It’s a December tradition for me … about thirty years old.  Reciting the poem ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.  Thousands of kids have sat before me as the words tumble out.

And then there’s today:

I decided to recite ‘Twas to folks I know on the Langemunt.  So …

Staff members at:

1.  Panos

2.  The Press Shop

3.  Izy Coffee

4.  Eyes and More

5.  The Cobbler

6.  Soup Lounge

Such fun!  Such remembering.  Such beginning anew.

The highlights for me were a young girl and her mom listening in the Soup Lounge.  And reciting for five hotel guests and three employees in The Cobbler

For most of these stops, I did both my normal speed version and a super fast one (about 1:10 in length).  I really sputter on that second one!

Here are the words penned by Clement-Clarke Moore.  There is much to enjoy herein:

‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a mouse
The stockings were hung
By the chimney with care
In hopes that Saint Nicholas
Soon would be there

The children were nestled
All snug in their beds
While visions of sugar plums
Danced in their heads
And mamma in her ‘kerchief
And I in my cap
Had just settled down
For a long winter’s nap

When out on the lawn
There arose such a clatter
I sprang from my bed
To see what was the matter
Away to the window
I flew like a flash
Tore open the shutters
And threw up the sash

The moon on the breast
Of the new fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day
To objects below
When, what to my wondering eyes
Should appear
But a miniature sleigh
And eight tiny reindeer

With a little old driver
So lively and quick
I knew in a moment
It must be Saint Nick
More rapid than eagles
His coursers they came
And he whistled and shouted
And called them by name

“Now Dasher!  Now Dancer!
Now Prancer and Vixen!
On Comet!  On Cupid!
On Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch
To the top of the wall
Now dash away!  Dash away!
Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before
The wild hurricane fly
When they meet with an obstacle
Mount to the sky
So up to the housetop
The coursers they flew
With a sleigh full of toys
And Saint Nicholas too

And then, in a twinkling
I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing
Of each little hoof
As I drew in my head
And was turning around
Down the chimney
Saint Nicholas came with a bound

He was dressed all in fur
From his head to his foot
And his clothes were all tarnished
With ashes and soot
A bundle of toys
He had flung on his back
And he looked like a peddler
Just opening his pack

His eyes – how they twinkled
His dimples how merry
His cheeks were like roses
His nose like a cherry
His droll little mouth
Was drawn up like a bow
And the beard on his chin
Was as white as the snow

The stump of a pipe
He held tight in his teeth
And the smoke it encircled
His head like a wreath
He had a broad face
And a little round belly
That shook when he laughed
Like a bowlful of jelly

He was chubby and plump
A right jolly old elf
And I laughed when I saw him
In spite of myself
A wink of his eye
And a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know
I had nothing to dread

He spoke not a word
But went straight to his work
And filled all the stockings
Then turned with a jerk
And laying a finger
Aside of his nose
And giving a nod
Up the chimney he rose

He sprang to his sleigh
To his team gave a whistle
And away they all flew
Like the down of a thistle
But I heard him exclaim
‘Ere he drove out of sight …

Merry Christmas to all
And to all a good night

Yes … Merry Christmas

About the singing (yesterday’s post) …

The café at Minard was standing room only, maybe 70 people.  I sat there beforehand, enjoying other performers – poetry, singing and playing guitar, and an artist who “looped” harmonies before launching into his melody.  All lovely to behold.

But I was so nervous!  I had a post-it note in my pocket, which said:

Where the earth shows its bones

Of wind-broken stone

I just couldn’t corral these beginning words in my mind.  And there was an internal bouncing around, as I tried to locate the pitch of the first note.  If I started too low, I wouldn’t reach the really low note that came later.

So much for the peace of the Buddha!

Then it was my turn.  I walked onstage, brought the microphone to my mouth, and did something unusual for me: I didn’t tell a story about the song and its writer.  I just … started singing.  Somehow “wind-broken” emerged from my mouth.  And somehow my beginning pitch was perfect, allowing me to touch a note at the very bottom of my vocal range (assisted by lots of oxygen):

I’m caught out of time

My blood sings with wine

And I’m running naked in the sun

I sang softly … loudly … slowly … quickly.  The words brought a spirit of love to many in the audience.  We were longing for a union of souls that would continue for forty-five years.

And I just want to hold you closer
Than I’ve ever held anyone before
You say you’ve been twice a wife
And you’re through with life
Ah but Honey, what the hell’s it for?

After twenty-three years
You’d think I could find
A way to let you know somehow
That I want to see your smiling face
Forty-five years from now

I sat back down and smiled as well

Tonight in the café of Minard, I’ll sing Forty-Five Years, an exquisite love story.  May I be with the audience throughout, with my brain off on a coffee break.  May I see the people sitting in front of me, and reach out with my soul to touch them with lyrics such as these:

Now the summer city lights
Will soften the night
Till you’d think that the air is clear
And I’m sitting with friends
Where forty-five cents
Will buy another glass of beer

He’s got something to say
But I’m so far away
That I don’t know who I’m talking to
‘Cause you just walked in the door
And Honey, all I see is you

My memory has had moments of suspicion lately, such as forgetting to look in drawers for my clothes before leaving an Airbnb.

Pair that with my commitment to memorize songs … so that my eyes meet those of the audience.  No gazing down at my phone.

Two things are difficult for me in Forty-Five Years:

1.  Remembering the first line.  Without that I’ll just be standing there smiling.

Where the earth shows its bones of wind-broken stone

Woh.  “Wind-broken”.  It doesn’t come naturally.  I’ve practiced a lot.  And still the first line rarely flows.  But I will be on that stage tonight, remembering instantly … or not.

2.  Figuring out the pitch of the first note.  Forty-Five Years comes really close to touching the lowest note I can sing, and the highest.  Most songs don’t ask that much of me.

Right now, I don’t want to rely on external aids, such as an app that would give me the starting note.  No words to the audience in the realm of “I’m trying to get this right.”  Just get up there, tell a little story about the song, and …

Sing!

What a fine challenge.  Hit the first note, so I can reach the upcoming really low note, and the high ones later. 

***

This I know …

Tonight the singing will go well

Or not so well

And I will smile thereafter

Rebecca Solnit writes … and the messages both transcend and include nature.  They enter me as mystery.

I write while staying in one of the great forests of British Columbia [Canada], a forest in which the inextricability of life from death is gorgeously evident.  Several kinds of fern – some taller than I – spring from this soil, birds move among the branches, many kinds of berries abound.  It is lavish, almost hectic with life, and with the inseparability of life and death.

Magnificent fallen trees turn back into soil as younger trees reach downward to twine around their ancestors’ trunks and upward toward the sky.  The roots growing around and gripping these decaying logs look like veins and tentacles and fingers clutching and reaching toward an anchor in the soil.

Some of the mature cedars and conifers stand on mounds that must be fully decayed trees or rather once were trees and are further along in the process of becoming soil.  Often a great tree that’s fallen over still has at its base a tall shield that is its roots still clinging to rounded stones and soil, and from this the trunk stretches across the earth.

…

I think of what a forest without death would be, imagine trees that grew endlessly and never died, never gave their nutrients back to the soil and the next generations so wholly, never fell to create openings in the canopy younger trees could reach toward.

***

I could wax poetic about what Rebecca’s words mean, but not today.  Please look at the photo and let its majesty come to you.  See the “nurse log” flowing left to right. 

Listen to the silence of the forest

It appears that everything has a beginning and an end

But maybe that’s just a rumour

Gandalf from Lord of the Rings was on to something here.  Perhaps all does turn to silver glass after the body dissolves. 

I sense the truth of multiple lifetimes.  But speaking musically, I imagine not a series of separate lives (staccato) but rather a luxurious flow that soars, dips and dives, and keeps on going (legato).  Slow … so slow.  Feels like a dance.

And then there’s the individual human being.  It looks likely that I end at the surface of my skin but I sense no.  I waft.  So do you.  We reach around corners and worlds to touch life where it grows.  A gas, not a solid.  Even beyond a liquid.

And speaking of the universe, at what point does it become “not-universe”?  None that I can imagine.  And what would be beyond the supposed finality?  Beats me.

Woh!  The universe never ends.  That rattles my brain cells.

How about the impact of a human life?  A famous writer survives her or his physical time on Earth through their words.  But perhaps all the good that each of us does during our lifetime continues on, through generation after generation.  You saying “Hi” to a stranger today may touch someone in Japan in 2053.

Finally …

(Actually not, but it’s all I can think of in the moment)

… we’re mostly vertical beings.  Conventional wisdom says I’m 1.78 metres.  Perhaps you’re 1.58.  But maybe that too is a fiction.  There’s no end at our hair or our toes.  We fly to the stars and drop down into the very centre of our home.  The sky … the heart.

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand
    things too wonderful for me to know

(Job 42:3 in the Bible)

I’m sitting in Izy Coffee, aimlessly tapping on a small rectangular screen.

I’ve just read the words of some unknown Buddhist human being:

One’s compassion should be like that felt for the suffering of a mother who has no hands and so is powerless to help her only son who has fallen into a river.  Because she cannot help him, she becomes more and more upset, and feels more and more love for her child.  The bodhisattva needs to feel such limitless compassion for all sentient beings amidst all their different sufferings.  The bodhisattva’s motivation is a deep and heartfelt wish for beings to be free from suffering.

[Bodhisattva: a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so through compassion for suffering beings]

[Nirvana: a transcendent state in which there is no suffering, desire nor sense of self]

A life of compassion rings true within me.  And how about right now, with the people before me?

1.  A muscular man, arms crossed, talking to the barista

2.  Two young women in animated conversation

3.  A middle-aged man, also talking to the barista, nodding vigorously with a little smile

4.  A woman of perhaps 60, slumped sideways on her chair, intent on her phone

There’s nothing visible of angst, of the sorrows of life.  But I wonder … Does something dark lurk beneath the animated words of the two women?  Not consciously felt in the moment.  Perhaps only drifting up to consciousness in the minutes before sleep.

I sense that every Izy customer is carrying something heavy … be it woes of health, relationship, money or just basic self-esteem.

May I have the eyes to see

What lies beneath

And to hold in my heart

The pain

Way up high … certain death if you fall.  Why not boogie?

Far less dramatically, I smiled at the audience after I made a mess of my cello piece a few weeks ago.  And it was a real smile.

Teetering on the edge of disaster … and still seeing the beauty of the moment – that sounds good to me.

Joseph Luciani wrote …

One of my favorite Zen stories tells us of a monk who, walking along a mountain path encounters a tiger.  The monk leaps off the edge and grabs hold of a vine.  The vine begins to loosen.  Frozen in the moment before his fall and death, the monk notices a strawberry growing in the cliff face.  The last words the monk speaks before his death are “What a magnificent strawberry.  I think I’ll eat it.”

Fifty-five years ago, I too was dangling on a cliff.  Death welcomed below.  No strawberries to be seen.  Also no smile in contemplating beauty.  Just a desperation to survive.

But today and tomorrow?  May I wonder at the moments of my life … both wondrous and terrifying.

It’s time to dance

The Buddha said many marvelous things, ideas that have guided me as I travel this life.

Someone (I don’t know who) said this about him:

Lord Buddha said that he prayed to lead all sentient beings to enlightenment, with himself last.  He also prayed that in the interim he would become light where there was darkness, a bridge where there was no way across a river, a home with beautiful land and meadows for the homeless, fire to warm those who suffer from cold, and waters for those who thirst.

I don’t care about enlightenment.  I want to love, to be kind, to give each person I meet a little bit of me.

I emcounter many human beings who are weighed down with darkness, dried out, a dull brown colour.  I don’t have much to say that would be helpful.  And I can’t think of magic actions that would make the “owwie” go away, especially when the pain dives deep.

I simply want to be in the presence of the hurting one, “being with” them.  Nothing extraordinary.

Simple, quiet … enough

I sat down at a table for four at Jagger’s, my favourite breakfast place.  And I proceeded to do what I’ve done a thousand times in restaurants:  If there’s something right in front of me on the table, I move it away.  I need space.

There’s a vague underthought in my mind that I’m different from other people.  I do and say things that most people don’t.  Yes, down deep we all have the same joys and sorrows but how I express myself in life feels unusual.

I’ve hardly given a thought to my “centerpiece shifting”.  Until two women sat down at the next table.  They too had dried flowers in a tiny vase, salt and pepper jars, and a wee candle.

I was looking at the back of one of the women when suddenly a hand was pushing all the objects to the left end of the table.  Pretty ordinary, you might say.  But my eyes opened wide.

Someone else does that?

Such a simple example … but it took me away to the past years of my life.  Maybe I’m more like than unlike.  We’re all members of the human family.  We bleed.  We smile.  We have a beginning and an end, with hopefully much in between.

Us

It was time to leave our beloved Airbnb home in the Ardennes.  I said goodbye to the high stone walls and rough beams, and to the dining room table – a place of fine conversations.

I knew it wouldn’t take me long to pack up.  We’d only stayed two nights.  In my room and in the bathroom, I checked the surfaces for stray Bruce objects.  I made sure my phone cord was disconnected from the outlet.  My slippers were no longer lolling around on the floor.  My bedsheets didn’t have treasures hidden within.  All fit perfectly in my backpack and suitcase.

You’re so organized, Bruce!

And we were off … two hours plus on the highway back to Gent, as Pascal educated me about the realities of driving in Belgium.

My apartment!  Hello, home.  Happiness in the going and in the returning.

Unpacking should be a breeze.  Actually a little too much of a breeze.

Where is my reddish brown sweater?

Where is my pink “Be Kind” t-shirt?

How about my blue gym shorts?

And a pair of my long red compression stockings?

Not here!

The thoroughness of my packing was a fantasy.  I hadn’t checked the drawers where I’d placed this stuff.

Oh, Bruce

Wherefore art thy mind?

And so the recent expansion of my forgetfulness continues.  Getting old, I suppose.  A little too loose in the head.

***

Now here’s the day after … and I’m smiling about my foibles, about not being alert in the packing yesterday.  So cool!

I love my objects, especially the pink t-shirt, but letting them go feels easy.  Our Airbnb hostess may mail them back to me.  (I’ll pay whatever you want!)  Or perhaps not.  Either way, all is well.

I’m so easy in the living today

May tomorrow be the same