During young adulthood, I avoided orchestral music. The in-thing of the era leaned more toward rock, folk, blues. Orchestra was a sound from my parents' generation. But as I've grown older, I've come to embrace the music of their era as much as my own. Coming upon the upbeat sound of the intro to the long-running Johnny Carson show, for example, creates a happy nostalgia, a kind of bridge between the Rat Pack years of my folks and the last decades of the twentieth century. The Big Band sounds of Benny Goodman are a joy. The orchestral introductions to the musicals like Guys and Dolls, or Camelot, or Fiddler on the Roof can bring tears to my eyes. 

Orchestras are rather fascinating. There are so many instruments, so many musicians, each with a unique noise, that collaborate to create a complex work of sound. Oboes, violas, French horns, cymbals, triangles, saxophones, xylophones, cellos, piccolos, tubas and so on. The music performed comes from a wide selection of styles - classical, jazz, operatic, musicals, et cetera. Sometimes the sounds wander rather aimlessly, like when band members are warming up. It can be awkward or humorous - it's sort of like being in the wild with frogs croaking and woodpeckers knocking on wood and meadowlarks warbling melodies, and waterfalls crashing, wolves wailing. A harmony of not-randomness. I always enjoy the sounds of the instruments warming up in the same way. Some compositions are deliberately structured in such an organic, natural manner.

The product of an orchestra can be tame and very controlled. Or like in big band, it can cut loose. Some performances give voice to more than the composer, more than the musicians, more than the instruments and audience. The performance reaches deep and far, like an intricate formula has been uncovered, or a key has been turned to release an epiphany.

1959

1959

two cats
one orange, one black and white,
sway along the rows
of the early summer garden -
they own the little backyard world
the tilting stalks of corn
the scent of sweet pea blooms on the vines
purple and deep rose, pink and white
hovering in the warm air -
sleepy black snake winds through
the dirt and patches
of fine green grasses
the butterflies and bees
shiver
in sunlight
bright
of paradise

We know about bears. We know about wolves and bobcats. We know about mice, deer, whales - and we know about human beings. But there are many mammals on our North American continent that I've never heard of, much less seen. Today, the muskrat came up. Now, I have heard of muskrats - but only because someone wrote a song about 'Muskrat Love' in the 1970s. What is a muskrat like? Where do they live? How do you find one?

I went to friendly Wikipedia and looked them up - cute little things like short-eared rabbits or long-furred guinea pigs. Except reading about them, if the article is accurate, their behaviors sound more like that of beavers. Their fur has the density and qualities to withstand water. They swim and make nests that look like river igloos - made of mud and leaves and sticks instead of ice. They're family critters, like beavers and otters. And yes, muskrat love exists - they produce young with some frequency several times a year.

A few years back, we had a reference book on mammals, and I was suprised to see how many different mammals share the territory where I live - central Texas - and yet we've never met. Perhaps that kind of distance is in our mammal neighbors' best interest - or maybe if we knew more about them, we'd be more considerate of their habitat and food preferences.

sewing and healers

You don't have to be very good at sewing to sew. Even the most rag-tag kind of stitching - short stitch long stitch straight and crooked - can hold two pieces of fabric together. Your needle has an 'eye' - the little hole at the top. It should be big enough to let you slide the end of a length of thread through the eye. You tie a knot at the end of the thread. Some like to tie the two ends together - sewing with a paired thread. Some just knot one end. You use up less thread that way with a single, but you have to be careful the unknotted end doesn't fall out of the needle! The knot keeps your stitches secured to the fabric.

It's been a while since I wrote about traiteurs - Cajun term for healers. (In Mexico and the southwest United States, they are known as curanderas, I believe.)

I don't know if this is true, but I read that traiteurs don't ask for money. They accept gifts, but not money. I read that as a traiteur comes to the end of their time practicing, there is someone next in line that they pass their skills to. The lineage alternates, man to woman to man to woman, and so on. This keeps a kind of balance in a community. Yin-yang. Once a traiteur transfers their healing gifts, their own practice ends, deferred now to the new guy or gal.

sans mot

sometimes
i envy the worms
the rabbits
the woodrats in the fragrant grasses
who live life all out
know fully each moment
without a word

Doctors, nurses, aides, and caregivers learn a lot about a person's current health using some basic tools. With a stethoscope, one can hear more clearly the sound of the patient's breathing - listening for congestion of the lungs, for example. One can listen to the speed and regularity of the heart's beat, and to that of any little babies on the way (by holding the stethoscope up against the mother's abdomen). With a thermometer, one can measure the patient's temperature. 98.6 Fahrenheit give or take a few tenths of a degree, is normal for most humans. (A high temperature might suggest a virus or infection.) With an otoscope, one can check the eardrum, look for signs of infection or blockage or foreign objects. Blood pressure equipment measures - guess what - blood pressure. A scale measures weight, which can be documented so as to note any dramatic changes since last measured.

The older, mechanical equipment, if properly calibrated to current standards (regarding units of measurement and markers of 'normalcy' - a subject unto itself), has a history of being quite reliable. Some newer gadgets are hard to calibrate, and are affected by battery levels and some hi-tech factors as well. That said, some of these require less time to get a reading, and can be highly accurate if properly calibrated and maintained.

With the basic information yielded via these instruments, and a simple interview regarding pain and symptoms and 'how's it going' - one can learn quite a bit about the nature of any physical concerns that need attention.

For the most part, our parents let us do our homework without any interference or supervision from them. They trusted us to get our work done, and we generally did. I can only think of two times our mother took active part in our projects and one was in early grade school. We were supposed to create something for a school exhibit. Our mother suggested a plan, got the supplies, and completed both me and my sister's project.

This was a little frustrating at the time, because the supplies were quite appealing, and we pretty much were not allowed to touch them. She got us each a tray - like that a waiter or waitress might use to carry beverages. She got some sand, and some tiny Japanese figurines - people and lacquered arches and little bridges and shrubs, and mirrors for water. She made two scenes - one in each tray. We were not to touch. There was some difficulty getting them into the car without objects toppling or sand spilling, but we did. And those were our displays for the school fair.

I'm smiling as I type. We were fascinated too, watching her assemble these, her enthusiasm and the scenes taking shape. Those sand trays Mama assembled were really quite beautiful. 

Some two decades later, this activity became a core part of my practice as a psychologist. Called Sand Tray or Sand Play, the client gets to assemble a scene using a tray of sand and their choice of figurines. Clients like this. I enjoyed the ones I've made off and on, and the ones colleagues and clients have put together. The creative process has calming effects, and it's a useful, appealing way to non-verbally process stumbling blocks in life.