Objects In Motion, Objects at Rest

The show went very well - it ended well, so all was well.

The music did its job, it provided a smooth wash during the performance; the "train station" music painted an evocative picture of Portland back in the Victorian era, the jangling bells matching the "conductor's" weaving of actual historic speeches into the beginning of the play.

Once you got the hang of watching from many different angles it was a lot of fun and very well performed. I was accompanied by a medical friend with a lot of stage experience, this person's reaction was also very positive.

After that a little shopping on a brilliant Old Port night, a gelato (sorbetto, in my case) and now I'm home doing some catch up work put off by the final push of writing for the show. Soon I'll put a YouTube video together in case you'd like to hear it.

Seven days ago I was sitting in my secret, sunken garden, processing my father's illness.

Six days ago I took time in the blazing 101º heat of an Oklahoma afternoon to drive East, along the Dan P. Holmes Memorial Highway (Highway 33 - Mr. Holmes was a fierce advocate who paid for his own commercial after every Sunday night late news show - he touted his own insurance business and always finished with a push for "that highway 33, heading to Joplin, MO" - years after his death the state actually built an ultra-modern highway and named it after this not-so-Quixotic Okie - God, I love to be a native of this state - would hate to live there now, but am proud to be from there).

I headed East, up into the Cherokee hills, East of Salina. When I was a child it was all a dusty red-gravel road, now it was smooth and paved, twisting along the bottom of a long, broad valley, green hills hundreds of feet high on either side.

To my right a stream, Brush Creek by name, slow, barely moving, carried in a bed made of white rocks the size of a chid's fist.  The water looked tired, as if dragged down by the heat. I knew from experience that this kind of flow meant that the water would be warm and snakes, especially the dreaded water moccasin - or cotton-mouth - would be loose inside it.

As much as the heat drove me to consider taking a wade in the water prudence bade me leave it be.

There, rounding a turn onto a side road, was the Euwala Baptist Church grounds: a bell-topped main sanctuary, a Fellowship Hall and attached class space.

An open shed for dinners and meetings was next to it, large, too-bright plastic playground equipment beside it.

Behind - the graveyard.

Not a cemetery but a graveyard.  The place where people from the hills ... in the hills .... came to leave their dead.

The grave decorations bespoke the Cherokee sense that people still seem to be with us - not as ghosts but as present spirits. Almost every grave was covered with some kind of object that bespoke raw feeling, connection, placation, compassion.

The decorations said "are you watching? are you listening? can you see this gift, this toy, this flower?"  I contrasted it with the cemeteries I'd seen here in Maine, pretty, designed "memorial parks", so dignified, so contained.  This graveyard screamed loss and love, screamed passion and sorrow and joy.

One was marked with a simple cross of PVC pipe, like you'd get at the hardware store, drilled together and stuck in the red earth.

Some were covered with dolls, some with toy turtles, some gravestones had inlaid pictures of the deceased.

One had guitars engraved on it with an actual University of Oklahoma banner, signed by friends, hanging from a wire post.  I tucked the edge of the banner against the bend in the metal so that wind wouldn't bunch it up and the "OU" could show proudly in the breeze.

Memorial Day was not all that long ago, no heavy rain had happened yet, most things looked very fresh, as if dropped off only a day or so before.

A jackrabbit broke cover to my left, ran across the bare end of the field, headed for a pile against the fence, a pile made of discarded plastic flowers, all in a big trashpile along the property fence. The rabbit raced across in front of me then slowed down, stopped, looked at me before scampering away.

And after a diligent search I found it - my mother's grave.  The stone was very low, carved from red granite.  I sat down next to it, looking at the three simple plastic flower arrangements. No toys or engraved guitars or pictures - just a simple, simple stone with her name, dates, a quote from the children "Love is forever". A Bible verse from my dad about a wife being a great joy.

It was very, very hot. I sat on the grass and rough soil, a few steps, a very few steps, from the loading dock of an abandoned warehouse, just over the chicken wire of the fence.

As is the habit of the children of our family I cleaned the grass off the grave - I did leave the clover.

I'm always leaving the clover.

A sweating mess, I sat back down and talked to my mother. It was things I needed to say more than things she needed to listen to.

I told her about all the things that had happened since I'd last been there two years before, my successes and failures, my loves and hates.

I introduced friends I'd met, people I'd worked with, danced with, taught, cursed, questioned, embraced, ignored. So many things as the Oklahoma sun beat down and I slowly became tired and heated and a little dizzy.

There came a point when I had said my piece, when words were done and just like sitting with my father in his darkened, quiet hospital room I sat with my mother, just sat, hot tears raining off my face, not wanting to move, letting them fall onto the red, stony earth that covered her last physical remains.

Watering the clover.

Who knows, perhaps it might grow.

Portland, Maine

All's Well That Ends

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Can you name the piece at left?

It's known by its incipit, the first line. As such it is "L'homme armeé", the "Armed Man" - or armèd, to take a Shakespearean accent to it.

It's a sort of 14th Century public service announcement to "beware the armed man who is on the roads, you should wear a coat of chain mail".

Good advice in all time periods, I think.

For a lot of musicbabble reasons concerning things like perfect fourth crusis intervals and subtonic shifting relations and other things not worth going into if you're not a music major - or a composer - this tune has a lot of useful little structures in it.

You can take things apart like Legos (©) and rework them in all sorts of interesting ways.

Like Silly Putty (©) you can stretch them out, compress them, throw them against the wall - and they'll all pretty much stick.

It's found its way into several of my pieces, even some arrangements I wrote for my chorus in North Yarmouth, far back in the day. A sort of private musician's joke.

I bring this before you because it was bubbling under my thoughts and feelings during my visit to my father this weekend past. I've been asked (as opposed to "commissioned" which would imply pay) to write not so much a score as much as create a background ambience to be played during the Naked Shakespeare Company's performance of "Alls Well That Ends Well".

This production opens in three days as part of the Portland Fringe Festival, the fringe of the Portland Performing Arts Festival.

The Performing Arts Festival is about a dozen "big" acts and costs about $75 for a complete ticket.

Cash.

The Fringe Festival is all of the "other" organizations that are also vying for audience attention - and financial relevancy - by putting on really cool stuff and hoping people get back into the habit of attending live performances.

Naked Shakespeare is run by ACORN Theatre, which came out of the old Acorn Theatre on Oak Street, where I did most of my onstage Shakespeare work years ago, both as actor and composer.

"Alls Well That Ends Well" is one of the Bard's "problem" plays in that it isn't a Comedy ("Merry Wives of Windsor", "Two Gentlemen of Verona"), a history ("Henry the Fifth", "King John"), a romance {"Romeo and Juliet") or a tragedy ("Hamlet", "Othello").

No, a problem play has to be taken on its own merits - "Measure For Measure", "Troilus and Cressida" and maybe "The Merchant of Venice" are others - neither "fish nor fowl nor good red herring".

The director, Mike Levine, has adjusted the play so that it now is set in late Victorian Portland, Maine - the Victorian Mansion in our town being the source for design inspiration - it's now called "All's Well On the Waterfront".

Since the action is continuous and the audience literally walks from scene to scene the sound had to suggest a menacing yet optimistic feeling, not interfere with the voices of the actors nor call attention to itself by making any sonic statement that would break focus from the action.

I think I've succeeded - the director told me this evening that it worked really well in tonight's run. This means it sets people on edge but isn't noticeable.

I can strongly identify with it.

And tucked away in the droning string part, stretched out to four times its length is my old friend "L'homme Armeè" - and I identify with him because you have to look out for the sound - it makes you nervous and you might want to have your defenses on.

Because good theatre and music - and wild emotions - can sneak up on you.

If you're lucky.

Portland, Maine

The Might of Cloudy Witnesses

The Sunken Garden - my childhood secret place

And so this brief visit has ended. My father will be released from St. John's on Monday. His gall bladder removed, his kidneys verified as healthy and functioning he walked on my arm to the bathroom, to the edge of the doorway. And tomorrow he goes home and he goes on.

He uses a cane, wrapped in leather, tribal colors woven in amongst the brown.

I helped him in and out of the bed. Never a bulky man - I get my build from my mother - he seemed birdlike and frail.

His eyes were alternatively bright, smiling and dull depending on the moment.

As I took my leave in the darkened room - a ravishing Oklahoma sunset painting the view outside his ninth-floor window - he held his arms out to me from the bed.  I climbed over to his side, felt his grizzled cheek, just as I did all those years ago when he came home from work every day, usually giving me a  Twinkie saved from his lunch.

That moment, in the Cherokee way, seemed eternal. I was blessed, for that moment, to be a child again, to feel the grace and love that holds us up in our parent's arms when we just cannot stand any longer, to feel the shield and buckler of love defending the fire of our souls until we learn to feed it on our own.

I took a moment to scream in my mind "Never, never, never forget this! Remember it, feel it, you'll need it someday, maybe soon, there are children, friends that will need you to give this to them!"

And then I shut my mind up and became lost - no, found - in the moment.

Releasing him was one of the hardest things I've done in a long time.

When I  conduct, rarely now, or write a piece of music I experience the whole piece in one moment, I know that a change here will mean a difference there and that the whole thing is connected. The experience is a sense of the flow of time in an instant - and I know now that comes from my Cherokee sense of time.

As I began to walk away I felt both the tears I knew would come and the present laughter because I knew, I knew as sure as I feel the chair I'm sitting on, hear the music playing as I write - I knew that it was fine, that somehow we were complete and whole, even if only steps away from the abyss of death.

Happy/sad. Confused/certain. Gracious/jealous. Angry/peaceful.

English - human language in general, I suppose - is so limited in how it expresses feelings - or feelings just don't fit the words. Better to just go ahead and feel, suss it out later.

The words finally came, inevitable, thick, powerful. "I love you Dad. I'll see you soon."

From the bed in the dark: "I love you, son. Go with God's blessing. Go with mine."

Cherokee has no word for "goodbye". Our relationships never end, they just change and if you pay attention you can see them all at once. A story finishes, a new one starts.

So I turned and went into the hallway, gently pulled the door closed so he could sleep. Stood against an exercise machine next to the door, the end of the hall.

The tears came then, a physical ensign of the depth of my love, joy, heartbreak, pride, sorrow, anger, fear, none of them different, all the same in one moment.

They stopped and I pulled out my iPhone to post to Facebook that I'd "just left my father ...." - and once done, made as to leave. Suddenly I thought, "no, I'm leaving too soon, I think I need to stay on the mountain for a moment longer".

And sure enough, my unfinished business was still there and I stepped right back into the tears, the joy, the moment on top of the mountain.

But I knew that I had friends who would see the post, who would reach out, even if only to "like" it. As I took the elevator down to the car I was flooded with their presence, that people hundreds of miles away, across the ocean, were taking a moment to think of me.

The tears came again, neither healing nor hurting - just showing how full my life was at the wonderful, graceful moment.

We are the shield and buckler defending the fire of each other's souls. At our best we feed each other, we reflect each other, the universe is brighter - and the shadows more clearly defined - because our light glows, dazzles, even at the end of our time.

So now I have gone home; I have come home.

And I am going on.

Portland, Maine

Source Material

There is a wonderful park - and my family always lived near it until my Mother's passing.

Woodward Park is a giant parcel of land on the edge of the "Old Oil Money" section of Tulsa and I would retreat there from my youngest wandering days.

Part of it is carefully cultivated woods, laced with fountains and streams all cleverly giving a natural feel, all flowing into large ponds that ring the western end.

Anther part is a strange, ethereal Rose Garden, long lines of warm sandstone beds filled with a riot of blooms.  Beyond that is an arboretum composed of trees chosen from a range that runs all the way to the Mississippi.

In between is the Garden Club, a Tulsa institution, a large, faux-Italianate mansion where flowered society ladies would meet back in the day to plan the layout of gardens in all of Tulsa's parks. Now they are the wives of local entrepreneurs, dashing to do good works between Pilates classes and non-profit board meetings.

And right beside them is the Sunken Garden.

It was my secret place from the Fourth Grade on, filled with strange light, even in the middle of the day, its fountain softly splashing; minnows, tadpoles in the water.

I would escape there when the burden of being different became too great, when I needed to feel magic around me. I would escape there in the middle of the night when the traffic sounds were hushed and stars burned through the haze of a million street lights.

Everything I know about magic in the world started with what I learned there. The magic of joy, self expression, singing tuneless songs to yourself, dancing shuffle-thump across the stone parquet - of the magic of affirming yourself, engraving your soul on your heart, so secret and so close that not even you were aware of it until decades later.

So that no one could ever lie to me about myself, make me believe I am something I am not.

Only I could do that to myself. And those days are ending.

This is the safe place I came to at sunset tonight, straight from the hospital.

My father looked so old, so different and frail.

I'd seen him pulling a 60 pound bow, tracking deer (badly), playing industrial league softball (and I was an umpire, age 9), coaching my baseball team - the Lee Beatles (don't ask) .... all the ways I remembered him, all those men blending at one moment, in the strange Cherokee way of sensing all times in one moment, past, present, future.

And I saw him dead, as he must, sooner rather than later.

And I saw him beyond that, living and acting in my life, the very same way my mother does now.

It was a dizzying moment but felt very natural and sweet.  I felt the pain of loss, the joy of memory, the certainty of grace and presence in time to come, all the ways my own life is entwined with his.

Because of him - I am.

I was given tools and source material to make of what I could.

And I came to my garden to be sad, to be amazed, to have sorrow and joy.

And the reconciliation of all those possibilities, certainties, thoughts and feelings is true magic. Something is made of all these feelings and I will bring that back to my father when I see him again in the morning.

My job is to just be there, to be me and the rest will happen.
 
True magic.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

Strawberries and Sanity

My father is still in hospital back home in Tulsa, a bit of a relapse, though, earlier in the day, we had a wonderful conversation - I was proud to share good news from work (which I cannot tell publicly, just yet) and overjoyed to hear his laughter and congratulations.

So things are smoother, though not out of the woods yet.

Still - at the core of this, with all the joy and connection (both always there, perhaps, but hard to acknowledge) there is a raging, hot anger inside of me.

If I could, on this longest day of the year - now past, we're now into the shortest night - I'd wander off into the darkness, probably down to the seashore and vomit out my fury against all of creation.

A friend observed that "anger came easily to males". I had to disagree - anyone can be angry in the proper conditions.

Native Americans - at least in my experience - are subject to the "warrior's rage", a blind, vicious, powerful sense of emotion, force and violence. It is called up when the tribe - one's village, one's clan, one's family - is under attack and is only appropriate in defense, when justice or survival is at the stake.

Over the years I've become familiar with being angry for the sake of others - friends abused in relationships, a family decimated by AIDS (that was really hard), students who were bullied, people who came in "just looking for a dog to kick" and tearing up my colleagues (in all my workplaces), friends who poured the acid of their anger on themselves rather than those who hurt them .... but always for others, for those who could not defend themselves.

The idea that I could be authentically angry for myself was extraordinary.  That I could truly be hurt and scared and furious - this is recent and new to me. I'm told, by people I love and therefore trust, that this is actually a good sign.

But I have to say I really wanted to hurt someone or something this morning. Just cut them, verbally, perhaps physically and just watch the bleeding, feasting on the pain and humiliation.

So the modesty shield of ice usually covering my darkest, most explosive feelings was rather cracked.

I wandered down to the Farmer's Market in Monument Square, thinking I had to accept this and process it, get it focussed - I was desperate for a visit from my friends The Sad Clowns but they never appear in daylight ....

... and then I saw them. Strawberries.

On every table of the market, it seemed. Box after sanguinary box of deep red strawberries.

Story time - Selu (the Corn Maiden) and Kana'ti (the first man, or, Lucky Hunter) were created one for the other, to temper each other, build each other's strength and help with each other's challenges.

But like many couples there came a point when they got so used to each other they forgot to actually listen to each other and an argument broke out, the kind that can really cut people, verbally, perhaps physically.

Selu ran from the cabin, so fast that even Kana'ti couldn't catch her. Up, up into the mountains of the Cherokee homeland - for each peak Kana'ti reached Selu passed three.

It was hopeless. Kana'ti fell to the ground and begged, pleaded with the Creator to help or his heart would break and the balance in their lives would be forever lost. The Creator told him she would help and as Selu ran seeds, then flowers and finally berries - blueberries, huckleberries, choke cherries, all began to spring up from her footprints.

But Selu kept running. FInally bright red berries, fat and sweet, beguiled her through her anger and compelled her to stop. They were strawberries and so wonderful to taste that Kana'ti finally caught up with her as she sat in the midst of a field of them.

They sat and looked at each other and realized that they had a choice - to go on with the pursuit of their anger or accept the bounty around them, created by their anger, anger transformed into something sweet and wonderful by grace - her willingness to stop, his willingness to keep trying by asking for help.

So they brought some strawberries home and from that day to this we Cherokees have always kept them close to us - in jam, in the fridge, by our computers (ahem), even in pictures on the wall.

I honored my anger - really my deep, deep love for my father, estranged though we might be - by bringing strawberries to work, sharing them with my friends, bringing them to tango.

I couldn't avoid it - I had to do it, almost as a sacred act of forgiveness to the universe - because I am a part of the universe; if I lash out at it, I lash out at myself.

The deal is I think the universe is used to being lashed as well as being loved - the universe can take it.

And you what?  So can I.

Portland, Maine

The Books of Other Things

My Father, Dewey Alberty, age 17?

There is always an endgame

Friendships change and evolve.


Understandings move and shift.

The stories of our lives enter new chapters.

Each chapter has a last sentence, perhaps a summary or a cliffhanger, a pithy apethelion or a rim-shot zinger.

But there will always be a last chapter, last sentence, the book will always end.

And stories must end otherwise new stories would never arise to join them.

The books of other things - things that are not us - all of reality, whether action, career, friend or lover - all those books end, we will see them entire and perfect in their completion, with last sentences done and periods placed.

We close the book’s cover. It can then either go into our bookbag to be taken out and savoured - or at least learned from - or it goes back on the bookshelf to be catalogued, either as reference, mystery, romance, genre - or fantasy.

Another book is taken down and opened and we participate in experiencing - creating - a new story -until we finish the last sentence of our own.

The bitter thing - or perhaps the most glorious - is that we never will see the last sentence of our personal last chapters - we’ll probably have a rough idea what our last sentence will be but, by definition though we may finish the words the period will be placed by another pen (I think in terms of pens even though I’m typing this).


Like any creative thing our lives are influenced by our learning, our experiences - it’s what our imagination calls on to create new, beautiful, effective patterns to amaze and delight us.

This is how I think about my father, seriously ill and in hospital. I don’t think we’re going to see the period on the end of this story yet. He will recover, though he is damaged.

Still it is a reminder that books end, that there are only so many pages left, despite our strongest wish to have it continue. 

And all good books should end, should make their point, should ultimately end with “and  they all (or at least those who had the knack for it) lived happily ever after”.

Even if reading that last sentence is one of the most frightening, saddest things you’ve ever experienced. 

Belfast, Maine

"What You Mean 'We', Paleface....?"

Jim in his ribbon shirt and dance staff

Jim

Let me put a popular - well, "wide-spread" - legend to rest.

Maybe it will help you to understand me as well.

In undergrad school, like many liberal arts students, the University of Tulsa music students were given to hosting parties. I don't know if it was the rule at other schools but we'd have faculty drop by every once in a while.

The most unwelcome was the percussion director, Cliff White. He showed up to one Yuletide party with a bottle of some kind of red wine, which, given the wassail (yes, real wassail) slowing disappearing from the kettle on the stove, didn't see any action.

So at the end of his part in the evening Professor White gathered up his bottle, saying "well if no one is going to drink this I guess I'll take it back". After his departure, bathed in aghast silence, someone, no-one in particular, spoke up ....

"God, what an Indian giver".

It was a measure of my social presence in the room that no irony of any kind was noted.

But I did note the term "Indian Giver".

Lemme 'splain ...

I come from a tribal culture and the rules governing social relationships in "normal" social action are vastly different from it. To this day they are often lost on me, to the eternal exasperation of some of my close (and blessedly understanding) friends.

Imagine a village, a cluster of huts around a central lodge house. It is a forced proximity that brings a level of communality that's currently unimaginable  - there is almost no privacy in either the public or family spheres.

If a family fell upon hard times the natural human urge to help had to be tempered by the need to preserve the respect and honor that everyone had to give each other. If a feeling of mutual goodwill and trust wasn't nurtured by every act then a fraying, bitter collection of individuals would replace the smooth social fabric that allowed everyone to prosper.

So help had to be given in a discreet but effective manner.

Before dawn you'd leave a fish or a sack of meal hanging from the front of the receiver's lodge post, then you'd conceal yourself to watch.

If the gift was accepted it would be taken inside. Since gifts were usually given anonymously you couldn't know whom to thank - so you treated the whole village with respect and gratitude.

If not it was just ignored, like it just didn't exist. There was nothing that dead fish could do to break into their consciousness.

Sound familiar?

But if the gift remained up all day it would be a blatant signpost of trouble and embarrassment from the receivers to everyone else in the village.

So at the first possible moment, the watching donor would run over and take the gift back, rather than call attention to the misfortune of another.

What Caucasian observers thought to be penurious, mean-sprited reclamation was actually a gesture of respect for those less fortunate, an expression of a willingness to share, to "lift up" others (in the spiritual, almost prayer-like sense some evangelicals use it today) in a way that did not demean them - and, most importantly, gave them a measure of control and integrity.

So today I try to reach out to those of my friends who may need something - a word, a touch, a gesture, anything of the almost limitless things we need to cope when overwhelmed.

Or not just overwhelmed. Sometimes acknowledging someone's joy is equally important - maybe more so.

So supported they can choose to accept or go on - and if they choose to go on then it's my job to hold back and give them the respect they deserve.

Pulling back is an expression of respect and honor, in a way, of love - emotional discipline, at the very least.

Since you never know who left that fish you are obliged to treat everyone as your benefactor - and they may see you in the same way.

It's asking a lot, I know, but sometimes you can get a lot out of a dead fish.

Portland

So, One Fine Oklahoma Sunday ...

The Mom Bomb

.... .. my Father hears our family van pull into the driveway of our house.  But he's surprised to see my Aunt Mary Jane get out of it. Just as he's asking her where my Mother is, a bright, duck yellow Mustang convertible pulls in.

Out hops - well, "gets" - my Mom.

With a huge grin she tells him "Dewey, look what I won at Cherokee Bingo".  All those weekends of tribal support had suddenly paid off in a big way.

Dad gasps like a beached catfish for a second and then replies "Well, you can't keep that! That's the Devil's car, you won that gambling! Maggie, you have to give it back!"

Mom's reply is terse - "I'm keeping it."

According to my niece, in residence at the time, those were the last words they exchanged directly for a calendar month.  Meals became torturous affairs with dialogue like...

"Ask your grandmother for the biscuits, please".

"Tell your grandfather they're right on the table where his lazy arm could pick 'em up".

"Tell your grandmother ...."

Poor Robin damn well went crazy.  She learned a lot about people, I will say that.

Brush Creek Church - where Mom is buried

So after a month of this, one fine Oklahoma Sunday, getting ready for church, my Father comes down the stair and tells my mother ...

"Well, I guess we can afford the excise tax" - which, of course had been the issue that had immediately jumped to his mind ....  

... which leads to the only reply that could possibly come ....

"Don't worry, honey.  I already won the money playing Cherokee Bingo".

.... and she reaches into her amazing purse, pulls out a wad of cash big enough to choke a Cherokee buffalo.

I was honored to drive that car in her funeral procession, right behind the hearse.  People in the Cherokee hills lined up along the road, off and on, all the way up to Brush Creek Church, where she is interred, in Kenwood.

I can't tell you how proud I am to be my parent's child - most of the time because I can't quite figure out why.  But I am, by God.

Portland

I Am Nothing but Still Oddly Important

I am nothing,
But still oddly important.

There are friends of mine
that do not know me

who are still the
brightest signposts to my soul.

The world can seem
to be
so small
it

Seems to fly by
faster
than my
eye can
ever see,

And yet a frown that
comes from the antipodes
creates

A gale far larger than
my thoughts will ever know.

My heart is full of joy and
sorrow both,

My brain and heart share
mastery of
my way.

Contradictions balanced in the
rhetoric of life,

Teaching me to live in love
each day.

Portland

"I've looked at clouds from both sides, now"

According to Wikipedia (and who can you trust if you can't trust that?) Joni Mitchell was reading a book on a plane, "Henderson, the Rain King" by Saul Bellow, where Henderson was looking out the window of a plane and saw clouds below. Looking out her window she saw the same thing.

The synchronicity was enough to generate the song.

I suppose if clouds do have illusions they're brought out by what we see in them, by the illusions in ourselves. Fool yourself and the cloud will fool you too.

See the truth, more specifically, see the beauty in yourself and the clouds will show it back to you.

At least, that's my theory for the day.

I had a chance to test this yesterday by taking time to watch clouds in one of my rare paired days off.

Time has recently been filled with writing, editing, reading, studying, working, dancing, walking, listening and processing. I like the activity but in the same way that my job in the Orchard focusses me so intently on people that it often ruins me for other normal human interactions then all this intellectual/emotional  focus can make me lose my sense of my feelings.

So I took time on a brilliant, warm afternoon, time to walk to Deering Oaks park, time to lie down on a branded Apple throw blanket, roll my backpack under my head and just let the cool breeze speak to me through the rustle of the trees.

In my experience people see clouds as kind of Rorschach tests, cognitive stimuli that cause reactions that can be objectively interpreted (if that's not a contradiction in terms). The interpretations tell all sorts of things about motivations, sociability, imagination - and such interpretations are very complex endeavors.

For myself, laying on the blanket, one leg crossed over another, warmed by the sun and free for an hour from the agreeable demands of my mental/emotional life, it was a pleasant exercise in letting my soul coast downhill, enjoying the feeling of simple experience, letting my thoughts jump like children, hopscotching to new things.

Sometimes I do see howler monkeys (like in the picture on the right) but mostly I just like to see the patterns, love the peace found in the colors.

Eventually I was joined by my friend Adira. We chatted about the tango flash event planned for today (very successful, more later) and things in general.

Some people were leaving trash from their little picnic - a lot of trash. Adira was kind but forceful in reminding them to move it. Dogs played nearby.

And eventually the moment ended. She went to fix a tire on her bike and call her significant other, I left to walk to the store to get a green pepper to make gazpacho for dinner.

The clouds stayed with me.

They were clear and lovely overhead and I cannot tell if they were speaking to me or not - what kind of sound they made, like that I hear (I experience it, whether I'm actually hearing it is up for debate) from mountains.

Maybe I'll have to climb a much higher mountain than previously if I'm to hear what a cloud has to say to me. I don't think sitting in a plane like Joni Mitchell (or Henderson the King) will do it.

Maybe they've been talking all along and I'm just too far away to hear it.

So I suppose I'll have to depend on what I see when I look at them - what I take away, based on what I see, what I allow my mind, heart and soul to leap to.

Based on who I really am.

Portland, Maine.