Laurel Massé

The long night

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...

AN ARCTIC SOLSTICE

Yes, friends, the darkness grows, but these
short days so celebrate the light:

today the lemon sunrise lasted the few
hours until sunset, all day the frost

glowed hyacinth and lilac on the trees.
Winter’s not a time of black and white,

the sun is not at war with night. Renew
your faith, my friends. We are not lost.

                                                                 by Patricia Monaghan

Not lost.

Solstice blessings to you, and hearts singing.

O come, Emmanuel.

Rests between the bright shiny notes

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.

 

Deep listening

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.

 

Dreaming true, like it or not

On the last page of every issue of her magazine, Oprah writes a feature called "What I Know for Sure". It is usually a distillation of - or perhaps the inspiration for - the theme of that edition. This month's theme was intuition, the feeling of just knowing that some course of action is right or wrong for you.

"The intuitive mind," said Albert Einstein, "is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." We all are intuitive, but we don't listen to our gut feeling. We learn not to, in fact. I often have to defend myself against myself, as logic and common sense and the "right" way to do things conspire to blow out the spark of insight and drown the fire in the head. Even when I do listen, I don't follow what I hear all the time. Bad marriages, bad business decisions - how many such griefs could be avoided by just paying attention to the little voice, the synchronicity, the dream?

In April 2002, I dreamed I was singing in a club with my band when, partway through the first song, the piano player started to collapse and couldn't continue. I wrote the dream down, and then forgot about it. Several months later, in August, 2002, I was playing the Rosendale Cafe with my band when, partway through the first tune, my piano player, Vinnie, started to collapse, and couldn't continue. A friend took him home. Eventually, he was diagnosed with severe Lyme's disease, and received treatment. I still didn't remember the dream. I only found it earlier this week, as I was tracking a different intuitive dream guidance that has been insistant, but that I, to my regret, have brushed aside for years.

Often I find I have to defend myself against myself, as logic and common sense and the "right" way to do things try to blow out the spark of insight and drown my fire.

Coincidences, or "life rhymes", are another of intuition's angles of appproach. Years ago, when I was nursing my dogs through cancer, I found Maukie. 

Maukie is a little Flash cat that purrs when you "tickled" with the cursor. She - or he - is black, with white paws and white whiskers, and big green eyes. It cheered me sometimes, when I was feeling very dark, to hear that purring sound even though I knew it was ones and zeros,  pixels and beeps.

Several years after that, when I moved back into the city,  I discovered Diane Duane's feline wizards series, and The Book of Night with Moon, which I loved. Rhiow, the lead character, is described as a small black cat.  On the book's cover, she is depicted as black with white at her neck, white whiskers, and green eyes.

This past May, Mrs. Peel stormed my Castle of Common Sense (impractical to have a pet in the city, I do too much traveling, vet bills, etc.). What did she look like, do you suppose?  

One could say I was primed to choose the black kitten, but there was no other kitten there. She had been pre-chosen for me. It was a Divine set-up, and all my logic was worthless in the light of those green eyes. 

Oprah's intuitions, she says, have led her to wealth, influence and success. Mine have not been so spectacular, perhaps because I have resisted them more often. I have gained confidence in fit and starts (much more slowly than I gained the appearance of confidence). Conventional wisdom and advice have not served me particularly well over the years, less well recently. I am renewing my membership in the Dream Library. Rhiow says, "A claw goes further into the ear than a thousand explanations." I intend to be paying keener attention to the wisps and the whispers, so as to not require the big fat can't-miss-'em signs, the claw in the ear, and the cosmic kick in the keister quite so often.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Wonder Sunday, courtesy of Science Friday

As Madeleine L'Engle once pointed out, there is a big difference between visible/invisible and seen/unseen. I believe that's why we don't see the kingdom of heaven though it is among us, and why Mrs. Peel is tippy-toe puffy-tail bouncing sideways across the room like a Halloween cat right now toward something I wouldn't know is there.

"We're behind the eight-ball,” says marine biologist Roger Hanlon, “if we think the world looks like how we see it. There's much more information there, and other animals see it very differently."

Here's why he said that:

Thank you, ScienceFriday.

Here endeth the lesson.

Or does it?

Mrs. Peel, editor

While attending the International Cabaret Conference at Yale, Mrs. Peel was happy to assist Amanda McBroom in composing a text message.

  

Oh, the places we'll go!

Once I have loaded my steampunk laptop (see previous post) into the gypsy caravan, along with my sister Babette, her dog, my cat, and a teakettle (of course), this is the map we will be consulting:

Map via danmeth.com

We'll be singing all the way.

The cat and the Fiddle and Dance

Hot, sultry breezes ruffling the leaves, neighbors out walking, kids getting ready for the fireworks - it's Independence Day. Mrs. Peel and I have been celebrating our freedoms all day here - freedom to have breakfast, freedom to play with the feather-on-a-string-thing, freedom to take naps. What a country!

I am still savoring the sweetness of Western and Swing Week at  Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp, and am a little between worlds, as I always am when I first return home. That this holiday is falling right after camp is a blessing; it gives me one more day before I have to make sentences for humans.

You may remember that I had, at the last minute, lost my cat care person due to a scheduling conflict. I was a little frantic until I thought to ask friends who go to camp every year and live in the area if we could stay at their house. They generously agreed, and so Mrs. Peel had her first long road trip. It's one thing to be in her little crate in the car for as long as it takes me to move it for alternate side parking. She had done well with that. A two and a half hour car ride is another thing entirely, and she made quite a few objections, in the raspy baby voice she usually only uses for yelling about dinner. Imagine Tina Turner complaining in the passenger seat. She was obviously not happy.

When we arrived at the M's house, they were loading their car with camping gear, and getting their dog settled, so there was a fair hullabaloo going on. I took Mrs. Peel up to the guest room and let her out of her crate. She fled under the bed, and stayed there most of the next two days, until she felt safe. Then she started zipping and zooming around the room, exploring at high speed.

I traveled back and forth several times a day, to feed her and play with her, and I slept there at night, and it all worked out. We were both given little revelations. The sunny spot on the floor was a new experience for her, as our city windows don't get any direct light. She liked the warmth, and was entranced by the dust motes that dance in sunbeams. Watching her, I could see for the first time the faint tabby striping in what usually looks like a night-black pelt. There was a dressing table in the room, with three mirrors, each reflecting a cat who looked just like her. How alarming! Much posturing and puffing up and skittering ensued. But when the mirror cats proved incapable of coming up with any new ideas, Mrs. Peel lost interest. She then invented a new game to play: bat the ball hard. She's ready to join a soccer team as goalkeeper. Or, since balancing on a broomstick is as easy as lapping up cream, to be Keeper on a Quidditch team.

She ate well, she behaved beautifully, all this I expected. What I had not entirely anticipated was the effect of being able to bring her, how merry it would make me, even though it prevented me from staying at the camp itself.

On the way home, she voiced her complaints again, all the way to my sister's house, where I stopped in for a glass of cool water and a hug. Babette suggested Mrs. Peel might like Mozart. Once back in the car for the last leg of the trip, I turned on the radio, and found no Mozart, but - to my delight! - a station playing Louis Armstrong records from the 1930s. Perfect music to listen to after such a joyous week, at least for me. At the first sound of that golden horn, she stopped talking. Her ears flicked forward in interest. A minute or so later, she stretched, and yawned, listened a litle longer, and then fell asleep.

I should not have been surprised. Mrs. Peel is one hep kitty. And Pops? Well, he really was the cat's pajamas.

 

 

 

 

Rainy day, dream away

Another grey day. What to do? Even I can drink only so much tea. Mrs. Peel strolled into her little carry crate hours ago, curled up in a ball, and went to sleep. The crate is in my office, with its door always open; she likes to nestle there when I am at the computer. And indeed, I have been at the computer, trying to create and maintain an illusion called Getting Things Done. Things are never completely Done, especially when I am distracted. I miss my friends in England. In fact, I miss England.

I might need a scone.

A scone is, to me, what a madeleine was to Proust, and what the Tardis is to Dr. Who. But, there is no scone in this apartment, and there is no scone in this neighborhood, either. Without one, how else do I visit England in dream-quick time? It's actually easy.

Poets speak of "the wings of song", and for good reason.

Off I go, with two of my favorite British singers:

June Tabor...

 

...and Maddy Prior.

 

I'm back. The NY skies may still be grey, there may still be no scone, but the scent of the rain is sweeter, and the inspiration, bright.

About that painting up top.... That will be me and Mrs. Peel, in another 50 years or so.

 

 

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

You know those weeks when everything falls apart? When you seem to be in a cosmic gravity vortex, and one thing after another slips from your fingers, eludes your grasp, and crashes to the floor?

I am having one of those weeks.

Within the past seven days, I had to cancel a concert, I lost my live-in cat care for next week while I'm at Ashokan, and I turned down a future engagement because I was already committed on the date, only to find that the gig I agreed to was moved to a date I can't do, and the one I turned down has already gone to another artist. What else? Let's see. The bluetooth headset for my phone has learned how to shut itself off, and does so blithely, but only on the business calls (and don't tell me it's an inanimate object, because I have news for you: there's no such thing!). A dear friend I'd hoped to see when he came over from England is not coming after all. A play in which I was cast has been postponed. People I urgently need answers from are not responding to my calls, while my mom is annoyed because I don't call her often enough. Little lightnings everywhere.

And tumblings down. None of these things are big. but they are all coming at once. Ouch! It makes me think of the tarot Tower card.

For me, tarot cards are wonderful tools for focused meditation. The cards are works of art that I can lay out on my kitchen table now and then (unlike La Grande Jatte or Michelangelo's Moses), and the archetypal images speak to my dreaming mind.

The card above shows all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and they are hammering on the tower. Blam! Crack! Blow, winds, blow! Kapow! The squiggly symbol on the left side of the tower, just above the falling guy, is my birthsign, Capricorn.

In this simpler card below, the Tower is called La Maison Dieu, the House of God. When things are flowing very smoothly, I feel God's presence, and all places are God's house. Then I stub my toe, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, and I am kicked to the curb. I feel as if I am pelted so hard, with so many little (and round!) problems, that they've knocked me right out of the tower. Clunk! and... well, there I was, and here I am.

One other thing I noticed in this particular card: the tower has three windows. Third century martyr, St. Barbara, was told by her father to watch over the building of a bath house as he was traveling. In his plan, there were two windows; in her cosmology there had to be three, for the Holy Trinity. So, she altered the design, and added the third window. When her father returned, he was so outraged that he drew his sword and attempted to kill her on the spot. Last October, I was privileged to be involved in the world premiere of Holy Women, a cantata by composer Robert Sirota and librettist Rev. Victoria Sirota Robert. St. Barbara's aria, gloriously and madly sung by Abby Fischer, still rings in my mind's ear. Rumor has it that there is to be another performance, this time in New York City. I will post the date as soon as I know more.

And in the meantime, mind the gap.