Sunday, January 30, 2011

New Morning Koan / What would you say to Dr. Bob?






















A few weeks ago my sister told me that our sister and our 18-year-old nephew went to see Bob Dylan in concert at Bumbershoot in Seattle in September. This third-hand story is that as Bob Dylan began to sing, my nephew's face became puzzled, deeply puzzled. He looked at my sister questioningly, making funny faces at her. Before long, she said to him, "You don't have to stay if you don't want to." He was immensely relieved and left the concert. I would be curious to hear his version of this story. The story is that my sister didn't stay for the whole concert either. The last Bob Dylan concert I went to was so loud it hurt my ears, but it's good I stayed for the astoundingly moving acoustic version of "Girl from the North Country" that was the final encore. That was in the mid to late 1990s in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Here is another take on Bob Dylan that I came across yesterday, written by a man who was born in 1966, when Bob Dylan was 25 years old:

Good question

I laughed out loud when I read these words of Todd Snider:

"...but you see here i go . . . now i'm starting to talk to the very bob dylan_the same way i talk to my nephew about bob dylan._in that spastic way that reminds me of an old far side cartoon_where the two gorillas are under a banana tree gorging on bananas_when one turns to the other and says_"you know man, i know we're supposed to like bananas. being gorillas and all_but i think its different for me. i mean, i really like them"_that's how most true bob dylan fans sound when they start trying to explain him..."

Listen

(Crescent moon and Venus before dawn on January 30, 2011)

Friday, January 28, 2011

Three stories about walking south and three stories about walking north / Experiments in consciousness and imagination and delight
















































































































consciousness. 1. the state of being conscious; aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

imagination. 1. the action of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.

delight. 2. something that gives great pleasure.

Listen

Thanks to this blogger for the link to the wonderful music.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

At the beginning of a 40-minute walk in Whatcom Falls Park yesterday morning


















"All my life I have been haunted by the fascinating questions of creativity. Why does an original idea in science and art "pop up" from the unconscious at a given moment? What is the relation between talent and the creative act, and between creativity and death? Why does a mime or a dance give us such delight? How did Homer, confronting something as gross as the Trojan War, fashion it into poetry which became a guide for the ethics of the whole Greek civilization?"

(from the preface to The Courage to Create, by Rollo May)

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Pacific / Ocean of Compassion


















Listen.

The Point Reyes National Seashore on the Pacific Ocean in Northern California is hidden in a cloud bank this morning but not forever.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Martin Luther King Day 2011 / Walking



























From page 59 of Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit:

"A photograph of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march has been on my refrigerator for months, and it speaks of this inspired walking. Taken by Matt Heron, it shows a steady stream of marchers three or four wide moving from right to left across the photograph. He must have lain low to take it, for it raises its subjects up high against a pale, clouded sky. They seem to know they are walking toward transformation and into history, and their wide steps, upraised hands, the confidence of their posture, express the will with which they go to meet it. They have found in this walk a way to make their history rather than suffer it, to measure their strength and test their freedom, and their movement expresses the same sense of destiny and meaning that resonates in King's deep-voiced, indomitable oratory." (my italics)

Last night just before sleep, I opened my copy of Wanderlust: A History of Walking, which I just started reading in the last week, and saw the above words. Thanks to Solitary Walker in the Midlands of England for mentioning the book on his blog.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Snowy day clouds to the east

















This was the view on January 9, best seen by clicking on the image. This morning the rain has returned, and most of the snow and ice are gone. Yesterday I took an hour walk in the snow and ice in Whatcom Falls Park. Sure felt good to be walking.

Listen

A friend mentioned Stephen Levine a few days ago. It was in the early 1980s that another friend recommended Who Dies?, a book that I have read and re-read for its wholehearted wholeheartedness that honors heartbreak and renewal in equal measure. It brought me to tears and laughter, sometimes at the same time.

It is where I first read:

"The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it." (Sri Nisargadatta).

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Winter Light






















when asked if you care about
the world's problems, look deeply
into the eyes of he that asks
you, he will not ask again.

(from "Advice for Geraldine on Her Miscellaneous Birthday," Bob Dylan, 1964)

Friday, January 7, 2011

Beethoven

















Listen

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. -James M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)

(Quote from A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg)

Saturday, January 1, 2011

New Year's Day 1/1/11






















You and Art

Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.

Year after year fits over your face--
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;

And you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.

(from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems by William Stafford)






















A wolf? A coyote? A dog? From one of the Yosemite webcams on December 25, 2010.

Dear Blog Friends,

Looking forward to another fruitful year of reading your blogs and blogging! Here is where I started in 2006. My 4th blog birthday was December 8.

Kind wishes for 2011 and always,
am

P.S. At the top of this post is "Boy with Amaryllis and Orion," one of my trackpad drawings from January 2008.