A Whiff of Happiness
While all you two-legs types are mired
And wallowing in wintry fear,
I see spring’s hints and am inspired
To smell the happiness from here
What gain or merit mankind finds
In only frigid, dormant joy,
When you could wag those sad behinds,
Dance forward, every girl and boy—
Hold on to sorrow if you must,
While I lap up those thrills made dear
By breaking through the frozen dust:
I smell the happiness from here!
I’ve No Beef with Your Cultural Identity
Being a female or male Croatian
Is no more determined by your location
Than eye-color, height or weight, or sex is
By where you were born in the state of Texas—
But I will admit Texan regions do
Determine the skew of your barbecue,
And can also say, since it ain’t no tattle,
That many are mighty fond of cattle.
What shall I say when I am asked my opinion and I think it would be best not to give it? I feel a little like I should perform a circus act, give the impression of cheery appreciation while keeping the less charming truth to myself. Not a little, really–I think I’m actually quite the liar at heart when it comes to people asking for information I’m pretty sure they would not actually like to receive. There are indeed those who want an honest and purposeful breakdown of the situation in question, but they are in my experience rather few and far between. In real, day-to-day life, what people are generally seeking is reassurance and affirmation, encouragement and support, not really a critique, when they ask for opinions.
So excuse me if I put on my happy face and do a little tap-dance of diversionary niceness when asked. If it’s strictly entertainment you seek, I’m here for you and will do my little tricks as best I can, but I hope you won’t decide to ask me for any touchier information. The only thing I’ll willingly admit your pants make look big is my discomfiture on hearing the question.
Snaking Upward
I’m not a caterpillar, no,
I’m just a humble worm;
I have my aspirations, though
Ambitions make me squirm;
I like to keep a secret how
I wish for fame and wealth;
I know to climb’s not bad, I just
Prefer it done by stealth.
Rattlesnake Wannabe
I had such a grand week at the conference. The 11th through 15th of March was my spouse’s purported Spring Break from the university, but as so often happens, most of the week was filled up with work. In this instance, the work was exceedingly pleasurable, but as it was the conference of the American Choral Directors Association, it was, as are most tremendously enjoyable activities, exhausting. Two, three or four concerts a day, master classes, seminars and sessions of all sorts, wandering the exhibitors’ booths, networking and lots of socializing and late, late nights are all piled into the ACDA conferences. By the end of the week, going home sounded beautifully and truly welcome.
It might surprise some people to hear it, but by nature I’m an introvert, shy, and I used to have a fairly nasty perpetual case of social anxiety. Yeah, all that fun stuff. I spent a lot of years feeling scared and sick over every new meeting, every unfamiliar place or event. Luckily for me, there are such things as therapists, medications, and lots of family support and training. As a result, going to the various conventions, festivals and conferences that bring together the choral world from time to time has gone from what was, the first time I attended one with my then new husband, quite overwhelming and nerve-wracking to this last, which like its latest predecessors was a much-anticipated ‘family reunion’ with a great number of beloved friends and colleagues from all over the world.
So I certainly had a grand week. Meeting with longtime friends from various places we’ve lived, choirs my husband’s conducted, and from our school days, and with ever so many outstanding colleagues, we got to celebrate with them all over music, lunches and dinners, receptions, walks-about-town, drinks and quiet conversations. We laughed and hugged and chattered with current and former students, with composers and conductors and publishers and singers and players, so many friends, and it was all tremendous fun. It made for long days and for short sleeps, for incredibly dry eyes from staying up way too late and for teary eyes from amazingly sweet meetings, no matter how fleeting, with our long-absent dear ones. Stellar music performed by both friends and strangers moved me to both sniffling and silly grins (sometimes simultaneously). It made me as happy and full of love for music and friends and life as I can get, and it made me so tired I could hardly move ten of my cells at a time. And it made me look forward with great intensity to the splendors of home. There, I can relish in retrospect all the sweetness of the multitude of marvels granted by a superb week. And I can revel in Just. Plain. Being. Home.
The Duchess was inordinately fond of animals. Though her courtiers would never dare say so to her face, they imagined she ought to have been born a zookeeper, or at the very least a farmer. This idea was strengthened, especially, by the fact that it always fell to the housekeepers and servants to make the palace tidy enough for Her Ladyship’s dainty passage through life and to freshen the air when the royal menagerie had pranced, prowled or otherwise paraded through its rooms and left unseemly gifts along the way. The Duke, who was as allergic to all things animal as the Duchess was attracted, considered for some time whether he oughtn’t to have a team of expert taxidermists and artisans solve this problem once and for all, creating a large display of preserved zoological beauty that might be both lower maintenance and less powerfully scented than the living creatures populating his estate indoors and out, day and night.
Unfortunately, the Duchess’s sisters who lived in the east wing of the palace did not support the Duke’s enthusiasm for the design, making noises of disapprobation at least as loud as the Duchess’s favorite dogs’ barking or donkeys’ braying. Perhaps, the Duke thought, he had been a little incautious in discussing this artistic concept with his secretary while within earshot of the sisterly ladies-in-waiting, for they both appeared quite ready to dash off squealing with rage to their unsuspecting sibling, or at the least, to imitate the household fauna in some other impolite fashion.
As it fell out, the Duke, however incautious he may have been in heat of the moment, was not without the wit born of hard experience. Working swiftly with his retainers, was able to resolve the situation quickly and suitably merely by shifting the subject of the new art to a slightly different one featuring the Duchess and her sisters. As an added benison of this resolution, it was discovered that he wasn’t allergic to winged or four-legged pets after all. The palace staff found maintaining the menagerie surprisingly less onerous afterward as well, even with the added curatorial duties of dusting off the Duchess and polishing her sisters from time to time.
Fortresses
Wars build walls
On a foundation of
Corpses–
The evil and
The innocent alike–
And what do the walls
Keep in?
Keep out?
How is it that
Battles can be declared
Won or Lost?
For both sides die,
Both parties always
Somehow
Lose land and goods
And certainly, soul;
Starve in the snow or
Roast in the heat,
All the while watching
The world they knew
Reduced to ugly
Holes and rubble and
Its storied walls replaced
By a fortress that
Is really
Only a new prison
I Realize You were Only Doing
What Comes Naturally,
But I have to Scold You, My Pet
I know you only meant to make
A dandy first impression
By killing this whole crowd, but Jake,
Behold my grave expression–
For it is impolite, I think,
And maybe even naughty,
Recruiting everyone in sight
To play the role of Body–
Your nature calls you to the task,
I knew from your first GRRR!—
But some restraint gets less complaint
Than utter massacre.
I thank you that you rout the moles
And rodents by your labors,
Dear Jakey Boy, but next time leave
Your teeth out of the neighbors.
On the upside, the house next door is available now . . .
Practice as though Your Life Depended on It
Two singers strolled into a wood, and I
Followed the one less skillful; why?
Starved beasts will flock to an anguished cry,
As they did that day; in the wink of an eye,
I was on the road less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
[With sincerest apologies to Robert Frost]
That little old four-letter word Work has challenged the finest among us to test the limits of endurance, wisdom, hope and courage for as long as there’s been such a thing as a job on this planet. We agonize and weep over our work as though doing unspeakable heroics every single minute, even when we know perfectly well that every living thing has faced challenges of his, her or its own since the first moment there were, well, living things. It didn’t take employers and employees to bring this tension to full expression. If I think I’m sitting on a powder-keg just because I’ve tackled something that pushes me to my limits (or, to be more precise, because it has tackled me), it’s time to step back, take a deep breath, and remember my compatriots of every sort striving and struggling and facing greater odds than I have ever faced, accepting them as the inevitable price of existence.
Not that any of this contemplation has the remotest chance of making me stop thinking myself both the greatest martyr and the finest superhero at work on the planet. I only get the smallest momentary glimpses of sanity through the veneer of my regular distorted self-image as the silly person I am, after all. Even though I know that in my own version of ‘cat and mouse’ the tiniest mouse could best me in the flick of a whisker.
Art-Colored Glasses 