“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
from Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The pot is boiling. It has taken 20 minutes to bring water to a bubbling roll
so that I can hard-boil my egg. At last the low-heat hotplate finally does its job. The thunderstorm completely soaked me to the bone during my dash from the Helene-Lange Gymnasium back to the flat to pick up my math book. Now, I have to let the storm pass before returning to class, so why not eat something while I wait? Everything is wet and water is pooling around me on the floor. I have stringy hair and am hungry but will soon have, for the first meal of the day, a hard boiled egg and a crust from the last of the bread we bought last week. I am missing math until I can hop on my black bike and zoom back to class.
Mach dich, mein Herze, rein
“Music can create these beautiful moments out of nothing. We can be sitting here and play a phrase and suddenly there’s beauty. Anyone who relates to music knows that feeling of being touched by a piece so deeply—and God, that’s such a privilege.”
from Piano Lessons: Music, Love & True Adventures by Noah Adams
Consider a time when I am (a young) 15 and living in Hamburg, Germany with my humble and brilliant sister, eleven years my elder. She has earned—and I mean won through lonely, hard work—the Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (the DAAD—the “German” Marshall Scholarship)—for an academic year of study of Bach with an eminent German organist. She loves Baroque organs. Incredibly, Rose has asked our parents if I could drop out of school for a year (between 8th and 9th grades) and travel with her to Europe and—the incredible part—they have said yes. We are living alone in a German flat in the University District. It’s a gray, cold and uncomforting winter day in post-war (still) Hamburg, and I climb on the U-bahn train at the Dammtor station, ready to disembark downtown 14 minutes later within sight of St. Jakobi. My trusty black pea coat, black pants, grey scarf, wool beret and backpack suggest German university student. I am actually an intellectual, artistic and spiritual toddler in sore need of a bigger picture. And I am getting it.
from Piano Lessons: Music, Love & True Adventures by Noah Adams
Consider a time when I am (a young) 15 and living in Hamburg, Germany with my humble and brilliant sister, eleven years my elder. She has earned—and I mean won through lonely, hard work—the Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (the DAAD—the “German” Marshall Scholarship)—for an academic year of study of Bach with an eminent German organist. She loves Baroque organs. Incredibly, Rose has asked our parents if I could drop out of school for a year (between 8th and 9th grades) and travel with her to Europe and—the incredible part—they have said yes. We are living alone in a German flat in the University District. It’s a gray, cold and uncomforting winter day in post-war (still) Hamburg, and I climb on the U-bahn train at the Dammtor station, ready to disembark downtown 14 minutes later within sight of St. Jakobi. My trusty black pea coat, black pants, grey scarf, wool beret and backpack suggest German university student. I am actually an intellectual, artistic and spiritual toddler in sore need of a bigger picture. And I am getting it.
Watching Frogner
It’s 2:37 and I’ve been on the field longer than usual since we began earlier. Mr. Panufnik started the class with a strict “Play Ball” right after the tardy bell. I love baseball so I don’t care but the infield is weary. A jay in the conifers at the edge of the track jeers at the current batter. Frogner swings crookedly at a painfully easy pitch. He misses. Strike one. I sigh heavily at this kid’s ineptness. What intramural team rejected him? I stoop to tighten my right shoelace and notice that one of the cleats is bent and muddied then peer to the left and dash off. It takes two kicks against the spectator’s bench at the perimeter of the right field to loosen caked-on mud. Mr. Panufnik yells at me to get back on the field and I hustle into position.
Thrashing
“For many years they [the Schultz family] had one of the big threshing machines in the area. Paul, covered with grease, ran the huge Case engine, and Carl operated the 26” White separator. It took eight hard working men and teams, and a couple of spike pitchers, to feed the brute. Many a neighbor’s field was cleaned in jig time” (James 483).
“The thrashing machine, or, in modern spelling, threshing machine (or simply thresher), was a machine first invented by Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle for use in agriculture. It was invented (c.1784) for the separation of grain from stalks and husks. For thousands of years, grain was separated by hand with flails, and was very laborious and time consuming. Mechanization of this process took much of the drudgery out of farm labour” (“Threshing Machine”).
“Thrash out or over: to talk over thoroughly and vigorously in order to reach a decision, conclusion, or understanding; discuss exhaustively” (“Thrash”).
I’m looking at a black and white vintage photograph which hangs in the hall outside my piano room. Pulling twenty horses in four rows (two rows of four and two rows of six), a large mechanical contraption with a rolling scythe to the right lumbers into the modest ascent, about one hundred years ago, of a wheat field. I am struck by the juxtaposition of the threshing machine with rows of dignified and muscular work-horses. Caught in this rare photograph is the “brute”—the thresher—an industrial revolution invention which somewhat freed my grandpa and his fellow threshers from back breaking labor. Also captured is the resigned and powerful presence of the horses. This image suggests to me an age that is long ago. Amazingly, though, I am uncommonly and intimately connected to it, because the Schultz family in rural Alberta (and their army of threshers) are my grandfather’s neighbors who lived one homestead over on the vast prairie.
“The thrashing machine, or, in modern spelling, threshing machine (or simply thresher), was a machine first invented by Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle for use in agriculture. It was invented (c.1784) for the separation of grain from stalks and husks. For thousands of years, grain was separated by hand with flails, and was very laborious and time consuming. Mechanization of this process took much of the drudgery out of farm labour” (“Threshing Machine”).
“Thrash out or over: to talk over thoroughly and vigorously in order to reach a decision, conclusion, or understanding; discuss exhaustively” (“Thrash”).
I’m looking at a black and white vintage photograph which hangs in the hall outside my piano room. Pulling twenty horses in four rows (two rows of four and two rows of six), a large mechanical contraption with a rolling scythe to the right lumbers into the modest ascent, about one hundred years ago, of a wheat field. I am struck by the juxtaposition of the threshing machine with rows of dignified and muscular work-horses. Caught in this rare photograph is the “brute”—the thresher—an industrial revolution invention which somewhat freed my grandpa and his fellow threshers from back breaking labor. Also captured is the resigned and powerful presence of the horses. This image suggests to me an age that is long ago. Amazingly, though, I am uncommonly and intimately connected to it, because the Schultz family in rural Alberta (and their army of threshers) are my grandfather’s neighbors who lived one homestead over on the vast prairie.
The Past as Present
We rise in our yellow hotel room. It’s early June and we see sunlight streaming through thick muslin curtains covering sweet bay windows which peer down upon a dusty, untidy, cracked cobblestone alley. Stray cats scatter themselves along the way. Directly beyond this rustic outlook, peeking out from surrounding buildings, lies a river flowing placidly eastward on this soon-to-be-hot day. Spokes of emerging canals (dingy until the daily deluge at 4:00 sharp) meander towards the river under multiple bridges, all connecting dull streets. Clearly—and I mean this literally because I am wearing my new glasses which for once I haven’t forgotten to bring with me—the day seems primed for Rosie and me to explore this ancient city. We are in Prague.
Crime and Punishment
My elders, I muse, and most of the books I read, tell me that punishment—deserved or undeserved—is inevitable . . . like the time my cousin (in college), after practicing at the Music School, was ticketed at midnight for not stopping on her bike at a deserted intersection by the cemetery. (She had been warned that there was a rapist loose in the area.) Talk about ridiculous punishments. But I return to the present and notice Mr. Toppish intoning the rules and reminding us that we cannot leave for even a bathroom break until noon. I am here at Saturday School detention. I think back to what brought mousy me, bespeckled, bookish, and athletically challenged, to this imperfect justice and I reflect on an event one week ago . . . .
Thoughts on "After Apple Picking" by Robert Frost
from “After Apple Picking”
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it [the ice on the water trough
like a pane of glass] fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet [brownish red] showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it [the ice on the water trough
like a pane of glass] fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet [brownish red] showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
Thoughts on "The Exposed Nest" by Robert Frost
The Exposed Nest
Robert Frost
You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once--could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might out meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven't any memory--have you?--
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.
Robert Frost
You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once--could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might out meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven't any memory--have you?--
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.
Thoughts on "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell
George Orwell, in “Politics and the English Language” reminds me of my mother. She comes from a long line of clergymen and grew up around story-telling and lots of analysis and a fair amount of intellectual curiosity. Why she married my father is still to be revealed since he comes from a long line of practical types and the men folk, in particular in his tribe, are taciturn or, as Aunt Virginia (who herself married into the clan and described it), are “tall, dark and silent.” Orwell is like Mother’s team and can travel to Europe via Peru and Pensicola, in other words, with lots of background, context and supportive material so that when we arrive, we are both relieved and much more prepared to understand the point, which has taken A LONG TIME to arrive at. He presumably is going to tell us about the horrors of language and its relation to political thought but not until page six (of nine) does he blurt out his thesis (I’m being funny here; get it?). But I forgive him because I have enjoyed his linguistic excursions along the way.
Thoughts on "Heavy Women" by Sylvia Plath
Heavy Woman
Sylvia Plath
Irrefutable, beautifully smug
As Venus, pedestalled on a half-shell
Shawled in blond hair and the salt
Scrim of a sea breeze, the women
Settle in their belling dresses.
Over each weighty stomach a face
Floats calm as a moon or a cloud.
Smiling to themselves, they meditate
Devoutly as the Dutch bulb
Forming its twenty petals.
The dark still nurses its secret.
On the green hill, under the thorn trees,
They listen for the millennium,
The knock of the small, new heart.
Pink-buttoned infants attend them.
Looping wool, doing nothing in particular,
They step among the archetypes.
Dusk hoods them in Mary-blue
While far off, the axle of winter
Grinds round, bearing down the straw,
The star, the wise grey men.
Sylvia Plath
Irrefutable, beautifully smug
As Venus, pedestalled on a half-shell
Shawled in blond hair and the salt
Scrim of a sea breeze, the women
Settle in their belling dresses.
Over each weighty stomach a face
Floats calm as a moon or a cloud.
Smiling to themselves, they meditate
Devoutly as the Dutch bulb
Forming its twenty petals.
The dark still nurses its secret.
On the green hill, under the thorn trees,
They listen for the millennium,
The knock of the small, new heart.
Pink-buttoned infants attend them.
Looping wool, doing nothing in particular,
They step among the archetypes.
Dusk hoods them in Mary-blue
While far off, the axle of winter
Grinds round, bearing down the straw,
The star, the wise grey men.
Beethoven's Cadenza for Mozart
The intellect is a marvelous thing; it is thinking and what is done with thinking. And thinking—or the intellect—is only one area of importance in the human equation. There’s the business of the emotions—which is similarly important. So in considering what intellectual experience has been a great influence upon my development I would also want to weigh in the balance what has helped me with my complex assortment of feelings. And surely the answer to this investigation must lie in Beethoven’s Cadenza to Mozart’s Piano Concerto #20 in D minor.
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