Love Only Knows by Josh Groban

Love Only Knows

I’ve tried to hold this back so long

And we’re always such a good thing when it’s gone
Would it be alright, if we just left our heads tonight

Take me away from this old game
Saying that we’re both too much the same

It be alright, if I just stayed with you tonight
And before I go, will I ever see you again
She said love only knows

Love only knows
If we’ll give into fear and chose life undercover
She said love only knows
If it’s special enough then we’ll chose one another
We’ll chose each other

You were the secret I loved to keep
The name I would only sing in my sleep
Would it be alright, if we just lose ourselves tonight
And if you let go, will you reach out again
She said love only knows

Love only knows, if we’ll give into fear and chose life undercover
She said love only knows, if it’s special enough then we’ll chose one another
We’ll choose each other

And I can’t breathe without you and I don’t
And I can’t live without love and I won’t
And I won’t

Love only knows
If we’ll give into fear and choose life under cover
She said love only knows if it’s special enough then we’ll choose one another
Love only knows, how your arms pull me in like the tide pulls me under
She said love only knows just how long we can run before we lose each other
And we need each other

And I can’t live without you and I won’t

Duck Love

This morning as I walked I felt the wildness of Spring was in everything.  Flowers blooming.  Birds singing. Even the ducks are in love. I saw a mallard protectively swimming by his mate and was filled with admiration. A little envy too. Ducks are monogamous. They stay together.  They protect their offspring. This mallard was chuckling to his mate--I feel pretty sure he was singing to her.  It was lovely.

Dappled Things

For the last five months I have been reconditioning my body after three years of illness.  It has felt amazing.  I now can walk three miles every day. This means that I can go back to my old routes. My absolute favorite is the botany pond on BYU campus. This morning was gorgeous--the temperature was cool, so moving was a pleasure.  The sun was bright and the sky  was shot with high wispy mare's tales. The path was dappled in shadow and light and the sound of rushing water accompanied my steps.   The last couple of days I have felt a euphoric lifting in my soul.  I can move.   I can be outside.  I am alive.   On Saturday I almost cried as I walked through the iris garden--the iri as we call them in my family.  This morning I sang inwardly the words of a poem that I have always loved because I praise God for dappled things and for my body which has been dappled in sunlight and health.  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.

13. Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;     For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;         5     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.   All things counter, original, spare, strange;   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:         10                   Praise him.

Indeed.
Amen.

The Stuff Inside

"We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves; we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us."

"If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you. Besides, those voices are merely guardians and demons protecting the real treasure, the first thoughts of the mind."

~Natalie Goldberg "Writing Down the Bones"

Sometimes when I am having problems with my own words, I seek comfort in the words of others.  But I must also realize that I cannot hide behind them either.

Let It Go

                                                                     To live in this world

                                                                      you must be able
                                                                      to do three things:
                                                                      to love what is mortal;
                                                                      to hold it

                                                                     against your bones knowing
                                                                      your own life depends on it;
                                                                      and, when the time comes to let it go,
                                                                      to let it go.

                                                                              -- Mary Oliver (from In Blackwater Woods)

Music: A Return to the Rach

Listening to Rachmaninoff is like walking down a hall of mirrored doors. Each note is an opening to an emotion, one’s life caught in neatly staffed lines on a white page of manuscript. When the door is opened a tidal wave of the actual feeling, the love, the loss, the joy, the hope, the despair hits the listener before there is even a chance to breathe. The notes create a deep jungle of our own experience that must be traversed with a machete, a sense of humor, and plenty of snake bite remedy.

On the surface Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme from Paganini may seem to be

an ardent explosion of love, longing, and lust. A frenetic opus to the disquietude of romance it may well be.

But to me, when heard in the context of the complete movement, the rhapsody is less about romantic love, than the love of survival, of living life, of the heart pulsing in the chest and the throat and the wrist. Each breath, each beat, each pulse building the bittersweet fragility of life. It is the morning dawn soft and smudged across the dark memory of night. The glimpse of genius in a life that seems dull and spent.

The cry of a baby.

The blossoming of a rose.

It is the prayer of longing from one soul to another to be heard, and loved, for who one truly is and not what one seems to be.

The quieting of the inner voices.

The knowing of self.

The shaft of light through the darkening cloud, the sea of calm surrounded by the maelstrom of hurricane. The breathing point between one despairing disaster and the next reversal of life. A flickering candle in a livid tinged nightmare, the ease of somnolence after a sleepless night, the transparent, unbelievable moment of casting aside pain, rejuvenation after chronic illness.

Cliché? It may be, but the reason these are cliché images are because they are common, experienced by all. They will never be trite. As with all of Rachmaninoff’s music,though it holds a promise of respite, it also holds the reality of hardship. This most beloved variation of Paganini’s theme is so beautiful because it occurred to Rachmaninoff to turn the notes upside down on the staff, to invert normalcy and discover the unexpected beauty in a reversal. We wouldn't have the rhapsody if it weren't for a change, a break with what was wanted or expected. Each bright note is paired with darker notes. The dark underpinnings of life, the heartbreak, the hurt, the finality of death may be real, but the rhapsody encapsulates the eternal pulse of life, of breath, of hope.

It might be Spring?

I went for a walk this morning. The torrential rain is keeping the pollen count down.  The clouds were low on the mountain--the air so saturated that it beaded on my face.  It was like the wind was trying to hold my hand--playfully filling the relaxed palms of my hands, buffeting my hair from my neck.  More like swimming than walking. I could smell lilacs. Oh what a smell.

I have been helping a doctor friend of mine to write press releases and articles for a book. He does not write. He thinks. My job is to translate that. Sometimes it goes well sometimes it doesn't. But I got a chapter done of my WIP. It is about Paganini and French Fries. Once I get it presentable I will post it.

Yay for the Miracle of Everyday Life

Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

It Has Begun: Writing again

I am a writer who does not write.
That is probably one of the worst things to be.
But not so anymore.
I wrote 2000 words tonight on my WIP.  I am going to try to write something everyday.  It is time to start new essays, and new book proposals.  It is time to be a writer again.  It is time to practice what I preach.  To boldly go where no writer had gone before: the middle school lunch room.

Actually a lot of writers have been there.  But they have never been in the mind of a chronically ill twelve year old  girl who is so sick she misses her eighth grade year. That is somewhere nobody but I has been.  That sentence sounds ungrammatical, but I assure you that it is.

It is also one in the morning and I need to go to sleep.

Another of the Reasons I love Rumi

CRY OUT IN YOUR WEAKNESS 
A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself, 
they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard 
your helplessness."

Where lowland is,
that's where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair our of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
*             *                    *
Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight around your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.
Just a little beginning whimper,
and she's there.
God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out,
so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has 
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.

Shoes, and Ships, and Sealing Wax

I dreamed of shoes last night.

They were beautiful.  Loafers with a square toe, leopard skin with pink bows.  Wow, what a shoe. I don't know if they really exist. The first part of the dream was not so beautiful.  I was going to a friend's house for a function. On the way there I got a phone call from said friend's husband. "Hey, you will have to drive we don't have gas and we spend a lot of money on you anyway, so it is your turn to spend some money." and then the call ended. I was in shock.  Had I been unknowingly draining my friends? Was I a burden to them? Money is tight for me and for them.  I tried to call back, but no answer. (This is funny because I rarely talk on the phone while I am driving; what is more funny is that I began to try and text him back and express my sorrow and hurt at his comment. I never text in the car.)  I was having trouble texting and driving at the same time (wonder of wonders) and I got hit by a semi. As I am thrown from the car all I can think about is that I am leaving this world in deep debt  to my friends and family.  Then out of nowhere I was wearing these amazing shoes.  I began to think dying might not be so bad if I left this world in such style.

And then I woke up.

Can you say "Anxiety Dream"?

New Thoughts for the New Year

A. I hate Black Board.  For those of you unaffiliated with the Academic world, Black Board is an electronic component of teaching that is basically like a really low tech blog for educational file sharing. Blergh. I have been trying to get all my classes set up and just finished organizing power points and files. So I was already to upload and  . . . a little box pops up . . . . we are experiencing technical difficulties. Would you like to wait for these websites or kill the pages?  I press wait. 5 seconds later.. . same box. This happens four times. So I go all the way out of my browser. Start fresh, new clicks. Same thing.  Yes, actually I would like to kill the pages, and my browser, and several other nouns that may or may not be people.

B. I wish I could figure out a safe way to write on my laptop while enjoying a long hot bath. Seriously electronics and hot water should be able to mix without producing a electric shock that will fry more than my brains. Writing and the tub are two of my most relaxing tools to fight stress. Imagine combining them. Writing in the tub is very problematic, even with pen and paper. Water soluble objects. Paper likes to disintegrate, ink runs, the humidity hurts even spiral bound notebooks.

C. Technology. Yup. It has me in its clutches. Even I who don't text when a real person is in the room, I who turn off the TV when a breathing entity calls--not on the phone, in person.  I think all the critical thinking that I advocate to my students is starting to get to me.  Maybe technology is taking us over, or we are letting technology take us.  Maybe Google is getting ready to take over the world.  I know they will read this, hi Big Brother Google; it's Blogger after all. So do I go off grid? No, I write a blog about it. Hum.

D. Life is funny. Sometimes when we are trying to do what we have been asked to do, and want to do, and have put so much work in to do--we have to wait. Yes, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months (cringe), years (sigh). Does that mean that the time spent waiting is a waste of time? That all depends on what we do while we are waiting. Do we take that time to take deep breaths, become introspective, connect with others that matter most to us, read a good book? Or do we sit around and plan various nasty things to do to those people and things that make us wait? Do we question our worth if what we want to have happen doesn't happen? If what we wanted that we don't have makes us less valuable as people or teachers or parents or women or men, etc.? Sometimes the things that seem to be a good idea and really what we think would help us most, are those things that are the most dangerous to us. Sometimes we have to do things one at a time instead of at the same time. And sometimes the value of those things and moments in time become the sweeter for their separateness.  And they become more valuable and precious for the amount of time we have to wait for them one at a time. Sometimes we think too much and make things harder for ourselves when all that we are asked to do is just take it a day, an hour, a minute, or a second at a time.  Those heartbeats are not undervalued. Those breaths are not disparaged. Those thoughts are not pointless. Those feelings are no less precious.

Sometimes being a lily of the field is exactly what we are supposed to be.

PS. I hate the word "things". It is so ambiguous. I preach against its use in all of my classes. But for once it has fulfilled the measure of its creation. Fill in the blank with the things in your life. Change all the us's and you's and we's to I's, me's, and mine's and this is really about me. no really.