Sometimes I go looking for smiles … luminous ones.  You know what they’re like: they touch you.  They reach you.

If I’m watching for these faces, I know what my best chance is – kids.  Yes, there are open-hearted smiles among us older folks, and I’ve included one at the end.  But children teach us.

I hope you enjoy these fine human beings

In my life, I’ve usually done well when tackling new things.  Understanding has come pretty easily.

Not now.  Not in Belgium.  (I wonder why I’m smiling)

It’s good to exercise my older brain.  Making new connections in there.  Keeping dementia far away.

If I’m right about all this brain activity within the new, dementia doesn’t have a chance with me.

Exhibit One – Cello Music

Here you see the musical staff of lines and spaces for the notes – treble clef on top and bass clef at the bottom.  But what the heck is that in the middle?  Mr. Google just helped me:

I had my cello lesson yesterday.  Lieven had given me a new piece called “Meditation”.  In the middle, the alto squiggle suddenly made an appearance.  Totally foreign to this mind.

On each of of the three staffs, the first note you see is C.  As a kid, everything was in the treble clef.  As an adult, when I started singing in a choir, the bass part was written in the bass clef.  And that’s also how cello music is written.

I look at the staff in the middle and right now it’s incomprehensible.  Like a foreign language, such as Turkish.  (Sigh)

Exhibit Two – Power of Attorney

I sat with a notary today and read through the English translation of my new Power of Attorney documents.  If dementia comes my way, my friend Lydia will make decisions about property and health.

Clearly I understand English.  And there are no horribly strange words in these sentences.  Some other passages were more difficult.  But it took so much effort to follow the formal language, the legalese.  Page after page of it.  I was soon exhausted.  Again “the new” was blasting my eyeballs.

Exhibit Three – Dutch

Right now I’m in despair about my ability to learn Dutch.  My dream about having a basic conversation with neighbours who don’t speak English seems in tatters.  I hear the words and grammar, I try to absorb them, and then they float away …

Here are a few sentences from one of today’s documents.  It’s written at a level of Dutch far beyond what I’m learning now but it feels like I’m looking at what you see in the second picture (an Arabic script).

***

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

That’s a lot of laughing at me

And it’s still a good life

I started going to silent meditation retreats in 2011.  In some moment, in one of them, these words softly entered my head:

Love them all … light the world

They’ve returned to my awareness so many times over the years.  They’ve shown up unbidden, in good times and bad … guiding me.

And so ever deeper – filling every blood vessel of my being.

What is the source of such a flow through time?  I don’t know.  The face is hidden from my sight.  And that’s fine.

Love them all.  Even the ones who send toxins my way.  I wonder if their parents did the same to them.

Do I live the words every minute of every day?  Of course not.  That’s when I fall down, turn my back, see only me in the mirror.  But someone reminds me, over and over again, of what I stand for.

***

Awakening

Falling asleep

And awakening once more

I have twenty pieces of art in my home – paintings, photos, batik.  Mostly I don’t notice them.  What a loss.

So it is with my yesterdays and my today.  Tomorrow doesn’t have to follow suit.  These are powerful images.  They deserve to have an impact on me so I can be buoyed up by their presence and pass on their energy to the people I meet.

I notice that I walk by my walls without turning my head to see.  Either I catch my paintings out of the corner of my eye or I don’t even see them.  I’m moving on the top line next to the wall shown by the bottom line:

What if I paused at a hanging creation and turned to face it?  My view is the vertical line, the wall is the horizontal one:

I can look … linger … and absorb.  Who is this?  What are they saying to me?  Am I willing to stop?

This morning I took photos of four of my pieces.  They’re the ones that I’ve especially ignored.  I need to let them touch me.  I need to turn towards …

Voilà:

***

Four friends

Actually six

Friends should not be abandoned

The fatigue has accumulated over the last week.  This morning I was wondering why.

And the word came to me: performing.  For five of the last six days, I’ve presented something to an audience.

Wednesday – Play and talk about the cello to my Music Theory class

Thursday – Play “Tango” for my teacher and fellow cello students

Friday – Sing “Song for a Winter’s Night” at an open mic evening

Sunday – Be a “darshan host” during an online Evolutionary Collective retreat.  Darshan is a tender, largely silent practice of connection among seven participants.  The host needs to do things in a sensitive way.

Monday – Be a Zoom host for an Evolutionary Collective meeting.  Lots of tasks, sometimes coming at me quickly.

In each of these events, I experienced pressure.  Fear.  I put myself on the hot seat.  I did some things well.  I also made mistakes … and kept going.

It often seemed that I wasn’t getting better at these things.  The disappointment came.  After that, an “Oh well.  I shall continue.”

As a teacher years ago, I was in some sense performing every day.  But it was different than now.  I was comfortable in my role, in my knowledge, in my skills.

Ten years ago I retired, and the sense of being in front of people in a public way disappeared.  Very little stress.  Very little asked of me.  Was that the good life?  Not really.

There’s a sweetness about experiencing the pressure of now, knowing that people are counting on me.  Blowing it here and there … and lifting my head once more to face the next moment.  Acknowledging when I’ve served the audience or participants well.

Right now I’m sitting

And I feel tall

I make plans.  Just like you, no doubt.  There’s something beautiful about being committed to a project … and then following through, whether that’s for a year or a lifetime.  Or even a day.

And then there are those other times.

Today was to be the day when I returned to the gym.  It’s been five weeks since pneumonia said hello.  However this weekend I was at an online retreat with the Evolutionary Collective, lasting each day from 5:00 pm to midnight my time.

I’m sitting in Izy Coffee letting myself be tired, since tired is what I am.  The idea of spending time on the elliptical has retreated to the far recesses of my mind.  My body is quietly saying “No”.  And my body I shall obey.

Today was to be the day when I hit the Dutch studies hard.  I had a three-hour class on Saturday morning and I ended up shaking my head a lot.  “Right now I have no idea what my dear teacher is saying.”

So I need to dedicate myself to studying for next Saturday’s session.  But the brain is currently fuzzy, despite copious sips of caffeine.  The idea of focusing on grammar has retreated to the far recesses of my mind.

Today was to be the day when I wandered  the back streets of Gent, discovering treasures around corners.  Going where tourist feet rarely tred.  Finding an old café where no one speaks English.  Loving my fellow drinkers at nearby tables.

But my calf muscles are sore and my shoulders low.  A lengthy route mostly not aided by Google Maps is a bridge too far for this Monday man.

However …

Today is to be the day when I take the tram to my favourite copy shop and print off sheet music from my phone.  Last Thursday my cello teacher challenged me to tackle “Meditation”.  In January I heard another cello student play it at our concert.  Divine. 

I want to work towards such divinity.  Just not today.  It’ll be fine to return home, place the sheets of paper on my music stand, and smile towards tomorrow.

And then an afternoon nap

The mouth curves up.  The mouth curves down.  Up is far more fun.

The change from predominantly down to predominantly up doesn’t have to take years.  But what can I say to convince people of that?

I could pull out all the wise words in my vocabulary – too many of them, in fact – and drone on in lecture mode.  But deaf ears would follow.

Sometimes I say good stuff but there are eight billion other humans with cool minds.  I found one yesterday on the internet.  So here he or she is.

Your job is to read these next words and feel into the being who said them.

And then …

Read the sentences from bottom to top.  A different mind … joined by a heart.

Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don't try to convince me that
There's something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look
This world is a pretty evil place
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in awhile
Satisfaction and happiness don't last
And it's not true that
It's all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one's surroundings are good
It's not true that good exists
I'm sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It's all beyond my control
And you'll never in a million years hear me say that
Today was a good day

***

Brilliant

Here we are yesterday afternoon … all seven of us.  We are guests of the Pratershol, a community centre in my Gent neighbourhood of Patershol.

The seventh was a well-loved devotée of the centre.  I’d walked into a community.

Marc is the fellow in the grey sweater.  A few months ago he took me on a rambling walk through un-touristic Gent, much to my delight.  He’s such a welcomer.

Yesterday the conversation, full of smiles, was naturally in Dutch.  Marc took care to speak slowly so hopefully I could catch on.  But mostly I didn’t.

I watched the faces as their words blew by me.  There was animation in the stories but usually I didn’t know the situations.  It didn’t matter.  My newer and older friends were including me, happy that I was sitting at their table.  What life is all about, I’d say.

The host volunteers were a couple from Ukraine.  I made them smile with my vocabulary of four words.  I welcomed them as I was being welcomed.

There will be a time when I will sit as this table speaking Dutch to my friends and enjoying their stories.  Even though that time seems far away, I know it will come.

It was comfy in the Pratershol, even as I leaned forward to understand.  Focus … dissolve … focus … over and over again.

***

Being home is far beyond understanding

And being understood

It is being known and loved

Smiles for no good reason

I like love.  It’s a marvelous experience … giving and receiving.

There are two types I know something about:

I love you

One other person and me, romantic or not.  Contact with the eyes.  Sublime.

I love human beings

In my better moments, I see their faces shining in the street … and I love them, in all their particularities.

***

This morning I lay in bed and other words came:

Be love

I let them enter me, rather than be analyzed by my mind.  And I thought of rain.  It falls gently on all of us, quenching a thirst.

There’s something here about moving beyond the solid human being.  About the border between skin and air dissolving.  About the silhouette disappearing.

***

I know not of what I speak

And that’s fine

It’s a beginning

I sat in The Cobbler this morning for breakfast … and also for looking around.

I had cool conversations with three staff members: Lie, Pascale and Yanisha.  It’s precious to be known.

Out the window, far away, sat three birds – one on a roofline, one atop a stepped gable, and one perched on a chimney.  I loved the winged ones.

There were lines of connection between my eyes and theirs.  I celebrated their different shapes, sizes and sitting spots.  The largest spread its wings at photo time.  Later he or she held that openness for at least a minute.  Such grace.

And you know about windows and birdies.  I’m looking out into the world and suddenly there are wings on the right edge, swooping across the panes and disappearing on the left.  So cool!  It’s a symbol for me … of people and experiences appearing, lingering and then passing past my sight.  A natural rhythm.

Another ecstasy for me is watching a bird swoop down and vanish beyond a roof.  Ohh …  I expect there are few people who share my passion here.  C’est la vie.  I will continue to wonder at the speed, the descent, the “goneness”.

I told my companions at The Cobbler that I would write about sitting in their midst this morning.  Fait accompli!

Fly on, dear friends