Golden Gate Park

About to leave, I stood by the door at Riptide listening to the last measures of 'Mona Lisa', catching glimpses past the drinkers of the red-shirted straw-hatted Octomutt guitarist. But it was such a satisfying experience, the steady friendly vocals, the fiddle and the bass, I waited instead just to hear what would be next, and there it came, two blocks from the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco. And in my head, I was hearing Lost John singing it under the oaks at Nutty Brown Cafe outside of Austin, and the Ernest Tubb impersonation I'd heard only this morning in Berkeley.


Waltz Across Texas
(Quanah Talmadge "Billy" Tubb)

When we waltz together, my world's in disguise
A fairyland tale that's come true,
And when you look at me with those stars in your eyes,
I could waltz across Texas with you.

chorus:
I could waltz across Texas with you in my arms
Waltz across Texas with you;
Like a storybook ending I'm lost in your charms
I could waltz across Texas with you.

My troubles and heartaches are all up and gone
The moment you came into view;
And with your hand in mine I could dance on and on
I could waltz across Texas with you.

Before I met you, I never would dance
Never would dance it is true;
But now we're together I jump at the chance
To waltz across Texas with you.

I was looking for a good mayonnaise joke. Instead I found something awfully familiar that had nothing to do with mayo. Sliding down the browser slope, I landed in a site, who knows how, of a voice from the past.

Sometimes the old road is just a left turn off the new.

I have moments of transparency, beautiful transparency, where I have no secrets. Brief but shimmering. Where for the first time in my life when I have dreams that I'm wearing no clothes in a public place, I feel shy but pleased. No distress.

Not an easy state to maintain, but oh so balanced, so comfortable in my skin to have no secrets, no hiding of the scars and stains, the unconventional thought or odd behavior. They are what they are.

It feels really good, those moments.

I think I'll pass on taking the left turn.

From the 15-drawer desk in a second story room of robin-egg blue with white trim and curious moldings, you overhear people walking the pavement below.

One fellow sings, ‘And I think to myself, what a wonderful world…'

Another clear voice floats in a few minutes later, a man behind a baby stroller, ‘Look! Look up! What is blue sky? Where's the cloud?’

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off—they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

—William Stafford

Golden Gate Park

The tree doesn't know it's supposed to be dead.

At a gathering tonight, I learned that the Persian new year begins at vernal equinox, and that fish is eaten to celebrate the new year.

As I drove away, I followed a car whose license plate read: FISSH

'We can’t help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water.'

Rumi

Some months back, my sister hypothesized that our dad’s hypnosis technique was successful because it distracted one part of the brain from the other. Her experience was that simultaneous counting and visual imagery, the two components of his technique, left her brain open/vulnerable to suggestion, in this case, suggestion regarding follow-through on an exercise routine she wanted to maintain.

This thinking aligned with my own experiences in Shintaido, where counting plus various vigorous body routines seem to break down barriers, leaving one open to suggestion and growth. Sometimes euphoric states occur, sometimes new personality features or untried talents. As with hypnosis, these effects can last for extended periods, long enough to effect long-term transformation.

Today, a friend sent me the URL to a video lecture by a neuroanatomist who suffered a massive left hemisphere stroke. Because of her expertise, she was able to observe her own experience as the function of her left hemisphere broke down, even as she lost speech and speech comprehension. I can’t do her story of her experience justice, it is so moving and incredible, but I can summarize her understanding. She suggests that left hemisphere holds our individuality, our concept and functioning of self while right holds the connection of our energy with that of all that is around us. With the right hemisphere comes a full experience of the present. That when the left hemisphere is erased or disabled, one may experience nirvana, a oneness, a connection, a euphoria, an expansiveness of being, a loss of absorption with self and the trappings of the past. That to learn to voluntarily switch hemispheres as the situation calls for, to regularly experience this connection with all being, could bring each of us, and our world, greater peace.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Below the dark blue bowl
of sky at dusk,
trek along
the breathing hips and curves
of fragrant earth expanding
beneath the sky’s deep attention.
Breathe in, breathe in
the glowing air.
Sky and earth
unleash the body...
or does the body
unleash earth and sky?

'With Serum 977, you won’t see the rabbit any more, but you’ll see your duties and responsibilities.'
Dr. Sanderson

'After this he’ll be a perfectly normal human being—and you know what stinkers they are.'
Cab Driver

‘I’ve spent my life studying fly specks while miracles have been leaning on street signs at 18th and Fairfax.’
Dr. Chumley

(approximate quotes from the movie about the six-foot rabbit, Harvey)

Dolphins often synchronize their movements in the wild, such as leaping and diving side by side, but scientists don't know what signal they use to stay so tightly coordinated. Herman thought he might be able to tease out the technique with his pupils. In the film, Akeakamai and Phoenix are asked to create a trick and do it together. The two dolphins swim away from the side of the pool, circle together underwater for about ten seconds, then leap out of the water, spinning clockwise on their long axis and squirting water from their mouths, every maneuver done at the same instant. 'None of this was trained,' Herman says, 'and it looks to us absolutely mysterious. We don't know how they do it--or did it.'

'Minds of their Own'
Virginia Morell
National Geographic
March 2008

...are you listening
parents
to the paper rustle
of the printed programs?

Do you see
the patch above
the door handle
where you entered?
maroon worn grey with
the press of
thousands of
your children's
hands?

Pay attention
this lasts
but an hour

My new year resolution arrived late, but here it is, finally:
Find your adult voice.

(I hope to keep the eyes of a child...)

A great-horned owl is calling outside the window, such a tranquil low voice.

(Apologies for the photo I snagged last month. No, not to you, the blog-surfer, but to the owl...)

My favorites at University Museum of Art were the works of Joseph Cameau and Nicholas Dreux, Haitian painters. They both use the palette knife, they tend to outline areas in black (like if Roualt were tropical) and their color palettes are very similar. While the video art had an agitated undercurrent, the Haitian paintings were full of serenity.

Yesterday, I exited a filling station forgetting to replace the gas cap which was sitting on the back of the car. I drove some distance to pay a 14 dollar bill onto which had been added a 15 dollar late fee because I forgot last month to pay it. When I got to the parking lot, two young women in a truck gently beeped and pointed to the gas cap. I parked and screwed on the cap. I went in to pay the bill. My checkbook was not in my purse; I'd forgotten it in my room. The cashier stared down at the counter.

I can reproduce in my mind a couple of the Haitian paintings, both by Cameau. In the one that held my attention longest, a town center is surrounded by small, four-walled structures. Each wall and roof are smoothly spackled with different colors, but there is no clashing, the colors work seamlessly, the little houses easy on the eye. The central area is filled with people, close-up, all seated or on foot, men dressed alike, women dressed alike, but in many colors. Their arms and legs are long, their postures relaxed. Their clothing connects them, the colors suggest individuality. In the strokes of paint, there's a tenderness.

My sisters and aunt took me to the University Art Museum for my birthday. A visiting exhibit, Balance and Power: Performance and Surveillance in Video Art , included video of a performance artist in a public lobby running a tiny surveillance camera under her blue sweater and under her cargo pants, displaying close-ups of her body, including her most private parts, on a large screen up above. Another surveillance camera records what we're seeing: the artist, the screen, and a dumfounded stray audience.

http://jillmagid.net/Lobby7.php

Just as riveting was a video of a compact man in a shower, but instead of the water raining down, it's falling up (the video playing in reverse). Not just water, but dirty water.

The man uses his hands to scrub himself. As he washes, mud flies up, leaving spots and streaks on his belly, arms, chest and face. The spots grow and interconnect. The longer he showers, the more mud.

Now he's covered, his eyes bright and alive from within a mask of mud. The water turns off. He leaves the bathroom and slowly walks, the encrusted mud man, down a hall through a door and to an elevator. He enters the elevator, faces the camera, the doors close, the end. (“Pure”, a video short by Subodh Gupta, 2000)

I see on the internet that the gunk was not mud, but cow manure. The video was absolving. Watching Gupta muck himself into a pure state challenged my narrow thinking.

Our aunt in her red blouse created art of her own just by sitting in a red chair.

fig leaves upon the stem;
happiness weaves a nest within;
hear the train?

I've been reading about a vast void in the universe, a billion light years wide, one that was discovered by Minnesota scientists and reported last August. No stars, planets, dust nor gases. No dark matter exerting muscular gravitational pull. Just a void.

I was a bad girl today: I broke my Lenten practice of no sweets and ate 3 leftover birthday brownies. The first one was exquisite--the next two more on automatic. What can I say. I didn't feel bad at all. I'm very pleased about that. I mean, my mother was buried this week. I did a large part of the funeral arrangements as well as attending to emotional details such as picking out and carrying in the last clothing she would wear, worrying about whether they'd fold her socks like she liked them, and picking objects to go into the drawer in her casket, objects that she might need on her journey (flashlight, shoehorn, bandage scissors, 2-dollar bill, candy violets, a golf magazine with Tiger on the cover...) I've kept up with Shintaido practice. And, I bought a book called The Lucifer Effect about situations that turn good people evil--which is both an attempt to get needed CEUs before the end of the month and an attempt to better understand violence, war and interpersonal tweaking--the other half of this year's Lenten practice.

While I'm glad I've learned some self-discipline over the years, I need more work in learning to let go. So y'see, the bad girl is a good girl.

And let's hear it for friends who suddenly showed up at the end of this awkward, wobbly day. A moment of silence for friends...and for sisters, brothers, mothers, teachers, sons, therapists and fathers. Though I have no daughters, I am a daughter. Let's honor daughters, too.

To hurry pain is to leave a classroom still in session. To prolong pain is to remain seated in a vacated classroom and miss the next lesson.

--Yahia Lababidi

Diego Rivera, Anthony Quinn,the Duke and Duchess of Windsor: "Four celebrities in 45 minutes. Something was going to happen. And it did..."

Mambo "...like the jump from black and white into Technicolor...I would go on to discover that mambo was dancing us all toward genuine being, becoming ourselves through caring about others...In a wonderful book on his life, 'Benjy Lopez: A picaresque Tale of Emigration and Return,' by Barry B. Levine, he shared this insight: 'Imagine if you were twenty years old and didn't feel inferior to anybody or better than anybody. When you treat everybody the same, people open up to you.'"

from "Mambo on my Mind"
Robert Farris Thompson
Newsweek

February 25, 2008

Jessie
7 July 1923 - 3 March 2008


My mother passed on before dawn this morning...

I'm pretty sure I boiled these particular potatoes and green beans. You could also toss lightly with olive oil and Chachere's seasoning, throw them in a pan and roast at 450 degrees F for maybe 25 minutes. That's really good and easy, easy.

Last night, I didn't have green beans, but roasted mushrooms and sliced onion and some pitted olives with the potatoes. It was a hit.

She was a sweet-looking rodent, on my path at 7 AM.

She stayed there through warm-ups and sword practice.

She could have run a few feet into the brush for shelter; she let me take her picture.

By ten, she looked pretty shaky. By noon she was on her side, dead in the sunshine.

Why.

I don't know.

Her last meal was a wild strawberry.