The Playing for Change band’s latest tour ended in November. The recording of this performance took place in the Nokia Theater, Los Angeles. The song, "Felangaye", is a Titi Tsira original, and tells the story of a young woman who must overcome her fears and tell a young man that she loves him.
Playing for Change is a project of Mark Johnson and Jonathan Walls. The idea is to film and record musicians from around the world sharing their music in the belief that we can all find peace through our music.
In memory of Susan Davis Brown
this loving rendition by Natalie Merchant and Karen Peris
(click on bar) When They Ring The Golden Bells
There's a land beyond the river
That they call the sweet forever
And we only reach that shore by faith's decree
One by one we'll gain the portals
There to dwell with the immortals
When they ring the golden bells for you and me
Don't you hear the bells now ringing
Don't you hear the angels singing
'Tis the glory hallelujah Jubilee
In that far off sweet forever,
Just beyond the shining river
When they ring the golden bells for you and me
We shall know no sin or sorrow
In that heaven of tomorrow
When our hearts shall sail beyond the silvery sea
We shall only know the blessing
Of our Father's sweet caressing
When they ring the golden bells for you and me
Don't you hear the bells now ringing
Don't you hear the angels singing
'Tis the glory hallelujah Jubilee
In that far off sweet forever
Just beyond the shining river
When they ring the golden bells for you and me
When our days shall know their number
When in death we sweetly slumber
When the King commands the spirit to be free
Nevermore with anguish laden
We shall reach that lovely Eden
When they ring the golden bells for you and me
When they ring the golden bells
This is the amazing Kseniya Simonova appearing on a Ukranian talent show (of all places). The songs appear to be very closely related to her story and are mostly Russian as far as I can tell (maybe others can be more decisive).
(1) Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" (played by Apocalyptica, the scandinavian Cello quartet, maybe)
(2) Sacred War(Napoleon’s Russian invasion)
Rise up, huge country, Rise up for a mortal fight! With the dark fascist force, With the damned horde.
Refrain Let noble fury Boil up like a wave A people's war is going on, A sacred war!
We'll give repulse to oppressors Of all fervent ideas, Rapists, robbers, Tormenters of people.
Refrain
Black wings don't dare To fly over the homeland, Her vast fields The enemy doesn't dare to trample.
Refrain
To the rotten fascist scum We'll drive a bullet into the forehead, For the rabble of humanity We'll knock together a solid casket!
(3) Dark Night (translated by Alisa In WonderWords)
Dark night, only bullets are whistling across the prairie, Only the wind is humming along the wires, And the stars are blinking dimly. On this dark night I know you are not asleep, my love, You are by the crib, wiping a tear.
How I love the depth of you sweet eyes, How I wish I could press my lips against them. Dark night is dividing us, my love, And the troubled black prairie lay between us.
My faith is in you, my dear friend, This faith has kept the bullet away on a dark night. I am happy and calm in a mortal fight, Since I know you will greet me with love, no matter what.
Death doesn't scare me, we faced it in the prairie before, Here it is, hovering above me right now. You are waiting for me, sleepless by the crib, And that is why I know that I am safe from harm.
(4) Cranes (Words by Rasul Gamzatov. Translation of Andrey)
It sometimes seemed to me that the soldiers, Who didn’t return from bloody fields, Didn’t lie down into our ground But turned into white cranes. And they are flying and are screaming their voices to us now And they do it from that old time. May be it is the reason why we often stop talking ruefully When we look in sky.
The weary wedge of cranes is flying in sky, It flies in the end of the day. And there is a small interval inside this wedge May be, it is a place for me. May be, it will be a day and I shall fly With the flock of cranes in the same blue sky And I shall call everyone, whose I left in a ground, From the sky by on the language of birds.
Mercedes Sosa (Tucumán, 09-July-1935 — Buenos Aires, 04-Oct-2009) Thanks to life Words by Violeta Parra (translated by Ron Adams, 10/07/09)
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me two bright eyes that, when I open them, Can perfectly distinguish black from white And in the distant sky with her starry backdrop, And from within the multitudes, find the one I love.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me hearing that in all its wide ranging Records night and day, the rattle of chains and canary songs, Tyrant shouts, the roar of war, slander, misfortune’s storms, And the tender, loving song.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me meaning and learning. From them come the words I’m thinking and now confess: "Mother," "Friend," "Brother"; and the light shining On the road of the soul where love travels.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me the strength in my tired feet. With them I have crossed cities and seas Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains To your house, down your street to your heart.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me the passion that shakes my soul When I see the fruits of real human understanding, When I see far beyond the bad to the good, When I look deep into your clear eyes.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me so much laughter and so many tears. With them I rescue happiness from the crush of pain— The two materials that form my song, And your song, that is my song too, And everyone’s song, that is my special song. Here’s to the life, which has given me so much.
Andy Adams is a New England-born carpenter living and working in the Bay Area of California. Though he has had previous careers as a Musician and Renovation Contractor his work now focuses on Garden Structures such as decks, boardwalks, planters and benches. The benches in particular allow for the easy intersection of art, design and building. He is interested in collaboration and the process and design of landscape and gardens. See more atgarden structures by andrew adams.
Raymond Chandler in 1940. Photograph: Ralph Crane/Getty
Raymond Chandler died March 26, 1959, so this is a big anniversary year for aficionados.*
The biggest News I have found in the blogosphere isn’t really new news: Ray Chandler appeared in a camio in Double Indemnity (the film for which he infamously co-wrote the screenplay with Billy Wilder). Larry Harnish reported this “discovery” in his Los Angeles Times blog (June 7, 2009), apparently referencing Adrian Wootton’s blog for The Guardian (June 5, 2009). Don’t rush out to discuss this with your thesis advisor. But it is a cute five second scene.
*Checkout Loren Latker’s Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles website: http://homepage.mac.com/llatker/
Check out Waltham Art Windows at this year's Riverfest this weekend. This picture by Clare Asch. I have to admit I like this reproduction better than the original, but see what you think. http://www.walthamriverfest.org/artwindows.html And at Lincoln Studios, 289 Moody Street, June 6 through 29
(Russian: Картинки с выставки – Воспоминание о Викторе Гартмане, Kartinki s vystavki – Vospominaniye o Viktore Gartmane)
"Pictures at an Exhibition – A Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann" A suite of ten piano pieces composed by Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.
Modest Mussorgsky was a member of 'The Five' (or 'The Mighty Handful'), a 19th-century group of Russian composers including Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, and Cui. Together, The Five created the so-called Nationalist school of Russian music. Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' was inspired by an exhibition of paintings by his deceased friend Viktor Hartmann and is a particularly striking example of The Five's efforts to create a distinctively Russian version of European style classical music. It was originally written for solo piano (the version played with much grace and power by Naoko Sugiyama on a Sunday afternoon at The First Parish in Waltham). It has inspired orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov and, most famously, by Ravel. But the raw power of live solo piano is the way to hear it. Mussorgsky supplies the Might; the pianist has got her hands full.
The Pictures
No. 1 "Gnomus" (Latin: The Gnome)
Vladimir Stasov: "A sketch depicting a little gnome, clumsily running with crooked legs." Hartmann's sketch, now lost, is thought to represent a toy nutcracker.
This picture shows one of Hartmann's costume designs for a revival of Mikhail Glinka's opera Ruslan i Lyudmila. The evil wizard Chernomor wears a turban crowned by a bat, and bears a staff with an owl perched upon it. The opera was performed with Hartmann's designs in 1871 by the Bolshoi Theatre.
No. 2 "Il vecchio castello" (Italian: The Old Castle)
Stasov: "A medieval castle before which a troubador sings a song." This movement is thought to be based on a watercolor depiction of an Italian castle. Hartman often placed appropriate human figures in his architectural renderings to suggest scale.
No. 3 "Tuileries" (Dispute d'enfants après jeux) French: Tuileries (Dispute between Children at Play)
Stasov: "An avenue in the garden of the Tuileries, with a swarm of children and nurses." Hartmann's picture of the Jardin des Tuileries near the Louvre in Paris (France) is now lost. Figures of children quarrelling and playing in the garden were likely added by the artist (see note on No. 2 above).
No. 4 "Bydło" (Polish: Cattle)
Stasov: "A Polish cart on enormous wheels, drawn by oxen."
No. 5 "Балет невылупившихся птенцов" [Balet nevylupivshikhsya ptentsov] (Russian: Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks)
Stasov: "Hartmann's design for the décor of a picturesque scene in the ballet Trilby." Gerald Abraham: "Trilby or The Demon of the Heath, a ballet with choreography by Petipa, music by Julius Gerber, and décor by Hartmann... produced in 1870. The fledglings were canary chicks."
No. 6 "Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle" (Yiddish)
Stasov: "Two Jews: Rich and Poor"
No. 7 "Limoges, le marché" (La grande nouvelle) (French: The Market at Limoges (The Great News))
Stasov: "French women quarreling violently in the market." Limoges is a city in central France.
No. 8 "Catacombae" (Sepulcrum romanum) (Latin: The Catacombs (Roman sepulcher))
Stasov: "Hartmann represented himself examining the Paris catacombs by the light of a lantern."
No. 9 "Избушка на курьих ножках" (Баба-Яга) [Izbushka na kur'ikh nozhkakh (Baba-Yaga)] (Russian: The Hut on Hen's Legs (Baba-Yaga)
Stasov: "Hartmann's drawing depicted a clock in the form of Baba-Yaga's hut on fowl's legs. Mussorgsky added the witch's flight in a mortar."
No. 10 "Богатырские ворота" (В стольном городе во Киеве) [Bogatïrskie vorota (v stol'nom gorode vo Kieve)] (Russian: The Bogatyr Gates (in the Capital in Kiev) Commonly translated as "The Great Gate of Kiev." Bogatyrs are heroes that appear in Russian epics called bylinas. The title is also sometimes rendered "The Heroes' Gate at Kiev."
Stasov: "Hartmann's sketch was his design for city gates at Kiev in the ancient Russian massive style with a cupola shaped like a slavonic helmet." Hartmann made a sketch for a planned (but never built) monumental gate for Tsar Alexander II. This gate was to have commemorated the Tsar's narrow escape from an assassination attempt on April 4, 1866. Hartmann's design for the gate caused a sensation, and the architect himself felt it was the finest work he had yet done.
Peter Adams [keys], Billy Mohler [acoustic bass], and Aaron Sterling [drums] having way too much fun Friday night at the Downbeat Cafe in LA's Echo Park playing music from Peter's new release,Spotlight, Floodlight.
As the 89-year-old civil rights champion, Pete Seeger, helped close out the ceremonies that opened this inaugural affair on Sunday, so the efforts of the 87-year-old civil rights leader, Joseph Lowery, brought the celebrations to a resounding close today. At least that’s how I experienced it.
Lowery is former pastor of the Warren Street United Methodist Church, in Mobile, Alabama and co-founder with Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His benediction was filled with references well-known in the black community but maybe not so well-known in the white world.
“God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou, who has brought us thus far along the way, thou, who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee. Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.”
These are the closing lines from “Lift every voice and sing” otherwise known as the Black National Anthem. It’s writer? James Weldon Johnson, of course. [His brother, Rosamond, wrote the music.] It's #149 in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal.
“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.”
The reference here is to Big Bill Broonzy’s “Black, Brown and White” blues, also known as “The Get Back Blues”.
"If you're white, you're all right. If you're brown, stick around. But if you're black, oh, brother -- Get back! Get Back! Get back!"
Broonzy became an influencial performer, especially prior to World War II, coming out of the Chicago blues scene. After the war, according to the blogger who introduced him to me, “he was accused of being a Communist and blacklisted, and, apart from appearing with his fellow blacklister, Pete Seeger (who performed for Obama on Sunday), did little for the rest of his life.”
Somewhere a voice calls out Just beyond hearing. Birds twitter and rise from their roosts. Leaves of grass flutter and flatten under foot, As residents rush to below ground homes. I see it all as I run, holding the pain in my side. Too late.
Here. Is this the Holy Land where the voice was heard? Was it a cry or was it a murmur? Only air in motion or filling all with meaning? I wait, sitting here beneith the tree whose leaves have heard, Pressed against the bark, listening with ears and fingers. Did I hear? Was it a voice of love or hope? Why?
In the city are many sounds at all the hours. The silence in spaces beacons loudly. I lie in an empty moment holding tight to the memory Of when the voice was nearer — ah, youth. Babies cry, engines roar, lovers whisper in the dark Just beyond hearing, but the echo lingers. Listen.
— Oscar Handler, “A Bevy of Lies”, 1938
Here is how it is expressed in Psalm 50:1-5:
The Mighty One, G_d the Lord, speaks and summons the earth. From the rising of the sun to its setting Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, G_d shines forth.
Out G_d comes, he does not keep silence. Before him is a devouring fire round about him a mighty tempest.
He calls to the heavens above and to the earth ... "Gather to me my faithful ones...."
By the time I entered sixth grade my father had begun to come into his own in the business world, and our family came to summer on some of the small lakes in Western Massachusetts near our home.
The first year we tented by one of these nearby lakes, perhaps with the thought that we could actually live there all summer long and my father commute to work. But the land was flat, and the development was new, and my father sold this land after the first year. And we began to rent a cottage well up in the Berkshire hills at a place called Big Pond.
There the woods were old and it was four miles by winding, climbing dirt road from the main highway to the northern shore of Big Pond where we stayed in a cottage owned by Orin Handler. The Handler’s and the Grimes’ were the only houses you could reach by road in this part of the lake. There had never been anyone but Handler’s and Grimes’ on this road since it was cut, but Harold Grimes was planning to sell some of his shorefront property, and we were there to consider adding our name to theirs on the small sign that marked the road.
Any old New Englander would be familiar with the cottage we stayed in there — the big porches extending off living room and dining room through creaking French doors that were usually open to the breeze off the lake, but were often closed at night as the temperature fell even in June and July.
Then, the smell of oil fired stove would permeate the air and nestle around us as close as the heat itself, and we children would be hustled off upstairs to a loft looking down on the living room fireplace, the wicker furniture, the wooden rocker you could get on and ride like some wild stallion galloping across the plains until your mother cried out in fear that you would tip over.
Overhead was nothing but painted roof. The walls were wood paneling. The windows were hinged like cabinet doors and you looked out on the long slope of front porch roof and the lake’s waters beyond.
When the thunder storms came, as they frequently did during our days on Big Pond, the rain would come in a rush across the waters at the edge of the wind that drove it to engulf our cottage and thunder down on the shingles only inches above our heads. From the second floor you could see out over the whole lake as the lightning flashed its eerie white light and its tentacles snatched at the houses out on the island in the center of the pond.
My father and I built what was called a surfboard in those days — a vague cousin to what you would see at the seashore today. For me it was a pretty much unsinkable craft that I paddled by hand and by foot along all the shoreline and eventually around the shore of that island at the center of Big Pond.
The actual building of the eight or ten houses out there was a source of considerable fascination until the transporting properties of ice debunked the fantasies. The one house which most drew my explorer’s eye stood alone on a small peninsula of rock dropped by glaciers in retreat up past Hudson’s Bay long before my time. Isolated even from other islanders, I wondered at what sort of folk might suddenly emerge from within to challenge my small intrusion into their secret lives.
Orin Handler and Harold Grimes were a kind of old time Yankee you can still find in upstate Vermont or perhaps in other recesses of the country from which they have failed to vacate. They were men my father felt at home with and in this case admired, for they were country men but of class and culture.
There were not many such men, I suspect, in my father’s world and there were certainly no others like them in mine. Their families were long off the farm — perhaps merchants or seamen from Boston or New Haven who first came here for the cool of summer and, then, stayed on in Springfield or Northampton.
I found their books shelved on the long wall by the fireplace and stacks of “Boy’s Life” magazines up under the eaves. And an image of the life they led there burnt itself in my small, growing soul. I peered through their windows and poked about in their boathouses, for they rarely actually lived there any more, and in later years I longed for their life — for the ease of their manner, the ready chair by the fire where no person was truly a stranger.
At first my wish was just to be there, to experience again a way of living they provided and which I, too, could admire and rejoice in. But, then, ambition, greed for a life I could only experience but not myself provide, took over and consumed me. And it is here in this reduced and ruined form that I now find myself, and you experience me, grappling with the spirit that seemed to direct their course, and enveloping myself in every mud puddle, sinking slowly down into the earth from which I came and which so clearly shaped their lives.
The land is neither hostile nor welcoming in and of itself. But it does seem to contain within it something of who we are at our deepest core — a connection to the spirit of the life that animates everything — not as some detached, external mechanism, but in some extremely personal, intimate form in which I recognize what I want to be — not merely who I am but the special form only we humans can attain but which requires so much of us, so much effort to draw it out and is yet so easy and common when it comes.
I speak here of soul, not as of some alien being hidden within our decaying bodies, yearning for release to another land, to a better place beyond this life. No, this is the soul of who and what we are here and now, the bath of water and blood from which we were born and which now courses through our bodies, an oddly unfamiliar presence from which so many around us are actually fleeing. It repulses their nostrils; it is too coarse a salt to set at their table. And yet to separate from it is to abandon life itself.
I speak of the soul as of something warm and wet — the wet behind the ears that experience brings — experiences of love and welcome that form the bonds between us, bonds formed not by some exterior coating, but by some inexorable fluid oozing from within each of us like sweat or mingled blood, like the warmth that comes from within the fire.
I saw this life coming across the lake in the fire of stars and moon. I felt it shimmering on the surface of rocks beneath the surface of the water. It welled up around my toes when they dug down into the sand at the water’s edge. It slipped across my palm on the bodies of escaping fishes.
And I experienced its remains in the Handler cottage and in the gnarled arthritic fingers of my father’s hand clutching at tools they could no longer grasp. And it came to me in recent years in the flashing old blind eyes of my wife’s Aunt Charlotte as she searched out the form of her visitors, not by sight of course, but by a feeling that reaches out and holds you.
In those summers by the water my eyes, too, stretched out to embrace the life around me and I was in no way alone, though I may have seen no single person up close in a day or a week of exploring. Through all the angst and anguish of my worst teenage years I experienced there the same at-homeness in my element that my father and I understood in the presence of the Grimes and Handler men.
Not when skulking down paths after dark through woods where only the infinitesimal difference between trodden grasses and wild reveals direction; not even in the company of the most alien of god’s creatures (teenage girl) did I loose that sense of oneness of self and land — an experience never known down in my flat-land school or home, and that was to desert me so completely in the years of work and suburban life to follow, until I came here to live on my island in the Charles where the abandoned rocks, small birds, and marshes surround me as they did in the Berkshire hills, and the surface of still waters mirrors the golden trees of fall and me.
It is a beautiful poem, but it is sad. It may be frightening. Worse yet, it is idealistic ... even naive ... romantic. It knows nothing of scarce resources which must be guarded… or pillaged when they belong to others. It is generous. The poet’s heart is not mired in discontent. He is not at odds, does not feel displaced from his rightful spot. He is not ashamed that he loves.
His name is James Weldon Johnson — the author of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. He is Black. I was surprised to discover that. So, apparently, was he. His voice is possessed of such a special intelligence, his mind so focused in a place I could only identify as my own, that it seems incredible that this mind should be that of a man of a different race. And, yet, of course, he is a very Black writer. His themes, the occasions for many of his works, come directly from the Black community. They are expressed in plainly human terms. His heart and words are plainly human —
The glory of the day was in her face, The beauty of the night was in her eyes. And over all her loveliness, the grace Of morning blushing in the early skies.
She is, of course, his much beloved wife. “When I met her, “ he says in his Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, “When I met her, the surprise which I had felt at the first sound of her voice was heightened; she was almost tall and quite slender, with lustrous yellow hair and eyes so blue as to appear almost black. She was as white as a lily, and she was dressed in white.” And for the first time he had to face squarely the fact that he, on the other hand, was not. He says, “ ...I became again the bashful boy of fourteen, and my courage failed me. ...I don’t know what she said to me or what I said to her. I can remember that I tried to be clever, and experienced a growing conviction that I was making myself appear more and more idiotic. I am certain, too, that in spite of my ... complexion, I was red as a beet.”
The glory of the day was in her face, The beauty of the night was in her eyes. And over all her loveliness, the grace Of morning blushing in the early skies.
And in her voice, the calling of the dove; Like music of a sweet melodious part. And in her smile, the breaking light of love; And all the gentle virtues in her heart.
This is just so romantic. I was going to say, ‘it is just so male.’ I have never heard a woman speak this way. (Perhaps I just haven’t read enough in the Romance Novels vineyard.) I know there are women who feel that they have suffered from this seeming excessive identification of Virtue with Womanhood and, yet, its absence can be the cause of a desperate suffering.
“Gentle virtues ... sweet melodious part … calling … smiling ... in her heart.” Am I just old, just out of touch, that I weep for the absence of such tenderness in this life? Must we all be athletic go-getters, quick to fight, quick to scorn? Some kind of Super Adults who never need, never long — always the Meeters capable to the demands of the day? — always the Providers to others’ needs?
Here is the whole poem as Johnson wrote it. I’ll read it once and then I’m gone —
The glory of the day was in her face, The beauty of the night was in her eyes. And over all her loveliness, the grace Of morning blushing in the early skies.
And in her voice, the calling of the dove; Like music of a sweet melodious part. And in her smile, the breaking light of love; And all the gentle virtues in her heart.
And now the glorious day, the beauteous night, The birds that signal to their mates at dawn, To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.
It is about 9 am and I am setting out on what has become a daily trip around the shore of what is known as Big Pond in the town of Otis, somewhere deep in the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts. My mother knows only that I go out exploring on the surfboard that my father and I built . (Well, let’s be honest here. I picked out the design; he built it, with me standing along side fetching tools as needed. As an adult, I actually built another one of these surfboards in the same basement of our family home, but without my father’s supervision. He was much too capable a craftsman to be able to tolerate my amateur fumbling efforts. Let it be noted that my board floated as well as his and was never known to crack-up on a rocky shore.)
This was a rather large and cumbersome 1940’s style board; nothing like the sleek designs of the ‘80’s. But I could lie across it, and, with wetted goggles securely in place, view the rocky bottom of Big Pond in immense detail, square foot by square foot.
I began these artistic inquiries around the beachfront near the summer cottage that my father also built, but each day I move further and further afield, slowly circumnavigating The Known World. I say these ware “artistic explorations” because all I really care about are color and shape and what the academically trained painter calls architecture. Truly, I knew nothing of minerals or of the slippage of tectonic plates or of glaciers creeping back and forth.
I move out past the Spencer’s house on the point, a wonderful old musky, dark abode of the elderly, and, thence, into the uncharted territory beyond, paddling eventually to the largest spring source of this incredibly cold and deep summer home I love. And, then, I press on further still, working my way around the blockade of rocks rising up, suddenly, to just beneath the surface of the water — a death trap for motorboats. This is totally forbidden territory. And, then, in a surprising turn of bravery, I head straight out toward the center of the pond, where an island of perhaps a dozen houses beacons.
Roaring deathtraps drawing skiers or bearing fishermen cross my path; an occasional sunfish, too, sails swiftly past before disembarking its young passenger in a burst of unbidden energy. (I will not speak of this adventure in my home, now or in the future.)
I peer into the boathouses and the front yards of the island people, and note the manufacturers and horsepower of their docked motorcraft. I view the faded green and white stripes of their wooden lawn chairs, and wonder at how they mow their lawns so neatly. It seems odd to my gentle mind that in this idyllic playground, so far from city formalities, mown lawns yet exert their tyranny.
Some of the inhabitants are curious about my origins and I am drawn inevitably into fraternization with them. I continue on even to the dark back side of the island, and, then, to a littler isle just off its coast, where there is evidence of wood fire and beer drinking.
Back home my mother has not really noticed my absence. She and my younger sister are busy with the things domestic women seem to find endlessly fascinating — sewing and cleaning and discoursing on the minutia of their lives. They might smile condescendingly but without comprehension at the magnitude of my adventures. They might be alarmed.
This is a story of great excitement, with joy and power thrown in for good measure. But it is also a story of death and fear. So that, almost inevitably, you must know that this is a story of the Divine. My world feels full of such sacredness, and I have had no experience more full of the divine presence than that of which this story speaks.
When I stood by the bed where my father lay, his body ravaged by the cancer that killed him many years ago, we spoke of the giant tree outside his window and of the divine power it seemed to embody looking over him, embracing him in his final hours. This is our experience of the woods. The Hunt (for jack rabbits)
When I was twelve, my father took me hunting. Two of his buddies from work came with us. And, of course, there were the dogs — three dogs, three men, three shotguns, and me (out from behind my books).
I was familiar with the innards of the 30/06. My fathered cared for his religiously and I had often seen it on the kitchen table spread out in pieces, moist with oil. I knew also how, no matter how gently you might squeeze its trigger, it would still try to knock you to the ground with one giant kick in the shoulder. But my father’s men were big men and their guns obeyed them.
Their dogs were more precious than new born children. Harley Pentford Wellington III, commonly know as ‘Flash’, was a Beagle, and his line was the best of hunters. He was owned by my father, but he lived with me.
Always after supper we lay sprawled out on the diningroom floor in the embrace of the cool hard oak. Flash, the trained hunter, dreaming of the hunt, back there, lying between my legs. But he was not the best hunting dog we ever had. That honor belonged to Peanuts, who was dead — hit by a car, when I was six. Flash knew he was The Best in my heart, though I did love Peanuts, a lot. And I know my father missed him.
It was August and I was covered in bug spray and sweat and the dogs were jumping at their leashes. The men were full of stories, shotguns cradled in the crooks of their arms, cigarettes dangling from their lips. There were two fried egg sandwiches in my pockets — by six in the morning you are already hungry in the woods.
The trees, if they may be called that, were scrub oak; the brush was nearly as high. The burnt edges of scattered limbs testified to the fire that had downed them in days gone by. We grew silent amongst them; dog noses searched the ground. An unheard order required their release, and they charged off before us, racing down trails to destinies we could not follow. Old holes sprang up to view around us where fox or gopher once had lived. The sandy earth crunched beneath us. Leaves rattled in the breeze, when it came, bringing life from distant elsewheres and, then, moving on.
When the dogs began their frantic ritual of yips and darting here and there, they spoke a language no one could mistake. And hunter eyes scanned the brush for other signs of the life we knew, now, must linger here. The men were as keenly into the habits of our prey as were the dogs, and they worked as a single team in harness.
The oldest among the dogs took charge — shaking off the lesser scents, turning away from false trails now grown cold. This was no junior high lark. Matters of life and death were in our hands and in our senses.
And, then, suddenly, they were off! Tiny yips became great howls of excitement. Dogs tore madly through the underbrush, falling over their short legs, leaping more than running, crashing down long hillsides on their bellies. And we, tall monsters, thundered after them, though every step found us falling farther and farther behind until their cries were but a distant map of progress in the chase.
After some time the trail they ran moved off to our left. “They’ve turned him,” the men agreed. We were moving in a tight little circle that emulating the larger one that rabbits run in, when they fear for their lives. Dog voices had grown faint, but, now, suddenly, they grew louder. “They’re heading back!”
The men broke for a clearing directly in the path the fleeing rabbit must surely run. This time there was no time. No Time. There would be no chance for little rabbit tricks, no doubling back, no running in purposeless circles, no distracting our trained hunters from their deadly errand.
We stood silent at the clearing’s edge. The dogs’ cries were frantic, and coming closer. “Arw, arw,... arw, awr!” They were running straight toward us! The gun leapt into my father’s hands. Someone shouted. “Blam!”
I don’t know who fired. Men were running. The jack was down. Dogs were everywhere. A hunting knife flashed in the light. A head flew into a pile of leaping dogs. They were ferocious; their ecstasy almost too great to bear.
Eventually, the day drew gray, the first rain drops rustled the leaves, and we men headed for the cars. But the dogs were still off — too far away. Owners whistled and shouted out names. But only two came back. Our Flash was still on the trail.
The other men drove off after a long embarrassed wait. Rain rattled hard on our car’s hood, but we sat in silence peering out past the rivers of water now running down our windshield. My father got out every once in awhile and whistled and shouted, but Flash never came back. “Damn. He‘s got a deer.”
And in the end we had to go home without him. “We’ll come back in the morning.” And in the morning light Flash was there, bedraggled and exhausted, lying by the roadside where we had parked. My father wrapped him roughly in a blanket and he slept in my lap all the long journey home. “You were a naughty boy,” I whispered, but he paid no mind. Instinct guided him as it guided me, and I huddled over his frail figure with my back as a shield against the fire in my father’s eyes.
Come, sit here awhile In the soft cushion by my heart. Here find home, not rooms for fear. Here end the flight That drags your heart from death to death. Here, halt in moonlight's glow Where even heartless android workmen feel again love flow Through ancient corridors to places long forgotten — This is the destiny for which you have fought and sought.
I, this motherland feeding your dream; I, this dying god hauling your relentless burden upstream, By your scars I know you! Through your failures I claim Your heart.... I have waited so long. Come. Do not fail me.
----
In the garden of my soul where green pastures spread fragrant delights And lazy horses nibble in the shade of old apple trees A thin stream glistens in afternoon's slanted rays, A warm summer sun shimmers in its own milky blue reflections.
In cool shadows down by water's edge, Where even the smallest pebbles are cleaned and polished, Glacier rubbed boulders form flat sitting spots for two gangly boys Groping with sticks in cold depths beyond their minds to grasp.
While young horses munch down rotting apple droppings To spice their green fodder with stolen sweets, Flat saucer stones walk the water’s surface In quick steps propelled by expert snaps.
Their watery graves, unmarked, Are forgotten Before their souls may gurgle free Or their final 'plops' be heard.
On a far sunny knoll two black hounds lounge unnoticed, Dreaming minds lost in former hunting glories, Rerunning chases of great merit Without present effort or apparent future purpose.
Here fearful minds behold Lord Chaos reigning. No intentions guide toward long-term goals. No affirmations of gainful purpose Beguile serious strivers into mighty efforts.
For in this soul garden romantic histories Still command respect and gallant heroes wrestle Their foes to submission without loosing hearts to anger Or minds to fears they cannot master by a simple cry to god.
Lionhearts beat strong in bony breasts; Tired hooves stumble to late life victories; Keen senses still find home through miles of haze; And our Good King honors loyal knights as friends.
---
A rainbow melted from the sky one day and formed a pond where two small explorers now poke their heads beneath the water’s surface along the shallow shore, and scout out small curious stones while nosy passing bluegills nibble at their toes.
In deeper waters where boys do not go except by accident or by dare, the darkness sits - it's hungry belly primed for feasting; it's shadowed claws flexed and open wide in waiting. Here divers close their eyes lest fright devour their fight to surface.
"Such a pond is no plaything for disrespectful travelers", their mother's soft voice warns them, as she rides out from stables atop flashing hooves with snorts like fire crashing through sharp underbrush to fly across meadows in a sea of hair.
"Take care", she whispers, her lips burrowed in yellow cornsilk hair. "In such depths lie great treasures, hid for good reason from prying eyes that have no care for living."
---
A row boat is an unwieldy thing especially when powered By independent oarsmen. They struggled with the logistics of backward travel. They practiced poling off undetected rocks masked by reflection's glare. A map of underwater dangers unfolded slowly in their minds.
From the haven of their wide-bottomed craft they surveyed their dominion And their hair grew whiter still as their skin grew dark as night. And in that darkest hour when the sun's warmth has faded farthest from our earth They woke together as though hearing the same voice calling.
By their rainbow pond they stood transfixed, bare toes gripping icy sand, And they climbed into their dingy quiet as the air in breathing. Their oars they moved in union; their strokes were strong; their aim was sure; And they plunged beneath the surface as a single splash, now swallowed, now unnoticed.
They were absent still from their beds when she called to wake them For their chores. Blankets and clothes were scattered about on bare wooden floor. From the high tower window she could see the dingy floating empty In the center of the pond and a rainbow was sucking at the water, hard.
She spread her arms to greet it and urge it to its lonely task - To turn these waters back to heaven; to lift their burden from the earth. But her boys sat huddled, shaking on the farthest shore. Four black hounds paced around them. All arms and legs gripped others.
When she stood beside them, they huddled lower. With care she stooped And encircled them with a deep velvet cloak - a cloak she had never worn herself But saved secure in a chest long locked in a chamber beneath the tower. For Lionhearts beat still in bony breasts and friendship is treasure beyond any price.
---
The Green Man poked in the rubble of the rainbow pond departed. His staff was a sapling trunk - no mere branch held he in weathered hand. Great boulders toppled to their sides; wet underbellies he lay exposed, And he glowered down through green flashing eyes beneath great rusty eyebrows.
He cried out, "Ho!", at each new discovery. Boys crouched and watched wide eyed. They were not afraid. At least so they said as they boldly ventured In the giant's parting wake. He strode through the pond with majestic step And they marched in his footsteps with their own staffs tapping.
They had seen him first at the twilight hour, surveying the muck and ruin Of the summer pond that had been their joy and was still their hunting ground. They peered hard into places he uncovered. They touched and smelled The muddy bowels of the ancient creature we now call Earth.
He seemed unaware of their prying presence. Though he sometimes smiled To an inner joke when they could not see his visage. A great round hat shaded his ruddy features and wild red hair Poked out beneath it like raspberry bushes from the roadside.
The excitement of their discoveries emboldened the boys each day. They rose with the sun and roamed into the night obsessed with their new science. She stood in the saddle and watched from the hill and waited in stony silence. For she knew this man and she knew his plan and she sent her dogs to track him.
They crept in a crouch that only old dogs know, And they hunted him down to his lair in a cave in the rock - Moss covered and water dripping - back deep in the dark, Where she now stood and glowered; hands thrust on her hips; breasts heaving.
"These boys," she hissed, "are not treasures to keep. They live in the sunlight. They dance in the meadow. Free they are. Free they shall remain so long as Lionhearts are still beating." And she drew her sword as the lightning flashes.
His foot stomped ground. Rocks trembled and fell. "Mine!", he roared, like dark wind howling, and his staff he raised As though to strike her numb. But she stood still on silent ground. Green eyes stared into his green orbs, and he knew her then for what she was.
His staff he lay on the ground between them and he sank to a rock To wait. Her breathing slowed and she sheathed her sword. Her hounds gathered behind her feet. Their teeth were bared, But they held their ground and slowly sank to the rock to wait.
"I mean no harm." He spoke with a soft, rough sound, Like a man who has rarely spoken and must search in his throat For muscles forgotten to clear out a path for his words to follow. "I love them. My sons. True sons. Not right to stop me."
His voice seared great streaks in her breast and belly And she thought such wounds must pour out her life on this man. Her hounds whimpered - her distress was theirs, And they rose, all crouched to spring to their deaths if need be.
But the man made no move. Kept his hands on his knees And leaned forward as though the better to see her. He wanted to rise And his heart felt her pain, but he dared not reach out to touch her. "Ah," he signed. "I have no match for such anger."
The tears in her eyes shamed her hot warrior heart And she turned from his gaze to shield them. He rose, now, without word and strode through the dogs Who stepped aside as though for their master.
They walked to the pond. He stood apart in the shadows. Yes, two boys still searched there for meaning. "My boys," he murmured, And he turned to her eyes: "Treasures they are, but not treasures to keep." His words burned her soul but she nodded.
The shooting death of two members during a worship service at the Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee has resulted in an outpouring of prayers and messages of support from around the country. Waltham Unitarian Universalists, like myself, grieve for our brothers and sisters in Knoxville.
As spiritual seekers who have taken a hard look at human social life, we can begin to understand the depth of feeling that can drive an abusive man with a history of contempt for gays and liberals, as this shooter appears to have been.
But it is still shocking to see such hatred acted out and to recognize ourselves as its victims. Our Waltham church has been plagued by only minor vandalism due to our support of gay and lesbian marriage rights. And, thankfully, here in our city we are not alone in that social stand as Unitarian Universalist churches in other parts of the country often are. It is good to feel surrounded by friends in such emotion filled circumstance.
Most news reports focus on the shotgun-wielding intruder, but I find the churchmen who confronted him more worthy of contemplation — John Bohstedt, Terry Uselton, Jamie Parkey, and, especially, Greg McKendry (deceased) who was the quickest to action.
It is certainly true, as the Knoxville News Sentinel observed, “that no place is immune to such violence”, but the heroes of compassion and bravery, like these who rise to the community's need, are the ones who will see us through to a more just and caring day.
I am told that at the public vigil held on Tuesday in support of our Knoxville parishioners the final song was so emotion packed that the crowd erupted in shouts and cheers for the young singers, applause and tears of gratitude for the community’s concern, as well as grief for the victims of such an outrage. Amen to that.
I read one blogger who (with outrage eyes) saw Tom McCarthy’s film, The Visitor, as liberal propaganda about post-9/11 US mistreatment of Muslims. It would help this interpretation of the film if the words ’Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ were anywhere part of the soundtrack or if all Syrians or Senegalese could be reliably depicted as at least non-Christian.
There can be no doubt that the film’s immigrants are illegal and callously treated for no particular reason, but some presumably honest individual finding such a strong religious twist to the film ought to make us wonder about what we actually experience when we go to the movies or even when we walk outside afterwards. How much of our experience is actually happening? Is so much of what we experience being shaped by our expectations that we can never know what is real?
When I watched The Visitor at my local Landmark Theatre, I saw a story about Walter, a college professor who has lost his way, but now begins to discover in drumming new possibility for meaning in his life. This drumming is introduced to him through Tarek, the illegal Syrian immigrant he finds living in his long-abandoned NYC apartment.
Maybe we should compromise between these extreme interpretations and say that “the film’s title refers to [Walter] — a transient presence in his own life —as much as it does to Tarek, who seems at home wherever he is.” *
Walter is no where at home when the story begins. He tries to connect with the life he shared with his dead wife through learning to play the piano, as she did. But that is no more successful than finding meaning in his teaching or in writing another book. By ‘accident’ he is forced to return to the apartment he shared with her many years ago and there he finds through his visitor, Tarek, the musical connection to the feeling life that he seeks.
The Visitor storyline is far simpler than its emotional impact. Political activists will be driven toward righting our panicked Ship of State. Introspectives may be drawn to Walter’s life predicament and the powerful personal connection he finds through the music that embraces his foreign soul.
Go see this movie. I’m afraid that its impact may be lessened by seeing it alone on your little TV screen. For me the film is still about being at home — at home in your own skin; at home in the society where you live; an awkward, sometimes angry visitor.
**** We didn't talk about Tarek's mother, but we should have — a real traditionalist we think she is. The modernist, Tarek, strives to keep her in the dark about his Senegalese girlfriend. [One blogger actually refers to Tarek's girlfriend as "his wife", but nothing could be farther from what we see happening on the screen.] Fortunately, this mother is one traditionalist for whom love trumps all.
Not surprisingly we can feel Walter falling in love with this woman's solid ways. We, too, admire her as she rises above stereotype and accepts Tarek's loving embrace of "ethnic diversity".
Her name in Mouna [The Mouna Diamond weighs 112.53 carats and is of even greater color and weight than the Tiffany Diamond.] and at first it seems like this will be Red State Mouna vs. Blue State Walter. But in the end they are unified in their inability to deal with the monstrosity that our government has become.
The Visitor may be the story of Walter Vale's quest for a truly living identity, but his story takes place in the wasteland that our weak-kneed politicians seem hell-bent on creating.
* A. O. SCOTT in The New York Times film review, April 11, 2008.
