I was walking near the Stadshal yesterday – the modern open building in Ghent centrum that’s such a contrast to all that is ancient. There was piano music in the air.

I came close. The fellow you see was caressing the keys, and flowing with a melody I didn’t know. I stayed.

Wasn’t it time for me to sit down at this keyboard and let my fingers wiggle?

No, it wasn’t. I enjoyed the man’s music and the woman who next took the seat. Then I walked away … not yet ready.

***

Today is here. I’m a ten-minute walk from the public piano. Perhaps I’ll stroll over there.

But my small mind intrudes:

It’s awfully hot today

There’ll be a lineup of potential players

I’m not a good pianist

Et cetera et cetera

“Awfully boring talk, Bruce. Finish your coffee and head to the Stadshal. Bring your fingers.”

Okay. To be continued …

***

I didn’t play

Mere metres from my cappuccino, I turned onto a side street. Voilà:

I heard the sound of piano. Thirty seconds later I heard applause. My head dropped.

At the Stadshal, here is what I found:

The same guy from yesterday was still playing brilliantly. About forty people were milling around. Most of them clapped after every piece.

My friend also sang a few songs while playing. I want to do that too. I quietly hummed along to ABBA’s SOS.

My rear end was firmly attached to a bench throughout. I wasn’t brave enough.

I talked to the pianist and found out that the piano is locked up every night within the colourful structure you see behind it.

Although he, and a couple in the audience, encouraged me to play right then … I didn’t.

(Sigh)

Tomorrow morning at 10:00, a city employee will unlock the cupboard and pull the piano out into the light of day. I promise you that I’ll be there for that moment. And I’ll play.

I told the couple this. I wonder if they’ll come. A very small audience would be lovely.

Grrr …

I spent two hours today stalking the internet for an app that will transfer the teacher’s spoken words to text on my phone, and translate everything from Dutch to English.

I read this:

The following are 10 of the best translation apps that stand out among all language translator systems available at present:

I read reviews. I looked for a program that wouldn’t stop the transcription when the teacher pauses. I looked for close to 100% accuracy as compared to the translated gobbledegook that showed up yesterday.

I went to my first group cello lesson at Poel and held Google Translate close to Lieven as he coached the other two students in Dutch. And what came up? Blank screens with the occasional word or phrase dangled in front of my eyes. Google Translate was sticking its digital tongue out at me.

Then I tried a major competitor of this popular app. (I’ll leave the name anonymous)

Also niet.

I went to an anonymous store in Ghent renowned for its sound solutions > “We can’t help you.” Don’t they realize that my whole musical future is up for grabs here, both in this lifetime and the next?

Tomorrow I’m going back to that same electronics store, and one other, and ask about lapel microphones compatible with Android phones.

And then there’s the age old question of where to find an app that will produce accurate Dutch and English from the tones that escape the teacher’s mouth.

***

I loved being in the cello lesson today, watching the other students growing into their instrument, hearing the beauty of the teacher’s demos … just being in the atmosphere of shared music. And as we were packing up, in walk four young girls ready for their lesson.

I want them to love the cello as I do

I want to keep seeing them at Poel

Today was the first session of my music theory class at the Poel music school.  I knew that it would be taught in Dutch.  I start Dutch classes in three weeks and my meagre efforts with the Babbel language app had not prepared me much.

I understood virtually nothing.  The other ten students seemed to be nodding a lot.  They asked questions. 

Arjen, a friend at Izy Coffee, had coached me about using the microphone function of Google Translate.  The teacher talks in Dutch and English shows up on my phone screen … supposedly.

Mostly this morning I’d turn on the microphone and the teacher’s spoken words didn’t appear in print.  Or they’d start showing up and then the microphone would shut off.  Arghh!

A couple of times Google Translate would show me a sentence or two from the teacher’s mouth.  Here’s an example that focuses on the difference between a major and a minor chord:

First of all, when I showed this to the teacher, the Dutch was incorrect.  And the translation was wildly incorrect.  So how exactly am I going to make sense of what I’m supposed to be learning here?

I don’t know.

For most of the two hours, I was searching on the internet for an app more faithful to the source language and the translated one, that won’t stop the translation when the teacher pauses, and that will still work when he moves to the piano on the far side of the room.

No luck.

So … my week until next Wednesday will be filled with app research. I’ll pay for good quality. I’ll pay for being able to stay at Poel. You see, if I can’t understand the theory spoken in Dutch, and if I therefore can’t be successful in the course, the administration will ask me to leave the school.

Therefore no group cello lessons either. (Sigh) I have to succeed in both courses to stay.

***

I will not give up

There’s a future for me at Poel

Do you know a good app?!

I opened Facebook this morning and there was a post about some famous people who in their 20s were washing dishes in a restaurant or working as a carpenter.  Towards the end of a long list, there was Grandma Moses.  Another article said that she didn’t pick up a paintbrush until she was 78!  She painted until she died …at 101.

Grandma was famous for her landscapes of American rural life.  Here’s one called Out For Christmas Trees:

Grandma and me.  I wonder.  Will I begin something when I’m 78, or even later?

Music explodes in me right now.  I’ve renewed my friendship with the cello, the piano, the guitar and with my voice.  Those are re-beginnings. 

What can be new further down the road?

Singing and playing in public

Singing sixty songs I love, without an instrument

Singing songs and accompanying myself on the cello

Creating batiks again after a hiatus of forty years

***

The seeds of all these were planted when I was young.  What could happen that now is beyond the span of my thought?

How about …

Writing a novel

Feeling deeply connected with all people, all of the time

Creating a new colour

***

Wait a minute … I said “beyond the span of my thought”, and I’ve been thinking!

Well, well, well

So the future is delightfully unknown, and will stay so – until it shows up

The hardboiled egg just sits there, waiting to be cracked open, to be eaten.

The egg has a very limited consciousness but maybe it can teach me more than someone with a PhD can.

The question I’ve wrestled with for fifty years is “How can I remove the shell more quickly?”

Hardly ever have I addressed the question “Is it better to do it faster?”  Perhaps the answer is “No”.

A knife works well to crack the shell.  So how many hits is optimum for swift removal?  My latest thinking is “not very many”.  And this theory seems to hold water.  Today I revealed the naked egg in a matter of seconds, not minutes.

But so what?  Who cares if the task is full of time and tiny bits of shell?  Who cares if I have to wipe the shards off my fingers with a napkin?

Whether the process is fast or slow, can I stay present in the removal?  To feel the curves of hardness and the wet flesh within.

***

Skill and speed fall away

The egg and I are all there is in the moment

Delicious

I could prepare you for this video beyond the title of the post but I think not. Just watch it.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=CaROl1j-xBY&si=rzyl0Exfn5vJx2dq

“The Rose” is one of the finest songs in my life.

Love is so much better than no love. If the target of my love is another man, it’s just as sweet as if it’s a woman.

A soloist gives us a few phrases of the song and then yields to the rich blending of melody and harmony from the men. And they’re singing a different song. Back and forth between LeAnn and the Gay Men’s Chorus.

It’s a unique performance of the song, one that progresses slowly, one that lets the words linger in the air before melting into the deep male tones. Words such as …

I say love, it is a flower
And you, its only seed

Thank you, LeAnn and the men of the chorus. You’ve helped me see that moments of despair do not define my life.

Instead, I can …

Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies a seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose

The question is “Do I really need bar graphs in my life?”

Yesterday was September 1.  A month ago, when the page turned to August 1, I did what my obsessed self had done for years.  I checked the WordPress site to see how many views I had for my posts.  Then there was the process of odious comparison:

July, 2023 vs. June, 2023

July, 2023 vs. each of the other months in 2023

2023 vs. 2021  (see the note below)

2023 vs. each of the other years since 2014

(Actually I exaggerate.  I wrote a post on September 29, 2021 … and not another one until January 30, 2023.  Sixteen months of absence … but you get the idea.)

***

I am fascinated that today (September 2, 2023) I have no interest in seeing how many of you tuned in during August.  The “have to” is gone.  My ego is no longer invested in whether the number is 800 or 100.  If the number was 2, then I would get antsy but I know it’s far larger than that.

Where did the need go?  It’s true that I’d told myself to stop looking at daily and monthly stats, and that I’d often cheated at the beginning.  But now the whole topic of conversation has floated away.

I’m curious.  I’m not analyzing, as in “What does it mean?” or “How can I apply this to other areas of my life?”  I’m simply in wonder.

***

Look what’s happened

Apparently without my brain being involved

There are about eight billion of us. How many have done something that’s never been done before? I wonder.

***

In 1954, Roger Bannister was a medical student in London, England and a member of his university’s track team. On May 6 he and his teammates were in a mile race against Oxford University.

Four minutes had long been considered an impossible barrier. Roger ran 3:59:4. And there was a shift in consciousness on the planet.

***

During the 1968 orbit of the moon by the Apollo 8 spacecraft, astronaut William Anders took this photo, aptly named “Earthrise”. Suddenly A looking at B had become B looking at A. Millions of people just stared. And there was a shift in consciousness on the planet.

***

“Before 1966, the longest Amateur Athletic Union-sanctioned race for women was one-and-a-half miles.” In April of that year, Bobbi Gibb blew that idea to smithereens. She ran the Boston Marathon (26.2 miles) … and completed it. This despite the prevailing wisdom that “women are not physiologically able to run a marathon”.

And there was a shift in consciousness on the planet.

This from a recent Facebook post:

Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes and waited for the race to begin. When about half of the runners had gone past, she jumped in. She wore her brother’s Bermuda shorts, a pair of boy’s sneakers, a bathing suit, and a sweatshirt. As she took off into the swarm of runners, Gibb started to feel overheated, but she didn’t remove her hoodie.

“I knew if they saw me, they were going to try to stop me,” she said. “I even thought I might be arrested.”

It didn’t take long for male runners in Gibb’s vicinity to realize that she was not another man. Gibb expected them to shoulder her off the road or call out to the police. Instead the other runners told her that if anyone tried to interfere with her race, they would put a stop to it. Finally feeling secure and assured, Gibb took off her sweatshirt.

As soon as it became clear that there was a woman running in the marathon, the crowd erupted – not with anger or righteousness, but with pure joy, she recalled. Men cheered. Women cried.

By the time she reached Wellesley College, the news of her run had spread, and the female students were waiting for her, jumping and screaming. The governor of Massachusetts met her at the finish line and shook her hand. The first woman to ever run the marathon had finished in the top third …

***

Now it’s 2023

I wonder what beginnings this year is hiding

My walk to and from school yesterday was indeed a loop. I strolled west, south, east and north. I watched for the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Let’s see what’s out there in Ghent.

***

My neighbour designs dresses. I particularly like her Sunday schedule:

There must have been very tall people when this door was carved. And I love the artistry of the face:

You could say that someone should fix the wall but I’d prefer that you didn’t:

This is Theresianenstraat … delightfully ordinary:

Here we have de Walrus café – a small tucked between two larges:

And my destination – the adult education centre called CVO. It looks ordinary in the sun. I expect it will be extraordinary in the learning:

My classroom! Lucky Room 13. On September 26 at 8:45 am, I’m sure that the chairs will look different:

Bijlokehof … a little wedge of a park with about eight benches for human beings:

Where men pee:

A wee path away from the street and nestled close to the boats:

I cheated. This is about a hundred metres from my Dutch-learning route but I sure love yellow:

Long ago perhaps this ship sailed into Ghent harbour:

Where do two doors go?

And who sits under the light in the window?

On the Langemunt, these faces watch over the shoppers:

***

And so to home …

May the circle be unbroken

In late September I begin Dutch lessons at an adult education centre called CVO Gent.  I’ve seen pictures but today I want to go there.

There are two main options for transportation – using my feet or taking the tram.  Google says walking will take between 25 and 29 minutes, depending on my route.  I walk slower than the Google computer.  Here’s what Option One looks like:

And here’s Option Two: walk four minutes, tram for five minutes, walk nine minutes.  This one gets me to CVO at least seven minutes faster.  It provides at least twelve fewer minutes of fitness.  And it costs four euros more (4€ vs. 0€).

I’m not big on lists of pro’s and cons so I’ll go elsewhere.  What do I get about which way to go? 

Walking.  Uninterrupted flow.  Slow.  Gentle.

***

The second choice concerns the route I take.  The blue dots take me along the Leie River … very scenic.  If I came back the same way, my travel time would be 25×2 minutes = 50 minutes.  The fastest.  But what exactly would I be saving time for?  This route gives me access to fewer of Ghent’s wonders.

Then there are the two paths shown by grey dots. I’m thinking of a quote from a poem called “The Road Not Taken”. It was written by Robert Frost, an American poet:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

I’ve walked some of the route represented by the right vertical line of grey dots and virtually none of the left one. So do I travel back and forth on the leftmost streets?

What comes is saying no to all of the choices where I’d retrace my steps on the way back home. What comes is the beauty of a circle … going out into the world, looping around, and returning to the source by another path. There’s a mystery in the returning to something, and knowing it newly.

***

Perhaps this mixture of philosophy and walking seems strange to you. Or maybe it’s calling you home. No matter.

I’m about to set off on my journey

I’ll tell you tomorrow of the wonders that come my way