when they were little, i was accustomed to watching their growth spurts – these moments when their tiny bodies were overcome by fiery energy of growth……a sudden few inches here or there…a burst in language or fine motor skills. childraising is a continual surprise. just when you thought you knew what you needed to know – at least temporarily – you were stymied by your own tiny child – and you became a little heap of not-knowing uncertainty. oof. it’s all a glorious mystery.
the one – and only one – daylily wasn’t giving up. all around it, blooms had tired and turned into wrinkled brown tissue, stems were drying out, its green frond-y leaves were yellowing.
and then, the growth spurt of this one last blossom – not yet willing to give up the game. it raised its head to the sun, singing.
we are watching the transition to autumn – all around us. fallow is in the offing, just off-stage, waiting for the summer to clear and sweep the wood floor of time it had inhabited. lighting is clearing the way for dark, a slow decrescendo of available daylight. sound is preparing to – soon – shut down the microphones of cicadas and crickets. the props of summer – all the heavenly hot-sun blooms and flowers and produce and herbs and the fantastic tapestry of color – the stagehands of fall are collecting them, quietly putting them to bed.
but the daylily in the front garden is having none of it.
in the middle of the transition to the quietude of fall, it is speaking loudly. it is not remaining silent. it is – in fact – screaming out to us to “remember!” it is reminding us we don’t know it all.
daylily’s transition is not without noise. it is not without color – its flame orange a loud pushback on what seems inevitable – fading fall, falling.
it is having a growth spurt of independent spirit. one lone bloom. glorious.
“instead of silence, she chose fire.” (celeste ng)
mama dear repurposed gramps’ old wooden cigar boxes. she’d label them with a magic marker with a big Z or a big B on the front – which stood for zippers and buttons.
i have these old cigar boxes. The Z box now stores nespresso pods in our sunroom. the B box stores harmonicas, kazoos, egg shakers in my studio. the unlabeled corona cigar box is in the office and is loaded with business cards from days when my recording label was flourishing.
the zippers from the Z box are in with my sewing supplies.
and the buttons from the B box? there is a giant collection of buttons. tiny buttons, metal buttons, plastic buttons, wooden buttons, buttons with distinction, whimsical buttons, spare buttons in those tiny plastic bags along with a bit of matching colored thread – that used to come with every blazer, every shirt, every coat.
it is a direct connect to pass by these button-flowers – these fading daisies in the meadow – and think of mama dear, my grandmother, my sweet momma’s mom. she is the person who taught me how to sew and i simply cannot so much as thread a needle without thinking of her.
i found a letter from mama dear the other day. it was from early 1980. i was 20. in it she thanked me for a christmas gift i had given her and a card i had sent from a trip to visit my parents. no one knew at the time it would be her last holiday season. born in 1899, she was a feisty almost-81 with bright red hair and a penchant for gambling slot machines in vegas. in her letter she wrote, “i hope you are happy with your choice” referring to my staying in new york instead of going to florida with my parents as they retired.
at the time it wasn’t really a difficult choice. i was at the beginning stages of a composing/recording/performing career and retirement-central wasn’t the place to grow. so, yes, i was happy with my choice. until one day when that choice became dangerous and i fled all semblance of my budding career, leaving any feisty i had inherited from mama dear behind, devastatingly leaving all artistry buds behind for decades to come.
the button-flowers are charming. they punctuate the masses of goldenrod lighting up the meadows. and they make me think of my button collection.
i have no idea what i will do with all of those buttons. i suppose one day i will list them on marketplace and give them away to a seamstress or crafter who will make creative use of them. maybe i will tell them a little about mama dear, about how many of these buttons are vintage, about how they carry a spirit of feisty red-headed grandma in them.
or maybe i’ll just quietly gift them the collection and hold onto the feisty myself.
and every time i pass a button-daisy on the side of a trail i’ll check in – inside – and make sure it’s still there – the feisty – still growing, still challenging me, still repurposing into profound and important choices for the L box. Life.
mid 80s, late 80s, the 90s – it was a thing. posies of dried flowers everywhere you could find a spot. on indoor trellises, tucked into cornices, hooked onto doors, gathered in bowls, in wreaths and vases and garlands, in frames and potpourri vessels. so many dried flowers.
and it wasn’t that they weren’t beautiful. next to the quilts on quilt racks and the doilies on the side tables, old silverware windchimes, painted wooden tchotchkes and cross-stitch anything, the dried flowers complimented the style of the times – this nod to nostalgic country-ish.
there was a day – years ago – when, having been surrounded by dried flowers for decades, i literally walked around my home with a big garbage bag and tossed all the dried flowers i had managed to hang, tuck, hook, trellis, gather, weave, drape, frame or potpourri-mix. it – this decorating obsession with things-dried – was suddenly done.
(now, to be fair, currently, there’s a posy of lavender from our garden in a small glass milk pitcher and a couple reeds from a hike. oh, and a few hydrangea from out front. of course, there are two big branches in our house now, not to mention driftwood from long island and an aspen log from the forest in breckenridge, but, in essence…for the most part…in theory and almost-all-application, the dried-flower-dust-accumulator period is over.)
instead, as we hike along the river and in the woods and walk in the ‘hood, we watch the flowers of the meadows and the gardens changing. their waning beauty draws me in – even more than their mid-summer blossom. there is something about the fading flower, something about the button left after the petals fall, something about the curve of the wilting coneflower or a tired black-eyed susan, the almost-fluffless dandelion, the loves-me-loves-me-not petal-less daisy. i stop and linger with them, always curious how graceful it is they go into fallow, this period of rest, how they so readily give over to this change in appearance when humans seem to resist so vehemently any visible aging.
the 1980s/1990s dried-flower-hanger/tucker/gatherer in me rises as i admire these beautiful nods to autumn’s arrival. but i leave the flowers in the meadow, in the garden, in the marsh next to the river, in the woods.
and, instead, i carry their beauty – and the moments i was witness to it – with me, knowing that diminished beauty is – nonetheless – beautiful.
we’d get on our bikes early in the day and just take off. susan and i would bike hike anywhere – we’d plan our journeys and make sure there was a carvel or a mcdonald’s somewhere on the way. as long as we were home by dinner no one worried about us. and we had the freedom to roam around our neighborhoods or anywhere we could reach on the island.
it should be this way.
back in school, in the fall – after the ultimate freedom of our summer – we practiced getting under our desks at school but the likelihood of any bombing actually happening to our school was a mere mention on a fire-drill-bomb-scare just-in-case checklist.
every year d and i talk to each other about “the wistfuls”. it hasn’t happened yet this year – neither of us has felt it descend on us. but we know it will.
there’s fall – the changing of the guard moving toward fallow. my favorite season of jeans and boots and flannel shirts. and there’s fall – a recognition of summer ending, of the sun and long, hot days and freedom and a lightness of spirit coming to a close.
and i wonder – in these gorgeous fall days, the lower sun intense, the breeze cooler, the colors more vibrant with the humidity pushed aside – what that wistful is about.
is it about those days growing up? is it about a yen to have little to no responsibility, no concerns, a time of fiercely following curiosity, of grasping the tiny adventures of childhood with both hands, believing they were huge explorations? is it about painfully remembering a time when my whole extended family seemed to be on the same page, supporting each other, caring for the world and its inhabitants?
is it about a yearning for when my own children were little? when their backyard playing was the everyday joy of looking out the kitchen window? when the dining room table was the gathering place for school supplies and backpacks? when the summer freedom slipped back into a schedule of school and homework and lessons and sports practices? when, after dropping them off or seeing them onto the bus, hoping that they ate their packed lunch, remembered their spelling words, weren’t bullied by anyone were my worries?
although there were occasional bomb threats issued at the schools and 9/11 was a profoundly terrifying day, there was never an actual shooter on the premises (that i knew of).
but there had been moments in our town. and the moment i heard a loud inner voice direct me – vehemently – to NOT stop at the mcdonald’s i was about to pull into on my way home from the mall with my two tiny children – the day that minutes later a shooter entered that very mcdonald’s through the back door, killing the people at the table where we always sat – the one at the very back opposite the door, where the smoking-allowed-smoke didn’t reach our happy meals – that moment reached inside me and raised up the fear i had carried with me since my own earlier life, the time after bike hikes and carvel and fireflies in the neighborhood.
it shouldn’t be like that.
i just watched an instagram reel during which a mom instructs her little boy – who is five years old – about following his teacher’s directions during an emergency at school. between reading the circumstances about her little boy, his physical challenges, and the thought that his tiny – tiny! – self following directions could mean the difference between life and death made my head want to explode.
it should not be this way.
and is it any wonder that i wonder what the wistful is about???
oh, i imagine that when the wistful hits, it will be with some degree of force. for everything is changing – not just the leaves. and we are suddenly thrust into a world – a country – where freedom and rights are being usurped, where the administration is upholding the secrecy of sexual predators, where school shootings – with children and adults dying – dying! – elicit merely passive thoughts and prayers, where xenophobic, racist, homophobic, misogynistic leaders wish to eliminate – eliminate! – actual people they consider superfluous, unwelcomed, expendable, where the premise of warmongering seems to be a sport and the propensity to further lethality and offensive actions on those they perceive as disposables runs rampant, where healthcare and the ability to have enough food is considered elite, where having more gets more and having less doesn’t matter.
there are about 200 seeds in a single dandelion fluff. even in the gentlest of breezes, the dandelion field scatters everywhere – seeding, seeding – more dandelions, more dandelion fields.
oh, the mayhem.
88 keys.
the clusters of piano keys that might be in any piece of music. consider just a three-note composition. in the simplest of equations, assuming once the first choice is made you must move on to the second choice and then the third choice, one has 88 keys to choose from x 88 keys to choose from x 88 keys to choose from – merely 681,472 options for any given composer on any given day working to write just the first three notes of a melodic gesture.
oh, the mayhem.
choices.
for the painter and a canvas, a writer and a pad, a dancer and a wood floor, a potter and blocks of clay, a blogger and a computer keyboard.
it – the imperative to mayhem – calls us. to make something out of it all. to birth something out of the raw materials, to use our tools to create, to choose direction, to express artistic vision – what we see or hear or feel – a passion – that might – or might not – touch others.
there is no guarantee, no real proverbial “if you build it, they will come”. it doesn’t just happen that way. it is an imperative nonetheless.
the imperative to show up, to engage in the mayhem.
i’ve done much of my composing in-between other things, stealing time – minutes even – to write something – anything, something that might be universally understood, something that gives air to a thought, an emotion – something in my internal or external world. scraps of melodies, bass line roots, ideas only until i might make them airborne.
mayhem steals my imagination and lifts it past the stuff-of-the-day. it pokes and prods me, not allowing for passivity, foisting ideas and snippets of muse upon me.
it’s a bazillion seeds in a dandelion meadow, a bazillion pianos, a bazillion pencils and pads, a bazillion brushes and a bazillion paint pots.
i have always been drawn to notebooks. composition books, spiral notebooks, journals, graph paper pads, legal pads, pa-pads – really, i guess, any kind of bound group of paper. blank paper.
it all represents a beginning. “begin anywhere,” john cage urges on a piece in my studio.
but sometimes there is a paralysis. sometimes there is something – some quirk – that stops me from starting – it stops me from putting pencil or pen to the first page. i feel this very big responsibility to the new blank paper. sometimes it feels like what i might write, compose, jot down may not be worthy of the first pristine sheet in a new paper vessel that could – ultimately – contain hundreds of writings, compositions, jottings. i haven’t yet gotten over that.
and so i dig out old spirals that my children used in elementary school – with wide rule lines – or high school – with college rule lines. their names are on the front and i can – delightedly – still find scribblings inside the notebooks. lab results or math problems, vocabulary words or drawings or paragraphs of tiny stories they were creating – it’s all thready for me and so this stack of old spirals and folders speak to my heart – in so many ways. i can easily write in these.
but there are those really delicious new books, new pads, new journals. and i glance at them, wondering when i might think that anything i might pencil in them would be worthy of their newness.
just staring at the beach was zen-full. it was quiet. almost pristine.
the beach had been combed – stunning horizontal lines – raked, perfectly clean but for a few sets of footprints walking – along the horizontal and taking the hypotenuse to the water.
the orderliness was just a tiny bit interrupted. and the orderliness was waiting for more disorderly. the disorderly would mean people – walking and running, children playing and building castles in the sand, seagulls clamming, dogs digging, sand flying.
even as i write this, i think about pulling out one of the brand new notebooks. taking my ever-present mechanical pencil to the first page (or maybe the second – to leave the first page clean and blank).
it makes me think that maybe the disorderly – the walking, running, building, digging, sand-flying – might actually be the real joy.
it makes me think i just might walk the hypotenuse across the college-ruled page. and wreak a little havoc on some clean paper.
though we love-us (as they say) a familiar trail, we found a new trail to hike recently.
it was a really windy day and we set out knowing we would not-know what we might find along the way. that – in itself – is one of the gifts of hiking. even on trails we know like the back of our hands.
i knew being a minister of music like the back of my hand. and, as the easter holiday just passed by, i thought a lot about the 35 or so easters for which i had been responsible – the decades i had shaped the music of these seasons. i always believed it was my job to help people connect to that which they could not see – thus, ultimately, to touch faith, to touch love.
a dearest friend of ours retired this past week. with great joy, we celebrated his new freedom and listened as he told about the party his colleagues had thrown for him. he told of their stories, their comments, their appreciation – it was a powerful validation for him and for all the time and energy and life he had spent working in that place. he finished with a flourish – full of affirmation – ready to walk into next. one door closed, others ready to be opened.
it brought up personal grief.
for my very last days – of that career – one of the professions in which i used my knowledge of music – that spanned three and half decades – these days were not lined with validation or gratitude or even a nod of thanks. instead – for me – they were fraught with being fired, what felt like a plethora of undistilled meanness, full of unanswered questions, betrayal and shock and – then – absolute quiet. an assault.
i never finished. there was no brunch, there were no casseroles, no sheet cake, no jello mold. there was no t-shirt, no mug to carry off and use each morning, warmed by the memories of time spent.
this was an awakening.
i suddenly realized that i wasn’t done.
for all the sorting and cleaning and throwing out, there was still something incomplete.
there was no flourish; there was no affirmation.
this was an epiphany.
since i can’t go back literally, there is something in me that wishes to find a way to closure. maybe it is to go back to this place we found on this new trail. to this gate that stands in the messy field of wild grasses next to the birch tree just a bit back from the meadow. maybe if i lift up that gate and just step – even just one step – into what is past it – what is on the other side – maybe it might feel – in some metaphorical-retirement-party-crepe-paper-streamers-strewn way – like there was a little flourish. that i will grant myself the validation, the affirmation – the acknowledgment of a great deal of dedicated time of my life – that others tore from me, disregarded – that i will know – deep inside me – that i gave that place – and all the 35 years in that particular spoke of my sedimentary-layered life of music – giant pieces of my creative soul and that i can finally – finally – leave the familiar behind and get about the new. whatever their agenda or issues – in an end that was not of my choosing – it should not detract from my own celebration of me.
i will never be a minister of music again. that part of my life – that arrow of dedication of the music within me – has finished. and – i was damn good at it. i understood it. i knew it like the back of my hand.
and now it’s time for a new trail.
right after i pull down all the streamers and toss them out.
it is hard for me to pass by something this beautiful – this wispy milkweed pod – without stopping. i am fortunate to hike with someone who understands this. we stop and i study the milkweed; i take several shots.
it is not the first time i have taken photographs of milkweed in the winter. i’m pretty sure it won’t be the last. each time i see milkweed – even in the winter – even in its fallow – i feel like it is different – its slant in the meadow, the curve of the pod, the way sunlight plays on it.
this is how i will get through it all, i think. zeroing in on intense beauty, tiny nuances, millisecond moments. i realize that this is the power that is available to me. this is the distraction.
the invitations are numerous from the side of the trail, from the side of life. they beckon to each of us and it is up to us whether to accept those invitations.
i am kind of a detail person…so the invitations are somewhat evident to me, hard to miss. they blur out everything else, if you intend to really take notice.
and, in just that way, we are intending new practices – more intentional meditation, more exercise, more outside. and each time – despite any same-ness, there is the possibility of new. each time we may stop and study or gaze and admire.
“things will not be the same, because we will not be the same.” (anon)
it may be difficult to avoid focusing on the way things will be in these fraught times. nevertheless, we will try to focus elsewhere. to lean into the beautiful and leave the rest of it blurred.
there is a reverence of fire. it centers me into stillness, quiet time when much else slips away. just silently staring at its dance makes time – always vibrating – shift into slower motion.
there are moments – sitting in front of a fire – when you can feel that you are coming back to yourself. it is like the somethings that have been covered over, put aside, chucked away come forward and the fingers of flame burn off what hides it from your heart. the fire melts the rigid in you, pushes you past doubt, past angst, and beyond places that ache.
and suddenly we are a tiny bit open – more open than before – to the universe tapping our shoulder, to releasing the fear of being raw, to cracking open the vulnerable, to receive gifted divine intervention, to maybe-just-maybe wings to Back.
“your hand opens and closes, opens and closes…your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding.” (rumi)
brave thistle plant – even in the bitter cold – open. this star in the meadow reminds me to stay open…fluid in breath…in and out.
i sometimes wonder about my music. my grand sits in my studio, waiting. it is patient, although i can sometimes hear it in hushed tones, calling me. there has been much between the last time and now, much that has left me closed to it.
i’ve touched it a few times in a few years. i don’t want it – or anyone, including me – to overreact to that. it is beautiful and full-stick and keys-open and – like the thistle – it bravely stays starlit even in the fallow times. and so, it is – every now and then – inviting. but it is complex – complicated – and it’s obvious I haven’t sorted through all the layers yet.
it is an artist’s imperative to create. but there are no rules that state the medium must remain the same. and so…in these inbetween times…i write. to be open to something different is to dance with that imperative.
the heavy old mic stand tucks right outside the doorway to the studio. it’s holding a vessel for candlelight right now but – at the end of our hallway – it reminds me of microphones and wood stages, simple lighting and boom stands. and then i wonder again – about all that.
the real answer is that i don’t know. i don’t know what will happen in these nexts. i don’t know if i’ll compose more, record more, perform more. there are a lot of ifs between here and there, a lot of details, a lot of stars that must align.
but the little thistle plant in the meadow reminded me that even with all that – all in the galaxy that must cluster – constellations in the cold are possible.
reverse threading 