Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Alive Alive-O


















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

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

Alive Alive-O.

5 comments:

Nick said...

Awake and alive is good; enjoy.

Sabine said...

Who knows, this coming spring may just be wonderful.

Dominic Rivron said...

I've been writing/reading blogs very erratically recently but did I mention before that I got into Patti Smith thanks to finding that video on your profile page?

It's great to find a new book/song/piece of music/work of art/etc. with a personal wow-factor. This song was one such.

Talking of Vietnam... I saw the Werner Herzog film, Little Dieter Needs to Fly yesterday, a documentary about Dieter Dengler.

Anonymous said...

Such wonderful exuberant news.
"Alive alive, I want to get up and jive,
I want to wreck my stockings
in some jukebox dive…"

am said...

Nick -- Thank you for your kind words. I just came across this quote on my Zen Calendar for February 23rd:

May my silences become more accurate.
-- Theodore Roethke

Sabine -- Thank you for giving me that positive perspective.

Dominic Rivron -- Thank you for mentioning Little Dieter Needs To Fly. I was able to get a copy from the public library and watch it yesterday morning. I'm still absorbing what I saw and heard. The place where Dieter lived on Mt. Tamalpais is one of the loveliest places imaginable. Watching those scenes from the movie, I was there on Mt. Tamalpais. Dieter was so grateful to be alive. What sticks with me was when he hugged the Laotian man and said, "It's only a movie. You still have your finger." I keep seeing the variety of thoughtful expressions on the faces of the Laotian men as Dieter told his harrowing story.

I remember the first time I heard Dead to the World. Something about Patti Smith's voice and the rhythm and the words and something beyond that which you clearly heard, too.

robin andrea -- Thanks so much for the Joni Mitchell lyrics from "All I Want." Perfect!