Playing Fair and Being Kind

My favorite time of day is sitting with huge cups of coffee brewed, dripped through a filter into a grand ceramic mug hand crafted by Nancy Button of Warren, Maine. She in herself is a Mozart symphony with eyes that are deep and dark and filled with ancient stories. I see her once a year when I drop into her shop, Fireside Pottery, on Route 90.

I am up early and the world is quiet except for the song birds outside who are rustling up the bugs to feed to their young. I listen to classical music or Bill Evans and enter my reverie to rummage through the events of my life greeting old friends and revisiting old conversations. This morning it is Mendelssohn.

This post is about two young friends. Both live far away but are always in my heart. I’ve known them for the past five years and they have become an integral part of my life. Both are sentient beings in the form of children who have silently offered me proof that our molecules are indestructible and ongoing. Ada and Phoenix.

I have played the alphabet game driving with Ada on Interstate 25 in Northeastern New Mexico and I have listened to her play her cello. I had a heart attack and her mother bravely drove me to the emergency room. Naomi saved my  life.

Similarly I’ve watched Phoenix in California lost in his imaginative world while he quietly builds with food or objects complicated representations of what he sees in the theater behind his eyes. Watching Phoenix puts me in the same mood. Our chronologies shift into matching ticks and hums. I see what he sees. His mother saved my psyche. Neeley has encouraged me to be a warrior for justice.

Here are two photos. One is Phoenix pretending to be the child Felix Mendelssohn. The other is Ada pretending to be the child Hilary Hahn. While I’m scribbling these words Ada is playing the violin; playing the chords that Phoenix wrote. The link is below the photos.

 

What follows here is a concept of change without losing touch with beginnings. I can remember the ledger of accounts; the additions and subtractions which form me. Every part of me figures into the summation that I am today. I hope your day is as beautiful and pleasant as this one is for me. Be well and listen to the music any way you can.

EXTRUSION

I learn,

I see,

I adjust,

I learn to do one way,

I see results and adjust,

I bear all the consequences,

I absorb energies and lessons over time

I remain connected to learned and forgotten skills,

Nothing is erased – it is overwritten,

I remain connected to the womb,

To the first hands that held me,

To all houses that sheltered me,

To all people who spoke and listened

I squeeze through each day onto the next,

I am absorbing and growing right now!

The longer I live the longer I get,

I am a million miles long,

The days are getting longer and longer,

I have a million miles to go

G. M. Goodwin

May 9, 2014