Summer Solstice

Have a blessed Summer Solstice!

In the Garden: Purple Hearts

Purple-hearted flowers, in my garden. Chives and columbine. Large clumps of each.





Columbine flowers are fascinating. They are layered, complex shapes, with different colors. This pale purple and white on some, deeper blue and white on others. I had three or four clumps of columbine this year, that exploded with color and lasted a long time.



This last photo of columbine is my favorite of this group of photos. It shows the design of my little garden to advantage. Even though I don't have a lot of space for my garden, I have been strongly influenced by Japanese Zen gardens in my planning, and this shows that well.

In the Garden

sullen summer heat
days of droning cicadas—
flowers exploding

Home Again After Surgery

Lilies in my garden. Because of the hot weather, all my flowers have been blooming with gusto.

I've been back home here at my house since Friday afternoon. Everyone is telling me, nurses and doctors and everyone else, that I look and sound good, that I am doing extremely well, faster than average on the recovery, mind and body both ahead of the curve. As this is all very very new to me, I am taking everyone's word for it, and am glad for the positive feedback. In truth, I am surprising myself with all this; but then, I had no real expectations, as it's all a new experience.

They told me going into the hospital that I would be there from four to seven days; in fact, I left on the fourth day after surgery, after having spent only four nights in my hospital room. So that's pretty great. And as I write this, I was in surgery exactly one week ago; so that's pretty good, so far!

I know that I would not be doing this well without all the lovingkindness, support, good wishes, prayers, good thoughts, distance energy work, and so forth, that all of my family and friends have been sending my way. I am grateful beyond what words can contain right now. All I can really say is THANK YOU—and please keep the thoughts and prayers coming for awhile, as I still need them.


Labyrinth Prayers (new art made after returning home from the hospital)

Even though I am ahead of the curve on recovery, I still tire easily and often. So I won't be online all that much, and if takes awhile for me to answer a phone call or email, no worries. Everything is very day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and I must take it slow and careful.

That's the most important news. Now for some short summaries of the past week—amazingly, it's exactly a week ago, as I write this down, that I was being operated on in the surgical theatre. (I am keeping a journal of this experience, but it's ongoing, and not very coherent, so consider these as summaries.)

I'm told the surgery went well, by my sister and my other friend who were with me. I have no memories between when they put the epidural in my back—epidural for pain management during and after this abdominal surgery—and when I woke up in my hospital room; no other memories of pre-op, none from post-op. I just woke in what was to become my room for four more days. And I'm just fine with these lacunae: no things that I might really want to forget later.

So the surgery went well. My next goal is to heal from the current incision and wound, then continue to lose weight, gain strength, recover my energy (now that the malfunctioning colon that has been sapping my energy for decades is gone!), and so on. Meanwhile, I'll keep writing music, keep making art, keep writing.

I have a long incision right through my belly button, running from top of groin to a few inches above belly button. To the right and above that I have a stoma of small intenstine protruding from my belly wall, covered by an ostomy bag into which I will be going to the bathroom for the foreseeable future. (There might ensue a long series of Really Bad and Tasteless Jokes, which I will spare you from.) It will be an interesting scar someday.

So, I've survived thus far. I have another major, high-risk operation to go through, for them to construct an ileal pouch out of the base of my small intestine, then close the stoma, reattach everything inside again, and after that heals, I'll be internally integral again, and can get on with my life. That's the long-term plan.

I do not have an overall time table for the long term, and will not for awhile. The next phase of operations will begin when the doctors decide I'm ready for it, which will depend on my overall recovery and health and strength, and how much weight I can now lose. I am determined to make this all happen sooner rather than later.

Surgery itself causes some weight loss, and my appetite is still pretty small. Between eating smaller portions, and getting more exercise as I begin to recover and feel my strength return, I hope the weight loss segment of the program will be smooth and successful.


I brought in some of my own artwork to put up in my hospital room, for healing, and as a reminder of beauty, and what else really matters.

The nurses and NAs and doctors who visited me in my hospital room and helped me through things were all spectacular. The nurses especially, among whom three in particular are People Of Extraordinary Merit. I'd give them medals if I could. Yesterday was my first home nursing visit, and that also went very well; she too was impressed with how far I'd come in one week. I will be getting home nursing visits two or three times a week for the next few weeks.

I go back up to the surgical clinic in the hospital in Madison in a week or so for a follow-up with my surgeon and his team, during which it is planned that they'll remove the surgical staples, and let the incision heal on its own thereafter. My goal is to the get to the point where the incision is free of pain enough so that I can resume more normal physical movement, including bending over which I can't do yet, and taking walks for exercise. A few days after the staples come out, I believe I'll be much further down that road.

I was on my feet, standing and walking, less than 24 hours after awakening from anaesthesia. I walked three or four times a day while in the hospital, down to a quiet lounge and back, a little more each day. At home, I have only gone out to look at the garden once (which needs weeding!), but I am walking loops around the house several times a day. I'm also doing my breathing exercises, which help stave off my past tendencies towards pneumonia—it's all been great so far, so no worries.

I think that's enough news for now. Once again, THANK YOU for the love and support from friends and family. I couldn't take this ride without my "village" to help take care of me throughout the journey.

Blessings & Light & Love for the Highest Good of All Concerned. So mote it be!

In the Garden

An Invocation for Healing

This Photoshop montage superimposes a clutch of marigolds with my own most recent EKG.


(Click on image for larger version.)

Marigold is an ancient healing herb as well as a common garden plant. Marigold is good for the blood. It's good for cuts and bruises, and can be used as an antiseptic. It can soothe bee stings. It's good for skin conditions of various kinds.

Marigold is good for wound healing. I will invoke the essence of marigold to heal the surgical wounds I am about to receive. I will ask to be infused with the essence of marigold to protect myself against infection, to reduce inflammation, and stop bleeding.

Marigold will help me heal faster, and more effectively.

Process of Writing 9: A Day Off

After two days of hot, humid weather, including major thunderstorms ripping through the area, the first big t-storms of the season, today it's cloudy, cool, bleak, wearying, oppressive. I've just been out in the garden, making more photos, and also some HD video, trying to catch the last of the spring blooms, especially the daffodils and tulips. Other flowers are just starting to bloom, and the hosta are still emerging from the mulch. The lilac bush is covered with purple buds that haven't opened yet: one of my favorite scents of later spring and early summer.

The wind and rain and thunder are shaking down the spring flowers. The pear tree is shedding snow across its skirts. The neighbor's crabapple tree has shed most of its profuse clutch of white blossoms in last night's wind and rain, and now several square yards of lawn and garden are covered with bright white petals, making it look as though there is snow upon the ground. A whole field of flowers and grass emerging from petal-snow, making a confusion of seasons, and some beautiful images.

More storms are coming, it's been promised. I try to capture what flowers I can, in the cameras, before they are all gone.

The world seems shaky right now. Cyberspace is acting stupid and unreliable today. The weather is unstable, neither warm enough nor cool enough to be comfortable, and with a restless breeze that is the foretaste of more storms yet to arrive. It reminds you how fragile everything is, from cyberspace itself, which has always been a friable medium, to physical and social infrastructure, to life itself. I can’t get ignore how fragile life seems right now. Everything can always spin apart. Everything is delicate and ephemeral, to be savored for the moment, for it will soon be gone. These flowers that have been glorious all this past month will soon be gone. They are already ragged around the edges; although there are new buds still to open. The day will soon be gone. Everything could fall apart, and that’s it.

I feel like nothing would be better for me, this moment, than to be in the desert. In the heat and sunlight. D.H. Lawrence wrote that New Mexico forever changd him, once he got past the surface of things. I have to agree. My time living in New Mexico forever changd me, too. And I keep wanting to regain what I first found in the Southwest, and in Wyoming: A kind of openness, of liberation, of carelessness, that I can’t forget. It has become part of living day to day, for me, now. I surround myself with reminders, like my own photographs, but really I want to be there. I think I’ll spend some time today going through photos from recent roadtrips out West, both hot and cold days, to remind myself of what really matters. It’s certain that little that I can see that “needs to be done” right here, right now, really matters.

So I'm taking a day off. A rest day. A vacation day, from everything.

I’ve taken a mental break from the writing of the new music. I needed a day away from it. Ao when I went down to Chicago earlier this week, for a night in the studio working on video and other music projects, I did not take the new music notebooks with me; I left them here, on the worktable. It is one good reminder that a day or so in Chicago gives me: working on other music, other creative projects, reminding myself that the world hasn’t really narrowed down to only one project, one medical situation. I have other things I need to make, even if they’re not all highest priority right now. They need doing, and I need to do them. A mental break. Today I want to work on photography. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get back to writing the music. Tonight, who knows, I might do some more papier-maché: a friend of mine who is moving gave me a thick roll of hand-made art papers. I want to see what's in there, and it might inspire me to make some new papier-maché pieces. I have been thinking about doing a much larger art bowl, with many layers, using fine art papers over a stronger matrix. So, who knows. The day is nowhere near over.

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Later:

I've spent a couple of hours filming HD video in the garden. The second session was as rain was falling gently, wetting the leaves and the flowers on the trees. The pruneria tree in my front yard is so thick with pink flowers overhanging the garden's flower beds that it looks like a giant pastel explosion. The raindrops slick the branches in close-up images, reminding me of Japanese paintings of cherry blossoms. The light is cool and steady, making all the colors vivid and bright.

I've spent the evening watching inspirational moments on TV.

Tavis Smiley interviewing Bill Moyers, about Moyers' new book of selected interviews: "This is no longer a society that honors the evidence, that honors the facts." —Moyers, who has made a career of speaking truth to power.

I watched a political commentator speaking the truth that no one wants to admit to: that to call oneself a Christian while living a hate-mongering, hypocritical life means that you're not really a Christian, because you're not walking even your own talk. That's what's wrong with the evangelical political right wing: they don't even listen to the teachings in the book that they hold up when they're shouting out hatred against gays. You're not a follower of Jesus if you don't live by the words he spoke, you're just a fan.

And I watched the finale episode of the series Smallville, in which the young man who is Clark Kent at last grows into the man we call super. It was actually inspirational; but what made we most appreciative was when, in the last minutes of the show, when the mantle was finally assumed, the musical score started quoting, first in bits and pieces, then in a full quote, the famous "Superman" them from the movies, written by John Williams. What a perfect way to connect those versions of the story all together.

Soundtrack music has the power to make such connections, both by association and quotation, but also by creating emotional resonance. The "Superman" theme by Williams is a genuinely inspiring melody: it makes you look up in the sky, it lifts up your heart, it excites your expectations of being both entertained and inspired, and it is on top of that an eminently hummable tune.

This makes me think of my own songwriting at the moment. If I can do half as well, even one-quarter as well, in a song I am writing for this new music commission, in uplifting emotions and inspiring people to both feel better about their lives and to go out humming a tune, I will be a very happy composer indeed.

Red Lilies

the red lilies

From last summer, the red lilies and streaks of color fire.

The lilies are already coming up this year. They've multiplied and spread, so where I had two or three last year, it looks like I might have up to a dozen this year. I look forward to the new color display that will be here in a month or so.

Merry Beltane

I can't get to any Beltane gatherings this year, but I did go out this afternoon, while it was still sunny, and stick my hands into the garden dirt. Planted calla lilies and tulips, weeded some pernicious scrub grass, cleaned out and mulched the hosta bed, generally spent time connecting with the renewing and healing earth. Daffodils exploding everywhere, the tulips about to bloom, too. Possibly even tomorrow; there was one tulip whose bud was reddening all day, visibly changing during the day. Lilies emerging from the earth. The bleeding heart bushes have spread, and are nascent with pink flowers. I should probably transplant a few of them to the back garden, to thin them out. The rose bushes are all coming back to life, with small red-green leaves clustered around their bases, and some of the last year's stems greening up again. Robins in the crabapple trees that are just about to flower.



The Great God Pan, the Green Man, all coming back to life now. Reminds me to feel alive, even when I'm not at my full strength.



So, Happy Beltane to those who celebrate the return of spring to the land. And happy spring to everyone else.

Blessed Be!

Rumours of Spring

Our first really warm spring day here, the bulbs emerging and exploding into color. First the crocus, which already started a week ago and are almost done by now. Then the daffodils and tulips and lilies coming up in the front garden. The back porch garden, which gets the most light, the tulips already going.




In the morning, still foggy, the tulips not yet open. By afternoon, when the sun burned off the fog, these exotics were already fully open, fully colored, spread wide.



I have a lot of standard, familiar, red chalice-shaped tulips. But my favorites are these exotics. Tulips that are different from the norm. I have some fringed varieties, also, that will open soon. I like the varieties, and I like the unusual flowers. My garden as ever is planned to be a riot of color, with blooms opening and blasting out their colors from now until autumn. Always something in bloom, always something giving out color and life.

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And then, of course, there are the lawn sculptures in the stores they're trying to sell you to make your garden even more "beautiful." Nothing I would ever buy, or ever put out. I love the natural beauty of my garden, these hilariously kitsch items would do nothing to "improve" it. But they're fun to look at in the store.

A Photographer's Garden 5: the White Lilies

images from my garden, July 2010



summer's perfume
around the house corners—
the white lilies

A Photographer's Garden 4

images from my flower garden, June & July 2010

A Photographer's Garden 3: Calla Lily

Streaks of Color Fire

embrace of vision
red streaked sun star flash and fire
oceans vibrating

sea of fire in the sand
everything that is, is alive

A Photographer's Garden 2

The season's first roses:





And some of this year's first lilies. All the lilies I planted in the front garden last summer have split their bulbs over the winter. In most cases, I am getting three stalks where last year I planted one. They're spreading, and growing, and all I had hoped for.





I'm having a bit of a fight with the deer and the rabbits. They find the bulbs, before they open, just too delicious. So I've been sprinkling the garden with deer-blood fertilizer (they hate the smell) and cayenne pepper and/or chili powder (which keeps almost everything from being too tasty to their delicate ruminant tastebuds). Every time it rains, I have too to redo the repellants, as they wash away. One night I forgot, and the deer got a few of the buds, while the rabbits ate somme hosta leaves. So, each time it rains you just have to remember to put out more cayenne and other powders.

Shades of Red

O my luve's like a red, red rose.
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like a melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
—Robert Burns

Along the northern coast,
Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves,
In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country,
With the surge for base and accompaniment low and
hoarse,
With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven
by strong arms,
Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in
the redwood forest dense,
I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.
—Walt Whitman, from Song of the Redwood Tree

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Red was my father's favorite color. The red flowers that I grow in my garden are partly in homage to him, and to his life-long love of gardening. I grow several kinds of tulips, and lilies, and roses. The daffodils and tulips are already done this year, along with most of the other early bulbs, the grape hyacinth, the crocus. Dad liked solid red tulips, bright spots of red you can see a hundred yards away in contrast to the surrounding green. I like variegated, unusual varieties of tulips. I've planted some exotics, which did well this year, with all the early and sustained rain; the red and white striped tulips, and the tall thin purple, were especially lovely. The tulips are done, the bleeding hearts are in full bloom now. The lilies are growing tall, but not yet ready to bloom. I planted several new lilies last year, which did well; now I see that most of them have split their bulbs over the winter, and in many places where I had planted one lily, there are now two or three. Gradually, given time, the garden beds will become thicker and richer, as each year the perennials return, having split or multiplied or cast new seeds. The garden beds will thicken and the colors unfold throughout the summer and autumn, so that there will always be something in bloom, something providing color, rich spots of bright color amidst the green.