One Happy Man (Rocky Hutchinson) with Eight Puppies (two are black)

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

September 7, 2023

 

If you help one person, you help humanity.

—Ai Weiwei

 

Ken Margolis sent this poem by Ai Qing, who is the father of the artist Ai Weiwei:

 

YARKHOTO

It’s almost as if a caravan is wending its way through town

A clamor of voices mingling with the tinkle of camel bells

The markets bustling as before

An incessant flow of carts and horses

But no—the splendid palace

Has lapsed into ruin

Of a thousand years of joys and sorrows

Not a trace can be found

You who are living, live the best life you can

Don’t count on the earth to preserve memory

 

—Ai Qing  (1980)

*

 

A letter from Abe Green:

 

It’s early morning

          I’m sitting in my backyard acquainting myself with the

richness of this new day

          The sun bright and warm

          The air intoxicatingly fresh           [small feather taped to the page]

          I gulp it with delight

A hundred thoughts clamor for my attention but I deny all in

anticipation of the song birds arrival at my feeder

          I am patient

Suddenly a single wren swoops in alighting on the small

table next to my chair

          Next to my arm

          We both seem surprised and take cautious appraisal of 

one another

          She inspecting this mysterious land-bound creature

          I observing her intricate feathering

          Her tiny yet powerful legs and feet

          And most of all her dark probing eyes

 

Gazing into those ebon portals I was confronted with the

full creative power of life

          Did she see the same in mine?

          Did she see the earth song in my heart?

 

How beautiful those few heartbeats were for me and

          How beautiful was her perfection

 

Then with three resonant chirps as if clarifying an essential

truth with this benign human

          She took wing to be about further business

 

          How astonishing is creation in its continual

          bursting forth with life

 

          And how wonderful is the human experience to be

 

                    Astonished!

 

—Abe Green

*

 

Dear Johnny

 

Hey there, my friend. It’s been quite some time now since I’ve written you a letter. But you know that I’ve just been really busy. My skills that I’ve been obtaining the last few years have been shining through the last few weeks in my work. It’s an amazing thing to see all you can accomplish when you really apply your heart, mind & soul into life. The truth is, is that for me the difficulties are worth the accomplishments.

 

My lesson with the dog today went surprisingly well. The things I’m doing now are so hard to do, but my trainer is very good at this & is helping me to be better too. As I performed all the “get help” cues with the dog, I got to do them by the flowers I planted this Spring. As I gave direction to the dog with cues, my eyes took in the beauty of the gladioluses, brown eyed daisies, foxgloves & a rose bush. It was an enchanted few seconds, sacred in the pause of the mind. My hope is that my life will be this way once I’m out of here. I’m happy & wish to stay so.

 

We got to take pictures with the puppies & you’ll be getting some soon. As luck would have it, my favorite one, “Unique,” a 9 lb female black lab has moved into my cell “for a short stay.” She is a lot of work!! She is 41 days old & knows her name, comes, sits & potties on the pad. She will be doing rides & hills by 60 days old. They are an amazing litter….

 

I wanted to let you and Nancy know about a movie I caught a few days ago. It’s called “Maudie”! It’s about a Canadian folk artist that had arthritis badly. Very good movie…very humble life. When I see such things…it gives me a sense of calmness, knowing that the best lives are full of difficulties & that makes the joy we find in them all the sweeter for us, and maybe for those we touch.

 

Well, you can use this whole letter in the Open Road newsletter if you’d like. It’s all good & beautiful. I love you & miss you & hope to hear from you soon.

 

Beautiful things on the Golden path are like finding the best rocks in the river on a Summer’s day. The best things we all have in life are the joys we give & get & the love we let shine from our hearts that grow all the good things. It feels like I’ve got raven wings to fly on, shiny, strong and true, for carrying all the love I have to all the ones I love so true.

 

—Rocky Hutchinson  (8/13/2023)

*

 

Prairie Radio

 

Way out on open hills we get

no reception—no news or message

gets through, so we listen to birds

explain existence, and by scent of dust

and flowers apprehend our chance.

 

Back home in cities, signals bombard

our tender minds with wars and other

troubles, air around us thick with

warnings and sorrows, light around us

thick with poisons for heart and mind.

 

But anywhere, if you turn your head,

wind delivers light across prairie hills

from far to inform your ancient soul.

 

—from Beauty So Intense You Shield Your Eyes by Kim Stafford

*

 

Scott Teitsworth recently read this inspiring passage from Brian Doyle’s essay “The Final Frontier” to some of his friends:

 

….I began, slowly and dimly, to realize that humble was the only finally truly honest way to be in this life. Anything else is ultimately cocky, which is either foolish or a deliberate disguise you refuse to remove, for complicated reasons perhaps not known even to you.

 

Of course you do your absolute best to find and hone and wield your divine gifts against the dark. You do your best to reach out tenderly to touch and elevate as many people as you can reach. You bring your naked love and defiant courage and salty grace to bear as much as you can, with all the attentiveness and humor you can muster. This life is after all a miracle and we ought to pay fierce attention every moment, as much as possible.

 

But you cannot control anything. You cannot order or command everything. You cannot fix and repair everything. You cannot protect your children from pain and loss and tragedy and illness. You cannot be sure that you will always be married, let alone happily married. You cannot be sure you will always be employed, or healthy, or relatively sane.

 

All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference. Humility does not mean self-abnegation, lassitude, detachment; it’s a more calm recognition that you must trust in that which does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly, ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture. You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow. That trying to be an hones and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will prevent a thread or two of the social fabric from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, and in fact the vast majority of things you do right will go utterly unremarked. Humility, the final frontier, as my brother Kevin used to say. When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or several at once, sometimes; when we are older we take on other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you and I both know men and women who become trapped in the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to escape who they no longer wish to be; but finally, I think, if we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief, that none among us is ultimately more valuable or rich or famous or beautiful than another; and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and true about humility.

 

This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I’m a muddle and a conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

 

—One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle, pp. 58-59