ROOTS 06.07.2013

Walking closely behind him she carried her cafeteria tray, clutching the edges of it for her life.  Getting too close meant discovery.  She had watched his moves for weeks now. She knew his habitual patterns.  As all humans, ritual is within our nature.  At week three of watching, not one day differed from the last.  Her confidence had blossomed and it was time.

He discarded his school lunch issued milk carton, the brown paper lunch sack sent with him from home, and the plastic spoon.  Every day he had a yogurt or a pudding, no doubt lovingly packed by a parent. The spoon. The spoon.......

Keeping herself positioned directly behind him at the large garbage container she promptly shoved her tray into the trash.  Feigning clumsiness she reached down to retrieve her tray....

….And the spoon he tossed.

Success. She clutched it under the lip of the tray in an attempt to conceal her prize. She deposited the tray to the dirty tray line, shoved the spoon into her hoodie pouch and hurriedly burst through the cafe doors. It took all her might to not sprint to the lavatory.  Her heart beat unevenly and hastily.  Her cheeks, she could feel, were flush and hot.  The hair on her neck was raised and sweaty.  Her panties were wet and warm.  THIS, this is what she had been waiting for.

Checking each stall to confirm her solitude she closed her self in the far left toilet.  Locked the door and perched herself up onto the seat as to not be discovered.  Her only fear was interruption at this point.  She closed her eyes.  Held her breath.   Reached her clammy hand into her pouch.  Fingering the handle of the spoon she let out a moan and felt a tingle between her thighs she had never experienced.  

Pulling out the spoon by the handle she held it with both hands in front of her and stared into it almost as if the spoon were his eyes.  She pulled it close to her face and parted her lips, as any pubescent teen practices kissing in the mirror, .she held the scoop of the spoon to her mouth and wrapped her tongue around its dirty edges.  Her eyes pressed tight knowing this moment couldn’t last forever she collected memories in her mind. The flavor of strawberry yogurt, foreign saliva and garbage all cataloged for reminiscing over in the privacy of her bedroom later .  

Putting it deeper in her mouth she closed her lips over the white plastic spoon and tongued it as if it were his tongue.  Withdrawing it, heavy with her spit, she gently grazed her face with it. Again her thighs tingled with that unknown achey tingle.  She dragged the spoon down her face to her collar bone.

SLAM!

Another stall was abruptly occupied and she knew her date with the boy had to end... for now.  

Now she has lots of that boy’s spoons.  They are the roots of her desire, her lust and her want. Her obsessions.

She has them still, now, in totes, in her three room apartment twenty-two years later. She looks at the full totes and smiles from the thought of the first spoon. “What a silly girl I was” she thinks. She picks up her binoculars and watches her new love make coffee.....

ROOTS 6.6.13

"I heard there was a secret chord

that David played and it pleased the Lord,

but you don't really care for music, do you?

"It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth,

the minor fall, and the major lift--

the baffled king composing Hallelujah."

- Leonard Cohen

Music describes relationships of all kinds. Music tells stories in a universally native tongue. Music is math, and math reveals to us G-d’s secrets.

In Western music theory there are 12 notes to choose from, including all the sharps and flats (e.g., F sharp, B flat). There are 7 natural notes in all. Using the C major scale as an example, they are C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. After B, the pattern repeats and we come back to C, but now an octave higher. If you can sing “do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do,” then you’re familiar with the C major scale.

A chord is made up of the first, third, and fifth notes of a scale. Therefore, a C major chord is composed of C, E, and G. In this case, C is the root. The root provides the chord's name and its companion notes provide the structure--determining whether it's minor, major, diminished, etc.

A typical song consists of three chords, usually based on the first, fourth, and fifth notes of the key you're playing in. In the key of C, those chords are C, F, and G. If you know three chords you can play, literally, thousands of songs. Just choose a favorite key and run with it. In the key of D, you’d use D, G, and A. In the key of E: E, A, and B. 

Get past the theory. Just play. Just sing. It’s regenerative. It’s grounding. It’s humbling and inspiring.

The more I play music and the more I sing, the more I understand not only the numerical relationships between notes and chords, but the emotional ones as well. When you stray from the root of the key, you long to come back to it. It feels, inexplicably, like home. 

In a well structured song, there are dips and rises. Your heart falls into the song, and you trust the progression of its chords. From the root chord of the key to the fourth, it’s just enough of an adventure, just enough tension to provide a thrill, and a return to home feels that much sweeter. 

There are different feelings for different progressions. I know this not from theory but from practice and experience, from quiet mornings with coffee and raucous campfire nights.

I am guilty of over-thinking in my life. I wish to understand the workings of my passionate pursuits. But these yearnings are only means to an end. I wish only to deepen my experiences, to speak and understand in more elegant ways, to find the simplest solutions--which are often the most beautiful.

ROOTS: 6.5.13

Honey Mushroom

it spreads, unchecked

1665 football fields, they say

2400 years old, they say

a dense tangle beneath the earth


I've got a little somethin' on that one, I do

from one ocean to another

and back again

and back again

I'm as old as stardust 
and the mycelial mat I've woven
reaches

from one ocean to another

and back again

 *image credit: http://www.omgfactsonline.com

and back again


the rhizomorphs weave stories

hold memories

transmit joy

and sadness

drawing a map of life
as old as stardust

a way home
between oceans

Roots 06.04.2013

Weeds can survive anywhere. Sidewalks, gardens, even the middle of a busy road. They grow everywhere in large numbers. Problem is that they have weak roots. Their lack of foundation means they end up being ripped up, washed away, or trampled easily. They rarely bare flowers or fruit. Quantity over quality.

Trees need more care to grow. They need the right light, the right soil, and the right amount of water. Their roots run deep. Strong and powerful, once established, they will grow for years. Some bear fruit, all provide shade and homes for all sorts of critters. They survive the changing of the seasons, adapting to each beautifully.

I fell in love with my husband watching the trees survive a stormy summer. Fresh green leaves would get ripped off their branches. Branches ripped off their limbs. Limbs swaying and bending in the whipping wind. But they survived, they thrived. They held on with their powerful roots, burying them deeper into the earth.

A few years later we married under a canopy of oranges, yellows, and reds. The trees had survived the summer’s assault. Heat, drought, storms. They lived through it all and were showing off. Their roots tangled and entwined under our feet as we exchanged vows, as we created our own roots.

Wednesday is the eleventh anniversary of the day we became a couple. Storms have come and gone, each one trying to rip us apart, pull us in separate directions. But, our roots are strong. All tangled and entwined beneath us. Holding us tightly together and to the earth.

The weeds of our past are long gone. Blown away by a breeze or washed away in a rain. Now, here, we have each other. A strong union, tended to with deep love and care. It has grown and flourished. It has survived the changing of the seasons and adapted beautifully.

Our roots are strong. Our love is deep. This is our home.

ROOTS 06.03.2013

I used to sing on top of a grand piano at Beth Israel nursing home for a bunch of old people during their entertainment hour. I used to sing there because my Great Grandma Bobby used to live there. Bobby was Russian and supposedly used to dance with Danny K, but when I met her she was ancient. I can’t remember her ever walking, never mind flitting her skirt around in a musical number with a famous redhead.When she started deteriorating, she moved to the Intensive Care Unit, and I went from singing for people who could tap their canes and clap, to singing for people who were drooling out of the sides of their mouths and tracing circles on their thighs with their heads cocked to one side. The smell of the nursing home made me nauseous every time I walked down that sterile hallway to get to the rec room. People slowly and not so slowly deteriorating like compost; pretty faces, brittle bendy bones, and pissed in pants all in one room. I was singing in front of those that were losing themselves, as I was just growing into myself, and it scared me and thrilled me all at once.

Grandpa Marvin makes paper piles and builds them all over his apartment. He’s ninety and he dates Molly and they go to the diner around the corner and the movies. He fills his days petitioning to get seat belts on buses, counseling young people on how to start small businesses, and reading the New York Times to blind people on the radio. He likes to swim and doesn’t have time for people who fail to listen to him.

Nana Curtis was a graceful beauty with flawless skin who saw the light and came back twice before she actually died. She loved Neil Diamond songs, but she loved my dad’s version of Frank Sinatra’s "My Way" better than all the songs. People mistook her for Nancy Reagan and after her husband died and then her son died, she didn’t seem to have much room for men. They hit on her in the elevator of her Assisted Living Center, but she dismissed them and called them “pathetic.” She lived her life as a caretaker, and after those that needed extra care passed, she could finally care for herself, even if that meant doing nothing. She told me that she used to write dark poetry, that she never showed it to anyone, but if she found it deep in her closet, she would give it all to me.

Pop-Pop was a jovial, martini in the recliner while watching really loud game shows kind of a man. He had one of those coughs, those full, face turns red, wheezy, move his recliner from the laying down to the sitting up position to get it all up kind of coughs. His bad habits led him to needing a prosthetic leg which softened him a bit, but not much. He was mean to my dad and yelled down the halls at my Nana, so I don’t have much more room to write about him. Perhaps it's a bit of a fractured root. 

Grandma Terry collected lion and elephant figurines and kept the small ones in a glass display case in her living room. She liked sweet treats and when she ate them, she said she couldn’t believe she was eating them, and that she never ate stuff like that. She didn’t like being alone, and she couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever want to live out in the country without any neighbors close by. She always smelled good and had amazing breasts. Is that weird to say about your grandmother? It’s true! She rarely showed her skin, but even in a purple turtle neck, they were sturdy and robust. She wrapped everything in multiple plastic baggies and used lots of elastic bands; she was obsessed with keeping everything and everyone safe. I watched her empty out boxes of green tic tac’s and boxes of white tic tac’s onto her dining room table, mix them all up with her palms and fingers, and put them back into their new packs for convenient variety. She wore cappuccino lipstick from CVS, so I bought some in high school. She never looked sloppy. She was regal until the end.

What kinds of actions, gestures, traditions, and stories are we constantly injecting into our own lineages? We are all the off-shoot roots for future generations. What bits are we casting off for others to remember?

Roots 06.02.2013

When my dad was a kid, he lived in a house on the outskirts of town. His backyard was a stretch of rolling woods, veined with trails that he ran on as a teenager. His sneakers packed the dirt, skipped over roots and fallen branches, and carried him to the top, from where he could see the river in the fall, when the trees were bare.

Nearly 40 years later, I lived around the corner, and I felt magnetically drawn to those woods. I spent hours walking the trails and sitting on boulders, soaking up the spots of sun that danced through the canopy. Each season, I watched the landscape morph into something even more beautiful than it had previously been. The budding trees of spring, the lush moss of summer, the fiery yellow leaves of fall, the crusty and diamond-laced snow of winter-- they were all my favorites, depending.

One morning in the late fall, I pulled on my sneakers and ran to the top, skipping (and tripping) over the roots and fallen branches. The earth was soft and I sunk into it slightly as I rested my hands on my hips to catch my breath. Through the last of the season’s foliage, I watched a mist glide across the river.

A breeze sent chills up my sweaty spine, as I leaned against a maple, tangling my feet in its roots, grounding me with my own.