Start to Carry Your Weight
Posted on April 30, 2010 with 0 comments
The startling sight of snow covering red maple buds, daffodils and freshly cut earth today pulls spring’s lift downward and inward again. I pace the dusty wood floors in boots, restless, almost unable to bear the burden my life has become. Bedraggled strands of hair hang in my face, a symbol of my anger and struggle to be seen and hidden. In such a frame of mind, there are no gigs, there is no money, no one likes me and I can’t strike a chord worth playing. This would be a second adolescence twisted almost tighter than the first because I should know better.
But the days roll on, they always do. Armed with an instrument, I’m jumping out of my skin into the car for a drive down the muddy road towards musical communion. I’ll have to drive at least an hour to find a musician or a good cup of coffee but soon enough I’m on the country highway hypnotized by a verdant world of hills and sparkling snowmelt rivers, a sight that cuts to the quick of my malaise with it’s soothing balm. A conspiracy of turkeys appears from nowhere and walks in front of my car as I slam on the brakes, catching sight of their brown plumage in full display, thanking my reflexes. Their skillful jumping over the ditch, under sagging barbed wire and onto a hillside pasture reminds me to stay in my body. I resume my course more slowly past quiet old valley farms while spring rages towards the surface of the land through every pore. I feel the presence of the elderly people in these houses breathing slowly ready to leave but savoring this one last extravagant spring. Navigating the moody first branch of the mighty White River, my life seems part quicksilver, part ancient oak tree rooted for eternity. This inherent contradiction, that of existence, never leaves me but occasionally I leave it through journeys of the heart and the realm of music. There lie the dreaming, the vision, the expression and the peaceful village of compassionate souls living as one. There lies rest for the weary, the removal of despair.
My wandering mind is colored with images from a week in the life of myself: The small block of kindling wood with a message written on it in pencil: “Kristina, the floor looks great!” set on end so I would see it coming in the front door. The full moon framed in the bedroom window being erased by moving clouds and the gaze of my distracted lover. The half-eaten chocolate bar accidentally abandoned in the dark of night in the back of my car, left there by the father of my youngest child. The unexpectedly terse email saying “ …never again …” followed by a silence. The blue jeans knees soaked by the wet earth under the apple tree so I can get a better look at blooms of ruffled bloodroot. The almost physical words: “Why don’t you start carrying your own weight” that strike my stomach and cause me to consider putting an end to my creative endeavors once and for all. The smiles: one from a man walking down the road as I drive to the post office and the other from a bartender serving coffee to me in the pink light and noise of a rock show. And of course the beatific vision of the lithe photographer sent to us on assignment, hoisting herself onto the workbench to shoot the guys in the shop who pretend to work. Finally at nightfall the calloused fingertips I love to rub and push together, remembering fondly my guitars.
But the days roll on, they always do. Armed with an instrument, I’m jumping out of my skin into the car for a drive down the muddy road towards musical communion. I’ll have to drive at least an hour to find a musician or a good cup of coffee but soon enough I’m on the country highway hypnotized by a verdant world of hills and sparkling snowmelt rivers, a sight that cuts to the quick of my malaise with it’s soothing balm. A conspiracy of turkeys appears from nowhere and walks in front of my car as I slam on the brakes, catching sight of their brown plumage in full display, thanking my reflexes. Their skillful jumping over the ditch, under sagging barbed wire and onto a hillside pasture reminds me to stay in my body. I resume my course more slowly past quiet old valley farms while spring rages towards the surface of the land through every pore. I feel the presence of the elderly people in these houses breathing slowly ready to leave but savoring this one last extravagant spring. Navigating the moody first branch of the mighty White River, my life seems part quicksilver, part ancient oak tree rooted for eternity. This inherent contradiction, that of existence, never leaves me but occasionally I leave it through journeys of the heart and the realm of music. There lie the dreaming, the vision, the expression and the peaceful village of compassionate souls living as one. There lies rest for the weary, the removal of despair.
My wandering mind is colored with images from a week in the life of myself: The small block of kindling wood with a message written on it in pencil: “Kristina, the floor looks great!” set on end so I would see it coming in the front door. The full moon framed in the bedroom window being erased by moving clouds and the gaze of my distracted lover. The half-eaten chocolate bar accidentally abandoned in the dark of night in the back of my car, left there by the father of my youngest child. The unexpectedly terse email saying “ …never again …” followed by a silence. The blue jeans knees soaked by the wet earth under the apple tree so I can get a better look at blooms of ruffled bloodroot. The almost physical words: “Why don’t you start carrying your own weight” that strike my stomach and cause me to consider putting an end to my creative endeavors once and for all. The smiles: one from a man walking down the road as I drive to the post office and the other from a bartender serving coffee to me in the pink light and noise of a rock show. And of course the beatific vision of the lithe photographer sent to us on assignment, hoisting herself onto the workbench to shoot the guys in the shop who pretend to work. Finally at nightfall the calloused fingertips I love to rub and push together, remembering fondly my guitars.