Losses and Gains and Cats

Looked him in the eye as the sedative took effect. Kept repeating “Good kitty. You’re such a good kitty”.

We lose stuff - people, youth, friends, pets, careers, identities - all the time

I always promise at these moments that I will never take anything that I love for granted again. Never lie to myself that pets won’t get kidney disease, parents won’t have sudden heart attacks and prostate cancer. Never think that I can treat the thoughts and needs of my friends with indifference forever.

Never think that not saying what you feel is an acceptable way to live.

His eyes looked directly into mine, the way he always did when I left for work each day, looking with a cat’s certainty that I would return because “how could he not return to such a wonderful animal as me?”

I made that promise at the moments when I lost Eckart, after my mother, after leaving Litchfield after being, in effect, fired for incompetence as a teacher - promised each time, as if self-delusion was inoculation against the guilt of a job of loving badly done, inoculation against the guilt of shortcuts in action, passion, of care.

The supervising vet, at other times a very gruff, demanding person, was surprisingly kind. Perhaps my being wracked by loss and guilt made him seem gentler by comparison.

“Once he’s out the actual drug will work very fast. He won’t be suffering much longer.”

When I was a child my science teacher - the amazing Mrs. Heilmann - said that “when she was a girl” the worst thing you could say about someone was “he thinks the world owes him a living”. As if paychecks grew on trees and someone was supposed to pick them for him.

Not a great support of the Great Society, Mrs. Heilmann.

Over and over again - “you’re a good kitty. Such a good cat. I love you. I love you. Good kitty. Good kitty.” His eyes never wavered - or closed.

I stack my hope against my self-knowledge.

I hope I never think the world owes me love. I know that sometimes I take the people and things I love for granted, as if it’s something due to me just because I’m using the available oxygen.

It’s not guaranteed that we will be loved. It’s something we all need - to receive and to give. But it is not guaranteed.

Plants leave the seed knowing they must have rain, not knowing they will get it. But still they leave the seed.

So I looked into his eyes as they went dark, truly dark.

Finally now I hope that in that cat’s mind, that cat’s heart, inside that miserably sick, pain-wracked cat’s body he felt a cat’s certainty that of course he was loved because I had come home for him.

And that now I could be certain that I was loved in a cat’s own way ....

...even if he was the one who was now leaving.

Thank you to Sebastian P. Goodkitty - the late Lord High Kitty of Congress Street.

Larger Flakes.

It's black night out now - I can see large flakes of snow falling in the peach streetlights below.

Mournful fog horns.

There is a pickup truck, its running lights glowing in the snow. A large man in a heavy coat is down by the docks, he lights a cigarette, drags on it for a few moments and tosses it into the water at his feet.

I've been resting here for the past 4 days, since Friday evening. There has been a run-in with a seal, over-priced pub food, the discovery of a 'fridge full of champagne and frozen cookie dough and a fair amount of sleep and introspection.

I wish I could say I am coming out of this a transformed person - unless you think that being more yourself is something of a transformation.

I've actually not talked all that much these last few days. Went to Portsmouth with friends for a tango practica, sat with a carpenter/boat captain pal in his rebuilt sail-loft of a house, drinking coffee and talking about the challenges of a being a new tango person - "new' being anyone not born and raised in Buenos Aires.

Through the windows that face my bed I can see lights moving through darkness, around the island docks in the middle of the harbor. It's motoring toward the dock with the pickup truck. The large man tosses what must be his fourth cigarette into the water and moves to the back of the truck. Looks like rope coming out, a line or something.

I think I've stayed here long enough. I feel rested, like my zealous, over-filled soul has used the time to listen quietly, patiently, to the gently varying sound of the waves on the shore. Like the snowflakes each wave has its own sound, its own pattern.

It should probably now become part of my routine to find time to sit by the ocean, wherever I am on the coast of Maine, to sit, listen and calm my spirit, tune my ear to hear the sound each wave makes, just once and then forever gone.

Unique and irreplaceable. And then gone.

The boat is at the dock. A tall man exits the wheelhouse, waves to the man on the dock, tosses him a line. The boat is home safe.

The snow keeps falling.

Fall forward, Spring Back - Feed a cold, starve a cold

So now we've launched our 2nd Generation magical computer device. I've been so excited I've not been getting sleep - working out my nerves by writing a fairly challenging new tango.

I like this new piece. I tend to like all of my pieces, frankly - but this one really seems to say what's on my mind, the joy and the tension, the excitement and contemplation that always fight for supremacy in my spirit.

I'm taking some time off next week - I really don't think in terms of vacations and free time - ordinarily, anyway.

There's a lovely bed/breakfast overlooking Boothbay Harbour, about 45 miles north up Route One. During "The Season" it's quite a tourist haven; my digs for four nights would have cost a good bit North of $1,500 - I'm getting them for about $500, including full breakfast.

And I'm a big breakfast guy.

People at the Orchard who have worked full-time from the opening (I've been full time for just over a year) seem to take huge vacations - it was pointed out to me that 100 hours of vacation is more than two weeks, rather than just over 4 days (96+ hours or so). I just don't think that way.

So, before "The Season" starts, while stores are being painted, docks being repaired and fishermen doing actual work, I'm going to stop and just watch the tide change, probably singing "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" - or, more realistically, thinking about what I have to do to get my music to sound the way I really hear it.

If you really believe in what you do, that it can do some good, you have to act. I suppose I am, that everything I've done in my life has led to this direction, to the moment I'm sitting in now, for good or ill.

Let's see what happens, shall we?

One Fog Bank and Suddenly It’s Spring

The last 24 hours have seen the ruination of winter.

Had an isobar moved 50 miles toward the shore the rain pounding down outside would have passed through an arctic cold front and piled up as snow.

But it’s coming down as water, the air is in the forties and fog is drifting across the streets. Large drops are dissolving snowbanks that used to tower up to second-story windows.

My standards of meteorological neatness are quite high - if we can’t have lovely banks of puffy (easy to shovel) snow surrounding us then it’s just as well to have done with it.

Raindrops strike the brick sidewalk outside the glass doors beside my seat. The intensity waxes and wanes, cells are moving by above the city, the tap runs from closed to open and then back to closed.

I’m working on a new tango. It’s at a stage where I can take a step back to see how it feels as a unit. Having a foggy, rainy, slightly clammy night to stalk through helps clear my mind.

A beer and the excellent sauteéd Brussels sprouts make a difference too.

I suppose I’m ready for the season to change. Time to shed a layer of skin (going to the gym will help that too) and see what patterns I’m showing this year.

Strange Days, Stranger Nights

Taking a moment to have a drink and catch up with this blog. We were hit with what would last week have been a serious storm - tonight it's only the precursor to a really, REALLY big storm.

I'm glad to say that I've finished my first new piece since Eckart died. It's a bit of a mash up - but it works well and I rather like it. The orchestration is in the works - but it's fun.

Tomorrow - or later tonight - the REAL storm will hit and we're going to decide if we open late or not. Either way we're going to do it. I love it.

Another reminder of the loss of my friend - besides talking through my fears I would be constantly pestered about my dreams. He was a strong proponent of dream theory; his training as a logotherapist gave him all sorts of interpretive tools to help people use their dreams to delve further into the center of their selves.

So here is the dream from two nights ago.

I remember being invited to Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner at the New England saltbox of a family that were friends of mine. Several musician friends were adult children of the family, the parents were my mentors in theatre and publishing music.

The "kids" had an old boat on the grounds to play in - I remember looking out the window at sunset - and at everyone having fun playing "boat". I helped set the table, opened the wine, made myself useful instead of joining my friends outside. The music from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", the Bricusse/Newley version, which is the reason I decided to commit to being a composer, was playing in the background.

I remember being polite and totally detached from the family feeling. Very typical. The Wizard of Oz was playing as well - I remember walking through Woodford's Parks back home and pretending to be in the movies as I walked through the woods and gardens, desperate to keep the magic I was feeling in my head intact so I could leave the park and deal with my life.

My guitarist friend has asked me to help him unload his truck into a downstairs entrance of a building near the old fire station (Station 5) on Boston Ave., where I learned to play pool when I was in First grade.

There was a long electric keyboard being unloaded into the back room space of a school, run by an evangelical church - my guitarist friend was part of the worship band but was something of a "four corner", hired to anchor the band. I set the piano up and crept to listen at the doors of the classrooms, at how disorganized and thoughtless their music lessons were. The rooms were dusty, barely lit.

I exited through the office, the secretaries mortified that I was there - apparently I was a known quantity - or at least my theology was.

It was a sunny Summer day, and I looked up to see all my friends, the accordion player, her sister, the bass player, the violinist, the guitarist, the mentors, all of them in a Sikorski helicopter, turning arabesques in the sky over my head.

They all clearly smiled and cheered at me, waving like they really cared.

And I remember thinking that I had to decide that either they were making fun of me or just being kind and loving. That answering that question was the most important thing in the universe - and that just knowing that decision faced me was enough to make me smile.

And THAT, my dear readers, is why I miss Eckart so much - he would be able to help me figure it out for myself. I suppose I'll have to.

How strange.

Despite the Magic Sometimes the Monsters Come Anyway

So, let's talk about Clarke's Law, little boys and the monsters that drag you away.

Clarke's Law is a law of cultural inequality and it explains a lot of history. It states that "any technology sufficiently advanced will look like magic to less-advanced observer".

This is how Cortez and Pizzaro were able to defeat civilizations outnumbering their soldiers by millions to one. If you think you're dealing with gods and magic then you've put yourself at a disadvantage that may not be recoverable.

That idea of magic is in my life today. Since losing Eckart I've prepared for the moment when his son will ask why his father smoked while in the knowledge it would hurt him - and what does that mean about how his father felt about those around him?

It will be a slightly magical answer - I won't know it, won't understand it.

It is slightly bad magic - the mystery of why he smoked (and we all have things like that in our lives - more on mine in a moment) is part of a bad magic that took him away.

It is countered by good magic - the love and connection that we all shared - still share, though our experience of Eckart is different now - is something we don't understand and can't explain.

So I call it Magic. Like all good stories there is good and bad and sometimes people can learn to harness it and use it in both ways. It's a choice. That's not magic - I hope it's not. It's a choice.

Sometimes my own bad magic takes me over. I get sudden, overwhelming panic attacks sometimes, especially when I'm dancing with friends. With strangers, no problem (mostly I'm nervous about perceived wardrobe malfunctions).

Most of the time I just accept that that's what's going on in my heart and head, I go for a walk, cry it out, sit and breathe or just stand at look at the stars and it passes.

Most of my friends understand and accept it, give me space and still love me. Some people I know try to take advantage of it - I just watch them bluster and don't expect them to be there in any real way.

And often I'd go to chat with Eckart about it. Sometimes for sympathy, mostly just to acknowledge that I'm wired that way and it's the price, I think, for my creativity.

But tonight the bad magic came. I realized, as I sat in my apartment, just up from Maine Ballroom dance, where I'd just left after a record fast 90 second appearance, I realized that he wasn't there to talk there anymore.

That's a different magic than just losing him, a real blow. It was baking a loaf of bread and having no place to set it to cool, no one to share it with.

So I took a breath and headed back to dance with my friends. Good magic.

I think I'm ready if that young boy wants to talk about his dad now. We are all mysteries in some ways - we don't know what's going on and since we don't have explanations we have to depend on magic in certain ways.

In many others we're very clear and engaged in the science of our lives.

But sometimes it all comes down to magic.

Blizzard Watch/Snow Day

Hello.

Can anyone here me?

Hello.

Oh - there you are.

... and tonight I'm at Geno's - two energetic young ladies, strippers from Portland's home-grown burlesque scene; J.R. himself, on the phone giving out booking info to a band from Boston; myself, getting out of the apartment to see the effects of the storm on my beloved little town.

And it is quite a storm. I awoke this morning and got to the Orchard in good order only to have it shut down at Noon. Since then I've been relaxing and chilling out (strangely) - should be writing music but just too scattered.

That's been the pattern. If you've been following me on Facebook you know that my best friend Eckart passed away suddenly of a heart attack just before Thanksgiving.

Since then I feel I've been off balance in some ways, more connected in others.

It feels like I'm in some kind of artistic limbo, it's become very hard to see any one particular project to completion, at least projects that don't have specific deadlines.

At the same time my enjoyment of my work in the Orchard has gotten more and more intense. I really like working there.

I'm part of a community - actually part of several communities.

Work has friends, new ones and old ones, people I've seen and worked with every day for almost two and a half years. I've never known a group of people this well before, it's very strange. I know personal things, professional things, have given and taken correction and comment and not let my natural feelings of immediate threat take me over.

My connections to the tango community have grown - well, as much as I ever manage to grow in a social group. I still don't get invited to parties and still can wander off into my own deep, almost autistic place when watching dancers. It freaks people out but it's worth it to experience such deep joy in listening, writing and dancing.

And my relationships with Eckart's family have grown.

I have people to talk to and, more importantly, people to listen to.

If all this was just watching what went along and not communicating in two directions then it would be unbearable.

I suppose I need to sit down and apply myself to get music written - I also need to think about where all of it is going, because I know what I'm writing is going in some direction - but what that direction is is totally a mystery.

I like mysteries and am OK with not knowing the final outcome of the things I do.

You get a present.

Is it more fun to look at the pretty wrapping, run the taste of anticipation over your tongue over and over?

Do you like seizing the box, shaking it, pulling the ribbons, ripping the paper?

Is it more about looking at the gift, trying it on?

Or do you get off on writing the thank-you notes?

Or do you do all of then?