At Home With Unusual

Taking Time

I stand solid now,

Not like the moon in my twenties

Balloon ideas tugging too taut

Slowly my head turns

Taking it all in

Feathers fluffing with breath

Coming down

Snow floating on

A navy blue night

I am taking time-

it can’t sneak up on me

anymore

A lot happened my fortieth year: unemployed>employed, divorced>remarried, Chico>Sebastopol. I'm used to moving, changing jobs, even being married. What's new is relocating. Such a deceptive, clinical term that connotes nothing of the dizzy, schizophrenic sensations inherent to the reality.

Chico friends driving though the area stopped for coffee with Dave and I at Aroma Roasters. “Do you miss Chico?” they asked. “No,” I shot back immediately, “but I miss my friends.” It’s hard to miss a place that slammed door after door in your face even if it offered some quality parting gifts like a nice start to a teaching and music career.

Then I think of running up the North Rim trail months after my divorce, stopping to sob with the sunset, and swimming in Bear Hole with my father looking at fish through goggles not knowing it would be the last time he would ever visit a town where I live.

A new friend, actually a hybrid of the two worlds, shared the stress of moving twice this last year before arriving at the perfect west Sonoma County spot to create her art and house her husband’s extensive guitar collection. Although the tension nearly snapped her into picking an old fashioned bar fight, she asserted, “You have to keep moving on, or you’re not really living.”

Here I'm slapped silent with beauty just walking to the store up the crest of roller coaster hills. I buy my Charlie Brown Christmas tree from a farm tucked between vineyards and orchards next to Tom Waits loading up a ten-footer in his big black Suburban. Artists and musicians come here to live as if it were a greener, holistic New York city, and I’m lining up with them to pay slightly cheaper non-controlled rent.

The poem at the beginning of this entry came to me sometime during the blur of a year; a stolen moment with a pen and back of a shopping list. Against the grain of upheaval, a coming down, an assurance about the decision to remarry, to relocate regardless of difficulty or doubt settled serenely and I had to write it down. 

White Out and random thoughts

White Out

Prosperity sits

Not 50 yards

From the front

Door

My frozen fingers

Can’t feel the line

A younger self tied between

The two

Inside the kettle

Whistles, and songs

Sometimes make a third

Hum with the howl

 _________________________________

I haven't been writing as much the last couple of weeks due to the resurrection of my professional portfolio in need of a decade's worth of renovation, and the inception of a serious fitness regime. The masters say, "From one thing learn 10,000," and it often seems there are ten thousand pieces involved in doing the one thing. Video, photos, essays, lessons, all dragged out and polished up for the chance to distinguish me from the hundreds of other desperate teachers out of work in California.

My older sister was kind and cruel enough to show me by way of personal example what a proper diet and four to five days of reasonable workouts can do for a 40+ body. The gauntlet was thrown down, and I've been picking it up with lean and lovely form and repetition though running, tae bo, and daily yoga. Another friend told me that it was her goal to be in the best physical, mental, and spiritual shape as she turned 30. My decision was less proactive, but probably similarly inspired by my birthday's approach. I'll never forget a friend from church's gleeful exclamation, "I'm so excited to turn 40!" She explained it felt like the beginning of a peaceful mindset less concerned by triviality, and more self-assured. I concur. 

The poem I started with reveals another concern often emphasized by age. Wisdom counsels strongly against comparing ourselves to others, but despite following numerous rabbit trails off the path of stability, I marvel at how many friends settled in long term jobs and homes surround me. This economy has been pummeling me the last four years, and knocks me down every time I get up off the mat. So, in true artist's spirit, I wrote a poem that describes the view down here. 

In the black tunnels of this cave, though, there are gems to be found. I never expected to develop a yoga practice, yet here I am stretching a flexing in odd positions every morning. Discovering that it's possible to do from home, thanks to Rodney Yee's Daily Yoga, led  me to continue my search for a similar practice for guitar. What? Guitar is really yoga for your fingers, and I would never attempt to throw together some poses for myself and call it a routine, so why do I expect that of myself on guitar? I looked up a daily guitar workout, and found a couple of options with good reviews. As soon as 30 Day Guitar Workout and Guitar Aerobics arrive, I'll report back to you.

Story Behind the Song #3: Scarlet Silence

Little Words Cover Art

I invited high school students from my former workplace to create the artwork for my most recent album, Little Words. Students were given lyrics and mp3s for the songs from which they were to create a vignette expressing the heart of the song in the shorthand of imagery. I would then choose from the submissions which to use representing each song in the graph of nine photos on the cover.  One girl’s work stood out by each photo’s slightly melancholy, yet sentimental tinge. It was her entry for Scarlet Silence that surprised me in the sneaky way subjects appear when you start looking with a writer or artist’s eye. The old Christmas tree wrapped in a sheet/shroud, leaning over against a broom amidst stacked boxes conveys exactly the sentiment that stirs me around the holidays. The long, dark evenings force us to confront our interior attics; to move carefully among the precariously piled memories that threaten to spill out and bury us. 

I wrote the song in the throes of a quiet, dark morning when I lived in an apartment with a window looking out to the downtown plaza where a towering evergreen is ceremoniously draped with lights every Christmas season. Most likely, I was headed out to another job as a substitute teacher, and was making coffee trying to prepare for the day. The lonely, forsaken quality of that tree still lit in the early hours stirred me to pick up the guitar and start picking a quiet backdrop for lyrics that roll over the arpeggios in a stream of consciousness flow. 

This song reminds me of a psychological practice I developed when I dream: whenever anything terrifying approaches, I make a point of reaching out for it and facing it head on. It’s a powerful feeling that I would like to experience more of in waking hours. Scarlet Silence invites all my ghosts to unleash their most powerful spells of nostalgia, and gives me an opportunity to appreciate the roll dear people have played in my life even if we are currently estranged. It is one of the most naked requests I make in my music for reconciliation with friends and family. 

I recommend this song to your holiday playlist as a way to keep the focus on connection with people during the holiday craziness that is ramping up all around us, or buy a copy on iTunes for a friend. Click on the title or the iTunes button at the end of the lyrics to preview the song. Hearts grow bolder as we join together singing…..

Scarlet Silence

So the saying goes, darkest ‘fore the dawn

Wake up early find Christmas lights still on

And the cars go slowly, slowly walkers make their way

On the radio, Holy, Holy, it’s another holiday

Spin around the sun earth turns again

Something ‘bout that motion makes us remember when

The world was quiet, waiting for a savior’s sound

A time when we were lost, but oh so certain we would be found

Days grow colder, and the stars crown the night as king

Hearts grow bolder as we join together singing

Set the table well, put out the finest glass

Don’t turn away your eyes, let this moment pass

Though we’re feeling lonely, so lonely for those we left behind

Let’s stop and savor slowly, slowly every echo in our mind

Oh, I miss you, mama, I’d love to see you dad

How I pine for, lover, the crazy life we had

Do you ever think about me, my old friend?

It’s times like these I pray that this scarlet silence ends

Days grow colder, and the stars crown the night as king

Hearts grow bolder as we join together singing

Two Months In

Let me be honest with you about what I’ve accomplished two months into unemployment:

1.     Betty fucking Crocker: I eat 99% of all meals at home. The menu includes an incredible pork roast as well as a roasted chicken on par with Safeway’s rotisserie version at half the cost. I whip up a frittata with the roasted vegetable leftovers the next day. For breakfast there’s a black bean chorizo potato burrito, or hash browns with peppers and onions. Oatmeal cookies, pound cake, brownies from scratch top all this deliciousness off. I’m back, baby.

2.       Music over my head: The website is dusted off and up to date, and Microsoft Publisher pushes me to learn more each time I make new flyers for gigs. Kim and I meet regularly with our band mate, Aaron, and I’m practicing guitar on a daily basis and expanding the boundaries of what I thought I could do. More finger picking and little lead riffs move from my head to my hands.

3.       Internet TV: If there were a multiple choice or essay test on the plotline of any of the following shows, the teacher could use mine as the key: DEXTER, HOMELAND, HOUSE, MODERN FAMILY, THE OFFICE, PARKS AND REC.

4.       DEUTSCHE ORDEN: At least I have a beautiful desk/home office area to write these blogs from and surf the web for invisible employment opportunities. Yesterday my father’s US Marines spirit possessed me in a violent fit and a new alphabetical filing system was born. Now no stray file or 2006 tax folder clutters some forsaken bureau drawer. I can tell you EXACTLY where to find my birth certificate, past drug prescriptions, or car maintenance receipts. Das ist wunderbar.

5.       Wedding Wonderland:  Would you watch a reality show where a bride was given less than $3000 to plan her wedding? This is not an existential question for me, and I’ve downsized from caterer to taco truck and kegs in the process. That actually just made the whole marriage thing seem cooler.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, it’s time to go clean the house and make BBQ chicken sandwiches out of the leftover roast……

"Hello, this is Northstate Public Radio, may I take your pledge?"

Hard at work on KCHO's fall pledge drive

I whole-heartedly converted to the great community of NPR listeners in early 1990's. I rose up from the baptismal waters in love with the holy trinity of warm radio tones, old-time shows like Prairie Home Companion, and Fresh Air interviews with music icons and movie directors. Any knowledge of presidential elections, economic trends, and international happenings made themselves known to me in contemplative solitude while cooking hundreds of dinners, driving the sunset-soaked back roads home on long commutes, or sipping morning coffee. I vividly remember clearing breakfast dishes when the first incredulous reports threw the world off kilter on 911.

This fall's involuntary unemployment gifted me the time I never had, but always wanted to shift my intensely personal experience with NPR to that of a flesh and blood community by answering phones for the fall pledge drive. After meeting the staff and taping on my name tag, I helped myself to some Chico Chai and dried fruit plunder available to volunteers. Little did I know that the classical music show hours tend to invite low call volumes, but the two other ladies on my shift and I wasted no time in chatting it up about the inevitable small town connections we shared- their boys played soccer together, and we all had worked within the sphere of public education. We unearthed startlingly common horror stories of crazy staff members given free rein under the tenure system in obvious need of revision.

When the first rings snapped me back to attention, I frantically grabbed my script and filled out pledge forms neatly enough to make my team leader proud. Needless to say, the predominantly senior citizen callers made it easier by scrapping the need to notate strange email addresses. Each conversation felt like peeking through a lace-curtained window of a slower era. The whole experience provided a boost to my faith in humanity that too easily falters in the paid working world.

Next time, I hope to bring at least one of the Afternoon Bloom members so we can be a real team and even get a quick blurb about us on the air during our shift; and maybe even create a challenge where the first ten callers get a CD.

I'm curious to hear about your NPR nostalgia, or a confession of your current membership/pledge status. It's never too late....... Click here to pledge now!

Story Behind the Song #2, Look Upon me With Love

I was just starting to get to know my shadow self (as my psychologist friends say) when I wrote this, at the turning of the tide of the black and white thinking that had carried me through late adolescence and lingered in a fundamentalist Christian setting. Some other friends were learning the hard way about how good intentions + do the right thing ≠ NICE LIFE. Getting personally acquainted with this formula is a lesson we all learn, or are doomed to repeat in life’s merciless remedial courses. In retrospect, this song marks the mere infancy of my relationship with that kind of higher math. 

I observed that “each of us defy a reason to be loved;” that only perspective changes our focus from the damning details to the embraceable big picture. The utter lack of armor, the assailable emotional skin we reveal when we ask another to look upon us with love astounds with its honesty, and terrifies with simplicity. How much easier to spin stories and construct air-tight arguments to convince someone why they should love us? 

The meaning deepens and doubles as the years go by. The challenge to “let your lens be tinted with that rose” demands me to honestly recognize shortcomings while resisting a cheaper worldly bitterness that confers a lonely superiority. On a good day, this song can strip us of our cherished litanies repeated desperately in the dark hours before dawn, and deposit us eye to eye with the actual people in our life who may or may not “deserve” our affection, but what a gift we could give?

Look upon me with love

To the naked eye each of us defy

A reason to be loved

We speak too often or too quick

Make promises we’re sure to ditch

Can’t find a reason to be loved

Please look upon me with love

Yeah, look upon me with love

Let your lens be tinted with that rose

Look upon me with love

What other question, other cry, would be so easy to deny

Than look upon me with love

There’s nothing I can guarantee

For such a risk you’d take with me

To look upon me with love

Please look upon me with love

Yeah, look upon me with love

Let your lens be tinted with that rose

Look upon me with love

There’s nothing I can guarantee

But such a gift you’d give to me

To look upon me with love

The Difference a Year Makes

The next few posts are taken from "morning pages" I wrote over the last year. It's fascinating to see what changes and what remains the same. See what you think.....

I know that if I were in Spain right now that I’d be in some plaza watching these clouds drift overhead, minding their own business like a lovely woman peering at antiques over a table at the bazaar. In the middle of a thought or a question, their beauty would startle and calm me at the same time. Clouds are like old friends who's every incarnation you think you know, but surprise you with the subtle power of their charm. 

There seemed to always be a “we” there, even in the middle of nowhere in a windowless room of an albergue. There would certainly be someone to drink with, to share the sense of pilgrimage. That’s why it’s sometimes confusing that in my hometown I find so much solitude. Everyone is so lost in their personal orbits that I am acutely aware that my presence is not needed; it only ices the actual cake.

A TV drama’s character alluded to a sentiment I’ve long entertained in my own life, the idea that one can “borrow” a family and therefore afford to neglect the building of their own. My 20’s involved the extreme interlacing of two worlds, and today leaves me bereft of any contact with children I witnessed being born; whose first sounds heard included my involuntary exclamations at the wonder of their arrival. 

So like the wayward, well-meaning character on the screen, I find myself piecing together fragments of family wherever they can be found. With each attempt I realize with the surprise of a child watching a clowning adult’s thumb separate and reattach that surely I must have know that my life would not look anything like other people’s. Did I think something would magically appear to make everything fit together? The answer is, just like that little kid, I actually did. I’m not stupid, but there’s an irresistible appeal hoping for illogical outcomes. It’s more fun to think that way, and everyone seems to end up amused in the process.

What I really want to say is that it feels like resurrection, all the suffering and little deaths I’ve endured, and I wonder if Jesus feels isolated and a little aloof. It must have been strange to walk down those Jerusalem streets in his glorified body and think, “This is where I dragged the cross before the people who work in that building over there stuck a sword through my lungs. Well, I’ll be.” He must know that they can’t hurt him anymore, and it must have felt like a thousand years had passed even though it was only three days later he rose up to chat with the women who were weeping at the entrance of his burial cave.