Us-lim--a vid

Us - lim

Julian Curry -- Embryo

T Model Ford with Gravel Road--Wood Cuttin' Man

Poetry Friday---Carlos Andres Gomez -- What's Genocide?

Playing For Change---Stand By Me

Bad Love

Why come now bad love?
Bad love taunts me from death
as she did in life.


2/16/2009

I must be going to Maroc

I just bought the tickets. I've been trying to learn Moroccan Arabic, but that ship might have sailed. It's a tough language but I have two friends who speak Arabic so I'll try to pick up some phrases. So far no one to travel with me the first week. This might turn into my own little quest.

Morocco

I am going to Morocco in the fall with my friends. My partner was planning a horse trip to Morocco without me and I decided to go and see the culture while they ride. I will get some camel riding in. I'm researching how to best use my week in the beautiful country. I'm thinking of getting a place in Fez and just living a week there. I may have a friend or two join me. I'm hoping!

Yesterday I went horse back riding. I did ok except my legs were spaghetti when I dismounted and I landed on my fat butt on the ground!

big tree in australia

 

"Norman" by Mary Larson

This is a better picture of Norman. We have certainly enjoyed him.

Poetry Saturday--Czeslaw Milosz

AND YET THE BOOKS

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
"We are," they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters.  So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imaging the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Berkeley, 1986

Nostalgia

I have been corresponding with old old friends, high school classmates.  One friend is on a quest with the "angle of death" down in South Texas.  He's been reading Don Miguel Ruis and Ekhart Tolle.  I don't have permission to post his adventures here but they reminded me of the Porcine Canticles by the poet David Lee from the early 80s so I sent him a couple of poetry books.  Another old classmate found me on Facebook and wrote me about his globe trotting adventures and the sad tale and his regrets of a failed marriage.

I've also heard the sad news of the illness and death of my junior high and high school algebra teacher, Bob Boatright.  I sent him flowers before he died and I'd just completed my PhD so I told him about it in the card.  Like my success is his success.  Who knows how much the teachers remember about old students?  I sure remember him.  He was scary strict and I never did my homework for that class (3 years worth) but managed to pass the quizzes. I think he took pity on my miserable life.  My life was hard in those days.  He'd say "Trigg, if you'd just do your homework...."   Somehow when I got to college I just "knew" algebra and did well in my math and science classes, so I must have learned something.  Here is a youtube of Bob in a fiddle medley.  If you watch long enough you can see him and his chubby cheeks as he fiddles.  I think I would have liked this guy if I'd known him in real life.  As it was, I just felt bad about not doing my homework for those years.

I've also heard from a college friend.  I don't know what has gotten into me but I've been looking my old self up and trying to remember who I was.  Most strange, I'm not that different now, if anything more myself.  And our class song, Freebird still applies.

Hurray for the Class of '76.   We were all that and more!

Nostalgia--HS class song--Freebird

Nurse Jackie

Let Me Help!

 This is Julie, the oldest of my rescued parrots. She is about 30 years old and was raised from an egg by my partner's brother when they were adolescents. Julie has lived with Demos, the parents, and has now come to live with us. She fell in love with me the moment we met. No one seems to know the source of the deep and immediate affection/attachment the African Greys sometimes exhibit. As you can see, Julie has climbed up on my computer to help me with blogging.

Norman is here!

Here is an initial photograph of Norman.  The photograph doesn't do him justice.   I'll get a better picture of him up later this week.  Watch a video about Mary Larson the artist here.  She's painted what I see when I work with my patients.

Rainer Maria Rilke -- Do not write love poems;

Paris, February 17, 1903 from Letters to a Young Poet

...avoid at first those forms that are too facile and commonplace...describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some kind of beauty--describe all these with loving, quite, humble sincerity, and use to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses--would you not still then have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure house of memories? Try to raise the submerged sensations of that simple; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away.

Coming Soon: A Mary Larson Painting!

I've been trying to get a Mary Larson painting for several years. She's always sold out! Today I was showing another artist friend/coworker her paintings and noticed that she had several up for sale, so I called immediately and asked to buy one of them. I got a call back within 1-2 hours from Mary Larson herself saying that the painting "Norman" was available. The price: 250 $5.00 Starbuck's cards. And worth every drop of all that coffee.

Mary Larson is a nurse employed at Seattle's Pioneer Health Clinic which treats many homeless people. Ms. Larson started painting portraits and selling them for donations of items needed for the homeless patients who come to the clinic.

I'm especially moved by these paintings because Larson is a nurse working at a clinic serving the homeless and many of my patients at the hospital are also patients at her clinic. I also love the eye for beauty she brings to each painting. Finally, she sells them for donations for concerns serving homeless patients. I was so excited that I was told I could get a painting that I wanted to leave work immediately and go get my starbuck's cards and figure out where I was going to hang the painting!