What I do is me, for that I came.

Even for someone as prone to tears as I am, I know I have finished a good biography if I cry at the end when the subject dies. The last book that moved me like that was Christophe Wolfe’s biography of J. S. Bach, and it goes without saying that I knew what was coming in the end. “Winston & Franklin” on the other hand, made me eager for the demise of both protagonists. Last night I got misty reading the end of Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life by Paul Mariani. I’ve always admired Hopkins’ poetry (and Mariani’s, for that matter) but had only a passing familiarity with the circumstances of his life - I knew he was a convert, a Jesuit, lived throughout Great Britain, died young, achieved no literary fame in his lifetime.

On the other side of having read this biography, that’s still the story. I now have a greater understanding of his trademark sprung rhythm, a term for which I’d only had cocktail-party level comprehension. New Hopkinsian terms like inscape and instress have worked their way into my vocabulary and will likely disappear once I’m off what promises to be a “Hopkins kick” and have moved on to another temporary obsession.

Every biographer is going to focus on one element or another of a subject’s life, and throughout much of this book we read about Hopkins desire for sacrifice - he sacrifices reputation and relationship to ‘swim the Tiber’, he sacrifices his writing and creativity seeking obedience to his order, and he sacrifices much of his health in that same spirit of obedience. From what I know of Mariani’s other writing, the biographer has undertaken spiritual journeys of his own, including the Spiritual Exercises. The knowledge, both intellectual and spiritual, of Hopkins’ Catholic (and Jesuit) world makes all the difference in his writing about the poet. I imagine it is hard to write about a man who punished himself too much - who probably took himself too seriously - while loving and respecting the man and his actions. Mariani never laughs at or dismisses Hopkins’ deep desire for sacrifice or communion with God.

What I do is me, for that I came. I know I’m not the only person for whom that is one of Hopkins’ most memorable lines. My little liturgist rises up at this affirmation that what we do matters - not what we think, or believe, or intend, or someday might do.

I realized about 2/3 of the way through the book that I was basically reading from poem to poem. Though I gave attention to and was interested in the circumstances of his life, all the while I was measuring out Hopkins’ life in sonnets. I turned each page hoping to see more of his familiar poetry, accompanied by the circumstances of its writing and by Mariani’s unparalleled insights on its inspiration. But would the poet have read his own life the same way? Would he have agreed with posterity on the reason for which he came?

What I do is me, for that I came. We can think we know what it is we do, for what it is we come, but perhaps like our friend Gerard that which survives of us won’t resemble our dreams and intentions. Knowing the future’s uncertainty what else can we do other than catch fire, draw flame, keep grace, offer ourselves over to God and to each other? Perhaps Hopkins would have been even more prolific, more genius (is that a possibility?) had he not indulged his religious scruples. But the brilliance that we have from him was born in that intersection of devastating sacrifice and creative indulgence. His reality - his ‘me’ - was the filthy manger in which his spark took flesh.

For that I came. The eager and inspired want to know what “that” is. It is music, it is sport, it is health, it is justice - we have ideas of our purpose and our end. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe we just slog through, with no sense of what makes us most ‘me’, what will survive, and what may reach beyond us across years to help others suss out dappled things, bright wings, God’s grandeur, our end.

Into Great Silence

Recently I showed some clips from one of my favorite films, Into Great Silence. It documents the lifestyle of the monks in a Carthusian monastery in France. Rather than being about monastic life, the film is like monastic life, and its slow pace and timeless sense of prayerfulness is intoxicating.



I spend enough time around the dismissive anti-religous to know that there are a lot of people who think that those monks are escaping from the real world, or are incapable of living with reality. When I watch them I know how brave they are. How could anyone imagine they are escaping? They live a life that offers no escape from who they really are. How many of us would be able to survive without the day-to-day preoccupations that distract us from the huge questions of our existence? How many of us could really let ourselves go and say to God 'it is ok if no one remembers me. It is ok if there is no trace of me left in this world. I abandon myself to you and need no other recognition'?

Years ago I went on a long silent retreat. When I tell people that they smirk and laugh in a way that is actually somewhat hurtful. Because I'm highly verbal no one can ever believe that I spent some time in silence, but I did and it taught me a lot about being myself rather than acting like myself. I don't think I'm built for the monastic life - like most people I am too proud to give up my pursuit of accomplishment and recognition. I envy the trust and courage of the monks at Grande Chartreuse who leave behind what they know and seek to be subsumed in God's silence.

Watch, therefore, for you know not the hour.

I really didn’t want to go to New York today. ‘Tis the season, as they say, but when “they” refers to singers, we’re not talking about being jolly but about heading down to New York, to a narrow building on 54th St with dingy bathrooms, in hopes of catching the eye and ear of one of the numerous auditors who park in those studios for hours at a time hearing aria after aria.

Last night was New Hampshire for a gig. When I got back to Boston in the late evening I took some time to wind down, packed a bag, laid out some travelling clothes, and hit the sack.

I woke in the middle of the night, as I tend to, and saw that the power was out in my apartment. Immediately I saw in my mind’s eye the letter from the electric company warning me it might be out this morning. My phone, which could have told me the time, also serves as my alarm clock. Therefore it was far across the room in the only place where I can guarantee I will have to get out of bed to turn it off.

Not knowing what time it was bothered me a lot. For whatever reason when I wake in the night I like to know how long it will be until I actually have to get out of bed. On days like today, when I needed to be up at 5:30 on the dot to make my 6:30 am train, it seems even more crucial. But last night I realized I had to live with the uncertainty and be ready for the alarm when it came.

ADVENT THEMES ALERT!! I thought to myself in the drowsy night, as I fought off the insomnia that I seem to have caught from my brother over Thanksgiving. Watch, therefore, for you know not the day nor the hour. (Mt 25:13)

When the alarm sounded at 5:30 I swung out of bed, wove my way across the room, hit the button on my phone, lit a candle, and got moving. I followed the plan I had determined the night before, was in a cab at 6:00 and on the road at 6:30. At some point during the 10 hours I spent on the Megabus today, I realized I was able to get out the door not because I’m wily or because of any exceptional night vision, but because I knew what I wanted to take with me.

What do I want to take with me when the trumpet sounds? Faith, hope, charity, mercy, justice, love? If so, I better keep them near me, “laid out” like my clothes (read: tossed) on the futon while I sleep nearby. There are things there would be nice to take, and then there are essentials. Today it was a dress, heels, and the Hopkins biography I’m reading. Maybe a good exercise for Advent is to think about what I truly can’t live without, what I want to have close at hand when the alarm rouses me in a powerless night, earlier than I ever expected.

Dorothy Day, pray for us

Yesterday among a million other little things, I had a few minutes to think about one of my favorite saints, Dorothy Day. I have always felt a great affinity for her in part because she passed to eternal life on the day that I was born. I know I'm not the only person in my circle of friends who admires her. Her writing talent, her sass, her commitment to serving others - all of these things have made her a role model for many and have inspired me as I have tried to grow in discipleship.

Dorothy Day was nothing if not radical - and not just in the twentieth-century political sense of the term. One definition of that word is "thoroughgoing or extreme", and that she was. She committed herself wholeheartedly to serving God and other people.

I have written previously about the gap between what I want and what I wish I wanted. There were a lot of years when I thought that the only way to live like my role models was to mimic them: I needed to live a life that looked like Dorothy Day's in order to be a disciple of Christ the way that she was. I'm just beginning to find the ways that I can follow her example by being my unique self, rather than by going through the motions of what my heroes have already accomplished in the past.

We'll only end up frustrated if we try to live someone else's life. No matter how admirable a person's actions are, they are their's alone, and trying to appropriate them is a cop-out. I'm not going to live in a Catholic Worker house, I'm not going to write for a radical newspaper, I'm not going to be arrested - at the rate things are going I'm not even going to make it to any protests any time soon. But I can find ways to be truly 'radical' - thoroughgoing and extreme - in my service and discipleship by committing myself to what I do and to those who I serve.

But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.

We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know him in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community. - Dorothy Day

Road Race, by the numbers

Miles: 4.75. Sightings of Whalers gear: 18. Kids from my high school running in kilts: 3. Drunks on rooftops: 9. Runners behind me with bullhorns: 1 (and believe me, one was enough).

I can't really see the allure of running in costume, but that's probably because running is hard enough for me. I can't imagine adding a pair of wings or a native headdress to my usual running accoutrements. I don't know for whom I felt worse today: the guy in the Buzz Lightyear costume that couldn't have been very breathable, or his girlfriend dressed as Woody, running in jeans.

After the race: latte, shower, TV, pleasure reading, and soon dinner. Lots to be thankful for today! Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Abide with Me

Abide with me, fast falls the even tide
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Darkness. Last night as I drove out of the city I happened to be driving just at sunset, which has never been a good time for me. Like a lot of people sensitive to light and seasons, my mood dips when the sun goes down in the late fall and winter. I am helpless against the power of the earth as it turns and tilts.

I need Thy presence every passing hour
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who but Thyself my guide, and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me.

Grace. I teach about grace a few times a year, always with a sense of guilt - how can i stand before people and try to explain that which cannot be explained? Grace - friendship with God. Grace - participation in the life of God. Grace - God working in the world, on us and with us.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless
Ills have no weight and tears no bitterness
Where is death's sting? where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still if you abide with me.

Grave. In the darkness of night our world can indeed seem grave, when we are confronted with tragedy and sadness, the pain of those we love and the challenges of being alive in an imperfect world. It may be then that our only triumph is our hope.

Hold now Thy cross before my closing eyes
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

Life. Throughout my life, abide with me. Is this not the root of all our prayer? God, whatever you are, however you come to us, as love, as goodness, as blessing, as grace, be with us. Abide with us. Teach us to hope in you, to serve your light, to trust against our senses and against our despair. Prepare us for the dawn of heaven's morning and remind us that the shadows of this earth are indeed vain and no match for your Light.


[Music: Eventide William Monk (19thC)
Words: Henry F. Lyte (19th C)]

Dreams and agreements

It wasn’t until I was all alone in the dressing room that I started to cry.
What can I say? I’m a weeper, and I knew there was no way that I was going to make it through the end of The Crucible without one of my trademark emotional moments. Most of the emotion was relief: that our gamble of six performances had paid off, that we had put together an artistic product that was powerful and meaningful, that I had learned all of the notes.

How fortunate I am to live my dreams. Making art with people I love is a dream for me (as Willie Nelson said, “the life I love is making music with my friends” – truer words were never sung). Most of my dreams are things I don’t recognize until they have come true. When I started at grad school I wasn’t thinking to myself “I hope I make a life-long friend at orientation. I hope she starts a small opera collaborative and I get roped into it despite initial skepticism. Then I hope that I am asked to be president of that group, work tirelessly with other musicians to keep it running, develop my skills as I learn a few roles, and transition into PR. Finally, I hope that 4 years from now I am standing on the altar in a huge Boston church wearing whiteface and faking demonic possession.”

But all those things happened and it has become a dream for me, even when it has been a nightmare. And although as I look forward in my life there are things I would like to see, I don’t dare hang my hat on those plans because what comes my way tends to be more life-giving than anything I can imagine on my own. What has served me well so far is to get up every morning excited to face the day, and to say yes to as much as I can.

My dream and hope is in that ‘yes’ – to learning a new instrument, to joining a new group, to taking on a new project, to coffee with a new friend. “Yes” is my agreement every day to live in communion with and service to other people. “Yes” is my affirmation that all things can be new, that I can change as the tides do rather than splashing futiley against them. “Yes” is when I throw my lot in with everyone else: yes I will help you. Yes I will join you. Yes I will contribute.

There are times when the only way to affirm our own needs is to say no – or what looks like no on the surface. Likewise there are times that my will does what my heart would not, and “no” issues from my lips in response to a question or action that has at its root a question like “can you help me? Do you care for me? Are you in solidarity with me?” Those moments shame me.

Can you learn this role in a week? Can you send a resume over for this position? Can you plan a prayer service for us? Do you want to join a new opera collaborative? These are the questions that I hear, to which I answer yes. Maybe these questions are a disguise for the bigger questions. Are you alive? Can you change? Are you ready to put your money where your mouth is? Yes.

Time apart

Last night in class we were encouraged to think about when and where we take time to rest. I had had a hectic afternoon. The reviews of our latest opera had been posted at 3:00 pm, and it was my task to distribute the information via email and online postings. I needed to be in Cambridge at 4:00 pm, my computer kept freezing, and everyone wanted to virtually chat and celebrate our reviews while I scrambled to get the info up. When asked later in class about taking quiet time, one of the situations that appeared when I was imagining my rest was “any time my computer is off”.

I've got a lot of irons in the fire, a lot of people I try to stay in touch with and a lot of people who rely on my to stay on top of certain tasks. Choirs need to know call times, students need homework posted, BOC needs the website kept up to date. If I make a mistake, a need to respond to a dozen emails sent to point it out. Then there's the fun stuff: twitter, facebook, my website, this blog.

I take on responsibilities because I care about people. I want to be around people, to collaborate with them, to serve them. But when I am trying to balance virtual contact with too many people I lose sight of persons, and the love I feel for the unique individuals right in front of me. I am reminded that I want to be hyper-involved by the times that I am not, when I have trimmed the distractions to a reasonable amount, or eliminated them completely.

I grew up in what I like to call “the house that technology forgot”. You can still hear a busy signal if you call there (remember the days of taking the phone off the hook?) and the dial-up internet can only handle one thing at a time (and some things it simply can’t handle). From my childhood, I’m used to that sort of isolation. I have a laptop at work that I only bring home on weekends because I don’t want the distraction of a million tasks every evening. If you want an easy way to get to bed early, hide your computer.

I used to get off on the thrill of non-stop productivity, but that thrill has passed. If mental health is built on the balance of introversion and extroversion, then I need to be unreachable for a while to preserve my sanity. If someone really needs me they can call – but if it’s after 9:00 pm, my ringer will be off.

Seasons

A few years ago I spent three weeks in Malibu at the beginning of the summer. I returned refreshed to a Boston that had suffered a brutal heat wave in my absence, and was often asked how the weather was. Although I'd never needed a hat or gloves, and I'd never sweat through my clothes, I hadn't been totally satisfied with three weeks of 70 degrees and sunny. I didn't have the nerve to confess this to my friends and family, but I had found that monotonously idyllic weather boring.

Years are funny things. They're long enough that we can't really comprehend their span, but short enough that they can seem to pass quickly, and we give a lot of meaning to this number of 365 days. In New England we get a little of everything in each turn of the earth around the sun - snow & freezing temperatures, humidity and blazing heat. Although the warm weather seems terribly distant each February, we never really go long enough without a particular season to forget what it is all about.

I think that's why I have always liked the liturgical calendar so much. Every element of Christian living is given it's due at least once a year. No matter what the seasons of our lives are we are called to ponder the whole experience during the course of the year. We celebrate new life and the Resurrection even if our own lives feel like an unrelenting penitential season. When life is joyful we still pause for sorrowful remembrance and contrition. We go through it all - and then we cycle around and go through it all again.

This weekend I finally packed up my swimming and biking gear from triathlon training this summer. I went into fall with good intentions for keeping up with those sports, but the demands of work and music have left me no time to even find a gym with a pool, never mind swim in that pool once I've found it. I keep saying "I miss swimming", and I do miss the feel of the water on my body and the rhythm of my arms stroking through the water. But what I really miss is the season: bright mornings leading into days that would be longer than the nights, early breakfasts in my friends' kitchen, running my towel through the dryer in the sunny laundry room before I stuffed it into a backpack and got back on my bike.

Opera singer? What was I thinking?

I have had a very busy few days, with our latest opera in tech week and a number of exciting auditions that have me running all over, seizing the day. I was driving back into Boston today, running through the list of things in my head that I needed to get done and realizing that most of them are bizarre production related things that would be foreign to non-opera folk. This thought literally ran through my mind: "Opera singer? What was I thinking?"

Could it be that this question is one reason so many opera singers are so mental? Walk into any school and you find a number of educators whose parents were also teachers. Daughters inherit their fathers' medical practices, sons learn the law at their mothers' knees. Because a musicians' vocation is accompanied by a rarer gift, far fewer of us enjoy the sense of entitlement that comes with having inherited our lifestyle from our parents. We flock to big cities and gobble up new experiences, all the while feeling like kids playing dress-up, wondering when someone is going to notice that we don't belong in the world of professional music.

To whom do we turn for advice? Families aren't familiar with our world, friends count our callings as hobbies, while we contemplate questions: How much of me is my voice? Is something of me lost if I am not hired for a while? Is there something else that would be a better use of my time? Is it selfish of me to do what I love?

How does one answer questions of identity without a sensible profession on which to hang their hat, or when many people think their calling is simply imaginary? Even though going to a liberal arts school set me back vocally when I got to conservatory, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything because BC was not going to let us graduate without starting to figure out who we were. In my religious language I discovered myself as a being created out of love with a large capacity for goodness and share in a mission. I learned to be comfortable with my history and with my present, which has served me well in that it has kept me from being ashamed of entering new worlds.

So to answer the question, I'm not sure I was thinking at all when I 'decided' to do music. I doubt it is a decision I could have made without the grounding that comes from knowing who I am and where I come from, and the security that those things won't change no matter where I go or what I do.

Navigating the maze

Every other Monday night I meet with a prayer group for a one credit class. Usually I am tired or preoccupied enough that I am annoyed about having to go. Then I am ashamed of being annoyed about having to go.

On All Souls' Day we were supposed to pray the labyrinth outside the library. I was missing rehearsal to do this and was concerned about that, but had sung at a very emotional mass earlier that day and was looking forward to processing some of that in the labyrinth. The lights weren't on outside the library so we ended up meeting inside the Jesuit residence where we were to pray a 'finger labyrinth', tracing the maze with our finger rather than with our feet.

I was pretty pissed. If you've been keeping track, I had gone from annoyed to ashamed to concerned to dolorous to optimistic to aggravated - and this is all before prayer.

So I grabbed my paper maze and stomped off into the halls of St Mary's to find a place to sit. An early music group in the chapel was preparing for a concert going that evening which most of my classmates found really soothing, but like most musicians I find it hard to get zen while listening to music. The halls were noisy, side rooms were full, chairs were uncomfortable - I finally parked right by the front door in a chair with plenty of light, even though the sound from the chapel was distracting and I knew half of the people coming in the door. Whatever, I thought, let me pray and get it over with.

As soon as I started running my finger through the paths of the maze I was overwhelmed with want - an emotion that I, like a lot of people, have been taught to put away. It's tasteless to want, and wanting implies you think you deserve what you want, which would be even more embarassing if anyone found out. But my want bubbled over: I want my feet to touch the floor in chairs, I want to sing straight tone without going flat, I want it not to smell like old people in here, I want life not to be so hard, I want to not be sad at sunset, I want all music to be in tune, I want to sing, I want to hug people when I see them and not have it feel so pretentious, I want life to be easier. Dissatisfaction was swirling around me. And here I am supposed to find God?

It felt right to sit with my desire. And it hit me: this is where prayer happens. When I am distracted by people walking by or by a tuning theorbo, that's where it happens. When I have flown through 7 emotions in the course of a few hours, that's where it happens. When I've finally got my feet balanced in a way that I can be comfortable - not forever, just for a while - that's where it happens.

I will never be quiet or placid, at least not as a way of life. The lion's share of my prayer will not be in calm moments. My prayer will be in the stormy moments of my life, which is precisely when I need it. God finds me when I least expect it and all I can do is welcome God in, whether I'm annoyed, ashamed, concerned, dolorous, optimistic, or aggravated. I have often been told emotions are what separates us from the beasts, and I am becoming more convinced that we can pray through most, if not all of them.

Mayoral Madness

I'm sure many of you have been waiting with baited breath for the announcement of Felice Mi Fa's mayoral endorsement. Like most things this fall, Election Day has snuck up on me and I haven't peeped about local politics. Those who know me well know there is something wrong with that.

One reason for my silence is that I have been a little unenthused by the slate that is up, although the dual candidacy of "Floon" certainly makes for some drama. I, like a lot of Boston residents, am mildly uncomfortable with the length of Menino's tenure in office, but am generally happy with his leadership. Maybe it's a sign of the conservativism that can come with age, but I am less distressed by his hold on City Hall this year than I was last time around. I will admit, during the last mayoral election I voted against him even though that meant voting for Hennigan (and going against my beloved unions).

This time around, I am not so sure that kicking out Menino should be priority 1. I understand the criticisms around him: he rules with an iron fist and stifles opposition. The BRA is a mess. He won't let developers do what they want. I think a lot of those criticisms take for granted that the good of Boston depends on attracting big businesses to the newest skyscraper downtown. What Menino has excelled at is building up the neighborhoods. If all politics is local, maybe it should be more important that I can find a parking space and that the empty lot up the corner isn't completely trashed. Skyscrapers don't matter much to me, even though I can see them from the top of the street.

There is nothing about Flaherty that excites me, which is why I voted for Yoon in the run-off. If we are going to do change around here, I thought, why don't we do it right? I knew he wasn't going to win but I wanted to send a message (although after what happened with Nader in 2000 I should have known better). And yes, I am one of the 12% of people who votes in mayoral run-offs.

The announcement that Flaherty and Yoon were teaming up did not impress me. Politics makes strange bedfellows, for sure. I can't foresee real teamwork should they make it together to City Hall.

So there will be no blogtastic endorsement today, and I'm not sure who I will vote for on Tuesday (other than Ayanna Pressley for City Council). Townies, please be sure to vote.

The Helplessness of Love

Today I found myself feeling great affection for a group of people, and I thought "the appropriate response to this is humility". I recognize myself as a vessel of a powerful force I neither create nor control. I am not the first nor the greatest to have cared for people. I am subsumed by a Love far greater than myself, which is both thrilling and humbling. That humility is a great gift.

Like most powerful moments of the last few months, this one led me back into my grief. What is grief if not love made futile against absence? I remember years ago sitting with a friend who lost her entire family in a genocide, and loving her so much, and feeling so helpless because no amount of love could ever undo the trauma she had faced. Perhaps it is not my place to un-do it.

I know better now than to wish away those feelings of affection. And yet, on these gloomy fall days, standing in the dark of the chapel, fighting off tears, the love I feel for anyone is seasoned with the knowledge that it has me rendered helpless. I will care for people forever, against futility and darkness, and deal with the gloomy days as they come.

Here and but the Beholder Wanting

I just found this from about two years ago, before my days of blogging when I used to simply bore BOC-ers with my ramblings in the membership newsletter. Although this was my 'message from the President' in the newsletter, there isn't much in it about opera. There's plenty about poetry and beauty and nature and music - a few of my favorite things.

"Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty…". So begins one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets. The poet is Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose work I would still love even if he hadn't been a Jesuit. The poem is Hurrahing in Harvest, which always inspires some appreciation for this transition between the seasons. I've never been a big fan of fall, often finding myself "grieving over Goldengrove unleaving" during the month of October, to quote another Hopkins poem addressed to a child with whom I share a name.

So it is good for me to be reminded of the barbarous beauty in this transition into the seriousness of winter from the summer frivolity which consumes cities like ours; cities doomed to months of dismal, short days and soggy, sloppy sidewalks. Hopkins, with his trademark sprung rhythm, describes fall's "silk-sack clouds", and "azurous hung hills" which are "very-violet-sweet!" In the final stanza Hopkins hits us with the punch line: "these things were here and but the beholder wanting".

How much beauty in our lives is just waiting for us to behold it? Who are the people we don't appreciate? What loveliness looks back at us from the mirror every day as our minds race along not noticing? How glorious is it to open our mouths and have beautiful sounds come out, to be able to run scales and match pitches and infuse words with new meaning through music? All of this can be easy to forget when we are in the practice room struggling with a phrase, convinced that all the beauty in the world and all the beauty in us just isn't enough.

Since I am teaching full-time this fall, I leave you all with an assignment: behold something beautiful this month. If you are lucky perhaps you will have the same experience as Hopkins' anonymous beholder: "The heart rears wings bold and bolder/and hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet."

(For extra credit, go read some Hopkins.)

Exploring Abigail

When I was asked at the last minute to sing Abigail Williams in The Crucible, my major concerns were learning the tricky 20th century music and being off book in a reasonable amount of time. It didn't cross my mind at the time that I should consider how emotionally involved I become in my characters when I was discerning whether or not to take part.

The mysterious artist in me knows better than to give away too many of the insights I have into her character, but I can admit that it has been an interesting ride so far. Most human beings spend their lives reaching toward the light, toward wholeness, toward God. Identifying with Abigail has required some serious regression.

Cruelty, brokenness, unresolved trauma, hunger for power, misplaced priorities: day after day those are conditions I try to avoid. My relentless self-reflection seeks unlimited awareness of my own motivations; it's hard to get to a place where I can be someone who doesn't know what she's doing. It's been an adventure so far, a powerful and dangerous adventure.

Some of my colleagues insist they prefer playing unstable, insane characters. While it's certainly interesting, I take my own mental health too seriously to say I enjoy it.

preferences

A quick post since I haven't had much time to write lately:

My need for a new tube of toothpaste reached a critical stage the middle of last week. For a few days I jumped up and down on a trial size to squeeze out the remnants, and one morning (the date of which I will keep to myself) I just used water and the minty remains that were on my toothbrush. I had another trial size, but didn't want to use it since it's the one I keep in my bag, and who knows when I will be on the road and need it? I also wanted to wait until Sunday to see if there were any coupons or sales in the paper.

While that is an interesting glimpse into how I can make a huge situation out of something as simple as a tube of toothpaste, that's not the point of the story. Since Colgate tubes were buy one get one free at CVS (see! I knew waiting would pay off), I walked into my apartment yesterday with two huge new tubes of toothpaste, which in retrospect is sort of a big commitment. When I took a close look at the boxes I saw that these tubes feature a "two-way cap" - you can either flip it or unscrew it.

Am I supposed to have a preference about how I open my toothpaste? To be frank, those sorts of features leave me silently pleading "please don't make me care about this". I care about my voice, I care about my classroom, I care about my friends, I care about my family, please don't make me care about the cap on my toothpaste.

This happens to me pretty frequently: someone expects me to have a preference regarding something about which it never even occured to me to be fussy! Someone once asked me if I liked fruit cold or room temperature. I usually eat whatever you put in front of me. At the dentist they check to make sure I like the flavor of polish they are going to use, even though I'm pretty sure when I'm in the chair they have the upper hand.

Do all these choices distract us from the substance of a thing? If I get to pick the temperature of an apple will that distract me from the fact that it's overripe? I don't care what brand or texture the bandage is as long as it covers up my skinned knee. I don't care if the music at mass has organ or piano as long as the person on the bench can play. And when I come up with silly preferences, as if they will help to define who I am or give me some sort of agency, all I am doing is preparing myself for the disappointment of finding that my toothpaste doesn't open "the right way".

What I've learned from running

As I’ve written many times, I started running out of stubbornness. I didn’t turn to the sport for revelation, edification, or other forms of improvement. As tends to be the case, revelation found me without my seeking it. Long runs, both training and racing, have been revelatory for me. I have said countless prayers, cried my eyes out, planned retreats and recitals, written poems and blog posts (ahem) while plugging away on the open road. Yesterday I finished my sixth half-marathon (with a time 35 minutes faster than my first!), and if the good Lord has chosen not to reveal to me how to finish in a respectable time, at least God has taught me a few other lessons in the course of my training.

It is hazardous to my ego for me to compare myself to other people while running, which is why I just put my tunes in my ears and focus on the road in front of me. I’ve learned not to look behind me, although I always want to know for sure I’m not last, and I not to even look in front of me, because it doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing. My body is calibrated to do a certain pace in a certain way, and that has nothing to do with the people around me.

So what have I learned from running? That when you’re exhausted and you think you can’t push any farther, you can always push a little harder – but if you collapse and cry (or vomit) there will still be people who will be nice to you and help you out. That it’s better to push to the top of the hill and then take it easy on the way down. That when it hurts in one place a tiny adjustment can take the edge off – although you’ll just end up hurting in another. That there’s benefit in doing the things which embarrass you the most.

When I was younger I would get jealous of the success of others, especially when I felt it came at my expense: the other singers getting the leads in the school plays, the classmates earning scholarships and accolades, the athletes feted for their skill, the girls with nicer hair and clothes being treated well. Now I see it doesn’t do me any good to size up the people around me or envy their success. I can’t do anything about the way gifts are divvied up, and even if I could I wouldn’t shuffle around the ones I’ve received for any others. When it comes time to work hard and use those gifts, all that counts are me, my feet on the pavement, and the music in my ears.

I had a nice run

It had been over a year since my most recent tumble (which came merely 5 days after another, during the summer of my bi-continental clumsiness). My streak ended yesterday.

I had set the alarm for 5:25 yesterday morning. Since I put my alarm on the other side of the room I don't consider myself in danger of oversleeping, but yesterday was an exception. I have no recollection of getting up, weaving through the maze of furniture crammed in my studio, finding the tiny button on my cell phone to turn the alarm off, and getting back in bed. I must have done all of those things, because I awoke 15 minutes later than I usually rise on mornings when I don't run.

Therefore I had to run at the end of a long day. I got home around sunset, changed quickly and got out on the road as quickly as I could, taking a familiar route that I knew would be well-lit. About three minutes into my run I was suddenly on the ground, somehow ending up on my back even though it was my front that was bleeding. I now have a sweet bandage in the usual place of knee-skinning. I have given up on having legs without scars. There is no real reason for my having fallen.

In addition to banging up myself, I also cracked the face on my watch. I looked at my watch before going running, thought "I need to take this off" and then forgot to do so (NB: In my mind, this is my way of being punished for sleeping through my alarm, because if I had gone running in the morning I wouldn't have been wearing the watch).

To confirm my suspicion that I'm better off not running in the evening, while scaling the last hill on the way home I was passed by a man in street clothes, easily over 200 pounds, wearing flipflops. He was obviously fleeing from someone.

Working Hard, Making Art

This is really a follow up to my post from last week, and sheds a little light on where my brain is this week.

I work hard, and most of the people in my life who I love and respect work hard too. I don't feel bad about this, and I only rarely feel like my work is 'getting in the way' of my life. My work is my prayer, my work is my life, and I am lucky enough to work doing what I love. Like many people, I want to be excellent in the things that I do (athletic activities being the exception - in that area I'll settle for being competent).

Last week when I was plowing through what was my 2nd or 3rd rehearsal of the day, I heard another singer who was singing a short phrase with great artistry and freshness, and I thought: I want that. I knew that at that moment if I had been asked to sing a phrase on my own I couldn't have been as artistic as that because I was too worn out, and that shamed me. When my diligence gets in the way of making art, all is lost. It's not worth beating myself up in the practice room if it means that I will be fried once it's time to really sing.

To all my fellow pluggers out there: just because our labor threshold is higher than other's doesn't mean that we have a limitless capacity for work. Eventually the scales tip and our hard work stops being an asset to our living well and starts to be a threat.

What We Capture

In the room that we've always called the Great Room (due to it's unclear function in my parents' house rather than it's natural superiority to other rooms) there are some unobtrusive cabinets hiding a large collection of photo albums. Although no one in the family is a particularly gifted photographer, there has always been someone at every event with a camera (usually the disposable kind from the drug store), documenting graduations, picnics, parties, haircuts, soccer games...you name it.

Although many of the photos are of people, there are plenty that are of things. Some are profound - the Grand Canyon, sunset over evergreens, a rose window, an impeccable 1957 Chevy Bel Air. The ones that thrill me the most are mundane, and I am thrilled for this reason: each photo means that someone at some point, found beauty in simplicity.

Tomatoes from the garden, in varying stages of ripening, lined up on the windowsill. Crocuses popping up in the rock garden. A duck swimming in the pool cover. An owl in the window of the barn. A good-looking clock.

There are more than a few photos of car dashboards (I know I took many when I was finally sending the hoopty to the graveyard). Occasionally you will find a pair of pictures of a car odomotor, one showing it at all nines, and then another of it just after it turns over to some new, large, round number.

Two days ago the odomotor on the Jeep turned over to 120000, and I didn't notice until it was at 120011. I almost started to cry for my own preoccupation, for not being able to see that something simply neat was happening right in front of my eyes. There is a place for focus in a life, but there is a point at which focus turns into distraction, and we can't see what's right in front of our noses.

We have choices about what to capture, in our photos and in our hearts. I find it far too easy to capture the frustrations of a day, week, or month. If I'm not careful it can all turn into the frustrations of a life. I want my heart to hold snapshots of what is right in front of me, in all it's thrilling simplicity.

A necklace

The morning of the day my apartment was broken into I decided on a whim to take off the gold cross I had worn nearly every day since I was twelve and to put on a silly star-shaped necklace instead. That evening, when I noticed that all of my jewelry was gone, my first thought was "damn, I wish I had worn a different necklace today", because all of the ones that had meaning for me were probably already melted down (along with my class ring and the handful of other items I had of any value) and I was stuck with this dumb star choker with the gold plating chipping off.

Today I put that necklace on for the first time in almost a year. In a testament to my own irrationality, every time I looked at the thing I became angry at it, as if it was the fault of that necklace that so many things that had accrued meaning and experience over time had been taken from me. I wish I could say I have gained some perspective and insight about the triviality of objects, but I haven't really. I haven't taken my claddagh ring off in a year, because if anything happened to that I would probably give in to despair.

Notes on the tri

Training for a triathlon ranks with learning to play the bass clarinet and moving to New Bedford on the list of most impulsive decisions I have made. I knew this past summer I would be laying low in Boston, and I also knew that I had a nice bike I didn't use enough and a good friend who would remind me how to swim, so I went for it.

On Sunday I took the plunge, literally, into a beautiful lake in the middle of CT wearing a race-issued pink swim cap. The water was colder than I expected, and it took four solid minutes for my heart to stop racing enough that I could put my face in the water. Once I was able to, though, the swimming leg felt great. I had trained hard this summer for endurance (not giving much thought to speed) and was rewarded with a great swim in the race.

Something funny happened while I was swimming that hasn't happened in the dozen or so road races I have done since I started running again: I passed people. I distinctly remember thinking to myself "this is what it feels like to pass people in a race". Racing is usually an exercise in humility for me; that feeling was unfamiliar.

I got over it quickly. As I ran into transition I realized that I had made a mistake that I knew I would make: My sneakers were still tied from the last time I had worn them. That juvenile habit fills me with shame every time I kick my shoes off without untying them, and on Sunday I finally paid the price.

As it turns out some cyclists take riding very seriously. Thus, a lot of people passed me on the second leg of the race. I had spent more time on the bike this summer and greatly improved over the course of my training, but since most of my riding was through Lower Roxbury, I never really had a chance to train for speed. As I cruised back into the race site at the end of my race, some guy screamed at me "smile!" I really could have ran him over. I don't go to women's races so that I can still have men boss me around, thank you very much.

The run was miserable, as is to be expected. Apparently the definition of "flat" for a trail run is different from a road race, because the trail was not nearly as flat as had been promised. I also was not prepared for the aerobic fatigue I felt by the final stretch. Even though I run road races that take longer than the tri took, I don't think I had ever maintained such a high level of activity for as long as I had around mile 1 of the run when I really started to feel worn out.

I was happy to see my mom waiting for me when I crossed the finish line, and was not surprised at all that she teared up during our sweaty hug. After a free bagel and sandwich we got on the road (with a stop at Dunkin). I took the shower of a lifetime at my parents house and drove back to Boston, where I had to conduct at the 9 pm mass. By the offertory I could barely lift my arms.

Living with a new normal

On September 11th there seems to be some pressure to offer a weighty and profound reflections on what happened to our country 8 years ago. I’m afraid I don’t have much profundity to offer. I don’t know what this means for American history and American culture, for victims and survivors. However, today as I read and listened to the memories of friends and colleagues regarding where they were, how they found out, and what they did immediately afterward, I couldn’t help but think about those (blessedly few) moments in my life when everything changed suddenly and unexpectedly, and I was left living with a new normal.

It always annoys me when people tell me they won’t go to certain parts of the city (invariably those populated by minorities) because “people get killed there”, or imply that I shouldn’t live where I do because it’s not safe. People get killed everywhere, and we are never safe. Life has a mind of its own, and things come at us no matter what we have done to move toward the life we had planned. Marvelously, we adapt to our new normal, surviving what we think we could never endure.

My mother loves the couplet “God gave Noah the rainbow sign/no more water, fire next time”. We don’t ever know what’s coming. No gasmasks or triple locks or aloof attitudes keep us safe from the surprises of life. Don’t bother praying that you won’t break, because some blows break us no matter how strong we are. The grace is in the recovery, in the healing after the breaking. Maybe the best we can do is fortify our lives in a way that allows for the recovery: Get to know God in a way that helps us find holiness in the dark, surround ourselves with good people, know ourselves well enough to adjust ourselves to our new normal, be brave enough to ask for what we need.

There’s no way to predict the “fire next time”, but we can strengthen ourselves to survive the burning.

Singing notes is easy, singing from your heart is hard.

The first time that I traveled to Italy, in the Summer of 2000, I often went to morning mass and/or evening vespers at one of the local churches in Parma. One evening I arrived at San Giovanni Evangelista and parked myself in a pew just as the church ladies were handing out hymnbooks. One old woman in purple approached me and held the hymnal just out of arms reach as she said something to me in Italian I would never forget. It translated roughly to: “Are you going to sing? Then really sing!”

When I tuned in for Kennedy’s wake last weekend, I did not expect the most memorable quote of the evening to come from Brian Stokes Mitchell. Before he started singing “The Impossible Dream”, he told the group assembled that he would miss Ted Kennedy’s voice because of the joy and intensity he brought to his singing. “Singing notes is easy”, Mitchell stated. “Singing from your heart is hard.”

Anyone who tries to ‘make it’ as a singer knows that is an understatement. Even though we all know that the performances that thrill us are the ones that have something to say, it is so tempting just to play it safe. We don’t want to offend with our passion or our message, we don’t want to wear our heart on our sleeve, so we stick with the somewhat bland interpretations that we think will sell.

One of the common quips that you hear when someone is spending too much time practicing and not enough living is that “they don’t write a lot of operas about the inside of a practice room”. Perfect technique and hours of practice only get us so far, and eventually we have to bring our lives and our message to that technique and figure out how to say what we want to say.

I didn’t really understand that idea of a message until very recently, when I had one that informed my singing and that I finally thought was too important to ignore. Still, it’s scary to take a stand and to say something, especially in our society where opinions are a dime a dozen about things that don’t seem to matter (the quality of Jon and Kate’s parenting, ‘death panels’ in the health care bill that don’t actually exist), but holding fast to a belief in a more serious area (the sanctity of the human body, the importance of a worshipping community) can be like stepping on the third rail.

To go back to Kennedy, listening to reflections on his life I think that was one of his most attractive qualities: he stuck to a politically liberal message that emphasized care for the poor. He happened to be savvy enough to craft that message into something that would get him elected, but just having such a clear message caused him to stand out in contemporary politics.

In music and in life, singing from your heart is hard. I’m convinced it’s the only way to “really sing” as my elderly friend in purple admonished me nine years ago. Life’s too short to be bland, or to hide what we have to say because our message might cause people not to like us. If we are not honest about who we are what does the admiration of people mean? Just that we are crafty enough to fool people, and that we believe the truth is not admirable.

The Downside of Discretion

The downside of discretion is that it's hard to get credit for the things you don't say.

Readers who know me are probably shocked to hear that occasionally a thought comes into my head that I don't announce to the world. I think discretion is an under-practiced art, and those who make comments like "I have an opinion but I'll keep it to myself" do violence to the idea of actually keeping something to yourself.

That said, I would like it on the record that I have had scads of pithy (and to my mind, hysterical) comments about training this summer, particularly about the filth of the pool in which I have been swimming. The sliver of my brain that is able to process normal social cues tells me that these comments about pool cleanliness are gross and inappropriate and that I should keep them to myself. Deep down though, I know that they are funny.

I had to get that out. One week until the triathlon.

Funerals, Media, and God's People

My first inclination was to keep commentary on the Kennedy funeral to a minimum, mostly because it just seems tacky to Monday morning quarterback a Mass of Christian Burial. But I have spent the last few days surrounded by church types who all have an opinion, plus I am under strict orders to post tonight, so I’ll share my thoughts regardless. Between thoughts on the liturgy and reflections on the concepts of the liturgy as expressed by commentators and media, trying to even think about this has been so meta that I could be sick. Maybe writing will help sort it all out.

Obviously I was very interested in what was likely to be the most public display of Catholic ritual in recent memory. As I was running early Saturday morning (I had to squeeze in a long run before the coverage started), I thought to myself “Will people still think that Catholicism is supremely weird after this whole thing is over?”

Let’s start with what I know best: music. Both beautiful and disappointing. First, it was the one thing that the networks couldn’t seem to broadcast right. During the opening song I surfed all over the place trying to find a balance that didn’t include heaping portions of grating tenor. From what I could tell, words to the opening song were printed in the program, as it appeared people were singing along. I think it would have been powerful to hear the sound of the assembly. I also hope that choosing “Holy God We Praise Thy Name” will encourage some other folks to select that for their funeral, rather than schlock like One Bread One Body and Hail Mary: Gentle Woman (both of which I am singing for a funeral tomorrow).

I was horribly disappointed that the ordinary of the mass wasn’t sung. I’ll admit that there are two issues here. One is that modern American Catholicism does not have a suitably dignified mass setting. Observing the family and their familiarity with the liturgy, I know that they would have reflexively sung along with whatever mass parts the organist cued up. But do we really want Mass of Creation as the public face of Catholicism (nothing personal Marty)?

The second issue is the pervasive entertainment model of the liturgy. Assemblies become audiences, song leaders become soloists, and worship aids become programs. The very pieces of the liturgy that we all know inside and out, the words and melodies that pop out of our mouths without our even knowing it (like Mass of Creation – and even One Bread One Body) are the pieces that we are most willing to cut if we feel that things are going to run a little long. As if those four measures of intro on Haugen’s Sanctus are going to make or break a liturgy with three post-communion reflections and a twenty minute homily. The fact that the Song of Commendation wasn’t sung was the final blow to this lover of communal singing.

One idea that motivates me when ministering at funerals is that our liturgy gives us a glimpse of the eternal life that we hope and pray the departed is enjoying. There was beautiful, sublime music at the funeral on Saturday. Still, as hopeful as I am that Susan Graham and Placido Domingo will enter into the beatific vision when the time comes, their’s are not the voices I want next to me in the celestial choir. I want my mother switching octaves as the music demands. I want my brother jokingly singing JamBandforJesus music the way he does over the phone on Sunday nights. I want my father imitating my “howling”. And, for what it’s worth, I want a big honkin’ timpani roll each time we launch back into singing Holy Holy Holy. The funerals that give me the most hope are ones that are filled with the sound of the voices of God’s people.

A few comments on the media coverage, which I thought was respectful overall. It was perfect to keep the video cameras away from the communion procession; nothing has irked me more in the last few years than the politicization of the Eucharist. Brian Williams’ random editorializing during the Sign of Peace about its recent introduction into liturgical practice was somewhat amusing. Hearing Andrea Mitchell refer to the pall as the ‘fabric’ made my heart sink a little. If you insist on commentary on a religious event, it would be nice to have people who knew their stuff doing the commenting.

But in the end, this wasn’t just a religious event, and it was never going to be. A lot of newspapers sanitized the religious side of things, talking about the nice speakers and the beautiful “performances”. Still, there are some of us out there who are in on the secret, who know what the funeral Mass is about and know how noteworthy and admirable it is that a public person and his public family wanted this Catholic service. We are the ones who got a subversive rush when Cardinal Seán recited the Latin prayers before the censing of the casket. Religion is a piece of identity, and many of us who shared a religious identity with the Senator likely hoped to see even more of that identity shown off for all to see. I bet I’m not the only person who asked “Will people still think that Catholicism is supremely weird after this whole thing is over?” and then thought “I hope so”.

Becoming a Lion

For this left-leaning Catholic from New England with a passion for policy, there are few people held in higher regard than Jed Bartlet, who, unfortunately, is imaginary. Ted Kennedy has always been one of those few, as I would guess he has been for other northeastern Catholic Dems. Kennedy spoke our language. Much like Obama has done over the last few years, he announced to the world what we believed in better language than we could ever come up with on our own. He fought for things that we didn’t even know we wanted to fight for until he brought them to light.

We live in an era without second chances. One scandal, one misstep, one howl (remember Howard Dean?) and you are out like yesterday’s trash. One of the more compelling themes to come out of reflections on Kennedy’s tenure in the Senate is the consequence of his longevity. Rather than simply celebrating longevity for longevity’s sake, I cherish that longevity for giving us a model of great endurance and growth.

Our beloved “Liberal Lion” was not born a lion. He stumbled through youth like the rest of us, making tragically bad choices and enduring scandals that would put our current generation of blathering adulterous squirts like Mark Sanford to shame. Because of his name and because of his era he could keep going in public life and continue to work not only to make America what he thought it should be but to become what he should be as well.

When I look to Kennedy as a role model (in some things, not all, surely) it is because I see an example of someone who grew up. Lions are made, not born, and as I scamper around like a dumb cub swatting at toys and losing my balance, I feel hope that with perseverance and self-correction I can become who I am supposed to be. No matter how painful life’s discipline may be we have a choice to be broken or a choice to continue becoming. The elder Kennedy had become someone who was truly admirable, someone who had refined his message and knew for what he was fighting.

Nowadays public figures have to be perfect all the time. There’s no place for a sordid history, and those who hope to live in the public eye need to start preparing for it in childhood. There can be no smear or blemish, because all of the rest of we damaged people won’t allow that in our heroes. I, for one, relish the opportunity to celebrate a damaged, sinful hero. We don’t have to ignore the sinfulness to admire the goodness of someone who had the good fortune and the grace to mature.

Health Care, Soundbytes, and Talking to a Dining Room Table

Barney Frank was my first taste of Massachusetts politics. I heard him speak at BC during September of my freshman year. He made a snarky comment about Jerry Falwell and I laughed loudly, to the shock and disapproval of my fellow students who seemed to think that being impressive had to involve being prim.

In other words, it was love at first snark. Because of this, I follow him with great attention, although he manages to get attention all on his own and I don't usually have to look very far to find one of his soundbytes or quips. The clip I have posted is pretty soundbytey, but I suggest taking a look at the footage over at NECN, which paints a much more thorough picture and which, most importantly, includes the entirety of the question that Frank's interlocutor asks.

I haven't really been following the health care debate. Yesterday I heard the man behind me at the grocery story shouting into his phone "Don't you think it's a shame that all the other G8 countries provide health care?" and I knew he had to be getting his information from somewhere. It's a shame that most of our sources are so absurd: email forwards claiming that taxpayer money will pay for abortion or that the government will decide to pull the plug on old people. As someone who has made peace with the idea of our representative democracy, I am always aghast at people who propose that our elected officials (who are overwhelmingly women and men of good will) have monstrously sinister motives and plans. Don't get me wrong - I don't think politics is perfect, or even always nice. But I do believe that what we have here are groups of people who disagree on the best way to do right by the most people.

The media won't show us that, it's not nearly sexy enough. Talk radio gets us all in a huff, self-righteously defending our 'side'. Then people go to town-hall meetings (the purpose of which continues to elude me - is it really just to have a screaming match?) and they all shout and make good television. What a coup for the TV news. What Larry King doesn't mention in his little clip is that the questioner is quoting Lyndon LaRouche of all people, and I think we all know that there is a special place in the looneybin for LaRouche supporters. So she gets set up as the poster child for the anti-healthcare camp, which isn't fair to the plan's opponents, while Frank looks like a hero for taking an easy shot at someone who really does need to be shot down.

This is interesting and important stuff we are dealing with. Maybe I'm a hopeless optimist, but I think the country is capable of a more sophisticated debate than the one we are being handed. My optimism runs out when I think realistically about whether or not we will ever be presented with enough dispassionate truth and honesty to really understand what these conflicts are about.

The Can Lady Consortium

Any BC alum who was paying attention (or who ever set foot in the mods) is well aware of the Can Lady, who trudged around campus on Saturday and Sunday mornings retrieving our empties from bushes and sidewalks. Even the most justice-oriented undergrad (and there were plenty vying for that award) could use her activity as an opportunity to feel self-righteous about littering, of all things.

In retrospect this was probably not good for the moral development of BC's privileged students - and before you get all huffy, fellow alums, let me remind you that anyone who can go to a school like that is privileged one way or another, either with family influence, wealth, or simple academic inclination. So what if we had small Asian woman cleaning up the debris of our attempts at bacchanalia? We were doing her a favor, or at least that's what we convinced ourselves.

With due respect to my Boston College roots, there is a new can lady in my life. She lives around the corner from me and her back deck leans out over the path to my backdoor. I can remember one evening out with a friend of a friend who happened to live down the block who started talking about our charming can lady. "I give her all my empties and she calls me her angel!" the young woman effervesced. I am sure I shocked her when I started complaining about the cute old Lithuanian lady in the babushka.

In fact, I probably came off like a complete shrew. But on Tuesday night, the night before garbage day, I was repeatedly awakened through the night by her rattling through her empty bottles. I really don't know what she does on that deck with all the empties, but it involves relentless clanking all through the night. I am getting the urge to type all in enraged caps just thinking about it.

I have also seen her going through my garbage bags. I don't know which is more insulting, the violation of my private space or the insinuation that I don't recycle.

But what is most disturbing to me are all the moochers who have teamed up with her to use her space. There is a parade of people in and out of the gate next to mine, wheeling their suitcases and shopping carts up and down the street to see what they can get from our garbage. One of them sent her son who couldn't have been more than ten down the street to pick through the barrels looking for good stuff.

For what it's worth, I don't think that any member of the Can Lady Consortium is sinister enough to have been the person who burglarized the apartment last fall. I still could do without my corner being dumpster diving central.

Panem nostrum quotidianum

Everytime I finish a gig I fly into a panic.

I'm probably not alone in that regard. I know that other singers do it, my guess is that most freelancers have the same experience. You hardly have time to enjoy one success before you convince yourself that there is no more success coming up down the road. We want our calendars packed full for years at a time. We want to know what's coming.

Do we ever really know what's coming?

Two Sundays ago in the first reading from Exodus we heard the Israelites doing what they do best in the Pentateuch: grumbling. God, in response, tells them that quail and bread will be provided for them. They are not to store up manna, but God will give it to them every day.

Today it hit me during the Lord's Prayer: When we ask for our daily bread, we aren't just asking for food, we are asking only for that day's portion. Maybe part of that prayer needs to include asking for the patience and the faith to be satisfied with just that one day's portion and the promises that God has made.

I don't want to be patient or take things one day at a time. I want to know that my relationships will stay the same forever. I want to know that I will be an employed musician for many years. I want to know that the people I love will live to old age. I usually revel in the surprises of life, but in my sinful human nature I have decided that some things are so important that I need certainty - more certainty than the promises of God. Promises aren't good enough: I want predictions. They don't come.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. -- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"

If it's not fun, do it anyway

Yesterday afternoon involved a long car ride in the rain to pay respects in front of a very small casket. It was the sort of afternoon that totally drains a person, but it made me so glad that there are small things we can do to lift up the other people in our lives and that I surround myself with people who are willing to do those small things.

On the way home I saw a car with that old Ben and Jerry’s bumper sticker that reads “If it’s not fun, why do it?”, and I thought seriously about leaping out of our car and banging on the other driver's rear bumper. As you know, I love fun, and I have often thought that I might be able to get behind a slogan that read along the lines of “If you have to do it, why not make it fun?” But sometimes things are not fun, they are just awful, and we do them anyway because that is what human beings do.

It’s just a bumper sticker, don’t get so worked up about it. I think anyone who has been paying attention to the world knows that it’s not just a bumper sticker. It’s a way of thinking that allows us to ignore people around us who are in need if their need seems inconvenient. It lets people get away with not going to funerals because “it just reminds me of the last time I was in church, for ‘so-and-so’s’ funeral”. It keeps grieving people waiting to hear from the people who are close to them, who because of embarrassment and dis-ease decide that it’s not worth reaching out to try to comfort someone.

Some of the things we do are just not fun. On my worst days I think of them as the price we pay for living. When I’m particularly thoughtful or philosophical, though, I think that they are the only thing that can sustain us. When someone needs you, you go to them, whether or not it is convenient or comfortable or fun. Much of our lives are simple duty, and that duty is the manifestation of the love that in the end can be our only hope.

On Interruptions

You know the sort of person who thrives on crisis? She’ll leap up from the dinner table when out with friends or family to take a phone call because something came up at work, and for whatever reason she is the only person on the planet who can deal with it. Around the water cooler in the morning she’ll lament the poor night’s sleep she got due to one of the many projects she’s involved with, or a late night phone call from someone who absolutely had to talk to her. It’s easy for people to get hooked on the thrill of being needed, and to court interruption as a way to break up the day and beef up their own self-importance.

I’m ashamed to admit that to an extent I could be describing myself. To have been in a situation like Jesus’ in the Gospel today would be a dream come true. Speaking to the crowds, already the center of attention, from a distance I spy someone dashing through the crowd: “Your mother and brothers want to speak to you!” Hear that, everyone? I’d think to myself. I’m needed. While I went to speak to my family I would only half listen to their concerns, instead imagining the wonder of the crowd at my sudden and mysterious absence. Best of all, I would get to melodramatically complain about it when I got back. What could be better than that?

Once again the Scripture reminds me that God’s ways are not always my ways. Jesus’ reaction to interruption is not to fly into a tizzy or to use the pause to keep the crowds wanting more. Instead he stays present, saying “my family is here”. My people are here. My work is here.

So the moral of the story is not to get interrupted, right? I wish it were so easy. When I look back over my life some of my most important moments can only be described as interruptions. When I decided to throw an application to Boston College into my ambitious Ivy League pile during my senior year of high school, I didn’t know a Jesuit from a hole in the ground, yet now the fact that I completed my undergraduate education here affects nearly everything I do from the moment I get up in the morning until I go to bed at night. Senior year of college I had big plans to go straight on to conservatory, but I came back to my mod one day to find a flyer for a Nativity School on my door. “I like urban education” I thought, and off I went to a life that I had never ever expected.

I was struck two weekends ago by the first reading from Amos, when Amaziah hollers at Amos that enough is enough, and that Amos should get the heck out of Israel and prophesy somewhere else. Amos replies that he wasn’t a professional prophet, that wasn’t his gig, he was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores. In other words, “I didn’t ask for any of this, buddy. This is not what I had planned. God started talking, and that was that.” More often than not, God’s will is not the same as our plan.

I wish I could take credit for my many blessings by claiming some magical powers of knowing when to let God interrupt my life, but there are just as many times that I have let my life interrupt God’s work, and I struggle every day with knowing the difference between the two. All of us have so many responsibilities in our lives, and I spend a good portion of my prayer on the hope that my responsibilities will never come into conflict, that the tightrope I’m walking will stay taut and still.

I have often imagined God’s call like a tide, rocking me back and forth, pulling me slowly toward God as long as I’m calm enough not to struggle against it. But man, are there days when I splash away against the current, stupidly thinking that I won’t ultimately be overcome by the will of God. I am lucky that I have had experiences of things being just right, so that I can measure my gut reactions against those moments of blissful congruence with God’s will. There has been a lot of ink spilled on what discernment means, but for me the best description I can think of is going with my gut, and making a habit of being present and attentive to God’s working in the world so that I can recognize the action of God when it manifests.

Even on days when I am sick of trying to do the right thing, sick of playing by the rules, I can say along with the psalmist “Your words are spirit and life, O Lord,” because I know that I am most myself when the only interruptions I allow are from God. I have to trust that I have followed God’s words well, that like Jesus in the Gospel I am where I am supposed to be, doing the work that God wants me to do. Then I need to shut up and get out of the way.

On that note, I am going to shut up and get out of the way, with a prayer that both during our silent reflections and in the chaos of our lives we are so attuned to God’s call that it ceases to be an interruption or an anomaly and simply becomes who we are and how we live.

Summer morning with friends

You all know that there are days when I want to throw it all in the car and get out of the city. It’s too crowded, I miss grass, I miss family. There are those moments, as you know, when life seems like an episode of Friends, that make it worthwhile.

Nicole and I have recruited another friend to our morning swim club, and today was our first day meeting out in JP for some laps. We were to meet on the steps of the community center at 6:30, so I hopped on the bike around 5:45 and pedaled over. After braving the traffic of Newmarket and Egleston Sq, I arrived to find that the pool was closed until 10. I was right on time, but L & N weren’t there.

I’m enough of a Luddite to leave my phone at home occasionally to make sure the world will keep spinning. Without a phone I had no way of knowing where the rest of the team had gone, so I went the half a block to N’s house and knocked on the screen door. Her boyfriend answered the door, and I used N’s phone to figure out where the rest of our party was located.

L had just gotten to the pool, late. It was quickly decided that we should not abandon our plan to have breakfast. N and her bf decided they would come along as well, suggesting Haley House Café in Roxbury.

Two of us got on our bikes while the other two showered and drove, and we got our social justice on at the café. Drinking Thousand Hills Coffee was anti-climactic, since that’s what I drink at home too, but the breakfast was leisurely and laugh-filled.

On the way home I impersonated the Magi and went home by another route. If you can’t explore Roxbury on a bike in the morning, when can you? All this, and home before 9:00 am. Life is good, friends are good, the city is good.

The Lord is Kind and Merciful

It's been a week and a day since my family gathered back home for the funeral. As a liturgy buff, I'm not one of those people who says they "hate funerals" - I actually don't mind funerals, it's people dying that brings me down.

If I had anything to do with it, this funeral was going to be a barnburner, for lack of a better word. One of the things I find so helpful about liturgy is that it lets us say what we want to say using words that have been used before, so we don't foul it all up because we are sad. In a situation so devastating we wanted to make sure everything was right - the music, the readings, the prayer of the faithful, the programs. All of these things can help to sum up our belief in the resurrection, in family, and in mercy. The words we use matter.

So that's my academic, overthought rambling on liturgy. Why was it important, in truth, for me? Because I needed to see that I wasn't the only person who had been blind with grief for the previous week and a half. Because when I sang Psalm 103: The Lord is Kind and Merciful I knew that I had a chance to say what I believed, to stand in front of people I loved and sing "Bless the Lord, O my soul" and really mean it in spite of everything. It is rare that singing matters so much to me.

Yesterday was the memorial of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the only Native American on the path to canonization. I learned during reflection at midday prayer yesterday that Tekakwitha was the moniker given to her due to her partial blindness, and that it means "one who gropes in the dark". I can identify with that; and I think most of us can. I have been groping through the darkness of grief with my family, mulling over the wretched questions that we know we can never answer. But day after day I think we all grope through the dark, grabbing onto what we can to orient us, be it liturgy, family, friends, or simple hope.

Sleepy's? More like creepy's.

I take a long time to do things.

I put off moving into my own place for years until one day I walked into a realtor's and put first and last down on the first apartment I saw. Buying a futon took about 7 months from the time I thought I might like one, and a futon cover was another 4 or 5 months in the making.

It's been obvious for more than a year that I need a new mattress and box spring, and a quick look around my apartment reveals that I really need a proper bed and not just a crummy old bed frame. Still, I'm not very particular about those sorts of things, and I can be somewhat lazy, so I keep putting off getting the new furniture.

Yesterday I finally went to Sleepy's thinking this could be the time! I usually think and think about these big purchases and then complete them quite suddenly, and I figured that yesterday's excursion could be the culmination of all my new-furniture-dreaming.

I walked into the store and there were two salesmen in the big empty store, goofing off on their cell phones. I explained that I wanted a mattress and box spring, I didn't want to spend a lot of money, and I sleep on my side. I had hoped that I would lay down on a mattress or two and finally feel "ahhh, this is what a mattress is supposed to be!", but nothing really struck me.

In addition, the salesman I was working with was pushy and dismissive, while the other salesman watched me roll around on the beds with a little too much interest. My gut was telling me that the day of the new bed had not arrived, so I stood up and explained to the salesman that I had been expecting something to really knock my socks off, and nothing had, and my gut was telling me that I shouldn't get anything today.

He proceeded to get somewhat antagonistic and even pushier. "Then what was your goal in coming in here today? What do you mean when you say 'knock your socks off'?" I find it very funny when people think that they can bully me, which was definitely what he was trying to do. I know that I may not always look like a stubborn, firm person, but despite my small stature I have a pretty big will.

Every year there are a few kids who think that they can manipulate me either by bickering or by getting weepy. My co-workers think it's a riot. In fact, most people who know me are amused when someone who thinks they can badger me gives it a whirl, since most of the time there couldn't be a further possibility.

The end of the story is that I didn't buy a bed.

Life is not ended, just changed

“All the wickedness in this world that man might work or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal in the sea.” —William Langland



Earlier this week there was a terrible tragedy that resulted in the loss of two family members. We're shattered and praying, and I'm trying to fill parts of my days with other things in order not be overwhelmed by what we could never possibly understand.

In lieu of dwelling on all that I can't understand, I have been spending some time with what I do understand. I understand that our tragedy is even more stark because it casts it's shadow over the blinding brilliance of our many blessings of love. I understand that year after year as we have gathered for Christmas Eve, for summer picnics, for weddings, birthdays, and visits, bonds of love have strengthened between us. These bonds weave into a web that lifts us all when we fall and supports us when we can't stand. With a piece of our web missing I feel broken, but I take comfort in knowing that our remnant can carry the lost together in a web of prayer and love.

I understand that even after a month of gloomy weather, I wake every morning with a new chance to see the sun. I understand that when we gather for another cousin's wedding later in the week, we reaffirm that love rises, that futures are possible even in great darkness, and that it is worthy to persevere with new life always as our goal.

I understand that life changes, that it's silly to think that things last forever, and that clutching at blessings, standing very still and hoping that nothing will be altered, will ultimately fail. Perhaps the best practice is simply to develop habits of surviving that allow us all to live with dignity and virtue even through changes and grief, continuing in the paths of our ancestors and of those we love.

On another plane from what I understand (and don't) lie the things I believe. I believe in a God of inexhaustible mercy, who loves like a mother and whose love does not disappoint. I believe that suffering is never God's will and that the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is hogwash. I believe that grace, infinite holiness alive in the world, is always available to us, that God's inscrutable goodness cannot be conquered by death and that hope may be our highest calling.

Having technique

A lot of singers talk about ‘having technique’, which I usually assume means ‘having the capability to manipulate our bodies in such a way that we produce a marketable operatic sound’. Ignoring that minor complication that such manipulation is supposed to be relaxed and natural, we can still conclude that technique isn’t really something we attain or achieve but something we practice.

And practice, and practice, and practice.

One of my coaches has been working with me on middle voice. A lot of sopranos have trouble with that part of the voice, and I am no exception. I know that dealing with less-optimal vocal qualities is the only way that any singer improves, but making those improvements usually includes someone harping on your flaws over and over. For me at least, no matter how hard I have worked to get everything else to line up, whatever it is we are trying to tweak or fix makes me feel like my flaw is the only important thing.

Some of you may remember my multiple proclamations last summer that most singers think about quitting at least five times a day. That’s why. It takes a life-time to “have” technique, which one then needs to refine & practice. I know lots of gifted singers who for whatever reason decided not to pursue a career. I have to wonder if the stress of constant self-improvement is a reason some people decide to call it quits (rather than just dreaming about it like the rest of us).

That’s not to say that all people aren’t called to self-improvement in one way or another. Still, knowing that I am pressured to ‘improve’ something as fundamental to my identity as how I sing creates a constant tension between the part of me that wants to be lazy and the part that wants to be excellent.

Advice

The last 24 hours may make you think I am obsessed with The Atlantic, but I can't resist sharing this letter to the back page advice columnist.

I am the pastor of a small, historic Episcopal church in the Southeast. A bride-to-be wants to tie little pink bows to the pews for her wedding. Our wedding director says the church is too pretty to be ruined by little pink bows. The bride is deeply distressed. Meanwhile, the youth group wants to burn the church down and replace it with something more energy-efficient. I concede that the church, a Victorian pile with high ceilings and lots of stained glass, is costly to heat and maintain. Energy-efficient churches are often ugly, but pink bows would then cease to be an issue. Should I let the youth group burn down the church?

What's the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist...

Two poems

Heaven
by William Heyen
Henry Thoreau’s last words: “Moose … Indian.”
Joe DiMaggio’s: “I’ll finally get to see Marilyn.”

Henry died never having gone to bed with a woman.
Joe enjoyed dozens, but in the end loved only one,

& believed that after he’d signed his last ball or bat,
he’d find her waiting in Yankee Stadium in starlight.

Henry died younger, & wasn’t sure about the out-there,
except it sounded transcendentally beautiful, whether

or not it was cognizant of him or was just a cowbell
thunking in the mind of the great Oversoul,

but if it at least proved amenable
to hounds, bay horses, turtledoves, what the hell.

Maybe Henry is in Joe’s penthouse, Joe in Henry’s cabin,
maybe Joe is writing books, Henry hugging Marilyn,

maybe Henry is hitting homers, & Joe is fishing Walden,
maybe Joe & Hank are pals, & Marilyn ecstatic with Emerson.

Reading "Heaven" in The Atlantic reminded me I'd never shared this, which I read in the same magazine while in West Virginia, and which moved me so much I mouthed the words over and over in the collegiate auditorium in which we were taking our rehearsal break.

Celebration
by Grace Schulman

Seeing, in April, hostas unfurl like arias,
and tulips, white cups inscribed with licks of flame,
gaze feverish, grown almost to my waist,
and the oak raise new leaves for benediction,
I mourn for what does not come back: the movie theater—
reels spinning out vampire bats, last trains,
the arc of Chaplin’s cane, the hidden doorways—
struck down for a fast-food store; your rangy stride;
my shawl of hair; my mother’s grand piano.
My mother.

How to make it new,
how to find the gain in it? Ask the sea
at sunrise how a million sparks can fly
over dead bones.

Both of these reminded me I should never write any more poems, ever again.

The joy of ad sales

Because of my newly acquired free time, I am hawking a ton of ads for BOC's summer production of Carmen. Ad sales have always been one of the toughest things we've had to do, for the simple reason that no one likes to do it. Walking into an establishment, making a fast new friend, and convincing them that what we have to offer is just what they have always been looking for but never knew to seek out - this requires more than free time. It requires mental fortitude.

This season we are able to offer many of our sponsors a lot more than ever before. Cadenza: the Boston Opera Collaborative newsletter reaches over 900 subscribers, and we are expecting about 700 tickets sold for Carmen. Many of our packages this season include pre-performance exposure, so that we can offer our patrons information on restaurants, hotels and attractions near our performance venues.

With these new offers in place, sales have been a little easier this go-round, but it should go on the record that it is still not a lot of fun. I wonder if some people imagine that I like doing the things that no one else wants to do (such as when I have had to talk to people about deodorant at rehearsals). I'm willing to take one for the team, but I can think of things I'd rather be doing.

That said, want to purchase an ad in the program?

Happy anniversary to me

It was just over a year ago that Felicemifa had it's inaugural post. What began as an easy way to keep mom and dad up to date on my Italian adventure has turned into what every blog should be: a narcissistic chronicle of minutiae and pompous profundity. And for whatever reason, you keep reading.

For those of you who have never really understood the title (and who pronounce it "fuhleesemeefa", it's a line from Musetta's aria in La Boheme. I learned that role last summer, and I only really decided to start a blog about being in a summer program when I came up with a clever name.

I hope to post much more this summer - although there is no European gallavanting ti report on, Boston promises just as many adventures! Happy summer!

Congrats to Nick and Katie!

Two of my dearest friends (and former roommates) just had their first child. Nick and Katie are two of the greatest people I know and I am so excited that they have added a son to their wonderful household. I don't have any pictures to post (plus I have some moral reservations about posting pictures of babies) but I'm so overjoyed I'll just post an old picture from their wedding.

River of Glory - for all the LAG kids in the house

Today I heard River of Glory sung by a choir that is not my group from BC, and let's just say it did not exactly inspire the same reveries as the last time I heard it.

a few classics revisited

Have you ever gone back to a book, or a restaurant, or a play that you really loved, only to find it disappoints you upon revisiting it? Ever since re-reading The Catcher in the Rye when I was 23 or so, I have been terrified of hitting up the old standards. The life-altering story of growth and introspection seemed self-indulgent and boring once I was in my twenties. Rare are the classics that stay powerful. Counting Crows’ "A Long December" continues to exacerbate my maudlin tendencies despite being associated most with the winter I turned 17 - perhaps it’s just that I haven’t outgrown emo angst yet. God willing I never will! I can still rock out to Everclear’s Songs from an American Movie, which was the soundtrack to my junior year of college. But some music and books don’t transition with us as we get older, and the specter of Holden Caulfield hovers near when I dare to pull revered works from a dusty shelf.

For whatever reason, a few days ago I was feeling brave and I pulled out not only The Brothers Karamazov but Phish’s Rift. Let’s deal with the less profound of the two first. At this point it my life I believe that the deeper work is the tome of Russian literatur, but there are days when Trey et. al. make a pretty good case for their own sagacity . Since Phish has started touring again I have been thinking more and more about my days of ripped jeans and wallet chains. If I recall correctly, I wore an extra-large Phish t-shirt and corduroys to my BC orientation (no wonder I never quite fit in with the J. Crew crowd. I had never even heard of J. Crew. But that’s another post). During a PR Committee meeting at B.Good two weeks ago I heard a track off of Junta and stopped dead in my tracks as I had flashbacks to high school (one of the flashback frames involves Phish’s Lawn Boy on cassette).

On the drive to CT this weekend I popped in the beautiful blue CD. As the opening riffs sounded I wondered, would I still find the poetry of “Fast Enough for You” as brilliant as I once did? The answer is not quite, but it’s still darn good and those guys know how to slap together a couplet better than just about any band out there. What really struck me was the virtuosity of their playing and their musicianship. The opening minute of “My Friend, My Friend” is stunning, and they have a way of pushing the beat around that makes me a little bit nervous but ultimately inspires trust that they will keep control. That’s right, Phish inspires trust in me. Make of that what you will.

So I discover that some of my beloved tunes from high school have stood the test of time. The real question is whether or not Dostoevsky has. I went on my Dostoevsky kick when I was 19 or 20, going so far as to read a library copy of House of the Dead on the beach in St. Thomas at Deb and Eric’s wedding. (Also the purview of another post - my odd choices in beach lit. Common Ground was my companion on the beach the summer of 2007. Weird.)

Like a lot of college kids, my life was changed by The Brothers Karamazov. Part of the power of that book is that it is so vast. I truly believe that anyone can find in that book a character, an episode, or an emotion that will resonate with them. The first time I read it I fell deeply, madly in love with Alyosha Karamazov (the first but not last time I fell for a fictional character), and the second time through I identified more with Fyodor Pavlovich. That most recent read-through was more than five years ago, so I decided (thanks to some inspiration from Christina) that I would give it a shot again. I’m about 80 pages in and I am as enthralled by the writing as ever. Now that I teach church history I understand far more of the ecclesiastical references without having to constantly flip back and forth to the end notes. I still have some trepidation though - when I close the book will I still pronounce it “amazing!!”, the highest praise of the college undergrad? Maybe I will, but I bet the tone of voice will be different.

I’m not old, but I’m older, and each year that goes by I know more than I did before. I can never go back to experiencing something for the first time. I was trying to mush all of these thoughts into a blog post yesterday just after I arrived at my parents’ house for a few days of R&R. One nice thing about cerebrally picking apart nostalgia is that it doesn’t really give you time to feel it, but as I jogged past a kids' vegetable stand - one that wasn’t ironic, or out of place, or sponsored by WIC - the feeling hit me straight in the gut.

I love “Ain’t it a Pretty Night” from Susannah. Like many poignant arias, this is a tough one for me to get through, mostly because I as an actress I have to un-know a lot of things. When Susannah wonders if her big-city dreams will cause her to miss the rustic attributes of home, she simply announces “I could always come back if I got homesick for the valley!” I’m not one for “you can’t go home again” melodrama, because I do go home, again and again, and have a perfectly fine time and then go back to the city. But each time I go home or go anywhere, I know a little more and I’ve seen a little more. I remember when all I needed for adventure was a walk in the woods. Something about the uncharted, untamed quality of large expanses of trees filled me with excitement because I never was quite sure where I was heading. Same thing with long walks and later long drives down rural roads I had never been down, undertaken just to see where they would go. Now I am better acquainted with the lay of the land and it takes more to inspire that sense of adventure. Even when life offers me uncertainty and adventure, half the time I am too lazy to take up the offer. Some pieces of the past seem doomed to stay there - like The Catcher in the Rye - but the best ones travel forward with me as I change and the world changes. And luckily for me on occasion I can still venture out into the woods and find something or some place that I don’t already know.