I like sequences.  One thing happens … and later another thing happens.  Are they connected?  Or is it just random?  Actually, how much of this life is in the realm of my understanding?

Physicist Bryan Cox had something to say about this:

I honestly think the wheels are coming off our picture of the way the universe works at the moment.  We don’t know what 96% of the universe is made of – that tells us that we don’t understand something fundamental.

And AI wants in on the conversation:

Most of the universe (about 96%) is made of mysterious substances (dark energy and dark matter) that we can’t see or fully understand, even though we know they’re there.

I have an example.  Here’s the jigsaw puzzle I completed last night …

It’s such an adventure, looking at the leaning of books and the shimmering of turquoise to see what piece would fit an empty space.  And the completed image is stunning.

This morning I was walking in Gent, enjoying the shine of wet cobblestones.  And then I came upon a dislodged cobble.  I wanted to make it right, so that no one would trip.

I picked up the stone and turned it this way and that, so it would fit the space.  And Voilà!  It worked.  I was happy with what you see here … the one in the middle.

***

Is this in the land of “nothing important”?

Is this in the land of “something known”?

Or is this in the land of the unknowable?

(Smiling)

I’m a Buddhist, and I enjoy reading Tricycle magazine.  This morning I sat in Lunchroom Martens, propped up my phone, and followed my eyes through an article entitled “Love In Action”, written by Devin Berry.

These words came:

Bring to mind someone in your life who’s having difficulty, someone that you care about.  Still connected with breath and body, take a moment to sense the nature of their difficulty and what that might be like for them.  See if you can look at the world from this person’s eyes, feel with their heart.  See if you can get a sense of what it’s like from the inside – what it’s like to be living in their circumstances.  Staying connected to breath and body, ask yourself “What’s the hardest thing for this person?  What’s most disappointing?  What’s hurtful or scary?  What’s the most challenging situation this person is living with?”

Still connected to breath and body, sense and feel underneath the words that arise from the point of view of that person.  What’s the belief here – that I’ll never get what I want?  That I’m failing?  That I’m somehow unlovable?  How does this person feel that experience in their heart?  From the inside out, you might get a sense of what, in this place of vulnerability, they most need or want.

Now come back to your own presence, but still sensing that you can feel this person within you as you’re breathing in and breathing out, contacting that vulnerability.  With the outbreath, see if you can offer a bit of what’s needed.  Perhaps that person needs to be cared for, or they wish to be understood.  See if you can breathe in their pain, and as you breathe out, offer your presence and tenderness.  Offer your care.

“May you be held in the arms of compassion.  May you be free of pain.  May you be well.”  Or maybe simply offer: “I’m sorry, and I love you.”

Nice.

As I finished “I love you” an old man sat down at the table across from me.  I smiled … and so did he.

And I knew … time to put away the phone and “be with”.  He spoke Dutch, and a little English.  The same with me – except it was “een beetje Netherlands”.

I asked the basics in Dutch … He was 85, lives above my pharmacy, and I’ll call him Frederick.

He enjoyed his eggs and toast, often drooling between bites.  No matter.  We connected.

And I realized … that I need to know far more Dutch if I’m to deepen the connection with folks who speak little or no English.

My favourite question to ask English-speaking people is:

What’s important to you?

I just looked it up in Google Translate:

Wat is belangrijk voor jou?

***

My future beckons

Yesterday I returned to the Babbel language app for the first time in over a year.  Motivation to relearn basic Dutch has returned, because the care home has accepted my application to volunteer.

How the seasons of life change … away from “English only” to Dutch conversations with old people, some with dementia.

I need the eyes to see the vibrant human being inside the old body:

Yes, this man has evolved over the years.  No doubt life experience has drawn some filters over his eyes.  But the emerging adventures of youth are still inside.

And the same …

Way back when, people didn’t smile for photos, but I bet they laughed a lot with their friends.

And more recently … Does the joking young one become the “mature” old one?

Or is it only through time that the true joys of living are revealed?

Whomever I meet at the care home, may I draw forth the humanity of the person sitting with me.

The cool memories

The eyes of wonder

The remembering of love

I lay in bed this morning in the silence.  And then began a banging – slow, rhythmic, from across the river. 

There’s a construction site about 100 metres from my windows.  I imagined the workers using a machine to dig a hole.  Later it would be filled with cement, creating a column that would support the new building.

And the throbbing continued.  Part of it was inside me.  And part of it was shaking my bed frame with every plunge.

“What?!  My room is shaking.  The vibrations are travelling under the river to me!”

Unknown.  Things not as they seem.

***

And then the TV series Dark came to mind.  It’s about four families and how they’re connected through time.  Plus there’s time travel:  between 2019 … 1987 … 1953 … 2053 … 1921.

The photo shows strings joining people.  At the top right are three photos of Ines Kahnwald.  From right to left, she’s 13, 46 and 79.

Subterranean connections within the same person – young meets old, old meets young.

Connections between people – in the same year, and also when you’re young and I’m old, when you’re old and I’m young.

***

Mysteries

Joinings … sometimes invisible

Nothing standing alone

Together

There was a time …

When there were kitchen parties

When a coffee or a beer joined with the tunes

When a fiddler launched into a solo

Then guitar, harmonica, maybe a stand-up bass

And the voices!

Untrained … Unrestrained … In joy together

Harry Chapin, long dead now, wrote a song about the music.  Living rooms and kitchens rather than grand concert halls.

Just folks opening their mouths …

Remember when the music
Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire
And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire
For we believed in things, and so we’d sing

Remember when the music
Brought us all together to stand inside the rain
And as we’d join our hands, we’d meet in the refrain,
For we had dreams to live, we had hopes to give

Remember when the music
Was the best of what we dreamed of for our children’s time
And as we sang we worked, for time was just a line
It was a gift we saved, a gift the future gave

Remember when the music
Was a rock that we could cling to so we’d not despair
And as we sang we knew we’d hear an echo fill the air
We’d be smiling then, we would smile again

Oh all the times I’ve listened, and all the times I’ve heard
All the melodies I’m missing, and all the magic words
And all those potent voices, and the choices we had then
How I’d love to find we had that kind of choice again

Remember when the music
Was a glow on the horizon of every newborn day
And as we sang, the sun came up to chase the dark away
And life was good, for we knew we could

Remember when the music
Brought the night across the valley as the day went down
And as we’d hum the melody, we’d be safe inside the sound
And so we’d sleep, we had dreams to keep

Remember when the music
Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire
And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire
For we believed in things, and so we’d sing

***

There was a magazine way back when …

Sing Out!

Yes

Here’s a picture of nursing home residents I took from the Internet.  In Belgium the facility is called a “care home”.

I met this morning with the volunteer co-ordinator of a care home near me.  She agreed to accept me as a volunteer.  Over time I get to be with the dementia unit residents.  That’s what I want.

I now have the motivation to study Dutch again.  I quit a year-and-a-half ago, saying it was “too hard”.  And now … a chapter re-opening.  I have my notes from Levels One and Two, and the Babbel language app.  My next appearance at the care home is on December 22.  Some basic Dutch will flow from my mouth that day.

The care home is around the corner from my music school.  Both venues are offering huge challenges.  And both will give me moments of immense happiness.  Plus they are only a fifteen-minute walk from home.

***

Who would have thought this five years ago?

Bruce’s future:

Living in Europe

At home in a medieval city in Belgium

Playing cello again after 56 years

Singing at open mic sessions

Being with nursing home residents

Such happiness

Yesterday morning in the blue chapel of the Poel music school, about fifteen cello students took turns walking onto the stage and playing solo with a piano accompanist … and an audience.

I played miserably.

Of course the idea is to place the finger on exactly the right spot on the string to create the exactly right pitch.  And to draw the bow across the strings in a manner that creates a rich vibration of sound.

It didn’t happen … much.

I wasn’t particularly nervous.  I smiled at the audience before the pianist began his eight bars of introduction.  My bow and I were ready.

Even as the “wrongness” began to accumulate, I still had moments of feeling the music, of my body swaying.  And then those moments withered away …

At one point I realized that my right hand wasn’t holding the bow firmly.  And once the bow simply slid off the strings.

Halfway through, I got lost.  The piece has a few times where I had to jump to an earlier spot in the music and be aware of the number of bars of rest before beginning again.  I got it wrong.

It wasn’t like I was having some physical event.  I just didn’t know where I was, or where the pianist was.

My teacher Lieven came up onto the stage and pointed on the music to where I needed to play.  I was embarrassed … and thankful.

(Sigh)

I’m pleased that I didn’t crawl inside an emotional shell.  I bowed to the audience at the end and smiled at them.  After the concert, I approached four of my fellow cellists and congratulated them on their playing.

***

Now it’s a day later.  My sadness has dimmed.  Yes, I failed to play well yesterday.  I failed to keep track of where I was in the piece.  But I’m remembering what my neighbour Dirk told me the day before the concert.  He quoted the playwright Samuel Beckett:

If you fail, fail again

Thank you Dirk, Samuel, Lieven

Thank you everyone

On I go

Clearly a courageous shop owner, trusting that people will move past the sign and into the store.  Good for her or him.

It gets me thinking … What do I really need?

Certainly enough food, clothing and shelter to keep the body going.  But not caviar, Gucci and a mansion.

I need a deep connection with other human beings, especially when we’re 1-1.  Not sex.  Sure, it would be nice, but not essential.

I need periods of quiet, ideally including a daily period of meditation.  I don’t need supreme soundproofing between my neighbours and me … the rumble of nearby noise is part of life.

I need to watch or read stories about folks and the people they love, and the people they don’t love.  Real moments … tender or distant.  I don’t need to binge watch the seven seasons of Outlander on Netflix.

I need beauty in my life … of colour, shape,  movement, song and poem.  I don’t need to be inundated with TV images that flash by in a second.

I need home.  Kicking off my shoes and sprawling on the couch.  I tell myself that I need Gent as home but maybe almost anywhere on the planet would do nicely.

I need to sing, play cello and write as ways to reach people.  I don’t need to be good at these things.  I just need to be passionate in the doing.

***

And I don’t need a longer list of needs

Marina Abramovic is a “performance artist”.   Mostly she sits onstage in front of an audience and does next to nothing … for hours.  And the people stay to watch.

In The Artist Is Present (2012), for three months she sits across a table from a person, looking directly into their eyes, for eight hours every day, without ever moving or taking a single sip of water.

“Gaps appear in the thinking, the gaps get bigger, and at one point you enter into a nonthinking state.  For the first time you really see the person – and the person becomes highly emotional, because they see that I can see them, and they start seeing me too.  It’s vibrational.  The connection is incredible – that opening is very special, and then the heart opens.  The effect ripples out to the audience – they see what I am seeing and are deeply affected.  People wait for hours to come and sit with me.  Even the guards who’ve been watching every day change into ordinary clothes on the weekend and wait in line to sit.  We have seventy-six people who came more than twelve times, who have created a club just to talk about their experience.

Such astounding connection

Such longevity of contact

Such mystery

I was all set to sing at an open mic session last night, in the café of Minard.  Out of my mouth would flow the words of Stan Rogers’ “45 Years”.  That’s him in the pic.

I knew the schedule – last Monday of each month.  Except this time it wasn’t.  Another event occupied the space.  Open mic time was last Tuesday.  (Sigh)

Yes, I was nervous to sing, but far more excited than that.  So I started my slow slump home.

I dropped into my favourite hangout spot – Izy Coffee on the Langemunt.  I told my sad story to the barista and three customers sitting nearby.  And then …

“May I sing you the song?”

They smiled and nodded.  The barista turned off the radio.

And there I stood, waiting for the first line to emerge.  It didn’t.

Where the ______ shows its bones

Of wind-broken stone

What was that word?  Four human beings gazed at me.  Still nothing.  More slumping.

I told the barista that he could turn the music back on.  I put my mittens back on and turned to leave.

Defeat

One of the customers called out something like “Please sing.”  I looked into his eyes.  I sensed the bigness of the moment.  Teetering on the edge of my future.

I took off my mittens.  I returned to the four fellows.  The radio filled the room.

And the word “earth” came to mind.

I sang