The music of Philip Glass often bridges the latter days of winter with the first peeps of spring, and so I went down the Glass rabbit hole of music videos and came upon this slightly meditative and gloriously mesmerizing piece entitled ‘Glassworks’ which is as fitting as any other sound right now. Contemplative and compelling, it transforms into whatever you need, the way a good piece of music moves into many spaces, taking up many different forms.
We are all a little weary right now – perhaps now more than ever before – and not just because we are battling the last few weeks of winter. The world has been rocked. Some of us have turned on each other, just when we need each other the most. It makes me want to be a little kinder to everyone I know, and even to people I don’t. A little more patient with strangers. A little sweeter to Andy. A little better to my parents. A little nicer to my friends. And maybe a little more forgiving of myself.
“When you’re depressed, you get trapped inside yourself and lose the energy to take the actions that might make you feel better. You hate yourself for that. You see the suffering of others but feel incapable of helping them, and that makes you hate yourself, too. The hate makes you sadder, the sadness makes you more helpless, the helplessness fills you with more self-hate… Working… broke that cycle for me. I wasn’t sitting home thinking endlessly about what a failure I was; I was doing something, something that actually helped people. The more I did, the more I could do, the more I wanted to do, the more I saw needed to be done.” ~ Leymah Gbowee
“It is our duty to stand up for humanity. Step in and correct things that are wrong.” ~ Leymah Gbowee
“You can tell the people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.” ~ Leymah Gbowee
“For instance, there is no light without darkness—and this troubles many of us—but without it, how else would we tell one from the other? We spend half of every day in darkness; surely we should make our peace with this.” ~ Mark Frost
Clocking in at a precise 29 minutes, my daily meditations (and Virgo-like tracking of them) will expand to half an hour come March 1, a good plane on which to keep them for a while. It’s my own little system of what works thus far in this meditation journey, and it’s nice to see how neatly they have become part of my daily routine, as natural and easy as taking a shower (even in COVID times).
Meditation has proven to be quite a benefit in my life, something I’d hoped for but didn’t always trust to come to fruition, possibly because it sounded too good to be true, and possibly because I wasn’t sure I’d have the patience to sustain it to the point where I’d see a difference. Luckily, I stuck with it, and the differences have been gradual but profound. The older I get, the quicker time seems to pass, and so I can observe the past year and the gentle changes this meditation journey has produced, starting with an overall sense of calm and serenity. That’s not always easy to gauge or notice when it’s happening in such small increments; revisiting the past year of daily meditation allows me to see such changes on a broader scale, and they have been remarkable.
Honestly, I don’t think I realized how big an influence such a practice was having on me, but when I pause to consider what we’ve all been through in the past year, it’s certainly something to consider how relatively calmly I walked through it. (I wasn’t always so serene or accepting of such things.) That I did it all without any other crutches like alcohol or distracting entertainment like travel is a testament to the power of meditation. It’s not something that became clear until I started to look back.
It’s strange and wonderful the way the world works – or the universe or God or whatever entity that you believe fuels and guides us on our way – how the state of mindfulness, and being present in the moment, doesn’t reveal its full grace until patience and acceptance come into genuine existence. Wonderful because the work of mindfulness is immediately and at once a state of grace, while over time it transforms some lives into a greater state of grace. It feels like my mind is on the cusp of something, and that might mean what I’m saying isn’t completely clear or making much sense. I’ll work to refine that. For now, the call of meditation is precisely what was needed at this time, and I’m grateful to have that practice at hand.
Positing this as a late-night snack doesn’t mean I didn’t have it for breakfast. When I found a container of candied orange peel on the counter and saw that it was still good, I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and added some in – because chocolate and orange makes for a killer combo. I also happened to have a new box of Trader Joe’s Blood Orange Rooibos tea on hand, which only adds to the greatness of happy combinations. When the universe conspires to pair things up that belong together, it is folly to resist.
“I love tulips better than any other spring flower; they are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli. Their faint, delicate scent is refinement itself; and is there anything in the world more charming than the sprightly way they hold up their little faces to the sun. I have heard them called bold and flaunting, but to me they seem modest grace itself, only always on the alert to enjoy life as much as they can and not be afraid of looking the sun or anything else above them in the face.” ~ Elizabeth von Arnim
My heart leapt for joy when I saw the first bucket of jonquils appear at the market a few days ago, a signal that we are on indeed on the road to spring. Already, more winter has passed than we have yet to traverse. That is a very lovely thought. Almost as lovely as these cheery flowers, with their delicate scent that is barely perceptible, lending something even more wonderfully elusive to their appeal.
After everything that has happened over the past year, I hesitate to get too many hopes up, but the sight of these pretty little things has cheered me, so I’m going to indulge in some gratitude and appreciation of their gentle beauty.
Lent begins today, and thus the final trudge to spring ensues as well. This is the long Catholic haul – the more sinister sister of Advent that culminates with crucifixion and resurrection. Drama, drama, and more drama, and the mystery of rebirth cloaked in incense and prayer and mournful hymns.
The terror of performing as an altar boy for someone as socially anxious as myself was more traumatic than I could properly express, and so my dread and fear was kept mostly within. I didn’t want to disappoint God, and I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. The spiritual and the practical were both guilting me into doing something that set me decidedly off-balance and into a zone that was anything but comfortable. Rather than numb me to social situations where all eyes were on me, or accustom me to such a public performance, it instead seared a lifelong revulsion to all large gatherings. And so Lent carried a darker element than just the Jesus story.
It began in the dim evenings of winter, when we would shuffle into church for Ash Wednesday or the Stations of the Cross every Friday, and carried through our sacrifice of something fun or sweet or enjoyable during its 40-day duration (not counting Sundays). Such a long journey of drudgery, shrouded in the smoke of inscrutable incantations, made the last weeks of winter especially slow. The most haunting of the hymns was as disturbing as it was heartbreaking: the Stabat Mater, which came to embody this period of time.
As my brother and I carried candles past each station of the cross, the story of Mary about to lose her son Jesus seemed a sorrowful tale for any child to carry to bed every night, but such were the thoughts that followed me home, the ideas that populated my days, knocking on my heart and bothering my head. At the end was always the promise of the resurrection, the notion that no matter how bad we had been, Jesus would always be there, dying for our sins, suffering for our human failings, sacrificing himself and leaving his mother behind for the collective mistakes of humanity. It didn’t quite seem fair, and the lack of justice in all of it left me disconcerted, as upset by the torture of an innocent man as I was by having to parade around in robes that seemed to be a little longer than I was.
It sounds more upsetting now than it did then, and what kept my mind relatively unaffected by the drama was the promise of Easter – and candy and bunnies and colorful eggs – and the main celebration of Jesus rising from the dead. There was a lesson in all of it, something that felt more elusive than any sort of solid faith that made sense or was entirely believable. I couldn’t quite see what it was though, and I’m not sure I see it now. Faith is mysterious that way, in how it lends sustenance and power to some, and how it strips steadiness and sense from others.
Mostly I took my inspiration from the ultimate spirit of generosity and sacrifice that was inherent in the story of the end of Jesus’s life, even if I couldn’t quite grasp or understand it. That God would send his only Son just to die for all of us sinners struck me on some level as the ultimate travesty and tragedy. It always felt like those who most needed to model themselves on a martyr paid no heed or attention to the story, and those of us who were scared into believing didn’t have the room for any sort of peace or calm.
I spoke to God in my own way, in the rare moments when I wasn’t serving as an altar boy, kneeling in the pew or on my bedroom floor at night. It was a form of prayer that was absent from all those extra trappings of Catholicism, from the man-made bindings that too often strayed from the spiritual lessons at hand. And in that there was a comfort and protection that the church itself would never provide.
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston
“Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston
“It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning… Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself “Why?” afterwards than before.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston
“Love is like the sea. It’s a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston
“It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston
Once in a great while this entity we all populate and frequent and despise – known generally as the internet – and all its accompanying mess that we know and abhor – known as social media – produces something that is actually useful, particularly when it comes to dinner in a hurry. In this case, it’s a viral recipe that is making the rounds of TikTok, and if you enjoy feta and pasta, then this one is definitely for you. Here, as best as I can recollect, is how to do it.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Take a casserole dish and pour a container of cherry tomatoes into it. Plop a block of feta into the center and drizzle with a healthy bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and whatever seasonings you enjoy (basil and oregano and parsley for example, or that container of generic Italian seasoning that we’ve all had in the back of the spice rack since 2008). I added some red pepper flakes for a bit of heat, and some fresh garlic cloves, crushed. Shove that into the oven for about 20 minutes, and cook a pound of whatever pasta you want. I used a penne for this one. Go for al dente, and reserve a bit of the water for later (maybe 3/4 cup or so). When the tomatoes and cheese are done, mash them all together, add the drained pasta to the casserole dish and mix well, adding however much pasta water needed to get the desired consistency, and you have a simple but amazing dinner, done in a little over 20 minutes. The addition of some freshly chopped basil is recommended near the end – I made this on a very snowy day so we didn’t have any in the house and no one was going to get any, so this plain version had to suffice.
I thought it was a gimmicky fad at first, like cloud bread (don’t ask, don’t tell), but this one is a definite keeper – and I’m not even a big feta fan.
There’s one thing we don’t fuck around with in these parts, and that’s ice. We can barrel through a foot of snow on the Thruway on any given day, but as soon as you add ice into any travel equation, I’m out. And so it was that I had to delay my office day by a few hours when the ice storm hit early this morning. (See, if it’s Tuesday and I’m due at the office, the inclement weather occurs. Check the last four Tuesdays and prove me right.)
It does make for something pretty though ~ a veritable winter wonderland that makes everything a bit brighter, even if a bit more dangerous, as if we needed any more of that right now. Mercury is in retrograde until the 21st. Be safe out there.
One flies by day, one flies by night. Both hunt the lowly crew who roam closer to the earth, snatching them from their skittish movements, slicing and tearing them apart. Winter calls for desperate measures, dire decisions. Sometimes it’s a simple matter of survival, and that makes it easier not to pass judgement or cast aspersions. We are, all of us, merely trying to get by, especially when the air is threatening.
Watchers of the wilderness, they gaze from above, seeing more than we will ever see in a single day.
Without skipping over spring, that glorious season of renewed hope and rebirth, my heart has lately been pining for summer, so I picked up these Stargazer lilies to fill the living room with the scent of sunny days. They recall our first summer at our home, when I planted a few of these in the backyard, when I was just starting to fill in the space with plants and trees of our own. Back then, much of the yard was overrun with a tangled mass of pachysandra that just have been years in the making. They would take years of unmaking as well, and there are still patches of it that remain uneradicated. I’ve left it alone where nothing else will grow, but they are constantly on notice, encroaching as they do into the more refined and cultivated sections of the yard. Gardening requires such strictness.
As for the Stargazer lily, they would last a few years, always a few more than expected, and I’d thrill at their buds and sweetly-perfumed flowers when they’d appear mid-summer, but eventually they would peter out, sending up only a stalk or two of foliage as other plants overtook their place. It may be time to put a few more in, and start the cycle of summer surprise again.
“You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” ~ Nina Simone
“There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.” ~ Nina Simone
“I am just one of the people who is sick of the social order, sick of the establishment, sick to my soul of it all. To me, America’s society is nothing but a cancer, and it must be exposed before it can be cured. I am not the doctor to cure it. All I can do is expose the sickness.” ~ Nina Simone
“You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.” ~ Nina Simone
“Life is short. People are not easy to know. They’re not easy to know, so if you don’t tell them how you feel, you’re not going to get anywhere, I feel.” ~ Nina Simone
There’s a new world comin’
And it’s just around the bend
There’s a new world comin’ (joy, joy, joy…)
This one’s comin’ to an end
There’s a new voice callin’
And you can hear it if you try
And it’s growing stronger
With every day that passes by yeah, yeah, yeah
There’s a brand new mornin’
Rising clear and sweet and free
There’s a new day dawning
That belongs to you and me
Yes a new world’s comin’
You know the one I’m talking about
The one we’d had visions of
And it’s comin’ in peace, coming in joy
Comin’ in peace, comin’ in joy
Come in peace, come in joy
Comin’ in love
And I saw another sign in heaven
Great and marvelous
Seven angels having the seven last pledge
For in them is built up the rack above
And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire
And them that had gotten the victory over the beast
And over His image
And over His mark
And over the number of His name
Stand on the sea of glass
Having the harps of God all around them
There’s a new world comin’
And it’s just around the bend
There’s a new world comin’
This one’s comin’ to an end
There’s a new voice callin’
And you could hear it if you would just give it a try
And It’s growing stronger
With every day that passes by
There’s a brand new mornin’
Rising clear and sweet and free
There’s a new day dawning
That belongs to you and me
Yes a new world comin’
The one we’d had visions of
Comin’ in peace, yeah
Coming in joy, yeah
Comin’ in peace now, yeah
Smack dab in the middle of February, we have reached the mid-point of winter, and if history is any indication, the second half usually follows Broadway standards and moves much quicker than the first. Sometimes, though, winter stalls, especially when we want it to hurry out the door. There are snowier days still to be had, icy nights to be endured, and so we wait it out a bit longer. First, a quick look back…
Every Valentine’s Day found the students of McNulty Elementary School filling up bags with Valentine cards for our classmates, and by the time the afternoon rolled around most of our bags were filled with the innocuous cards that kids (or more likely their parents) picked out for one another. Cartoon characters or superheroes or unicorns and rainbows, they were a varied bunch – a mish-mash of harmless lovey-dovey sentiment before any of us had any idea what romance meant.
This post is going to be a little like those bags of Valentines – some of this, some of that, none of it very serious, none of it very meaningful. ‘Tis the damn season. First up, a poem, because I’m not entirely ready to forego some Dorothy Parker:
Experience
Some men break your heart in two, Some men fawn and flatter, Some men never look at you; And that cleans up the matter.
~ Dorothy Parker
Second, a song – sort of a companion piece to this ‘Crazy’ entry, but something more upbeat and bombastic. I’m heading into a Beyhive moment, and this one pushes all the right buttons, charging all the right stations. It’s a song for strutting when you’re in the throes of that first flush of love.
Third, a more recent, and heartbreaking, poem, to show the other side of love, because there’s always another side of love:
A Regret
by DAVID TRINIDAD
Kurt, early
twenties. Met
him after
an AA
meeting in
Silverlake
(November,
eighty-five).
I remem-
ber standing
with him up-
stairs, in the
clubhouse, how
I checked his
body out.
But not who
approached whom.
Or what we
talked about
before we
leaned against
my car and
kissed, under
that tarnished
L.A. moon.
Drove to my
place and un-
dressed him in
the dark. He
was smaller
than me. I
couldn’t keep
my hands off
his ass. Next
morning, smoked
till he woke,
took him back.
He thanked me
sweetly. I
couldn’t have
said what I
wanted, though
must have known.
Drove home and
put him in
a poem
(“November”)
I was at
the end of.
Later that
day it rained
(I know from
the poem).
And finally, a few quotes for this day:
“Loneliness is not being alone, it’s loving others to no avail.” ~ John Berendt
