SONGS WHILE I'M SLEEPING

"Starry Night", pastel,
by Karen Margulis

     I awoke several times last night and listened for a few minutes to the singing of the insects outside, and it has me thinking, this morning, about some of the other things that happen while I’m sleeping. For the few hours that I’m asleep, the universe, as always, is a busy and stirring place. Besides the music of countless crickets and katydids, there must be limitless kinds of activities among nighttime animals as they live their important lives – the rushing and shoving and soaring that’s essential for the creatures that carry on with their lives while I’m lying among soft sheets. There’s the nighttime work of people who prepare essential things for the rest of us while we sleep – the third-shift factory workers who make the beds that we sleep on, the grocery employees who get food up on the shelves so we can select what we need in the morning, the employees of power companies who keep our night-lights lit. While I’m sleeping, airplanes are streaking across countries and seas on essential missions, hospitals are helping people prepare for better lives, and police officers in cities and towns are taking their peacekeeping work seriously. While I’m fortunate to be finding a few hours of rest beside my wife, rivers are flowing as fast as they always do, and the steadfast stars are doing their shining, as always, above us.         

DOING A GREAT WORK

Not long ago, as my grandson was working on a Lego project with single-minded passion, he paused and said to me, “I am doing a great work, Hammy” – and I said to myself, Yes you are, and so is everything. The universe itself is an endless system of great works, from the falling of a single snowflake to the movements of the far-flung stars. These words I’m writing are doing the great work of wrapping thoughts like gifts to give away, and the cars I hear on the nearby highway are heading somewhere on great missions, from finding a place to eat to saving a loved one’s life. We’re all engaged in grand enterprises. The smallest of our thoughts, if we only realized it, is serious business, and typing a tiny word is a major miracle. It’s a great work to give a greeting to someone, or to notice the sunshine on a sidewalk, or to set one foot in front of another, or to help hundreds of Lego pieces fit perfectly together.

SEEING

"Wind and Clouds", watercolor,
by Gretchen Kelly

When things seem stirred up in my life, sometimes all I have to do is see more clearly. I've found that if I can simply notice the usually unnoticed things around me, life then feels lighter and more leisurely. If, for instance, I take some time to tour my wife’s garden on these abundant days of May, and actually see the assorted shades of the blossoms, actually notice the slight but continuous shifting of the flowers in the faintest winds, I almost always come away with a quieter feeling about life. Problems seem simpler after I’ve studied the colors of clouds for a few seconds, or seen the different ways two houses shine in the sunlight, or observed the flow among the millions of new leaves in windy trees. Even taking the time to notice the patterns in one of my wife’s colorful table cloths, or the way a window shows the shades of early morning light, might make a day seem sort of effortless, it’s potential problems rather powerless and easy to solve. 

RUNNING HOME

"Pena at the Plate", oil,
by V....Vaughn

It’s always a thrill to see your team’s runners running home in a baseball game, and yet it sometimes occurs to me that something just as thrilling happens to me many times each day. I guess you could say I “score” every second of every day, simply because I’m alive in this uplifting world. With every surprising breath, I score another run, and all of my thoughts somehow make it all the way home. Just seeing daylight once more this morning means I’ll again be racing around the bases all day, giving waves to the world as it watches and cheers. It’s a sport of constant though sometimes concealed  triumphs, this beguiling game of life. Sometimes I score without even knowing it. I breathe in and bang a triple, breathe out and break a record.

WHAT MATERS

     Someone once said that everything should be honored, but nothing really matters – a truth I have been thinking a lot about lately. Yesterday afternoon I was standing outside in breezy spring sunshine, and I thought, yes, everything should be honored – these sunlit minutes on the lawn, but also all the troublesome and sorrowful times, all the seeming misfortunes. Every event, every situation, every person, every thought, every single moment, should be respected as though it is a precious miracle, because it is. Whatever the universe unfolds for us (whether we conveniently label it “good” or “bad”) is a marvel worth our respect. This doesn’t mean, though, that anything really “matters”, or at least that any one part of creation matters more than any other. In the kind of cosmos that we live in, which is endlessly intricate but also one hundred percent harmonious, no facet of it is more important than any other. Everything, from the farthest star to the most miniscule atom, is of equal value and significance. Everything matters equally, which, in a sense, means nothing really matters, or matters more than anything else. All that truly matters is the completely cohesive and harmonious universe, which has been successfully fashioning and re-fashioning itself for numberless eons, and which will continue to do so into infinity. Instead of thinking I have to fret and fuss about each present moment because everything matters, I should focus my attention on cherishing the astonishing creations of the universe. Instead of taking things so seriously, I should take them, perhaps, more reverently and gratefully.

REIGNING IN THE RAIN

"Just Rain", acrylic,
by John K. Harrell

It’s supposed to rain most of the weekend, but I’m saying “So what?” to the forecast. I’m making plans to reign in that rain. I will be a king among cloudbursts, a prince in drizzles and showers. Let the skies let loose their wettest weather; I will still wear the crown, still think the thoughts I want to think and see the goodness that’s given to all of us, in storms or sunshine. There will be showers this weekend, but there will also be the rule of kindness and the sovereignty of consideration and benevolence. Among gales and squalls, goodwill will be the lord of my land.
 

STIFF ARMS AND WHIRLS

"Football", oil, by Hall Groat II

For most of my life, I used the old “stiff arm” strategy from my football days to push away what I saw as problems, but these days some occasional twists and pivots seem to be working just as well. Instead of shoving aside my so-called problems, I’m seeing that I can usually swirl around them with something like a smile. Instead of shoves and thrusts, I’ve been using more spins and whirls, more loose and limber dancing as a way of passing by my problems. It seems, in these first years of my 70’s, that life is a lot more like a dance than a dispute. There’s more billowing in it than forcing and thrusting. It’s not that I ignore the usual difficulties of life, just that I roll with them rather than ram against them. I flow a lot more than I force. I almost hear the cheers in the stands as I swivel past all these amateurish, incompetent problems.

GAPS

"Buffalo Gap", watercolor.
by Kay Smith

 It often occurs to me that I need more “gaps” in my life. According to one dictionary, a gap is simply “an unfilled space or interval”, and I am certain I would appreciate more of those during my sometimes headlong hours and days. Surely I would be grateful for an occasional chance to choose “nothing” as an activity – to neither listen nor speak nor think, but just sit in ease and stillness. In the midst of the steady streams of thoughts and words that swirl through my life, I would welcome the possibility of easing up, slowing down, and just simply stopping. It’s strange that I don’t realize this more thoroughly, and put it into practice. How hard is it to understand that gaps – interludes when nothing happens – are an essential aspect of all lives? Don’t we take pleasure in the long gaps every night in which we settle and refresh our lives through sleep? And aren’t there even ever-so-brief gaps between the words we speak, between the breaths we take, between the beats of our hearts? Why, then, do I so often insist on living a gap-less life, shoving and dashing ahead in a nonstop manner, breathlessly pushing myself toward endless finish lines? What about an occasional pause to seriously consider what’s been said? What about stopping to actually think about my thoughts? What about a deep breath now and then?

FRENCH HORNS AND ENGLISH CLASS

"French Horn", oil, by Jia Tian Shi

This morning, just before school, I listened to several movements of a Mozart wind quintet, and the perfectly beautiful French horn solos started me thinking about the art of teaching. Here was this outsized, cumbersome instrument, one that is usually kept in the background of classical pieces, playing lovely melodies by itself, and playing them in an enthralling manner. As I listened, I thought of certain of my students, the ones who stay on the outskirts of discussions and seem to be only marginal members of the class. I wondered whether these reserved students had "music" inside them that I was missing -- whether they could perhaps “solo” as skillfully as this French horn. What this led me to was the realization, for the thousandth time, that all of my students have a secret, special brilliance, and it is my duty to draw it out. The quiet ones may not be able or willing to solo like the French horn, but at least I can let them know that I appreciate the irreplaceable loveliness they are able to lend to the class. In order to do this, though, I have to be truly attentive to them, and to listen carefully to their fleeting but beautiful thoughts. Like the French horn in the Mozart piece, these timid, retiring students have singular music to share.

SPECIAL CRAYONS

"Colorful Crayons", oil,
by Linda Apple

       Some days, I feel like my pockets are full of special crayons that can color the world in beautiful ways. Of course, it doesn’t really need coloring, for all things, even the smallest stick in the grass or the most short-lived cloud in the sky, shine with assorted hues of color, but sometimes it’s fun to feel like a kid again and color my days like they’re pages in a coloring book. Most days can be made to glow with colors, and I take pleasure in pretending that I’m the artist. I swish my crayons across hours of gray rain, and what I see then is hours of softness and freedom. I color a tedious meeting with various shades, and suddenly there’s something stirring in the words we speak. I use “sky blue” and “melon” on some strenuous duties, and step back and see the secret rewards in them. It sometimes takes just a second to swipe some colors across a person or a situation and notice, however faint, something beautiful. It doesn’t always work, but in a world that often seems stained with sorrow and darkness, it’s worth a try.          

SUNSHINE AND WIND IN THE MIRROR

"Foothills Farmhouse", oil.
by Don Gray

     When I look in the mirror, I don’t see sunshine and wind, and yet, in a sense, that’s what’s there. The atoms that swirl in sunshine and wind are the same ones that shape my bones and blood. The atoms in my bloodstream were made as many billions of years ago as those in the sun I see rising outside my house this morning, and the timeless winds are no older than the calcium I carry inside me. I am an inseparable piece of the single, immeasurable universe, as are sunshine and wind. We mix and mingle as surely as the breezes across our yards, as surely as the seamless rays of sunshine. The separate person I seem to see in the mirror is no more separate than one swirl of the wind is from another, or one shaft of sunlight is from another. We shine and swirl together, sunshine and wind and I.

THERE IS A RIVER

"Enchanted River Canyon", oil,
by Laurel Daniel

 When my students, like most of us, occasionally fall into dismay and discouragement, I always hope they will soon be able to see the river of good thoughts that’s constantly flowing inside them. There is, indeed, a river there, and in all of us, and it has more rousing and optimistic ideas than we could ever count. It flows from somewhere or nowhere in its relentless manner, and the only way we don’t notice it is by turning away and noticing the pessimistic river instead – a steady and persuasive one, for sure. It’s easy for kids, in their sometimes frenzied and snarled lives, to be spellbound by the flow of downright depressing news and thoughts that pour past them, which is probably why I try to select books to read in class that will bring a brighter view. I don’t mean that I avoid books that show the certainty of sorrow in human life, just that I look for books that also show the strength and inspiration that can come with, and even be created by, the sorrow. There is a river I love in great books – a river that carries light for the darkness and quiet confidence for the future – and those are the books that can be the creators of new life for young students, bringing a stream of stirring ideas that any teenager can make use of. Those are the books, too, that can turn the students back to the good river of hopeful thoughts that’s always with us all, if we could only turn and see it.

THE TIME HAS COME

"Yellow Apple with Alarm Clock"
oil, by Hall Groat II

I have often heard the phrase, “the time has come”, and more and more it seems like a significant truth to me. The time, after all, has always come. The present moment has always been all there really is, has always been splendidly arriving with flags flying. It’s like the entrance of a procession, or a powerful person, or a stunning sunrise, each and every moment. It’s like a band beginning to play a stirring song, every single second. If I’m sitting at my desk typing, or talking to my wife while spring winds are shifting in the trees, or if I’m simply sitting outside in the generous sunshine, the time has come. Every second, I should hear an orchestra starting up with a symphony, should shout like someone who just received the greatest news, for the time has truly come. 

WATCHING MY STEP

"Spring Nest", pastel,
by Karen Margulis

     “Watch your step” would be a useful slogan for me these days. I especially like the word “watch”, because it suggests the kind of completely committed awareness I want to foster in myself – an awareness that sometimes, sadly, seems absent in me for hours and days at a time. I want to be constantly on the alert, attentive as much as possible to the nuances of this peculiar and beguiling life I’m living. I want to watch what’s happening as carefully as a sharp-eyed sailor watches from the deck. This is a demanding mission for me, since an almost youthful heedlessness still, at 71, seems more prevalent in me than awareness. I still sometimes see in myself the rash impetuosity of my teenage years. I seem to come panting into a new day, dash through it, and then rush into sleep at the end, hoping that a few hours rest will help me race even faster tomorrow. It’s a swift and hassled world we live in, hardly the kind of environment to encourage “watching your step”, but I want to give it a good try. Instead of simply glancing at the gifts spring is giving us along the roads these days, I want to occasionally stop and study them; instead of a quick look, I want a long look; instead of just shooting past the songs of birds on my bicycle, I want to pause and truly listen, to sometimes let the bike come to a silent stop among their brave new songs. 
 

RISING

"Beach Sunrise", oil, by Sharon Schock

I rise early each morning, and it’s nice to know that other risings are also occurring, and are constantly occurring. As I type these words, my fingers rise above the right computer keys, and my chest rises each second as my lungs lift to let new life into my body. The grass in yards these flourishing spring days rises slightly higher almost by the hour, and flowers stand a little taller each morning. Even the tallest trees are slowly stretching higher this morning as I sit at my desk, and of course the sun, or so it will seem, will soon ascend and cause new light to lift up around me, somewhat like the surprising thoughts that sometimes slowly rise inside me.

I stood up a few seconds ago just to stretch, but maybe it was to show respect and praise for this life that leaps up, almost always, all around.

WITH EACH OTHER

"Italy Walk", acrylic,
by John K. Harrell

       It’s strange that most of us see ourselves, at least sometimes, as basically separate and alone in this life – strange, because togetherness is perhaps the most fundamental force in the universe. We can’t be alone, even if we wanted to, for all of life is linked in innumerable and unbreakable ways. To take a simple example, when I see people passing by on the street, they live, if briefly, inside me, in my eyesight and my thoughts. They have their own private lives, but those lives are linked to mine as I carry them, for a few seconds, inside me. We are, in a sense, side by side in our lives as we pass along the street. We share this world in special but unseen ways – by breathing the same air as we pass, by seeing the same sunlight and feeling the same air flowing past us, by placing our feet down on the same spinning planet as we walk. Even our feelings are shared among us, for who can keep a feeling from flowing out to everyone? A feeling, be it love or loneliness, cannot be kept inside us like locked boxes, since all feelings flow among all people like the sea among the dwellers in the sea. If I’m sad, I’m simply sharing in the sadness of the world, and any happiness that happens to pass through me is the same happiness that lifts up lives in Indonesia and Indianapolis. We dwell in endless alliances, whether we like it or not. We are comrades and collaborators, created by the same extraordinary universe and seeking, side by side, the same happiness that heals us all.        

EVERYDAY BALLET

"Pointe Shoe", oil,
by Oriana Kacicek

     My wife and her son, Aaron, and I saw a stunning performance by the Boston Ballet yesterday, and it reminded me, as we rode home on the train, that beautiful ballets are continuously being danced all around us. It’s strange that I so often miss this marvelous fact – that dance-like harmonies of the highest order are all around us, always. Closest to home, there’s the graceful symmetry of our bodies – our balanced limbs and organs, as well as the flawless steadiness of the passing of blood through our veins and arteries. There’s the graceful twirl of tree limbs in winds, the spins that sparrows show off as they search for food, and the stylish skips and leaps of squirrels. Even the slow fall of old spring blossoms to the grass these days seems to be done with poise and precision, as we saw yesterday while walking in a park in Boston with floating white dogwood petals pirouetting in the air around us. Ballet at the theater is a blessing, but no more so than the skillful dancing of the everyday world.

A SEA, NOT A STORY

'Sea Cloud", oil.
by Oriana Kacicek

I got to thinking today that the cause of most of my problems lies in thinking that my life is a “story”. Without realizing it, I have spent most of my days deeply engrossed in “the story of Hamilton Salsich”. In this story, as in most works of fiction, there’s a protagonist – me – who is faced with an antagonist – in this case, the rest of the universe. As in a good story, there’s a plot (me against the universe) that involves a goal the main character (me) has set for himself – being as personally happy as possible. There’s a beginning to this story (my birth), a lot of rising action (all the battles I’ve fought with the innumerable manifestations of my antagonist, the universe), and certainly there will be a climax, although I seem to have already experienced countless numbers of them. And, of course, as with any story, there will be an end – my death. It’s been an exciting story, I guess, full of thrills and spills, but the truth is ...I’m tired of it, and it’s all make-believe anyway. The story of Hamilton Salsich is a complete fiction, because in this universe, there are no stories, at least no separate ones. The universe, as its name implies, is one whole unified story, wherein all the characters and scenes and actions mingle together in seamless unity. In fact, the universe can’t be a story at all, because there are no separate protagonists and antagonists. There’s just one vast creation blending and intermingling and fusing in endless harmonious patterns. As a story, in truth, our universe would be a flat failure: no plot, no rising action, no climax, no end. Rather than a story, a good metaphor for the cosmos would be a sea, one with no shores whatsoever. The entity called “Hamilton” is simply a wave in an endless sea of creation – a sea in which all waves are equally important, a sea which exhibits continual and innumerable harmonies rather than artificial “dramas” and “plots”. When did “I” begin as a wave in this universe? Who could ever tell? When will “I” end? Never – at least not until the sea does. I’ll change, yes, (and death will be one of those changes) just as the waves in the ocean are always changing – but somehow, someway, I’ll always be a part of this astonishing, nonfictional existence which we call the universe.

LIGHTHEARTED LIVING

"Big Sky", oil,  by Jason Tako

     Living in a light-hearted way would be a good goal for me. To have a heart – an inner spirit, a manner, a mind-set – as light as the spring winds that wander among my wife’s unfolding flowers these days would be something special. There’s too much heaviness in the world – too many burdens brought on by our countless cares and concerns – and I want to lessen the weight. I want to lay my load down and dance a little. I want to learn from the lightness that’s all around me – from the sunlight that always floats and never forces or pushes, from the breezes that seem as carefree as hopeful thoughts, from the occasional single clouds that hover above us as if they’re satisfied with the way things are. 

     There’s bending under burdens, and then there’s sailing with buoyancy and good spirits – and I now choose the latter.         

     

SO FAR, SO GOOD

Over the last several decades, the old pedagogical practice of praising students has been severely disparaged in articles and books, but I must confess to still being fairly enthusiastic about it. I think my students, as individual persons, deserve to be praised – all the time. Certainly their actions sometimes deserve criticism, but their inner lives – their hearts and souls, you might say -- always deserve praise. In the most fundamental ways, they are good people – now, tomorrow, and forever. At every moment of every class, I could say to each of the students, “so far, so good”, because at that moment, as far as they’ve come on their life-long journey, they are so good, so just what they should be at that instant, so perfect for that particular split-second of time. They may not know how to use semicolons or what the symbolism of a James Joyce story means or how to always listen carefully when the teacher is speaking, but for that specific moment of their lives, they are, in their own special ways, just right. I guess what this suggests is that I don’t believe in the linear theory of learning and human development. I don’t believe my students will necessarily be smarter students or better people tomorrow, or next year, or twenty years from now. Wisdom and graciousness don’t grow gradually along a straight line. I know teenagers who, in very real ways, are just as gifted and good as 60-year-olds with advanced degrees. I suppose, when I think of the young people in my classes, instead of a straight line I think of a circle of an infinite size, and each student is always at the center. No matter how many days or years pass, no matter what the students do or how many books they read or how many courses they take, each of them will always, at each moment, be at the exact center of the universe – precisely where they should be. They will always have come so far, and be so good, and deserve so much praise.