Remembering to Listen

 "Music is the universal language of mankind." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

I don't quite understand it, though perhaps I should.  I have started more than one year with Classical music, and then as the year carries on, I listen less.  The same is true for writing, and often for reading.

Yes, of course, it's what happens in the days after January 1.  We return to the habits we choose.  I took a consciously longer walk today in the same place I walked in December.  I felt refreshed and energized.

So why don't we choose these things consistently all year?  Plenty is written about this by February, as predictable as gym parking lots emptying.  

It may be predictable and the typical way of things, but we can make the current January different, and the current year.  This is the January that matters - the one in the moment.  I aim to keep listening (and writing).

 

Winter photo by Susan Larison Danz

The Quiet Voices of a Clamoring Year

 "We have cut the whales off from themselves.  Creatures that communicated for tens of millions of years have now effectively been silenced." ~ Carl Sagan 

 

Some years effectively clamor into our awareness.  2020 was a year like that.  It was not a quiet year.  

When a year like 2020 comes our way, some of us go inwards.  If we choose to continue to nurture our awareness, our voices may appear as if they have silenced themselves.  And perhaps they have.  But not in every way.

I made a conscious decision to be here tonight, even as my dinner is in the oven.  I made a conscious decision to turn off the television that was on while I was cooking.  I turned on Classical Music, instead.  I just missed The Blue Danube, it seems, though they played a more modern rendition afterwards.  

I was reminded even before I turned the radio on that I have often enjoyed the New Year's concert from Vienna.  It is shared live, and so if it was on, it was on in the morning.  I forgot about it completely.  Now it's night.  And yet I wondered.  Was it live this year?  Was it presented at all during the age of Covid?  Would I have wanted to hear it, diminished?  Did they play another year perhaps?  Did they perform it on Zoom?  (I seriously doubt it.)  I could look it up, I suppose.  I don't really need to.

And so it goes with 2020.  

And now it's 2021.

The last time I wrote here, I wrote a rather poignant story.  It was an important story, actually, one that is about trade-offs.  As the year progressed, it became less accepted to talk about such things.  And our awareness of them became more nuanced.  There will be Catch 22's, so-to-speak, that will be examined for years, I sense, if we get that far.

Voices matter.  Some of us went inwards.  It doesn't mean we were "depressed", though some might have felt that way.  We just needed to speak for a time with ourselves, and perhaps with the future.  We didn't necessarily stop writing.   And through that quiet expression of awareness (what some might call "journaling"), we discerned in the moment and found solace.  Even when it felt like we didn't, we did.

That's what 2020 was like for me, after April.

I look at just about every description on my "profiles", the ones I have consciously chosen to share.  In almost every case, I have put "writer" first.  I did not stop being a writer in 2020.  Far from it, actually.  

But now it's 2021, and I am here.

A piece I do not recognize is playing on Classical radio.  It has aspects of discordance.  But still, it carries melody.  My dinner is almost ready.  It took a while to cook.  I will either be back to continue, or I will finish here for now . . . 

(I wonder, before I go to check on it, how many others went inwards last year? And what will the future reveal their voices to say?  Dinner time.)

About 40 minutes later.....Also Sprach Zarahustra (I was thinking Thus, but I looked up the exact title) was playing as I wiped down the kitchen counters.  I thought to myself "That's rather perfect."  It is still playing now.  I need to listen to more Classical music and less "news".  (There isn't really much "news" anymore - it's essentially opinion.)  I wasn't listening to "news" earlier.  A movie was somewhat randomly on (the beginning of The Devil Wore Prada - it's a rather light and interesting movie, in its way, but I turned it off, knowing it).  

Were they truthfully Catch-22's, or trade-offs?  I thought about that at dinner, thinking I was "softening" the idea.  I sense that History will consider them trade-offs, which is what I would have said in April.  

(And in case you are wondering, the previous post I am referring to is this one:  Every Day.)

That was written on April 7 - the last time I wrote here in 2020.  A lot has surely happened in 2020 after that!  And yet plenty of what I wrote about there happened as well.  Some day, we will have the courage to examine all of this more closely, perhaps some of us even today (The music comes to a dramatic crescendo, and then it descends.)

2020 was a year when Spirituality has been vital for many of us, and I hope to speak a lot more about this in 2021.  It is also the year when Spirituality was far too often dismissed.  Perhaps I will write again tomorrow.  Perhaps I will finally read Thus Spoke Zarathrustra on my Kindle one day soon - it's been there for quite a while, unread.

What people seem to think is dead is very much alive - and needs to be.  

Spirituality is vitally important.  

(And now the piece has finished, in precisely perfect timing.  "A chance to shine", the commentator says - I didn't quite catch who was shining, how or when, as I was only partially listening.  Yes, I'd love to believe that is indeed true.  And true of 2021.)

Winter photo by Susan Larison Danz.

Robin Dear...A Joyful Sign for the New Year!

"All the world is fresh and sweet...flowers blossom at my feet..." 

~ from a song about Robins in Springtime my mother taught me as a young child

Observed outside my window, just a few minutes ago....

While growing up in Colorado, the first Robin of the year was indicative of Spring, but here in the Pacific Northwest, it is never really winter. So perhaps the sign here for the New Year is to look for "Spring" each and every day!   (And remember, other seasons are nice, too!)

P.S.  Upon searching for the song I learned as a child, I was quite surprised I couldn't find it online!  I only found inexact fragments from schoolbooks dating to 1907.  This is my best recollection from the age of 3 or so, as my mother helped me to sing this song over and over and over again multiple years in a row (a few words highlighted with [] may not be exact, but very close)...when I would forget the words from the previous year, she would remind me.  I would like this to be preserved somewhere for history because it was a real song I learned around 1967, almost surely taught to my mother when she was a young child of immigrants in the New York City area (probably just across the border in New Jersey) around 1930-33.

Robin dear, I love you so
I really wonder if you know
Where the [little] flowers grow
Hidden deep beneath the snow

I've been waiting for your coming, Robin dear
And I know you're [singing,] singing Spring is near   [?]

All the world is fresh and sweet
Flowers blossom at my feet
Life [in] Joy is so complete  [?]
Robin dear!

When Day to Day Begins...

"The angel shook her head slowly and said. 'Six pairs of hands.... no way.'" 

~ Erma Bombeck, "When God Created Mothers" 

For me (and for most of us), the real "New Year" starts when "day to day" begins. 

  

Even before the coffee was brewing or I launched my "work at home", I decided I don't have time this year to search for socks.  There are only a few strays left...

I'm tired of extra pans in the sink, despite filling the dishwasher the night before. 

Somehow the first of "the dreaded attic boxes" came to my attention.  (That's the "new car" sticker from my 2007 Honda.)

Real New Year's resolutions arrive in the doing, not the planning.  And even with high school nearing its end, a Mom's day to day continues...