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Category: perspective

In Person

In Person

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Yesterday’s rain has cleared out — an affront to the beautiful bridal shower my sister planned for her oldest daughter, a shower that went on as planned despite almost horizontal rain blowing into and around the gazebo near the Severn River, where it was held. 

The shower had already been moved outside to thwart the coronavirus, so the fact that we ended up with an atypical August monsoon made for the kind of event where everyone just shrugged and went on with it because, really, what else can you do.

But being there with family and friends yesterday reminded me of what life was like before mid-March, reminded me of gathering and chatting and pleasures we formerly took for granted. 

I know we must be careful when we meet in person, but it’s good to be reminded that behind these squares on a screen are real flesh-and-blood people. They’re around now and will be later, when all of this is behind us.

(The Severn River at sunset — in calmer, drier weather. )

On This Day …

On This Day …

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Yesterday, still giddy with the news of our first grandchild, I had no time for the details. Today, I look up, note the day, August 14, which was Claire’s due date, and the famous people who were born on it: comedian Steve Martin; Russell Baker, author of the lovely memoir Growing Up; “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson; and Doc Halliday, who survived the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. 

Those would have been interesting birthday mates, for sure. But it turns out there are some interesting characters born on August 13, too. There is sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and was the most famous woman in the world at one time; William Caxton, the first man to print a book in 1475, using the printing press that had just been invented 25 years earlier; and director Alfred Hitchcock, who made “Psycho, “Vertigo” and “Rear Window.”

So the little guy will have plenty of birthday company as he makes his way through life. For now, he is eating and sleeping and getting to know the world. For now, he is still pure potential. 

(Thanks to the Writer’s Almanac for these facts.)

Noting the Passing

Noting the Passing

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The pianist Leon Fleisher died August 2 at the age of 92. I’ve written about him before, both as a pianist and writer. I even vowed to learn a piece of music because of watching him play it, a promise I have not kept, by the way. So the least I can do is honor the man here.

Fleisher was a master of reinvention: winning competitions as a prodigy, losing the use of his right hand, despairing for a while, then eventually remaking himself as a conductor, teacher and performer. The difficulty he faced almost sunk him — he considered suicide — but he emerged stronger as a result. 

“Time and again, I would look at my life and marvel that so many wonderful things had happened that never would have happened if my hand had not been struck down,” Fleisher wrote in his memoir Nine Lives. “I couldn’t imagine my life without conducting. I couldn’t imagine life without teaching so intensely.” 

Curiously enough, Fleisher’s obituary shared the page with that of another artist and master of reinvention. The film director Alan Parker directed several movies I’ve loved, such as “Fame” and “The Commitments,” movies that, until reading his obituary, I wasn’t even aware were his. Like Fleisher, Parker took risks, made changes, didn’t find a safe path and follow it but continued to learn and grow.

Two men, two creative careers, but one lesson (at least for me): Whatever you do, they say, don’t get stuck. 

Precious Moments

Precious Moments

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It’s easy to feel a failure at meditation, although I believe failure is a concept frowned upon in meditative circles. But despite the wandering mind I must constantly try to rein in during my brief sessions on Headspace, I stepped outside today to pick up the newspaper and felt a thrill just to be alive.

The sun was shining, I could walk barefoot to the street — the moment was perfect for celebrating the importance of all moments.

And as if to underline this view, as I write this post the hummingbird, elusive this year, seems finally to have decided our nectar is worth sipping. Already I’ve seen her make several passes at the feeder, dipping as well into the New Guinea impatiens, her needle-like bill stabbing the flowers with surgical precision.

A summer moment. A precious moment. Precious as all moments are.

The Miniaturist

The Miniaturist

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Today, Virginia enters “Phase 3,” which means that pools open, gyms can operate at 75-percent capacity and gatherings of 250 may be held.  But for many of us, I suspect, life will continue on its oh-so-different track.

Book group tonight will still be virtual. Going for groceries will remain my only weekly outside-the-house errand. Working-from-home has become routine, as have my take-a-quick-break strolls around the backyard.

It was on one of those yesterday that it dawned on me that this new life is making me a miniaturist. Not someone who builds tiny dollhouses or paints illuminated manuscripts, as tempting as those occupations might be, but “miniaturist” in the sense of paying attention to small things.

I notice the gall on the poplar and the chicory that has sprung up by the fence. Those parts of the yard that I seldom used to enter have become my secondary landscape, the place I go to make the world go away. And there is beauty in the small and quiet, the “violet by the mossy stone, half hidden from the eye.” 

A Clutch of Keys

A Clutch of Keys

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From a neighbor, we’ve received a windfall of dubious utility and uncertain origin: a clutch of keys — if that’s the best collective noun to use for them.

Some are for doors, some are for clocks. All are antiques. They hail from an era when keys were king. No plastic card, no fob, no key code. These are the real thing, known as bit or barrel keys, Wikipedia informs me. They’re the kind of keys that belong on a big ring, the kind of keys zealously guarded by housekeepers or superintendents.

Before I began this blog I would not have photographed these keys sitting on the counter. They would have been just another pile of stuff. But now I see the illustrative potential of things, find myself stopping to admire the kooky wall art in the lobby of my building (see yesterday’s illustration) or to snap picture of leaf shadows on siding.

It’s a new way of seeing … and yesterday, I saw these keys.

Virtual Vacation

Virtual Vacation

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Time for a virtual vacation. Today I’m heading to Florida, where I go every summer to walk the beach, inhale the sea air, and watch dune grass swaying in the breeze.

I’m thinking about how sultry it is there, and how I always intend to do more writing than I actually do — but how it works out anyway. Because the trip is always an inspiration and a restorative, much longed for, much appreciated.

It’s still months away but already I can feel a warm breeze on my face and the fine white sand between my toes. One of the best things about a virtual vacation is that it can happen whenever you want it to! And for me, it’s happening … right … now.

Lasting Impressions

Lasting Impressions

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Remembering where I was this time last year, zooming through the streets of Phnom Penh in a tuk-tuk, about to leave for the eastern part of the country, where I would have a strange and unforgettable experience with bats.

The trips I’ve taken the last few years will never leave me. Though the reporting I’ve done has long since been turned into articles, the impressions it left will always be part of my writing.

They come in especially handy when I need to remind myself that the world is much larger than my little corner of it. The last few days I’ve been remembering a woman who seemed the incarnation of sadness. She had been trafficked, beaten and abused. Through a series of remarkable occurrences she found her way back home. But the poverty she returned to was so severe — her kids ate rice and roasted rat because that’s all they had — that it wouldn’t surprise me to learn she’d once again taken her chances with a job offer abroad.

She was a beautiful woman whose children hugged her tenderly. They seemed to know what she had done for them. How could they not?

Shades of Gray

Shades of Gray

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Never fear, dear readers, this blog isn’t taking a more salacious turn in its second decade. This post is not about the erotic novel and film “50 Shades of Gray.”  It’s about what color to paint the bathroom.

The weekend remodeling project is proceeding apace, and by next weekend, we’ll need paint. Will it be Abalone or Barren Plain? London Fog or Seattle Mist? Wind’s Breath or Cedar Key?

This remains to be seen. I want a warm gray to match the swirls of color in the marble-like porcelain floor and shower tile. But I don’t want to ignore the marble vanity top, which is a bit cooler in tone.

Ah, dear, the problems of affluence — in which we are freed from the daily tedium of black and white (what will we eat? where will we sleep?) to contemplate … the shades of gray.

Walking Tall

Walking Tall

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It was an aha moment made possible by a liberal arts education, and it happened in the biology lab. While dissecting the brain of a fetal pig I came across the pineal gland, located between the two hemispheres and thought by some (including Descartes) to be the seat of the soul. I had just been reading Descartes in my philosophy class, and the fact that I was now seeing that very gland (albeit a tiny porcine version of it) made my heart skip a beat.

I still pay attention to things like this, strange connections and coincidences when the fates seem to be saying, listen up … this is important.

What I’ve been noting lately — both from Becca, the physical therapist I’ve been seeing, and reading in Sarah Kaufamn’s The Art of Grace (more later about this fine book) — is the importance of good posture.

Posture is a foundation for moving gracefully, Kaufman writes, and good posture provides an uplifting feeling. This was seconded by Becca, who tells me that in the process of tightening my core I should concentrate on being pulled up, that this will counteract a tendency to collapse in the midsection that can irritate the spine and cause sciatic flare-ups.

“If you watch people walk,” Kaufman writes, “most of us sink into our hips. … There should be a comfortable tension in the torso, lifting the abdomen and hips against gravity while helping relax and easing shoulders down slightly.”

The fates have spoken  — and I’m trying to walk tall.