The Gift of Giving (A.B.)

It's hard to imagine a greater gift than to have someone share with you what you've given.  Maybe the clearest way to receive this is through words.  But sometimes we have to listen more carefully and creatively to hear that this is so.  I imagine that a teacher can receive this in seeing it in their students, in their students' students.  Or parents seeing it in their child's accomplishments, and even just their traits which they pass along because they love them.

So much is possible.  The world is bigger than we imagine.

Remains of the Day

So much time planning and preparing.  When will I get up, to do what things, and in what order that they will all be done?  When, how, what will I eat for the day?  How will we move our things?  Will we travel this summer, where?  What will I do next year?  How should I introduce 3-octave scales?  And vibrato?  What is best for this child?  How are we shaping their future?

And what remains at the end of the day, as we return home, as we say goodbye?

Tired with no more plans for the evening but to get to bed.  Travel gerrymandering takes 3 swipes just to get home, one for an error, completely unplanned.  And yet, it's ok.  It's ok.

The planning and preparing have led us to this point, and now we have nowhere, nowhen, left to plan.  We are spinning in circles, breathing the time, and so often it seems that our fingertips just miss one another as we spin off into another cycle, landing in another world of disorder waiting for us to shed our blind light.

Back and Forth 6 Swipe Day

Swipe #1: 116th to 66th.  For a rehearsal of Mozart g minor piano quartet and Beethoven A Major Cello Sonata.  We meet at the pianist's condo, on the 27th floor of One Lincoln Plaza.  The walls are either bookshelves or sliding door mirrors which gives the effect of the space continuing on forever, out beyond the elevated view.  We are rehearsing for a house concert there, an event which is half celebration of our pianist's birthday (20 years ago she joined the Lyric Chamber Music Society at the age of 58--her hint to us) and half a way for the director of a music program where I teach to meet people, a development evening of sorts.  Our pianist has just written a novel, about a little girl whose magic power is music.  She started playing the piano in earnest in her 40s.  In short, she's another inspiring model of aging well.

Swipe #2:  66th to 116th even though I hadn't planned to go home for lunch, I was dismissed earlier than expected from the Beethoven rehearsal (I was tired, too) and made use of the time to practice piano and half-heartedly answer emails.

Swipe #3:  116th to 66th  Seeing a pattern?  Lessons at Kaufman Center.  4 of them.  Discovering the importance of focus as a thing to teach, of posture, of awareness, of asking questions.  Said goodbye to the last student I had yet to tell.  Two penultimate heartbreaks, brothers with some magical power.

Swipe #4:  M104 Bus where I texted the parents of the student I had just told, scheduled some lessons, and wrote up all the lessons I had just taught, and sat next to.....I don't know how many people.  They come and go and it's easy not to notice if I'm alone or accommodating another's space.

Swipe #5.  116th to 59th, Columbus Circle.  Tonight was one of two nights of Manhattanhenge, and the only one I could get to.  There were a lot of clouds and people, but I read my book in a small "park" on 56th and 7th.

Swipe #6:  59th to 116th.  Home, but really.

Running the Flowers

The flowers this early morning at the garden at 93rd St. in Riverside Park were so miraculous.  I woke up early, way too early for the recoup in sleep that I had hoped to gain, but there they were, waiting.  Roses, irises, peonies, everything so beautiful and glorious on this cloudy day, with no competition.  This is one of the things I love in New York, one of those things that isn't in a tourist guide book, because its beauty extends beyond a few days, a week, or a month.  Every morning that I manage to visit it, it's different.  It's alive and changing, and so is the world around it.

A sense of wonder.  I ran around it once, and then in reverse, and then again, waiting for that sense to fade with all the many angles that a garden can exude.  Fading with multiple journeys around and around.

I'm grateful to have this beautiful, tangible thing to exhaust, even if only for a morning before it must be renewed.  If only there were some way to run laps around years, around people, around music and art, around thoughts that come and go.

Return to New York

And now suddenly back in rainy New York; as though the heat wave never happened, as though I skipped from one cool spring day to the next, no orange moon above a Midwestern city, no empty streets with lonely traffic lights, no gathering of souls to open one another, no dining al fresco with only bikers going by.

Back to this city, still in a haze of living within questions and not answers, of saying excuse me, of being happy despite sitting in the last row of the plane, in a window seat without a window, in a chair that cannot recline.  Where is my entitlement?  How did it dissipate in the flat wide streets of emptiness?  Shouldn't I be demanding something better?  Is it safe to let down my guard?

But here I am, for another month and change.  Piecing together wrapping up. Closing in on the concept of space, and otherwise.

Believing in Change

Regardless of the number of transitions that I experience--seasons, locations, circadian rhythms---I'm always amazed at how things can change so fully.  Being at this conference, meeting and re-meeting old colleagues, opening up new possibilities in the way we think about teaching, and importantly for me, the way that I think about my future, has been reaffirming.  Once again I realize that there are many ways to live, and that can be true across cultures and lives, but also within one life.  To teach is to believe that change is possible.  I'm not sure I can live deeply enough with that idea, for my students, or for myself.

Things of Beauty Everywhere

Back in the Midwest for a Suzuki conference.  Retaining walls, calm wide streets, green interspersed everywhere.  After a run this morning, I noticed more things, perhaps out of want for things to notice.  The puddles, the insignia on certain buildings, the way the walk signs count down in no notable manner, but just the way that they do.  It was an old familiar feeling, of seeing a boring world full of wonder.  Maybe it's something I inherited and love from my mother, who grew up in a small town in Ohio.  Things of beauty everywhere.

And it's something that I think is lacking in New York, but also what makes New York special and wonderful in itself.  Things are never incredible there.  People can do any number of things, look any number of ways, say, act, however they want, and no one will bat an eye.  There is history and beautiful buildings and parks everywhere.  There are celebrities and talented no names playing on the sidewalks for change.  Any night of the week has dozens of options for excellent entertainment, education, dining.  There is no superlative in New York.  It's all dazzling and radiant, and easy to have glazed eyes in the lights.

The Midwest is admittedly boring, but maybe it pulls something out of the beholder that makes it special in a way.  Well, we'll see....

Finding new teachers

It's been years since I've broken up with someone and had to experience the mix of retreat, of gently pushing off, of hoping for another's happiness, while at the same time selfishly wishing for my own.  How big is the bigger picture?  Or the biggest one?  

Sundays Fundays

I had so many fun interactions today.  It's just the way Sundays are.  From games that heighten students' sense of awareness, to "mouse horses,"  to giggles about all the things that have to be ready before starting, to "EXTREME FINGERTIPS!" to water and fish themes permeating Lightly Row, every child is a new adventure and game.  I love seeing kids get excited about music, being rewarded by playing a duet, motivated by music in  various different ways.  And they are learning and growing through it, too.  And so am I!  Sundays are fundays, and now that I've finally figured this out, they are over.

I guess I'll just gloat on this until I have to leave my next routine, only to newly discover its own hidden gems.

My friends, it has been wonderful.  So much love to you, I will see you all soon, again.

Saturday before Sunday

Scurrying through midtown on a drizzling day, dancing with the tourists at the base of the Empire State Building, getting sucked into a mediocre Japanese restaurant by a promoter with menus on the corner, and enjoying the sights and sounds and poetic ambiguity of the MTA.

Tomorrow is my last official Sunday of lessons, the day of the week that used to be such a burden and now has become the pinnacle of the week,  regardless of the energy it requires.   Luckily, endings are often not so black and white, and for most of these students, we will have meetings in the coming weeks.  More Goodbyes dodged for the time being.

Celebrating Young Artists

My questions concern how to find the human soul in the human body, and how to share the process of  that discovery with another so that they may do the same.  My guides are those that are growing and needing to be fed, that pull something from me which quenches us all.  My mentors are the love that binds families and time, and exists in a magnitude unimaginable, yet completely possible, within and without my skin.

I am filled with the life that fills me.  Grateful, undeserving, so alive, and for it, wanting more.

May Time

There's a song by Mozart called May Time.  It's in compound meter and has an upbeat, which means there are a number of levels in teaching it.  It's important to feel all the subdivisions, but it's also important to feel the big beats.  This evening my student had mastered all 6 "beats" nodding his head for every one.  What is this song about?  It's lulling sway, gently flowing.....the beauty of May and the blooming of spring....

"Allergies," he said.

April may be the cruelest month, but May is not without it's complications.

I worked with his nodding, eventually putting my hand on the back of his head, moving it up and down, not to the subdivision but to the beat, saying, "Play head, play head, play head, head...." oh so musically with the song.  He got it to the point of a Pirate's Jaunt, which is maybe a little bit closer to the glory of spring.  As we laughed at this game, we forgot about the frustrations of extensions from the early part of the lesson, and winter melted into spring.

The privilege of swimming in a world I know

In my fingers, in my hips, in my lungs, and in my lips, are all the pieces that I've ever touched, all the people that I've ever played,  all the words I've ever walked.  They are a part of the fabric that continues, to cut through time, in the space in which I move.  What a privilege to be cut of my own, woven of what I have been, endless landscape ahead, with nothing to cross, nothing to knot, nothing to need.

Some ways of loving

I feel like a love hoarder.  It's hard to leave connections that would seem to be able to grow for years. I see that possibility and potential in the people who will miss me, in the way they express it.  There is a sadness that I can't help but wish to remedy.  I'm just not always sure who is the source and who is reflecting it.

But love can grow in other ways, with other people.  Trusting that it can and will is another way to love.  Allowing it to be with another, is also a way to love.  Letting go can be yet another way.

Blue Group

It doesn't get easier.  Everyday is a new goodbye.  Today's was group class.  Last year I taught 4 every week, and this year there was only one, a group of four 3rd-5th graders, beautiful people.  I thought about various lesson plans this morning, but in the end, let them take the lead.  And after several games, and solos, we somehow finished with my favorite closing, French Folk Song.  We stood up to take a bow, and I thanked them for the year, and behind several comments of gratitude, I hid that I loved them, until I couldn't hide it anymore, and let myself say it to them without holding.

Exchanges

I was on another crepuscular bus ride to the LaGuardia Terminal.  Early morning, the breaking, cracking, of day, and I was wedged within that miraculous event of turning earth.  And I was writing in a very New York-style way, bluetooth keyboard and smart phone, piled on my stuffed all-in-one-carry-on backpack.  As the sun pulled apart night, I could feel the leaving that is coming for me in less than two months.

After living here for nearly three years, I recently discovered another truth about the feeling of New York.  If only there were a German word I could conjure.  That feeling, just before entering a turnstile to the subway, or turning the corner to catch the bus, of hustling for fear of just barely missing it, of seeing it, hearing it drive away.  What if I enter the turnstile to discover that the last train just left and I have to wait 9 minutes.  Woe is me!

But trains are always leaving the station, buses are driving away without me.  I'm missing them constantly.

The bus I was on went through Harlem, and at the St. Nicholas and 125th St. stop a deluge of people got on, likely just off the A or C trains.  Middle of Harlem; Spanish, and English, and silent tired faces.

It's another exchange.  And there are so many that we have to make.   Being one place, going to another, transferring from a train to a bus, from work to home, from one life to another.  The trains are always coming and going.  Sometimes I'm there to catch them, and sometimes I'm still walking.  Sometimes I'm nowhere near them in mind or body, but will still call upon their service.  When does an exchange begin, and when does it end?  I have been leaving and arriving forever.