I learned from today’s Writer’s Almanac that Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was published on this day in 1802. This means that for 219 years young pianists — and those who live with them — have been tortured by this piece.
Even now, I can thrum the fingerings on the desk. The first few bars of the first movement of Moonlight Sonata along with the opening of Beethoven’s Fur Elise may well be the last knowledge to leave my brain. Yes, it’s that bad.
I wore an aqua-colored dress with a white collar at the recital where I performed Moonlight Sonata. And I think I performed it relatively mistake-free.
My teacher was unorthodox, so recitals were mercifully few and far between. But of the handful I had, on at least one or two occasions I had to start over when mistakes derailed me.
Moonlight Sonata was not one of those times, though … because it was then and forever will be, embedded in my brain.
(Title page of the first edition, courtesy Wikipedia)
When I woke at 5:40, morning had begun. It was seeping in around the window shades and filling the room not with light but with something that wasn’t darkness, either. A vague shift of shadow, a sharper awareness of shapes.
I lay there a while, thinking it was still dark enough to sleep and that would also be a good way to start a Tuesday, also, perhaps better than jumping out of bed. But the morning won out. There was an insistence to it: Come on, get up. What are you waiting for?
Once downstairs, the morning fulfilled its promise, putting out a steady clear light from the east, which I stationed myself to watch by sitting in the big blue chair. It’s been a light fest ever since, a treat we can continue to enjoy as days lengthen and expand.
A long winter, an even longer year. The light is welcome.
March begins with low skies and sodden soil, with raindrops pinging puddles. The ground is full of water; it can hold no more. But still the rain falls. It follows the snow and the sleet and the freezing rain, all of which left their mark.
Last night’s drops drummed the roof. This morning’s precipitation ventures forth more vaguely. Will it shower? Will it drizzle? Perhaps it will remain indecisive — and mizzle.
In the meantime, moisture pools on sidewalks, beads on branches, saturates the air with mist and haze. If today were to dress for the weather, it would need a poncho and galoshes.
Welcome, March. I hope you brought an umbrella.
As we continue through our second Lenten season of the Covid Era, I notice that today’s reading is the story of Abraham taking his son Isaac to the mountaintop to slaughter him. It’s never an easy Bible verse for me — or any parent — to hear. The amount of faith and obedience required is way beyond what I or, I hazard a guess, most of us, might have.
But the story does come at a good time. With most of a penitential season still ahead of us, we could use a reminder of the power of faith to, if not move mountains, then come pretty close. Because, of course, Abraham is richly rewarded for his obedience. He is told that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars.
Lent on top of Covid seems redundant. We are already giving up so much! I’ve struggled this year, as I did last, for a way to make the season meaningful. One of them is to keep up with the daily readings, to seek wisdom from the verses. This doesn’t always work … but sometimes it does.
This morning while carrying a mug of hot tea from the first floor to the second floor of the house, I thought about the coffee shop lingo I only learned last year, that of ordering a tea to go “with room” — meaning to leave a little space at the top for the milk.
I remember what a revelation this was when I first heard it, a practical shorthand for communicating that I didn’t want scalding water up to the very brim of the paper cup.
Today, of course, I was not in a coffee shop but in my own house, but I have learned the hard way that when the cup is full the carpet bears the brunt of it. So “leaving room” is now a mantra both at home and away.
It’s not one that comes easily to me, however. I’m an up-to-the-brim kind of person, and restraining myself enough to leave room is an act of restraint I’m not always willing to make.
The little bit of wisdom that flew down on me when I glanced at my not-quite-full-cup this morning was that it’s an easier way to live and is perhaps worth a more-than-occasional try. Living “with room” means not packing every day quite as full, leaving minutes at the beginning and end to think, ponder or meditate. Living “with room” takes some of the edge off he day.
(My brother is an excellent packer, but even he left room in this well-stocked box of gifts.)
The spring weather that was promised yesterday more than materialized. It reached 64, way above the 59 that was originally predicted and warm enough to take my laptop out to the deck and work there for a few hours.
What a boost to soak up the rays of the still-faint late-winter sun, to hear the wind chimes clang in the unaccustomedly warm breeze. It was just a taste of what’s to come, but it broke a deadlock of sorts.
Winter has less of a hold on us now. We may still have cold rain, chill wind, freezing temperatures. But the witch hazel tree, responding to yesterday’s prompts, has burst into bloom. It’s the earliest harbinger of spring in our yard, and I’m glad for its vivid evidence that yesterday was not a dream.
(The witch hazel tree photographed in an earlier, snowier winter)
The weather folks tell me that today’s high will be 59. Fifty-nine! I stare at my phone, at the sun icons and the numbers below them, which tell me that at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. it will be 59. I figure if I look long enough those numbers might turn from 59 to 60.
Sixty would be nice. It’s not much more than 60 inside right now (the nighttime temps still prevailing). Sixty would feel balmy and Florida-like to me, stuck mostly inside at the tail end of what’s beginning to feel like a very long winter.
Fifty-nine, on the other hand, still has a chapped, windswept feel.
Before finishing this post, I walk out through the garage to pick up the newspaper at the end of the driveway. It feels pretty darn warm already. I can feel the difference in my bones. There’s a skip in my step as I walk back in the house.
I try the phone one more time. It now tells me that at 4 p.m. it will be 61! That’s more like it.
Making tea this morning, I ponder the word steeped, its meaning and its sound, how the double vowel elongates the word, how saying it out loud mimics its effect. “S-t-e-e-p” — as in a hard climb or a long soak.
What a lovely word, steeped. It speaks of richness and tang and satisfaction. It speaks of judgment. Coffee is brewed, tea is steeped. There’s a world of difference in these processes. In one it’s clear and proscribed; in the other, it’s open-ended and subject to taste. With steeping, time is part of the equation.
This morning, I feel steeped in place, which does not mean I’m gazing at a fetching vista but that I feel totally saturated with the place I am. It’s not a bad place, not at all. In fact, it’s a wonderful place, this house, so full of love and memories.
But it is, after all, only one place. And there are so many other places out there.
With slower walks closer to home, the soundtrack of the stroll grows in importance. Because as much as I would like to say that I walk in silence, the better to hear the faint voice of inspiration, I usually do not. In fact, the music often is the inspiration. At the very least, it’s the pace-setter.
Sometimes it’s Bach or Brahms or Dvorak coursing through my brain, and my cadence flows from the tempo of the movement, speedy during the prestos, slower for the adagios. Other times, I play jazz or folk or show tunes; the latter have a lightheartedness especially appreciated these days. The soundtrack can be seasonal, too: Irish tunes are prepped and ready for next month.
Music is a mood enhancer, amplifying good thoughts, soothing anxious ones. Often I come back in the house from an amble and keep the buds in my ears, finishing a movement or a song, prolonging the escape just a little longer. The soundtrack of the walk throws long shadows on the rest of the day.