Saturday, October 18, 2003

Songs I wrote and performed for the sound track of the prize-winning filmed documentary,  "Farallon Light," by San Francisco filmmaker, Charles Petersen ... .


Wind song
Hear my wind song, hear the gulls cry
watch the storm race through
restless reeds writhe ... waves weave madness!
blackness steals the blue.

here I stand in winter's wildness
sea and sand are mine!
take them storm, if you trust my mildness.
should you dare -- I'll bid the sun to shine!

See the clouds lift. Sand surround me
Now sun, now! Break through!
See the tide's gifts all around me
jewels I'll bring to you.

hear my gulls cry ... feel the warm sky,
hear my wind song ...
hear my wind
song ......



Meditation   
When my lovely world turns cold and leaves me wondering
if all I am to be has now been?
And if all I am to grow, to sense, to hear, to see, to know...
if all I am to feel has flown with the wind.

Then I flee my lonely world and climb a hill
where soft earth fits my foot and I can make the world be still
while my arms, outstretched, hold sun and clouds and sky...
and the wind folds me in love
and I'm ...
all ...
I.

And then high atop my hill my trees and I
through earth beneath our feet all can feel the world inside
and through limbs, outstretched, feel moon and stars and sky
and our wind folds us in love
and
we're ...
all ...
I.


Am thinking about the day when I took very young granddaughter, Kokee, up to the Lawrence Science Museum high above the U.C. Berkeley campus and -- walking down a long hallway -- could hear the sound of my own voice as it drifted through an open doorway. We walked inside to an empty and darkened theater. Farallon Light was being shown on a large screen ... there were the waves crashing against the rocks, and my disembodied voice ... . Waited until the film ended -- long enough to see the film credits. Realized that no one that I knew was even aware that I'd done this. Why had I been so secretive?

By this time I'd left the suburbs far behind and had re-entered life in Berkeley where I was now divorced and remarried, a faculty wife on campus, but had not yet reconnected with any of the life I'd left behind in 1950 when we'd moved into another new life. I'd become a whole other person, and there was no way to explain this Betty to either my family or our friends from those earlier years. It felt surreal. It was.

It was about this time that I stopped writing and began to evolve into political Betty. The artist was dismissed, but she may have saved my life while here. Owning that part of myself has been a difficult thing to do, but blogging is helping in that process.

Guess I'd hate to die and leave so much of myself behind buried in blue plastic storage boxes... .