Teresa Evangeline

The Ballad of the One-eared Stinky Monkey

2012-01-27T12:36:00.007-06:00

Snow is coming down and Buddy is one very content, not-so-little-anymore puppy. He has always liked shoving his nose deep into its cold fluffiness again and again as though he has just discovered the greatest thing on earth. He finds particular pleasure in tossing one of his babies up into the snowy air, catching it and then running around madly just to do it all again. And again. It's the stuff happy is made of.

Now, lest you think Buddy's babies are being mistreated, I have to add that they seem as delighted by all this fun as he is. And he knows the routine. He either barks or grrrs softly at the door when he feels it's time to come in and warm up, or take a snooze, tired out from all that strenuous activity. Sometimes, he just stands by the door, expecting me to read his mind, and I've gotten pretty good at that. We've had a lot of practice.

He has several babies to choose from, an entire basketful, and he is careful to make sure everyone gets their shot at some time outside, but it's the baby bear that seems to be his favorite now. 'Twas not always so.

Once upon a time, it was a monkey with two ears and a very healthy behind. As way led unto way, one ear was chewed off in a moment of overzealous affection and then he became the one-eared stinky monkey, stinky being a natural by-product, shall we say, of incessant chewing.

As these things go, the love-induced chewing led to more chewing and then it was the behind which became, ultimately, unrepairable with needle and thread. I'm happy to report my sewing skills have remained intact, being much in demand these days, but sometimes even they cannot bring someone back to "life." Thus, the closet shelf became the final resting place of the one-eared stinky monkey, a back shelf lest Buddy see it and whine for its return to the fold. I cannot bring myself to relegate it to the dustbin of history. Not yet. These things take time.

I've thought of replacing his monkey with a brand new one, and perhaps one day I will. In the meantime, I have discovered that second hand and thrift stores are great places for inexpensive stuffed toys. When I go to town without Buddy, he always checks the table as I unpack the grocery bag, checking to see if Ma remembered to bring him back a new pal. No, he's not spoiled one bit. He just lives with the constant expectation of good to unfold, and that seems like a pretty fine way to go through life. We have this unspoken agreement. I make sure life is good for him and he makes sure it is for me. It's a win-win.

The opening photo is Buddy when he first came home with me at eight weeks old. He is now almost a year old. What a wonderful year it has been.

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

2012-01-24T16:38:00.000-06:00

A few days ago, a friend and I were visiting on the telephone, talking about the state of the union. The subject of Charlie Chaplin came up and we both agreed he was an amazing person. Tonight, President Obama will give the State of the Union Address and so finding this video today seems rather timely. It's from the Charlie Chaplin movie, "The Great Dictator." First released in October, 1940, its relevance today is almost astonishing.

My Lesson From the Sea

2012-01-23T13:37:00.001-06:00

It's now going on two years since I visited the Atlantic Ocean. It was time spent, for the most part, on a quiet beach in the off-season, which was, for me, the perfect time to be there. There were early morning walkers, some with dogs, some in pairs, some alone and deep in thought. Many were visitors from someplace else who had their own purpose for being there. Almost always these fellow travelers offered a hello, or a nod in greeting and, occasionally, would stop and visit with me about the ocean, the day, the weather, some observation they had made. And some would sit quietly on the benches, set near the sand dunes, just looking out to sea.

My time included some deep thought, but mostly it was about opening my arms wider to life and taking in all that the ocean had to offer by way of understanding myself a bit more. Some lessons were hard-won, and some were dropped at my feet unbidden, as wholly unexpected gifts. I have only recently come to understand more fully just what the ocean and the days spent there really brought me, and eventually taught me. The ocean is a wonderful thing, full of deep mystery, yet so inviting. It offers us an opportunity to write our names in its "book of waves," to feel a part of that never-ending night sky; it teaches us to become our own lighthouse.

This morning, with several inches of fresh snow outside the door, a morning poem arrived in an email that left me smiling with its beautiful timing, its ability to so poetically distill these lessons from the sea, what it has taught me: it drew me to its shores so that I might become better able to See.

"I Was Never Able to Pray"

Wheel me down to the shore
where the lighthouse was abandoned
and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees
and see the stars flaring out, one by one,
like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves

and then stare into the dome
of a sky that never ends
and see my voice sail into the night.

~ Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch lives in New York and is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Painting by Winslow Homer. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he once lived and painted in a studio at Prouts Neck, just down the beach and around the corner from where I stayed. Perhaps one day I'll return and pay my respects for all the hours of pleasure his paintings have brought me.

Listening to the Inner Need

2012-01-22T12:17:00.000-06:00

Color is a power which directly influences the soul.

Colors produce a corresponding spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the elementary physical impression is of importance.

The artist must be blind to distinctions between 'recognized' and 'unrecognized' conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. He must watch only the trend of the inner need, and hearken to its words alone.

Everything shows me its face, its innermost being, its secret soul, which is more often silent than heard.

The word composition moved me spiritually and I made it my aim in life to paint a composition. It affected me like a prayer and filled me with awe.

Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, and the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.

Everything starts from a dot.

All quotations by Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944), a Russian painter credited with painting the first purely abstract works.

They make me happy. I hope they make you happy, too.

And Then the Spell was Cast

2012-01-20T17:02:00.000-06:00

From Lao Tzu to Etta James, it makes perfect sense to me. I remember you, dear lady, as the one who accompanied me over Monument Pass time and time again, as I made my way back to Minnesota from Santa Fe. When I got to the Colorado border, I would slide your CD into the player and "At Last" would take me up the mountain, across the Continental Divide, then down the other side, gliding around curve after curve, leaning in with every note you sang. I wasn't in love with a person, I was in love with life, and it was my song. Thank you, Ms. James, for keeping me company.

A Morning Song from Lao Tzu

2012-01-17T12:00:00.001-06:00

When I woke up this morning, I was planning on writing about poetry and had a poem in mind that I had been going back to this past week just because I liked it and what it had to say about life, but then I realized I needed to listen to the nudge I was getting to go to the book shelf and bring down this slim volume entitled, Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu. It calls out to me occasionally, and, when it does, I know I need to respond. It never fails to provide just the right idea for propelling me forward into the day, allaying any fears or sadness I might be feeling, allowing me to, once again, feel the Oneness that connects me to all things.

I like what Brian Walker, one of several wonderful interpreters of these timeless ideas and the author of this book, has to say about Lao Tzu: "I have come to think of Lao Tzu less as a man who once lived and more as a song that plays, eternal and abiding." This was my morning song that led me to "still waters."

The Universe is a vast net of energy rays.
The primary ray is that which emanates from the
   Subtle Origin, and it is entirely positive, creative,
   and constructive.
Each being, however, converts the energy of this
   primary ray into its own ray, and these lower rays
   can be either positive or negative, constructive or
   destructive.

An individual who is not yet fully evolved can be
   adversely affected by negative energy rays in the net
   around him.
For example, the combined influence of several
   negative rays might cause an undeveloped person to
   believe that his life is being controlled by an
   invisible, oppressive ruler.
Such a misconception can be a significant barrier to
   enlightenment.

To attain full evolution and the status of an integral
   being, you must be aware of this intricate net and
   its influences upon you.
By integrating the positive, harmonious energy rays
   with the positive elements of your own being, and
   eliminating the subtle negative influences, you can
   enhance all aspects of your life.

In order to eliminate the negative influences, simply
   ignore them.
To integrate the positive influences, consciously
   reconnect yourself with the primary energy ray of
   the Subtle Origin by adopting the practices of the
   Integral Way.
Then all the rays in the net around you will merge
   back into harmonious oneness.

Chinese artwork by Wang Qiang and Chen Jun

Because it is Right

2012-01-15T15:00:00.000-06:00

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular,
but one must take it because it is right.

~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Not Language but a Map

2012-01-12T16:42:00.003-06:00

"The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart"

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couple on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not.
When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets wre translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems and psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
Oh Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

~ Jack Gilbert (1925 - )

My photo of ancient rock art taken outside Moab, UT, last winter.

Slipping off to a Sand Dune with Dr. Seuss

2012-01-11T18:37:00.001-06:00

Some of you might know by now I'm a Dr. Seuss fan. I am, I am. So, when my son told me about this great little video made at the Burning Man Festival using the Dr. Seuss book, "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" I knew I had to watch it. Then share it. You probably already know about the festival, so I won't go there, and maybe you even know about this video and I'm way behind the curve, but just in case that's not the case, I'm posting it.

The title is alluding to Maria Muldaur's song, "Midnight at the Oasis." One night at a bar, many years ago, a man told me I looked just like her. He told me this more than once. I told him he was drunk. He insisted he wasn't. Then he fell off his bar stool.

They're connected by a very thin thread. But a lot of things are.

Here's the song: youtu.be/Q3tHYb4_bAg.

And here's the video:

Ode on a Cast Iron Pan

2012-01-10T13:37:00.002-06:00

This morning, while making breakfast in a cast iron pan, I thought of a friend whom I haven't seen in over a year. She lives about two hours east of here, and I rarely get over that way anymore. When I first returned to Minnesota, I stayed with another friend who has a double geodesic domed home over that direction and I met some really cool people while I was there, including this gal. I wrote about her when I first started blogging, before anyone read it but me. I have never actually supplied a link to a previous post, although I have mentioned a couple of them when I felt it was apropos, but I'm making an exception, because I want to remember this friend and that wonderful day we spent together, and I'd like you to meet her, too, through this post.

At the end of the day, she said how grateful she was for all the help I had been, and although I was having a great time and had no intention of being reimbursed in any way but with a great memory, she would not be dissuaded, and so I went home with a crazy cool cast iron fry pan that makes me happy every time I use it. I grew up in a house where we used nothing but, and I'm betting many of you did, too. It's actually a cross between a fry pan and a dutch oven, so it's versatile, and I simply love it.

Here's the link (the title alludes to the post before): teresaevangeline.blogspot.com/2009/09/i-warned-you.html

A good friendship and a good cast iron pan just seem to go together. And I think it's time to re-season both.

There's a Bluebird in His Heart

2012-01-09T06:32:00.007-06:00

Please be patient with me, but that rabble-rouser (she said affectionately), known as Reality Zone, posted this cool Charles Bukowski video on his site. I warned him I was stealing it, making this sort of a Charles Bukowski trifecta. I was so moved when I first listened to it, I was in tears. Then I listened about four more times. And I'm still moved. This poem probably says more about the man than any one or any thing else ever has, or could. It may not be him reading it (see addendum), but I love the reading, his words are powerful, and I always appreciate seeing into someone's heart through their own words, rather than filtered through my perception.

Thanks RZ, for posting it, for sharing personal experiences in response to my last post, and for being so gracious about my re-post. Here's a link to RZ's site, a go-to place for non-mainstream news, politics, metaphysics, and music. You never know what you're going to get. It's always interesting, starting with his avatar (above), artwork by Alex Grey: realityzone-realityzone.blogspot.com

Addendum: With a little further investigation, I have discovered the wonderful reader is a British actor who goes by the pseudonym Thomas O'Bedlam on his youtube channel. The name alludes to an interesting, anonymous poem from the 1600's: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_o'_Bedlam. To add to the intrigue, Roger Ebert says we should be able to guess the actor if we listen close enough. Regardless, it's a great poem and a great reader.

Only 1:57, then I promise I'll move on.

The Peace Train Inside All of Us

2012-01-08T10:55:00.006-06:00

One of my favorite anthologies of poetry sits next to me, as it has for the past few mornings. I try to open it at random and in that way I feel I can get a glimpse of what the world has to say to me, what it might want me to know, and then perhaps pass it on. In this anthology, the poets are sometimes represented more than once, in different sections, but almost never more than twice. So, the odds of opening it to the same poet two mornings in a row might be considered a long shot. I try to pay attention to where I am directed to open it and then leave the rest up to whomever is in charge of these things.

This morning, I opened it to the other poem by Charles Bukowski. If I'd read it before, and I probably have, it'd been quite some time. It seemed to be mirroring my thoughts. It was obviously written during Desert Storm in the early '90's. Unfortunately, it seems we've dug an even deeper hole in the sand, which makes this poem as timely now as it was then, perhaps more so, especially in light of Rick Perry's remark that he would consider sending troops back into Iraq. I didn't watch hardly any of the debates. That was quite enough, thank you. I can't handle that much unkindness all in a row. Here's Charles instead:

"the con job"

the ground war began today
at dawn
in a desert land
far from here.
the U.S. ground troops were
largely
made up of
Blacks, Mexicans and poor
whites
most of whom had joined
the military
because it was the only job
they could find.

the ground war began today
at dawn
in a desert land
far from here
and the Blacks, Mexicans
and poor whites
were sent there
to fight and win
as on tv
and on the radio
the fat white rich newscasters
first told us all about
it
and then the fat rich white
analysts
told us
why
again
and again
and again
on almost every
tv and radio station
almost every minute
day and night
because
the Blacks, Mexicans
and poor whites
were sent there
to fight and win
at dawn
in a desert land
far enough away from
here.

~ Charles Bukowski

To put an exclamation point on this: Cat Stevens was always in the background of my life during my college years. I loved his music. Every single song talked of a world we hoped to see. Yes, he is Yusuf Islam now. And he is still the picture of kindness. I want to spend more time listening to him than the political machinations that seem to be permeating the airwaves.

He first recorded "Peace Train" in 1971. Forty years ago. During that time, I discovered there's a peace train that runs through me, and that's the train I have to be on at all times if I'm ever to see the world I hoped for back then. Here is Yusuf :

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Happiness Comes in Bursts

2012-01-07T10:27:00.006-06:00

Have you ever had a moment when everything feels right and good, a feeling washes over you or bursts in through an open door somewhere inside you and tells you everything has fallen into place? I call them bursts of happiness, and they stop me in my tracks just for that moment while I pause and say Yes to life, and life says Yes to me. They don't happen often. I suppose that's what makes them special, feel so good.

My bursts of happiness can happen when I'm driving in a car, walking down the road, vacuuming my house, just living life, but always when I least expect them. A couple of days ago, as I was working in the kitchen, I just turned around and there it was: this perfect crystalline moment and life felt so darn sweet.

This morning, I opened a book of poetry, as I'm wont to do, and there was none other than Charles Bukowski, a rather rough-edged fellow, looking back at me. His poems, surrounded by all this sad and serious melancholy, usually include just the tiniest bit of light coming through the cracks, his own bursts of happiness. So, you see, it can happen to anybody. But, you probably already knew that.

The poem I opened to, "too sweet," reminded me of my own days at the race track. I didn't get there often, never took a trip solely for that purpose, but I recall at least one day in Arizona and more than a few in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I liked to play the ponies, and I don't mind saying that. I was a pretty safe bettor, never went too far out on the financial limb.

One day, out of the blue, I decided to get a better look at the horses. It wasn't that I expected to get some inside information, but I liked horses and wanted to take a look. Those were some very pretty horses. On my way back to the stands, as I stood and watched them being ridden to the starting gate, a dark-haired fellow silently moved in next to me. I was momentarily uncomfortable, and then he quietly said, "Bet on 7." Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I walked to the betting booths and placed my bet, covering Number 7. Couldn't tell you the horses name now, which is a shame, but in that one bet my entire trip was paid for.

I don't think I've been back since, not because I saw the error of my ways, but for lack of opportunity. Life took me in another direction and my time at the track was over. No regrets. I like going out a winner. Here's Bukowski to tell you how it feels. And not just about winning at the track, but life in those moments when there's an open door in your heart that you didn't even know was there, and happiness comes bursting through.

"too sweet"

I have been going to the track for so
long that
all the employees know
me,
and now with winter here
it's dark before the last
race.
as I walk to the parking lot
the valet recognizes my
slouching gait
and before I reach him
my car is waiting for me,
lights on, engine warm.
the other patrons
(still waiting)
ask,
"who the hell is that
guy?"

I slip the valet a
tip, the size depending upon the
luck of the
day (and my luck has been amazingly
good lately)
and I then am in the machine and out on
the street
as the horses break
from the gate.

I drive east down Century Blvd.
turning on the radio to get the result of that
last race.

at first the announcer is concerned only with
bad weather and poor freeway
conditions.
we are old friends: I have listened to his
voice for decades but,
of course, the time will finally come
when neither of us will need to
clip our toenails or
heed the complaints of our
women any longer.

meanwhile, there is a certain rhythm
to the essentials that now need
attending to.
I light my cigarette
check the dashboard
adjust the seat and
weave between a Volks and a Fiat.
as flecks of rain spatter the
windshield
I decide not to die just
yet:
this good life just smells too
sweet.

~ Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

"The Secret Life Begins Early..."

2012-01-05T16:14:00.003-06:00

When I was a child, I had a favorite tree that I would go and spend time with when I needed someone to talk to. I would trudge across the field in front of our house and into the woods beyond, where a large and very old White pine stood waiting. If I pressed my ear against it's rough bark and held it close, I could hear the wind whistling through it, telling me its secrets. Then I would tell it a secret or two of my own.

Shortly after I moved in here, two summers ago, I felt drawn to one particular Norway amongst many in the back yard. It seemed to be beckoning to me, and so I walked over to it, held it close and told it how happy I was to be here. That winter, nine deer came regularly to browse beneath it. Quite often, three or four would stay to bed down as night fell, then leave at first light.

These trees that surround my house make me feel loved and protected. I am honored to live among them, to be in their presence. They still tell me secrets. And, sometimes, I tell them mine.

When you write late at night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
It's why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who'll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.

~ Title and excerpt from "A Secret Life," by Stephen Dunn

For those who might like "a little night music," here's one of my favorite Leonard Cohen songs, "In My Secret Life," accompanied by some beautiful images: youtu.be/1vAId2SX3a8

Where Anything Could Happen

2012-01-03T14:26:00.000-06:00

"There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had." ~ Raymond Carver

For information on "Ghosts of Paris" and the person who created them: sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com

Thanks to Tony Zimnoch at: everton.blogspot.com for pointing me in their direction with his latest post.

Next of Kin to the Wayward Wind

2012-01-01T22:48:00.005-06:00

There's a crazy wind blowing around out there tonight, making the natives restless, Buddy mostly. Earlier, he kept coming up to me with this stricken smile ('cause goldens rarely stop smiling), as if to say, "Please make it stop Ma." He wanted to go outside, as it's his favorite place to be, but the wind was whipping up the scent of something and he didn't like it. When he stuck his nose out, I thought I heard the dim call of a coyote or two, so I suspect that's the cause of his reluctance. I finally put him in his crate and I think he prefers it; there's a more peaceful and protected feeling there. Hope he doesn't have to pee anymore tonight.

Early this morning, as we turned the page to a new chapter, I awoke with a call to sweep the kitchen floor. It has a sense of parable about it, doesn't it? Rumi mentions it in at least one of his poems, and Christ Jesus mentions it a time or two, if I'm not mistaken. I would imagine it holds a place in many traditions, spiritual and otherwise. So, I swept out the old and, in doing so, I prepared for the new. Whatever that turns out to be.

Not so new is this recording by the great Patsy Cline. Several folks recorded this song, but this is the one that helped raise me and I prefer it. I pretty much prefer anything sung by Patsy. BTW: The photograph is one I took on the road to Valentine, Nebraska, as I as drove out west last year. I take its picture every chance I get. Talk about the potential for wind.... Anyway, without further ado, here's Patsy:

In the Living Room of the World

2011-12-31T10:41:00.003-06:00

Every once in awhile a book comes along that really changes my life. It doesn't happened often, but when it does, it really changes things. The last book that did this was The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, by Don Miguel Ruiz. It's based on Toltec knowledge passed down from generation to generation. It was published in 1997, but I don't believe I came across it until a few years later. I still stumble from time to time in my practice of these tenets, but I continue to hold them up as lights on my path. When I practice them consistently, life becomes a much more loving place to be. Perhaps you're familiar with them, but I post them here as much a reminder to myself as anything else.

1. BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of the Word in the direction of Truth and Love.

2. DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement you can completely transform your life.

4. ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST. Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

Life, to me, is a continual unfoldment and years are simply human constructs meant to give us a sense of order and to delineate the human condition. Still, I will be quietly celebrating the turning of the page. I plan to pop the cork on a bottle of homemade wine made by my son, Coleman, from the grapes that we gathered from my vine, back on that sunny day in mid-September. No dirty dancing in a bar at midnight with someone I barely know, as I did way back when, when way too many Cosmopolitans and a sad heart made me think that was a good idea, or a reasonable facsimile of one.

No, tonight will be just Buddy and me in the comfort of low light in our living room. I'll say a little prayer that I might practice those Four Agreements more consistently and then one for the world, that we might all learn to, and not just practice them, but live them.

Paintings:
Andrew Wyeth, "Long Limb"
Winslow Homer, "Bridle Path, White Mountains"

at red lights we press our lips together

2011-12-26T16:13:00.000-06:00

Buddy's asleep on the porch, a shaft of sunlight is falling on the skeletal remains of my garden, and a most intriguing line has been left under Search Keywords in my stats: "at red lights we press our lips together." And now, I'm looking out the window, trying to remember how long it's been since I kissed someone at a red light. The answer? Far too long.

While I look at possibilities for remedying that, here's a poem I've been wanting to share with you. It seems like the right time.

"Looking at Things a Long Time"

Out there in the woods and along the road
are all sorts of books: anthologies
of trees, biographies of brooks, poems
by bees, novels in glaciers. Just look
around carefully, thinking about whatever your
gaze rests on. Notice that turn in the road
to which quite a few pages could be given.

Consider your own story, how you arrived
where you are. Think: what might be called
a dire imposition on your life actually
brought you down this path to where we
meet in a sparkling friendship. Explain that.

You've traveled roads you would never have chosen
and they've taken you nearer to what you deeply are
even though there were many strange
stopping places along the way. Don't look back.

There are turns we take away from the familiar
that would surprise a lot of people, until we
find ourselves finally again on the old street
gladly lending a hand or telling a story. We see
our own names written in other lives and find out
each day how to care more. We discover that people
listen better when we are often silent
and pondering, looking at things a long time.

~ John Cuno

Photograph by Vivien Meier

When the Morning Stars Sang Together

2011-12-25T06:14:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Painting by Grant Wood

To Find a Night Like This

2011-12-22T13:01:00.001-06:00

Several months ago, I mentioned dreaming of William Stafford, who was sitting in an easy chair and reading a poem to me by lamp light. I found it very comforting and knew that the poem he read, one of my favorites, should be shared. It was titled, "A Ritual to Read to Each Other." Well, for the past few days, I haven't been able to shake another poem by him that also feels like it should be shared. And so, here it is, for reasons that are not clear to me. Maybe you will know....

"Once in the 40s"

We were alone one night on a long
road in Montana. This was in winter, a big
night, far to the stars. We had hitched,
my wife and I, and left our ride at
a crossing to go on. Tired and cold -- but
brave -- we trudged along. This, we said,
was our life, watched over, allowed to go
where we wanted. We said we'd come back some time
when we got rich. We'd leave the others and find
a night like this, whatever we had to give,
and no matter how far, to be so happy again.

~ William Stafford

Will You Be Home for Christmas?

2011-12-21T12:21:00.002-06:00

During the early 1990's, JB and I would head out every spring for canyon country. We were on a tight budget and strapped for time, so we would take turns driving, stopping only for gas, or at rest stops for bathroom breaks and a chance to stretch our legs before getting back on the road. The destination was what mattered.

One night, we pulled into a rest stop somewhere in Nebraska. As I walked into the bathrooms, I noticed a handwritten note taped to the door at eye level. I was pretty skeptical of things in those days and not exactly rollin' in the dough myself, but what I read on the note kept nagging at me. It stated that they were a family heading to Cheyenne, Wyoming. A job was waiting, but they had run out of money. Any help, in any way, would be appreciated. They were in the station wagon out front. I stood by the door and asked myself, how can I leave the bathroom without acknowledging their presence, their predicament?

I headed back to the car, told JB what I'd read and what I was going to do. I got a grocery bag, filled it with whatever food we had in the car - bologna and bread, apples and chocolate - and walked over to their car. I knocked on the passenger window where they waited. When she rolled it down the stench was almost unbearable. Piled high with clothes and whatever they could fit of their lives into the back of that station wagon, I knew in that moment that was the smell of poverty. Their two children sleeping in the back seat stirred as I spoke with them. I told them it wasn't much, but it was what I could do, then handed them the food and a twenty dollar bill. The father leaned forward toward me and said, "God bless you. God bless you." It turned into a chorus as I walked back to my car.

An epilogue, of sorts: Twenty years later and the number of families that are homeless, living in their cars and in charity sponsored motel rooms, has increased in vast numbers. On a segment of the BBC news last night, they showed families in Denver, CO. living in just such a motel. In talking with the parents of one of these families, they mentioned the lives they once had, not at all different than the lives you and I lead, and the lives they lead now. Christmas was not going to look anything like Christmas of the past. The mother wept openly, the father's eyes welled with tears as he talked. Despair filled that room. This should not be happening, not anywhere, especially not in what is still touted as the richest country in the world, the United States of America.

I wonder what the 1% are doing for Christmas?

Timeless images by John Vachon

I've decided to add a link. Jenn, at jennsthreegraces.blogspot.com, has some great ideas for gift giving on a small budget. I Love these! Thank you, Jenn!

Traveling Through the Night

2011-12-18T12:59:00.002-06:00

When I was a child I loved traveling by train (I might have mentioned this a time or two). Actually, any mode of transportation would have been fine. I just wanted to see everything I could see and trains seemed like a good way to do that. People don't travel by train as often as they once did and from what I hear from friends who do occasionally, it's an entirely different experience now. But, I still love the idea of traveling through the night, staying awake, as Roethke says, "To see the land I love."

"Night Journey"

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below the knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.

~ Theodore Roethke

I used to collect vintage postcard folders, seeking them out in every antique store I visited. These photos are of just a few of them.

I want to thank Cletis, at thebookofcletis.blogspot.com for reprinting my post, "Learning to Navigate," on his Creative Sunday.

The Spaces Between the Leaves

2011-12-17T08:29:00.003-06:00

Every day I spend some time with Buddy in a small section of woods and meadow on the southern edge of my land. There's a group of plantation pines there, with a little clearing. I can often see where deer have bedded down and Buddy, of course, can smell their lingering scent. While I'm out there, I spend most of my time among a stand of very old and very tall Norway pines that I refer to as The Seven Graces. When the sun is shining and I can feel its warmth on my face, it's hard to imagine a more perfect way to spend time, a better place to spend a part of each day.

My self-imposed assignment is to keep my mind still. Buddy's seems to involve smelling every inch of that acreage. I'm getting better at mine; Buddy mastered his early on. I look forward to this time when he is leash-free and, in a very real sense, so am I. The tethers I place on myself through emotions or false thinking seem to fall away; it's just the sun, the trees, the grass, the earth, Buddy and me. And it's pretty good company.

Yesterday morning, one of my sons shared a quote that had spoken to him, thinking it would speak to me, as well. He was right. I love the phrase "the spaces between the leaves," and all it implies.

As you embrace the Infinite Self, it will show you things that you have never seen before. Sometimes they are simple things like the spaces between the leaves of a tree or the silence between words in a conversation. Sometimes it shows you major stuff like the doorway between two worlds; suddenly you see the twilight non-world hovering between the in-breathing and the out-breathing of this Cosmic experience we call Life.
~ Stuart Wilde

Of course, Buddy isn't thinking about any of that. He's just breathing in and breathing out, experiencing life without any encumbrance of thought and with the pure joy of simply Being.

What a great little teacher he is. What fine sons I have.

A Place Called Sweet Surrender

2011-12-14T09:23:00.001-06:00

When I mentioned yesterday that maps are a current theme I thought I would share with you what brought this to the forefront of my thought.

Recently, I ran across images from a book by a woman named Marian Bantjes. She has compiled what looks to be an interesting investigation into her own personal map-making along with other images that she created, both pleasing and intriguing. She titled it I Wonder.

I am not familiar with the entire contents of said book, but I do have images of the maps that caught my attention. I found her name places amusing and more than once I did that inner nodding in recognition.

I think I've been to a few of these places, walked more than one of these streets, been temporarily lost on a road or two. You might want to click on this one to see the names. Perhaps you'll recognize a road or two yourself.

I got to thinking about making my own map, though I have been visiting the Valley of Indecision a little less frequently as of late. Ditto for the Sea of Misgivings. And (I say in no small measure), I've been trying to stay off the Road to Mischief. If you stay on that road too long it leads directly to a place called Mayhem. Oh, yeah. And no more running down the avenue. You know, the one of Astonishingly Stupid Decisions? I'm trying to stay on the roads less traveled now.

My current map would have a rather bucolic look to it compared to what it would have in the past. Perhaps a vintage map showing me where I've been, reminding me where I no longer want to go. It could come in handy. But, I've set sail on this river of Letting Go and if I spend too much time looking back I might miss all the signs pointing me to the cool places up ahead.

Check it out: www.bantjes.com

Learning to Navigate

2011-12-13T13:48:00.004-06:00

My love affair with all things cartographic seems to be a current theme, with maps playing a huge role in my life. I love almost nothing more than poring over one to see where I am, where I might be going, and the possible routes that will take me there. I try to turn the seemingly endless options over to the Universe, listening as I go, so I don't get caught up in driving down a dead end road, or on a side trip that leads to a dead end. In more ways than one. Been there. Done that. Really don't want to repeat it.

I do like what William Least Heat Moon describes as blue highways, and I do love those signs that say, "Pavement Ends." I have spent many an hour and even whole days driving the low maintenance roads that lead through our state forests. When I get through to the other side, yet another road waits for more discovery. It's the best kind of daytripping.

My explorations have often involved topographic maps. I like going into BLM offices and seeing what they offer. Canyon country requires a thorough perusal of one to get a feel for how long you can remain in a canyon before you run out of daylight. You want to be in and out before dusk descends. And it happens early in the canyons, surrounded by rock walls. I've never camped down in them, only at the top, waiting for daylight to show me the trail. I do think that would be a cool experience, though, cool being the operative word. One would need to be thoroughly prepared. Either way, learning to read these accurately is essential. I still have several topos that were constant companions during those explorations.

Maps played a big part in my travels out east, as well. Each trip out, I tried to take a slightly different route so that I might see as much of the country as possible. While still living in Santa Fe, I took a more southerly route, through states I'd only flown over or into previously. I covered a lot of great territory.

One trip out, I momentarily got caught up in the road, missed my turn and ended up going down a small road, through very interesting country, chock full of photo opps that I would have missed out on had I stayed with the original plan. No back tracking here. I just went straight on through to the next possibility. In doing so, I got some great photos of an old farm somewhere along the Delaware Water Gap. I blogged about it, of course.

Occasionally, I will stop to check the atlas. No GPS for me. I don't want the chatter and I don't want to miss out on opportunities that the Universe knows I need more than I do. I also like to just drive in the general direction, knowing I'll come out when and where I need to. Leaving things open to "chance," and the adventure inherent in an altered course of action, has led me to some pretty wonderful experiences. I don't intend to change that. Ever.

As I was writing this, I found myself thinking about Beryl Markham and her flying adventures, especially over Africa. I went looking for some words of wisdom from her and found this:

It was disconcerting to examine your charts before a proposed flight only to find that in many cases the bulk of the terrain over which you had to fly was bluntly marked: 'Unsurveyed.' It was as if the mapmakers had said, 'We are aware that between this spot and that one, there are several hundred thousand acres, but until you make a forced landing there, we won't know whether there is mud, desert, or jungle -- and the chances are we won't then!'
~ Beryl Markham, West with the Night

Whether talking about mapless roads, less-than-perfect flight plans, or uncharted terrain of the heart, her words encourage me to never be afraid of the "unsurveyed."

All images are borrowed from Google, except for the second one of my topographic maps.
Top image: Edward Frederick Brewtnall (1846 - 1902), "Where Next"

Crossing to Safety with Stegner

2011-12-11T07:09:00.000-06:00

Sometime during the early 1990's I discovered Wallace Stegner and went on a mission to read everything he'd ever written. I couldn't get enough of this man's writing. Some writers are like that. They have a style that just flies off the page and into the imagination with the greatest of ease.

I think it started with a book I found out west in Back of Beyond, a bookstore in Moab, Utah. It was titled, Crossing to Safety. I usually open a book at random to get the flavor of the writing and if it sparks something in me then I take a chance, often falling into it with great contentment at having found something I could sink my teeth into, if not my heart. Set in academia, this story of imperfect friendships that endure, despite all the reasons that time can create as to why they shouldn't, still rests on my shelf of favorite books.

For several months, I read one after another of his books until I was sated. Then, on a subsequent trip out west, I found a collection of his short stories in a bookstore in Santa Fe and my obsession began all over again. Each story was a perfect little slice of life. I read and reread them, and with each reading they settled into my bones a little bit more. I love the medium of the short story and how our imagination can create an entire world around one.

I haven't read any Stegner for some time now. He passed on in Santa Fe, NM, in 1993, as the result of a car accident. But I brought Crossing to Safety down from its shelf a few days ago and placed it on the stump next to my chair where I will consider reading it again. I'm a little concerned about what I might find. Some books are not meant to be reread; they are better left to the past.

I did, though, open it at random this morning, just to see what would turn up, and was pleasantly surprised. I opened it to where the main character is reading a letter from his wife. She's spending time at a summer house in Vermont with mutual friends, while he's spending his days immersed in English literature at the college where he teaches. In this passage she's writing to him about new friends that joined their circle the previous evening:

Comfort is terribly pretty and Lyle is one of the most fascinating men you ever met. You and he should hit it off. He comes from Arizona, and is a biologist, and works all over the world. He and Comfort were married right after he got his PhD. from Yale and they went straight to Alaska, clear up to Point Hope, and lived among the Eskimos...

Now he's given up arctic flora and is working on plants that have adapted themselves not to cold, but to drought. He's just back from several months in Libya, and he had all sorts of stories about caves with people and animals painted all over the walls, and a flint desert where the wind had teed up stones like golf balls, and when you looked , you could see that every stone was a tool left from a neolithic civilization that died thousands of years ago. I swear his clothes smelled of camel-dung fires....

Perhaps it was the reading of Stegner that prodded me into going out and having my own adventures, which include spending several years in the SW, exploring canyons, photographing ruins, and meeting some pretty interesting people along the way.

I found these photos tucked inside the book:

Doorways I fell in love with at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, NM. (another copy of this photo found its way into my post, "Never Met a Door I Didn't Like").

Me, next to my first ruin, taken in SE Utah in the early 1990's.

And this one, taken at Zippel Bay State Park, in northern Minnesota, around the same time period. I love old fence lines with wildflowers.

The Unbearable Sweetness of Being

2011-12-10T08:47:00.007-06:00

This morning, Buddy woke up first and sat next to me so I would know he was there. I reached out to pat his head, then slowly emerged from my nighttime cocoon. Perhaps he knew before I, that something was happening outside and we needed to be present to it. No, not the sunrise. It was too early for that. It was the moon being eclipsed and it had already started. As I stepped out onto the porch in the cold, dark morning air, I could see it sitting low on the horizon. I knew I had at least a half hour to watch the darkness spread across its face.

Just as I wished I could call Coleman to remind him (my son who also loves these celestial events), the phone rang. I ran inside, and it was him, calling to tell me! We hung up quickly so we could stay present to what was happening. I walked back outside to the apple trees beneath my kitchen window, the place where so much seems to happen, and got still, very still for a few minutes. As I stood there quietly watching the changing face of the moon, I recalled a Camus quote I had written in a notebook a few nights ago:

She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane static life, the lone languish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole body against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising, gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth.
~ Albert Camus

As the eclipse slowly covered more of the moon, I lay down under the bare branches of the birch tree, against the shadowy, dark roots spreading beneath it, closed my eyes and felt the cold earth against my back. I could almost sense the movement, the slow tilting away, as the moon fell below the horizon and out of sight, leaving the total eclipse to those further to the west.

Note: The title is taken from a wonderful Milan Kundera novel titled, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, about two men, two women, and a dog, in the Prague Spring of 1968.

Image: "Fantasy II" by Joseph Cornell

Jack's Rule #3: Try never get drunk outside yr own house

2011-12-08T21:47:00.001-06:00

A few days ago, I dug out Jack's Rules of Spontaneous Prose. I hadn't read them in awhile. It was fun to get the flavor of his vision and writing again. I have a few favorites among them, but they seem meant to be read as a whole. I'm going to keep them around, pin them to my bulletin board, let them remind me now and then to let go and just write.

Jack's Rules of Spontaneous Prose

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening.
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house.
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language and knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored and Angeled in Heaven

~ Jack Kerouac

I Can't Move This Thing Alone

2011-12-07T21:00:00.001-06:00

Been thinkin' about friendships, those that are new, and those that have stood the test of time, inexplicably transcending some very challenging circumstances, those that seem to transcend time itself, as though they've always been, and those that have fallen prey to poor communication and the shortcomings that seem to be part of being human. There simply is no understanding, and certainly no explaining, the human heart. But that didn't stop me from lying in bed early this morning, attempting to make some sense of it all.

Anyway, I didn't arrive at any conclusions, but I did hear this new Leonard Cohen song a few days ago, and I just had to share it with you. I particularly love these lines:

Show me the place.
Help me roll away the stone.
Show me the place.
I can't move this thing alone.

Friendship of the best kind: together, we roll away the stone.

Here's Leonard Cohen: Show Me the Place

Tabula Rasa

2011-11-20T14:18:00.000-06:00

Taking some time, clearing the slate....

All is well. See you soon....

"Sibyl with Tabula Rasa" by Diego Velazquez (1599-1660)

At Odds with Circumstance

2011-11-16T17:13:00.001-06:00

"What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance." Theodore Roethke

There was a time in my life when I willingly embraced those things that both intrigued and frightened me. I was looking for the deeper meaning, always looking over the edge to get a glimpse into the darkness, the place where I thought all the answers to all the secrets were kept. One could say I was looking for Life in all the wrong places.

It did lead to some interesting experiences and people, and I have come to see that time as an invaluable precursor to what lay ahead, to the life I've come to know. I have tried to live my life, since that time, in the light of day, in an openness that doesn't allow for secrets to take hold, nor for shades of meaning to cloud my judgment. It's a good way to live and makes everything so much easier. Living with my cards on the table, and letting the chips fall where they may, has brought with it a sense of liberation that in and of itself brings deeper meaning, and with it a light, and a light-ness, that provides reliable guidance, with far surer footing.

And, what does this have to do with anything? Today, it seems to have to do with Theodore Roethke.

Roethke was no stranger to the darkness. He walked the edge many times during his life. For that very reason, I have wrestled with him for many years, never certain if I wanted to pull him into my circle of imaginary friends who just happen to write good poetry, or keep him at a safe distance where I can look, but not touch, at least, not too much, or too often. You might not have the same response to him, but with some poets I need space between their words and the ideas they emulate, or I feel cornered. And, I've never been good at feeling cornered. Plath and Sexton, Berryman and Bukowski come to mind. So, I take my Roethke slow and measured, a few lines at a time, sort of feeling my way through to the end.

In my first reading of this poem, I felt as though I was drowning in dirt. But I pushed through, turning his words over and over, mulling and pausing, mulling and pausing, and I found this: they are rich and dark, with a certain mustiness that smells and tastes like the first carrot I pulled from the earth, all those years ago, carelessly brushing off the dirt before taking that first delicious bite. And this: despite the darkness, a little sliver of light comes through. That, for me, is poetry of the best kind.

"In a Dark Time"

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood --
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks - is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is --
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I ?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

~ Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke, above, won many awards for his poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for The Waking.

For more information: www.poets.org/troet/

Painting: "Roots," by Frida Kahlo

Living at Lonewolf

2011-11-12T19:23:00.002-06:00

My friend, JB, from Moab, Utah, has created a great little video using images from Lonewolf, my home. They're all photographs I've taken during the last year and a half and used in various posts. You might recognize some of them. I turned the images over to him, he pulled them all together and chose a beautiful song to accompany them, "Women 'Cross the River," by Linda Ronstadt (written by David Olny). When I first watched and listened to it, it brought me to tears. Thank you, JB, for putting up with me all these years, for taking the time to really get to know me, and for liking me in spite of it.

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At the River's Edge

2011-11-10T15:30:00.001-06:00

It's a cold and gloomy day, with a smattering of snow on the ground. A quiet seems to have settled on everything. It feels peaceful and good.

Last night, while watching a few videos from one of my favorite albums, Leonard Cohen's "Ten New Songs," I was reminded of when I was a child and my father did some trapping of mink and ermine in order to make ends meet. We thought nothing of it. It's what men did to get enough money to put food on the table, maybe some women did, too.

I would sometimes ride along with him when he'd go to check his traps. He would park near a bridge, on the shoulder of a dirt road not too far from our house, and walk along the banks of a small creek. Sometimes he would return with nothing, sometimes he would bring home one or two and then he'd skin and stretch them out on small boards made for that purpose.

Later, when I saw them on the boards, a smidgen of sadness would pass through, but I never took it any further than that. Never gave one second of thought to the fact that they would more than likely become part of a lady's coat. When you're young, you sometimes fail to connect the dots. At any age, we can fail to connect the dots. The news, on any given day, can attest to that. And, well, the late 1950's weren't exactly enlightened times. I'm not so sure these are, either, but I'll try to stay on track.

Anyway, I certainly hold no judgment of those who trapped then, nor of those who do now. There are those who feel it's essential for wildlife management. I don't know enough about that to have an opinion even. I love wildlife, emphasis on the life. That's all I know. And, I didn't decide to post this video because of the trapping aspect, although it is taken from the foreign film, "The Last Trapper," but because I found it to be quite beautiful, a visual treat, and Leonard Cohen is always worth a listen.

Though I take my song
From a withered limb,
Both song and tree,
They sing for him.

John Vachon and the Bone Lady's Beginnings

2011-11-07T12:02:00.008-06:00

While looking over images taken by the Farm Security Administration photographers, I kept being drawn to those by John Vachon. So, I wasn't surprised when I saw his picture and felt a sort of kinship with him. This happens sometimes, both in person and through photographs. I did a little more reading about him and found that he was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, receiving a bachelor's degree from St. Thomas College in 1934.

A couple of years later, he went to work for the FSA in Washington filing the many photographs taken by people such as Dorothea Lange. This, of course, piqued an interest in photography. After spending his weekends on the streets of DC with a borrowed Leica, encouraged by folks such as Walker Evans and Arthur Rothstein, he joined the ranks of these noted photographers in 1937. The rest, as they say, is history.

As I was reading this, my imagination went to work creating a scenario where he would have driven by our farm, just off the highway, sometime around 1962, on his way to Bemidji where he took a photo of a used car lot with Paul Bunyan at the gate (yes, the photo was taken in 1939, we're pretending here). Paul Bunyan was a pretty big deal in Minnesota back when I was a kid, this larger than life, folk tale lumberjack. For several summers, we would ride the train up to Bemidji to visit our cousins for a few days, a visit which usually included an afternoon at the Paul Bunyan Amusement Park. We loved riding that train, just my sister, Jane, and I. My mother's second cousin was the conductor, so we had someone to look after us along the way. We rode those rails as the brave adventurers we imagined ourselves to be.

I like to think that Vachon, all those years ago, might have stopped in our parent's cafe that was just up the road from our farm, in yet another small town on the main highway that runs between St. Paul and Bemidji. Maybe he had a stack of my mother's pancakes for breakfast, or he'd come through in the evening and had supper, fried chicken being the calling card. It didn't matter that he'd moved out east long before that time. I placed him on that highway as a way to have him come to life for me. And he did.

I was taken back to an evening when I was probably around six or seven years old. My parents, in a very atypical moment, decided to go out for the evening. Where? I have no idea, but they were away and it was just we three younger siblings at home. Shortly after they left, we noticed that several cars seemed to be parked at the corner where our country road met the highway. It was so out of the ordinary that we started speculating about it, and in my little mind I started imagining the worst: our parents had gotten into a car accident and would never be coming home again. I sat on my sister's bed, peering through the round metal headboard and out the window that was closest to the scene on the highway.

After a time of no answers, the oldest of the three of us, Christy, who was probably 12, was dispatched to ride the bike, yes, The bike, up to the corner to see what was going on. When she didn't immediately return, my mind went into overdrive. I had not developed any coping skills for such an event. Fear was the driving force and it hit me pretty hard. I might have prayed, 'cause that's what we'd been taught to do, but it didn't seem to alleviate my fear and I wasn't close to anything that remotely resembled peace of mind. I watched and waited. Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, but was probably no more than half an hour, Christy returned, and our parents shortly after that.

We found out a bad car accident had happened just up the road and lives were lost. My parents had come on the scene just before arriving home, but had not been involved.

Some time later, I was up at the filling station on the corner, where my mom's best friend, Lu, and her husband, Hank, lived. I had become friends with her grandson, Michael, and together we would explore the woods behind the garage. It was there, in the woods, I saw the two cars with wrinkled hoods and broken windshields. One of them was a pea green color. Odd, isn't it, how the little details remain? This all came to mind when I was looking into John Vachon's life. Perhaps it was just the idea of him taking photos while driving around the countryside in a car from that long ago era, or the romanticized notion that he may have driven right by our farm those many years ago.

John Vachon went on to become a staff photographer for Life and then Look magazine, returning to Minnesota as a guest lecturer at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts shortly before his death in 1975. I love his photos of rural people and times, but, I have to say, his city scenes, especially those taken in the rain, jump out at me. There's something about city streets in the rain.... These photographs make me want to walk right into them, even with the rain coming down (especially with the rain coming down), on my way to a cafe, or a movie, perhaps "River of No Return," starring Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe, for which Vachon was the sole photographer while they were on location in Alberta, Canada.

And, although this all happened long after Vachon had completed his assignment for the FSA, we still would have made pretty good subjects for that whole rural poverty thing.

Yeah, that's me. The Bone Lady was beginning to form within.

All of the photographs, except for the one of me, of course, were taken by John Vachon throughout his career. None of his photographs are of people I know, but they could have been. These are among my favorites of his. They illustrate a time and place that sometimes seems like yesterday.

In Praise of Standard Time

2011-11-05T23:45:00.002-05:00

It's getting late. I'm fighting to stay up for just a little while longer, here at my kitchen table, where a very small celebration is taking place: Enya's Watermark is on the stereo, a glass of red wine sits on the notebook to my right, a thin volume of Mary Oliver's poetry is on my left. Buddy, a bit of a party-pooper, sleeps at my feet. We're coming to the end of daylight savings time and that's reason enough to celebrate this first Saturday night in November. When I wake up tomorrow morning I won't have to wait two hours for the first faint light to cross the field, then climb above the treetops. It will arrive, as expected, then depart in the evening, in perfect timing with the world. It will be daylight enough for me.

It is our nature not only to see
that the world is beautiful

but to stand in the dark, under the stars,
or at noon, in the rainfall of light,

frenzied,
wringing our hands,

half mad, saying over and over:

what does it mean, that the world is beautiful--
what does it mean?

~ Mary Oliver, from The Leaf and the Cloud

Painting: Vincent van Gogh's "Willows"

Everyone We Know

2011-11-04T15:48:00.004-05:00

"Moonlight" by Winslow Homer

This short video was made by Miranda July, the woman who gave us, "Me and You and Everyone We Know," a great little independent film from 2005. If you like independent films and haven't seen it, you should. It's funny, sad, and thoughtful, with just the right amount of quirky thrown in.

In this short, John C. Reilly is conducting a "survey" and Miranda is the first person to whom he asks the question, "Are you the favorite person of anybody?" It's a thought-provoking question with a quiet sadness to it. I found it on a blog I recently discovered, Isherwood Wildwalker's Wanderoke Musings. Wanderoke is a young widower who is putting his life back together one interesting blog post at a time. You can find him here: www.wanderoke.blogspot.com

Drawing from a Deep Well

2011-11-01T09:53:00.001-05:00

When I was a child, I pumped water from a well, on top of a wooden platform much like the one in the photograph. A few trees surrounded it, creating a sort of oasis in the summertime. I liked this chore, sometimes having to lean hard on the handle to draw the water up and into the pail. It would then sit by the porcelain sink in the kitchen, with a metal dipper hanging from its side. That water tasted so good. It was cold and clear.

"Though I speak with the the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail, whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

~ The Bible, 1 Corinthians 13

Photograph: Aroostook County, Maine, 1942, by John Vachon.

This Land is Our Land

2011-10-30T16:15:00.001-05:00

In my post yesterday, I mentioned the Farm Security Administration and the photographers they hired to raise awareness, as we've come to call it, about "rural poverty." Looking back at that time, and living on the edge of it myself during the mid-to-late 1950's, it seems redundant. There were no wealthy people in rural America, and very few middle-class. The rural areas consisted almost exclusively of farmers, and most weren't even in striking distance of the middle-class, let alone any semblance of wealth as it's measured by most segments of society.

Besides the photographs taken in black and white, which created a stark vision of these people and their way of life, the photographers also shot many photos in color, which put things in yet another perspective. These included other aspects of American life during this period in our history. A few years ago, the Library of Congress held an exhibit of these photos called, "Bound for Glory: America in Color." Last week, a friend sent a link to the Denver Post and its Plog, a blog dedicated to photography, which features the images shown at that exhibit. I'm including a link to that page, along with a few of my favorites. It's not just the subjects that speak to me in these photographs, but the colors, the compositions, and the stories they tell.

Here's the link to the Denver Post Plog and the photographs. They speak for themselves:
Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 – Plog Photo Blog

The photos (taken from color slides) and the photographers, in order:
A starch factory in Caribou, Aroostook County, Maine, 1940, by Jack Delano
Rural school children in San Augustin County, Texas, 1943, by John Vachon
Greene County, Georgia, 1941, by Jack Delano
Farm auction, Derby, Connecticut, 1940, by Jack Delano (Note the couple in the right foreground)
Woman at roundhouse giving a locomotive a steam bath, Clinton, Iowa, 1942, by Jack Delano
Welder in rail yard, Chicago, 1943, by Jack Delano
Assembling B-25 bombers, Kansas City, Kansas, 1942, by Alfred T. Palmer
The Caudill's, Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940, by Russell Lee
Juke Joint, Belle Glade, Florida, 1941, by Marion Post Wolcott

Note: remember that they can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Just me, Harpin' About that Homemade Hope

2011-10-29T11:15:00.004-05:00

Most of us are familiar with the iconic images that came from Dorothea Lange during her years as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (later known as the FHA). Walker Evans and Gordon Parks are also names that come up frequently in relationship to this time. There were several others who were also sent out to capture images of rural poverty in order to sell the New Deal. Politics being what they are and have always been, it's an interesting look at what has been done to carry a message out to the many.

This particular "marketing" ploy caught on more than some others, but not enough to convince the majority of farmers to become part of "collectivized agriculture." Yes, that was one of the less-than-modest proposals. The government wanted to round up farmers in large numbers, onto government owned land, where they would produce food, with the government controlling them through "suggestions" (read: rules and regs) offered by "experts" on what would be the most efficient and profitable for "all." When the farmers balked at this, wanting to own their own land and make their own decisions, they then made it possible to obtain loans for land, farm equipment, and new gadgetry, all at Very low interest rates. Is any of this sounding familiar? History having a tendency to repeat itself and all.

Anyway, farmers in droves signed up for their new farm machinery, ultimating in spanking new cabs, with heat and radios to listen to the farm report. Of course, these put them deeply in debt, things started to go haywire, and farms were auctioned off, by the banks that came to own them, in huge numbers. Add Monsanto (corporate greed run amok doesn't begin to describe this fiasco) to the mix and goodbye family farms.

Farming was not an easy life, but it was a self-reliant life, at least it was before greed took hold at every level. I understand the need for rules and regs when you're talking food for public consumption, I understand that if you're willing to sign on the dotted line you have to be willing to follow those rules and regs. Taking money from the government is not without rules, all part of the big plan. So, basically, we got collective agriculture anyway, just scattered around a bit more, allowing farmers to continue for awhile under the illusion that they actually owned their farms and had a say in how it was all going to go down.

Yes, I'm off on a tangent, and I don't know for sure why, but here it is. I started out just wanting to post some interesting images from that time (and I will, very soon), but today I need to vent. I realize there are so many ways of looking at this issue, that it's a very complicated one, and my approach is an emotional one, but it's another fine example of how we are sold a bill of goods by the government, all while thinking they're doing us a big favor.

The best way out of this is to return to small community thinking and doing. Buy local whenever possible, create your own sustainability right where you're at, and forge relationships with others who will help to create a support system that is unwavering, the only rule being "love thy neighbor as thyself," which has been said in one form or another in pretty much every spiritual tradition that's ever been. It's also a good thing to follow even without the spirituality thrown in. Ethics, pure and simple.

Anyway, here is the link that got me going, got me thinking (too much, perhaps) and put me here, in this place of consternation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Security_Administration

I know, this isn't exactly cheery stuff here, unless we take the possibilities to heart and head in the direction of that homemade hope I've been harping about for the past couple of years.

There. I think I'm done. For now. Plus, I've used up my quota for alliteration again, unintentional though it was.

Anyway, Wendell Berry, Kentucky farmer, writer, and all around good guy, says it better, and more succinctly, than I:

We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibilities that have been turned over to government, corporations and specialists, and put those fragments back together again in our own minds, and in our families and household and neighborhoods.

Photos of and by Ms. Lange.

The Rhythm of the World

2011-10-26T11:18:00.007-05:00

When the world seems a little more than just frayed around the edges, it helps to have a reminder of its inherent goodness, and to be carried away once again by its rhythmic beauty. Yesterday, my friend, Jeff (often referred to as JB), sent a reminder in the form of a video link that knocked my socks off. It's the trailer for a series by the BBC called, "Human Planet." It's an astonishing view of life and the best 3:33 I've spent in a long time. I'm betting you'll feel the same. If you've already seen it, perhaps you'll find it worth another look. The link takes you directly to the video where you can watch it on an expanded screen in HD. You won't be disappointed. Really. I think I can even promise this.

The same stream of life
that runs through my veins
runs through the world
and dances in rhythmic measure.

It is the same life
that shoots in joy
through the dust of the earth
into numberless blades of grass,
and breaks into tumultuous waves
of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked
in the ocean cradle
of birth and death,
in ebb and flow.

My limbs are made glorious
by the touch of this world of life;
and my pride is from
the life throb of ages
dancing in my blood this moment.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1913

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=2HiUMlOz4UQ&vq

Photographs by Timothy Allen. On his website, you'll find a link to a slide show of many more beautiful images from this series, plus some interesting advice about following your "enthusiasm."

http://www.humanplanet.com/timothyallen/2011/03/thank-you

The Heart of a Lion

2011-10-25T10:14:00.010-05:00

One spring morning in the mid-1960's, when I was about eleven years old, I woke up to a sound I had never ever heard before. It was the sound of my father crying, and not just crying, but sobbing. As far as I could tell, he was sitting at the kitchen table. Though I was two rooms away in a bedroom I shared with two sisters, in my young mind I could almost see him there at the table, head in hands, more distraught than I had ever thought possible. My mother was saying soothing things to him, with words I couldn't quite make out. It was still dark, which made the sorrow even more solid and hard to understand. Our father did not cry. What could have possibly made this happen? Life felt very odd to me at that moment, the world had tipped on its axis. I was lying in bed, with the blankets pulled up around me, and no idea what to make of this.

After the house had warmed a bit and things had gotten quiet,I got up and went into the kitchen. My father had gone out and my mother was there alone. I pretended to be busy getting a bowl of cereal or something when I asked her, in my usual vague manner - not feeling free to intrude upon their private lives - what had happened.

Our father had, a few days earlier, purchased several birds, some considered rather exotic. He was going to add them to our growing collection of animals and birds that would inhabit the wild animal park they were creating, which was opening sometime in May, fishing opener more than likely. My parents had named it Deer Valley, as it was set in a valley between two small but busy tourist towns near where we lived.

I knew Dad had carefully constructed a pen for these birds in a corner of the barn, waiting for slightly warmer weather to transport them to the park. I'm sure he felt absolutely confident he'd built it in such a way as to prevent any intruders from entering it. He was a very careful man. But, the night before, that pen hadn't stopped a mink or weasel from finding a way into the barn, digging far under the fence, and killing every single one of those birds.

I don't know if my father was terribly distraught because of the loss of the birds - their lives, which I know he valued, and the cost, which would have been a lot for us in those days - or because he couldn't get past feeling responsible for not hearing what surely must have been a ruckus in the barn. Later, we talked about how the dog hadn't even barked, which seemed unusual. He had, for reasons now lost to time, went out early, before sun-up, to check on them. I wouldn't doubt that, on some intuitive level, he already knew before he entered the barn.

As my mom and I stood there in the kitchen, it dawned on me that my dad was not invincible after all, that it was possible for him to hurt to the point of crying, that he could feel real pain over life's sometimes scarring circumstances. It was a hard thing for me, to see my dad in this new light, as a fully-realized human being. And in that moment, I wished it wasn't true, that the mink had not gotten into the pen, my father had not sat at the kitchen table in the dark in the early morning and sobbed, I had not heard my mother quietly talking to him in her attempts at making it hurt less, and that we could go back to the way things were.

But we couldn't, and we didn't, and life went on. It was not the last of my father's hurts over the care of these animals. But it was the first. And although our animals were not exotic animals - they were deer and bear, red fox, buffalo, and other native animals - you might feel we had no business keeping any such animals, and you would be right. A few years later, my father's new awareness took hold and he let the business go. I remember him telling me that he'd come to see the animals as his "relatives." He felt close to them and no longer wanted to be the keeper of the keys.

I thought about this last week as those exotic animals in Ohio met their death at the hands of men who would say they had no recourse, and were given the order to "shoot to kill." The whole thing left me feeling unsettled and with more than a few questions, especially after reading that the animals didn't roam much farther than a few hundred yards from their fence. Yes, I've read all the reasons why they felt they had to shoot. I'm fully aware of the reasons why they felt tranquilizer guns would not have been a timely and effective solution. But I'm still left with questions.

I understand the fear local residents must have felt, knowing some of the animals had escaped previously and knowing the terrible damage that they could inflict on their lives, but I so wish it could have been another outcome than death to those beautiful animals. The image of that lion lying there dead is heartbreaking. I know, I know, better this way than a human life lost, but I still can't quite wrap my mind around what happened. Eighteen of the tigers were Bengal tigers, which are dangerously close to extinction. Why was this man allowed to keep these animals?

My next question is this: if the man who kept these animals had been someone other than a man who'd had previous run-ins with the law (he had recently served a year in Federal prison for having unregistered weapons) say a local banker, doctor, lawyer, or other respected businessman, someone with whom local law enforcement would more than likely be on good terms, would they have looked for other ways to deal with this problem than just "shoot to kill?" Would they have handled it differently? Or did they perhaps, just perhaps, act out their frustration with this man by simply eliminating the animals? I'm sorry, but these are some of my questions.

In any case, these animals were killed through no fault of their own, but just by being the animals they were, and had always been. It's hard for me to accept. And it makes me very sad.

Here's Neil Young and "Ohio." I can't help but think it's connected. Everything is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkg-bzTHeAk

The top photo is from National Geographic. The others are from news sources in Ohio.

All Hands on Deck

2011-10-23T13:06:00.005-05:00

One of the things I try to do in order to avoid getting into a rut in life is listen to new music. It's music I might not look into, left to my own devices, so I'm grateful that my sons, Trevor and Coleman, who love music at least as much as I do, send me links to music they think I'd like. Without fail they're right, because even if it's not what I'd continue to listen to, I like knowing I've at least been introduced. Both of my sons are big fans of a man named Maynard Keenan, the genius behind the group Tool. Yes, genius. He may not be Dylan or Cohen to my age group, but for many in the younger generation, he fits easily into that category.

Although Tool, being a metal band, is not necessarily to my liking music-wise, I do appreciate reading the lyrics and developing an understanding of what this generation is relating to through music. Maybe three years ago now, Coleman and I agreed we'd each buy a CD we knew the other liked in order to discover music through the others eyes and ears. He asked me to buy "10,000 Days," by Tool and I asked him to buy "Modern Times," by Bob Dylan. I listened to it as I drove from Santa Fe to Minnesota in one of my visits home. It was an interesting opportunity for me as a mother to get inside my kid's head and see what was going on there. I was very happy with what I found. And although I did not convert him with the Dylan, I'm glad he gave it a try. He did like several cuts and what mother could ask for more?

Keenan is one of those multi-talented people who has developed a life around his passions. He has two other music projects, which create an interesting mix: A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, both of which are more alternative, rather than metal. No matter which one he is speaking through, he has some solid ideas around what's happening politically and culturally, as well as some very intriguing thoughts on metaphysics and spirituality. Then, there's his wine company, which I'll get to.

Last week sometime, Coleman sent a youtube video to me from Puscifer's new album, "Conditions of My Parole." The first time I watched and listened to it, I liked it. There's something about it that drew me in and, like many music videos, it has a nice visual payoff at the end, an ending that left me wondering even more about Maynard Keenan and his perspective on life. Sort of a Mad Max meets Noah and the Ark. At least, that's what I saw. I've promised myself I would do better at keeping an open mind and gaining some measure of understanding around those things that mystify me. This man might, at first glance, be dismissed as an odd duck, to say the least, but that would be an injustice. He has a lot to say, has chosen a variety of ways to say it, and I admire that.

Now, the wine. Keenan has developed a vineyard that has been producing consistently good wines, which have received high ratings from wine connoisseurs. I'm no connoisseur, but I'm thinking about ordering a bottle or two. I love what he's created in his site, Caduceus. Once you enter, you see a "book" that looks like an ancient script. After the introductory pages, you'll find several pages dedicated to the different wines he offers. Click on the corners and turn the pages. The descriptions are almost poetic and the whole thing is a fun read. It's accompanied by his song, "Indigo Children." www.caduceus.org I think it's just a very cool site.

See, wasn't that fun? Now, here's "Man Overboard." May I suggest you click on it and watch it in HD (720p) on youtube itself? Oh, come on, give it a chance. You never know, you might surprise yourself....

The Value in Remembering Katyn

2011-10-21T15:05:00.003-05:00

For the most part, I try to stay away from politically charged themes, so for the sake of continuing in that tradition, do you mind if we call this a movie review? It really is about a movie, which happens to be about an important story. It came up for me again today when I read where Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has made a statement regarding the slaughter of thousands of Polish men in the forest of Katyn in 1940. The news story states the number at 2,000. So, I'm left wondering if that's the official number that Russia is willing to apologize for murdering, or is that a misprint? Because the actual number is around 22,000. It included Polish officers as well as university professors and anyone else considered a part of the intelligentsia. They were, by orders from Joseph Stalin, executed one by one and then buried in a mass grave, with bulldozers doing the rest of that very dirty work.

Rather than show images from the excavation of those graves, I'd like to share a trailer for the film. Like so many foreign films, it deals with really tough subjects, but it does so in an atmosphere that constitutes some of the best cinematography one could find in film, which, in this case, serves to heighten the horror over what happened at Katyn. No, it's not so difficult to watch that one is left feeling manipulated, but it does underscore our terrible shared history. The key to films such as this is that one would hope it serves a greater good and that it would aid in not allowing history to repeat itself.

It follows the lives of four women who are impacted, each in their own way, by the arrest and eventual deaths of the men in their lives: brothers, husbands, fathers, sons. Directed by Andrzej Wajda, who is considered one of the finest directors we have, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008. To add even more gravitas to the film, not that it needed more, Wajda's own father was among those murdered in the Katyn forest. His story is a very personal one, indeed.

When I read the statement by the Russian foreign minister today, I almost got angry all over again. The carefully worded statement is filled with the kind of political rhetoric that still runs rampant. He said, "Russia is ready to consider a perfectly legitimate request to declare these people innocent." Huh? It kind of reminds me of President Obama's wording in his statement today regarding the complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by the end of the year - except for those who will be left to guard that monstrous multi-billion dollar fiasco built by taxpayers money, our money, called the American Embassy, another monument to American greed. Okay, okay, he said, "After nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over." Again, huh? I'm sorry, Mr. President, but that is not and never was, "America's war." It is and always has been a Bush/Cheney war and then it became Your war. So, please stop referring to it as "America's war." I take extreme umbrage to that bullshit. But, as they say, I digress.

"Katyn" is an excellent film, telling an important story, and if you like foreign films at all, I cannot imagine you would be disappointed - sad, very sad, maybe even mad at the ways that human beings can act towards one another, a story repeated over and over again right up to the present day, but you won't be disappointed in the film. I try not to give movie-going direction, but may I please offer one suggestion? Stay with the film even when the screen goes gray. It goes gray for a reason. Let that reason soak in. And, while you're staying with it, stay for the credits. I'm a big credit watcher. I think it's important that we honor all those who are part of films that matter. This one matters.

What the Dog Says

2011-10-20T18:28:00.005-05:00

This morning, while on an archeological dig through the ephemera of my life, searching for a possible post-related item, I ran across some poetry that a friend from Santa Fe introduced me to shortly after I arrived there. His love of poetry dovetailed nicely with mine, both of us having our favorites. During our occasional nights of poetry reading, he would sometimes bring out a poem by either William Stafford or Stephen Dobyns. When he ran across one he thought I would especially like, he'd make a copy of it for me to take home. So, while another idea percolates, I thought I'd share one with you that I saved from that time. I mean, who doesn't like a dog with good ideas? And who hasn't stared into the refrigerator late at night, "as if into the place where the answers are kept?"

"How to Like It"

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dogs says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder.
Fixed in his headlights, the eyes of animals
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a trailer truck lit up like Christmas
roars past and his whole car briefly shakes.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest a while before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept --
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

~ Stephen Dobyns

As I re-read this, John Updike's character, Rabbit Angstrom, came to mind, the night he went out for cigarettes and didn't come back. Maybe if Updike had provided a dog for his character, one capable of talking some sense into him.... Ah, but that would be a different tale.... Thank God for Buddy, who's pretty good at keeping me in line. Most of the time.

The dog says, Let's go into the kitchen. Let's eat All the cookies in the cupboard.

The Sound of My New Life

2011-10-18T10:57:00.005-05:00

Last night, sleep came easy and left early, so I was up again this morning well before first light. As I stood out in the yard, with silhouettes of bare-limbed trees all around the house that just last week were dripping with fall color, thoughts about the changes life has wrought formed around me. After being away for several years from this place where I grew up, I find I'm still growing used to being back, still settling in to a new sense of home. There in the dark, I could almost feel the movement of the universe itself, taking me further away from what was - the places I've been and the people I've known - and pulling me ever closer to the new. And though the cool night air was still hanging around my porch, I was warmed by this feeling. I knew, standing there at the edge of morning, "what's past is always prologue." *

Before I could see the headlights through the trees, I could hear the neighbor's truck as it crossed the bridge that leads to their farm. The now familiar rumbling has become a comforting sound. It's the sound of my new life.

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens with them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over the gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

From Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

*Paraphrased from Shakespeare's The Tempest

Paintings by Henri Rousseau (1844-1910)

How I Went to the PO to Buy Stamps and Got a Lesson in Art Instead

2011-10-17T07:40:00.000-05:00

Paying my bills by mail is something I don't intend to give up any time soon. I may be one of the last hold outs, but I want to see that paper bill in front of me, I want to keep track in a check book, and I want to put a stamp on the envelope before dropping it in that blue metal box, sending it out the old-fashioned way. I still even send a note or letter occasionally. The news that the postal service is in financial trouble is a tad troubling for me. I don't want to see it go by the wayside or be hijacked by a private corporation. I just want it to stay the United States Postal Service. Is that too much to ask? Time will tell, but I'm going to keep buying stamps.

Last week, I went to the PO and, as always, asked the postmaster what he had that was new and interesting. He spread out the sheets before me so I could take my pick. Among the choices were stamps to remind folks to Go Green, stamps to honor animated films like "Ratatouille," and stamps to honor Owney, the Postal Dog. Yes, the Postal Dog. There was even a stamp to honor Edward Hopper, with an image of his seascape, "The Long Leg," (oh yes, I nabbed that sheet). Then, there was one that sort of stopped me in my tracks. It had images of work by an artist I'd never heard of before, at least not that I recall. I paused briefly to take a look, and then, so as not to rile any folks behind me trying to hurry through the postal experience, scooped that one up as well, paid my money to the man, and went on my merry way, ready to learn something new. And from the post office yet.

Here's what I learned: Romare Bearden (1911-1988) was an artist who worked in a variety of mediums, including watercolors and oils, but became well-known for his collage work depicting the African-American experience. Four of them were chosen for the stamps. Wanting to learn more, I googled him as soon as I got home and spent some time familiarizing myself with his life and other images from his body of work. When speaking of his collages, which he felt brought together the past and the present, he said, "When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time." Enchanter in time. I like that.

You can google him, too, but here's a good place to start: www.beardenfoundation.org/artlife/biography/biography.shtml

Images of work by Romare Bearden depicted on the stamps:

"Falling Star"
"Prevalence of Ritual: Conjur Woman" (conjur is Bearden's preferred spelling)
"Odysseus: Poseidon, The Sea God - Enemy of Odysseus"
"Conjunction"

Photograph of Bearden by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964)

Swimming in the Sea of Dreams

2011-10-14T15:03:00.001-05:00

The wind is roughing things up a bit out there today. A panel on the tin roof of the garden shed has come loose and is moving back and forth in the wind. It rolls back, then comes crashing down on the rafters. It does this over and over like ocean waves breaking on the shore. I've made a note and tomorrow, when the wind has died down, I'll walk back there and find a way to nail it down again. There are a few odd jobs left before we move down the road toward winter.

Yesterday afternoon, I revisited a poetry site that Michael at RV0777.blogspot.com had mentioned to me. It includes many of my favorite poets: Mary Oliver, of course, David Whyte, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rilke and Rumi, along with many others. It also includes this woman, Wislawa Szymborska. I read through several of her poems and felt very drawn to her voice, what she had to say and how she said it, but this one stood out. It continues to grow on me, and has given me much to think about while I go about my day. I've asked myself a few questions in response to it. But first, the poem:

"Utopia"

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches entangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echos stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

~ Wislawa Szymborska
        (translation by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh)

The questions I posed to myself ran along these lines. I call them, 'What If.'

What if the sea into which we all seem to have plunged is really the Sea of Dreams? What if we've never really left that island, that island where all becomes clear? What if we're still standing on solid ground and have access to all roads? What if we're only dreaming in the Sea of Dreams and every day we can choose instead to live with the weight of proofs, eat from the Tree of Understanding (remember, it's straight and simple), as we sit beside the spring of Now I Get It?

What if the wind does, if we let it, dispel all doubts instantly? What if all the secrets of the world are explained in an echo, the echo we hear while swimming in the Sea of Dreams? What if we can choose to rest in the cave where Meaning lies and bathe in the Lake of Deep Conviction, swimming through Truth?   What if we really live in the foothills of Unshakable Confidence, sheltered by its strength, as we walk through the Valley of Obviously, among the Essence of Things?

What if the island is not uninhabited, but the "faint footprints scattered on its beaches" are really the suggestion of myriad ideas who still roam freely on this island? What if only in dreaming do we believe we've plunged into the depths of unfathomable life? What if all we have to do is wake up and realize we've never really left this island, that we can simply stand up on solid ground, still there beneath our feet? Look down. See those faint footprints in the sand?   What if they're yours?

Painting by Winslow Homer

Basking in the Goodness That's Life

2011-10-12T10:19:00.004-05:00

From the kitchen table, I can see Buddy's sweet little face, his chin resting on the arm of the couch where he lies. He's looking out the window, drifting in and out of sleep. For a moment, I wonder what he wonders. Does he have any need or desire to look beyond this perfect moment? Or is he just basking in the goodness that's life?

We were up early this morning, around 4:30, a light rain was coming down and dripping off the eaves as I stood under them, watching Buddy watch for movement in the dark beyond the gardens. One morning, we startled a doe and her two fawns as they made their way through the yard, stopping to munch on some greenery still growing on a trellis at the far end. A few days earlier, she had defiantly walked right past Buddy as she retrieved her wayward youngsters who had stopped by to help themselves to a few fallen apples. Sensing an attitude, he had repaired to the porch where he quietly watched as they walked down the driveway together, one of the fawns stopping long enough to greet a rabbit by the gate. Perhaps, this morning, he is recalling that interesting things can happen when we least expect them.

Last night, while dark settled in, I left the house and walked down the road towards the cabin to watch the full moon as it rose over the neighbor's field. The sky had suggested rain earlier, but it had blown over and the moon was shining down on the leaf covered road. As I watched it rise, something written by Wendell Berry came to mind:

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.

My photos: The old chicken coop with attached shed and the bicycle in the fall woods, which was resting there when I arrived.

Girl in the Woods

2011-10-08T12:11:00.000-05:00

Every time I look at this image, it grows on me. There's something about the way the girl is standing in the forest, so alone and small beneath the ancient trees.... I wonder, why has she gone into these woods? What is she considering, as she stands there on the forest floor, a world of fallen leaves beneath her feet? She's holding on to something. It appears to be a solitary brush and palette. Has she gone into the forest to paint? Is she somehow lost? Is the world confusing? Or has she found solace there?

The light coming through the trees, a gray-blue sky in the distance, a path winding its way between.... What was van Gogh trying to tell us? What did he see, what did he feel, when he painted her there, standing in the forest? Again and again I return to the brushstrokes of green on the tree behind her. I think of him, in that moment when he moved his brush across his palette, then, reaching out, left those four small strokes of color. It's been almost a hundred and thirty years, and they still make all the difference.

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood, past manhood and all the living and dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.

~ Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums

Vincent van Gogh, "Girl in the Woods," 1882.

Everything Lives Inside Us

2011-10-04T09:10:00.003-05:00

Three nights ago, after I had spent a good deal of time pouring over images of Katsushika Hokusai's prints, (which I quickly became enamored of), I dreamt about them. In my dream, I found myself living inside them. It was as though I had become part of the images, living a life set amongst these scenes with the people who inhabit them. We shared an unspoken communication, which made me feel deeply connected to them. There was nothing disturbing about the dream, just a sense of tranquility tinged with sadness that comes from knowing how tenuous life can sometimes appear to be. I was moved by their ability to remain quietly joyful.

Hokusai's most well-known piece is called, "The Great Wave off Kanagawa." It brings to mind the earthquake and tsunami that wreaked such havoc on Japan a few months ago. This past Sunday night on 60 Minutes, Bob Simon visited a town that had been pretty much obliterated by the tsunami, a town where entire families are unaccounted for and presumed dead. There were some horrendous images of its after-effects, including large boats on tops of buildings amid devastating destruction, but his conversation with a man who had lost everything, everything, and was still able to smile, captured my heart.

In the narration, Simon talked about how in Japan it's considered a weakness to allow severe emotions to take over one's life; they believe they have an obligation to put on a very brave face and maintain a positive attitude, and yes, there is a downside to this part of their culture, but I was still amazed at this man's resiliency. During the end of the segment, he pointed out where his house had once stood. There on its site a hydrangea bush had small green shoots pushing their way out of the rubble-strewn ground. He showed them to Bob Simon, pointed at them, and with a smile said, "This is hope... We are living."

When I look at Hokusai's prints, I am awestruck by the work involved in carving a relief in wood of what is really a mirror image, which is then used to create the print. It's an interesting process that I don't fully understand, but I've been doing more reading about it and find it intriguing. I've discovered I have an affinity for them, along with a desire to better understand his passion for this work. I see it in the meticulous and loving care he's given them and I can't help myself, I'm smitten.

I encourage you to click on each image to see a somewhat larger, clearer view of them and if you're interested in doing any further reading you might want to start with these:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokusai

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodblock_printing

There is No End to Seeing

2011-09-30T17:58:00.008-05:00

"Hokusai Says"

Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.

He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient.
Every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive --
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn't matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn't matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn't matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.

He says don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

~ Roger Keyes

Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese artist, painter and printmaker (1760 - 1849)

All photos were taken here at my home in the last two days.

The Grapes of No Wrath

2011-09-28T18:26:00.000-05:00

Remember how people used to buy ice cream in pails? I mean other people. Not you or I. Well, I'm glad they did, especially the folks who used to own this place. They definitely liked their ice cream in pails. She must have decided she didn't need them where she was going (no, she didn't die, she just moved to a condo in Iowa). No grapes to tend, no garden. I wonder if she ever misses either, or if she's just glad to be free of them....

Anyway, I'm loving those pails as they have been the perfect thing to use when picking grapes. I am happy to report, this year produced fifteen pails of grapes, and there are more we simply could not reach on top of the arbor. Coleman, my younger son, and I, picked yesterday morning and had the best time in that fall sunshine. While we picked grapes, we talked about life and planned for the wine. It was a perfect fall day. Since it's getting late in the season, I did a little pruning as we went. Next year it will be easier to get those on top.

Buddy and one of Coleman's dogs played in the leaves near us until they got hot and took shelter under the picnic table. Buddy liked having a play date and he absolutely adores Coleman. He is the picture of excitement when I even say Coleman's name. That dog knows good energy.

So, Coleman and his girl, Britta (speaking of good energy), are pressing the grapes and going through the process at their house. Coleman said the best part of making the wine is giving some bottles away after it's finished. Older son, Trevor, was over last weekend and said it would be fun to have a family vineyard. It does sound like fun, despite those family business pitfalls. It probably will never happen, but that doesn't matter, it's the idea that counts, not the manifestation of it. We're having a good time here.

And, since I'm on a Raymond Carver kick:

"There isn't enough of anything
as long as we live. But at intervals
a sweetness appears and, given a chance
prevails."

My photographs, before frost: underneath the grapevines, on the corner of the arbor, I discovered a head, well, a skull, now serving as a bird house, an animal skull (let's make that clear), but I couldn't ID it. Any ideas?

The Bone Lady lives!

Waking Before Sunrise

2011-09-25T20:05:00.003-05:00

This morning, just before daybreak, I was up and in my kitchen, working on losing some nameless, unrecognizable feeling I'd been carrying around the last few days. While the coffee brewed, I opened the drapes, ready for the light to show its face. Buddy moved from the bedroom floor to the green chair in the living room and then went back to snoozing. I sat at the table, picked up a book of poetry, then opened it at random to see what it had to say. The poet was Raymond Carver, and the book was his collected poems entitled, All of Us. This is what I found on page 157:

"Mesopotamia"

Waking before sunrise, in a house not my own,
I hear a radio playing in the kitchen.
Mist drifts outside the window while
a woman's voice gives the news, and then the weather.
I hear that, and the sound of meat
as it connects with hot grease in the pan.
I listen some more, half asleep. It's like,
but not like, when I was a child and lay in bed,
in the dark, listening to a woman crying,
and a man's voice raised in anger, or despair,
the radio playing all the while. Instead,
what I hear this morning is the man of the house
saying "How many summers do I have left?
Answer me that." There's no answer from the woman
that I can hear. But what could she answer,
given such a question? In a minute,
I hear his voice speaking of someone who I think
must be long gone: "That man could say,
'O, Mesopotamia!'
and move his audience to tears."
I get out of bed at once and draw on my pants.
Enough light in the room that I can see
where I am, finally. I'm a grown man, after all,
and these people are my friends. Things
are not going well for them just now. Or else
they're going better than ever
because they're up early and talking
about such things of consequence
as death and Mesopotamia. In any case,
I feel myself being drawn to the kitchen.
So much that is mysterious and important
is happening out there this morning.

~ Raymond Carver

Thank you, dear friend, for sending me the book of Carver poems. It had been on my internal wish list for the past few weeks. And then, there was the UPS man, walking up my driveway last Friday morning, package full of Raymond Carver poetry in hand, your gift note tucked inside: "He saw so much so clearly and, like Hopper, shattered all illusions."

Thank you. Truly.

Images from Tumblr and Google.

Dreaming on the Equinox

2011-09-23T17:52:00.007-05:00

In my dream, I'm looking for some money I've misplaced. I thought it was here, somewhere, but I've traveled three roads and am still not sure I've found it. It seems to be tucked inside this bank bag along with some checks. I look through it. The checks are not mine, but I'm pretty certain the money is. It doesn't seem to be much, forty, maybe sixty dollars. I don't want to be thought a thief and so I hesitate. I think I should leave, go back, return on the same road I'd just been down. But when I look back, the road has narrowed. It's only a sandy trail with big rocks here and there, and bits of grass along the sides. It's traversable, but only by foot.

Then, you are there, telling me you'll help me find it. As you leave to look for it, the sun is shining down on you. I watch you go.

When you don't return, I go looking for you and find myself standing outside your office door. I knock, thinking the door is shut. But when I knock, it opens. You jump up, startled, not sure what to say. We don't say anything, but I know you've forgotten, forgotten that I've been waiting, that you said you'd help me look. A beige cable-knit cardigan is hanging over the back of your chair. I think, 'How odd,' it's not the kind of sweater you'd have worn before. The room is empty except for your computer on your desk, your chair, and a little side desk that sits beside it. Nothing hangs on the walls. No art, no memorabilia. They are gone. Only brown undistinguished paneling. No books resting where once the shelves were full. They are all gone. It's just you and your computer.

You look tired. You look older. You've lost a lot of weight. We stand there, silently looking at each other, the desk between us, not certain what to say. And then, you look away.

Image: Edward Hopper's "Stairway at 48 rue de Lille Paris"

The Falling Leaves Drift By the Window....

2011-09-22T20:20:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, very early in the morning, we will experience an equinox, "equal night," then quietly move into autumn. For me, nothing says 'autumn' like this song and no one sings it better than Nat King Cole.

The Last Rose of Summer

2011-09-20T18:37:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, while I was out collecting zinnias for next summer's seed, I noticed that, despite all the other flowers having been hit hard by several nights of frost, a small bud was forming on one of the smaller rose bushes, a tea rose, I believe. So today, I went out and took its picture. A light rain was falling. There's something about a rose balancing beads of rain on its soft petals....

"It is Raining on the House of Anne Frank"

It is raining on the house
of Anne Frank
and on the tourists
herded together under the shadow
of their umbrellas,
on the perfectly silent
tourists who would rather be
somewhere else
but who wait here on stairs
so steep they must rise
to some occasion
high in the empty loft,
in the quaint toilet,
in the skeleton
of a kitchen
or on the map--
each of its arrow
a barb of wire--
with all the dates, the expulsions,
the forbidding shapes
of continents.
And across Amsterdam it is raining
on the Van Gogh museum
where we will hurry next
to see how someone else
could find the pure
center of light
within the dark circle
of his demons.

~ Linda Pastan

A New American Renaissance?

2011-09-18T17:26:00.000-05:00

I invite you to spend just 3: 39 watching this video, the trailer for a new film premiering on 11-11-11. Click on the link. Then, if you're so inclined, I'd like to hear what you think.

http://www.thrivemovement.com

For the Love of Dennis

2011-09-17T14:07:00.004-05:00

For as long as I've been on this planet I've loved words. You probably have, too, that's why you're here, in this community of writers, expressing yourself in your own unique way. We all love words, especially the written word. I followed along over my mother's shoulder as she read to us, learning to read almost by osmosis. I could read well before I ever went to school. It just seemed to come very easy for me.

In the first grade, I recall a boy named Dennis who, when called upon to read aloud, struggled so hard over every syllable that I think I held my breath, praying him through, 'til he was mercifully released and the next child was called on. I even wondered, when it came to my turn, if I should pretend to struggle, so he and others who fought their way through a sentence would feel better. It made me sad. It seemed unfair.

In second grade, again Dennis sat across from me and we silently struggled together, side by side. Whether it was reading, or math, whatever the subject, he had trouble. He seemed to move through life almost painfully alone. A strange thing, considering, but understandable now from the distance of over fifty years. He came from a family of fourteen kids. Perhaps that was the first time I recognized one can feel very isolated and alone even in a crowd, even in the midst of family and friends.

It was early in the year when Mrs. Tonsager handed out new reading books and I got so caught up in reading that I was completely unaware we had moved on to handwriting. When I finally looked around and saw everyone else working on their cursive, I quietly lifted the top of my desk, slid the book inside, pulled out the cursive handbook and went to work practicing my loops. I've wondered why Mrs. Tonsager never said a word to me. She surely saw me there, two desks from her desk, reading instead of writing, completely absorbed in the book. Perhaps she knew the value and allowed for it.

In the spring, we all took part in something called Iowa Basic Skills Tests. Mrs. Tonsager would call each child up to her desk to discuss the results of their tests. When it was my turn, I stood next to her desk as she told me I was reading at an eighth grade level. I wasn't sure what that meant, but she seemed very pleased and I supposed I should be, too. I quietly returned to my seat. But, in that moment, the world opened before me and all the potential that books brought with them came flooding in. I never looked back. I read nonstop year after year.

One day, sometime during that year, I noticed Dennis was sitting with his face in his hands and quietly crying. I didn't know what to say. A boy was crying and I was completely lacking any skills that would allow me to comfort him. I did ask why, but he wouldn't answer me. I couldn't tell you what happened and in what order, but the teacher came back to Dennis' desk, knelt down beside him and asked what was wrong. I heard him tell her, through his tears, that he'd forgotten to wear a shirt. He was wearing only a white t-shirt at the time, something I'd given no notice to, but to him it might have been akin to my recurring dream of hiding behind the door to our classroom wearing only my slip. No child is immune to feelings of vulnerability, so I don't know why I'm relating that story and tying it into reading, but they seem to go together in my childhood, his struggle with reading and with life.

A few years later, I became friends with two of his slightly older sisters, Trisha and Kathy. We spent many summer days riding horses, laughing ourselves silly, and forming the Beatles Bifocal Club, something I've alluded to earlier. I never made friends with Dennis. He seemed to disappear, as though he was in some sort of self-imposed exile. I have no idea what happened to him. I lost track of their family years ago.

It seems to me, looking back across the distance from childhood to here, that "no child left behind" should apply to their emotional well-being rather than their academic progress. I believe the two are inextricably linked. Surely, we can do better, for a boy named Dennis and all the others since. Somehow, it all seems tied together. It's not a magical answer, but being able to read and being encouraged to read opens up a world of infinite possibilities, raising one's perception of their place in the world along the way.

Paintings by Winslow Homer

Playing Dress Up

2011-09-15T13:30:00.004-05:00

Playing dress up wasn't a big part of my childhood. Mom wasn't an evening gown and high heels kind of gal. She lived in a cotton dress world, to borrow a phrase from Nick Lowe, especially during those early years. No, we just played ourselves, little kids running around in the woods and down endless dirt roads.

It came to me very early this morning, while reading a poem by Mary Oliver, that those years not only gave rise to my love of nature, but they also helped to shape my spiritual life. I think a big part of this return to the land of my youth is about remembering that, recalling who I am, with spirit firmly at the center.

Here's Mary, who never fails to help me remember.

"Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)"

The spirit
   likes to dress up like this:
     ten fingers,
   ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
   at night
     in the black branches,
        in the morning

in the blue branches
   of the world.
     It could float, of course,
       but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
     it needs
        the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
   the oceanic fluids;
      it needs the body's world,
        instinct

and imagination
   and the dark hug of time,
     sweetness
        and tangibility,

to be understood,
   to be more than pure light
   that burns
        where no one is --

so it enters us --
   in the morning
   shines from brute comfort
    like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
   lights up the deep and wondrous
   drownings of the body
    like a star.

~ Mary Oliver

Here's Nick Lowe and "True Love Travels on a Gravel Road."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4I21_vooWI

Image: "Icarus" by Henri Matisse

Chasing the Light Around the Crab Apple Tree

2011-09-13T18:32:00.002-05:00

I've been fixating on the crab apples that have fallen from the tree just outside my kitchen window. I've walked all around them, taking their picture from every angle imaginable, and I still don't think I'm done with them. I love the way the sun peeks through the clouds and around my shoulder, highlighting individual apples, how it lights up the grass lying over and around them as the grass cradles a few inside its shade, the shadows the light creates as it falls here for a second, and then there for a second, silhouettes of boughs hanging overhead. I just can't seem to get enough of these little beauties.

I have spent two days chasing the light around that crab apple tree, never failing to see something new, something different.

I've been having a very good time.

Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.

~ E. B. White

An Evening in Utah with Edith Piaf

2011-09-11T14:12:00.003-05:00

In the spring of 2004, late April, I was in Bluff, Utah, with my friend, JB. Located in the southeastern corner of the state, it's a tiny town, with a population of about 300 people. It sits next to the San Juan River, among what has to be some of the best hiking on the planet: countless red rock canyons to explore and play in, long afternoons to sit quietly under those endless blue skies and just listen, surrounded by a profound sense of history.

On this particular spring day, despite being in what seems like the middle of nowhere, we decided to celebrate my birthday by going to dinner. You might think a town of this size would be bereft of possibilities. Not so. The Cow Canyon Trading Post, a sprawling old adobe home, sits alone at the edge of town. Besides the art gallery it contains, there is a restaurant unlike anything anyone could ever imagine possible in this little corner of Utah.

Offering a small menu of exceptional quality, prepared by a talented and skilled chef, our meal that evening was something beyond delicious. Truly remarkable. But, it was the ambiance that made it so very memorable.

We were seated on a porch in the back, with floor length glass windows on three sides. It had a smooth stone floor, high-backed wooden chairs, and a table with turned legs and fading yellow paint, the kind you might find in an old farmhouse. A simple bouquet of fresh flowers sat on the table, next to the adobe wall. From there, we could see her wash on the clothesline, blowing back and forth in the breeze, budding greenery just beyond it, and then, the canyon walls shining in the evening light. We sat quietly. It was a perfect spring evening.

As the wash on the line gently lifted and fell, lifted and fell, we could hear the exquisite sound of Edith Piaf singing, "Non, Je ne regrette rien." I Regret Nothing.

If I'm going to remember a moment in my life, it's going to be That moment.

Here is Edith Piaf, the Little Bird: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Kvu6Kgp88

The images are mine. The card is set against a piece of pottery that JB made for me, a different year, a different birthday. I'll tell you about it sometime.

Thank you,Cletis, for highlighting one of my posts today at your place: thebookofcletis.blogspot.com

Sweeter Than Wine, Vintage 1942

2011-09-08T11:00:00.001-05:00

Sometime last week, before heading to town to run some errands, I had a question concerning something or other, and, as I have done from time to time, I wondered what my dad would do, so I asked him. Almost immediately an answer popped into my head that felt exactly like what my dad would have said. I think I already knew the answer, but was looking for affirmation.

Not content with my affirmation, I decided to ask for confirmation. As is often the case, my answer arrived via the radio.

But first, some background.

When I was young, somewhere in my early 20's, I created a scrapbook of photos, along with song lyrics and poems that I knew my mom liked, and gave it to her for Mother's Day. One of the pages held a photo of Mom and Dad the summer they met. It's taken outside my grandparent's house, my mom's parents, shortly before they got married.

Years later, after I came along, I would sometimes hear my dad singing Jimmie Rodger's, "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine." Not the entire song, just a verse or maybe the chorus. Dad was a dreamer, but he was also a doer and a practical man, not prone to outpourings of affection. Oftentimes, his affection came in the form of music. Both of my parents had great voices and loved to sing. Anyway, through the years I came to see it as their song. In the scrapbook I made for my mom, I placed that song next to their photo.

When I was heading down the highway last week, looking for some verification of what I thought was an answer from my dad, I turned on the radio and that song immediately came on. I hadn't heard it in years. Many, many years. I don't know if I call these things up, or the Universe drops them in my lap as a way of saying, 'keep moving, you're on the right path,' but it happens often, quite often through music, and I can't see it as just coincidence. There are millions of songs out there and I'm just a speck among them. Whatever it is that happens, I like it. It makes me feel connected to the vastness of the universe.

I also have a million stories I could tell about these two people. My cousin once said, after both had passed, that now the universe was right again, these two twin souls were reunited. I don't know if that's true, but there's no reason to believe it's not true. In a few days, my parents wedding anniversary comes 'round again. They didn't have a perfect marriage, I'm not sure such a thing exists, but they created together one beautiful life and left me so many things of great value. I will be eternally grateful for the day that picture was taken.

Here's Jimmie Rodgers and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kg1GEOg8k8

Note: There were two Jimmie Rodgers, one of train and yodeling fame, and this one. This song went to #3 in the fall of '57.

Photos: Mom and Dad on that day, and one of my sisters and me, peeking out the window of the garage, several years hence. Left to right: me, Chris, and Jane.

Buddy Consorts with Martha and Agnes

2011-09-07T15:11:00.003-05:00

This morning, shortly after commenting to Grethe (Thyra) that Buddy had not yet chewed my maps and guidebooks, I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. While I was doing so, Buddy was apparently busy checking out the notebooks on top of the table. I had not yet realized he could see the top of it and, well, while the cat's away the mice will play.

When I came back out to the living room, he knew his goose was cooked. He led me on a chase, with a piece of paper in his mouth. I had not yet been able to discern which piece of paper, but from the looks of the notebooks scattered on the floor, I knew I wanted it back in one piece. He ran behind the chair, thinking it might be a good spot to get out of Ma's reach. When that didn't work out according to plan, he made a mad dash for the couch. From there, he jumped on top of the ottoman, a sort of King's X, he likes to think. King's X, as if.

As I got within reach, back behind the chair he went, where he dropped the piece of paper and then made a quick retreat to the kitchen. He now lies under the kitchen table, pretending to be asleep. No curtain call for him. He's probably familiar with the adage "let sleeping dogs lie."

Anyway, this was on the piece of paper he found most inspiring:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And, if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.

~ Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille

A regular Baryshnikov he is, that Buddy. He clearly knows what the urges are, even if he's not always aware of the motivation. And, it's impossible to stay mad at him for more than a second or two. Besides, I rather like having a dog that's well-read. Even if he leaves the pages a bit, uh, dog-toothed.

Shedding More Light on Mr. Hopper

2011-09-05T22:35:00.006-05:00

Since posting my Edward Hopper piece, I've been doing some thinking, mostly due to a few comments that forced the issue. I talked in the post about how my topic was light, as well as the passing of summer, but I lost some sleep last night because I felt a nagging sense that something was amiss in this post. I woke up early this morning, very early, trying to get to the bottom of that twinge of unknowing. Then, I realized I'd given the wrong title to one of the paintings. So, I got out of bed, went to the computer, and made the correction (just a little OCD). Since I was there, I read and published the newly posted comments. Then I went back to bed.

And then, I really couldn't sleep. A comment left by Cletis, who talked about how he found the Hopper paintings "terrifying" and "upsetting," left me unsettled. Maybe, just maybe, I needed to take a look at this.

Mmmmm....

Well, I have to admit, a part of me certainly understands that someone could, indeed, find them unsettling. It's not an emotion I'm entirely unfamiliar with as it relates to these paintings.

And then there is George's comment, which arrived this afternoon, in which he talks about Hopper's characters, who seem to have a propensity for, "wondering...endlessly wondering what is out there, how one person, so seemingly insignificant, fits into the larger scheme of things," noting that he found it reassuring that others are also wondering.... And that got me wondering, mainly because I could relate to it.

So then I had to ask myself, why did I focus on the light? Am I unwilling to look at the shadow? I know the shadow has no power except that which I assign to it, but am I choosing to simply ignore even the idea of a shadow? And if so, at what price?

When I was working in the art gallery , one of my favorite clients came in and we somehow started talking about Edward Hopper. He had just finished reading a biography about him, and he told me that Hopper and his wife, Jo, according to the biographer, fought like cats and dogs, regular knock down, drag outs. If this is true (I'm not entirely convinced biographers can remain objective about their subjects), then it goes a long way towards explaining the sense of isolation he seems to have felt. And, although his paintings appear to be about light and shadow, the shadow seems to be the real subject of his work.

Anyway, I may or may not ponder further. My inclination is to just keep moving. All will be revealed. In the meantime, here is a Louis Jenkins prose poem that seems rather apropos. If you recall, he's the poet from Duluth whom Mark Rylance quoted in two Tony acceptance speeches. I've discussed my fondness for Mr. Rylance previously.

Here's Mr. Jenkins:

"Diner"

The time has come to say goodbye, our plates empty except for our greasy napkins. Comrades, you on my left, balding, middle-aged guy with a ponytail, and you, Lefty, there on my right, though we barely spoke I feel our kinship. You were steadfast in passing the ketchup, the salt and pepper, no man could ask for better companions. Lunch is over, the cheese-burgers and fries, the Denver sandwich, the counter nearly empty. Now we must go our separate ways. Not a fond embrace, but perhaps a hearty handshake. No? Well then, farewell. It is unlikely I'll pass this way again. Unlikely we will all meet again on this earth, to sit together beneath the neon and fluorescent calmly sipping our coffee, like the sages sipping their tea underneath the willow, sitting quietly, saying nothing.

~ Louis Jenkins

Images: Edward Hopper's "Compartment," "Empty Room," "New York Movie" "Room in Brooklyn," and "Nighthawks."

Edward Hopper and the Passing of Summer

2011-09-04T16:55:00.002-05:00

For the past week, Edward Hopper has been paying a visit to my inner life. I think it's the play of light that tells me summer is waning and fall is on its way. I have felt it in the air for well over two weeks now. One day it's distinctly summer and the next the air is tinged with an indescribable feeling of transition. We've made the turn into shorter days and softer light. A breeze has taken the few leaves that have fallen and created a small pool of gold and brown under the crab apple trees outside my kitchen window. There is the soon-to-be last mowing, the final apple picking, the grapes that are almost ready.

Hopper stated in an interview, "Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world." When I see his paintings, I get the sense that something has just happened, or is about to happen, that we are viewing, in an almost voyeuristic way, the emotional details of someone's life, details usually kept hidden from the outside world.

Many of his subjects seem to be in isolation, as though disconnected from others, from life. One gets the distinct feeling that Hopper himself felt disconnected, his life lacking in any true intimacy.

Even his houses carry that feeling of being disconnected, adrift on some nameless sea.

I no longer feel that sense of isolation from the rest of the world, a feeling I often grappled with in my early years and throughout the 1980's. When I went to the Picasso exhibit at the Walker Art Center I purchased a postcard depicting Hopper's painting, "Seven a.m." It immediately spoke to me, as though I was calling up some long buried memory of a time and place I once inhabited, perhaps inhabit still somewhere in this vast universe. Despite the feeling of melancholy it evoked, I also began to feel a pull towards a greater connection with something, to other souls who were seeking connection, a sense of place in the world.

Edward Hopper's wife, Josephine, who was often his model, was also a painter. As with many artistic couples in the past, it was usually the woman who was relegated to a lesser position in the art world, who took the back seat, whose work somehow never made the splashy entrance into our consciousness. Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner come to mind. Perhaps that's why I'm drawn to Hopper's painting of, "Jo in Wyoming," in which he clearly is viewing her as being in the front seat, painting. But, I'm getting off topic.

So, what is my topic? I don't think the topic is melancholy. I don't feel melancholy at all. It seems that doesn't play a role in my life nearly as much as it used to. I think the topic is light. I have been noticing often this summer how it plays against the curtains as it falls through the window, how it moves, creating the shadows that lie on the green lawn, and now, as we move through these final days of summer, it often hides behind the clouds only to emerge a short while later and it does this all day, until dusk takes hold.

Last night, after visiting with a friend on the phone and going over the summer, what it brought for both of us, and just as valuable, what it didn't, I stepped outside and onto the lawn in my bare feet, looked up at the Big Dipper hanging just above the treetops, and said goodbye to summer. Perhaps a tad premature, but I felt it was time. Somewhere in the distance, fireworks were going off.

Will I miss the intensity of the summer light? No, I can't say that I will. I have long preferred the fall. It's my favorite time of year. I'm actually looking forward to the projects I'm lining up for the winter. I'm going to go back to practicing the mandolin and break open those watercolors that I bought last year, try my hand at what I know is a difficult medium to master. We shall see what happens. Mostly, I just want to continue to stay present to my life and appreciate every single day, watching the light as it moves through the seasons.

While I thought about this post - Edward and Josephine, summer light and falling leaves - Joan Baez' song, "Diamonds and Rust," came to mind. She and Bob Dylan went their separate ways, each to follow their own life, through their own art. There are brown leaves falling and snow in his hair, but it was the line about Washington Square that gave me permission to post this, bringing together what might appear at first to be disparate subjects. Edward Hopper died in his studio near Washington Square back in May of 1967. Josephine followed him ten months later.

Here is Joan:

When It's Mushroom Picking Time in Minnesota

2011-09-02T17:42:00.012-05:00

Back in the Eighties, I had a husband who knew his mushrooms, at least four different kinds (no, there's no joke here), and one of our favorite things to do in the fall was head out into the woods to do some pickin'. Rotten logs on the forest floor were prime real estate for those honey capped beauties. Depending on the year, they could really be in abundance.

One of those years, a farmer we knew had a pasture full of them and we were invited to come over and pick to our little heart's content. The cows were guaranteed not to bother us. And so we arrived, with brown grocery bags at the ready. We aimed to fill them up.

Within a very short time, I realized I'd died and went to mushroom heaven, right there off County Road 113. Mushrooms seem to like growing where there's poop and cows provide it in spades. No, they don't grow out of the cow pies, but very nearby. Okay, they may grow out of cow pies, but I have my standards.

I actually loaded up an old jeep with dried cow pies once for fertilizing my garden, but that's another story.

So much for standards.

Anyway, on this day, my head is down close to the ground, I'm moving from mushroom to mushroom, when I think Hubby has sidled up to me and is infringing on my territory (we mushroom pickers can be very territorial and no, there's no joke here, either), and so I start talking to him without looking up. I say his name. No response. I say it again, with a bit more of a questioning tone. No response. I try it one more time, this time with an edge of panic, 'cause something is definitely right in front of me now and I'm not sure I want to look up and find out what it is. But, I do anyway. I raise my head, very slowly, only to come eyeball to eyeball with a large cow. Not a bull, mind you, but who's checking? I put on my happy face, to show her there's no interloper here. But, she's not buying it. She's not mad, she's just not sure what my business is.

By this time we've drawn a crowd. More cows have shown up to see what Bossy is up against and are standing around waiting for the action to begin, see what the little lady is going to do.

I slowly start backing away from the gang of cows, trying to make nice, but my feet want to hurry, and my feet win, every time. I'm off and running, dropping my bag of goodies en route, heading for the gate. The cows seem to think it's a good idea to run, too. And so they do. I don't know what they're thinking, can't read their minds. I just see cows out of the corner of my eye. And they're chasing me.

Out of the corner of my other eye, I see Hubby practically rolling around in the pasture with uninhibited glee. He's yelling, "Stop Running!" This does not sound like a good idea at all, and a little mean-spirited, if you ask me. He repeats this, with the admonition that they will stop running when I do. Not to be dissuaded and not entirely sure he's correct, I push on, all the way to the gate. Up and over I go. No time for niceties involving latches and such. Safely on the other side, I turn to check my back trail and see cows standing around looking at me as though I'd led them on a wild goose chase. This did not end up in any way they might have imagined. They go back to being docile bovines and I feel foolish for about ten years, maybe more. After all, I grew up around cows, brought them in from the pasture many summer evenings, and should know better. Amazing, how quickly it can go from, "No problem, just cows," to "Feets, don't fail me now."

What brought this on? That darn Annie and Roxanne, over at thegoodluckduck.blogspot.com have posted pictures of a mushroom and a cow, along with all sorts of other cool stuff, and so I threatened to tell my own mushroom and cow story. Next thing I know, I'm back here, doing just that. Now, I have to go get my clothes off the line.

Just for the record: I went back and got my bag of mushrooms with Hubby as escort. As soon as he stopped laughing. When we got home, we dried most of them, in the sun and then a low temp oven, and ended up with a big glass jar full of very pungent mushrooms. And they were very good.

The End.

No, these are not my photos. I borrowed them from Mr. Google.

The Road and the Roots

2011-08-31T10:48:00.011-05:00

For quite some time now, I've had a hankerin' for a small movable living space, not unlike a gypsy wagon. Sort of a movable feast for my gypsy soul. This will not come as a surprise if you've been around these parts for any length of time. I once spent a couple of months in the southwest, traveling and living out of a van, so I'm not unfamiliar with what's required. Despite the settling down I've been doing here on my Minnesota land, I still have a desire for the sound of wheels beneath me, that ribbon of road spooling out before me. But, the voices that beckon are softer now, more of a whisper in my ear; they speak with less urgency. The road isn't going anywhere and right now I'm appreciating a place to be, a place where I'm establishing roots, that will be here waiting whenever I go traveling again.

Staying put has taken some getting used to. It's a grand lesson on how to be at peace within. A lesson I'm learning, I'm happy to say, and I'm more at peace than I've ever been. Besides this wonderful chunk of land I call home, I also have a great companion named Buddy. This little golden buddha-boy has taught me much about unconditional love and pure, unmitigated joy in the simplest things. He arrived just in time to help me with this settling-in process.

What got me thinking again about these caravans is a book by Iain McKell, in which he explores the lives of new gypsies through a series of photographs. There seems to be a resurgence in this lifestyle, particularly in the U.K. Out of choice or necessity, I don't know. My sense is that, for the most part, people choose it; it's what they prefer. Maybe it's about the sun coming up on golden fields.

The idea of parking a caravan at the edge of a field, living the simplest of lives, is still very appealing. I know it's a romantic idyll, but it's also who I am. Even now, on this place, I have a small home and a very simple lifestyle. Perhaps it goes back to when I was a child and was so enamored of the woman living in the black van, which I wrote about last year in, "An Old Black Van and a Ripe Yellow Pear." It's who I've always been.

I've included a short video of the history of gypsies - I love old footage - and was surprised to learn that their origins are in India. I had long thought Romania, but that's just where they migrated way back when. There are other videos available, one on a gypsy woman herbalist I found interesting. And just because I love music and I like this song, I had to include a link to Brian Hyland's version of "Gypsy Woman." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StC5lwA2snM

Photographs are by Iain McKell: www.iainmckell.com

It's Like, Definitely Beautiful, You Know?

2011-08-29T09:32:00.002-05:00

You're probably familiar with slam poetry. These poets deliver their poems with a bit more oomph, shall we say. My friend, Diane, sent me a link to one of Taylor Mali's poems on youtube and I really liked it. He's a former teacher whose poetry has led him down a new path. Advocating for teachers is one of the things on that path. I went exploring a bit and found another one that jumped out at me. It's been around for several years, but it's new to me. Perhaps it will be for you, too. If not, forgive me for being slightly behind the curve.

Things have changed a great deal since Norman Rockwell painted, "Teacher's Birthday." But, about this time every year, teachers still return to school for another attempt at teaching young people how to spell and think, among other things. So, this is for teachers everywhere, both former and present, and for anyone else who is considering what to do with the rest of their lives.

First, a link to the one Diane sent. It's called, "Totally Like Whatever, You Know?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEBZkWkkdZA

And, "What Teachers Make." There are several versions of Mali performing this, but I chose this one because I like his delivery. It jumps right in, so in case you're wondering if you missed anything when it starts, you didn't. And even if you're not a teacher, I think you'll appreciate them both.

Going Hog Wild with Mr. Rogers

2011-08-27T13:14:00.002-05:00

My neighbor, who has one of the most beautiful vegetable gardens, caught me outside on more than one recent morning, while either hanging clothes on the line or trying to convince Buddy to stop chewing on Mama, and offered her surplus of green beans, cucumbers and zucchini. Nobody in their right mind would say no to organic veggies, and despite what someone might say about the state of my mind, I gladly said yes.

Those cucumbers are the definition of delicious. Better than candy. I've sauteed some of the zucchini, but a few found their way into zucchini bread. The recipe called for two loaf pans and I only had one. It offered as a second option a bundt cake pan. I've never been part of the bundt cake pan crowd, but I remembered that the lady who owned this place before me had inexplicably left one behind (I love that the Universe handles the details). I didn't have walnuts, either, but I did have pecans and so they went in as a replacement. I actually prefer them to walnuts and they worked out more than fine. I ate some, I froze some, and I'm giving some away. I didn't offer any to the neighbor, as she had already concluded at the outset that she had enough zucchini bread of her own making. Thus the surplus.

I hadn't snapped beans for awhile, but I dove in with the precision of a factory worker, snapping away, boiling water for blanching, followed by a cold water bath before freezing. I found a little curly bean amongst them and it made me laugh out loud. Just finding joy in the simple things in life, and getting pretty good at it (let's not go back to that right mind thing). A friend had sent me a late night link to some great rockabilly music and so I snapped and danced in the kitchen, while Buddy slept under the table. He never gets too far from the action. He opened one eye, realized it was only Mama going a little bit crazy, nothing too much to worry about, and went back to sleep.

Now, on to the apples, the ones the bears didn't get. Yeah, they're here, back again for another summer of pickin' and poopin'. With Buddy here, I'm glad they're working that tree either late at night or very early in the morning. There aren't as many apples as last year, it tends to go that way, so I'm thinking apple pies.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood and Fred Rogers just crossed my mind. Wasn't he a kind, good soul? I read an article about him in Esquire magazine many years ago, around the time he passed on, and I was so taken with his goodness, his clear vision of life. Mr. Rogers and his red sweater, zucchini and green beans, cucumbers and apple eating bears, all on a Saturday morning in late August. I love my life.

This was my breakfast:

I went a little hog wild.

Ghost on the Canvas

2011-08-26T10:32:00.003-05:00

Last night, I watched a video of Glen Campbell and his wife of almost thirty years, Kim Woolen, as they talked about his diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Apparently, the symptoms had been coming on for awhile. Glen said he didn't feel any different, didn't notice anything, but it was obvious his wife had, and they were dealing with it. Watching this made me sad, but because Glen himself seemed unfazed, for the most part, I felt a deep sense of joy, also. This man, whose music I've loved for over forty years (don't you just love that blue guitar?), has a new album and a new tour, and, along with it, there's a renewed interest in and understanding of what he's brought to our world.

His catalog is filled to overflowing with great songs, timeless classics. He was blessed with some of the greatest songwriters of our time, John Hartford and Jimmy Webb, to name two. I name John, especially, because he wrote one of my favorite Glen songs, Gentle on my Mind. I never get tired of hearing it. Other favorites include By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Galveston, Try a Little Kindness (what a great bit of musical advice that is), The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, and, of course, Wichita Lineman.

This man came on the scene in the 1960's, stayed around quite awhile, got himself into a bit of trouble in the relationship category, fueled by alcohol and other drugs, and then met his current wife, Kim, one of those people who sometimes makes all the difference. He spent many years performing in Branson, Missouri, the place where country singers go to bide their time and play to an appreciative audience until their time comes around again. I wish his time had come around again under different circumstances, but come around it has and I'm glad for that.

I'd love for you to listen to Gentle on my Mind. It has the perfect melody to match what I feel are some great lyrics. I just love this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFIRTtn_ZSE

What I was amazed at, in watching the video of his ABC interview, is that this man can still really sing. No studio alterations here. I heard very little difference from then until now. And that's not always the case. If you wish to watch it, you'll find it online, but interviewers, almost without fail, ask stupid questions and rather than give her anymore time, well, you're on your own for that one. I mean, who needs to hear about Elvis when you're talking to this good man right in front of you?

I've purposely chosen videos that are just about the song, nothing to watch here folks. As a matter of fact, I prefer my Glen songs as I'm working in the kitchen. They belong in the everyday of life, because that's what they're all about.

Hell's bells, as long as you're here, you might as well listen to Wichita Lineman, just to be reminded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTfwcLdP5Xk

All three of these songs take up not much more than ten minutes of our lives, but they span decades and will stay with me forever. They're a very big part of the soundtrack of my life.

Glen's new one, Ghost on the Canvas, has some lines I just love: wheat fields and crows. Anybody coming to mind? Here it is. I hope his tour lasts a very long time.

Every Purse Tells a Story

2011-08-24T16:09:00.006-05:00

This is my story of purses (I can see those eyes glazing over from here), but I encourage you to stick around. It may get interesting. Okay, it may get semi-interesting. Well, Linda, at http://www.blueskiessunnydays.blogspot.com wants to read about them, so here we go, Linda, and anyone else who may or may not wish to identify themselves.

When I was about five years old, I got my first purse. It was clear plastic, with pink flowers and a bit of white bead work. For a little girl who spent a good deal of her time in the woods, you wouldn't think a purse would be a want, but I had a habit of quietly getting into any purse left lying around, friends of my sister, Judy, being my chief victims. More than once I was caught with my hand in the "cookie jar." I wasn't larcenous, I just saw them as portable treasure chests, where anything was possible, and I wanted to know what they were carrying around in there.

On one particularly dark night, I left that purse sitting on a table in a cafe I had gone to with my parents. After playing "Sugartime" on the jukebox enough times to drive my parents and anyone else within earshot stark raving mad, we walked out, into the dark and to the car, not realizing until we were long past the turnaround time that I had left it behind. Despite my parents promise that they would see what they could do to get it back for me, I held out little hope for ever seeing it again. The town we'd been in was about sixty miles away and that was a distance in 1958. I can't imagine what was in it, little to nothing; every nickel I might have had went into that jukebox, along with my dreams of being one of The Lennon Sisters. I can see my small self sitting in the back seat still, sadder than I'd ever been. That little purse never found its way back to me.

Thus began a lifelong obsession.

They say everybody needs a hobby, I guess this one is mine. See that brown and black one in the upper middle? Buffalo hide. Bayfront Blues Festival, Duluth, MN., sometime in the mid '90's. Ditto for the deerskin in the far upper right. Same festival, different year. I used to wear it tied around my waist, aging hippie that I was. Am. The little beaded brown suede pouch on the far left was bought from a Native American woman near Page, AZ., while on my way to Lee's Ferry, a place with some historical interest, if not significance. It's sort of an amulet bag.

The other beaded one was bought at a consignment shop when I first arrived in Santa Fe in the fall of 2001. Got it for only $10. I've never understood how it could go for so little. I had a long blue coat that it seemed to go with perfectly.

The little pouch with a tassel, made from an old serape, was bought from a woman who had a store next to the art gallery where I worked on Canyon Road. She made some very cool jackets, also out of serapes, and was a painter as well. She lived in the back of her gallery/store, an old adobe known as The Bodega. When things were quiet she'd sit on a bench just outside the door, wearing her own creations, a quintessential Santa Fean. Her name was Teal. She was well-loved and respected among the locals. I wish I'd gotten to know her better. She kept her illness very quiet and no one really knew she was struggling until she no longer walked up to El Farol in the evening to join her friends on the patio. She was gone shortly thereafter. Every time I use it, I think of her.

Then, there's this brown velvet one. I bought it at a Salvation Army store. It has a peach silk lining and leopard print velvet gloves inside. It always makes me feel good.

My still burgeoning collection began with that little crocodile bag. It could be alligator, but I think it's crocodile. I got it at an auction for just a few bucks. My sister, Chris, knew I coveted it, but it was in a box with some other things and it wasn't coming up real soon. We both wanted to expedite things, so she simply took it out of the box, told the auctioneer's assistant I wanted to bid on it, now would be good, and so he put it up next. I was the sole bidder and got it for just a few bucks. We hightailed it out of there, with me happy as can be on a Saturday morning in June. That was back in 1980, I believe. I used it a lot, so the handle wore out and I, in a moment of pure purse genius, replaced it with a necklace my grandmother had given me back in the late '60's. I'd never worn it, it wasn't my thing. Maybe it was waiting to become a handle for my purse twenty and some odd years later.

Which takes us to the yellow one. Bought in a vintage shop in St. Paul, it remains one of my favorites. It's been the most fun. And there's a bonus.

That's right. Matching flip-flops. They're not vintage; they're just happy happenstance.

Well, that's it for now. Thus ends the story of my purses. I may be back for a part two. There are more, as you can see from the picture, but their stories can wait for another day. See that black one with the beaded bow? Viva Las Vegas, baby. Yeeeah. Now you want to hear more, don't you? Maybe next time.

Picasso's Mandolin

2011-08-22T14:13:00.006-05:00

The other day, Old Jules left a comment that included the title of a Guy Clark song I was unfamiliar with, so I looked it up and found a great video. I love the song and the images to go with it. Pablo seems to be swirling around in my head these days, for an undetermined reason.

Sometime back in the spring of 1980, I hornswoggled my then boyfriend, George, who later had the misfortune of becoming my second husband, into going to Minneapolis to catch the Picasso exhibit at the Walker Art Center. His somewhat tongue-in-cheek response to my request? "He makes funny guitars." But, we went anyway, with the promise that the weekend would include other activities. Turns out, he actually enjoyed it. He told me so.

Along with seeing a great bunch of paintings and feeling a part of the Bigger Picture by being there, I scored a Picasso T-shirt. By scored, I do mean purchased. Shortly after our return, in a matter of days, the Picasso family legally stopped production. Apparently, the company producing them didn't ask permission for misusing his name on something as lowbrow as a T-shirt. This morning, I took it out of the box of memorabilia where it's been languishing, took pictures, and decided to show it to you. What the hey. I've thought about framing it, but then I wouldn't see the back, so it's going on a hanger in the hallway, next to my handbag collection. Here it is, wrinkles and all. And smaller than I remember. How did That happen?

Here's Guy Clark and "Picasso's Mandolin." I think you'll like it. It has a catchy tune and some fun lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UmdSiJMrgc

And, here are some more of Picasso's mandolin paintings:

Old Jules can be found at So Far From Heaven on my sidebar.

4-H: From Radishes to Rosettes

2011-08-21T12:51:00.005-05:00

When I was a kid, 4-H was a pretty big deal. All the kids I knew belonged to it, including my siblings. Most of us were farm kids, to one degree or another. Some families were serious farmers, some had other ways to make a living, but did some farming because it put food on the table. We belonged to that second category.

When I was old enough to join, I had some mixed feelings. I knew I was supposed to look forward to it, but much like baptism, I wasn't sure it was for me. I liked the idea of it, the actual practice of it not as much. It was a club and clubs had rules and regulations, along with what felt like, to me, too many expectations.

For starters, most of the girls were expected to do girl things: baking and sewing for the younger group. I wasn't violently opposed to these things, but I was not particularly enamored of them, either. Produce from your garden was a possibility, too, but arranging potatoes on a plate to be judged at the county fair didn't sound too appealing. So, I made less-than-delicious oatmeal cookies, sewed dresses that were unseemly (the puns are semi-intentional), and even participated in a fashion show where everyone wore the dresses they'd made. I don't think I was such a bad seamstress as the choices for material were not appropriate for small town country girls. Blue and white geometric patterns didn't go over well among the local 4-H elite. White ribbons were not uncommon and humiliation came easy. Yet, I forged ahead, because it was expected.

My sister, Jane, a couple years older, had a similar penchant for less-than-acceptable clothing. One year, she made yellow, dotted- Swiss bellbottoms with white lace sewn around the bottoms, right up to the knee, with matching sleeveless cropped top. By cropped top, I mean her belly was exposed. We were not supposed to expose our bellies, but we did. As often as possible. It was the sixties and we were going to participate, come hell or high water. I can still see the look on the Agriculture Extension Agents's face when he came to our meeting and saw her project. I imagine his stifled smile arrived with the realization that, "the times they are a changin'."

One year, probably the same year, a boy named Allen, who I had heard through the grapevine had a crush on me (the grapevine being my cousin, Karla), decided to join our little band of potato growers. Unfortunately for me, he showed up for the first time on the same evening that I was expected to give a little talk about something or other, the project we were currently working on, or something else of interest and apropos for 4-Hers. I had to stand up in front of the group and deliver. Right now, in this very moment, what I spoke on just came back to me. I had, with the help of my mother, decided to give a talk/demonstration on how to make rosettes from radishes. I kid you not.

Handling a knife with Allen in the audience, audience being about a dozen kids or so, was not what I had planned. It became a blur, but I got through it.

And never went back again.

I never got to do photography, floral arranging, or pinning butterflies onto cloth under glass. And that was okay with me. My parents, however, may have occasionally wished I hadn't cut my 4-H years short. Allen did, eventually, become the second boy I ever kissed. We were supposed to be at a youth group meeting at our church, learning to be better youth. I discovered I liked kissing better.

Which brings me to our pledge. It always hung above our booth at the county fair. I'm pretty certain I broke it more than once over the years.

Sleeping on the Ground and the Persistence of Memory

2011-08-19T17:43:00.003-05:00

What do Salvador Dali and Mary Oliver have in common? Very little, I would suppose, but one never knows. I'm going to go ahead with this thing anyway, because they both popped into my noggin about the same time. We'll see where this thing takes us.

It actually started with an allusion to Pablo Picasso I'd read yesterday and I wasn't sure exactly when these two gentleman's lives might have converged so I looked up their dates. As I suspected, Pablo arrived on the scene shortly before Dali. One set the bar as the King of Quirky and the next one raised it. None of that has much to do with my subject which, believe it or not, is camping, sleeping on the ground, to be a bit more specific. Dali's painting, "The Persistence of Memory," got me thinking about memory and in popped the homemade tents my sister and I made in the yard a whole lot of summers ago.

These tents were made of blankets, as many as we could abscond with from the house. We would string some clothesline between two trees, tie it off and throw the blankets over it using clothespins to secure them and rocks to hold down the corners. It was quite a makeshift camp we had. The payoff was sleeping on the ground, feeling the earth beneath us, and being able to open the end blanket to look up at the stars overhead any time we felt like it. Which was fairly often.

On more than one summer night, a breeze would blow, the night would grow cold, and we'd find ourselves trudging back to the house in the middle of the night. On the nights this didn't happen, we would almost always find ourselves sleeping under the night sky at some point, with the blankets fallen down around us. We'd scrunch down inside them a bit more and wait it out 'til morning. Some mornings we'd wake up only to discover it had happened unbeknownst to us, we'd slept right through it, and the morning sun was shining on our faces.

I've done a lot more camping in my life, with a real tent. Some of it has been up on the north shore of Lake Superior, with its spectacular scenery, some of it at state parks elsewhere in Minnesota, a whole lot of it in southern Utah. There's a campground on the banks of the San Juan River, a few miles outside of Bluff, that has some nice sites and Deer Flat Road up on Cedar Mesa has a particularly nice spot to set up a base camp from which to explore the nearby canyons. Watching a full moon come up over the rocks and pinons had such a surreal feeling one night, I thought I'd stepped out of a dream and into a painting, Rene Magritte this time, but that's all the further I'll take that, as this is already occupied by some pretty surreal fellows. Well, maybe one image won't hurt.

There's something about sleeping on the ground, or pretty close to it, that has an almost primordial feeling to it. Close my eyes up there on the mesa and all sorts of lives float through. It's not at all difficult to imagine being inside an alcove, tucked into a canyon wall, my children softly sleeping next to me, or lying up on a rock ledge, behind walls made of mud and juniper, with a dog at my feet. It feels good. It feels natural.

These days I sleep on a queen size Serta plush top mattress and that feels pretty good, too, but it's the nights inside those homemade tents made of blankets and clothespins that still call out to me across the years and make me wish for just one more night, to sleep under the stars with the full moon on my face.

A while back, I'd written down in a notebook a poem by Ms. Oliver I thought I'd like to share at some point. I guess that point is now.

"Sleeping in the Forest"

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

~ Mary Oliver

Salvador Dali and Mary Oliver, the persistence of memory and sleeping on the ground, a thin thread. Sometimes, that's all it takes.

Paintings by Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, and Jules Breton

Salvation and Baptism, Nothing Too Heavy

2011-08-17T10:38:00.007-05:00

Somewhere between nine and ten years old, I got baptized. It wasn't that I, personally, felt the need for it, it was just the thing to do at that age and in that church. Perhaps my parents or my siblings felt it was time, maybe even past time. I felt about as much need to be baptized as I did to have my soul saved. It just never made any sense to me. It felt off, like something people might do to feel better about themselves, but I couldn't see how that involved me in any way. For the most part, I felt fine about myself.

When the call to the altar came that Sunday and salvation was nigh, my cousin Shelley, who was sitting next to me, decided it was time and stepped forward. I, however, hesitated just a bit too long and next thing I knew the time for repentance was over. For that week. The next week, there it came again, same call, same altar. I felt no need to go, but with my cousin nudging me (apparently she felt I had the need), I walked forward with a few others, feeling foolish and small. I can't articulate exactly what I felt, but what I felt didn't feel right.

After I went to the altar and they prayed over me, asked if I wanted to be saved (I thought it best if I agreed at that point), they took me into this small side room along with everyone else who came forward, talked to us some more about our personal salvation, read some appropriate Bible verses and what have you. I remember almost nothing about that except the way I felt and it wasn't good. For the life of me, I couldn't understand the need, what the hoopla was all about. I didn't feel saved. I didn't feel better. As a matter of fact, I felt worse. Diminished somehow. Of course, I didn't reveal these feelings to anyone. I may have mentioned not feeling all that much better about myself to my sister, Jane, but when cousin Shelley asked, insinuating how much better I surely must be feeling, I quietly nodded. At least she felt better.

The salvation thing happened when I was about six, possibly seven years old, and, as I mentioned, the baptism took place a couple of years later. I suppose I needed to prove myself worthy, which I managed to pull off long enough to get a dip in the lake. This was before I went to Bible camp and gave evidence to the contrary. See my post from last summer, "Camp Jim: Mama Tried."

My baptism was in a local lake, on a Sunday afternoon. Rainy Lake is a pretty little lake, not far from where I live now. I've taken a dip or two in it since, and not for baptism purposes, but I felt better than I did that Sunday afternoon when the pastor held my nose, one of the deacons held down the turquoise blue skirt my mama had made me (thank you good man), and gently pushed me backwards into that lake. Afterward, I walked to the shore, not feeling anything but wet.

Here's the baptism scene from, "Oh Brother, Where Art thou?" with Alison Krauss and "Down in the River To Pray." One of my favorite movies and one of my favorite singers, all rolled into one. Speaking of one, I think that's where the salvation thing comes in. We're all One, all connected to the divine, nobody needs "saving." It's a fun scene anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgVL-rBq9Fw

Fox on the Run

2011-08-14T16:38:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, I have to remind myself of all that I have to be grateful for. It seems it should be easy to remember, but life crowds in and, if I'm not careful, the simple beauty of life gets pushed aside. I forget to remember.

Today, I just wanted to recall a few of those things that make my life such a good place to be. So, without further ado, recent scenes from My Book of Gratitude:

Flowers, of course, lots of 'em....

My place along the river....

What looks to be a bumper crop this year....

My little buddy, who isn't so little anymore....

And falling asleep tonight to the wonderful smell of sheets fresh off the line....

Tom T. Hall's, "Fox on the Run," keeps running through my mind. Maybe it's the fox scat I found beneath my grape arbor. "The Fox and the Grapes." Silly old fox.

Here's Tom. I love this man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KuQILn2L2A

Anthems of Summer

2011-08-13T14:53:00.000-05:00

In the summers of my youth, I spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out at a resort on Leech Lake, here in Minnesota. It's a terrible name for a beautiful lake. On its southern shores, there's a little town called Whipholt. It's mostly a residential area with the resort as its focal point. At the edge of town there's a long sandy beach where I hung out on a fair number of summer days. On one of those summer days, an afternoon in late August, I lost my virginity on a grassy hill overlooking that beach.

My boyfriend, who later became my first husband, worked at the resort. After he was done bailing and gassing up boats, cleaning fish and mowing the lawn, we would hang out with other local kids, along with a few who were vacationing at the resort with their parents. A garage at the resort had become a sort of rec room: a table with a few chairs, a ping pong table, and most important, a jukebox. The jukebox didn't get much rest, it was well-fed, but for the life of me, the only song I can recall now was, "Let's Live for Today," by The Grass Roots. It became our anthem that summer.

Many years later, sometime in the late 1990's, long after that husband and I had gone our separate ways, I went to a Fourth of July celebration where The Grass Roots, on a reunion tour, were performing in the bandstand. There they were, alive and well, still looking and sounding almost as good as they had thirty years earlier. They encouraged us to sing along, and we did.

Later that night, on another grassy hill, I sat with another husband to be, as we watched the fireworks rain down around us.

This summer, on July 11th, Rob Grill, lead singer of the band, moved out of sight on this River of Life, and it brought to mind that long ago summer, sitting on a table in a garage, listening to the jukebox, and becoming all too aware that my boyfriend and a girl named Helle were more friendly than I was comfortable with.

I wouldn't want to be young again for all the tea in China. But I sure do like this song:

For those who might be interested: their guitarist at the time, on Rob's right, is Creed Bratton, an actor now, who plays one of the guys in, "The Office," with Steve Carrell.