Mimi

Happy trails, Mimi Farina.

Even with as much new thought reading as I do, and my view about death as just a focusing into a different reality, I still miss the physicality of the folks who make the inevitable transition of focus.

I'll miss Mimi, and I'm bummed out that I missed her memorial at Grace Cathedral two weeks ago today.

I met her once. She probably is the most beautiful person I've ever met, in sheer physical terms, yet it was certainly her clarity of her soul that rendered her so subtle yet brilliant a beauty.

I used to live and work in Mill Valley. She came into the vitamin department looking for something. This was years ago, maybe seven years ago. I'm sure she was a strong person, there was an ethereal quality about her, that made anyone paying attention just let her float by, like a butterfly, or a faerie, without disturbing her.

Mimi Farina has made a pretty neat impression upon this place we live in, all the while living a quiet life, though colorful I'm sure.

I'd felt "connected" to her sister Joan Baez since I was younger, mostly because as a half Mexican, half white young girl I thought that I looked like her, with my long hair and my penchant for guitars. She was one of my earliest role models. My father, her contemporary, enjoyed her music, and I grew up with it, as well as with the imprint that her activism had upon my parents' generation (at least for awhile). When I was 20 I wrote to Joan about leaving school and being disillusioned with the world, etc. Her mother picked my letter from the mail and answered it. That seemed like a special thing to happen. Imagine all the letters that get sent and not answered.

I don't read the newspapers, nor listen to much public media, so I missed hearing about Mimi in time to participate in her public memorial. I think of why I would have like to have gone, and why I am a little sad that I missed it. A sense of belonging maybe, a chance to indulge and swim and float in a common celebration as well as feelings of sadness.

Anyway, she seemed like a nice lady, and she created a pretty cool organization bringing music to people hidden and forgotten.