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Imagining 2021

Imagining 2021

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The new year arrived wearing top hat and tails. It landed with a swoop and a glide and an elegant dip. It was Fred Astaire tap-dancing on the ceiling, Gene Kelley singing in the rain and Judy Garland dreaming of somewhere over the rainbow. 

Plans were canceled, isolation strictly enforced, but the American musical was not shut down, or at least not the American musical as imagined by Metro Goldwyn Mayer in the 1974 classic “That’s Entertainment.” Hosted by a slew of stars (Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minelli and Jimmy Stewart), there were clips of everyone from Esther Williams to the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. 
It was a surprisingly apt way to see out an old year and bring in a new one. No, it wasn’t realistic. The world depicted was mostly on a sound stage or a backlot. But it was vivid proof of human imagination.  And imagination is looking pretty good these days.
Zoom Memorial

Zoom Memorial

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Over the weekend a friend and neighbor was memorialized over Zoom. My initial skepticism at this 2020 version of a final send-off melted away in the first few moments when a devoted son — one of five — opened the call, his voice slightly husky from the task at hand. 

There were photo montages of his father as a young man, a proud dad, a world traveler, a loving husband. Each son spoke in his own way, one from his father’s garage. And though each had a different mode of expression, in the end, the portrait became clear. 

Here was a family grieving but also celebrating a life well-lived. Here was as much life and music as could be crammed into 60 minutes of screen time. And in a strange way, the screen amplified the presence, made it at once more intimate and expansive. 

I imagine Zoom memorial services are as many and varied as the people they honor. The fact that this one was so touching may have nothing to do with Zoom and everything to do with the man himself. But I’m not ruling out the nature of the event, the fact it came into our living rooms and kitchens, where, without diluting the enormity of the loss, it softened and transformed the sadness. 

The Ninth

The Ninth

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I hadn’t heard it in a while, and I caught only fragments on my drive to and from the post office last week. But there it was, the syncopated rhythm of the second movement on the way there and, on the way back, the first strains of the fourth movement.

Today is the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, and he will be well-represented on the radio —just as he would have been thundering through the concert halls, if those were open. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a way to hear his Ninth Symphony today, too.

But I doubt it will compare with last week’s performance. After arriving home, I rushed out for a walk, headphones in, classical station blaring, so that I could move through space as that sublime music moved through my brain. 

There was the first “Freude!” “Joy!” The soloists’ voices entwined and melodious, the pulsing timpani and the chorus filling my head with sound. And in that way, the ordinary walk became a celebration of life.

Rejoice!

Rejoice!

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Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, when the message shifts from one of “beware and prepare” to “rejoice and prepare.” 

I love both Advent messages. For that matter, I love Advent. It’s a season of anticipation — and isn’t anticipating an event usually always better than the event itself? 

More than two decades ago, I happened to read Kathleen Norris’s book The Cloister Walk during Advent. It was a busy time for me as a writer and a parent, and when I’d collapse in bed each night I’d savor a chapter or two of this fine volume and be transported into the silence of the cloister.

The image I have of Advent is one of cold stone and plainsong, of middle-of-the-night awakenings for prayer and devotion. Though Norris spent time in a monastery in Minnesota, it was the old churches of Europe that came to mind as I visualized her progress through the liturgical year. The long centuries of hope condensed into an annual calendar. 

By the reckonings of that calendar, we have already begun a new year. 

Gratitude 2020

Gratitude 2020

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The rain has cleared out, the sun is peeking through the clouds. It’s warm enough to have an al fresco Thanksgiving meal — if only we had known that a couple weeks ago. But that, like so much else lately, is out of our control. 

Thinking of thankfulness today, as many of us are. All signs point to the moment as the source of gratitude and wonder. The moment indivisible, the moment extinguishable, the moment which is all we have so we must live fully in it.

A tough lesson to learn. But grateful I have another day to try. 

A Bump in the Night

A Bump in the Night

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Halloween is behind us. The skeletons and graveyards that decorate neighbor’s yards have given way to sedate autumn wreaths. But my heart was beating faster yesterday than it did the entire month of October. 

The reason: a bump in the night. The early night, to be sure, but it was dark and it was rainy and the bump sounded like something big had fallen upstairs. 

Was it a cat burglar come to get my jewels (an errand sure to disappoint, I might add)? We crept upstairs to check it out, entered each room carefully, and there was  — nada. No box had fallen from a shelf, not a thing out of place.

There’s a chance this was an outside noise mimicking an inside one. But I doubt that. I’m going to assume it was just a friendly poltergeist messing with us a little, taking advantage of this old house, with its creaks and groans, sending us a message — that we are not alone. 

Celebrating Hope

Celebrating Hope

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When the word came that Joseph R. Biden had been elected the 46th president of the United States, the country was well along on its Saturday morning. I’d just put the groceries away. Celia in Seattle seemed to have the word even before the news alert on my phone did.

There was no ringing of church bells, no banging of pots and pans or shooting off of firecrackers in my neighborhood, but there was one joyful family and, I assume, many joyful families throughout Folkstone, each celebrating in their own way, glad that a new era is dawning for this country.

I seldom write about politics in this blog — this week has been an exception — but today, especially, is a day worth noting. It’s not that the road won’t be steep and the going tough. But there is now a hope that we may come together as a country. And that is definitely worth celebrating. 

Auguring Good

Auguring Good

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I don’t want to write about politics all week, but it’s difficult to think about much else these days. I’m also trying not to read too much into omens and symbols, though I do anyway. Sometimes I think I was born into the wrong time or culture, because I do more than my share of knocking on wood. 

Yesterday, hoping that my candidate will prevail, I took comfort in the fact that the climbing rose is still producing lovely, creamy pink flowers — even this first week of November. 

And so, although I have already featured the climbing rose in recent posts, I feature it again today. The bloom of a rose, the scent of a rose, speaks of renewal and beauty and augurs many good things. Surely we all need those now.

The Fray

The Fray

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My self-imposed blackout lasted until about 6 p.m. yesterday. Forgoing media allowed me to be a little more productive and a little less anxious than I would have been otherwise. But then the floodgates were open, and I learned the razor-thin wire on which we walk, each side convinced that “there be dragons” on the other. 

In my saner moments, when I can step back from the fray, I continue wondering how we got to this place, this divided place. I’ve been reading and thinking about it for four years. But these musings are in the head, not the heart. And it’s my heart now that is pitter-pattering, as are millions of other hearts across this great land of ours. 

On Tuesday I stuck an American flag out by the mailbox, and it has flown there since. It seemed one way to reassert the position I’m trying so hard now to believe — that there is still more that unites us than divides us. 

The Blackout

The Blackout

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I’ve been awake for hours and have seen only the barest shred of news, an update that appeared unbidden on my phone screen about the vote tally in Arizona. I’m trying to see how long I can hold out without looking at a news or social media site, without turning on the television or picking up the newspaper, which lies forlornly out by the forsythia bush. 

It’s not that I don’t want to know the current tallies. I’m as curious as the next person, I imagine. But I also know that once I look, the truth (whatever it is right now, even if inconclusive) will be with me — and I won’t be able to ignore it or wish it away.

So I’ve drifted through the day in my own bubble, writing in my journal and on this screen, exercising on the elliptical and stretching on the floor, making and sipping a cup of tea, tidying up. 

I know I can’t keep up this blackout forever. Curiosity will get the better of me and I’ll peak at some sites, learn some totals. But until then, I’m enjoying my own little news-free zone. It’s calm and cozy in here.