sometimes we are silent. sometimes it’s better that way. a fluid point, a fine line of balance, there’s so much to say; there’s so much we should avoid saying. silent days.
we walk or hike outside, we take limited trips to the grocery store. not a lot of interaction, the way it is supposed to be right now. with varying cautions about distancing and asymptomatic spreading and aerosol molecules, the experts have my rapt attention. although i do not have the ability to make as much of a difference in this as those who are on the front lines, i need do my part. responsibly and respectfully.
making do with texts, phone calls, work videoconferences, online hangouts with friends, it’s still much more silent than it ever is, normally.
there are reports of residents hearing birds again in wuhan. the woodpecker is busy in our backyard, the mourning doves call, the frogs quip to each other in the woods.
and so we walk, quietly. we cross to the other side of the street, we single-file on the other side of the path. maybe here and there people answer to our soft hello as we pass. we shop, rarely, pushing a cart, quickly assembling what we need. we listen to the sounds that often linger unheard below the noise.
and even above the masks, even in the silence, i can see their tentative smiles.
“hope…it makes you breathe differently. it makes your heart beat faster. it makes your knees weak and your ability to wait strong. it makes you weep with anticipation and holds you close with others who are also hoping.” (reverse threading, dec. 7, 2018)
i have done time on the kitchen floor. like you, i have been brought to my knees with grief, anxiety, worry, pain, shame, fear, sadness, loneliness, anger, disappointment. when you are on the floor, any movement seems monumental. anxiety is crushingly powerful. it seems unlikely you will rise. and even as you go about your days, doing the things you do in life, it seems you will remain on the virtual kitchen floor.
but then, there is a moment. it appears illusory yet it is luminous. it is a mere butterfly wing, the slightest of silk tendrils, but it is there. elusive and tiny, it asks for absolute focus. like viewing through the eyepiece on binoculars, you slowly steady your gaze. something inside you knows. something tells you to reach for it and hold it gently in your shaking hands. it is hope.
“hope. there aren’t many words like this…describing that which you can actually – viscerally – feel in your body. it makes you breathe differently. it makes your heart beat faster. it makes your knees weak and your ability to wait strong. it makes you weep with anticipation and holds you close with others who are also hoping.” (reverse threading, dec. 7, 2018)
my emotional well was full when i woke up today. thinking of us, our children, our families, our dear friends, our community, this world. i desperately want to gather our beloveds in, hold them close, protect them.
i have no words for all of this; i have too many words for all of this. i fear that none of them are helpful, none of them are wise. it’s just me. and, like you, carrying the weight of the world one step at a time, one quiet minute at a time, staring out the window and wondering.
with these broken wrists i have moved from a whole rest to a quarter rest. i have made progress playing my piano and my broken-wrists have told me when to be silent. in the silence the earth keeps spinning, we trek around the sun, everything keeps keeping on. but for a moment, i rest.
we are each granted rests upon entrance into this orchestra-of-earth. sometimes they are chosen, sometimes they are not. always they are necessary. it is in your quiet that others make noise, that others speak, that other timbres color the muted. the hush is yours to own; the rest is yours to take. the silence both sometimes frighteningly deafening and sometimes a grand relief. the metronome really never stops.
(a reprise of paragraphs from 8.13.2015 post): at 1am, we walked to the lakefront. away from as many lights as we could get away from, we laid on some old steps, bricks and mortar digging into our backs so that we could gaze straight up, watching the night sky for the meteor shower.
the streaks of white light across navyblueblack make us draw in our breath. i’m wondering how far away this meteor is…how it is that we, here on earth, can see this amazing sight. such a big sky. such tiny bodies in contrast lying on the ground, waiting for the symphony to start, waiting for the downbeat, the symphony that has been continuously playing, the downbeat lost in centuries upon centuries of time gone by. like any good piece of music, it’s the rests in-between the notes, the rests in-between the meteorstreaks, that build the anticipation, that create the emotionflow, that bring tears to your eyes. each burst, each streak of whitelight is a miracle, a tiny moment exploding in time, so far away, in vast vastness.
time stretches out in front of us. and behind us. we are tiny and we are big. we gather in the moments, we breathe them, we rejoice, we worry, we ponder, we move. there is no downbeat and the symphony is already playing, has been playing and will continue to play. always. it is magical. and it is vast.
i don’t feel as much in-a-boat as i feel that i am relentlessly treading water. but there was no handy treading-water bitmoji and i remember the exact moment that this bitmoji showed up on my snapchat mapping…in the middle of a lot of treading.
treading, treading. guessing at why what-is-happening is happening – in wide concentric circles around us, tightly close to us.
and today, both valentine’s day and d’s birthday, i want to express gratitude for this man who is standing in the water with me – waves crashing over us, undertow threatening to pull us down, riptide ever present – and holding my fiberglass-cast-encased hand. the person who is equally as perplexed at this time, who takes turns with me being alternatively flabbergasted, philosophical and soberingly pragmatic.
he continues to zip my jacket, buckle my seatbelt, paste my toothbrush, carry my music, pepper-mill my breakfast and dinner, put the ernie straw in my coffee. he has learned the fine points of where-on-the-head to place hair conditioner, how best to tie plastic bags on my arms, what stool will work best at the piano, which wine glass i can pick up at the end of a day. he has watched me learn how to hold mascara with two hands and pull up girl jeans by the belt loops. he has been treading water with me as we look to the horizon.
maybe this watershed is the thing that elicits change. at the end of 2019 i could feel it coming. and i can now, with all authority and certainty, say that the change is not that i will, smack dab in the middle of middle-age, become a professional snowboarder. nope. but there may truly be things out there i just didn’t see or consider. perhaps the things that are vexing us, stunning us, deeply disappointing us, are just the things that will propel us. ah, if that just didn’t feel so pollyanna-ish.
this life is bigger than anyone can ever live it. that includes us. treading water in the watershed might be a time that forces dynamic change. like everyone, i wish i had some prescient inkling of what’s-out-there, what-will-happen.
my perceived lack of control is maybe a misperception. maybe that which has taken away control is conversely granting control, granting the creativity that comes with grabbing onto flotsam and jetsam in a sea that seems to be swirling. maybe the grasping-at-straws is grasping-at-ernie, a touchstone that seems flimsy and unimportant, but which actually is grounding, rooting, and gives voice to more solid footing, less wave-action, more direction-choosing.
the watershed is here. moment by moment we stare at it. we roll our eyes, we yell at the angst-y details, we shake our heads in confusion, we stop and stand still and, yet hyperventilating from treading, we wonder. we try to breathe, to center, to be in the eye of the storm.
holding hand-cast, we look forward and we guess that this ain’t the last watershed on the horizon.
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“i want women to see that you do not get pushed around.” (* attributed below)
this piece today is dedicated to all the women who have made it through, all the women who are making it through, all the women who will make it through.
your fire has brought you to the edge of the battlefield many times and you have still made lemonade; you have still prevailed.
you have made it through intensely emotionally abusive relationships. you have picked up the pieces and you have moved on.
you have made it through physical or sexual abuse. you have risen from the ashes.
you have made it through terrifying health scares. you have pulled up your boot straps and determinedly plodded through with massive courage.
you have made it through society’s prioritizing of body image and appearance. you have been measured by your cleavage or lack thereof, by the indent of your waist, by the clothing you choose, by your hair. you struggle to remember you are beautiful. you stand tall.
you have made it through vacuumous times, the middle of chaos, the middle of multi-tasking. you have created.
you have made it through physical summit experiences. you have scaled mountains. you have boarded down untracked chutes. you have trained your body with weights and exercise. you have run. you have skated. you have pedaled. you have breathed in and sighed an exhale. you’ve run thousands of lengths of playing fields. you took the next painful recuperating step. you dove to the depths. you have been on world stages. you have risen with hungry or fevered children night after night. you have competed. you have given birth.
you have made it through falling. you have made mistakes. you have been human. you have forgiven and you have been forgiven.
you have made it through an education steeped in gender-inequality and bias. you have chosen to learn more, to actively seek the resources, rights and opportunities due you, to resist against the discrimination.
you have made it through a system that undermines your success and devalues your value. you have fought for your place.
you have made it through financial challenges of single womanhood, of single motherhood. you have been scrappy and, without complaint, you have layered onto yourself however much it took to get it done.
you have made it through work situations where you’ve questioned how you would be treated were you to be a man. would you be yelled at? would your professionalism be questioned? you have asked these questions. you have stayed, holding steadfast, or you have moved on; you have decided what is best for you and moved in that direction.
you have made it through the skewed-world fray into leadership roles where your every decision is challenged or thwarted. you have overcome; you have triumphed.
you have made it through being-too-young and through aging. and you are not irrelevant.
you have made it through. you have spoken up, spoken back, spoken for. you have written letters. you have marched.
you have been pushed around. but you have pushed back. and, just like the tortoise, you have made it through.
download MADE IT THROUGH from THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY on iTUNES or CDBaby
“all of us have special ones who have loved us into being. would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are….ten seconds of silence.” (mr. fred rogers)
he brought it up on the trail. the movie we had recently seen. not an action thriller or a mystery. just a movie about a man who changed the world. mr. fred rogers.
quietly hiking on the trail, he broke the walking-arm-in-arm silence, “i’ve been thinking about all those people. those people who loved me into existence.”
what could you possibly be more grateful for? that trail of thought found us yesterday morning and wove its way into all day, skirting along the edges as we cooked, back into the center on facetime, at the table with wine glasses, in a late night text out of the blue.
the people who love you into being.
mr. rogers got more specific, ” from the time you were very little, you’ve had people who have smiled you into smiling, people who have talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving.” what kind of legacy do you have to be known for this kind of wisdom? it changes everything.
the people who love you into being.
we spoke of these people on and off all day and late into the night. there was a moment i could feel shadows that were cast by any of those we talked about falling off, light covering the shadow. reasons. seasons.
the people who love you into being.
too many to list. too many to remember. we backtracked and stood still in our memories, telling stories and finding wonder as names – and the dear picture of that person in our mind’s eye – spilled out of us. a wealth of being-makers. every one of them a builder in the construction of some piece of us, like a giant box of tinkertoys or lincoln logs or even crayons. so much potential. a wildly wide spectrum of color and characteristic, texture and depth. profoundly moving. a tiny bit of shake-up. both.
there was not room on island for my piano, sheets of blank score paper, baskets of notebooks of lyrics, melody smidges, chord progression fragments. they waited at home for my return.
consumed by many tasks and layers of work since we arrived back home, we are surrounded by boxes and bins still unpacked. there is much to do. we have many other things tugging at us and these packed boxes, although frustratingly in the way, have sunk to a lower rung on the list of things-to-do.
i have been in and out of my studio, grabbing music as i need it, playing through a piece here and there, reviewing music for work. i have added a few notes to notebooks, to my calendar, a line of lyric here and there to remember on scraps i hope not to lose.
the other day i pulled out cds, finding a few with pieces that didn’t get tracked. rough cuts of piano for under lyrics, rough cuts of piano instrumentals. every artist has them…the cuts that didn’t get finished, the cuts that didn’t make it to the album. scraps of paper, notebooks of ideas, rough cuts of beginnings. they all eventually lead somewhere. no idea, no melodic gesture, no lyric stands alone.
and so, my really beautiful big resounding piano waits for me as i am quiet. pencils i’ve saved from The Boy’s and The Girl’s pencilboxes sit atop, next to blank score paper, notebooks and pa pads. they all wait. the muse waits. the music waits.
my sweet momma used to quip, “make new friends, but keep the old. one is silver and the other’s gold.” i believe it came from her girl scout leadership days. a song, those are wise lyrics.
OLD FRIENDS appears in two versions on my first album RELEASED FROM THE HEART. as track 3, OLD FRIENDS is a longer composition, a wide passionate spectrum of emotion. as track 13, OLD FRIENDS REVISITED is shorter, quieter, more reflective, even wistful.
about my very oldest friends i feel both ways. i am passionate about remembering (always remembering) my long island friendships, susan and marc and crunch and joe-z, especially. times spent growing, talking, arguing, debating, adventuring, laughing, camping, driving, beaching, traveling, listening to music, frisbee-ing, making apple pies, biking, boating, scuba-diving, fishing, living life. i look back in my mind’s eye wistfully and am filled with love for them.
about my old friends and my new friends i feel both ways. i am passionate about how they stand in it with me. they each know who they are reading this. they will recognize themselves when i thank them for times spent together. for the times they supported me when i needed it, for the times they supported me when i didn’t need it. for the times they have listened and talked when i needed it, for the times they have listened and talked when i didn’t need it. for adventures, laughter, good food, coffee and wine. for playing music, scouring around for fun stuff to do, antiquing, dancing, pontoon-boating, playing games, potlucking, sharing opinions and challenging assumptions, giving and receiving words of wisdom, and the telling of our stories. so much life; i know it would be impossible to do without them and i am filled with love for them.
we are fortunate, we human beings. we are aware of our friends, the ever-giving gift of friendship. remembering. always remembering.
“the box: a place to put all the stuff of our lives.” (from BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL liner notes 1996)
the old black suitcases store stuff. treasured moments, all in a jumble, some decipherable, others bits and snatches of times we want to remember, so we keep these feathers and ticket stubs, notes and river stones, scraps of wrap, cards, red rock. they proudly sit in the dining room, in a stack, their vintage scrapes and broken handles call to me each time i pass them by. they shower me with memories and times i have passed through, moments i have lived. i can feel what is in them.
in another box, in another place, are old dreams. torn vestiges of paper with lyrics, a few notes scribbled in the margins of old spirals. there are visions and imaginings, goals and undetermined outcomes. like you, these are the things undone. there are no ticket stubs or photos in this box; these are the things that have not come to fruition. these are the things that beckon over and over. these are the things that demand i consider and reconsider what i am doing today, tomorrow. these are the things that make me question. each time i pass them by. i can feel what is in them.
i am reminded:
“a ship in harbor is safe. but that is not what ships are built for.” (john a. shedd)
these are the full liner notes:
“the box: a place to put all the stuff of our lives. sometimes this place really hurts.” (BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL 1996)
download THE BOX from BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL on iTUNES or CDBaby
reverse threading 