maps/legends

Spring

The trees have exploded all over the town.

OK.  So maybe explode is an overstatement.  But you know that feeling?  The one where winter seems to be a permanent ecological condition and then all of the sudden, you notice that it has become green?

I noticed the green recently.

When I was in the fourth grade, or maybe it was the sixth grade, we learned how to use a key to identify trees.  This key was a little paperback book with these Encyclopedia Brown like questions. If the leaves are alternate, turn to page 62.  If the leaves are opposite, turn to page 66.  That book was the first I ever stole.  Temporarily, at least.  Eventually, the guilt got the better of me and I put it back in the classroom.  But for a few glorious days, I walked around the neighborhood shouting Birch! Oak! Sumac!  I am not sure what it was about that book that I liked so much.  Maybe it was the way in which all this information was right in front of me and all I had to do was ask the right questions.  Maybe it was the excitement of giving names to things in my immediate world that I did not already know about.  Maybe it was the great variety of plant life in the world.

Maybe it was the illicit thrill in dealing in stolen property.

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There is something about my walk this morning that makes me anxious.

I fear there is something wasteful about being outside when I have so much to do.  Then again, I always think I have too much to do and that I have somehow not been efficient enough to get it all done.  I bet everybody thinks that.  Which is probably why we don't walk that many places with a tree identification book.

But I walk anyway because I wonder a lot about anxiety being an important fuel to moving forward.  Like cognitive dissonance makes someone anxious until that anxiety demands to be relieved by the changing of a past paradigm to accommodate new knowledge or a complete rejection of the new information to preserve the old structure.

I am at the edge of my paradigm.

So I force myself to walk through it.  To pay attention to the trees and not ask where it is going to be used in the Grand Plan to Prevent Homelessness and Starvation.  To force myself to face the anxiety, instead of waiting in the dark while the trees explode outside.

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I used to think that spring was hopeful.  That there was something about the arrival of green leaves that triumphed over a long stagnation of passive nothingness. 

Now I think I am foolish.

Trees sprout leaves because it is spring.  There is no hope.  There is only forward motion.  Hope is something we ascribe to nature because we want to believe that forward motion includes looking up.  It might.  But it is not necessary.  The only thing necessary is motion.  Without regard to where it is going or how long it will take to get there.

Motion.  Without judgment.  And oddly, without hope.

I am failing the spring.

Song

Last night, I went to see Songs of the Sufi Brotherhoods at the Strathmore.  It was a visit to three diverse areas of the Islamic world to study both song and spirituality.  In true Sufi tradition, the two cannot be separated into componant parts.  The music, poetry and dance are as essential to life as the spirtuality, healing and gratitude of the music is to the performance.  One doesn't get one without the rest of the net.  In all that connection is a great night of celebration and music.

The first performer was Hamza El Din, playing alone on an oud, and singing his own compositions of Nubian/Arabic music.  According to his biography, he is the father of modern Nubian music, creating a hybrid of traditional African music with strains of Arabic song.  The result is meditative and lyrical.  His deep voice mixes well with the higher strained instrument, and added an overall depth to the sound of the poetry.  Not speaking the language, I could only hear the words as another instrument, not hypnotic, but something more like centering.

The next performance was by Hassan Hakmoun, and, I have to say, was my favorite of the evening.  There were three performers with him, playing an assortment of percussion instruments, and himself, singing and playing a sintir.  At least I think it was a sintir.  I am not really as up on my Moroccan music as I could be.  Or my instruments.

This performance was incredibly varied.  There were hypnotic rhythms said to be healing music usually played all night in one piece, and a distinctly blues sounding piece that gave thanks to parents in another.  There was dancing, where steps became additional instruments for drumming, and the dance another form of chanting.  Hassan Hakmoun spoke to the audience as well, introducing the pieces and the place they have in the culture and spirit of Morocco.  It was very much as I imagine Morocco to be, full of spice and poetry and color, set against a solid beat.

The final performance was by Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali.  They were a large group, eight, or maybe nine in total.  They sat on the floor in two rows, the back row had the tabla player and four clapping performers who sometime sang.  The front row had the two harmonium players flanked by the two main singers.  These guys are pretty amazing.  They do a highly energetic style of music, heavy on the clapping and with the most amazing vocal dynamics I have ever heard.  There is call and response with both the instruments and each other, to a background of heavy clapping.  It is harmonic and hypnotic at the same time, with each piece going at least 15 minutes.  I loved it, for its sound and excitement, but it lacked the diverse and subtle quality of Hassan Hakmoun and somehow, to me, that worked against them.  Still, it was an amazing feat to perform as they did, and they rounded out the full style of Sufi music.

It was a good night.  A new map to a new sound.  New.  Like me.

Limbo

When we sit down for coffee, she tells me her life is finally starting to move out of its four year limbo.

This American Life is about limbo.

Limbo is what is when something else needs to happen for something to be done to change the state of limbo.

And you can't use the word itself in the definition of a word. Remember that.

Limbo is sometimes the first circle of hell. More optimistically, it is the denial of hell without the reward of heaven.

It is the great undefined in between.

It is being halted.

It is waiting.

I am waiting.

I can tell you about the couple hundred of square feet within which I make most of my life. I can tell you exactly what it looks like out the window. I can tell you in detail how minutes pass and how hours pile up and the things that get done to move the time ahead.

What I can't tell you is the feel of the ground under my feet.

It is time to move again. Waking up is all about moving in space. I return to my feet because I need to remember all the basic truths of my life.

I walk. I map. I observe. I translate.

That is all I am.