An evening in Rancho Viejo, Texas. The ambience– so dramatic and beautiful. None can beat Nature’s own filter! Just like being in a 3 dimensional painting … #nofilter (Skyscape # 007)
The Little Story: To meditate alone with no interruptions, a monk decided to go to a nearby lake. He took a boat and moored it in the middle of the lake, closed his eyes and began meditating. After a few hours of uninterrupted solitude passed and he was in a deep meditative state, when suddenly, he felt the bump of another boat colliding with his own. His eyes were closed still, but he was agitated, and felt his anger rising. By the time he opened his eyes, he was about to scream at the boatman who had so carelessly disturbed his meditation. On opening his eyes, however, he was startled to find that it was just another empty boat that probably got untethered and floated to the middle of the lake.
That moment the monk had a profound realization: all the anger was within him; it merely needed the bump of an external object to provoke it out of him. And that moment on, whenever he came across someone who irritated or provoked him to anger, he reminded himself that the other person was merely an empty boat; it is he who has the choice to react independent of the whatever the other person did.
There have been times when I would feel frustrated and hopeless about things and myself, and it gave way to so much anger I didn’t know I was capable of. It is easy when you think you have a wrongdoer in your life to blame. But in absence any villains, one confronts the stark reality of one’s own nature. After the fact, realizing how it was making others feel would kill me. I felt powerless and at mercy of this intensity of the emotion I had no explanation for. Thats when I stumbled upon this story.
It hit me in the head like a brick. Past the cleverness of the story and the intellectual stimulation such stories might give, a space needs to be created for a lot of work to be done on self: take it in, assimilate the knowledge, contemplate on it until it shines back out as wisdom, becoming a part of one’s nature.
This book gave me a lot of trouble because I was quite moved by it and so, very much wanted to talk about it, but feared just might spoil it (you will know why*). None of the approaches I took felt right, yet I could not abandon it. Ergo, this is a simple account of a few themes that ran through the compelling memoir of the poet, singer-songwriter and rock ‘n roll artist, Patti Smith.
Nostalgia. Barely twenty, penniless and unsure, but not without an intense desire to become an artist, Smith steps into New York City, then a petri dish for the counterculture of the 1960’s, with widespread use of recreational drugs, free sexual expression & exploration, psychedelic music, and the Beat generation giving way to the hippie culture. Once past my initial shock over their avant-garde lifestyle (credited entirely to the author’s honest and sober narration), I pictured those times in curious wonderment: the nobodies with the potential to be trailblazers; the weirdos, the drug addicts, the experimentalist; the searchers, the idealists, the artists… Those must have been interesting times!
P. Smith. Album cover ‘Horses’. By Robert.
The Chelsea Hotel, where, in a peculiar turn of events, Smith and her friend Robert start living. Known to be a haven for writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers and colorful personalities, famous and yet to be famous, one could trade art could for the room-rent. “The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in The Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe“, she writes. At this point in the book there are several names mentioned, some known to me, others unknown: Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Allen Ginsberg and the other Beats, and a multitude of others that I googled as I encountered, only to get woefully intrigued by their life-stories. Some made it, the rest succumbed to drugs or AIDS, and never lived to see the times they were ahead of.
Patti and Robert
Patti and Robert. What will stay with me is the tender friendship Patti Smith shared with her lover for a while, and best friend forever, Robert Mapplethorpe. It is a beautiful thing to see how they really understood one another, not only as friends but also as artists. “Nobody sees as we do, Patti” Robert would say, and “whenever he said things like that, for a magical space of time, it was if we were the only two people in the world.“
Their relationship went through various definitions, but belonged to none. “We were evolving with different needs. I needed to explore beyond myself and Robert needed to search within himself.” With time Robert would discover and accept his homosexuality, and go on to become a famous (albeit controversial) photographer. Smith, a sketch artist and a poet, would finally find her niche and become a musician and the leader of her band ‘The Patti Smith Group’, and start a new life with her husband, Fred. Notwithstanding that, both of them would remain as close friends as they always were.
The last part was heart wrenching and yet there was a sense of innate beauty in its naked truth. Robert gets diagnosed with AIDS. For Patti (and for the reader who is now so invested in their lives), the idea of losing him is extremely unsettling. On his deathbed he wishes that she write their story.
Just Kids is Patti’s a fascinating and poignant tribute to their friendship. *There was something quietly private she tore apart and put out there for the world to read, and it feels like sacrilege to “review” it; one can just relate and respect and carry it in one’s heart. Of course, there is more to the book: Patti’s love for poetry and for poets like Rimbaud and Baudelaire, their times of struggle, their friends and their interesting journey in interesting times. It deserved 5 stars on my Goodreads.
I loved this excerpt from the epilogue ‘A note to the reader’ by the author:
“…There could be many stories I could yet write about Robert, about us. But his is the story I have told you. It is the one he wished me to tell and I have kept my promise. We were Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was the splendor we only partially imagined. No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together. only Robert and I could tell it. Our story, as he called it. And having gone he left the task to me to tell it to you.“
Poem by Smith for Robert- who had the greenest of eyes- for his Memorial:
Little emerald bird Wants to fly away If I cup my hand Could I make him stay?
Little emerald soul Little emerald eye Little emerald soul Must you say goodbye?
All the things that we pursue All that we dream Are composed as nature knew In a feather green
Little emerald bird As you light afar It is true I heard God is where you are
(The above picture shows summer skies of 2016 in Mackinac Island, Michigan. While the island and the waters and the people, all earthbound, were enjoying the the sunshine from down below, a dozen kites took flight and dared for the skies…)
THE waning sun The sky blue still The night to come The heart athrill
THE tree so bare Looks up to the sky The sunset’s glare The darkness nigh
IT’S arms outspread It’s soul inviting A tree beckons With love abiding
BOUNDnotwithstanding Its Spirit free All over, burning The Twilight Tree..
Twilights are one of my favorite times of the day. It is a short time when two worlds merge, creating a third, evanescent one. This poem is dedicated to twilight and the witnessing tree.
A hundred or two birds perched on the tree tops /Skyscape#004. (#nofilter)
It was a particularly sunny and warm day, and the sky was dotted with an amoeba-like shape made up of lots and lots of black wings, elongating and twisting, as the party moved from tree to tree. The above picture (no filter applied) is a moment in time when hundreds of birds were perched on the leaf-less tree tops, a sight to see as they stopped awhile, and before I knew it, they were soaring back in the fresh blue skies!
And below is the picture (transfer filter on iPhone). I love the color and how it changes the mood…
A hundred or two birds perched on the tree tops (transfer filter on iPhone)
"What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?" -- Annie Dillard
Life according to one of life’s truly gifted naturally born wafflers… an open diary of a Saffer in a different land... life in the greater Dublin & Leinster area. (Blogging since 2011) My quests fuel my dreams… my dreams fuel my quests!!
This book gave me a lot of trouble because I was quite moved by it and so, very much wanted to talk about it, but feared just might spoil it (you will know why*). None of the approaches I took felt right, yet I could not abandon it. Ergo, this is a simple account of a few themes that ran through the compelling memoir of the poet, singer-songwriter and rock ‘n roll artist, 
Little emerald bird
Madame Zenista 