Juxtapositioning

For a few weeks I’ve been toying with the idea that I am broken.

At first I felt resistance to the idea. Who would want someone who was broken? We throw away the broken things. They are unwanted, unloved, undeserving.

I decided to take my resistance as an invitation. Go deeper, it whispered.  Okay, broken. What is broken about me?

Every step for the past seven months has brought pain. Literal steps bringing literal pain. The cartilage in my hip joints is not what it once was. I am a young woman for this to be happening, but it is. I suspect there is little cartilage left. Hip degeneration is in my family. When I began a deep martial arts practice seven months ago, I had no idea there was anything wrong with my hips. I had no pain. I had no idea about being broken in this way. I quickly found out, when my hips were asked to move in ways that they hadn’t in a long time, that I was not in the condition I had thought I was. Broken. Read the rest of this entry »

It takes more than one hand to list the animals that have been showing up for me lately, filling the air with their song and presenting me with wisdom, perspective, challenge.

[Note: I count on my fingers beginning with the thumb. How many people do that? I would wager not many. Not many Americans anyway.]

One. Hawk. The messenger. Visionary power and guardianship. Paying attention to what might otherwise be overlooked.

Two. Eagle. Bald eagle, off to the west of I-5 somewhere around Stanwood. Ability to see highest truth or viewpoint. Spiritual energy. Connection from earth to sky, symbolizing balance.

Three. Ants. LOTS of ants. Many more than I am comfortable with. The warm spring winds awakened them and they scuttled inside looking for solace. Attending to one’s foundation. Community. Perseverance. Accomplishment through discipline and structure. Read the rest of this entry »

Fingers intertwined. Scent of winter-flowering trees. Bare expectant branches, contrasted against a muted backdrop. Verdant aliveness, sap running within, hearts beating in warm repose. Cloudburst-sated, yet wanting more, more, until waterfalls crested over mossy hillsides and the emerald turf drank a thousand years of delight.

Things I love: perspective, the unexpected, golden afternoon light, lush wetness, the way colors pop on a muted overcast day.

Seattle Arboretum view brought to you by serendipity, a romantic sensibility, and Hipstamatic, the second coolest app on my iPhone.

I’m haunted this week by Colorado. It keeps coming to me in different forms and from different places, SMACK a flash of memory. A mind’s-eye snapshot of brilliant white light filling rooms from every window. Bike paths winding through chirping prairie dog villages. The brilliant sky in tones of gold and vermillion, a different view in every direction. The purple crystal heart that hangs from my rear view mirror. Freedom. Loss.

He was ten that year. The cello was a natural instrument, but they weren’t friends at first. Not long before Christmas, something clicked into place. He sat taller, straighter. The instrument became part of him, an extension of him. Notes flowed from his fingertips into the warm golden-brown wood, and the house sang. A room at the front of the house became the music room, and every night we were bathed in golden brown.

I always liked Pachelbel’s Canon in D from the first time I heard it while driving to ballet class one Pittsburgh Christmas season. How had I missed this? I wondered, and turned the radio up louder. Now Pachelbel sang in the music room, the deep bass notes and the dulcet golden middle tones combining in joyful abandon. He taught me the bass line, and I felt a little body recognition in the way I held the cello, fingers curling around on the left, a taut bent arm bowing on the right. It felt familiar. No wonder he had become a natural. One day he’d play professionally, maybe.

Six months later, the sunsets dwindled in the rear view mirror and my bright dreams turned to ash. Colorado became a bitter memory of loss and defeat. The worlds I was creating, of cello players and horse girls, fell away into dust. The cello went back to the music store, forever a part of that one sun-washed year.

I heard my Christmas gift over the phone this year. It’s five years later and he’s bringing music back into his life. He picked out the notes of all the parts of Pachelbel on a keyboard nearly as old as he is, and played a hip hop version for me while I wept silently on the other end of the phone, remembering the tall boy who sat taller when he held his cello, regally coaxing notes from the golden brown wood and sending them off into the ethers, a blessing to the universe.