9:26 pm: I begin a blog post, writing this sentence:
“What if you decide that what you really want is to retire to New England, garden, meditate, and be left alone to play your musical instruments (at last), but you’re stuck in hot, insane Texas with 3 months of work to accomplish in three weeks, and retirement is at least 15 years away?”
9:28 pm: I pause to re-read it, and one of my students texts me: “Have you seen this moon?”
9:29 pm: I walk out my front door; big fat yellow moon, the kind you only see either in vast flat places, or over the ocean.
Thank you, Grasshopper.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Visualize Recovery
Fellow Humans:
I am a strong believer in the power of collective thought and collective energy.
The spill in the Gulf is an eco-disaster the likes of which we have never faced. It is easy to feel overwhelming despair when seeing the horrific photos of birds and animals and the relentless TV coverage showing the constant gushing of the well, and reading about the livelihoods ruined, the men who died and were injured in the blast, the irresponsibility of the corporate giants whose negligence caused this. For the average person who has little or no control over this, it is easy to feel almost panic-stricken. Panic, fear and despair are natural reactions to this situation, but those emotions are also the media’s stock in trade. Bombarded by the sight of these oily creatures and that hideous, constant Fox and CNN image of the oil jetting into the ocean magnifies the collective sense of powerlessness.
I am going to suggest an exercise in collective consciousness. We cannot plug the hole with our thoughts, of course, but I strongly believe that positive energy can affect healing processes and the efficacy of our actions and ideas. I do not mean that we should ignore what is happening – we cannot ignore it, and it demands our intense attention. We do not have individual control over the event, but we do have control over the type of attention we give to it.
I truly believe that a mass collective visualization of solution and recovery can affect the process, just as a mass collective panic and mental tailspin can affect the process negatively. So this is what I propose. Every day until this hole is plugged, at Noon ET, wherever you are, take three minutes of your lunch break to create a large mass of collective positive energy to counteract the media fear and panic. Sit quietly and visualize the cessation of the gushing mass of oil. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Visualize that it stops. Send positive energy to those engineers who are coming up with solutions, to the people who are saving as many creatures as they can, to the people who are cleaning up the coast. Send healing energy to the Earth, to the creatures being harmed and killed, to the people whose livelihoods are being ruined, and imagine the cessation of damage, harm, and killing.
Please join me in this. If you want to do this in groups, all the better. If you want to do it more than once a day, great. And it goes without saying that if the opportunity for any kind of remedial action is placed before us as individuals, even if it’s just bringing bottles of Dawn detergent down to a local charity that’s helping with the bird cleanup, then add your actions to your thoughts.
Please share this with all of your friends.
--Angela
"What counts is not the enormity of the task, but the size of the courage." (Matthieu Ricard)
I am a strong believer in the power of collective thought and collective energy.
The spill in the Gulf is an eco-disaster the likes of which we have never faced. It is easy to feel overwhelming despair when seeing the horrific photos of birds and animals and the relentless TV coverage showing the constant gushing of the well, and reading about the livelihoods ruined, the men who died and were injured in the blast, the irresponsibility of the corporate giants whose negligence caused this. For the average person who has little or no control over this, it is easy to feel almost panic-stricken. Panic, fear and despair are natural reactions to this situation, but those emotions are also the media’s stock in trade. Bombarded by the sight of these oily creatures and that hideous, constant Fox and CNN image of the oil jetting into the ocean magnifies the collective sense of powerlessness.
I am going to suggest an exercise in collective consciousness. We cannot plug the hole with our thoughts, of course, but I strongly believe that positive energy can affect healing processes and the efficacy of our actions and ideas. I do not mean that we should ignore what is happening – we cannot ignore it, and it demands our intense attention. We do not have individual control over the event, but we do have control over the type of attention we give to it.
I truly believe that a mass collective visualization of solution and recovery can affect the process, just as a mass collective panic and mental tailspin can affect the process negatively. So this is what I propose. Every day until this hole is plugged, at Noon ET, wherever you are, take three minutes of your lunch break to create a large mass of collective positive energy to counteract the media fear and panic. Sit quietly and visualize the cessation of the gushing mass of oil. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Visualize that it stops. Send positive energy to those engineers who are coming up with solutions, to the people who are saving as many creatures as they can, to the people who are cleaning up the coast. Send healing energy to the Earth, to the creatures being harmed and killed, to the people whose livelihoods are being ruined, and imagine the cessation of damage, harm, and killing.
Please join me in this. If you want to do this in groups, all the better. If you want to do it more than once a day, great. And it goes without saying that if the opportunity for any kind of remedial action is placed before us as individuals, even if it’s just bringing bottles of Dawn detergent down to a local charity that’s helping with the bird cleanup, then add your actions to your thoughts.
Please share this with all of your friends.
--Angela
"What counts is not the enormity of the task, but the size of the courage." (Matthieu Ricard)
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Poem
Last month I wrote a "placeholder" post stating that I had tried to write about the passing of my mother-in-law, but was unable to do so and gave up after a couple of tries. I said I would try again, but I doubt I could do any better than I could then. So instead, although I am not a poet in any way, shape, or form, I offer this poem, composed in my head while in the car on the way to the funeral and finished the next day.
While driving to a funeral
Bobby is gone, gone, gone beyond
Gate gate paragate
Parasamgate bodhi svaha
Her son at the wheel driving east
Rain is lashing at the windshield,
spraying up from the passing trucks
and while thinking of how we pass
from life into death, around us
life continues its circus
in the sheeting rain, driving wind
Massachusetts bumper stickers:
Obama is still President,
My Other Car is still a Broom,
Jesus Saves and the Yankees still suck
This my home state, and now, and now
One last journey to the North Shore
At least for reasons tied to blood
And bone, and the love of this man
And the others who share that blood
And how strangely appropriate
The blinding rain and shrieking wind
To sagas stories and plot lines
To complicated webs of past,
To layers of pride and of doubt
To all the love and the anger
Kneaded into the famous bread
And those who came to adulthood
In the eye of this hurricane
Each making their own peace with her
She was not my mother, and yes
I saw the complicated side
But I loved her for bringing him
Into the world in the first place,
And for what she wanted to be,
And for the things she tried to be,
And was, when clarity could cut
Through what had been handed to her.
A friend of mine once said to me
“One can be a difficult parent
And still be a great friend,” and
She was that to me, and it is
A terrible thing to witness
A heart beating in the shambles
That Alzheimer’s leaves in its wake--
So you will understand, when I
Saw the ashes mixed with earth, why
I spoke the mantra “gone beyond”
Gate gate paragate
Parasamgate bodhi svaha
the doorless doors of the Pure Land
do not require us to bring
All of our Stuff along with us
No eyes no ears no nose no mouth
No junk no faults no garbage, but
Just the cloudless blue sky of mind.
March 14, 2010
While driving to a funeral
Bobby is gone, gone, gone beyond
Gate gate paragate
Parasamgate bodhi svaha
Her son at the wheel driving east
Rain is lashing at the windshield,
spraying up from the passing trucks
and while thinking of how we pass
from life into death, around us
life continues its circus
in the sheeting rain, driving wind
Massachusetts bumper stickers:
Obama is still President,
My Other Car is still a Broom,
Jesus Saves and the Yankees still suck
This my home state, and now, and now
One last journey to the North Shore
At least for reasons tied to blood
And bone, and the love of this man
And the others who share that blood
And how strangely appropriate
The blinding rain and shrieking wind
To sagas stories and plot lines
To complicated webs of past,
To layers of pride and of doubt
To all the love and the anger
Kneaded into the famous bread
And those who came to adulthood
In the eye of this hurricane
Each making their own peace with her
She was not my mother, and yes
I saw the complicated side
But I loved her for bringing him
Into the world in the first place,
And for what she wanted to be,
And for the things she tried to be,
And was, when clarity could cut
Through what had been handed to her.
A friend of mine once said to me
“One can be a difficult parent
And still be a great friend,” and
She was that to me, and it is
A terrible thing to witness
A heart beating in the shambles
That Alzheimer’s leaves in its wake--
So you will understand, when I
Saw the ashes mixed with earth, why
I spoke the mantra “gone beyond”
Gate gate paragate
Parasamgate bodhi svaha
the doorless doors of the Pure Land
do not require us to bring
All of our Stuff along with us
No eyes no ears no nose no mouth
No junk no faults no garbage, but
Just the cloudless blue sky of mind.
March 14, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Undergraduate Saga: Installment 1
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my experience as an undergraduate, and I’ve decided that writing about it might be, oh, cathartic. Not sure why it’s coming up now – it was over thirty years ago, and I thought it was all behind me. Interestingly, it is the period of my life that I talked the least about to my therapist during my billion years of therapy, so that may explain a lot. Then recently, a colleague of mine asked me “what path I had taken” academically to get to the place where I am now, because she wanted to advise a student. My advice to the student: don’t try this at home.
So, this is my Undergraduate Saga; a kind of mental spring cleaning, if you will. Since I know many of my own students read this, I will describe it as a cautionary tale, or how NOT to conduct your undergraduate career. It may be hard to imagine your crusty old professor having these experiences, but believe me, I am not making this up.
My high school graduating class had something like 350 people in it. I excelled academically in high school, and for reasons that had mostly to do with the fact that I was the lead singer and keyboard player in a local rock band and was always singing in high school shows, I was voted class musician. My audition at the large northeastern university where I did my undergrad work, however, was a disaster. I had studied classical piano as a kid, but for the 4 years or so previous to my audition I had mostly played popular music and mostly by ear, in addition to playing guitar, singing in the concert choir at school, and singing in the aforementioned rock band. I took some brush-up lessons with my choral director, Mr. Wrinn, and then drove over to the university to audition, with my high-school-boyfriend along for moral support. No one greeted me. I had no idea where I was going. I have no recollection of filling out any forms, no recollection of anything, really, except waiting outside the studio, petrified. I played my half-baked Mozart sonata for three European conservatory-trained musicians. After I had played, they asked me (with barely concealed disdain) who had suggested that I come to audition. I was totally terrified, and frankly I don’t remember my answer. The two Germans then raked me over the coals for awhile with a bunch of technical questions while the British one sat quietly and said nothing.
Needless to say, I was rejected. I was devastated. When I got the official rejection letter from the music school, I left it lying on the table where my parents would find it, because I couldn’t tell them. My Dad found it, and the only thing he said to me was “I’m disappointed.” I wanted to die. I don’t remember my mother’s reaction, for some reason.
However, the University itself had accepted me with flags flying, because I was one of three valedictorians of my class. It was too late to re-activate my applications to the two small liberal arts schools to which I had applied, and anyhow, my parents had agreed to pay for the large state school, so that’s where I was going, music major or not. I went to the art department (I had taken 4 years of art in high school as well, and was pretty good), but they wouldn’t even look at a portfolio because the “deadline was past.” Thinking that perhaps I could get involved in some of the musical activities if I was at least a Fine Arts major, I declared as a theater major. This was, of course, daft.
Freshman orientation was hot, humid, and miserable. Back in those days, one’s parent dropped one off at Freshman orientation and said “See ya.” (I am still astounded by the current generation, who show up to auditions and orientations with their family and all sets of grandparents and then use their umbilical cell phones through the entirety of college. My theory is that their parents—my generation—still remember going into that freshman orientation all by themselves feeling as though they were walking into Mordor, and they don’t want their kids to experience that, so the pendulum has swung the other way.) At the initial meeting, they herded all the new College of Arts and Sciences kids into a huge auditorium, where some stuffed shirt gave us a speech that began with the sentence “If there’s anyone in this room who wants to get a job when they finish school, I suggest you leave this room immediately and go over to the next building where Computer Science is meeting.” And a warm welcome to you too, asshole.
On a brighter note, with my academic record, I was instantly accepted into the Honors College. At this particular school, acceptance into the Honors College meant that all the University’s core requirements were waived – you only had to take the courses required by your major department, and all the rest were electives. I was in hog heaven. Being a jaded old college professor now, it’s easy to forget how exciting a college course catalog can be for a freshman from Podunk High. I instantly signed up for two junior/senior level courses: Shakespeare and a course in Arthurian Legend, in addition to two introductory theater courses and probably something else that I don’t recall.
And then it was Fall semester. Within the first two weeks it became obvious that Theater was probably not my future. No surprise - my acting career had been limited to the chorus of the HMS Pinafore in 5th grade, a stage play in the 7th grade which I do not remember, and the senior show at my high school, in which I played Lois Lane and got inadvertently punched in the face during a rehearsal by Eddie Waskiewicz, who was playing Batman. One of our first assignments was to choose our favorite poem and deliver it from memory to the class. I thought it would be hilarious to do John Lennon’s poem “The Fat Budgie.” After all, everyone likes comedy, right? And I had been nearly thrown out of high school study hall one day for having uncontrolled hysterics while reading In His Own Write.
I have a little Budgie
He is my very pal
I take him walks in Britain
I hope I always shall
My Budgie’s name is Jeffrey
My Grandad’s name’s the same
I named him after Grandad
Who had a feathered brain.
He’s getting very fat you know
From eating far too much
If he gets any fatter
He’ll have to wear a crutch…
…So that’s my budgie Jeffrey
Fat and yellow too
I love him more than Daddy
And I’m only 32.
The professor did not share my sense of humor. She looked at me and said, in a tone dripping with sarcasm, “And THAT…is your favorite poem?” They were obviously not looking for comic actors. In my other theater class I was assigned a film review, at which point I raised my hand and asked how I, a freshman, could possibly know enough about film or theater to actually think I could write a review of a bunch of professionals (obviously a question over which most critics do not lose sleep.) I don’t remember the professor’s answer, but he also was not amused.
About a month into this travesty I discovered that the music department was open to the idea of letting students re-audition on another instrument if they had not passed the first time. I jumped at this chance and decided to audition on voice. Since all my paperwork indicated that I intended to be a theory major, they were perplexed (it had been a long time since the Middle Ages, when that wouldn’t have seemed the slightest bit strange.) I was sent to meet with a music professor who also had some role in undergraduate admissions. He asked me why I wanted to audition on voice, then asked me what other instruments I played. When I said “guitar,” made a face and said “And how well do you play that – as well as you play the piano?” I don’t remember what I said in reply (I do remember what I was thinking, which was something like “Thanks a lot, dickhead.”) He agreed to let me audition—right then and there, with no preparation at all; just sent me packing off to the building where the vocal studios were.
So I sang for the three voice faculty. I had nothing prepared – I had never done a vocal audition in my life and had no idea what was expected or what was required. They were kind, but bewildered by this, until one of them – I will never forget – decided to improvise and just said to me, “Do you know the old song “Drink to me Only With Thine Eyes?” Yes, I did (ironically, because I had played the freaking thing on the now-highly-suspect piano.) They had the lyrics there in a book, so I sang it. They then put some music in front of me to test my reading; I read it through at first sight. They tested my ears with some pitch matching and other exercises; I nailed them all. They did not make fun of me; in fact one of them said that I had the ‘perfect name for a singer.’ (That would not be Dharmonia, but my actual name, which is about as Italian as you can get without turning into a cannoli.)
They then sent me chugging back to the fire-breathing dragon who had asked me if I played the guitar “as well as I play the piano.” Unbeknownst to me, while I was auditioning, they had somehow gotten my high school choral teacher on the phone. Mr Wrinn, may he rest in eternal peace and happiness, had pointedly asked this dragon if he was aware of the fact that I was one of the valedictorians of my class, the “class musician,” a songwriter who had already taken private theory lessons for two years, and simply was unfortunate enough to be a person who had learned most of her music entirely by ear and just needed a chance to be given some training. With that, and the fact that the three voice professors had actually accepted me, this paragon of tact informed me that they had “decided to give me a chance.”
And that is how I became a music major at a large state school. They then gave me the theory placement test, which I aced except for the section on medieval modes, since I had never had that before. Life can be ironic.
Stay tuned for Installment 2.
So, this is my Undergraduate Saga; a kind of mental spring cleaning, if you will. Since I know many of my own students read this, I will describe it as a cautionary tale, or how NOT to conduct your undergraduate career. It may be hard to imagine your crusty old professor having these experiences, but believe me, I am not making this up.
My high school graduating class had something like 350 people in it. I excelled academically in high school, and for reasons that had mostly to do with the fact that I was the lead singer and keyboard player in a local rock band and was always singing in high school shows, I was voted class musician. My audition at the large northeastern university where I did my undergrad work, however, was a disaster. I had studied classical piano as a kid, but for the 4 years or so previous to my audition I had mostly played popular music and mostly by ear, in addition to playing guitar, singing in the concert choir at school, and singing in the aforementioned rock band. I took some brush-up lessons with my choral director, Mr. Wrinn, and then drove over to the university to audition, with my high-school-boyfriend along for moral support. No one greeted me. I had no idea where I was going. I have no recollection of filling out any forms, no recollection of anything, really, except waiting outside the studio, petrified. I played my half-baked Mozart sonata for three European conservatory-trained musicians. After I had played, they asked me (with barely concealed disdain) who had suggested that I come to audition. I was totally terrified, and frankly I don’t remember my answer. The two Germans then raked me over the coals for awhile with a bunch of technical questions while the British one sat quietly and said nothing.
Needless to say, I was rejected. I was devastated. When I got the official rejection letter from the music school, I left it lying on the table where my parents would find it, because I couldn’t tell them. My Dad found it, and the only thing he said to me was “I’m disappointed.” I wanted to die. I don’t remember my mother’s reaction, for some reason.
However, the University itself had accepted me with flags flying, because I was one of three valedictorians of my class. It was too late to re-activate my applications to the two small liberal arts schools to which I had applied, and anyhow, my parents had agreed to pay for the large state school, so that’s where I was going, music major or not. I went to the art department (I had taken 4 years of art in high school as well, and was pretty good), but they wouldn’t even look at a portfolio because the “deadline was past.” Thinking that perhaps I could get involved in some of the musical activities if I was at least a Fine Arts major, I declared as a theater major. This was, of course, daft.
Freshman orientation was hot, humid, and miserable. Back in those days, one’s parent dropped one off at Freshman orientation and said “See ya.” (I am still astounded by the current generation, who show up to auditions and orientations with their family and all sets of grandparents and then use their umbilical cell phones through the entirety of college. My theory is that their parents—my generation—still remember going into that freshman orientation all by themselves feeling as though they were walking into Mordor, and they don’t want their kids to experience that, so the pendulum has swung the other way.) At the initial meeting, they herded all the new College of Arts and Sciences kids into a huge auditorium, where some stuffed shirt gave us a speech that began with the sentence “If there’s anyone in this room who wants to get a job when they finish school, I suggest you leave this room immediately and go over to the next building where Computer Science is meeting.” And a warm welcome to you too, asshole.
On a brighter note, with my academic record, I was instantly accepted into the Honors College. At this particular school, acceptance into the Honors College meant that all the University’s core requirements were waived – you only had to take the courses required by your major department, and all the rest were electives. I was in hog heaven. Being a jaded old college professor now, it’s easy to forget how exciting a college course catalog can be for a freshman from Podunk High. I instantly signed up for two junior/senior level courses: Shakespeare and a course in Arthurian Legend, in addition to two introductory theater courses and probably something else that I don’t recall.
And then it was Fall semester. Within the first two weeks it became obvious that Theater was probably not my future. No surprise - my acting career had been limited to the chorus of the HMS Pinafore in 5th grade, a stage play in the 7th grade which I do not remember, and the senior show at my high school, in which I played Lois Lane and got inadvertently punched in the face during a rehearsal by Eddie Waskiewicz, who was playing Batman. One of our first assignments was to choose our favorite poem and deliver it from memory to the class. I thought it would be hilarious to do John Lennon’s poem “The Fat Budgie.” After all, everyone likes comedy, right? And I had been nearly thrown out of high school study hall one day for having uncontrolled hysterics while reading In His Own Write.
I have a little Budgie
He is my very pal
I take him walks in Britain
I hope I always shall
My Budgie’s name is Jeffrey
My Grandad’s name’s the same
I named him after Grandad
Who had a feathered brain.
He’s getting very fat you know
From eating far too much
If he gets any fatter
He’ll have to wear a crutch…
…So that’s my budgie Jeffrey
Fat and yellow too
I love him more than Daddy
And I’m only 32.
The professor did not share my sense of humor. She looked at me and said, in a tone dripping with sarcasm, “And THAT…is your favorite poem?” They were obviously not looking for comic actors. In my other theater class I was assigned a film review, at which point I raised my hand and asked how I, a freshman, could possibly know enough about film or theater to actually think I could write a review of a bunch of professionals (obviously a question over which most critics do not lose sleep.) I don’t remember the professor’s answer, but he also was not amused.
About a month into this travesty I discovered that the music department was open to the idea of letting students re-audition on another instrument if they had not passed the first time. I jumped at this chance and decided to audition on voice. Since all my paperwork indicated that I intended to be a theory major, they were perplexed (it had been a long time since the Middle Ages, when that wouldn’t have seemed the slightest bit strange.) I was sent to meet with a music professor who also had some role in undergraduate admissions. He asked me why I wanted to audition on voice, then asked me what other instruments I played. When I said “guitar,” made a face and said “And how well do you play that – as well as you play the piano?” I don’t remember what I said in reply (I do remember what I was thinking, which was something like “Thanks a lot, dickhead.”) He agreed to let me audition—right then and there, with no preparation at all; just sent me packing off to the building where the vocal studios were.
So I sang for the three voice faculty. I had nothing prepared – I had never done a vocal audition in my life and had no idea what was expected or what was required. They were kind, but bewildered by this, until one of them – I will never forget – decided to improvise and just said to me, “Do you know the old song “Drink to me Only With Thine Eyes?” Yes, I did (ironically, because I had played the freaking thing on the now-highly-suspect piano.) They had the lyrics there in a book, so I sang it. They then put some music in front of me to test my reading; I read it through at first sight. They tested my ears with some pitch matching and other exercises; I nailed them all. They did not make fun of me; in fact one of them said that I had the ‘perfect name for a singer.’ (That would not be Dharmonia, but my actual name, which is about as Italian as you can get without turning into a cannoli.)
They then sent me chugging back to the fire-breathing dragon who had asked me if I played the guitar “as well as I play the piano.” Unbeknownst to me, while I was auditioning, they had somehow gotten my high school choral teacher on the phone. Mr Wrinn, may he rest in eternal peace and happiness, had pointedly asked this dragon if he was aware of the fact that I was one of the valedictorians of my class, the “class musician,” a songwriter who had already taken private theory lessons for two years, and simply was unfortunate enough to be a person who had learned most of her music entirely by ear and just needed a chance to be given some training. With that, and the fact that the three voice professors had actually accepted me, this paragon of tact informed me that they had “decided to give me a chance.”
And that is how I became a music major at a large state school. They then gave me the theory placement test, which I aced except for the section on medieval modes, since I had never had that before. Life can be ironic.
Stay tuned for Installment 2.
Placeholder
This month has had so much emotional input that I cannot even work through it enough to write about it. My mother-in-law, whom I have known now for 28 years, passed away March 2. I will write about her in good time, but for some reason am unable to do so yet; after two unsuccessful attempts, I have decided to let it settle for awhile before I try again. For now, may she rest in peace, free of the plague that is Alzheimer's.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
From "Meditative Gardening"
Great quote from the upcoming-birthday-present-book I received from my Mom, "Meditative Gardening," by Cheryl Wilfong. Obviously it's about more than gardening.
"While Loving-Kindness is the heart's natural response to another being, Compassion is the heart's response to seeing another living being suffer. This includes watching someone wrestle with her particular Root of Stress. After diagnosing myself as an aversive personality type, I now easily recognize others in my "family" of Aversion. I used to defend myself from feeling their Suffering by thinking "That's not right...If they'd only...They should..." Nowadays, when I watch another aversive person try to halt what's unpleasant (by complaining, judging, or expressing annoyance) I recognize a pattern that is deeply familiar to me--and, rather than feeling repelled by that person's actions or speech, my heart opens to them."
Ah, is that what they call it--aversive personality type? Pass the mirror, please. What a concept: to stop one's own aversive behavior and simultaneously cultivate compassion for everyone else who's doing it. Gotta work on that.
"While Loving-Kindness is the heart's natural response to another being, Compassion is the heart's response to seeing another living being suffer. This includes watching someone wrestle with her particular Root of Stress. After diagnosing myself as an aversive personality type, I now easily recognize others in my "family" of Aversion. I used to defend myself from feeling their Suffering by thinking "That's not right...If they'd only...They should..." Nowadays, when I watch another aversive person try to halt what's unpleasant (by complaining, judging, or expressing annoyance) I recognize a pattern that is deeply familiar to me--and, rather than feeling repelled by that person's actions or speech, my heart opens to them."
Ah, is that what they call it--aversive personality type? Pass the mirror, please. What a concept: to stop one's own aversive behavior and simultaneously cultivate compassion for everyone else who's doing it. Gotta work on that.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
The Thin Place
The Irish have an expression, “A Thin Place,” that refers to a location where This World and The Other World meet: a sacred mound, a holy well, or any number of other places. It’s my own opinion that there is also a phenomenon that one could describe as “A Thin Day,” or period of a couple or several days, when This World and The Other World seem to be phasing in and out. I don’t know why these phenomena occur on some days and not others; astrologers could probably tell us, or maybe it has some other scientific cause that hasn’t been discovered yet so that people still think it’s magic, like fire. Or, perhaps, like most phenomena, it is a product of our minds. Hell, maybe it’s the result of seeing both “Ground Hog Day” and “Buckaroo Banzai through the Eighth Dimension” within a 24-hour period; Wherever You Go, There You Are, and are and are and are.
I began the day yesterday pondering the passage of time, as a young friend whom I had met when she was about 16 turned 24 and, rather than being taken out to brunch, made brunch for everyone else. We went to her new apartment and I looked at all the pictures on her wall, of various ancestors and family members. She has an obsession with J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan, and a bookcase shelf full of his books. She has more light and youthful spirit and grace than Tinkerbelle, and yet all around her, ancestors look kindly down. Not just from the walls, from which their visages smile, but in the abundance of inheritance: Grandpa made the furniture cabinet, and a strange canteen-shaped ceramic pot that belonged to Grandma hangs curiously in a macramé-style hanger, dangling precipitously over the unwitting head of the potential victim sitting in the chair underneath it. Time has passed; she has lived in West Texas for years, but her parents live in Houston now, her brother is fighting in Iraq. Just yesterday she was a little kid learning Irish fiddle, now she is a graduate student writing a thesis about the medieval fiddle called the vielle, and makes killer cinnamon buns and biscuits and oatmeal that is exactly the right texture. Last summer she went to Vancouver Early Music and studied medieval music with Sequentia; just yesterday I did the same thing, or was it two decades ago?
In the afternoon, I went to a concert given by some of my colleagues. One of the pieces was a 20-minute tour-de-force for electronic tape and piano, played brilliantly by one of our theory-composition colleagues who did not write the piece, but interpreted it with a beauty and depth that was awe-inspiring. The piece had been written as a meditation on the death of the composer’s sister; the sonic landscape was rich and varied and intense and drew upon everything from mathematical ratios to Zen chant. I cried during it and was speechless at the end, until I remarked to Coyotebanjo that “for a person with synaesthesia, it was about as intense as an acid trip.” Synaesthesia is a phenomenon experienced by people for whom the stimulation of one sense produces a response from another sense: the texture of an object produces the sensation of a taste in the mouth, or colors have smells, or in my case, sounds produce vivid visual images. That piece was followed by another compositional tour-de-force, a four-movement piece by a very talented colleague based on the story in the Lotus Sutra of the Dragon-King’s Daughter, who reaches Enlightenment at the age of 8. The piece included dancers and a huge screen onto which beautiful abstract graphics were projected. At the end of the concert I was completely exhausted by the intensity of the experience.
In the evening, C went to rehearsal after preparing a whole bunch of food with which to make home-made pizzas for a little Super Bowl party. The Super Bowl is a little weird for me, because my father, who loved to watch the Super Bowl and used to look forward to it every year, died the night before Super Bowl 1997, 13 years ago. He had mentioned to my sister and my mother several times that week how much he was looking forward to watching it. I figure he either missed it or had a ringside seat… but I think of it every year. After my Dad passed away, I said to my Mom and sister that my Dad had told me several times during his life that when he died, he wanted to be marched down the streets with a band playing “When The Saints Go Marching In” like they do in New Orleans. It was then discovered that he had said the same thing, at various and separate times, to both my sister and my Mom. So at his funeral service, his jazz friends, including his 2 jazz-playing sons-in-law, played “When The Saints Go Marching In” while they carried his casket out of the church. This year, the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl; a momentous occasion, since they had never even played in it, never mind won it. The TV cameras showed the crowds back in New Orleans going wild and screaming and dancing on Bourbon Street, and I thought of “When The Saints Go Marching In,” and my Dad, who always rooted for the underdog, and how he would have loved watching the Saints win that game, and how he would have seen the crowds on Bourbon Street and said to me, as he always did, “When I die I want one of those bands to march me to the cemetery.”
During the Saints-Colts Super Bowl game a number of friends came over, including a new friend, a composer from Michigan who also plays Irish traditional music, so we had a lively session. It’s been a long time since we had a session; it’s been painful to play without our friend Coop, who almost left this world after a case of life-threatening and virulent pneumonia had him on a respirator in intensive care for seventy-something days. He is miraculously recovering, to our great joy, and he would have been at the session too, if it wasn’t so cold and miserable out; but he needs to recover some more before throwing himself out into the winter wind. We missed him at the session; but we know he’ll be back soon.
That was all yesterday. This morning it was cold and misty, raining and icy. C sat down with his computer and had an e-mail from his brother; their Mom is in the hospital in Providence.
C’s mother has Alzheimer’s. She’s had it for awhile. After her husband, C’s step-dad, passed away this summer, she had to go to an assisted living facility in Providence. It’s an exceptionally nice one, and we feel fortunate to have found it.
She lost the ability to speak coherently awhile ago. Mostly, she has just walked. She’d get on her walker and just walk, back and forth, back and forth, from one end of the facility to the other, most all of the time when she wasn’t either sleeping or eating.
Sometimes she knows us, or seems to, and sometimes she doesn’t. She seems to know C’s younger brother and his wife, who have been nothing short of heroic during the last couple of years of her decline. Both of Chris’ brothers and their wives have just been incredible through the whole thing, and since we live 2000 miles away we feel a great deal of gratitude and appreciation for this.
So C’s younger brother’s e-mail of this morning explained that their Mom had a sudden decline. She had seemed to be ill, stomach-flu kind of thing, but after stabilizing her in the hospital it transpired that she could no longer walk. This did not appear to be the result of anything physically wrong with her legs. She also will not eat.
I don’t know anything about Alzheimer’s other than the things that I have read since she was diagnosed, but this doesn’t sound good. But, then, what is “good?” What are we supposed to “hope” for in a case like this? I think if it were me, I would hope that I would slip out of my body easily and end the suffering of being in a body with brain full of data and a busted hard drive. I find myself “hoping” these things for her: for peace, for as little suffering and fear as possible, for no pain, and frankly, for escape.
We went to work. I got an e-mail from my Mom. A family friend had lost her father Saturday night. The night before the Super Bowl. Hmmm. I called my Mom, who did not remember that my Dad had passed away the night before the Super Bowl. We talked about that, and about her visit to my Aunt Dottie.
My aunt Dottie has Alzheimer’s. She is my late Dad’s late brother’s ex-wife (got that?). I don’t remember how old she is. My mother goes to visit her once a week. Dottie is, as far as I can tell, in that stage of Alzheimer’s that the local assisted living facility calls “pleasantly confused.” She enjoys my mother’s visits.
Until recently, my mom had also been taking Dottie’s sister to see her occasionally. Dottie’s sister hasn’t been well, and this past weekend she passed away. My Mom went in to visit Dottie, who had not yet been told about her sister’s passing, and found her completely beside herself. For some reason, she had become lucidly aware of the fact that she could not remember anything, and was in a state of panic, as if she had just realized the truth of her condition. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t remember anything. What will I do? If I go somewhere I’ll get lost. What will I do?” My mother spent a good amount of time calming her down: you’re in a safe place, you won’t get lost, everyone here loves you and takes care of you, your son comes to see you and brings you to his house all the time, everything is OK. Dottie was still upset: “But I can’t remember anything. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.” And my mother (the lifelong Congregational Protestant) said to her, “Dottie, you don’t have to. All that matters is now. We have to make a Buddhist out of you—the past doesn’t matter, the future doesn’t matter, just right now.” My mother told me, “I was trying to make her laugh.” And apparently it did. And I laughed too, on the other end of the phone, and cried also, with tears running down my face, although Mom didn’t know that. How do you know the guy sitting next to you isn’t a Buddha? The Buddha taught that all sentient beings have been our Mother; apparently, mothers can occasionally be our Buddhas, too.
My mother wondered if Dottie had had an “ESP” experience of communication with her sister, and if that had somehow set her off; if she had an experience that she felt intensely but then could not remember. I didn’t know. I reminded my Mom that when my Dad’s mother had passed away, one of my cousins told me that the night before she passed, she had told my cousin that she had been visited by her (deceased) brother and sister. These things happen. The day my Dad passed he asked my Mom who “that guy was” who was standing by her; she told him that there was no “guy” there, and he said “Do you mean to tell me you don’t see that guy?” I have always wondered who That Guy was. I have no idea if my mother remembers this. I didn’t mention it to her.
Tonight in Early Music Ensemble we worked on two songs by Thomas Tallis; more images of passing over to the other side, including his deeply beautiful Procul recedant somnia, a setting of a passage from the Compline prayer Te lucis ante terminum. “Lord, as the light subsides at the end of the day, keep us safe from all those phantasmagoric dreams and nightmares and the defilements of the body.” Great monastic 16th century stuff, with some harmonic changes in it that would have made Gesualdo happy. Then on to the next composer’s forum concert, where our new friend had two pieces performed; one inspired by Sufi poetry and a performance of the late, great Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; the other a piece for voice and orchestra inspired by epitaphs from old graveyards in New Hampshire. Both were beautiful and extremely intense meditations on life and death. The second work included a movement whose text was the epitaph of a two-year old. I cried through most of it.
I cry a lot at concerts; if music moves me, the water works start. I used to be embarrassed by this, but I don’t give a damn anymore. Let ‘em see me cry, I don’t care. People don’t become musicians for the money-that’s obvious. Most of us become musicians because at some point in our lives we realize that we’re both stimulated into a transcendent state and struck dumb and senseless by music and can no longer live without doing that forevermore, the thing that before the advent of recording was the most impermanent and ephemeral of all the arts, heard and then gone forever. Just so, you never feel more alive than when you truly realize that you, too, are going to die; in the moment of that fleeting realization, we are in the ultimate “thin place,” where there is in fact no life and no death, just calm clear light mind; where there is no past and no future, just Right Now.
I began the day yesterday pondering the passage of time, as a young friend whom I had met when she was about 16 turned 24 and, rather than being taken out to brunch, made brunch for everyone else. We went to her new apartment and I looked at all the pictures on her wall, of various ancestors and family members. She has an obsession with J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan, and a bookcase shelf full of his books. She has more light and youthful spirit and grace than Tinkerbelle, and yet all around her, ancestors look kindly down. Not just from the walls, from which their visages smile, but in the abundance of inheritance: Grandpa made the furniture cabinet, and a strange canteen-shaped ceramic pot that belonged to Grandma hangs curiously in a macramé-style hanger, dangling precipitously over the unwitting head of the potential victim sitting in the chair underneath it. Time has passed; she has lived in West Texas for years, but her parents live in Houston now, her brother is fighting in Iraq. Just yesterday she was a little kid learning Irish fiddle, now she is a graduate student writing a thesis about the medieval fiddle called the vielle, and makes killer cinnamon buns and biscuits and oatmeal that is exactly the right texture. Last summer she went to Vancouver Early Music and studied medieval music with Sequentia; just yesterday I did the same thing, or was it two decades ago?
In the afternoon, I went to a concert given by some of my colleagues. One of the pieces was a 20-minute tour-de-force for electronic tape and piano, played brilliantly by one of our theory-composition colleagues who did not write the piece, but interpreted it with a beauty and depth that was awe-inspiring. The piece had been written as a meditation on the death of the composer’s sister; the sonic landscape was rich and varied and intense and drew upon everything from mathematical ratios to Zen chant. I cried during it and was speechless at the end, until I remarked to Coyotebanjo that “for a person with synaesthesia, it was about as intense as an acid trip.” Synaesthesia is a phenomenon experienced by people for whom the stimulation of one sense produces a response from another sense: the texture of an object produces the sensation of a taste in the mouth, or colors have smells, or in my case, sounds produce vivid visual images. That piece was followed by another compositional tour-de-force, a four-movement piece by a very talented colleague based on the story in the Lotus Sutra of the Dragon-King’s Daughter, who reaches Enlightenment at the age of 8. The piece included dancers and a huge screen onto which beautiful abstract graphics were projected. At the end of the concert I was completely exhausted by the intensity of the experience.
In the evening, C went to rehearsal after preparing a whole bunch of food with which to make home-made pizzas for a little Super Bowl party. The Super Bowl is a little weird for me, because my father, who loved to watch the Super Bowl and used to look forward to it every year, died the night before Super Bowl 1997, 13 years ago. He had mentioned to my sister and my mother several times that week how much he was looking forward to watching it. I figure he either missed it or had a ringside seat… but I think of it every year. After my Dad passed away, I said to my Mom and sister that my Dad had told me several times during his life that when he died, he wanted to be marched down the streets with a band playing “When The Saints Go Marching In” like they do in New Orleans. It was then discovered that he had said the same thing, at various and separate times, to both my sister and my Mom. So at his funeral service, his jazz friends, including his 2 jazz-playing sons-in-law, played “When The Saints Go Marching In” while they carried his casket out of the church. This year, the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl; a momentous occasion, since they had never even played in it, never mind won it. The TV cameras showed the crowds back in New Orleans going wild and screaming and dancing on Bourbon Street, and I thought of “When The Saints Go Marching In,” and my Dad, who always rooted for the underdog, and how he would have loved watching the Saints win that game, and how he would have seen the crowds on Bourbon Street and said to me, as he always did, “When I die I want one of those bands to march me to the cemetery.”
During the Saints-Colts Super Bowl game a number of friends came over, including a new friend, a composer from Michigan who also plays Irish traditional music, so we had a lively session. It’s been a long time since we had a session; it’s been painful to play without our friend Coop, who almost left this world after a case of life-threatening and virulent pneumonia had him on a respirator in intensive care for seventy-something days. He is miraculously recovering, to our great joy, and he would have been at the session too, if it wasn’t so cold and miserable out; but he needs to recover some more before throwing himself out into the winter wind. We missed him at the session; but we know he’ll be back soon.
That was all yesterday. This morning it was cold and misty, raining and icy. C sat down with his computer and had an e-mail from his brother; their Mom is in the hospital in Providence.
C’s mother has Alzheimer’s. She’s had it for awhile. After her husband, C’s step-dad, passed away this summer, she had to go to an assisted living facility in Providence. It’s an exceptionally nice one, and we feel fortunate to have found it.
She lost the ability to speak coherently awhile ago. Mostly, she has just walked. She’d get on her walker and just walk, back and forth, back and forth, from one end of the facility to the other, most all of the time when she wasn’t either sleeping or eating.
Sometimes she knows us, or seems to, and sometimes she doesn’t. She seems to know C’s younger brother and his wife, who have been nothing short of heroic during the last couple of years of her decline. Both of Chris’ brothers and their wives have just been incredible through the whole thing, and since we live 2000 miles away we feel a great deal of gratitude and appreciation for this.
So C’s younger brother’s e-mail of this morning explained that their Mom had a sudden decline. She had seemed to be ill, stomach-flu kind of thing, but after stabilizing her in the hospital it transpired that she could no longer walk. This did not appear to be the result of anything physically wrong with her legs. She also will not eat.
I don’t know anything about Alzheimer’s other than the things that I have read since she was diagnosed, but this doesn’t sound good. But, then, what is “good?” What are we supposed to “hope” for in a case like this? I think if it were me, I would hope that I would slip out of my body easily and end the suffering of being in a body with brain full of data and a busted hard drive. I find myself “hoping” these things for her: for peace, for as little suffering and fear as possible, for no pain, and frankly, for escape.
We went to work. I got an e-mail from my Mom. A family friend had lost her father Saturday night. The night before the Super Bowl. Hmmm. I called my Mom, who did not remember that my Dad had passed away the night before the Super Bowl. We talked about that, and about her visit to my Aunt Dottie.
My aunt Dottie has Alzheimer’s. She is my late Dad’s late brother’s ex-wife (got that?). I don’t remember how old she is. My mother goes to visit her once a week. Dottie is, as far as I can tell, in that stage of Alzheimer’s that the local assisted living facility calls “pleasantly confused.” She enjoys my mother’s visits.
Until recently, my mom had also been taking Dottie’s sister to see her occasionally. Dottie’s sister hasn’t been well, and this past weekend she passed away. My Mom went in to visit Dottie, who had not yet been told about her sister’s passing, and found her completely beside herself. For some reason, she had become lucidly aware of the fact that she could not remember anything, and was in a state of panic, as if she had just realized the truth of her condition. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t remember anything. What will I do? If I go somewhere I’ll get lost. What will I do?” My mother spent a good amount of time calming her down: you’re in a safe place, you won’t get lost, everyone here loves you and takes care of you, your son comes to see you and brings you to his house all the time, everything is OK. Dottie was still upset: “But I can’t remember anything. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.” And my mother (the lifelong Congregational Protestant) said to her, “Dottie, you don’t have to. All that matters is now. We have to make a Buddhist out of you—the past doesn’t matter, the future doesn’t matter, just right now.” My mother told me, “I was trying to make her laugh.” And apparently it did. And I laughed too, on the other end of the phone, and cried also, with tears running down my face, although Mom didn’t know that. How do you know the guy sitting next to you isn’t a Buddha? The Buddha taught that all sentient beings have been our Mother; apparently, mothers can occasionally be our Buddhas, too.
My mother wondered if Dottie had had an “ESP” experience of communication with her sister, and if that had somehow set her off; if she had an experience that she felt intensely but then could not remember. I didn’t know. I reminded my Mom that when my Dad’s mother had passed away, one of my cousins told me that the night before she passed, she had told my cousin that she had been visited by her (deceased) brother and sister. These things happen. The day my Dad passed he asked my Mom who “that guy was” who was standing by her; she told him that there was no “guy” there, and he said “Do you mean to tell me you don’t see that guy?” I have always wondered who That Guy was. I have no idea if my mother remembers this. I didn’t mention it to her.
Tonight in Early Music Ensemble we worked on two songs by Thomas Tallis; more images of passing over to the other side, including his deeply beautiful Procul recedant somnia, a setting of a passage from the Compline prayer Te lucis ante terminum. “Lord, as the light subsides at the end of the day, keep us safe from all those phantasmagoric dreams and nightmares and the defilements of the body.” Great monastic 16th century stuff, with some harmonic changes in it that would have made Gesualdo happy. Then on to the next composer’s forum concert, where our new friend had two pieces performed; one inspired by Sufi poetry and a performance of the late, great Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; the other a piece for voice and orchestra inspired by epitaphs from old graveyards in New Hampshire. Both were beautiful and extremely intense meditations on life and death. The second work included a movement whose text was the epitaph of a two-year old. I cried through most of it.
I cry a lot at concerts; if music moves me, the water works start. I used to be embarrassed by this, but I don’t give a damn anymore. Let ‘em see me cry, I don’t care. People don’t become musicians for the money-that’s obvious. Most of us become musicians because at some point in our lives we realize that we’re both stimulated into a transcendent state and struck dumb and senseless by music and can no longer live without doing that forevermore, the thing that before the advent of recording was the most impermanent and ephemeral of all the arts, heard and then gone forever. Just so, you never feel more alive than when you truly realize that you, too, are going to die; in the moment of that fleeting realization, we are in the ultimate “thin place,” where there is in fact no life and no death, just calm clear light mind; where there is no past and no future, just Right Now.
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