The Benign Eye

She Blows Away Bad Spirits

2011-12-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

"You hung up on me?"

"Yes, I'd said all I had to say."

This morning I snapped at Valecia, whose feelings I know to treat carefully, who deserved part but not all of my aggravated and door-slamming irritation. I had not listened well enough and came to exactly the wrong conclusion, which was exactly the right conclusion to vent something I've been afraid to say straight-out. Because I've been afraid it's been unsayable.

I offered my apology, which she has not yet accepted.

"How do you eat an elephant?" the old joke goes. "Slowly, in pieces."

Afterward, as I was mulling over what had just happened--okay, what I had just done, because that is the way it felt to me--I flashed on something else.

When my therapist, Don, mentioned recently that he's been taking pictures for 30 years, my immediate reaction was consternation, even shame. Though he's been more than supportive of my talent and continues to praise my work when I bring it in, he actually sees very little of what I do. How could I be such a fool as to go on and on when he probably knows more about photography than I do? How can my five or six years measure up against that? And I was found wanting. Again.

I must have scraped bottom this morning because I got to a new place as I mulled over these feelings in my journal. There is nothing denied me that is necessary. Startled, I realized that the grain of sand that forms the pearl of great price and the one Blake used to espy heaven are one and the same--and that I have what I need. I can tell my truth to Valecia. I can quit trying so desperately to elicit from Don a life-saving love I could not get from my Daddy. The real question is only how thoroughly I occupy myself. There is nothing denied me that is necessary. I would have said, "That's news to me." Now I say that's good news.

Grizzly Mama Love

2011-11-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is my birthday, so this picture of Mama and me was taken almost sixty-five years ago. The picture says a lot. She shows already and still a maternal solicitude and I, I am determined and beginning to look out of the frame.

Several years later she was carrying me along a path at a rustic mountain resort. I'd broken my leg and was in a full body-cast around the injured leg and my torso, so I must have been somewhat cumbersome. There we were, no one else around, and she turns her ankle and falls, taking me down with her. But I didn't cry out. She held me vertical and I didn't know anything had happened I should have been afraid of. Grizzly bear love is how I think of it.

The years to come were not always easy for us or between us. She has been gone since 1989, when she lay in her final hospital bed and I breathed into her heart, "Daddy loves you, I love you." As she left, she paused a moment at the threshold and looked over her shoulder. That night I know she and my father went dancing. He had been impatient all afternoon for her to get there.

Last night these words murmured themselves to me. I am pleased that they are more fond than is sometimes my wont. They are for her.

GRIZZLY MAMA LOVE

baby baby don't you cry
mama's going to get you a bye-and-bye

if that bye-and-bye don't come
mama's going to get you a big shotgun

if that big shotgun don't shoot
mama's going to get you a high-heel boot

if that high-heel boot don't kick
mama's going to get you a candle wick

if that candle wick don't light
mama's going to love you right all right

Thanks be to God.

Occupying 2011

2011-11-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

"It is an act of violence to begin anything," said Sagittarian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. "I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning." I urge you to consider trying that approach yourself, Sagittarius. Instead of worrying about how to launch your rebirth, maybe you should just dive into the middle of the new life you want for yourself.
--Astrologer Rob Brezhny

Aint it the truth? Or, as the Governor of South Carolina is reported to have said to the Governor of North Carolina at half-time of one of their yearly football rivalries, "It's been a long time between drinks."

Such as it is, and it's big enough, right here, right now, I want to do a SHOUT OUT for all the kids, because that's what they are to me, who protested and demonstrated and marched and--dare I say it?--occupied against Viet Nam. They bring tears of gratitude to my eyes. In large part they turned this beloved juggernaut of a country around and got us out of that damned war. God bless them all, God keep their sleep, God warm their ancient, aging bones.

I sat out Viet Nam. My life was too imploded. I read the newspapers and watched TV, and somehow it didn't get through. I cared as much as I could--and action scared me. Such certainty scared me. Such righteousness scared me. My father scared me. No way I could take on the President and the country. I don't feel good about this, and that's all right.

It's in the context of Occupy that I've been thinking these thoughts, revisiting these memories, thanking my friends who were out there so many years ago.

This time, count me in. I'm going to occupy my heart as far as it will reach for this country and its people that I will not let go of without a protest. I'll do what I can. As I saw on Facebook this morning, 99 to 1 is pretty good odds.

Fresh

2011-05-15T07:03:00.001-07:00

Fresh, originally uploaded by Lynn Park.

Holy Saturday

2011-04-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

Friday--the Crucifixion, the Temple veil ripping, the suddenly dark sky--and Sunday--the best brought out of evil and defeat, a tomb that stays empty, broken hearts that begin to be filled with joy and astonishment as real as bread. The texts testify to this much, and more, but of Saturday not a word--not a word about the Reality that holds reality in place.

One hint: the Apostles' Creed has him going down and harrowing hell. First preconceptions include dark tones, lugubrious and seemly processions that mimic joy, the formal transfer of power from a despotic regime to the new authority of love which offers freedom in a never-ending moment. We can't "know" the way we know calculus or botany, but we do know from the mystery of our own Saturdays, which have opened into graced newness. That's knowing enough.

Today is Saturday, tomorrow is Sunday--Easter, when we can say, "He is risen indeed!"

Agatha and Me

2010-08-31T07:24:00.000-07:00

Lori's Diner

Late in life Agatha Christie was a houseguest at a large estate in the English countryside. She came down to breakfast one morning and failed to stifle a series of yawns. When asked why she was so sleepy, she replied that one of her early novels was being reprinted--and the night before she had realized that she couldn't remember the identity of the villain. So she had stayed up till she finished the book!

This morning I didn't have anything brand-new that I liked for my daily photo blog (http://dailybenigneye.blogspot.com/) so I went rummaging through old pictures, some rejects, some I had already used, and all of a sudden "Lori's Diner" appeared on my monitor. Did I take that? I had no immediate memory of having done so. Hmm. Well, it must be mine, so I used it--and the Christie story came to mind.

Now I think I took this photograph at the Elm Street Mall in Emeryville, but I'm still not sure. I must have been with Barbara Boughton, but I'm not sure about that either. Nonetheless, I like it that I can surprise myself. I hope Agatha liked how the book came out.

Mr Blue at Starbucks

2010-08-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

Yep, Mr Blue is back--this time at our local (2+ miles) mall. Someone told me they had "seen" him at Starbucks. Yesterday I called first, to find if it had been painted over yet, and when I said I wanted to take a picture of it, the young barrista immediately got suspicious and worried I was up to no good! I was halfway afraid I'd arrive to find waiting police.

The tag is not on the building itself but on the dumpster enclosure. Mission accomplished, I went inside to get a pastry and asked the barrista if she was the one I had talked to. "No, but I heard about it. We just want things to be safe. As long as you're doing it for your pleasure [I didn't mention his worldwide fans!], it's all right."

A funny little story, definitely worth a bus ride--and the driver on the way home had a delicious New Orleans accent and comped me my dollar ticket after some friendly flirting.

Mr Blue, you may have gathered, is a tagger, one whose work I've been photographing for the last few years. Now, I know all the arguments against graffiti and defacing private property--and most of the time I agree, especially when it's ugly. But Mr Blue charms me and I cheer him on, though both he and I can be taken to task by strict conservationists of the public space and most definitely the owners of the property he chooses to be his canvas.

Be that as it may, I want to meet Mr Blue, have him write that name on a 16" x 20" canvas board that I'll then frame and hang in a place of honor in my home. I haven't quite figured out how to do that. I don't know if he visits his old sites so I don't know if he'd ever see a note I left. And if I did leave a note, he might think it was from the police. And I certainly wouldn't want my phone number and name out there for various and sundry possibly disreputable types to find.

But it occurs to me that I can, and will, place an ad in the personals section of the East Bay Express, our local free paper. As long as I use a disposable email address, what could be the harm?

I just might come out of it with my own personal Mr Blue--and another good story.

[Note: I have a collection of 35 Mr Blue sightings at Flickr.com. To see them, go to Lynn Park, click Organize & Create (third tab at upper left), select Collections & Sets, then choose Mr Blue.]

August Postcard Poems

2010-08-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

Thirty other people--all strangers to me except the noted poet Diane DiPrima, whose work I've admired for years--have gathered online and committed to send a postcard with an original poem to each person on the list every day in August. If all goes as it should, each of us should receive thirty postcards/poems.

Instead of commercial postcards I've used 4" by 6" prints of my photographs and--just recently--4" by 6" file cards on which I glue a magazine image that's caught my fancy. Like a doofus, I sent off my first cards without copying down the poem or noting the photograph I used.

At the very first I sent several people one American Sentence, the 17-syllable Western equivalent of haiku. Thinking back, that seems a bit skimpy, so I think I'll send those people another offering.

Here are two recent pieces.

"Poem for My Aunt"

the old woman is dying, will die in six weeks
if not a month, but already the formerly
managed dementia now in full sway
from mismanaged medication
has taken her away from herself and
those who love her, leaving her to pluck
the sheet and whimper sounds that
are less than speech, she who might
have shed her body in the full knowledge
of being loved

I used a photograph of an Easter lily in a colorful pot made by a friend. The pot sits on the table on my patio and is seen in a reflection through the screen door.

And now "How She Laughs"

she is the woman who fills my mind's I
lives in how I think of myself
when I avoid mirrors and hard thought
unaffected charming girlish
nonchalant about her beauty
she has an innocence any crone would envy
and the crone I am becoming
replete with skin tags wrinkles and thinning hair
beset by obstinate extra pounds
and ridged fingernails that are too quick to split
cannot understand either
how this one stays alive in me
or why no one ever asks her to dance

I used a magazine illustration of a young woman laughing, her eyes downcast, her hand up to her mouth.

Now a couple of American Sentences, written in response to a photograph of St. Gregory's Palm Sunday procession:

Sunshine lights our way as we go toward the darkening week ahead.

He is ahead of us, riding on an ass, on a road we'd avoid.

The Church's One Foundation

2010-08-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

"The Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. . . ." Many of us, especially those with Protestant backgrounds, have sung this venerable chestnut in church. With what enthusiasm or at what tempo, I don't know--but I do know that several years ago when I learned that the words fit perfectly to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas," I perked up mightily. For some reason the joy came through in a new way. That was important because I've had a conflicted relationship with Christianity in general and my own Christianity in particular.

When I was a small child, "good Lynn" was expected to side with believer Mama against loudly vocal atheist father. Church attendance was sporadic, depending on the vagaries of my health and their relationship. But at twelve, as was the custom then in the South, I joined the Presbyterian Church--and proceeded to worry about the state of my soul. Was I really saved? (It was a great comfort, some years later, to read Kenneth Kenniston and to discover that, far from being a monstrous anomaly, I had had what he termed an "existential" adolescence.)

Shortly before I entered college I had an intense involvement with Pentecostal fundamentalism that at moments was piercingly sweet but that I could not sustain in my life at a liberal church school. I dropped away from the white church with the neon cross on top and early in my sophomore year sought out the one girl on campus who fancied herself a Buddhist. I don't think I believe in God any more. Okay, she said.

In the Sixties, I was never anti-God or anti-religion, still liked the Psalms and parts of Isaiah, just didn't go to church (much to my mother's consternation till I told her and found myself meaning it, I worship God every day of my life). Religion, with the exception of reading Thomas Merton, just wasn't part of my life.

Then, in 1972, serendipity led me to the practice of Transcendental Meditation, or TM. For the first time I found something good, and whole, and stable inside myself. I went more than two years without missing my twice-daily practice. Then the rhythm broke and I found Vajrayana Buddhism as taught by Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche from the Nyingma tradition. And here I could write volumes. Suffice it to say, in the Buddha I found an inexhaustible source of never-blaming compassion.

In the years to come I maintained some sort of Buddhist practice, almost always in the form of chanting, usually alone, sometimes in the company of others. And I started going back to church, for a year here, for a year and a half there, sticking my toe in the water, poised for flight despite myself. Looking back, I think there was a connection I missed then.

On a hot Arizona afternoon in 1980 I was blessed with a deep apprehension that the Love I sought, sought me and that in my heart there could be strong friendship between Christianity and Buddhism. But still I wandered, chanting as I went, occasionally allowing myself to be churched, however tentatively, for a while.

Till my mother died in 1989. After her death, to my great surprise, I began to hear a little voice telling me to go to seminary. But I don't even know if I'm Christian, I thought to myself. Somehow that became a non-issue and I wound up attending, and graduating from, a progressive Presbyterian seminary with the full intention to become a pastor.

But in the increasingly tense climate caused by the conflict between conservatives and liberals, I did not feel free to speak of the Buddhist half my heart. So, when six months after graduation it became clear to me that I was not after all called to ordination, my Thank you thank you thank you thank you began to release me back into the fullness of being myself.

I continued to attend the Presbyterian church where I had done my internship and worked part-time. And St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco entered my life. For a while I tried to split myself between both congregations. Then, when I had been greatly injured, St. Gregory's was my Good Samaritan and did not let me languish. That was eleven years ago. When it's right, I tell my Buddhist stories at St. Gregory's. More and more I have felt myself belonging, even when it hasn't been entirely comfortable, as I sense a vastness and possibility in the home tradition that at one time seemed to constrict.

Recently, filling out the profile for a new online social networking site, I was trying to find words to describe who I am spiritually. Over time I've used phrases like "bi-chambered heart" and "informed primarily by Christianity and Buddhism." This time I came the closest yet: "Astonished Christian with a deep debt to, and love of, Buddhism." The child or adolescent I was would have never dared to dream it. Thanks be to God.

Ducks on the Run

2010-07-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

The jailer man and sailor sam are still looking for the band on the run, but I'm more interested in the ducks that cut a swath outside my back door a few days ago. I don't know what got into them--whether it was fear of a hot wok or the rumor of good birdseed down the block--but those avians were covering some territory. They were young ones, too, hadn't mastered flying yet, were still at the bobbing up and down in the water, rump up phase. But they moved fast on land. I hope they found what they were looking for, those ducks on the run.

Disappointment

2010-07-03T10:04:00.001-07:00

Disappointment matures when anger and sadness come to sit side by side, in silence, instead of each scampering off to make its case heard and maybe even won. What disappointment knows is that there is no winning, no forced fading of the bruise, no taking back of the wince.

Sadness and anger typically take turns on a seesaw, sadness focusing on the loss to the self, anger concentrating its attack on the guilty other, both getting out of breath and sweaty, even tearful if too tired. Disappointment can empathize, casts no stones, sometimes even would prefer to indulge itself like them, but latterly prefers the calm of taking in the situation as a whole, melancholy and tart, to one-sided and premature venting.

Not long ago someone disappointed me. This is a person to whom I have given my trust and of whom I asked a small consideration, a consideration that I found was the next day denied. There was no practical negative consequence, though I thought that there could have been, which was the reason for my asking.

I think of William Blake, who wrote, "I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow." I will tell my friend my disappointment. In the necessary meantime I seem to learn a certain silence.

Some days later. . . I broke that silence when I talked to my friend. "My wrath did end," and our bond continues, strengthened.

Freshlets

2010-06-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

One of my dearest friends had exploratory surgery yesterday. She's been told she'll be three days in the hospital and will likely have a painful, weeklong recouperation. I know it will be a while before she checks her email, but I still sent this picture to her this morning, with the wish that this freshlet of beauty, like the drops of water that speak to where we are parched, bring her ease and comfort.

And I got to thinking: freshlets. Little moments that catch the eye and heart, that may stop us and even turn us around.

Today, for me, it was going at 6:30 in the morning to the Coke machine at the pool of my apartment complex to get my daily kick-start of Diet Coke. The light was still new and the air was just cool enough to announce its presence. I hadn't even begun to indulge my habitual nattering that I shouldn't have so much caffeine, that I shouldn't spend the money on expensive individual cans, that I shouldn't. . . .

And there they were, these purple flowers whose name I do not know still clothed with remnants of the day's watering. I stopped and looked. "I have to get my camera." In the few minutes I was gone the light did not change, the droplets did not dry up. And I came back to see more clearly, to play with light and air and color and form, and dials and settings and exposures.

The bejewelled flowers were a freshlet, as was the interlude, as is something it stirred in me.

Cracked Egg

2010-06-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

Fragile egg, cracked but not broken open. Hard concrete. Green grass that might have been a cushion but wasn’t. I select the picture, a recent one, not sure where it will take me, and list what I see. Then I know this piece is about my sprained knee—approximately 7:45 p.m. on Monday, April 19. Never let it be said that it didn’t make an impression on me.

My left big toe got stuck as I was transferring back into my power wheelchair. The chair and I—everything but my foot—were moving away from where I had been sitting. In those few seconds before the brain could interpret the knee’s pain as a direct order to remove my hand from the chair’s joy stick, my foot was pulled to the right side at about a 30 degree angle. And it hurt. It hurt bad, and all I could think was “gravel,” imagining as I did that the bones in my kneecap were being pulverized. (I fracture easily.)

911 call, ambulance and emergency personnel, hospital emergency room all night, where I find out that knees are governed by ligaments, which I’ve pulled badly, and that nothing is broken. “It hurts as much as a fracture at first but gets better faster.” I turn down the ER doctor’s offer to put me in a splint, saying I’ll wait for the orthopedic technicians in the morning, who put me in a lightweight full-leg half cast with secure bandages. Picky, me? Damned straight.

And almost two weeks in a rehab hospital, learning to transfer myself with a leg that at first spasms every time I move it, a leg that is clunky and awkward though finally almost pain-free. And that is the easy part.

Then I go home, where I cannot transfer myself onto the toilet with my stiff leg and so must use a slide board to get into and out of bed every single time I have to “use the bathroom” on a bedpan. It is tiring and it is awkward and I basically have to take care of it by myself. My home health aide was required to quit when I went in the hospital because she can’t be paid when I’m not in residence. (It took more than a month to hire a new worker.)

And I was lonely. After the rich “people broth” of the nursing home, having only minimal contact with people made the situation even more difficult. And it was hard, hard as concrete I might have said if asked. But I was only cracked, not broken open, and unlike Humpty Dumpty I was graced to be put together again. Though it felt so far out of reach at the time, I regain a sense of that vibrant green cushion.

Two Tables

2010-03-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Valentines Day!!

2010-02-12T12:48:00.001-08:00

Happy Valentines Day!!, originally uploaded by Darwin Bell on Flickr.com.

I've been wondering what I'd write about, what would pull me out of my literary torpor--and this image by my Flickr friend Darwin Bell did it.

I am a fan of hearts, both emotional and physical, and in fact try to live guided by the clarity of "the diamond in the eye of the heart." To remind myself I wear a white gold ring with a diamond in the center on my "wedding finger"--third finger left hand--even though I have only married my own heart.

My heart has been tender lately, a little on the achey side. If I were plotting the story of my life, I'd be pondering the open book that is the last major section. At 65 I need to learn to lay skillful offerings at the altar of Janus, as I look back at a past that delivered disappointments on the order of the proverbial elephant that demands to be eaten and as I stay open to a future that can still offer solid satisfactions and surely some pleasant surprises.

Staying in more than usual because of the rainy weather hasn't helped my heart. When I stay in too long, I get over-frugal with my own energy and don't venture out to the new places that excite my eye. I don't meet the strangers I so enjoy, and too often I pull back from deepening with the people already in my life. "They're too busy," I say. "I had him to dinner once; I don't know if he'd want to come back." Or I don't issue the invitation to the new acquaintance whose friendliness is already giving me so much pleasure. "Better leave well enough alone," I mutter to myself.

But Darwin's tincture of pink may be just the restorative I need right now. Accessible, imperfect, actual, off-center, it invites one in, says, "Come closer, you don't have to be afraid of me."

Things Are Looking Up

2010-01-31T05:33:00.000-08:00

Firsts

2010-01-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

(Some people have asked why this picture with this particular musing. If I say my friend Deb is fully alive, you'll understand at the end.)

I hadn't known what I would write about first here, what would summon my heart, what would be the first cracked twig or bruised moss on the forest floor to show me my direction this writing year. Firsts are important, and contain unfoldings.

And somehow I wind up at an online article about the recent Kennedy Center arts honorees, among whom was Bruce Springsteen. Bruuce. Who can't be 60 and who is.
Who wears his medal and ribbon almost as comfortably as a t-shirt and jeans.

And a YouTube video of him singing "Born To Run" in Turin, full of concert energy and heart and heat and joy. My eyes filled with tears and my tight, beleaguered heart let go into celebration, even as I asked, even as I wondered, "What could I have done if I had had my health? How large could I have been?"

I watched the crowd, surely swayed with them to the rhythm that held us all, knew myself to be smiling at the same time a cry was torn from me. Tears fell, as I went from video to video, from city to city, exulting in watching a supremely talented good man enact the magic that transmuted the art of performance into love given and received. I looked at the faces in the audiences. Each one beaming, a brighter than normal icon of its normal visage through which clearly shone a light that both reflects and attracts. I remember Iraneaus, the fourth-century Greek father who is noted for having said that the glory of God is the human person fully alive. May glimpsing and limning the glory that I just partook of and witnessed call me onward during this new year.

Location Envy

2009-12-10T20:57:00.001-08:00

"10 Knots," originally uploaded by G a r r y on Flickr.com.

No, I did not take this photograph--and it typifies an extreme instance of a chronic, low-grade malady I usually battle with better than fair results: "Location Envy," otherwise known as "I don't have a car and there are only so many places I can get to in my power wheelchair."

I know the areas around my apartment building, my church, my HMO, my therapist's office, to and from our little downtown. I'll swear there's nothing left to see or photograph--but I take my camera anyway and sometimes, not always, I'm proven wrong and there's the stuff of magic there in front of me. But winter is settling in here in Northern California, which means more rain and generally cooler temperatures. I'll be staying inside more and won't be outside wandering around so much, a prospect I don't welcome with glee.

I can--and will--set about honing my skills inside, working on macros and interior abstracts, trying as William Blake would put it "to see Heaven in a grain of sand," but damn, I'd like to be able to take my camera to the wide vistas, both metaphoric and actual, that call my heart.

Birthday Eve

2009-11-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

On the eve of my birthday I think about my family and remember the past, particularly my parents. I am older now than they were on the nights that comprise this memory and this image.

The City of Childhood: I

in the summer we lay at night

on blankets in my grandmother's yard

in the dark night filled

with stars stars and fireflies

night sounds of breezes and passing cars

long shadows on the lawn

we lay there

my mother my father and I

with my grandmother

and some of the men

who rented rooms

we lay there on the grass

on blankets and old quilts

resting there between the earth

and the night sky

the sky dark and solemn

bejeweled with stars

caught and held then as now

by the slow silent spin

of time and love

Anybody Home?

2009-11-01T17:33:00.000-08:00

I keep coming back to this picture, and I don't get any where with it. I've finally figured out that I don't know if I'm on the outside trying to get an answer or inside deciding whether or not to respond. Am I the resident or the guest, the owner or the interloper in my own life?

I feel like the gestalt drawing: looked at one way it's a beautiful young girl, looked at another way it's a wizened old crone.

Increasingly, I'm noticing where change is sneaking up on me.

In a week I turn 65, which brings in its wake a life review and a preview of the life I'm likely to have in the time I have left. I have to accept that the life I have is the life I have and that "I'll live single all the days of my life." The dream that someday I would be someone's beloved has been hard to let go of. Now mostly it's a dull mute ache, and I truly do value the genuine affection of the people I know and who cherish me. As I realize, somewhat to my surprise, that I have even deeper yearnings--to speak forth what I see and know and am shown--"It's not the same" is a whispered truth I have no will to deny.

I've become vegetarian. The decision not to eat beef, pork, or poultry was almost effortless once I learned something about the factory farming of aminals; I'm having more difficulty fine-tuning what's right for me in terms of fish, dairy, and eggs. My instinct is to give up fish and eggs because how they are made available to us in this society still depends on creature suffering. We'll see.

I'm watching two special friends deal with the effects of aging on their health and mobility. My favorite (and only living) aunt is in very poor health, and I realize how much I'll miss her when she goes. I realize how much I'll miss my friends as their mobility becomes more circumscribed--and know that it's also myself I'll miss as the yet-unknown effects of aging take their toll on my already difficult (not necessarily "bad," mind you, but difficult) circumstances.

"Knock-knock." "Who's there?" "Change." "Change who?" "That's up to you."

Whether it is or it isn't up to me, I'm home and I'm going to answer the door.

A Coming Home

2009-10-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

My spiritual life lately has been about as well balanced and as substantial as the reflection of this house in the car window. I've been not exactly depressed but disheartened and at loose ends. I've tried to meditate, do mindfulness practices and notice sensation, but this only went so far--and that far was not far enough.

Next month I turn 65--and have heard myself saying things like "but 65 is in an intimate relationship to 70." I'd belabor the point that I am too young to be that close to 70, too vital, too unfinished (sometimes I feel as if I've barely gotten started living), too whatever. The issue was never 65 itself; it was always 70.

Tuesday, as I was going over this yet again at my therapist's office, I heard myself say, "And Daddy was 69 when he died." Pow!! I got it. There's no way I want to live in a world without my father, and it feels that to outlive him would be to do exactly that. Knowing this, I've felt lighter about the whole birthday thing and more sanguine about "the future," whatever it is. The sense of being disaffected begins to lift; I sense movement within myself that is gift.

This passage from The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava just came to mind. Padmasambhava, otherwise known as Guru Rinpoche, is the Indian scholar-saint who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century. I'm quoting from memory.

When Padmasambhava goes to the palace of beatitude,
do not seek to follow. Do not go with him.
Having known me, you will see me in the future.
This union is indissoluble.

And again, "Ah. . . ." The love I have for my father, the connection I feel to him--a connection I have fought for and earned and been blessed with--can survive 70, if it comes to that.

As I was lying down last night, I realized that the meditation that wasn't working was too rational, too determined, too forced. In my need I had bypassed my heart. But for years I chanted, something I haven't done in a long time, something it feels right to return to with all the love and yearning of my heart, with no apology.

Questions and Answers

2009-09-26T12:35:00.001-07:00

St. Petersburg Painting, originally uploaded by Lynn Park.

This morning I spent two hours figuring out how to send pictures directly from Flickr.com to dailybenigneye.blogspot.com, because I can't figure out how to pick up my most recent photos with the Browse function, something that would be a piece of cake for any self-respecting autodidact, who would of course have a systematic overview of the field under consideration.

No, I'm more like a terrier--nothing as massive as a pit bull--something smaller that can get down low, dig frantically through the underbrush and dirt, till I get a grip on what I'm looking for. Then again, it's nothing systematic, but more a worrying the problem to death, shaking it back and forth in my "jaws" the way a small terrier dog will till it wrests its prey to submission.

And it occurs to me that in many ways I am worrying something larger than the answer to a discrete technical question. Aging, fragile health, acceptance of solitude only interrupted, plaguing economies when it comes to means--these pose a question I have not yet answered in my heart and in my bones. A purely rational approach, lists of pros and cons, good reasons and bad, even stating the inevitable leave me unsatisfied and afraid of the inevitable and the difficult. And my mind jumps from "jaws" to this quotation from writer Annie Dillard: "I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you," which occurs in the context of an essay on weasels and the fierce purity of their tiny jaws that will not let go.

Sometimes obedience and purity are their own reward and the only near-certain answer.

Making Space

2009-09-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

A month ago I woke up without my gall bladder. This morning I woke up to a significantly more serene apartment. As well as letting go of a seriously inflamed internal organ, I've let go of 15 bags of books, 7 large bags of yarn, 8 years of back issues of knitting magazines, 1 garbage bag from each of my 2 desks, 1 small table in the living room, and assorted trivia. I'm not done yet. I still have to go through clothes, costume jewelry, kitchen drawers, the catch-all area around the computer, 1 giant stack of old magazines, 1 filing cabinet, the bins where I store old photographs and collage supplies.

The apartment "looks" pretty good right now--and if I could keep my living space at this level of neatness, it would be an accomplishment. But I want to go below the surface, into drawers and minutiae, so knitting needles are all in one drawer and I'm not keeping any old batteries. I want the same feeling of pleasure when I open other drawers and cabinets that I get when I open my underwear drawer and take out a perfectly folded slip. I want blank note cards all in one place and a modicum of order to old family snapshots.

Years ago, when I lived in Washington, D.C., I read a book about an American woman's experience in Japan with Zen: Sun Buddhas, Moon Buddhas by Elsie Mitchell. Her teacher told her something along the lines of, "You Americans think you care about people and don't care about things. But not possible. Can't care about people until you care about things."

Even then despite my self-image as an aesthete and a bohemian living in a verdant clutter, I felt the call of spaciousness. Taking on my entire apartment felt like too much, so I tackled the bathroom. I made sure to fold each towel and washcloth, to align my bedroom slippers just so, to put the soap in the soap dish so the edges were even--things I would have before criticized as anal and railed against as taking too much time. But contrary to my expectation, just the opposite was true. I felt a sense of lightness whenever I entered that room and found myself taking an easeful pleasure in keeping it orderly.

I don't know what happened. The bathroom got messy again, along with everything else. I was young, and maybe it was too much to ask for a taste of spaciousness to "take," but I think I'm after something of the same thing now, though on a larger scale.

And it does not seem unrelated that the traditional associations for the gall bladder have to do with anger. Certainly I still get angry, but I don't think I'm making it up to say I feel less inflamed, more open inside to the calm I am trying to create around me.

Gall Bladder Tsunami

2009-08-26T00:45:00.000-07:00

By the psyche's own arcane schedule of markers and indicia, "it"--this recent journey into the netherworld of death and rebirth occasioned by my successful gall bladder surgery--began two weeks ago today.

During the day my inner Imperious Queen, far more a tyrant than the Queen who so intimidated poor Alice, had been forced to accept, with mewling good manners and a semblance of calm, a situation that called for hysterics and upheaval on a continental scale. Later, in the night, in Dream Time, my inner Dutiful Daughter, a timid creature who makes much of keeping secrets from herself, took quite a charming step toward self-recognition and frightened herself into a panic of equilibrium-altering proportions. What can I do?, I then asked myself, feeling both beset by Queen and betrayed by Daughter. I can EAT! and proceeded to consume the grain foodstuffs of three small duchies and later the meat leftovers from several municipal feasts. Ah, sweet satiation, as I drifted off to sleep.

NOT, as I awoke to burning pain lodged somewhere in my right chest near the elbow. And NOT during two days of increasing discomfort, as breath becomes increasingly difficult and speech almost impossible. But the pain is on the right side; I can't be having a heart attack, can I? By Friday I am scared and call the Kaiser Advice Nurse. "We think you should come in. It could be a pulmonary embolism, and we can't rule out something with your heart even if the pain is on the right."

But I don't have transportation today; I can make it tomorrow. Then I begin to dilly-dally. Should I, shouldn't I? I mean, after all, how serious can it be? But what if I wait and something Really Bad happens? Maybe I can find someone to take me, but that's such a hassle. Then I call 911. "I'm having difficulty breathing."

Emergency medical technicians here in minutes. Ambulance. IV. Emergency Room. Tests, more tests. Foley catheter. Nothing by mouth "just in case." Hurry up and wait. Ten p.m. Inflamed gall bladder, surgery tomorrow. Ten p.m. Saturday night. Into surgery, finally.

I wake up in my room, can't find any bandages, wonder if they've done the surgery, go back to sleep.

The surgery went well. Five small bandages, easy for benumbed fingers to miss in the dark. Liquid diet for breakfast, normal diet after that. Sunday in the hospital, home Monday.

"Your gall bladder was so inflamed it disintegrated every time I touched it with my surgical implements. You would have died if we hadn't operated when we did." This, from the surgeon Friday when he removes the drainage tube.

I think about my Imperious Queen and my Dutiful Daughter, the day before the first attack. My therapist tells me that thoughts just happen, that dreams just happen, that I didn't "cause" the gall bladder attack, that it also just happened. I'm not so sure. I think about the reports of altered behavior of wild creatures before earthquakes and tsunamis, and cannot but wonder if the melodrama, imperial and diffident alike, that prompted my own inept response wasn't somehow a good thing. The Imperious Queen seems less fearsome than she did. The Dutiful Daughter's devotion seems a finer, stronger thing than I had thought. And I go forward into what will surely be the latter years of my life newly pregnant with possibilities I had not known before, possibilities that reach to join the inner and the outer worlds in a way that seems both to anchor me here and to call me home.

I Wanna Play Now

2009-08-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

My church is setting up an online social networking group for members only modeled loosely along the lines of Facebook. There are application and approval procedures, and it's not yet clear how things are going to work. There's no reason it should be clear yet as the new site has been up less than two days. And I'm amazed at how much feeling this change is stirring up in me.

I applied yesterday, at which point the screen greeted me by name and informed me that administrative approval would take a day or two. Now them's fightin' words. I know intellectually that "administrative approval" is a gate-keeping function, the cyber equivalent of paperwork--and bells go off in my head are about inclusion and exclusion, and power that someone else has, and being on the outside wanting in.

This morning I go to the site, where I am again greeted by name but discover that I cannot make a blog entry, so I must not have been approved yet. I see that Joe Blow left a note for Jane Doe. "Interesting," I think, "I can at least keep up till I'm able to post." Not. Jane Doe's site is private because I don't have administrative approval. I know it's "yet," but it still stung and the kid in me thinks, "How come they get to play and I don't?"

Yesterday the emails had begun flying back and forth through our regular channels, the pros and cons of the new site and what risks the changes it entails might be. I felt myself get caught up in the not knowing and how it reverberated with less successful incidents in the past, incidents both personal and corporate, and started to fire off my own impassioned, editorially slanted plea for information.

Then I did something radical. I picked up the telephone and called someone who would know what was going on and found out directly what was involved--the history of the new site, why we were changing some long-standing approaches, the potential it offered for the life of our community. Everything made sense. I could and did sign on. I wanted to play, and I didn't want to wait.

And maybe I can have a little bit more bemused affection for the part of myself who so quickly feels left out, who is so certain that the "other kids" are going to get the good stuff first, and there'll never be a place for me.

Every Single Thing

2009-07-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

every single thing is both:
ended and begun

possibility rises like a camel's hump:
which side will you ride?

all is lost:
begin again

all is begun:
this is the end

every single thing is both

Snowball, This One's for You

2009-07-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to learn Nikon's Capture NX2 photo editing program, which I have installed on my computer on a 60-day trial, a week of which remains to be used. Before I shelled out the more than $140 to buy it, I wanted to have a sense of whether I'd be able to use it, whether it would be too much or two little for my needs.

At first I felt as if I'd been dropped into Advanced Potion-Making at Hogwarts with no preparation.

I either got no result or a result that wasn't what I was looking for. The online help was definitely inadequate, so I picked up a trade paperback and went through that, which helped. I know now that competence, the kind that can move without pondering first, is a matter of months, not of weeks, and that I'm liable to get discouraged during the process. But already I've been able to achieve effects that please me, and I will purchase the full package eventually.

I'm pondering the similarity between photo post-processing and active processing, as it were, of experience, a processing that goes beyond memory into an emotional, visceral, intellectual engagement with something that happened before. "Oh, I remember that." We've all said it--and the memory returns to the shelf unchanged. And we all have the themes and situations from our past to which we return over and over again, as if we have not yet gotten them into focus, as if we cannot yet see them clearly enough to lay them to rest with other accomplished recognitions.

So we hold these experiences this way and that, consider possibilities of blame and expiation, and cannot let them go, unsatisfactory as they are, till something shifts and we have a new way of seeing the situation whole, entire.

When I was a little girl, my most beloved dog ran into the wheels of a truck, he was so glad to see us. The truck driver was upset but there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. Obviously Snowball was injured. My mother carried him home, put him in his bed to see if he would get better. Three days later, when he hadn't, she took him to the vet, who said his hip was badly broken and put Snowball to sleep.

All these years I have held anger in my heart toward Mama, that she didn't take Snowball immediately to the doctor, that he had to suffer any moment longer than necessary. And I know that things were different 50-some-odd years ago in the South, that even loving people didn't necessarily take the same kind of care of their animals. But this didn't ease my heart, till a dear, trusted friend said, "Lynn, have you ever thought that perhaps she could not face giving him up?" I don't know. Tears still come to my eyes, but now they are more complicated tears and even the past has been somehow affected.

Today's picture was quite drab when I started to work on it. Somehow it seems this version says more about what was "really" there.

Blow Up the TV

2009-07-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

I just left in my wake a small swath of discomfiture at a major American corporation that will remain nameless to protect the guilty. You see, after my final bill for cell phone service, said corporation said I still owed them $1.99. I thought about not paying it, but I did.

So today I receive an adjusted final bill that showed said corporation owing me a credit of $1.77. I call to request a refund and am told variously, by four different employees moving higher up the organizational chart, that $1.77 is not enough to warrant a refund, writing the check would cost the corporation more than it was worth, and they only issue refunds for $4.50 or more.

My blood boiled. I announced, quite clearly, that I was not angry with the person on the phone but the corporation. . . . Well, let's say that's a different matter and that my conversation was sprinkled with "petty larceny on a corporate scale" and "class-action lawsuits" and "who gave you the right to decide how much of my money you get to keep?" Each time I was told no, I said, "I want to speak to your supervisor."

Finally I got a young woman who as much as intimated she was breaking the rules by authorizing a refund for such a little amount, "but because you're so upset," she would do it. When I cash the check, I'm planning on sending back a note of thanks and saying that while I appreciate the corporation's belated sensitivity to my upset feelings, refunding the money because it wasn't theirs to keep in the first place would have been a much more satisfactory solution.

Roses in the Distance

2009-06-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

Lucinda Williams is singing on the radio: "Don't buy a fancy funeral--it's not worth it in the end." I took this picture of my parents in front of Dulles Airport in September 1974, nearly thirty-five years ago, more than half my life ago, a full broken heart ago, a heart broken both because of wounds it received and because of distances it enforced.

They had come from East Tennessee to Washington to visit me for the weekend, one of the few times they ever came together. With what hopes and fears, anticipations and regrets they made the trip I do not know. I cannot remember how I felt but I remember that I tried: tried to show them a good time, tried to make everything okay, took them to brunch at the Watergate, where the fine service was too formal for them, I realized too late.

We weren't entirely easy together, even during the good times, even during the best of times. The years of his drinking and their fighting had taken something out of me, something I did not know was gone, something I did not know how to replace. And on Sunday afternoon, or maybe it was Saturday because we went to brunch on Sunday, "Why don't we take a drive?" we wound up at Dulles Airport.

Where I took their picture, where I put them in their place, where the distance in my own wounded heart spread out onto the asphalt parking lot. I didn't know till the slide came back, after they had gone home, what I had done. When I saw how tiny they were, how innocent and hopeful, there for my taking, there for my loving. But then all I could do was fix them at a distance too far for touching.

This picture has stood all these years as silent accusation for what I've taken to be my hard-heartedness--but now I see something more. I see them together. They had each other and they understood, and in that they could begin to forgive themselves and were able to forgive me. I see an innocence that had not been lost in what could be the hell of our life together. It had been hell before. It would be again, yet that afternoon the broad light was both just and merciful. I could not see that till just now, through my tears.

When I first determined to write about my Mama and my Daddy in front of Dulles and wondered about a title, I considered, "What you can't forgive your own heart--may it grow love like roses on a bush." For a title it's a bit wordy, but something has grown these sad years. And its aroma is sweet.

That Wide Risky Reaching

2009-06-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

in that wide risky reaching
we sometimes lose our footing
and find ourselves in graceless arabesques
of fear and doubt

yet discover there a dance
that is truer to the music
that calls us still
than would be a more certain stance

Not This Time

2009-06-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

Being disabled is damnably inconvenient. Let me explain. I use a power wheelchair, and I wear a protective brace on my left lower leg, which has a significant curvature and has already broken twice in the same place, to protect it against further damage. Before the brace, when I had to go to the toilet, I would simply pull my chair up close and slide across. No problem.

Now, however, two broken hips and the brace later it's not so simple. In fact it's not. Period. The brace rubs against the toilet in an awkward place, and after the broken hips I haven't been able to maneuver the slight difference in height between my chair and even a raised toilet. An ordinary toilet is out of the question; my shoulders aren't strong enough.

What I am able to do is use a free-standing bedside commode I keep in my bedroom. So I'm very careful to have my daily bowel movement before I leave the house, even if it means getting up two or three hours early and ingesting what I hope will be enough caffeine to get things going. I also try to balance fiber, liquid, and the occasional laxative.

For two years the Force was with me. But today my luck changed. I had planned to take a 7 a.m. Paratransit bus to San Francisco to St. Gregory's for a five-hour Chapter meeting. The meeting doesn't start till 9 a.m. but that was the pick-up time Paratransit gave me. Usually I allow myself three hours, but somehow I just couldn't see getting up at 4 a.m. so I set the clock for 4:45 and started drinking Diet Pepsi. Diet Pepsi? you say. Yes, the caffeine and the cold fizzle usually do the trick, though these days it's taking more than it used to, to get the same effect.

It was 7 a.m. and the bus arrived. Nothing had happened on the alimentary front. I wanted to go to Chapter (a twice-yearly members-only event), but even more I did't want to get myself in a situation that could well have been messy, embarrassing, and malodorous. I told the driver to leave without me.

If I'd gone and made it through without necessity striking while I was on the bus, St. Gregory's has a portable toilet raiser, which is currently on top of a cabinet. If I needed to use the bathroom there, someone would have had to lift it down for me--and I would have felt a lot safer if that person spotted my transfer (the first in a very long time) from the chair to the toilet. All this with a growing sense of urgency--nope. It didn't seem like a good idea.

I'm sorry I'll miss Chapter; it's a special day of discernment and sharing, but I'm not distraught or overly disappointed. It helps that today is San Leandro's annual Cherry Festival, which I had regretted the prospect of missing. One good thing gone, another good thing in its place.

And much of what comes with being disabled is still harder than it looks.

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

2009-06-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

Or, "How To Make Up Increasing State Deficits by Cutting Programs for Poor People Who Didn't Cause the Deficits in the First Place."

If you had told me twenty years ago that I would spend the latter years of my life severely "financially challenged," as they say, I wouldn't have wanted to believe it. "Oh, I'll never be rich," I would have said, "but I'll make it fine. I'm clever, I'll be all right." I am clever, and in strange ways I'm more fine than ever, but for me "making it" has come to mean SSI and Medical and In-Home Supportive Services and weekly therapy paid for by the State of California through Medical, therapy that's authorized in six-month increments.

And now it's likely that my In-Home Supportive Services will be cut because they're "only" for domestic tasks and I'm not needy enough. Which would mean no more Anita, who has increasingly become "my beloved Anita," to clean, make the bed, cook, wash clothes, do all the necessary but seemingly insignificant chores of daily living that I either can't do at all or that would sap my energy if I had to do them on a regular basis. No more warm, familiar presence every morning to puncture the debilitating pall of isolation that drapes too many of my days.

And Don, whom I see once a week, whom I have finally begun to trust is there for me, will be there for me. We've developed a relationship that gives me structure, that helps me redress lingering deficits from the past, that helps me keep going when otherwise it might all just be too much. What would I do, what will I do, if I can't see him any more? I've heard that there are going to be deep cuts in Medical-funded mental health programs.

Now, mind you, these budget cuts have not been enacted yet. The muckety-mucks in Sacramento, who haven't to my knowledge either been asked or volunteered to reduce their perks or their pay, still have some motions to go through. And it will take some time at least to dismantle established programs. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a few lawsuits along the way, though I doubt they'll accomplish anything. Anita, bless her heart, has said she won't leave me bereft, will always find a way to give me some help. Don and I talk tomorrow. Maybe we can work something out.

I've been fond of saying, "Worry is interest paid on a loan you haven't even taken out yet." And I'm still worried. I'm a good enough Buddhist to that change is inherent in how things are, I remember my father declaiming, "This, too, shall pass," and I can quote St. Paul to the effect that "nothing in creation can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus." And I'm still scared.

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Note: This photo can be found on my Flickr.com photostream.

This Moment

2009-05-29T11:03:00.001-07:00

THIS MOMENT

the green light under the trees is aslant with holiness:
holiness raining down and blooming on the young man
the young man there with his infant on his knees
his hands holding the world and hope

the child is stable as a buddha: quiet and full
resting surely in all containment
in all being contained and held

the man's white shirt (open at the neck)
calls to mind nothing so much
as the light of a Dutch interior
the summer Panama shades a face
sweet as any madonna's

the man was found whole in this moment
in the dappled light of the summer afternoon
when he held his child on his knee:
this moment that shimmers as a sepia memory

in the yard under the trees
when the summer light was awash with joy:
this moment that stops the sun with a steady hand
and holds the man and the child as gently
as the man then held the child

and the woman is there too:
it is she who is holding the camera
it is her eye and heart
that held and framed
this moment

it is hers forever
and the man's and the child's:
that moment when the green light under the trees
was aslant with holiness

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Note: With the acquisition of a new scanner, I'm able to broaden my range here. This photo, from my infancy, is veritably an image of heart's best hold for me, which I hope you'll see from the poem I wrote some years ago.

Boot Liquor Blessings

2009-05-23T20:47:00.000-07:00

Seven-thirty, Boot Liquor country blasting through the headphones. "They ought to make a brand-new whiskey, and give it a woman's name." I'll take Diet Pepsi for my postprandial libation, forego Bailey's for now.

"Oh, I'll pawn you my gold watch and chain, love." Been in all day, was starting to slide, feel out of sorts, unanchored and aimless by midday. Tired of Flickr, tired of checking SiteMeter, tired of sorting through pictures on Picasa, tired of reading about other people's lives on Facebook.

And I knew Becca was coming over from the City; I'd invited her Sunday. A little concerned that silence might lie heavy, that I might talk too much. "I hollered, 'Lordy, Lordy, have mercy on me.'"

We started slow, I felt jerky and out of gear. "On the road to Bakersfield." Stories came, food, weight, computer talk, Andy's good heart, Anita's pushing my mother button, my hard time during Lent, her having felt buoyed up, two seminary graduates and her ordained, how sometimes what doesn't "fit" is the best and most healing truth.

"Ain't going back there, ain't going back no more." My fear, still, that being Christian will take something away from me--and the only part of Christianity I can always take without struggling is the Resurrection. But at church I'm home. When I came back to the church, I wanted where I came from, what I was, to be good enough.

"I won't wear the chains that sadness made." Daddy, how he came to me at the trial of the man who shot him and again the day of Mama's funeral. How I used to say, "He loved me so much he battled through time and space, life and death," and now I know he had no cosmic opposition, just God saying, "Well, Franklin, get going."

"We're doing fine--me, myself, and the wine." And through the afternoon, my heart opens from the stripped branch I had known earlier to the fullness that makes what is, good and enough, even this body and not having had the relationship I always wanted, even the loneliness that aches.

Becca hears my words into knowledge; I receive her relatively greater silence as gift. The slight meal we share is feast enough. Eight-thirty and I'm not just caffeine mellow. Boot Liquor still flows deep and bright. "Send dead flowers to my wedding and I won't forget to put roses on your grave."

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Note: "Freeway Sky" appears on my photostream at Flickr.com.

One Way of Putting It

2009-05-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

is to say that God is good.

This time I had my eyes open and caught the "giveth/taketh" sleight of hand, which probably happens rather more often than I'm willing to give it credit for.

Yesterday the boo-hoo-hoo with stern injunctions to myself not to procrastinate, not to give beauties on the wing a chance to get away.

And today, going back through my photo archive, I find from last July an unremembered gift from Hot Lips (what else to call the itinerant, anonymous artist) from a neighborhood all the way across Oakland from my recent sightings.

Delight, and even gratitude, rises.

Note: "Hot Lips in Splendor" can be found on my photostream at Flickr.com.

"Gather Ye Rosebuds"

2009-05-17T14:48:00.001-07:00

Rectilinear Lip Leaves
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

In the 17th century Robert Herrick advised virgins to "gather ye rosebuds while ye may," because the missed opportunities that accompanied the passing of time could not be regained. I say, "Take that picture now."

People are of two minds when it comes to graffiti/wall art. Some people say, "No, no, no. Not ever. Ugly. Defacement of property. Bad, bad, bad." I can see their point though I don't have to like it.

And I often say, though I can't always defend it, "Hmm," and even "Hot damn!" I confess a particular weakness for good tagging (applying one's name in a distinctive, even decorative manner) and stencil art like these fuschia lips, for example. I love them and took two shots near my doctor's office. I had also seen, in the other direction, just a little out of my way, two more examples I intended to photograph, when I had time. This morning the bus passed by and my unsung, unloved, unappreciated, unphotographed osculatory icon had been neatly and thoroughly painted over.

That will teach me to wait. Or, in Herrick's words to virgins who've lollygagged and missed their chance to marry, "For having lost but once your prime, you may for ever tarry." As my mother would say, affecting a downhome accent, "That'll larn you." Indeed it did. Here's to going a few blocks out of the way for beauty, especially outre' beauty. I mean, what's not to love about flaming rosebud lips?

Note: "Rectilinear Lip Leaves" can be found on my photostream at Flickr.com.

Pressure

2009-05-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

I don't have a job, i.e., I don't go to work and get paid, but I do work, and some of the time it feels as though I work all the time. Should. Got to. Necessity. Important. Major consequences. If I don't. . . .

Time. I don't have "enough" of it, and I have fewer blocked-out obligations than most people I know. In fact, the days I have to be somewhere I usually worry less about time than when I have the whole day to myself. Like today: it's already one o'clock and I haven't "had time" to wash my face or brush my teeth. And sometimes I don't even have time to go to the bathroom!

Things to do. So far today I've called IRS, and Social Security, and left a message with my Dell sales rep, and e-mailed pictures of Paul's installation to Sherri at the SGN office. But I haven't taken care of hygiene, physical or spiritual, and I haven't started gathering the year's worth of checking account statements I need to come up with a monthly balance for my yearly housing renewal. And I've got to find my savings account number. I need to e-mail the customer service reps who've written to ask if my computer problems have been resolved. I still haven't retrieved my Word files from the old computer. There's always housework. And I haven't even thought about anything as sensible as having lunch.

I remember, when I worked in Washington, D.C., at the National Education Association, how on the weekend I'd bring home what I was sure was five or six hours of work--and steadfastly not work on it all weekend, feeling worse and more desperate all the while, constructing scenarios of doom if I didn't, till about nine o'clock Sunday night, when I would decide that it was too late even to start or try. And I'd be free, deliciously free. Monday morning I usually got everything done in about an hour. Somehow I never seemed to learn not to bring it home with me in the first place.

This is the first time I've thought about that pattern in relation to the feeling of being overwhelmed I have so often now, in the leisure of my enforced retirement.

I remember, too, procrastinating before exams in college, the misery of that, and how studying was usually positively pleasant compared with avoiding studying. When I get to doing the things I put off or am afraid of doing, usually I feel much better than I did.

What if I DID take care of everything as it came up, got dressed and washed my face and brushed my teeth first thing, instead of spending half (or more) of the day in my nightgown? What if I did handle the proverbial piece of paper only once and attended to e-mails promptly? What if I wrote phone numbers in my address book instead of on little pieces of paper that I lose usually more than once?

Then I'd have the blocks of time I say I want, to read, to paint, to make collages, to knit, to meditate, to be. And my photography wouldn't be a stolen, nine o'clock on Sunday night pleasure the way it sometimes (not usually, thank God) is. That would be good, or so I say--but I might have to face the loneliness that I'm afraid would do me in if I didn't defend against it. I've realized, in the writing of this blog piece, that when I'm overwhelmed with undone tasks and obligations, the "loneliness" feels worse, so I have even less motivation to accomplish the tasks and obligations that I could do in a Monday morning hour. But when I do that "hour's work," I can be with, if not necessarily fix, the emotions and issues--what I call the loneliness--I've been avoiding. "Being with" is a lot like studying for an exam: a lot less painful than the alternative, dreadful as that may seem in prospect. Maybe I'd better get to work. I can assemble the bank statements tonight; if I want to, I can do the math tomorrow.

Note: "Death and Taxes" can be found on my photostream at Flickr.com.

No More, Never Again

2009-05-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd say it, but . . . no more, never again, nada, I've had it. You might think such vehemence signals turmoil in a intimate relationship. It does: a woman and her computer.

I used to watch the Mac vs. PC ads on TV, where the Mac guy is cool and the PC guy is a geek, and PC person that I am/was, I'd think, "It's not that bad. I haven't had any real problems. I like being loyal to Dell--and besides, I have a credit account with them." Well, I beg to differ with my former self. If and when I get another computer, I'm going the Mac route (oh, how those words grate) even if it does cost gazillion dollars more for basically the same thing.

I've had the new Dell Studio XPS since Friday night and despite flashes of being in love, especially with the 23" monitor, I'm not a happy camper. First, a long service call to Dell so my browser would work. Next, a series of live-time email chats to Mozy.com to try to install Mozy, a file back-up service, on the new computer so I can transfer the files it took days to save on the old computer in the first place--chats that didn't work. And a real-time phone call yesterday with Jai, who had a smile in his voice and never lost patience and who eventually said he'd have one of the senior technicians get in touch with me. And this morning an e-mail proposing yet another unsuccessful but logical approach. I wrote back to thank them and said the ball was still in their court. What next?

Earlier I compared this new computer system to a sleek black car. That's what it looks like but with all the sputtering I don't know if I got a vehicle or a sour yellow fruit in a big black box.

The rub is that if I were careless and not concerned about backing up my 7000 photographs, I wouldn't even know I was still in trouble. One thing for sure: the old computer isn't going anywhere till all this gets resolved. It was a clunker, but it was my clunker--and it's still got all my original photos on the hard drive.

Several years and a couple of thousand dollars from now I'll find out for myself if Mac really is plug-and-play!

Note: "Never" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com.

Picture for "New Toys"

2009-05-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

Tongue-in-cheek proof positive that I don't know my way around the new system yet.

Picture for "New Toys"

2009-05-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

New Toys

2009-05-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

I don't believe the adage that "he who dies with the most toys wins." Far from it--but there is certainly something energizing about new toys. Verily, I sit here at 8 a.m. on Saturday, after not enough sleep, Diet Pepsi in hand, playing with my brand-new, sleek black Dell Studio XPS with 23" monitor. I swear this thing is as long as a classic car with fins.

My friend Andy unpacked and installed it last night, in record time. I'd been thinking it would be a marathon hassle getting cables and cords matched up, and he had everything necessary done by supper and was out of here by 8:30. Myself, I was up till midnight, exploring. Now I've installed a version of Word I like better than the preinstalled word processing program and am preparing to spend the day transferring data (mostly photographs) from five flash drives, repopulating Picasa (sounds like science fiction), and trying to navigate my way through the unfamiliar twists and turns of Windows Vista, after cruising along with XP for years. Right now "I wanna go home" because I can't find any of my familiar landmarks. But. . . .

This baby is gorgeous and I look forward to taking her out for a ride, many long rides. It's the first time I've ever had a black car.

Worry In, Blue Sky Out

2009-03-07T17:45:00.000-08:00

I am still holding in my heart and mind a friend’s admitted great fear from last week, and today I saw an article about the suffering of the beleaguered orangutans of Indonesia, who are being slaughtered as their rain forest home is cleared at the rate of six football fields a minute to make way for palm oil plantations, orangutans who if they are not shot are burned, mutilated, or tortured.

I read the words and physically turned my head and said, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. . . . I can’t face, can’t take into myself that kind of suffering on the part of the innocents.”

I suffer, you suffer, we all suffer. Sure, we’d rather not admit it, and rightly we take action, good action, to reduce our suffering, but for me at least suffering remains. And though I was not raised Catholic, I had a thought that seemed to me to be “Catholic”: how to use that irreducible suffering instead of simply fearing and feeling it.

I didn’t feel so bereft, in my conceiving that somehow my offered suffering might become a moment’s relief from pain for a tormented creature. Then I thought about the Tibetan tradition of doing elaborate sand paintings to appease the hungry devils that are always crying out in us. According to that tradition, hours, even days of the most detailed, scrupulous work is worth it if a devil spirit knows a moment’s freedom from hunger.

Somehow my friend’s worry, my own pain, and the suffering of the orangutans coalesced around the idea that we can afford allow the pain in. I think I’m feeling my way toward something like the Tibetan practice of Tonglen, in which case one breathes in, for example, someone else’s anger or fear and breathes out blessing. Somehow a kind of holy anodyne is released. It may not be “enough,” but it is good.

Note: The photo "Skylight" appears on my photostream at Flickr.com.

Courage Is Being Scared To Death But Saddling Up Anyway

2009-03-05T20:22:00.001-08:00

This is the first time I've ever featured someone else's picture here but this one is too rich not to take into myself in some real way. And since for me words and pictures are about as real as it easily gets, I'm putting it in my blog.

It's a rich picture, lots going on: John Wayne, a pristine coiled hose, Ellison Street Interiors, and a sidewalk empty of everything except a disabled "Reserved Parking" sign. I can imagine a gunfighter--this time a disabled gunfighter being scared to death but standing his ground anyway against some unseen villain 40 paces down the street, the hot sun baking down on them both, as they wait for the town clock to hit 12.

For myself, I don't know so much about being scared to death of what I have to do, the life I live, as I do about being scared to death of not being able to do, not being able to live the life I live on my own. As long as I can keep saddling up anyway, that will keep one set of fears at bay.

And I'm somehow cheered by the image of a parking sign standing guard at the end of the street in the small Western town. Heck, John Wayne is just back-up.

Note: "Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway" comes from the photostream of Texas Finn on Flickr.com. Please check out his other wonderful photographs.

Gifts That Give

2009-01-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

There’s a story, possibly apocyrphal, about a luxury hotel in New York that started off its Christmas decorations with a giant tree made of poinsettia plants. Later in the season, when plans called for a live tree with traditional decorations, one of the executives involved with the project asked, “Why don’t we give the poinsettias to a homeless shelter? The residents could sell the plants at Grand Central Station and make a little money for the holidays that way.”

Phone calls were made, arrangements decided, and the next day hundreds of poinsettias were delivered to the shelter, where the director graciously accepted the donation on behalf of the men who lived there, one of whom was asked to say a few words on behalf of his fellow residents. Instead of smiling, he looked nervous as he began. “We appreciate what you’ve done—but would it be okay if we didn’t sell them? We got together, you see, and realized we don’t get much opportunity to give to other people. What we’d like to do is give the poinsettias to the commuters.”

I liked this story the first time I heard it, years ago—and now I’m getting to live it out. One of the pains for me of reduced circumstances is always having to watch what I spend—and this includes what I can give. I’m curtailed in my ability to make extravagant—or even moderate—gestures. But since my photography show, which was funded by friends, has been up, I’ve been newly “rich” in a variety of ways—some sales, exceedingly generous acclaim, personal affection, and photographs worth something. Now I have something valuable I can give—and that has been a gift.

Note: "Reflected Garden" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com.

January 19: Intimations of Glory

2009-01-19T14:36:00.000-08:00

I’ve spent the day grinning—at the TV, which I have set on MSNBC. I can’t get enough of the smiling faces, the crowds already gathering and it’s not even Inauguration Day yet. I can’t get enough of people from near and far voicing their pride and their hopes. I can’t get enough of Luke Russert telling about high school students who have cut school to be in D.C. this week. I can’t get enough of Pat Buchanan quoting Martin Luther King. I can’t get enough of Chris Matthews saying, “I’ve lived in Washington a long time, and I’ve never seen so many radiant faces.” And all I can do is grin (like an idiot, some might say) and know that I have seen glimpses of the glory of God.

Iranaeus, an early church father, got it exactly right when he said, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” Today I’ve been seeing people more fully alive than perhaps ever before. I’ve been seeing people both risking hope in the future and joy in the moment. I’ve seen diversity as people together, not just next to each other. And something important about the glory of God: it can’t be contained—not on a mall, not to an Inauguration—and we can be mirrors to show it to each other. By the hundreds, by the thousands, by the hundred thousands, by the millions. Yes we can.

Note: The photo "Escape Is Possible" can be seen on my photostream at Flickr.com.

"It's My Party, and I'll--

2009-01-09T19:03:00.000-08:00

“It’s my party, and I’ll— if I want to.” When my photo show opens Sunday, it definitely will be my party—and I don’t know what I’ll feel, what will happen. I don’t think I’ll cry, but anything is possible.

When I got to St. Gregory’s this morning, Paul, my curator and friend, already had the framed photographs stacked along the wall. The signature that had seemed so large and garish last week was just right. The matting, in tones of blue and gray and tan, was perfect. I didn’t tear up, but I was stunned: I had done this.

For reasons of space, we decided not to hang three pictures. They’ll be available, just not on the walls. As we kept at it, deciding which photograph went where, a larger pattern started to emerge and small groupings revealed their own internal logic.

While we were working, the controlled chaos of St. Gregory’s Food Pantry, which serves free food to more than four hundred families a week, swirled around us. Occasionally a volunteer would stop and say, “Oh, I like that,” or ask a question. A couple, who like many of the other volunteers were originally recipient beneficiaries, were delighted when I invited them to come to the Sunday opening. “Of course you’re welcome.”

All in all, it was a grand preview of what looks to be a grand day—and I came home and very consciously overdosed on Diet Pepsi (caffeine) and Oreos (sugar), just enough to bring me down. The poet T. S. Eliot wrote that ”human beings cannot bear very much reality.” It’s not knowing what to do with happiness that I think threw me a curve ball.

My job now is to get my eating back on the straight and narrow. One day of being mindful and careful can turn around the slippery slope that I ran the risk of courting when I consumed two-thirds of a box of Oreos. As I satisfy myself with wise choices and precision in terms of what and how much, I can be here now—and there Sunday, and quite possibly surprise myself with how much reality I can bear.

Note: The photograph "Ooh, Goodie" appears on my photostream at Flickr.com.

Artist's Statement

2008-12-28T18:22:00.000-08:00

(January 11 I'm having my first photography show, at St. Gregory's in San Francisco. One of the things I have to do is write an artist's statement. This is the draft I've submitted to Paul Mahder, my curator and friend.)

I live in San Leandro with a strong-willed calico cat, too many books I rarely read any more, and almost 9000 pictures on my hard drive. I wore out my first good camera in the 1970s, took pictures at a fledgling country club in the early 1980s, and then money (the lack thereof) and life diverted my attention from photography.

July 2006 I was gifted with a Nikon digital point-and-shoot, and I had the feeling that I had come home. As good as the intervening years had been—writing and editing, painting and making collages (though making collages was sweet indeed)—I had the sense that this was what I was meant to do. The hard work felt easy and exercising my eye rejuvenated my soul. In a very real sense I came back to life.

January 2008 I was gifted with a Nikon digital single lens reflex that I carry with me almost everywhere. I take pictures of everything that crosses my vision—at a height of 44 inches, my height sitting in a chair. I am particularly fond of the homely detail, the ironic (or iconic) inconsistency, the wear and tear of urban life I can see and reach from the sidewalk or through the window of a Paratransit bus.

Throughout I try to shoot with a “benign eye” that reveals the beauty in what may not be conventionally pretty or generally noticed. Formal values—color and composition—are crucial, though I’ve never met a rule I’m unwilling to challenge. My earliest visual mentors were the Northern Renaissance painters who held everything they saw in the same pristine clarity, which I take to be a kind of love.

Note: "3808" and "Wild Bunch" appear on my photostream at Flickr.com.

Shrink-Wrapped Glory

2008-12-28T07:22:00.000-08:00

Old rock and roll is one of my best teachers. “To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him—and I do.” The kind of photography I do is often a contemplation. “To see, see, see it is to know, know, know it,” which often brings something very like love in its wake and can unleash a surge of gratitude where the world is seen to be “charged with the glory of God’s grandeur, like shining from shook foil, like the ooze of oil,” as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins knew so well.

Note: "Shrink-Wrap" and "Shrink-Wrap, Take Two" appear in my photostream at Flickr.com on November 18, 2008.

Writer's Block--and International Acclaim

2008-12-27T19:07:00.001-08:00

Floating
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park : See profile re 1-11 SF show

"International acclaim" may be putting it a bit strongly--but when an Italian psychotherapist on Flickr asked if she could use some of my pictures on her own blog, it got me thinking. She doesn't go on and on; instead, there is a photograph and a brief passage of text. She makes me wish I read Italian, which I don't.

Today she used this photograph. I call it "Floating"; she calls it "Musica," which lets me find something new in it. http://www.pagineblupsicologia.eu/monica.anoja/

Maybe I'll try brevity and see if I can recover the soul of wit--or at least my writer's voice.

"Floating" can be found on my Flickr photostream on October 31, 2008.

Dinner with the Governor

2008-10-09T17:25:00.001-07:00

Almost monochrome
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

In the spring of 1989 I read in the paper that George Wallace finished his last term as governor of Alabama to generally high approval ratings from both black and white voters. The writer cited substantially improved health and education indices as a cause. Hmm, I thought. Months later, on August 20 (I know the date because it was Mama’s birthday), I read in the paper that Jesse Jackson had gone to Montgomery to meet with the Governor. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall, I thought. Wily young populist fox meets with wily old populist fox.

Talking to Mama later that day (she was in Tennessee, I was in Arizona), I told her what I’d seen and said, “You know, I ought to write a letter to Wallace before I wake up some morning and find out he’s dead.”

“Well, why don’t you do it?” she asked. “What do you want to tell him?”

“That I think he’s made good use of the shooting that put him in that chair, that he’s helped people and turned his life around—and that I’m not just blowing smoke, that I have a right to say so, because of my being in a chair too.”

I wrote the letter that night. I can’t remember what I made explicit and what remained unsaid, but I remembered his having gone to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his father, and having asked forgiveness of the congregation. I thought about what being brought low can do to a person. I know I expressed my appreciation and good wishes and thanks for his good work. The next day I called the library and got an address.

When I was home for Christmas, Mama asked me if I’d heard from the Governor.

“No. Maybe it didn’t get to him, or maybe it was too personal and he took offense.” We went on to other things.

I went back to Arizona, and graduate school. The end of February I had a lot on my mind: my final exams in the middle of the week and going home to see Mama on Saturday. So, Monday when I got my mail and saw a return address from “Wallace, Troy State University, Montgomery,” at first I thought it had to do with some inquiry I’d made in regard to my research. THEN I opened it.

“Dear Miss Park,” Wallace began, “Please accept my apologies for the delay in answering your letter. I have been under the weather and have fallen behind in my correspondence.” He went on to express thanks for my “kind sentiments” and acknowledged “the situation we both share.” The ending was simple. “Please know that I am sincerely yours, George C. Wallace.”

The first time I read the letter I could barely see it for tears. Somehow he conveyed to me a courtliness that spoke of more than manners, something that touched me to the heart.

As it happened I went home early to see Mama that week. She had a stroke on Wednesday and died on Saturday. In the months and weeks that followed more than once I thought about calling Troy State University, getting the Governor’s secretary, and flying to Montgomery to take the Governor to dinner. I could have done it. Mama left me enough money that I could indulge the occasional grand gesture. I didn’t do it. I wish I had.

Note: The photo "Almost Monochrome" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com.

Little Things Mean a Lot

2008-09-13T09:07:00.001-07:00

One Step
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

I have a pain in my right side. At first I thought it was a pulled muscle, but now I don’t think so. I think it may be a tiny hair-line crack in a rib, acquired I know not how, which is possible because I have osteoporosis as well as the osteogenesis that is the reason I use a wheelchair. “But I’m too young for little cracks like that,” I think. “That’s for old women; I’m only 63. I can’t start falling apart yet.”

It’s not a bad pain, nothing I can’t live with, mostly a wince when I turn or lift my arm in certain ways. But it’s there, in the background. I have an appointment with my orthopedist Tuesday, to see what he thinks. Maybe it’s time to go on Calcitonin, a medication to aid bone healing and reduce pain, that’s supposed to be good for the small fractures associated with aging.

I could have called my medical doctor but it would probably have taken longer to get in to see him and he’s rather dour, whereas I always feel supported when I see Dr. W. He’ll tell me if I need to see Dr. D, who might know more about the latest medications. I’m just not as comfortable with him. But at least I’m not playing ostrich. I’m doing something.

While I want to convince myself that this pain, and my concern about it, is a “little thing,” my own words come back to me:

FOURTH POEM AFTER RUMI

Get full value.
Don't cheat yourself.
You are being called
to spend everything
for a moment's bliss--
with no guarantee
that payment will ever come through.

Only fools hoard their heart.
You are no fool.
This grief and this longing agree on that.

Your love yearns to cry "yes."
What option is caution
for the soul that would be free?

Finally the oyster knows itself
to be not different from the pearl:
soft flesh made precious in pain,
all a jewel in God's fiery sea.

Note: The photo "One Step" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com.

Renascence

2008-09-03T20:17:00.001-07:00

Early Sky
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

Several years ago, on a cold, gray Sunday afternoon, I went to Border's. I may have gotten a latte, a magazine or a book, but I was by myself, enjoying it, and not paying much attention to anyone else. When it was time to go home, I went back to the car.

Getting in took a while. First I positioned the chair by the driver's side seat and placed a slide board under my bottom and on the seat so I could make the transition without having to stress my arms or shoulders. Once in, I put the slide board in. Then I reached to take out the seat cushion and remove the back pack from the chair.

Now "the contraption," otherwise known as a car-top carrier, came into play. I pushed a button that opened the box on top and let down a chain with a hooked arm on the end. I manuevered this hook under the wheelchair seat, pushed the button again, and--ta dum, the chain rolled back up, folding the chair as it went and then slid the folded chair into the box on top, which then closed. All I had to do was close the door, put the key in the ignition, and--using the hand controls--drive off.

But before I could do that, a young man who'd been standing off a ways came up to me and said, "You demonstrate the indomitability of the human spirit." I may have thanked him, I'm pretty sure I nodded (I hope I looked gracious), but I was not glad. I didn't want to be an example of the imdomitability of the human spirit. How did that young man see me if that's what he saw? I didn't want to consider that.

And something is shifting, something I find myself investigating in these blogs as I explore the interface between photographs that have quickened new aliveness and the experience of living in this body of mine. I revisit that Sunday afternoon and have a better sense of what the young man observed.

Edna St. Vincent Millay burst on the literary landscape in the 1930s with "Renascence," which contains these lines: "The world stands out on either side No wider than the heart is wide." I'd add the eye that opens and the body that may have been misread. At least that's how it's coming to seem to me.

Note: "Early Sky" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com.

Things Change

2008-08-23T11:40:00.001-07:00

Change of Focus
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

Things change, especially the things I take as rock-solid certainties. When I wrote my blog profile, I referred to my power chair as both central and peripheral to my existence—and thought I’d summed the matter up succinctly. But no. Behind a simple statement about my means of conveyance lies the whole issue of my disability, something that gets more complex as I get older and as I get more able to be with the nuances of my own experience.

When I was a little girl, we didn’t talk about “it” because there was nothing that talking could change. Somehow I got the idea I wasn’t supposed to have feelings about living in a body that would sometimes fracture of its own volition, about looking different, about being unable to do so many things that other children did. It wasn’t supposed to bother me that some people on the street would stare and some people would avert their eyes and refuse to look at me. I had good manners and made good grades and my parents gave me nice presents, so there was nothing to say.

As a young adult I concentrated on Good Grooming, perfect makeup, never a hair out of place, had long red fingernails, and bristled if people mentioned my being disabled. After all, I could do almost everything but walk so why did they need to say anything? I lived alone, I drove across country, I had a full-time job, I even moved the furniture in my studio apartment (the hardwood floor meant I could slide things). I could get out of the chair, scoot up a flight of stairs on my bottom bringing the chair with me, and get back in it at the top.

Then in my thirties, after a bad accident, I couldn’t go from the chair to the ground any more, was limited to horizontal transfers. Fast forward to the present: more accidents, weight gain, a brace to prevent a vulnerable lower leg from fracturing, an arm that doesn’t rotate properly, and I have become what I thought I would never be: a Disabled Person, someone for whom being disabled affects most activities of daily life.

I don’t drive any more. I use a bedside commode instead of a toilet because the transfer is safer (and it’s still difficult). I use a slide board to get in and out of bed. I can’t turn on my side in bed without deliberate and difficult maneuvering. I have a harder time than I used to reaching things in the kitchen. I, who used to be pain-free, know about frequent aches. I, who used to go longer and harder than just about anyone else, generally lie down in the afternoon. Along with the changed visage of middle age, I have a new body, one that I don’t yet identify with, one that is not yet entirely my friend. And still, with all of this, the I who investigates, who takes these pictures, whose eye and heart still finds newness and beauty along the sidewalks I travel, is both able and grateful.

This photograph "Change of Focus" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com.

Feeling Groovy

2008-08-05T06:35:00.002-07:00

I may have painted between the lines when I used Daddy's shirt cardboard, but something in me wants to kick over the traces, do it differently, make a new statement.

I was just thinking, wondering which of my poems fits this mood and realized that while I'm not grieving any particular romance, the apparent loss of romance in later middle age--"which of course can have its creative compensations"--is a kind of grief. And if I tell the truth, it's grief for losses I've been feeling in recent months rather than depression about the way things are. A subtle distinction perhaps but important and by no means an indication that every moment has been misery. Far from it. But I do have a poem that seems apropos:

THE NEXT TIME

the next time
I get a broken heart
I don't want to act civilized
and talk things out
in a rational
manner

instead I want
to throw things
and make huge scenes
in public
places

I want
to hold on to his leg
as he drags me behind him
while he tries
to walk
away

I want
to break glasses
and smash plates
and not ever
clean it
up

I want
to cause a commotion
not take responsibility
feel sorry for myself
be self-indulgent
throw a tantrum
raise a ruckus
suffer loudly
be immature
have a fit
blame him
carry on
grieve
whine
moan
cry

and howl
at the moon

over and over
again

Note: The photographs "Green Set (c), (a)" appear in my photostream at Flickr.com.

I've Always Been a Good Girl

2008-08-04T19:45:00.001-07:00

One Way--or Another
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

When I was little, Mama would give me the cardboard from Daddy’s shirts when they came back from the laundry. One Christmas I got a set of oil paints. I remember painting on a piece of shirt cardboard, the paints spread out on a towel at the foot of the other bed in my room. I was very careful not to make a mess. I don’t remember what I painted.

Note: The photograph "One Way--or Another" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com.

Barack Obama Made Me Cry

2008-08-01T18:51:00.001-07:00

Obama '08
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

It happened this way. At a town hall meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, Obama responded to a young heckler who took him to task for supposedly not doing enough for black people. After detailing specific actions he’s taken, he ended by saying, “The only way we’re going to be able to solve our problems in this country is if all of us come together: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, old, young, disabled, gay, straight.” DISABLED? Did he really say “disabled”?

He did—and all of a sudden I understood why it had meant so much to a friend with multiple sclerosis some years ago when Jesse Jackson had a silver stripe—for chrome wheelchairs—included in his rainbow. Howard kept saying, “He knows we’re out here, he knows we’re out here.”

Now I knew what he meant, because Obama was talking about me. I matter. People like me matter to the possible future President of the United States.

And today, as I kept reciting the list, which I’ve memorized like a mantra, I realized it’s not just a list of the excluded or the marginalized. More important it’s a list of the people who belong, who have to be counted—and that includes disabled people.

It’s been hard to come out, as it were, as a disabled person, despite the fact of that disability being so very obvious. But if Barack Obama knows me well enough to make me cry, I might as well “stand up” and be counted.

I think they were tears of joy.

Note: The photograph "Obama '08" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com.

"And the Red, Red Robin . . ."

2008-07-22T16:28:00.001-07:00

Blue. Bird.
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

"Goes bob, bob, bobbin' along." I don't have any robin pictures so this will have to do.

It's been a week since Anita told me she wanted to quit, to take a job with more hours. And the situation has resolved itself quite nicely.

The next day she said her employer-to-be told her she wanted to give some of Anita's hours (the reason she was taking the job in the first place) to a former caregiver who had come back on the scene. This did not sit well with Anita, not well at all. "If she does that now, what might she do later?

"Can I have my job back? I'll be loyal to you."

And I said yes. The things that had been getting on my nerves seem to have become non-issues, and we're settling in well, establishing our own routine, which includes starting the day with a few minutes of hot chocolate and talk.

No, not a bad outcome at all, and the red, red robin does go bob, bob, bobbin' along.

Note: The photograph "Blue. Bird." appears in my photostream at Flickr.com

"Suspended for Sexual Misconduct"

2008-07-20T17:56:00.001-07:00

Electric landscape
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

I keep thinking about an article I read recently in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Epis-copal Church comes under fire for parolee priest: Murderer who was ordained has been suspended for sexual misconduct with parishioner” (by Matthai Kuruvila, B-1, 9, Friday, July 18, 2008).

“Sexual misconduct with parishioner”: I think about how familiar these words are, and how familiar these issues are and how close to home they come.

A former president of my own seminary in another denomination resigned because of sexual impropriety: adultery while being pastor of the church he served before coming to the seminary, adultery that continued after he came to the seminary. This man saw nothing inappropriate in his being a moral arbiter of gay and lesbian students seeking ordination—and was quite proud of having written a book on manners that sold well.

A seminary classmate brought sexual abuse charges against the pastor of her home church, who counseled her after the death of her husband and shepherded her on her journey to seminary. He didn’t rape her, and it was still sexual abuse. After he got his obligatory slap on the wrist from the denomination, many people saw her as a nuisance who should shut up and go away, when she kept demanding real help to put her life back together again.

At a conference I met a psychiatrist who had lost his license for sleeping with a patient, “for her own good.” He could not see that he had done anything wrong. He didn’t rape her, but I doubt that she could call him between sessions and say, “Honey, I’m feeling horny. Let’s get it on.” When I met him, he had lost everything but what he still saw as his innocence.

It’s been said that “a stiff dick has no conscience.” What’s the comparable witticism, unfunny as it can be, for a woman? While I was a seminary intern I was powerfully attracted to a member of the congregation where I was working, and it was grace that kept me from making a grievous error. It was probably grace that let me get together with this man later and find out for myself it was a mistake—but not for moral, ecclesiastical reasons.

Any of these stories warrants lengthy reflection. Every one of them stirs the pot as I keep going back to the Chronicle story. As I try to see what’s roiling beneath the surface, the first thing I see is the difficulty of even touching on them. The reticence I feel to broach the subject of sexual abuse—victims and perpetrators—has to do with issues of privacy and with issues of so-called “politeness.” Then there’s the old voice that says, “Don’t. Just leave well enough alone. Nice people don’t talk about bad sex.”

This prohibition likely stems in part from reluctance to face the dark numen that can be part of sexuality bereft of the ethical and the kind, the forthright and the mutual. It’s hard to talk about the possibility that we might falter, that someone we’ve looked up to has faltered. And it’s also hard to admit that our best-intentioned efforts may not prevent or easily ameliorate the grievous effects of sexual abuse by those in positions of power. Here I’ve reflected on situations involving clergy and a physician—but we don’t have to be clergy or physicians ourselves to hear troubling echoes that ring true more than we may like to admit, even to ourselves.

I think that’s enough for now.

Note: The photograph "Electric Landscape" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com

Only the Shadow Knows

2008-07-16T19:27:00.001-07:00

Only the Shadow knows
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

Anita quit yesterday. She'd gotten an offer for double my hours and really needs the extra money.

"I'll stay with you till you get someone else."

"No. Just finish the week --and maybe you could do laundry and change the bed, and do grocery shopping, once a week till I get someone." This is fair, I think, and doesn't saddle me with someone who's already out the door, someone from whom I've already in just these few moments begun the process of disengagement.

She agrees. Oh, yes. Gladly.

Today was all right. Wednesday. One down, two to go. I hadn't been devastated yesterday. After all, it was only the seventh time she'd been here. And while things were generally going well, I had reservations.

She's a complainer about things in her personal life; I don't think she knows how much. And a sigher. I can't stand her deep lugubrious sighs. And she likes me so much.

Who knows? Perhaps the new person will be neither a sometime curmudgeon nor a complainer. While I can get lonely, very lonely, a part of me likes the prospect of being on my own in my own space again for a while. Things aren't too bad.

Then, this afternoon, I go out for a few minutes and come back to a message on the answering machine: "It's Anita. The woman I was going to work for wants to give some of my hours to a caregiver who used to work for her. Is your job still open? Call me."

Nothing in me rises in delight, breathes deep, sighs with relief. OH SHIT. How do I say I don't think I want her when I haven't made a single criticism of her work?

"It was so hard to give notice because you've been so sweet to me."

Only the Shadow knows.

Note: The photograph "Only the Shadow knows" appears in my photostream at Flickr.com.

Two-Part Invention

2008-07-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've made a collage since I got my first Nikon (a Coolpix P4) two years ago and today I made a collage.

With my photographs there is the immediate constraint of sitting; my eye level opens up certain possibilities, subtle ones usually, and pretty much rules out others. With my collages I often set myself the challenge of working with just two pieces of paper, two disparate images, to see what I can get with such seemingly limited means.

Today, when I took my collage book outside to photograph it (something I haven't yet mastered to my satisfaction), my upstairs neighbor, she of the yellow toenail polish, was sitting on the steps. And I have a picture of a collage that is very like a collage.

Note: The photograph "Two-part invention" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com

Homage to My Father

2008-07-09T08:41:00.001-07:00

Homage to my father
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

Daddy would have been ninety-nine today. He died in 1978, almost half my life ago. He is still my shining star and my bete noire, “a man of such grace and gift as to beggar the telling of it.”

He was capable of great tenderness and fearsome rage. My last words to him, before he was killed, were “Go to hell.” Six months after his murder I revisited a former psychiatrist, to tell the story of my grief one more time.

“There’s something wrong here,” he said. “For this much time having passed, your grief is too raw, too extreme. I think you’re trying to separate the Good Daddy and the Bad Daddy. I promise you that if you let them come together, you’ll wind up with more of the Good Daddy.”

Dr. Mathews was right, more right than I knew then. I still adore my Daddy—and I haven’t been free not to tell the good stories, not to sing the songs of praise. Finally there’s room for in my heart for the darker songs too. Happy Birthday, Daddy. It’s all right.

TWELFTH POEM AFTER RUMI

Bury the Old King. Let his bones
give to the land what he could not,
what he would not
in his hatred and his fear
of the gentle blooming life
that would not obey his will,
that was unable of itself not to grow.

For this he cursed the land
and for this we bury his bones
as the only mercy we can ask for him,
as the only mercy he can at last give.

Note: The photograph "Homage to my father" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com.

Way of Thorns

2008-07-08T07:44:00.001-07:00

Way of thorns
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

“If I hadn’t posted it now, I could have posted today’s photograph next Easter season.” At least that was the direction I was going when I sat down to write. A little irony, a little brittle humor, and the rest I wasn’t sure of yet.

This is an unusual photograph for me in that the symbolism is so easy to read out of or into the picture, though I didn’t see that when I took it. I simply saw the long curve, the pattern of light and shadow, the parallel lines, the repetition of sharp points. But when I posted it, I experienced a physical sense of disquietude, in part about making any of my own “way of thorns” public, in part about acknowledging how deep is my connection to the imagery and belief of the Christian tradition. But at the level of declaration what my right hand embraces, my left hand rejects, still. And then there is the Space that simply is, that holds it all, where declaration and rejection are simply two more patterns to be observed. That Great Spaciousness does not depend upon a season.

Recent weeks have been replete with thorns—and I sense a subtle Easter stirring. Even yesterday, with Anita’s first day . . . even last night, with allowing myself Advil to ease the aches I too often put up with. . . even this morning, getting up with a hint of free-floating well-being. And I notice the desire to wrap up, to present in a package, what is perfectly fine as it is.

Note: The photograph "Way of Thorns" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com

Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam

2008-07-06T09:29:00.001-07:00

Chimney
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

At 7:05 I cancelled my 8:36 Paratransit ride to church because I had to give them at least an hour’s notice or I would have gotten a “no show” on my record—and enough no shows can jeopardize one’s ability to use the service. Had they asked why, and sometimes they do, I would have said I was having difficulty with bowel management.

Actually I was afraid I might have difficulty with said management because I got up later than usual and the last couple of days have been difficult in that department. Usually getting up early enough to let two or three DietPepsis work their magic lets me have my bowel movement before I leave the apartment home, on the free-standing bedside commode that I’ve had to use since my last broken hip. Peeing away from home I can handle; a woman’s urinal in a discreet black bag on the back of the chair takes care of that.

Today I might have had a problem, and I might not have had a problem, and the truth is, I wanted to play hooky. Generally when I stay home from church I wind up getting lonely, eating too much, and knowing I would have been happier if I’d pushed myself to get up and ready and out and about.

Except right now I’m relishing what feels like stolen time, a day that’s all mine, nobody to account to. I remember, years ago when I worked, I’d often bring a pile of work home on the weekend. It would sit on the couch all weekend, accusing me, till I finally admitted, sometime on Sunday night, that I didn’t have time to do it, at which point I would experience a guilty frisson of freedom. I’d escaped. I’d made it through again. The time between then and bedtime was all mine.

In the clear light of Monday morning what had seemed so pressing, what I had thought would take so many hours, was usually quite simple. The not-working I tortured myself with all weekend was a complicated and painful game I played with myself for the high of the putative escape.

Currently I have some external structure in my life, but not a great deal. I have therapy one day a week and other occasional medical and personal appointments. Then there’s church in San Francisco on Sunday. Sometimes Paratransit is a dream: quick and efficient; sometimes an hour’s appointment can eat more than half a day.

Generally four days a week I have a home health-care aide to help me with housework and cooking, shopping, and things like washing my hair. Judith, who just left after three years, could be high-maintenance in terms of energy. I don’t know about Anita, who starts tomorrow; I do know it will take time for us to get to know each other and to learn how to work together. Sometimes when there’s someone with me I feel that I have to be “on.” Sometimes I don’t.

And the fact is that right now I have this stolen block of time, “where the buffalo roam, and the skies are not cloudy all day.” Sometimes it’s okay to escape.

Note: The photograph "Chimney" can be found in my photostreat at Flickr.com

Independence Day

2008-07-04T08:40:00.001-07:00

Crown of wires
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

I’m still mulling over the difference between a blog and a journal. This past week would have been a fruitful one for journaling, if I were still drawn to keep a journal. There was the end-of-the-month melodrama of holding on for a new month and new money (I ended up with $2.57 in the bank). I was really pissed off, again, at someone about whom I had recently gained a fair degree of equanimity. My weight seemed to multiply itself by ten every time I looked in the mirror. Judith had left and Anita hadn’t started yet; I had all the housework and too much solitude despite three appointments and feeling pressured for time.

When I was young, and serious about being a painter, I knew I’d done something good when I had the sense it had the right to exist in the world separate from me. I’m starting to think that blog entries also have some kind of right to exist in the world, in part because they are shaped and deliberate in ways that journal entries typically are not. Even if small, this can make them worthy of protection and possible notice. That disciplined shapeliness may allow me to address deeply personal material in this very impersonal forum in a way I could not risk with material bounded only by feeling.

And there is, of course, the delight of the writing, when correcting a line opens up a new line of thinking. “This past week would have been a fruitful one for journaling . . . “ I can't remember that I originally wrote, but last week I kept thinking I should be able to take the direct roil of feelings, get them out, and make a blog of them. But this was pretty much coming out of old journal-mind. I know that now; I didn’t know it till I saw myself write “if I were still drawn to keep a journal.”

And felt a palpable sense of rightness. I can do this: I can find a way of looking at my experience the way I look at my photographs, the way I look at the world through my photographs. I’m not still drawn to keep a journal, the eighty-plus notebooks and sketchbooks and hardbound blank books in the closet not withstanding, I don’t have to keep a journal. The fact is, I don’t keep a journal.

I don’t keep a diary/day-book either—and because I don’t, I can’t look back and remember hat I did a week ago Thursday. This bothers me because I feel that I’m losing time. And I think that if I have an entry for each day, like a picket, I can fence my life in and it won’t get away from me. Wrong. I don’t think so.

But I have the present, with its opportunity for occasional insights that recast pissy weeks and lingering shoulds.

Happy Independence Day.

Note: The photograph "Crown of wires" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com

Anita. Anita. Anita.

2008-06-28T16:56:00.001-07:00

Open
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

I've interviewed two women for the home health-care worker position; a third, who worked for me briefly when I came home from the hospital last August, didn't call or show up for her appointment. I started out thinking it was a done deal that I'd offer her the job.

Until, that is, I interviewed Anita yesterday. She was running late, called to let me know. I didn't chafe or get irritable. Finally she showed up, with a retarded young woman she takes care of from mid-Friday afternoon through Saturday morning. There hadn't been time to see me between her morning job and this one so, rather than not see me, she brought her charge along.

We had clicked on the first phone visit when I'd asked her if she had a sense of humor and then wished her the Southern benediction--"Hot dayum"--and a sense of rightness deepened when we met in person. I knew I still had two interviews to go--and nonetheless last night and today "Anita" whispered itself over and over in my ear.

The woman I interviewed today was lovely, very professional, an Afghani whose English was good but not so good that I would be able to speak quickly or casually. I'd be worn out in an hour from the effort of having to accommodate myself to her comprehension level. Talk about feeling worn down and constrained!

Anita. Anita. Anita. "I'd like to offer you the job." She was so happy she got teary, she had prayed so hard, she would take such good care of me. Someone to take care of me.

And my heart is singing. I thought it would be so hard to find someone to replace Judith. No one can "replace" Judith: she is as idiosyncratic and dear to me as is Brenda. Truth be told, sometimes it was as difficult with Judith as it was good, though the good usually won out. But now maybe it's time for someone to take care of me.

Note: The photograph "Open" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com

The Fire and the Rose Are One

2008-06-26T08:29:00.001-07:00

Come in
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

Still feeling my way with the newness of blogging, sensing into the difference (or what will be the difference for me) between blogging and journaling, noticing my desire to play with my new toy all the time, which is not the point and would surely after the fact bore me and any reader. But an excitement nonetheless.

My first take on the blogging/journaling distinction is that blogging is ideas and journaling is feelings, to put it broadly, but for me ideas are feelings and feelings are ideas. The tricky part is where other people come in. How much will I feel free to write my feelings--okay, my negative or critical feelings--about other people? I think the key point will be to reference the other person and then to go beyond that person or situation, to allow myself a longer view through an exploration (guided or not!) of where this going beyond, which is the essence of process, takes me.

"The fire and the rose are one." That's what process offers the apparent contradiction between privacy and expression, too much disclosure or impenetrable resolve. And I'm getting the sense that one way my writing got stuck, or derailed, in the past was by being too interior. I was trying, with all my heart, to limn my subjective experience--and to break out of that I would do "writerly" exercises involving the outside world. But somehow that didn't do the trick, probably because I had no vital connection to the slice of the outside world I chose to write about.

But now, with my photograph as a kind of liminal object, something feels different. For example, the picture of the open door speaks to the situation around Judith's leaving, and much else. I don't necessarily have to write about that "much else" here, at this moment, to have it resonate in what and how I write and in how I come to the writing.

Note: The photograph "Come in" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com

Cool, Clear Water

2008-06-24T21:01:00.001-07:00

Cool, clear water
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

I'm wearing myself out. This is what I need: cool, clear water; ease; rest--and it's not what I'm feeling. I blogged this directly from Flickr, which is good in that I can see the image I'm working with, but I don't know how to change the image size or position.

Bleahhhh.

Note: The photograph "Cool, clear water" can be found on my photostream at Flickr.com

Gaudi in Oakland?

2008-06-24T20:48:00.001-07:00

Gaudi in Oakland?
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

I lost this picture when I edited "I'm Pissed." Now I'll have to settle for having it right above that entry. This blogging is hard shit.

Note: The photograph "Gaudi in Oakland?" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com

I'm Pissed

2008-06-24T20:10:00.001-07:00

BlogSpot won't let me download a picture--and the first two were so easy. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, and I don't know what I'm doing, and this whole blogging thing is siphoning energy off from photographs and Flickr. I don't want to make a fool of myself.

But I kept with it and I figured it out. This time I picked out a picture at random--"zen in the art of fortune cookies"--"Gaudi in Oakland?" The first thing I see is that the reflection isn't smooth, that there's a distortion that wiggles wavelike across the surface. I know that I deleted two American flags because they didn't fit the composition.

It hit me a few minutes ago that my building sense of unease, of urgency about what and how to write has something to do with Judith's leaving. She has two days left, plus bringing Miss Lily by here on Monday and the one day she's getting paid for that she won't have worked yet. And I'm worried about who will reflect me? Who'll be there on an almost daily basis to see me and hear me pretty much no matter what I do and without my having to go through social nattering to set it up. I've come to depend on her, to know myself through her eyes and count on the relief of not having to keep everything bottled up. Don once a week and Janet every two weeks isn't enough; each one goes deep and is valuable, but as an "all" or an "almost all" it's pretty skimpy rations. And I'm scared. I don't want to go back to the place where I feel like I'm the one who has to take all the care of myself. Brenda and Christina both can listen magnificently, when I really need it, but it's not the same thing as Judith here, difficult as that can be sometimes.

Feel like I'm getting wordy--but at least I did get on to something, that this antsiness about the blog is somehow related to Judith's imminent "official" departure. That's something.

If Your Eye Intrigue You . . .

2008-06-24T07:35:00.000-07:00

For a second there I thought the type was going to have to start under the picture, and I definitely wanted wrap-around text.

It's 7:30 and I haven't done anything with Flickr, but that's kind of fun, to have more than enough. This could be where I learn how to do illustrated books.

The original text is "If your eye offends you, take it out," but I'm remembering what Donald used to say about taking offense--how much of the problem started there--and thinking how I don't look at my own experience the same way I look at the detritus I see on the street, the worn surfaces of buildings, the broken windows and defaced storefronts that I find so fascinating and so visually appealing. I thinking about some of the rundown areas of MacArthur Boulevard, where I would so much like to take pictures but where I am afraid my presence would be seen as intrusive or offending condescension, where I would be an "other" come to use the stuff of people's poverty and misfortune in a way that is perceived as insensitive. I don't know how I would say, "But let me thank you. I see such beauty here, beauty alongside and in the presence of the hardship and the public/private pains you are right to tell me not to assume I can appropriate without understanding."

I know the eye I carry with me makes my Paratransit trips through "bad neighborhoods," derelict sections of town, often a delight because I am able to see without judgment. "Back alleys and formal beauties": the phrase that came to me at the laundromat in Berkeley all those years ago. "If thine eye be whole." Maybe I can come to let myself extend this same kind of interested appreciation to how I work, what I'm going through--all the issues of aging, and weight, and loneliness, intensified as they often are by the borderline--by extending a benign eye upon myself. Somehow "a thousand years are as a day in your sight" fits in here too.

Note: The photograph "One open eye" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com

BART Handrail

2008-06-23T17:49:00.000-07:00

Hooray! I figured out how to send a picture from Flickr to the blog. Was thinking I'd have to get somebody to show me, but again, I did it myself, I taught myself.

This is the BART steps at the 12th Street Station in downtown Oakland. I'm looking between railings that go across the top, fitted the lens in between. The wall actually is a much duller color and, if the photograph hadn't shown it, if it weren't there to be pulled out, I would have sworn there was no reflection. I like that the diagonal doesn't slice the picture plane into two equal halves, if only because that means I can send it to the Dissymmetry pool on Flickr.

Something bright and hopeful about this. Though the picture has the feel of a descent, it is a descent to the right, and if it's this bright "near land," close to the top, what lies below has to be wonderful. There is quantitatively "more" in the world because this picture exists, and qualitatively too.

Note: The photograph "BART handrail" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com

I've Decided To Blog

2008-06-23T17:01:00.001-07:00

The title--The Benign Eye--comes from my next book of photographs; the first, a gift to me from Janet Ference, was True Vision.

I was talking to Paul Fromberg yesterday and said I've noticed that my photographs aren't angry. Even when I'm upset or worried, there's a kind of calm in the image. I can even take pictures of things that aren't "pretty" and find beauty there. For a long time I've thought about the eye of Northern Renaissance art, how deep is (in photographic terms) the depth of field. To me that bespeaks a kind of equaminity that is worth pursuing, even if it cannot be chased, particularly because it cannot be chased.

I don't know how this blog will evolve--I hope at times I'll find myself writing into discovery. It's been a long time since I've done that. And I hope I won't write "for" some phantom audience. I know that hasn't been a problem at Flickr. In fact, as I've gained the friendship and praise of people whose work I value highly, I find myself more free, less constrained by "What will people think?" or "Am I putting it right?" It will be interesting to find out if I can do the same thing with matters of life and faith, aging and the body, borderline and loneliness--as well as the little purple flowers I find on the left-hand side of the path that I take up the mountain, away from the golden city that lies far across the desert floor.

I would like to include a photograph, probably "BART Handrail," with this first entry but I can't figure out how to attach pictures.