John & Anne Wiley

2010/11/14

Art

Filed under: Inner World,People,Random,Relationships — John @ 22:37

Well maybe you’d already guessed that this might be another short inward ramble, but I really thought today would be a standard photoessay. Here’s the deal: we watched “Smoke Signals” last night and having managed to refrain from zipping it were delighted by the ending poem, so I’m sharing it here with this “Their Father’s Daughters” link to the original poem from which this poem ending the film was adapted.

How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.

Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?

Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?

If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

-adapted from “Forgiving Our Fathers” in a book of poems
titled Ghost Radio, by Dick Lourie
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Spiral

It can be fun to explore synchronicities, and to contemplate what we attend (as in notice and/or take pix of). I realized that two of my fav recent pix evoke an intense almost dizzying spiral energy in me.

0797~3131 Spirals

0797~3131 Spirals

So I googled “spiral” just now, and the first hit is a movie we’ll get from the library. The second hit is the wiki entry, and I skipped down to the symbolic meanings: “a symbol of the process of dialectic” and an excerpt there: “central to both Indic and Western philosophy since ancient times. …dialogue between two or more people who may hold differing views, yet wish to pursue truth by seeking agreement with one another.”

It turns out that in the relative silence of our life since the Citizens election campaign, Anne and I have been engaged in an especially deep, sweet, challenging and fruitful ongoing dialectic. Kinda cool to “feel” something in the pix and find this context.

Another “hit” I’m getting internally is about Chumash meaning in spiral forms. So I googled “spiral chumash counter-clockwise” and the first hit was an essay with two bits that resonate. First a reference to how low pressure systems make a counterclockwise spiral (a common feature related to aviation weather), the other mentions a Yogic tradition that “counterclockwise flow is the unfolding or dissolution of matter into energy.” I’m certainly experiencing some energy flow!

In a dream last night, Tripp’s number came in. You may recall it’s 66111, and that seems to have strong significance in ways I don’t understand. That entire number is the end of my pilot license number, assigned in 2006 and not consciously noticed until long after we bought Tripp 1/23/10. I graduated high school in 66, and that number has resonated for me over the years. In the dream there was something about 111 related to a date, maybe 1/11 (New Year’s Day) or Jan. 11? Anyway, it all seems worth noting so I can re-read this if anything else comes up, or perhaps sometime next year.

Further down the hit list is an Ojai item about a Chumash ceremony where “a screech owl swooped overhead.” On a quiet night in Santa Ynez recently a great horned owl (a bird I have associated with my father) called me and I walked to within 15 feet. We looked at each other intently before I tried to speak owl and he flew away in disgust. Two nights this week in different parts of town a screech owl has flown low over my head and called. I’ve heard them a few other times over the years, but never in flight. Coincidence? The item linked in this paragraph ends, “everything is a process of spiritual growth.” That’s been my core focus since soon after switching my life focus from technology to psychology.

Further down the hit list is an essay by Harry Marriner I’m going to read and contemplate more. “Many North American Indian cultures associate counterclockwise spirals (starting from the center) with the concept of rising, and the clockwise spiral with the concept of descending.” Earlier tonight I had noticed that one of my two spiral themed pix above is looking down into the water, the other up into the sky.

OK, enough of my inward spiral for now. Next post I’ll be back to “normal” for you. 😉

Harry A. Marriner

Downtown

Filed under: Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Random,SB Region — John @ 01:49

La Arcada downtown has a great courtyard pond with turtles and fish. There used to be a restaurant with outside tables there and we have many warm memories of meals and meetings over the years in all seasons. Watching the fish like you’d watch a cozy fireplace. Watching kids watching fish and turtles, kids trying to talk to or feed them, and sometimes a kid trying to catch them. Watching people strolling through.

0797 Arcada Reflections

0797 Arcada Reflections

A few steps away is a nice view of the Courthouse tower that we used to join the tourists going up for a panorama of the city. It looks nice from the air. 🙂

0796 Courthouse Tower

0796 Courthouse Tower

Looking the other way in that spot the Art Museum entrance is entrancing.

0794 Into Art

0794 Into Art

So many magical places downtown, it’s fun to revisit favorites and we still discover new secrets occasionally. Will it be another glorious day tomorrow? If so, will we fly?

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