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.

Apocalyptic Meditations

The albuterol inhaler my doctor ordered was not the one my insurance covers so I did not pick it up.

The orange sky is not, I hope, some kind of electoral omen.

When short of breath I cannot work because it could be COVID-19.

Nobody really likes masks.

If I could do one thing over from my parenting years it would be taking a full year off from work for each new child.

Daniela reminded me the Bach Preludes and Fugues are the Old Testament, the Beethoven Sonatas the New Testament. Of piano.

Reading the Bible cover to cover makes all the world seem unnerving, especially if you are a woman, not white, not straight, and not big on smite. But did any right-leaning Christian ever read even one word ascribed to the Christ? 

If it was to become COVID, will it involve cardiomyopathy? The tightness in my chest might just be anxiety about 

What can be controlled and what cannot?

My child Zoomed a math exam today even though the world is on fire and that gave me hope. 

It can be 120 degrees where my other child is imprisoned. Sometimes they pour water from the toilet on the floor and lay in it for relief.

Even though I believe in God I find 

No judgement

Anyway my tax dollars will be used to help the department of justice defend the reputation of our rapist in chief.

I earned that money carrying for all kinds of people, many not well-off, in a rural place that some might describe as a shithole county

If just based on statistics of wealth, life expectancy, drug use and other public health measures of interest.

Others might be shocked by the beauty and in fact flock here to escape to the cooling breezes and redwood mist.

Whales stop by often. As do seals, mountain lions, elk and foxes. We also have a rat in our yard. 

Templeton, I think, or a descendant thereof. He likes the snacks our chickens receive and the detritus from the bird feeder which is still my all time favorite housewarming gift from 18 years past.

Coffee every morning, while junkos and hummingbirds feast, probably annoyed I watch them so intently.

Or once a deer wound it’s astounding tongue up into the conical bird feeder and drained it in 3 minutes flat. 

In an ideal society a mother would not have to choose career versus children. My own Mom puked her chemotherapy guts out before she went to work after making my lunch for my day at fifth grade.

America cares about children except for the child care aspect, the paid maternity/adoption leave, the healthcare coverage, the feeding of hungry mouths.

People should not be hungry.

I wanted to get some albuterol today because I am having trouble breathing. 

In my country, you can only breathe if you have enough clout. The right hue. The right insurance blue, shielding 

You from worry