The moon was full a few days ago, and I caught glimpses between buildings as it rose in the sky. It was beautiful, and my heart sang a little song.
But once upon a time, I lived where a winter night's full moon looks like this...
Moonlight in the Adirondacks, by Rockwell Kent
... and shines so loudly that you can hear the light whispering to the snow, and the moon singing her own song.
It is a hard place to live, especially in winter, but you can see why one would try.
Dancing 'round the year, and blessed to be doing so again, because...
On the eve of solstice last night 33 years ago, my life was utterly changed in the slow blink of a tired eye, and I woke in St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, California, broken.
This morning, so many solstices later, I wake in my apartment, with my cat, Mrs. Peel, snugggled close.
I can tell you a story of the times between.
But first, listen...
Not lost.
Solstice blessings to you, and hearts singing.
O come, Emmanuel.
Mrs. Peel and I are sitting side by side, looking out the window. The morning chatter-clatter of starlings on the postage-stamp lawn in front of my apartment has already abated, leaving us to gaze at metal and bricks, the traffic passing by, the boxy building across the street. And at people on the sidewalk with and without strollers (about half and half), and with and without earbuds and iPhones (almost all busily with).
Ever the Capricorn, I recently took the stubbornly contrary action of trading in my somewhat-smart phone for a single-minded dumber one that only knows how to do one thing: phone calls. I did this because I need to hear what the person on the other end of the call is saying more than I need to check my emails all day, or send and receive messages. I had a feeling that the more "gifted" phone I had been using to relieve my stress level was actually adding to it.
A month into this experiment, I can report that I was right. Checking emails pulled my attention repeatedly away from the present place and time. The way that little "ding!" hooked me was disruptive of both conversation and quiet, because I do not multi-task very well. I think I am not alone in this. In fact, I don't know anyone my own age - i.e. grew up without computers and adopted them later - who truly can multi-task. Rather, we get several balls going in the air, and think we're doing great, but we can drop one or two without noticing. Then we fume over yet another email exchange about all the same things, or a double-booking, or an argument about what was actually said and agreed to.
The iPhone is a glorious invention, and I'm not scorning the idea of ever having one. But right now I need all the quiet I can get. I live in a noisy place, where inner quiet is the only available quiet, and for that, for now, for me, the dumb phone is the smart way to go. If ever I move back to the wilderness, you can bet I will rethink. But in the meantime, I am trying to train myself to take and make my calls, when at home, in the corner of my apartment that is farthest away from where my laptop sits, so I am not browsing the internet while saying "uh-huh, yes, I know" to I don't-know-what because I am browsing the internet. It was easier to train my cat to sit on command, because Mrs. Peel has the feline's gift of focus. She is distracted only by string. But for me, anything and everything can be string. That's my personal string theory, and because of that, because I am a 20th Century human in the 21st century, I must decide, every day, when to boldly go, and, with perhaps more urgency, when to refrain from going. Music is in the rests as much as in the notes.
A few mornings after I returned from this year's wonderful session of The International Cabaret Conference at Yale, I had a little dizzy spell. Walking down a narrow hallway, I bounced off the walls a bit, like a pinball. Nothing serious. But when I opened my eyes the following morning and started to sit up in bed, the room took a sickening lurch. It was a brief sensation, very uncomfortable, but familiar. Years ago, shortly after I moved from Chicago to the Adirondack Mountains of upstate NY, I experienced a long siege of bronchial infections. When I had to fly back to Chicago several days before a series of engagements, I was still husky-voiced and very tired, but I knew I could do the gigs. My wonderful voice teacher has instilled technique that usually carries me through such things. If I can stand, I can sing.
A few days before the opening night, I had a brief, odd sensation of dizziness. It passed. A couple of days later, when I turned my head on waking, and tried to rise, I was violently nauseated. The room rocked. The only thing that gave any relief was to be utterly still, with my eyes partly closed. I felt even worse the next day. Every time I moved my head, I had to vomit. I tried to shower and wash my hair to get ready for the gig. I couldn't stand, so I crawled from the bathroom to the room I was sleeping in, and, lying on the floor, began putting on my makeup. It just slid down my cold perspiring face. My accompanist, Dean, knocked on the door, and took a look.
"Laurel," he said, "no one's going to pay money to see this. You have to cancel."
I did. The cancellation cost me about $1500. But with the help of a phone consultation with an ear, nose and throat doctor who prescribed an anti-nausea drug, I was at least able to fulfill the latter half of the engagement. But the doc didn't tell me what I might have, and not knowing was frightening.
It was not until I returned to the mountains that a PA (physician's assistant) in the local health clinic told me what was going on.
"You have a textbook case of labyrinthitis," he said. "Probably a secondary infection resulting from your long bronchial crud." He gave me Antivert to counteract the vertigo, and told me to get some rest, so that time could heal me. Which, eventually, it did. He also suggested I stay out of smoke-filled rooms, but as that was almost a synonym for jazz clubs, I didn't have a way of doing it.
That was probably in 1989 or '90, a long time ago in human years. Three dogs and a cat ago. A divorce ago. Fourteen house moves ago. Several hairdos. A lot of anti-smoking legislation (which saved my career). A lot of books read, a lot of water flowing under the bridge. Yet this past summer, when I tilted into the wall, I remembered.
I'd had bronchitis earlier in the season, which I could have picked up anywhere. I had just about recovered when I left for Yale. The schedule of the Cabaret program is very full, and the air in the dorm this year was damp and silted with construction dust. When I returned home and started reeling like a drunken ballerina, I cancelled everything, and went straight to bed for a week.
Because I did, the labyrinthitis was not as bad this time. I was up again far sooner, though I could not look down without feeling nauseated. I developed a very erect carriage, sailing through rooms like a tall ship, and if I dropped something, it pretty much stayed dropped. Sang some gigs, did some recording, was in a play, all without looking down.
The doc I saw this time told me that, although they know what labyrinthitis is - an inflammation in the the labyrinth, the part of the inner ear that control's the body's balance - they don't know for sure why it develops, though there seems to be some correlation with bronchial infections, stress, allergies, and head injuries. Nor is there a medication that cures it, other than time. Months, in fact. He prescribed rest and patience, and also suggested I look down from time to time, to help my brain rework the balance issue.
I've been doing that. I am much improved, but I do still have it. When I get very tired, I get dizzy. Not about-to-faint dizzy. It's more like boat-deck dizzy. But this time, I recognize something that was hidden all those years ago.
When I moved from Chicago to the Adirondacks, almost every aspect of my life was assaulted by change. Moving from big city to deep country. From having lots of friends to knowing no one. From a church community I loved to one that made me feel very unwelcome (another time for that story). From trusted musical colleagues to no colleagues at all. From an established local and national career to an empty calendar. From proximity to my family to proximity to my then-husband's family, who were very, very different. Though I had moved all my life, no move was as big a shaking as this one. Looking back, I can connect the dots: I was flung utterly off-balance, and my body didn't know what to do. So it got sick. And what was affected? My ability to communicate (bronchitis) and my equilibrium (labyrinthitis). Perfectly perfect, as my step-niece would say.
Twenty-two years later, this summer, too, has been for me a time of waking up to intense discomfort and rebalancing. What is really important? What do I need to do and to have? Of what can I let go? And this shaking up is not happening just in my heart and home, but in those of many friends and relatives, and of communicators - writers, speakers, artists, people of spirit - whom I follow but have never met. I think the ground is shaking all over the world, for millions of people. A global shift is taking place, and we are struggling to keep our balance, trying to find our way through a labyrinth we helped create, or allowed to be created, until we realized we'd been trapped. A whole lotta shakin's going on.
I don’t have internet in my apartment at the moment. Nor do I have any magazine-in-the-mailbox subscriptions. These two conditions are related, and there are a couple of reasons for them. The first, the “presenting complaint”, in med-speak, is the expense. When I first came back to NY and arranged for Verizon to be my provider, the lovely introductory rate was $17.99 each month. Sign me up! When that rate expired, the new rate was $10 more per month, and now it's $44.99 per month before taxes. Just for internet.
Magazines are the same. A sweet bargain for the first year or two, to catch you, and then a much higher rate when your subscription renews automatically, as a “convenience” to you. More important, magazines, even the best ones, are either repetitive (sorry, Oprah), or relentless (New Yorker, I’m talking to you). Or both. Who has the time to read them all? And who, in this apartment, has the time to read them all when there is a cat to admire, Shakespeare on the shelf, music in my head, and friends to talk to? Real life, compassionate, aware, loving, curious friends?
Which brings me to another concern: The Vortex. Our minds are wired to look at the newest information. This can keep us both alive - Look out! There’s a snake! Move fast! A tree is falling! - and breeding - wow! now THERE”S a man!. This also makes us the perfect targets for Facebook and Twitter addiction, because the feeds keep updating. I find I am reading about someone I barely know doing something I don’t care about (so glad you’re having coffee for your hangover, my fb friend). It’s the latest, so it’s the loudest. Though it is easy to decide to stay away, actually doing that requires overriding millions of years of evolutionary development. But just as I am trying to do that, here comes another update, and it sucks me back in, on the off-chance that I need to know this new bit of information.
The Vortex substitutes the watching of life for living of life. It affected me years ago, through television, and so I got rid of my TV. Since then I have been encouraged (often!) to re-engage the box, and I haven’t yet done so. Perhaps when a cable company allows me to choose and pay for only the stations I want (I want my BBC, period). The result of this mode of living is that I am an alien. Those who watch a lot of telly probably don’t realize that they talk more about that than about anything else. They talk more about the characters on shows than about the people they actually know. I notice it because, when I have to ask who they are talking about, they are astounded by my ignorance.
But I watched a lot of TV in my past. Many friends have been made to endure my recall of theme songs and jingles from the 60s. In 1978, when I had the car accident that forced me out of the music business for a couple of years, I had extremely good medical care from Dr. Alvin Mulne, and all the superb staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, CA. I also had Jamie Sommers, The Bionic Woman, on daily reruns, and that show played an important part in my healing, too. I had been surprised to find that, thanks to bad management, I was rather spectacularly underinsured, and the daily “meditation” and visualization of her speed and strength and acute hearing was almost the only post-op therapy I had. We really do have the technnology, built-in, in mind and spirit.
Today I am living in a cable-free, magazine-free, internet-free apartment. Some of this may may well change. It's inconvenient. To publish this post, I have to walk down the hill to the library with my laptop on my back, and then walk back up. It's raining. But once I am home again, the mental silence - because I can't check Facebook - is deep and fruitful. The payoff's been really big. Clearer ideas. Sharper awareness when I am out, quieter thoughts when I stay in. Intuition's more insistent. Prolific dreaming. Prayer. I feel more present to Presence.
So far, so good.
This photograph - which is not a fake - is extraordinary in many ways, not the least of which is that is has countless layers of symbolism and story and the truth of dreams. Every time I look at it, I see more.
Tell me. What do you see?
