Category Archives: Human Nature

Longing for Home

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photoMany years have passed since I first had reason to recognize that Home was not a built structure or even a location but a state of mind, a condition of the heart. It becomes associated with places by virtue of the happiness that embraces us there and also to the degree of intensity with which we are cared for and loved by the people of that place. The beauty of this characteristic is that Home can become portable when we are able to revisit those people or that contentment and security, belonging and joy, wherever they go, even in memory at times.photo

The complication therein is that the more places become Home, the more ways I can feel Homesick.

I will never complain of this any more than I would of any other pleasure or privilege, even when they fill me to the point of bursting–can anyone ever truly be surfeited with happiness? But there are times, perhaps those happy times most of all, when my reverie strays down all the pretty paths that lead to those many beloved locales and times where and when I’ve felt most accepted, at ease, at peace. My heart follows, soaring over all the lands and seas and resting where it will: in the arms of loving and hospitable friends and towns and favored hideaways and palaces I’m privileged to know as Home. It’s not that I can’t be contented where I am, it’s that the well of contentment runs so deep that every aquifer offshoot of it eventually leads my thought and memory back to other greatly loved locales. photo

It can happen at the edge of the crashing January ocean, beside a crackling fire, on an island-hopping ferry-boat, in the midst of sweeping farmland fields, or in the center of some sizzling, jazzy, noisy city. When I feel it, my breathing speeds up just a little and my heart’s singular syncopation becomes more pronounced and I might feel just the slightest sting of salt cutting at the corners of my eyes. Suddenly there is that tingling, that sub-sonic hum, that says I am at Home–and this is how I can invoke a rooted joy that echoes back to me with whispers of welcome in so many marvelous parts of the world.

I have been genuinely at home in the immensity of an ancient forest and on the flanks of a gleaming mountain; under the Gothic vaults of a cathedral, the low roof of a cozy suburban home, or under the spangled starry night-bold sky; among humble strangers whose language is worlds away from mine and in the arms of my dearest, closest and longest-known loved ones. Home, whatever and wherever it may be, is precious beyond words and missed in every atom of its forms at any moment when it is not near or I’m not in it.photo

What I could not imagine, all those years ago, was that I would find myself at home as well in a construct as much as in a constructed place. Yet here I am, posting letters daily to a family of people I may never even meet, and feeling as though I am in a kindly, hospitable place of heart and mind that tells me once again that I am Home. May you, too, who are reading this, always find–or make–yourself good homes in all the places that you can, whether in a graciously appointed house or in a soul-filling hermitage of your choosing; whether surrounded by the comforting presence of people who fill your days with delight or in the quiet retreat of your own contemplative corner–or right here, where you are always welcome to come and sit for a little while and chat and go by the name of Friend.photo

Art Imitates Life Imitating Art

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A little ditty I wrote when teaching drawing classes . . . graphite on black paperAye of the Beholder

Teacher mustn’t be too choosy,

Guiding student artists through

Projects in which they redo

The works of masters from Brancusi

to Vermeer or Frankenthaler

Or da Vinci; every student

Has a vision of what’s prudent

And what fails, as artist-scholar;

Though they may have witticisms

And have skill and wisdom plenty

As artistic cognoscenti,

Few have true twin criticisms–

Expectation must diminish,

Open-mindedness then flourish,

So the student brain can nourish

New great art from start to finish;

This is what the child of three meant

When she said no one had told her

That the Eye of the Beholder

Never met complete agreement:

Genius art is the dominion

Of the Artist, true; and yet, it

Is the critics, I regret it,

Who know Genius is opinion.digital drawing image

How not to Spend Your Bonus Day

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My two cents: some days are a bit of a tails-you-lose proposition, if only in the sense of lost time you’ll never get back . . .

I have two words for you: undesirable expenses. I’ll say right up front here that I am in no way comparing my day yesterday with those disasters of epic proportions in life, safety, health and happiness that are visited regularly on people around the world and even those in my own circle of love and acquaintance. So you already know, then, that I am still here to tell the tale and it’s only generalized annoyance and frustration at my own petty, less-than-optimal Happenings that make me even say it wasn’t the most glamorous and desirable way to while away the hours of that “extra day” we get every four years in the form of February 29, or Leap Day.

There are some people who claim that what happens on the 29th day of February is a sort of cosmic Freebie–it doesn’t count as real in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t actually exist, because after all the 29th of February doesn’t even appear calendars for three-quarters of the years of our lives. Of course, this idea of the day’s magical insubstantiality might be considered problematic by any of the people who on February the 29th are born, get married, win the lottery, or anything else they might consider a big Plus, if not essential. Maybe I should’ve planned my 29th better ahead this time around, just in case there was anything to the theory. But disregarding any potential Bonus inherent in the date, I did as I always do and scheduled/happened upon just another ordinary day of Being Me. Not that I find this practice in any way lacking panache and glamor, as I am after all quite the fantastic creature ‘as is’.

The only straying from my typical day was decided for me: a return visit to the local radiology center where I’d recently had my regularly scheduled mammogram. This was simply the first available date for my ‘reshoot’, and I took it. Arranging times for routine medical checkups is hardly routine, a sketchy business at the best of times, so when a scheduler says the magic words “I have an opening . . . ” I leap. Leap Day it is, then. I even showed up a little early, because who knows . . . . Should I have been worried that the first magazine I saw on the waiting room reading table in the Women’s Health Clinic was ‘Rifleman‘? No matter, I plunged ahead.

Thus I found myself sitting in the hallway between the time of being Ready for My Closeup and getting my radiological reading from the oracle-doctor, and thinking dimly about whether my worrier-self needed to be consulted. I slouched there looking at a wall that was quite blank except for the electrical outlet that was either winking at me conspiratorially or making grimaces of warning–I couldn’t tell which. This, at length, confirmed for me that I am either too jaded or too lazy to get worried about such things.graphiteHaving what is blandly termed “dense tissue”, I have probably had call-backs on at least 50% of my mammograms over the years. Auditioning actors might like callbacks, but I’m not such an enthusiast. Mostly, it means another half day of my precious life’s hours down the drain. So far the worst that has come from any of those callbacks were a few visits to a surgeon who aspirated collected fluid from persistent cysts, which while it’s another time-eater and not my first choice for a purely entertaining thing to do, is benign stuff. And I will certainly admit that I am glad someone cares enough about either me or my money to check up on my health from time to time. Even if I could figure out a handy way to do my own digital mammography ‘x-rays’ with a DIY home kit (my version would likely involve a non-stick frying pan, a bench vise, six disposable cameras, silly putty, and duct tape), I know from looking at the resultant tissue images yesterday that there’s not the remotest hope I could usefully decipher what looks to me like a grey interstellar cloud with a sparse constellation of teeny white fibroid stars in it. So I sat there in that hallway gazing without much thought at an electric receptacle.

It was, of course, a relief all the same that I had a perfectly happy diagnosis confirmation and no need to do further imaging or biopsies or aspirations. If I am to have aspirations I’d much prefer them to be for more impressive, productive or fun things than personal deflation. By the time I ran a couple of errands on the way home, there was a hefty chunk of the morning all siphoned right away and with very little to show for it but my one-page declaration of Negative (or Good) Results.

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Sometimes, when things are obviously entirely beyond my control I begin to feel like a seahorse out of water . . .

No matter, I had better things ahead. And indeed, the afternoon was a pleasant one, beginning with that telephone call from Mom S that led to yesterday’s reverie posted about the ambient music of the world, going on through the latter part of the chamber orchestra rehearsal I caught when I went to pick up my partner from his work with the players, and next leading to getting a few needful things done at home before we drove south for the evening’s church choir rehearsal. Indeed, I had put away my sense of tedium from the morning’s sitting-around and getting-pinched and sitting-around-again extravaganza and I was able to enjoy the evening’s rehearsal from my perch in the adjacent office while looking forward to a commute back home afterward, an hour or so to unwind, and then off to sleep away a longish day.

This was where things went a little off course. Literally. We were hardly on the freeway, heading wearily but contentedly home, when we caught the usual sight of many red taillights coming on as we approached the freeway construction zone downtown and prepared to get into a brief bottleneck. As we were both scanning ahead to see if the traffic seemed more backed up than usual, the cars all close together but not yet terribly slow, right in front of us appeared a very big piece of Something that could not possibly be avoided at freeway speed, let alone when it spanned the entire lane, was obviously made of metal, and was framed by cars whizzing right alongside us. No swerving, no amount of standing on brakes, and no wishful thinking could fix the situation, so drive right on over it we did. With a crunch and a clank. Whether it was a truck tailgate or a piece of construction scaffolding or something else was irrelevant: it was big, pointy, solid and Right There. Amazingly, the car jolted but never went off its straight line. The Tire Pressure light came on at the dashboard instantly, though, and we knew continuing forward was not optional.

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Whether getting fluid removed from oneself, being pressed to near-nothingness in a mammography machine, or seeing *all* of the air go out of a tire, one is always a little surprised at the Shrinking Feeling involved . . .

My fabulous chauffeur got us up the first exit ramp and our champion car hobbled up the street far enough that we could get off this busy city avenue and into a passenger drop-off zone outside a parking garage. All of the good things that could happen from there on in did happen, so I have to give credit to the kindness of the day that, first of all, we didn’t see the debris until it was virtually under us, so there was no time to tighten up and get any injuries from the jolt. That the car behind us that was also ‘hit’ also limped up the exit safely, passengers intact. A large group of men passing by as we got out to survey the damage stopped and offered to help us change our tire: not, it turned out on inspection, necessary or useful, because both right-side tires were deflated far more than I ever was after fluid aspirations. I’d never realized full-sized tires could get so tiny. The car-park structure had security guards, who kindly checked on our safety. We had a functional cell phone with programmed numbers and were able to call a pair of incredibly generous friends from the church choir, who came instantly to our rescue.

When our friends arrived, the men stayed to join forces with the tow truck operator who had answered the summons for help. We two women took the one functional car and dashed off to Love Field–the airport being the only accessible location where we could secure a rental car at that hour, and then only by a ten minute margin from closing time–and picked up a temporary replacement for our injured vehicle. Then we two caravanned back and convened with the men, who had been dropped off with our lame auto in the alley behind the local auto shop our friends recommended. Leaving our kind friends with our car keys and a commission to get the repair process started in the morning–and leaving a note crammed under the auto shop door–we finally headed back for home only a couple of hours later than planned. And still uninjured, unless you count a bit of a blow to our best-laid plans.

Will you be shocked if I say there was a flurry of very colorful colloquial language indeed in the confines of a certain little red rental car when we got on the road to drive home to our burrow and the ramp leading onto the northbound freeway was completely closed for construction, with no Exit Closed, no foreshadowing, no detour signs anywhere in sight? Some days are like that. Maybe I should be glad that so many of the hours of a less than ideal day were actually wasted away and gone forever. I should at least be glad we got home mostly unscathed, eventually. I know I am very glad, at the moment, that the 29th of February only shows up once every four years.

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Some days are clearly beasts of entirely another sort than the expected…

The Very Music of the Air

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My husband’s parents are longtime travelers and music lovers. In addition to being their son’s chief cheerleaders and supporters in his musical career from the beginning, they have always enjoyed listening to all sorts of other music, particularly jazz, and in that, particularly big band and swing music. They love live music and have gone many times on road trips to various jazz festivals over the years, and Mom called this afternoon with an enthusiastic review of their just-completed trip down to the Newport Jazz Festival. They don’t do any of this by halves: it’s a serious pack up the car and leave home expedition for these two, in this case a drive from east of Seattle where they live on south down the Washington corridor to Astoria (just over the Oregon border) to meet a couple of good friends at a restaurant before they trek their last couple of hours down the coast to Newport, Oregon where they stay for the festival. They attend a number of concerts and events every time, and this time opted for the additional festival closing candlelight dinner with its own live music. And of course, being Mom and Dad, they also took a couple of side trips to see an old friend (possibly younger than they are) who doesn’t get around as much, and to go a bit farther down the coast for an extra stay in a seashore place they love. And the centerpiece of the trip is, on these expeditions, certainly still the music–they take such contagious joy in the variety of performers and styles and pieces and concerts they hear each time and, I think, are fueled by them with a bit of a new lease on life each time too. Music does do that to us, as I might have mentioned once or twice in these posts . . .

digital drawing imageI think of all the lives that have been changed by music–and the music-makers who have changed the lives of us listeners who get to experience it–and am astounded yet again by the potency of this communal experience. What would it be like to [shudder!] have a world with no composers, no violinists, no Dave Grusin, no African drummers, no klezmer bands, no Ray Charles, no Elly Ameling, no Chinese opera, no Eric Clapton, no mariachi, no Baroque oboists, no ZZ Top, no reggae, ska or zydeco music, no Ella Fitzgerald, no oud or sitar, no Jussi Björling? An unimaginably dark place, that world, if you ask me!digital drawing imageI’m always immensely pleased to hear Mom and Dad have had another marvelous time out exploring and savoring the countryside. Of course there’s the simple delight in knowing they’re happy. But besides that, through these adventures of theirs they keep up with an enormous cadre of family and friends all over the country, take interest in a mind-boggling range of cultural and historical sites and sights along the way, admire the breathtaking breadth of the American landscape and its ever-changing character, meet and adopt fascinating people everywhere they go, dine at whatever local favorite watering-hole captures their imaginations, and come home to tell the tale and renew our interests in such things–either over the phone or, if we’re lucky enough to all be in the same part of the country at the same time, over dinner.

So much of this started in part as a response to their love of music and the pull it has to bring them across this sprawling land. I think of the composers, music theoreticians, and other artists and philosophers worldwide and over the years who have posited a cosmic musical scale, heard music in the ambient overtones of the atmosphere in which we exist, and built art and ideas around that in ways the speak to the inherent musicality of our existence. It’s entirely possible to conceive of the existence of something that very literally attunes us to one another and to the universe in which we exist, that urges us irresistibly to live in harmony somehow.

digital drawing imageWhether there is some quantifiable and empirical way of knowing and understanding this, I as a non-musician and madly un-scientific person can’t tell you fully. What I do know is that there is something so inherently compelling in music that almost all of us are drawn to its power in one form or another. And that there is plenty of good reason for us to attempt harmonious living of whatever kind we can, and if there is no other way to achieve such things I think that in music might very well lie the key to doing so.

Foodie Tuesday: My Crustacean Crush

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Who are *you* calling a Shrimp??? These here critters are Prawns, ma’am!

Living in north Texas, I realize we’re only a day’s drive away from the Gulf Coast, and stores and eateries here have generally plentiful provisions of Gulf Coast shrimp, catfish, stone crabs and other delicacies of the region to be sure. But I will admit to occasional bouts of longing for the profligate availability, in our former stomping grounds on the West coast, of those indigenous oceanic treats and northwest native water denizens with whom I grew up. The salmon and steelhead Gramps would bring us fresh from the Skykomish; the Dungeness crab caught that morning in the icy water of Puget Sound or sweet clams dug from the rocky coarse sand beaches of the Pacific Ocean, all right at our doorstep. The Alaskan runs of halibut and Copper River salmon being dashed down the coast from boat to table in a matter of hours. These are the delicacies on which I was weaned and cut my kitchen choppers, so to speak. Gulf Coast treats are a delight of their own kind, but neither should ever, could ever, supplant the other in anyone’s heart and mind and tastebuds.

So I indulge a little when I come across any of that home-reminiscent bounty of the sea and shore when I’m able. But I’m also working my way around the places in my newer home region that seem to proffer the authentic and fresh and well-crafted seafood known and loved by Texans and lake-landers and southerners, to learn more of what’s so great about what’s right here and what can be brought in that brings the oceans with it. Today needed to be a seafood day; either my heart or, at the very least, my tastebuds told me so.

On an ordinary Tuesday, I’m out grocery shopping in the afternoon, because my zookeeper husband, having a short turn-around time between when he gets home from Tuesday morning staff meetings and work at the church in Dallas and when he needs to be back at the university to do his final preparations for choir rehearsal there, has me drive him over and that gives me a convenient time with access to the car for the grocery expedition. Today wasn’t ordinary, though–having sung an extra-rigorous schedule  of rehearsals and performances of Theodora, the Collegium singers had earned a break from today’s usual rehearsal time. Since his schedule today included useful and necessary meetings with at least three or four different parties during the day and a significant reception event in the evening, all in Dallas, and since most of my partner’s administrative and score-study work can be done at or from any of his three current office spaces (school, church and home all having library materials, keyboards, computers and telephones), it’s an all-day Dallas day.

While we could, of course, have brought our lunch, it offered an opportunity for us to go to a place known for its seafood and indulge the whim a bit. So that’s what we did. Truluck’s–where I confess we’ve not yet tried anything not particularly aquatic to eat other than a little salad–seems to me to treat their seafood with respect, and not try to disguise anything second-rate with overworked or over-complicated distractions. So the fresh prawns in the first shot, their “Shrimp Cocktail“, is nothing but five massive prawns cooked, chilled, and served in their own stainless cauldron over billowing dry ice (that looks remarkably like the dish was shipped straight from Cawdor) with a couple of wedges of lemon and a hearty spoonful of brain-clearing horseradish cocktail sauce. It’s entirely possible that anyone wishing to do so could eat this supposed cocktail with some of the house bread and butter and leave fully replete and contented. But one has, after all, passed the display tank in the entrance on the way to one’s table, and the crustaceans there waved their antennae and claws ever so coyly and winsomely . . .

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…with a friendly ‘Howdy Do’ to all and sundry…

. . . so, clearly it would be rude to ignore the invitation and bypass a further dish. The dish of choice: a bowl of the house Lobster Bisque, as creamy and unfussy and redolent of the rosy lobster as one could like, and studded with a few very nice hunks of mild and tender lobster meat lazily rafting around in the foamy pool. The soup is poured into the bowls tableside, over a good dollop of goat cheese, and having that nice bit of mild zing gradually melting into the soup so that it intermittently brightens the mellow, cayenne-tinted warmth of the broth and balances the lovely bit of cognac (or is it sherry?) just barely sweetening the pot–well, it’s all finally melded into a slurry that goes down a treat on top of those recumbent prawns now nestled neatly in one’s happy stomach.

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Creamy and dreamy.

I’m still looking forward to the next time out on the coast and eating Cheri’s inimitable clam chowder (no one else’s anywhere has come close yet) at the 42nd Street Cafe, or wild-caught King salmon straight off its cedar roasting plank, or taking ridiculously big forkfuls of Dungeness crab drenched in melted butter and washing them down with a glass of some nice, crisp, dry Washington Riesling . . .

Of course, there’s all of that seafood beckoning to me from the vast array of countries and cities and restaurants and home kitchens full of good sushi and curries, gravlax and dishes alla Pescatore and, oh, oh, ohhhhh . . . .

Old Lady up a Tree

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Ha! You thought I was talking about some girlfriend of that guy who lurked in the tree outside Grandma’s window. You may be excused for thinking I’m the equivalent of my own imaginary friend, in fact, but yes indeedy I did climb a tree today. Sometimes it’s good to be a crazy old bat. Here’s why I did it:

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The backyard tree was calling my name . . .

I mean, really. If you had this Bradford flowering pear tree glowing at you through the kitchen window, could you have resisted? Granted, there was also a squirrel-decimated finch feeder glaring from its branches, and removing the skeletal remains from sight seemed like rationalization enough, if I needed any, but the pear trees are unsure we actually had a winter, and so both our front and backyard pears are not only bursting into bloom a tad early they are starting to leaf before the blooms are even fully open, and getting just a little ahead of themselves, as I often do too. It’s not especially sunny today, but pretty warm, and who wants a ladder when it feels like springtime? It may be apropos that from up there I had a nice view of the sweet cedar bat house I’d mounted in the adjacent red oak, but I think a tiny bit of tree-climbing may also have cleared a few of the bats from my own belfry, or at least knocked out a cobweb or two.

You might even wonder why I’d be looking out the window all that much when it’s grey and overcast and kind of, well, lackluster in the great and brown-grassy out of doors here in the first place. Here’s why I did that:

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The little patio nursery is awakening . . .

You could ignore this? Me, I just have to look every few minutes or so just in case the sprouts are suddenly eight inches taller. It could happen. See those adorable little fine-haired leaflets? The dainty little red stems on what I will assume are the sprouts of beetroot plants?

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The charmingly incorrect way I have of throwing everything in together and planting at the same time, same depth, same channel ought to at least entertain me . . .

No one who hangs around this blog for the briefest length of time will mistake me for an orderly, proper, or logical gardener. But I love my mad-scientist fun in yard and garden and the often profligately rewarding things the dirt gives back without regard for my deserving. I was going to say, “my deserts”, but you might easily mistake me in this instance for plotting an entire property full of nothing but cacti, given last year’s Texas drought, my stated intent to move toward a fairly solidly xeriscaped property, better water management, prairie-native plants, succulents, and all of that sort of thing. And I do plan all of that in the long term. But it won’t stop me from, say, planting a few things here and there that mightn’t be strictly ideal for the situation, because I do have that experimental urge and my wildly impractical loves. So yes, I did go ahead and put in a few orange and white tulips in the planters out front, thank you very much. And here’s why:

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The yard--front and back--thus far boasts some fantastic trees (and the two little sticks, one of which you can barely discern here centered on the porch, that I intend to raise into trees eventually), but there's not a lot more to commend it . . . yet . . .

I have my ambitions. Not least of them is to get proper drainage around the house perimeter and evict the hopelessly useless and rarely attractive lawn in favor of paths and planting beds and places that would invite the local bees and butterflies and birds and the greenbelt denizens from out back to come and linger, and the eyes and hearts of visitors to find pleasure. All of this, in place of dull hard St. Augustine “grass”; having lived in temperate climates I find I can’t quite call this scratchy variegated-brown stuff by the honorific reserved for something a lot kinder underfoot and a lot more able to thrive on its own than what we’ve got now. I like to believe I can make a bit of a change for the better! It’ll take a lot of resources, but I have hope. Here’s why:

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In an earlier time and place I went from a similarly "low maintenance" yard (don't you just adore Realtor Speak!) of mostly unhealthy grass and stumpy evergreen shrubs yard to something nicer in only a couple of years . . .

I think you can get a hint of the Why, no? Granted, that was a west-coast climate very friendly to all manner of plants from just this side of tropical (I did grow a banana tree as an annual out back) to alpine. But I’m optimistic that with the right ingredients, a bit of effort and plenty of imagination, I will be able to transform, if slowly, this place too. I may not achieve the lushness of my temperate garden, but I look forward to something a bit more dramatic and inviting. Here’s why:

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The neighborhood wasn't honestly the most upscale, but given the growing climate, I finally decided Parkland wasn't *entirely* a misnomer for it either . . .

This photo was taken less than two years after the whole property had been bulldozed. I dug up and salvaged a number of the rhododendrons and other shrubs, and of course the magnificent Douglas-fir off camera to the right held its ground (after the arborist gave it some tender loving care following its attack by lightning!), but the rest was a big scraped-off dirt pile. So I’ve seen what dirt can do. I’m going to go on believing in what it’ll offer until and unless it proves otherwise. Then you can all say I was just out of my tree.

Oceans of Music

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photoRecent weeks have seen our household in full music immersion. The casual observer or fly on the wall might be rather skeptical of the claim, when our home–other than occasional brief bursts of singing from my partner’s office while he’s studying a score–is, if anything, more silent than usual. That’s simply because the music is mainly taking us both elsewhere. And thanks to our practice of managing a one person/two places of employment, one car household economy by means of my sometimes chauffeuring him between gigs and staying through on the sidelines when possible, I get to share in the musical inundation.

It’s no surprise that a conductor, especially one who works in one of the largest university music programs on the continent and therefore has colleagues and students almost beyond the counting who offer musical rehearsals and programs well worth our sharing from morning until late every day right alongside and overlapping his own, would be so surrounded by sound. The Anglican church where he’s currently serving has, in addition, the average Sunday in which the choirs he conducts will sing anthems, Psalms and liturgical service music at two full morning Eucharistic services and one Evensong. All of this is, in fact, hardly unique among conductors, many of whom like him also do guest conducting, clinics and lectures and all of the adminis-trivia that accompany choral, educational, ecclesiastical and institutional operations everywhere. I’m still often astounded at what he manages to do, not only logistically but with continued thoughtful musical scholarship and grace.

And always, always, I am moved to gratitude that I’ve had the incredible good fortune to link my life with his, this person whom I not only like and love but also admire immensely for his integrity, artistry and good humor. On top of all this, I get to Go Along for the Ride and listen to it all.

So as things have gained momentum on the calendar chez nous (as they do cyclically in every household), I have been privileged to bathe in oceans’-worth of music to please my ears, to challenge my thinking, rejoice my heart, soothe my sorrows, ease my weariness, shake my complacency, and rock me gently on sonic waves of peace and beauty. I could do with a little more of that household silence, not to mention free time or sleep, and we can safely assume my spouse would welcome these ten times as eagerly. But I can’t think of what I’d willingly cross off the list from among what we’ve been hearing in the last number of weeks.

I always love listening in on rehearsals, whether with groups my husband’s conducting or otherwise, in part for the wonderful music I hear and in large part because, as a non-musician myself, I can enjoy nearly any music more if I’ve not only listened to it a few times to become more familiarized but, especially, if I’ve gotten a sense of what the singers and/or players are being told about the work–its origins, history, style, particular complexities, and so forth–and are being asked to do with it musically and interpretively. Each group of artists converges at an entirely different point in time in the performing arts, each and every time they rehearse or perform, because in addition to gradually improving or changing skill levels and building affinities with the works in question, they each bring different degrees of their daily condition with them for the occasion: health, attitude, and the news of the last hour may color a performance and endanger or enrich it accordingly. All ages and levels of skill and experience and passion can have ‘off’ nights onstage or, conversely, magically exhilarating moments of unsurpassed attunement, somehow, with the universe.photo

I love actual performances, too, of course, where the high drama of potential crash-and-burn or apotheosis resides in every second of the concert, the recital, the act. The power that emerges from the performers nerving themselves and plunging wholeheartedly into the moment is a splendid spectacle and can transport us all to other places and planes. Not having the performance skills myself (nor the will or self-confidence to develop them as necessary), I am all the more aware of what’s at stake and how nearly incredible it is that great things come out of the effort so often. And, of course, that much more appreciative that there are those who can and will share such gifts with the rest of us.

What the last weeks have brought have included a huge range of such gifts. There was an outstanding high school choir whose fine conductors invited my husband to do an evening’s clinic with the singers on literature they’re preparing for a choral competition. Such joy and energy and responsiveness filling the room! Then, some of his sopranos and altos from one of the university choirs singing the lovely and yes, alluring ‘Sirènes‘ of Claude Debussy as guests on a university orchestra concert, calling all of us listeners to wreck our souls on the dangerous promontories of their imagined seashore. Two performances of the uni Symphony Orchestra in a showcase of some of the school’s powerhouse players, including a recently acquired, fabulous violinist who gave a mesmerizing performance of the Allegro moderato of Tchaikovsky‘s violin concerto (Op. 35) each time–once on campus, then at the Texas Music Educators’ Association conference 5 hours’ road-trip south, where if I weren’t musicked up enough lately I certainly could (and did) dive in among the over 25,000 musicians in attendance at the convention.

There was a delightful performance by a doctoral conducting student with his recital choir. Lots of rehearsals and warmups and services with the church choirs, including lovely works by William Byrd, Morten Lauridsen, Gregorio Allegri. Rehearsals with the university Chamber and Collegium (early music) choirs going on as always, and new ones beginning with the combined singers from Collegium and Dr. Jerry McCoy‘s outstanding A Cappella Choir whom my partner was preparing for performances of George Frideric Handel‘s oratorio ‘Theodora‘ under the baton of Maestro Graeme Jenkins of the Dallas Opera, along with the university’s Baroque Orchestra. Ash Wednesday was a road-tripping adventure, with the two of us working at home in the morning, heading to Dallas for him to warm up and conduct the choir in the noon Ash Wednesday service at the church, dashing back to the university for his afternoon Chamber Choir rehearsal, then back to Dallas for the 6 pm service and a following weekly choir rehearsal before going home back north for the night. But oh, so much lovely music sandwiched in between car races!

That was followed by Thursday and Friday nights’ ‘Theodora’ performances–3 hours of ecstatic music about agonizing trials, or good old life-and-death oratorio drama of Handel’s best sort–and then, yesterday’s Metropolitan Opera broadcast of ‘Ernani’, which I told you about in last evening’s post. Squeezed between concerts and rehearsals, a few pauses while at home spent on listening to a Canadian rock CD (yes, pretty listenable!) I just got as a comp for letting the musicians use my art for their CD cover, and especially on stealing bits of time to revisit our nephew’s punk band Honningbarna when I can. Upcoming is, oh, just more of the same: more beautiful liturgical music-making at the church; more rehearsals, recitals, and concerts at school and in town; another major musicians’ conference; the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, opera at the university and perhaps the One O’Clock Lab Band (the university’s top, Grammy-nominated Jazz ensemble), if we can somehow manage the time for it. Holy Week services (about 8 in 5 days, counting only the ones my husband’s conducting). More of the same.photoAnd yet it is music: never quite the same thing twice, nor the same experience of it. Always powerful, always waking up parts of me that I may have forgotten or not even known were there to be awakened. A constantly changing stream of sound-waves that in turn, become oceans of music to buoy me up, toss me around, pull me in, and carry me far, far away.

All that Glisters is Not Gold, but If It’s Shiny It’s Good Enough for Me

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Miss Magpie here, reporting for duty. I have been out and about doing errands and chores, being an everyday sort of person in my everyday sort of way, but as always, I am in a constant state of watchfulness, snapping to attention at the slightest glimmer of a sun-ray zinging off the corner of the windscreen, the flicker of movement that snags my eye (ouch!) on a brilliant yellow weed wildflower (and yes, Steve, it was tiny but beautiful), the broad gleam of a hawk’s white underside lighting up like a beacon as he banks away from the sun over our ravine.

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Some things, like this golden gilt cockerel weathervane, are clearly made to dazzle us . . .

While I harbor my exceedingly childlike admiration for the wonderful works of intentional glamor and glitz without any hesitation, I am all the more moved by those things that through their very nature or some moment of perfect serendipity become jeweled treasures to be savored every bit as deeply and wildly. The crinkled aluminum foil from last week’s roast (seen here) becomes in my eyes a stolen bit from the vault of the Crown Jewels; the bottom of an empty jar and its creased shadow on rough concrete is transformed into an alchemist’s beaker bearing a mystical, nearly invisible elixir for eternal romance.

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One sip, and I am transformed into an otherworldly being . . .

Even the most mundane of things can–and should–be able to become beautiful to one with a practiced magpie eye. Thankfully, those around me have patience while I crouch at the curb picking up bits of broken glass and shreds of steel that have fallen off of passing vehicles (probably spaceships, to be sure), while I lag behind on a walk to pick up opalescent beetle-wing shields and bent pins and uselessly blunted coins. And the smallest scrap of Japanese tea-chest paper or damaged disposable pie tin or leftover curling ribbon, the parts from a broken watch, keys and candy-wrappers and bits of metallic thread–these have no need of monetary weight, if they can spur the heart to visit places it’s not gone before.

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The value of shiny and golden things is not always intrinsic but arises from what can be imagined about them, dreamed about them, hoped . . .

Sackcloth and Ashes

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Contortionists all are we . . .

More Fun to Hate than Mediate

How we do love to boil our blood

And wrestle into controversy

Things that once were small and slight,

Warranting more, sure, our mercy

Than our spite or fear or ire,

But our desire to scream and swoon

Out-reaches wisdom to require

Tempests in every old teaspoon

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No amount of prettifying attempts can cover our darker selves . . .

 

Rough around the Edges

In the hearts of faithful men,

Sacred or not in path, a yen

For self-fulfillment will arise,

And if successful, choose a guise

Pretending prophethood and care,

Made up with clothes and wavy hair

And social graces and faint wealth,

To steal the souls of all by stealth;

Little is so rank and smelly

As to be a Machiavelli

Covered with the smooth veneer

Of love, charisma—to appear

Compassionate and selfless when

Inveigling your fellow men

Under a banner of religion—

Never was the night so Stygian

As when worlds were overthrown

Not for God’s sake but for men’s own,

And all while silkily insisting

Disagreement or resisting

Constitute cruelty and treason

Against goodness, faith and reason—

All while perpetrators ate

The fruits of conquest, greed and hate.

 

Foodie Tuesday: Inner Beauty

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Holy Basil--Ocimum tenuiflorum--Batman!

There are nearly as many food aphorisms and adages as there are things to eat. Or not to eat. Humans have long sought specific herbs, seeds, barks, flours, shellfish, eggs, and much, much more for the decoctions and concoctions made of them as treatment or cure for far more than starvation. Theories abound regarding what is and isn’t healthful and when and why and for whom, and they swing from one extreme to another at the drop of a spoon. The only fairly dependable approach, it would seem, is to listen to one’s own body. Not such a bad thing to do, in any event, but remarkably rare among the extreme advocates of numerous dietary practices, for whom their personal insights and experiences become a matter of faith.

Indeed, faith (as expressed in religions) has long been a significant factor in shaping what is deemed good or ill at table. Religions often determine what their adherents consider healthful or horrible, sacred or profane. Many religions require strict practice of particular dietary laws, from veganism to vegetarianism to specifying what meats or fruits one may or may not eat and how they must be prepared and in what season they may be embraced. My own beliefs about foods are far less religion-driven–as you can probably tell from my food-related posts here, anyway–but I don’t think religious strictures are any more or less perfect or questionable than dietary practices developed by most other means. I would no more knowingly offend anyone’s religious dietary practices than tell them they should eat foods they’re deathly allergic to or that they must like or dislike the same food and drink as I do. And let’s just be honest here: if others say No Thank You to something I like, then there’s more of it for me!

But what is on my food-crazed mind on this particular day is the practice of finding what foods suit one’s own particular health and happiness. Aside from any laws and limitations, and of course availability and accessibility, we must make constant choices about what to eat. Nearly as long as humans have eaten with any deliberation, any sense of knowing what will kill them or preserve their lives, they have also looked at foods as capable of qualifying the degree of health and well-being they enjoyed.

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Love-Apple or Deadly Nightshade?

Tomatoes, perhaps because they are members of the Solanum clan, the nightshades, were considered poisonous in some places (including North America) long after other places’ cuisines were safely and even happily employing them as food. Consciously or not, we all revisit the notion of a comestible‘s safety and health-enhancing properties rather constantly, choosing those things whose tastes we prefer or that make us feel new-and-improved in any way, and avoiding those that give us heartburn, nausea, gallbladder attacks, the Wind, loss of hair, loss of appendages, dropsy, dyspepsia or excessive whimsy. (Well, masochists aside, at least.) Herbalists and nutritionists teach us the known and purported characteristic effects of pretty much everything that can be chewed or swallowed. And ultimately, all I can do is try to learn from my own body what it does and doesn’t want or need.

That’s not to say that I will always do what I believe is best for my health and welfare, by any stretch of the imagination. And you know I have one.

What I want is to feel good. And sometimes stuff that’s not necessarily guaranteed good for me makes me feel good.

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Dear Verbena, let me be candid: I may be a little lipophilic, but I'm no radical . . .

It’s really quite amazing what the things we eat and drink can do to us, in us and for us. And I’m not just talking about pharmaceutical effects. Necessarily. See, lunch affects how we feel until dinner, yes, but there’s also the general effect on mood and attitude, on what we see when we look in the mirror, on whether we feel healthier and happier or more impressive in any way. Part of me wants to believe that if I just ate the right stuff I actually would look fabulous in my long-ago orange fake-fur trench coat. That I would be suddenly as smart as I’ve always thought I was and solve all the problems of the world. And of course, that I would be the most spectacular version of myself possible and live that way for another half-century or so at least.

But really, I’m just happy when I figure out what pleases my inner workings and makes me feel pleasantly sated and really ready for whatever the next few hours bring. Oh, and doesn’t make me break out like I’ve reverted to my teens. I’ll get back to you when I’ve developed the perfect diet for all humanity. All I know so far is that it has lots of butter, salt, and chocolate in it. And that it guarantees a certain degree of both inner peace and vigorous smiling when taken regularly and judiciously.

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. . . meanwhile, back in my orange trench coat days . . .