Define fine. Is it pleasing, first-class, thin and wispy or what a teenager says when they are feeling snippy? "I'm fine." Maybe it is not being bombed or maybe it is being bombed and the world actually caring, versus living somewhere, say Syria, that does not lead to people posting supportive memes on social media. Fine is how I would describe a nice human being. Or the Steinway I recently decided to buy. Fine means okay, rare, mundane, or it is furious or it is grains of sand settling in the tight curls of my big, goofy poodle after a run at the beach. A fine speaker gives a solid speech.
Someone angry with blond hair and two X chromosomes demanded that Ketanji Brown Jackson define "woman." KBJ continued to smile, though I doubt she felt fine, and gently reminded angry XX that she is not vying for a seat on the Supreme Court of biology. But of course, biology is law and politics moreso than science these days, and nine justices get to decide what I do with my body and you do with yours and whether my transgender child should be allowed to live. What defines woman? When I was a tween and giving piano recitals, I wanted to wear tails but was told I could not because I am a girl. When I go to work now, my hair is too short or too long or my body too fat or too thin. It is hard to be comfortable in your skin. There, I defined "woman." I would rather be Circe than the sailors of Odysseus or Odysseus himself. Though it may also be fine to be a swine.
The best part of definitions is they are often wrong. Like the close-but-no-cigar way we all go through life, narrating the events as if we know and understand them. All of us walking about with thought-bubbles like cartoons. If our mind bubbles were readable, imagine the cacophony! Imagine how hard it would be to follow the billions of story lines. I would say to you "did you read what that guy just thought???"
Imagine having to read Ted Cruz' thought-bubbles.
A little bit ago I gathered with friends to watch the ashes of Dan be scattered by his wife and child. It is the third ash-scattering I have attended, the first two being my parents. Have you ever tasted human ash? Or felt it? It is so weird how they put it in a plastic bag, like someone's sandwich. I wonder if it is the whole person or just a sampling? Is it really that actual person or do they just mix everyone up and dole out a bit to each family? I have never tasted ash on purpose but it does blow in the wind and it is very sticky, and it clings like it is trying to stay around rather than be discarded and separated from other humans. My parents' ashes are buried in our old back yard and sometimes I fantasize about digging them up and reburying them somewhere closer so I can visit them but I suppose by now they have seeped into the soil and fed some blades of grass which a deer then ate, perhaps incorporating it into their milk with which they fed to their fawn who shat and helped a wildflower bloom into neon color.
My mother kept a very clean house. You couldn't put down a glass and walk into the other room for something without coming back and finding it washed and dried and back in the cupboard. My parent's house was the oldest house in our neighborhood in Wisconsin, very modest, with the best sledding hill in back. Rattlesnakes and rabbits and deer abounded, as did the bees you would accidentally step on while running barefoot in the summer, leading to a justified sting. The piano my parents got for me at age 16 to replace our little spinet was 40 years old when they bought it, and came from the local music store owner's home. It dominated the living room in our house. Now that house has other inhabitants. Turns out one of them over the years cooked methamphetamines in my mother's kitchen. Impermanence defined, and I doubt the ashes of Mom would mind.
The piano is much older than 40 now and me no longer 16. I hauled it everywhere over the years of my life, up 4 flights of a walk up flat in Minneapolis, across the country to California and back again and back again. It is, like all of us, not meant to last forever. Nor will the 1967 Steinway M I hope to bring home soon, but hopefully it will outlast me. I wonder, when human extinction takes place, about music. I think of all the grief around the real possibility of our species burning itself into oblivion, that for me this is the greatest grief of all, that the universe in general will lack Beethoven and Bach and John Coltrane. I am learning that attachment is a sure way to prolong suffering, but the late Beethoven Quartets are hard to release. I would rather not taste the ashes of art and music in my mouth, or have them cling to my skin to remind me about what can be lost.
Define fine. I won't be running the Boston Marathon as planned, due to injury. But I took a nice walk in the woods today and the trillium are absolutely everywhere, so I guess I am fine. I might never run the way I used to, because I am aging and fatigued, yet I guess I am fine. I guess, in my estimation, it is fine to be alive and to feel the cold nose of my dog push against my hand while I scroll on my phone, him trying to bring me into his world and out of the bizarre virtual universe. He also pushes against my hands with his fuzzy face when I practice piano for too long, and I cannot discern whether this is out of the same frustration and disgust my siblings felt listening to me play endlessly in our very small childhood home or if he just really wants to go for a walk. Or wishes a scratch on the head, after which he will trot off contentedly.
Lately I have been asking people how they define compassion.
Compassion is a bag of worms feeding the soil that produces astounding flowers and trees that bear fruit that we eat and the sweetness explodes in our mouth and reminds us of Christmas morning. Compassion is open heart surgery with a grafted vessel infused with hope and bitter wine. Compassion is grasping a thorny mess and holding it tight like you might hold a child shaking in fear after a clap of thunder that shakes the foundations of your home. Compassion is letting your mind bubble pop without regrets. Compassion is being disarmed. Being alarmed but not paralyzed by fear, then rolling up your sleeves and rebuilding what is broken. Compassion is taking a walk when you wish you could run or taking your mother's ashes and thanking them the way you wished you had thanked her.
Fine is what you pay when you don't follow the rules. Love is what you use to counter fools. Piano is hard to play when your dog nudges your hand. Steinways are fabulous and grand. I will run again when I can. I remember well the last time I ran with Dan. Both of us carefree in the golden hills of Palo Alto, his early dementia not slowing him down, his blue eyes sparkling.
His fine blue eyes sparkling.
