It's my favorite time of year from late August onwards, until my birthday in the third week of October. The sky is often pristine, the sunlight -though it gets more scarce- is more stunning than ever, and the temperature is neither hot nor cold, humid nor dry. It's the quiet of the year, before we settle in and batton up for the winter. When we consolidate our photographs and memories of the summertime relaxation we hopefully had, and ready ourselves again for work and school and routine.
The weather lately has been reminding me of September 11th, 2001. I venture to say, there hasn't been a day like that, before or since. The most perfect of all qualities came together for a day that would have been ideal for outdoor weddings: warmth in both sun and shade, breezes that felt like a caress, and not a cloud in the sky. If those attacks had had to have come, couldn't they have been in February, or in any other time of year already uglied by harsh weather?
Every September 11th, I like to do something to make myself feel better, or do something better for the world. Last year I volunteered to deliver sandwiches to the homeless at night, seeing a New York from the perspective of the men and women who manage to find the right doorways to sleep in and the places to find food. This year, not knowing where I could volunteer, I decided simply to attend Quaker meeting for worship, where I hoped to find a bit of peace with others, and maybe to hear some messages that would enrich my own grieving.
Any New Yorker who moves to another city will quickly discover that they have long lived without a basic fact of life almost anywhere else in the world: the need to get directions. Tell me you live on 22nd and Lex and I can get there with my eyes closed. Tell me the meetinghouse is on 5 Longfellow Park Road and I need to consult two maps and a man on the street before finding my way over. But then, I saw the clogs and jeans, the grey hair, a beat up car with a bumper sticker that read "Be a buddha behind the wheel" and I knew I was among Friends.
Cambridge Friends is a large, active meeting, which means that the first 15 minutes of silence didn't actually happen; they were filled with the rustlings of the numerous children squirming in the aisles. But then something very unusual also happened, and I was convinced I would not find the peace I had come for. A man stood up and started shouting. For Quakers who worship in silence, there really is never a need to raise your voice. He angrily described a meeting about a year ago in which an elderly friend of his stood up to speak, and had to be "eldered," that is, confronted by another worshipper who cut him off and sat him back down when he had rambled on too long. I felt like performing the same favor to the man presently speaking. He went on to remind us that Quakers are not a war church (had we forgotten, I mean, that's our main schtick??) and that we should take real action against the war in Iraq. He finally sat down.
What followed was the most chatty meeting for worship I've every been to, with barely any silence between messages. Some people posed interesting questions or made observations on peace and Iraq and where to fit in as Americans who oppose the war. Maybe it was because they're in Boston, but hardly anyone mentioned September 11th.
Not being a frequent attender of meeting, I was unable to achieve the yoga nidra zen I once I could. My heart would start pounding every so often, as I contemplated rising and delivering a message. Then I would relax again as I considered just keeping my thoughts to myself. But, after 40 minutes, when no one had discussed the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room, I stood up and talked about it myself.
This time of year, with it's beauties and perfection, is steeped in a weighty sadness. September 11th 2001 is what brought me to Cambridge meeting this morning, and is ultimately what brought me to Boston. Four years ago today. So many words have been spoken and written about that day, what could I possibly have to say about it too? I barely cried that morning. I was scared, but I somehow couldn't grieve, and I felt only numbness in the weeks that followed. I walked home from my downtown office in Manhattan. Barely a week later, I moved to Brooklyn, where I would travel across the bridge at least twice a day for the next four years.
Somehow, all New Yorkers, and I guess everyone in the world who had a touch of that fear, managed to take one step at a time and lead their lives forward. Part of my choice to move to Boston was to feel a little safer; when I expressed this to a friend, he asked if I really thought I would be safer there? I can offer no solutions to this fear, or the fear felt by refugees of the hurricane or refugees in Iraq, or the fear of countless other people in countless other wars and hotspots around the world that aren't reported in the headlines. I want to share with you a few lines of a Schiller poem that came to mind four years ago, and that I think of today.
Even the beautiful must die.
What rules men and gods, does not touch the heart of the god of the underworld...
Just to be a dirge on the lips of the beloved is marvelous, because the common go down to Hades, unsung.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Friday, September 02, 2005
Was this actually such a great idea?
Well, this blog might just have to go back to its original mission. That is, chronicling the trials and triumphs of little old me, a sometime singer who's trying to become a full-time singer.
Let's begin with this move. Sometime back in April, after I had finished my school auditions and was deciding where to go, I had what I thought would be my first and only crisis. I spent a few hours sitting on the edge of my bathtub, tissue box in hand, bemoaning the fact that my dream of going back to school would involve saying goodbye to my life savings and uprooting myself from a life I was not by any means unhappy with. But, it was my dream, and I screwed up my courage, dried my eyes, and decided that I had what it took to carry through.
That was my first mistake.
After a magical summer, a pleasant time back in New York with friends and family, I packed up and replanted myself here in Boston. After the first 36 hours, things can only improve. The living space my friend found for me is not as workable as I had hoped, that is, impossibly small and roommates who can't seem to understand that this might be a problem. We've talked and will try to "work this through," but I have my doubts and I already feel uncomfortable.
Just yesterday a new hitch came up at BU that makes me reconsider registering. Neither my first nor second choice teacher is available, I don't know any of the other teachers, and I am currently assigned to study with a man, which I absolutely don't want. I turned down a full scholarship at another school because I couldn't get the teacher I wanted, now I get to deal with this situation again and pay for it? Getting a degree in singing is absolutely worthless if you don't have the teacher who can do wonders for your voice. Sure, there must be someone there who can teach me a thing or too, but I'm wary, and I might have to spend half a semester sorting this out. If I can't resolve this well, I will quit, get myself a job, and call myself a singer and hope for the best.
So without a stable home, the school arrangement I was counting on, without income and a sudden dearth of friends in a city I still don't know well, I'm petrified and feeling profoundly sorry for myself. This is the first time away from home and the first day of college rolled into one. But shouldn't I be old enough to handle this by now? That thought makes me even more glum, especially when I think about any number of life choices that could have been more fulfilling, maybe. I could have married by now. I could have stuck with my perfectly fine old life, saved a bundle in expenses and been able to clothes shop without fear. I could have stayed on in Rome, perhaps one of my friends would have eventually taken me in, and I could have always lucratively begged on the streets. I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed with the French horn, would I live on a diet of Brahms and Wagner? I always did like working at the food coop, maybe I should quit all this and go manage a Stop & Shop, or maybe Costco. Okay, now we're going overboard.
Lying in bed this morning, I turned on my cell phone's calculator to see how much my lavish, education-enriched lifestyle would cost me, and I read a message from my brother, telling me that I'm brave. Brave?? I've spent three days interrupting my crying fits only when my face hurt too much or I had to try to look happy for my roomies. I've been sobbing to my parents and to a dear companion twice a day so far. I'm just as homesick and weak as I was as a child, only now I'm too old to excuse it. The president's voice on the radio offering comfort to hurricane refugees and the news of people crushed in the melee in Iraq make my skin crawl, leaving me with images of water-swollen corpses and babies crushed like grapes. I have little appetite, and my head often aches with the pain that comes from unspent tears.
Today, the shroud of rain and choking humidity finally lifted off of Boston's face. My problems are unresolved, but not, I don't think, unresolvable. I sat in the rocking chair on the apartment's porch (yes there's a porch! Albeit overlooking a junk heap, the same view from my room...) and spoke with my brother and then a friend from Rome. What are we without friends and family? My conversation with Matt (my brother) began as most have this week, with me choking back tears and wondering why I was putting myself through all this. How is it that he always manages to cheer me up? After just a few minutes of speaking my already rusty Italian with Andrea (patient soul!) I had a smile on my face. I had emailed him only hours before, and he called from all the way across the sea to make me feel better. Lacy outlines of words, pure vowels framed by fizzy consonants and a voice that reminds me, somehow, of whipped cream.
I'm not brave Matt, just nuts, and well cared for by the ones I hold dear.
Let's begin with this move. Sometime back in April, after I had finished my school auditions and was deciding where to go, I had what I thought would be my first and only crisis. I spent a few hours sitting on the edge of my bathtub, tissue box in hand, bemoaning the fact that my dream of going back to school would involve saying goodbye to my life savings and uprooting myself from a life I was not by any means unhappy with. But, it was my dream, and I screwed up my courage, dried my eyes, and decided that I had what it took to carry through.
That was my first mistake.
After a magical summer, a pleasant time back in New York with friends and family, I packed up and replanted myself here in Boston. After the first 36 hours, things can only improve. The living space my friend found for me is not as workable as I had hoped, that is, impossibly small and roommates who can't seem to understand that this might be a problem. We've talked and will try to "work this through," but I have my doubts and I already feel uncomfortable.
Just yesterday a new hitch came up at BU that makes me reconsider registering. Neither my first nor second choice teacher is available, I don't know any of the other teachers, and I am currently assigned to study with a man, which I absolutely don't want. I turned down a full scholarship at another school because I couldn't get the teacher I wanted, now I get to deal with this situation again and pay for it? Getting a degree in singing is absolutely worthless if you don't have the teacher who can do wonders for your voice. Sure, there must be someone there who can teach me a thing or too, but I'm wary, and I might have to spend half a semester sorting this out. If I can't resolve this well, I will quit, get myself a job, and call myself a singer and hope for the best.
So without a stable home, the school arrangement I was counting on, without income and a sudden dearth of friends in a city I still don't know well, I'm petrified and feeling profoundly sorry for myself. This is the first time away from home and the first day of college rolled into one. But shouldn't I be old enough to handle this by now? That thought makes me even more glum, especially when I think about any number of life choices that could have been more fulfilling, maybe. I could have married by now. I could have stuck with my perfectly fine old life, saved a bundle in expenses and been able to clothes shop without fear. I could have stayed on in Rome, perhaps one of my friends would have eventually taken me in, and I could have always lucratively begged on the streets. I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed with the French horn, would I live on a diet of Brahms and Wagner? I always did like working at the food coop, maybe I should quit all this and go manage a Stop & Shop, or maybe Costco. Okay, now we're going overboard.
Lying in bed this morning, I turned on my cell phone's calculator to see how much my lavish, education-enriched lifestyle would cost me, and I read a message from my brother, telling me that I'm brave. Brave?? I've spent three days interrupting my crying fits only when my face hurt too much or I had to try to look happy for my roomies. I've been sobbing to my parents and to a dear companion twice a day so far. I'm just as homesick and weak as I was as a child, only now I'm too old to excuse it. The president's voice on the radio offering comfort to hurricane refugees and the news of people crushed in the melee in Iraq make my skin crawl, leaving me with images of water-swollen corpses and babies crushed like grapes. I have little appetite, and my head often aches with the pain that comes from unspent tears.
Today, the shroud of rain and choking humidity finally lifted off of Boston's face. My problems are unresolved, but not, I don't think, unresolvable. I sat in the rocking chair on the apartment's porch (yes there's a porch! Albeit overlooking a junk heap, the same view from my room...) and spoke with my brother and then a friend from Rome. What are we without friends and family? My conversation with Matt (my brother) began as most have this week, with me choking back tears and wondering why I was putting myself through all this. How is it that he always manages to cheer me up? After just a few minutes of speaking my already rusty Italian with Andrea (patient soul!) I had a smile on my face. I had emailed him only hours before, and he called from all the way across the sea to make me feel better. Lacy outlines of words, pure vowels framed by fizzy consonants and a voice that reminds me, somehow, of whipped cream.
I'm not brave Matt, just nuts, and well cared for by the ones I hold dear.
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