Late June

After the last two moves being overseas, this is going to be a piece of cake.  We finally started today, a week away from departure.  We could have easily put it off for a few more days.

More pressing are the things I need to be doing to be ready for the week.  The lesson plans for Dalcroze-inspired classes, the score study for a friend's new composition, and then another piece that I haven't even cracked yet.  It will all happen, and all of it is very exciting.  It's an exciting week to be alive.

And despite the planning and packing that needs to be done, I couldn't turn down an invitation to join Andrew for an evening run along the river and through Riverside Park.  What a beautiful time this is.

Walking in Small Towns

I'm in the beautiful old German town of Bethlehem, PA for a 3-day Suzuki workshop.  After dinner this evening, I went for a walk on the brick sidewalks, in the untamed green coming up through the cracks and over the fences, guarding the centuries old buildings.  I walked through Lexinginton, KY my first home away from home, and I walked through Madison, WI, my second and slightly more distant one.  I remembered the expansiveness of finally living in a different city, the curiosity of finding all its nooks and crannies and quirks.  And how quiet it was.  

Walking felt like stepping out of a cocoon that had been holding me in place and molding me.  Freedom maybe, but discomfort, too.  Without the constraints of a city and millions of people, what's to keep me from drifting away in a place like this?  When I moved to those smaller towns 10 years ago, I was happily drifting, and happy to be taken away on some new adventure.  And now, for some reason, I have this adult idea that I should be building something, and I'm busying myself with searching for the materials.

 I'm curious to make a move to a place similar from my past, and yet for the time that I've covered, now very different.  I walked to the edge of a park, found the local library, ventured to peak at the Japanese Serenity Garden.  Perhaps that curiosity is still there, just a little stretching needed in a bigger space.  

In Real Life...

In real life, I played a house concert last night and failed to accurately reckon with the amount of rehearsal needed for my particular combination of composition and colleague.  I've grown so used to playing with my husband and I guess I learned what an asset that familiarity is.  I've also grown over-confident in my abilities in chamber music and reading under pressure.

In short, it was not a satisfying performance, for me or for the audience.  In prescient anticipation of it (why didn't I listen to the hints I was sending myself??),  I catalogued ambivalent performances as more odious than the accounting class I once took.  In fact, I had a hard time coming up with anything more uncomfortable.  Maybe poorly timed flatulence in an elevator is the most accurate comparison.

It was passible, but not enjoyable and certainly not the transcendent message that Beethoven deserved it to be.  Luckily, I've done those performances.  They are in me.  And I've done far worse, they are there, too.  It's a reality check and as much as I hate bad performances, I love reality checks.  So things balance out.

But in my dreams last night, I lost my value.  The various narratives and juxtapositions converged on an underlying nagging feeling that ate away at my self-esteem.  And as much as I hate bad dreams, I appreciate when there can be clarity in their origin.  Rarely is this so, but given real life, it was there.

It's left me wondering what value a life has or can have.  And this is especially poignant as I cast off from a life of co-dependence with my students and venture into an unknown network of new possibilities.   What is valuable in a person?  Is it in what they give, or share, or do, or collect?  What gives a person greater value?  And maybe most perplexing at the moment:  what motivates the search?

Stepping away from students here has also led me to reflect on the nature of the bonds that are created between people.  As a teacher, do I need or want my students to need me?   The practical part of me says no, and in fact I'm thrilled when students are reading and start to learn things more independently.  I try to get them to hear concerts, watch videos, play in ensembles, go to workshops, and programs, so that they can learn things from other people- it's less work that way!  But on the other hand, realizing that I will not be needed anymore is surprisingly difficult to accept.  Do I still have value if I'm not needed?  And in creating these bonds and relationships, have I been planting an impure element of dependence?   Or is that another way of looking at trust?  Where would our relationships be without it?  When things dissolve, sometimes I think they do so unevenly, and the residues emerge in interesting way.

In real life, the weather has been warm and dry, although humid, and my days have been fairly open.  I've ventured to the huge soccer field in Riverside Park at 106th Street to do Tae Kwon Do.  I try to get there before late afternoon, because around 3:30, the individuals, and pairs, and groups of soccer players (and baseball, and football....) start to pepper it more densely.  I dodged a soccer ball from a nearby group many times today, and by the time I started to close my workout, there were several dozen spread out on the field, and probably half as many balls flying all over the place.  I did my final stretches and sat for the final breathing and reflection, but after a minute or so, opened my eyes.  It was partly for safety, but as I sat there I realized that I could stare straight ahead at a small speck in the field, and still see all the balls bouncing around me.  The one I had been dodging flew by again, and again, and needed no reaction.  None of them did.

The real world spun around and remained unmoved.  

Morning Run in Morningside Park

It's been a long time since I've done my morning run through Morningside Park.  It's a great run for winters, when the sun comes up a little later, rising over the east side of Manhattan.  So the summer shadows this morning were very disorienting, nearly perpendicular to the last time I saw their slanted angle.  Where is the sun, what time and planet were we on?  The sun didn't even rise from the east, it seemed to emerge from the north.

I awoke from a dream of sleeping in a silver-dewed canopy of trees.  Another world, beckoning me to get up, to start the day, to worry about the needed worries of the coming two weeks.  There is much ahead.  With or without me the tulips became primrose bushes, loyal gardeners pulled hoses and carts stacked with gallon water jugs to perpetuate the preferred growths.  One season to another, one early hour to a later one, with or without me, until my eyes are open and making it real.

Goodbye to Charlotte

Another long day of teaching and checking off goodbyes.  Some are very hard to believe, but they are happening bit by bit.  The unpeeling progresses.

One of my students gave me a picture of her practicing.  She is absorbed in her space, surrounded by sheets of music that are falling off the sofa on which she's sitting.  In the time that I have known her she has grown so much, both as a person and as a musician.  She is coming to own this space, it is growing in her and through her, something still young, but which I think will be unstoppable very soon.

It's so powerful to be a part of this.  Teaching is an art in which I can see great pleasure in being virtuosic.  I have so much to learn, and am so thankful for my students for being so patient and respectful of me.  Thank you.

Genera of Perfection

A variety of perfect day: low 70s, sunny with intermittent clouds, a slight breeze.  One students in the morning, a committed Tae Kwon Do practice on the field, a long walk in the park with a friend and mentor, practice session, a potluck dinner with extraordinarily well-balanced and delicious offerings.
Tomorrow another variety, and perhaps another the day after.  Counting down the hours on this order of perfection.

Last Day of Lessons at Westport (and other endings)

We've hosted, and dined out, and been hosted, and overall eaten very well.  And the week is rolling on into next week and the week after....

Goodbyes are passing beneath us like railroad ties.   One rung and then another and another and the momentum is moving along along along.

Lessons like any other, trying to move up the ladder one more step and then another, trying to get closer to touching heaven and helping others find their footing along the way.  We are there together, breathing together, miles and countries and likely years or lifetimes apart.  There are no goodbyes.  Our presence changes little from what it was or will be.

It's so easy to lose track of the days when reflection abuts the future.  Such a strange time of measuring.  Quantities of lessons, of evenings, of people, of dollars per mile, of dinners, of cards, of truck footage, of elevator rides, of bottles of wine unconsumed.

It's hypnotizing and beautiful to see so many souls gathered in one packaged epoch of life, soon to be departed and viewed as a single sparkling galaxy of the past.