Flowers, candy and breakfast in bed … well, they’re all very well and good but I prefer a handmade card! Believe it or not, the artist of the above card is only twelve years old! Miss Audrey Gould, artist, actress, dancer, and just about anything she sets her mind to be.
This is a bittersweet day for those of us who’ve lost mothers over the past few years. Whether or not you were close to your mother, it’s like losing an anchor.
When I was in high school my English teacher introduced us to the study of logic. We spent about a month going through various exercises –“If A=B and B=C then A=C” sort of stuff. Nothing too deep. Kind of fun actually but for the most part my fellow classmates moaned and groaned. They just didn’t get it. At seventeen they knew exactly how to think.
I was thinking of those logic exercises the other day after listening to the governor of Texas. Here’s what he said broken down as a logic problem:
I’m almost certain Miss Bauer would have given him an F. What will be his next great leap of logic, do you think?
The lovely thing about logic is it isn’t partisan. I don’t care what side of the political aisle you’re on. If anger and hatred are on the rise, the logical solution is not to hand out more guns. It just isn’t. Of course, logic alone can’t be used to solve problems but it sure can highlight sloppy thinking.
When dealing with people. remember, you’re not dealing with creatures of logic but creatures of emotion.
Dale Carnegie
And aye, therein lies the rub. Are we capable of anything but sloppy thinking?
There’s an event pavilion on the slopes of Mt. Diablo about forty-five minutes from my house.
You can either pay extra and sit under the canopy or bring a blanket and sit under the stars. I’ve done both and prefer to spread out on the grass and take my chances with the mosquitos. The sound is the same and maybe even better.
I don’t know how many concerts I’ve seen at the Concord Pavilion over the years but without a doubt, this guy and this song made the biggest impression on me.
For one thing, Lightfoot had a mini-orchestra on stage behind him and when they ignited, we were all on that doomed ship, thrown about in the merciless waves and counting the last moments of our lives.
The other song that electrified the crowd that night was “Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” It tells the story of the men who built the railroads across Canada, the men now “too silent to be real.” But also of the “green dark forests” that covered the wilderness “long before the white man and long before the wheel”… also too silent to be real. It felt like, in the dark hills surrounding us, druids watched and wept.
He’s gone, dammit. Another chunk of my soul just chipped away. He wasn’t a young man (84) but then, like Leonard Cohen and so many of the legendary poet/folksingers, he never seemed like a young man. They came to earth as old souls, flawed old souls who made mistakes just like the rest of us but were able to confess in word and song.
Fella, it’s been good ta know ya!
Looks like a lovely spot for an alfresco lunch doesn’t it? That’s what I thought while waiting for a friend but guess what? Wisteria in bloom attracts the nastiest, most aggressive bees I’ve ever come across.
And finally a real door!
I spent many happy hours behind these doors learning how to sculpt: heads, busts and full figures. Sadly my instructor passed away and the class is no longer offered.
Check out other doors on Dan Anton’s planet – prepared to be amazed.
Dear Richard,
I thought of Pete as I watched White Mischief and the movie is all about the White Kenyans and Happy Valley before and during WWII. If you don’t know, it’s the story of how the cuckolded Jock Broughton murdered Josh Erroll. Erroll was somewhere in the succession line for the King of England.
The ghost of the Happy Valley crowd was still around in the early 1990’s and it was something to behold. Pete was mostly dismissive of the whole bunch, but they knew their way around and were ready to go off somewhere difficult and Pete liked that. Some ended poorly, caught up in the dream of being a White Kenyan in Africa. They thought they could do pretty much anything they wanted. It used to be a thing, Richard. Don’t know if it still is, but in the movie the character played by John Hurt…
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While most of my friends are ready to watch that final rodeo from a comfortable easy chair, my friend Jude (Miss Judith to all those writers she successfully schooled in the finer points of grammar back in the day) has gotten hitched again and set off with her buckaroo on a series of adventures. The lucky gent, known as Double L, is a successful architect and landscape photographer. So I thought in honor of Green Day, I’d post a few of his photos for you all to enjoy. With his permission, of course.
The above photograph was taken near their home in Visalia California. You can still see the snow on the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range.
Lately my eye has been drawn to images of loneliness. Like this guy who sits on our railing and coos all day long. For a long time I thought I was hearing owls but then I caught him in the act.
According to the experts, owls hoot for a variety of reasons but the mourning dove, well, he’s just horny. According to my husband, who also loves to postulate about animal behavior, this guy’s beloved mate was chased into a window by a hawk. She broke her neck and died and he’s not horny; he’s in deep mourning and will be for the rest of his life.
These two guys are not cooing at each other. The man on the left is wondering if the man on the right is the person responsible for upending his well-ordered life. Not on purpose but as the result of poor timing; the wrong word said at the wrong time. In the above scene, for over four minutes there’s no dialogue or music. Just scenes of a wasteland through the eyes of a doomed man. And then Cary Grant (as Roger Thornhill) crosses the damn road and the action begins again.
Next to our house is a vacant lot with a lone birdbath. When we first moved in there was a teepee village next to the birdbath only we never caught a glimpse of any children at play. But we had nine to five jobs and teen age children to keep us hopping and thus no time to get to know the neighbors.
Then one day I was gardening when I heard a child’s voice: “You’re not supposed to go barefoot in the garden.” I looked over to see a girl of about eight draped in the fence. “Where’s Betty?” she asked. Betty was the previous owner of our house. I explained that Betty had remarried and moved away. “I liked Betty,” she said in a way that made it clear she could never warm up to someone stupid enough to go barefoot in the garden. I didn’t find out until years later that the little girl’s mother was dying of cancer and that Betty was someone she could confide in.
I never saw her again. She abandoned the teepee village. Years went by, the teepees fell apart and someone started dumping tree trimmings on the lot. The swimming pool behind the house next door filled with algae and the property became run over with weeds and overgrown bushes. However every summer someone comes by to trim the weeds around the birdbath and where the teepees once stood.
At some point this little maple will probably grow large enough to disguise the rather odd architectural feature behind it. Right now, it just looks lonely to me. Which is okay. Far by better to be lonely and know you have a purpose than surrounded and lost.
All great and precious things are lonely.”
John Steinbeck
Easter always reminds me of the year the Seagrass Clan insisted I come with them to see their eldest son perform in something called a Passion Play. I had no idea what a Passion Play was but their eldest daughter Connie and I had just become friends and she really, really wanted to introduce me to her brother.
My parents had no strong religious beliefs. We went to church from time to time primarily for appearances and they joined the closest church to our house so that we could walk to Sunday school classes while they slept off their hangovers. Saturday nights there was always a party somewhere.
To this day, I cannot tell you what distinguishes a Methodist from a Baptist but the Methodists seemed like decent folk.
The Seagrass Clan, on the other hand, lived and breathed Jesus Christ, all of the Angels, all of the Saints, the current Pope and, oh yeah, the Virgin Mary. They were also all about food. The morning of the Passion Play, I arrived at their house to find them packing the back of their station wagon with baskets of food: frosted brownies, cheesy lasagna, chocolate chip cookies and freshly baked rolls they called Yeast Bunnies. All homemade and all smelling divine. They been up all night cooking, Connie told me.
I’d assumed this seminary would be somewhere in Reno Nevada where we lived. But after climbing into the car next to Connie, her eight year old brother and six year old sister, Mother Seagrass (the driver) announced that it was snowing over the pass and we needed to recite several Hail Marys and invoke the mercy of some saint whose statuette she affixed to the dashboard. We were going to California. We would be back that night but possibly quite late. Lord have mercy.
We said a lot of Hail Marys going over the summit. The snow blew sideways and the bridges were covered over with black ice but once we began to descend into the Sacramento Valley the sun came out and ignited a dizzying sea of vivid greens on the foothills. The further into the Sacramento Valley we drove, the greener it got. However, Mother Seagrass wasn’t used to driving on freeways the size of those in California and so slammed on the brakes when unsure which exit to take. “Lord, which exit should we take?” she would pray as the rest of us peed our pants.
A passion play, Connie finally explained to me, depicts the trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. To this day, I don’t understand what’s so passionate about such a grim subject and I don’t really want to know. Over the many, many years since then, I’ve seen that … such intense devotion and strict adherence to religion has a dark side. But I do remember that day well, all those bright young men, dressed in robes and sandals and sporting ill-fitting beards, their joy at greeting loved ones and their joy at seeing the feast awaiting them after the play. And the green of Spring all around.
When told he is always welcome to return home to live, my charming son makes a face. “That would be like returning to the pits of meaningless despair.” I can’t say it makes my day but I can understand.
If your childhood home came up for sale and you could afford to buy it, would you? I know two people who inherited a childhood home and decided not to sell. They’re actually living in the houses they grew up in and neither had what I would describe as a “happy” childhood. Divorces, premature deaths, alcoholism, insanity. The works… all enclosed in cramped houses with faulty plumbing, aging wallpaper and moldy basements. Perhaps they wanted to return to the familiar, no matter how filled with sour memories. Or perhaps they hoped to form happy memories to drive away the demons.
Recently my nephew was in the market for a new house. One of the listings that he found and shared with his father, was the house we’d spent the majority of our childhood in. Even though my nephew had been there when he was a child, he hadn’t recognized it. Will he buy it? Who knows.
I know I’m in the minority. From the quotes I found on line, most folks think of home as a welcoming, warm place full of wonderful memories.
After you leave home, you may find yourself feeling homesick, even if you have a new home that has nicer wallpaper and a more efficient dishwasher than the home in which you grew up.”
Lemony Snicket
“You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”
John Steinbeck
“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing’s sake, back home to aestheticism, to one’s youthful idea of ‘the artist’ and the all-sufficiency of ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ and ‘love,’ back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermuda, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time–back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
Thomas Wolfe
Whenever I hear about a mass shooting, particularly a mass shooting in a school, or church or even a grocery store and then I read about all those politicians who defend owning military grade assault weapons as if it’s a god-given right, I feel so damn old. God plopped you on this earth, naked and defenseless with absolutely no rights.
I guess that’s why this song by the Beatles (George Harrison) always resonates with me at times like this.
It’s been a long, long, long time
How could I ever have lost you
When I loved you
It took a long, long, long time
Now I’m so happy I found you
How I love you
So many days I was searching
So many tears I was wasting, oh, oh
I could see you, be you
How can I ever misplace you?
How I want you, how I love you
You know that I need you
Hope I love you
It’s a simple song, written for the so-called “White Album” toward the end of the Beatles. At that time, George was coming into his own as a songwriter while Paul and John were feuding and pouting and pouting and feuding – which is understandable considering the stresses they were under..
Thus I was surprised to read that one night, in the midst of all that craziness, somehow all four Beatles managed to make it through 67 takes of Long, Long, Long without killing each other. 67 takes! That must have been some night. The result is a piece of music that critics have praised as “a touching token of an exhausted, relieved reconciliation with God” with a “weird spectral ending.” (They accidentally recorded the sound of an empty wine bottle rattling on top of a speaker and decided to leave it in, along with Harrison’s “palpable spiritual wailing.”)
George was talking about the life force we are all a part of. Animals, plants, the oceans and rivers. We can’t break the connection but it’s easy to misplace and if that happens, time drags on forever.
You’ve probably seen the above image many times but I really don’t think it can be shared enough, do you?
**”The music of deep silence,” is how one Rolling Stone music critic referred to Long, Long, Long
Saying nothing in particular 