I had a dream recently that I wanted to share. It made me very happy. I had been chosen to sing with Sweet Honey in the Rock. Short of finding out that I am Joni Mitchell and Pete Seeger’s love child, it was the best of story lines. I came out on to the stage with a few other singers new to the group and Sweet Honey members came out from another part of the stage. We began to warm up with a song informally and some folks were talking and laughing and there were few people in the audience so I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. Then it was time to begin and we walked off the stage into a very large trough of warm water running the length of the stage in front of the first row. That’s when we really began to sing and Bernice smiled at me. I had the same small goodish voice and I was still white and still male but my voice fit in. It felt wonderful. And then I woke up smiling.
Seeing as how winter has arrived big time and we don’t have TV reception here at Pansy Brook Farm, I am wondering what videos y’all might recommend on these long dark nights. Suggestions please.
Marshall asked John Meyer for John’s favorite novel as a Christmas gift. John gave him At Swim, Two Boys. Marshall inhaled it and has been raving about its beauty relentlessly. Other recommended books?
And, while I’m at it, we’ve grown sick for the Washington Blade as a news source for national gay news. Other ideas for that?
Hope all is well on this very cold night.
PS I was shopping at a mall the other day and was severely struck by how
unattractive the general populace is. You’d think that anyone who really
wanted to lead the free world would get the most votes by promising to raise
the level of fashion, sensible eating, and free gym memberships for all Americans.
This would be ever so much more profitable than war and with more people getting cute and having sex, there’d be less time and money for war. Why do I have to be the one to think up all these things? Don’t they know I am busy freeing the world of traumatized and tense muscles due to the war on sanity?
Marshall and I are here in Palm Springs with his parents and siblings celebrating his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. I have loved getting out of the Vermont winter for 2 weeks and to be instead surrounded by flowers and palms and warm sunny weather. I am becoming less of a New Englander in my old age. I think winter should last about a month and be pretty with an occasional fresh snow to tidy things up a bit but no ice and plenty of sunshine. It has been hard to pursue this idea with the universe. Vermont is intent on beginning winter in November with the occasional hard freeze in October and dragging things on like a bad date into April. Much too to much so far as I can see.
It’s great to see Marshall enjoying his family so delightedly. His nieces and nephews are big fun and he is a breath of fresh air for them. I enjoy the family too though my taste for crowds and being social for days is less and less. I find that my weekdays at home with about 5 hours of solitude are just about right. So I am a bit of a hermit married to a social butterfly and people lover. I grab some time here and there to sit in the garden and do a few postcards or journaling or watercolors. And I nap each day. This gives me some alone time without seeming to step outside family boundaries in too odd a way. I do tend to notice how odd I am, eccentric really, when I step into new waters of people not in my usual situation.
And now it is a few days later. We left California this morning and I am in flight from Atlanta to Hartford. We left Palm Springs on Wed January 1. We got a few hours visit in with Marshall’s 93 year old Grandmother Ruth. I want to be just like her when I grow up. She is slow, quiet, kind, happy, and gentle in all parts of her being. If I live that long, I might get part way.
I worked on a few family members during this 2 week vacation. Nothing extensive, but some good energy work for the basic wear and tears of life- nothing particularly traumatic. As usual the work went very well and people were very grateful but I very soon afterward went into deep fatigue. I have also been having a period of disturbed sleep with dreams that wake me sometimes and leave me feeling weary of life. I’ll have a deep afternoon nap that I can’t say no to. I am watching this all to see what part is related to some kind of change I am feeling after doing energy work and what part may be processing during sleep which may or may not be related to work on people. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts. I expect to do a sleep test for apnea in Feb. My first work trip is not until the end of January so I can go slow with desk work for now. The naps and sleep-ins did restore me. And it may also be that I simply didn’t have enough alone/quiet time in the last 2 weeks. Seems I don’t quite know what I am feeling if there isn’t some more space, like most people I guess but more so.
I have been setting up work for 03 and have a fairly full calendar but I’ve been late in contacting the Boulder Massage College about possible work there in May. I am still hoping something might be put together but it’s late in the planning year for a Spring engagement. I hope to contact them this week and will let you know what might be happening. If that doesn’t come through then M and I might go on to California and see his family.
Hope this finds you both very well and life is good in this new year for you. I send much love and hope to hear from you when you get a chance.
Thanks for the CD. I listened to Sweet Honey for much of the time I was getting ready to go west. I love that album and I am very happy that you thought to send it to me. Yes, I remember us going to hear them and the local gospel group also- great fun. I saw Sweet Honey back in March and loved the concert. Seems I am getting more and more fussy in my old age. My patience to explore new music is limited. I want to swoon soon after I hear the first notes or I hang it up. How did I become such an extremist? The hot, the quick, the best art, the Dear friend, the favorite whatever or don’t bother me- so little room for learning a new taste. And yet a very high standard for anything that wants my attention at all.
I loved being in the desert and out of winter. I’ve just heard that we are heading into a snow storm and I am hoping the friend who is picking us up at the airport does better than her usual driving which is scary in daylight on clear slow roads let along the interstate in a blizzard.
Be in touch. Let me know how you are. And how life is in CO. I hope we can get some time together this year before we meet up at the home and I can remember who you are but am not too sure who I am.
Marshall and I are in Palm Springs celebrating with his parents and siblings their 50th Wedding anniversary. It is warm and sunny. Low 70’s in the day. I’ve just been for a swim in the pool, which is right outside our door. There are palm trees surrounding us and a sharp steep desert mountain range just west of us. I dream of finding a way to be out of the cold for winters and in this warm sun. Maybe when Marshall retires, we will find a way to have a couple of months out of the Vermont winter which is not even as cold as your winter but just too damn long for me.
Yesterday we went to a vaudeville show with singers and dancers and jugglers and comedians. The finale was a big tribute to the military and war and Bush and asking the audience to stand and sing the national anthem. All of Marshall’s family rose, hands over hearts, while we stayed seated. We might as well have suggested we all go pee on the blessed virgin Mary. There were several discussions and holding witness with in-laws can be dicey. But two stories came out that helped increase the understanding. Marshall’s father was denied entry into world war II by a doctor hearing a heart murmur at his first physical. But the doctor at his second physical didn’t hear it and so he was gone to Germany as the war was ending and was a guard in the courtroom at Nuremberg. The other story was that Marshall’s nephew who is newly 18 didn’t register with the selective service and no one in his family has discussed this or knows the implications. So we were able to divert what might have been huge misunderstanding towards some family thinking about immediate patriotic needs and less show business- odd how Quakerism puts one on the spot so easily.
I have been meaning to call and ask if you have received, listened to, and enjoyed the tape of our evening? I hope you like it. I think it is a clean enough recording to reproduce. I also think we spoke well enough of interesting ideas so that some people may be interesting in buying a copy. I’ll be in touch to ask what you think.
We took a stroll today on Indian land in an oasis canyon. The palm trees grow along narrow rocky canyons where precious water flows from the ground. There are rattlesnakes, coyotes, and other friends of the earth making homes in various rocky places. The palms are huge and a large grove of them feels like a cathedral with cool air wafting along the ground. There is just a bit of water in a streambed and water plants grow profusely during this “wet season” in winter.
I hear the Indians here did some careful dealing of land and remain in control of some of the best land and make a good living off the white people around them. So good to have the story improved over the usual tale.
I have enjoyed being with Marshall’s family although they are extremely normal and enjoy a jolly good time all together while my tastes run more towards being a hermit who comes in from the edge of the village every so often with a low appetite for crowds. Marshall is extremely social and delighted to be with nieces and nephews and it’s great seeing them so happy together. To my delight, the youngest nephew, age 8, has taken to calling me Aunt John. The revolution comes slowly and with good laughs.
I send much love and hope finds you having good holidays, excellent health, and some good resting time.