each time we returned to our airbnb west of aspen we turned it on. the salt lamp seemed a beacon, warm light welcoming us. i don’t know if it was actually emitting any goodness – as they are said to – but it sure felt like it.
we have a salt lamp in each of our studios. they glow in those spaces and, whether or not they are scientifically proven to be goodness-in-a-lamp, they are soothing to us.
my studio is clean now. i removed a desk and all the extra stuff that was cluttering up the space, all the relics of jobs or times that felt negative. i have yet to go through the closet where there are a couple file cabinets of music, but the space – as i walk in – is a completely different place than it had been and every day i light my salt lamp.
and just last week or the week before, i put the j away.
when you are from long island “oy” is not an uncommon response – to many things. it can span the spectrum from light-hearted to the intense, though, in reaction to the intense, you would be less likely to use the derivative and more likely to use the whole saying – oy vey!
surprise, dismay, grief, frustration, distress. all of it.
it seems like it was a particularly prescient moment for the j to fall and the oy to stand firm.
who am i to question gravity and the wisdom of corrugated galvanized metal?
we thought we were tired before. we thought we were exhausted. what an absolute understatement now.
and isn’t that the point. to exhaust us, overwhelm us, inundate us, gish gallop-muzzle-velocity us, to put us all in such a state that we are paralyzed with fear under our woke quilts, unable to rise up.
and – to top it all off – to be intensely aware of all the people we know and love who are supporting this hideousness. to have our hearts broken by people breaking our family values, undermining the freedoms of the very people in our very family.
exhausting indeed. IS there a bigger word for that? bone-weary. shattered. fried.
we each need to rest here. to take a few moments and just not talk about IT. to zero into the very center of our own lives. to find things that sustain us, people who sustain us.
because – even in the midst of all the unconscionable – we are still alive. and we need even just the tiniest bit of joy in our breathing – so that we might rise up, stretch our limbs, clear our throats and speak up.
i’m not sure that i can point to the moment when i realized – with every fibre – that the truly holiest moments were not the ones in buildings called churches.
it is a moment for which i am grateful, perspective-arranging and a welcome addition to my secular vocabulary – the word “holy”.
i spent many decades creating the atmosphere in churches where people might tune in to the emotional of faith – that which they could not palpably touch but which they could feel, they could intuit, they could impart to others. through music that i specifically chose – after research, after studying the narrative to be used, and after much listening and evaluating if a piece might touch hearts – open or closed – i shaped the music of services – the everyday and the special holidays, the celebrations of joining together and the inevitable release of people to the next dimension – to freely acknowledge spirit as it flowed and to try to gently grace others with it through music. to try and encourage an openness to the spirit that breathed into the place and maybe into them, into a place inside them where they needed the sweet assurance. whether i was aware if it did or not was not my only measure of success. providing the tenor of possibility and holding space for holy and their experience of holy was my job. there were moments when the last strains of a song or piece of music lingered in the air over the congregation, moments when a choir of singers, paused in a rest between notes sung with dedication and commitment to each other that you could almost see holy in the hush – the sun shining through, its rays touching each person. but over the course of these decades of time spent in these buildings, i was inordinately disappointed – even stunningly – time and again – by the hypocrisy to which i was privy. true faith is as true faith does, holy is as holy does, i was reminded, over and over. disillusionment was – and still is – a repeating theme.
out on the trail, as the clouded sun shined through the winter landscape and reflected onto the river, i could see – once again – how holy turns up in the purest of moments, the simplest, the least contrived. we have been gifted by the universe – and whatever deity we each individually feel or – perhaps – in which we might believe – with the extraordinary: a world full of beautiful.
beautiful is a descriptive word – easily understood as describing something of beauty. and that is all around us. the reaching of people to people in times of abundance and in times of need, kindness to and embracing of our neighbors despite differences, the love between any and all, regardless of anything, nature and its astonishments. our holy is all around us.
for those of you who are invoking your – supposed – religiosity to validate your vote – and your support – for the cruelest chaos that is this new administration, those of you who are spouting righteous religious drivel to prop up your bigotry, i would venture to say you may have missed the point. sheer hypocrisy has taken over your holy.
holy has not only left the building, but it has clearly left your soul.
our sansevieria is called “a perfect houseplant“. it doesn’t require much tending, much light, much water. it is hardy and healthy and has grown immensely since we brought it home, filling the window nook.
it makes me think of my sweet momma, since she is the one who first introduced me to sansevieria – the snake plant. she had several and called them by their scientific name.
our sansevieria seems unconcerned that it is referred to as an “old school succulent“. and, according to the miraclegro website, they are “almost comically easy to grow, so chances are you’ll encounter few problems with them.”
the other day d and i were talking about trends. neither of us is particularly trendy nor aware of the trending trends. we reminisced about growing up with parents who also weren’t trendy and didn’t try to keep up with pop culture. we wondered about whether that was a detriment but decided that it was likely helpful since staying on trend requires a financial investment and real-life artists are generally not in that sort of position.
i’m thinking that we are both sansevieria.
perhaps we all need to be succulent sansevieria. easy to care for, ruthlessly growing despite all odds. we need to be hardy and healthy, comically easy. maybe that will give us the strength we need to prevail through all the chaos and uncertainty we are experiencing.
the one thing that we don’t have in common with our snake plant? the part that reads “chances are you’ll encounter few problems with them.”
it’s our job as artists – and, let’s face it, as humans – to push back on cruelty, on injustice, on betrayal, on marginalization, on stupidity. so…you may encounter a few problems.
yeah, we’re mostly sansevieria. but definitely watch for a few prickly cactus spines thrown in for self-preservation and for the protection of others.
these days – even if you shut your eyes really tight – squeezing your eyelids so that you can see nothing – you cannot block it all out. i’ve tried. it doesn’t work.
like you, well – some of you – i am horrified by the fast and furious devastation – the epitome of meanness and ugliness cast upon us, upon this nation. there are no words to describe it all.
so i open my eyes instead.
and i look for things of beauty. anywhere. everywhere.
the sage green was a balm to the eyes in a landscape mostly brown. the folds of veiny leaves drew me to it – tiny crystals of dew glinting what little light there was on a drearily grey day.
the photo shoot wasn’t prolonged – only six photographs – but each one is somewhat dreamy – this fuzzy plant off-trail in the underbrush was stunning. i was glad to have noticed it. its presence gave me pause – to breathe.
this is the only way i’ll get through all this.
by keeping my eyes open to anything of beauty on or off trail. anything at all. anywhere. everywhere.
but the miso potsticker soup called for it, so game on. we purchased baby bok choy and set about making a big stock pot.
it is a beautiful leafy vegetable, photogenic. and much simpler to use in a recipe than i thought. the new recipe opened up ideas – as we cooked together – for other ingredients we might add, to other recipes we might try. that is the beauty of trying new things. new begets new.
the fewest short months ago, we co-opted the phrase “we’re not going back” made popular by kamala and tim. we both felt passionately about not going back, but instead moving forward, our land and its people becoming a more perfect union, learning more, experiencing more. we were excited about the possibilities that lay in front of us – all of us – excited to think about the potential of a country that had so much potential. like our bok choy joy, we were eager to try new things.
instead, the pall that is settling over this country is everything BUT that. suddenly, we are being thrust backwards, hurled around into the ugliest times that are arriving with each sign of the sharpie. it is beyond incomprehensible to grok why anyone would want this.
as we trimmed the bok choy stem and divided the bundle i thought about all the canned vegetables i had eaten back-in-the-day before frozen vegetables in the days before buying fresh. i don’t think i had ever had fresh asparagus before the early eighties. i had no idea what i had been missing, no idea whatsoever.
cooking with canned asparagus – as I would expect it would be with canned bok choy – is narrow and colorless and bleak. quoting from reddit – “asparagus from a can should be banned as a crime against humanity.” (bellasantiago1975)
co-opting THAT expression now, i’d adapt it to a far greater-reaching, far more ominously perilous outcome than we might imagine: “going back should be banned as a crime against humanity.”
three sources. the bible, the statue of liberty on ellis island, the declaration of independence. all pointing – pointedly – to the same thing: no one is lesser or unworthy of respect.
in the current climate of these most-obviously un-united united states, it might do one good to remember any one of these powerful quotes. because the disrespect, minimalizing, oppression, degradation of people, the disenfranchising, the marginalization, the injustice, the out-and-out cruelty is mind-bogglingly unconscionable.
this administration’s pathetic excuses for validation are rampant gish gallop. and you – the anti-woke out there are being taken for a dangerous ride. at any moment, the gish-whip can be turned on you. but remember – you wanted this. you voted for it.
we are not forming “a more perfect union“. we – instead – are heading for dystopia.
a more perfect union loves one another. a more perfect union celebrates the richness of all diversity. a more perfect union learns from each other. a more perfect union is a place where “e pluribus unum (out of many, one) ” counts, where equality is a thriving verb, where each person’s life – regardless of any differences – is valued and cherished.
please wake up, you anti-wokers. your complicit sleep – on the galloping bandwagon over hill and dale all across this country – is killing our democracy.
“our forever work is to learn to hold the brutal and beautiful in the same palm.” (suleika jaouad)
i am trying to learn to list to the beautiful. lean into it. curve that way. take that path. abruptly turn, if need be.
in these fraught times, these times of brutal, we are finding how we wake – how we start our day – is crucial. we are fragile, maybe just like you.
and so we watch through the mini blinds, through the screen and storm window, as – out across the deck, reflecting on the sunroom windows, just past the awning over the back door – the sun – rising over the lake – climbs to a place where its rays sneak around houses and gardens and reach out and out, brushing our windows.
and we can see it.
we watch as it intensifies and moves up, up. a tiny gift for us to hold.
and then – as we sip coffee – one of us quietly comments on how truly beautiful it is. and our day is officially started.
reverse threading 