THINGS THAT REFRESH MY SOUL

Quiet

Not that noise is bad or good – without it we wouldn’t have music or laughter or waterfalls. It’s just that the balance between it and silence seems so off. Some days it’s hard to remember what it would sound like to strip the noise away layer by layer – the big noise first: bomb blasts, rockets, grenades, screaming. Then the industrial noises: cars, factories, churning, grinding. Then the media: TV, video games, radios, movies, arcades. Then the daily noises: Doorbells, typewriters, conversation, paper shuffling, babies crying. And finally the tiniest noises: birdsong, bee buzz, whispers, eyelash flutters. Everything and all of it – except heartbeat. Time to reflect. Time to ponder. Time to remember. Time to hear the inner voice.
Deep Thought: It seemed to me that, somehow, the blue jay was trying to communicate with me. I would see him fly into the house across the way, pick up the telephone, and dial. My phone would ring, and it would be him, but it was just this squawking and cheeping. “What?! What?!” I would yell back, but he never did speak English.
Today I am grateful for: Earplugs and Hearing Aids
And by the way – HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

The Station Agent

Blockbuster only fans can move on. Just out on DVD and taking the audience award at Sundance last year, this is a delightful story of 5 oddball characters who fall into sync, all of their misfitting corners some how fitting perfectly together – a case of the whole being greater than its parts. Fin, a morose dwarf, inherits an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey. Parked nearby is Joe, a lonely puppylike young Cuban-American hotdog vendor who clambers into Fin’s space and parks there. Both of them meet and fall into the spell of Olivia, a 40-ish painter who has lost her young son by accidental death and cannot break out of her grief. Adding to the total mix are Cleo, a chubby little black gradeschool girl who adopts all of them and Emily, a sexy young pregnant librarian. What a team. You just have to see the magic they work on each other. Makes you want to board the nearest train.
Deep Thought: Once, when I got lost in the woods, I was afraid that eventually I might have to eat Tippy. But finally I found my way home, and I was able to put Tippy back in the refrigerator with my other sandwiches.
Today I am grateful for: All forms of transportation

Old Piano

It stood clear back in the corner of the long living room on the farm where I grew up, next to the door to the laundry room and across from the coat closet and the record player cabinet. I don’t remember what kind it was other than upright. The bench lid opened to keep sheet music inside and there were always several books of music spread across the front. Thanks to my mother I sat there for 13 long years learning how to read and play classical music, mostly Chopin. My hands were good piano hands, but whatever was in the mix between me and the piano and my mother, it was not my passion. Years later, my mother persuaded her grandson to take lessons on the same old piano that had followed to her house in town. It was not his passion either. When she left that house after my father died and moved into her last apartment, she didn’t take it with her and I, the only inheritor left, was somewhere in my life where I could not, would not, take it. And so it’s gone. Perhaps someone cherishes it somewhere. Perhaps it’s firewood burned up long ago. Because of it, I know that I could sit down today and play music again whenever I want. I haven’t yet, but I just began to retire from years of busyness in the world and maybe some day soon the old piano will take its place once more in the corner in my heart.
Deep Thought: The king threw back his head and laughed. He enjoyed a good laugh, and so did his wife, the queen. When she saw the king laughing she let out a big laugh too. In fact, she laughed so hard she broke her throne. This made them both laugh harder. Then they got serious when they remembered they had the plague. “The plague,” said the king, but the way he said it made them both burst out laughing again.
Today I am grateful for: Never having to play in a recital again in my life

James Joyce (1882-1941)

OK, I discovered a day late by a few references here and there in Xanga that it was Bloomsday yesterday, a day to celebrate Joyce’s most famous novel, Ulysses.  He also wrote poetry:
________
I Hear an Army

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging; foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour,behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the Charioteers.

They cry into the night their battle name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long grey hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

[Des Imagistes, 1914]
_______
Deep Thought: If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that’s another weakness.
Today I am grateful for: Islands

But Wait There’s More

If you’re like me, you have a shaky idea of Middle Eastern geography, but on looking at this map I’m struck by how Saudi Arabia looks like Texas next to the rest of the countries around it. Probably the same mentality too judging by the attitude toward death. It’s just not a good day without at least some death in it. So now there’s a new hostage paying with his life because of just plain simple Greed. Don’t even tell me that the U.S. friendship with Saudi Arabia is because of high ideals and brotherhood of the spirit. Say, maybe the administration will start sending our young people there next to die. Oh goodie. And maybe soon there will be car bombings right here in Portland, Oregon so we can share in in it. Looks like that’s what our government hopes for us.

Deep Thought: To my way of thinking, there’s nothing that can’t be cured by a big ol’ pot o beans. Except maybe bean fever.
Today I am grateful for: Eyes of the storm

Blindsided – Lifting a Life Above Illness: A Reluctant Memoir

I heard this book being discussed on some TV show or other and ordered it from the library. The author is Richard Cohen, a former senior producer for CBS News and CNN, 3-time Emmy Award winner, and recipient of numerous honors in journalism. He is married to Meredith Vieira, host of the women’s talk show The View. More importantly, he was struck by MS in his 20′s, effectively blinded by this disease, and then had to endure two bouts with colon cancer in the 90′s. You would think the book would be a downer, but the reason it drew me was that I’m always looking to examine ways that people find to surmount any of the myriad stresses we face in life so that I can incorporate them into my own journey. This is a fairly small book, big print, fast read, but so far I’m only at the beginning and what I’m observing is that this is a person who has goals, a family history of MS with good role models in his father and grandmother who took the disease calmly, and of course a certain amount of privilege. I can’t help but wonder if the book would have received the same attention were it written by a poor, unattractive, black woman. Nevertheless, I am intrigued to find out how he makes it from age 25 through the following 30 years of his life to now. My guess is it will be with a combination of gutsiness and zen.
Deep Thought: I think a new, different kind of bowling should be “carpet bowling.” It’s just like regular bowling, only the lanes are carpet instead of wood. I don’t know why we should do this, but my God, we’ve got to try something!
Today I am grateful for: Lions

THINGS THAT REFRESH MY SOUL

Peace

Peace, peace of mind, peace in the world, peacetime, peacemakers. Today is Sunday, the day many folks go to church to celebrate spirituality, and jeez (short for Jesus) I just wish one Sunday I would wake up and find out that all the billions spent on weapons of war were now going to be spent on weapons for peace. What would those be, you say? Well, for example, teaching conflict resolution from the first grade on to our children. Or requiring some form of emotional support (like counseling, or church, or support groups, or whatever) of every single individual on earth every year of their lives. Or making sure every individual and family has excellent health care and the chance for a higher education. What kind of rocket scientist do you have to be to figure this out? In that beautiful biblical verse it says “to everything there is a season.” How about if we had at least a single lifetime of just one side of the balance – a time to be born, a time to plant, a time to heal, a time to build up, a time to laugh, a time to dance, a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace, a time to get, a time to keep, a time to sew, a time to speak, a time to love, and most of all, a time of peace.

Deep Thought: I’d like to see a movie where a guy is going to die when the sand runs out of an hourglass, but then at the last minute an ant stops the sand from running out. Then the rest of the movie is about the ant.
Today I am grateful for: Unexpected endings

we are sworn to silences