William’s candle lighting his birthday party on his recent caving trip. (photo W Hayes)
Yea, trying to keep my thoughts in one bucket. What are you saying Felipé? I mean there are so many things calling for my attention today. Things seem up in the air, tentative. It is not helping that the plain old weather outside my window matches the sociological weather that we are all being buffeted by. It is very unstable, both weathers are. What the heck is next? It’s “unsettled” the weatherman used to say.
A sailor would say that you can’t change the wind but you can change your sails. With that thought it is time to “reef” or “shorten” the sails. This is a way of having less sail up, using less sail area. That is a way to slow down to something that is manageable. There are also ways to bring more stability to the boat. And ways to have more control and quicker response to changes.
And the preacher would say that we should read the story of Jesus calming the seas. There are some of the Apostles aboard who all are distraught as we are distraught. Sometimes we need to put our faith in the higher power.
I am currently praying for your country and our world. Praying for justice and peace for us. Could be have both please? I know that sounds like a tall order.
When the sun perches low upon the western horizon and ignites radiant colors across the sky, poetry is found…
When a small, fragrant bud stands tall upon it’s stem and takes it’s first breath to open, poetry is found…
When an artist turns a blank canvas into a creative mosaic of light and shadow, reflecting the calming landscape before them, poetry is found…
Yet what about the poetry to be found in the mundane and routines of life?
And where is the poetry in the chaos and the pain?
The beauty and the poem of the present moment can be found though it may require a shift in perspective and a retraining of the eye to see what is right in front of us.
Even contained within the pages of a book a poem can be found. Though it can take some time to weed through the words and find the special message, a jewel of a poem, buried within the sentences.
Below is a poem that I discovered from a page in a book, which is pictured above This is actually an art form which is called Found Poetry:
How long we will go on
You must tell me
I can see
You are not yourself
Her advice is to sleep
For days and days
But when you awake
In blessed solitude
I would be in your arms
Nothing else will matter
I still do not know why
Regardless of the cost
Why
My head understands
Though my heart does not
But, but, but…
You have a different truth
Perhaps we can spend
Hours together
Rather than minutes
May you love
And understand this with majesty
And wild plans
While the external Camino’s of our lives continue to have limitations, if you wish to pursue a journey into the realm of Found Poetry more information can be found at this link.
Some of My Rebecca’s Darlow’s Enigma roses. It’s a great rose. (photo R Graves)
There is just a hint of clouds up there and they are coming out of the north which is a good sign. Fair weather for us here. Finishing up a little carpentry job today hopefully. And weeding the corn is also on the agenda. Loving it, finally some stable weather.
Have a scan tomorrow I found out. I thought that it was going to be next Wednesday but no. So, an extra trip to the city for this guy. But one thing nice is that my anxiety level is generally under control with these scans as the years go by. That’s good because I won’t hear the results till next Wednesday. That’s more than any normal person could stand.
Speaking of stuff like that, I saw the quote this morning on FaceBook about how telling your story could become someone’s survival guide someday. Doesn’t that ring a bell, seen that quote many times. Funny how that works. Our individual experiences have commonality. So, that is what I am doing here underneath all the fun and games, journaling along about a life with cancer.
Walking in a moment out in this glorious day! Come join me sometime.
Some of My Rebecca’s Darlow’s Enigma roses. It’s a great rose. (photo R Graves)
Yesterday We/I realized the we had to work on raising our spirits. Time in this pandemic moves slower than our most boring class in high school. We are mostly Jonah in the belly of the whale. There were three things that happened yesterday that brought welcome relief and healing to our household.
I had my weekly phone conversation with friend and author Dr Henriette Klauser who makes time fly. She used to be able to come over for walks and tapas before the pandemic. But the the closing of the West Seattle Bridge and the social distancing have made us further apart so we settle on the phone. It is always good to hash things out with her.
Then My Rebecca and I had a FaceTime with Rev Bonnie Barnard, speaker and author. It has been years since we have been with her, such a joy. Somehow things that are difficult seem to be put in perspective when she is around. She with Henriette have websites just use their names. And they need to meet each other so we got that proposed.
Then in the evening we had a couple of couples over for sitting around the campfire with physically distancing of course. Gosh, and we laughed and laughed. It seems so simple the joy of getting together. And now we all smell like smoke.
That seems like a good place to start. I have absolutely no idea where this is going today but sometimes just starting is half the fight. We all are here in the midst of the pandemic without a sign yet of this thing melting or changing. We see the need for a lot of work to be done in our civic and personal lives. That is the only thing that we are sure of.
We need to move forward at a measured pace to get things accomplished without undue harm to ourselves and our neighbors. Happenings seem charged to such an extent these days that we all need to take a collective deep breath. That is the best I can do, a collective deep breath.
OK, I have to go for now. The details are stacking up in my day. Tomorrow is another day. We can’t get it all done in one day.
OK, yes the weather is driving me crazy, it’s wackin my mole. Do I live in my raingear or do I find another hook to hang my latest wet jeans on? This is the tragic level of Felipé’s problems.
What else is new? The Island boat racing guys are fine tuning their hydroplanes for this years annual race on the early morning of the Fourth. Remember the Fourth? This competition has been going on for as long as I remember and is an important part of our Island life although there are always some party poopers who make a big deal about the noise. There is nothing noisier than these things. But big bragging rights go to the winner and his pit crew.
And Wiley and Henna made it in for a tour of CHAZ, that’s the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone. This is a small section of the City of Seattle left over from the demonstrations and riots of days ago. It is presently without police presence and has for the present been peaceful and sort of an experiment in ceasefire. I am sure that you have seen reports on the news both good and bad depending on the bias.
Anyway they are back safe.
Church wise St. John Vianney has been down but I just received an email that they plan on opening this Sunday with an outdoor service limited to one hundred attendees. This should be interesting.
Also, Burton Community Church, My Rebecca’s, had the fabulous Bonnie Barnard Zoom in to give the sermon yesterday. She is always full of energy, wisdom and good vibes. She spoke on King David and the 23rd Psalm, a Psalm for hard times or the hardest of times.
And that‘s life for us here locally on a Monday. Off to walk in a minute, have to find my aqualung.
A pic out the window. It’s a jungle out there. (photo P Volker)
The sun edges higher and the light slowly moves across the field in the distance. It’s going to be a glorious day coming up. And also coming up is the Summer Solstice with the same sun creeping up on the longest day of the year. What a time! The whole thing is glorious!
I’m giddy with sunshine after this long winter and a long wet first half of June. Rain, rain, please go away for a while at least. We will have a dry walk here in a few minutes. Catherine coming to pray the rosary as we walk. Still no news as to when church will start up again so we pray on in our own homespun way. Our world could use a few more prayers don’t you think as our deck gets reshuffled.
The TV blares as the debate goes on. We talk on, write on, think on, walk on, pray on. We are all working on this collective problem in our own way. And life tries to go on.
And half of my life these days also is involved with the sweet corn crop. The fight to get the weeds under control is where the effort is centered. The clover green mulch is establishing itself in between the rows which is hopeful. But in the rows, up close to the individual plants, needs a one time clean up to keep the competition down. That is where I am today or this week, this month.
OK, that‘s what it looks like at the moment. Time to find my boots, Catherine will be here. The sunshine need some to be out in it.
You don’t meet that many guys named Norm these days so when you do you have to take advantage. Norm works in the hardware and lumber store on the Island. He is the one of the employees that you want to keep track of because he knows the answers and he is available. I was in buying some plumbing parts the other day and he was stocking in that aisle so we were gabbing. I had most of my plumbing problem figured out so I really didn’t need him so badly but it is always reassuring that he is close by. So I was done and ready to leave when I said, “Norm, some time before I die there is this one fitting that I never have had a chance to use and I always wanted to.” Norm thought that was humorous, “Like that’s on your bucket list?” I said, “Yea, I’m easily pleased!”
Well, that’s a good attitude to have during a quarantine. I don’t have to fly off somewhere or get seasick on some harrowing boat trip or experience some another way of having buckets of fun. Somehow being fascinated with the common or familiar seems enough for me these days. Being outside walking the trail with visiting pilgrims and weeding the corn seems just great for a June’s activities.
I was listening in on My Rebecca’s Zoom meeting today with her knitting group. It was absolutely hilarious. So glad I had the opportunity. People are connecting and just having good times despite the lockdown or near lockdown anyway.
So, time to go. It is drying up outside, time to continue my contests with the weeds.
Not Exactly Déjà vu, But We’ve Been Down This Road Before
“Back in the last century”, is a quip I throw out there frequently, as much as anything to remind my current listener that I’ve been around the block a time or two, and, no, this isn’t my first Rodeo. 2020 is going to stay in our collective memories for a long, long, time. And justifiably so. The younger set has the tendency to think, Man! Things have never been this messed up before! And even us older lot, tend to forget what the road was like we trod on 52 years ago.
Following the lead of my Hero, Camino Felipe, I tend to take a broader view. The View we are going to revisit with today’s Blog, has the time stamp 1968 on it. Admittedly, there was no World Pandemic raging that year. But there was a savagely raging shooting war going on half way around the world, and it had much longer legs than the virus the world is fighting now. That war had already been going on for a dozen years, and to us of a draft-eligible age, seemed like it was going to last long enough to suck us into it.
The term “Tet Offensive”, probably doesn’t ring a bell with anyone under age 50, but it truly does to any of us 20 years older than that with the tag “veteran” affixed to us. That was the opening act of 1968, and it was a “game changer”. The “Bad Guys” came out on the very short end of that stick, but the fact that they did what they did at the time they did it, knocked America on its proverbial behind. It would still be a long time til “the end” of that tragedy, but it was most assuredly, the beginning of the end.
As is the case today, ’68 was an election year, and the rhetoric then, as now, was visceral and constant. Twitter wasn’t even a glint in any entrepreneur’s eye, but AM radio was on constantly to fan the flames that the Evening News would rekindle daily.
The twin topics of The War and Civil Rights dominated everything. Until, that is, something like “The Pueblo Incident” would erupt and then the pot would get stirred and heated to the boiling point as an American warship and its crew are captured by North Korea, threatened with execution, and literally held for ransom.
Assassinations, not one, but two, and of young, shining stars, Martin and Bobby, mourned with a passion that still reverberated from JFK a short five years before. Agony of mind and spirit was omnipresent.
There was no Pandemic to halt the ancient inspired games of the Olympics, but the angst of a race of people long oppressed flashed around the world on a raised fist of Black Power.
2020 has thrilled us at least momentarily with the Falcon Rocket taking American astronauts to the Space Station. 1968 saw us one step closer to that Giant Step for Mankind on the moon, with Apollo 8 orbiting the magnificent orb, Luna. And on a more mundane note, the incredible 747 took its jaw dropping maiden flight, with a wingspan longer than the total flight of Wright Brothers on the sands of Kitty Hawk. .
The term “Police Brutality” was coined long before 2020, and the days and weeks surrounding the Democratic Convention of 1968 would seem like a primer. Police dogs tearing into panicked, screaming, high pressure water-hosed demonstrators was daily TV fare, as well as tear-gassed gagging reporters covering the mayhem.
And all of this was viewed through the eyes of a 21 year old newly minted Iowa State University alum, with a signed contract obligating him to 4 years of discipline and adventure provided by the United States Marine Corps. I had already earned the love and promise of my heart’s desire, and the future had more promise than fear. Bring it on!
This is the feeling that I hope is predominant for those who may feel that there is no justification for hope. There must always be hope, and a good way to find hope is to find reassurance that bleak times of the past did not last.
It’s William, O’Brother Where Art Thou? (photo J Hayes)
That’s really “obstacles” but that is how it was pronounced by Pete on O’Brother Where Art Thou. I do love that movie so much! Could just be my favorite film, maybe tied with the Blues Brothers. We watched it again last evening after take out pizza dinner.
One of the local pizza joints donated 100% of their take yesterday to Black Lives Matter. The place was hopping, they had so many orders. I always get the “Price Buster” pizza and they had about twice as much topping on as usual. It was an Island party!
Then I had O’Brother calling me so My Rebecca found it and we watched. I just love everything about it. And I had forgotten a lot of the details since the last time we watched it and that was on VHS tape so you can tell how long ago that was. It is really a journey, a pilgrimage with all kinds and manner of situations and close calls just like our journey. We can all recognize so much. Might be time to watch it again.
