A Night Out with the Local Italian Supermodels

"Too many gardens I've seen seem to express only one mood or one state of being. There is a dependence, a reliance on the effectiveness, let's say, of a single color, as though it were the only state of being that corresponds with one's concept of the beautiful."

--Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, p. 75


Last night my neighbor and her singer-songwriter sister took me out to hear Kris Delmhorst at One Longfellow Square. My neighbor bought me a ticket as a way of saying "thanks" for therapeutic massage received in the days before the birth of her son. The work helped her sleep and forget for an hour that she was pregnant and she felt grateful, so she offered me a ticket to hear live music. How cool!

Now, let me point out that my neighbor and her sister both look like supermodels. I'm not kidding. Long, classically gorgeous, Italian-American. And smart. And sweet. And ten years younger than I am. So going out on the town with them makes it really easy to pretend that I, too, look like an Italian supermodel. That the dozens of guys staring at us along the way are actually staring at me, too.

But the best part of going out with these two is that it's incredibly fun. One of them is always doing something or saying something that makes the other one break down in hysterical laughter.

I'd always wanted to set foot in One Longfellow--they get all the good folkies touring the northeast--and the show turned out to be great. Kris Delmhorst is gutsy, bluesy, original, an excellent poet with words and strings. She played by herself, and had forgotten her performance clothes, and so was wearing her "mommy shirt" that had food on it. I felt right at home. She blew our doors right off with that voice coupled with all that presence. Like really there. Totally in the moment.

And we did get stared at, and it was fun.

Package from Cisco Systems? It's Not a New Router.

"Working with obstacles is life's journey. The warrior is always coming up against dragons."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 68





Still January 30, 2009

This morning right after the boys left I had an opportunity to visit with a good friend in the neighborhood. She was getting ready to head up to Camp Mechuwana for a winter retreat. We talked for a while.

Walking home I stopped at the Rosemont Market for leek, onion, red bell pepper, domestic feta, tortillas, then headed for home in between the mountains of snow from the plows, shovels, snow blowers. I was feeling a bit frightened and scattered about heading back to an “empty” house.

When I opened the door to the front porch, there was a package for me from Cisco Systems in Seattle. Usually packages from tech companies are for Jeff but this one was clearly addressed to me.

Took me a minute to realize that it was from Julie Wieringa, my former boss at AT&T Wireless, and that she’d probably shipped me a copy of her classical guitar CD.

Indeed. Also included were a lovely letter and two letterpressed books that she made — one a sweet story (illustrated) about a man and his dog, and the other a 6 x 9 letterpressed journal with musical staff pages on the left, lined writing pages on the right. And a letter written by hand in ink — she has a phenomenal fountain pen collection.

If I were in my old life, I would not find the time to write her back, but I’ll probably write her tonight. In my old life I would e-mail her, or Facebook her a reply. Enthusiastically. Lovingly. Instead she’ll get a nice letter, handwritten in ink, on stationery.

Linda, Emmy Lou, Dolly, and the Six-Year-Old Conscience

"We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn't that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it's a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it's all mixed up together, it's us: humanness."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 21

Still Jan 30, 2009

We (the kids and I) have been enjoying an album by Linda Ronstadt, Emmy Lou Harris, and Dolly Parton called Trio 2, that we have on loan from the library. I think it won a Grammy ten years ago. It’s an hour of the most exquisite harmonies imaginable.

When I first put it on a few days ago, Charlie fell out of an irritable mood and into a trance. He lay down in the middle room on the rug, mindfully gazing up at the ceiling. Later, on the track "Blue Train," I came around the corner and he was blissfully moving through the living room. “I’m pretending I’m flying an airplane, Mom.”

Enchanted as well, naturally thoughts progressed in my mind toward how to obtain a copy. itunes would be ideal - $9.99 -- and, while less expensive, is out. I could call Bull Moose Music in the Old Port and order up a copy….but it’ll be costing me $16.

Or…gulp…I could just accidentally on purpose import it onto the family computer. I know this is wrong but the music is so tempting and the $16 seems so out of reach.

I went upstairs to check on the six-year-old — who was on the toilet with the door open so he didn’t miss any of the songs.

“Mom, is this the radio?” he asked. He knows to ask this so that he knows if he can hope to have something put on repeat. (He’s asked many times in the car “Put this on repeat” and it’s turned out to be the radio.) "No, it’s a CD," I told him.

I mention casually that I would like to obtain a copy of this album, or maybe I’ll just copy the songs onto the computer. I am treading on thin ice, looking to see if the six-year-old will notice the problem with this idea.

“Mom,” he whispers while peeking at me around the corner, “I think that’s illegal.”