Saturday Night Soup for the Soul (21)

ast week, I went on another 1000 miles in 36 hours road trip. Again, I wanted to get back to the wide open ravaged spaces that lie due east of the Cascade mountain range in Oregon and Washington. Come Away On A Strange Vacation Holiday Hardly Begun Run Into A Good Friend Of Mine Sold Me Her Sign Reach For The Stars Venus And Mars Are Alright Tonight I made a bee line south for the Columbia River, and turned east on I-84 following the upstream path of where the great ice age floods smashed their way right on thru a major mountain range. First stop: Multnomah Falls, Oregon. As you drive up this "canyon" of the Columbia River, with walls up to 4,000 feet high, you start on the wet western side of the mountains. Hence, there are miles of spectacular emerald green vistas, capped with spectacular falls leaping of the edge of the mountain range into the canyon below. This is the granddaddy of them all, situated in the Oregon side and quite close to metropolitan Portland (where flyboy Lewis can be seen running around bare-assed naked sunning his schlong). I continued east up into the heart of the Columbia River Gorge, pausing periodically along the way to snap pix, before jumping back to warp speed (85-90 MPH). My sword, it lies broken and cast in a lake In a dream I was told that my prince he would wake. Towards the eastern end of the gorge, I turned south and climbed up onto the Central Oregon lava plateau. I stopped and took a look back into the gorge, cranked out this pic, before I pressed on. Damn, I was so preoccupied with shooting pix that I did not even notice this hot sex boy toy hitch hiking by the side of the road... This Road Trip Diary be continued next week... 1. Venus and Mars (Reprise) This is an obscure song from the 1975 Wings LP of the same name. It was the follow-up LP to Band on the Run (or as I like to call it, "Gland on the Run"). I like the lyrics alluding "a strange vacation". I also like the melody a lot. Someday i'll play it's twin rendition. While I am on the topic of Venus, Here is Tony's "Death of Venus" which is why The Birth of Venus started this post. 2. It Ain't Fair is one of many unbelievable performances by the Queen of Soul, Miss Aretha Franklin. The track is from her 1970 LP "This Girl's in Love With You". This LP has several songs that are among her very best. It Ain't Fair contains some burning bee sting guitar rifs by Duane Allman. 3. Legend of the Girl Child Linda is by Donovan and comes from his stunning 1966 LP Sunshine Superman. It is filled with imagrey of middle earth. If you want to buy even one Donovan LP, make it this one. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your bowl of Saturday Night Soul for the Soul by clicking the jukebox.

The Return of the Prodical Painting

I have always seen art be it music, visual, or the written word, as children that the artist births, raises, and then sends off into the wide wide world to make a place for itself. One of Tonys paintings (This One) or at least the owner (Ellen Bloom) of several of his paintings, visited this site last week. How cools is that? She has a post about Tony that you can see HERE

Saturday Night Soup for the Soul (22)

aving reached the crossroad of personal revelations (this shall be revealed in due time, but not this week) , I continued south into central Oregon. Rimse the raindrops From your head Wipe your eyes Go back to bed In the morning Skies will clear And I'll be here I turned off the highway onto a cratered one lane road leading into a place called Twickenham to reshoot some pictures that I took, and then accidently destroyed four years ago. A fellow blogger hunted down my phone number (a very resourceful bugger he is) and called me. During the conversation he asked "Why did you drive where you did? ". There were reasons for each stop -- all esoteric, and I suppose, on some level, deeply and primally spiritual. But Twickenham itself, those were for a special project I am working on titled "Get Back to Let It Be...Dissected". This prototype is an example of something I need to recreate from my Twickenham Pictures. Why Twickenham and the Beatles? A couple of weeks ago, I posted this vid. IT was filmed at Twickenham. England of course, and not Oregon. What I am working on is both a research work, and my look at the entire history of western culture, centering on the decade of the 1960's and one month in extreme detail, January of 1969. Here is something else from that month. Any way...this is all another project that is only hinted at by me in this blog. It will eventually be a separate web site once i start work on it again. The deaths of my sister and my mother is what interrupted it. Next week I'll continue this journey with pictures form the John Day National Monument -- Painted Hills. In the mean time, I am switching this blog to SUMMER HOURS which means I will be outside being active most nights, and therefore online much less than I have been, until September. I will still post -- just not as often. If you want to contact me and I appear to have vanished a bit, feel free to email me, or even call me (hey, one of you figured out my phone number, so it obviously can be done). See the sunlight Break the ice For the birds of paradise Listen to the song they sing Awakening This Road Trip Diary be continued next week... 1. Section 43 is from San Francisco band Country Joe and the Fish's 1967 LP Electronic Music for the Mind and Body. I have mixed memories of this music from different periods of my life. Memories of listening to this at a school Psychologists home in junior high at 3:00 in the morning on a weekend all nighter where I, along with six or seven other students, were the subject of her doctorate thesis. We were a group of kids with extremely high IQ’s (“Group Four”), who had all given a big “F**k You” to conventional social norms and mores, and charted an highly individualistic path in life. She wanted to know what made us tick, I suppose. The control group had all the jocks and cheerleaders in it, who the psychologist told us, were absolutely BORING. Her name was Marilyn Hinkle Myers. She had a big influence on my life. I believe we may have smoked pot out there once, at her house, after we were in high school. She loved kids and was a jewel of a human being. This music also brings me memories of a leather bar in Seattle on First Avenue that I used to wander into occasionally when I came out of the closet (again) in the mid to late 1970’s. I remember it playing among the smoke and pool tables and cycle parts strung up on the wall and the “trick or treat” leather and levi men gawking at one another. It is music for ancient, wandering, and forever restless souls. 2. Mahler's Sympnony Number One -- Movement Three is one of the all time stunning first symphonies. Gustav Mahler is the bridge from the order and tradition of the 19th century to the wild chaos and vibrancy of the 20th century music. His first symphony only hints at this to us, but in it’s day, it was very controversial and hated by many. Particularly this movement bothered contemporary audiences. It begins with a sad minor key version of “Frère Jacques” which forms the basis of a lumbering melancholic funeral march; and then it picks up, transforming itself into a half Austrian, half Klezmer (Jewish Dance Music) like music, eventually becoming dance-band music one might hear in some beer hall. Parody, double and triple meaning, sudden and odd tempo and orchestration transformations...none of it “made sense” to the audiences. Mahler does not “make sense”. He just is – his music is all about the journey. Without Mahler, there could have been no Shostakovich. About the vulgarbeer hall music Mahler leaves no doubt: “With parody” he writes at the top of the page, just as the drum and cymbal join in for the dance. 3. Rinse The Raindrops is by Paul McCartney from his Driving Rain CD. It is a repeated musical mantra, and is all about "Awakings". I am about to force myself into such an awaking. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your bowl of Saturday Night Soul for the Soul by clicking the jukebox.

Viola

Last night as I was half a half a block from my home stopped at a light, I saw an elderly lady, perched on a rock on the corner, wearing a short sleeve top, elastic waist band pants, and white sox without shoes. A kind 30-something good Samaritan with child were kneeled down talking to her. I quickly surmised her plight: lost and unsure of things. In the next two minutes, I drove to my home, ran into the house, grabbed one of the 19 boxes of new high end shoes with great support favored by my late mother (I had no idea they were even in her closet until recently – and here I was buying her shoes), and grabbed one of my mom’s comfortable button up sweaters that are sitting in a huge mountain of clothes that I have yet to deal with. I walked across the street and up to the people. By now the man was calling 911 on a cell phone. I knelt down and nicely introduced myself, and asked her name. She said that her name was Viola W. I told her that she must be cold and asked her if she would like to have a new sweater. She looked into my eyes with such relief and thankfulness at my crumb of kindness and said “that would be very nice of you". So we put the big bright blue sweater on and buttoned it up. By now I was already almost crying, as the look she gave me, is the same look my mother gave to me every time I did the least little thing for her, for the last months of her life. I asked her what size shoe she wore. “Oh...8 ½ to 9” she replied. I opened the box of new shoes – size 9. I put them on her. A perfect fit. I asked her how old she was – she was unsure of the number, but knew that she was born on July 14, 1922. I asked her if she was lost. She replied with some confusion and distress that she was looking for her house, but was lost. I asked her where her house was. She replied with confidence that she lived on 30th and Stevens, about three miles from where we were. I asked her if she lived in a home with lots of people: I was thinking "adult group home", which is where I assumed she had wandered away from. She said that she lived with her parents – and seemed a bit sad, and distressed again. By now I could hear sirens of the coming paramedics, so I sat speaking quietly to her, reassuring her that she should not worry, promising her that we would see to it that she would soon be back home safe, and warm, and that tonight she’d sleep safely and soundly in her own bed. She seemed to relish my words. The paramedic came, asked us for what we knew, called in her description (I had to correct their description of her wearing a blue sweater). They gave her the standard tests that diagnose a stroke (negative) and Alzheimer’s/dementia (she did okay on that). But when she told them that she was trying to find home where she lived with her parents, it was obvious. Then a man drove up her knew her (her son’s best friend) followed by a nursing staff member of the adult home just down the hill from me. I of course wanted Viola to keep the shoes and sweater. Saturday I will take her a couple of more sweaters and a second pair of shoes. I came home, and immediately started crying. This brought is all back to me. She reminded me so much of my own mom near the end of her life. Looking, searching both for loved ones, and for a time and a place long gone from this world. My mother did the same. I suspect I will too. I think that broken heartedness, or a desire to eventually leave this world will propel me to wish to escape this world in the end. That seems unavoidable to me. Freud called it “the death wish”. Others call it a desire to rejoin those who have already left, or a desire to be back in God’s presence, or a desire to dissolve back into the fabrique of the universe and to once again be a part of everything, or even a desire to die that you might again be reborn and advance.

Saturday Night Soup for the Soul (23)

s I continued my manic "1000 miles in 36 hours" road trip thru central Oregon, I raced the short distance from Twickenham to the John Day National Monument "Painted Hills" unit, arriving in the evening sunlight. I Needed Loving, Needed A Friend I Needed Something, That Would Be There In The End. On A Rough Ride To Heaven Want To Get Inside, What Will I Do? This once was volcano country. Eons of eruptions laid down layer upon layer of ash of differing chemical composition. Later, it got covered with other layers of earth, and then the landscape raised, buckled, and tilted exposing the brightly colored ash layers. Click the pic below to see a panorama that I half-assedly (colors are mis-balanced) digitally constructed from a series of shots I took. The exposed ash fall layers that comprise the most spectacular geological features of the Painted Hills Unit in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument are nearly devoid of plant life. The reasons as to why start with the clay-rich soils. The initial part of any rainfall (and there is little – less than 41cm (16in) per year) is immediately absorbed by the clay component of the soil — think clay-based cat crapping litter. Once the top layer of clay is saturated with water, it becomes impermeable to any succeeding rainfall, so the rest of the precipitation quickly drains away; in the process, the draining water flushes away any organic matter that might have built up on the clay eliminating another factor in the establishment of plant life. Little available water and little organic matter results in a very inhospitable environment. He's so divine, his soul shines Breaks the night, sleep tight His ever loving face smiles on the whole human race He says "I'm somebody" He's got his eye on your soul, his hand on your heart He says "Don't hurry, baby Somebody up there (somebody) likes me After I left Painted Hills, I was started to get road weary and drove until I saw a motel in Proneville, Oregon which is where I crashed for the night. This Road Trip Diary be continued next week... 1. and 3. Rough Ride is from Paul McCartney's "Flowers in the DIrt" CD. This song was on my mind all week, though I did not listen to it until putting the soup on the burner this morning. I fricking love the words. Always have and always will. Very true for me, and reflects life as I have experienced it. Is this true for you? The Soup closes with a rare LIVE version from a sound check. 2. Somebody Up There Likes Me is Miss David Bowie at her best. From the Young Americans LP. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your bowl of Saturday Night Soul for the Soul by clicking the jukebox.