Opus 13 for Monk

 Beethoven was 27 years old when he wrote this sonata, also known as the “Grande Sonate Pathétique”. I was 27 once. I turn 57 tomorrow. My youngest child turns 26 in a week. Yesterday we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary. I’ve been a physician for 28 years. My Mom died over 30 years ago. My mother-in-law died a few days ago. Monk turns 2 soon and my piano is about 63 years old. The Gutenberg bible was printed some 500 years ago. The Diamond Sutra is thought to be the oldest printed book. Physicists know why the hammers of my piano fall and cause the strings to be sounded, but they still don’t know exactly what time is.

I was on the prowl today for some new dogs to hear this, one of LVB’s greatest hits, but alas, little brother Monk was left alone to absorb it, with the added indignity of wearing one of my t-shirts. It’s my party and I can dress my dog if I want to. 

My Dad, dead now over 27 years, often played the opening of this sonata. He would arch one eyebrow with a Rabelaisian delight in the tragicomic. The slow movement I played at my Mom’s funeral service, don’t ask me how I got through that one. If she was here today, which she actually is because matter is neither created nor destroyed, she would’ve told me not to play it so fast, and she would be right. My mom-in-law who lived with us this past year, and whom I was cuddled up next to in bed when she passed peacefully to the next adventure, heard me practicing this one recently. Usually she would be on the couch with her beanie on, a book in hand and Monk stretched out snoring on top of her. 

The Pathetique was written 228 years ago. Sometimes when I consider the potential extinction of our species, the thing that really forms a lump of grief in my throat is the thought that Beethoven and so much other music, art, writing, will be gone. Homo sapiens has been around for something like 300,000 years. My mom-in-law lived 92 years. I would guess she has read at least 8200 books over her lifetime, assuming she started her prolific pace at around age 10. She was about 5 pages away from finishing A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when she died. Not her first reading of it, but I feel some frustration she did not finish. Seeing it generally took her about 10 minutes to pick her next book, my guess is there was always going to be one left unfinished. 

I cannot count the number of fortepianos and sforzandos Beethoven used in his lifetime, his 56 years on earth. When Mary Oliver went back in time to ask him what he planned to do with his “one wild and precious life” I’m pretty sure he said he planned to run around shouting the musical equivalent of “BOO!” to unsuspecting people just trying to go about their own wild and precious existence in peace. 

Verdi took that trick to use in the opening of his Requiem’s “Dies irae” which, even though I know it’s coming makes me jump every single time. 

Grief (like Beethoven) is timeless, sneaky, loud, soft, tender, annoying, profound. I sometimes think to call my Dad to tell him something (Oops dead—Boo!) or try to remember the exact sound of my mom’s voice  or my mom-in-law’s chuckle or the feel of a beloved long gone dog pressed up against me (boo! Boo! BOO!). Grief sneaks up and maybe that’s why crying is known as “boo hoo!’. The non duality of grief: no birth, no death, no way we can love each other fully and no way we cannot love each other fully. 

Dan was a friend from college who died of early-onset dementia. I actually blame him for the purchase of my new-old piano, which I rather impulsively picked out the same visit to the Bay Area when I went to tell him goodbye. No time like the present thought I. 

They Might be Giants, a band Dan loved, said “ I returned a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf before the expiration date, I came back as a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf before the date stamped on myself”. It is a tragicomic koan, perhaps signifying the meaning of life or the lack of meaning of life or …

Only 21 more sonatas until The Hammerklavier. One that should only be left to the experts, one avoided by most, so wild and probably overly-precious. I don’t really understand the passage of time (was I not playing whiffle ball in my Wisconsin yard, age 10, just yesterday?). But from a physics standpoint that piece won’t play itself. If I travel forward in time and practice it while working on the intervening 20 sonatas, will it go better than expected? If I expect anything at all, have I already squandered the time being? Do pianos even work in outer space? 

Dedicating this one to Nancy. Remembering closing Printer’s Inc Bookstore with her 35 years ago on weekend nights, before I even met her son, my husband, us counting the tills and gabbing after we chased out the last rowdy bookstore denizen. She was a great mom-in-law. I will miss her. I miss her. She is missed.

Opus 10, No 3 for Sammy, Monk & Flora

 Sight reading is an interesting phenomena. I am pretty fair at it, and though I love this sonata quite a lot and should’ve practiced it, I decided to just read it today as I had a three dog audience at hand. When I sight read I like to follow the advice of Martin Luther and “sin boldly”. Sight reading is like skiing or mountain biking or technical trail running. You need to look at where you want to go, not where you are afraid to fall.

Imperfection abounds, yet mostly Beethoven Op 10 no 3 will look good in any outfit. My husband of going on 35 years thinks I too look good in any outfit. He likes me when my chin hairs emerge and when I have nasty surgical scars on my neck. He likes me when I sit in my recliner which is where I’ve been for the majority of the last 4 months and when I ask for a coffee refill from my La-Z-Girl throne. It’s nice to be cared for in such an unconditional fashion. Perhaps I do the same for him, and maybe this is why we are in our third decade of marriage despite a child in prison and a life-eating profession like medicine.

I am now five weeks post my second major surgery in 3 months. I have found piano playing to be painful in the literal sense but a palliative balm in the figurative sense. At first I could manage 5-10 minutes. Now I can at least fumble my way through a sonata despite a slow movement that is bloated with gravitas. Serious as movement two is (largo and mesto which indicates slow and melancholic, though it just occurs to me it sounds like something you’d eat at a trattoria), the rest of the sonata is full of jokes. Dramatic pauses, ridiculous sforzando-pianos, and a rondo theme that opens with his favorite scheme of “the third time is the charm.” That is, LVB liked to start something twice then the third time take it to fruition. It must have driven his other band members nuts sometimes. Fun fact, Beethoven precisely counted his coffee beans every morning. 60 beans per cup. He was a beautiful brilliant batty barista with a knack for piano and an ear for composing, even when he was deaf.

I’m going to leave this edition of the Beethoven Dog Project as it is, warts and all. It’s just not every day you get three dogs clamoring for classical music. They like Beethoven best as they can really dig their teeth into his music. The bones of each sonata hold the seemingly simple tunes and fragments together, and the marrow of those bones signal a deep connection to sacred creativity. Fueled by 60 coffee beans and an ego that was never afraid of falling, rather always keeping focus on where he was headed, riding the black diamond musical moguls of this rugged, ragged life.

Op 10, No 2, for Maisie

 Sometimes you just play, no matter what else is going on. You do it because you can and someday maybe you won’t be able to. Or you do it because it is your first love, the thing you gave as an answer when adults asked you what you wanted to “be” when you grew up. Or you do it because Maisie is just laying there serenely and while away from her family seems calmed by the piano and in a few days you are getting surgery and you also had surgery not that long ago and post operatively no matter how much you want to play you will not, you cannot.

Maisie knows me mainly as a pianist. For years now I descend upon her home early mornings or weekends and play with one of her people. Or she comes over with her person and plays here. Maisie finds Monk fairly obnoxious. Which I don’t really get, but I don’t speak dog so who knows what he is saying to her. Mostly he’s a goofball whereas Maisie is more on the classy side.

Opus 10 number 2 is, if I remember correctly, the first Beethoven Sonata I ever played. I probably nailed it at age 8, and truthfully at 7 times that age now and with very little recent practicing (see above re surgery), it’s a bit rough, or should I say ruff? It’s OK though. This piece is a lark. A little piece that Ludwig could probably improvise with his 2 pinky fingers while holding a conversation regarding the importance of art and music in the true understanding of human nature. I love its lightness. It doesn’t seem too concerned with itself. But still it delights. Maisie might find it meh-sie but she also may be dreaming about the beach and the woods and bacon and everything good. 

Right at this very moment, despite an unstable spinal cord, I can play piano well enough. In fact my recent surgery fixed a fumbling right hand. The next surgery will get a nice protective moat around my spinal palace, so it may continue to reign over my body with stable decision making and jewel-like precision. If only certain other folks in power would do the same…

Sometimes you just have to play, even when the world is in chaos. I do love Beethoven but my main go-to recently has been Bach. The Well-Tempered Clavier with its 48 preludes and fugues provides endless challenge, while it is also comforting in its familiarity. It is ordered and perfect and stable. Stability is underrated and overlooked. Like breathing it is often forgotten until it disappears or is threatened. The breath of the holy spirit as well as the wind and fire is celebrated on this day of Pentecost, the 50th day after Easter. If Bach is the breath, Beethoven is the wind and fire. A Shining Star, giving strength to carry on, yeah.

Just Maisie it’ll all be OK.

Opus 10, No 1, for Monk

 This the fifth sonata was part of a group of three that the 1798 (or so) press reviewed as “three nice sonatas”. I am not sure anything by Beethoven can really be called “nice”, unless said in an edgy drawl, “noiicccccee”. Anyway this sonata is Mozartean in the way a single wrong note is like showing up to a work meeting naked. It doesn’t exactly ruin the meeting but no one really wanted to see that over morning coffee.

Playing Beethoven for dogs will not change the world, but it might bring joy (to me? to the dogs? to someone walking by?) and joy, they say, can be an act of resistance. Playing Beethoven for dogs does not express the grief of the execution of Renee Good just blocks away from the execution of George Floyd. Maybe it does send out some well-crafted sound waves into the atmosphere, serving as an antidote to the venom of hate.

When I lived in Minneapolis I enjoyed eating ice cream when it was 20 degrees below zero. I once left the music school at the U and was met by about 30 angry looking raccoons, eyes all fixed on me, glowing. I enjoyed soup and bread at St Martin’s Table. I snow shoed to the video store. I worked at a bookstore owned by Meredith Birney Baxter’s brother. I studied genetics and heard Beethoven’s 7th symphony live. I was a student in a lab studying malignant hyperthermia. I fell in love with organic chemistry.

Minnesota is not for the faint of heart. Though my father once received a heart transplant there, so..

what I’m trying to say is it does not surprise me to see the people there, not all of them but many of them, rise up together as a community to help their neighbors. Which, along with welcoming the stranger and loving your enemies is an actual thing that Jesus said was super important.

As for Opus 10, no 1 and my little brother Monk witnessing it, I rather enjoyed this piece and am glad to have explored it. Monk full on snored during the slow movement. I think he might need a CPAP machine, though in his case I suppose it would be a CPUP. And though Monk slept through most of the sonata he surely noticed at least subconsciously, the brief moments resembling the fifth symphony, another gem in c minor. Beethoven is a doggone genius!

I will keep on with the Beethoven Dog Project. It is this small grounding bit of joy and a challenge on many levels. What’s the point? The grounding allows me to keep perspective in this time of uncertainty. It reminds me that although some people have chosen to revel in the suffering of others, that most people like a good tune and a community of friends. The challenge keeps me learning. Can I play one phrase in the sonata in a way that cracks open a bit of the mystery? Can I find a deeper relationship with music? Can I slowly drive my husband and dog insane with nonstop Beethoven, piano lid up?

If Opus10, no 1 has me at a work meeting naked, God only knows what the Hammerklavier will bring. Hopefully something “nice”…

https://youtu.be/h8vZMXKXv7s?feature=shared

Opus 7, for Kiya, Garbo and Garbo’s daughter

 The “Grand Sonata”, Op 7, has been a struggle. It looks easy on the page. But I’ve had difficulty connecting to it. Usually this has nothing to do with the piece of music and everything to do with my own distraction. There has been plenty of that. I often find myself practicing a passage while thinking about something else entirely. I remember one of my piano teachers as a child telling me no matter how well you know a piece it’s best not to be thinking about what you are having for dinner when playing it. I remember my music school idol, Meg, telling me when she teaches piano that when practicing, like cleaning a window, if there is dirt there and you just keep rubbing it around, you get nowhere. I remember spending hours upon hours in the basement practice rooms in music school until I couldn’t not do it. I remember studying for anatomy class with such intensity and focus that I quite literally knew where absolutely everything in our bodies was located. Studying anatomy and music is not all that different. You take the parts and dissect them then see how it all fits together.

I was thinking recently about whether, if it was measurable, I have now held my phone in my hand for more hours than I have held the hands of my children, husband, parents, dying patients. It’s hard to pay attention when the next thing is just a scroll away. 

Still, I have had some great moments with Opus 7, the greatest of all being with the dogs and people who came to listen to it. For the last 10 years I have celebrated Beethoven’s birthday with “my patients”, with a performance of one of his sonatas. In the last 4 years this has included the violin-piano sonatas with my uber-talented violin pal, Jenny, graciously offering her time. This year we did sonata no 8 at one center on Tuesday, another big and somewhat uncharacteristically joyful piece by LVB. On Thursday I brought the grand opus 7 to another center (we have 3 centers, and I’m still scheming on getting a piano to the 3rd). 

Which brings me to the dogs. Therapy dogs who like to hang out with people and offer their healing presence. I’m not sure about how the other people present felt, but this doctor was over the moon with the chance to share music with an amazing group of people and dogs on a sunny day near the winter solstice in celebration of one of the greatest composers of all time. Right before I started, someone asked if I could play boogie-wooogie on the 100 year old piano, donated to us by Fred and Joan Tempas. Right after I played, Kiya’s person asked if I wanted a hug, and as I reached to hug him he said “actually I meant the dog”, and so I kneeled and Kiya laid her head on my shoulder and really what else matters?

For the record, I am a midwestern, Lutheran, Buddhist, classically-trained perfectionist who worries non-stop. No one wants to hear me playing boogie-woogie.

I am putting grand opus 7 to rest for awhile. I need to come back to it with fresh eyes and fingers, and better attention. And anyway the opus 10s are calling. It takes practice to practice piano properly. Just because the world seems to be unraveling around us is no reason to allow the mind to wander when playing Beethoven, or when reading, or talking with a beloved. Attention is needed when laying stethoscope on chest, first right then left sternal borders, then apex, then axilla, asking oneself if the sound is soft, medium, loud, systolic, diastolic, whooshing or clicking, galloping or straightforward, boogie-woogie or Bach? 

On Beethoven’s actual birthday (though debated, December 17 was his baptism day so probably he was born on December 16 based on traditions), my husband makes killer Mac and cheese. It was LVB’s favorite food. We revel in the rich, artery-threatening delight, imagining some Vienna eatery of the early 1800’s, and hoping at least sometimes Ludwig had a friend to share a meal with him.

Things are profoundly imperfect. Some days I can hardly breathe. I was chatting with a patient in a nursing home recently, someone who is an ambassador to other residents there, hearing their concerns and advocating for them. As I stood at the end of their bed,  with my awkward privilege of being able to walk out of there on healthy legs, they expressed their bewilderment at what has become of this country which is becoming unrecognizable. After several beats of silence, except for someone’s TV blaring in the background, I said I just keep trying to show up each day for the person in front of me, with kindness and in service. Which is what the person, stuck in that bed does every day. As does the canine masters of healing, the true experts of quiet comfort, given with a doggy smiles and cold, boopable noses, the Kiya’s of the world.

In the imperfection of beginners mind we practice. As the Zen master would say, fall down 8 times, get up 9. Then go to your piano bench and practice opus 10.

Opus 2, Number 3~For Monk & Flora

 Mr Rogers reminds us when we witness catastrophe to “look for the helpers”. When the house shakes, the ice cream cone drops, the glacier melts, the hate speech spews, the ash of the volcano covers towns, the team loses, the long and complicated chart note you are almost done with randomly disappears, look for the helpers. When you find a spot on the X-ray, when the Supreme Court looks the other way, when you realize the days are getting shorter, when your heart cracks open wondering if your child will survive heroin, look for the helpers. 

Fred Rogers both soothed and irritated me as a child. I thought his sneakers were lame. He was really nice and calm. The make believe royals freaked me out. 

What I did not realize at the time was that he was a trained composer, who liked the story arcs to resemble the structure of sonata form (exposition, development, recapitulation, coda). His co-composer, jazz pianist Johnny Costa, based the opening theme on the Beethoven Sonata I played for Flora and Monk today. Specifically the start of the 4th movement. Mr Costa was practicing Op2, No 3 and thought it would be cool to do the LVB flourish in “Won’t you be my neighbor”. Of course he never played it exactly the same way twice, being a jazz cat. Actually I doubt Beethoven ever played anything the same way twice either, being a master improviser himself. 

Listen here:

https://youtu.be/Xx-ncTtaOJY

Listen here! What I am trying to say is the helpers are the ones who make beautiful things, and the ones who speak to a neighbor, the ones that bring food to someone who is shut in, the ones who put out the fires and walk into the room where someone is a hot, sick mess with COVID or tuberculosis or a festering wound that reeks of decay. The ones that change our bed pans and place our IVs, the ones who teach our children and the ones who make us laugh when times are hard.

When I learned this particular sonata as a teenager in music school, my tempo was a teenpo which is to say the athletics come easily at that age. I probably zoned out during the slow movement and really sforzandoed those sforzandos. I mean I still do that, because…Beethoven. As the athleticism fades and some bit of wisdom creeps in, I delight in the hilarious moments, the yearning, shirt-tearing despair, the precocious pushing the edges of decorum right on the heels of an age of powdered wigs and pianos that were barely able to live up to the name of pianoforte. What I am trying to say is there would be no metal without Beethoven and if you don’t believe me you can Kiss my AC/DC..

I doubt Beethoven went for runs, but he did like being in nature, and did a lot of composing when out on hikes. The very first notes of this sonata are a bird call. The slow movement moves between a gentle late summer day along a brook with a nice breeze, and a sudden covering of the sun by dark clouds with peals of thunder. The third movement is a dance but under the stars at a gathering after a day working in the fields. It has a trio section that sounds to me like the town preacher walking by and shaking his fists at all the cavorting. Ultimately he gets ignored and the dancing resumes until folk fall over tired and lay back to gaze up at the moon and listen to the last movement. Enter Mr Rogers about 180 years in the future, heartening back to this rondo of a scale in triads. Rondos rendezvous with the theme over and over, playing hide and seek with it, then calling Olly Olly in come free!

When i ran in from Ghost in the Graveyard, i rejoiced at my friends all gathered in a pile, the autumn leaves crackling under us, a bed of summer’s farewell. When I run in from the redwoods cloaked in mist, the trees leave me with their blessing. When I run out of hope for this broken world, and sink to my knees in some kind of prayerful stance, i remember my parents, the ones who gave me piano lessons for my 6th birthday, the ones who held my hands in theirs, the ones who welcomed the stranger as if they too were beloved. I remember their help for others as stitched into the very core of who they were. Probably whispering in an ear right now, words of love and kindness. And Dad might also include a limerick or two.

Listen to this, if you click on the link you can watch Monk sleep through Beethoven, and Flora Mae the Fierce take it all in through her spectacular bat-dog ears. In Monks defense, he’s heard this one. A lot.

Opus 2, Number 2, for Clarence

 Early Beethoven is surprisingly tricky and should be memorized. It should be perfect. And though I started out gifted, now I am just about average, words stolen from a song by my husband, the truly gifted yet under-appreciated by the world member of the household. Go read one (or all)of his books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Atthys-J.-Gage/author/B00RYJWHGK?ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Opus 2, No 2 is counterpointy, athletic, whimsical, with some moments of head-banging thrown in. Full on metal interrupts the graceful theme in the 4th movement. The first movement tries some counterpoint that is like jumping from rock to rock at full speed on the edge of a steep cliff. The third movement a lark, a dance, like a palate cleanser after the heady second movement which could be a string quartet with the cello doing this amazing pizzicato bass, and before the fourth which reintroduces the fact that Beethoven was one of the great improvisers of all time. He could just sit down and spin out a theme in a million different ways, each time more intricate or more funny or more serious or more outrageous than the last. Only to end the whole thing in a soft tip of the hat, a nod to his own genius and a laugh at the sucker who sat through it, weeping or laughing but definitely amazed.

I mean Beethoven was a bit of an arse, drinking too much, criticizing the friends who helped him most and  must’ve been the uncle from hell for his nephew. If Facebook or whatever people are using these days was around, Ludwig would’ve made cringy posts, though in the current world of meanness as a badge of honor, maybe his followers would be legion. I would like to think he would be on Strava, mapping his long country hikes where he did a lot of his thinking about music. How cool would it be to see the route where he composed Opus 2, all 3 dedicated to Haydn, and all 3 brimming with nature if you listen just right. 

Clarence, the dog, has a very recognizable bark. He is the neighborhood curmudgeon who doesn’t suffer fools, but is head over paws in love with his main person. Anyone else might want to watch for the shiv he keeps tucked in his adorable fur. Maybe Beethoven kept one tucked in his mane of hair too. I can relate to this-not the shiv part as I am a pacifist at heart, but the part about things being stored in my hair. After a romantic dinner with my gifted better half the other night, I realized I had 2 large redwood fronds in my hair the entire time. It may be he did not notice, but knowing him he just liked them being there. 

The Redwood Forest is hard not to take along with you. It is the fog and mist that fills a mind overawed, it is the seasonal dust or mud, the ferns unfurling like a heart cracking open and letting in light even if it might get burned. It is the creaking branches that could kill you in one fell swipe, reminding you each day is precious and asking you what your plans are regarding that fact. It is neon yellow slugs, wedding dress white trillium, unashamed iris purple like the old ladies who might wear it in defiance. It is the sense of a mountain lion nearby, which is a good way to describe the anxiety of parenthood, or the anxiety of playing all 32 Beethoven Sonatas in a world where Lang Lang also lives.

For about 25 minutes there is this escape into a world called opus 2, number 2, that is oddly a slightly different planet each time it is visited. Music is like that, a science fiction, science of tonality and reactions, of gravity and rate determining steps, with hypotheses and alien life forms popping in with their double sharps and crossed hands. The fictional aliens fit right into the world-building done by @LVBeethoven, which was his sci fi handle. And holy shit things just get weirder the deafer @LVB gets, until the science fiction in the late opuses is almost too mind-blowing to fathom. It is possible Opus 106 is a space opera. I’m gonna need some serious calisthenics to ride that particular flying saucer.

But I get ahead of myself. Next up is opus 2, number 3 which is one of my very favorites. While I try to get that one reasonably under my paws, please reach out if you know a canine music savant that wants to run around, snooze, chew a bone, fart or bark madly while I play it for them.

For today, thank you King Clarence, for giving 25 minutes of your one precious life, and for letting your person film the video. Incidentally, she was specifically instructed not to focus on my big ass, and if you make it to the end of the video, I am pretty sure she decided to defy me and do an actual close up of my derrière. For what it’s worth, I imagine Beethoven liked a good butt joke, though maybe not quite as much as Mozart did.

If you would like to listen, and meet Clarence, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvLFNY4WqMs

Opus 2, Number 1, for Monk

 My dogs, through the years, were often runners. My Reverend father named the childhood dog the Rabelaisianesque “Brandy”, make of that what you will. Brandy never needed a leash, always at one’s side. He equally enjoyed parental walks, cross-country running obsessed trots and sprints alongside my skateboarding brother. As he aged, sometimes I’d notice he wasn’t at my side and instead had joined an old jogger neighbor some ways behind me. I mean she was probably at least 45 years old. In our small home he laid near the piano when I played (probably used to my siblings loudly begging me to stop). Maybe he too was begging me to stop. 

But I think all dogs appreciate music. Zoe, a neurodivergent, stunted golden doodle, actively sought out music. I had impulsively picked her out from a breeder in Washington state who had their puppies listen to classical music. When I finished reading to the kids at bedtime she would trot click click click down the hall and sit at my feet gazing up while I sang „Müde bin Ich“ and “ You are my Sunshine”. She preferred music no later than Brahms. When anything in the 1900’s started up on the piano, and God forbid the 21st century, she click click clicked upstairs in a huff. But she also frantically did what one friend called the “breast stroke” on leash to try to dine on horse shit. So I am not sure she gets the last say on modern music.

Buster the border collie had no opinion about the piano but was completely devoted to me, he wore his black and white tux to every practice session. He had class.

Shasta really didn’t like me very much and the piano was just another confusing part of the universe she was thrown into when we brought her in after her owner had died, near the end of her life. Which turned out to be 4 years later. By the end she tolerated me and really that’s all I can ask of anyone.

Moving into the jazz era. Miles took over Buster’s fierce devotion immediately upon his Christmas Day death, a Christmas Day spent in a hospital shift after laying on the floor hugging old Buster all night. As I lay weeping later, Miles tucked right up next to me and sort of just stayed there for the next 10 years. When Our favorite violinist or a string quartet came to join me for music adventures, Miles would quietly stand in the middle of the group just being a witness, like someone quietly swaying in church during an especially fiery sermon. Though if the beach had not been visited before a long music session, he would head-butt my hands off the keyboard. When I met him as a puppy he seemed the most chill of the litter and I thought he was cool jazz. He went through several phases though, not unlike his namesake. He always knew how to use silence, and that it was at least as important as the woof woofing.

Monk has an old soul, a goofball presence, and never fears mistakes. At 9 months he already outweighs Miles (may he rest in peace). He is a lab so EVERYTHING IS AMAZING AND MIGHT ALSO BE GOOD TO CHEW ON. Somehow he knew chewing on the Steinway was the antithesis of joy. As he matures I believe he finds chewing on the tasty chords that fly through the air quite satisfying. He told me once that there are no wrong notes on the piano. Or maybe that was his namesake who said that but either way, I am in.

I wanted to be a concert pianist who wore tails. I decided that when listening in the dark to the LP of Horowitz playing the Moonlight Sonata when I was 5. We didn’t even have a piano, but THAT was my future.

When my cervical spinal cord was all messed up in 2023 I couldn’t quite walk in a straight line. Then I couldn’t pick up a jigsaw puzzle piece. Then I couldn’t play a scale. Which finally made me stop gaslighting myself and seek medical care. Thankfully it was mechanical and a neurosurgeon just fixed that thing. The dexterity hasn’t quite returned but since there are no wrong notes on the piano I don’t sweat it too hard.

I am so grateful to be able to play. And here is a secret: I love Beethoven. It’s beyond reason but probably there is some neurohormonal attachment from that 5 year old girl sitting under headphones with Horowitz at the helm of an 88 key mind-blower. Before my spine surgery, I played through all 32 Beethoven sonatas in a few days. It occurred to me that the very slight possibility that something could go wrong could leave me unable to play at all. Over the years, from music school days as a teenager to the years not playing much at all during medical training to a reengagement with grace to my diminished stature as a musician, I have always come back to LVB. 

I haven’t ever been a concert pianist who played in tails. But I like to make others wag their tails. And in however long I have left on this spinning rock, I am finally going to learn all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas reasonably well enough. In fact well enough to entertain the purest of all critics, the best boys and girls in the universe, the chewers of the bones of the repertoire and the inhabitants of a world where open hearts is just wagnificent.

Thus begins the Beethoven Project. If you know a dog needing some Beethoven, give me a holler. The first one though is for my best little brother, my current zen master and the loudest snorer in the universe.

If you’d like to watch Monk watching the first Beethoven Project performance, click below!

Let’s start at the start, little Monk. 

https://youtu.be/DndQqkktMl8?feature=shared

Tree Magic

 While running through the old growth redwoods today, the older adult redwoods, the elders, the sages, sensei masters, maestros of the girth of a Mahler symphony, while running among them on the paved path inserted by people in order to allow us to see and be among the trees, I thought about community. I touched the bark and moss and burls as I loped past, in gratitude and like all of my species, in an attempt to take with me some of the mystery, the tree magic.

16 months ago, I was not sure I would ever run again. Myelopathy had me walking askew and unable to do the things that come easily enough to me, like playing piano or lifting a puzzle piece with my fingers. Turning pages of a book and walking in a straight line required a connection no longer being made. All my skepticism about modern medicine had to take a hike for the relinquishing of control to an anesthesiologist and neurosurgeon, all standing in a row with nurses when I entered the operating theater. 

Good fortune, skilled and attentive physicians and good old fashioned fear of what was happening to me spurred me to take the leap and have led me to be a good deal better than I was. Including, today, running the marathon again.

I heard someone around mile 18 say “did she just touch that tree?” But around mile 10 when I did a little leap up to tap Sir Redwood, someone else shouted “Yeah! Tree magic!” Either way I might be weird but besides the tree magic the people magic has me thinking that our world is on the okay side of disaster. While we are seemingly surrounded on all sides by rage, the hundreds out running today had smiles and good wishes. A 3 year old handed me a cup of water with bright eyes gazing upwards and a huge smile. James Washington and a multitude of volunteers fed, watered, herded and cheered on the racers. 

I reached out to some friends before the race to help me build a playlist. Earth, Wind & Fire made a couple of appearances. David Bowie, AC/DC, Jenny Scheinmann, John Coltrane, Jon Batiste, Beyoncé, and of the 3.5 hours of music, there was only one duplicate (Batiste-Freedom), and only one that I picked myself (Boom Boom Pow). One of my favorites was Femininomenon. Right at the half was Mountolive and of course, Journey was there, Not stopping believing just like they didn’t let us stop believing when we boarded the bus to a high school cross country meet at 6am on an autumn Wisconsin morning in the 1980’s.

So What, you say? And no, Miles Davis did not get on this list, but I will make sure he is represented next time. A friends’ playlist through bone conduction headphones while doing something you aren’t sure you can actually do is a huge gift of community. I could identify who had picked what song, and Monica, did you hear me laugh when East River came on? 

On Friday an angry patient yelled and swore at me. But I still believe in community. Our local university campus is closed after demonstrations, but I still believe in community. My middle child is in prison but we talk almost every day and I still believe in community. We do not have to navigate alone the crazy fact of being alive in this broken world (thank you Mary Oliver). Michelle, who ran (SMOKING FAST) the half marathon today hung around to see me finish and make sure my weak, donut ass got safely into my car with my incredibly thoughtful husband after the race. 

Regarding donuts, I binged on them at work on Friday. See above re angry patient. Coping mechanisms are a work in progress, likely till the day I die. And when that day comes, I know the community will turn their hearts to my family and friends, and will make sure my patients are cared for. I don’t plan on a celestial discharge anytime soon, but, again with the Mary Oliver: one precious life can zip by faster than Yuja Wang can play a Chopin Etude!

We do not have to be alone. Just ask the Redwood trees who have all sorts of interesting chats over intertwined roots plugged into the Mycorrhizal network. Chats that maybe started 300 years ago. Tree magic.

Driftwood

 I have not surfed for several weeks. Aside from the size of the waves, beyond my ability, I might get clocked by a redwood tree.

Humboldt style driftwood is not for the faint of heart. As with almost everything else in this far Northern California blend of the sublime and the ferocious. This ought to segue into a long discussion about Beethoven, but I shall spare you.

Buster, the second dog love of my life (after childhood pal Brandy, named by my pastor father after his color, not as his porn name, no offense to Brandys everywhere as it is actually cool name), used to bring me beached trees, actual trees, dump them at my feet and say “you strong, capable woman shall now throw this tree and I will then fetch it for you.” Buster was bewildered by my declaration that I was not actually the princess warrior he was picturing.

A few weeks ago Miles (current dog love, bless his 13 year old heart of gold) and I were on a beach walk when a sudden storm blew up. The wind was scary in that “is this a freaking cyclone?’ Sort of way and it did not rain, rather it hailed ice stones that actually hurt. Being exposed on the beach, the first place I dove for with dog in arms was a great big log. We huddled there, still getting pelted but less fearful of being blown into oblivion when there was a fantastical lightning strike and beach-shaking thunder. Miles, who is cachectic and relatively hairless after a grumpy groomer decided he needed to be stripped naked, was shaking and we locked eyes for a second, maybe both thinking it had been a nice life… 

I scooped him up again and scrambled up a dune and God seemed to have deus ex machinaed a hole covered by a bush right over the peak of the dune where we rode out the rest of the storm. When we could finally walk back to our car, me pretty much blue lipped frozen at this point, a sassy rainbow appeared. Nice one Mother Nature! 

Before storm

                                                                        After storm

Today, as we walked among the wood drifted upon the beach, we managed to just miss the rain. January has been making up for our relatively dry winter. I was obsessed with the sky and the way the wind blew eddys of sand. Sneaker wave weather for sure so we hugged the cliff, always with an eye out for an escape route. Rip tides apparent. I miss being in the water, substituting the pool after long work days. Still healing but not the same.

Sky like a paint by number masterpiece, and the strong smell of cow dung. I kept checking my shoes but it was just the way the wind was blowing, exactly picking up the scent and spreading the news, or perhaps spreading the moos.

Diagnostically speaking, it’s been a good week. Just when the dysfunction and drama of modern medicine has me down, I remember the joy of noticing something with my eyeballs—not needing a fancy scan or a blood test—-just seeing the malady and knowing. It’s especially great when there is something that can be done to heal, to help. Pondering the way my brain works, I seem to have a knack for patterns. Reading music, reading EKGs and seeing/feeling/noticing a subtle sign on physical exam. Just don’t ask me to remember a name, a part of my brain woefully underdeveloped, or to remember all the brand names of the millions of medications now available for type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Though if you want to know my super secret memory device for this:

“Some guys are losers” =SGLT2 inhibitors (the -lozins)

“Good looking people surf”=GLP-1 agonist (the -tides)

Driftwood has been useful to humans over the ages, as a supply to build boats and other stuff. It has this lovely, twisty, water-polished surface that elevates it to almost-art. It isn’t unusual on our beaches to see driftwood forts, some elaborately designed. Driftwood is a place of refuge when surprised by a storm next to the not really all that Pacific Ocean. 

And don’t even get me started on the magnificent fact that we are alive, all entangled in the wildness of a universe that produced Bach, the surfboard, Miles the dog, Miles Davis and the warm bath after the beach. Just at this very specific right now moment, things are ok.

Well Tempered

 Johann Sebastian Bach probably wrote some of the well tempered clavier during his month in prison. He snubbed a royal who didn’t want him to go work somewhere else. 

Some of the well tempered clavier was thus written in his head in likely miserable conditions. If you’ve never tried writing a fugue, under the best conditions it’s sort of like being asked to thread a needle seven different ways while blindfolded and standing on your head. 

The well tempered clavier was written before there were pianos. Purists might play it on a harpsichord or clavichord. Glenn Gould plays it like an alien who was actually Bach on another planet.

The 48 pieces come in two book volumes, I’d say 6 eight track cassettes, 4 CDs, 8 LPs and just a blip on Itunes. Each piece has a prelude and fugue demonstrating, yes indeed, a well tempered keyboard. If you start on a C and do it in major and minor and climb up the scale by half notes till B (then back to C again), all those guys sound in tune. It’s math, it’s art, it’s engineering. It’s like that scene where the Von Trapp children sing about deer and sewing. Threading a needle.

When the world is falling apart, I usually rest in the well tempered clavier. Some call it the Old Testament of music. Like “in the beginning” there was Bach. But in the same way the well tempered circle has no beginning nor end, there was music encircling our ancestors. Maybe we sang before we grunted coarse words. 

Bach just happens to tap into my own primordial goo, which seems to be located in the liminal electrical space between my atrium and ventricle and between my motor cortex and my fingers. If you notice I’m well tempered on any given day, thank Bach. 

Prison Bach especially. The guy who threw him in prison was a monstrously rich megalomaniac-JSB actually got off easy compared to some other employees who didn’t wear the proverbial red hat for the Duke of Haters. It’s a good reminder that mean people in power is just a part of the human condition. They might win a little sometimes but in the sense that not a single soul can hold back the long arc of beauty and justice, it’s a hollow victory. A deep well tempers grief with compassionate waters. A well that welcomes all. Please notice who usually gathers at the wells of the world, to tend to the thirst of their children and their community.

Please notice the helpers.

https://youtu.be/HZ_muo3BzI8?si=FNS-CCA2f2LALsYE

The Other Mother

A Poem, or Something, About Mother's Day, Neil Gaiman and Carnivals

I want to shrink inside of myself. I walk slightly askew and my waist has thickened. I gave birth once and parented thrice, I doctored entirely too much. Let me give this advice. 

Don't take me advice, but rather crawl into the hole in the wall leading to the Other Mother where you might find better, button eyes. You might find weird and wild and wise women in disguises. Women baking magic cookies. Aromatic bread rising. Enterprising

Women make poor mothers. Clara Schumann, for example, always had other things to do. The fact is your career and ovulation peak together. And even while neglecting their children, women physicians make two million dollars less than men over their time in the profession.

I will make the concession that being a doctor is not an excuse for prison kid. I did the best I could but it was never enough and Other Mother, the one I dream about, would've put the lid on the drugs and the drugs and the drugs pervading our child's beautiful body. Invading their heart.

Though they say it was not because of us, still we are broken apart. 

Other Mother might have breast fed longer, not rounding on the wards or taking exams. Time off to tickle toes. This mother's mother died just shy of 4 months of first baby's new life. Breast fed at the side of Oma's hospital bed.

So I fled from grief. Running five steps in front of sorrow, its hot breath on the nape of my neck. Big love thrown to baby, baby and baby. Happily ever after in our house by the big trees.

Mighty Other Mother in her perfection, much better than I at protection, I paled in her reflection, my kids demanded an election. Unseat the one with the screaming pager! Real mother, Shoo!

But let's keep her chocolate chip cookies and that one song she sings is pretty good too. You know, "Müde bin ich, geh zur ruh..."She is less than we expected and more than we knew. She took us to see Beyonce. 

And plays piano much too early and too often. Demands perfection but never asks enough. Too white, too worried, too hurried, too busy, too 

Unlike Other Mother. The one with just the right stuff. Like the astronauts in that movie. Like s'mores or peanut butter cups. 

Three points from mid-court, all net, no drama, Other Mama

And yet this is what you get, the one with a stenotic spine, a love of Beethoven, a wish for more and more compassion and kindness, naive and not ever influential in the way, say

The Pioneer Woman is. Or that Perfect Mother on Instagram. @OtherMotherIsBest #ButtonEyes

I would do it better if I could do it again, be the mother that the Other Mother could only dream of being. The mother my three would seal up the wall to magic for, just so they could sit in the solid world of us, made of real eyes, stinky dogs, loud pianos, parents dancing, redwood-fronded, scratched, quarter sawn oak floors for sock sliding. Like some kind of carnival ride of love. Like the Scrambler or Tilt-a-Whirl:- thrilling, nauseating, with your companions shoved up against you with the gravity of life. 

Viaduct Kiss

 Recurring dream: a viaduct from my childhood town appears, I drive over it and something magical happens. One side of the viaduct is safe (the side that goes to my home). The other is some kind of slightly off Terabithia, magical but not always in a good way.

In real life, the viaduct bridges over railroad tracks. Under this viaduct I once kissed a self-identified dirtball. "Why are you hanging out with a dirtball?" said he. I was a practically invisible nerd with braces and hair I did not yet understand how to manage. It was actually a nice kiss, all clandestine. Have you ever been under a viaduct where the slope meets the underside of the bridge and you can tuck yourself in behind a pillar and hide? 

At the beach today there were truck tire marks all over, by the water, on the dunes. THE truck in question was stuck in some impossible position in the sand, truly I do not think it will be able to be extricated unless a crane is involved. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when Dog and I passed by them, as they were doing some maneuver with a rope to try to, well, try to do something that indicates they slept through physics class. We went along our way and spent an hour by the ocean on this luscious day. September on a Northern California beach is a balmy, gentle time. Today was a good day for a beginner surfer, with small, organized sets of waves pealing in regularly. Dog is almost 12 years old and he cannot really run like he used to, but he enjoys this beach as much as anyone can ever enjoy anything. Like joy with a fluffy top knot and 4 stick legs. 

We were passing by THE truck, still stuck ass backwards in the dune, and in that way that any woman on earth can understand, I took a wide berth around it with Dog on short leash. Still, I was surprised when the dog of THE truck rushed us and attacked my old boy. THE people of THE truck screamed at the attacking pup and finally pulled it off, and I just got the heck out of there as fast as I could, in self-preservation mode. I did not even realize till we were part way home that Dog was injured, and bleeding.

A vet visit, $300 and some antibiotics-Dog will be OK. 

This past week a governor enticed some traumatized immigrants onto a plane and dumped them at Martha's Vineyard, then laughed and crowed about it to a rally of supporters who cheered out loud, in public. This is America. Grown ups take joy rides on a serene beach and have animals in their care they cannot handle. People taunt women and children and men who have literally walked hundreds of miles at risk of death to reach our country. Little girls are raped and forced to carry the subsequent baby to term. This is America.

I am nearly 53 years old. I was thinking by this point in life I would have a grasp on what's happening around me. That somehow it would all make sense. But I still do not understand why people are mean. What is the point? And why is it so often worn as a badge of honor? 

When I was 8 or 9 years old, a man called our home and I answered. He said "I'm going to come and kill your Daddy!". Apparently this was related to Dad allowing a group of gay men to meet in the church where he served as pastor. In my dreams, the home where I grew up represents the safe side of the viaduct. But in reality, it was where 8 year old me was introduced to the way someone can assault your space with hate. My parents died long ago (of cancer, not wing nuts, though perhaps their cells mutated in response to the stress of trying to be kind in a fucked up world). The childhood home has had many other owners since. It is reported someone has even cooked meth in my mother's old kitchen. Where we used to eat our breakfast cereal, and bake cookies, and where you could stand at the window over the sink and watch the deer eating my father's garden. 

In my dreams, the viaduct has led to Zion National Park, where I was trying to take a run and kept getting lost. Once it led to a VA clinic that I had to work at and for some reason deliver babies. In reality it still leads to the IGA and from the top you can see my old high school, just sitting there and still demoralizing new generations of teenagers. I never graduated from high school, so maybe the viaduct dreams are the deep anxiety that someone will pull me over on this road of life and require me to complete my PE classes. In my old uniform.

The Terabithia I seek probably doesn't require driving over the viaduct where a dirtball kissed an invisible nerd. Might be that all the magic I need is accessed by paying kind attention to the people around me. That's pretty much what my parents taught me. How we respond to the constant assault on serenity, otherwise known as being a human on earth, is a choice we make. You can cook meth in my Mom's kitchen, but you cannot diminish the lovingkindness she brought into this world. You can want to shoot a man of Christ for being kind to others, but it won't heal your own despicable despair. You can drive over the beach crabs and make a perfectly nice dog whimper in pain, but you cannot take away his pure joy that only seems to increase even though the beach trip has happened a million times before.

You can be mean. I wish you wouldn't be though.

Invisibilidad

 Había una vez, ella era invisible.

I was thinking about the pandemic. Women did the bulk of the child care when children suddenly found themselves at home for a year or more. Same women might also be trying to work. They might have had to stop working in order to support their children in zoom school. It was expected the women would be the ones to do this. Women also did and do the bulk of the nursing, tending to people dying horribly on ventilators in the ICU. Nursing those in the overfull emergency rooms that still cannot accommodate everyone on any given day. Nurses getting assaulted by patients as they do their essential function. A somewhat worn and tattered "Heroes Work Here" sign greeting them as they walk in for each shift. Women are doctors too and they are less invisible but the $2 million in wages missing over their 40 year career compared with the men doctors is yet to be found. 

As my husband and I soon celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, I am thinking too about marriage. Why was I so fortunate to have a partner that makes me feel seen every day? If anything I worry he does not feel seen as he has inhabited the traditional role of stay at home parent during our life together. Marriage is interesting in its original purpose of subjugating women into a role where they need protecting by a man. Particularly white women who are currently being forcibly put back into their role of propagators of the race. It is no coincidence that Roe falls in this era of renewed energy around white supremacy as the creed of our nation.

I might be angry, and I realize that is not very ladylike of me. But I am thinking about feminine power and how it is the missing piece of the healing arts in our country. The data are clear that while we have mad technology in our system of medical care, the outcomes are poor compared to other countries of similar wealth. We spend a lot more on it too. When I was pregnant in medical school the men were befuddled by my very presence. I pumped breast milk in the women's bathroom stall. I pretended not to be a mother so that I could be a resident that people respected. I worked and worked and worked. Privileged as I am, I can see this was not ideal, now, 27 years later. But perhaps more importantly on a societal basis is the parts of me I tried not to bring into my healing art, pushing down my tenderness and compassion for fear of not being seen. As recent as last week a male colleague was chiding me for the work I do, which is high intensity, low productivity medicine that focuses on the goals and concerns of each human being for whom I serve as physician. I think his words were "what exactly is it you do all day?"

If I am invisible those I serve are invisible minus a million. Like some bullies on the playground the world screams this at them every minute. Like one hand clapping I know the self is a mirage. Like hands clasped I know we are more like the trees in a forest, where it appears they are all individuals but if you dig a bit underground you will see they are all connected to each other. My hands play Rachmaninoff and they can palpate a liver. For this I can thanks the many teachers in my life, my root system of people who shared their skills and believed in me. That saw me. 

My anger too is not in isolation. There are whole communities of people and particularly people who identify as women and girls that are strengthening our connections. We sit with each other in silence as a warrior sangha, but since we have powerful presence we do not need words. I invite the 50% of white women who voted and continue to vote for fascism and self annihilation to consider that they could be a part of this sangha. Or congregation. Or root system. Or a girls night out that lasts well beyond the dancing and frivolity.

In medicine, in healthcare, in relationships of healing, the feminine is what we all need in order to see the outcomes improve. A heart transplant is cool. My dad had one, actually. But we also need to notice the women who are dying in pregnancy and childbirth, and now forced childbirth. Are women worthy of living? 

Once upon a time she was invisible. 

Define Blue Eyes

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.

The First Noble Truth

 The bird I am hearing sing these days is the Anna’s Hummingbird. High pitched, not biological sounding. Repetitive like a regularly irregular heart rhythm. They can be hard to spot, though have some favorite branches. Near the top of the spruce he must be king over the junkos and maybe even the blue jays. The thrush are silent. It just happened one day, just as suddenly as the first day they sang in spring. My hens sing the blues, especially at dawn, not full throated, just a moan or a pondering while pecking here and there. I cannot picture eating them. Today they got our past-ripe bananas, since none of us likes banana bread all that much. Bananas are eaten in phases in this house. Apparently this past week was not a pro-banana era. Grocery stores giving us fruit on demand makes it easier to ignore, I imagine, than it would be if we could only eat it in season and if it grows locally. People do line up at the Farmer’s market for early summer strawberries which bear no resemblance to the monsters shipped in, picked long ago and far away. Peaches probably create the longest queue. Masked produce-seeking neighbors, patient in their single file peachophilia. Yesterday on the way to the beach with my dog, a semi pulled into the street, stopping traffic in both directions. Forward, backward, into a fence, forward, backward. The man directing them had an infant in a sort of football hold on his forearm. Some behind me pulled out of line and turned around to seek another route. Dog and me just waited. We did not delude ourselves into thinking the truck driver was separate from us. When we are the truck driver, we can only keep reversing and pressing the gas until the damn thing can be extricated from a cul-de-sac it should never have entered. Today we went to the beach again. My dog smells like shit so after the beach I stopped at the pet supply store and purchased this $17 shampoo to deodorize “doggone” smells. The bath was warm and he was completely sudsed up. I trimmed nasty dreadlocks and scrubbed every canine nook and cranny. Now he is asleep in the sun and smells at least $17 dollars better. Has this been a productive day? Week? Month? Life? Prior life? Future life? I almost have Liszt memorized. I ran 20.8 miles on Sunday. I walked with Nancy and swept my front porch. I watched Schitt’s Creek and sat zazen. I hugged my husband and found myself aware we are both going to die. I seem to crave chocolate chips. Then tomorrow I step back into my patients’ suffering, which I never really left. The blue jay is screaming. I cannot decide if they are angry or the lead singer of a heavy metal band. Either way it is loud and difficult to dance to and I assume never once featured in a Disney musical. I doubt anyone has considered the suffering of unquiet avian minds. Or vice versa.

I am-bic pentameter

 I am the girl with braids the boys would pull. Perhaps they loved the power, my heart, my brain. The way I could outrun them after school. Skinned knees bled while my hair glowed in the sun.

I am the girl who lied that I had horses. I tripped a boy in a second grade trust exercise. Stood up for fat girl the class would often torture. Both my parents got sick and almost died.

I am the girl who never finished high school. I dreamt of wearing tails at Carnegie Hall. I got drunk in Spanish class held on Bascom Hill. My professor brought sangria for us all.

I am the girl who has a child in prison. The methamphetamine, like Stephen King. I thought fierce love would be enough to save them. The monster in the book will always win.

I am the girl who sees my letters in colors. A synesthete, afraid of missing gems. The bird, the fugue, the book, the unopened door. The Boston marathon. Achieving zen.

I am the girl I am the girl, my father quipped on my forehead curl, I no longer am sure I know what matters. I am not even sure about iambic pentameter.

The Probability of Impermanence

Panic due to unfamiliar birdsong

Time is running out

May never know the species 

Or learned and forgotten 

Among neurofibrillary tangles

A plaque in the birdsong storage site

Synapses devoted to well tempered Bach

Knowing every note 

Memorizing came easy 

When sleep was less vital

Now fugues slip away sulking

Downcast by my lack of devotion

That child skip-running toward me

Might have been real

Or time lapsed me 

Message! Message from the past!

Do you not recall

That this is why we run?

Frantic at the bookstore

Northtown which is

North Star in my night sky

Outside of a dog

Too dark inside and

Cannot read fast enough before I die

When he snores a light touch 

Prompts position change without waking

Then deep silence

So must I reach out 

Verifying breath

Palm to ribs slowly expanding

All of which is

To say holding tighter

Holding tighter to say

Each breath is 

One closer to a last exhale or inhale

Oxygen bound to no destination

Pocketful of Rocks

 This raven upon the tree that used to look like a grandmother in an old style of dress but has weathered into an artistic rendition of a pitchfork 

Will hover in the air when dog approaches

And dog looks up and they appear to be yelling at each other

Raven dips down and up and down further but always out of reach

*

Then this runner feels the packed sand or molasses sand or silky sinking sand up Achilles to gastrocnemius 

Hamstring to glutes to core

Breathe with beating waves retreating, heart meeting fish and salt’s smell and taste of nostalgia 

One mile ago is never happening again 

*

Phone rings most times regarding my role as physician and reminds 

Me not to think I have my own life 

*

This stone calls also

So I stoop to gather it 

Pocket full of rocks 

*

Dog twirls in air arriving fresh having fully known this was going to be the best day of his life so far

No last time or next time compares

*

I can run from this factually literally sensationally until the parts that ache forget their sorrow and the parts that sit idle remember their purpose and

While a powerful man who brags about pussy grabbing- as my transgender child with addiction and mental health problems serves thirteen years for a crime committed at age eighteen while high -is acquitted despite trying to kill our so-called democracy

This anger upon me dissolves into just being a mother and a doctor and my dog’s companion

Taking stones to my garden

Never quite able to get all the sand out of my running shoes or my dog’s tight curls 

Testaments

For a year now, I have been trying to learn and memorize the 48 preludes and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach. These are the old testament of piano. Stepwise, Bach takes us through the keys, the well-tempered tuning presented in fortspinnung. Fanny Mendelssohn, the lesser known but equally precocious sister of Felix, memorized 24 preludes in a week at age 13. I am not jealous. I am not jealous. I am not jealous.

If I was Fanny Mendelssohn and 13 years old, I would have gotten the Well Tempered Clavier memorized by now. But I am 3.9 x 13 and fatally distracted by the world around me. 

Memorizing music came naturally to me once. Actually scratch that, it was always hard work, but maybe I used to have better focus. Back in the days when I was not on call 24/7 and did not have this pocket-sized computer sitting next to me, making little chirps and rings and silently beckoning me away from any other task at hand. In music school, the practice rooms were in the basement of a building built to withstand a bomb (literally), and once in the little room with the door closed, you could be alone for hours. No phones in those days, except the ones connected to the wall. You could emerge from hours of practice into a dark world and realize your fingers were still tapping out phrases on your thighs which ached from sitting on a wooden bench. Once at midnight I came out of the music school to a large pack of raccoons. They all stopped their garbage can raid and swiveled their heads to me, two dozen glowing eye-dots between me and the parking lot.

I have been trying to memorize opus 109 of Ludwig Van Beethoven. The 32 piano sonatas he composed are the new testament of piano. Herein lies the gospel of theme, exposition, recapitulation and rondo. The deafer he got, the more laser-focused these pieces of music. No chaff, only wheat. Blessed are the piece makers, for they will be called the children of God.

When I sit and play piano, I think about coronavirus. I look out the window where the redwoods just sit there, unconcerned. So nice to have a day at home, but I worry about my friends on the hospital wards. I stop and scroll through my phone in case something has happened I need to know about instantly. I think about the fact that it might be better not to know.

Montel wrote an email to us today to let us know our child in prison is in good hands. New cellie, always some fear there. I worry about that too. But thanks for the reassurance, Montel.

Seems like the only time I do not worry is when I run. If I could run all day every day, I would never worry. The mask fogs my glasses and I take them off and run somewhat blind but at least not fog-blind. My brain turns off on a tangent with each new trail. On single track, if a runner comes from the opposite direction, we both pull back into the woods, diving away from shared air particles. I cannot hug friends. Our dogs still intermingle though.

That is not actually true, as my dog is on high alert regarding any other dog stepping paws on the same planet. How dare you enter my woods, my beach, my neighborhood! I fear my dog would be a Trump supporter if human, but then I see how he has a pure joy and realize there is no joy in Trumpland. Only hate and greed and mistrust of science. My dog digs science. He plays fetch with the discipline of a randomized controlled trial. He loves me best but Dr Fauci would be a close second, I am pretty sure.

I have not been able to creatively write for a long while. Mainly due to the aforementioned fatal distraction and a heavy dose of consternation. My piano may be well-tempered, but I am not. I tilt at betrayers of democracy. I foam at the mouth on the inside while smiling sweetly on the outside. I get on my knees and pray for clarity. I usually am tying my running shoes during this maneuver, and the prayer works almost every time. I write now as a testament to the dis-ease I fight daily. My face shield gives me superpowers. My hands are washed of any malarkey.

I wish everyone had the courtesy of Montel. Just to tell us we got each other's back, not to worry, not to despair. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 

Blessed are those sharing their music with us during this lockdown, including the current Queen of Bach. I am not jealous. I am not jealous. I am not jealous.