Saturday Sojourn - Reckless Spring

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it

were voices instead of colors, there would be an

unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the

night." - Rainer Maria Rilke

What a difference a day makes. It was as if Spring had overslept and was suddenly awakened by the alarm clock. "Hurry!" she exclaimed to the trees, shrubs, flowers, and birds. "We're late...get busy!"

I went outside to find that things were blooming quite recklessly, not with the usual springtime order of events. The leaves on the deciduous trees suddenly decided to unfurl in all their sweet chartreuse splendor...

Though there is still no sign of the unusually stubborn daffodils and tulips, colors on the shrubs and trees collided against each other...

Wild Dogwood (yellow blossoms)

The beauty of the songbirds... purple martins, bluebirds, finches, and cardinals, combined with the less melodic crows, grackles, and jays, to produce a cacophony of sound that never ceased.

And the mysterious "Brigid's Gate" down the path from our house, which looked so barren this past winter...

Now looks like this...

...and I suppose before too much longer, it will be completely hidden from sight.

I missed the usual commune I've come to expect in the last few days with Brother Heron. Instead, he ceded the pond at Weldon Spring's nature path to a fisherman in human form, one who was much larger, noisier, and less graceful than he.

When I finished my meditation, though (seated at a pondside bench) I opened my eyes to see him (the heron...not the very large man) fly overhead to the sanctuary of the back woods.  So at least we said hello today.

Apparently, spring this year will be a raucous event filled with the chaos that invariably accompanies oversleeping. Each spring is different, I suppose, and this one promises to be memorable.

Today I hope you witness spring...somewhere.

The music I selected today is a little longer than most I choose (I never want to take up too much of your precious time), but I promise you this one is worth the seven and a half minutes out of your day.

This is Beethoven's "Sonata Op 57, 3rd Movement", or "Appassionata." This video is of Valentina Lesitsa in rehearsal before a Vienna concert in 2009. Like Spring today, it's filled with excitement, passion, and a bit of chaos. I think you'll be amazed by how fast Lesitsa's fingers fly at the end. Enjoy!

Seeing Flowers

"Happy are those who sing with all their hearts, from the bottoms of their hearts. To find joy in the sky, the trees, the flowers. There are always flowers for those who want to see them."
-  Henri Matisse



Weldon Spring is acting a bit like Toronto this year. A few feeble daffodils have appeared, rather faintheardedly, but the cold wet weather has yet to yield to enough sunny hours necessary for the usual springtime profusion of blooms.

This means I'm forced to look for other forms of beauty on my regular walks at the Weldon Spring City Hall nature path. Here's what's been going on:

The new Big Red Barn (replacing the old one that burned down last summer) was installed in the fall.

It's very handsome, don't you think?

Apparently, plans are underway to spruce up the front of

City Hall as well:

They're breaking up the old concrete driveway...

And preparing for a brand new two lane road.

Brother Heron and I have become much better at

not frightening each other...

Along with the Canada Geese, he now allows me to watch him fish for his dinner...

...though I'm pretty sure he went 0 for 5 on this outing.

I found this perfectly formed little home for some creature

in the back part of the trail, which calls for further

investigation as Spring continues... 

and the sky was as beautiful as any impressionist painting...



So yesterday I tried, and will continue to try, to see the flowers. As Matisse suggests, sometimes it's simply a matter of choice.

Today, I hope you see the flowers.

I've selected a beautiful orchestral work to share with you this morning, Gabriel Fauré's "Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50" written in 1887. This one is performed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, and is conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy (be still, my beating heart!).

Fauré wrote this pavane ('pavane' is a piece of music named for a stately royal court dance of the same name) for a patron of his, Countess Elisabeth Greffulhe, and it originally included dancers and a chorus of singers in a spectacle to be performed at her garden parties in the Bois de Boulogne. Oh, yeah...if I close my eyes I can see the flowers now. Enjoy!

L'Adieu to the Arts?

"But something touched me deep inside,
         The day the music died..."
- Don McLean, "American Pie"




Frédéric Chopin


I'm immersed in thought over what is happening up on Captitol Hill today. The issue of a looming government shutdown is complex and wide reaching, yet how many of us truly realize what that means?

Most of us think it means simply that government offices will close (so what?), politicians will take a break (so what's new?), and maybe a few services will be curtailed (so what's a little more trash on the curb?). 

It seems so much more dire than that to me.

Deep cuts are being proposed to the national budget, many of which are essential to our economic recovery. No matter which side of the aisle your perspective comes from, we all see the need to monitor the ongoing escpades of lobbyists, special interests, and corporate potentates. Everything is up for debate, right?

Everything but the arts, please.

We're locked in struggle, a desperate uphill battle to restore some balance in our society, and this fight cannot be won unless and until we recognize that it cannot be restricted to commerce alone. It is also a battle for the very spirit of our nation...our ethos.

Enter the arts.

I spent a magnificent few days in our nation's capitol recently, and was astounded at the wealth of artistic treasures it contains. The National Gallery of Art is comprised of two beautiful buildings, one historic, the other of new, modern design.  Much of our nation's and world's art is preserved and displayed here.

"The" Smithsonian is not, as we know, one building, but a complex of the world's largest museum and research complex, with 19 museums, 9 research centers (and more than 140 affiliate museums around the world). A shutdown of this facility alone would affect thousands of individuals.

Symphony orchestras, dance companies, and theater groups would be on furlough along with the trash collectors. Is this really what we want for our country?

A free society can not legislate culture, but we can vow to protect it. We can acknowledge the purpose of art, to transcend the mundane and lift us up to the cerebral and ethereal nature of our souls. It fills a void and nourishes us. When we are most desperate, we find sustenance in art. The arts reflect our sadness and struggles, as well as our joys and triumphs. They are a mirror to our national soul.

We cannot live by politics alone. We can and must aspire to sustain beauty in our civilization, to replace noise with music, to insert poetry where there is debate, and to look bravely into a future filled with the beautiful, magificent, myriad reflections of our souls.

Please join me in sending messages of peaceful cooperation to Congress today.

Although I might have selected any number of American composers for this post, of course my favorite composer comes to mind. Chopin wrote this lovely waltz, "Waltz Opus 69 No. 1" in 1835 as a farewell gift to Maria Wodzińska, to whom he was engaged. Although Maria's parents agreed in principal to their engagement, her mother felt Chopin's health to be too frail, and they never married. Chopin died at the age of thirty-nine.

[Nearly half of Chopin's works are alive today because his sister disobeyed his deathbed request to burn his manuscripts which had not yet been published. Hooray for rebellious sisters!]

This melancholy waltz was one of those pieces published posthumously. Its nickname is "L'Adieu" or "The Farewell Waltz" and it is my very favorite piece of music. Ever. Not even Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" can compare. This version is played by the brilliant technician, Tzvi Erez. Enjoy.

It's a New Day

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."



- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Barge Haulers on the Volga - Ilya  Repin, c.1870 -1873
Oil on canvas, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Whoooeeee. Yesterday was grueling. I felt just like these poor men, tethered together with leather yokes, slogging through clay and mud, dragging barges up and down the coast of the Volga River. 
 
(This painting by Repin is iconic in Russia, and was very provocative for its time. Despite the czarist mentality that hard work for the state was noble, this is a realist's depiction of life at that time, a time when men would work like this merely for a meal a day and a place to sleep at night.)
 
Sheesh. Look at how hopeless and dejected they all look.
 
Okay, in my infinite ability to romanticize my existence, I may have exagerrated how awful my day was.  But I did feel as if I were slogging through mud. That part is exactly right.
 
My friend Steven (of the blog THE GOLDEN FISH) posted an essay by Herman Hesse that expressed it better than I ever could.
 
You can read it  HERE.
 
At odds with everyone including myself yesterday, I decided to go for a very long walk, probably too long for the time of year, as I now have an earache from the cold wind and blisters from hauling the barges  walking the path.
 
As I came around the heavily wooded part of the park, a huge heron lifted up from the ground in front of me and flew right across the path. My camera was in my hand, as usual, and I snapped this picture as he lazily flew around my head.
 
 

 
I took that to mean that tomorrow would be a better day. We can do that, right? We can interpret the signs around us as we see fit to interpret them, can't we? I say yes.
 
So last night, I luxuriated in a hot tub for a very long time (how lucky am I that I have the time to do that at the end of a hard day?) listened to my beloved Chopin, and went to bed. I slept well and had pleasant dreams of being showered with cherry blossoms. Tomorrow has morphed into today.
 
Oh, Yeah. Today is a new day. I'll let you know how it goes.
 
I wish you a day free from tethers, blunders, and absurdities. Carpe diem!
 
Music today is from Michael Bublé, who personifies cool. Oh, yeah, he knows how I feel.  I wish the last two minutes of cheesy banter wasn't at the end, but just go ahead and hit the little stop thingy after the song is over. I've already played it a dozen or so times, and it's still early in the day...Enjoy!
 

Grace Notes

"I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace." - Helen Keller

Fantasy Bust of a Veiled Woman (Margeurite Bellanger?)
Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, c. 1865-1870, terracotta
Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

The last two weeks have been extraordinary, profound, and healing.

Just days after my mother's passing, I traveled to Maine to meet a dear friend and see my daughter perform in a ballet there, and then with only one full day in between trips (barely enough to unpack and pack again), I traveled east again, this time to spend a few days with two friends in D.C.

I struggled mightily with the decision to continue with my plans for these two trips. I had just suffered a significant loss. I was in pain. I wanted to curl up and hide under the covers. I was wrapped in grief.

In fact, when I saw the bust pictured above at the National Gallery a few days ago, I was covered with chills and thought to myself, "That's just how it feels." Veiled. Swathed in yards of heavy sadness. Grief, thy name is Margeurite.

Two weeks ago, I thought these two trips might be inappropriate or ill-adivised. I wasn't sure I could physically go. Could I even find the energy to pack one suitcase? Two seemed impossible. I wondered if I could make it emotionally. Tears come at unexpected times when we're grieving. Would I completely embarrass myself? What if I burst into tears in the middle of the airport? Or worse, in the midst of happy friends?

What I understand now is that there are no accidents. These trips that were planned well in advance of my mother's death had been scheduled at the perfect time with the perfect people in the perfect settings for the purpose of healing. I am in awe, and I am so very grateful for having decided to make these two trips. 

They were grace notes in grief's symphony.

[Grace notes are extra notes 'suggested' by the composer (they are indicated in classical works by printing a note that is much smaller than a regular note, sometimes with a slash through the note stem) for extra embellishment, but not necessary for the harmony or melody of a composition.]

They aren't necessary...just rather special and really appreciated.

As I progressed through the last two weeks, the layers of weighty sadness fell away slowly and gently, removed tenderly by family and friends who care for me.  The heavy veil was lovingly replaced by a weightless armor of understanding and peace.

If you offered a word of comfort, a hug, an act of kindness, or a smile to me in the last few weeks, know that I heard and saw and felt it. Each act is a grace-filled note in the poignant symphony of grief.

It isn't exactly necessary to the process, but very special and deeply appreciated.

I will share more about these trips, but for today, I want to leave it here...in grace.

May you have added grace notes to your symphony today.

Music today is Mischa Maisky playing the Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No. 1. Enjoy.