but the real question is, what IS an exact science? virtually nothing.
have you ever stood in your life’s moment – right now – and looked back a decade or two or maybe three and thought, “i never would have thought i’d be here/i’d be doing this”?? just a couple days ago, michele said, “if you had told me twenty years ago that i would be playing a gong for a room full of people, i would have said you were crazy!” and yet, she had just had this remarkable experience playing for others, born of practice and study and a new-found love of the instrument.
magic is not an exact science. art is not an exact science – in any of its forms. science is not an exact science. it all makes us realize that, indeed, life is not an exact science.
so if you are an over-thinker like me, this is tough – to trust where you’re going. there are too many details that get in the way of the overall picture. d is a global thinker…he looks at the bigger picture, he calls it “from 30,000 feet”. i need to be able to envision each foot to get there….ok, maybe not EACH one, but i need a few more details lined up in order to believe something is possible. that disparity gets us in trouble sometimes. we talk about something and are having two different conversations within the same conversation. mostly, we usually agree on the ultimate Thing, but getting there is, well, sometimes cloaked in a tad bit of disagreement.
who was it that said, “everything will be ok in the end. and if it’s not ok, it’s not the end” ??? such brilliance! and optimism! i suppose we gauge so much of what might happen on what happened Before. we have pre-judgments about how something will turn out; we have reluctance to start; we think, “i’ve already DONE this and it didn’t work.”
i am at a crossroads. after 15 albums, i haven’t recorded an album in 8 years, haven’t recorded a new vocal album in 16. 16! where does the time go? albums are very expensive projects, not only financially, but emotionally. as i have already talked about numerous times, there is financial pressure on independent artists now like never before. streaming and illegal downloading has lead to a literal trickle of income, despite millions of “listens”.
so – where do i go from here? songs have been waiting; the piano beckons. something in me resists, afraid of not recouping even what it costs at the front end for something new to be released. part of me wants to believe – believe that it’s time to release something new, in this new time of my career. put it out there and not be concerned with how it is received, how many cds are purchased, how many paid downloads vs how many times it is streamed or pirated. but that won’t pay any bills, won’t afford a living. i am having trouble seeing the 30,000 foot view. not to mention all the feet in-between here and there.
like you, in some arena of your life, i am trying to trust. that whatever decision i make it will be ok in the end. and, if it’s not ok, it’s not the end.
the crystal clear water was cool around my feet, cold actually. the current pulled at my flipflops, necessary – for the rocks below were slippery and i didn’t have the cool sandals My Girl had on. the hot-hot high altitude sun blazed into my hair; it made me think i should have worn that new packable hat i got last year.
i scanned the horizon, a 360 of mountains and trees and sagebrush and blue-blue sky. and this river. going on and on. as far as i could see, it meandered through the landscape i was reluctant to leave.
and i stood in the water. never-minding the feeling of almost-numbness of my feet. because in this moment, i could feel. the very hot of a brilliant sun, the very cold of snow-capped mountain runoff. this time of cloudless sky and the murmur of the river. this time of being with my daughter. this time of dreaming and imagining and creating scenarios in my mind that would allow me to stay in this very spot. this time of (in this case, metaphoric) cloud-gazing.
every good cloud-gaze creates a story. every good cloud-gaze builds a memory. every good cloud-gaze gives you pause to breathe. it’s the same with your feet in the river, your blanket on the beach, your chair in front of the bonfire, your boots on the trail. make time, i say.
my sweet momma’s birthday is today. she would have been 97. she died shortly before her 94th birthday but remains a force in the world. her kindness and her zealous belief in kindness continue to ripple outward. i heard beaky firsthand when My Girl was talking about the world and its issues and said, “the best thing i can do is to be kind to people.” i’ve seen beaky firsthand when My Boy has stood firm in raising pride awareness.
now, i know this story has been told before, but i risk being called redundant to tell it again. back when my momma was 93 and facing down stage four breast cancer having had a double mastectomy a few months prior, she told us she felt like she had accomplished little in her life. there could be little farther from the truth. but she insisted she had no title (“engineer”, “architect” etc) to put after her name. we knew she had, however, three manuscripts she had written decades prior – stories about the family dachshund named shayne – stories she had tried to have published with no success back in the day. stories told from shayne’s point of view and simply wholesome and delightful, we searched for – and found – the manuscripts. and immediately got to work.
my amazing husband david illustrated the first of the trilogy, named SHAYNE. i laid out the text and the graphics of the book itself, designed merchandise like an “author” shirt, banners and a shayne iphone case for momma, built a website, contacted newspapers and we hastened to put together a release party with a reading and press and a celebration with brownies and asti spumanti at her assisted living facility in florida. when we told her – on MY birthday in march (for what could be a better thank-you-for-my-birthday than this?) what was happening on april 11th, she squealed like a school girl and started practicing signing her name with a sharpie. it was BY FAR one of the pinnacle moments of my life to see my mom – the AUTHOR- hold her book, read aloud to the dozens of people who attended and sign “BEAKY” on her books as her fans lined up to purchase the earliest copies. eighteen days later, my sweet momma was no longer on this earth.
david has since illustrated both the second and third books. the second, SHAYNE AND THE YELLOW DRAGON, was released a couple years ago and today, on her birthday, i am so excited to tell you that the third SHAYNE AND THE NEW BABY will be released shortly. the trilogy will be complete! my sweet momma, beatrice h. arnson “beaky” the AUTHOR would be pretty jazzed to sign each of these, but i know her blessing is on them as she reaches through the invisible line between heaven and earth.
we will keep you posted on the release. i have this sweet vision of so-so-many-many-books being sold (to individuals, to schools, to libraries, to dachshund owners, to families with small children, to families with dogs, to dog lovers, to teachers, to scholastic press or to some entity that sees how important it is to have dreams come true – at ANY age) that we might start a beaky-beaky foundation and help – in some well-thought-out way – in momma’s name. if you have any ideas, let us know. we want to keep beaky’s ripples going.
“mom’s getting all existential on us,” The Girl declared as we drove through moab, utah to arches national park, my first time. i could hardly help myself. she had told me ahead of time that, “it looks like mars” and she was right. it is vast. and full of shape and shapeless. it was hard to wrap my head around the BIGness of it all. i felt utterly tiny, small as an atom, infinitely lucky to even BE on this earth, somehow present in the midst of all of THIS.
i couldn’t help reflect on how this had all happened, both scientifically and from, yes, an existential place. i couldn’t help what was probably a mouth-wide-open expression on my face the entire time. it is so immense you can feel it in your heartbeat. i couldn’t help the tears that flowed easily, which The Girl had predicted. i couldn’t help the wonder.
in those moments that day of gazing at what had been created on this glorious earth, i realized, once again, that nothing really mattered except that i was there, that intense beauty surrounded us, that love prevailed. i had seen yet another spectacular vista, had breathed it in, had climbed with my daughter and watched my husband take in this place, for each of us both magical and spiritual. and all would be well.
we drove through the plains, through the flint hills, through rolling prairie, through mountain passes, hills dotted with sagebrush, desert adorned with red rock formations. we drove past working cattle farms, deer and antelope in the wild, horse ranches with fencing that went on forever. we stopped in little towns high in elevation, two-building towns in the middle of mountain roads, towns with fancy boutiques and eateries, towns with little shops with names like ‘heart and sleeve’. we met people who were little-town-leery-of-newcomers, people who embraced us, people just doing their job, people going out of the way doing their job. we saw the wonder of a clear mountain night sky, streams dropping thousands of feet off red rock, arches that had invited themselves into a formation, blue-blues juxtaposed with green-greens and very-burnt-siennas, the grey and white of rocky mountains. we felt the heat of the desert sun, the cool of a mountain river, the pouring-down rain of a passing colorado storm, the peace of high-elevation night air. we sipped coffee in bed in a sweet southwest adobe house, lots of water on every trail, wine on the balcony overlooking the mountains and gin and tonics on the porch overlooking the town. we shared time, laughter, dinners, lunches, even breakfasts, stories, Lumi-dog, tears, adventures and car rides with The Girl. we spent moments with people important to her and people we met along the way who are now our friends, generous people, kind people. we collected stones in the river, sandstone in the desert, brochures and new colloquial expressions, the cherished sound of The Girl laughing, hugs and what it feels like to once again hold my daughter, goofy moments, sunburned noses, recipes, ideas and cardboard starbucks espresso cups we’ll use later to walk around the ‘hood with wine. we loved the moment a way-younger-guy-with-great-dreadlocks passed us holding hands and walking on the sidewalk in a little high valley town and said, “you guys are cute.”
and every one of these things…all of this…inspired me.
so now i have photos and memories, receipts, rocks and prayer flags, matching braided leather bracelets and a shirt from the town where The Girl snowboard-instructs…all pieces of what will now be reminders. reminders of every single thing that inspired me, inspires me, will inspire me.
when you think about bowling, you can literally smell that distinct bowling alley smell. each time we see the boys, we bowl. it is becoming a tradition. i think it is because we are erratic bowlers and they like to poke fun at our lack of bowling expertise. no, truly, they are pretty kind about it. and it is always a blast. after we bowl together, i always say to d, “we should bowl more often.”
sandy and dan (brother and sister) bowl on thursdays. every thursday. they bowl with a team and i know that they look forward to it. it is a staple of their week and balances out everything else going on in work and life. it would be a unimagined joy in my life if i could bowl on thursdays with my brother.
this morsel is a piece of a much much larger painting, called joy. the painting is gorgeous and colorful and one of my favorites of d’s yoga series. when i sorted to this morsel, i was surprised and amused at the bowling ball and wooden lane that i could clearly see there (at least clear to me.) but how perfect. joy within joy.
i am writing this ahead of time…in anticipation of a so-much-looked-forward-to trip to the high mountains to spend time with The Girl and our new granddog lumi. when you read this, we will be almost home. and there are a few things i know for sure.
that i will -for sure- awake at night, as i often do, and i will relive the time we spent in those mountains. i will relish the time i will now have in my memory bank, the visions in my mind’s eye. i will cherish the bits and pieces i will have brought back for our special box. i will hold dear the photographs i will have taken.
when the moon wakes me, i will be endlessly grateful for any and all moments in the little town she calls home. i will run conversations and laughter through the middle-of-the-night quiet. i will catch a hint of the cool midnight colorado air on the breeze through the window. i will feel what it feels like to, once again, hug my beautiful daughter. and i will store it all away. so that in the night – any night – i can recall all of it.
reverse threading 