A Return to Blogging and Gathering My Thoughts

                                                               

                                                              Richard Murray (1948-2024)

I have not blogged for 10 years. One of the reasons is because I didn't want to get rid of the picture of the cougar my friend, Richard Murray painted, that seemed to go with my poem, so I'm keeping it and adding a new post to it.

On May 15, 2024, I went to visit Richard in Oregon. To my horror, I found him lying face down in the middle of his beloved iris garden. He had died only hours before my arrival.

The artist Richard Murray is easy to find online—search his name and you’ll see many articles and photographs of his extraordinary work. One of them is a huge mural of horses lining one whole wall in Robert Redford's restaurant at Sundance. 

After he moved to Oregon, Richard and I spent countless hours talking on the phone. I always kept a pencil and paper nearby because I knew he’d say something hilarious or recommend a book, piece of music, or video worth tracking down. His wit was sharp, and his knowledge spanned an astonishing range of topics. He even coined his own terms—like gynokinesthesia, which he defined as “a woman completely unaware of how she moves through a space.” His example: a lady blocking the grocery store aisle.

Richard avoided the digital world entirely—no cell phone, no internet, no network TV. He preferred videos and books. Some called him old-fashioned, but I always thought there was a kind of purity in the way he sought out information.

He was a shy, awkward student in his early years, and often said those difficult school days gave him a kind of immunity later in life. When I regularly updated the “In Memory” section of our high school reunion website, I’d send him printouts of the classmates I knew he’d remember—usually fellow quiet souls, not the ultra-popular ones.

For all his modesty, he could admit to moments of pride. On our last phone call, just before I left for Oregon, I asked how he felt about his artistic career. He paused, then said, “There are days I look at a particular painting and think, God, I was on my game that day!”

Some Richard Murray quotes:

• “Hubris is the upswing of manic depression.”

• “Take away someone’s assumptions and delusions and they become very ordinary.”

• “I’ve always depended on the kindness of OCD people.”

 I thought about listing all the things Richard loved, but this poem by his Richland, Oregon friend, Linda Joy Cordtz, says it better than I ever could:

---

The horses knew first and told the snake
That our good friend Richard had passed.
Swans heard it from the iris,
That bore it on the breeze, telling the meerkats.
And soon they gathered under the starry sky,
Monkeys, turkeys, elk, owls, deer and skunks.
The ostriches helped him stand and he walked freely
Among them, holding a hare to his chest.
Chickens and peacocks, guinea hens, cougars and bison.
The eagles brought the wrens, the owls nestled
On the musk ox’s back as they celebrated him.
The leaves whispered and the flowers bloomed,
And still they came.
The milk cow, a wood duck, a lynx with a coyote,
A grand moose with cranes, followed by raccoons.
The mountain goat, the fox, a black bear and the wolf.
All the dogs barked and ran, as the bighorn sheep
Circled back to see him looking out at the pond.

The raven called, and still they all came, to walk him
Home.