Taking the Repeat

Taking the Repeat

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I’m not a musician anymore. I play the piano every few weeks. But I’m an avid listener, and sometimes when I hear a piece I knew from long ago, I can imagine the string bass part or I can see the piano music, the key signature, the caesuras, the repeats.

I always liked the latter. The vertical bars, one thick and one thin. The two dots. The permission it gave. Try it again, this time softer or louder or more legato.

Playing the same section twice had its challenges at times, especially if it was a difficult passage. But it also gave me, never the most confident of musicians, two chances to get it right.

Not a bad idea, in music or in life.

Snowquester!

Snowquester!

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Snow-starved Washington is finally basking in a day off that is not due to sequester-related furlough.

The government, schools, offices — all closed. Students, teachers, bureaucrats — even lobbyists, I imagine — are staying home and letting the world spin on its own for a few hours.

As predicted, it’s a heavy, wet snow — not so much falling as plopping from the sky. Or maybe it”s plopping from the white-coated trees. Or maybe both.

Today’s photo looks much like yesterday’s. But it’s not from the vault. It’s real time.

Will It Stick?

Will It Stick?

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Here in the suburbs of D.C. we don’t just argue about federal policies, we also debate what to call our snow storms. Though the Weather Channel calls the snow that’s supposed to start tonight “Saturn,” the Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang has named it Snowquester. And it’s not giving up the fight.

Putting aside the more primary question — which is why, since “Snowmaggedon,” we feel we must name our snow storms? —this naming convention does reveal an interesting turf war.

Apparently, the Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang asked folks to send them storm names last Friday, and the winning response was “Snowquester.” It’s the perfect appellation for a March snowstorm in sequester-weary Washington. And much more apt than Saturn, people say.

Will the name Snowquester stick? More to the point, will the snow?

We will have to wait and see.

The Moon Before the Storm

The Moon Before the Storm

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Here we are thinking about the snow we might get on Wednesday, the snow I will most probably write about tomorrow, too. But today it is clear and bright and cold, and the moon, setting, was framed by the trees in our backyard.

A faraway moon this morning. Remote, withholding. Not round and jolly and close by.

A moon that is glad to be going.

Something Up My Sleeve

Something Up My Sleeve

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Spring is trying, but it’s still winter here. Bare trees, brisk winds. I probably should wear gloves. But somehow I never remember, or I think I don’t need them. So on most of my walks now my hands are balled into fists and pulled up into the sleeves of my old jacket.

This is probably against most exercise maxims: relax, keep your arms loose, shake out. But for better or worse it seems to be my style these days. And I like the idea of gloves at the ready, long sleeves (and this jacket has them) with a soft lining. Some sweat shirts these days are made with thumb holes so my hands are always warm — though wearing them makes me feel like a poorly paid Dickensian clerk.

Still, there is something to be said for being as portable as possible. Do I have something up my sleeve? Absolutely!

Encore!

Encore!

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Word came yesterday that the great pianist Van Cliburn died on Wednesday. Though his career did not fulfill its early promise, there was a time when his name was on everyone’s lips. He was the man who so wowed  the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958 that judges were forced to ask Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev if they could give him the medal. “Is he the best? Then give him the prize,” Khruschev is supposed to have said.

Van Cliburn took not just the classical music world by storm. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine, given a New York City ticker tape parade. When I told my kids this last night, they said, “What’s a ticker tape parade?”

I heard Van Cliburn play when I was a child, a young piano student. Not yet in love with classical music, I stared up at the ceiling of the concert hall, counting the beams or the light fixtures or something. Bored by the Chopin or the Rachmaninoff or whatever dazzling piece he was playing. Bored by my own lack of understanding.

Could I have that concert back now, please?

Squeaky Stairs

Squeaky Stairs

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The house is usually silent when I wake, walk downstairs, fire up the computer and write my post. So it’s important to be quiet.

Those squeaky stairs, for instance, how to avoid them? The girls had this down pat. Because it was to their advantage to ascend and descend without sound or detection, they memorized which steps were noisy and which were not. Even the two daughters who no longer live here, I bet they could tell you exactly which steps to avoid. And the one who’s still here, well, it goes without saying.

So why is it then that every morning I put my foot —not in — but on it?  It’s not from lack of knowledge or sensitivity or caring. Perhaps a stubborn fondness for transparency?

Once again, then, I vow to count the stairs, to remember which ones squeak and which ones don’t, to move silently through the house.

(Not our stairs — I wish they were.)

Indecision

Indecision

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The witch hazel has been poised like this for weeks. Half in autumn, half in spring. Some of the branches blooming, others not.

A true gardener might look at the tree and say, uh oh, it was nipped by frost — or it’s developed [add scary tree disease here] — or the big storm last June was hard on it, and that explains this holding back, this pause.

But I look at the witch hazel and see human nature. How easy it is to embrace the new,  how difficult to forget the old.

I look at it and see indecision.

Little Jewels

Little Jewels

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We’re getting rain today, at least an inch they say. I’ll be downtown, as sheets of water pelt the alley, blur the view of First Street, dampen my lunchtime walk.

But out here in the suburbs, the rain will be seeping into dry soil, moistening gardens already growing, including the pesky wild onions, which have been sprouting earlier than usual.

If we’re lucky, the drops will glisten on pine boughs, hang out there longer than seems possible or probable. Little jewels — they’re hard to photograph. I’ll keep trying.

Unforgettable

Unforgettable

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Some walks stay in mind only as long as my feet pound the
pavement; they vanish as soon as I walk in the door. Others are unforgettable.
 
It was winter and the moon was rising.  The city was spread out as it always is,
midtown to the left, lower Manhattan to the right, New York Harbor at our feet,
the ferries and tugs like insects skimming water. The day was ending and the
great city was dressing for dinner.
 
In those days the Brooklyn Bridge talked back to walkers, as
cars drove across the metal grid of the roadway below, and being out there in the middle was truly to be suspended — not on earth at
all but flying above it with towers of stone and cables of steel and something
else that can’t be named or explained.
 
Later that year I stood with thousands as music blared and fireworks
exploded to celebrate the span’s 100th birthday. And in the years
since I’ve often strolled from Manhattan to Brooklyn. But when I think
of the bridge, it’s that walk I remember most — the gathering darkness, the sighing
of tires on steel, the real world falling away.