Music

He was the ocean, the twilight depths;
he was red and black-blue.
he was the delicate cry of pale orchids nodding in northern light:
I believed in him, and chased him with all my peasant passion.
Up and down the keys of black and white,
through a glass darkly,
I reached, I stretched, and my wrists ached.
permanent knots in my shoulders from malpractice,
but knotty arpeggios flickered frenetically,
painting with sound a fantasy that music was an answer, an embrace, a goal, and would be found soon,
always very soon.

Silent wait the keys and my wrists are loathe to ache from that percussion again;
the tatting of notes are missing from the stand.
My passion got in the way of discipline,
so I sit like an untamed fourteen-year-old trying to imagine a Neverland in musical notes,
a social filibuster.

Still later, in a quiet and beautiful way, I began to appreciate fairy tales once again.
Why grasp? crushing grasp!
No, no.
Joy is falling asleep--sweet drift!--when you were still awake.
Maybe I can start over with dreams and forgiveness.

When Helping Hurts...Autofill, Text Alerts, and Telephones

In sixth grade I formally learned to type.  I was already a decent typist, because I had played Mavis Beacon, but in the public school classroom, I was trained and tested in the structured environment of a classroom.  The resulting skill:  Utilizing all ten digits to type at speeds of up to 100 wpm, without looking at the keys.  Actually my wpm hovers closer to 70, because I never did get really accurate at that number row, and I still have to correct a lot of my x's, c's, and b's from that bottom row.

The internet came to school when I was in 7th grade; in 9th grade I got my own email account, and by the time I graduated from high school, I had hung out in chat rooms and learned for the first time that there are very sad and strange people hanging around in chat rooms.

Then the internet, and its browsers, ripened into a golden age of reading your mind.  Autocorrect had been around, built into word processing programs, for some time, but now autofill came in full force on internet website forms.  I began to take for granted that any question I had for google had already been asked a hundred times, and the dropdown autofill menu typically confirms that.  Thus, only half a word into the act of writing out a search item, I can complete the request with a tap of the down arrow and Enter.

Then you go to write a paper for the first time in a while and find yourself full of ideas...and a strange writer's block when it comes to finishing sentences...

I've noticed different ways technology does my thinking for me.

It's nice that I no longer rely on a computer printout for telephone numbers of friends and family.  Taped to the wall by the landline, this handy directory was really convenient, growing up.  In fact, over time I naturally memorized several of my best friend's phone numbers.  Now there is no need to memorize phone numbers.  After having a work phone for several years, I have only recently learned what my own work number is!

In the last few years, since finishing college and developing simple daily routines of life, I have noticed other trends in my neural firings.  For my own personal success in life, I had to leave one of the internet's most popular social networking sites.  It has the potential to be addicting.  More to the point, its design is extremely conducive to being addicting.  Who ever thought a tiny red icon containing a number could give you such an instantly gratifying high of affirmation and importance?  So, realizing my tendency to float around for hours in the half-light of the never-ending whirlpool of notifications, live feeds, and funny videos, I did the cold turkey thing.  

This brings me to my final observation.  Just an instant ago I heard a noise that told me an email has arrived!!!!  I have eliminated a lot of junk mail, so there is about a fifty percent chance that it is something relevant to me personally.  At that sound, I instantly stopped mid-sentence and moved my mouse to the application bar.  The email icon had one of those ubiquitous red symbols with a number.  Then I stopped and came back, because the intense onset of ADD caused by notification sounds is what sparked this post!

Lately I've struggled a lot with focus.  A lot is going on in my life, actually.  Twice last week, in person, I caught myself yanking my attention away from a friend I was talking to because somebody had walked up and interrupted.  I know interruptions are one of those things you have to figure out how to deal with in life, but I couldn't help noticing how unapologetically my attention instantly switched and I completely forgot what I had been talking to my friend about.

Maybe my focus problem is independent of technology.  Maybe not.  This morning a text message woke me up.  Alarms don't get me up, but a text message will.  I picked up my phone, read the message, and responded.  Then I lay down again and began thinking about my day, preparing and planning in my head.  But, whatever I was thinking about, it completely fell apart when my phone beeped again and I grabbed it to see the latest text message.  I responded, and lay back down, and then thought, "I have no idea what I was thinking."  Then I thought, "I think that a lot after I've been interrupted."

Instant gratification is no longer the only culprit.  I've allowed myself to be trained by sounds and small icons to instantly drop whatever I have been doing and turn my complete attention to the new sensory input.  Although instant gratification is the motivation to be so trained, the training is now in place.  It doesn't matter if I'm in the mood for texting, if I want to be receiving an email.  Those stimuli demand instant responses.

This morning I turned off the text message alert sound in my phone.

When I have posted this message, I am going to turn off the email alert sound on my computer.

There is no rational or compelling reason that I need to know instantly when I receive messages.  That is what telephone calls are for, and I don't receive too many of those.  My phone can demand attention for those.  

Speaking of phone calls, I have memorized a few telephone numbers.  I do it by applying my music knowledge, translating numbers to scale degrees.

1-C

2-D

3-E

4-F

5-G

6-A

7-B

8-C

9-D

0-E

(The last couple numbers being in the next octave up).

It is nice how much technology has made life easier.  But I am determined to reclaim my ability to memorize and to ignore distractions.  Since technology has designed extremely compelling distractions, which are 9 times out of 10 mere "wolf" cries, I think it is only fair to just turn off some of those noises.

Relinquish

A decision--becomes many commitments which my own nature is not strong enough to fulfill.

How quickly I can lose sight of a castle I beheld from a pinnacle, in the toil of climbing through the forests of preparation!

I have snapped many "selfies" of myself in my different living situations.  It is so normal, very human to identify with my things (simple as they are), the paint on the walls, the books on the shelf.  I also have identified myself many times as an artist, a musician, a would-be writer.

Now I wrestle with my things--how absolutely shall I reject them?  Are they not memories--external hard drives for the brain?  A few notes, photographs perhaps, will do, won't they--if I want to be really technical.  Oh, a photo is nothing like holding a treasured mug in hand, but at least the memory may live.  (And how we humans do treasure memories!  Invisible realities that remind us we are bigger than this moment! that we are part of a collective identity that has sweated and bled and loved both for created things and the Creator!

In some moments, many moments, I think I would rather write about doing than actually do.  But without the pressure to accommodate both, writing has no inspiration.  And where writing has no inspiration, work has no art.

I can sit amidst a jumble of displaced items--most of them so useful given the right situation!--I can sit among them and think because I do not see them as chaos; I see them in their uses.  The five-gallon water cooler on the dining table is not there, but on a picnic table full of iced tea, and my three young children run to it with their plastic cups for a refill.  The miscellaneous scented candles burn cheerily, mingling with the scent of dinner to welcome my husband home along with two or three guests, and children's voices babble happily at play.  Two deeply red platters are piled with dessert, and half a dozen assorted mugs await a fill of evening decaf. 

The ragged fence in the back yard is there, but I easily imagine methodically cutting it out of the tree stump and digging up the posts in teamwork with a mate.  But all this imagining has suspended my connection with the reality that there is no such man at this time, and no promise of one; that there are no children; that plastic does deteriorate whether it is used or not.

And a decision to shake off the fog of superimposed fantasy, to become a little less nostalgic for the future (as only imagination can do!) brings about moments of emotional conflict.  Lingering, sitting down and reflect on why I love my possessions, when I need to get real and push them off like encumbering weights, freeing my footsteps for a much greater, surprising journey!

And I wonder.  From Lot's wife's perspective, did she feel she had just as much reason to love her city, to long to imprint its image in her mind that she might take its memory with her?  As far out of context as I am, I don't want to draw a comparison that unnecessarily shames--but I wonder if so much sentiment, so much determination to remember flickers of story is just so many strings keeping me tethered....

(but tethers can be so reassuring!)

Somewhere deep inside, I must somehow find hope in my past.  Hope in my earliest memories--hope that there is something I have forgotten, but that one day, if I hold onto the memories I do have, I may suddenly remember something fantastic.  Why do I have the persnickety desire to remember my earliest memories?  Why does it drive me crazy to remember only as early as 18 months of age?  It seems I wish I could remember the moment my soul sparked into existence.  And if I could just understand who I am to such a level, memories would cease to matter.  I cling to early memories as a sort of anchor I can dive to in the sea of my conscious past, hoping I might one day excavate just a little deeper than I ever had.  Somehow I believe I do have memories earlier than the ones I am sure of.  (Last night I watched Mary Poppins for the first time, I thought, and in the scene where the Banks children and their father cross the street from the cathedral to the bank, along with the richly beautiful choir of saints, I was struck that it almost perfectly depicted a dream I had a couple years ago, in which I stood on a portico like that of the bank, looking across the street at the cathedral, thinking I would just dash over to join the church service, then realizing it was already begun, as great swells of choir music came out, so rich that I doubled over crying at its beauty.   (So now, I ask my older sister, and she says yes, we did watch it, when I was about two years of age.)

Closure.  Sometimes a decision with no organic context, or sometimes a naturally occurring event in good time.  Sometimes a relinquishing of the quest, replacing it with a quest to go forward, to leave all these questions and things behind, for something and Someone so much greater than any formative human sense of "home".

When Jesus said, "In my Father's house are many mansions--if it were not so, I would have told you," what was indicated by that second clause?  That it was a popular belief that heaven would indeed be a magnificent, glorious place, and if it were not so, Jesus certainly would have corrected the disciples' thinking?  The Lord is good.  If there is a reason for me to remember some random memory, He can bring that about without me questing and clinging.  

As to memories in general, hopefully I can retain them internally and externally within reason, without being hampered by them as I press onward.  I do not want to become a stranger to the people I love from the past and the present.  Family, gold friends and old friends, those who have passed and those who will surpass me--

ah what a mysterious fabric is Creation.

May I dwell even more on the beauty of the Creator.

Bettas

Besides treating the ferns with extra care, I've taken up the care of six Betta fish.  Since a cat prowls this household, I moved things around in the spare room.  In here I can control the temperature more, and, of course, shut the cat out.

I may have bit off a lot to chew on with six bettas.  I remember in college, different girls on the hall bought betta fishes, keeping them in tiny containers of water and commenting on their chronic half-dead behavior and occasionally cleaning the bowls.  I joined the club, but to be different I bought a goldfish.  To be more different, I bought a black goldfish, which reminded me of a hammerhead shark the way its eyes boggled sideways.  Ibble-ka-Dibble was a very peppy fish, who always wanted to fly out over the rooftops as seen below my dorm window.  Or so I interpreted his headbanging in the direction of the window.  (Once, while my roommate checked her email before we headed to lunch together, she heard me saying "I know you really want to fly out over the rooftops..." and responded, "I'm coming, I'm coming!" later explaining that she thought I was just giving one of my strange metaphors.)

Alas, Ibble-ka-Dibble was not the same fish when I came home from working at a camp the following summer.  Having survived most of the summer in the care of my family, he got a little overneglected just weeks before my return, and they replaced him without telling me.  His change of personality was the first thing I noticed.  I gave him to my dad to keep at his office, but alas, nor was Ibble-ka-Dibble II long for this world.

That was my experience in fish-keeping, back in 2006.

Now when I recall the scummy fishbowls of Alpha Hall I shudder slightly.  I would actually like to treat these six beautiful fish with kindness and dignity.

So I've given all but two of them luxurious 2-gallon homes  

(what did two of them do to get 2-quart homes, you ask?  Nothing....it's just what I bought.  I am a little bit sorry.)

The plastic lids were dividers to keep the fish from seeing each other and getting angry and stressed out, but I've removed them now, and they don't seem to care.

But I mentioned the cat, Charlie.  He sometimes wants to come meet the fish, and under supervision, I don't mind letting him.

And that is an introduction to my fish adoption.

Talking to Plants

I paused over the maidenhair fern I have been nursing along in my bathroom.  My dear coworkers say I've succeeded keeping mine alive because of the humidity in the bathroom. Still--though it is attempting to put forth new shoots--I don't think it is thriving.  I would say I have consistently overwatered it, which has not harmed it, but it adversely affecting the English Ivy around the edges.  Perhaps I should fertilize it.

With a quick Google search, I confirmed that a little fertilizer wouldn't hurt (but I can wait for Spring on that) and that high humidity is good.  The bathroom is the most humid room I have; but even so, at this time of year, it's dry enough as the forced air heat combats zero-degree weather.

I haven't done a lot of successful plant-nursing in my home lately.

But the article I found reminded me of the value of a spray bottle.

Drink, sweet fern! Drink!
I sprayed it until its tiny leaves dripped, and I imagined it was dreaming of being outdoors, soaked in a drenching spring rain.  I got spray-happy, like a kid overwatering a garden she's just planted.  And then, when I had the sense to stop, I lingered like that same kid, proudly and lovingly looking at the plant I had just so blessed.  Grow, little plant, grow!  Happiness and health!  You have had a hard life and overcome less than ideal conditions (look at how you are growing!) --and now I shall take better care of you.  I will gladly send more rain soon!

1234567890

Results from searches in my mac's dashboard dictionary:

1

101 |ˈwənˌōˈwən|adjective [ postpositive ](describing education courses, real or imagined) elementary; basic : stuff that you should learn in hacking 101.

2

twenty-twenty (also 20/20)adjectivedenoting vision of normal acuity.ORIGIN the Snellen fraction for normal visual acuity (seeSnellen test ).

3

"3" could not be found.

4

four-by-four (also 4X4)noun informala vehicle with four-wheel drive.

5

"5" could not be found.

6

"6 could not be found

7

seventy-eight (usu. 78)nounan old phonograph record designed to be played at 78 rpm.

8

8vo |äkˈtävō|abbreviationoctavo.octavo |äkˈtävō| (abbr.: 8vo)noun ( pl. -vos)a size of book page that results from the folding of each printed sheet into eight leaves (sixteen pages).• a book of this size.ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin in octavo ‘in an eighth,’from octavus ‘eighth.’

9

9/11 |ˈnīn iˈlevən| (also September 11th)nounSeptember 11, 2001. On this date, two hijacked commercial airliners were flown into the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. A third hijacked airliner was crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth went down in a field in Pennsylvania : the shroud of 9/11 will be draped over the nation's heart forever.
0007 |ˈdəbəlˌōˈsevən; ˈōˌōˈsevən|nounthe fictional British secret agent James Bond, or someone based on, inspired by, or reminiscent of him.adjectivereminiscent of or inspired by features of the James Bond films: This is not 007 territory; it can be achieved with the tools that are available already.

Sick Images, Bible Colors, Loss of Control.

I. 

Driving home from work today the tune on the radio made me think of a song by Jars of Clay on an old album, If I Left the Zoo.  All I thought of was the tones of the beginning riff, and I thought I might look it up later.  Scratching my ear thoughtfully, a memory arbitrarily popped into my head from a movie I watched years ago, a passing comment in the script that my mind had quickly turned into a visual.  It was horrifically crass, and the fact that my mind contains this "memory" makes me thoughtful about the idea that we have one life, one mind, and the effects our choices can have.

Earlier in life, we learn about renewal and clean slates.  We learn that the morning starts a new day; that after a long winter, spring starts everything over: where leaves died and fell last year, new ones grow--fresh, perfect, unaware of last autumn's decay.  We learned that no matter how awful life felt at 9pm,  so tired from a day at the park we were crying our childish little eyes out, we would wake up in the morning full of energy and ready to start a new day of discovering.

For some, innocence drains away early in life.  Innate hope is battered by cruel experiences, and at far too young an age, they lose expectation.  For others, the knocks are not as hard and farther between.  But for everyone, there comes a time where the body, if not the mind, realizes the inevitable-- the cycle of renewal does not go on forever--not under the sun, or materially speaking, anyway.  Like rechargeable batteries that eventually wear out, skin doesn't renew itself as flawlessly as it once did; joints and muscles don't recover as readily from strain.  Mornings don't feel anywhere near as promising as they did to a five-year-old.

The mind continues collecting memories that don't go away.  It's not just the good ones that stick.  A terrible image is hard to erase.  You know how, on your computer, you have a trash bin?  Well, that's a good place for the bad memories--dealt with, laid to rest, not to be dwelt on any more.  But sometimes these thoughts are hiding in the attic like dusty spiders, and one day when you're chilling in your living room, suddenly this intruder is dangling in front of your face!  What then, in the realm of the mind?  A spider in front of your face. Maybe it's a wispy one, or a wolf spider.  What if it's a camel spider?  Anyhow, I digress.  In some way you're confronted by a horror.  Sometimes you're happy just to chase it back into hiding rather than squash it.  But I've known myself to just sit and stare in fascinated horror to see what webs it will spin before our eyes, proverbially speaking.

What application do these mental ramblings have to life?  Well, for me it's about consciously choosing to let ideas "stop here."  I have two or three bad images I can recall to mind in a moment.  One horrible video of a real life tragedy, one verbal description of the horrors of behavior caused by bath salts, and a really crass comment from a movie (sadly, I don't mean for a moment that's all I have on file).  The thing is, I've been in many conversations where someone shares a shocking tale, and I naturally respond with my own shockers.  ...I love shock effect...  But when someone recently shared with me a horrific reality about bath salts-induced behavior, I finally realized I am not obligated to pass it on next time someone starts an exchange of shocking news.  If I play in my mind any of those thoughts, I am sickened with the distortion of humanity.  First because it's so far from good, and second, because my fallible humanity has the very same capabilities of horrific behavior.  Thus I feel personally filthy by the very concept, and painfully compassionate to those who are full of guilt of committing such horrors.  I hope being nonspecific hasn't itself brought pointlessly negative thoughts into your head; I hope you will move on quickly while understanding what I'm saying.

There might be a social burst of joy in sharing a shocker that successfully jolts everyone in the room. My new resolution is, if it creates a visual memory that can turn my stomach any time I look at it, and there is no real life reason to inform someone of the thought, then I no longer want to 'duplicate' the corrupt 'file' by sharing it with others.  I may not be able to erase it from my 'hard drive', but by the grace of God I can relegate it into a guarded trash bin and, daily, refuse to dwell on it, and not let it replicate via my mouth.  From several sources recently I'm taking the wisdom, "The way to stop thinking about something is to move onto the next thing," whether that next thing is a better memory, a task, a prayer.  Abraham Lincoln addressed the very same idea to moments of feeling embarrassed, lol.  Move on quickly to other things.

II.

Without using any search engines besides my own recall, I was trying to think about colors in the Bible.  There's not a verse that says, "And Noah looked upon the rainbow, and behold, he saw that the band of color was a blend sequence of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple."  So I started asking myself, just what can I recall is mentioned of color in the Bible?  Not because I imagine a colorless ancient Near East, but because I am intrigued by the everyday things the contents of the Bible do include.  When I find these things, it's like a glimpse of ancient times.  It still amazes me sometimes to think that the people mentioned by name in the Bible could look up at night and see the very same constellations I look at now; somewhere on this same globe, their eyes were directed at the same arranged pinpoints of light, and they too wondered how small and insignificant they must be beneath such a vast mystery as the depths of a night sky.

Colors.  I thought about blue.  Surely a Psalm about the heavens says blue. But, off the cuff, I cannot remember such a mention (I could be wrong).

Sometimes color references in the Bible are named by precious jewels.  Sapphire is blue, and I'm pretty sure that is mentioned among many others in the book of Revelation.

Lydia, the seller of purple who was glad to learn that the God she worshipped had sent His Son with good news of salvation.  I once learned about the incredibly time costly process of making purple cloth.

Red: scarlet, the cord Rahab the harlot hung out her window which marked her house as the one that wouldn't fall with Jericho.  Blood and snow are also both used as descriptive color terms.

Gold.  Gold things, or things that appeared like gold.  Brass.

Green.  Green pastures in which the Good Shepherd "makes me lie down" from Psalm 23.  Green, verdancy; lush.  Shades of green surrounding your desk can refresh the spirits in a most pepto-bismol pink of rooms.  I learned this at my last job! :)

Though I talked earlier about not wanting to shock people with horrifying stories, I am still someone who likes the jolt created by contrasts, and bits of reality that put a splash of color back in a grayscale picture.  For the world I see on a day to day basis loses vividness of color, like retinal fatigue.  As I stare at something green, the retinal burn of purple dulls the green.  But look at another color after staring at green, and the purple retinal burn will mingle with those colors in a new way.  I apply this to mingling of ideas, too.  Stare at one very hard, and then change angles.  

III.

Driving home from work today, my shoulders both ached from work yesterday. I wondered at the entitlement I've felt to a healthy body.  While everything works well, I somehow imagine it's because I'm doing things right.  Hardly!  True, much disease can be blamed on poor choices, but only in hindsight are those choices proven to be poor ones.  Other folks make those same choices with no consequences, and thus--in a sense--those choices were neither poor nor good, but just choices.  But escaping consequences does not necessarily neutralize the poorness of a decision.  Lifting heavy weights wrong can work fine, ....until you injure something.  Smoking is fine, ....until you have lung cancer.  Do many people get away with smoking and never get lung cancer?  Sure thing.  But not smoking is probably a most excellent way to avoid ever getting it.  How many smokers, however, feel entitled to be one of those who never gets cancer, and if diagnosed, respond with as much innocent injury as a nonsmoker rightfully would if diagnosed?

My life thus far was teaching me that I intuitively know my limits--that if I can lift something, then my body can handle that strain.  I try not to lift with my back, but I've never studied body mechanics enough to realize how vulnerable my shoulders might be to wrong lifting.  Well, twice this year now I've been reminded, that I can misuse my muscles in a way that hurts other parts of my musculoskeletal system.  Oh, sure I knew it happened to other people, but injury never confronted me.  Oh, how unrewarding prevention feels as long as we suspect it's much ado about nothing!...But how we wish we could rewind time, when consequences arise which we could have prevented.

Someone who is put on blood thinners, learning her normal behavior is now unhealthy because she bruises so easily, can continue doing what "she knew she could do." Or she can admit that her body has changed, and adapt her behavior to take care of her body.

It's so easy to take a healthy body for granted, to feel entitled to its right functioning, and to believe it's functioning rightly 'because I want it to'.  With that mindset, an onset of a chronic disease can only be utterly demoralizing, for the body that obeyed certain commands before now refuses.  Did it ever obey because of my authority?  I suspect not, but rather because it has been commissioned to obedience.  I don't think the life coursing through my veins can be credited to the life of my sense of self; rather, it's a vehicle made and held together by a gerunding miracle.  This vehicle allows me to experience physical humanness.  I can treat my body like an old jalopy or like a rolls royce; I hope it will continue getting me from point A to point B, but where a first beater car is often 'driven til it drops,' we only get one car.  Sure, we'll drive it til it stops, but that doesn't justify abusing it.  Sure, things can go wrong that aren't our fault.  But appropriate fuel and routine maintenance are a little more important when you realize insurance can only repair so much.

So what if you find your maturing body takes a turn for the worse?  As you're forced to accept that the cd player has started skipping, the radiator is leaking, do you start wondering about existence Aftercar?


So what was that Jars of Clay song, anyway?
"Goodbye, Goodnight."
A flower for your vanity, a penny for your thoughts
about the world's insanity and how we've gotten lost
Strike up the band to play a song as we go waltzing by
And fake a smile as we all say goodbye
Goodbye, oh goodbye

Say a prayer for recognition, kiss the ones you love
Gather up the ammunition, sigh for all the lost
Strike up the band to play a song as we go waltzing by
And fake a smile as we all say goodbye

Raise a glass for ignorance, drink a toast to fear
The beginning of the end has come that's why we all are here
Strike up the band to play a song and try hard not to cry
And fake a smile as we all say goodbye
Goodbye