SOLITARY AND SINGING

"Singing a Happy Song", oil, by Karen Margulis

“Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.”

       -- Walt Whitman, “Starting from Paumanok”

       I live in the East of the U.S. and the West of the world, and, like Whitman, I see myself as a singer of sorts, and as a solitary guy getting up each day to do some traveling in a fresh, new-fangled world. I am happily married and I can’t make any real music with my songs, but I still prize my solitude, and I sing my heart out in the earnest and, with a little luck, pleasant-sounding sentences I compose each morning. A person can be deeply in love, like me, and still love the peace of being alone in a wondrous world, and a person can have a voice like files and razors and still sing with a silver-tongued spirit. I feel lucky and honored to have newly-made mornings greet me again and again, and I try to return the greeting by giving back some modest but maybe musical sentences. These letters and words I type this morning make up my song for today, a melody made for an unused, state-of-the-art world, a tune I can take with me to make this day, perhaps, like a special show full of songs.    

SOMETHING ELSE

"After the Rain", oil, by Linda McCoy

“But there is something else very great, it makes the whole

      coincide,

It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and provides for all.”

-- Walt Whitman, “Starting from Paumanok”

It’s comforting to me to come back to the truth that there is, as Whitman says, “something else” besides the small and sometimes bothersome things in daily life. There’s something else, something grander and more magnificent and magnanimous than the miniscule concerns and tasks of today and tomorrow. It’s reassuring to realize that, after all the daily tasks have been taken care of, there’s still a splendor thrown over my life, a light that’s brighter than all the big ideas I’ve had, all the cares and trials that have tested me. It’s this “something else” that speaks to me, day by day, sometimes in the midst of major worries or delights. I can be wondering whether I should get my car serviced today or tomorrow, and suddenly I will see so clearly that there’s something inside my life that lifts all my small concerns up into the magnificence that makes all things new and helpful. I will see that even the smallest task or distress can do for me what sunshine does for flowers or rain does for rivers – send a freshness through me that fills my life with a light made by something else – something different, something besides – that’s as sparkling as all the stars.    

UNPERTURBED (FB, July 2014)

"Approaching Storm", oil, by Lori McNamara

“… aplomb in the midst of irrational things …”

     -- Walt Whitman, “Me Imperturbe”

     It would be a great gift to go unperturbed among the seemingly senseless workings of this world. It would be wonderful to be utterly calm whether crashes and calamities or restorations and triumphs take place. Like Whitman, I wish I could go with good-naturedness through all the madness I seem to see around me – live a life of stillness and acceptance while the world is throwing itself around with recklessness. It would be like living like a tree, just taking the winds and sunshine and storms as they come, just leaning and slanting and swaying and then standing straight up again with composure. The oldest trees could teach me how to bend, how to hold steady while doing whatever winds want me to do, and how to take up, again, a grand and gracious posture. To be unperturbed means simply to say “yes” to whatever is happening, and then to thank it for unfolding new truths for me. It means making a misfortune a gift, a disaster something to take strength from. It means showing whatever comes along that serenity always subdues hardship.  

THE SILENCE OF INNOCENCE

The silence often of pure innocence

Persuades when speaking fails. 

-- Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale 

     

"Hear the Silence", oil, by Gerald Schwarz

      Sometimes – more times than I realize – I need to simply shut up and let the silence of innocence speak. I certainly don’t mean that I’m innocent in the sense of being free of mistakes or injuries to others, but innocent in the sense of being absolutely simple, unsophisticated, and innocuous. I sometimes feel like a 71-year- old child, a baby newborn yesterday, a youngster yearning for the simplest understanding of things, and occasionally it comes to me that silence is the best way for me to learn, and to speak. Life seems more amazing to me each day, and my elaborate, delicate, and insubstantial words seem to lose all significance in its light. Sometimes I simply need to sit and let silence lead me to some modest truths: for instance, that sunlight on ashen streets in winter can work wonders, that music on a car radio can radiate warmth, that a loved one’s hands in light can communicate better than the best words. Most of the words I make are made of the most evanescent thoughts, ready to waft away and vanish, and never able to touch even the boundaries of the truth. For me, wide-eyed silence is usually a better speaker, and listener. 

NONSTOP RETIREMENTS

"Retired", oil, by Tom Brown

     I was wondering this morning why I’m making such a personal fuss about my retirement, when retirements are occurring constantly in countless numbers all across the earth.  If retirement refers to time after having stopped working, how many millions of things literally stop working every single second? The Audubon Society estimates that, in the United States alone, as many as 13 million birds die – stop working – each day, which comes to about 150 birds every second. That means that each second that I spend fussing about how I will spend my retirement years, 150 beautiful wings fold up for good. It’s estimated, too, that approximately 3,000 animals die – stop working – each second in slaughterhouses around the world, so while I’m furrowing my brows feeling sorry for myself for leaving my wonderful work as a teacher, thousands of chickens and cows are leaving the work of life unwillingly, and in pools of blood. And of course, how many of my fellow humans have to retire from life each day because death comes to the door? While I’m wondering if I should start a stamp collection or take sketching classes in retirement, two people per second are leaving loved ones forever.  It puts things in perspective for me, making my retirement from teaching seem like simply a tiny stop in a vast cosmos of endless stops – and, of course, just as endless starts.