Category: Music

Where We Wander

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And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.
~Anne Porter from “Music”

 

as cold days linger in interminable gray
when energy wanes
sleep as refuge
instead of restoration

to wander this wintry path
alongside the One who
readies us for radiance
of bird song and sleigh bell frog chorus

a remembrance
of a promise kept~
this is not all there is

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The Shadows of a Moment

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I hated waiting.
If I had one particular complaint,
it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation.
I expected —
an arrival, an explanation, an apology.
There had never been one,
a fact I could have accepted,
were it not true that,
just when I had got used
to the limits and dimensions of one moment,
I was expelled into the next
and made to wonder again
if any shapes hid in its shadows.

Memory is the sense of loss,
and loss pulls us after it.
~Marilynne Robinson from Housekeeping

 

Winter weather has a way of exacerbating loss, reminding us over and over what it is we’ve lost and still waiting for — the sun’s warmth on our cheeks, the feel of cool breezes in our hair on a sweaty day, the presence of color when numbed by the sky’s constant weeping of whites and grays.  We keep waiting for that next moment, and then the next, looking for when we may settle down and stay, however briefly, content.

We are pulled through the shadows of each emerging moment, losing what we just had to mere memory:

Last night, my husband and I attended our children’s former high school’s winter musical production, as we had done for over a decade while our three children were among the actors and actresses on stage.  I sat in the audience for two hours, emerged in the music, the singing and the dancing, the beautiful costumes and sets,  allowing each wonderful make-believe moment to carry me to the next and the next.

Only after the bows had been taken, the applause and whistles quieted, and we made our way to the lobby to greet the performers, did I realize my loss.  My memory of our children overwhelmed me:  not as they acted a role in the lights and shadows of the stage, but after the production, in the lobby as themselves, albeit costumed and overly made up, greeting grateful audience members.  But where were they last night?  Not here, I realized through my tears, not where I was so used to seeing them stand a bit apart from the crowd, smiling and laughing, waiting my turn to hug them.

Gone and moved on to other roles and other stages, far far away.

They have each left the magic and the hard work of high school musical productions into the magic and hard work of real life.
And we are left waiting for each next moment, remembering and accepting, filling and emptying,  wintering within our hearts again and again.

 

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Reconciled Trembling

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke from “My Life is Not This Steeply Sloping Hour”

On Mondays I often feel I’m the spot in the middle between discordant notes. There is on one side of me the pressure of catch-up from what was left undone through the weekend and on the other side is the anticipated demand of the coming week. Before I arrive to work, I’m uneasily in dead center, immobilized by the unknown ahead and the known behind.

This moment of rest in the present, between the trembling past and future, is my moment of reconciliation, my Sabbath extended. This morning I allow myself an instant of silence and reflection before I surge ahead into the week, knowing that on my journey I’ll inevitably hit wrong notes, but it can be beautiful nevertheless.

Even the least harmonious notes find reconciliation within the next chord. I now move from the rest of my Sabbath back into the rhythm of my life.

Trembling, still trembling.

Solemn Silence

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photo by Josh Scholten http://www.cascadecompass.com

The moment of waning night before
the first bird sings-
a solemn silence holds its breath
about to be broken

Like a full breast tingles
with readiness to flow until empty-
a wave rises highest before
toppling forward to withdraw

Like a nose tickles and builds
to uncontrolled sneeze-
a conductor’s baton raises to
ready the chorus

The anticipation rises
for unrealized potential-
cascades tonight’s stillness
into tomorrow’s dawn

Pulling Out the Stops

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I noticed the music his hands created before I noticed him. It was hard to miss the sound rolling through the church sanctuary doors as we entered to take our place in the pews, the layering of pipe upon pipe as the organ picked up the congregation, shook them and put them back transformed in their seats. I’d never heard anything like it before.  He knew how to pull out the stops.

Then I watched the new church organist as he played. Erik’s hands and feet were dancing the Bach Toccata and Fugue, his face lit with joy. This tall graceful young man was the happiest musician I had ever seen.

At sixteen, I had taken ten years of piano lessons and had never experienced what Erik clearly felt. I decided at that moment, I was stopping my lessons with my sixty four year old piano teacher with the cloying perfume, bangly bracelets, swinging ear bobs, multiple rings and meaningless compliments, and I was going to take organ lessons from this incredible man.

Whatever Erik could teach me, I wanted to learn. I watched his hands move up and down the keys, his long fingers reaching and caressing each note.

At first I was so nervous my fingers trembled when I played for him. To have him sitting on the organ bench beside me was a combination of ecstasy and terror. I practiced more hours for him than I ever had practiced before, wanting to please him and show him I was worthy of his time. He seemed to know how hard I was willing to work so he gave me progressively more challenging pieces to learn, and pushed me to create sound that felt wholly ethereal.

After a year of his teaching, a letter from Erik came in the mail the day before my weekly lesson, saying he was moving to another city for another professional opportunity and would no longer be available to give lessons. It was a brisk typed goodbye that burned in my hands as I held it.

The next Sunday, a white haired lady played the organ in church as if we were attending a funeral. I wept for the emptiness of the pipes, knowing the fullness they were capable of. Rumors circulated about Erik’s sudden departure, that he had left for a lover in the city and would not be back. I decided the organ wasn’t so important after all, walked away and never played again.

A decade later I was a medical student on my internal medicine rotation in a big city hospital, working as part of a medical team to admit patients and coordinate their care and treatment. One night I was handed a chart for a new admission to work up, and the name on the cover looked familiar. It could not possibly be the same Erik.

This was a gay man dying of AIDs, admitted with pneumonia and delirium. When I walked in the room and pulled back the curtain, I was not completely certain until I saw his hands. The rest of the Erik I remembered had been ravaged.  The stops had been closed, all except one.

His beautiful hands, the shape of his long fingers, all the same. And for the first time, they enfolded mine.

 

(written as fiction for a writing class I’m taking–the assignment is “What if? –telling a true story but only to a point.   Erik’s story is real.  My finding him later is the “what if”…)