'Now my dears,' said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, 'you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.' ~Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit
There are forces—intrinsic, extrinsic, otherworldly, Olympian—in the preteen psyche that I hadn't anticipated. The girl is petitioning for a room makeover. Well, is it any wonder? I shouldn't be so surprised, after all, she is surrounded by storybook misfortune: rabbits captured for pie, eggs swiped from ducks,foxy-whiskered, prick-eared gentleman not to be trusted, and owls who skin squirrels alive.
Lulu, who turns thirteen in a little more than two months, has lived among the red hued toile rendering—wall covering and coordinating balloon shades—of Beatrix Potter's creatures for as many years.
I hadn't thought about Potter's nursery rhyme characters in that light when I decorated Lu's room more than a dozen years ago. I thought, to be candid, that the paper and fabric made for a nursery design with which I could live and a wall covering that would easily grow up with Lu. Now I wonder how easily she's slept for all those years in that angelic, antique three quarter bed while Potter's beasts dallied on the walls.
I admit, the toile was for me.
But thirteen is a coming of age birthday—a right of passage that has been known to be marked (her brother's room as precedent) by inner sanctum transformation. Hence, Lu's passage into teen-hood will be observed by the conspicuous and abrupt changes that are characteristic of any metamorphosis: a permutation of color; the shedding of layers; altered structures.
The coming transformation is for Lu.
I worry. I wonder if any morsel of Lu's youth will be recognizable in her transmuted cocoon. Or shall I enter to find a Kafka nightmare? Lu as a gargantuan pest?
Goodbye Jemima Puddle-Duck, Pigling Bland, Squirrel Nutkin, my Peter. Augmented inner sanctums take no victims. (Nor—I hope—accidents, like fluorescent permutations.)
Lacrymosa is the stage name for 22 year old Brooklyn singer/pianist/composer Caitlin Pasko, whose warm, tranquil music gently fills space, time, and captivates. Her second album, Selah, was released in 2010.
Pasko studied classical piano from a young age, and quickly developed a style which she has described as whimsical forest music. Her angelic soprano lends itself well to her otherworldly sound, as well as the pastoral imagery her songs evoke.
Pasko's lyrics are peppered with fields of gold, roses, buttercups, parrots, trees, spiders and tiny horses—just the type of visuals that also might make for something really sweet, like, say...
Wheatfield with Crows--Vinent Van Gogh, from the Van Gogh Museum.
Her daughter's breathy kiss lingered in the air, aflutter, like a corvid beating its way through the evening breeze, migrating to places she'd not considered in a long while. Places saturated in deep alluvial and poseidon hues, where prismatic skies swirl and lime-coated mountains plummet madly into ravines. The cold winds that sweep through these places sweep through the heart, loosening it from its chamber like a tin can from a toppled refuse bin, clanking through the empty streets.
The Rhone Valley was like this, and her heart was open to it, to being lost to its craggy mountaintop villages and billowing vineyards, to chaparral covered plateaus, to the warm springs and high cliffs of the Vaucluse, to the artery and veins of the river, to the very mouth of the Rhone. But not to its empty streets.
Mon nom et Lucien, she thought she heard him say as he stepped into his toe clips and cruised easily along the gravel path, out to the main road. Lucien.
The streets were busy with traffic and she pushed hard on her pedals to keep close behind him. Several riders, changing gears, passed them as they climbed a hill. His calves, chiseled into the shape of an upside down heart, hardened as he clamped down on his pedals, accelerating up the hill, and she sensed she'd lose sight of him beyond the crest--he would take a left or right somewhere along the decline and she wouldn't know which way to turn--but he slowed when he noticed her fall behind. She downshifted twice and hurried up the steep incline to catch up with him. The gap between them narrowed at the hill's crest, and she nearly clipped his back tire with her front, having turned too hard to the right as she drew near him. She had lost sight of what lay ahead, preoccupied with the why and the where to which she was going, she hadn't asked the destination, and she tried to divert her racing thoughts to those of Van Gogh, and the green and beige squares of farmland and scattered olive groves that rose with her to the road's crescendo. She was thankful he hadn't turned to see her approach. She wondered if he'd even heard her, certainly he'd heard the grinding of her gears. As he fell below the horizon she saw ahead of him the road dipping gently into a long, thin, grey ribbon unwinding into the valley and the river beyond.
Van Gogh, she remembered, had painted his Wheatfield with Crows in Auvers, during the last weeks of what would be the final summer of his life. Attempting to escape the turmoil in his head, Van Gogh had left Saint-Paul with an injured ear, but even in the soft pastel glow of Auvers, just outside the City of Light, among midsummer ploughed and weeded fields of wheat, a countryside tinged with light pinks, pale yellows and greens, he painted inky, turbulent skies, twisted tree roots and ashen branches. But he painted the light, too.
The road through Saint-Étienne-du-Grès, where she had expected Lucien to stop, took them past washed lime morter stone villas, windows adorned with periwinkle shutters, and roofs of arched terra cotta tiles. Everything looked peachy, and she wanted to stop and linger, she wanted to know where they were headed, and was growing impatient with her own naiveté, but she could tell that Lucien, still ahead of her, had reached a cadence that obviated slowing, and she dared not suggest a break. They wheeled swiftly through the town's center and out along pea green fields, continuing west along Av. D'Arles, until they reached the roundabout where they circled north up Route D'Arles, across Boulevard Victor Hugo, and into Tarascon on the Rhone.
She'd been to many villages in Provence, but never to Tarascon. They glided along a stretch of road that led directly to the village's Place du Marché, where they found the outdoor market stands buzzing with noontime shoppers looking for fresh cheese, fruits and olives. Lucien dismounted from his bike, swinging his right leg up and over the back wheel with his left foot still on the pedal. She slowed behind him, placing both feet carefully on the gritty road, straddling her Raleigh, scanning the circular perimeter of the town. He grabbed his bike by the stem and marched authoritatively to her with an enthusiastic smile, pointing at the vendors and a massive, stone block of an ancient castle sitting at the banks of the Rhone, You see! Worth the ride, non?
Yes, it's quite lovely, she said, breathing deeply from her diaphram, squeezing water from her plastic bottle onto the tip of her tongue. The sight of a castle did not surprise her, there were Romanesque ruins and medieval castles scattered all over Provence. She looked at his glistening yellow shirt as the knight in shining armor cliche passed through her head.
She smiled slightly, You like castles? Your not planning on climbing to the top of that thing, are you?
Oh, tu est fatigué, mon cher?
No, a little winded, but I'm fine.
There is a moat.
A moat? You don't think I've seen moats? she laughed.
Je pense, eh, I think there is much you haven't seen, he replied, grinning. Come, I'll give you a tour. From the top you can see Beaucaire, across the river. It's where the great plague came in from Syria. Greedy merchants didn't care if the ship's captain was sick. It killed almost all of Marseille.
He coaxed her off her Raleigh, and they tied their bikes together against a cypress tree. The air was thick with the scent of lavender and lemon and olive oil, and she followed him, reticently, toward the castle.
* * *
Madison Violet, a/k/a Mad Violet, is Brenley MacEachern and Lisa MacIsaac. The duo have been playing together for more than than a decade, but serious acclaim has come to them only within the last couple of years, after releasingNo Fool for Trying (2009).
Their latest release, The Good in Goodbye, is a beautiful expression of their friendship, the essence of their relationship preserved in silky harmonies. You can read more about Madison Violet here.
What is the use of a house if you don't have a decent planet to put it on?
~ Henry David Thoreau
The brook is so low it's barely moving. The whole of our little riparian zone here in our corner lot in Suburbaland is a mess with fallen branches, twisted twig, and windswept trash. It looks miserable. This time of year, when mud season creeps in, I always feel like our land is telling us that it would like to be left alone. That it should never have been disturbed. That it wasn't meant to have been developed. We bought it, though, despite my general concerns regarding suburbia, after the cul-de-sac had been close to fully developed, and the biggish house (and in the grand scope of big-home suburbia--land of obscene McMansions--ours is the caretaker's home, which is still more than I care to care for) and pretty wetlands at its border drew us in.
We bought it for quality of life. For the family. We bought it for the school system (which, as it turned out, was rather overrated and spiraled southward soon after we moved in). We bought it because we got more home for the dollar here in lil' Rhody (oh, but the taxes!). We bought it for the dream.
Swift growth outside of urban areas is not unique to Suburbaland. Our town, to which I have before, by way of photo essay, referred, is like many other suburbs that hope to lure families to the dream with biggish new lots on which sit biggish new homes with biggish new lawns (and sometimes littleish lots with biggish homes and littleish lawns) and the pièce de résistance: biggish privacy. Though I'm not well versed in Suburbaland's permitting process, I'd imagine that developers love towns like ours that seem, or at least seemed at one point, quick to hand out building permits. Of course, we all know how that ended. Yet, it hasn't actually ended.
Several years after we moved into town, a new development went up on a hilly parcel of land along an old country road. The land comprised the few remaining untouched acres on this particular part of the road. Right under the bridge of a highway. McMansions set on steep mounds of craggy soil below the highway. I wondered if we needed housing that badly.
Eventually, the homes sold, with the exception of the first house built at the corner of the country road and the new road. What was also sold off was our buffer zone. Trees and brush and any living thing that offered padding from the noise of the expressway was flattened. A half-mile or so away from the new McHood, my neighborhood is now a little bit noisier. But certainly not noisier than the old Boston 'hood, on Comm. Ave., where most services were a walk away, and the T screeched by every fifteen minutes (which I never, ever minded).
It's all relative, as they say.
Still, I reassess. Our mayor, who hitherto has been the champion of town edification, has proposed a plan to create a town center on the protected lands of our old Monastery, in which the town library is housed. It's a beautiful 550 acre swath of grassy tracts, leafy trails and wetlands where I walk and cross country ski, and where the children run cross-country, and while I applaud the idea of a town center, the thought of transforming any portion of this slice of verdant land into what the mayor dubs an "Educational Village," containing a relocated town hall (in perhaps a more desirable location?) is shameful. The reason we don't have a town center is because of historically poor town planning. It's by this same reason, and at the hands of town solicitors and leaders who believe that land conservation easements were meant to be modified, that this community is at risk of losing even more of our valuable fields and woodland.
Simply by virtue of living in this town, in this neat little subdivision without sidewalks, in this world of homes of unused living rooms and front porches, on the edge of the remains of a place that was once fully adorned with flora and fauna, I am beginning to feel that I am in collusion with suburban sprawl--the need to push our planet to its absolute limit, and the willingness to turn a blind eye at the cannibalization of every morsel of land. I am a part of the rapid consumption of open space, the degradation of environment, biodiversity, farmlands, our very quality of life. I am a part.
Yet here we remain. For the children. Until the time, not too long from now, I can remain no more. And when that time arrives I'm going to pray like hell that someone else wants the caretaker's home in the dream.
Lia Ices released her sophomore effort, Grown Unknown, last January 2011. Pitchfork reviewed it soon thereafter:
When Ices indulges her avant leanings, the material provides a more suitable foil for her voice. A mixture of finger snaps, glinting piano, and subdued organ provides a suitably artful backbone over which she hangs a touchingly forlorn vocal turn on "Little Marriage", and there's a deft marrying of chamber music sadness and welts of distorted guitar on "Bag of Wind". But it's the standout title track that provides the most successful conduit for Ices' eclectic whims, with a militaristic handclap and acoustic picking alongside feather-light string parts. Here Ices sounds relaxed, locating a natural meeting point for her disparate sounds and easing into a vocal that effortlessly intertwines with the arrangement.
From Necima (2008):
Grown Unknown, has all the same haunting melancholy feel as her debut album, Necima, but is less shaky, more grown up than unknown, and clearly reflects her experimental theatre education at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, as well as her Shakespearian studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Chaparral, she says, reading from her notes while sitting near her mother in the king sized bed, is a small tree or shrub that grows densely in a Mediterranean-like climate.
Chaparraaaal, her mother repeats, extending the last breathy syllable in windy, treble swells like the mistral that blows cold over the Rhone Valley in the spring and fall, piercing ancient, ochre-colored hilltop villages, sweeping through the lowlands of Provence, over the sparkling lights of Marseilles and out to the Mediterranean Sea.
The girl laughs, Mother, it’s scrub. You say it like it’s some exotic plant. Chaparral is all over California.
Not just California, my dear. It’s found in any Mediterranean climate, like in southern France, where sage, fragrant juniper, and pretty white petals of myrtle cover the countryside. The mother remembers a certain half-year or so in Provence and the Riviera, the man she'd rode her bike with for a time, and her mind trails off to a different season and place while her voice tells the girl an automated story of Mediterranean vegetation.
After college she’d gone off to France with a pension from her father and a notion that she’d train for the women's version of the renowned Tour de France. Instead, she spent most of her time in two towns that flanked Cavaillon, where she kept an apartment. She'd take the bus or bike north, to L'Isle sur la Sorgue, and browse the antique shops or stroll the canals. On warm, sunny days, of which there were many that summer, she’d ride her bike south to Saint-Rémy, often stopping at the Saint-Paul asylum to doze beneath rows of aged olive trees that wreathed the hospital.
It was there, in St. Remy, while quietly walking the halls of Saint-Paul, where Van Gogh had taken residence for a year of respite, that she met a man she was to ride with. This is where he painted the Wheat Field, tu sais? He whispered to her as she gazed at a small Van Gogh etching hung in a shaded hall. Yes, the Wheat Field. She knew the Wheat Field, the dark Cypress trees, the swirling wind of a mistral, and she looked at this man, flaxen hair, sea-blue eyes, the muscular arms and legs of a triathlete, dressed in a tight yellow cycling jersey and black shorts, and felt a chilly breeze from the northwest, its whistle cascading from the mountains, almost flattening her to the stone ground.
Oui, je sais, she whispered back, he was living here at the time, but I believe he painted his wheat fields in Auvers. She looked at him, almost apologetically,I was an art student once.
And now?
Now? Oh, now, I’m training for the Grande Boucle Feminine, she smiled.
Here? He laughed. You need to go up to the hills. North to Mt. Ventoux. Or better, the Pyrénées! You can’t train down here. This terrain is not challenging enough.
I prefer Provence, and I've been up Mt. Ventoux. Besides, I don’t think I’ll actually do it. I’ve gotten a bit, well, lost. In things here, you know?
Ah, I see. It is easy to be lost in Provence. It's the good life. Suddenly, you don't want to go anywhere else. What you need is someone to ride with. Someone to give you a little push. A partner. Non?
A push up the mountain?
D'accord! Where's your bike?
They left the building and went out back to a small pebble-covered parking area, where she had locked her red Raleigh against a tree. When she saw the man's smoky Campagnolo leaning against a stone wall she knew that he'd be a formidable partner. Maybe too formidable, and she began to feel that she was not prepared for this man, for this moment.
The air is clear in Provence, the man said, moving closer to her. It is the wind, the mistral, it dries up the mud and muck, cleanses the atmosphere. And the soul, too. It's good for the soul. And it makes for a good ride. You will ride with me today, non? I know a wine cave, the best olives, too. I'll take you there, it's not far from the Rhone.
The man's thick hair glinted in the sunlight, and she noticed a shadow of light stubble along his jawline. He was handsome and confident, and she didn't want to fall for him. Yet, there he was, offering a push.
I need to be back to Cavaillon by dark, she said. Can I be back by then?
He shook his head, Oui, absolutement.And if it gets too late, there are buses back, along D99.
She unlocked her bike, put the cord in a pouch under her seat, and they rode down the long drive, out to the main road. Suddenly she wondered. Had he? Had Van Gogh painted the Wheat Field with Cypresses at Saint-Paul? Were they even thinking about the same painting? Or was this stranger, with whom she was now wheeling the roads of Provence, thinking of another wheat field? The wheat field with crows?
But she was following him now. His golden locks flapping in the breeze, his wide shoulders low to the handlebars. The mistral at their backs. She was going. Going, going. Between here and the Rhone, and the mountains and the sea. Falling. Falling, falling.
Mum, that's good, I get it. The girl pushes her mother's shoulder with hers. Hey, Mom, you can stop now.
Oh, good then, the mother shakes her head, unsure of what she's been saying. You're ready for the test? You know there's yucca and agave in California?
Yup, ready as I'll ever be. It's howling out there now. You hear that?
Hmm, I hear it now. Oh, I feel it, she says as she rises to lower the partially opened bedroom window. It's got a bit of a sting. Maybe a spring storm is coming in.
You alright, Ma? You look a little sad.
No, just tired. All this Mediterranean climate talk. You get going now.
I'm going to ace it.
Ah, lofty thoughts. Good then, go get 'em girl. Nite, nite.
Nite, Ma,the girl says, and before she's fully out the bedroom door she turns and blows her mother a long, airy kiss that trails off in a soft trill, following her down the hall.
* * *
Husband and wife team, Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore, are Tennis. Their debut album, Cape Dory (2011), a compilation of retro-pop/surf music, was put together after spending a year touring the eastern seacoast on board their 30-foot sail boat.
Riley and Moore released Cape Dory under the self-aware name Tennis, poking fun at the fact that, "from an outsider's perspective, [they] might look very WASPy." The finished collection of songs not only retraces their route along the coast, but also follows the relationship between the then-unmarried couple, which was tested and strengthened over the course of the trip.
In "Long Boat Pass," they find themselves anchoring away from their marina for the first time and rocked by powerful gales. Moore says the song is her telling Riley, "I'm going to trust you that this is not the worst idea that we've ever had, and hope we make it through." They did make it through, emerging from the experience a stronger couple.
This year they've returned with their sophomore album, Young and Old, a new band member, drummer James Barone,a more mature collection of songs, and a more confident and evolved sound.
Then came the ice birds, through the bleeding sky, over the undulating, aqua field. The white forest, frozen in dream, did not hear their trumpeting, nor the crunching upon the crisp ocean as a gaggle landed on its crystal beads.
One eye open and one eye shut, they rested uneasy, gulping the heaving field's abundant air—until impatient and hungry grew the gosling, who cried!
Mother goose took the lead, dew-tipped tails waddled behind, the bleached horizon in the distance pined.
Where the red sky meets the blue plain, dusk and dawn are the very same.
A poem, at times, must be scrutinized, to uncover certain clues—this is what the schoolmaster uttered, his tapered pointer a dancing muse.
Ice birds fixed on the cold, cold ground of the ivory shore as they shuffled in cedilla form (unlike their innate, accent circonflexe arrays in ruby heavens).
The silver gander considered the graze, and advanced along the inversion, his broad crown alert to what might fill the gizzard.
Somewhere in the sea of brush: berries, sedge and root. (Had he expected fish?) Then came the ice birds, mandibles wide and serrated, pulled up all the grasses, swam along the scrub, filled their bellies with white forest and frozen dream.
No one writes more imaginative story/songs/poems (especially the scruffy, down-and-out sort) than Tom Waits. Loss, lies, love, lowlife, liquor, loners and lullabies, he covers a lot of ground with a mean growl. Only Bukowski (whose influence on Waits is palpable) growled more prolifically. But Waits is the master of pairing poetic story with melody. And his ballads are beautiful.
Waits's most recent album, Bad As Me, was released in 2011after a seven year absence in the studio. On Bad As Me he's back like the geese, mandible wide and serrated. You can read (or listen—highly worth the 45 minutes) more about the release on this October, 2011, NPR Fresh Air interview with Waits.
____________________________________
The geese, as they were this morning (minus inverted color), in the undulating field.
You know, about the Dream. The American Dream: Justice, Freedom, Equality? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Oh, that's right, the American dream has fizzled along with your investments and savings—if you've been so lucky as to have saved at all.
Really though, are you still dreaming?
Or are you weary to your bones?
The dream, as James Truslow Adamswrote in his book, The Epic of America, is the"[...] dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement..." Yes, life should be better for all. It should, dammit. Now wake up from the dream. (If you are, in fact, still dreaming.) Becausethat dream is over. Poof.
Things are beginning to get a little ugly on Wall Street (as if they were not already grotesque). And elsewhere. Police and protesters are clashing across America. Our government's leaders praise the youthful anti-establishment protests overseas, but in America—Land of the Free, Land of Hope and Promise—peaceful activists are being arrested and even run down by police scooters. Who knows what's next.
"...It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it..."
I'm dreaming...
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong.
Our young have taken to the streets in an assemblage of civil disobedience, giving temperate expression to anger. I pray it remains peaceful. They do, we do, of course, have every right to protest. As we should. We must rise against corporate greed and confront Wall Street, the banks, the thieves with their crimes! After all, our government (ha!) simply won't do it. They won't. They prefer to bail out the thieves. With our money.
We are still a nascent country. We are still trying to find our way and we are floundering. Worse, we are drowning in our own greed. And make no mistake—it's not just Wall Street or big corporate or the banks. It's a two way street. Greed runs both ways. Greed throws rationality out the window. Greed takes hostages and then forgets about them. Disposes of them. Makes casualties of them. Greed never looks at the fine print. Greed signs contracts while disregarding consequences. Greed makes ill-advised and just plain wrong decisions. Greed gives bogus advice.
"...It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."
What we are sorely in need of, as individuals and as a nation, is self-actualization. You laugh. Bwahaha! I mean it, we need to get ourselves self-actualized and but quick. Has our collective dream become solely the pursuit of mounds of money? Does that trump all? I think not. (Though many's the time I've been mistaken.)
The disparity between the wealthy and poor is profoundly absurd. And no matter how one spins this dubious distinction when it comes to a full stop it is transparently clear that it's a dizzy and thickly layered black blotch against humanity.
I'm still dreaming...
What if, my OWS and Working America and Adbusters friends and All those interested in reform—and I don't care from where the financial backing comes—what if we considered doing more than just hanging around financial centers throughout the country. Now that OWS has gained momentum, what if the cause were to use the cash to find us a new leader—hell, we should All use our cash for that purpose—to broaden the candidate pool (the pool obviously ought to be emptied, political parties sucked down the drain, cleaned and re-filled with a fresh, clear, odorless solution), and not another politician chained to big corporate and financial institutions, but someone, some thing, who's nested in the loamy grass of the earth. Someone, some thing, that understands the heart and soul of a country, its people, it's greatest desire, its dream—we could search Thoreau's woods and root him out—and what if we stood him firm on packed soil (though he may not come so willingly—who, what, in their right mind would)—brushed him off a bit and tossed him into the pool (which has been cleansed of its greedy, beastly, sell-your-soul-to-the-devil political system that has never truly represented We the People)?What if? What if we rewrote the whole damn system?! Our new earthly candidate won't need to answer to or feast with the great corporate powers that be. The People will back him! You think he'll get eaten alive like a vegetable? The People will back him! He will serve humanity. Humanity will feast!
Uh, I am having night sweats. I am turning and tossing...
Oh, dang, I just woke from my dream!
... But it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest.
* * *
Paul Simon turned seventy yesterday. When he wrote American Tune back in the 1970s our country was in high turmoil. We were in the midst of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers were laid out for public consumption and horror, and the Watergate scandal sealed Nixon's fate. The American people had been mislead and violated.
The road to America's self-actualized soul is littered with obstacles. The journey is long. The GPS is our collective conscience. I hope we never lose sight of it: our destination—our Dream. I hope we've enough fuel to get us there.
His lower abdomen is punctured with tiny holes for the trocars, blown up with CO2
and the wall is illuminated. She walks the city streets in Boston. Back Bay and Beacon Hill. He is in able hands.
There is nothing else to be done.
Three hours in the OR and three more in recovery. A stroll in the Public Garden.
The Swan Boats have been stored for the season. Still, the city's oasis sings botanic.
A poke in Shreve, Crump and Low. Too sparkly.
Lunch at Figs. Crinkled spinach, bacon and Parmesan salad. She eats
the very last dark leaf.
A massage. Soft tissue, she says. Stares from the headrest at the mossy green carpet.
What are they cutting now?
Isabelle's Curly Cakes on Charles Street: They make a
damn good cupcake.
It is, after all, owned by renowned chef Todd English. (As is Figs.) At four bucks
a pop every morsel is savored.
The surgeon calls and says he'd been looking for her in the family
waiting area, expected her to be there.
I'm around the corner, she says. Oh, well, says the surgeon, he's going to be fine.
She repeats it. Collapses, shutters inward relief.
She goes to the waiting room. The attendant says the surgeon was looking
for her. He seemed disappointed, she says.
Thanks, she thinks, I'm the bad wife.
No one misses the Chief.
They let her run up to recovery—only on Ellison do they allow that, the attendant says.
She sees him on the gurney.
Bloated and wired with input and output, says he's happy to see her. Boy, am Ihappy to see you.
She collapses again. Smiles and says, the surgeon says you won't remember anything in
recovery. You remember the surgeon seeing you in recovery?
I do, he says.
Her hair is greasy with healing oils. She hopes he doesn't notice.
His head is wrapped in a cream colored blanket and he looks like an old Babushka.
She leaves him, again, to rest.
There is nothing else to be done.
Has dinner at PF Chang's—no Todd English at PF Chang's. Returns to the hospital.
Tubes and drains and Foley catheter. Instructions and prescriptions and precautions.
Call if this. Don't worry if that. He'll go home tomorrow.
The whole damn summer into fall. This'd better be the end of it, she thinks.
It's fall. Fall is not decay. Fall is renewal. Renewal.
There is nothing else to be done.
She drives him home the next day. Box of cupcakes on the backseat.
Kate Fenner, the Canadian musician with the rich and sultry voice, began her singer/songwriter career in the 1980's with the alternative rock band Bourbon Tabernacle Choir. Since the disbanding of BTC in the mid 1990's she has recorded two solo albums and several others with Chris Brown, with whom she founded BTC.
Fenner's last solo recording (January, 2007), Magnet, produced by Brown, includes this beautiful duet with Brown:
According to her website, Fenner and Brown are currently working on their own renewed collaboration—an album with an unscheduled release date. One never knows what's around the corner.
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.~John Muir
I know why Backwoods Betty left the city. Though this, I did not always know. Nor was I certain it was a good idea—Betty being a cityfied professional for nearly three decades, held captive by the city's assiduous urban hum, it's vibrant sheen, culture and diversity—I was worried, couldn't imagine how she'd negotiate the solitude of the mountains and northern boreal forests, the frigid and often dangerous winters, the slowed pace. As a second home, sure, but on a permanent basis?
But North of Franconia Notch is hardly an isolated, unfriendly or stagnant plateau. It is a series of verdant mezzanines, palisades of evergreens and brush, pillars of granite and peppery stones that line its natural corridors and wrap around its lush and coniferous woodlands. There, in the thick of this mountainous weald, it is to breathe crisp air and listen.
It is to be spoken to by a voice rooted deep in earth's core, an oracle.
It is to be in the company of good friends. Like the croaking bullfrogs at dusk.
Sunday morning we hiked Falling Waters. Here, along this rugged, root covered, stone lined trail, worn by the tread of many a trekking shoe, insulated from flurry and fuss, from what can sometimes feel like the madness of the world, we heard water falling: drips of clear liquid dropping from one green leaf to another, like Mother Nature's tears running down a stairway of foliage. Then, a trickle of water from behind slate and golden rocks, around fallen birch limbs, and quietly through the brook.
It is a conversation, accompanied by a lullaby.
Without television, radio or internet for the entire weekend, on Sunday we were still unaware of the events that had unfolded in Oslo, and Utoya. We climbed, quite blissfully, higher up the steep and sometimes muddy trail, and witnessed a different kind of unfolding: cool water plunging down granite steps. Pulling ourselves skyward, past sharp twists in the terrain, through shallow pools of water and up stone risers set by the AMC, the waterway widened and gushed from enormous slabs of stone into cascades of trilling aqua.
It is a melody.
We rested at the top of one of the largest falls, and absorbed the deep pigment of nature, whistling birds, barreling water, buzzing insects, pine and dirt and rock, the organic lyrics of the mossy forest.
It is a symphony.
Not knowing anything but the rich sounds of tall pines, clods of mud under foot, wild geese, bullfrogs, or fanning falls can be bliss. (It was Walt Whitman who said: You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.)
But the north country is not about not knowing. The north country is about paying attention to knowing. It is a meditation on knowing the true identity of the world, and all its creatures, of self and of what brings oneself joy and peace.
It is a meditation on quality of life.
It is a libretto of life. And death. And renewal.
And it is a meditation on everything we don't know, may never know, may never understand.
We went up and down the trail unfettered by the knowledge of the chaos and killing in Norway. The whole weekend, unfettered. It's hard to believe. Some things we don't want to know. Some things we most certainly will never understand.
At the base of the trail, turning on the radio, it was a requiem.
Falling waters, slipping tears. Sounds that resonate.
I didn't want to leave.
Thomas Dybdahl is a Norwegian Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter. His music has all the serenity and lushness of a stream rippling through mountain gorges. His voice: undulating waves of light and sound. His lyrics: as colorful and emotional as the deep northern forest, flooded with the steamy warmth of southern everglades. The sound: rooted in pop, its branches having a multidirectional spread to folk, rock, country, jazz—it is as melodic, scenic and pristine as the glacial terrain and falling waters that seduce us, that speak to us.
His new album, Songs, was released this month in the U.S.
This week, Dybdahl has been touring the States, dedicating his shows to his Norwegian countrymen. Next week, he returns to Trondheim and the tears of Norway. There, he's sure to bring much comfort.
(In the background, Norwegian philosopher ArneNæssspeaks of quality of life by asking, roughly, how it may be defined andhow it may remain high or become heightened? He reminds us that quality of life has nothing to do with what one has, but how one feels about oneself, what brings one joy. Næss is well known for his work on the principles of deep ecology.)
I worry no longer. Betty knows exactly what she's doing, and she's doing it well. There, in the backwoods of New Hampshire, is much joy and peace. I wish it were the same the world wide.
"In every walk with nature one receives more than he seeks."
Because I've barely unpacked one bag and am packing another for a weekend in Nantucket, where Easter will be celebrated with family...
An abbreviated version of FNF appears below.
(It's not what you think.)
Including (and limited to):
(a) A confession;
(b) A hustler, charlatan and genius; and,
(c) Fabulous music, of course.
As follows...
Poof.
(a) Opera. Oh, don't say it. I never liked it either. Until 1984. Then, I fell under a spell. Mostly a Puccini, Verdi and Bizet kind of spell. Mostly with arias. Mostly in the shower;
(b) Malcolm McLaren: the hustler, charlatan and genius who sold clothing on Kings Road, a costumer and stylist who managed the Sex Pistols, and the New York Dolls, dabbled in advertising, TV, film and a musical career of his own, a prompter and maybe even a bit of a Prima Donna, who died a year ago this month; and,
(c) Fans, 1984. McLaren's symphonic production—a version of opera—a tantalizing fusion of musical genres, was the spit and flare, that in my young mind, like a toasted coconut marshmallow moment, quick and thick, fired all things operatic.
Madame Butterfly:
Carmen:
Turandot:
Gianni Schicchi:
An artful new meaning to bel canto. Arias drained of vibrato, absorbed by fire. Oddly haunting and beautiful.
