Suitcases Up Steps

Somewhere around 11^th grade, I suffered from an inexplicable bout of insomnia for a few months. Never knew why it started or how it ended, but I do remember that it was sheer torture. I’d lie awake just on the edge of sleep, some way too-conscious mind way too conscious of the fact that I wasn’t sleeping and then getting frustrated and angry, which I’m sure didn’t help. Luckily, it stopped and never was a problem again. 

 

Until last night. Of course, it was jet lag and no surprise that I awoke at 2:00am, but a bit of a surprise that I was up for 4 hours with that same maddening feeling of almost asleep, but not quite! Then I clearly finally dozed off and when I heard some sounds from my wife in our curtain-darkened room, imagined that it was 8:00 or 9:00 am. Imagine my shock when I saw that it was 12 noon!!! Our check-out time! We got a half-hour reprieve and were out on the streets ready for the train trip to York, our next stop. 

 

As any long-time reader knows, I like to notice the things that are different about one place from another and in both the subway and train station, here’s one: No escalators!!! And why not? So many people dragging heavy suitcases up fifteen steps or so, so it’s not as if there’s not a demand. And yes, there is a lift (translation: elevator), but it’s nowhere near as convenient or user-friendly as a simple escalator. These days, I don’t feel like the U.S. can give a single word of advice to any other culture, but I think “escalators in train stations” is something the world —well, at least the U.K.— might consider. 

 

A two-hour trip to York and for the second time in two days, went to our Premier Inn and were not in their records, only to discover that the Premier Inn we wanted was literally a second nearby hotel, around the block in London and two doors down in York! Kind of like Starbucks in downtown San Francisco. 

 

Our Premier Inn has a broken lift, so there we were again lugging our suitcases up steps. Luckily, we got a room on the 1^st floor! Quickly settled in and hit the streets around 6:00 pm. Plenty of light, because York is a fairly northern latitude and we’re only three weeks out from the Summer Solstice. (I’m writing this at 10:00 pm and it’s only just now twilight.)

Looking for a snack, we decided on a Thai dinner, though promised each other that we’d go to the Fish and Chips place tomorrow that serves it up in newspaper, a “when in Rome” commitment. After dinner, we walked up the steps to the Medieval Wall that surrounds part of the city and started to circumambulate. Perfect 75-degree temperature (no converting from Celsius here!) for an evening stroll, looking down at the gardens of the row houses below. Came to the end and descended to walk towards the City Centre (British spelling—again, when in Rome…) and it was evocative of another city we loved visiting on our bike trip two years ago—Ljubljana in Slovenia. They both have a river running through it with walks along the side and outdoor restaurants and pedestrian-friendly streets. 

 

This is what I love about Europe. The taste of antiquity in the air in these old town neighborhoods with buildings/ castles/ churches/ walls as old as a thousand years, the people-friendly and winding meandering streets, the outdoor restaurants and cafes serving quality food, the diners having conversations (though phone addiction is creeping in). My wife just read two books about how cars have shaped American culture—one called Carrmeggedon and the other Life After Cars and both suggesting what San Francisco is beginning to do— pay attention to car-free roads in parks, slow streets, pedestrian malls, bike lanes and more. 

 

In Rebecca Solnit’s book mentioned in the last post (whose subtitle I neglected to mention– A History of Walking), she notes: 

 

“…(in the United States) public space is designed to accommodate the privacy of automobiles, malls replace main streets, streets have no sidewalks, buildings are entered through their garages, city halls have no plazas, and everything has walls, bars, gates. Fear has created a whole style of architecture and urban design, notably in Southern California where to be a pedestrian is to be under suspicion in many of the subdivisions and gated ‘communities.’ “

 

Yep! I have felt this so strongly traveling around the country giving workshops and being put up in chain hotels on strip malls with chain mega-stores and taken out to dinner at chain restaurants. How can the aesthetic experience I’m hoping to give in the workshop be fully absorbed when we live like this, surrounded by sameness everywhere and character nowhere? I remember once in Grand Rapids asking if I could walk to the movie theater in a nearby mall and they looked at me like I was an alien from another planet. I did anyway, without a sidewalk with cars zooming by. 

The next morning I was so starved for something that felt real, that seemed to be a neighborhood, that I started to walk away from the main road (again, no sidewalks). Finally, I stumbled on a park-like green space with a sign announcing future ‘development,’ walked up to a tree, looked around not surprised to find nobody there and basically took off my shirt and dropped my pants to hug that tree and try to feel like an authentic human being again in close contact with an authentic part of nature. Really! I did that! I was that desperate.

 

Talking about recalibrating our culture to accommodate walking and biking and such seems so trivial in the face of the major blitz, bombardment, onslaught we are suffering in the hands of the Moloch monsters we’ve somehow elected. And yet. It’s all connected. The AI saturation bombing is yet another attempt to render the body wholly —and the mind and the heart—irrelevant. 

In the face of that all, the simple act of walking in our bodies, in our own thoughts, in company with the natural world, is both a needed personal healing and profound collective act of resistance. When that simple step can go further yet to organize our architecture and paths and sidewalks and roads around this landslide vote for quality of life, then real change can begin. Europe remains so impressive in its ongoing commitment to withstanding the onslaught. Still no skyscrapers in Paris, the empty Salzburg fields that were there when I first visited in 1990 still there, the activity around city riverfronts in Ljubljana where people stroll and dine and sip coffee or savor a glass of wine— they seem to be holding steady. Not so in China, where they razed the colorful hutongs and chose the Las Vegas glitz and towering buildings and endless malls, as did Tokyo in its own way. And so on.

 

That’s my first day report—well, my second report, as Be Here Now was written on the train. Tomorrow an adventure to see if I can complete a loop that happened 48 years ago, when my wife and I visited York for the first (and only until now) time. To be continued…

Be Here Now

If the reader will indulge me, a short rant and vent before moving on to the praise of this wild and precious life. 

 

As noted in the last post, I miraculously cleared the deck before leaving on my trip so I can be more wholly present and embrace the notion of “vacation.” But we (certainly I) have organized my life around being perpetually “in touch” and “available” through the ever-expanding possibilities of e-mail, text message, WhatsApp, Facebook, Facebook-messenger and having done so, feel obliged to check in in case I miss anything “important.” So the first e-mails I saw were two people signed up for the Jazz Course saying they’ve dropped, having heard of one more the day before I left and two more the week before that. That’s 5 out of 20 people casually letting me know, “Oh, by the way, I’m not going to make it.” More and more, I’m seeing people treat commitment as a casual “maybe I will, maybe I won’t” and that not only disturbs me culturally, but makes it almost unworkable to run courses like I do and depend upon them meaning it when they sign up. Of course, accidents and family crisis and health crisis are real and understandable, but in the past, that accounts for maybe two or three people out of 100 sign-ups. This is now 5 out of 20! 25%!

 

I need all 20 and then 5 more to make our budget and needless, to say, this was NOT what I wanted to hear and it really threw me to the floor. On top of the fact that in order to check messages in those multiple mediums, I have to scroll through the junk mail of the next bad news in my home country of not-Canada. Of course, I don’t read them, but hard not to notice the headings and do I have to stay connected with this shit when I’m just trying to re-learn how to be more fully present in the here and now? It’s really bumming me out. 

 

But having released my complaint in language, I’m working on letting it go and turning my attention to Ram Dass’s timeless advice: “Be here now.” What does that actually mean and how might I pay attention to it more fully? A few thoughts: 

 

BE— Be wholly present in the fullness of your being. 

HERE—Locate yourself in space.

NOW—Locate yourself in time. 

 

In reality, we are constantly criss-crossing between past, present and future. We are here at the same time we are there. We are present in our own being at the same time being inhabited by others speaking through us or at us or colonizing our thoughts with their thoughts or (the best of choices), enlarging our thoughts with their provocative thoughts.

 

All of this has always been possible in a mind made boundless by imagination, jump-started by stories around the dinner table or campfire, then given more energy by literacy—books that can instantly transport you to other lands and inhabit you with other thoughts and carry you to other times. Books that you can choose. Books that are your ticket to distant places and times. Books that are wholly your choice as to when and if and why to buy one and how much you’re willing to spend. (Not the price of the book, but the time invested.)

 

Now the choices have amplified exponentially. You’re in one restaurant with one friend at the same time you’re FOMO’ing yourself to the other restaurant with other friends. Your connection to place is broken by heads-down looking at the tiny screen, your possibility of savoring the moment stolen by the endless distraction of games, videos, social media posts singing you to your be-here-now-doom and no one is tying you to the mast or plugging your ears. 

 

Rapid transportation is another way to catapult you out of the here of the body’s slow movement through place and in the body's time— planes, trains and automobiles that offer little by way of savoring the journey, just getting through the miles between here and there to begin your “real” life or vacation in the new places. The faster it moves, the less you are “here.” 

 

Yet trains that are not “faster than a speeding bullet” can have their own romance (as the old Hitchcock films, the Before Sunrise film, and my own train travel in Europe capture). Boats that likewise glide more leisurely through water (Now Voyager film and my boat ride to Formentera) and cars that sing out “Road trip!” (On the Road, my first trip to California, my pandemic RV trip to Michigan with the kids and grandkids), autos that meander the back roads and bypass the super-highways, have their own sense of hereness and nowness. 

 

Keep slowing down and the pleasures increase— the bike ride, the canoe or kayak trip, and best of all, walking— not destination fast-paced hiking or head-down rushing to the next subway stop, but true meandering and wandering . 

 

And so on the verge of a 5-day semi-organized walking trip in the Yorkshire Dales and the good sense to bring Rebecca Solnit’s book Wanderlust, I’m ready to renew my love of walking. Stay tuned for my Walking Autobiography, my musings after each day’s walk and my sense that the best resistance to the world demanding my attention with its distractions is to refuse it—or at least limit it to one short e-mail check a day and that’s it. Wish me luck!

 

(And please sign up for the Jazz Course!)

Up and Away

I’ve never been a big fan of the saying that “God gives you just the right amount of trouble that you can handle,” but it is true that She gave me exactly the number of things I could check off my list before taking off for six weeks of travel. With a flight at 8:00 pm at night, I woke up and got to work on laundry, packing, sending out invoices, paying all bills, whittling e-mail to zero, packing up a box and two envelopes of books and sending them off at the Post Office, eating all the perishables in the refrigerator, calling my two daughters and sister, booking a flight to China, voting by mail, buying a plug adaptor and yet more. The one snafu was my haircutter being closed (on a Tuesday? Why?) and having to scramble to find another, which I did. 

 

So off we arrived at the airport and I had some creeping sense that something was going to go wrong and sure enough, suddenly the U.K, demands an ETA before you can enter. With no line ahead or behind us, two helpful travel agents walked us through the application on our phone and we were able to board the plane, some $56 poorer. But then the guardian angels made up for it by giving my wife and I a whole row of three seats each and the rare luxury of a horizontal flight, without having to pay the $10,000 or so (I kid you not!) that first-class people had to pay. 

 

A few first impressions upon arriving in London: 

• Dickens and Conan Doyle wrote of London as cold, bleak, grey and foggy. Coming off the Heathrow Express train and out into the air at Paddington Station, it was a hot 90 degrees and sunny.

 

• Cobblestones are charming until you have to wheel a suitcase over them for several hundred yards. 

 

• E-sim is an easy way to keep access to your phone while traveling— up until the moment (after you’ve paid for it) you try to install it. 

 

• We are exactly in the place where we met our Australian friends Margie and Paul last year and wandered around the charming (and surprising) neighborhood of Little Venice.

 

• The waiter at our dinner pizza place asked if we were from Canada. When we told him U.S., he said with a smile, “Well, I just wanted to give you a chance to pretend.”

 

• That restaurant had a first for this “half-a-bottle-of-beer-and -then cork-it- until-tomorrow guy" (me)— you could get a pint, 1/2  pint or 1/3 pint! The latter was perfect for me and cost a mere 2.8 pounds. 

 

• The bill at the end had a Table Service charge, so no need to leave a tip. And the charge was 12%. Yeah!

 

So back in the land of Mind the Gap and Look Right (for cars when crossing the street that could hit you). Both metaphors for our Canadian I mean, American, experience. Having to daily mind the gap between our American promise and our dismal reality and to look to the Right to avoid their dangerous careening vehicles. 

 

Happy to say, we’re in the U.K.!

 

Homage to a Colossus

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters—another giant has passed from our midst. Yesterday, Jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins ascended to the world of the Ancestors at 95-years-young.  Back when he was 26, he recorded one of his best-known albums Saxophone Colossus, a title that suggests he was somehow aware that he was indeed destined to become a “colossus,” an old Greek word referring to “any extraordinarily large, towering statue, or metaphorically, a person or entity of immense size, power, or influence.” That well describes Sonny’s long and varied career. I suggest listening to that album—or any of his albums —to properly honor and pay homage to this American genius. 

 

For my own tribute, I changed slightly the words to Bobby Hebb’s hit song Sunny and they seemed to fit well. Sing it out loud if you will. 

 

“Sonny, yesterday our life was filled with rain, 

Sonny, you played for us the jazz that eased the pain,

Now the dark days are done and the bright days are here
My Sonny one shines so sincere
Sonny one so true we love you. 

[Verse 1]
Sonny, thank you for the sunshine bouquet. 

Sonny, thank you for the love you've brought our way
You gave to us your all and all

And helped us feel ten feet tall,

Sonny one so true we love you. 

[Verse 2]
Sonny, thank you for the truth you let us see
Sonny, thank you for the facts from A to Z
Our life was torn like wind-blown sand
A rock was formed when you joined the band.  

Sonny one so true we love you. 

[Verse 3]
Sonny, thank you for that smile upon your face

Sonny, thank you, thank you, for those notes that flowed with grace.

You're the spark of nature's fire,
You're our sweet, complete desire,
Sonny one so true, yes, we love you.”

 

R.I.P., Sonny Rollins. 

Double Dutch

Amidst all the reasons paraded daily in the news to confirm that human beings are the most pitiful species on the planet— worse than mosquitos, cockroaches, venomous snakes, who simply have no choice in who they are and how they act— almost daily I’m reminded that the opposite is equally true. From the delight of children to the kindness of strangers to the music of Sonny Rollins (may he R.I.P, having ascended to the heavens yesterday at 95 years old), we mortal beings are capable of such extraordinary grace and eloquent expression and deep connection. For every encounter with the worst amongst us, real or virtual, we should remember or seek out the best amongst us. 

 

For example, Double Dutch jump rope. This came up casually in a conversation the other day and though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen any examples of it live, the thought struck: Youtube!!! Ah, there it was, in all its glory and even more glorious that I ever could have imagined. Check out these two examples and be properly amazed!

 

https://youtu.be/jYIFsKfYSs4

 

https://youtu.be/2JtIQJsjJWs

 

Just witnessing these miraculous coordinated breathtaking physical feats is more than enough. But of course, I have to make it do double duty as a metaphor for human possibility. My first thought is that that level of intensity, concentration, rhythmic prowess and endurance feels a little like life under this insane government. Every day, throwing more at us and we have to hop and jump and duck and fall just to keep going. Not only running twice as fast to stay in the same place but dodging and flipping and dancing so as to not get tangled up in the ropes. 

 

But that metaphor doesn’t hold in real Double Dutch, where the turners are not trying to trip us up but are in the game to make it all work, to turn the ropes with our best interest in mind, to be reliable and trustworthy and do their job well. 

 

Ever a teacher, I can’t sign off without giving some background and illuminate how the term Double Dutch came to be. Here I’ll defer to Wikipedia:

 

It is widely acknowledged that modern Double Dutch originated in the United States among girls in predominantly Black urban communities during the 1940s and 1950s, who congregated on street corners to display new tricks and repurposed clotheslines as ropes. While it had long been a popular street activity for African American girls in New York City,  the rules of the sport were formalized in the early 1970s by NYPD officers Ulysses Williams and David Walker. The first official competition was held in 1974. Competitions in Double Dutch range from block parties to the world level. During the spring of 2009, Double Dutch became a varsity sport in New York City public high school.

 

Although it is popularly claimed the activity was brought to America by Dutch settlers, the term "double Dutch" itself has long existed in English slang, where it originally referred to incomprehensible speech or nonsense, reflecting historical English views of the Dutch language as confusing or strange. Phrases such as "in Dutch", meaning to be in trouble, further illustrate this pejorative connotation. The use of the term "double Dutch" for the game reflects the visual complexity and perceived challenge of the jump-roping, similar to the confusion implied by the idiom.

 

My new fantasy is to find a Double Dutch “teacher” to come to the next Orff Afrique course in Ghana and teach it to the kids there. I predict spectacular results. Meanwhile, I’m stepping gingerly between the fast-turning ropes of everything that I have to get done before taking off for a walking trip in England. Wish me luck!

 

Sing, Floss and Don't Forget the Sunscreen

It’s graduation time. Out in the city, young people are dressed up and out and about on their way to or from their big moment. I just helped a friend write a speech for a graduating 8^th grade class and between that and the recent Colbert thing I wrote and reading a commencement address Anne Lamott gave, such speeches are on my mind. I’ve only given one— many years back to my school’s 8^th grade about the lessons of Jazz. (Maybe I can dig it up.) And of course, would love to give more. But along with that elusive Honorary Doctorate, ain’t no University in the country that will ever invite me to speak. Oh, well.

 

But there is something appealing about trying to condense in one short speech everything you would like a future generation to consider. My friend found this one from Kurt Vonnegut in 1997 to fold into his 8^thgrade speech and truth be told, this would be hard to top. (Particularly love number 7 in light of my recent Facebook flaming). 

 

Enjoy!

 

1.    Wear sunscreen.

 

2.    Do one thing every day that scares you.

 

3.    Sing.

 

4.    Floss.

 

5.    Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

 

6.    Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

 

7.    Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

 

8.    Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

 

9.    Stretch.

 

10.  Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. 

 

11. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

 

12. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. 

 

13. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

 

14. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

 

15. Respect your elders.

 

16.   And trust me on the sunscreen.

Out of the Echo Chamber

One of the valid criticisms of social media is the way we choose our friends there and have our thoughts and feelings validated by people we know and like, even as they might occasionally respectfully disagree. It’s a lovely place to be, but also creates an Echo Chamber that potentially steps to the side of the kind of engagement that considers diverse points of view. 

 

However, to engage in civil discourse requires that people stick with ideas separate from personality and avoid personal insult. That they back up their point of view with genuine quality research rather than mere opinion. That they’re open to considering another perspective. In short, that there’s an atmosphere of mutual respect and willingness to listen. 

 

In general, the comments on my Facebook posts are exactly that. In my recent one, a version of the last Blogpost about Stephen Colbert, I enjoyed the dopamine rush of “Perfect! Sharing!,” “Yes!”, “Bravo!” and the best kind of comment, “Thanks for saying what many of us feel.” Some people respectfully disagreed with my suggestion and felt that his way of leaving the show worked well for them and was just what it need to be. A good example of mutually sharing different points of view with calm and respect. 

 

But then came the surprising comments from people I didn’t know, ranging from somewhat snarky to maliciously mean-spirited:

“Well, when you get your OWN TV show, you can give your own speech!!!”

 

“Too bad it’s all a lie. SC is simply not funny. He first played a conservative dunce and in real life he morphed into the libtard version of that character in real life. He is done, not funny, not relatable, not employed.”

 

“You’re a phkn idiot. His shit show of a how was losing 40 million per year. That’s why his dumbass got cancelled.”

 

Well, that wasn’t a fun way to start my day. Get me back to the echo chamber!

 

Of course, not the slightest reason to take it personally or defend myself or try to reason with these lovely people. But the way our hearts and brains are wired, of course, we feel threatened and go into defense mode. I can only imagine what kind of hate mail Stephen Colbert gets and the sheer volume of it. Not to mention any public figure who dares to expose themselves to the masses through writing, acting, performing. Especially those who tell uncomfortable truths, whose inboxes are not only filled with the vitriol and venom of scorn and contempt, but death threats as well. I imagine you need to grow a pretty thick skin to armor yourself against such attacks. Or develop a Buddhist transparency that lets the arrows pass through without drawing blood. 

 

But why does it need to be this way? For those who feel the need to attack anything that makes them think harder or consider something, it is revealing more about their knee-jerk reactions and low emotional and intellectual intelligence than anything else. But between the ease of social-media flaming without any face-to-face conversation, the permission of the Twitter-hate speech President gives to say whatever you want without a moment’s pause, the whole tone of national discourse has gone straight to the bottom of the barrel. And amidst the other toxic symptoms of a misogynist mansplaining and man-spreading culture, men seem particularly vulnerable to reveal their deep insecurities by spewing their venomous anger whenever and however and to whomever they want. In a recent Youtube summary of eight pianists that Chick Corea admired, it said that Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea both played in Miles Davis’ band, but never together. So someone commented:

 

“Wrong. Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea played together in Miles Davis Isle of Wight concert. Do your research, pal.”

 

The correction was appropriate, the tone unnecessary. And this and other comments like that were written by theoretically spiritually elevated jazz enthusiasts! 

 

My Echo Chamber is filled with the overtones of beautiful music, created by and appreciated by the people I would wish us all to be. Outside, the people I know exist (those 70 million voters!)but rarely meet are throwing their stones at the walls, but thankfully, the thuds are cushioned by the music of genuine civil discourse. 

 

Thanks for indulging me in this little vent so I can get on with my day and work on my Buddhist transparency.