Musics

One of the things I treasure most of more of all of the real relationships I have with other people is the music sharing. I was shared this today and it's beautiful.

First, a flashback:
I remember walking to class aside Dave K (oh worshipful Dave! You moonbeam! You, song of life and elderly tapdancers on aeroplanes ((You spelled it that way when you spoke, without knowing, but I knew!))) (listen to the whole album.  In order.  With headphones.  Walk in the snow.  Feel the cold and the heavy)  (and then fall in love with me. and life. and reading Kafka. and fake hot chocolate I improvised with old kisses and  boiling water while your sortafriends ate like kings.)

Beck, Sea Change https://www.youtube.com/watch?

but this, in today's moment:
approximately minutes 16- -17:19 Oh my!



Can I be trapped and untrapped forever?


Tell me what it means?

Aren't the lyrics below so deliciously kitelike?

"So in looking to stray from the line
We decided instead we should pull out the thread
That was stitching us into this tapestry vile
And why wouldn't you try? Perfect weather to fly"

I dig "tapestry vile"

\ 

And finally, one of my favorites:

 Now I'll be bold
As well as strong
And use my head alongside my heart
So take my flesh
And fix my eyes
A tethered mind free from the lies
 And I'll kneel down
Wait for now 
I'll kneel down 
Know my ground 
 Raise my hands 
Paint my spirit gold 
And bow my head 
Keep my heart slow 


My. Goodness. I kill these fruitflies who attack my apples.

I kill them with mercilessness like a Hindu Goddess. A bare (small)breasted goddess gnashing gnats. Oh dance with me Oh dance
Oh dance with me
Oh dance
Oh dance with me
Oh.
dance.
Oh.
Dance. Oh.Dance.

This feels like the right time to drown in some Elliot Smith.  "Keep Writing, Helen" he said.  That man.  That soft, pockmarked man.  Oh, an embrace I treasure!  Oh the boisterous women I admire!

Kite flying

Tonight's writing may happen in a series of posts, for the sake of post-erity, and posteriors, and post scripts (oughtta be more of those in life).

So we went kite flying today.  This is the kite I flew:  


I picked this one because it was called "hot" (see the tiny caption?) which I liked better than being cool.

Kite flying is a funny thing.  It's like having a dog, in a way, because strangers come up to us to strike up conversation:  "How do you make it dance like that?"  "What's it made of?"  "Where'd you get it?"  or just "That's a nice kite."  It's like having a dog because it lets people come up to you, but you don't have to feed it and it doesn't stink up your house.  It just feeds you.

Emilia and I had to have a talk about talking to strangers.  She admonished me after I chatted with the little boy who rode his sister's bike over to watch us flying.  He picked his way across a muddy field til he was close enough to call out "Hey, that's a nice kite!"  And we talked a bit, as much as we could with Nori clinging to my cheek.  After he left and I toyed with my regret at not offering him a go at the kite (hindrance being the baby stuck to the upper left side of my body that kept me from being able to give proper kite-flying instruction),

Emilia admonished me for talking to a stranger.  This is the second time this has happened.  She had a long talk with me after we picked up a down-on-her luck stranger last month and took her to find a hot lunch.  How do you teach your children to be cautious but to show love to strangers who need to admire your kite or ask about God at the playground?  How do you explain the way you have to listen to God speaking in your heart?  How you have to read the situation and watch your wallet, but give and give and give and share and give some more, your peppers, your kite string, your time and attention?  How you have to give your own personal gut-punched self a backseat so you can be there for someone else?  How do you explain that to a six year old?  And how do you explain the way you listen to intuition and the God speak?  How, when you're just learning to listen yourself?

I guess the doing is witness and answer enough for now.  I tried to explain listening to your heart, but she looked at me with skeptic's eyes.  My first baby one and look at her now.  I'm proud and in awe.  It makes me feel so small.

So let's change the subject to kitier things?

This is the kite I wanted to buy this summer:



But these are the dual-string stunt kites I really want but don't know if I can justify buying because, let's be honest, I'm not that skilled (am I?  maybe I am?)  I like the design on the top one better, but mainly I just want to try my hand at real kite flying.




Aren't they gorgeous?  Can't you just SEE them ducking and diving??  Can you hear the squeals of delight?  And feel my sun-stung cheeks at the lakeshore?  I can.

So why kites, Helen?  Why the thing with the kites?  Why, on this muddy suck should-be-winter day do you convince the kids to get muddified and go across to the field and fly kites when they'd rather be doing safe indoor things?

See, here's where I think the fascination lies:  It's in the tethered and the control.  We all secretly (secretively, oh wordplay) are rooting for the kite to escape.  Have you ever had a kite escape?  We did.  The very day we found out Jonah would be a he (and lied, we lied and lied and lied).  And our pirate kite escaped.  And when you feel the string go slack and watch the kite lift, you drop the string and run, but, if you're a Helenka, you  chase the kite every moment heartwhispering "Go, you kite!  be free!  Head to Iowa or Memphis or to the apartments off Broadway, but go!!" And still, you run to the tree line, you plow through the underbrush and scan branches searching for the skull and crossbones that's supposed to be yours to control, to allow slack, to bring in.

But I hold the line (blue spool is 90 lb line; red spool is only 50).  That day I only used fishing line.  I held the spool on a branch.  I thought I could control it enough-- could a trout or a bass really be stronger than a pirate kite?  I thought.  I thought wrong.

But I love the interplay between control and release.  I love the way we ache for it to soar, we try to control it, but when it breaks free, we run and we cheer.  Oh, how we cheer.

I love the ache of the forearms as I reel in what feels like a mile of kitestring.  I love the way it's worth it to know my kite got the highest.

I love the strangers who come to say "what's it made of?"  "where'd you get it?"  "is that your kite?"

How I Feel Most of the Time

This pretty much sums it up perfectly, except in my version there is a little bit less of a lurpy background dancer presence.



"I feel like expressing myself now, and I could certainly use a release!"

Daily Gratitude

It's that time of year again-- posting my daily gratitude in a public place.  I forgot to start posting over the weekend, so please walk back in time with me a few days and then, if you are so inclined, please join me in sharing your gratitude for the world.  This kid wouldn't claim any kind of wisdom or great worldly understanding, but I can say that cultivating a more vocal spirit of gratitude makes a big difference for me.  It allows me to tune in to the blessings and tune out the sad trombones...although, now that I think of it, that womp wahhhh sound is something to be grateful for, too.

So here we go.

November 1st Daily Gratitude: Brothers, great company, stopping in the middle of party prep bustle to read about King Solomon, the Cleveland Museum of Art.

November 2nd Daily Gratitude: The fellowship in a group of women I know, driving alone so I have complete control of the soundtrack (and can sing like a madwoman), going back to Evolution Yoga after a too-long hiatus, and feeling God's beauty wrap around me and support me.

November 3rd Daily Gratitude: Crazy looking handmade dresses from the thrift store, having friends to talk to on rough days, ropes + yoga, laundry + Munk/Walking Dead, wordmath.

November 4th Daily Gratitude: Work days at work, guitar in the background (and how it makes my brain work so much better!), spontaneous thrifting adventures, a chance to teach yoga (that's a blog post in itself) walking in the wind, coming home to my kids and those hugs and that garden and playing outside, watching a large cardboard box cartwheel down our block in a beautiful way, and then watching my darling husband run across the street, dropkick it, roll over, rassle with the box, and bring it home for us to fill with leaves.  Laughing hard.  Play dough, bath time, Nora's constant talking, love love love is all around.

Post your own gratitude!

This is the Stargazer sculpture at the CMA

 

Dreams

My dreams last night, like my thoughts so far today, were constantly interrupted by the people in this house.  So they came in images:

I pored over a map to study isobars up close.
That was one whole dream.


Next, in a patch of grass,
beside the staff parking lot,
joined by Nora,
and, a short distance away,
a small group of female acquaintances,
I sat in the sun and found a four leaf clover.
It was not a perfect one,
two leaves over-large and two were just right,
but it was the one I had been looking for
to settle the four leaf clover drought that's lasted
most of the summer.
I looked up at the sun glinting off the building.
I tried to photograph it to share what happened
but kept getting interrupted.
Two students walked over and asked to see it.
"It's not real" they said.
I held it up for them like an offering.
"Wow, it is real," they said.  "How'd you do that?"

Then the cat and the kids and the noise woke up me.

But oh, symbolism!  You are quite the delicious torment.

Steady study steady

This morning finds me in mourning and studying to steady my mind. Come ponder with me.


It helped last night, after everyone left, to scrub the coffee pot and the counters like I always did on my first night (or first morning) there.  I put on music, blasted the stereo like he always did, one or two clicks past loud enough, and we cleaned and sang and cried. Chris, Gracie, and I.  And we sang and cried and talked and cleaned.  This is all really hard.  And I am so glad we are staying there.  I'm so glad I can sit in  my spot here and my spot there and wipe this sink or sit in this chair and breathe in the smell of the towels and cigarettes.

Do you know he saved every card?  More on  that later.

I gotta walk now.  Gotta walk.

Here's some of what I was studying this morning.

First, from Plotinus, FIRST ENNEAD, SIXTH TRACTATE: BEAUTY


4. But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low place.
As it is not for those to speak of the graceful forms of the material world who have never seen them or known their grace- men born blind, let us suppose- in the same way those must be silent upon the beauty of noble conduct and of learning and all that order who have never cared for such things, nor may those tell of the splendour of virtue who have never known the face of Justice and of Moral-Wisdom beautiful beyond the beauty of Evening and of dawn.

Such vision is for those only who see with the Soul's sight- and at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in the realm of Truth.

This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight. For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen; and this the Souls feel for it, every soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love- just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are not stung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers.

That middle paragraph just hits me.

And from The Confessions of St. Augustine, some thoughts on fire and weight and love.  All things I also happen to distinctly enjoy.

Chapter IX

But was not either the Father, or the Son, borne above the waters? if this means, in space, like a body, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if the unchangeable supereminence of Divinity above all things changeable, then were both Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost borne upon the waters. Why then is this said of Thy Spirit only, why is it said only of Him? As if He had been in place, Who is not in place, of Whom only it is written, that He is Thy gift? In Thy Gift we rest; there we enjoy Thee. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us up thither, and Thy good Spirit lifts up our lowliness from the gates of death. In Thy good pleasure is our peace. The body by its own weight strives towards its own place. Weight makes not downward only, but to his own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are urged by their own weight, they seek their own places. Oil poured below water, is raised above the water; water poured upon oil, sinks below the oil. They are urged by their own weights to seek their own places. When out of their order, they are restless; restored to order, they are at rest. My weight, is my love; thereby am I borne, whithersoever I am borne. We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to the peace of Jerusalem: for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire nothing else, but to abide there for ever.

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