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Time, on the edge of Forever

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

~ Marcus Aurelius-Meditations

Do you remember the old Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever”? Kirk and Spock pursue an hallucinating McCoy to 1930’s New York City through ‘The Guardian of Forever’. While in the past Kirk meets and falls in love with Edith Keeler. (of course he does, he’s James T. Kirk) Unbeknownst to Kirk, McCoy has stumbled into the mission where Edith takes him in. Meanwhile, through reviewing the Guardian’s images of the original and altered timelines, Spock has discovered that Edith was supposed to have died in a traffic accident which McCoy prevented. Kirk knows that Edith must die in order for time to return to normal. In the end, Kirk does what he believes is the right. “Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before.”

Forty seven years have passed since Harlan Ellison’s screenplay was first televised. Last week I was reminded of that story, the fluidity of time. People. Places. Peace.

…..And found myself at the portal of my own “The Guardian of Forever”.

Children grow up. Parents age. Friends get sick, some die. It is the natural course of things. Surrender. Letting go. Time, like life, can be about choice. How we choose to spend it. Open to and examining the possible. Riding the wave of time.

Sometimes we grasp so tight, the ‘water’ slips through our fingers.

As much as wish for it, time doesn’t stand still…..nor would we really want it to.

“Seize the day, then let it go.” ~ Marty Rubin

Life happens bit-by-bit, drop-by-drop, moment-by-moment. Accepting people as they are and ourselves where we are. Discovering joy along the current. Not perfection. Not manipulation. But joy. Even James T. Kirk knew he couldn’t trick “flow of time” but be content knowing he found peace.

Adventure

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.

Catch the trade winds into your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover.

~Mark Twain

Last Thursday morning I threw off the ‘bowlines’, ‘caught the trade winds’ and ‘set sail’ for points north: Boston and beyond. It’s a trip I’ve postponed. One I’ve looked forward to. Easter journey. Family. Friends. Freedom from schedules, commitment. Alone time. Ten days of rest and relaxation. Wandering. Wondering. It’s been too long….

Rejuvenated. Renewed. C.S. Lewis writes:

“Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.”

Time to find THAT Easter Day. Pray for those special ones who are still with me: heart, heaven… cherish…..take time. Breathe. Journey. Adventure.

Cathedral of the Holy Cross-Boston, Easter Sunday

Adventure….

Embrace the reflection of who I am still becoming…..

A mystery of motherhood and middle age….

sometimes leading, sometimes following.

Fun. Spontaneous. Serendipitous. The magic continues……next week….in living color… Explore. Dream. Discover. Catch the trade winds. Who knows where they may lead….

Passion

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain you see their specks dispersing?- it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

Jack Kerouac On the Road

Some weeks.

Seem special. Every word is cherished. This is one of those weeks and it’s not even Wednesday. Every moment cherished. Every word treasured. It started Sunday with an adventure…….

How many of us have convinced ourselves we’re the only ones that had ever been betrayed, injured, humiliated. My hand is raised: Guilty!

Broken, often oblivious to the brokenness. Complicated. Confused. Come on!

Odd adventure. Stop. Breathe. Letting go. Surrendering to the possible. Passion!

“Our life is not given to us like an opera libretto, in which all is written down; it means going, walking, doing, searching seeing….We must enter into the adventure of the quest.”

Pope Francis, America Magazine, September 2013

Often, the comfort of what is familiar hinders our desire for the quest. My mother used to stay “a lady always knows when to leave.” That had become my life’s prayer. Knowing when and how to leave….is an ARTFORM. I’m splendid at entrances, it’s the exits I haven’t mastered.

Passion. Journey. Sunday I FINALLY remembered something I’ve known all along. None of the moments are about hurts or injuries, entrances or exits…..but LOVE! As much as we don’t like to admit it, we’re broken people…. At least I am. Love puts it right.

An adventure is good for the spirit, soul…peace of mind. Perspective.

So with renewed vigor, the adventure continues…

with Passion…..Today….Tomorrow….Color me GRATEFUL……….Music to Long By

Foolish Consistency

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds….

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rarely at a loss for words, I was stumped for this week’s blog until today. Writer and photographer’s block!

Saturday afternoon I found myself at a women’s gymnastics meet sans camera. I’m not certain I would’ve or COULD’VE taken pictures. Oh, people were certainly snapping away. I even took one from my phone. Having never attended a meet before I didn’t know what to expect. By the end I was frazzled by the hustle-bustle-circus-like atmosphere of the event. I longed for quiet, peace, reflection~spent Sunday recuperating. When I was younger I liked the circus. Most of us grow. Up or otherwise.

When I first rediscovered photography I took lots of photos of clouds storing them in a folder labeled: “Up in the Air”. The click of the shutter quietened my mind, heart and spirit just as surely as any metronome ever did when I practiced the piano, singing or studying a score. The new vision was spontaneous yet consistent and comforting, like an old friend. I couldn’t place why until this week.

“While she danced without a net upon the wire….”

Decades ago, I learned that comforting dance with a camera. Mr. Gallien, my science teacher was inspiring, patient and creative. He built a dark room in the corner of the science lab so we could learn to develop film. He took us on adventures beyond the classroom, exploring the world through the lens. It was mysterious, magical and musical…red light, clicking of the shutter. “Up in the Clouds.” The journey from there to here……from clouds to circus has sometimes been circuitous. I’ve discovered I like spontaneity balanced with consistency.

Quiet. Foolish. Consistency.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

Today in quiet I reflected on journeys….

Casavant Mechanical Action Organ 2 Manuals, 25 Stops, 33 Ranks, 2011, St. Aloysius Church

choices…..

while sparkling through “a foolish consistency”……

Baptism Window~St. Aloysius Church, Baton Rouge, La. Stained Glass Art~Dufour-Corso Studio

Journey Window~St. Aloysius Church, Baton Rouge La. Stained Glass Art by Dufour~Corso

In the quiet, it all seems less foolish and much more consistent…

April Abandon

April.

Spring is dressed up in all her finery. I’ve learned to appreciate Spring without waiting for the other shoe to drop. Discovered order out of chaos. I’m a person who likes traditions and memories as much as I like knowing there is hope in tomorrow, being aware of the possible of each moment. SERENDIPITY!

Once, April began an adventure to a yesterday I chose not to remember. Now the journey is creative, collaborative, filled with a different abandon. Paradigm Shift.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Recently my daughter Sarah, a graduate film student asked people to submit experiences about “loss” or being “lost”: anything from losing keys to more profound experiences. St. Anthony certainly came to mind since I’ve evoked him plenty during my life: “Tony, Tony please come round…..”. Ultimately, I submitted something a little more reflective.

Shout for joy, O daughter Zion! Sing joyfully, O Israel! Be glad and exult with all your heart! Zephaniah 3:14

Beauty. Loss. Struggle. Finding a way…

When I was very young I went with my parents and older brother to the Louisiana State Fair in Shreveport. I remember the bright lights and music of the midway, the smell of the carnival food. Somehow I was separated from them. Hazy memory: the loudspeaker blares my name, my mother calls for me, my father picks me up. I am safe. I used to dream that memory.

April 19, 1985. I’m called to the phone during a choir rehearsal. Busy, I say. Take a message, I say. Urgent. Come with abandon. I take the call. My brother with news. The minute I hear his first word….. I know.

The unsettling confusion I remembered encountering on the midway returned. Loss. Lost. Change so visceral you can taste it. Until that day if anyone had ever asked my greatest fear I would’ve said: ‘losing my mother’. I was twenty-five. Naive. Sheltered……Unconditionally loved.

My mother had experienced loss: her only brother in his 30’s, the

month before I was born; her mother, other relatives, friends . I witnessed her strength, her intelligence, her faith in life’s scenarios: joys and struggles. It has been one of her greatest lessons to me. In her short life, 59 years, she showed me how to live with style and grace.

I’ve wondered how I could ever be the person my parents were: honest, involved, fun, loving, warm. They raised me to live an independent life…as me, not them. Exactly want I for my own children. Because of that example there is no loss; I am not lost or abandoned.

My parents words have stuck with me, reminding me to be a person of faith and not fear, guiding me along the right path, to love all people and walk humbly. Even when I have stumbled, their wisdom and spirit have brought truth to a world often absent of it. Not the least of which: I was born in their heart. Because of it I carry a piece of theirs in mine. . . for the journey. . .with sheer abandon…but never abandoned.

Here’s to the beautiful people finding a way….

How Can I Keep From Singing

“There’s only us
There’s only this
Forget regret– or life is yours to miss.
No other road
No other way
No day but today” (from the musical~RENT)

Saturday night I found myself standing at a well.

Staring at the darting fish, I considered the woman at the well. Dry. Searching. Avoiding. “No day but today.” Like her and even the koi, at times I’ve experienced isolation or chosen to hide under a rock. As I stood there staring, pondering….I heard these words: Women by May Swenson

I laughed. At the words. At myself. At my arrival at that profound, perfect moment.

“No day…..but….” So many times we stop short. Second guess. “What if”. Think too hard, too much rather than swimming forward or even resting in the possible….we stop short of ‘today’.

The now. A present. Gift.

“There’s only yes
Only tonight
We must let go
To know what is right
No other course
No other way
No day but today”

Music and especially singing has brought delight to my life, especially nurturing singers. Mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote: “Follow your bliss”. Often, singers take an abstract approach to the art form surrendering to the possible through imagery. We balance both worlds: Art and science; collaborating, joining with others to bring about a cathartic experience. To achieve this, artists become vulnerable and relinquish control. Call it serendipity. Magic. Miracle.

“No day but today.”

Just as the woman at the well, our souls and spirits thirst. We hide in shadows or dart about under rocks searching for who knows what until we find or remember those like-minded others.

“I can’t control
My destiny
I trust my soul
My only hope
is just to be”.

Busy. Excuses. “Let go.” “No day but today.” The path is there just as surely as the notes on a page. Trusting and saying ‘yes’ to the possible then trusting others….

We’re told that ‘hope does not disappoint’. Sometimes we don’t know for what we hope, which makes the quenching more difficult.

Standing now at a different “well”. This one is in the knowing that all will be well, grateful for the path and song that lead me to this day. There really is “no day but today”. Seize it! And SING!

“There’s only now
There’s only here
Give in to love
Or live in fear
No other path
No other way
No day but today”

Vernal

The first day of Spring after an unseasonably cold Winter. Others far more eloquent than me have set “Spring” to poetry and music as well as captured her visually. Virginia Woolf got it right when she wrote: ““I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.”

New life is BURSTING forth.

It been a full week. A challenging week. Solace came in knowing there would be time with a camera lens and music. Hearing students singing: “la, la, la la…it’s Springtime, it’s Springtime, it’s Springtime…. WAIT! That’s Antonio Vivaldi, Ms. Beth!” The Spring song continues….

Spring reveals herself in lady-like splendor. Creatively.

Rumor has it that the vernal equinox is the only day of the year when an egg can be stood on its end. When my kids were little we tried the science experiment. Sadly, it didn’t work. Even though it’s not true, we can admire the imagery. Eggs are nature’s perfect symbol for springtime and new beginnings. In March, when life is quickening in its seemingly miraculous annual way, we can’t help but ponder the cosmic egg of creation. Our newly hatched world is green, new, fresh, and as innocent as the dawn.

I can but trust that good shall fall at last–far off– at last, to all and every winter change to spring. —Tennyson

Silver and Gold

“Make new friends and keep the old.

One is silver and the other’s gold.”

Ask any Girl Scout. They’ll tell you the first song they learned as a Brownie. The spirit of those fourteen words runs through our veins

just as surely as cookies in March.

My grandmother was a woman of few words. Kind. Loving. A woman of faith and peace. We shared a birthday. She taught me many things:

mundane things like how to make the perfect roux and proper ironing technique by putting the wet, starched items in the freezer before ‘doing the deed’. More important life lessons: smelling a lie and prioritizing family and friendships.

She spoke of choosing friends wisely by modeling the passage from Sirach: Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds ONE finds a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond price, no amount can balance their worth. My grandmother always punched the word one as if there could only be one in a lifetime. Past the half century mark, I better understand what she meant.

Friendships are indeed treasures. The best are based on qualitative not quantitative factors. Time and geography aren’t a part of the equation.

Life was slower paced for her, my mother. Yes, even for me growing up. It was common place and even expected that families and close friends lived across the street, around the corner, across town, in the next town. FA-57140 was dialed on a red rotary then on a pink princess push button. The soundtrack of our lives was played on 8-track tape players or cassette decks and answered to names like “Davy”, “Bobby”, and “Donny”. Even when we dreamed of moving beyond the four walls of home we never imagined leaving behind such good friends….blood brothers and sisters….we could and would never forget. How could we? We would never forget such treasure….it’s buried in our hearts forever.

Silver. Gold.

There is a second verse of that Girl Scout song:

A circle is round. It has no end. That’s how long I’m going to be your friend.

The story repeats itself with each move. Each breath. Never leaving behind. Waiting. We carry with us those special ones. Always faithful. Always sturdy. Treasures.

Like silver and gold. No sum can balance their worth.

Phoenix Rising

Louisiana and Mardi Gras. They go together like red beans and rice. New Orleans and Jazz.

Mardi Gras isn’t just one day but a season, an attitude. Carnival season starts when the first King Cake appears on the Feast of Epiphany. In turn, the day following, “Ash Wednesday” is determined by the date of Easter which is set as the Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the vernal equinox. A. Mouth. Full.

Like so many things in South Louisiana, the lines between sacred and secular are often blurred. Easter is late this year which made for a long Carnival season.

“Throw me sumthin’, Mister”!

Young. Old. In-betweens. The art of the ‘catch’. Balls. Doubloons. Pearls. Krewes. Kings. Queens. Floats. Flambeaux. Laissez le bon temps rouler. Let the good times roll.

It’s taken me over two decades to appreciate the finer points of the culture and tradition of Mardi Gras. Joie de vivre Twenty-five years of living here, this North Louisiana native-Irish-Catholic is still much more at home on Ash Wednesday; however, I have come to appreciate the rhythm and cadence of the changing seasons. Last summer I went to a parade back home in North Louisiana only to realize that most parades pale in comparison once you’ve been to any parade in South Louisiana.

Saturday I attended a local Mardi Gras parade with friends. A beautiful,warm day. There are no strangers at these events in South Louisiana. At one point the parade stopped for over 30 minutes. While we waited, music from the floats continued playing. A beautiful little boy, eight or nine, started dancing. The woman next to him joined in. Total strangers dancing together, joined in community. Diverse in age, race. No labels. Serendipity. Joy. The moment was beautiful.

As with all good things the parade ended. My son Patrick always liked the ‘last float’: the street sweepers. He enjoyed seeing the beads attached to the brushes. I always thought it was a nice segue from Carnival to Lent, a cleansing. Some of the things I have in my life need cleaning up, sprucing up.

Lent. A good street sweeper would do the trick. Slowing down after the parade. There are a few remnants of the good times had but cleaning up, examining the leftovers. Taking time. Thinking about others.

Finding the old leaves and burning them could be the right idea after all. Starting fresh. A phoenix rising from the ashes.

Exceedingly Rare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qHX493bB3U

Wild. Thing. The song has been a guilty pleasure for decades. Not much to it. Three chords. Simple, uncomplicated lyrics. . . “you make my heart sing….you make EVERYTHING….groovy…but I wanna know for sure….” When I was younger I didn’t think much about the lyrics of the song. There are few things that are certain. Important things.

I’ve always been more of a glass half full girl, naturally enthusiastic and optimistic. Enthusiasm can be a gift and a curse. Passion burning TOO brightly for too long causes burnout. If not burnout, the spirit certainly has a way of getting scorched and seared. Misunderstandings. Miscommunication. Hurt feelings. What my grandfather meant when he said you can’t (or maybe it’s shouldn’t) have your cake and eat it too.

After weeks of auditions and rehearsals we finished a successful run of “Once Upon a Mattress” this weekend. I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with such talented young instrumentalist, singers and actors. For colleagues and friends who affirm and support this work to promote the arts. Building and nurturing creativity.

Hearts. Sing. Groovy.

Taking the time to enjoy the “moments” I’ve become less concerned about what was and what might be. It’s one of the great gifts of creating music. . . those beautiful ‘moments’. Collaboration with others becomes a model for all relationships. The music of ‘life’ is quite lovely!

The wisdom of this poem brought the last few years into perspective.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich

Stumble. Fall. Pick up. Move along. Life and apple trees are exceedingly rare. ...wouldn’t you agree? Taste. Let them sing. Groovy!

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