Lyrics - Aisle Two

Six months ago, maybe more

I was walking out the stage

Looked up and saw your face

Oh right-- we work in the same place

You were surprised too, and kinda grinned 

That made me anxious

You walked me to the store, I wondered if I'd been a bore

(chorus)

Cuz every time I see you

Look up into those eyes so blue 

I try to hide it, but it's so hard to do

My face betrays me with its ruby red hue

Let's stay awhile, keep on dreaming 

Here, in aisle two

Fast forward a few weeks, and we're both there now

Standing in the produce aisle

Scoping out vitamin C

You say something bout organic oranges

I was pretty sure it was completely wrong so I checked with a biologist friend of mine 

And it was, but I didn't mind then and I still don't now 

Cuz every time I see you

Look up into those eyes so blue 

I try to hide it, but it's so hard to do

My face betrays me with its ruby red hue

Let's stay awhile, keep on dreaming 

Here, in aisle two

I just can't stand it

You've gotta see

I like the way you pick your celery 

I like you standing here, next to me 

Let's move an aisle over and pick out a few ingredients 

To bake our house, of gingerbread 

Just sweet enough for you and me

********************************************

One day I'm buying oranges 

when I hear someone softly say my name

I smile, it's been a while 

But you're back in the frame 

We wander over to the section I prefer 

I wonder, if you're still with her

It'd be so nice to take you out for tea

But standing here too is okay by me

Cuz every time I see you

Look up into those eyes so blue 

I try to hide it, but it's so hard to do

My face betrays me with its ruby red hue

Let's stay awhile, keep on dreaming 

Here, in aisle two

Lyrics - Meditation

Every morning, when I rise

I pray the Lord might be my eyes

There's so much good I don't realize

Help me to see

Next I ask, oh, when I wake

Won't you please my heart just take

Do it now, for my sake,

Help me be free

Again

Finally with my tea

I ask for just a word 

Or maybe three

Seems today I need you here

With me

************************************

The sun is setting, I sit right down and

Make a list of all the reasons 

I needn't frown

I've got plenty of good food to eat 

And family so sweet

But there's still something out there 

I've gotta meet

Lord, is there still time today?

Whaddaya say?

Songwriting

Hello from Austin, dear readers! 

I'm one week into my life here, officially, after being asked in July to come back to be the afternoon nanny for a Wellesley family and also being offered to join the teaching faculty of a wonderful community music school here. 

"Miss Lucy", as I'm referred to in these parts, is my new alias as I flit from music studio to classroom and from after-school pick-up to the playground. Days here are full of sweet children playing whimsical music and teaching me their games, and nights are mixtures of more music outdoors with friends and adventures into the various nooks and corners and taco joints of a city I am quickly embracing as my own. Each night as I drive home just north of the city proper, I put down the top of Goldie Hawn, my convertible and friend, and inhale the warm, Texan summer air. The freshness is tinged with the aromas of highway construction, far from pleasant, but striking to me, as I too am building something exciting and new of my own here. (End metaphorical tangent) 

The musical friends I've made here in just the short summer are so inspiring to me. I've decided to try to write a new song each week to perform at the Monday night outdoor open mic we like best, and I'll put the lyrics and maybe some videos here as the weeks go by. 

I got a bit homesick for all of my faraway friends and family a few nights ago and started writing a song about pie... And then made cookies instead of finishing the song. Maybe tonight I'll think of a fitting tune. 

peace & love 

Howdy, friends.

It's been a few months since I've updated this blog, as I've been over on my other page (see here) tracking all of the travel-related adventures (and misadventures...). I've recently landed in Austin, Texas, where I find myself blinking in the sunshine and oddly comforted by the close hug of the heated air (up to 103 degrees the first day I was here). My Yankee blood is feeling fatigued by the heat and learning the deeper meaning of a mid-morning and mid-afternoon siesta, but I am soaking up the warmth like a beetle in the sun.

Or maybe like a kitten in the pool of the sunlight on the tile kitchen floor. I'd rather be a kitten than a beetle, upon second thought.


Regardless. Some writing and much musing has been happening these last few months, but the majority of it has been the kind for my eyes only. (Sorry dudes). Now that my feet are staying in the same general vicinity for a few months, I'm happy to be back on my writing routine and to start spinning out more poetry to chew on and edit and scratch out and wonder if anyone else reads it and so forth. Is it strange that I really do truly enjoy this process?


This one I found on my phone while cleaning notes out waiting for my flight to Texas a few days ago. It's from April 10....I remember all of the context. It's nice that now, in June, I feel much less weary, but I still dwell on the comforting feeling of knowing that there are people out there who love me, no matter the distance. This is dedicated to all of you.

From April 10, 2015

It's this quiet knowing
That you exist
Hemispheres and time zones evaporate
I can sleep

Body's willing but minds ablaze
Never seems to tire these days
Wishing I could follow you to work and home
But my Tuesday's ending in a cold kitchen alone

Cut up the onions
Set the water on
The kettle's my company
The popping corn replaces
Our chatter

My ginger candle
Steadily flickering

It's this quiet knowing
That you exist
Hemispheres and time zones

No matterYour voice on my phone
Even just the message
Before the tone.


-lab

just to mention

I am tracking some travel-related adventures and items in a separate place...this space shall be reserved for strictly the weirder and wilder musings that don't necessarily fall within the realm of a "travel blog" and stray more toward the imagination and the pursuit of writing down something that needs to be creatively expressed.

So...the new blog is here: http://lucybee-solviturambulando.blogspot.com/

But...the old blog is here, as in actually right here. You know.

the trouble with blue eyes

from Good Friday

The trouble is, I can see the future.

No, not the what will be but the what could be

I think it’s the worser ability of the two

A moment of eye contact in a subway train

Smelling of farts and a young man softly rapping along

To the lil wayne song his girlfriend’s playing with him

On a singular intelligent device, connected by wires,

Closed off with communication pumping directly into their ears

I glance over and look

Blue eyes

Look away

Blue true dream of sky forget it

Next stop’s mine, what a day.

What a week.

Blue comes in and out of recollection

Brain searching for the landing spot

Circling and circling

Dein blaues Auge hielt so still ich blicke bis zum Grund

Du fragst mich, was ich sehen will?

Ich sehe mich gesund.

Aren’t we all, every one of us small scurrying creatures, hoping to find

One who sees us

In the midst of our life

And simply scoops us up for a moment

Perhaps, forever. 

one

A week from today I'll be thirty-two minutes away from my last Friday workday in Symphony Hall.

It's been coming in in waves... bits and pieces of the massive realization of the step I'm readying to take out in a big blue and green unknown. The messages from beyond are washed up on the shore I've called home and comfort, known daily routines and cups of steaming coffee; the small words and messages from beyond appeared by my toes and some days I've been too busy walking back and forth along the bank holding myself together to notice them. Other days it was all I could to take one step, I was so preoccupied in scanning the sand for traces of a vessel of meaning from the other places, for they appear as shells, rocks, creatures, broken edges of massive sand dollars. I treasure each discovery, I shriek aloud in wonder and delight at the mystery that brought us together. I hold each tiny shell in my cupped palm and study its inner-workings; if only I were an ant, and could make my home in one such beautifully constructed immaculate edifice.


***

A few weeks ago I spent a few days with my oldest friends on beaches never before visited by my ten small toes. Water makes me feel at home, fifteen years old, growing up by a small lake for the school year, and a larger lake for my summer. I was so very lucky -- we all were --- these dear, old friends of mine, the ones who were my friend when I wasn't pretty and when I couldn't navigate social scenes. They all had boyfriends at summer camp except me. My head and heart were in the trees and the clouds, waking up early to read my Bible, and later, an e.e. cummings volume of poetry that would become ragged with the cover torn off from a smothering of love and attention. The volume accompanied me to the Alps where I had my first French romance; to Haiti where my heart was broken for my beautiful, joyful Haitian friends dealing with poverty, harsh conditions, and later, the aftermath of a devastating earthquake; and the simple words of the poet came with me to both my first and second apartments. They comforted me the first year decorating a Christmas tree alone late one night, my roommate asleep already, but I was too sad to sleep. The white lights and green branches waved and winked at me, knowing things I would patiently wait to learn.

***

Packing up my books a few nights ago, in the place I have called home for two years now, I hesitated when I reached the purple torn-off cover of the selected poetry by my favorite whimsically serious writer. It's not that I don't need the words anymore -- i do -- it's that, instead of bringing volumes of already-written poetry on my journey, I've decided to bring blank journals to fill, with my own words.

There are a lot of them, I think; I've shared some of them here in this public space, but there are so many more that I am struggling with, allowing to pool in the elixir of memory and time, stirred up with song, dance, and early mornings. They shiver and shimmer along the bridge of my nose and back, sinking deeper into lungs and heart. They're heavy; they demand attention. They're part of the reason I'm doing everything that I'm doing. There's a new sense of peace that follows when I've been able to write something that has been spinning around for days and weeks, slowly forming into silvery stream and a final note of punctuation.

While I'm away , I will write, pray, meditate, and sing. I'll cook for the friends I stay with, and show them my little collection of messages from the deep blue. It's already helped so much to allow others in to my story and thoughts.

I thank you all, dearly. It hurts to go away, but here is what a certain Cambridge native by the initials "e.e." would say, and what I do very much so believe :

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

My heart is very full right now. It's keeping me going -- strengthening each word and straightening each footfall. 

farewells

oh all the money, that e'er I had
I spent it in good company

and all the harm that e'er I done
alas it was to none but me

and all I've done for want of it
to memory now I can't recall

so fill to me the parting glass
goodnight, and joy be with you all

oh all the comrades that e'er I had
are sorry for my going away

and all the sweethearts that e'er I had
they'd wish me one more day to stay

but since it falls unto my lot
that I should rise and you should not

I'll gently rise and I'll softly call
goodnight and joy be with you all



These two weeks in Boston are late winter and early spring enmeshed in a harmonious overlay of opposites. There are great sorrows sketched with fine outlines of joy; I'm staying very still and waiting, watching for these lines to appear, just a moment. Less present than the shooting star -- it's the trail burned softly into the sky that I'm after. I've trained my whole life to have eyes that could see that moment.

Today we say farewell, together with sisters and lovers and friends, to a dear person. We all knew her in different ways and in beautiful settings. She graced each one of us with her infectious smile and boundless courage. We hold her in our hearts, as we were held and are still held in hers.

Last night I returned to campus to rehearse music for today's service. It was a homecoming for me; accompanied by laughter and hugging. Girls gathered around the piano, listening and focusing. We practiced the song, whose lyrics I typed above, and I told them about the touching way my Russian friends say goodbye. It's saved for when someone is going far away, or on a long journey, perhaps with uncertainty about when you'll see them again. You pack up your things, load up the car, and then return back inside the house and sit down at the table. You take a moment together, sitting in silence. Then someone looks up or clears their throat; the moment has passed. You get up, hug once more perhaps, and go on your way.

This little song, "The Parting Glass", for me, creates this kind of moment. We'll sing it to close the memorial service today, to wish all those in attendance to leave with peace, and a hope for joy. It's a moment for them to sit in silence, not necessarily thinking about anything, but allowing the moment to be filled with loving memories naturally, on its own. And then, we can all take our farewell.

peace & love

for my dear friend, who is sick

...

are you feeling better?

 

the weather isn't any wetter

i could have written you a letter

but i'm wearing my business sweater

work today is a double-header

 

(man, I could go for a slice of cheddar!)

shoulder pain

each day at 3:15
for about two months running
my upper right shoulder begins to scream
pain lights up the length of my shoulder blade like
a christmas tree on the first of december
i jerk back and clasp my hands
drink a sip of water
stretch back

the shouting disintegrates into a dull murmur
i don't think anyone else can hear it
but i'm quite certain it will return

my body is starting to tell me what
my mind already knows

late march

i've got the late winter early spring chilly morning blues

nose runs, throat drags its limping lymph-nodes lazily

raspingly grasping the edges of my teeth

wearisome wispy warbles wither within

the bus screeches, we all jump off

the wind howls, we tuck our faces

into the curving caress of hooded 

duvets, I fall asleep in mine 

whether I'm sitting or standing 

tip tappering toes turn of their own accord

with the faint glim glammering hope

an orange

a losange

a small cup

of morning glory elixir

warm, frothy tendrils

reach up from my to-go glass

they blow kisses and laugh

at my grumbly human existence

my cheeks dimple of their own accord

"today"

thinking softly about this poem by mary oliver, entitled "today":

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness.  One of the doors
into the temple.

fried and fraying

last night I set a paper bag of popping corn on fire in the microwave.


as the flames engulfed the bag, I gingerly pulled the bundle of pyrotechnic possibility out of the heating square

my brain ticked rapidly to locate the fire extinguisher.
vision became a Goldeneye screen
I was moving player 1
45 degrees, one click, one more,
turn back, advance, no fire extinguisher
Eyes switch to the left and land on a metal mixing bowl
10 o'clock as the crow flies
I grabbed it and set it upon
the now
entirely
flaming
paper bag

Smoke started to creep out from the turned-up edges of the metal bowl
so I threw a towel  around it, then flipped it right-side-up scooping a few bits where the fire persisted. Splashed water around.

Sighed.

My feet turned toward the broom closet, but my hands found nothing.
Last resort took a small hand brush sweeping device  and swept up all of the blackness around me. I swept and swept and the ash turned into a light rain and I softly laid down on a pillowed fluttery mountain

and the rain was only dust around my temples
swirling in the mist I heard your voices and laughed and fell strangely asleep.

american tunes

You find nice things when you finally upload all your pictures and media off the real camera.

My friend Nels shot some footage during my annual Friendsgiving Potluck, back in November. Close-ups and far-aways. I like playing music with my friends Jamie and Ben.

tye dye bathing suit bottoms

juices mingling together

strawberry particles broken down
acidic lemon cut with carbon dioxidized bubbles of cranberry and
lime ginger topping crisping your tongue at the last moment of departure

a moment; hush; large bed and three juice bottles struggling for attention overshadowed by a
small mountain of dirty laundry, still waiting, ignored this entire week
(chose to write little words down instead
that's what bathing suits are for anyway)
they get you through until
the night of the week
some call "thunder
day" i choose to
call it laundry
day

3 o'clock witching hour

i take issue with this red velvet cupcake half.
it is neither red, nor velvety, enough.



contentment must be found, alas, in just my plain cup of black tea.
finally; quarter past three.

a-stigma-tism

apparently, according to one of the emily's (of which there are many...her true identity i choose not to reveal at this time, but if you wait a week and tell me the magic passcode user key, perhaps i'll change my mind)

well where was i?

apparently, oh right yes! a parent lee, once told me that the A Stigma in my right and left eyeballs somehow contribute to the drying of them, for the lenses by whose contact my vision fully is restored must just-so thick be, this A-Stigma whose tism corrected perhaps once was, but

...but, but cloudiness and blockage barrs me from continuing, for my lense appears to have been perturbed by a pesky provocation pooling neath the lids, twixt the eye and lense whose - right o! - increased thickness more quickly dries the eye socket.

my constant tip-tap-teepering of the keys and jabbing of the knees distracts from the dry-ness, till poof! Thar she blows, my sight is gone, a cloud, a plane absorbed, a girl, sitting alone with her purple headphones

playing coltrane, and sighing.

the great five

It dawned on me earlier today, in the midst of a conversation with a co-worker about my travel plans, that I ever never swum in any of the Great Lakes.

For any other New Englander, this would be normal. No big deal. The United States is a big place, and the Great Lakes are pretty cold if you're looking for places to swim. But --- I've spent part of every summer since the age of 3 months old going to Michigan and driving right by some of these lakes.

The not-as-great-but-still-super-swell lake that would be my destination was always too sparkly and wonderful and enticing to permit any ideas of visiting other lakes, once I finished the 16-19 hour drive to get myself there. Once I did the drive with a puppy, without stopping. That's dedication.

But, this summer is different.

This summer, I'll have just turned 25. I'll have resigned from my first *big-girl* job (yes, this is official, public information, not to worry, dear readers) and this summer, I'll be a moving target, waiting to hear and figure out where I'll end up come autumn leaves-time.

The actual physical journey-route I'll take to get to the cottage this year is still to-be-determined. As my course redirects to possibly include a trip to Colorado to take part in what sounds like an epic combination of music and neurological discovery (check out more details here) I'm toying with the idea of a little road trip. If that were to happen, I guess, I might just have to stop in all of the Great Lakes along the way. Take a small dip. 

25 is a great age to turn. Why not start the year off right, with a little baptism by road-trip, and insanely cold, clear water?

a thursday late afternoon

Your bleary

Weary dreary teary

Dearie.

Please

Hold me fold me

Mold me

My little brittle

Heart (light pulsing slow now

No flashes not brilliant

Soft and low)

Please

 Slumber by me

still, sighing

my dearie-o-bleary-eyed

Dreaming you.

(my heart will ponder;

Grows fonder)

northern light

I wasn't raised talking about faith and the scriptures every day

We prayed before going to bed

My mother sang

I believed, as many children do, without fear

God was watching over me.

My elders instructed me in the ways of early mornings

A steaming cup of tea by a lake

And deep darkness late at night

Waiting and hoping

Ready to run gleefully out on the dock arms

Wrapped around each other

Hugging one another in the cold

Grins blinding the nights sky

The one night the aurora borealis arrived

I was twelve

It hasn't come back since.

Each day still

I prepare for its return

I have no fear

Such is my faith.

Morning laughs

Teach me

Instruct me in the methodology

Formulaic steps toward the goal

Of increasing morning laughter I fear

The prognosis isn't great

One shouldn't awaken to tears of sadness

It's jarring and sudden

Let's ease into the day

(It's Saturday, for Pete's sake!)

A chuckle, an exhale to start

A little smile, however brief

Is what we're after

Nearness is better but far-ness works too

Come, we'll work together

To make a giggly you.

6 am, on Long Island

They didn't believe me when 

I told them, gently, that I would do my best to

Be very quiet

For I knew I would wake up 

Very early

And need to occupy myself for a long time to let them sleep

I've been in the practice since I was a child

Seems I've always had a proclivity for early mornings

Needing to mull things over

Allow myself to be sad

Tears onset before it seems my eyes are open

What fears have happ'd in dreams

I know not

These days I don't remember my dreams

Sleep is short and weak

My body reveals the upset state

Of heart

The uncertainty of today

Of tomorrow

The Sehnsucht for a small piece of hope

That will not come.

Ode to the Boston Symphony Orchestra

The horn warms its bell and tubular

Copper early in the morning

I arrive to start my day

Lists agendas to-dos and not-to-dos

Questions unanswered problems unsolved

It's early.

The office is empty as I peel off winter 

Sweaters and coat scarves small gloves

Folding each neatly, one upon another

It calms my mind to smooth out

Wrinkles around me

Hands on the keyboard

Poker-straight posture

And I buckle 

Down down down

To the small corner

It's too early for violins

Violists slumber still

Me, a horn only

Our mournful morning vocalise

Rises

As you shall rise, soon.

Back to the desk

To my friends

To my family

I pause and look

Peering from the chair an old maestro preferred

And then from out of the door 

The magic ones, the heart ones, the soul 

Of the symphony

It was after the concert
a flaming crimson dress with hindemith
on her fingertips
My friend invited me out

onto this sacred ground

So simply

With a shy smile and wave of the hand 

"Come with me"

How timidly I tiptoed, hands clasped

Heart beating

Dreams and future stirrings not daring to be awakened
fluttering scurrying putting on their costumes
tuning their viols and slapping their cheeks
a vision of joining my friends
and releasing sound
to what suddenly appear to be a small group
of only the beloved ones
waiting and watching

it no longer feels impossible. 

How too must have they felt,

Those whose paths were forevermore 

Altered

The day a nice young man  looked into their eyes

Simply

Inviting them, to join him
in paradise.

for CM, TS, and me

the opera glasses slipped out of my hand
they are inlaid with pearl
they posess that certain mysterious

intermingling 
the kind also found in my
grandmother's cookbooks

the ones no one else wanted

the hats gloves shoes that fit
no one

(but me)

i will fix these--
for that is ever my task
a solemn desire for all to be well
whole, content, beloved
warm

full stomach of noodles and mushroom stew
home from a terrible bike ride in the rain
pausing
shaking the rain out of his long hair
he inhales and smiles into my eyes

early in the morning i stop to wonder why
why to care at all
it would hurt less
be 
"easier"

perhaps


the good ones
the sweet grandchildren of the world
know dearly
at what cost 
we love

our grandmothers
for they loved and cared
and instructed us 
in each their own quiet or 
particular way
to do the same

our grandmothers

yellow kitchen filling
the small pocket of a memory

borrowed from a friend 6 hours ahead
but abiding in my present

space untouched
coffee pot undisturbed

sunlight hitting the same spot
as this time last year

empty
without but with

the bus took me north of my 
usual hemisphere

the need was too strong
to hear a well-known whistle

to sit in a white kitchen
and see the yellow morning sun

stream through familiar windows
full

 

for Davina

Ginger candle and dream catcher in the weary early hour, when the rest of the world is sleeping.

The people who love you are with you, and are all around. I would, that you feel this, even though you are asleep and shall soon leave this world. 

for d.


sunshine at the desk
fixing it all with a smile
---a wonderful girl







(be strong)

the practice room

A year ---  

I don't count time

I let it hold me in its clutching embrace

Sooner or later it will release

And I'll slide quietly away, hoping it won't stir as I ease on my boots and click the door shut behind me

Toward water

Rock paper and scissors where water

Beats time

Time beats heartache

Sunrise crowned ruler over all

How many sunrises have I seen this year

How much water has bathed my frazzled limbs caressed every spot his hands 

Used to know

Held me when my heart thrashed 

Body cried

Soul ached.

I count time maybe then by sweets

Made for friends

Birthday cakes

Sparkling frosted cookies

Pieces of my brokenness

Made lovely again

I count it too by the strain of my calves 

After a long morning's walk by the river

Through the snow

To arrive back, somehow, 

Here

The murmur and lone horn 

Warming his lungs in the hallway obscured

By stacked tables and chairs and serenading me 

To this little room

Where maybe here, myself will allow myself

heart mind and soul to sit and hold hands. Speak softly of dreams

Willing body to fuse into one sound---

Alleluia.

Auditions and things

This past Sunday I auditioned for an orchestra for the first time in 4 years. 

It felt great. 

Not perfect, but I was dizzy from the performance high for the rest of the day. Cooking couldn't even calm me down, which truly says something. 

Tomorrow I'm auditioning for another thing, a project where I would sing Schubert Lieder in a museum to a solitary patron seated in the middle of people wandering, lingering, instagraming, feeling uncomfortable or disinterested and probably, for the most part, actively ignoring the lady in the big flowy costume singing loudly in German. 

I'm not sure I want to do the gig even if I get it, but I know I want to audition. The preparation has been more than just time spent in the basement of Symphony Hall banging notes and figuring out how to hold long Schubertian notes in the middle of my range as quietly as I possibly can. I've walked all over Cambride and Somerville with these Lieder in my ears, allowing them to enter my world. Inviting my world to enter theirs. I've turned each syllable over and over in my mouth, finding the best spot for the rolled R and the allided "d" and "t". The melodies have intertwined with grinding of subway trains and screeching of the tired of awful boston drivers and melted into twilight on my dusky walks home and across town. It's good cold weather music, the kind that makes you want to hug your mom and cook your best friend a cake and talk long into the night. Instead I've mostly been talking to this cat Marcus who I'm cat-sitting and watching rom-coms. Well, when I'm not practicing.

Each time I go to sing "Du bist die Ruh", I try to have something or someone different in mind for the "du". Sure, I could pull out my musicology texts and look at the influences for this time period or perhaps there is someone specific Schubert had in mind, but maybe I'll do that after the audition.

For tomorrow, I've sung this song, this surprisingly simple lullaby of a song, with at least 20 or more different personas for the "du". I wanted to prepare myself to sing this intimate piece to the curator of the museum, to my coworker, to my oldest friend, to an ex-boyfriend, to a small child, to an old man, and so on. I don't want there to be any person who would be more of a challenge than another to sing for. Though it is something different entirely, to sing looking into someone's face. There's not much you can to do prep for that in the practice room. I've learned, the only thing you can ever trust in performance or auditions is your breath. Your heart and mind will both fail you, but the breath wil always sustain and allow you to keep singing. We practice to get the technique in place, so we can focus on the breath and let the sound blossom out naturally. If you rely to much on either your heart and mind to sing, you're never going to make it through singing the important piece of music for a difficult funeral in the morning the day after you've been dumped. Only breath gets you through that--- no thinking or feeling allowed.

---

Oftentimes when I'm sitting on the T or the bus, I notice people who seem familiar to me. A few minutes pass and I'm gladdened by this small moment of recognition for it feels good to know people in the world--- but then I realize I only know them from seeing them before on my commute. I don't, well, actually know them.

There must be a couple dozen people in this city who have no idea that seeing them every other day or every couple of weeks is for me, a moment of peace and joy. Is that strange? Or is it kind of what the artist doing all of these performance pieces about intimate interactions with strangers is trying to get at?

Depending on what happens in the audition, and whether it's actually going to be a paid gig (still unfortunately unclear, but they want each singer to do a lot of hours over the run of the piece, so one would hope there's decent compensation--), I would imagine myself inviting the strangers on my commute. Could I do that? Hey, nice blonde guy with the knee brace who prefers to stand even when there's a seat and who's been wearing that knee brace for months on end, come let me sing for you, you can stand, I know sitting sucks for your knee. Hey lovely woman with the best velvet hats who gets on the bus to ride only three stops each time I see her, please take a seat and let me tell you that you, to me, are full of something deeply beautiful. To the Junot Diaz look a like who teaches at Berklee, from the apparel and occasional instrument bags, I would quietly say hi, check out this thing I'm doing. It's not really about me; it's actually about you. I want you to accept this offering. Consider it; let us have this moment. 

---

After weeks spent now living with these Schubert Lieder and picking my one to sing tomorrow, I blow-dried my hair, and ended the final prep night with some soul-rocking arias from Herr Kaufmann for inspiration to open my lungs and let er rip. 

And we're off.

a first draft -- a first poetry cycle

The porch bed; poems

i.

picking a slow, uneven way through trodden iced-over paths

taking others’ footsteps in their frozen footprints

laughing

I hadn’t thought to wear boots with better traction

that hadn’t been on my mind

when I gathered myself up this morning

dressed myself all up and painted on the face

curled the hair, applied even layers of mascara I hoped wouldn’t drip off

fooling even myself with my get-up.

---that today was just like any other.

there were lessons to be had, a new student!

arias to fuss over and schubert to pick apart. audition looming and

no time for a lack of focus or motivation

no time to wander aimlessly fussing with the remnant pinging stinging memories of my latest

romantic foil, just yesterday actually. a saturday, for coffee.

a true dud, this time,  

definitely wrong.

I can say I’ve done that now, back to poor musicians. I’m sure I’ll find my velveteen tinsel-strung heart already held softly and hesitantly by some humming pianist

or tentative violist. listening, searching, wondering if he can keep it. if I’ll let him. if we’ll harmonize. if I’ll go flat if he tries to jump the fifth. he’ll learn I won’t, if he sticks around long enough. I tend to be the patiently waiting one in these tails.

there’s something to be said for perseverance. I’m good at that, I don’t wear out that easily. it’s a gift my mother gave me, durability. high pain tolerance. no need for percaset, take it away, twist the ankle back in place. just a groan, they said. 180 degrees, they said.

she birthed all five of us without anything.

natural they say.

hot damn, I say. but I’ll probably go the same way.

it’s what we do --- we remain. bitter. strong, we remain.

my great-grandmother divorced her husband right after world war one. or during? it’s always been fuzzy history for us.

my grandmother kept hers, but became a bit of a tyrant when he died and reigned for 25 years enjoying the quiet and the disappearance of the systemized engineer who needed breakfast at just the same time every morning, even in the summer.

he built a glass-bottom dingey so he wouldn’t have to swim around looking for the chains to our mooring stones, straight out from the boathouse doors.

Barb, BARB!!! He’d call once he found them, and make my mother, the eldest, go diving for the bottle affixed to the end of the chain.

I never met the man. I haven’t a single memory. But we keep the little pornographic pictures of his up in the boathouse in the back left corner by the light switch, they’re funny. I like the ladies, I’ve named them Fiona and Eloise and Daphne. They tell me Grandfather smoked cigars often and bent over his work, not whistling, sometimes forgetting to breath and sucking in a huge draw of air when an idea fell into his head just the right way. They assure me, he loved Grandma, it was a real romance. I don’t know one way or the other but I nod and tell them their dresses are sure looking fine today.

---I sigh and hope but it’s over and they’re gone, so what does it matter.

Nowadays I’m the only one who takes out his canoe, the one who didn’t know him, and it’s my time with him. I oil the beauty down once a summer-- two coats. My annual granddaughter-grandfather time. My solitary tradition.

To me, the canoe is heaven, its heavy beautiful hand-carved Canadian self rising out of the cool 7 or 8 am foggy water.

My great-grandmother, she divorced her husband, my grandmother, she kept her husband, and my mother, she divorced hers.

We all come from the same school

The pattern goes ---

I wander on.

ii.

long wharf up ahead,

I’ve made it.

it’s shittily dark and I’m cursing my flimsy fashionable leather boots.

I cannot slip again. doctor still can’t fathom why everything broke so evenly -- should have been a sprain

I take my moment and watch the planes come and go.

breathing in, breathing out.

counting to four and holding it

one two

three

four.

I tell my students, these exercises, you can do them anywhere.

The sailboats moored in their places.

I’m twelve, coming out to sail with mom. We stop at the small place by rowes wharf not rose wharf but rowes, how terrible is that, not rose, but we stop for creamy chais I’ll never taste something like that, I search but the chai latte isn’t right and the chai isn’t right and the dirty chai is very wrong

I hate the jellyfish and the smell at the dockside but love the wind, even cold, even now, I hug myself, drawn in, drawing in color and sound and sensation and telling myself at least I am alive.

that’s one of the things he told me. That I’m one of the few people who live every day completely alive.

what the fuck other way is there.

iii.

sailboats. i never got it. my mother wanted to spend her entire weekend on one.

my grandmother spent entire days monologuing about whether or not to go out on hers.

my great-grandmother i don’t know what she did about sailboats but I’m sure she could tie any of the damn knots in her sleep.

But grandma sally, she’d sit on the dock for hours, calling back to my mom

Barbara, wouldja help me rig it? I think I’ll go while it’s blowing from the West.

Oh, nevermind the wind! It’s dying! I missed it.

Barbara! Well maybe tomorrow.

Every day, she’d wait all day. Watching and listening. Testing the air, reading the barometer.

Only in the middle of the afternoon, just as everyone was about to rush off to something else,

would she march in and declare I’m going sailing! and we would jump up and race around and bicker and mom would become Captain Barbara to the helm

and my day would be ruined.

I learned to be absent, summer afternoons.

iv.

only once i knew mom was out-on-the-sunfish-with-nancy aunt alice was volleyballing my sister alice was on the roof sneakily burning her skin deep red johnny was at joey’s peter was with liz and amy next door andy was who knows and grandma

grandma was asleep--

only then would I go into the kitchen.

reaching a small hesitant hand

---drawing it back, a creak---

only felix, the cat. Or gus, the dog. Or christie, grandma’s dog whose hair would float

up into andy’s food, of course andy, the one who would be the most enraged

and the least graceful---

I snuck my hand toward the green breadbox

--the bottom drawer, not the top, the top is where grandma kept her wallet, but I wasn’t interested in that --- the bottom, for the chocolate. The chocolate.

I didn’t know who restocked the chocolate, nor did I care.

It only mattered-- were there hershey’s nuggets or just bars?

Nuggets tasted best

on a hot August afternoon, with a pop.

v.

It was respectable

to flop onto the porch bed after a grueling summer day’s activity

my legs buckling from the strain of the ski, swim, bike,  volleyball, repeat, repeat, repeat

You were the coveted spot, the afternoon nap with the waves and breeze coming through

the screen. Years of my childhood spent tearing up the lawn dripping wet and yelping in

delight to fall

silent in line with the edge of the house, knowing the bed was there, and the bed was

occupied by a slumbering grandmother, a most fearful state, neither to be awoken nor

approached

How strange now---

to be allowed to walk in the front door sopping wet, but to continue instead

around the back,

carefully, quietly

peering in to see if you are still there.

vi.

alone again.

again alone.

my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother.

Can’t say we’ve had the best of luck, or have we.

We are masters of the practice of solitude. It’s become a peace and an honor,

to be alone with myself. Letting myself be still

with myself

it’s hard. I’m loud and impatient

demanding attention

declarations of valor and lofty promises

one day I shall sail to Nova Scotia

I don’t know what for or why, but I have promised myself, myself alone, this trip to Nova Scotia, and now I’ll have to do it. For myself, I suppose.

Laughing, with myself. Loving the small dot on my hand. Putting on thick knitted tights woolen socks the tight jean skirt lavender laced shirt glittery teeny pendant dangling golden earrings layering on the clothes like a religious ceremony, wrapping myself in clothing holding myself with self-knowing, resolution, peace, love, foresight. A dedication to beauty, to creating it all around me.

then I’m out--- wandering status engaged, all systems alert,

solvitur ambulando

***my first comment of feedback was "it doesn't feel finished! it feels still in motion". I guess, well the story is still in motion, isn't it?***