The Owners of the Two Half Chickens



I have just one small story from when my family was in the old country. And while one small story does not make much of anything (anymore than one chicken bone in water makes a soup), it means a lot to me because it is something that is mine, the oldest thing that I know that is part of what made me, me.

• The old country is Poland. I had only one grandmother. One grandmother and one Bachi. My father's mother who lived with us in my early years was Bachi to me (and even her children called her that). When my cousin Barbara couldn't pronounce Babchi, meaning grandma in Polish, our Babchi's middle b was dropped and she came to be called Bachi, which now to me is also kiss in Italian. It just meant my dad's mom then. I miss my Bachi, but after maybe thirty years, I can still stop and let myself remember her specific kisses, the touch, her smell. It's funny the things that are chosen for us to remember. And I think I could still pick her hands and thin arms out of a lineup. This is her story I now tell, Connie's. To her friends, she was Connie.

Connie and her neighbor in the village pooled their few kopecks together and bought a chicken. I don't know what kind or if they gave it a name. They would take turns with the egg their chicken would lay most mornings. The neighbor would get it one day, Connie the next.

Once, for almost two weeks, the were no eggs and the neighbor kept accusing Connie of sneaking all the eggs for herself. Connie protested her innocence. Then chicken started laying again but the bitterness of the owners of the two half chickens didn't abate.

Soon after the hen was seen with a clutch of little chicks trailing her. The mystery was solved and the neighbor bought a dozen eggs for Connie as an apology.

I apologise that I have no more stories from the old country. Maybe that's why I read so hungrily the Issac Baschevis Singer stories of Poland. My wife and I have especially loved for many years his stories of the inhabitants of Chelm, who, in all his humorous stories of them, were schelmiels, wonderful fools.

A couple weeks ago my wife found out that two of her favorite students had ancestors who hailed from Chem. We had thought it was a mythical place. Now we are delighted that somewhere in Poland, our favorite old world village actually existed and maybe still does.

I have heard of immigrants who kept keys to their old country homes or something else, candlesticks maybe, and then they passed them down to their children. I am not jealous of them, I have this. A good story is one of the best things to have.

Hiroshima

Two weeks ago my thirteen year old son visited Hiroshima for the first time. The same day he arrived there by Shinkansen train from Tokyo, I saw a beautiful hardcover book on a street vendor's table for only four dollars. It was John Hershey's Hiroshima, which was one of the first serious books, the first I remember, that I read. I borrowed it from the local Cutchogue library. I have looked over many used books in stores and on the street over the years and would have noticed this volume before. But not until that day did I see it.

I am quite skeptical when it comes to coincidences and intuition, but these things seem to occur at an interesting frequency. I saw another book last week about how we overestimate the importance of coincidences with our minds. I believe we do. Yet there must be something going on even though I was trained by my Christian upbringing to believe in these things in the abstract but not live among them.

After years of schooling where I was told to not speak when I wanted; not eat when I felt like it; wait when I felt the need to relieve myself in the rest room; not to play or socialize when I felt like it; to concentrate when I wanted to rest; to do math when I felt like doing art; to read science when I wanted to study math; to be with dull, bitter teachers I wanted to get away from. . . I, like most Americans, learned to shut up what I felt inside.

Tell me, if you refuse to go the bathroom when your insides scream 'I have to go now,' how are you going to hear a more subtle, quiet message of intuition? I was trained to be counterintuitive for years and years.

Now, I don't know why I found Hershey's book when I did. I don't have to know but I can enjoy the event.

Why intuition you say, I thought you were talking about coincidence. Because intuition is to me, when you listen to your inner self, and some coincidence follows. Though you don't always have to sit down for 45 minutes and ask hmmmm. . . what are you saying, Miss Inner Self? Though sometimes that is what you might want to do.

I recently found out that John Hershey wrote another interesting small book called A Single Pebble, a story of an American engineer who travels the Yangtze to find places to put dams. Now, 50 years later, it is even more poignant with the the damming they are doing to that river. But while this is a touching, tender story, there is another story about Hiroshima and a single pebble that I would like to share, a true story.

A boy and his friends, perhaps it was his sister, were walking in Hiroshima near the end of the war and the boy stopped to pick up a small stone that caught his eye. There was a brilliant flash of light which burnt his friends, but the boy was shielded by a low cement wall as he bent down for his stone; and he lived.

(Atomic bombs can be configured to do different types of damage, only killing people and having the radiation dissipate quickly or giving off little radiation but doing much physical, heat damage or producing radiation that will stay a long time like in Chernobyl. So that is why this is possible.)

I collect stories of stones. One of the important hidden motifs of the Hebrew Scriptures is that of the Even Shetiah, the moving stone. If you have any stone stories, please share them with me.

And the lantern boats in the picture are sailed on the Hiroshima water each summer to not forget the tragedy and perhaps, help deal with it.

I don't think my son was there for the lantern boats but maybe one day he and I will go see them together. For me it will be complicated, my father was a navigator on an airplane which bombed Japan, though he was not on the Enola Gay, the one that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki; my wife's parents were in Tokyo at the time, being bombed by planes with conventional bombs.

If I do make it, I will look for a stone to carry in my pocket.

The Perfect Sunday Morning Service

As a musician, I love playing both carefully composed works and my improvisations; I love playing squirreled away within my own apartment or out in the wide world.

In central park there are three large lawns : the Sheep Meadow where, years ago, sheep actually kept the grass short; the Great Lawn where Simon and Garfunkle, the N.Y. Philharmonic and many other famous groups perform; and the North Field at whose edge I sat and played recorder this Sunday morning, watching the first stray players trickle onto the baseball fields.

I moved to the handball courts when my hill was taken over by a cacophony of dog owners, the courts just a few strides away. Stepping on the courts, I remembered practicing tennis here on another morning last year with two young raccoons shyly peering out of the near garbage can as my audience.

At the court, I played again but stopped when I thought I heard church bells. It took me a moment to realize what was happening. In the middle court there is a high chain link fence dividing two lines of courts and when I played my recorder there, the fence resonated. The actual sound was like the fuzzy after-peal of church bells sans the percussive knock or a loud glass harmonica.

If I have to attend a Sunday morning worship service, this is how I like it: Bach's music and improvised tunes, soft pealing sounds in the background, gorgeous woodsy setting, no preaching, no husband or kids dragged there when they'd rather be still under the covers or getting ready for the beach.

I have to report that 100% of the congregants (me, the only one) were thrilled to be attending.

I mentioned "Bach's music and improvised tunes." Of interesting musical note, I read a book on Bach's Art of the Fugue yesterday. It mentioned that while Bach improvised freely, when he then took those improvisations to paper, he would then adjust them to musically flawless, technically correct works.

This goes along with my thinking that music writing is a two part process, the first part being a freely created tune, often inspired by half remembered melodies now with new twists; infused the remembered rhythmic feel of a dance, a heartbeat; animated by birdsong (which that morning I heard and played with); laughter, which I personally believe (though I never heard anyone else say this), was the persistent basis of Mozart's melodies; or in one case (Harold Arlen, "Over the Rainbow"), kindled by the whistling for his dog.

The second part being the sometimes wonderful developments, patterns and clever teasings reworked into the piece.

In a review last week in the NY Times, Bernard Holland explained...

Countries with powerful popular cultures don’t produce many fugues. Abstraction and formal design have a hard time competing with musical impulses that seem to grow out of the ground, especially when the country is Spain and the melding of European and North African music remains so strong.

Folk cultures and popular music genres have no time for fugues, their musicians are busy playing melodies. Makes sense.

Bach, spent more of his energy on development, borrowing (stealing away for us?) tunes he found, including one song from Martin Luther (for which arrangement, two days ago, my son just finished studying the four recorder parts, SATB). "Serious" composers develop songs they find. Aaron Copeland's famously took the Shaker's It's a Joy to Be Simple and did hardly anything to it.

Of course, composers do love to make their own tunes. When improvising, I find myself focusing on a melody and its variations, while at the same time focusing on its development, progression and its interweaving with other melodies. It's like having two parts of your brain converse with each other, each speaking at the same time and it's you in each case being the speaker and listener.

When I do this, I see that multitasking the brain is deliciously addicting and must reluctantly admit I can't criticize my son for playing two demanding video games (and typing away like a demon to talk to other online gameplayers) at once, while watching a movie on the screen and listening to music, and researching stuff on the internet in between. I'd like to criticize but I can't.

But no matter how complicated the composition gets, its the tune, that short story of what happens to notes and harmonies, that matters.

People want to hear pretty, unforced melodies which feel like they grew out of the ground, whether played by popular musicians or reworked in classical style; whether they were created centuries ago like Greensleeves or improvised on the spot; in a concert hall or in a chance encounter in a park.

A pretty tune is like an cute girl. You want to spend time with her.

Pineapple triplets

Dear reader, I hope this story of my childlike attempts will encourage you even if you are not studying the cello as I am.

I want to tell you about Pineapple Triplets. First off, musical triplets are fitting in three notes where you would normally count two notes.

The easiest way to do triplets was suggested in Arnold Steinhardt's book, Violin Dreams...

When playing a whole note, play it to the word... Pear.
When playing a half note, play it to the word... Ap ple.
When playing a quarter note, say to yourself... Wa ter mel on.
And what is the word for triplets?... Pine ap ple.

Each syllable so easily directs one to play one of the notes. It's like having a little conductor in the brain, (Hormunculous' cousin?).

I was having trouble reading through some Scriabin (And as I am meeting with his great-grandson, the pianist, Elisha Abas, felt I should be playing a bit of the composer's music).

The music piece has dotted triplets (wouldn't it be neater if it was spelled trippplets?). And dotted triplets are more complicated than triplets; making one of normal length; one, half-length; and one triplet of one and a half-length.

Yesterday, I had asked my teacher to play the Scriabin through and then forgot what it sounded like this evening. She additionally told me how to approach the dotted triplets, explaining the process of learning to play them accurately: get the regular triplets down first, then adjust them.

But when I sat down to practice, I remembered Pear, apple, pineapple, watermelon.

I found I could easily lengthen and shorten the appropriate syllables in Pineapple once I got Pine ap ple into my head, I could adjust as my teacher said. But I didn't even have to play them or think them through as regular triplets first, they just easily came out perfect.

It was so easy and struggle-less. It was like playing the simplest tune.

Now I know why I was trying to convince my wife to buy a pineapple earlier in the day, when we went shopping, a purchase I have made three or four times in my entire life...

My inner self was trying to get me to remember about and use pineapple triplets.

And that pineapple tastes great, ask my son.

photo links:
willtooke
RaeA
jwlphotography

A Quality of Laughter

I am thinking of taking a yoga class. And yoga is not my cup of tea; if I find out it will take too much time to get there or it's at an inconvenient time, forget it.

What is attracting me to this yoga class is that it's laughing yoga; and besides being the best medicine, it sounds like fun. Doesn't it?

Years ago, I worked at the farm in eastern Long Island. It was just behind our house; I could just roll out of bed and be there. At the farm's fruit stand this one summer, worked a girl who was quite cute. She had a short haircut, dark eyes and an unbelievably warm, inviting laugh.

When I told her how much I liked her laugh, she told me that I should hear her sister.

The summer passed, the fruit season ended and when the other "summer people" left, she moved to Vermont to live with her laughing sister.

Well, the story could have ended here but I decided to take a car trip to see her, my longest then except for the one to Buffalo and Niagara Falls to see my brother in college.

I felt like the racing car hero in A Man and a Woman who drove across France to spend a short night with his love. It was winter, there was snow, I drove on highways voted the most scenic in America. The trip was a joy.

Beside having a great time in Vermont, I met the sister and heard her laugh. It was shear beauty. One of her college professors had told her she laughed chromatically. Yes, it hit half notes up and down with gentle timbre. I wish you could hear it, just once. Clean as a child laughing on a lazy afternoon, it was.

In a couple days my laugh had changed too. It was like picking up an accent. But I returned home and after a while, like a borrowed Southern drawl on Brooklyn streets, my quality of laughter melted away.

Now, if the laughing sister were teaching this yoga class, or even in it, I would so sign up, even if it were way up in Vermont. I want to laugh like that again. click these photos to visit their home sites.

(The photo of the pretty, young woman is not the girl I knew but a stunt double).

A Joyful, Noisy Thursday

Yesterday, there were two new entries to my son's calendar.

He had heard a car alarm repeating "Thursday, Thursday." (Yes, it was Thursday.)

Windshield wipers, washing mashines, and old refrigerators seem to whisper in our language and dialect, occasionally, deliciously. This was Sage's first encounter with"speaking machines" and it had made me wonder at the time, why he remained blankly on the top step of his cello teacher's brownstone instead of following me in.

Later inside, it happened to be the first time he played a double stop on the cello (a chord, two notes at once). Usually I don't pen-in these such small, delicate events, rather days like when he learned to ride a bike or when he first arrived in Tokyo and met his grandmother there.

I keep track of new things that pop up in Sage's life and put them in calendar form. A decade from now, when he graduates college (or whatever), I'll present the calendar to him and then each January of his life he can see that the 3rd was his first piano recital and each February, that the 27th was when he met a close friend. I hope this will later make for a life of mini-celebrations and smiles.

kriegs' photostream

Practicing the Cello

My cello teacher tells me over and again that it is most important to notice what we are doing when we play a scale, a movement, an exercise.

She asks me to put into precise words what I was trying to do throughout the playing and what I noticed in my playing. Did I hold down my first and second fingers as I played the top C? Did I prepare and start to lift my hand as I played F and G on the A string as I moved higher in the scale? Were my dotted timings correct, my equal notes steady or was I subconsciously imitating the rubato of Casals whom I heard play the piece many times? Being specific in noticing is very hard for me but it is the way of getting better at the cello. The only way.

In the TV show, Psych, we see flashbacks each week to the protagonist's childhood. His father asks him to close his eyes and recall the very minor details around them. In this way, the son gradually learns to notice. Noticing takes work.

And when we take care to notice in our discipline, be it yoga or cello, knitting or sweeping the floor, we begin to fall into the practice of noticing more in our daily lives.

simone_schot's photostream

My Magical Owl

This afternoon, the sky was waiting for snow. Now I finally hear ice plinks begin as I start to write at 2 this morning. I hear that quiet sound I like, of slow cars moving on the wet road. I am not trying to be poetic, just simply writing of my surroundings as I have woken and found myself here - unchanged by an overnight, Kafaesk, metamorphosis; not mesmerized away by a novel; still here in Manhattan, not having suddenly remembered that, Oh, yeah, I flew in to Tokyo last night; and not still dreaming another landscape. But if I may wax just once, Here I, transported by the magic carpet to nowhere else, am. (Ah, the very definition of meditation - though I am currently bumbling through the apartment in the beta state of workaday thinking.)

This afternoon, (back to the point of this entry), I needed to get out of the house a bit and so headed across Central Park toward the Met Museum. I always (always, near to the point of an Adrian Monk obsession) take a certain route when I get to an edge of the Jackie O. Reservoir. I take the jogging path along side the water going toward the museum and come back home by way of the Great Lawn and the pinetum.

This afternoon, I had a feeling I wanted to leave for the museum the other way, by the Great Lawn. It wasn't a strong feeling, I just wanted to take the road "usually" not taken. It was as simple as when you want a glass of water and then you notice yourself automatically getting one. But there must have been some resistance because I found myself needing to say out loud, I want to go the other way today. And so, I went.

There was a man with a large telescope in the pinetum. It was pointing to the sky, and I guessed he was bird watching but the angle looked just too high for the top of the fir trees in the fore. I wondered if he was looking at something in the sky? I had to ask, he said he was looking at an owl. We got to talking about whether there were actually 60 million birdwatchers in the country as I had read just yesterday and he took me a few steps to the other side of the copse where his wife was photographing and the man positioned his tripoded telescope for me to see one of the two long-eared owls treed there.

This afternoon was the first time I saw an owl in the wild even though I grew up not in Manhattan, but wandering field and wood, even taking foxes, rabbits, a turtle and a skunk as pets.

Seeing my first feral owl let me know that I had been connecting to the Life Force, to the greater world. Certainly, we all want these acknowledgments that our gut feelings are spot on, we want these magic owls. But even more is the connection we tangibly have when we stop and ask, How do I feel inside.

Please ask now. Reading this was just a prelude. Your feelings don't have to be profound, they might be just quietly hooting to you, Relax or Get moving. Then go out and try to keep connected as you move about you life. If later you happen to want to buy a magazine you never bought before or take a different route on your way home from grocery shopping? Why not?

And let me know what happens, if you will... TheAncientSounds@Gmail.com.

Hoot, hoot.

From my kitchen window, the road now and the car tops are white, and the plinking of icy snow keeps me company as my family sleeps.

photo by Dave Schreier on flickr.

Coincidental Groceries

I went to buy a chicken for dinner and remembered what a teacher had said years ago, When you go to the bank, don't stop off and pick up your laundry or pop in the record store, just go straight there, and your determination will grow stronger (paraphrased).

I listened and was not be distracted (as was my usual wont) along the way, not by the bookstore or other interesting stores. I went straight to buy for dinner. (Mission accomplished!)

Coming back, I stepped right beside a close friend and we were able to talk as we continued on. (This being unusual in that neither of us had a child in tow and so we could leisurely converse.)

Then I went to Gary Null's Whole Foods and right there was my wife, returning from her work, checking out groceries and I was able to help her carry them home, (this, the first time we met unpurposefully in the 15 years we have known each other).

I guess I was just where I should have been. Perfect Timing, ten minutes later and I would have missed the coincidental meetings. But it's the feeling you get, not the coincidences, which let you know things are as the should be. That palpable connection to the life force. And the term was not coined by George Lucas, I've noticed that Rashi used it in the middle ages, though in Old French.

To begin to feel more connected, just ask now, What do you notice within? And remember, gentle reader, it's the attempt, the asking, not what you call results that matters most of all.

Image by © JLP/Deimos/zefa/Corbis

Sonnata for Tenor Blockflote and Steam Radiator

Yesterday, got my son laughing when I played the recorder and incorporated the steam radiator's soft, plaintive D into the song. The quite recorder-like radiator played somewhat regularly every 20 seconds, sometimes with and extra toot or two.

He also drew a map of the moon earlier in the day and after learning how to draw a perfect circle with his thumb as a compass point. There are few things poetic as the name places of our Moon... the Ocean of Storms, the Seas of Tranquility and Serenity, Crater Tycho (I love the story of when Tycho Brahe was walking home one night and realized a new star had formed, he was so intimate with the dark sky), the Sea of Crises, the Ocean of Fecundity, the Lake of Sleep, the Sea of Nectar (never heard of these last two till now) and the Sea of Cold. My favorite is the Sea of Rains. Ah, yes, and the Dark Side. The homeschooling dad in me gives you your first question of the day, where was the Apollo 11 landing?

In the Museum of Natural History nearby, there is a display which shows how scientists believe the moon was wayward planet which bumped into earth (I don't know, it was before I was born) and it shattered then reformed as the moon. In that same little exhibition room is a small rock you could comfortably carry in your pocket. I guess it came from a meteor and you can touch it. It is older than the earth. That is my favorite part of the museum.

I guess homeschooling can be fun, though it is workety-work just to be around your kid and providing quality attention/guidance all the time then staying up all night to write music or whatever. Today we get to go to our favorite cheep-o Japanese restaurant in midtown, Zhia (really wrong spelling, I know), and go skating behind the 42nd street library in gorgeous Bryant Park. Here's the last question of the day, what are the names of the two famous lions outside the front of that library?


Frank Lynch
LeggNet

Playing the Piano Like a Pianist

Certain things were impossible, others I just wish they had been. Then they wouldn't have happened.

I would have said that teaching my son, Sage, to play the piano "wonderfully" within an hour would have been impossible, but it happened and the un-parental part of me wishes it had been impossible. Yes, I am glad o' the resultants, but it was a frozen moment and peppered with beggings for him to consider quitting piano. He wanted to just play the notes not music and sounded as bad as most "talented" young pianists. (He is now a version 12.5 kid and has been at the keyboard now for two years plus a little.)

Sage did not want to adjust his hand/finger/wrist position/movements and play from the solar plexus. While dealing with his ego/crying/sheer anger and deeply analyzing myself as to my pushing him for my own paternal motives (the quote, paraphrased, comes to mind, that "The most important influence of childhood is what our parents did not achieve") and trying to figure out as quick as that instant-satori moment of Zen - what the heck were the exact, intricate changes he must make and how to communicate them? All this from me, who incorporates things musical then erases within, all trace of how they got there and why to do things so. Then afterwards, the playing feels intuitive, instinctive for me. And I knew the window of teaching him this was very small or he would have just closed off. Well, I did it.

It was like that scene in Star Wars, A New Hope where Obi Wan on board the first death star memorizes the mappings of that death star and how to disable its tractor beams at speed-reading speed. My mind raced.

Once I figured out his very specific needs it was sort of easy. I won't go into the details of the motions, positions and concerts of ebows, fingers and wrists - your eyes would just glaze over.

But once shown he played well, completely differently. And the actual physical teaching took only twenty minutes or so. And yes, I also know it will take some gentle reinforcement over time to make all this natural and habitual.

The next day my wife played hooky from school and heard Sage practice from the other room and wondered at the change - very noticeable. Then she came in to see him and later told me that he now looks like a pianist when he plays.

After Sage's two years of piano lessons, this is the second time I actually got involved. My wife said that this help is why, when if you come from a musician's family, it's a big advantage for learning music. but its also the learning from just noticing without knowing they are noticing how the musician parents do subtle things. His teacher is terrific for him (yes, most of the time parents think their child's music teacher is the greatest when the teacher might not be so, true especially for unmusician parents), but he needed a different help here. Yeah, I'm tooting my own English horn, but hey, I am convalescing from the lesson and still trying to deal with the aftershocks yet 36 hours later the quake.


The whole experience reminds me of the man who designed the giant, giant turbines for a dam (was it the Hoover?) and they stopped moving. He was called in to consult in the great emergency. He walked around and looked at the situation, picked up a sledge hammer and went to one of the turbines. THWACK. It groaned and fidgeted and then then hummed full force, starting the others with it. They thanked him but two weeks later had to call him up angrily at the $10,000 bill, which in today's money is probably like above 10 million dollars. Where did he get the nerve to charge $10,000 for just hitting the turbine with a sledge hammer? He capitulated by saying he would send them another bill. A week later they received the second bill, this time itemized... Hitting the turbine with a sledge, $10; knowing where to hit it, $9,990.

Sometimes it takes just a small adjustment but you have to be very precise and knowledgeable.

Please remember, this was for Sage's specific habitual technique adjustments and for his specific hands, everyone's hands are unique (though there are some very basic principles here). Maybe I feel a little better after my rant. It is 2.40 AM here in New York time, no wait, now that the pictures are in, 3.15.

photo links:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamie_marie/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arteunporro/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/residae/

Which Craft?

Several months ago, I was wondering where to focus my work and asked The Divine (no, not Bette M., the other One), what I should be doing now (other than raising my son and working on myself), you know, what I should be doing in the world, workwise. My music, my writing, seemed impractical, (how many actually mint decent gold coins at these)?

I didn't expect a clear answer but I did get two. Later that day in a bookstore, a bit anxious, I primed the pump and drew out one card from The Kabbalah Deck. That's just not something I do, cards or tea leaves (too hokus-pokus for me), but, hey, I just plucked out a card. Samech. I remembered the story of how Samech asked Ha Shem to be the first letter in Torah but was told it needed to keep doing the job it had been doing, supporting the poor. No, another, less busy letter would be chosen.

Unbeliever, I, looked up my letter-card in the booklet which came with the deck. Here's the part that spoke to me...

In this context, the early Hasidim prized the worth of stories - sipurim (whose Hebrew word begins with 'Samech') - to nourish the soul and give us a greater appreciation for the holiness existing around us. Such leaders as Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav cherished storytelling as a valuable way to arouse people from their inner slumber.

I didn't think the booklet would actually encourage something like story writing.

The next day, I found myself walking with my son and telling him embellished funny stories. He turned to me, Dad, you should be a writer.

I'm writing this story down here because when I write about things like being answered by The Divine, I'm focusing on them. Then maybe I'll start to notice them a little better when they are happening around me the next time.

To me there is a fine line between being closed minded and reading too much into events and coincidences, being an unbeliever and looking too much for signs and messages. I guess what I am striving for is the same as in my cello playing - rather a focused practice than a vague overdoing. Everything we get better at is by ever more refined focus, by ever more quality attention than we thought even existed a while ago.

A few minutes of cello practice that is very attentive to specific aspects, like correctly varying the bowing lengths in a Bach phrase or carefully adjusting the bow closer to the bridge as a scale rises, will help me get better. An hour of dull practicing will actually make my playing worse.


When a violin maker, a luthier, makes an instrument, there is first the lumberjack who hacks down the tree with a crude ax. Then it is sliced at the less crude mill into straight planks. The best pieces are cut into possible violin slabs and aged. The luthier then roughly cuts the ones he chooses to fit a pattern. Then he carves them into roughly the correct thicknesses. Then with more refined tools, he shaves them into the shape of violin pieces. Then the tools get smaller and smaller, to nearly doll house sized. Finally, and there have been complicated testings and noticings at each step, a days work becomes when he sands a few grains exactly here and not there. Eventually he varnishes the wood become violin.

That is what I attempt in my communicating with The Divine, in my following intuition... a process that must be worked at with increasing attention and ever more refined noticing, but never overworked.

I quote The Violin Maker by John Marchese who in turn quotes ...the great sociologist, C. Wright Mills ...The craftsman's way of livelihood determines and infuses his entire mode of living, there is no split of work and play.

To develop a craftsman's mindset, it helps to actually practice a craft. Which craft does not matter, it could be cleaning one's house or cooking breakfasts just as well as making a violin. It's not the craft, but the way you do it that matters.

What is your craft?

I have to acknowledge again John Marchese, for it was from The Violin Maker that I paraphrased the process of making a violin.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stedanby/Ste D's photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vphill/

diskcover

OK, sometimes the Life Force, our intuition, needs to tell us over and over again because we ignore it with such obstinance, (even to the point of putting our fingers in our ears, loudly humming a tune to drown it out).

Last night it was trying to give me a message in a dream. Finally it kept saying (while I held an empty CD disk case), "Disk cover, disk cover." I woke and realized... oh, DISCOVER. In other words it was like Yoda saying, You idiot, just listen, discover what I am saying. Just listen.

One of my old teachers wrote that the inner self, intuition, speaks in images and puns. In other words, that part of our brain likes rebuses, it's our inner language, very direct.

OK, I better start listening to the dream message. If only I could taste a potion which would let me notice my intuitions rather than working at it, however easy. Patience, grasshopper.

I just now remembered that I picked up a white button with one word, Patience, on it. That was yesterday at the main NYC public library. Yeah, I guess I was on a roll yesterday...

When I went out yesterday I put my now favorite book and a small duck head umbrella in a backpack. I got on the subway and went for the book. I noticed the missing umbrella that my family liked a lot. Oh, well, I said, and opened the book to page 104, the first line said, How many times do I have to tell you not to lose your things? It went on to tell parents (and we to ourselves, I transposed) not to criticize at all, that there is no constructive criticism. Instead, tell the little ones they are wonderful and responsible because of showing concern for their mistakes.

The book gives nice examples. People need only positive talk and then they do change. But many times what we really care about is getting out our frustrations, not in helping others to change.

When we criticize, we are telling our loved ones (or ourselves)... this is how you are, (in this case someone who tends to loose things). Thank you, this gives me a chance to vent on you about your imperfections. I was already frustrated at having to trudge through life today, now I can yell at you and feel in control and macho. Stay just the way you are, just do it more often (loose umbrellas, don't clean up your room).

Encourage instead. Yeah, maybe I should have a button made that says that too, encourage instead.

Better yet, they should make an encourage instead potion. I wouldn't even have to pay for it, my son would pay for me, believe me. Believe me on this one.

www.flickr.com:photos:frozen-in-time:.weblocfile
ifnoif

The Perfect Meeting

Somehow I missed yesterday's meeting for NY Indie Publishers. I went to the McNally-R. bookstore where it was to be held but was told there wasn't a meeting.

Every rare once in a while (hope it gets more frequent) I get a strong feeling about something beforehand. Before this meeting I knew two things (no idea how I did), I was supposed to go and I wasn't supposed to go. So I was curious, I went.

This is what I found there... it doesn't matter to where you get (the most beautiful private beach or a grimy subway platform). It doesn't matter if there is or not a payoff for being there, just having followed your intuition makes it a wonderful place to be. This is Frost's Road Less Traveled, to me.

I sat down and listened to a couple of poets at the poetry reading which took place when my meeting was supposed to happen, then walked around the bookstore. Nice enough place.

Perhaps there was a payoff though. Found a book that I might not have found in Barnes and Noble. Framed by my mindset, it took more significance. In a future post, I may talk of the book. For now let me say this, it feels good to be intuitively connected to the greater world and that matters most. Yet, sometimes the book you find at the end of the process is more than just a book.

Perhaps we need to count the importance of things differently (it can be the smallest shift). Then we might recognize the path that is laid out especially for us, notice the giant's beanstalk we were overlooking, climb our own personal Jacob's ladder. (OK, lol, am I just kind of blabbing this last, unedited-out paragraph most only because I want an excuse to include this wonderful picture?)

And dear reader, trying to notice you intuitive feelings just once today is worth more than studying 100 books on it.

Right now, what do you notice within? Listen. What you notice is often less important than that you took notice.

Credits - photo of natural ladder from sitting rock on flickr (he interestingly calls it Guide); Mendocino beach photo from Rita Crane on flickr; selecting a book photo from Roberdan on Flickr.

My Son's Last Tooth-Fairy Letter

Hello My Dear Sage,

I see through the window when you are not looking, when you are sleeping, when you are practicing music, when you are looking at the tv or computer.


And sometimes I pretend to be a bug or a window-ledge bird so I can take a longer look. (Oh, don’t worry, if the me-bug gets squashed, I don’t get hurt – it doesn’t work that way)...

When I look, I see a happy boy whose father is trying to make into a hard working person. Well, try to be both.

I have retired but you also are retiring childhood and this is the last time I will be leaving you with a letter and a gift and yet, I will think of you from time to time and visit you unawares between the stuff I do that retired people and tooth fairies do.

I have never shown a picture of myself to anyone but as I am leaving, I will give you the only one. (I took it myself, so, sorry I aimed a little low. Well, perhaps that is best anyway)...

I have seen quite a lot of things in my journeys, but you have been my very favorite client, child, friend-though-we-have-never-met.

There were these identical twins in Idaho (or was it Wisconsin?) whose mother could finally tell apart when they lost different teeth, this one spelled “L,” look closely...


(P.S. and her name is actually Lauren which, you know, begins with “L.”)

One nice and rather strange boy wanted to grow up to be a tooth fairy and asked to be apprencticed...














I saved this letter that I especially liked...

One girl’s mom made this for me. Her dad had died earlier in the year. I found it under her pillow with a letter the little girl wrote. In the letter she asked if I would marry her mom to make her mom happy...


Another girl asked for two gifts when her goat lost a tooth the same week as she did...

I got the idea for this photo-letter when I saw your dad late at nite working with photos. I guess we learn to be funny when we are around funny people, nice when we are around nice people?

I know your dad wasn’t going to reserve your Halo 3 on time so I did for you as a farewell. Remember me sometimes. The receipt is below this screen, I paid for it under your dad’s name at the 83rd Street Gamestop.

Enjoy it (but don’t forget to eat and sleep) lol!

You are quite a sage already, little one,
Dusky

Credits: photo of boy in blue cap from starfire on flickr, many credits to yet be given.

1000 Pictures, 1000 Cranes

My wife's name in English is 1000 pictures because her mother, Saddako, liked to draw and paint watercolors.

1000 means a great amount and we love round numbers, Arod's 500th homerun and Matsui's 100th occurred last month with fanfares (both are Yankees). And in Japanese tradition, if someone (or some friends) make 1000 paper cranes, it will bring luck, healing, good results for a cause.

YOU GET TO SEE THIS POSTING IN PROGRESS, LOOK INSIDE MY BRain...















I am returning to this unfinished post after a couple years. I wonder how many people will dig through the pile of my old posts to read this little note?

Anyway, I am not going to tie together all the things I was going to here. But I will finally explain this picture, why my brain is a picture of a sideways girl.

What below, here where we run around and eat, is masculine; is feminine above, in the dimension where we connect to others as who we are, not what we do, also called heaven or the above. And vice versa, the feminine is masculine above.

The scope of what feminine and masculine are is beyond this small writing. If you are interested, study the left and right qualities of the sephirot, or better acquire a rare teacher who is willing explain.

Cold Brewed Green Tea?

I read an article on cold brewed coffee and as we alike Joe Torre prefer green tea (my wife is Japanese), I thought I would give cold brewed green tea a try. We loved the cold green tea we bought from Jas Mart in Manhattan but it was a tad expensive because my wife, my son and I go through it like water.

I put six tea bags into a gallon of water and placed it in the refrigerator. (You need to let it steep in or out of the refrigerator for a couple of hours, and... you don't even have to take out the tea bags! The tanic acid which comes out by over-steeping in hot water isn't found here and you can drink the concoction for days.) The result was terrific. It had a lighter, cleaner taste, more refreshing like cold water. The refined aspects of the tea were not destroyed by the brewing process. We love it!

I love when we use four jasmine tea bags and two regular green tea bags but my wife's tongue has a Japanese sensibility and it is too perfume-y for her.

The photo is of hot matcha green tea but I couldn't resist the beauty.

Here is the article on cold-brewed iced coffee, if that's your cup of tea...

June 27, 2007
The New York Times
Iced Coffee? No Sweat
By CINDY PRICE

BEFORE I go telling everybody that the secret to great iced coffee is already in the kitchen, my friend Keller wants me to confess: I didn’t know from iced coffee until he showed me the light.

It’s important to cop to this now, because not a summer goes by that he does not painstakingly remind me, a rabid iced-coffee drinker, that he’s the one who introduced me to the wonders of cold-brewed iced coffee. The funny thing is, when the subject came up we were holed up in a summer rental with three friends off the coast of Puerto Rico, on a tiny island not exactly swimming in upmarket coffee houses.

Our first morning there I brewed a blend from the local grocery in the coffeepot, laced it with a little half-and-half and sugar, then let it cool. Classy, I thought, carrying the pitcher to the table. “I’ll just take it hot,” he mumbled, while I blinked in disbelief.

Clearly, this boy didn’t know any better. A drink has a time and place. Surely he didn’t subscribe to drinking hot coffee in summer?

“No, I only drink iced coffee if it’s cold-brewed,” he said.

For five days we watched him sullenly sip his hot coffee on a broiling Caribbean island in the dead of summer. We chided him for his pretensions, ridiculed him, tried valiantly to break him, but he patiently waited us out. Once we tried it we would understand, he explained. Like friends disputing a baseball stat in a bar with no access to Google, we had no way to settle the argument.

Two weeks later, back in Brooklyn, I saw a sign: “Cold-Brewed Iced Coffee Served Here.” Fine, then. I threw down two bucks and took a sip. Though it pains me to admit, the difference was considerable. Without the bitterness produced by hot water, the cold-brewed coffee had hints of chocolate, even caramel. I dropped my sugar packet — no need for it. The best brews hardly need cream. It really is the kind of thing a gentleman might spend five days in hot-coffee solitary confinement for.

Most days I’m too lazy to hunt down the elusive cold-brewed cup. But recently I discovered an interesting little fact. Cold-brewed coffee is actually dirt simple to make at home. Online, you’ll find a wealth of forums arguing for this bean or that, bottled water over tap, the 24-hour versus the 12-hour soak. You can even buy the Toddy cold-brew coffee system for about $30.
But you can also bang it out with a Mason jar and a sieve. You just add water to coffee, stir, cover it and leave it out on the counter overnight. A quick two-step filtering the next day (strain the grounds through a sieve, and use a coffee filter to pick up silt), a dilution of the brew one-to-one with water, and you’re done. Except for the time it sits on the kitchen counter, the whole process takes about five minutes.

I was curious to see how it would taste without all the trappings. The answer is, Fantastic. My friend Carter, something of a cold-brewing savant, turned me onto another homegrown trick: freeze some of the concentrate into cubes. Matched with regular ice cubes, they melt into the same ratio as the final blend.

Very fancy. Can’t wait to tell Keller.

Credits -
Photo of matcha supplied by michenv's flickr photostream.
Photo of iced coffee supplied by disneymike's flickr photostream.

The New School Year Blimp

On the first day of this year's not-school (my son of 12 stays home with me and also learns from music teachers, an art/cooking teacher, and a swimming instructor), we were watching Kiki's Delivery Service which features a blimp prominently. We looked up and saw the Goodyear blimp circling around and around our window! We took it as an omen that this would be a good school year. (We measure our unschool year from when my wife goes to teach high school.)

credits -
Photo by Langston McEachen from LSUS Archives which was supplied by mikerosebery's flickr photostream. The photo was taken in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1948.