there is nothing that is not himself.
-- Shih-T'ou (700-790)

"... bright shining like the sun ..."

Listen to Odetta sing:

Survival Prayer / Talking About Raven

"Survival Prayer"

Recently I discovered and bought a copy of this splendid film directed by Benjamin Greené.  I'm not sure, but my guess is that he grew up here in Bellingham, Washington.

From his website:

"Benjamin Greené studied Neuroscience at Oberlin College and co-directed a documentary about the struggle for shelter and community in post-Katrina New Orleans.  After college, he spent two years in a brain-imaging laboratory before leaving academia to pursue filmmaking.  He went on to co-direct Bury Me in Redwood Country about the tallest and largest trees on the planet.  Survival Prayer is his solo directorial debut.  Benjamin is a 2012 graduate of Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School and an IFP Fellow participating in the Independent Filmmaker Labs.  He loves the process of turning ideas into films, leaning into the light, actualizing dreams."

(Gouache and watercolor, "Spectrum Series:  Green," painted in spring of 2007 by am)

"Yas" and Talking 37th Dream with Rainbow and Two Birds

The above photo and video were taken from my porch early in the morning this last Wednesday. We've had snow on the ground for about a week now.

Yesterday afternoon, despite another snow warning, I drove across town to visit a new friend who weaves story blankets.  When I arrived, she was sitting and talking with a friend of her husband.  I sat down at the kitchen table and joined in the conversation.  Her husband's friend is Navajo, and it turned out that he is a fluent speaker of the Navajo language.  My friend is a retired teacher of English to non-English speakers.  We were talking about the light snowfall, and the Navajo man told us the word for snow.  I asked him for the word for "stars" and "moon." I was moved by the beauty of the words but found it difficult to pronounce them correctly.  The Navajo man said that he had once known some of the Crow language, but that was long ago.  After a little while, the Navajo man left on his bike, and my friend and I continued to talk, and she showed me her beautiful story blankets.  Her husband arrived home some time later as it was snowing harder and getting dark.  He said that the roads were still clear.  The snow turned to rain sometime last night, but the air is still cold, and there is still snow on the ground.

Early this morning I found a splendid website with pronunciations of Navajo words and phrases.  I found this video about the Navajo word for "rainbow":

If you look closely at the photo above, taken from my porch this afternoon,  you will see at least two birds.  

Yoga with the Camera and the Birds

The photos were taken during my morning yoga practice a few days ago.  For the last few weeks, because I was not feeling well, I did not spend any time on my yoga mat.  It felt good to be back on my yoga mat. While I was performing the asanas, the sun was rising, and I was unable to resist interrupting the asana practice in order to grab my camera from the table and take some photographs while standing on the yoga mat. The second photo was taken through one of my windows, using the zoom function.  I resumed my yoga practice.  Then the moment came when I couldn't resist leaving the yoga mat and going out on my porch to take some black and white photos.  This is the best of those photos:

Again I returned to the yoga mat, but soon a flock of bushtits arrived, and their wings were illuminated by the rising sun.  Once again, I reached for my camera as I stood on the yoga mat:

If you turn the sound up, you will hear something from "Chants of India," by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison.  My camera is part of my yoga practice this time of year when it is light enough in the early morning to see outside.  There is more and more early morning birdsong as spring approaches.  

Gathered From Coincidence On A Snowy Day

The Invisible Peak from Gary Yost on Vimeo.

A few days ago, I watched Werner Herzog's Little Dieter Needs To Fly after Dominic Rivron had mentioned it in a comment here on my blog.  Dieter Dengler lived on Mt. Tamalpais.  This morning after reading Sabine's thoughtful post, I moved on to the Doonesbury website and came across a video about the Coastal Miwok and their sacred mountain, Mt. Tamalpais.  If you don't have time to watch the entire video, go to the end of the video and listen to Sky Road Webb drumming and singing on the top of Mt. Tamalpais.

If you watch the entire video, look for Sacheen Littlefeather.

"If we take care of the mountain, the mountain will take care of us."
(from the credits at the end of "The Invisible Peak")

Listening / Awake and Alive

Perry McClellan and Judith Gorman read the words of their son Orrin Gorman McClellan who penned these poems while serving with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan in 2005-2006.  Orrin, who struggled with PTSD after returning home, took his own life in 2010.
(Paragraph quoted from here)

Most people have the option of forgetting.  It's a survival thing.  Artists do not have that option, and I think that may of us suffer from hypermnesia, an exceptionally exact and vivid memory and often associated with mental illness, but our whole act of creating ... depends on that memory.  The only way we can get rid of it is to put it down on paper.

(Allen Say)

Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory.

(Bob Dylan)

I am always doing what I cannot do in order than I may learn from it.

(Picasso)

May my silences become more accurate.

(Theodore Roethke)

Alive Alive-O

Many of you have seen this turtle drawing before.  It's from a letter written in Vietnam in 1970.  Something has been going on with me since last fall.  Both terrifying and exhilarating feelings, as opposed to memories, are returning from 1970-1971 and from the last few days of 2007 (when I learned that my old friend had sustained a brain stem stroke) through late April of 2008 when he died in a VA Hospital in California.

I feel more awake and alive than I have in years.  Looking forward to volunteering with the babies again next week after my bout with pink eye is over!  I'd thought I'd be back volunteering this week because the second head cold I've had since starting volunteering last October is now gone.  It's a dark windy rainy day here.  The first green tips of the golden day lily fronds are appearing in their planter on my porch.

Alive Alive-O.

Remembering My Valentine

(Painted from memory in gouache and watercolor by am in 2002)

Born in 1914 in Minnesota

My Dad would have been 100 years old today.

Any guesses as to how many months old he is in this photo?  I'm not sure what his exact age is in this photo but having been spending time volunteering in a daycare in recent months, helping out with a group of babies, I see him in an entirely new light this year.

Merry Clayton

The Brothers and Sisters

The Wild Blue Sky Of Day

Thanks to R. L. Bourges for the inspiration.

Sending all my love to my nephew and his girlfriend who
will be having a baby in May.

A NATION OF SLEEPLESS WOMEN WITH MOON AND BIRDS

Awake and alert

As full and fragmented as the moon

Rising and reflecting

In a western sea

We hear night birds

Singing in the shadows

Mocking darkness

Mocking darkness

The moon asks an impossible question:

Do I control you

Or do you control me

In my circular journey

We ask the moon an impossible question:

Do we control you

Or do you control us

In our cyclical journey

We hear night words

We sing in the shadows

Mocking darkness

Mocking darkness

Imagine us at dawn

A nation of sleepless women with moon and birds

Just above the hills of childhood

Caught between impossible questions

And the wild blue sky of day.

NURSERY  RHYME (1982)

Babies are like us

Except when they smile

Their eyes are so clear

They can see everything we have forgotten

At first they have nothing to say

We draw their attention

Away from holy light

To clocks and alphabets

Words like parallelogram

Make them laugh

They can’t tell time from applesauce

Yet they store words

With smooth stones and skinned knees

No one really knows where they come from

Or where they go

They would put the sun

In their mouths

If they could reach that high

Not knowing who we are

Still they trust us

We impress them

With our brave words

Our clever clocks

(poems and drawing, "The Wild Blue Sky of Day," by am from the early 1980s)

"No Time To Think" / "Bob Dylan goes to see us"

In death, you face life with a child and a wife
Who sleep-walks through your dreams into walls
You’re a soldier of mercy, you’re cold and you curse
“He who cannot be trusted must fall”

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety
You fight for the throne and you travel alone
Unknown as you slowly sink
And there’s no time to think

In the Federal City you been blown and shown pity
In secret, for pieces of change
The empress attracts you but oppression distracts you
And it makes you feel violent and strange

Memory, ecstasy, tyranny, hypocrisy
Betrayed by a kiss on a cool night of bliss
In the valley of the missing link
And you have no time to think

Judges will haunt you, the country priestess will want you
Her worst is better than best
I’ve seen all these decoys through a set of deep turquoise eyes
And I feel so depressed

China doll, alcohol, duality, mortality
Mercury rules you and destiny fools you
Like the plague, with a dangerous wink
And there’s no time to think

Your conscience betrayed you when some tyrant waylaid you
Where the lion lies down with the lamb
I’d have paid off the traitor and killed him much later
But that’s just the way that I am

Paradise, sacrifice, mortality, reality
But the magician is quicker and his game
Is much thicker than blood and blacker than ink
And there’s no time to think

Anger and jealousy’s all that he sells us
He’s content when you’re under his thumb
Madmen oppose him, but your kindness throws him
To survive it you play deaf and dumb

Equality, liberty, humility, simplicity
You glance through the mirror and there’s eyes staring clear
At the back of your head as you drink
And there’s no time to think

Warlords of sorrow and queens of tomorrow
Will offer their heads for a prayer
You can’t find no salvation, you have no expectations
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere

Mercury, gravity, nobility, humility
You know you can’t keep her and the water gets deeper
That is leading you onto the brink
But there’s no time to think

You’ve murdered your vanity, buried your sanity
For pleasure you must now resist
Lovers obey you but they cannot sway you
They’re not even sure you exist

Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism
Fools making laws for the breaking of jaws
And the sound of the keys as they clink
But there’s no time to think

The bridge that you travel on goes to the Babylon girl
With the rose in her hair
Starlight in the East and you’re finally released
You’re stranded but with nothing to share

Loyalty, unity, epitome, rigidity
You turn around for one real last glimpse of Camille
’Neath the moon shinin’ bloody and pink
And there’s no time to think

Bullets can harm you and death can disarm you
But no, you will not be deceived
Stripped of all virtue as you crawl through the dirt
You can give but you cannot receive

No time to choose when the truth must die
No time to lose or say goodbye
No time to prepare for the victim that’s there
No time to suffer or blink
And no time to think

Copyright © 1978 by Special Rider Music

What a woman who works the tunnel between the buses and the backstage area at an arena outside of Atlanta remembers about Dylan is not that she saw him; what she remembers is "I was not allowed to look at him."

He was, of course, on his way to the stage when he passed her averted eyes—on his way to be looked at and listened to. It sounds like a paradox typical of Bob Dylan, worthy of Bob Dylan, but it's really pretty straightforward as an exercise of star power. The crossed relationship between Bob Dylan and his audience is the most enduring one in all of rock 'n' roll, and it keeps going—and will keep going to the last breath—because from the start he laid down a simple and impossible rule:

We don't go to see Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan goes to see us.

(quoted from here)

("Flashback," linocut by am, 1970s and "I Watch Movies," drawing made with computer trackpad by am, 2007)

Being

What I am I am, and say not.
Being is the great explainer.
(Henry David Thoreau)