They are almost non-existent. There is no rhyme or reason or regular cadence to them. if you’re not extremely observant an quiet you may not hear them at all. They are the sounds of spring – and they’re not the bird calls or peepers or this piece of Copland. They are smaller and less prominent than all of that. It is the sound of snow and ice melting, and the tiny little pings and clicks that go along with it. When things melt, they break and fall apart from their respective perches. Some bits of frozen water remain solid, crashing quietly into something else, and these little bursts of sound on a quiet day are the percussive songs of spring in its purest form. For those who prefer their music more pronounced and deliberate, here is a favorite for this time of the year.
It’s always worth a resist when the end of winter is in sight, and hope returns to right the world again. I’m hesitantly going to embrace such a thought, as we march toward the last couple of days with Mercury in retrograde. Godspeed.
“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you… What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.
I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” ~ Audre Lorde
A Litany for Survival
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.”
? Audre Lorde
Last year at this time we had no idea what was in store for our entire way of life. In some ways, I wonder if we have, collectively, truly dealt with all the PTSD that may have resulted from the previous year of living like this. I don’t see how we could, as much as I’ve found ways of maintaining a healthier lifestyle. It’s interesting to think of where we were at last February, before COVID hit the world in such an all-encompassing way. Most of us didn’t think such a thing was possible, pointing to our own failure of imagination and preparedness, for which we continue to pay. Lesson learned… and lessons continue to be learned.
What do we do when life takes such a dark and terrifying turn?
FOR MILES AROUND
I HEARD ABOUT THE THINGS THEY GOT GOING ON BEHIND THOSE DOORS
AND THAT’S MY JAM
NO HOLDING BACK
YOU CAN’T STOP ME IF I SEE ONE MORE
IT’S A VIBE, WANNA STAY OUT
WON’T LIE
I KNOW THAT YOU’D DO THE SAME DAMN THING, BABY
HANG TIGHT, LET YOUR HAIR DOWN
‘CAUSE TONIGHT I’M GONNA CHANGE YOUR LIFE
At this point in winter – and pretty much every winter, not just the second COVID winter we’ve endured – we tend to get a little stir-crazy. There’s an antsiness and agitation that stems from being cooped up indoors for too long. Some of us find solace and escape through books and entertainment, some find it in flowers and beauty, and some find it it in music and dance. I’m re-discovering some fabulousness through costumes and glitter, colorful lights and backdrops, and a polarizing mustache that I love almost solely for how much other people hate it. Who else wants to dance so crazy?
ALL NIGHT IN THE SPOTLIGHT
WHERE EVERYBODY DANCES SO CRAZY
CAN’T STOP IT WHEN IT FEELS SO RIGHT
AND EVERYBODY DANCES SO CRAZY
I’M PROUD OF YOU
YOU GOT THOSE MOVES
SHOWIN’ EVERYBODY HOW IT’S DONE
THE SECRET’S OUT
YOU WANNA SCREAM AND SHOUT
CHECK MY GROOVE, JUST FOR YOU
LET THE LOVE OUT
The decadence of a disco song, with echoes of a bygone era coupled with a modern-day twist, perfectly embody the need and vibe for a night out when we’re all staying in. Who wants to risk contamination when you can throw a rager in your own basement? Drop a disco ball from the ceiling, upend some grow-lights, and hang a curtain of tinsel and you’ve got yourself a party.
IT’S A VIBE, WANNA STAY OUT
WON’T LIE
I KNOW THAT YOU’D DO THE SAME DAMN THING, BABY
HANG TIGHT, LET YOUR HAIR DOWN
‘CAUSE TONIGHT I’M GONNA CHANGE YOUR LIFE
ALL NIGHT IN THE SPOTLIGHT
WHERE EVERYBODY DANCES SO CRAZY
CAN’T STOP IT WHEN IT FEELS SO RIGHT
AND EVERYBODY DANCES SO CRAZY (WOO, WOO)
When the world has beaten you down and there’s nowhere left to go but up, it’s time to channel your inner disco diva/divo/divinity and get down tonight. There is still some dazzle left, some little bit of sparkle that will have to be enough to see us through, and in that prism of rainbow light, in the golden threads that run through this polyester extravaganza, may we find the reserve of wonder to startle and astound.
My hair may be gray, my body may be tired, and my mind may be weary, but I will muster the will and the drive to dance. We owe it to ourselves to get up and join the party again…
YEAH, YEAH, YEAH (WOO, WOO)
YEAH, YEAH, YEAH (EVERYBODY DANCES SO CRAZY)
LET ME SEE YOU MOVE, YEAH
EVERYBODY GET ON DOWN
JUST LET ME SEE YOU MOVE, YEAH
EVERYBODY GET ON DOWN
ALL NIGHT IN THE SPOTLIGHT…
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.
