Lament

Music takes me places I would likely not reach without it.  As a conveyance toward and through sorrow, it has no equal. 

Here is a link to the New York Times article, "The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning."

For now, it seems the best we can do is grieve beside our sisters and brothers.

Can't whistle? Try this.

Kaffe Fassett needlepoint.

As my whistle is nearly inaudible, I've decided that color, ingesting, absorbing, overdosing and immersing myself in it, is my equivalent of whistling to keep spirits up.  I have a cellular response to it, the greater the profusion, the more strongly I feel it.  Color gives me pangs, but only in the best sense.

When he was much younger, my son would describe himself by saying, "I feel a bit dreary" when he was in the process of becoming ill.  He is descended from two generations that read way too much Edward Gorey.  Dreary doesn't get me in a choke-hold the way it once did but living the human experience can ambush us with disheartening moments, frequently brought on by our own minds and not specific external events.  Thus we seek avenues of cheer upon which we can be reminded that there is a sunny side of the street, regardless of what's going on (gestures with head) over there.

What happens to me is that I can forget the simple, accessible, free and non-food things that make me happy, forget them as though they never existed.  Wait! I exclaim to myself.  How did I not remember the way certain voices or instruments, lyrics, types of music produce pangs of joy?  It is not just age, it is not amnesia, though I think amnesia must feel a bit like it.  For a variety of reasons, I think we wander away from ourselves.  Fatigue produces a mental fog, as does pain, illness, lack of sleep, distraction, any of the naturally lower points that occur as we undulate our way, up and down, through the days.

I don't believe there is anyone completely immune to a sagging spirit.  It need not last long nor arrive often.  Just a state that is brightened (in my case literally), lightened by what delights us most.  For reasons too vague to ponder, we only just began watching the second season of HBO's series, TREME.  In the first episodes we saw last night there was a singer with a Sam Cooke voice and there was Lucia Micarelli, singing and playing the violin - heart-breakingly, again in the best sense.

Even when there is nary a shadow to remind us that darker moments do exist, what could be the harm in filling up on our favorite fizzy lifting drinks?  Based on very old business, I can tend to be stingy with myself, ration the sources of joyfulness as though they would run out or I was not fully deserving.  For this instant and, I hope, many instants to follow, I will be lavish, I will spoil myself with color and music, with beauty and every gleaming ray of life affirmed that I can find.  Why would we do less?  Take heart and we will dance together beneath a Kaffe Fassett-imagined sky.  Yes, I think the band has started.

Edward Gorey and others make their way through the Panama Canal

Happy 88th Birthday, Edward Gorey.  Issuer of licenses to be odd to children who may think they are doing it wrong.

One form my oddness takes is forgetting to do things that make me happy.  I forget, sometimes for what seems months but may only be weeks, that I love to read.  Then, with shrinking thoughts of having ever been away, I find myself shoehorned back into gobbling books, not wanting to do anything but read, planning - or wondering - what will be next.

And if my thoughts are filled with other matters, I can forget the necessity of music.  I do not have much knowledge of classical or opera, so I return over and over to folk and some of what was popular from the 50s until the 80s, after which I lost my way, somewhat.  Broadway shows, Cole Porter, New Orleans jazz, other styles are shuffled in.  Most times when I am awake in the middle of the night, there is someone singing in my head.  Since Sherry O'Keefe mentioned it several days ago, it has been Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country."  My version includes Johnny Cash.

I have no wish to put my forgetfulness or neglect under the microscope, peering at cells that may indicate a disregard for self, or not.  Having given it as generous a ponder as it's going to get, I've decided that I, and likely most of us, have been nearly eclipsed by overwhelm, the world is too much with us no matter how we wish or labor to have it not be so.  If I keep track of somewhere between four and a dozen things that matter to me in any given day and spend some time with each of them, I feel I'm doing well.  Sleeping, breathing, writing and seeing that the household is fed and watered. That would be a minimum day.  Each added favored activity is another step up my personal evolutionary ladder, if only for that day.  I survive through a combination of compartments and the water that lifts and lowers essentials; my life is the Panama Canal.