the tread matters not. the wheels of change are constant. fluid. ever-rolling.
we have watched bristol woods change. we hike there often and have gotten to know trees and turns in the trail personally. many months ago we knew a decision was made to build a high ropes “adventure” course in part of the park. we have watched its birth; we have witnessed the change. the big machinery is out there. gravel roads are cut. trees have been removed. tall poles have been installed and ropes are now hung between them. the county’s position is that this will be a good thing, generating revenue that would go back into “upkeep and improvements”.
all this remains to be seen. it would just be my hope that they haven’t lost sight of the simplest reasons for this place to exist, the quiet reasons, the pure reasons. what is that expression….”penny wise, pound foolish.” sometimes cutting corners or chasing the shiny new thing isn’t the wisest move in the long run. you lose the sure foundation, not recognizing what it is you are losing, the steadfast movement underestimated, the maturity of the woods undervalued. the wheels of change keep going and the concentric circles of impact widen ever-further out. david’s mom uses the expression “ever-forward” when she signs an email. sometimes forward is forward. and sometimes forward is not so forward.
i can feel the wheels of change. the tread, and therewith the pace, is not yet so evident to me. i’m not sure if it’s road-bike-tire-thin or monster-650-tractor-tire-thick, but they are there, turning, turning. ever-forward…
there have been times when a clear path would have been my choice. something that was predictable, “normal”, serene. a path upon which i wouldn’t have to ask a lot of questions about direction. sense-making would be easy; “right” choices would be obvious.
how many times have i hoped for a sticky note to float down from the heavens above, simple instructions listed like on an ikea bookshelf leaflet. how many times have i wondered about how to forge through the muddy waters, how to get where i can see but not touch. a clear path seems maybe too much to ask. we seek mentors to aid us, to ask tough, blunt questions. expecting candid answers, they help us see. perhaps we would miss too many lessons – or just too much – along the way were we to have a clear path. there is no “normal”.
the elderly hiker in the woods approached from the opposite direction. his hat pulled down over his forehead and his jacket zipped up keeping him warm along the trail, he smiled, inviting a response, and said, “i cleared the path for you. it’s all clear.”
we laughed and thanked him, but i know we both wished he meant it literally. in a life sense.
the icefall was in front of us. we had our crampons on and the ropes were secured. ladders were stretched across the crevasses and we had weighty backpacks filled with dehydrated food, protein bars and water. we were ready.
ha! in our dreams.
we climb mount everest regularly. now, don’t get all particular about whether this is literal or not. i am a giant fan of all-things-everest so we lose our breath watching others climb on video clips, movies, in books. we are soooo there. but, no, not really THERE.
i can’t imagine climbing everest actually. the perils, the training, the cold, the cost, the crowds (!) all point to the fact that i won’t be climbing everest. but we can climb other mountains, literal and figurative, and stand at the summit shooting selfies with a triumphant expression, realizing a dream. on our way back down we pass others on the way up; some linger on the ropes, unable to move. we offer encouraging words, but, in our conquest, we have already forgotten what it felt like to hang, even momentarily, on the rope, paralyzed.
we all have icefalls in front of us. they are insurmountable. they are surmountable. perhaps some crampons, ropes, ladders and a backpack filled with food and water will help. believing we can realize a dream, overcome an obstacle is the first step.
and, even more, remembering that bit of humility toward others, vulnerable on their way up while we are on our victorious way back down.
this came across my desk last week. “maturity in season of life.” part of a minister of music job description, i was struck by the unguarded language, the bow to what only time and experience can teach. i have never seen this written as such before. it was bracing in every GOOD way. it was appreciatory. it was a breath of fresh air.
in a society that seeks to remain youthful and puts less emphasis on maturity in season of life than on staying young, we need remember there’s a place for everyone. some places require youth, fresh and breathing hard from the sprint. other places recognize the need for the steadfast wisdom of the ages, a decision-maker-doer who brings a lifetime of positive and negative experiences and knows how to differentiate between them, has an intuition built on time and the ever-growing wealth of lessons. the seesaw has room for both; the fulcrum can only balance with both.
as two artists living together, we are more than aware of the challenge of ageism, the challenge of time spent in our artistry and how that relates to value. more than a thousand times we have each been admonished for thinking we need to be paid when we should be grateful for the “exposure” we are being “granted”. more than a thousand times we have each been in a place where we have had to explain why our artistry needs to be financially rewarded just like anyone else’s work.
indeed, pay scales have been built to reflect time spent and job descriptions use verbiage like “pay is commensurate with experience.” experience. maturity: “the ability to respond to the environment in an appropriate manner. being aware of the correct time and location to behave and knowing when to act, according to the circumstances and the culture of the society (read: job) one lives in (read: one works in).”
i recently was having a written messaging chat with a hard-working young adult whose job is in the arts. with these challenges facing him every day, he said that people do not realize that “they’re paying me to know what to do if things don’t go well.” intuition. working on the fly based on training, knowledge and an ever-building bank of experiences. he will continue to face that challenge; it will only deepen. how is that maturity measured? how will he be paid for that maturity, for that which he cannot describe and for which others cannot fathom? for some reason, in this society, it is easier to answer that question if you are doing a numbers job, something seemingly more concrete, more measurable, more quantifiable.
but maturity in season of life touches others as well and we have dear friends who have been ‘let go’ from their jobs simply because of their age. now, their companies would never testify to that and are careful to avoid such language – for that would set them up for all kinds of legal problems – but it has been clear to our friends, struggling to find a new way in later days of their lives. few and far between are those who are able to benefit by pointing out the error of their ways to the company that is undervaluing a later human-on-this-earth season. other friends are fortunate enough to be working somewhere that has deeply valued the long time they have spent in their work and these friends have retired with spoken words of gratitude and wishes of continued good living. where is the fulcrum?
in this particular document that came across my desk, the whole phrase read, “maturity in season of life and maturity in ministry experience.” shockingly, they are seeking this as a qualifier and they are willing to pay for it. speaking directly to that qualifier that beautifully honors the wisdom of the ages, there are things that, as a minister of music at 19 i did not know. there are things that, as a minister of music at 32 i did not know. likewise, as a 30-years-as-a-minister-of-music at days-away-from-60, of course there are things i do not know.
what i DO know is that every experience i have had as a minister of music has built upon the last. instead of a chasm where learnings have dropped rapid-fire into an abyss, i have learned what the important stuff is and how to attempt to keep those things foremost.
like anyone in any job, mastery is commensurate with time spent, with growth in that work, and yes, without exception, with maturity in season of life.
“take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” (desiderata)
yesterday david wrote these words about his palette. as i read his words, i realized he was conveying many of my own sentiments. with his permission, i have only slightly modified his words this morning to express my own artist palette – my piano. the re-posting of this, and even using the same verbiage, reminds me of the intertwining of all soulful expression. bear with me as i experiment, my words in red, an exploration of two artistic planes running parallel.
true confessions: i never rarely clean my palette the music stand on top of my piano. i like the messy build up of color. color is found in many forms but mostly notebooks and pa-pads, scraps of paper, snippets of tracks recorded on an iriver or an iphone. i like the chunky texture pile. it serves as a gunky history of my work, a genealogy of paintings compositions past and future. and then, over time, it becomes a tactile work of art in its own right. unfettered by any of the mental gymnastics or over-ponderous considerations that plague my “real” work, it is the closest to child-mind that i will achieve. it is accidental. it is free. it is idea, melodic gesture, poetry waiting for notes, phrase waiting for the rest of the lyrics. ready. waiting. free.
this might be a stretch but it is, for me, nevertheless true. i love my palette because it is the place of alchemy in my artist process. it is the true liminal space. long before the space spanning the route taken from introduction to coda. i begin with pure color. i begin with the rest, silence inbetween the notes, the place for breath so you can hear the vibrations of sound. i smash the pure color together with another color and transform it into a third color, the hue i intend. note upon note i build a melody, smashing note upon note i build a small unaccompanied orchestra of harmony, the hue i intend. on a palette, color becomes intention. sound becomes intention. and then, once transformed, with a brush or knife i lift the color-intention from my palette and in an action that is often more responsive than creative, i place it onto a canvas. i play, i listen, i play again. i lift it from the keys of my palette and place it onto the canvas of paper, attempting to capture the fleeting moment it has created and etch it into a piece of music that can be repeated, played again. it transforms yet again relative to all the color it touches. it transforms yet again relative to the air in the room, the echo of an intention, the listening ear it touches. an image emerges. more color is called for. it emerges, this composition of music, and more color is called for.
and, somewhere in this call and response of color, i become like the palette. the pass-through of alchemy, the door that color passes through en route to something beautiful. and somewhere in this call and response of color, i become like the palette. the pass-through of alchemy, the door that color passes through en route to something beautiful. this! can there be a more pure statement of artistry? and, in the process, perhaps i, too, in my messy build up of life/color, grow closer to that child mind. unfettered. accidentally interesting. free. and in the process, perhaps i, too, in my messy build up of life/color, grow closer to that child mind. unfettered. accidentally interesting. free. the rest between the notes. the breath of music on the air.
“You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough” ~ William Blake i paint. i write. i compose. i don’t know what is enough until i know what is more than enough. truth.
we pass under them every time we leave the house and every time we return. our prayer flags fly between the house and the garage…a welcome sight either way. although better given to you as a gift, we purchased our flags in a little shop in ridgway, colorado and i consider it a gift that we were able to spend time in that tiny mountain town in the san juan mountains. these flags represent that place to us, that time, and so much more.
each color is symbolic of an element…white is air and wind, blue is sky and space, green symbolizes water, red is fire and yellow is earth. flying these in a specific order produces a balance of health and harmony. flying these promotes peace, compassion, strength and wisdom; the wind blows the prayers into the universe. i cannot think of more visual evidence of constant prayer. it matters not to me what religious practice is associated with them. the prayers are so much bigger than that. everything is bigger than that.
every time we watch any depiction of an everest story, there are multitudes of these buddhist prayer flags. they grace base camp and the summit and each camp between, the prayers issued by those people seeking to reach the highest place on earth.
we can’t claim trying to reach the highest physical place on earth. but we can claim seeking peace, compassion, strength and wisdom, a balance of health and harmony. for me, for us, those things are the highest place on earth.
20 rolled his eyes at himself when he told us the story. he was at the grocery store and was looking at dish soap. he likes dawn dish soap; it gets the best ratings, he said. as he is peering at the shelf of containers, he can see that way in the back is a container with just a bit more…the volume of the ones in the front seem lower than this particular one in the back. so he reaches all the way in, moving aside other dawn bottles now rejected by him and pulls out the one where he can see the soap level just-a-little-bit-higher. he notes that the plastic bottle is not squished or dented (for obviously that would cause a rise in level) and he triumphantly puts the chosen bottle in his cart. voila! “there must be something wrong with me,” he said.
as a person who grew up with soap socks and leftovers i couldn’t disagree more. of COURSE you look for the highest level of soap in the bottle. that’s a no-duh. penny-pinching and making things last as long as possible were unspoken mantras for me; they still are.
my sweet momma kept a soap sock. for those of you who have no clue what that is: as a bar of soap gets smaller and smaller it becomes increasingly difficult to use. never to waste anything, my momma would gather all of her tiny vestiges of soap bars and put them in a clean white sock (generally a sport sock…something a little thicker with a tooth like a washcloth.) she would tie off the end and voila! there you have it – a washcloth with built-in soap! a soap sock!
i have inherited this trait from my momma. i will turn bottles upside down and squeeze the life out of them in order to finish all the product. days after d has declared a shampoo bottle empty i am still encouraging shampoo out of its depths. our refrigerator rarely has much extra in it – we buy for what we need and we use it up, even if it ends up as some weird concocted leftover. growing up i didn’t need the “starving children in ….” speech. i had dna.
so when 20 told us that he takes three pre-packaged 3 lb bags of potatoes over to the scale and weighs them i listened. apparently, 3 lbs of potatoes can look like 2 3/4 or 3 1/2 or 4 1/4 lbs. who knew? you can bet i’ll be trying that. more potatoes for the money! voila!
“there must be something wrong with me,” 20 said. nah.
corrugated metal. i have a thing about it. i have a thing about texture. and a thing about capturing texture on film. i love design and white space and fonts, simplicity and the challenge of balance. this image started with the side of a building against clean snow. i felt (and still feel) connected to this building and what it represented, so its texture is beautiful to me; the image both inspires and saddens me. an experiment in contrast and point of view, it may be hard for a viewer to discern what the original pure image might have been. manipulating it, changing what the viewer would see is simply an orchestration of color and space, light and dark, angle and edge, point and counterpoint (melody) lines. skewing it changes the emotional response; although it remains fundamentally the same, it becomes something slightly different and is seen through a different lens. it’s all a matter of perspective.
how we look at anything. how we see anything. how the pieces come together, how we view them, how we sort, how we sometimes have to let go. it’s all a matter of perspective.
the ice-breaking bow of our ferry made its way across “death’s door”, the strait that connects lake michigan and green bay. the windchill below zero, you could hear the hardy vessel crunching its way through the ice. it was other-worldy. no one else on the ferry appeared to be as enchanted with it as we were; clearly, they were big-I islanders, unmoved by this half-hour jaunt across frigid waters to washington island. unfamiliar vs familiar equals enthralling vs mundane. it’s all how you look at it. and where you start from.
when i moved to wisconsin 30 years ago (kicking and screaming at the time) i stood in the pasta aisle of the grocery store – a local piggly wiggly. there was no mueller’s pasta. none. the brand i had grown up with on long island, the brand i found in florida publix grocery stores…it was not here in wisconsin. i felt instantly lost, instantly homesick. i sensed people moving around my frozen-in-the-spot-trying-not-to-cry body; they were choosing boxes of spaghetti and penne with no problem. for me, it was a telling moment. it was an indicator of change, despite its seeming insignificance. standing in that aisle i can tell you it’s all how you look at it. and where you start from. (*for an update on this incident, please see below.)
the ferry docked on the tiny island, a mere 35 square miles. we disembarked and met our friends. they drove us around, on snow-covered roads, through canopies of trees, past glimpses of water between the pines, their limbs bowing to the snow. at one point they said we could go to the house if we were bored. “no,” we answered. how could we be bored, we wondered. the quiet, the stillness, the solitude was compelling. it’s all how you look at it. and where you start from.
it was quieter on the ferry ride back with fewer people. we were just as enthralled. the ice pieces broken by the bow skittered along the ice plate on top of the water. lines cracked through the sheet, paths drawn by nature’s etch-a-sketch. some large slabs of ice raised skyward. we looked at each other and quietly let out a breath. we couldn’t imagine how this trip across open water could ever become run-of-the-mill. but around us were people who acted like it was piggly wiggly brand pasta and they were in the aisle racing to get to the next aisle. it’s all how you look at it. and where you start from.
*(the rest of the story) i called my sweet momma when i returned home from ‘the pig’ as they say. she answered and i instantly recounted my no-mueller’s-pasta story, i’m quite sure teary in the telling, yearning for the home we had left. four days later the UPS truck pulled up at the end of the driveway and the driver lugged a very large box to the front door. in it i found every shape and size of pasta available…all made by mueller’s. moms are wise beyond words sometimes. by the time i finished using the boxes-in-the-box, the unfamiliar had begun to be familiar. the crisis (yes, fundamentally not a physical crisis, but definitely an emotional one) was over.
it drives them nuts, i’m sure, but i still write or say “triple always” to my children. a redundancy of course, the “triple” emphasizes the “always”… an unnecessary modifier that says “eternally”…. i love you eternally.
there is a boeing commercial we see often. in it, the narrator is stating steps of preparation for flight, counting down. then she says, “guidance is eternal.” that’s what i have heard every time. until one time i asked d why he thought she said that. he responded that she was actually stating, “guidance is internal,” which clearly makes more sense in the aviation world.
i had to listen more closely the next time to hear “eternal” as “internal”. i did discern the difference, but i still, each time it airs, hear “guidance is eternal” anyway, and maybe that’s a good thing. it serves as a reminder from an unlikely source, a sort of subliminal message, perhaps, at a time i need it. an absolute when looking to the universe for answers to unsolved questions, small eddies of confusion, sorting and attempts at balance, at level positivity, seeking wisdom from those who are beloved but on another plane.
the guidance is there. waiting. it is internal AND it is eternal. triple always.
