In April 1971 Morrison and his family moved to Marin County, California, before he recorded his previous album, Tupelo Honey.Their new home was on the side of a hill in rural countryside close to San Francisco, with redwood trees nearby.
"Redwood Tree" is a song of reconciliation, which seems to graft Van's Belfast childhood onto California, where redwoods actually grow, "Keep us from all harm", an invocation to the spirit of the ancient wood.
(Brian Hinton)
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Could that song have inspired the creation of the largest redwood forest outside of the United States"
Having grown up in the company of redwood trees, not all that far south of where Van Morrison and his family lived in 1971, I'm delighted to learn that Van Morrison, too, experienced redwood trees as protectors. My request to my family and friends is that my ashes be placed at the base of a local coast redwood tree, one of very few in this part of the world and dear to me.
Have been feeling edgy. The weather outside has not been good for walking. My inner weather has not been good for much that usually is a positive part of my daily experience. The weather of the world is troubling.
When I woke up this morning, I felt lost. I felt that I needed help to meet the day. I asked for help. Something got me out of bed and into my living room where I looked at my drawing table and knew what to do. I finished Tiny Mandala #38, started working on Tiny Mandala #39 and then looked around my place of refuge, my shelter from the storm. Not alone. Never alone. In good company. From time out of mind.
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it is in the shelter of each other that the people live
Someone left a wonderful book on the free bookshelf in the mailroom of the condominium complex where I live. That's where I learned about the Ultra Deep Field.
I'm also reading Killers of the Flower Moon (by David Grann, from the public library), The Varieties of Religious Experience (by William James), God Talks with Arjuna: The Bhagavada Gita (by Paramahansa Yogananda, indirectly recommended by George Harrison), The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (by Lewis Hyde), Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms (by Norman Fischer)
Just learned about Werner Herzog's memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, and have that on hold at the public library. I'm #12 in line. That will give me time to finish the other books.
Doing my best to keep my balance in these troubled times that seem to have no beginning and no end, not forgetting the joy which has no beginning and no end.
Janis Joplin's unexpected death on October 4, 1970, was a turning point in my life and in the lives of many of those in our generation. I had wanted to be just like her and now I just wanted to be alive. I had just had my 21st birthday a few days earlier and could drink legally. Upon her death, I had the thought that perhaps drinking wasn't was a particularly good idea for me. I told myself I would be more careful than Janis had been with alcohol and would not use any hard drugs.
I know I've told these stories before but need to keep telling them because each time I tell them I realize something that didn't occur to me on the previous telling.
At the time of Janis' death, R was in the last months of his year serving as an Army helicopter mechanic in Vietnam. Jimi Hendrix had died unexpectedly a few weeks earlier on September 18.
In the early morning hours of December 7, 1970, the day R returned from Vietnam, we took some LSD that his older brother (also an Army veteran) had given to us and drove west in my Volkswagen to Half Moon Bay where his parents and seven younger siblings lived. R was the third oldest in that family of ten children and the last to serve in the military. His father had been in the Navy in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed on December 7, 1941. As we approached Crystal Springs reservoir, I heard the heartening sound of an acoustic guitar followed by Janis Joplin's clear voice coming from the car radio. She was singing in a way I hadn't heard before but her voice was unmistakable. That was my introduction to "Me and Bobbie McGee."
It was also the beginning of a nightmarish period in my life. My living nightmare eventually came to an end. R's nightmare went on and on until he died at age 58, having spent his last months in a VA hospital after suffering a brainstem stroke as a result of his drug and alcohol use. It's occurring to me that R and Janis Joplin had much in common in the suffering that alcoholism and drug addiction brought to their lives and in their unmet desire for peace of mind and heart.
I've had two vivid two dreams about Janis Joplin since she died. In one, she was in recovery from alcoholism, celebrating life in the company of other recovering alcoholics. In the other dream, just before the turn of the century, Janis Joplin looked at me in a thoughtful way and said, "Please kiss the 21st century for me."
When I first read "The Dead" I was a freshman in college at University of California at Irvine. The year was 1967. That short story, especially the last lines with their reference to a snowy day in Ireland, has stayed with me.
During my years growing up south of San Francisco, I had seen snow only a few times in my life. At 17 years old, so much of my life was still ahead of me and yet I related to the experience of Gretta Conroy, Gabriel's wife. I was shaken emotionally by the story. I know I'm not the only woman who was. Now I'm thinking, too, of the men who were shaken by that story.
Having lived in Washington State for nearly 50 years, I have had somewhat more exposure to snow. Not all that much, because we rarely have more than a week total of snow here. And yet, when it does snow here, I look out my window at Scudder Pond and remember being 17 years old, reading "The Dead," and coming to the last paragraph which focuses on Gabriel's experience:
Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
At age 74, revisiting the story, I see how my life has unfolded in a way mostly unlike the lives of Gretta and Gabriel. This morning I feel compassion for Gretta and Gabriel and James Joyce who wrote that melancholy story. Perhaps reading that story as a 17 year old made it possible for me to have a different life than I would have had otherwise -- a life not without deep sorrow but with a growing wellspring of inner joy and peace, against all odds, that I don't take for granted.
Oh beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self, their country loved
And mercy more than life
America, America may God thy gold refine
'Til all success be nobleness
And every gain divined
"I'm so proud of the film we made with so many Osage Nation leaders, artists, educators & community advocates," she wrote. "Never forget this story is recent history with a lasting impact on breathing, feeling people today. It belongs to them, & we all have so much to learn from it."
"In this process of learning about the horrific Reign of Terror, remember that the Osage remain," she continued. "Native People remain. And this story is a lot to take in. Be kind, and please be gentle with each other. There is much to process, and much to heal."
I appreciated what Montana's poet laureate, Chris La Tray, had to say on his Substack yesterday, including:
"...All this is a long way to suggest I think the community aspect of what winter can be – I mean slow community, quiet community, not parties and commitments and all the hubbub around how we typically gather – seems on the wane, just like the community aspect of everything else in this hyper-individualist culture. That marketed individuality is a wedge the cruel manipulators of our world seek to drive between us because they know we are stronger as a bundle than as a collection of singles, so the distractions keep coming and coming and coming. Just look at the holidays: by the time the actual days of celebration arrive we are all so frazzled with the input of Everything that the last thing we want to do is be around each other. That’s tragic.
I didn’t set out to write an intentions piece yet here I am, sort of making one. I’d like to handle this differently in the coming year, figure out a way to be more in community than I have been … just a quieter, more relaxed, grateful kind of community, not a rambunctious and overwrought one, or one constantly based on planning projects or organizing more busy-ness. Ugh, it sounds awfully hard, though. If anyone has ideas, or examples of things you are doing, I’d love to hear them. I know this reads like a lot of rambling nonsense. I’m trying to figure out what to do too – I’m a guy who can count on one hand the number of visitors I’ve had at my house in ten years of living here – and I don’t have any answers. Perhaps you do.
Meanwhile, please take good care of everyone you can. There are a lot of relatives in our community who need us. We can do better at this ..."
Addendum, relating to learning Bob Dylan songs and my experience in trying to learn Spanish as a second language. Bob Dylan's voice and songs engaged me on an emotional level the first time I heard his voice at age 13. Certain words and short phrases in Spanish are immediately memorable. Dibujar. ¡Por supuesto! Claro que si. Los impermeables. ¿Por qué? Mis abuelos. Un chiste. El bebe. La biblioteca. La escuela. Los libros. El agua. El cielo. El lago. Azul. Verde. Amarillo. Rojo. El caballo. La tormenta. Todos los dias. El mundo. Escribir. Leer. Me gusta. Llorar. Las peliculas. Vivir. Una palabra. Saber. Los manos. Los arboles. Porque. Quiza si, quiza no.
Where there is no emotion there is no life. If you have to learn something by heart and it is of no interest to you, there is no fire; it does not register, even if you read it fifty times. But as soon as there is emotional interest, it need only be read once and you know it. Therefore emotion is the carrier of consciousness; there is no progress in consciousness without emotion.
As someone who struggled with an eating disorder from age 10 to age 37, this book serves as a gentle reminder that my nearly two decades of war with food are long over because instinctively I began to eat in the way that is suggested by Michael Pollan's 83 general rules.
Rule 83: Break the Rules Once in a While
Enjoy every sandwich.
(Warren Zevon)
Then there is Rule #52: Have a glass of wine with dinner.
There is one personal rule I don't ever break and that is that I don't drink alcohol in any form anymore. I used to drink wine and had no trouble stopping after drinking a small amount, but that small amount always resulted in an unbearable craving (a sign of alcoholism) that made it virtually impossible for me to stop eating. I didn't want to be an alcoholic and so I turned to more and more food instead of more alcohol. Of course, food couldn't stop a craving for alcohol. It was astounding to discover that my eating disorder disappeared when I stopped drinking alcohol -- that my eating problems were actually alcoholism. Wine is a delightful healthy food for most people throughout the world but for alcoholics like me it only led to insatiable craving for food and years of unrelieved depression that ended 36 years ago in May 1987 when I had my last drink (a champagne breakfast in a restaurant with my parents), followed by my last bout of suicidal depression.
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Winter Solstice.
The sun rose here at 8 a.m. and will set at 4:16 p.m.
A turning point.
Celebrating the return of the light with friends near and far, while enjoying the improved quality of sleep I enjoy during most, but not all, of the long dark winter nights.
Calendar Series: 28th Month (Return / The Turning Point)
Still studying Spanish on a daily basis. It's been a little more than three years since I learned about Duolingo and committed to fulfilling a nearly lifelong dream of learning a second language. At this point, I have the fluency and joy of a three-year-old child learning a language, which is immense progress. This came to my attention recently and has been encouraging. My reading comprehension is far beyond my listening comprehension, although if a person speaks slowly I can understand much that I never dreamed I would be able to understand. Although my accent is good (except for those rolled r's -- and even those are coming along -- something I never thought possible), my confidence in being able to speak is still a work in progress. It's not difficult for me to come up with a large number of nouns and the "to be" form of verbs, but my ability to speak the way I would like to speak is limited. I know that as long as I don't engage in daily conversation, my knowledge of Spanish will remain focused on reading and listening. It has occurred to me that I am more of a reader and listener and writer than a conversationalist in English. It's okay. The joy of language is still there.
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Not sure where I learned about this website. On a daily basis, thoughtful essays are suggested to me, some of which I read and many of which I have meant to share for some time now. That day has come. When I read something on a specific topic, the website sends me more essays on that topic.
It's that time of year when the cloud cover can be so heavy that it looks and feels like dawn or dusk all day long. This morning there are openings where blinding light comes through the dark clouds. Interesting to see that on 4.0x Zoom on my cell phone, the image is textured.
How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be? -- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Welcome to "37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)".
The photograph currently at the top of my blog was taken from my porch before sunrise on October 29, 2023.
"OLD GIRL OF THE NORTH COUNTRY" (the earliest name for my blog -- http://oldgirlfromthenorthcountry.blogspot.com
) came to life in early December of 2006 so that I could post a 42-year retrospective of my paintings and drawings and through that action, create a new relationship with the day the man I loved returned from Vietnam in December 1970. For a while (sometime after spring of 2008, which is when he died) my blog was "TALKING 37TH DREAM WITH RAINBOW (RUMORS OF PEACE)". For a number of years, it's been "TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)." As of April 12, 2017 my blog was titled "37TH DREAM / TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE/LOOKING UP)". Somewhere along the way it became 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE).
To begin viewing the retrospective with narrative, scroll down to December 8, 2006, on this page:
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. -- Martin Buber (1878-1965)
It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is.
-- Robinson Jeffers
The true end of a war is the rebirth of life; the right to die peacefully in your own bed. The true end of war is the end of fear; the true end of war is the return of laughter.
-- Alfred Molano
Enjoy every sandwich -- Warren Zevon (1947-2003)
Not in God's wilds will you ever hear the sad moan, "All is vanity." No, we are paid a thousand times for all our toil, and after a single day spent outdoors in their atmosphere of strength and beauty, one could still say, should death come — even without any hope of another life — "Thank you for this most glorious gift!" and pass on.
-- John Muir (1838-1914)
Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do? Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well. Hugh Fennyman: How? Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.
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