Cleaning Windows on a Cool Rainy Day

This morning I was still trying to clean myself of yesterday.  But it turned out to be a superlative morning, with perfect cool, rainy weather, and no jury duty.  No matter what happened today, it was a bonus round, so no way to lose.

I translated (or rather, used Google Translate to decode) the meaning in a new Italian cello technique book that I bought, and I cleaned the outside of many of our windows.  They flip out in a very convenient way for doing this (no ropes or acrobatics required), but we had never done it before.  The result took practically no time or effort, but resulted in incredible catharsis and visibility.  I've been staring at the windows outside our window, trying to scrutinize the levels of dirt they might have, now that I can see them more clearly.  There's a whole world out there!  We get used to not having a lot of light in our apartment, but there was a pretty decent upgrade available.

And then the rest of the day spent on various chores, nothing special except that it was FREE!  A walk to the library and bookstore and grocery, organizing matters for the coming year, stacking things in their proper places while listening to NPR, classical music, and watching the rain.

Jury Duty (Day 1 of.....1!)

The murals at 60 Centre St., the location of New York's Supreme Court, were intriguing, and once in the juror's waiting room, beautiful.  In the main lobby were the standards of Authority, Justice, Clemency, and Security, depicted by half-clad women; but once in the upstairs holding space, the murals were places in Manhattan:  Riverside Church with a freshly landscaped green knoll in the 1930s, the Woolworth building, the view of the harbor and the Statute of Liberty.  That may have been where the beauty of the day ended, though.

Jury duty was a suspenseful experience to go through, but in the end, I got a taste of the legal system, and don't have to do it again for another 6 years.  And that's fine by me.  I did get called, and had to go into a room with about 30 other people.  We sat there and listened to a story told by one of the lawyers about the two people that were sitting on either side of them, that had broken off a relationship in what seemed an unfortunately ugly manner quite a few years ago that had actually made it to press (I hadn't heard of it, but then I didn't really catch their names, nor did I follow New York local news while I lived in Japan).  I had gone into jury duty not wanting to serve, simply because for me as a self-employed person, it means a huge loss of income (others get paid their normal salary by their employers).  But being in the room with these lawyers and these people opened my eyes in a way that I did not want to see anymore.  People go through some difficult things.  It gets ugly.  I didn't see how I could emotionally handle a trial like this.

Luckily, after questioning all the people in the room to a sometimes intimate degree (are you currently single?  did your father's lawsuits effect you emotionally?  how do you feel about a certain institution?) they determined that basically all of us were jury-able, and so took the first six people (not me!).  I went back to the waiting room and sat for another hour, working on my website before the head clerk announced that there would be no more cases for the rest of the day, or tomorrow, so we were all excused to go.  Such a sigh of relief!

I feel very fortunate to have an extremely simple and idyllic life of music and children (young and old).  Sometimes my wish for my students is for them to stay as young as possible for as long as possible (maybe save toilet-training, etc).  And sometimes I feel that music does this for people, that I am much younger than many of the cross-section of professional New Yorkers that surrounded me in that room, a large percentage of which worked in some sort of financial sector.  Life can be so serious, and sometimes even so dark, but in music, it seems there is always a way to check in with other emotions, to find an inner space of play and beauty, even if it means to interact with those dark emotions in a non-hurtful way.  It gives an outlet for them.  Seeing a small window into the pain that can be thrown back and forth between people (without knowing any of the details) was incredibly exhausting for my child-like brain.  And so luckily tomorrow, I have a jury-free day.

The Power of Children

I got to see my family this morning through the powers of the internet.  It is always exciting to see them, and always exciting to see my young nephew.  But surprising is to find a similar sense of joy when seeing my students after two weeks, to be really thrilled to see their young selves, their witty T-shirts, or shiny belts, or new toe nail polish; and excited to hear about the time they spent away.  Kids are just really wonderful.

Free sparring

Presence is potent.

Passing a Ball

I never tried to excel in team sports.  I can only imagine what it must be to have mastery of any sort of ball and to coordinate it with other team members.  What does it feel like to embody something that moves around and away from you, and to be able to embody the others on the court or the field, to know if they are receptive to your pass or otherwise occupied?

But I like to think that in teaching I can practice something sort of like this-- to feel a student's energy and interact with it with precise intuition, even as it moves to different places, grows and retreats, is effected by a face in the window, or a shift in their parent's weight on the chair.  Perhaps in any field, a person may hope to more fully embody their work and surroundings, to make it like a language that actually gives them meaning through their use of it.  Sometimes I find myself seeking an interplay that is more natural than even some of the most natural things we do.  And just as I hope my students will fall into themselves, I hope to fall into it as well.

Filling the Vessel

We are all vessels serving others.  But you can't serve from an empty vessel.  When the body is just used to serve others, but is not acknowledged for itself, or given time to heal, or reflect, or grow, or regroup, or experience love, it becomes a machine in the middle of many machines, a cog in a meaningless wheel.  It becomes its job, or its relationship, or its perspective, or its value, and not itself.  There is a challenge to seeing oneself removed from all the things that touch us and depend on us.  And sometimes it is comforting to exist in relation to them.  It can feel good to be needed.  But only as long as our vessel has something to give, and only as long as we know how and exercise our ability to refill it.

Larger Phrases

It had been over a month since our last morning Tae Kwon Do meeting as a group.  And it'd been over a month since I saw some of the students I saw this morning.  But some things continue on even without regular meetings.  It's a pleasure to be able to work with a student that continues even if they aren't receiving regular lessons.  And a lot of learning can come with this sort of interaction.  I'm reminded of my high school teacher trying to get all his students "on the path."  And I think that may be an important focus of my teaching ongoing.  I suppose I can become obsolete in that case.  Maybe that's the larger goal....