Show Up (5,000th Post)

Art is vast and creativity knows no bounds, but there are two short words that all artists everywhere stand by: Show up. Time after time, preferably a daily appointed time, you sit facing the white page or stand at the blank canvas or in the empty dance studio or look down at the 88 piano keys of infinite possibilities. And then you begin. First word, first stroke, first gesture, first note. Just begin. And follow where it leads. Sometimes it brings you to a heap of nothing, sometimes to “just okay,” others to “actually, good!” and if the stars are aligned just so, you’ve hit the yellow brick road to divine inspiration. But all of that is somewhat out of your control. Your job is simply to show up, day after day, and stay with it until you can’t anymore.

 

And so according to my Blog stats, I have now showed up 5,000 times over the past 15 years. 5,000! That’s Tolstoy’s War and Peace times 4! I sometimes think I should sit down and read them all again on a rainy day—make that month!— but in light of that War and Peace reality check, that would be pretty daunting. Yet interesting to see what themes keep re-surfacing, what titles or even sentences I’ve repeated, which quotes I keep coming back to. Likewise, I think I would enjoy re-visiting all those days of all those years, a kind of slow-motion-my-life-flashing-before-my eyes. And for 38 years before starting this Blog, I have all my journals (also, more parallel journals these last 15). 

 

What does it all mean? This living life and reflecting on it at the same time? In the end, just footprints in the sand that the tides of time will wash away. But in the moment, simply the way that I give meaning and shape to the daily round in the way I was somehow born to do. Alongside the teaching and music-making, it brings color and taste and texture to the common and that’s enough. 5,000 little snapshots of the peaks and valleys of this precious life. 

Fates willing, I'll continue to show up. Perhaps another 5,000 to come. Onward!

 

School Dreams

Old habits die hard. Every year for 45 years, most of them here at this cottage on Lake Michigan where we finished our summer before returning to teach, I would have dreams about school. The usual kind of kids not listening to me or being naked in front of the class— you teachers know what I mean. It was the psyche’s way of preparing for the next round and always arrived like clockwork a week or two before school started. 

 

So here I am, now six years retired, and I still sometimes have those dreams! Like the last two nights. I guess my subconscious didn’t get the memo. Or else realizes that I’m in no way retired and still teaching both kids and adults, though on my own terms now and on my own schedule. Last night’s dream was actually a great idea that I should have done in my recent Orff training course that I should note for next time. Coupled with the one about kids who refused to follow my directions. 

 

We think AI and such is so smart, but nothing beats the mystery of our own minds. Meanwhile, a word to all my fellow teachers about to start the year—may your dreams not come true!

Cats and Dogs

“There are three kinds of people in this world. Those who are good at math and those who aren’t.”

 

We love dividing the world in two (or three)— from the casual coffee or tea drinkers, beer or wine, football or basketball to the more catastrophic Republican/ Democrat, Christian/ Muslim, white/black, straight/gay, etc. One of the more popular casual divides is, “Cats or dogs?”

 

Cat lovers admire the independence of cats, the ease of caretaking by a simple installment of a cat door that doesn’t require walking their pet on a leash with pooper-scooper in hand. They don’t expect unconditional slobbery love, yet appreciate the moments when the cat, on its terms, rubs against your leg and purrs, or jumps on your lap to enjoy your head scratches or jumps in your bed for some moments of mutual warmth. If you have a cat, you’re released from potty training— a simple kitty litter box will do— or taking an expensive class to teach your cat to come, heel, stay, roll over, beg. Ain’t no cat gonna listen to your commands or do what you say at their will and you’re at peace with that.

 

Dog owners love the way the dogs will greet them at the door like, as one poet says, you’ve just come home from a war instead of a trip to Walgreens. They like an excuse to get out to walk, enjoy playing fetch for what would be hours on end if the dog had its way, They love most dogs’ happy demeanor and endless affection and exuberant chasing of squirrels. Sometimes it’s also a nice way (see the film 101 Dalmations) to meet other dog owners, one of whom might be your future life partner. 

 

I love both my grandchildren equally (of course!), but a 15-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy are by definition, not to mention individual character, quite different. On this most recent visit, I had a wonderful walk and talk with Zadie (the elder) on the beach, enjoyed doing many of the things and yesterday’s list with her, never had a single eye-rolling moment and many genuine smiles and a few affectionate hugs. But I’d be less than honest to not admit that it was hard that she slept so late and was holed up in her room for so long, with far too much time looking at that evil little screen. But minus the screen part, imagining her as a cat helped me love and accept her much more. Sometimes aloof, wholly independent, not responsive to adult commands— of course, that’s her cat nature! No sense trying to convince her to change species.

 

Malik, by contrast, was the ever-faithful happy dog, by my side many of our waking moments and happy following me (or me following him) doing so many fun things together. 

 

So I find it useful to see them each in this light and accept the obvious: I’m both a cat AND dog person. 

Mandatory Fun

It’s no secret that I’m big on organized, mandatory fun and my daughter Talia is cut out of the same cloth. In general, our family is dedicated to ritual gatherings, with our long history of annual events we’ve done for decades—Thanksgiving with my sister’s family, neighborhood Christmas caroling, snow trip with three other families, New Years Walk with particular friends and family, the Spring Calistoga trip with the snow trip people, the annual family gathering at Lake Michigan.  Recently we’ve added the post-Christmas Palms Springs trip with the grandkids and the European bike trips with 6 to 8 friends. Each has its own subset of particular rituals— hikes, games, cooking and such. It could feel like a list of things to check off that overshadows the spontaneity of just hanging out together, but in fact, it helps focus the ways each particular group likes to hang out together. Especially these days when “hanging out together” often means everyone just sitting in the same room looking at their phones. 

 

Michigan with the kids and grandkids is awash with such rituals and I knew that this year, because of my one-time strange schedule with the Orff Course, I’d have very little time to fulfill them all. 3 ½ days to be exact, in contrast to the usual 10 days or even two weeks. But in that short time, we managed to: 

 

Swim in Lake Michigan, play frisbee in the lake, walk to the Outlet and skip stones, look for Petoskey stones on the beach, hike to the Baldy dune, play cornhole, paddleball, Rummy 500, Rummikube, Taboo, Five Crowns and Miniature Golf, go to the Cherry Bowl Drive-in Movie (Spiderman— feel free to skip it). 

 

We didn’t have time to go into town to the Cool Spot for ice cream, walk to the  Frankfort lighthouse, rent bikes and ride on the rails-to-trails path, rent a motorboat on Crystal Lake, visit Mystery Hill, do a jigsaw puzzle, sing songs around a bonfire on the beach, have a Dance Party, go to a dinner out at the Cabbage Shed, walk up Sugarbowl dune (they did it without me, I did it without them today), canoe, kayak, play the card games King’s corner and Trash, throw a football or play wiffle ball or  kickball on the beach, go to the Arcadia Marsh walk, watch a movie on TV with popcorn, go out for breakfast at Watervale Resort.

 

Did it matter that list of things we didn’t do was so much longer than the things we did? Not really. It’s all about the quality of the time spent and that was sheer delight for me. And I believe for everyone, even my almost 15-year-old grand-daughter whose attention, by all her peers’ standards, should be elsewhere than hiking in nature, playing games and hanging out with adults in their 40’s and 70’s. More on that in the next post. 

 

Meanwhile, both grandkids and daughters left today—and yes, it felt too soon—while I have two more weeks here. My list is to swim every day (if I can deal with this swimmer’s ear syndrome that is hard to bear), bike, hike, walk and probably get going on my next book, already in its second draft and awaiting completion. Driving my daughter to the airport, I finished listening to Ann Patchett’s pitch-perfect book Whistler, shopped on the way home and now have a lazy Sunday afternoon ahead with light drizzle outside. While so many friends still teaching school are arriving tomorrow to begin their school year at the obscenely early date of August 10^th (and a week earlier for many!), I’m happy to be here. 

The Barefoot Connection

In a heartfelt note one of the teachers in China wrote to me, she said:

 

"While we were fully immersed in games and laughing freely, you watched us with a soft, gentle smile, clearly savoring every moment of our joy. It felt just like a loving elder quietly observing children play carefree and happily, a pure and tender scene that touched me deeply the whole time.

 

I absolutely adore how relaxed and unbound you look teaching barefoot! This laid-back, unreserved vibe inspires me so much. I secretly hope that I can also teach my own workshops barefoot someday, just like you, and bring that same sense of ease to all my participants."

 

It was my teacher Avon who called this work “The Barefoot Connection.” He said teaching—and dancing—with shoes on was like playing piano with gloves. You miss the direct contact and connection through all the nerve-endings in the feet. If you’ve ever had a foot massage, you understand there is both deep science behind how the foot affects the whole body— and thus, the whole spirit. So yes, let’s take off our shoes!

 

Which I still do in my workshops, without a second thought about it. Now in my summer paradise on Lake Michigan, I feel again the grand pleasure and deep connection of walking barefoot in the sand, at the water’s edge, in the grass, on the dirt path that leads to the back lake. There is a great complexity to living a wholly fulfilled and soulful life, but sometimes it’s as simple as just walking barefoot on this great, green earth. 

The Case of the Missing Case

I’ve joined many who complain about the lack of resilience in the younger generation. Yet here I confess that in my eldership, I’m noticing my own issues of losing patience too quickly.

 

With the bigger issues, like the disappointment of human indecency, greed, ignorance and such, I’m actually a little more patient. But when something goes missing that I can’t find, watch out! There’s a storm a-brewin’!

 

This morning, I couldn’t find the case for my glasses. I looked in every logical nook and cranny of this summer cottage, under the bed, under piles on tables and it simply had mysteriously disappeared. I calmly asked for some compassionate family member to help me, which they did for two minutes, to no avail. I stuck to the best search policy of remembering when I last had them and where they would logically be. (There’s a Mullah Nasruddin story of someone looking for his keys out in his front yard. When someone asked him when he last had them, he said, “I dropped them somewhere around the front door.” “Then why are you looking over here?” “Because the light is better!”)

 

And speaking of light, I turned on my phone flashlight and looked down into the corner springs of the fold-up bed and sure enough, there it was! But by then I had worked myself into such a tizzy and made myself so miserable that there was still work to do to regain equilibrium. I also felt that after swimming yesterday, in spite of wearing earplugs, my head felt plugged up and it was even harder than usual to hear what anyone was saying, even with my hearing aids. So the frustrations were multiplying and in that state, as we do, I kept piling more on. “How to deal with my typically-phone-addicted 15-year-old granddaughter so that five minutes of conversation doesn’t feel like a gift from the heavens, but just the norm it should be?” “Why is my wife asking me to clean the stove after someone else’s cooking five minutes after I woke up?” “Why isn’t the orange-man dead yet?” You get the idea. 

 

Today was the day to do the annual ritual hike to the Baldy Dune and I actual considered not going, not wanting to bring the others down with my grouchiness. But they encouraged me to come and I wisely conceded.

 

On the walk up to the dune, my youngest daughter confided to me struggles she and fellow staff members were having with the admin at school and on the beach walk back, my oldest daughter shared similar struggles with a couple of fellow staff members in her work. Both brought up systemic issues with the way we now avoid real conversation and out-source conflict to committees in disturbingly ineffective and inefficient ways. Issues worthy of some reflection in this Blog, but not now. More importantly, I loved that they both trusted me to listen and empathize and I was happy to do both. It also, along with the 4-mile walk, was a good way to walk out of my Pity Party and feel a little bit more restored to self. 

 

So now the afternoon awaits with a bike ride or back-lake swim, Miniature Golf with the grandkids, sushi dinner back home, the Cool Spot Ice Cream in town and a trip to the Cherry Bowl Drive In to see Spiderman. With only 3 ½ days with my daughters and grandkids before they have to go back, all our annual rituals feel condensed. But still fun and now that I’ve solved The Case of the Missing Case, I hope to thoroughly enjoy them. 

 

PS Skipped the bike ride and swim, but took the grandkids to Mini-Golf. Before getting in the car, looked for my sunglasses which I had on the Baldy Hike and they were nowhere to be seen. Still missing. Then a great game of golf— we all have improved a lot and Zadie got a hole-in-one, shopping, home to ger ready for the evening—and then my phone was missing. Zadie had it in the store to look at the photo of the wine I was supposed to buy, but swore that she gave it back to me. I looked in the car. Nothing. Had Kerala call it and when I went to the car again, heard the ring. Again, nothing in sight in front or back seats but when I opened the trunk, there it was! It had fallen out of my front pocket while reaching far into the trunk for the Spindrift water. 

 

Some gods of lost items are having a super-fun day watching my suffer. Good for them! But can we stop now please? 

Retirement

I had this radical thought arriving at the northern Michigan summer place—maybe I should retire from being my own publicity agent. Stop telling people to check out my movie or books or podcast or blog or CD and just embrace the truths that: 

 

1)   No one really cares that much.

2)   I should stop identifying my work with my worth.

3)   I should enjoy the moments with people and not ruin them by telling them about any or all of the above. 

4)   I might even consider not posting my travels, courses, new books, etc. on Facebook. Gasp!

 

I often amend the Ghana proverb of “A good soup needs no advertising” with another partial truth: “But people who would like it need to know where and when its being served.” That’s my justification. 

 

But maybe I’ll just try seeing what it’s like without me shining the spotlight on it all. Just go down to the beach and read and play cornhole and swim without telling the world about it. Even though I just did!