Picnic in Central Park

After talking about it for awhile, we finally set a date and went to Central Park for a very special evening.  And now we are making decisions for the future, being amazed at the money that people charge in New York for....anything.  But mostly, very excited.

Picnic in Central Park

Dalcroze and Arizona

It has been awhile since I've written. The past two weeks were filled with an intensive Dalcroze workshop and then this weekend was a trip to Phoenix, Arizona for a friend's wedding.

my Dalcroze partner for Level 2 Certification, Miyuki Watanabe;
This was only my 2nd Dalcroze test, but the feeling before taking one is not unlike the one I have before doing a belt test.  There are many parts and subparts of the test [Eurhythmics: performing a song composed to a given rhythm, walking that rhythm while conducting, canons in 6/8 and 3/4 (stepping what the piano played in the previous measure, while listening to the current one!), follows, complementary rhythm in hands and feet and switching, etc; Solfege: sing various keys in fixed Do; and Improvisation:  playing the piano!  doing it for people to move to, doing it as an improvisation, and playing for a given image], and there is an element of the unknown.  Sometimes people are judged to be ready and sometimes not.  It is not a guaranteed thing that by taking a summer workshop you will be able to advance to the next level.  My biggest challenge was, and still is, playing the piano, because I am not a pianist.  I found myself trying to internally balance the feeling of wanting to succeed with the pleasure of learning for the sake of it.  It is a difficult thing to let go of, in myself and I think in the culture in which we live.  Being entitled to success based on the work one has done or because people have always said you are smart, is a tough thing to let go of.  So it was good to have another opportunity to face those feelings.  In the end I passed, but just barely in the piano skills area.  I will be continuing this training specifically, thanks to the encouragement and support of the mentors in the program, who, lucky for me, live in New York!
This was the other cool thing about the program–meeting the people who came from different parts of the world to be there.  One of whom is pictured here, a woman from Japan who spoke and understood about as much English as I do Japanese.  It was a good chance to speak Japanese, and to embrace someone doing something difficult in another language.  Luckily for her, she is a piano and solfege teacher in Japan, and has a wonderful sense of harmony, so once the instructions were understood she was set to go.  It was great to meet another Japanese friend who has now returned to that repository of untouchable friends living somewhere, thousands of miles away in this world.  Or so I believe.  Good to have had the experience with her.

Wedding!
We spent the weekend in Phoenix, AZ for the wedding of Christina Havens and Michael Byerly, two friends from Japan.  And they were married by another good friend from that time.  They held the wedding in the Musical Instrument Museum which was a really cool collection of instruments from everywhere in the world, and with a gathering of only about 50 people, it was a special and intimate experience.

I also learned a lot about another part of the country.  It was really mind blowing to see the dessert, so different from any landscape I had grown up in and certainly different from New York City.  And I learned that they get monsoons this time of year and that they are sometimes preceded by dust storms, one of which is pictured her in the distance.  

There were so many cacti and they were beautifully dramatic during sunset, silhouetted against the mountain ridges and rich sky.  I failed to have a camera at any of those points, sunsets or otherwise, but couldn't leave Arizona without at least one picture.  They are very large and very old, and grow just about anywhere, even intersections.   

Walking to Harlem via Morningside Park

I didn't realize that my doctor's appointment was only 3 blocks from the school where I taught all year.  This morning I retraced the path that I took several days every week and remembered the hopefulness or dread that I felt as I descended down the Morningside Park steps, and the relief and perplexity I felt returning up them, after another day of not quite getting it right.  It's a beautiful park, overgrown now but still really beautiful.  I remember seeing that beauty at at times a distraction from what I was feeling or thinking and other times an affirmation of the good in life.

Things feel very different now.  Yesterday was a nearly euphoric day of teaching in Westport, CT.  The sense of nervousness beforehand is yielding to excitement, and afterwards an internal debriefing of a different kind.  What a strange thing that in this world there are families that although not without problems, are able to shelter and raise their children in a mindful and safe manner, and that there are others that cannot give their children this kind of attention.  There are so many threats and stresses to everyday life that there simply isn't the space to invest in the future.  The present is enough of a handful.

But it is a different story in Westport which means it is a different story for me.  It makes it much easier to teach, to have a parent there, taking notes, following through during the week, sending emails and messages about their child's practice and demeanor.  They have systems for behavior that I don't have to create or mitigate, ways of motivating that seem to do the trick.  It is really easy to teach in this way.  I am able to give what I have, and the children seem so much more able to receive.

It is not a simple thing to figure out what are the causes of this discrepancy and how they can be alleviated.  My time here in New York, spent with the incredibly privileged owners of several vacation homes, nannies, and teachers and tutors galore, as well as those families with single parents, multiple jobs, and distrust of authority, has really highlighted the disparity of living in America in a visceral way.  The same place is not the same place in a different state of mind, the same path is often not the same.

Summer Sun

These are beautiful summer days.  I have the time to practice several interests, the time to read, the time to sit and stare and reflect on the past year and the past years.  Having this space, filled with reflection, exploration, teaching, playing, has meant a reawakening similar to what I felt when I lived in Madison.  I was very content there, but to have a similar feeling elsewhere must imply that we can feel a certain way independent of place.  But what are the elements, what are the pathways, the relations, the practices, that lead to a certain state of mind?

One of the practices that I am undertaking now is one specific within cello practice, that of memorization.  I am trying to memorize my Suzuki teaching music as well as some far more challenging music that I had learned in the past.  I have always had a difficult, if not impossible time memorizing, even the simplest little melodies.  Fingers, ears, eyes, always got in the way and confused, fighting for control of how to produce the melody on my instrument.  But somehow now it comes.  Several years ago I started to memorize poetry that I loved as a way to get there, and then chose one piece that I loved, and now several years later I can identify numerous possible leads that might be helping me memorize large chunks of music relatively easily in addition to these practices: martial arts, improvisation, doing it for my Suzuki class, feeling the lack of pressure to prove anything with the cello (in other words, feeling a freedom of enjoyment), Feldenkrais, any other body practice that has increased and integrated my sense of awareness, not stressing about it....

There are so many things that come together to create a person.  There are so many experiences, sensations, dispositions, and openings, if we allow; and it is terrifying and liberating to realize how fragile and flexible we are.  What more can we become when we allow ourselves to be unlimited?  

I feel like the days can go on forever right now.  That feeling of limitless sun in a single instant.

To a 6-year-old in Westport, CT

How wonderful, the light that falls on buildings at sunset and crowns them with a glory more than they are. Grace can fall at anytime and how wonderful when it does, something to celebrate.  And sometimes it falls from places below, rising from dissent, from suffering, from decay, from insecurity and frustration.  

A child's vulnerability in a group class today was a gift to me.  He started to cry when he made a mistake in Song of the Wind and couldn't get back on to join us.  And the same in Go Tell Aunt Rhody.  His mother told me that he had played them perfectly that morning, and it was frustrating to him that even though we gave it another go for him, that he couldn't get them all the way through.  He is a slower paced individual, not quick to speak or react.  The option of getting back on is perhaps not so available to him as it is to others.  His frustration was probably more than any of us can know, totally worthy of the tears his mother told him not to shed.  But today in particular I noticed his beautiful intonation, and I told him this after class, as he was trying to pull himself together.  "We've been working on that," his mother said, grateful for the comment.  And he paused a second in his sobbing, his breath still taking him in a despairing direction.  

It can be so hard to see our beauty.  To see the things that are loved about us.  This child has no idea how much he is loved.  I can see his frustration, I can see his mother's concern, perhaps her own insecurity in his behavior and how it reflects upon her, and in those things, they are so lovable.  Perhaps it is their concern for perfection, their seeking of love in something, be it another person, be it in an ability, or in an ability to simply be able to play with other people.  But there is a light that shines on them.  And it is a lesson to me, that in times when I do not feel worthy, there is also a light upon me, and every person that lives.  

Sunset Under the Brooklyn Bridge

An evening under the Brooklyn Bridge.....

The Dentist's Office

When I finally got the receptionist's attention at the dentist's office, I told her I was there for a 12 o'clock appointment.  "Andrea?  I have here that you were at 11."   Hmmmm....I was pretty sure it was 12.  I had immediately written it in my calendar the week before and don't usually mistake this sort of thing.  But unfortunately I had denied the printed appointment confirmation receipt the week before, and so couldn't show her anything.  But I was pretty sure.  She called back for a dental assistant to come help address the issue.

During our conversation another man walked up and started talking to her, perhaps not realizing she was occupied.  She seemed to recognize him.  "T, you're late.  No your appointment was at 11:30, not 12.  No, you're late."

"You can go ahead and take a seat,"  she said to me.  "I've called for the assistant."

Most of the seats were full.  It was more full than last week when I came for a cleaning, but it was a similar scene.  The TV was turned up, showing local news (people being interviewed about how hot it was), people were talking full voice.  Especially present were the voices of the mothers scolding their children for minimal offenses, being out of their seat, or just being too squirmy.  And when yelling didn't work, there were potato chips to appease.  I don't think there was another white person there.  

After about 10 minutes the assistant that I'd met the week before came out and asked if I could come back at 4.  I really couldn't.  He offered another time next week.  Based on my experience the week before–having had a 10am appointment and not being seen until 11 and then not being finished until 12:30–I explained I could do that time, but it would really have to be that time and I'd need to be done about an hour afterwards.  He looked down and walked back to check another possibility, that being too much to assume.  So we settled for a time, earlier in the morning,  when the chances of the office being overwhelmed would be less.

It has been enlightening to be in the middle of the Medicaid system.  I was in one office, and even gave a urine sample before being kicked out because my insurance was not accepted there.  In another dentist's office, I learned that I had been assigned a different primary dentist (how was I supposed to know this?) and that unless it was an emergency, insurance would not cover that visit (the receptionist tried to convince me this wasn't the case because their office would just bill later, after the date when my new preferred primary dentist (them) went into effect–I didn't bite).  It's incredible how much time it takes to take care of oneself in this system, to figure things out, and my issues are incredibly minimal.  Who can give up a day of their lives to sit in a clinic waiting room, and then do it again when it was the wrong place, or with kids, or to find out in the end that they have to pay a ton of money because no one told them they weren't covered there?  It's ridiculous that this is what healthcare is in our country.

Or at least for a certain population.  Insurance issues are issues at any level.  But the amount of waiting, the quality of care (in my check-up, the water cleaner was leaking water everywhere, the floss was so course it wouldn't go between my teeth, and a giant horsefly visited us several times), and the personal treatment (were I not a white person I wonder if I would have had a chance to set up a new appointment with the assistant, unlike the man who was unarguably late) are incredible.

To walk into one of these clinics is to look through a window at the systemic issues of a certain type of living and care, one that is not actually my own.  My background is incredibly privileged, and it is through that lens that I see these things and know that they don't have to be this way.  The treatment of one's self, one's children, and others.

Likely there will be a day when my income is stabilized and I can afford to sign up for a different health insurance, one that is covered at different places.  It may not be that far off that I am kicked out of this current system, deemed a different worthy than to be a part of it.  And maybe then I will forget what it is, growing comfortable in the lack of these offenses, enjoying the gentle muzak and running water and screens of fish floating in corral reefs that will consume a new way of living.  Perhaps I will think of these offenses–which to me, not being pervasive in other aspects of my life, are minor annoyances–and think how I could have possibly lived that way.  My lifestyle will shield me from these discomforts and make me think them impossible to live with.

But there is no end to wanting more.  Seeking greater and greater comfort is an exercise in retreat.  To look the other way is to blind oneself.  But as I grow up, into the privileged class that I am and will likely settled, I have to ask myself, where do my choices cross with others' inability to choose?   What power do I have to share the perspective that I know from my upbringing?  Where is my potency, seeing this, and yet being so far removed?