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.

migrating bluebirds

During the mid 1990s, I drove down a rural road in central Texas to pick up my sons who were playing with friends for the afternoon. The weather was brisk and thrilling - the first cold front of the year making its way toward us. The wind had only just shifted - was now flowing from the north. The cool air was welcome after the heat of the summer and early fall. The friends' mom and I visited for awhile, and she showed me their house. As we gazed from an upstairs winter over some dry pastureland, we saw a pair of little birds, glowing like jewels from the top wire of a fence, looking a little disoriented. Bluebirds! 

Eastern Bluebirds wintered each year in our area, as the weather up north was too severe for them. Such a delight to see their return on the northerly wind after a long summer absence.

earth beat

thumping rhythm
bebop de bop
drums around the world
birds in the jungle
and on the street corner
blood and song
pulsing to the earth beat
quiet but strong
beneath our breathing breath

the wristwatch

Turn the tiny knob
near the face of time
each morning around nine
rock it back and forth
back and forth
winding your watch for the day
hold it near your ear
hear the ticking?
is it working?
Will you please show me
the tiny springs 
the shiny gears inside?
they parse out perfect seconds
one gear moves this way
the other that
interlocked within 
a tidy steel case
on the back of your wrist.
how can that work?
o, what a gift.

Over half of the fifty states in the USA have names from Native American languages - words from those who were living here as the people from Europe and other continents arrived. There is not clear agreement on the sources of every state name (consulting info from websites and a World Almanac), but there is a general consensus on many of them. The state where I reside - Texas - has a name that was used by several tribes to mean 'friend'.  Michigan is how local tribes used to refer to Lake Michigan - and it meant 'great water'. Nebraska means 'flat river', and Missouri 'the big canoe people'. Kansas is a word from the Sioux meaning 'People of the South Wind'. Ohio was given the Seneca word for the Ohio River - meaning 'it is beautiful'. Most of the states' names refer to the water, the land, the wind, and neighbors. It's interesting that none are named after individuals, unlike many of the states with names not related to American native peoples.

The lands and waters and ways of life, the weather and the kinds of living species in our country at this time, reflect a dramatically different world from that which existed for many thousands of years before 1492. What an experience it would be to visit North America circa 1300 or so!

identity replications

The replication of identity likely goes far back in human history. How many Betty Davises and Marilyn Monroes have there been? How many Richard Nixons, Bill Clintons, and Ronald Reagans have I seen at Halloween parades? Quite a few! Of course these are rather obvious replications - masks from costume shops are all that's needed. No one is fooled.

There have been look-alike competitions for some celebrities. Elvis Presley imitators are kind of a genre all their own, and come out of the woodwork every year on Elvis's birthday. For a long time, the town of Key West, Florida sponsored a convention of Ernest Hemingway replications. Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake seem to have become icons who inspire followers to literally live in their shoes.

There have been actors who have embraced the histories and personalities of certain celebrities. For example, a couple decades back, the actor Hal Holbrook performed a one-man show as Mark Twain. Of course, everyone knew he was not Mark Twain, even though Holbrook fully researched and lived the writer's identity. Mark Twain died in 1910. In recent years, however, the rules have relaxed, and there are performers who live on stage and camera as actors or athletes who have long retired or are passed without acknowledging that they are replacements.

This may have been true in the past as well. Reading about Joe Jefferson who became rich and famous playing a one-man version of Rip Van Winkle, it occurred to me it's unlikely in the mid-1800s he could have very easily showed up in Europe and around the United States in as many places as are reported. There must have been other actors who saw his success as an opportunity.

For some impersonators, it's a kind of passion, a release from the bindings of one's own history. For others, a need for money and/or attention drives their new identities. Some are likely hired to liven up conventions and other gatherings. For those of us in the audience, some of us are reassured to see rejuvenated new versions of our favorite people from the past. Others are jarred to see a stranger replace someone who has meant something to them. (When replicas arrive at your office, your doctor's, or in your own home, that's worrisome!) Occasionally, there is a replacement who makes the audience happier than the original celebrity ever did.

paintings and photos of roses
are like portraits
the blooms vibrant, but composed,
stationary

this afternoon's roses
are in motion
petals in the wind like wings
on a bending stem

blessed lightning

the air hung heavy
the street was still

no body to be seen
yet every breath
was like a crowded plane
wan, with smells of
3-day clothes and
yesterday's after-shave

he walked on broken sidewalk
clouds looked dark
but no scent of rain
please break the spell
he asked for
please fresh air
and blessed lightning

Professor Grover Krantz, an anthropologist, maintained a small museum in Johnson Tower of Washington State University in the late 1970s. My psychology grad student office was in the same building, and thus I wandered in to see what the museum held. The entire space was devoted to Krantz's research on Sasquatch (popularly known as Bigfoot).

Sasquatch, named by Native American Indians of northwest US and of Canada, is traditionally identified as a kind of ancestral spirit that manifests itself as a very tall, fur-covered human. Over the years, people have reported sightings of a Sasquatch, and there have been grainy photos and bits of video, but the shy Sasquatches largely keep to themselves. They've been reported to be comfortable in the wilderness, often at higher elevations.

There have been similar reports of such beings in the Himalayas, reports across many past centuries. They are known as Yeti (later Anglicized as 'the Abominable Snowman').

I know little about either the Yeti or the Sasquatch. Dr. Krantz's exhibit had reports of sightings, and plaster of Paris imprints of footprints, which were quite big, like that of a barefoot, flatfooted human. I knew secondhand of a respectable ranger at Crater Lake National Park around the same time who reported seeing one cross a back road. The ranger was experienced and accomplished at observing wildlife in the back country.

Any time I have looked them up, there are stories of sightings, and there are stories of jokes and hoaxes. Yet a serious and respectful thread keeps our awareness and interest alive. There are tribes, cultures, and varied individuals whose awareness of life in our world includes the mystic Sasquatch and Yeti.

poboy bread

They might not use this title, but just as there are connoisseurs of wines and gourmet foods, there are connoisseurs in Louisiana of ordinary French bread. Poor Boys (poboys), the local name for what other parts of the country call submarines, hoagies and grinders, vary from parish to parish in the types of French bread used. For example, a very dear relative often described the French bread in New Orleans as crusty on the outside and tender within. A chewier product seemed to be the custom for a lot of folks in Lafayette - in south central Louisiana. Back in the day, one could trust there would be a plate or basket of thick slices of good, fresh chewy bread at nearly any restaurant in town.

For some time during the past couple of years, I prepared meals for my father. He was content with just about anything, and he never complained about the French bread that came with the gumbo, or the poboy bread that held the fried oysters. But one day, I spied a baguette - one of those long, skinny French loaves - from a local bakery. It was still warm. I nabbed it and brought it home. There was a moment - there may have been tears. The bread was so good, so wholesome, so fragrant, so crusty yet tender, it seemed to bring together the past, the present, and hope for the future, right at our little round table.

Farmer Woodpecker
plucks a ripe raspberry
dangling in the sunshine,
carries it to a branch in a tree
and eats.
Mmmm.
The juices and matter
of the berry nourish him
quite well.
The seeds and undigested fibers
pass down
through the tubing of his guts
and drop to the earth.
Some of the seeds,
now encased in moist, fertile goo,
take hold in the soil.
They grow into bushes that will
provide him, his sugar, and his bambinos
plump berries
during future seasons,
as long as there is rain, sun,
and no run-ins
with a mower.

sampan dream

the pull of the rope
tied to the sampan
was steady
she walked the shallows
bearing this other
his weight
whole and present
within the boat's shelter
her face shaded
by a broad-rimmed hat
the waters
in motion

Correction:

Dia de los Muertos

November 1 was All Saints' Day. Yesterday, the second, was All Souls' Day. Day after tomorrow - November 5 - is Dia de las Muertas - Day of the Dead. October 31 was Halloween, formally and formerly known as All Hallow's Eve (the evening before All Saints' Day).

That's almost a full week span of opportunities to celebrate, mourn, and wisely learn about death, which naturally happens to all critters, be ye a fish, a falcon, a flea, or a human. (I like to ponder how death, like birth, is both an ending and a beginning.) There are dwindling traditions of whitewashing family tombstones, and taking care of the local cemetaries.  Catholics celebrate All Saints' Day with a Mass - it's considered a 'holy day of obligation'.

These special days give us a yearly reminder to honor the dead, and to celebrate life. There is some yearly fun too in looking at death; on Halloween we dress as skeletons and ghosts and goblins, and go from door to door, jack-o-lantern to jack-o-lantern, expecting our neighbors to pretend to be afraid, and give us a fistful of sweets.

'Trick or Treat!
Smell my Feet!
Give me something good to eat!'