Reliquary / Contemplation / Namaste

(Chalk pastel drawing from 1983, "Composer," by am)

"When I look at the pictures and hear the songs I also see and hear the story behind them. A still photograph morphs into a home movie and a scrawl on a page evokes a scene in a room or on a street. I hear a laugh coming from somewhere off to the side...

... A song, a poem, a book, a film, an exhibit are simply representations of a period, a place, a person. And because memory is the joker in the deck I try not to take the representations of the past too seriously. Life goes on for those who live it in the present. Nostalgia, cheap or otherwise, is always costly.

I see history as a reliquary—a container where relics are kept and displayed for contemplation. So much has been written about the sixties that the more distant those years become, the more mythic the tales and the time seem to be ..."

(from A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, by Suze Rotolo)



Today's view from the porch, with sounds of spring:



Namaste:

Meditation / A young man who was staying drunk on fear in the wilderness / A young woman who was not afraid of him

Johnny: [opening narration from "The Wild One"] It begins here for me on this road. How the whole mess happened I don't know, but I know it couldn't happen again in a million years. Maybe I could of stopped it early, but once the trouble was on its way, I was just goin' with it. Mostly I remember the girl. I can't explain it - a sad chick like that, but somethin' changed in me. She got to me, but that's later anyway. This is where it begins for me right on this road.

During the 1960s, upon looking at some promotional photos of himself, Bob Dylan laughed and said, "I look like Marlon Brando, James Dean or somebody..."


























What's my point here? Something about fear and courage. That series of film clips from "The Wild One" moved me this morning. This may make more sense after watching the entire YouTube video above. Maybe not.

"I always have respected her
for doing what she did and getting free."
(Bob Dylan, from "If You See Her Say Hello")

"How long can I stay drunk on fear
out in the wilderness?"
(Bob Dylan, from "When He Returns")

"Time heals, after all -- although the clock that marks that kind of time has no hands."
(Suze Rotolo, from A Freewheelin' Time, 2007)






















(2007 trackpad drawing by am and February 2012 trackpad drawing by am)

The Song of Wandering Aengus

As a teenager, I listened over and over again to Donovan's early albums along with Bob Dylan's albums and could never understand why some people couldn't hear the difference between their two distinct voices. Sometime around 1971 when Richard returned from Vietnam, I stopped listening to Donovan.



It was Bob Dylan's music that spoke to me then and continued to speak to me. He was not ethereal. He was deeply human and was making some serious mistakes, just as I was. He was also playful and paradoxical. He didn't appear as fragile as Donovan. I was fragile. I wanted whatever it was that Bob Dylan had that keep him going. Listening to his music kept me going.



Yesterday I spent some time watching the many YouTube videos of Donovan's early work. This is the one I liked the best. I love the old Donovan songs. That was a time of relative innocence for me and for many of us.





THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS



by: W.B. Yeats



Went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;



And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.



When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.



Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.



'The Song of Wandering Aengus' is reprinted from An Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London: Methuen & Co., 1921.

'Cept the one you can't see with your eyes

Listen.

And there's no exit in any direction
'Cept the one you can't see with your eyes.

(from "Series of Dreams," music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, 1991)

I'm awake because of the third in a series of nightmares that turned thoughtful and brought unexpected healing to some very old wounds. The first nightmare was last September. The second was a few nights ago.

I'd already gone the distance
Just thinking of a series of dreams

(from "Series of Dreams," music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, 1991)

A FIELD THAT HAS RESTED

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a beautiful crop.
-- Ovid (43 B.C. to 17 or 18 A.D.)






















Oboe's paisley pillow was given to me by a young woman who completed a 14-day residential Yoga teacher training course with me and others in sublimely beautiful Plain, Washington, in late summer of 2007. The young woman was flying home to New Jersey after the course was completed and didn't want to try to bring the pillow with her on the airplane. She had bought it as a meditation pillow to be used during the Yoga teacher training. Oboe has claimed it as her own meditation pillow. I didn't become a Yoga teacher after all but still practice a series of Yoga postures daily in the early morning.

This morning at exactly 9 a.m. the sun appeared from behind the clouds to the east and lit up the trees, cattails and grass I can see from my porch:






















Can you hear the Red-Shafted Flicker's klee-yer (after the wick wick wick wick wick wick)?

Just now, while reading about Ovid in a Wikipedia article, I began to wonder idly if Bob Dylan had read Ovid because the article mentioned a woman named Corinna. As I read further, I began to wonder if Bob Dylan had been reading Ovid as he wrote the songs for his CD released on September 11, 2001, "Love and Theft."

Here's what I found, though:

American musician Bob Dylan's album Modern Times contains songs with borrowed lines from Ovid's Poems of Exile, from Peter Green's translation. The songs are "Workingman's Blues #2", "Ain't Talkin'", "The Levee's Gonna Break", and "Spirit on the Water."

(from the Wikipedia article on Modern Times)

Come to think of it, my grandmother on my mother's side was named Cora Irene and was known as "Rena." I have a copy of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" that belonged to my grandfather, Rudolf. As Bob wrote, "Take what you have gathered from coincidence."

"Corrina, Corrina, where you been so long?"

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS / SUNRISE

Listen

More often than not, ever since I was 14 years old, Bob Dylan's music has affected me in the way it affected Kyle Theiss. Bob Dylan's music brought me back to life again and again. It's good medicine.

"So bitter and so sweet."
(Joni Mitchell)

THE I CHING OR BOOK OF CHANGES

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
(Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890)

"A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea."
(John Ciardi, 1916-1986)

Looking for a question rather than an answer,
I opened my copy of the Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes
translation of the I CHING OR BOOK OF CHANGES and found
this on page 158:

"It furthers one to undertake something.
How is this to be carried out?"