The Words Return

It’s here: The day when the pressure of wanting to write outweighs the pressure to be wrapped in silence. I could be reentering the world from a monk’s cell, where I am allowed neither the input of others’ words nor the output of my own. Some part of the cell is the grief that returned to my doorstep as the first Thanksgiving without Ruth Ann’s earthly presence approached. But the greater part is the need for rest, for time to let my heart’s fields be fallow, for time to allow all the good and the bad, the bidden and the unbidden of this year to settle, to compost and fertilize whatever is next to emerge.

Over the last weeks my internal images shifted. I’ve been at sea for months. First, alone and adrift in a life boat, watching as the ship that was carrying me sinks beneath storm-driven waves. Later, my lifeboat sprouts oars, and I can row. No land is in sight. I have no course to follow, and no stars to guide my way. I row anyway, not knowing where I am going, or even if I am going anywhere. There is just rowing, and the vast expanse of ocean surrounding me.

Weeks later, in France, another shift. The wooden lifeboat transforms into a Zodiac, propelled by two powerful outboard motors. I stand at the helm, the throttle open all the way. The rubber craft skips over the tops of the waves, as much borne by air as water. The salt spray stings my face and eyes. I still have no idea where I’m going, but wherever “there” is, I’m getting there fast, and the speed is exhilarating.

In the gentle warmth of January afternoon sun, a new image, a new landscape, emerges. There is a field, with plowed and ready soil, stretching towards the horizon, waiting. I do not know if I’ve already sown seeds that will soon sprout, or if there are yet unknown seeds to be planted.

The field does not give me an answer. In winter, when life is tucked away safely into dark earth, awaiting warmth, both planted and barren soil looks the same. But I know that I’ve tilled the ground, and that it is ready to support whatever new life is ready to grow, be it already planted or yet to be sown.

 

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Turning Towards Light

Ruth Ann died five months ago. Meanwhile, the earth completed another quarter of its journey around the sun. Spring’s pastels of iris and dogwood are replaced by bold watermelon pink and purple crape myrtles, scarlet gladiolas, and orange day lilies that defy soaring heat and lack of rain. The last of the magnolia blossoms still perfume heavy summer air. The hours of light grow imperceptibly shorter each day, while the hours of night lengthen towards the darkness of winter.

I live in a precarious balance between light and darkness. Daylight hours of walking, music, knitting, and being encircled in the kindness of friends brings laughter, peace, and grounding among the living. Quiet nights bring reflection and sadness. In daylight, when I remember to breathe slowly and appreciate the fragility of all that I love, grace and gratitude can guide my way. Darker nights assail me with futility, with knowing all will be lost in the end, and leave me relieved to see the sunrise.

Someone had just passed away when I arrived at the Hospice unit last Tuesday. Family had not made it to the bedside before the patient’s final breath. I had unpacked my harp and was playing in the hallway outside this hospital room when the family arrived in a rush of heartbreak and weeping.  Once inside the room a young girl began keening,”No, no, no….I don’t want her to be dead.”

I kept playing. I kept fingers moving on the harp strings while her sobs crescendoed into wailing that echoed down the hallways with desperate cries of “No, no, no….come back, come back.” I hoped that Music could in some way comfort her fear and ease her pain, could in some way say to this family, “The world has felt this grief, and created these tunes to stand beside you on this hard journey.”

I’ve thought about this young girl all week. Thought about how she was able to scream her pain and give voice to the same words I mouthed so quietly to myself when I found out Ruth Ann was dead: No, no, no. . . . Come back, come back. . . . I don’t want you to be dead. And I see how these are everybody’s words, everybody’s desperate desire. The price of love is that we will tumble down in seemingly endless eddies of grief and fear when the ones we love leave us behind on this suddenly empty and lonely earth.

When I was twenty-something, I thought the Buddhist concept of non-attachment meant that we were not supposed to love, not supposed to care. That we were supposed to walk blasély through the world, indifferent to who and what it offered to us. Life and love and loss teach a different translation: that we must care about, and love, all that the world offers with all our heart, but with open hands. Open hands that do not clutch and grab at what is passing from them. Open hands that allow the heartbreak of endings. And open hands that once empty, are willing receptacles for approaching, as-yet-unknown joys.

In the heat and glare of a July day, darkness grows, and winter approaches. But today I remember that it is in the darkness of December, and the cold depths of winter, that the earth again turns towards light.

 

Enduring Impermanence

Everything changes. All that is, someday will not be.

I do not like this state of affairs one bit.

My teacher’s husband was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It has already metastasized to his liver. My dear friend just lost one cousin to stroke as she helped his brother with his chemotherapy appointment. A long-time friend, five years younger than me, is near the end of her fight with the stage four pancreatic cancer diagnosed six months ago.

Everything changes. All that is, someday will not be.

Everything in the outer world that fills my heart with joy hangs by the slimmest of threads, ready to end in nothingness. The people I love, and the people who create the places and things I love to do are so fragile compared to entropy’s onward march to oblivion. How does one tender heart hold both love and loss in equal measure?

Everything changes. All that is, someday will not be.

When it gets this ugly inside my head, I head to the ocean, head to the solace of the sea. Sitting on sand beside blue-green water, breathing to the rhythm of wave in, wave out, impermanence does not frighten me. Each wave breaks on shore in its own fashion, unique and separate for one brief moment, and then dissolves back to ocean’s depths. Light dances, each sparkle on the water existing for barely a second, yet the air shimmers like diamonds.

With only an eye-blink the scene changes. The water darkens from blue-green to turquoise. A cloud scuds across the sun and the ocean is cobalt. A line of pelicans glides overhead, wings motionless, and disappears into gray dots on the eastern horizon. The retreating tide exposes sand that moments ago was sea floor. Here, impermanence creates beauty that quiets my thoughts and soothes my soul.

Back home, it’s the impermanence of chlorophyl that creates the world of color in which I walk each morning.  Trees glow with garnet, topaz, and carnelian in morning light. With each night more green disappears; with each morning fewer jeweled leaves adorn the trees. I walk on carpets of color that crunch and crackle under my feet. Impermanence brings beauty once again.

My friend is not yet so close to death that time has lost its meaning. Her hours are long. Her days drag on even longer, the monotony broken by visits from friends and hospice nurses, and from the nodding off that the narcotics deliver in place of real sleep. She bears the pain better than the boredom. An active life that six months ago was filled with career, travel, and a vivacious social life is pared down to a narrow path between recliner, bathroom and hospital bed.

Everything changes. All that is, someday will not be.

I brought my harp to her house and played for her today.

I’ve not played for one specific person at their bedside before. My hospital harping is in the hallway – I don’t have direct patient contact. I play there with the intention and hope that Music will bring ease to whoever might be troubled, be it their body, heart, or soul, but without knowing if or how patients are affected.

My friend was tucked up in her recliner, staring at the muted television when I arrived. As I set up my harp and bench, I told her that she did not have to do anything – no applause or conversation – but drift with the music as much as she was able. I played my favorite Celtic tunes, the ones I know by heart – tunes that echo joy and heartbreak, tunes that remember journeys and leave-takings and lands and people lost or left far behind: Aran Boat Song, Skye Boat Song, Loch Broom, Glentain Glas, Inisheer, and more.

What my friend Kristin calls the “harp magic” did its work. Despite my own uncertainties and fumbled notes, her breathing deepened and she slept, deep restful sleep. When she awoke an hour later, she whispered one word: “soothing.” I told her I would come and play again if she liked. “Yes,” she said. “Please play again.”

Everything changes. All that is, someday will not be. Impermanence marks every wave, every turning leaf, every breath, every life. My friend is dying. But today Music, the mystery wave that exists without form or substance, lives and works her magic. Today Music allows us both to endure impermanence. My friend finds moments of comfort and ease, and I find joy in and gratitude for sharing these moments with her.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreshadow

It’s the height of summer. Yet amidst the heat and humidity, the turning wheel approaches autumn.

Already shadows are longer. Already the quality of morning and evening light is softer and more golden. Already a scrub maple beside the market parking lot is crimson. Already the day lily foliage yellows, and chipmunks search for first acorns.

While we humans celebrate summer’s glory, those closer to the earth and the seasons prepare.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons

Spring Maple

Fall Maple

Autumn Walk

Clearing A Space

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what happens when you say yes to what you truly and deeply love. What comes into your life, and what drops away? My life has changed so much since saying yes to the harp and beginning harp lessons. Many things have dropped away, in what John Holt in Never Too Late calls “clearing a space.” He writes:

“Adults who want to learn to make music well are going to have to clear a space. They are going to have to stop doing many things they have been doing, including many things they liked. To make more time for music, I have had to give up many pleasures I have enjoyed for years. This is no complaint; I am lucky to have surplus pleasures I can give up.”

He describes giving up attending the ballet, the theater and most concerts, outdoor recreational activities, playing sports, most travel, and even listening to great quantities of recorded music, in order to clear a space for lessons, practicing, and playing with other musicians.

It turns out that I also had many “surplus pleasures”: Watching television, reading fiction and going to the movies – I just can’t seem to get interested any longer in the imaginary dramas of imaginary people’s lives. The gym membership, and my workouts on the elliptical machine and in spin classes – replaced with $0 cost early morning walks with my dog up and down hills in my neighborhood, walks that also warm me up for harp practice. Riding my bike – I used to ride about 50 miles a week; the bike hasn’t been out of the basement in the last two years. Making books – I used to create books by hand, loved experimenting with Coptic and medieval binding stitches; the same three waiting-to-be-sewn journals have been on my work table for about three years now.

Shopping – now consists of brief forays to get what is essential for life support. I can’t make myself spend time cruising big box stores or malls. The only clothes I’ve purchased this past year have been two shirts for performances. Black pants fortunately don’t go out of style, and I have enough “work clothes” to reach the end of my days without buying anything else to wear.  Even when I see something I like, I end up comparing how many harp lessons or voice lessons or recorder classes I could pay for instead. The lessons and classes win.

Vacations – now scheduled around classes, lessons, and the beginning and ending of the harp ensemble and recorder ensemble semesters. I’ve never been one to travel in the heat of summer. But I can’t miss the last recorder class and playing the semester’s repertoire together one last time, so the beach trip will start a week later than usual. I can’t miss the first class of the new semester, can’t miss our first reading of music that will be our companion for the next 16 weeks, so vacation travel will be over by mid-August.

Socializing – old friends are no longer surprised that their “meet me for coffee” and “let’s have dinner” invitations are often met with “sorry, I have to practice/have a lesson/have class.” It’s my musician friends who understand that I’d rather be playing or practicing than do most activities I’m invited to be a part of.  And it’s only my musician friends who know my secret – that I’ll try to drop everything and rush right over if they ask me to come make music with them.

Over the last six years I’ve watched lots of adults become enchanted with the harp, start lessons with my teacher, be thrilled and enthusiastic for six months or so, and then drop by the wayside, saying “I don’t have time to schedule lessons,” or more frequently, “I don’t have time to practice.” They tried to squeeze harp lessons and daily practice into an already cramped and hectic life, and couldn’t find room for them.

I knew when I started lessons that I’d have to find time to practice, and that the only way to get that to happen was to practice before work. Which meant getting up earlier, which led to going to bed earlier, which led to the gradual lessening of evening entertainment and recreation. Weekends became the days to relish practicing longer than the 30 minutes I managed on a work day, the days I could work on tricky fingerings and hard passages as long as I wanted to.

I didn’t wake up one day and decide that I wasn’t reading or shopping or riding my bike or having coffee with friends anymore, just so I could play my harp. Instead, that which I loved doing the most became that which I wanted to spend time doing more than anything else. The harp claimed my heart, music became the path I followed, and the space cleared itself. Grace in action, once again.

Retirement Un-Planning

It’s four months to the day of my leaving my office for the last time, four months into this retirement adventure. Four months of contemplating what life would be birthed out of the unknown, of wondering what new scene would emerge from what felt like the swirling snow in a snow globe.

Four months later, the snow is still swirling. Perhaps it always will be. Perhaps the era of predictability, of knowing in advance the landscape where I will walk for the next weeks and months and years, is over.

Instead of having one distinct picture of what my life will be, it seems instead to be a braid of many colors and textures, with new threads being woven in all the time, as old ones come to their right endings; always changing, not planned or predictable, but always vibrant, always beautiful, alive with color, texture, energy and surprise. This is a good image, a strong image, one I want to hold on to, this picture of weaving my ribbon of life out of the gifts and choices and people and chance surprises that come my way.

Retirement, Rain, and Coming Back Down to Earth

My heart and my eyes were full as I walked out the door of my office building as an employee for the last time. All the automatic tasks of leaving for the day, like logging off the computer and turning off the cubicle lights, had a strange sense of ceremony, seemed to be a final ritual marking the end of my days in that building. My coworkers were in meetings, or on vacation, or on their lunch breaks, so no one actually saw me leave, saw me walk down the long basement corridor to the outside world, carrying the last box of the things that have kept me company throughout my work life.

And the rain, the soft, gentle life-giving rain started to fall as I walked through the parking lot to my car. It’s not rained at my house for 5 weeks. The creeping phlox is crisp, the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants withered, the blueberries already shedding their toasted brown leaves for the winter. The rain felt like a blessing, a baptism welcoming me into my new life. But I know the rain really had nothing to do with any personal symbolism; it finally rained only because that evening, six of us would be transporting our harps through the rain to our first harp ensemble class of the semester. If our ensemble had started a month ago I’d still be enjoying fall tomatoes instead of pulling dried husks of vines out of the earth.

So much about retiring has felt like a giant leap of faith, an exhilarating leap into a new life and new adventures. Yesterday the leap become quite literal. While leaving the student services building at the community college, my bifocal-ed eyes did not see the edge of a gray terrace nor the 6-inch step to the gray sidewalk below. I stepped into nothingness, and flew in an ungraceful arc across the sidewalk, leaving most of the skin on my knees and elbows behind. The non-surgery knee took the worse hit and now looks more gruesome than any skinned knee I had as a child. The surgery knee has some minor scrapes and a couple of new bruises, but I think I avoided serious damage. I’ll see if the physical therapist concurs on Friday.

This falling, this stepping into nothingness and the resulting bumps and scrapes and bruises of this bit of my new adventures have brought me back down to earth.  Too painfully they are reminding me of the need to keep my head where my feet are, and not in some metaphorical swirling snow-globe that contains my future.  Ouch!

Approaching Retirement and Coming in for a Landing

I have three more days to go to work. I am pretty much dumbfounded by that concept. All the internal debating, considering, planning, and deciding is over, leaving only the doing. The logging off the computer, packing up my work tote bag, and stepping out of the door for the last time.

My coworkers gave me a retirement party yesterday afternoon. People I worked with and supervised over the past 20 years showed up, along with current co-workers and people from community agencies that I’ve regularly consulted with over the past 5 years. I’m not much of a party person – 8 people in a room is a crowd. But I really enjoyed seeing so many people from my past and present work life, and I appreciate that they went out of their way to help me celebrate and to say goodbye.

The party made retiring real to me. I really was saying goodbye to people, some that I’ve known for more than half my life. And I know how unlikely it is that we will stay in touch. Our connection is through our work, and not through any other aspects of our lives. These are good, hard-working, solid folks, who spend their lives doing thankless jobs trying to make the world a little better for people, and I am lucky to have known and worked with them.

People kept asking me yesterday what I had planned, did I have big trips in my future, what would I do without coming to work. I still don’t know what to say when asked that. In an earlier post I wrote that since deciding to retire, I felt like I was living in a snow globe, with the snow still swirling, and I didn’t know what the scene would turn out to be once the snow settled. The snow hasn’t settled yet. So all I can truthfully say, is that I’m going to go forth and live my life, without trying to fit 40 hours of work into it each week. And I’m pleased to know that I don’t want to leave the life I have here, unlike a coworker who intends to flee her life and rent a flat in the south of France when she retires next month.

I might want to do something like that eventually, might want to plug myself into another life in another land. I know I want to return to Ireland, and to visit Iona in Scotland, and now Cornwall is also calling to me. But I am content in my world. My friend Beth eagerly awaits my being able to play with her at her studio any day of the week. I love my weekly harp lesson, and my evening recorder ensemble class. Our harp ensemble starts meeting next week, so again I get to do battle with the sight-reading demons and in the process, make music with others. I’ve signed up for the yoga class I promised myself I would take as soon as I wasn’t working. My garden awaits my removing the heat and drought-tortured summer crops and planting the soil-building green manure, and garlic, and the winter’s worth of spinach, lettuce and arugula in my grow tunnels. Mornings are finally cooler, and perfect for walking the greenway with my dog and watching the day-by-day changes in the trees and the meadows as summer loses its grip and autumn takes hold. Fall crops are already coming in at my Saturday farmers’ market – how could I possibly miss Dane’s dinosaur kale, or Carl’s fall potatoes and red-cored chantenay carrots, or Jennifer’s late tomatoes, or Mindy’s lettuce and fresh eggs, her”Gifts from the Girls”?

No, this life, the one right here awaiting me,  is sweet, and good, and is spread out before me, waiting to be plunged into and savored, swirling snow and all.

Arranging a Tune, Arranging a life

I had the good fortune take a workshop on arranging traditional tunes with Janet Harbison at the Southeastern Harp Weekend in October 2008. I was so thrilled by being able to do harp things at the end of the 90 minute workshop that I couldn’t do when she started the class, that the following summer I attended Janet’s adults only SummerSchool at the Irish Harp Centre in Castleconnell, County Limerick, Ireland.

In both settings, Janet stressed that harpers do not need to learn to play other musicians’ arrangements of traditional tunes. Instead, if first one thoroughly learns the melody, then the spirit of the tune, along with the notes, can become part of one’s repertoire. Then accompaniment can be added, starting at whatever level of simplicity fits with one’s skills at that moment. By absorbing the spirit of the tune and then by doing one’s own arrangements, one can play beautiful and heartfelt renditions of traditional tunes, in a way that fits comfortably within one’s skill level.

And so, our adventures with arranging started with learning the melody. When the tune was completely and comfortably in our fingers, we added simple one-note left hand drones. Once comfortable with single notes, our left hands ventured into playing root position triads.  Once comfortable with the triads, we could vary how we played them. Each new left hand idea built on the previous one. Each new step was taken only when the first pattern was completely comfortable and automatic. Janet called this process “dressing a tune,” and instructed us that a harper will dress and re-dress a tune many times, as one’s skills at the harp develop and evolve. But through this process of dressing the tune, of creating one’s own arrangement, the tune becomes one’s own.

I find myself remembering Janet’s phrase, “dressing and re-dressing a tune,” as I near my retirement date. Now barely two weeks away, the approach of my last day at work is surprising me with new anxiety. I keep trying to reframe this anxiety, keep telling myself that anxiety is one way I am recognizing the impact and importance of this milestone and this change in my life.

The bottom line is, I’m still gobsmacked that I am going to retire in two weeks. Growing up during the era of nuclear bomb testing, fallout shelters, the Cuban missile crisis, the Cold War with its lurking Communist menace, and then the Vietnam War, I never really envisioned retirement as a truly possible event somewhere in my future. I’m still amazed daily that both I and the planet survived long enough for me to retire. And while I did hedge my bets on my certainty of planetary destruction by contributing to a retirement savings account, I never had a vision of what my retirement would be, what it could look like.

But today I am realizing that retirement means I can quit living my life by playing someone else’s arrangement, and I now can create my own. I can figure out how my life will be different when I am not squeezing everyone and everything I love into the little time that’s available after working 40 hours each week. I can consider and decide what I want the next hopefully many years of my life to be, to look like, to contain.

What do I want to experience? What do I want to learn? What do I want to accomplish?What do I want to contribute? What is the best possible use of my time? How do I want myself and my life to be different from today and from the years of my working life? Who and what do I want to invite into this new life I am embarking on? This is not the kind of retirement planning that financial advisors seem to advocate. But for me, it may be the only retirement planning that truly matters.

And so, today I am finding comfort in Janet’s words about dressing and re-dressing a tune. Just as with the tunes we arranged, my vision for retirement, for my life, does not have to be the ONE decision that I cling to forever. I can re-dress my life as often as I can re-dress a tune. I can add in more elements, more complexity, as I am ready. The arrangement can change. For now, all I need is to create a vision for a few essential elements: How do I want to wake up in the morning? What do I want my day to include? What do I want to cook and eat? When will I practice? How will I spend time with people I love?

This much I know: I want a morning that starts with coffee, breakfast and reading the morning paper. Then a walk with my dog, and harp practice. Not such a different selection of activities than in my mornings now.  Only instead of starting at 5 am and walking the dog by flashlight, so I can fit in an hour of practice and still get to work by 8, now there is the possibility of a more leisurely awakening, of waiting for the sun to come up before walking, of taking time to explore a tune on my harp and see what choices to dress the tune I like the most. For today, that vision will be enough, I hope.