beginnings

This is an excerpt from an emerging books. I invite your comments.


The living room was a calmness of gray, creme and beige, the better to set off the oil paintings that hung there. She would lay on her stomach with legs up in the air or she'd sit cross legged in front of the speakers, listening intently to understand the words put to music. The plush gray carpet offered itself for frequent hand sweeps to bring up balls of fluffy gray fibers that grew as she rolled them. The piano was at one end and the sofa at the other. The drapes hung closed on the windows, never open to the sun. There was a hushed, almost sacred feel to this room. She felt special just to be there. The middle of the carpet in front of the speakers was her domain. She could look up at a large oil of foggy trees in the mist and wonder where they were, exactly?

Mom would change the records on the turntable in the hall cabinet. She was not supposed to touch that, though the way it spun slowly around and the little needle were very tantalizing. “The needle goes around these grooves on the record and makes a sound”, mommy told her. You have to be careful not to scratch it or you'll ruin the record. “ Of course she had to try it once or twice when mommy was upstairs or otherwise out of range. The sound it made when scratching was terrifying. What if mommy heard it too?

Every day she listened to the music that poured from the speakers. Show tunes were her favorite and she soon sang along to Mary Poppins , My Fair Lady and Peter Pan. Sometimes there would be a classical recording. The different movements of the piece always sounded like the weather to her. There was always a happy part and then a stormy part like a thunder storm that was just a little bit scary . Peter and the Wolf and Tubby the Tuba taught her about the instruments and she was fascinated. It's a Small World After All was another favorite.

When she was about six and already in school, piano lessons began from a book called Teaching Little Fingers to Play. gDid you practice?h, her mother would ask, already knowing the answer. So she would sit down dutifully and bang out Here we go/ Up the row /To the birthday Party. Little three fingered exercises that took the fun out of the music. But how else was one to learn? Having to do something was so much different from wanting to do it.

But reading was never a chore. It didn't take much practice and it never seemed like work. Rather, it was always a way to discover secrets. She would enter the cool dark room that was her father's study and head for the bookshelves that lined the far wall. A small finger would trace the titles on the bindings and eventually begin reading them. Tropic of Cancer. She knew that was a sickness people only mentioned in whispers, like the word divorce. The thought that someone would write a book about that illness gave her a little thrill of fear. In the sanctuary of daddy's study, nothing scary could really get to her. Her world was protected by the rich leather of his easy chair and the back set of the Cadillac.

The study was another fascinating adult room and it belonged to daddy. His pipe tobacco gave off a slightly sweet scent in there. She loved to put her fingers into the bowl of an empty pipe and sniff that wonderful deep smell. The pipe rack sat on the big wooden desk, front and center with many stacks of papers and a yellow legal pad or twobehind it. She and her brother knew not to touch the papers or disturb their order, but the pipes were a different matter. They could not resist trying those out, putting the pipe stem to their lips and sucking in the sharp and acrid after taste that sometimes burned their throats That was not nearly as good as the smell. Funny about smells. Coffee smelled rich and deep like chocolate but it sure didn't taste that way, especially when eaten! Curiosity lead her on all kinds of adventures in that house.

Daddy's closet was another great place to play. There was a big trunk in there. It was filled with all kinds of pictures of people she didn't know. Sometimes she and Andrew would drag daddy there by the hand and ask him who the people in the picture were. Most of the time there were stories to go with the people: that one was his own father, your grandpa, who was in the Russian army and escaped to come to New York. That is him in his uniform. The baby on the bear rug without any clothes was daddy himself How we squealed with delight to discover that! Mommy's childhood picture, by contrast, was of a fully clothed chubby little girl looking in fascination at a ball laying on the groudn in front of her.

After a time of poking around in that closet, oh so careful not to disturb anything or move it out of place, she would go back to the books, picking out one or two with lots of pictures to wonder at, curl up in the big maroon chair and slip into the world beneath the book covers.

Escapism, pure and simple

As lovely as reality can be sometimes, I guess I'm an escapist at heart. That's something I've known for awhile, but revisited this weekend. Two of my favorite forms of escape seem to be looking at art and reading. I do the second one more than the first, just because it is usually more convenient. This weekend, my parents were in town for Thanksgiving. We spent most of our time with the children, but then, on Saturday, looking for something to entertain ourselves with, we went to the museum, just the three of us, and floated in our own reflective orbits, shedding the worries and cares of our lives for a while. I got to take a break from having to fish for topics of conversation...always a challenge for me as we just walked from room to room. Dad had his commentaries on what we saw, but it was nothing really intrusive to the peaceful, soothing quality of the experience. Looking at art is my drug of choice.

I live in a house without a TV. Most of the time, I am determined to keep it that way. TV is full of nothing much as far as I'm concerned and I'd much rather, read or write. Both of which I do in large quantities. But writing is often a form of analysis. It's reading that can offer pure escape, especially fiction. I love time travel and alternate reality books the most and have just started one called The Time Travelers (vol. 1) by Caroline B. Cooney, who is a YA author, it seems. It's not particularly great literature but it is escapist and that seems to be what I crave!

Time to fly!

Do people actually find the time to write every day? And what to say? I've just realized today that I can write different things for different types of audiences. I need to expand my horizons. Think global, act local. Or act global too, as the case may be. As noted on my Facebook page, I've joined Heifer International. I just love the idea of donating live animals. I also love the idea of their study tours to distant and remote places. I've been feeling the need to start traveling for a while now. I will have to support myself as I go, which is why I got certified to teach EFL, English as a Foreign Language. If there is anyone reading this who has traveled and taught, get in touch, okay? Thanks!
Of course, if I want to get philosophical right now, there's always the idea of travel within, Rumi's kind: Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. Spiritual growth on the inside, transformation and all of that. God says our souls journey on from plane to plane and the successful one is the one who helps here soul to grow, not to let it stagnate. God always knows what we need, even if we are too blind or stubborn to see it!

#2

I have written in so many private places over the past umpteen years. There are journals and notebooks full of my ramblings. I want it all to amount to something, like an autobiography. Is this blog a way to start acquiring a reading public? I wonder.

The yearning is for connection: connection to God, and through His love, to each other. We are all drops in that ocean, as Rumi says. The Sufis seem to do the best job of trying to express those ideas and even to live them, at least some of the Sufis I've known. Its the way they interpret faith and spirituality.

Everyone suffers some pain and fear in life, no matter what their age or circumstances. Self-hatred, low self esteem, feelings of being inferior to someone else in some way, or even in many ways. God is there to tell us we are not forgotten or forsaken. He says in the Quran, Surat Duha:
By the bright whiteness of noon-tide
and the calm shrouding darkness of night
You are neither forsaken by your Lord nor are you detested
And the ultimate end is better for you than the first beginning.
And yur Lord shall give to you and you shall be satisfied.
Did He not find you an orpahn and provide refuge?
Did He not find you astray and guide you?
And did He not find you without means and provide sustenance?
So as for the orphan-do not oppress him.
And as for the beggar- do not drive him away.
And as for the grace of your Lord - proclaim it!

Allah is (SWT) talking to Prophet Muhammad, but at the same time to us, through the prophet and his life story. As a convert, I connect with this surah on many levels, but also just as a human being who's going through my own shit, every day in my own miserable or joyful way!

Reaching Forward, Reaching Back

Welcome to my blog! This is my first post ever, something I'll never be able to say again. It's purpose, like the spider's is to launch filaments and make connections. Blogging is one of the newer ways to "reach out and touch someone" as the phone company commercials used to say. Way back when the phone was actually attached to the wall. I'm dating myself already. Here's the poem. Try to look past the archaic language forms and get to the real meaning. And to think, Walt Whitman was the avant garde blogger of his day!

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd where on little promonotory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile
anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my
soul.