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Advent Day #11 – Smell

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Inhaling deeply, through the nose.   A breath meditation and a sensory celebration.  Smell is a marvelous gift!  Pleasurable, informative, playful and useful — something for which to be grateful as we count our Advent blessings. 

You Smell

Well, at least I hope you do.  I knew a young man who lost his sense of smell after a motorcycle accident.  I had periods of olfactory disability when I had chronic sinusitis.  I found those days flat and uninteresting.  I have always enjoyed the stealthiness of fragrance; it can surprise you and delight you and make you suddenly aware as if playing a game with you.  “Wow!  What is that?”  Your mother’s favorite brand of perfume, the beach grass from your childhood vacations, the star jasmine that bloomed beneath the porch.  It’s amazing how specific smells are.  Many animals identify their own offspring by scent alone.   So today, I am challenging you to become aware of and appreciate your sense of smell.  What is this season’s particular redolence?  Cinnamon.  Allspice.  Pine.  Onion.  Sage.  Vanilla.  I stopped at a spice shack the other day to buy Chai Tea Spices.  The place was a heaven of smell.  Pungent pepper and cinnamon.

There are place odors that are painful.   Hospitals and vets’ offices, for instance.  The stairwell of the parking structure in a big city.  The landfill.  Gary, Indiana in the late ’60s.  You know a few, I’m sure.

Garlic.  French fries.  Chocolate chip cookies baking.  Okay, now I’m just getting hungry.  Breakfast and then drive to Chicago for the Lyric Opera: Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss.  Dinner with Emily at the Algerian crepe place.  Never been there before.  Looking forward to smelling that!

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Advent Day #10 – Hearing

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And what’s behind door #10 on the Advent calendar? 

Do You Hear What I Hear?

“A song, a song, high above the trees with a voice as big as the sea, with a voice as big as the sea.”

As a little girl in chorus, I loved that Christmas piece.  There was something majestic and homey about the conversation passing from the night wind to the mighty king.  I liked the imagery of the sky and the little lamb and the star with a tail as big as a kite.  I sang it with all the passion I could muster at the age of 9.

Today’s gift on the parade of days in December is hearing.  Sound.  What are your favorite sound memories?  What’s the first thing you enjoy hearing in the morning?  How do sounds change your mood?

Today I woke up to the sound of chickadees outside my window.  The sun was shining through the frost making rainbow diamonds of pink and green.  I tried to take a picture of it, but the colors didn’t come out.  I realized that even when I put my glasses on, the prism effect disappeared.  I Googled “frost” images, and none of them have the colors that I can see with my naked eye.  I wonder if the lens thing destroys the refraction?  Okay, that’s a sight digression.  Sight was yesterday.  Today, I want to concentrate on sound.

It’s funny how you can be totally familiar with a sound and not even know that it’s in your repertoire.  For instance, I can sit upstairs in bed while Steve goes down to the kitchen to make a snack, and I can figure out exactly what he’s fixing, just by listening.  My kids used to hate this skill.  “How did you know that I was doing that?”  Sneaking snacks, tiptoeing out the front door, playing music on your headphones when you should be sleeping, they all have a particular set of sounds.  Even silence.  Silence to a mother with toddlers communicates alarm louder than a French siren.

Favorite sounds from childhood: the ice cream truck (why do they always play The Entertainer by Scott Joplin?) is a cliche.  I’ve got one: the sound of my mother calling us in for dinner with an alto yodel at a major third interval.  I was the most embarrassed kid on the block.  Couldn’t we have had a bell or a triangle or something that wasn’t her voice?  Okay, in all fairness, the sound of her singing Brahms lullaby to me at night made up for that.  “Lullaby and goodnight, with roses bedight (archaic form of ‘bedecked’, I suppose), with lilies o’er spread is baby’s wee bed.  Lay thee down now and sleep, may thy slumber be deep; lay thee down now and rest, may thy slumber be blessed.”  Or her other standard: “Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh, shadows of the evening steal across the sky.  Jesus gives the weary calm and sweet repose, with his tend’rest blessings may thine eyelids close.”  “Night-night, d’good girl”, she would always say, kiss me on the forehead and tuck me in before tiptoeing out of the room.

Music; have I had music in my life!  I am a walking encyclopedia of silly camp songs that crop up at the most mundane cue.  I am still learning to be as familiar with “serious music”.  Even after attaining a BA in music, I have to say that I feel I know very little about classical instrumental music.  This is where Steve is educating me.  He began collecting albums as a teenager and can cite off the top of his head how many symphonies, concertos, operas and other works were composed by a plethora of artists.  As a voice performance major, I know more about songs.  I even make orchestral works into songs, mnemonic devises to help me remember the composer.  “Sergei Prokofiev could barely read the treble clef until he was past 47″ sung to Peter’s theme from Peter & the Wolf, for instance.   (I got that from a book, actually.  I didn’t make it up.  But you get the idea.)

White noise.  There’s a scene in Tarkovsky’s film “Solaris” where they tape strips of paper over the air vents of their space station to simulate the sound of rustling leaves.  Noise that makes you feel at home.  The elevated train down the block.  Sirens.  Owls.  Coyotes.  The dishwasher.  I have my own white noise going constantly in my head.  I’ve had it since 2005.  It’s called an arachnoid cyst.  So I am a bit hard of hearing, but not so’s you’d notice, really.  Except when Steve mumbles something in his low register.  “Did I fake a rainbow trout? No?  Oh, ‘did I take the garbage out’!”  I can live with it.

My favorite sounds, off the top of my head:  Susan’s voice saying, “Hiiii, Maamaa!” on the other end of the phone.  The whistle of a cardinal.  A barbershop quartet.  “Unforgettable” crooned by Emily.  Josh and Becca laughing.  The pop of a cork from a bottle.  Coyotes and hoot owls and wind.  Red-winged blackbirds.  The loon at Woodbury Lake.  My mother’s voice.  Church bells.  The bell of mindfulness.  Frogs: spring peepers to be exact.  I hear them every year.  They’re deafening, practically, but I can never SEE one!  It’s a taunt.  One day, I’ll get lucky.

What is music to your ears?  Tomorrow, we’re off to the Lyric again for Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos”.  That’ll be some music.  Then we’re having dinner with Emily at an Algerian crepe restaurant.  Can you guess what the gift will be for that day?

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Advent Day #9 – Sight

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Reblogging my Advent appreciation countdown from 2 years ago: we are rich beyond measure in “ordinary” assets!  Today’s gift is Sight.

The Eyes Have It

I started a little tradition this December as a stand in for the Advent calendar.  I am sending a text message every day to my kids, reminding them of a gift that they have.  The first one was sunshine, the next air, then water, soil, snow, movement, memory, imagination, and today…sight.

I am a very visual person.  I have a visual memory.  A teacher once told me that there is an easy way to assess whether a child is a visual learner.  Ask him to tell you the contents of his closet.  If he looks away from your face and off to a neutral space in order to list things, he’s probably visual.  He’s removing his eyes from distraction so that he can “picture” his closet.  I heard this little trick and remembered all the boring afternoons I spent as a freshman at college picturing every detail of my room at home.  (Yes, I was terribly homesick.  Mostly for my sweetheart.  Finally married that hometown honey on Christmas break my senior year.)  I could still do it 30 years later.  I close my eyes and see my room exactly as it was.  (Where did my mother get that faux velvet wall hanging with the peacock on it?  And why did I bring it to college with me?)

Things I love to see include landscapes, sunshine, animals, trees, the sky…anything natural.  And people.  Faces, bodies, those odd architectural places of form and shadow and contrast that only your intimate loved ones allow you to look at to your satiation.  I can never get enough of staring at people I love.  That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by photography.  My sweetheart bought me a Canon AE-1 camera the second Christmas we were together.  My mother asked me, “Are you going to accept that gift?!”  Hell, yes!  Why wouldn’t I?  Oh, the relationship obligation thing.  No problem; we’re going to be together forever, I told her.  Jim died a year before the camera’s shutter gear got stuck.  So, basically, I partnered both of them for the same amount of time: 30 years.  Now, it’s the digital age, and I can’t afford to get the Canon repaired.  I’m saving for a DSLR.

Visual images are so powerful for me.  I don’t like the rapid, frenetic pace of graphics on TV or in movie ads, though, because they give me a headache.  Fortunately, I don’t own a TV, so I don’t get subjected very often.  We saw the Super Bowl at a sports bar last year and decided that we could make a drinking game based on a few visual cues: something exploding, rotating text graphics, and morphing forms.  Everything was moving.  Whatever happened to the timeless grace of a beautiful still shot?  I get my fix on National Geographic’s website under “The Daily Dozen”.  And I have to say that my sister’s photobucket is also a superb repository of stunning visuals.  Thank you for those “prezzies”, DKK!

Appreciating sight.  What are your spontaneous choices for favorite images?

My sweetheart, courtesy the Canon AE-1, 1980

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Advent Day #8 – Imagination

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The countdown of free gifts continues – Imagine!

Imagine That!

Do animals have imagination?  Do they think in concepts or toss ideas around?  Or is that strictly a human thing?

Animals have some pretty incredible artistic skills.  I think of weaver birds or bower birds, birds that display their expertise in foiling predators and attracting mates.  Does that indicate imagination?  Cats, chimps, elephants and others have created art with paintbrushes or paws dipped in colors.  Is that imagination?  Maybe.

What good is imagination?  Why is it a useful skill or a precious gift?

It keeps us from getting bored.  It motivates us to engage in possibility.  It fuels hope.  But I suppose it could also be said that it fuels depression or despair.  So, it’s a tool that we have in our skull-shaped kit box.  We can use it however we want.  We get to be creators.  And it’s free.  You don’t need electricity to run it; you don’t have to have an account or a password.  This is one of the greatest gadgets ever!  Do we celebrate it?  Encourage it?  Teach it?  Or do we try to corral it, censor it, mold it, sterilize it?  Well, historically we have done all of these, to be truthful.  What have you done with yours lately?  Do you have a secret place where you put the workings of your imagination?  A journal, a sketchbook, a doodle pad, a workbench, a tape recorder, a music staff, a photo album?  Do you unwrap these presents for yourself sometimes?

When I was in college, I worked summers at a Christian camp.  I was in charge of the arts & crafts area.  It was called “Imagination”.  Over the doorway in blue paint and gold glitter, the name hung like a talisman.  Each day, I wondered which kid was going to come in and blow my mind with something s/he created.  I remember one tall, skinny, shy kid with a speech disorder, named Devin.  He was 14.  He would come in and look bored.  I gave him some clay and googly eyes.  He joked around, embarrassed, and then made a pretty good likeness of E.T. from that summer’s most popular movie.   The next day, five campers came into the shop asking if they could make an E.T. head.  Not that the art was original, it was completely derivative.   But the idea to create something started a fad, like the kids were just waiting for someone to allow them to explore their own imaginations.

Steve came up with a book from his bookstore collection called Artful Jesters by Nicholas Roukes.  “Innovators of Visual Wit and Humor” it says.  Here’s the cover:

001

The artwork is by Willie Cole; it’s called “Burning Hot I – Sunbeam iron with yellow and red feathers”.  I would love to raid all the recycling containers on my block, set up a workshop in my garage, and make “Imagination” come to life again.  I’d invite all those shy, awkward kids and the ones who pay too much for entertainment, and see if they’d engage in this wonderful ability we humans seem to have inherited from somewhere.  We are co-creators in this world.  It’s a pretty nifty gig.  I appreciate all my blogging friends, my musician friends, artists, knitters, chefs, actors, gardeners, sculptors, photographers, architects, designers…thanks for opening up your shops and showing us it can be done.

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Advent Day #7 – Memory

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One of the most fascinating gifts of the human brain is Memory.  On my Advent countdown, this is something to open with caution.  “When faced with his past, the strongest man cries.” (from a Dan Fogelberg song)  “Memory is like the sweetest pain…” (from a James Taylor song)  The question I must ask myself when I am drawn to memory is, “Is this useful?”  I could get sucked into the morose for hours, wallowing in widowhood, motherhood, womanhood, childhood.  What would I learn?  If it brings appreciation or perspective, very well.  If it gets me ‘stuck’, then it’s not so good.  Here’s my post from two years ago:

Christmas 1982

Ever had a piece of music bring up a memory, a time and place from the past, with such clarity that you felt you were actually there?  Last night it happened.  I came home from my Memoirs class, having read my essay aloud with such a rush of nervous adrenaline that my heart was still pounding.  I decided to have  a glass of Chardonnay and listen to some of Steve’s recently acquired CDs with him.  So, I was relaxing and in “memory mode” when he put on a CD of the Tallis Scholars singing a mass by John Taverner, written around the turn of the century – the 16th century.   Oh, the flood of my heart!

I was 20 years old.  Jim and I had become engaged on my birthday over the summer.  I went back down to So. Cal. to school, to continue with my bachelor’s degree in Vocal Performance.  Jim and my mother were in a Bay Area singing group together, called Renascense (or some archaic spelling pronounced ren-NAY-sense).  I came home for Christmas and was invited to one of their concerts.  I close my eyes and picture them:  Jim in his black tuxedo, ginger mustache,  the smatterings of a beard he’s grown for Rigoletto.  He is 22, teddy bear-like with twinkling blue eyes, blonde hair and a killer Italian grin.  But while he’s singing, he is an angel, mouth perfectly forming straight vowels, eyebrows imploring heaven.  He is a tenor.  His voice melts butter.   My mother is dressed in a mail order catalog nightgown, polyester, rust-colored, that has been trimmed with gold & black cord around the waist and across her bosom in an X.  Only women who have sung in choirs can imagine how absolutely ludicrous these outfits can be.  No woman looks good in a choir uniform, let alone one that has been made to look “period” on the cheap.  It is ridiculously embarrassing, but I forgive her.  She sings alto in a hooty voice that blends well.  Her quality is not stellar, but her musicianship is indispensable.

I have been so homesick away from school.  I have been staring at my diamond ring, counting the days until break.  I sit in the concert hall and look at these two people whom I love more than any others on the face of the earth, and I am so proud of them.  I’m proud of their dedication to music and their fond relationship to each other.  I admire them completely, and I am jealous.  I want to be with them; I want to be them.  I want to feel the music in my breast float to the clerestory of the church and entwine in that beautiful polyphony.  I ache for this memory.  And then the tenor line soars above the rest, and it is Jim himself, singing to me.  The recording is perfection.  I can tell that it isn’t Jim, but there are moments when it definitely could be.  My will takes over and I make it him, in my mind.   I am there, in that sanctuary, and Jim is singing to me, alive, young, vibrant with love and mystery and warmth.

Jim before his Carnegie performance – 2002

Music folds time in patterns that defy chronology.  I sail far away on its transcendent waves.  It is a grace to travel toward those we love without limits.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Grand

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What is Grand? My first thought was of grand opera, but I’ve got to agree with the WordPress folks.  There’s nothing that beats Mother Nature for being truly big and dramatic.  I love this planet!  I’m betting that there are going to be a lot of stunning photos posted.  As my second post of the morning, this one will be brief.  We’re gearing up for some wintry snowfall here in Wisconsin, but I gotta tell ya, it’s not going to be nearly as grand as what they get in California.  Here’s a shot I took in the month of April at Lassen Volcanic National Park.  Gives new meaning to the line from the carol “Snow had fallen, snow on snow….in the bleak midwinter long ago.”

Lassen

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Advent Day #6 – Movement

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In the Christian Church calendar, today is the sixth day of Advent and St. Nicholas Day.  In my Advent countdown, today is the day to celebrate the gift of Movement.  We live on a moving planet.  Impermanence surrounds us in increments from nanoseconds to evolutionary ages.  Steve’s revelatory phrase about his identity is “I am the joy in change and movement.”  If this is reality, why fight it?  I am re-blogging a post from two years ago that illustrates the grace and artistry and discipline of movement – ballet.  Watching movement can be magical and mesmerizing and put us into a “dream mind.”  But waking up to the present moment puts movement back into the realm of consciousness.  Our hearts are beating, our lungs are breathing, we pulse and move and live.  It’s not a miracle, but it sure is something to celebrate!

Fairy Princess Dreams

Last night we went to see the Bolshoi production of Sleeping Beauty on the cinema screen.  The newly restored Moscow theater features gilded woodwork and royal red upholstery, a royal box and no “cheap” balcony seats.  It is Old World magnificence  and romance in itself.  Add Tchaikovsky’s  lush orchestral score (which includes not one, but two harps!) and the lavish beaded, satin costumes and tutus of classic ballet and you have a Spectacle of epic proportion.  We sat in the 5th row and felt like we were actually on the proscenium during the close up camera shots.  It was breath-taking.  Princess Aurora showcases all her most difficult moves in Act I at her 16th birthday party, partnered by 4 elaborately dressed foreign suitors.  Cymbals accentuate each technically challenging pose, and she becomes the prima ballerina superstar of all my girlhood dreams.  Suddenly, I am 10 years old and sitting next to my father at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago.  The ballet is so beautiful and I am so lucky and so loved and I miss my dad so much that I can’t hold back the tears.   My heart is too full.

My dad proudly attended to the cultural education of his 4 charming daughters.  We had classes at the Art Institute and ballet lessons at a studio on Michigan Avenue every Saturday.  He had season tickets to the ballet for the whole family and to the opera for my mother.   I was absolutely stage-struck as a kid and couldn’t resist trying on poses and gestures in the lobby during intermissions.  I was the youngest of his daughters and probably tried the hardest to please him.  I suppose I felt like a princess in many ways.  I counted on my father’s kingly protection and generosity.  I sometimes slept through life, waiting for Prince Charming to appear and carry me off to a dream of happiness.  I met my prince when I was 15, married him when I was 21, and almost lived the whole freakin’ fairy tale.   But no, I lived a real life.  And I’m glad of it.

I found out that grace takes a lot of hard work, that fathers are imperfect people, and that love is stronger than death and more powerful than beauty.  And it also requires a lot of hard work.  Discipline and commitment can be more lovely than romance.  Facing reality is more invigorating than dreaming.  Pinch me when the spectacle seems overwhelming; I want to know I’m alive.

And David Hallberg is my new fascination.  Not only is he a supremely graceful human being, he blogs, too.  Yup, he’s real.

David Hallberg

photo copyright Andrea Mohin

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Advent Day #5 – Snow

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Reblogging from 2 years ago with the rubric of a list of calendar gifts in lieu of Advent brings me to the topic of Snow.  Do you get snow in your part of the world?  I lived in California for 15 years without it.  I’ve lived in the Midwest for more than 30.  This year, Steve will be delivering mail throughout the winter.  He’s going to get out there 6 days a week in Milwaukee weather, whatever it may turn out to be.  This is real life!  I like that he’s not afraid to meet it face to face. 

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Believe it or not, we had a green Christmas here in Milwaukee, and we STILL haven’t gotten snow.  I appreciated not worrying about my kids driving on the roads to visit me, and I’ve enjoyed going hiking in the warmer temperatures.  But I also enjoy snow hiking, even though I don’t own snowshoes.  The transformation of familiar objects and landscapes in winter is always interesting.  Without foliage, the contours of the land come out more strikingly.  With snowfall, they soften and blossom like ripe flesh.  We headed out to Lapham Peak yesterday in bright sunshine.  We discovered that they had created snow for some of their cross country ski trails.  Man-made, electricity-dependent snow.  Because this is Wisconsin, dammit, and we just can’t wait around for Mother Nature; winter break is NOW and it oughta be snowing already!  (sigh)  It’s sad to me that humans can’t slow down to fall in step with the planet.  We keep pushing it to keep abreast of us.  It’s like watching parents push their toddlers to be grown up by signing them up for language, dance and art lessons before they even hit nursery school.  It smells manipulative and inauthentic.  I am sniffing around in the other direction, trying to learn to open up to what exists.

The snow-making machine looks like a lunar landing module.

The boardwalk through the wetland has buckled and twisted in the process of freezing and thawing.  It reminds me of the changeable dynamic of a journey, a path in constant flux.  It tells me that my progress was not intended to be in a straight line, that meanders are natural and meaningful.  And that makes them interesting and challenging.  They invite me to adjust my balance, to pay attention, to dance with them.

 

 

I have no idea what is around the bend.  There’s a new year coming up, full of mystery and thrilling movement.  I am feeling less afraid and unsafe in this realization, and more eager to take the fun house walk.

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Advent Day #4 – Soil

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Reblogging from two years ago is not as synchronous as I thought it might be.  Two years ago, the fourth of December was a Sunday, and my post was very Sunday-related and had little to do with the Advent gift of the day, which I designated Soil.  So, I went looking for another post from that year.  Luckily, I found one.  My parade of gifts from the Universe has featured Sun, Air, Water and now Soil.  The four elements of our natural world, if you will.  Here’s the post:

As Time Goes By

My daughter is a certified massage therapist.  This makes visiting her an extra special occasion. Not only do I get the pleasure of her company and hospitality, I get a 2 hour massage as well.  As I lay there thinking about my body, my cells, and the amazing things going on just under my skin, it occurred to me that the whole process that I call my biological life began exactly half a century ago.  Yup, I figure I was conceived Thanksgiving weekend, as my parents celebrated with joy their gratitude for life.   Not that they ever divulged so private a story to me, mind you.

I marvel at how life is sustained over time.  I mentioned this to my kids as I was sipping my post-therapy water.  My youngest piped up, “Yeah, well, half a century is nothing when you think about how mountains grow and change.”  Touche.  I have to get better at taking a longer view, getting a bigger perspective.  I look at my kids bustling around in the kitchen preparing food together, all grown up, and a second later, they are playing a patty-cake game from their childhood.

We are all still so young on this earth; we are such a blink.  What kind of impact will we have on the bigger picture?  What will be the most lasting legacy of this family whom I love so intensely?  The trees that we’ve planted?  The children we beget?  The words we pen? The votes we cast?  The ashes we give back to the soil?  I can’t say for sure.  It could be the love that we circulate, although it would be impossible to document.  I am just grateful to have been a part of it, a crinoid in the limestone, among thousands of others.

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Advent Day #3 – Water

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Reblogged from 2 years ago:

Handmade, Naturally

Today I had an opportunity to get into the holiday spirit by doing some arts & crafts with kids at the Nature Center.  Unfortunately for fundraising but fortunately for me, not too many people showed up this morning.  That meant that I got to play with the materials myself.  I was at the wrapping paper station with an array of washable paint colors and objects to dip into them.  Leaves, cedar boughs, fir needles, spruce branches, feathers, pine cones, sponges and whatnot.

Years ago, I went into the prairie with scissors, came back with leaves and seed pods, spray painted my treasures in gold, silver, and clear varnish, and decorated a mask with them.  That hung on the wall of the den for ages.  I’m always looking for ways to decorate indoors with pieces of the outdoors.  And all for free, essentially.  (Cheap & Weird – my kids’ nickname for me)  That reminds me of the dried macaroni gifts I gave the Christmas I was, what, 9?  Too funny.  Spray paint macaroni, glue it to a box, call it a gift.  I suppose I could get away with it as a kid, but what is it called when I’m almost 50 and still messing around like that?  Okay, call it messing around.  I have fun.  Here are a few examples:

Imagine me gleefully slapping a piece of butcher paper with a paint-soaked cedar branch ala Jackson Pollack!  I tell you, kindergarteners should not be having all the fun.

The best things in life are free.  So far on my December countdown, I’ve received Sunshine (Dec. 1), Fresh Air (Dec. 2), and Water (Rain – today).  Each day I go outside to receive some miraculous gift, and there’s always something.  No need to wrap it or trap it.  Martha Stewart or Andy Goldsworthy, I’m not.  Just a kid in a fabulous universe, trying to stay happy with what there is.