Awe-inspiring adventures await your soul
Friday, June 30, 2017
I am sitting in the room where my grandparents died. Well, not at the same time. Two years apart, actually. My grandfather passed away here in 2005, and my grandmother in 2007.
My grandmother left this world on June 19, 2007. It was her wedding anniversary. I'd just returned from a music festival and my first experience with... an "elixir" that can truly work wonders with a curious mind. I remember that as the day I saw God. That is, I was seeing the same material world everyone sees, I just saw it as God when I heard the news about my grandma. Specifically, I was looking at green leaves on a tree when the feeling came.
I was aware this year that June 19th would be the 10th anniversary of that day. I'd already traversed some thunderstorm drama that evening, as I had gone to work without an umbrella and been rewarded with horizontal rain when I had to move my car immediately after work. In short, a lot of sprinting was involved. My sweat glands may have felt overworked, but my heart was appreciative.
While the rain poured, I wondered what I'd done to deserve such a storm. Then I remembered that the rain wasn't punishment for past actions, or merely necessary thirst-quenching of the Earth's present. It was also preparation for the next miracle.
Earlier in the day I'd silently berated myself for taking so long with my dreams, and started playing that game where you wonder what life would be like if you'd done some things differently. Surely I wouldn't be in such a cruddy apartment with oft-annoying roommates.
As those thoughts returned to me, I looked out the window to see the sun had begun to shine. Not only that, but it was only shining on one corner of the building across the street. It illuminated a smile. I was about to run outside to see if it was lighting up the river, but something else caught my attention and I decided to sit down.
A colossal double rainbow was decorating the sky directly outside my window. Nobody on the street could see it. I had to be in that room at that moment. I listened to the song "Spirit" and thought of my grandparents and how happy they'd been.
A week later I went for a walk after work because it was a very sunny day. I soon noticed that someone had placed a piano near the park, which they do sometimes. A man was playing something I didn't recognize, but it sounded good. He had a small group of friends around him, bobbing their heads along, smiling. I decided to walk past them but then stop so that I could still hear the music.
After a while the performer started playing a melody that was very familiar, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't quite place it. Something in my head told me to look up, and I saw the moon grinning up above. It had been gone for a few weeks.
When the player finished, I was tempted to just walk away, but then I remembered this picture I'd taken in Oakland. It was of a building with the reflection of a pyramid on it. I think it was for the website Ask.com, because it said, "Just ask!" So I walked back to the piano and asked what song he had been playing. He smiled and said, "New York!" I scanned my brain for New York songs, thinking of Sinatra, Joel, etc., and then one of his friends said, "Jay-Z." That's when I realized he meant "Empire State of Mind" with Alicia Keys. I thanked them and pointed out the moon above.
A day later I was doing a similar walk, but later in the evening, when I arrived at St. Nicholas Park. I thought I was just gonna walk through quickly, but then I noticed there were fireflies everywhere. It reminded me of some happy and some not so happy times. Of course, I noticed Grandmother Moon then, and she looked pretty pleased.
That was a few days ago. Now I'm sitting in this room, happy to have made it home safely. After all, I hadn't planned to be here tonight, but a week ago I was climbing a hill in Troy and noticed the check engine light was blinking with just 35 minutes to go in a 3.5 hour journey. It felt like it was struggling up the hill, kind of like it felt when my spark plug went while descending a hill in Troy the year before. I pulled into a gas station, checked all the gauges, oil and fluids carefully, called my dad to warn him and see if he could give any advice, read the manual, and discovered that it could be that my catalytic converter would catch on fire if I accelerated or decelerated too quickly. Later it turned out it was the spark plugs. Sometimes you gotta work a little harder to keep up the spark.
I'm feeling lucky to be here safely for more reasons than 1. 7 years ago I woke up in NYC after 1 day back in the US and got on a train up the picturesque Hudson River to Albany, where my friend met me at the train station and gave me a ride to Gannon Road, where he dropped me off to walk the final mile of the 7 month journey around the world on my own. When I got to the house, I walked around back to this room and waved through the window. My sister screamed because they hadn't been aware exactly when or how I would be arriving home.
Today I woke up in NYC after three and half years of residence there, talked about family, friends and independence with people from around the world, got on a bus up the not-so-picturesque I-87, met my father at the same train station I'd met my friend 7 years prior, picked up my car at the auto-repair shop, and drove the final few miles home.
When I got home, I took advantage of the free laundry machine, as I've been known to do. I washed all the clothes in my backpack. On top of that, I included the sweaty clothes I'd been wearing on the bus ride (I'd stubbornly run up the motionless escalator at Hudson Yards with a large backpack on), so I had to look in my old bureau to find some shorts or pants to wear. My eyes immediately locked onto my old brown Thai fishing pants, the same pants I'd found in Bangkok in 2010, and worn pretty much every day for 6 months after that, including the day I returned home. They've got a large patch and a large hole now, but they're doing the trick so far. Also, there were ten dollars in the pocket, which is nice.
I gotta say, I was happy to find that cash, because money can be exchanged for goods and services. That said, you can't purchase the magic of synchronicity.
Or a rainbow, for that matter.
The pot of gold is a bonus
My grandmother left this world on June 19, 2007. It was her wedding anniversary. I'd just returned from a music festival and my first experience with... an "elixir" that can truly work wonders with a curious mind. I remember that as the day I saw God. That is, I was seeing the same material world everyone sees, I just saw it as God when I heard the news about my grandma. Specifically, I was looking at green leaves on a tree when the feeling came.
I was aware this year that June 19th would be the 10th anniversary of that day. I'd already traversed some thunderstorm drama that evening, as I had gone to work without an umbrella and been rewarded with horizontal rain when I had to move my car immediately after work. In short, a lot of sprinting was involved. My sweat glands may have felt overworked, but my heart was appreciative.
While the rain poured, I wondered what I'd done to deserve such a storm. Then I remembered that the rain wasn't punishment for past actions, or merely necessary thirst-quenching of the Earth's present. It was also preparation for the next miracle.
Earlier in the day I'd silently berated myself for taking so long with my dreams, and started playing that game where you wonder what life would be like if you'd done some things differently. Surely I wouldn't be in such a cruddy apartment with oft-annoying roommates.
As those thoughts returned to me, I looked out the window to see the sun had begun to shine. Not only that, but it was only shining on one corner of the building across the street. It illuminated a smile. I was about to run outside to see if it was lighting up the river, but something else caught my attention and I decided to sit down.
A colossal double rainbow was decorating the sky directly outside my window. Nobody on the street could see it. I had to be in that room at that moment. I listened to the song "Spirit" and thought of my grandparents and how happy they'd been.
A week later I went for a walk after work because it was a very sunny day. I soon noticed that someone had placed a piano near the park, which they do sometimes. A man was playing something I didn't recognize, but it sounded good. He had a small group of friends around him, bobbing their heads along, smiling. I decided to walk past them but then stop so that I could still hear the music.
After a while the performer started playing a melody that was very familiar, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't quite place it. Something in my head told me to look up, and I saw the moon grinning up above. It had been gone for a few weeks.
When the player finished, I was tempted to just walk away, but then I remembered this picture I'd taken in Oakland. It was of a building with the reflection of a pyramid on it. I think it was for the website Ask.com, because it said, "Just ask!" So I walked back to the piano and asked what song he had been playing. He smiled and said, "New York!" I scanned my brain for New York songs, thinking of Sinatra, Joel, etc., and then one of his friends said, "Jay-Z." That's when I realized he meant "Empire State of Mind" with Alicia Keys. I thanked them and pointed out the moon above.
A day later I was doing a similar walk, but later in the evening, when I arrived at St. Nicholas Park. I thought I was just gonna walk through quickly, but then I noticed there were fireflies everywhere. It reminded me of some happy and some not so happy times. Of course, I noticed Grandmother Moon then, and she looked pretty pleased.
That was a few days ago. Now I'm sitting in this room, happy to have made it home safely. After all, I hadn't planned to be here tonight, but a week ago I was climbing a hill in Troy and noticed the check engine light was blinking with just 35 minutes to go in a 3.5 hour journey. It felt like it was struggling up the hill, kind of like it felt when my spark plug went while descending a hill in Troy the year before. I pulled into a gas station, checked all the gauges, oil and fluids carefully, called my dad to warn him and see if he could give any advice, read the manual, and discovered that it could be that my catalytic converter would catch on fire if I accelerated or decelerated too quickly. Later it turned out it was the spark plugs. Sometimes you gotta work a little harder to keep up the spark.
I'm feeling lucky to be here safely for more reasons than 1. 7 years ago I woke up in NYC after 1 day back in the US and got on a train up the picturesque Hudson River to Albany, where my friend met me at the train station and gave me a ride to Gannon Road, where he dropped me off to walk the final mile of the 7 month journey around the world on my own. When I got to the house, I walked around back to this room and waved through the window. My sister screamed because they hadn't been aware exactly when or how I would be arriving home.
Today I woke up in NYC after three and half years of residence there, talked about family, friends and independence with people from around the world, got on a bus up the not-so-picturesque I-87, met my father at the same train station I'd met my friend 7 years prior, picked up my car at the auto-repair shop, and drove the final few miles home.
When I got home, I took advantage of the free laundry machine, as I've been known to do. I washed all the clothes in my backpack. On top of that, I included the sweaty clothes I'd been wearing on the bus ride (I'd stubbornly run up the motionless escalator at Hudson Yards with a large backpack on), so I had to look in my old bureau to find some shorts or pants to wear. My eyes immediately locked onto my old brown Thai fishing pants, the same pants I'd found in Bangkok in 2010, and worn pretty much every day for 6 months after that, including the day I returned home. They've got a large patch and a large hole now, but they're doing the trick so far. Also, there were ten dollars in the pocket, which is nice.
I gotta say, I was happy to find that cash, because money can be exchanged for goods and services. That said, you can't purchase the magic of synchronicity.
Or a rainbow, for that matter.
The pot of gold is a bonus
Monday, June 12, 2017
Saturday, June 10, 2017
I was waiting for the next show and reading this web log to see what I'd written exactly a year before, on June 9th. It turns out I'd written about a great class with students, at the end of which they wrote about why the world is a good place. I'd copied some of their responses at the end of it, because they were truly special. As I read them, I thought of how much I missed that group. They were a fun one.
Later, before I was seated, one last couple got up from their seats from the first show and made their way past me to the exit. The woman looked a little familiar, and much more so when she recognized me and made that "whoa" face people make when they see someone unexpectedly. She had been a student in the very class I'd just been nostalgic for. She'd written:
"We can talk and express our opinion to each other and we can understand each other. We create "the answer" for difficult problems together".
"We can talk and express our opinion to each other and we can understand each other. We create "the answer" for difficult problems together".
After all the hello's and "Oh my God!"'s I told her what I just told you, and showed her the writing on my phone. She was blown away, and then I took a picture with her and her date.
Then I got the best seat I've ever gotten
Then I got the best seat I've ever gotten
Friday, June 9, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
I'm looking at this piano, which is being played by the greatest musician in the world (ya know, Hiromi Uehara), and I'm realizing just how lucky I am because I'm right next to this piano, touching the stage, and then I notice something kind of funny. I'm so close to the piano that the spotlight is shining on the top of my head and my silhouette is being reflected in the side of the divine instrument. The thing is, the light is really illuminating the top of my hair (which is tied back) so that I can see individual strands sticking out from the rest. If I were feeling especially poetic, I could say it had something to do with non-conformity, but instead I'm thinking it looks strange to have my hair mostly pulled back with noticeable renegade strands vying for the spotlight. When I look in a mirror, I rarely notice that unless it's especially wild, but with the bright light, it seems obvious. Luckily, I'm immediately comforted by the fact that A.) nobody in their right mind is looking at the back of my head instead of the pianist and the harpist on stage, and B.) even if I were standing right next to the pianist and you could only see our hair, I don't think anyone would consider mine especially disheveled, relatively speaking.
More importantly, on the way to the show I was thinking about how last night I didn't meet anyone at my table, and maybe that had something to do with going to the early shows on work nights for the first time ever. Until this year, I'd always had to get permission to get out of work early, or even ask for a vacation from my night shifts for a night or two. I would always meet interesting people from around the world at my table. I do that at work, but with the responsibility of needing to teach them. On top of that, there's a much higher turnout of jazz fans at this club than there is in my classrooms.
Thus, I was very pleased to walk in later than I'd hoped to and find that not only was there an available seat immediately next to the piano, but that I was seated with five interesting people from various walks of life. When they asked me what I do, I said I write by night, and when they asked what I write about, I said something about memoirs involving travel and noticing the poetry that is the world. One of the guys was a poet, and he asked me if there was anything I'd taken away from other cultures that I wanted to adopt. I said I didn't copy any systems, because what works for them systemically wouldn't work for me, but that there were elements of thinking in eastern religions which I found resonated with my own thoughts. It turned out that three of them knew each other because of a meditation group. I also mentioned that I generally felt less uptight about things after spending so many nights teaching people from Central and South America. Of course, there was a couple that lived in South America and had retired after working in education for many years. When I told the teacher that seeing Hiromi was like being able to say you saw Jimi Hendrix, he smiled and said, "I did see Hendrix! I wasn't this close though!"
Before I continue, I should mention that a few months ago, for the holidays, I was given a book called Earth Prayers: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations from Around the World edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon. I've been reading it a lot more in the past couple months as I've been visiting nature more. A few weeks ago I was hiking my first mountain in the Cambridge Valley (where I grew up...) and read some of these poems at the top, breathing the fresh air. I also read some in a canoe recently, floating on the water, and on a hill, while sitting by a fire, admiring the Earth beneath my feet. One of the poems that really caught my attention was by John Seed and Joanna Macy. It was about the four elements: Water, Earth, Air and Fire.
It begins:
"What are you? What am I? Intersecting cycles of water, earth, air and fire, that's what I am, that's what you are."
I encourage you to find this book and read the rest!
Anyway, you can imagine my pleasure when she played a new suite entitled "The Elements: Air, Earth, Water & Fire."
There weren't any words, but the message was clear, dancing in my ears
More importantly, on the way to the show I was thinking about how last night I didn't meet anyone at my table, and maybe that had something to do with going to the early shows on work nights for the first time ever. Until this year, I'd always had to get permission to get out of work early, or even ask for a vacation from my night shifts for a night or two. I would always meet interesting people from around the world at my table. I do that at work, but with the responsibility of needing to teach them. On top of that, there's a much higher turnout of jazz fans at this club than there is in my classrooms.
Thus, I was very pleased to walk in later than I'd hoped to and find that not only was there an available seat immediately next to the piano, but that I was seated with five interesting people from various walks of life. When they asked me what I do, I said I write by night, and when they asked what I write about, I said something about memoirs involving travel and noticing the poetry that is the world. One of the guys was a poet, and he asked me if there was anything I'd taken away from other cultures that I wanted to adopt. I said I didn't copy any systems, because what works for them systemically wouldn't work for me, but that there were elements of thinking in eastern religions which I found resonated with my own thoughts. It turned out that three of them knew each other because of a meditation group. I also mentioned that I generally felt less uptight about things after spending so many nights teaching people from Central and South America. Of course, there was a couple that lived in South America and had retired after working in education for many years. When I told the teacher that seeing Hiromi was like being able to say you saw Jimi Hendrix, he smiled and said, "I did see Hendrix! I wasn't this close though!"
Before I continue, I should mention that a few months ago, for the holidays, I was given a book called Earth Prayers: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations from Around the World edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon. I've been reading it a lot more in the past couple months as I've been visiting nature more. A few weeks ago I was hiking my first mountain in the Cambridge Valley (where I grew up...) and read some of these poems at the top, breathing the fresh air. I also read some in a canoe recently, floating on the water, and on a hill, while sitting by a fire, admiring the Earth beneath my feet. One of the poems that really caught my attention was by John Seed and Joanna Macy. It was about the four elements: Water, Earth, Air and Fire.
It begins:
"What are you? What am I? Intersecting cycles of water, earth, air and fire, that's what I am, that's what you are."
I encourage you to find this book and read the rest!
Anyway, you can imagine my pleasure when she played a new suite entitled "The Elements: Air, Earth, Water & Fire."
There weren't any words, but the message was clear, dancing in my ears
Monday, June 5, 2017
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