The Bloom in the Branch

Though the mountains are dusted with new snow and I wear my winter wool hat while biking, the calendar says Spring has arrived and the returning birds and sprouting wild onion flowers agree. I heard them and I saw them while biking along the Salzach River yesterday and I realized how silent the winter world had been and black and white and grey. Now the song in my heart was also coming from the tops of trees and the forest floor was dotted with small purple and white flowers. Lovely.

My Iranian friends celebrated No Rooz yesterday, the Persian New Year so poetically aligned with Spring, the time of renewed vows and hope and gratitude. Their table is covered with ceremonial items symbolizing rebirth, beauty and health, wisdom and patience, affluence, the sunrise and love. They jumped over fire (I did this two years ago myself) and welcomed Spring in other ritual ways. In our modern world of cold machines that know neither winter’s silence, spring’s renewal, summer’s heat or fall’s color (except on screensavers), it’s a good idea to remind nature that we’re paying attention.

Spring in San Francisco is a quiet affair, mostly announced by the magnolia blooms in January, plum’s in February and cherry’s in March. No big contrast with our mild winter, no sense of relief from the bitter cold and dark, dark days. But still it’s there in our ancient cellular memory, alongside a renewed interest in fertility-related desires. And a reminder from the natural world to not lose faith, that the bloom is patiently waiting in the bare branch to burst forth in glorious color.

Yesterday, I played some musical examples from our school CD’s for my students here at the Orff Institut. We heard 8^th grader Shane singing “Dance Me to the End of Love” and as I tried to tell them Shane’s story, my voice started cracking and tears came to my eyes. Cellular memory again as I described giving Shane’s graduation speech that began, “Shane was one of the most difficult students I ever had.” In both the speech and the story, I related how Shane seemed constantly against the grain of the music class from three-years old to eleven until he got interested on his own in alternative rock and suddenly came alive in the music classes as well. At the end of the speech, with Shane at my side in front of some 300 parents and kids, I said something like: “We danced together clumsily for 9 years, stepping on each other’s feet, but at the end of the dance was love. (see song title above). You taught me never to give up on a student, that with sufficient faith, patience, the constant light of the sun and the daily watering in the class, the bloom will come to the branch.” As indeed it did.

My Persian friends are waiting patiently for the light to return to their country’s government (as are we all for our own!), my music teacher friends waiting for the testing madness to run its course and arts come to blossom in schools, we all know friends or family or parts of ourself that are frozen cold and need thawing, desparate for more bird song and flower bloom. Spring has arrived to remind us that all is decay and renewal, that the bare branch lies inside the bloom and the bloom inside the bare branch. 

Time, light, warmth and water are all that's needed to make miracles. Happy Spring!

Commute Through Paradise

It is said that trauma lodges itself in your cellular memory and can be called up when similar situations present themselves. I believe the same is true for our moments of deep happiness. Today I took the old bike ride from the Orff Institute to the village of Anif, the place I lived for six weeks my first time teaching the Special Course in Salzburg. As I passed each familiar landmark, I felt a wave of profound joy and contentment spread over me. Not nostalgia, but a reliving on a cellular level the same happiness I had back then. There was the Sound of Music pavilion at the entrance to Hellbrun Park, then the tree-lined path like the birth canal to Paradise, the cage in the zoo where I greeted the lions each morning going out and evening coming back, the small gate that opens to the vista of surrounding mountains (now wholly born into Heaven!), the row of quaint houses and artists’ studios, the church where the conductor Herbert von Karajan is buried and then the farmhouse where I stayed. Every day for six weeks, I biked this 20 minute ride back and forth, in rain, sun, sleet or snow and sometimes all of the above in one day.

What a glorious way to start and end the day. How I pitied the people who commuted on a trafficked freeway to their isolated office cubicles, with mountain scenes on their screensavers and scheduled trips to the gym. Here each day began with exercise blending with a healthy dose of beauty, more exercise and beauty and fun and connection at work dancing in circles and then ended with another infusion of of transport that got the heart pumping and the breath going on paths and through fields that moved your heart and took your breath away. A whole life lived fully in each hour of the day, nothing to recover from or compensate for. What a fine time that was.

I always mildly regretted that in spite of a life of constant traveling, I never lived abroad for a year or two. This was the closest I came to that feeling, everything fresh and new and exciting and filled with feeling of living in a mythic world, carried by a new culture and a physical beauty in the surroundings that daily took my breath away. And ten years later, it’s all still here, untouched by the claws of commerce. Amazing.

Herb Caen, that colorful San Francisco newspaper columnist, once said, “When I die and am admitted through the Pearly Gates, I’ll look around and say, “It’s okay. But it ain’t San Francisco!” I agree with him about that, but let me add: “Not bad. But not as good as the bike ride to and from Anif.”

The Tiger's Whisker

I just spent another two days of my life doing what I seem born to do— play, sing, dance, laugh, challenge and have fun with a group of strangers, armed only with the body, voice, imagination and a few silly little rhymes. Amazing what one can do with “criss-cross applesauce,” “choco-late,” and “Johnny Whoops!” Add in a couple of simple welcome songs and dances, some small instrumentsin a circle, a 3-note tune in 7 beats, a bunch of sticks and plastic tubes and an Estonian lullaby sung with heads on each other’s backs and you got yourself a good day. Everything the news doesn’t report is present in the room. Everything the news does report is dissolved and washed away in the healing power of tone, movement and patterned vibration. Thanks to 60 lovely teachers in Munich for your beautiful singing, open minds and hearts, good ideas and moving music.

But during a discussion time, the sadness of our educational practices and policies (and remember, I was in Germany. This is a universal 'our,' with of course, many commendable exceptions) leaked in as one teacher asked what to do with young teenagers reluctant to participate, coming into class with slumped shoulders and eyes ready to roll, armored to protect themselves from shame and ridicule by peers and teachers. I’ve lived my life in the world of “get it right the first time” and it’s mostly true that the teenagers I teach are not shut down because they’ve gone to a school that takes care to know them, see them, encourage them, praise them, inspire them to take risks and creates a safe community to do so. And yes, some protection and rolled eyes as part of their initiation into young adulthood, but mostly overruled by their seasoned innocence and enthusiasm that has been left intact. But of course, I know the characters she described and know how immensely difficult it is to begin such a music program with kids at 12, 13, 14 years old.

To answer her question, I launched into a short version of the folk tale of The Tiger’s Whisker. A woman’s husband returns from a war spiritually shattered and closed down. She can’t reach him and in despair, seeks counsel from the Wise Woman. She is told that there is a magic potion, but first she has to get a whisker from a tiger to add to the brew. So she goes as close as she dares to the tiger’s cave with a bowl of food and leaves it and runs away. Each day, she puts the food a little bit closer. After a month or so, she gets to the point where she can hold the bowl while the tiger eats. And then one day, she pulls out a whisker. Returning to the Wise Woman with the whisker, she asks for the potion. “There is no potion, “the Wise Woman confesses. “But if you have had the patience and courage to pull out a tiger’s whisker, surely you can do the same for your husband. Just offer your love each day until he finally feels safe enough to open again to the world.”

So many kids have been wounded by a culture that doesn’t love them, nurture them or praise them sufficiently, but all it takes is one courageous teacher to haul them ashore to safety and give them the tools— like music, for example— to re-claim and express their heart’s vision and pleasure. As mentioned before, that hasn’t exactly been my work and frankly, I don’t know if I’m capable of it. Perhaps working with Youth at Risk or in prisons or refugee camps could be the next chapter for me. But for now, my job is to keep the doors open from the beginning and help shield the children from the slings and arrows of unthinking and often downright cruel public policy.

Meanwhile, my deepest admiration for all those who daily bring food to the tiger and find the courage to pluck the whisker.

My Father's Gloves

I am walking through the Spring snows of Salzburg dressed in love. On my hands, my father’s winter gloves he left behind six years ago. On my head, my wife’s woolen hat I snuck from the hall armoire while packing for this trip (shh! don’t tell!). My winter coat was a spontaneous gift from my son-in-law when he bought himself a new one, the Argentinian sweater underneath a gift from my daughter. The shirt is a Christmas gift from my other daughter, the T-shirt I bought last summer up in Northern Michigan. The scarf is a present from Orff folks in China, the pants courtesy of the kind Gap employee who was closing up shop and unlocked the door for me and found the perfect pants in five minutes (this the night before my trip!). My boots I bought for Salzburg 10 years ago, re-cobbled a few times by our local shoemaker. I won’t mention the unmentionables.

And so I am a walking Facebook, the status of my friends updated on my body as I walk. We often tell those we love that we will think of them always, but mostly we don’t. Except sometimes. Like now, as I inventory each article of clothing and remember each person while walking through the fairyland of Salzburg made yet more magical by the floating flakes. I am warmed twice over, once by the familiar fabric and once by the fond remembrance of friends and family. I would wish each of them walking by my side (well, maybe not the shoemaker and Gap employee) and others too who didn’t clothe me today.

But no need to be greedy. It’s enough that I thought of them, that they helped warm both my heart and my body and that I have the good fortune to walk in wonder, clothed in remembrance.

Point of View

Woke up to yet more snow. It’s March 15^th (the ides of March!) and shouldn’t it be Spring already? I have to walk the half-hour to the Orff Institut with my suitcase to be ready to get to the Munich train after class and it’s snowing. By my usual standards of expecting the World to wrap itself around my needs and desires, I should be annoyed.

But last night walking to dinner in the Old Town, I found myself singing Christmas Carols and “Shezam!”—instant transformation! Fact is, Christmas in Peru wasn’t quite the image I have stored from childhood and I kind of missed it. So why not have it in March? The snowflakes under the sparkling lights, the castle up the hill and beautiful old buildings left and right, the cozy fire in the restauarant and candles on tables, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” and “Silent Night” (composed a few blocks away here in Salzburg!) ringing in my ears— it was Christmas in my heart. All that was missing was the same spirit in the people I passed by, who I imagined were less than enchanted and  thinking, “Hey, Spring! We’re ready! Enough with the snow!”

So this morning, I’ll set off with my suitcase belting out “Winter Wonderland” and “Deck the Halls” as I pass my bewildered fellow pedestrians and make some delicious lemonade from the lemons of the weather— or rather hot cider with cloves. And if the weather should change again, I’ll be happy to change to whisling Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring.” Hey, World, I got lots of songs. Give me what you will and I’ll find the right one to change my point of view and be right there with you!

Meanwhile, note to self. Put spending an actual Christmas in Salzburg at the top of the old Bucket List. A different kind of magic than Machu Picchu and not so strenuous.

Lost and Found

• Time spent looking for my eyeglasses case: 6 minutes

   Found: Under a book.

• Time spent looking for the ziplock bag I brought on the plane and was positive I didn’t

   throw away: 9 minutes

   Found: In the pocket of my fleece vest.

• Time spent emptying my backpack looking for my gloves outside in the freezing cold

  while talking to a student: 5 minutes

  Found: In my windbreaker pocket. (The student suggested I check there.)

• Time spent looking for my wristwatch: 4 minutes

  Found: On my wrist.

That’s 24 minutes of my life lost looking for lost things. 24 minutes of stress and frustration that weakened my immune system and damaged my self-esteem. 24 minutes that could have been spent contemplating the perfect original nature of all sentient beings. 24 minutes I might have spent in company with the Buddha nature which is timeless, unchangeable, unmeasurable.

Instead, I’m hanging out with that everyday self who is indeed subject to the ravages of time, is changing— for the worse when it comes to keeping track of things— and whose change is measurable— see 24 minutes above. It really is sobering. I’ve slowly come to peace with reading glasses and avoiding noisy restaurants and a few other indignities of the aging process, but this is really starting to alarm me. Not just once, but several times a day, that maddening moment when I stop with furrowed brow and wonder, “Now where could that be?”

All set to post this, but the Hotel wireless is asking for the password. Anyone remember where I put it?

The Discomfort Zone

Today I biked in the snow. Not something that happens very often in San Francisco. Stuck out my tongue and drank in the flakes while swerving around a few ice patches. Arrived with pants splattered with mud, backpack frosted with white, wet gloves and chilled fingers— and yet happy as a kid playing…well, out in the first snow.

Before coming to Salzburg, I looked at the weather predictions and groaned. I was happily welcoming Spring in San Francisco, the plums having peaked, cherries on their way and first leaves on the deciduous trees I pass each day to school. Why was I going to Salzburg where Winter still ruled? Who wants to be in a cold climate, bundling and unbundling, walking with the wind whipping on your frozen face, trudging through snow turned to slush, biking on ice patches squinting between the snow flakes? I’m too old for that crap!

Or so I thought. Turns out I love it! Well, at least in small doses. When I woke up this morning and saw the first snowflakes, my New Jersey childhood memories were triggered and I remembered just how magical it is. And how good it feels to be cold and wet and come in to dry off at the fire with the requisite hot chocolate and such. Put on soft lights and listen to Schubert’s Trout Quintet and feel the world wrap around you.

Why are we so obsessed with being constantly comfortable? The hot chocolate tastes better and the Schubert sounds truer if we earn it by some sense of battling the elements, of facing cold, wetness, hunger, leg pain from the long walk or bike ride. I tell the people coming face-to-face with their own frustrations, challenges and insecurities in my workshops that the practice is to become comfortable with discomfort, in any of its many shapes or forms. The “discomfort zone” is where a lot of the great stuff happens.

As always, I need to listen to my own advice. At my age, the Florida retirement doesn’t sound as absurd as it used to, but it’s heartening to know that I can enjoy something so inconvenient, dangerous, wild and damn fun as riding a bike in the snow.