Friday, May 25, 2012

Come All Ye Jackasses


The arm is long, the fingers gracefully curling, beckoning.

"Come shop with me. Please. Please?"

The questioning tone of the last word tells me she's already giving up hope for a pleasant, shared moment together.

Even before he speaks he's told her he's not interested.

His eyes turn to his Blackberry, fingers dancing, calling up letters on its screen.

"Nah. I'm going to ... yeah .... nah."

More meaning than I can bear is shouting from the meaningless syllables.

Her arm floats down, slowly. She is tall, willowy, demure; attractive, not alluring. Her features are elfin, bright eyes, a smile that comes easily, readily, grown by repeated joy, perhaps even before she was born.

But as he turns, heads for the mall couches, she is suddenly left in the middle of a gesture, a movement suddenly robbed of its meaning. Somehow her fire has been starved of just a little of its oxygen.

I want to shout, to storm over to him, grab him by the collar of his golf shirt, shake him.

If a spirit like that had asked me to do the least thing with her I'd crawl over broken glass to help - hold the bags, carry the boxes, give my opinions, hell, I'd even tell the truth about how those jeans made her bottom look.

Well, maybe not that far.

But far enough.

I think, in large part, we make our own oxygen for the fires of our souls.  A large part of that also comes from each other, that if we're smart we surround ourselves with people that encourage us to be ourselves.

Not all of them need to be a rah-rah bunch of cheerleaders but some level of support, some sense that someone out there is trying to make you more yourself .... well, that just helps a lot.

I had to leave for home and never found out if the girl had managed to get the guy interested .... but the image of her arm, the grace with which she asked and the brusqueness of his answer amazed me. I see so many people who just don't listen to what is in front of their noses.

I hope they both are OK - him and her.

Portland

Thursday, May 24, 2012

The song of a mountain


I think this walking around thing is starting to become a habit.

Yesternight I drove up to Bar Harbor - actually skipping a tango practica - to spend the night.  It was a kind of 24-hour vacation.

Rather shocking, in a way, to decide to visit.  My friend Patrick Fogarty, one of the Original Group at the Orchard, had left to open a unique little gift shop, called "A Little Mad".

I had asked if he'd be OK with my smudging his store with sweetgrass to give it good luck and he kindly agreed.

So that was my motivation.

That and a chance to see the incredible beauty of Mount Desert - is there really a mountain called "Desert"? - it's pronounced like "dessert", from what I can tell - but spelled like the kind with sand.

Oh well.

The timing was especially useful since this is the start of Memorial Day weekend and hordes of well-heeled, tony people will soon descend to take it over.


Now that I think on it, they're going to descend on Portland too - though we seem to see the infestation a bit later in the Summer.

The smudging itself was a lot of fun, in a spiritually serious way. I don't allow pictures to be taken during such a moment. It's not really a formal ceremony but there is something very personal in it for me, my feeling are very close to the surface.

That done I headed to the main Abbe Museum of Native Maine Culture.

But I never quite got there.

Actually there is a branch of the museum in Bar Harbor. I visited it after breakfast. The original museum is on the grounds of the Acadia National Park, just west of the town a few miles.

It was while here I realized that the park was woven, warp and woof, with hiking trails. And since, as always, I'd packed too many clothes I changed into some loose-fit shirts, got out my new hiking poles, checked the map and started off across the country.

The first trail, Jessup, you see in the first pic. After a bit of wandering it devolves into an amazing wooden walkway of perhaps a fifth of a mile, arrowing straight across a bog. The water runs down from Kebo Mountain, to the west, dozens of small rills that are fed both by springs in the hill and by the runoff from the last night's rain.

But as I approached the walkway, crossing a service road I saw a message carved deeply into a plank.

It announced the start of the Kebo trail and an unpaved path led off and up into the hill, fading away into the bright green of the trees.

This took me right up against the face of Kebo Mountain, one of the peaks guarding the approach to Cadillac Mountain.

The day was warm though very few bugs were out. Perhaps they were still getting themselves together.

The face of the mountain stretched up to my left. If I'd started off the trail to head up that way I would have been stopped easily

Huge rocks were scatted like ice cubes in their bowl in my 'fridge. It looked like someone - or something - had rolled them around like the dice of a giant, the kind used to decide which village gets destroyed, who dies by accident today, who finds true love or treasure (if that's not the same thing).

But some of those stones were big as a Volkswagon - an example is shown, rather like a menhir at Stonhenge but much, much larger.

And as I walked, poling myself surely and comfortable across the lower face of the mountain I began to hear, slowly and clearly, a long clear musical bass note, as if some huge bass singer was clearing his throat and then humming a tune, something so low that I couldn't actually hear it.

This was a bit odd, as I've still got a lot of my hearing left, even as my brain fails to catch up to it.

I've walked up two other "mountains" - Bradbury, in Pownal, about 17 miles north of Portland, and the hill behind Butternut Farm - call it "Butternut Mountain", behind the house of my friends Chuck and Nancy Brown-Fergus.

No wonder they wound up living on a farm - their names sound like very high-quality potting soil.

Still, to my memory, they had each a different sound, more buzzy, more baritone than bass.

I marveled to think that the stones I saw had cracked off the face of Kebo, had rolled down into the fantastic piles beside the trail, that the mountain had taken thousands, perhaps a million, years to rise to the point where the boulders would fracture and fall.

And I could hear it singing, slow and clear. Not a tune but a drone, a long, slow, deep, rich and fulfilling note in my head. I sat on a stone - it wasn't singing today, not that I could hear, maybe it was feeling abused by being used as a chair, I don't know - but I leaned on a tree trunk and let it fill me, rich and strong.

I think if I can call that song up - or the memory - I can find another way to see the steps my life must take, have a new tempo for the music my steps weave.

I've said before that dancing calls up the story of the music, that we create a story when we dance.

Perhaps I hear a new thing in my head that is very old, that I've been hearing since childhood but not listening to until this very moment.

Perhaps.

Portland, Maine




Thursday, May 17, 2012

Altitude Perseveration


A lot of the time I do not know when to come down the mountain.

Literally.

The repair of a tooth today took much less time than expected - and cost much less as well. Since my dentist is in Cumberland it was easy to drive over to Bradbury Mountain State Park to have a climb and a perch on the summit.

Parenthetically it also was a chance to try out my new hiking sticks, which allowed me to fly up the mountain.

The days have been rainy (this photo was taken two weeks ago), I was lucky to be between showers. The ground was very damp, layered in old leaves, pine needles, mud everywhere; rills of water gurgled freely down the slopes, between the roots of the trees.

It was easier to keep your feet dry by walking the path beside the path - though just barely. It was easy to find, well worn under the edge of the trees,  created by the feet of all the walkers preceding me, alongside the regular path when it was overrun by water and mud,

Achieving the summit took me through woods just below the crest - a grey light sponged away all shadows and a mist rose from the damp ground I walked over.

I shared the grey rock of the summit with the same raptor surveyor who had been there before, still at his high-powered monocular, watching diligently for signs of falcons, eagles, hawks and other birds of prey.

A shelf in the stone seemed custom-cut for my back; removing my jacket and folding it behind me gave a perfect spot to sit and let my senses take in the view. It was grey of sky, the green of the trees being the yellowish tint that only comes at this time of year.

I think I fell asleep, if only for a few minutes, the only sounds being songbird calls, the faint drip of water from the treeline, occasional sounds of other walkers and their dogs as they caught their breath at the summit, the animals drinking and splashing in water caught in a well in the rock.

Eventually there was a moment to consider leaving.

This was hard to consider. I had no real appointments, I did have to sit at the piano to finish a birthday tango for a friend but that was it.

I had no real reason to go and every reason to stay. This internal conflict happens to me a lot .....

.... I don't know when to end conversations

.... when to head for home while staying at a weekday getaway

.... don't know when to leave a dance

.... when a friend has listened enough

..... when someone is no longer served by contact with me

I hear people clearly and know what they mean, what they need .... but sometimes I cannot bring myself to meet them where they are.

Or meet myself where I am.

You always have to come down, a hymnbook could be filled with end-of-service songs that talk about leaving sacred space to return to the wicked world.

Foolishly or otherwise I think all spaces are sacred, so, perhaps, that is my best hope to resolve this.

Or, I could wait around trying to make up my mind and get soaked by the rain blowing in from the South.

Sometimes you leave the mountain. Sometimes the mountain leaves you.

Portland, ME

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Equalizing the Emotional Compression


A lot to write about today ... President Obama finally got off one of the most contentious fences in modern politics by declaring himself in favor of same-sex marriage. It felt a long time coming and I can see the political calculus but still, it happened.

As of Tuesday, yesterday, I'd walked 10.49 miles - usually I try to do 10 in a week. Having a good book to listen to helps - still, it seems very surprising to walk so far, so soon.

Even though there is a tango practica later this evening I might well run up the numbers another couple of miles - besides, Abe Lincoln, vampire hunter, has just gone to Washington and I cannot wait to hear what happens next.

I'm grateful that mundane amusements are starting to register since many scary and wonderful things have been taking up my focus.

When you mix a piece of music, especially the sort of wide-ranging sound I tend to write in my tangos, you have to balance loud and soft sounds. This trick is called "compression", making the louds softer so they don't spike the circuits and making the quiets louder, so they don't get lost in the mix.

I have routines built into my software that allow me to do this - I just have to remember to use it.

The problem is that when used injudiciously a bland sound results. There is no energy, no emotional room to maneuver. It just kind of roars, it sounds dull.

The trick is to let the highs be striking, the lows be beguiling.

I think it happens with emotions too. Experiencing the fear of losing Charity, real fear, fed by earlier losses that might or might not been expressed, re-experiencing those .... well, after all that your feelings can become a kind of dull roar.

When an explosion happens your ears go a little deaf and it takes a while for things to settle down - for the louds to have their energy and the quiets to have their grace.  The noise subsides and you can hear the extremes of sound that give it variety and expression.

Emotional explosions work the same way, from what I can see. For a few days I FELT BIG THINGS and HAD IMPORTANT THOUGHTS and WORRIED and HAD INCREDIBLE JOY and after a while EVERYTHING SEEMED TO BE THAT WAY NO MATTER HOW IMPORTANT OR TRIVIAL.

Each wave has a unique sound. Snowflakes have their own shape. A dance can tell a different story even with the same music.

It comes in time, if you let it.

Portland, ME



Sunday, May 6, 2012

(Not Really) Birkir and Not Really the Train


OK - introductions.

This is Birkir (as far as I can tell - ed.: well, I couldn't - I'm informed by the person who brushes him that he's Naskur). He lives on Butternut Farm with my good friends Chuck and Nancy near East Burke, Vermont.

He comes from a very unique breed of the equine family, the Icelandic Pony.

According to Nancy, who should know (better than most anyone on the North American continent) the breed is incredibly tough, adapted for survival in the hard-scrabble of Iceland.

Icelandic ponies are notably intelligent. Small, tough, they can pretty much be left out in all but the most vicious weather and they'll trot around happy as clams at high tide.

A rider has to be very flexible and clear - they will take advantage of any indecision to take control and correct the rider's gaffe.

They have evolved to exist quite famously on pretty much anything - that is to say, they'll eat anything they can Indian wrestle down their gullets.

Not only hay but lichen, moss, seaweed, straw (which is different from hay, so I'm told), grass, tree bark - pretty much anything remotely vegetative (I'm sure Nancy will fire off a reply to correct me but my policy its that it's easier to apologize than look up facts first - this applies to runes as well as roughage).

To summarize Darwin - Natural Selection doesn't favor the strong or the clever - it favors the adaptable. I feel better already.

And this?

This is a fake train.

It runs around a local Mall. It has a dinger, a train horn and wooden cars.

It costs $3 or so to ride and apparently hit a deaf person on its first day of operation. A good business is done with parents whose children ride on their own. The parents walk along beside either taking pictures or saying "you're riding the train! Just like Thomas! Choo Choooooo! Isn't this fun?"

And why are they together?

Well, Nancy informs me that you can kill an Icelandic pony by feeding it the same grain and hay you would a quarter horse. All horses are adapted to get nutrients from hay. Her husband Chuck tells me he cuts their hay after it has gone to seed because most of the nutrients have gone into the seed which gets lost during the process.  This means that the horse isn't flooded with more protein than it can handle.

The ponies might get a half-cup of supplemental grain.

A quarter horse might get a quart.

And the children?

Riding a fake train is like hay given to the ponies. It's a denatured experience, it's not really the same thing as a real train.

When I was five or so my parents put me on one of the last passenger trains to leave Tulsa's wonderful Union Station. I was quite alone on a sunny Oklahoma morning - something tells me it was Sunday. The conductor was charged to look after me, I was given a hug and they waved at me as the train pulled out.

My folks piled into their car and raced the train to the station in Claremore (town of my birth at the Indian Hospital) and were waiting when the conductor walked me to the door.

The fact they could beat the train 20 miles to Claremore might be one of the reasons passenger service was on its way out - but that's another story.

Children - all of us - need real experiences - real stories. You can look at a flower on an iPad and define it. If the experience is to enjoy and sense the beauty of a flower you need to see it in the wild - if the experience is defining and looking up info and exercising your mind then the iPad is the real experience.

Perhaps a wooden train will serve until you take a child onto a real train. A pony has to have its grain slightly denatured because it brings so much to the digestive party it really doesn't need more than that.

A Quarter horse needs all the help it can get.

People do better with the real thing - externally, sensorily - or internally, introspectively.

What we share with each other - how we carry each other ..... well, that's another story.

Portland, Maine

Thursday, May 3, 2012

The Mighty, Mighty Quinn



OK - everyone take a breath.  Charity is still here, Robb is sane and Young Master Quinn Marshall has joined the party.
Photos online show tired parents and joyous siblings.
I was just getting back from a walk around the river next to the South Paris farmhouse I’m staying at these two days. Charity - with the nom de plume  Verity - was the subject of my last post, waiting for the storm to break (insert water joke here....).

Induction led to a C-section and a successful delivery.

So it all turned out well.

Tension. Release. Release. Tension.

The walk - notated here, for those who care, was next to a bit more heavy two-lane traffic than I like, led mostly though country roads, along the river that runs down from Bethel and the mountains - Snow Falls is part of its path, photos here.

Got to the end of the road, standing on the bridge spanning one of the many streams and rills that are so active because of the damp weather and checked my time - and saw a Facebook notification.

There was the post. A short one, not a lot needed to be said.

And so many possible horrible realities fell with a crash, looming shards of pain glistering, resolving, melting into a single crystal drop of joy.

I like words like "glistering" : "All that glisters is not gold".

As I leaned on the bridge over the stream at the end of the road I put my phone away - after pausing the walk time - and was pleased and surprised to find drops from my own eyes joining the stream .

I was really terribly, terribly afraid that I would lose Charity. The tears washed away the image of her loss and revealed my loss of my best friend, Eckart, last year.

He told me, amongst many clever - in addition to wise - things - that I was cursed with "vision" - that my intuitive sense was powerful enough to over-ride my experience of reality. Good for planning, bad for living in the moment. 

I smiled. More tears came, washing away his Germanic accent and revealing my cat, Sebastian.

I remembered holding him as the drugs took him over, took him away. "Good kitty. Such a good kitty".

He had come up to me at the Westbrook animal shelter, one from amongst a roomful of cats, walked up to me and started vocalizing directly to my face. Perfect cat for a composer. And the memories came up of losing my dog Toby Tyler when he was tortured by neighborhood kids when I was 8. I had to cry those out in the car before I could let Sebastian come home.

I laughed, thinking of the counter-melody he wrote by walking up and down on my piano and how that helped sell my first print anthem.  More tears, washing him away and revealing my Mother.

The sudden phone call. My youngest sister saying "Jim, we've lost our mother". Five minutes. Five minutes of sanity to hang up, fly out the door to the other end of Emery Street where my ex-girlfriend and her husband lived in the attic apartment of my musical mentor's house. Five minutes before I would be incapacitated where I stood.

And the whole group, ex, her husband, her mother, her dad - all had water on for tea, a big rocking chair in the Antebellum kitchen, a place for my contact lenses, a huge, huge blanket ready to hold me while my whole world was jackbooted into shards, bright tears, that  glistered, flowed and resolved ....

..... over and over, again and again, scene after scene as I stood on the bridge, adding my tears to the welcoming stream.

And finally, at the very end, a baby .... a mother and a father .... and a starting place of certainty, of love and grace.

I knew that baby was me, that what my parents saw in me at the moment of infinite possibility was how I saw myself now, at that moment, on that bridge, on that stream, at this time.

So that is how I welcomed Quinn Marshall into the world.  If I'm very clever I can see this inside everyone I meet, no matter what the context, whether I see joy, pain, love, indifference or all together.

You see, I'm cursed with vision. It's rather fun.

I started my timer and walked on my way.

S. Paris/Norway

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Prices. Losses. Gains.



If there is any mercy at all in the universe then 24 hours from now …
…. a woman, a dear friend, will have  willingly gone through unbelievable, gut-ripping agonies and come out the other side,
…. a man will have re-lived the most terrible, most helpless moment of his life and stood his ground beside the woman he loves
…. a new life will have entered the world and been pronounced both beautiful and healthy by his parents.
Let’s call her Verity - a good New England name. He is Dave. 
The new young person we’ll call Fender.
Tuesday (it is now Wednesday, just after Midnight) I stopped in to visit Verity. We met through tango and are blessed with the kind of friendship based on listening and talking. 
We had mugs of tea, she let me feel Fender’s foot - he was in launch position, head on her pelvis, waiting for the window to open up.
The delivery would be induced today (Wednesday) starting about 7 hours from now.  Verity’s child by her first husband was now 5 or so, a precocious proto-ballerina who ate only organic food and went to sleep listening to Enya every night.  She had been 9 pounds and it was perfect agony for Verity.
Fender was clocking it at 10.5 pounds. At least.
So we talked about being scared, of seeing something you knew would be perfectly painful, PAINFUL, P*A*I*N*F*U*L*L - and being perfectly incapable of doing anything about it. 
I have absolutely no frame of reference for the pain of childbirth nor the exhilaration that comes afterwards - the sensory wiring just isn’t there for me.  
But I do know how it feels to be frightened of something massive that cannot be avoided. Tea with sympathy if not empathy.
To compound it her husband of less than a year was also preparing for his own ordeal. His first wife had died during the delivery of his youngest daughter.  He had loved his wife very much.  Her death had been completely unexpected.
I become strongly attached to people in all my close relationships - it frightens me a lot of the time - probably frightens people I know even more.   I’ve never gotten married because my standards are too high - I’ll never meet them. My example is how my father treated my late mother, a story I’ll tell another time - but if I love someone I mean to love them without reservation.
To consider losing that person at the moment of gaining a new life, to have a person you have chosen to love more than any other just die - I can’t imagine anything more terrifying.
And Dave is about to go through that again. I suspect he’s ready for it because he’s the kind of guy who’ll be there for Verity no matter what it costs.  Even if all the burning flames of Hell itself surround the bed by damn he is going to be there at her side.
I like him. I like the way he rolls.
So the cards are on the table and I don’t know what they will say when all is finished.
My hope  and best, most rational suspicion is that it will work out - Verity is physically very strong, a triathlete, when younger an Olympic-level snowboarder and she will get through it.
Dave will come through too because that’s the kind of person he is.
And Fender?
How do you think a kid with those kinds of parents will turn out?

You do? Really?
Yeah, I think so too.
Still, keep a good thought today.