this reminds me of the song lyrics: “what goes up must come down/spinnin wheel gotta go round/talkin ’bout your troubles is a crying sin/ride a painted pony, let the spinnin’ wheel spin….” (david clayton-thomas). spinning wheel is a late 60s song – popular by blood, sweat and tears.
john denver’s quote is likely from ten to twenty years later: “things go up and down. if you can survive the down it will come back.”
both encourage holding on for the long haul – which is precisely what we need right now. to survive.
though as i write this, i am pondering the wisdom in simply riding a painted pony and letting the spinning wheel spin. we need something different now. inaction in these times is not survival. it is how a democracy perishes.
it is a bit like the recent flippant current-administration quote “just sit back and relax. it will all work out well in the end – it always does.”
for who?
that makes my skin crawl.
every single day the new news astonishes us and, yeah, doesn’t astonish us. it’s always more of the same – gluttony, cruelty, bigotry, corruption – exhibited and acted on by people in positions for which they have no credentials but for sycophantic loyalty.
sitting back and relaxing because it will be well in the end is merely complicity. it’s going down with the ship without even trying. to go down and to not come back.
the words “it will work out well” are suspect. they are the cavalier words of a dictator. and, in a twist of twists, these are the words – the recommendation – of the leader of the free world.
is this really where two hundred fifty years has brought us?
this is practically too relevant to even write about. too obvious. too painful. too cavalier. too pompous. too arrogant. too irresponsible. too destructive. too, well, hidden in plain sight.
and you probably think i’m referring to the current corruption that is the current chaos that is this country.
but i’m not. not at this moment, in this writing.
though – i must say – in THAT vein – the current corruption that is the current chaos that is this country – it is waaaay too relevant, too obvious, too painful to even begin to write about as well.
it’s widespread, this horrific hidden-in-plain-sight stuff.
suffice it to say – when an institution/organization/government chooses to behave sans-truth sans-culpability sans-transparency-of-intention sans-acknowledgement that literally-everyone-can-see-what-is-going-on, it is most definitely an intentional kick-in-the-teeth we-freaking-don’t-care act of skanky dereliction.
it sits on the dashboard of littlebabyscion – the vestiges of a single daisy. it is now thirteen years old, this daisy. and it has been right there for all thirteen years, its seed coats still hanging on, though toughening by the day.
because we had never met when we met, i brought a daisy with me to o’hare – to distinguish myself from all the other people waiting at baggage claim, to be clear that it was me – there – waiting to meet him – arriving.
i told him that i’d be the one holding the daisy because i thought it better than a sign and because daisies are happy. i stopped at the florist earlier in the day to get my one daisy while in the middle of perseverating over what to wear.
in the end i wore jeans, boots and an oversized black chenille sweater and i felt like me. which is a good thing, particularly when you are meeting someone you have never met.
we had written for about six months. every single day. emails would arrive in the evening or in the wee hours and i’d lay awake devouring it all and writing back about my own life, candid and vulnerable – honestly typing it all to this new friend with whom i had only had one phone conversation.
we discovered that life – as artists, even in different mediums – had some parallels to which we could easily relate. we discovered that life held some of the same mysteries for us. we discovered that life’s challenges were, well, challenges for both of us. we discovered we could see that life’s joys were swinging on a star…or two….or a zillion.
i was sort of aware of people laughing when we skipped through the airport to get on the escalator. but it was more like a slow-motion movie happening outside of me, one of the people skipping. slightly dreamy.
but it wasn’t all dreamy.
and though we found our zealous friendship evolved into something much, much bigger, something where two hearts melded together, something where love was undeniable and where we found we made a good team, it had many moments that were less than dreamy.
because life is like that.
this year it was thirteen years on the thirteenth. thirteen years since that veryfirstday we set eyes on each other – two artists scanning baggage claim, both in jeans and boots and black – both nervous, both excited. the next day we got big star drive-in burgers and fries, had a little champagne. this year we got big star drive-in burgers and fries, had a little champagne. a celebration of a big day.
back then, thirteen years ago, on the way into the airport, a girl asked me why i was carrying a daisy. i told her why. we ended up going to the same baggage claim. she was meeting her fiance at baggage claim because he was flying in. it was their wedding weekend. we saw each other in the ladies’ room a couple of times, nervously fixing our hair, pacing.
she looked at me and said, “he’s going to be your soulmate, you know.”
i laughed and said i’d be happy if we even turned out to be friends.
she was right.
and so was i.
thirteen years since the first day i laid eyes on him now.
and we were both right.
and the daisy sits on the dashboard of littlebabyscion, the eye keeping an eye on us with still so many seeds for the future.
if you purport to be a weed – and only a weed – growing helter-skelter- invading lawns and gardens everywhere – then it is likely that people will see you – perceive you – as a weed.
if, instead, you believe you are vital early-spring nourishment for pollinators, recognized as a nutrient-dense food source, then it is likely that people will see you – perceive you – as beneficial.
it is all in what you believe about yourself and – here’s the tricky part – what you actually do about what you say you believe.
and why is that tricky? you ask.
i’m pretty sure you have stumbled across the vast hypocrisy – out there – that rears its ugly head from grandiose and magnanimous mission statements of organizations and institutions – even the current government (you don’t say!). these places that purport to be about, say, one thing or another – to stand for something.
i’m pretty sure you have been gut-punched – at some time – by the sheer hypocrisy that you have seen – that exists when push actually comes to shove – when the rubber actually meets the road – when the chips are down – at the moment of truth – that stubbornly squelches any culpability for what-they-say-they-believe – that atones in words but not in deeds. ohmygoodness, it is too prevalent to count, to even begin to depict.
human rights, the lgbtq community, racial divisions, birthplace bigotry, gender discrimination in the workplace, sexual abuse survivorship, places that foster accountability – the list of possibilities goes on and on. and yes, the hypocrisy goes on and on.
it all begs the question – what do you really believe?
and isn’t that just incredibly sad?
because how hard would it be to state what you believe in and then be what you believe in so that the statement “we are what we believe” would be a truth, a consistency in your business/organization/institution, something positive, life-affirming?
i guess the fact of the matter – in the end – is that just because you say you are what you believe doesn’t make you what you believe.
you have to live what you say you believe in order to be what you say you believe.
“sometimes you have to listen harder to hear it, but the music is always playing.” (rob shaver – the life we have)
there have been plenty of times i didn’t listen hard enough.
i wonder. maybe it’s different if music is what you do, what you are. maybe sometimes it’s harder to hear because i have so much invested in it, because it winds around everything. maybe sometimes it’s harder to listen to because it sits heavier on my heart, with imperative and expectation. maybe sometimes it’s harder to hear because it is mixed up with cellular strands of pain, with the memory of the painful, with reinvigorated pain. sometimes i choose not to listen.
in those times it is quiet i seek. there are no melodic gestures that invite me in, no harmony, no beat pattern of rhythm. it is blank staff paper. skeletal. it is silence.
and then – like now – i begin to discover – rediscover – that it was there all along. it was the thing that carried me from one measure of rest to another. it was the beast of burden that enabled me to rest in the rest, to climb when necessary. it was the universe that offered it up – always playing – as breath. healing. not a bandaid kind of thing, but a gut-punch of adrenaline, a reminder of melody-flits in my mind, a few keys on a piano i can feel in my fingertips – prompts for an intuitive artist, shoulder-taps, a wistfulness i can’t avoid.
and every sound becomes a symphony, ready for my own ovation. every chance at a riff, an arpeggio, a singular line of potentially-exquisite melody is the divine. it plays always – off to the side, in the wings of our individual stage, just waiting for the curtain call, for the downbeat, for the crescendo, for the fader to bring up the volume.
sometimes i have wished that my work was left-brained, measured, predictable, with less of a low-tide-tidal-wave spectrum. but the spectrum – the kaleidoscopic roller coaster – is my continuum and i know – particularly now – when one note arrives at a time – that i wouldn’t trade it.
i suppose it depends on how big your viewfinder is. looking through the viewfinder of a handheld camera brings your rapt attention to whatever direction you have aimed it.
as you know, we often watch the youtube videos of hikers on trail at night, before sleep. we hike the trail – vicariously – through their eyes and it is fascinating to see how the trail changes – and how the trail stays the same – through a multitude of viewfinders.
it is particularly helpful to be on the trail “with” these hikers, for their cellphones and gopros are our eyes until that time when we are stepping the millions of steps on a thru-hike path with a hulking backpack and – hopefully – a lovely mule carrying it. (ok, just kidding – about the mule.)
we just read each other our posts from an earlier day, as is our custom. we write from an image but don’t share until after we are done. it was during the reading of one of my posts that we just stopped – full stop – and said how very fortunate we are…despite everything.
though there is much that would need be “shut out” in order to achieve serene peace, we focused for a few minutes on what is a part of our personal viewfinders.
for a while – years, maybe – i carried a white cardboard square slide frame in my wallet. my dear friend crunch had told me that there might be times that holding the slide frame up in front of me (not close to my eye), closing one eye and focusing on only what i could see through it – while blocking out everything else – might help my perspective. one thing at a time, not the whole picture. sometimes i have found that is necessary.
“just look through the viewfinder…” and the peripheral stuff falls off. at least momentarily. we all have it – all that peripheral stuff, some of which sets the entire somber tone for the entire country, even the whole global world, some of which is personal and keeps us burdened and struggling, some of which is just the picayune detail of life and living, some of which is a bit lighter, less difficult to carry.
years ago my beloved teacher and friend andrea wrote to me, “nothing is idyllic. i think we have idyllic moments. we have to take time to savor what is around us.”
the viewfinder keeps us in the moment and doesn’t let us forget to acknowledge the right now. it keeps us appreciative of the way it feels to smell the coffee in the morning or hear the earliest bird calls. it’s perspective-arranging, gives us a breath when we can hardly breathe. it helps us see the glimmer on the water, the mica right around us. it is life-giving, even if just for a small bit of time.
it gives us what we need to then leave that narrow focus and, once again, look at the whole horizon and all of that which is there.
though they would have you believe that everything happens fast in new york city- that it’s all “in the flashiest flash”, that it’s all practically instantaneous – i would offer up driving across the george washington bridge or a spin on the cross bronx or the cross island or maybe the long island expressway – as counterpoint to that point. nothing happens fast in or on any of those places. it is slower than molasses and any pretense of traversing across the waterways to get to the other side – rapidly – would be dispelled as soon as you plant yourself in a vehicle somewhere near the gwb.
the thing about being on a bridge for a long period of time is that you are on a bridge for a long period of time. you can actually feel the sway of the bridge, the movement of the bridge, the other thousands upon thousands of vehicles on the bridge. it can be alarming if you are bridge-phobic, height-phobic, traffic-phobic, noise-phobic, phobic about going too slow, phobic about being late, phobic about big trucks surrounding you (if you are upper level), phobic about dark places that are underneath a whole ‘nother level of vehicles suspended on pavement and traveling above you (if you are lower level)…many phobias, so little time.
the problem is – this is the way there. to get to long island from new jersey – coming from the west, one must cross a bridge. you have a choice – the gwb or the verrazano. you can cross staten island or you can cross manhattan. the choice isn’t exactly favorable either way.
but – those are your driving-your-car options.
we thought about leaving – heading west – a different way…maybe driving north up along the hudson and crossing at the tappan zee, taking the ‘high road’ so-to-speak and bumping up into rockland county, taking a roundabout route to try and achieve that infamous new york minute stuff.
we chose not to, though, and went the “traditional” way, hoping we had timed it well, that – this very day, this very hour – the planets would align and conditions would be different and we would sail right through.
ahhh. no such luck.
maybe, in the end, the new york minute IS actually a thing. because anything – in comparison to the sloth-inspired-turtle’s pace on the roads to the city, through the city, across the city – would be faster. and a new york minute – that blink-of-an-eye-jiffiest-jiffy takes on different meaning.
i have listened to this song – rascal flatts’ stand – just shy of a million times. on every trip back and forth across the northern part of this country – driving from the midwest to the east coast to perform, sell cds, do a radio or tv gig – it would be blaring on the stereo, this song from the me and my gang cd on repeat.
because we have all discovered life IS like a novel with the end ripped out. every bit of careful planning, every end result we purport to know will happen, every time we are sure of it all, something else happens to throw an itty-bitty wrench into things, to wreak havoc on our tidy landscape, to make the horizon a tad bit blurry, to utterly decimate what we thought would happen.
i suppose we can take it all as it comes, lie down and let the steamroller roll over us – succumb – in any and every arena of life.
but the chutzpah that has come with listening to this song almost a million times – the chutzpah that comes with, well, just living itself – changes that succumbing-to-the-steamroller tune.
“cause when push comes to shove you taste what you’re made of/ you might bend ’til you break, cause it’s all you can take/ on your knees, you look up, decide you’ve had enough/ you get mad, you get strong, wipe your hands, shake it off then you stand, then you stand…”
and so, i find myself driving again – across the northern part of this country – from the midwest to the east coast – standing.
because when you can do something about that which has the potential of undermining every single thing, when you can do something about that which is life-arc-havoc-wreaking, when you can do something about that which has been too much – when you have decided you’ve had enough – when you are mad – when you get strong – then you must stand – in any and every arena of life.
“every time you get up and get back in the race/ one more small piece of you starts to fall into place…”
we blasted the song over the external speaker our boy gave us – because big red doesn’t have a cd player or any capacity to play music that is not on the radio or a cassette. i sang along. loud.
d listened to the lyrics. over and over again.
and suggested that this song be our theme song now.
under the quilt, getting ready to tune out current events, domestic and global news, opinions dedicated to either side of the chaos, we cursor-ed the play button on mike wandersfor a stunning video of him out west – a trip about which he literally oozed awe and gratitude. we were ready to no longer have eyes on what was happening in the world. it is all exhausting.
and then we heard it.
the distinct metal clinking sound of the birdfeeder outside our open window. too late for any of our birdies and definitely not helter-skelter enough to be a squirrel attempting to push down the little plate that releases deliveries of seed.
d turned on the back light so we could look out the window.
and there – quite happy for the extra lighting – was this raccoon, happily at what-would-seem our vending machine, designed just for him. standing and tapping the plate and then devouring, tapping the plate, devouring, tapping, devouring. we laughed at him – even with the window opened – and he just continued his munchfest sans interruption, maybe even happy for an audience.
we are not cranky about him eating our birdseed. this feeder holds a lot of seed and we know we will replenish it for the birds again.
instead, we delighted in the antics of this very cute raccoon. a bit later – without knowing we had seen him in our driveway, our dear westneighbors texted us with a picture of him sleeping on the peak of our garage roof, his full belly making him a bit tuckered out, i guess. he is doing his part as an ecosystem generalist.
i’m not sure what else raccoons do in the world – other than eat. though I’m guessing he may think the same about all of us. what we don’t know we don’t know.
it occurs to me – that at the crux of it all – making sure that all creatures – and, even more specifically, all people – having enough to eat should be paramount. to sustain life, to carry on with enough energy for all life’s tasks – the most basic of needs – we should be absolutely committed to the doctrine of keeping people fed any and every where.
and yet, here we are. eliminating nationwide emergency food assistance, snap and wic in our own country, eliminating food aid to the international sphere by usaid and the world food program. the rhetoric and propaganda around eliminating support of these humanitarian efforts are demeaning and literally beg vulgar responses.
what the hell are we doing here?
starving people is despicable policy. particularly when you are personally pocketing grift that could feed the poor, provide education and healthcare, take care of the populace and then some.
in the case of this – the very absence of compassion – the lack of soul of this administration – this shaw quote should instead read: “there is no sincerer love than the love of self.”
shameful beyond belief.
i imagine that now that our raccoon knows where to find it, he will be back for a snack tonight. we will be glad to hear him outside our window.
i wish they had been my size. but they weren’t. and so it seemed right to hand them down – these peace-sign-high-top-converse i had given my dad. and 20, well, he was cinderella in this equation. his feet fit.
he wore them for our wedding. he walked me up the aisle to join david, who i would stand next to for our ceremony and our life. he had tears in his eyes as we walked together. it was one of those moments, when long-term friendship and all its challenges and rewards come to the tippy-top and love of chosen-brother-sister rises above all else.
i love it every time i see 20 wear these sneakers, especially when he tells me about people who comment on them. i’ve never seen another pair.
i have hand-me-down converse high-tops from my girl’s closet; they are solid pink. there’s a second pair that are kelly green, loaded with all kinds of pen-doodles. i wear the pink ones – they make me happy because they were hers. yes…no thread escapes my attention.
but these? these peace-sign-high-tops? right now – in the toxic climate of this country – in this precarious world – if they were my size – i would wear these converse every day.
reverse threading 