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Do We Stand in Love?

Monday evening I attended a vigil for victims of the Tree of Life Shooting. The lawn outside the Arnstein Jewish Community Center was bright with the light from hundreds of candles.

It was reported that between 700 and 800 people attended, and I believe that. I am happy I went, happy to have gone with my step-daughter and grandson, happy to see so many people there, people from many different faiths, coming together in love. And it was an evening filled with warmth, where one felt that love could indeed prevail.

I don't always attend vigils and marches, and from a purely intellectual perspective I struggle with their effectiveness. But I also know that one of the most important things we can do as humans is simply to show up. Showing up was what was needed, sharing our love with our neighbors in their grief was what was needed.

We are all Jews. First of all, if you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, your faith tradition stems from the same root. But I am not speaking of that. And I am not denying that this is a hate crime, an anti-Semitic act in a country that is becoming increasingly anti-Semitic. I feel sad for my Jewish family and friends. But I also feel sad for all of us.

We are all Jews. Every single one of us is someone else's other. Every single one of us can become a victim in a moment. Yes, I admit to stating this from my position of white protestant privilege. But it doesn't matter if you are white, black, Asian, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Atheist, heterosexual, homosexual, blue-eyed, masculine, feminine, rich or poor. We are all Jews and we all live in fear. Most of the time, however, we are adept at denying that fact, even from ourselves.

All of our lives hang on a thread. We can bind ourselves together in love, or we can let the fabric of our society and our humanity ravel away. Yes the shooting in Pittsburgh was the act of anti-Semite. He may even be a madman. Evil and mental illness will always be with us. Apparently so will denial. When we can label a person, a place, an event, we make it smaller. We put it in a box and store it away on a high shelf in our mental and emotional closet. And another thread in our societal fabric breaks.

An act of violence in a place of worship, a sanctuary, is an act of violence against each and every one of us. A shooting in a school is an attack on every one of our children. Any shooting of innocents, any shooting at all, is an act of violence against each and every one of us. And we all carry the scars whether or not we acknowledge that fact.

We are all Jews. We live in a world increasingly marked by fear and hate. And we are afraid. Because we are afraid we turn our backs, although we tell ourselves other stories, stories meant to deny any thought that we may live in fear. When we close our doors and turn our backs we are building our own ghettos.

How can we claim to be a country that respects religious freedom when we lock our sanctuaries? Not just synagogues and temples, but churches as well. How can we say all are welcome, all are loved when we are so frightened we have to lock our doors? How can we claim to live in freedom when none of us is free? We cross the street to avoid the homeless person, the group of unfamiliar-looking young people. We build walls. We treasure our safe neighborhoods, our schools with gates and alarms on doors. We practice denial daily. We try to blend in. "it is not about me", we say, trying to convince ourselves. Denial is about fear. And denial is a powerful drug. It never is, you know, about me. Until it is. And then it will be too late.

And although I am thrilled that so many came to the vigil Monday night, I also know that there should have been ten or even one hundred times as many, even though there would never have been enough candles. I would like to live in a world where the 700 people standing on a lawn holding candles is not the remarkable thing. I would like to live in a world not marked by hate, but by kindness and acceptance, and yes, even love. I would like to live in a wold that stops and comes together to stand against violence, where coming together to mourn the loss of another innocent is the norm.

Wishful thinking I know. But then perhaps then we really would be "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

October 31, 2018
Two Fridays

Two Fridays, two performances. First the Knoxville Symphony and second, the Knoxville Opera. I preferred the former to the latter, but perhaps it is time to deconstruct.

Last spring I asked myself if I seek out performances to attend simply to avoid being home alone too often in the evenings. Perhaps I do. But even when I was not alone, George and I struggled with this same problem, finding the balance between wanting nothing more than a quiet evening home alone, and loving art and music and wanting to hear more and more. This fall, I added another question, namely how many of my choices are simply habit and do I need to both push myself and let go?

And so I have made a point of branching out. I have purchased a subscription to a theater series, which I have so far enjoyed. I enjoyed performances before, but I was not so likely to push myself to go out, and even tired, I am a better person for simply going. I went to hear Candide twice, and loved it, even though I went into it knowing that I really think Candide is Bernstein's least appealing work, pushing myself out of my own far too serious shell. I have subscribed to Knoxville's Marble City Opera, a company that focuses on smaller, more intimate works, often contemporary, often in non-traditional venues. I have thoroughly enjoyed the performances I have attended in the past, but again, without pushing myself I won't go out. I need to go out and I need to work on my own biases and barriers. This busyness, this going out more, doesn't directly address the first question, but I am sure that all of this struggle with too much vs too little will sort itself out in time.

When a friend pointed out Knoxville Opera's comic double-billing of Mozart's The Impressario and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, I bought a ticket. I knew it would be a push for me, for as much as I have loved many opera performances, I have also struggled with equally many, prompting those same questions about expectation and familiarity. I know that I struggled with Knoxville Opera's performance of Aida last May. I know I struggled with whether or not I was biased by some unrealistic sense of expectation, wishing to recreate the magic of my first opera performance, which was also Aida. At the time I hopefully decided to blame most of my disappointment on the venue, the Knoxville Civic Auditorium, which has horrible acoustics, so bad that, in my opinion the place is only suited to loud over-amped popular extravaganzas where the performance is in fact not as much about the music as it is about shared memory and expectation. To my ears, that venue sucks the soul out of the music and leaves nothing but a barren shell.

I was therefore interested in hearing the Knoxville Opera in a more amenable venue, and the Tennessee Theater fit the bill. I have to confess to a falsehood however. I told acquaintances that it was my first Knoxville Opera performance, which it was obviously not, reference Aida mentioned above. At that moment I had forgotten Aida, which I only attended because my son-in-law was singing in the chorus. Nearly six months later I remember the Knoxville Choral Society's portion of the performance more than I remember the rest of the opera. Sad state that.

I didn't actually remember having attended Aida until after the intermission, during the performance of Gianni Schicchi, which is much more traditionally operatic than was the performance of The Impressario. I actually thought The Impressario was well done. The work itself was intended as a parody, and the musical score is short, I would guess less than 30 minutes. It is also my understanding that the spoken portion and the setting is commonly reimagined to suit the audience and the locale, which I think is important. In that sense the production was good: a self-mocking reflection on a Knoxville opera company attempting to put on a production of Gianni Schicchi, filled with inside jokes and vaudevillian humor. The Mozart meets Gilbert and Sullivan mash-up worked, and the audience, at least the audience around me, enjoyed that sense of being on the inside of the joke. It wasn't opera, as I think of opera, but it was fun, light-hearted musical-theater, and a perfect example of knowing and connecting with one's audience, or at least a part of one's audience, as attendance seemed light.

I was less thrilled with the second half of the program. And here I don't know if my head just gets in the way. The acting was fine, humorous and entertaining even, and the singing was fine. Much of my enjoyment of opera revolves around the way sets and acting and music all intertwine. The production itself was smooth, quickly moving and thoroughly entertaining. And yet I was unmoved. I felt that there was perhaps too much emphasis on comic relief at the expense of the story. Perhaps I just don't understand the story. Perhaps all those memories of being called too serious are true, and I don't "get" comedy. But what I found lacking was balance. My understanding of the music itself is that there is a balance, a contrasting play of themes between the comic and the solemn, a contrast that emphasizes the comic aspects of the story over the tragic, and it is this very contrast that elevates the comedy. This contrasting balancing of themes centers around Lauretta's solo O Mio Babbino Caro, which provides this perfect moment of lyricism and beauty, after which the give and take, the jockeying between comedy and tragedy resumes. Except that I felt the performance was unbalanced, geared more to slapstick, with the more solemn moments minimized, and I felt that Lauretta's solo, although beautiful, did not provide that moment of perfect repose that elevates the emotions; that it somehow remained disconnected from what came before and after. In short I was disappointed. But I don't know if my disappointment was reasonable or unreasonable.

Perhaps it is simply a question of exposure. Perhaps I simply need to attend more opera performances. I'm not sure that I will however.

I will continue going to the symphony. I thoroughly enjoyed the previous Friday's symphony performance which revolved around Tchaikovsky's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, in a rather interesting program which opened with Beethoven's Egmont Overture, which was beautifully performed. I continue to think thet the KSO's performances of Beethoven have been consistently improving. But what most intrigued me was Arem Demirjian's comments prior to the concert. He discussed the Beethoven piece, explaining the story and illustrating how it played out in the work. I think this was a good approach, even though we often neglect explanations of Beethoven, assuming familiarity. He pointed out that Beethoven was a champion of political freedom and talked about how this played out in the concert choices for the evening, but I do not recall that he said much about the Tchaikovsky. Perhaps he should have said more, for although for although themes of fighting oppression, supporting the underdog, and freedom certainly apply to Shostakovich's fifth symphony, and were well explained by Demirjian, I don't recall him saying much about the Violin Concerto. But of course it fit in the same theme. Perhaps I missed it.

The performance was stunning. Robyn Bollinger gave an incredible performance of a difficult work, and neither soloist or orchestra gave in to the excess romanticism, which occasionally mars a performance. Aside from the technical brilliance of this work, I think it might have helped to remind audiences that it was written at a difficult time in Tchaikovsky's life; that he was struggling with a difficult marriage and a love that could never be; and that this work was not at all well received at the time — even though today it is one of the classics. Illustrating this may have been helpful. Or it may not have mattered given the thunderous applause at the end of the first movement, which tends to happen when this work is performed, but which did seem a bit protracted to me. But I also remember listening to some girls after the concert, talking about how the talks affected their understanding of the music, and how entranced they were, how they lost track of time, except for the Tchaikovsky, which they felt went on and on. I wonder about education and music, about what we expect and what we hear, and although I have never been a fan of talks before performances, Demirjian, who does this very well, is changing my mind, almost as if he is letting the listener in on a secret, connecting them to the performance they are about to hear.

This was particularly well done with the Shostakovich. Certainly what he said about the work, the musical examples that were used to highlight meanings and themes, all meshed with the performance we heard, and it was enlightening, even for these jaded ears. But then I sometimes think every performance I have hard of the 5th symphony has been different: sometimes it is beautifully performed but bland, sometimes emphasizing the surface veneer of nationalism, the part that I assume Stalin heard and approved, and yet at other times emphasizing the disharmony. I attended one performance that was so emotionally overwrought, so harrowing, that I felt completely drained after the performance, like a husk, with all humanity beaten out. But I don't believe that was Shostakovich's goal.

The Knoxville Symphony's performance was somewhere in between these extremes. I think Demirjian's exploration of the music for the audience, and the performance itself captured the dichotomy of this work beautifully, the strong undercurrent of bitterness and pain lurking beneath a surface gloss of normalcy and expectation. One could hear the hints of brash satire and wicked humor that are often contrasted in later symphonies, the grief tempered by hope, the sense that the spirit remains, subdued but unabashed. It was a bold and beautiful performance, and I suppose my sentiments align with those two young ladies — "it went by so fast….I was entranced….I want to hear more.."

October 29, 2018
Four Good Things, And A Minor Upset

I was a little under the weather last week. A close encounter with gluten, a cat bite, achy joints and muscle fog, a course of antibiotics, and the confirmation that I will be in the apartment another six months. Everything piled up on me and I took it a little harder than I would have expected. I was not really surprised by the delay. I knew that the original schedule could not be maintained, was not being maintained, but even then, it was an idea that I acknowledged only partially. And so, although not a shock, actual acknowledgement still felt like a minor upset, perhaps because I was already slightly out of sorts. The extended timeline came smack up with my own sense of what can be tolerated temporarily and what needs to be changed in order for me to be comfortable for the long haul.

Hence the past week also became a week of sorting. Of resettling, but also of reacquaintance with favorite things.

I have been in the apartment long enough to know what is not really working. The "not" was hitting hard last week, and, being an over thinker and an over-organizer, I suppose this is not surprising. I hadn't fully gotten myself settled before life got in the way and I allowed myself to get over-busy. What is over-busy after all, when you are already an over-thinker, and perhaps an over-organizer? Well, for someone like me, who tends toward too-muchness, who is often all in, or all out, they go hand in hand, busyness and organization, and when one is out of whack with the other, I flounder. Last week, already feeling under the weather, I was flopping around a bit, like a fish out of water, gasping for air. I often walk a fine line between my need for creativity and its attendant mess and my need for simplicity and organization. Last week a line broke and needed to be restrung.

There were good things too of course.

1. I've been cooking. I revisited a recipe from last spring, stuffed egg crepes, a kind of omelet filled with savory pork, topped here with some Acar Timun, a Javanese fresh pickle/salad. The pickle was left over from the night before, the first time I'd had people over for dinner. The brightness went well with the savoriness of the omelet, a kind of happy accident, a reminder of conversations and the sometimes surprising intersections of life.

2. I went to the symphony last weekend. I'll write more about that later. I will go to the opera this weekend and I need to thank a friend for egging me on. I love going to opera, the spectacle of it, the combination of staging plus music, but I don't often think to go. I don't think of opera in terms of music, but I do enjoy the experience itself, and perhaps that is something I need to think about more.

3. I read Donal Ryan's novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, and it too, was about empathy (a theme this year in my Booker reading? Are there themes in Booker selections?). In this case the reader is drawn into the thoughts and experiments of three men, three men who are very different from each other, and very different from anything in my experience. The writing is beautifully evocative, and I felt a sense of kindness toward these men, and a beginning of understanding of something that I would once have found off-putting. Ryan brings connects us to the humanity of his characters through what is really a rather subtle, and often not particularly clear exploration. Perhaps because there is but one author, although I think this is actually more intentional, there is a commonality amid the differences in the voices, as if delineating a thread of commonality that exists in all humanity, despite the often radical differences in the ways our lives take shape. In the end the three lives are brought together in an intersection that leaves as many questions as it does answers, and yet it feels complete.

4. I have started taking Tikka back to our neighborhood in the late afternoons. It started as a happy accident, she was out with me for a ride while I picked up mail, and I noted how excited she was, leaping out of the car and dancing around her yard, eager to reacquaint herself with her neighborhood. We started making a habit of it, and now she dances at the door when it becomes time for our afternoon car ride and walk. Once we arrive, she sets the direction and the pace. I simply let her walk as much or as little as she desires. I am finding that I enjoy these afternoon strolls, short or long, as much as I enjoy my own morning walks. There is no agenda, no goal, simply time and place.

These are important things: Friends, family, place, food, music. But although my house, and my neighborhood are home, this place has to be home as well, not just a packing container on the road of life. And so it is time to finish settling in. I remember moving in with George, oh so many decades ago, and asking him why a particular thing was stored a particular way even though it was, to my way of thinking at least, incredibly inconvenient. His answer? "That's where we put it the day we moved in, and so it just stayed there". Nearly 35 years later I remain incredulous. I can happily never rearrange things once they work, but until then it is a process. Or perhaps I just see my relationship with space as just that, a relationship; a relationship to space, to time, and perhaps just to life and where I am in that life in any given moment. It is about not living your life waiting for the next stage but about being in this one.

October 25, 2018
Continuation

The process of sorting continued last week. It is almost finished. Only the coat closet remains. Aside from that small space, I have tried on every piece of clothing I own and everything has been sorted. Things that fit, both physically and psychologically, have gone back into the closet. I've rediscovered some new old favorites, including some hand knits I hadn't managed to give away, and I am usually good at giving things away. There is a small pile of things that need only minor alterations, or which can be reconfigured or reimagined, in a corner of the sewing room. A few alterations have already been made. And there is a bigger pile, still in the living room, of garments that need to find new homes.

I bought two new things. There is a striped mariner-style tee from J Crew, which works perfectly with the shawl I bought in Scotland last fall. I wore them Friday for grandparent's day at Owen's school, and ditched the shawl later, as the afternoon warmed, for a game of bocce.

I also bought a pair of my favorite jeans, J Brand Marias, in deep blue velvet, partially solving my party clothing problem. I haven't worn those yet, but will. I have been much better of late, better about buying only things I will actually wear, better about adding things to my closet that actually play well with other pieces. Getting rid of excess also helps. One of the things I've discovered is that although I don't mind holding on to things for long times, even things I might very rarely wear, I also increasingly become overwhelmed by excess. My closet was too full, and it was mostly full of things that do not fit and/or I do not wear. Those garments have voices, and their voices weighed heavily.

Some mistakes were made. I wore a dress to church on Sunday that was too big. I had only tossed it on briefly, without really looking. On Sunday the deep u-neckline kept shifting, revealing more than I wanted to reveal. Luckily I was also cold and was able to employ my jacket and my shawl. When I got home I took a closer look and realized this dress was never going to work. Aside from the fact that I would need to take 4 or 5 inches out of the bust, I realized that the deep u-shaped neckline was also simply too wide for me. Yes I could add a seam, yes I could recut the garment into something else, but the more I looked at it the more I realized, that much as I had loved that dress, its time was over. We had good times together and it was time to move on. I could use the fabric to make something else, but I didn't love the fabric all that much, and the dress itself would never be the same.

Better to let it all go, to make room for promise and creativity, and to banish the weight of unfulfilled expectation. Better to let go, and to hold onto that which really works. I think that is what the whole Marie Kondo movement is getting at. It is not about being a minimalist if you are not a minimalist, but it is about not selling yourself short, about not accepting something that isn't right or doesn't suit you or make you happy just because of some false sense of expectation and worth. I have sweaters I may only wear once every 3 years in Knoxville, but every time I wear them I am so completely myself I cannot help but be happy. They will not go away until they literally fall apart. I had shirts that looked ok, but weren't right, that filled a role — that filled the idea of I need x to go with y — but in which I never really wore, of if I did wear them I never felt comfortable. Those things were not about me, about my life, but about some expectation of what my life should be. Far better to banish expectation for only then can you open yourself to joy.

October 23, 2018
Reflections after reading Anna Burn’s Milkman

I have not been as diligent with my Booker readings this year as I had hoped; not as diligent as last year, where I actually read most, but not all of the books. This year I have read only four, but I am nearly finished with a fifth. I will read the remainder, at least the one's I have already purchased. I have not, for the most part, regretted reading Booker nominees.

I was, nonetheless thrilled that Anna Burns' Milkman won the prize simply because I loved the book. Although I finished it two weeks ago, it still fills my heart. It is not a book I will soon forget. It is a book I will pick up, and read again, even a passage here and there, because Anna Burns writing has made middle-sister's voice a voice I know, a voice that I will not soon forget, a voice that has joined the other voices that form my own story, friends, family, acquaintances, another one of the voices that guide us, occasionally stepping forward, in our own narratives of our lives.

Admittedly I can't say that I recommend the book to everyone, even as I do exactly that. It is a slow meandering novel, a novel which encompasses only a few short weeks or months in linear time, but which also encompasses a life, the life of an 18 year old girl, and more, the life of a community. It is not a novel for the impatient. it is not a novel for the plot driven. But if you are willing to slow down, to read a book as if you are listening to someone's story, in this case the story of middle-sister, told from age, but looking back with kindness and understanding, on her young self, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, if you are willing, I can only hope that this novel will fill your heart as it has filled mine.

There are no names, or almost no names. The story takes place in an unknown city in Northern Ireland in an unknown time, although there are very strong hints as to the when and where. The only character who is named appears in the latter part of the novel and she is unique simply because she has managed to step outside of the overwhelming cultural imperative unscathed, or at least apparently unscathed to those still within.

Burns seems to me to capture that sense of being eighteen, of being ready to become an adult, and yet not quite. Middle sister is trying to find her own path in a culture that she really does not like, really does not want to be a part of of. She wants to simply drift by unnoticed. But she is noticed and she is noticed in a time and place where being noticed, where being singled out, where being different, is a very dangerous place to find oneself. I thought Burns' captured that sense of coming of age well. Middle sister reminded me of my own eighteen-year old self. The wisdom and the naiveté of it, that painful process of thinking oneself separate from one's own world, of thinking no one notices, of being shocked that people see you so differently than you see yourself, that sense of thinking you have survived something unscathed to only find that you have fallen directly into the trap you hoped to avoid.

Middle sister is a sharp and sensitive observer and narrator. Through middle sister's story I cam to understand something in a new way because although the story is set in a time and place that is not a part of my experience, the process of telling of her experience, the process of reading this novel, brought that experience to me in a new way, a gentle way, but its gentleness was no less pointed. This is a novel about love, about coming of age, about politics, oppression, feminism, family, individuality vs conformity, and the way our world shapes us without us even being realized that we are being shaped. It is about the way fear and love can constrain us, can make us accept cruelties we would never otherwise accept, the way fear can blind us to truth, and the way truth itself is often unknowable, shaped by the stories we hear, the stories we chose to believe, often without even knowing that we are choosing. Of course it has always been this way with human kind. For all of our so-called advances, we are no different than we have ever been.

Although this is a story set in Northern Ireland at the time of the troubles, it is also a story for all of us. It is a story about how we accept the world around us until that world constrains us to the point we do not even know we are being bent. I do not live in Northern Ireland. I live in a very different place, in a very different time. But none of us are all that different. The difference here is a matter of degree. We all listen to the stories, we all often tend to believe what we hear without checking the facts, we all, at least some of the time, trust the innuendo and the story more than the truth, and we do this often out of some sense of fear, even though we may not call it that — fear of being misunderstood, fear of being misperceived, fear of losing standing or community.

Milkman is not, despite its subject, a sad book. As I said it is about love, and about the human spirit, a spirit that is sometimes crushed, but which often times, like the grass between the stepping stones continues to thrive despite everything. It is meandering, the way my own inner conversations are often meandering. It is a book filled with love and understanding, perhaps even wisdom, although it is not at all easy to read. I found the writing poetic, but it also draws the reader into a world filled with claustrophobia, menace, oppression, paranoia and violence. Through this book I began to feel what it might be like to live in a world where one is afraid to trust, where trust is dangerous, where the culture itself is so toxic that people are afraid to trust and believe each other, where trust is a cultural thing and one's survival depends on trusting those cultural narratives even above the words of those one loves. This is frightening, and although we do not live in this world, I do not live in this world, I see how it can evolve, how it can take root and grow. But as I said, for all of this pain, this is a novel written in a voice of kindness. The writing, in its poetry, has an element of reconciliation in it, of forgiveness in it, of looking back with understanding, and it is this, this simultaneous capturing of pain and love, that elevates this book into my own personal list of great novels.

It is this very sense of understanding and kindness that really resonated with me, that connected me to this sense of a place I did not know, but also tied it into my own life. For I live in a culture where information and stories are everywhere. I live in a culture that is becoming increasingly black and white, not just physically but intellectually and emotionally as well. I live in a culture where stories circulate wildly and we all too often believe the story without checking the facts, where what we chose to believe shapes who we are. And yet I also live in a world where most of the people I know want to be kind, want to live their lives unscathed, want merely to be loved. We are not so different, middle sister's family and the people I love. That is brilliance. These people are not objects of a time and place different than myself and my friends, they are us, only their circumstances are different and if we cannot look on them with kindness, we cannot look upon ourselves with kindness either.

This is one of those stories, like Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets was for me, that takes the other and showed me myself and those I love. Although Milkman is the far kinder and more hopeful of the two. We are all the same, only our circumstances define our differences.

If you can find a quiet time and place, if you can quell your own internal business for a bit, please read this book. I am certain it will speak to each of us in different ways. But I hope you love it as much as I do.

October 18, 2018
Transition Time

Somehow my blog break was not as productive as I had hoped. No. Go back a step. My blog break was not productive in the ways I had hoped and anticipated….

That's more like it.

Fall has finally come to the Knoxville area and I am grateful. My wardrobe had already started to transition gently. The wide legs cropped jeans that I had worn faithfully throughout the summer of 2017 came out again. I didn't wear them at all this past summer, but they felt perfect as the light and the ambiance of the air shifted, even as the heat was recalcitrant. The summer of 2018 was just too hot, and I was outside a lot, what with moving and tramping around a construction site. I spent most of the summer in skorts, not the most glamorous look, but then I accept that I am not glamorous, and really just want to be able to be comfortable and move. There was the skort I knocked off, a skort I bought on sale at REI, and a couple of more that got whipped up before I packed up the sewing room, none of which I managed to share with you. Probably for the best.

And then, suddenly, the temperature dropped. There was a morning in the 40s, upper 40s yes, but still, somewhat chill. I was ready for my morning walk but a skort would not do. I needed a vest or sweatshirt; I needed pants. I couldn't find either. I moved in 90+ degree heat you see. At that point I couldn't imagine needing a sweatshirt. Everything that was "not summer" was in boxes on the top shelf of my closet, above my head. And so I started pulling down boxes.

I bet you can imagine what happened next.

I was lazy and in a rush. Despite the fact that I live in a small apartment, and the step ladder was literally only a few steps away, I did not go fetch the step ladder. I tried to reach up on tippy toe, I tried to take a small leap and snag those boxes. All my fall and winter clothes (luckily in canvas boxes) came tumbling down upon me, and my closet became a pile of clothes all jumbled together. I was probably fortunate that I was not standing under the box of boots.

I found a vest before I found a sweatshirt. I found a 5-year old pair of yoga pants. I didn't find my gloves and my hands suffered. I walked, went to the farmer's market, rand errands, planned menus and cooked.

I also started to sort out clothes, to shift the closet. I started to accept something that my head had not quite wrapped itself around. Looking at that photo, I see the evidence of something my brain and body were telling me, but which I was nonetheless refusing to accept. Although not loose, those yoga pants are not snug either. Last year they were snug, perhaps even tight. Ah the joys of stretch. Before I went to North Caroline for a long weekend at the beginning of my break, frustrated as I was trying to pack, I stepped on my scale and the truth was revealed. Somehow I had lost 13 pounds since I moved into this apartment.

I was shocked even though the evidence had been all around me. That first summer skort was falling down over my hips, but I couldn't accept that because I felt more tired, schlumpy and out of shape. In my head "schlumpy" and "fat slob" go together, which is not a flattering image I know, or even a flattering thing to admit to thinking about oneself. There are certain inner voices, deeply imbedded, which we never fully escape. It did not occur to me that I might feel schlumpy because my clothes were too big. There is a bit of cognitive dissonance going on here, and I know perfectly well that what makes a person feel fat or thin or sexy (a woman? Do men go through the same thing?) often has little to do with actual body size; instead it is shaped by a host of other unrelated psychological and social inputs. Inputs I do not intend to explore here or now.

What I did notice, and what prompted me to step on that scale in the first place, was that my pajamas were too big. I knew the pajama bottoms were loose, and if I moved around too much they could start to slip down. I had fixed that by shortening the elastic in the waist of the pants, but although they stayed up, they did not hang attractively. I had not noticed that the tops were also too big, a couple of sizes too big, and that I looked like a sad old woman in them. I probably only noticed that because I was going away with family for fall break, because we would be sharing a cabin and because, heaven forbid, someone might see me in my pajamas. No one ever sees me in my pajamas, a situation I might still hope is not permanent. Obviously, until last week, I never even saw myself in my pajamas, and that was truly sad state of affairs.

As I started shifting the closet to fall and winter, as I started putting away clothes, I started trying things on. I am still working on that. Various piles are growing. There is a pile of things to give away. There is a smaller pile of things that are too worn, things that should be recycled or thrown away. The only place I knew of in Knoxville that accepted fabric for recycling closed, so more research is warranted.

There is also a pile of things that will work with minor alterations or mending. The boyfriend jeans in the photo above are between 6 and 7 years old. they were skinnies when I bought them, although not the super stretchy kind. But they have only needed minor alterations to keep them wearable, and I love them too much. The gray cardigan from Margaret O'Leary is at least 12 years old, Last year I kept it in the laundry room, which is usually cold, and wore it only as a robe or a house-sweater. Last year I felt it was baggy and unattractive, but now I love it again. Who knew that would happen?

There is a pile of things I love, things that can be easily altered to fit. I've already made a few alterations. There are things I haven't worn for years that suddenly fit again. I've found five old pairs of pants that I still like, that I haven't been able to wear since George was alive, that only require minor alterations for me to wear them now. Actually, they just require hemming. In those days I wore heels. I practically never wear heels now and am not convinced that heels will be any part of my future life. I need to be able to make a fast exit.

And those jeans? Those wide-legged crops seen at the top of this post? In September of 2017 I realized that those jeans were beginning to get a little loose and I searched for a replacement. I found them on sale and I bought another pair. This is not an action I normally recommend, and I felt foolish at the time. The sale pair was 2 sizes smaller than the pair I was wearing, and I could zip them closed only with effort. But I kept them anyway. I figured it was a $29 folly and I could always donate them. I found them this fall, and they fit. In fact only in trying on the smaller jeans did I see how loose the bigger jeans had become, only in trying on those jeans, larger and smaller, did I actually start to look at what I was wearing and see actually see myself, actually begin to see that I was wearing things I shouldn't be wearing. I am probably still wearing things I shouldn't be wearing. It is a process after all. There is still a pile of clothes on the floor. I am working my way forward. It is the only way to go.

October 16, 2018
Pretty, Pretty

Deep sigh.

Great progress has been made this week, both in my own inner well being as well on both housing fronts, the unpacking and resettling of the short-term residence, and the bigger project. At the apartment, the sewing room is almost completely unpacked. A few small items are scattered over the work tables, but there is less than an hour of work remaining before sewing machines can be set up and I can start to play.

At the house there is less of immediate interest to show. But there are great long-term plans. I've been looking at paint colors for the new library upstairs, not because we are anywhere near having walls or finishing the library, but because I happen to have carpet samples in hand. The samples have to be returned, and the rugs have not yet been ordered. Even if I were to order them today, they would not be ready by my scheduled move-in date so there is no rush, and every reason to delay, at least for a month or two, before placing an order.

I will be on blog break next week. Back on the 16th.

October 6, 2018
Thursday morning musings: A review of sorts

It seems I spent a fair amount of time last week listening to Haydn. Now I like Haydn and can usually identify a piece of music as having been written by Haydn, but truthfully I never thought about Haydn much, or listened, actually listened to the music that much, well perhaps with the exception of the oboe concerto. But I've always had a thing for the sound of the oboe.

Anyway, last week, following a conversation with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra's Music Director, Aram Demirjian, I found myself scrolling through youtube, listening to Haydn symphonies. Initially I was seeking out performances conducted by Roger Norrington, but eventually I expanded my search only to return once again to Norrington. I had forgotten about Haydn's sense of humor, the way the music plays with the listener, occasionally surprising, almost always sparking a smile.

I knew that the KSO's chamber concert this past Sunday would include Haydn, specifically the symphony # 82, but I did not listen to that particular symphony prior to the performance. I did not want to add a layer of expectation to my enjoyment of the performance, rather just reacquaint myself with the composer. And it is true, that by Sunday afternoon I was eager to hear the performance, a performance I enjoyed immensely. The Haydn was almost raucously joyful, especially in the last movement where the music imitates the sounds of bagpipes, intended to remind listeners of village fairs with their bagpipes and dancing bears. It is a happy, joyful sound, music that left this listener grinning from ear to ear.

In fact the entire concert was stunning. The Haydn was followed by an earlier work by Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a work I was not really at all familiar with, but which I also enjoyed. The incredible balance in the music, and in soloist Gordon Tsai's performance, between artfully placed arcs of dramatic tension and flowing lyricism, once again left me with soaring heart.

Following the intermission, the symphony performed the one contemporary work on the program, and it was a piece perfectly chosen to complement the performance and expand listener's horizons. Carolyn Shaw's Entr'acte for String Quartet or String Orchestra was written in 2011, and there are strong echoes of Haydn, although the work is quite modern as well, bridging that debt to history, but acknowledging the present. In fact as I listened to the work I was reminded of the Brentano Quartet playing Haydn, a group I have hear on more than one occasion (and whose recoding of the Haydn Quartets I also own). I never read the notes before the performance, but was then not surprised to find that not only had the work been inspired by a performance of Haydn's Quartet #2, played by the Brentano, but that the Brentano played in the first performance of this work, in its quartet form. Anyway I found the music mesmerizing, especially in the way the classical theme appeared and then evolved into something more modern, doing so without really jarring, reminding me more of memory and understanding the way one lives in the present, but the past is still there, always coloring and influencing our choices.

The concert ended, as it should with Mozart's Symphony 31 in D Major, with its grand, swooping, and almost swaggering sound, probably the grandest opening I can recall in Mozart. an opening that is almost mocking in its extravagance. And yet, I increasingly think that is the genius of Mozart, that he can bring the music right to the razor's edge of parody without crossing that line, creating something incredibly beautiful, so beautiful that we might not even see (or hear) how close perfection is to mockery.

Anyway, it was a lovely performance, marred by the interruption of bouts of applause from the audience. I do, generally, think that moving away from the formality and imposed seriousness of classical music concerts is a good thing, and sometimes intermittent applause does not bother me, at least in moderation, but this time it did, and I left a little a wee tad disgruntled.

Not for long however. It has been a busy week in terms of performance, and I have had little time to mull over my discontent. Sunday evening I returned downtown to hear Alison Krause at the Tennessee theater, and frayed sensibilities were suitably soothed and enchanted. I had worried about the concert somewhat, much as I love music, most music, I often struggle with popular bluegrass/folk/country/pop concerts as too often they are a uniform mix of new work and crowd favorites that to my peripatetic brain waves all start to sound the same, whereas I really want a little dynamic programing and variation. Krause has a varied repertoire however; I hoped for the best and was not disappointed.

Tuesday night I went to an organ recital by the wonderful local organist James Garvey. I was awed by the music, by the skill and mastery not only in the performance but in the program organization as well, complex, balanced, thrilling. The concert opened with Bach and progressed through a remarkable balancing of music, with Distler, Franck, Leguay and Dupre. George would have loved the Franck, and I sat happily with his presence in my heart as I listened to the music. Everything was grand, but I soared with the Bach, and my heart danced with the Lequay, sometimes shocked alert, at other times peering through the clouds. There is something about atonal music that always alerts my brain, makes every cell vibrate, and I continue to think, when done well, clears away the fog and shadows that shape our perception of reality, showing us something of the universe beyond.

Last night I was downtown again, at the university, where I had tickets to Alias Grace, a marvelous and challenging play that addresses so many issues that affect society, and yet does so in a beautiful and compelling manner. Although many issues are addressed, this is really a play about memory and truth, and it asks more questions than it answers. Yet this member of the audience felt that the performance was graceful and sensitive, and that the conclusion was satisfyingly humane and complex, neither pandering to easy answers nor burdened with excess questions, only thoughts, and perhaps insight, or at least hope for insight.

October 4, 2018
Pity the Poor Missionaries — a September Review

Somehow my September felt a bit fractured.

I am not completely settled in the apartment even though I have been here two months. I am mostly unpacked, but things don't work the way I want, and there is still tweaking to be done. The work on the house got started and then stopped, mostly my own fault, as I made a change that halted progress in the short-run but makes far more sense for the long run. That decision also made more work for me, project work, not creative work, and ate heavily into my time and energy. But progress has resumed. The foundation for the addition went in last week. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and framing will begin this week.

September felt fractured not because of extra work, but because I decided to break some habits, to say no to the part of myself that is happy to take on everyone else projects at the expense of my own dreams. I thought it would be easier than it has in fact proven to be. It seems that relinquishing structure, although necessary, proved difficult. After all, decades of career choices have honed those organizational and managerial skills. One would think that, a decade into "retirement" I would be ready to follow my dreams; instead I was blindsided by how entrenched this instinct has become, this urge to take on projects, any project, rather than trust my inner self. I didn't really retire, I just took on other projects: acting general contractor at the old house, supervising George's care, serving on church vestry. I am the kind of person that, when I say yes to something, say it whole-heartedly, who gives 110% to the task at hand, who will take on everything that is needed.

But there is a toll, and I have come to the point where the price is too high. In this last project I also got burned, and my heart was broken. I realize that much of that pain has stemmed from my own crumbling walls, my own inability to separate my own personal "church and state", or my inner life from my involvement in worldly things. I realize that the last decade (or more actually) has involved a lot of soul searching, a lot of forgiveness and reconciliation, a lot of inner growth. The time had come to say no, not to my own dreams, but to all the obstacles I place in front of achieving them. Tackling projects, solving problems, organizing things, although all good and easily justified, also prove to be a very effective technique for avoiding self-doubt about my own dreams. After all, I have had decades to practice those avoidance techniques, and all under socially accepted guises. I am good at organizing things. I am good at solving problems. I don't know if I am any good at creative stuff. In fact I might suck at creativity; all the decades of avoidance may have seriously atrophied those creative muscles. The thought of finding out is kind of terrifying. But I have placed myself on this particular ledge, and there is no other choice but to step into the precipice. It should come as no surprise that the process of letting go might engender fear, and perhaps even a casual flirtation with depression.

But here I am, still standing. A little worse for wear perhaps, still kind of a newbie at trusting my creative instincts, but I also accept that I cannot, at this point go back, to do so would be to give in to fear. "Fear is the mind killer" is the mantra in Frank Herbert's novel, Dune. What, after all, is there to lose? Myself? Well perhaps that is a greater prize than all worldly definitions of success the world can throw at any one of us..

I might not have gotten as much done in September as I had hoped, but that is just fine. I need to remind myself that life is not about accomplishments checked off in the great ledger book in the sky. I didn't blog much, but well, we all have days when we have fewer words than others. I also didn't read much and that was a bit more of a surprise. I wrote briefly about The Mars Room here, and Candide here. Midwinter of the Spirit is the second in the Merrily Watkins series, and if Merrily flounders a bit, and struggles with her own head vs heart issues, I am in no position to judge.

I did spend quite a bit of time knitting. I don't have anything to show yet, but knitting is the one activity I am perfectly content not to rush through. The act of knitting itself is enough, and eventually progress happens. I am nearly finished knitting a shawl to match the red sweater I blocked in September, which is still not completed, but more about that later. And I started a prayer shawl one day when I simply needed something different. This prayer shawls simple repetition is more mindless than the red, which is not difficult, but does require balancing two yarns. Together, the two shawls, one for me and one to give away, have kept me entertained and calm.

And here it is, October already. I made keema matar last night, a dish teeming with childhood memories. My mom made keema matar for us when we were children, although we knew it as missionary curry. Apparently we refused to eat it the first time she made it so the next time she told us the peas were Missionary heads and missionary curry was born. How I loved missionary curry. How I loved gobbling up those peas, pretending I was a cannibal and devouring those missionary heads in the savory meat sauce. I was not particularly fond of peas in any other guise. Of course there was also the spectacle of the thing itself at my mother's table, the rice, the curry, the bowls of condiments. But the spectacle is best for sharing; alone I took a simpler approach, equally delicious.

My approach to the curry has also evolved. My keema matar today no longer tastes quite like the memory of my mother's, although that was my initial goal. I also no longer need to reimagine the peas as missionary heads, although the memory does make me smile. Those warm memories are a good thing — memories of family meals yes, but also memories of imagination and play, dreams of exotic places, and terrible things made safe and familiar, warm and nourishing.

October 2, 2018
Spark Joy

The symphony season began last weekend in Knoxville, and as usual, I attended the Friday performance. It was a wonderful performance, a wonderful evening, and I returned home bursting with happiness, happily jotting down a few notes and impressions of the concert, full of good intentions. It always takes me a while to translate my swirling emotions and thoughts following a concert into cogent words, and I have learned to accept this about myself, that I would not be suited to writing reviews on a deadline, just as my hands and mind refuse to become a fast knitter. Although I desire to make things and write, barring dire necessity, production itself is never the goal. It is sufficient to get wherever I am going in whatever pace is needed.

Alas, this week I took longer than anticipated. I was under the weather Saturday and again early in the week. Tikka was under the weather as well, and worry never aids in the flow of words. But we are both on the mend and this year I am determined to not let the concerts slip into the ether before I put down words, if only to assist my own memory.

It was a busy weekend in Knoxville, and I got to the concert hall early. Since this was the opening concert there was a champagne toast, and I enjoyed sipping champagne and spending time chatting with friends, getting to my seat before the short opening work, Starburst by young American composer Jonathan Leshnoff. It felt to me like the composer, and the orchestra as well, had captured that energy, that sense of bursting forth, and turned it into a beautiful, swirling performance. The music began with a great rhythmic energy that built to a single chord that held, then slowly faded away as instruments dropped off, folding into the perfect calm of a clarinet cadenza. The music built back up to a beautifully bouncing balance of rhythm and melody in the second half. I felt it was a happy piece, although admittedly these are but fleeting impressions, and I really need more exposure to the piece to build any kind of appreciation or understanding.

The Leshnoff was followed by what was for me the big draw of he evening, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, played by pianist Joyce Yang. Of course, I tend to think that the piece itself is a work of pure emotional genius, and I was not disappointed in the performance. Yang was fabulous, and the conversation between soloist and orchestra seemed perfectly harmonious, drawing this listener in from the opening bars of the solo piano, to the way the music swells into a powerful storm, balanced and interspersed with moments of calm. There is so much happening in that first movement, different themes running around each other, sometimes bumping together but never crashing. This is part of the genius of the piece to me, the way Rachmaninoff brings all these disparate elements into a common mesh, and the orchestra pulled this off beautifully. I could not help but ebb and rage, swept away with the music.

And that was only the first movement. The second movement is of course the movement we all know, and from the heights of the first movement I plunged into the second. It was the culmination of an emotionally difficult day, following a funeral for a friend's mother, seeing that same friend, drawn and worn, stretched thin; my concern for the family. I too was drawn and frayed and the emotion of the second movement burrowed deeply, eliciting tears. Of course that movement is filled with a sense of loss and longing. By the end I felt drained and spent, but of course you are not left there dangling, This is part of the genius of Rachmaninoff: following the cacophony of the first movement, through the emotional depths of the second movement, everything is pulled together in the finale. Through longing, comes peace, hope, thundering power and the majesty of something I can only liken to faith. It ended up being a perfect piece of music for me to be lost in on that particular day, probably on any day.

But this was only the first half of the concert. Through the intermission the beautiful cry of the oboe in the Rachmaninoff echoed in my thoughts, and of course it would soon be followed even more thrillingly in the second half of the concert, in the Brahms Symphony #1, with a shimmeringly beautiful oboe solo, and stunning solos on horns and violin, and its own unique way of combining disparate themes and ideas into a harmonious and satisfying whole. It was, I think, a happy pairing, the Rachmaninoff and the Brahms, both works brilliant in their respective ways.

I came late to an appreciation of Brahms, and I continue to grow in that regard. I heard a lot of Brahms growing up, along with Beethoven and Bach. Yes, my dad was a "three Bs" listener, but it was Beethoven that I most absorbed as a child, and Brahms with which I struggled the most. That could have simply been youth, but I think it was also the emphasis I absorbed, and which I think was played up in my father's recordings, that Brahms was the "new" Beethoven, the successor to Beethoven, and I am happy that orchestras and musicians have gotten away from that narrow view, if it was ever a trend. I don't know if that was a widely held view or just something I picked up, partially informed, from my small pool of understanding. I don't really see Brahms that way today. Of course there are moments that sound a little like Beethoven in some of the music, even in the first symphony, but in music, as in life, the past is inescapable, part and parcel of who we are. We can become a slave to it or move forward. Brahms moved forward.

Certainly the opening movement of Brahm's Symphony No, 1 feels like it owes little to Beethoven except, perhaps, in its use of texture rather than a consistent melody. I have to thank Aram Demirjian for reminding me of that as I was struggling with how to link my chicken scratches about the performance. I think of Beethoven as liking clearly defined themes, linked together in discrete packages, but that is not what you find in the first movement of Brahm's First. To this listener the Brahms opened with a polyphony of overlapping themes and ideas, a rich and complex counterpoint that felt far more closely related to Bach, and perhaps older forms as well, than anything that I associate with Beethoven. From the opening lines the rising notes of the violins and cellos form a contrast with the descending notes of the violas and clarinets — joy contrasted with lament. It is almost exactly this contrast and overlapping of themes, melding into a harmonious whole, not particularly melodic but very moving and both intellectually and emotionally rich that brings the symphony into satisfying territory. Again, this movement seems to stand more on the shoulders of Bach than Beethoven, but truly it is neither. Brahms is reimagining the symphony: it is as if he is trying to merge the tight multi-dimensional complexity of a small scale work like a fugue with the grandeur and enveloping scale of an orchestral work. As the first movement continues to unfold the contrasting rising and falling lines seem to do battle, thrillingly but also harmoniously, locked together arm in arm, a yin and yang, although Brahms would not have known those terms.

Of course that high-wire balancing act cannot continue, and the first movement folds into the gentle lyricism of the second, a soothing place created by the music, like being caressed by silk, which slips into the allegretto e grazioso. Here we have a gentle dance, a melody on a gentle breeze, a symphony that has begun in a worldly cacophony of voices and then turned inward, self-soothing, seeking quiet joys.

And then, out of the calm, all hell breaks loose. That is really the only way I can describe the shock of the opening notes of the final movement. We have been lulled into near complacency and are jolted rudely awake. Eventually a sense of clarity begins to open, a spark of light, signaled by a resplendent horn call in C major. The big dramatic melody follows, the part people compare to Beethoven, a look to the past, but also surging into a new future, signaled once again by the horn call, harmonized by a bit of dissonance but breaking through into meltingly beautiful music. It is a symphony that feels somehow public and private, individual and universal, a multidimensional road map. To where? I leave that up to you.

September 27, 2018