When the Music's Not Forgotten

Some days, when hope comes winging into your heart despite your best efforts at bird proofing, the best you can do is open your voice and sing, try to match the song as best you can, harmonies lifting until there is no difference between who you want to be and who you are.

This, today, is my song: When the Music's Not Forgotten, Deadman

Please come close, for I long for you to hear
Hear the sound
That will rid you of your fears
In a land, where no water can be found
In a place, where there is no fertile ground
Longing for, yearning not to be forgotten
In an age, when the music is forgotten
In an age, when the music is forgotten

In the truth (in the truth)
Speaks of great and mighty things
Teaching us (teaching us)
What the peace of heaven brings
We must give (we must give)
We must give to all the others to those in need (those in need)
Who we fear to call our brothers

Reaching out (reaching out)
So that we are not forgotten
In a time (in a time)
When the music is forgotten
In a time (in a time)
When the music is forgotten

If we stand on a hill and do not touch
How can we do good?
If we wash our hands with all our friends
Where change can really come
If we hide our fears and don't draw near
Have we really lived?
Or are we all just standing here
Hoping there is grace?

In a dream (in a dream)
That I had not long ago
Visions of (visions of)
In a city made of gold
And a sound (and a sound)
That I never heard before
Such a sound (such a sound)
Saturating to the core
Such a sound (such a sound)
One that cannot be forgotten

[x4]
In a time (in a time)
When the music's not forgotten

Shoebox

A good friend of mine used to have what he called his 'shoebox of lies.'  He took the name from a Barenaked Ladies song, and his box was filled with old letters and card, gifts from people who had once cared for him, people whom he had once cared for.  We joked about that shoebox thousands of times, but he recently told me he threw it out.  Time to clean house, move on, start fresh.

I have a box like that, not filled with lies, but with the words and music and gifts of one particular relationship.  I have not opened it since I filled it, eyes full of tears and heartsick that I may never see or hear or feel those things again.  I couldn't throw those things out, though.  I couldn't let the artifacts of love, the evidence of joy rot in some landfill somewhere while I wept over their loss.  And I didn't want to be one of those people who thought the love that had existed between us was somehow false or dead simply because one of us made a huge mistake.

I have, of late, been wanting to open that box, to sift and see, to dig and dream.  In my reverse Pandora story, there is no evil to be unleashed by looking, but there are small winged moths of hope that may come flying out should that lid be lifted, and I may be, today, more afraid of those flutters than of any other carnage or chaos because, when hope is shattered, when faith goes, there is simply no other road to travel.

So, for now, the box is buried, the lid latched, and I wait, wondering if there'll come a day to dream again.

The Rising

Denis Leary called this song the greatest artistic contribution Bruce Springsteen has made, and I am inclined to agree.

While the events of 9/11/2001 were the inspiration for the song, the message that we can join hands and use our collective love and spirit to rise above whatever fear or sadness we are living in is one that fills me with a profound sense of hope.    I believe that the psychic pain many of us are experiencing today is the beginning of a greater healing.  While our minds fill beatific blue skies them with planes and people bent on rewriting the story of us, I think we can take control of the narrative and become the writer rather than the written.

I pray today for all of us, that we may find love that buoys us above our current circumstances.  Love that sets us soaring through a cloudless sky towards a future of unlimited joy.  Love that reminds us no amount of pain is insurmountable.  Love that wants us to be fulfilled and happy.  Love that seeks to give us the strength to rise, again and again, until all our fears are behind us and we are surrounded by the cool blue light of peace for ourselves and for our world.  And I pray that those I love know my heart holds them in a steady, safe place, and that together we are sheltered from the storm.

I pray, as Bono does, to be a harbor in the tempest for those of you seeking light, and I pray to be that same harbor for myself.  It is time to rise.

Can't see nothin' in front of me
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me
Lost track of how far I've gone
How far I've gone, how high I've climbed
On my back's a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile of line

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin' the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la

There's spirits above and behind me
Faces gone black, eyes burnin' bright
May their precious blood bind me
Lord, as I stand before your fiery light

La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la

I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There's holy pictures of our children
Dancin' in a sky filled with light
May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin' on the end of my line

Sky of blackness and sorrow ( a dream of life)
Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life)
Sky of glory and sadness ( a dream of life)
Sky of mercy, sky of fear ( a dream of life)
Sky of memory and shadow ( a dream of life)
Your burnin' wind fills my arms tonight
Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life)
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la

Detach from Hope

I read a phrase today that has been haunting me: "Detach from the outcome."  The central premise is that if you can detach from the outcome of events as you believe they should be, then you can free yourself to live in this moment instead of living in one that may or may not come true.  While I know in my heart this is a smart way to live, it's very difficult for me to do it.

This idea dovetails with something I heard on NPR this morning.  A man was talking about the disappearance of his father from Libya--he was abducted and tortured and kept in Egypt and has not been heard from or seen--and the man said there is of course always hope that his father is still alive.  His body has never been found and there is no way of knowing if he is or isn't.  The man said that while hope is a commodity we now throw around for political purposes--and that is something that has culturally been perceived as good--the truth about hope is that it never allows to live for what you have and are certain of because it implies that there may be something else.  This can lead to anxiety and a general disquiet that never leaves you.

I have always been a hopeful person.  I have prided myself on it in fact, being able to believe that things would be alright, that all would be well.  Now I'm questioning if that has been good for me or not.  Believing that things will be better someday, believing in the idea of soon, believing in the promises of what could be--it's pretty naive, and it is unrealistic since we have no control over what could be.  Even those who claim to love of us most can throw us off like we're nothing, so perhaps living any moment other than this one--living in hope--is childish.  Maybe it's time to just live in this moment now, maybe it's time to grow up and accept that love and joy aren't things that everyone gets in this life.

The thing about now, though, is that it is terrible.  I am sad, and I can't seem to move past it, and while the blurry face of hope materializes every once in awhile, it never quite comes all the way into focus which, I guess, means maybe it's time to stop trying to see that face.

It's going to be pretty lonely around here without it, but then again, it's been pretty lonely around here for a really long time.

Funny

Tom Petty, a sage I don't channel often, once sang, "most things I worry about never happen anyway."  I've spent a long time worrying about a slew of things, and recently a couple of them came to fruition in the oddest way.

It's funny, sometimes the things you worry about happen, and they don't kill you, they don't crush you, they hurt and sting and burn, you cry and cry and cry, but then you sleep long enough and find you can breathe again because the anxiety, the what if is gone and now it's just you and your life, two things you've always loved, waiting to see what's next.

Paying Attention

Winifred Gallagher, author of Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, argues that the quality of human life is not dictated by the things that happen to us, by our reactions to those things, by our heredity or environment, by our gender or race, but rather the quality of human life is dictated by what each of us chooses to pay attention to.

If I choose to focus on the negative things I encounter each day, then my life will be fraught with fretting, full of fear, and completely chaotic.  However, if I focus on the small things that I find beautiful, if I allow myself to slip past the negativity and instead drift into the trancelike state of rapt attention, I may find myself not only calmer, more energetic, and less stressed, but fundamentally happier, too.

An old friend wrote a blog entry today about special needs kids and her dear sister, Sara, with whom I attended high school.  As I read Katie's blog, it occurred to me that by nature of her differentness, Sara focuses on the positive in her world far more often than the negative.  In fact, I've seen her irritated, but in the 20+ years I have known their family, I can't say that I've ever seen Sara unhappy.  Is that because sad things have never happened to her?  No.  But it may be because her diagnosis allows her to see the negative things in her life as less valuable than the positive things.  And that's not a detriment, that's a gift.

I work with students all the time who have trouble taking social cues, who don't know how to navigate a sarcasm laden conversation, who couldn't be insincere if they were payed to be, and rather than feeling sorry for them or wishing their situation would somehow 'improve,' I often find myself wishing the rest of my students had the same issues.  The same blinders that seem to negate the trend toward teen angst and cynicism.  Wouldn't it be lovely if all students--all people for that matter--woke up tomorrow and decided to pay attention to positivity?

All of this stems from a young man in one of my classes today who said, "Everyone is fake and everyone lies."  I was heartbroken to hear this from a bright, capable young man whom I so enjoy having in class because this kind of negative view tends to belie an inherent distrust of the world at large and, in my experience, that distrust most often leads to unhappy relationships and sadness.  I tried to tell him I do not lie, I don't believe in it, but he said if I have ever lied then I am, in fact, a liar.  This need to see the world in extremes, labels, one incident dictating a person's fate forever is--to be sure--an adolescent notion, but it strikes me that the country is becoming more and more narrow, more and more black and white, as opposed to becoming more accepting, more open.

Today an anti-abortion bill was passed in South Dakota and anti-labor legislation passed the senate in Ohio, and the Supreme Court sided with the right to hate speech of the Westboro Baptist Church.  Think about that: three momentous decisions all on the side of negativity.  We are focused on the terrible things happening overseas, the monstrosities being perpetrated here at home, the tragic downfall of an educational system hell bent on reaching kids who just don't care.  Is it any wonder depression diagnoses are up and public happiness is down?

My wish today is that, as the sun begins to spend a little more time in the sky on this side of the world each day, and as we move into--finally--warmer weather, that perhaps we will all take a few minutes to pay attention to the things that fill us with joy.  Total wonder.  Our rapt faces brilliant in the bright light of what we used to call hope for a better tomorrow.

It Is Time It Were Time

I have been feeling pretty low the last few days, trying to focus on what is good but still, inevitably, beaten back by the sadness of being alone this time of year.  Fitzgerald wasn't wrong when he wrote, "[S]o we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  It is so easy to live there, in the past, when things weren't--most likely--better than they are now, but from this vantage point, they seemed to be.

Just as Jay and Daisy have glorified, idealized, and fetishized the love they once shared, during the holidays it is easy to slip into patterns that celebrate the good in the past without acknowledging what led to the present.

I don't want to dwell on how I got here.  It is not a new story or a particularly interesting one, but today, I am trying to live not in Fitzgerald's world, but in Paul Celan's.  He wrote:

It is time the stone made an effort to flower.

Time unrest had a beating heart.

It is time it were time.

In an effort to honor his words, to look forward rather than back, to be hopeful rather than hurt, here's what I did today.  I can't seem to get the sideways ones turned around...maybe in the morning.

Hope

"We judge man's wisdom by his hope."--Ralph Waldo Emerson


I am trying to sow seeds of hope in an effort be as wise as I can.  Here's the effort from today.

Backyard: lavender Bougainvillea, blue Plumbago, gold Hibiscus

Side of the house: tall Daisies

Purple butterfly bush and orange...I can't remember what.  Front fence by gate.

Pink butterfly bush, NW corner--I wish I could flip the image.

Native grass on the north side of the house.

Light pink baby knock out roses next to the front door.