Rummikub

Amongst our metaphors for life, being dealt a hand of cards is a common one. You’re given your family, your skin color, your genetic make-up, your culture, your location, your religion (or lack of it). Now we might include your ancestral traumas, the undigested grief of your forebears, the inherited shames of your cultural group. You have some choice as to how to shuffle and play the cards, but if you don’t draw the winning ones, it’s not your fault— just random chance at work. You just get what you get and you don’t get upset.

 

There are other theories at work. Hindu reincarnation suggests that your past karma determines your present card hand. The Greek idea of the Daimon and the Fates give you what you need to discover just exactly what you were born for. Certain psychologies suggest that your experience determines all, that nurture overpowers nature— though such experience also seems like a random card hand. 

 

Here with the grandkids, the games are abundant, with all levels of the dynamic between luck and skill. Card games that lean more towards luck— like War, Go-Fish, Trash— give us an out when we lose. “I just didn’t get the cards.” Games like Rummy 500 or Hearts require more choices and thus, more skill, though the cards you pick still matter. Games like chess (can’t think of a similar card game) start with an even playing board, so skill is everything.

 

I find myself enjoying the middle category, games that require skillful choices with “a little bit of luck.” My new favorite is Rummikub, which allows for a flexibility of adjusting and re-adjusting the numbered tiles in a way that keeps the brain wholly searching and active and considering a wide variety of choices. If had to pick one game that symbolizes our own choices in life, both the ability and the need to shuffle and re-shuffle our life experiences based on the inherited tiles we drew, the requirement that we stay alert and attentive to the possibilities, the suggestion that we needn’t attach to any combination of tiles already on the board, but treat them flexibly (like verbs instead of nouns!), Rummikub takes the prize. I find myself less concerned with winning and losing and more delighting in the way my brain feels while playing, a sensation of being wholly alive and present, the axons and dendrites firing on all cylinders like a happy dance. 

 

Shall we play? 

How Do We Begin?

It’s the first day of school at The San Francisco School. And I’m not there. For the fourth year in a row.  I’m sitting at the breakfast table looking out at Lake Michigan, the day spread out before me to do as I like. Truth be told, I’m not wishing I could trade this for a staff meeting. (The kids don’t come until next week, this the usual staff preparation.)

And yet when the time came each of my 45 years, it mostly was something to look forward to. Reuniting with fellow staff members, many of whom I felt as friends, catching up on our summer adventures. Returning to that sacred space of the music room and starting to organize, clean, re-organize. Leading or co-leading some musical staff gathering to re-connect and learn the song for the Opening Ceremony’s tunnel of singing teachers. 

 

Yes, I didn’t always love having to do the CPR training again and when we took out the calendars to negotiate the year’s schedule, I often felt exhausted as if I had already lived out the year ahead. And as the ever-expanding admin took over the meeting agendas and there was this creeping fear of the next announced change without staff consultation, I could feel my spirit slump. 

 

But then the kids would come and we remembered why we actually were there. Off we went into our elaborate and spirit-rousing opening ceremony, a few classes, a re-gathering for tea at the end of the day with teachers sharing their funny stories and my ritual toast, “One down, 174 to go!” With tongue very much in cheek, as I was in no hurry to “get through” the year, each day with the kids (mostly) a delight. 

In my “retired” life, the children still await me. Two school residency jobs in Taipei and Toronto for two and three weeks respectively, another one for college students in Tennessee. (Taipei, Toronto, Tennessee— this is my “T’ year. Maybe I should contact a school in Timbuktoo?) I’ll do some guest singing in a few SF Schools and perhaps some more mentoring with an Orff teacher I trained. I’m by no means done teaching kids and loving getting to do it on my terms, no staff meetings or report cards attached.

 

But still I care how the year begins for my daughter and two music colleagues at The San Francisco School, my mentees at Children’s Day School, the various teachers I’ve trained this summer in all of those schools. May the Powerpoints be few, the bureaucracies shut down, the 55 page staff handbooks lie unopened. May teachers gather in games, songs, dances, be left alone in their rooms to sort, clean and prepare, the meetings filled with exciting new ideas for collaborative projects. May discussions include the children and what they’ve always deeply needed—worthy work, the feeling of welcome, the sense of being seen, known and valued, the permission to play their way into understanding, the deep sense of connection— all of which they need more than ever in a world in short supply of all of the above. May teachers reaffirm their vows to nurture, nourish, protect and tell the children the truth, Republicans be damned, about how the world has been broken over and over again when we refuse to see what has happened and why and how every act of kindness, love, understanding can help heal it. Amidst all the details of how to get a school year up and running again, may they all keep their eyes on the prize.

 

Me, I’ll be swimming today, but my heart is still with you all. Happy New Year!

 

Nouns and Verbs

I like nouns as much as the next person, but have long understood their danger, the way they make ice of water and store it in the uniform cubicles of the ice tray, where they lie captive and inert. And when we do free them up for our summer drink, they slowly melt and water down our drink, robbing it of its full robust flavor or texture. 

 

We are living verbs, ever changing, held noun-like together in our skin and body type and character, but impossible to pin down. If you doubt that, look at a photo of you at 8 or 12 and yes, some things are recognizable, but can you really remember that you you once were? Or consider your granddaughter newly arrived at the lake, almost 12-yrs old going on 18 in body, mind and emotion and try to resist wishing that she was the one you remembered at seven years-old. Or celebrate this new version (in-between the eye-rolls) as your level of conversation reaches new levels. 

 

In short, as I think Einstein meant (never did study physics), matter is energy, energy is matter, nouns are convenient summaries of common flowing energies, just as lake or stream or ocean are impossible to pin down as things, but are alive fluid processes always in flux and ever-changing. So are people, so is music, so is gender, so is health.

 

But besides an innate human proclivity toward wanting the comfort of the fixity of things— be they objects, ideas, dogma or political rhetoric— we Americans are particularly vulnerable to a noun-centric view of life. A capitalistic, materialistic society all about the consumption of things leaks down into all aspects of life. Music, for example. What we call the “music” are frozen symbols on paper that need the verb of music-making (which we don’t have—Christopher Small suggested “musicking”). Jazz musicians are much more verb-oriented, playing the notes in the Fakebook song-sheets with flexibility and originality and then departing from them altogether, swinging freely in a playground of solos that restores “play music” to its deeper meaning. 

 

In short, wherever we turn, we like to objectify and try to capture that which is free and life-affirming in its verb form, but stultifying and dull as a noun. An American music teacher, praising a teacher she admired, said “I like her stuff.” In Europe, the praise leans more toward the teacher’s musicality or imagination or process of unleashing her students’ musicality. At the end of Orff workshops, the most common question is “Is this in the notes?” or “Where can I buy those boomwhackers?”

 

This attitude trickles down to all corners of American culture, to our great distress and dimunition. Mental health, for example. Though there’s no scientific evidence that a syndrome like ADD has any physiological basis, we label kids with that limiting noun and treat them accordingly with our favorite prescription—physical pills meant to “cure” the noun we call “disease.” The Bible of turning people into nouned-disorders, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders, includes something called ODD—Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Apparently, that’s a “thing” and considered abnormal and eligible for treatment. Some of the most sociopathic examples of this syndrome? Angela Davis, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, Joan of Arc, for starters. Oh yeah, another one who defied Roman law—Jesus. Had the symptoms been recognized and the drugs prescribed, it would have saved the world so much trouble. 

 

These intuitions that I’ve long held are given voice and authority by a remarkable physician named Gabor Maté in his book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Society. Halfway through it, the pages are marked with my exclamation points, “yep” and “YES!!!” I will quote some of this eloquent support statements in the next blogpost or two. Meanwhile, my grandson is begging this old bag-of-bones-noun to get off my butt and throw some active verb footballs around on the beach. More later.

A Perfect Pair

 The other day, I took a tour with a small group of people around The Nature Conservancy’s new building. I learned more than I needed to know about watersheds, state-of-the-art technologies, native gardens and more. There was a couple on the tour that intrigued me, so I came out of it with lots of information and a small poem.

 

A Perfect Pair

The old couple.

She limps to the left.

He to the right.

Don't Let Him In

The only time my parents ever came to this beautiful haven on Lake Michigan was on the occasion of my 30^th birthday. I decided to surprise my wife and shave my virgin beard that I had been growing for some ten years. Since I didn’t know how to shave, my Dad and I woke early and he helped me with the project. 

 

This morning, I shaved in front of that same mirror, recalling that moment 42 years ago. The face that looked back had changed a bit, to say the least. Like so many in my peer group, that sense of astonishment— “How did that face get in my mirror?” 

 

I heard that Clint Eastwood, still vibrant and active in his 90’s, was once asked how he did it. He replied:

 

“I just don’t let the old man in.”

Good advice.

Bench Talk

While waiting for my wife and her friends to finish shopping in Traverse City, I sat down on a bench outside the store. A woman walked by and asked if it was okay to share the bench. “By all means” I replied and uncharacteristically, started a little conversation with her. 

 

“Did you notice that this store was founded in 1955? And the one next door in 1947?”

 

“Yes, I was just thinking how rare that is today.”

 

“So it is. And it’s also curious that this one (Talbots) has stores in London, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago — and then Traverse City!.”

 

Her friend came by and I scooted over to make more room.

 

“Are you both visiting?”

 

“Yes, I’m from near Grand Rapids and she’s from Dearborn.”

 

“ My wife was born in Dearborn! I’m visiting also, from one of those Talbot’s cities. Can you guess which one?”

 

“San Francisco?”

 

“You got it!”

 

“Love San Francisco! I lived in San Anselmo for a while and then also Lafayette.”

 

And so it went on. I found out that she taught Spanish and the conversation continued in Spanish. My wife and her friends came out, we made the Dearborn connection, I turned to her and shook hands and said, “A pleasure passing time on a bench together.” 

 

And it was. A simple, spontaneous conversation on a lovely summer’s day. No need to exchange our personal pronouns, claim our identity or find out what political sign was on her front lawn. No screens were turned on, no “likes” were solicited, no photos shared on our phones. Just two human life forms passing a few pleasant moments together.

 

Can we return to this please? 

Somebody Meets Nobody

 A short P.S. to yesterday’s post about what happens when Somebody crosses over to Nobody. 

 

On Yom Kippur, the rabbi stops in the middle of the service, prostrates himself beside the bema, and cries out, "Oh, God. Before You, I am nothing!"

The president of the temple is so moved by this demonstration of piety that he immediately throws himself to the floor beside the rabbi and cries, "Oh, God!  Before you, I am nothing!"

Then a tailor  jumps from his seat, prostrates himself in the aisle and cries, "Oh God! Before You, I am nothing!"

The president nudges the rabbi and whispers, "So look who thinks he's nothing."