McCotta's Blog

My Fiddle, My Friend, My Voice

2011-11-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

Part 2: Speaking

My husband and I once watched a documentary about a young man living on a small farm in China with his mother. The two lived in exile from the village, as the people disapproved that he was not killed at birth, since he was malformed. On the son’s shoulder, close to his neck, lived a vestigial twin. It consisted only of a nose and mouth connected to the young man’s nervous system. When he laughed, the eerie twin’s mouth widened and its tongue rose and fell, just like its host’s. When the young man cried, his twin’s mouth crumpled in silent mimicry of sobs. Somehow this never-to-be-forgotten image explains to me the function I expected of my fiddle – except that it was going to express my emotions in sound, not physical mimicry. The vision now seems like an immature expectation full of beginner’s hubris, but not without truth.

Working with fourth and fifth graders last spring, I would ask, “If you were a space man, how would you guess that a human could talk?” Well, humans have mouths – openings in their bodies. They also have lungs that inflate and deflate, so air passes through the throat, changing tones as the muscles in the vocal chords expand and contract. The tongue shapes words, cooperating with teeth, lips.

The fiddle can also talk, or sing, in that it has two openings, the sound holes. (To call them F holes made the kids snicker, but let’s forget about that.) The wind, or vibrating force, is created by drawing across the fiddle strings with the bow. That the bow is made of a wand and a horse’s tail made eyes wide. The sound of the note you want to make, I told them, comes from shortening the fiddle string by stopping the sound in different places with the fingers of your left hand, analogous to the work of the vocal chords. (Of course I didn’t use the word “analogous,” but struggled to show with my fingers how the vocal chords work.) The function of articulation is not by tooth and tongue and lips then, but by the strokes of the bow, controlled precariously by the fingers of the right hand. Are the motions of the bow choppy and short? Are they long and resonating? Hard, soft, medium pressure applied?

Because I believe in the energy centers of the body known as chakras, I appreciate the space that the fiddle occupies when played. The fiddle sits under the chin, protrudes from the body, and becomes an extension of the neck, throat and upper chest. In energetic terms, it lies close to the fifth chakra – that of vocalizing the soul’s work of receiving, interpreting, and then giving back information based on one’s unique experience, worship, perception. The position also hovers about the fourth or heart chakra, the warm energy field that transforms experience into nourishment and also allows us to love and be loved by others. The fiddle, then, is the little twin who is capable of broadcasting intense expression.

When I was new to Irish fiddling, and would tell people I thought I had a lot to communicate on the fiddle, they responded cynically. My husband suggested I tape record myself playing a jig with great emotion, then play it a second time shifting my attention to control of my motor skills, then listen to the difference. What he predicted was true: the controlled piece sounded much “better” because the force of emotion made my playing sloppy. Taking what is inside and projecting it is one thing, but preparing the message to be received and understood by others is another time consuming process. Like learning language, it is a long journey from using beginner’s words and phrases in order to voice basic needs to communicating ideas in complex word groups, conveying specific and detailed information. An even deeper layer of language is culture-specific, using colloquial terms readily understood by members of a community that shares physical, social, and historical references.

It is between two poles – the technical and the emotional -- I’ve had to bounce back and forth, over and over the years, while a river of information from listening to other players runs through my body/mind memory: tempo, phrasing and variation, tone, articulation. Emotion. But I’m always working toward creating a fiddle voice that represents my feeling- world, couched in my relationship to Irish traditional music.

My Fiddle, My Friend, My Voice

2011-10-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

Thoughts are bulging out of my head and they seem to be emerging in essay form. So: Caveat: only for those with a long attention span.

Part I Initiation and Immersion

What is fiddling? People say he or she is “just fiddling around,” meaning that someone is wasting time doing inconsequential stuff. Not busy at serious, goal-oriented pastimes. In this season of falling leaves, of trees standing naked, I feel close to the wood of my fiddle. Its grain is a kind of hieroglyph of wind and water; its glow the memory of sunshine pouring down through openings in the forest roof. I know that the work I have done in learning tradition fiddling is the result of following a strong spiritual urge to find a source. For a long time I thought that source was outside of me, but now I see it is also within me. It is a force that motivates others possessed of the similar madness.

Fiddling and traditional music in general comprise an invisible world that can only be known by devotion and perpetual practice. It is not like playing from written music, with its succinct instructions, nor is it much like performing in the symphony, led by a conductor who interprets the musical piece. In an orchestral setting, the musician is a worker under the instruction of different bosses. Ironically, this is the kind of musician most widely regarded as productive and exemplary. Many of them cannot learn strictly by ear, as traditional musicians do. Their music does not become completely internalized and must be summoned by external prompts. Not all, but many classically trained musicians rely on written music. How then, does the process of learning traditional music, of fiddling begin?

You go through a gate. As far as Irish traditional music, if you are not born in Ireland, or in an Irish community in America, where you may have been born into a family already steeped in music, the process begins randomly. It may be a traditional concert down by a lake, or a recording you hear at a party that rocks your world. For me, it was an LP played for me when I was deep in grief. The music – it was the Chieftains -- soaked into the broken place inside me, telling me that it knew me. It seemed to be speaking about what I was feeling. How did it do this? Irish traditional music is for me, and always will be, a language of the deeper life of the soul, spirit, heart: whatever words you want to use to name the currents that run through us all. There is a kind of instant attunement, not unlike falling in love.

After you enter through the gate, that initiation, there follows a long period of listening and learning. As well as yearning. Nothing will satisfy that longing except being where the music is played. Hopefully, you are able to find traditional music communities or individuals who have a repertory of tunes. It only takes two to transmit and receive the music. This period may last for decades, or a lifetime, as it has been with me. To be open, to listen, and learn – these are traits which bind us to the world in a thoughtful way in general, not just in music. During the immersion period, waves of sound wash over the consciousness, each wave focusing, illuminating, until finally a clearer picture of the tune forms and curves begins to emerge. There is something pure about this period, as one listens holistically, allowing the colors and feelings of the tunes to come in, without judging or parsing out according to one’s acquired likes and dislikes. This sensory data will continue to cling to the tunes, including time, place, people, odors, emotions, in the same process that Proust’s madeleines sent him time-tripping, and indeed to question the nature of time itself. In time, the tunes provide an inner landscape rich in imagery: a kind of bank, or inner wealth of tunes that will demand to be played.

THE DRUMS AGAIN

2011-10-14T09:57:00.001-07:00

I wrote these lyrics in 1977, when I was involved with the (successful!) movement against a proposed coastal nuclear power plant in Charlestown, RI. The song came back to me this morning, thinking of the brave ones now speaking out for balance, sanity, and the renewal of faith between earth and mankind.

CHARLESTOWN DRUMS

I will stand from my chair

Slowly I will shame the frozen air,

Set my words flying;

Speak the truth and hope it will appear

Before my dying.

The tires and the tractors shock the silence of the stone

Businessmen recite the words their fathers never owned

Every soul, believing it is ruthlessly alone,

Forgets the future.

I walk beside my children

Toward the light I took for granted as a child

The light of morning

My feet retrace the pathways

With the quickness of a rabbit’s beating heart

Beneath the meadow.

Inside smoky offices the Big Ones make their plans

Replace thoughts of balance with the deity of Man

Leaving to the poets all the reverence for land –

They’re dead, not dreaming.

The silence of the forest is the music

Of the senses breathing slow

You’re bound to listen

The sunrise on the ocean is the promise

Of the wedding of all hearts

Choir of color.

As the constellations weave the magic of the stars,

Brilliant white of Venus and the burning red of Mars,

All the earth is shining with the vision that is ours

If we just listen.

HIGH SUMMER BLUES

2011-08-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

No blog entries lately because it has been all I could do to survive the storms and heat of summer. Finally I was able to give voice to my feelings with this poem. Sometimes I find myself channeling the rhythms and language of the Romantic poets, because I love them, especially Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley.

SUMMER’S GAZE (The Mole's Lament)

The naked gaze

Of August days

Strips away the subtle shades:

The timid Spring,

The elphin glades.

The brutal sun

The Shining One

Robs every private breath

The lungs possess

Till leaves succumb,

And meet their death.

I flee this heat

On tiny feet

On naked pink and scurrying toes

I dig, I borrow in the loam

Seeking cool and fragrant home.

While in the sky

Great hawks do fly

Regarding, with most bitter eye

The prey below

And limbs that blow

The clouds of pollen to and fro.

These yellow clouds

That blur the sight

This yellow sun that drives the night

From resting place on hill and dale

And strips the fields of summer yields

And burns the skin once fresh and pale.

Summer, with your staggering heat

Crueler more than Winter’s cold

Merciless, your summer storms

Your rattling, shattering skies unfold

Burst and boom through every room

And keep the gentle child afraid

There is no silence in the trees

But drums of wings the insects made.

Sick of light, I long for dark

Lapis, cobalt, purple, ink

Poems writ of indigo

The dome'd void, the stars that wink.

BLACKBERRY WINTER

2011-05-18T12:52:00.001-07:00

The mountain people call it Blackberry Winter. Just as the first pure white blossoms appear on the vines, the temperature drops and the weather stays chilly for quite a few days. I enjoy this temporary halt in the mad growth and greening. It is a quiet pause before the earth yields to the riot of fecundity we call summer. The scent of wild roses, also in bloom, is piquant and pure in this cocktail of oxygen and cool, damp air.

Once again I take out companionable sweaters or reach for my homespun afghan in the night when the temperatures dip low enough to require extra covers on the bed. The pup, nearly grown, shivers in the mornings and regresses to her need to cuddle on a lap, burrowing into a soft blanket. These pleasures seem superior to the constant beckoning of the outdoors during spring and summer. The people of Spruce Pine are devoted gardeners, both of veggies and flowers, and the sight of their handiwork puts my hours of fiddling or journaling to shame. Dig in the earth, people tell me. Send away for catalogs. Plan your garden. It’s very therapeutic.

I want to belong to this community, but the lust for coffeehouses, cafes, films, and bookstores is still strong in me, though it’s now almost four years since we left our urban lifestyle in Chapel Hill to live here in relative isolation from The Stuff. I am weak and spend time shopping on the internet now that our limited budget and the soaring price of fuel makes the one hour trip to Asheville a luxury rather than a casual option to simple country days. I should be buying tomato plants but I’m on eBay looking for a spring handbag.

Owning acreage on the side of a mountain was not one of my life goals, but now that it has happened, I find it has ups and downs like any relationship. Some days I am overcome with love for the familiar trees, the rushing of the creek after a good rain, the mounds of quartz embedded in the soil, the shining flecks of mica everywhere. Others, the silence and beauty do not call me. Instead I long for the stimulation and buzz of culture. My heart is here; my mind wanders elsewhere.

BIRD BOP

2011-02-16T12:19:00.000-08:00

Finch upside down on a thistle sock

A whistle stop

For bird a flutter, bird a twitter

Hoppy, pecky

Bird-zipping, low flying

Tiny beak, tail-flick:

Birds, snow, seed, feed.

Puffed out peck’ums.

Touche-touche

Dart/swoop/flutter

Fat Jack on a couple o’ tacks

Hop-sticks,

Keep a movin’

Down/up, birds up down

Peck’um.

THE DOLL CHAIR

2011-01-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

People seldom sat in her,

The Doll Chair

She lived by the hearth,

Facing outward,

She partnered the television

Two sibling watchers,

One on squat claw feet,

The other a grey orb

Observing the Living Room

At my grandparents’ house,

With its worn Regency grandeur

Its well-trod carpets

And fragrances delicious and kind,

Waved inside by the swinging kitchen door.

On Christmas morning

The doll I wanted,

Had longed for

All those other seasons

Appeared in the Doll Chair,

Its small arms extended,

Next to my sister’s choice,

And our two Christmas stockings

Bulging with treats.

That was the miracle of having.

But before came the miracle of waiting.

Christmas eve,

On the foldout in Pop Pop’s study

Sister and I lay bug-eyed

While headlights from our cars

And the neighbors’ cars

Lit the darkness behind white nylon curtains

Made dancing panels on the high ceiling

And whispers came and went

Muted fluttering from the other

Regions of the limitless house.

In the mysterious night

I lie sleepless, alive to every sound.

My sister’s quiet breath beside me

I can’t wait but I do

Knowing that my wish is going to come true

That magic is about to happen

I am present to the velvet darkness

In an ever-new, ever changing way.

And it seems to me now

That my child mind believed less in Santa

Than in my ability to make appear,

By my dreaming and my desiring,

The most cherished of earthly things.

The Doll Chair a portal

For the bright, the new, the shining.

She is mother love

She is the full-petaled rose of possibility

Of gifting, of renewal.

On a New Year’s morning she reminds me of what is gone

And the possibility of what yet might be

Unseen now

But roiling in my heart to appear

Tiny flashes of clarity in the sleepless night

Reassurance of what may come

What may yet come.

FALLing

2010-10-31T17:06:00.001-07:00

On the ancient Celtic calendar, tonight is Samhain, when the living and dead join hands and tango. It is the eve of a New Year; the tropical summer with its searing heat is behind us and the introspective, crystalline winter is ahead. It seems I have come round again on the calendar, to a place just above that spiraling DNA of inner growth where I can look down from my perch and see clear through to one year ago, when jubilation over a completed CD veered, all at once, into the territory of grief and loss. No matter how it strikes, I can never dodge the process of grief. It is a flood. It must have its way.

How many times I’ve wandered the path in the woods behind our house this past year. Once it was a retreat, a white land offering pristine beauty. Then it became green and flowered, enchanted and fragrant. Summer brought a surprise: the arrival of a little pup in our lives, a creature to shake me up, drive me crazy – to come along the path with me.

The woodland way is now broad and well-used, with choice canine toileting spots on either side. It’s a friendly place I travel three or four times daily, with Sookie coming up behind, her ears flying, the picture of joy and abandon. When I sit by the spring, my arms and lap are full of wriggling and warm new life. The leaves are gold fairy coins against a blue sky.

So, let them Fall
Like water over the precipice
The old dreams
The ghosts and demons
The scaries and the faeries
Let them Fall --
The leaves, the leftovers
The undigested, the ruined
The perfect, the imperfect
The tears, the joy
The anger, the helplessness.
All of it, all of it.
To happen again and again.

Dog Days of Summer

2010-08-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

The stork brought a little present;

Dropped it in our yard the night of July 25 --

A squirmy, lost

Flea-infested pup.

Now, a lunar cycle later

She lives here.

Over the past 30 days

I’ve decided to surrender her to the Rescue

Four separate times.

But then couldn’t go through with it,

Cried all night -- not the dog -- me.

I can’t go many places any more

Not for more than an hour or so.

I am on carpet patrol,

House training alert

Sometimes, often, at my wit’s end.

Why why why?

Why go through all this?

My heart has been stolen

By Sookie Moon.

Alias “Puppa.”

I wonder,

On the good days,

If I'm the one

Who's Rescued.

May greetings

2010-05-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

FAERY SONG

Come with me

Put down your spade

Stop the dizzy spinning between your ears

There will be music

You will hear

And wonders

You will see

It is so easy,

Just come with me.

If the marvels fall quietly upon your senses

Open your senses

This is done

By letting go

If you do not see the beauty

It is still here

Still, here

Water over stones

And secret lights in the dew

Many who crawl

Swim, slither, or fly

Know the way

Why not you,

Walker?

Why not you?

(copyright Cathy Larson Sky 5/29/2010)

Road Trip Wagon Train

2010-04-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

Pat and I recently drove to Sarasota, FL for a concert, stopping on the way at Roswell, GA for an Irish session, and at St. Simon Island to visit a friend. In Sarasota we both came down with a cold/flu and headed prematurely for home, where we spent the next two weeks as runny-nosed, coughing couch potatoes. During this time we rented Ken Burns’ documentary The West on Netflix, fifteen hours of the grim history of the wresting of our country from Native Americans. I heard again the doctrine of Manifest Destiny that justified the whole mess; hadn’t thought of it since sixth grade history class. At that time, as a kid raised on TV cowboys (good) and Indians (bad, except for Tonto), I just assumed that all had been for the best, and now I was living in hunky dory Eisenhower land, thanks to the valiance of my forebears.

Now my road trip memories are etched in some kind of tableau right next to the images of wagon trains snaking across the land; travel-lusting Americans, side by side, from places all over the country, sharing a common dream of the future. Are we any different, we selfish, restless people, today? We are a strange tribe, driven by collective ambitions while demanding our right to act as individuals.

I felt the obnoxiousness of our American tribe on I 95 as I encountered folks at rest stops, in hotel hallways, waiting in line for coffee and fries at McDonald’s, or zipping by me on the road in sturdy cars with bikes strapped to the roof (it was the beginning of Easter vacation.) Aspects of communal facilities troubled me, like for instance the women who leave toilets damp (which one sometimes only discovers after sitting down.) Or the fact that some magnetic force attracts me to the only stall in a row with the latch broken (again, only discovered once I sit down, having arrived at the 11^th hour of my need) so I have to keep the door closed with one foot, while some fussy and vocal toddler impatiently rocks against it. Where is the child’s mother? She is talking on her cell phone while washing her hands at the other end of the room. Was this the etiquette observed at freshly dug latrines on the trail? I wonder, and some not-so-nice images appear.

Feverish and swollen faced, Pat and I faced traffic jam after jam as we inched along I 95. Troubling things happen among the tribe during these events. One or two or three renegades decide that the waiting does not apply to them, and run past the line of cars on the left hand margin, with an attitude like, “watch me, suckers.” Then, when the driver discovers that he really does have to merge, he depends on the kindness of his fellows to let him again into the ranks. I really wonder about this psycho-social behavior. Is this the same me-ism that caused settlers to ride roughshod over others to stake their claim on homestead acreage, on gold mining sites? Competition is the backbone of our tribe. Sometimes it feels like it is actually a pastime in itself, even when the prize is ambiguous, or meaningless.

Worst of all were the trucks. I guess truck drivers are a sort of sub-group of our tribe, with different rules. Like, you get to bully anyone smaller than you if they are slowing you down in any way. You get to drive faster than anybody else. Why is this? Because you are busy delivering the Stuff. These are the kings of consumerism, the lords of the highway. Not only do they blast you with their horn to get out of the way, they continue with the blast while and after passing – a steady stream to match the F and GD and SOBs the driver is probably muttering under his breath. I understand that these guys drink like Red Bull to keep them alert. How weird is that, Red Bull? The Lakota must be laughing up their sleeves at that choice of name.

So now I sit quietly in my mountain home, in a territory once peopled by the Cherokee but now claimed by white Christians who worship a prophet born two thousand years ago in the Middle East, who was dark skinned and wore sandals. I don’t understand this mongrel tribe to whom I belong. Or maybe I do, but don’t want to admit it. I walk in the woods and by the streams and wonder whether the spirits there can ever welcome me; I know myself as a member of the fair skinned people who bribe and promise and lie, who come on with the tractors and the asphalt, claiming a better life for all. The past is still alive.

White on White

2010-03-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

The White is not a kind, benevolent teacher. It is a trickster, a shape-changer -- beautiful, but terrible. Many people believe these mountains are home to fairies and ghosts. This photo of a twisted bittersweet vine looks to me like a long creature with legs ending in giant bird- claws, ready to fling back its hoary head in laughter once no one is watching.

Last time I went into the White, about ten days and a four-day thaw ago, I climbed a steep rise to sit on a fallen tree trunk and observe the Blue Ridge, visible through the standing line of bare trees. Another animal had been where I walked in the snow. The prints were about the size and shape of a dog’s. Just as I crested the hill, the tracks led up to and through the V shaped opening of a split sapling. An instant picture of my pet tiger cat and her love of flirting through small spaces appeared in my mind, and I felt certain that the tracks had to be those of a large cat. Wildcats have been spotted on our land and in the adjoining Pisgah National Forest.

I was too far from the house to be heard by my husband if I hollered for help. The steady drumming of my heart as I climbed higher turned into the need to open my mouth and pant.

Breath and breath and breath.

Afraid. Afraid, but not turning back, my legs stubborn and willful, I kept on till I passed through the narrow opening we call intention, choice, or risk. Any of those words that mean doing something you’re scared to do. What was the alternative? Slinking back to the house, knowing that I’d abandoned a goal (albeit a tiny goal) out of fear, or laughing about it over the phone with a girlfriend, sipping a cup of cocoa, covering my failure with wit, making it a funny story? Lame.

Stray Plenifora branches, with wicked red thorns, insinuated themselves under my coat and sweater, scratched my belly. They dove into the top of my rubber boots, caused bright welts on my right leg, wounds I only discovered later, in the bath that night. I wondered if the marks were some kind of rash, until I recalled the woods and recognized the shorthand of the wild upon my flesh: the consequence of my intrusion, the sharp price of admission to the White.

WINTER GIFT

2010-01-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

Four weeks of whiteness began on December 16th of 2009. I came to love the cold winter: its beauty and peace, the voice of snow, mystical, beyond the normal range of sound. Obligations to the outside world fell away. I slept without inhibition, ripping off hours of sleep, savoring it like fresh warm bread. When I was rested, I ventured into the woods, down to the small spring and stream there. Hoof prints of deer, pale blue arrows in the snow, clustered around spots where the animals had stopped to drink.

This particular day, in the silence of the woods, I came face to face with this creation by the spirit of water. In one form, she assumes an austere and pure shape; in the other, a playful, joyous motion, transforming and carving simply by journeying where she will, where nature leads her. Two discrete forms of the same element, one less fixed that the other, achieving together great beauty and cooperation. Even more, this note from nature was quickly writ, as the tableau was erased, melted, soon after I encountered it.

But this image, this winter gift, has returned to me again and again, making me pause and think carefully about what it means, in the dreaming part of me, in the splendid hours when the mind takes the time to savor and understand experience. I seem to be receiving a simple message about loss, and it comes from an old Gene Pitney song: Only love can break a heart. Only love can mend it again.

OUR CD BABY

2010-01-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

It's the equivalent of the New Year's cherub, clad in diaper, banner, and top hat. Patrick, my piper husband, and I, have produced a little electronic offspring. Traditional Irish music, played in the old style, as we learned from older generation musicians in Ireland and here in the US-Irish community. Here are some reasons it is unique:

Though there were pithy nouns and bold verbal commands exchanged between husband and wife during recording, the recording discussions were mediated by the purring, owl-eyed presence of Wanda, the long haired black cat, a pet of Too Tall Tom and Suzi Dimock of Thunderstorm Hollows studio. Peace was restored.

It was fueled by excellent and affordable ($3.59) chicken salad sandwiches at Creekside Restaurant in Bakersville, NC. Plus a few sides of Curly Fries.

It comes straight from our hearts.

It can be purchased at Ossian, USA (see the sidebar) or from us (info at www. patricksky.com)

Happy New Year to all of us in the creative arts, including day dreaming.

Season of loss

2009-12-12T08:32:00.000-08:00

Last month we lost a young member of our family of close friends. He was only thirty years old. Pneumonia took him suddenly. Sage, we will miss you.

DARKNESS FALLS EARLY

How do we remember joy
When hurt is deep?

So deep it lives with the leviathans.
With the scattered remains of ships.

The keening of whales
In the snores of our houseguest
Keeps me awake. I cannot dream.

Waiting in the line
At the supermarket,
It goes through my mind
This is the price we pay for loving.

Would we still give our hearts
If we had to pay in advance?
The first hour of pain
Would change our minds.
But we love by instinct
We can’t seem to help it.
There is no answer.

I believe in the Creator of rainbows, of waterfalls
I believe in the Creator of small birds and starlight.
In the Creator of springs and streams
Of quick-moving rivers
Of wind in the treetops
Of mud
Of green hillsides
Of slow black cows,
Their sides swaying, minding the path.

I hold fast to these things,
This fragile gospel
As the road bends sharp before me.

copyright Cathy Larson Sky 12/12/2009

WHEN LIFE IS HARSH,

2009-11-18T09:45:00.000-08:00

I want Christmas/I want the red and green, color of blood, color of pine.
I want silver haired ladies in Frosty the Snowman, skating scene sweaters.
I want mulled spiced wine and cheese balls, presents stacked in a crazy pile;
I want elves, piquant and bell-capped, or round and apple-bellied, and
Angels -- ornate Victorians or home mades of clothespins and cotton balls.
I want the lift in my heart when I see, turning up the drive, the tree lights beckon from the window.

I want the feeling of Benny’s Hardware/new tire smell wafting from the bicycle rack/cello-gleam of dolly packages, housing bunting babies, or nymphs with curly poly-thread wigs/pink or swimming-pool blue ponies with shimmering manes and tails.

I want my arms around a wriggling, impatient toddler, dressed in snap-up peejays, her breath sweet upon my neck as I carry her on my hip to the sink, where I wipe sticky candy mess from pudgy soft fingers, the chocolate of foiled Santas from her tender mouth, from her cheeks flushed crimson from sugar, and waiting, and not having to wait any more and

Christmas early morning
Christmas lustrous night
Christmas, her shining bobbing orbs and winking lights
Tracing the snowy yard
Breathing up into a lapis sky
Where a scattering of tiny rhinestones,
The wake of angels’ wings,
Blink joy in the cold stillness.

Copyright Cathy Larson Sky 11/17/2009

DISCLAIMER

2009-10-16T17:52:00.000-07:00

Recently my husband, Patrick, pointed readers of the Chiff and Fipple, an Irish music discussion page, to my blog. He did this out of enthusiasm for my writing. I am not just a musician but also a writer. Along with the novels, poetry, and stories I have written over the past 30 years, I've often penned articles about Irish music in newspapers and in journals. However, this blog is just about whatever is in my head at the time I feel moved to write. I am sorry for those who expected, understandably, to find a blog about Irish music. You will find a link to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin to the left; also a link for Tarot readers and mystics, and some author biographies. It's a potpourri.

I didn't ask Pat to put my blog on the Chiff and Fipple. If I'd known he was doing so, I would have stopped him, sweet as he was to recommend my work online. It was like standing up in a pub and and recommending a church down the street.

FICTIONAL TWITTER BETWEEN CHARLES DICKENS AND MARK TWAIN

2009-09-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

CD: Saw 5 or 6 li’l bros begging tday near my aptmt.

MT: That sucks, dude. What is world comin 2?

CD: It makes U, like, want 2 do sumthing. :0(

MT: Could be a book, bro. :0)

CD: Yeah well tell that 2 my publisher.

MT: What up there?

CD: My numbers are lo.

MT: U trust him?

CD: No way.

MT: Hey man, don’t give up.

CD: Same to U. BTW how’s your fam?

MT: Not great, man.

CD: ????

MT: Totally my fault, dude.

CD: ????

MT: Messed up, bigtime. Got hustled.

CD: Oh man. How bad?

MT: You don’t wanna no.

CD: That bad?

MT: Worse. Like, ruined.

CD: Need a gig?

MT: Scribe type?

CD: No, man. Stand up.

MT: Like, in stage?

CD: Yeah. It means $$$$. Bigtime.

MT: You’re shitting me.

CD: No way. Can U get over here?

MT: There?

CD: I could get U a couple gigs.

MT: Awesome! When?

CD: Let me no when U can come over.

MT: I’m on it!

CD: Gotta run. Namaste, bro.

MT: Later, man. Thanx.

MY MOVIE GEMS

2009-07-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

My husband and I left Spruce Pine and drove to the metropolis of Asheville to view the new Harry Potter last week. Did I enjoy it? I don’t know. By the time the twenty minutes of previews were over, I was shell-shocked and couldn’t concentrate on the feature film. The dozen previewed films included end-of-the-world horrors (New York falling into the sea), screaming, machine gun fire, crumbling and crashing buildings, all at ear-splitting volume. Psychopaths, drug dealers, murderers and corrupt cops stalked one another through puddles of blood. Then came cartoon creatures, supposedly comic relief, whose main charms were belching and farting as well as sassy and low-conscious backtalk. It’s enough to make you believe in conspiracy theories. When I am at my most paranoid, I wonder if the media powers-that-be purposely set out to desensitize American moviegoers to fear and terror and bloodshed. That these things are considered entertainment is scary to me, too close for comfort to the Roman taste for gladiator gore. As for the potty humor – that’s not really my idea of speaking to the inner child. Lewis Carroll did a much more admirable job of that with his Alice, using literature.

Here are ten films I ordered through Netflix (many of them dealing with war), that are gentle, wise, character-driven, and full of insight and hope about the human condition:

Housewife, 49: an ordinary British wife and mother undergoes personal growth during WWII

Kiki’s Delivery Service (Japanimation): a young girl finds friendship and meaning in a lonely world

Grey Gardens (the film version, not the documentary): Streep and Barrymore are exquisite, especially if you have seen the documentary.

The Station Agent: friendship arrives in the strangest packages

Kinamand (Danish): humility, unexpected transformation

I’ve Loved You So Long (French): mystery surrounds a reunion between estranged sisters. Subtle, beautiful, evocative

Last Chance Harvey: virtuoso performances by Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Brilliant acting, I don’t care if the critics gave low points to the love story.

The Cats of Mirikitani (Documentary): a Japanese American street artist is befriended by his documentarienne.

Paradise Road: an all-star female cast, a transcendent WWII story

Goodnight, Mister Tom (Brit): a crusty village character takes in a lad from London’s bombing district

Moon Rant

2009-06-07T18:00:00.001-07:00

May in the mountains was monsoon season. We have gone from two years of drought to drenching, soaking rain. The grass reaches knee level in two days. Fecundity has reached a new level. I’m glad that I am no longer a breeder because all this green moisture feels like the genesis of a new tribe stirring in the universal womb.

What harm? We need a new tribe, a bunch of folks who aren’t out to play king of the mountain or to argue over who can have the bombs, the biggest and baddest of toys. There has to be a better way to use our time here on earth. The newbies will know.

For one thing, the new tribe will honor wrinkles as marks of wisdom and find them beautiful. They will scratch their heads in confusion when they find ancestral skeletons with squishy blobs of non biodegradable material wrapped among the gnarled dried muscles of the face and ribs and slug-shaped plastic where lips once were.

I want to apologize to the future folk. I’m not sure what went wrong with my American tribe, why they got so silly and vain. Maybe we basked too long in the benefits of the sweat of our forebears and forgot to grow up. Bad guys got in there while we were building MacMansions and trying to have tighter abs.

Somebody tell us what to do. Help, not enough life boats to go around. Rich and richer first, then we’ll see what we can do about the men, women and children.

I’m ranting but can’t help it. Pluto and Uranus are having a field day while Saturn and Jupiter duke it out over who’s in charge. The June moon is full and hovers in a cloudy werewolf sky. Ah-oooo.

POEM FOR A RAINBOW

2009-05-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

Divine spectrum

Arch of light

Bowed from mountain to mountain

You answer the rumble of thunder

And the wild mad rain

With Amen, Amen

In the green scented twilight

Under skies soft gray with tears

Your beauty is a fragile chord

Subtly, gently changing

With the shift of light and hue

Lilac and watered lapis

Lime and palest gold

What I could do with such music

I could fly

Stay, stay

Bright vision --

My heart's cry

While moments and moments

Wink past

The heartbeats

The seconds

Bear us away

On the tide.

March Meditation

2009-03-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

March, with its overcast days and damp chill that seeps into the bones more insidiously than winter cold. March, with its occasional burst of spring-like days, soon replaced by more drear, which seems even more unbearable in contrast, like a promise believed but broken.

But the gray skies only make more beautiful and luminous the pink weeping cherry trees that grow in our front and back yard. The trees look like divine beings from another planet, reminding me of the delicate, fragile beauty of the moment. Just behind them, garbage cans are in display -- ours knocked down by the city sanitation workers, who seem to derive primitive joy out of flinging and tossing things around.

If I have a prayer, it’s this: Teach me to fill more space inside me with beauty. I still see and feel the garbage in my life: troubled relationships, thwarted hopes and desires, regrets, shortcomings. But let them take up less space than my gratitude and joy when I perceive the tender and tiny miracles that surround me each day.

A BEAUTIFUL FRIEND

2009-03-05T18:40:00.000-08:00

This evening I learned of the death of a special friend. He was a mustang quarter horse and his name was Romeo. I met Romy in 2005 when I attended a three-month class called Women's Intuitive Horse Riding at Blue Skies stables in Chapel Hill. Deborah Pearson-Moyers, the instructor, allowed me to follow my heart's desire: to seek, as an adult, the answer to why I had so longed for horses when I was a child. In the most painful years of my childhood, I had an imaginary horse named Ronnie who greeted me at the door when I went outside, and stayed by my side while I roamed the woods beyond my house. In 2005 the deaths of my mother and closest friend left me feeling very much like the frightened child I'd been at eleven. At age 57, I decided to pursue a special relationship with a real horse. I was not disappointed. Romeo welcomed me, nickering softly, the first day I attended class. His wisdom, kindness, and willingness to share his life with me was remarkable during that enchanted spring. Almost every person, child or adult, who met Romeo felt the loving and generous soul of this incredible horse and became a better person for it. I wrote this poem for Romeo four years ago. Rest in peace, dear and treasured friend. I love you.

ROMEO’S SONG

At the water trough

Once my thirst is gone

I hold my lips

Above the quiet pool

Tasting the coolness there

I carry its peace with me

As you lead me.

Ring of metal, gate’s skirling sweep

The round pen

A circle of earth

Where I may graze.

You have work for me

I can yield, even as I must

Keep watch over my Others

My ears scan the air;

Their hoof beats, their calls;

Their rhythm

All resound

Here in the velvet of my chest

Here where I am tender

Here, where I am strong.

Your fear makes you slumber

And I trick you awake,

Teasing your will

Or make a wall with my Nature

As I graze,

So you cannot enter.

This is often my way.

Today you have come

Singing of love,

Your heart open

The sun streams over our shoulders

You wave the gnats from my eyes

Two-footed handmaidens,

With soft, laughing voices;

We are one.

Once I greeted you at the tall gate

And you were frightened

By the bony crunch of my teeth

But you heard music there

And did not run away

We mingled our breath.

Now I will carry you

Though all your bones are aching

I am your sacred ground

Your heart, beating slowly.

June 13, 2005

COLLEGE TOWN, CABIN FEVER

2009-02-21T11:59:00.000-08:00

Next month Spruce Pine votes on a referendum allowing liquor to be sold in this stolid Christian “dry” community. The ruckus over this is unpleasant. Everything’s on my nerves. I’m still peeved about the way the local Republican party bombarded us -- registered Democrats -- with junk mail every day preceding the election (including a right wing propaganda DVD) and flooded the answering machine with ugly phone calls. My husband is an outspoken supporter of the pro-alcohol campaign who vents his opinions as editorials in the local paper. His volley of letters with Ruby, an elderly Baptist local who is anti-drink and anti-Obama, has escalated into a mini-war. An example of one of her headlines: “Obama is a Communist and so was MLK.” Now Ruby’s writing us directly. Her recent letter, on pretty bluebird paper, enlightened us with the 'fact' that the president is by-sexual!

I got fed up last week. On Thursday I drove the four hours to Chapel Hill and reveled in the psychic oxygen of culture, good food, and the company of my adult kids and educated, funny, articulate friends. For the last three of the eighteen years I lived in Chapel Hill, I complained about the town’s ubiquitous and often posed political correctness, the encroachment of the upper class, and the compulsive drive toward development and greed: rising rents driving local businesses to bankruptcy. Now I’ve swapped those social tensions for those of Spruce Pine, these ills don’t seem so bad, especially when a distracting riot of films, restaurants, coffee bars, shopping, and museums offer their charms.

It’s been difficult this week re-adjusting to small town mountain life. I am home, but simultaneously longing for home. My heart is in two places. How many homes do we have in a lifetime? What is this concept of ‘home?’ Every place, every thing is flawed; I know this, but I’m still confused. The crippled real estate market makes relocating implausible right now, so I've got to learn to be happy where I am. The Toe River rolls along in deep green currents, clean and fresh, but the cold wind makes my face raw while I’m walking there. My friend the kingfisher chirrups from his hollow on the river bank, but he’s not showing his face.

St. Brigid's Day Poem

2009-02-02T18:55:00.000-08:00

IMBOLC, AT THE WELL

Water soothe my burning thoughts

Fire, stream o’er the rocks, through the crevices

Of my frozen will --

Bark and lichen

Silt and earth

Steady the pilgrim way.

Water, receive these weary feet

Bless this brow, these eyes

These cheeks.

Laurel and pine

Hide my grief

In the weft of fragrant bough and leaf,

Weave me a new fabric

Whisper to me of tomorrow.

Baby Boomer Fashion Phobia

2009-01-22T15:04:00.001-08:00

Why, WHY? Now that Michelle Obama is the officially declared “new Jackie-O,” the First Lady of Fashion as well as the White House, WHY does her first big trend setter have to be the sleeveless sheath dress? It’s too cruel. The female news commentators covering the inauguration on TV – already sheath clad -- made me remember what it was to risk hypothermia for fashion.

In the ‘60s, I had two sheaths: one in emerald green, a knit, and the second in royal blue wool. I had a starry sun with pointed beams, a junk jewelry accessory, that I pinned in the center of the bodice. In those sheaths I shivered through Christmas parties, dances and dinners. No one ever wore jackets or little sweaters. You might gently drape your coat over your shoulders, sitting down, but you were careful not the ruin the line of the sheath. It was a simplicity thing. I remember observing pimply goose bumps on my arms when I was fixing my face in the merciless ladies’ room mirror.

But the cold isn’t the worst thing. Now I’m sixty, why, oh WHY is the new must-have body part a set of well-toned upper arms? Just when I’d resigned myself to my genetic heritage, turkey arms? They wibble, they wobble. My grandmothers had them, my mother had them. They made soft places to cuddle a grandbaby’s head. When I was small, I found those arms so comforting, so REAL. In my fifties I gave up my free weights, gym machines, aerobics, step aerobics – trading them for yoga. For walking. Exercise for the body AND soul, fitting for a slowed-down metabolism like mine. Jimi Hendriks’ Foxy Lady just isn’t my theme song any more; it’s more like Love is All I Have to Give, I'm Built for Comfort, Not For Speed, or, seasonally, My Funny Valentine.

But now . . . I am starting to panic. Spring is just a few months away. I only have a short time to get the mini-barbells from the bathroom closet, where they share a shelf with a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner. Hillary never would have done this to us. Never!

Small IS Beautiful (isn't it?)

2009-01-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

GIVING, CHRISTMAS 2008

My personal gifting budget was about one third its pre-retirement size, so I struggled this holiday season with the concept of “small.” Small is beautiful: I believe that. It’s a phrase from the title of the 1973 book by E.F. Schumacher, followed by “Economics as if People Mattered,” a supposedly influential philosophy that disappeared into the ozone layer, as as far as I can tell, after having lived through the advent of SUVs, millionaire consciousness, and the substitution of manipulation for integrity on the part of our government. At least Schumacher’s book changed me and the way I try to live.

Now came the acid test. Come the second week in December, it was time to put my beliefs about humble spending into action. My gifts came from local Spruce Pine thrift and book stores, artist hideaway boutiques, Walmart, the grocery store, and my own closet.Still, certain bogus equations and axioms hissed in my head, like an evil sotto-voce, as I doled out my modest funds. Here’s one: Love equals big-ticket item Christmas gifts. Another: The greater the cost, the bigger the love. The year’s hot items, like brand new Ipods, laptops, and Blackberries, were beyond me. I wanted to light up my loved one’s faces with joy, the joy of having Big Stuff. The other meaning of the word “small” -- stingy, ungenerous, mean- spirited – apparently haunted me as I apologized for presents as I handed them over.

“It’s nothing much,” I heard myself say, even though I had picked each item with thought and care.

This year I have more post-holiday blues and fatigue than ever. This confrontation with the force of consumerism has rocked my world, made me realize how deep its roots are sunk into my being.

2008-12-11T16:28:00.001-08:00

WHEN I AM DANCING

When I am dancing

I see the faces of people I’ve loved

Feel them close by

The ones who betrayed me

The ones I lost when our paths parted

The ones on the other side

Who visit me in dreams.

As I dance, you are with me

You and you and you

My bones lose their gravity

They’re smooth as pearl,

As full of light

Dancing, I remember

The love story of being;

The tip of the stamen,

The tender whorl of the petal.

Immortal unswerving liquefied shimmering

Sunflower

Starlight

Dance.

(Dedicated to the music of Van Morrison, whose music helps me clean the kitchen late at night. My favorites: Brown Eyed Girl, Crazy Love, Domino, Wild Night, Jackie Wilson Said, Moondance. Picture is of me and my friend Beanie Odell, a fellow Irish fiddle woman, rocking out to reels and jigs.)

2008-11-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

Friday morning was one where I just couldn’t see why I should get out of bed. Hey, I know my anxiety is not unique. So many Americans are worried about money, about losing their children to an ambiguous foreign campaign, about getting sick without insurance to cover them. All of us are carrying burdens as the holiday season approaches. It will not be a typical Christmas. What will it be? In times like these, we must live day to day, without having answers. A bright white light shone through the slats of the Venetian blinds in my room. Snow, it advertised. Snow had fallen during the night. I shambled into the living room to find that magic had touched the holly bushes in our back yard. The holly berries are abundant this year. Now the sliding doors framed a scene of pure enchantment just within my reach. I pulled on my boots and waded out in the snow to take this snap. I just wanted to share the beauty. Let your hearts be light.

Cosmic Metronome

2008-10-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

I had this thought today during music practice with my husband: why doesn't the universe provide us with a metronome to solve world problems?

For years my husband and I have quarreled over our music. At times it's been so intense we've had to put down the pipes and fiddle until the ugly feelings went away. "You're speeding up. No, you are. You're missing a beat. No, you're just playing the wrong version." On and on.

Now, in retirement, we have committed ourselves to playing every day for at least an hour. We've brought in an old friend, the metronome. We wired it to some speakers so it's loud and assertive. Gradually, the steady beat guides our attention away from the old complaints and focuses our attention on our own music-making. Slowly a new and harmonious partnering is possible as the steady beat becomes our guide and natural arbitrator.

Where on earth/in human nature is the cosmic metronome that would steady the pulse of human relations; that would channel the energy of blame and argument and disperse it into self-examination and self-correction, with the aim toward achieving harmony? I don't know. I'm just wondering.

On Being a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

2008-10-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

Turning 60. I feel like a grilled cheese sandwich. All nicely toasted on one side, and then somebody comes along and flips me over. All the cheese from the baked side starts to seep through the vulnerable inner bread on the flip side.

This is not the best analogy, but I am trying to describe the way that each of the thirty year periods of my life are suddenly aligned, and the past is backwashing, filtering through the newly completed 30-year layer comprising young adulthood to “maturity.” My memory will flood with reruns from my early years, something like old movies on TV. I'm lost in the good and bad, the ugly and sad, the amazing, and the pathetic. Retro-view in both color and black-and-white.

Fumbling back to bed on the way from the bathroom one night, I caught the reflection of the bedroom in the window glass, and had the strangest feeling that I was walking inside the glass; the sense of being a goldfish (but that’s hubris: let’s say a guppy) inside a liquid, fluid medium with no end or beginning. Is this the altered state of the yogi, the embryo, the Senior Citizen, or the dawn of the legendary Second Childhood? Will it end in adult diapers or in enlightenment? Or both?

What my Tomatoes Taught Me

2008-10-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

This spring was the first time I planted a garden. Here in the mountains everyone was doing it. Got your plants in yet? Do you think we’ve had the last frost? I bought three types of tomato plants: non-acid, Celebrity, and Horace. I thought it would only take three small sites for my tomatoes. How stupid could I be? I had bought three flats, each containing four tomato plants. Twelve, in all, needed homes in the not-so-great soil around the house.

I felt a burning commitment toward my unborn tomatoes. After all, I adopted them. I had to give them a chance. I used a place where the town had ravaged our yard to repair our water main. From the soil the city tractor had already tilled I rescued many beautiful stones big as a man’s fist – among them the quartz that makes Spruce Pine the Mineral Capital of North Carolina. I fertilized the stone-free earth with bags of soil from Walmart Garden Center, and my fledgling plants soon grew in a proud row in the front yard and in a maverick, second bunch in a sunny spot by the kitchen wall. Here is a picture of some of the tomatoes, taken in late August, lined up on the window sill above the sink.

When I think of the tomatoes, I remember their warm weight in my hand as I carried them in my palm to the cutting board. But I also remember how I had to fight for them all summer. Blight slowly turned their stalks and leaves yellow and dotted with black. Every morning on the way back from the mailbox, I would pause by the tomatoes, tearing off diseased leaves. Some plants were hardy and resisted the blight. Others bowed to it. The tomatoes came anyway; stubborn, resilient, they matured and we enjoyed them for weeks. I wondered at the process that wrought them: something arrived, where there was nothing. All it had taken was time and effort. Patrick, my husband, harvested many green tomatoes and brought them down to our friends Jo and Sharon at the Upper Street Café downtown, where the unripe fruit starred in bacon, lettuce, and fried green tomato sandwich specials. That was summer. Now it’s October.

This morning I took down the metal hoop skirt stands that supported our tomatoes and returned to the soil the stalks and the green tomatoes that are too late arriving. This is the seasonal duty of the gardener, just as was the reaping. I am sad. The recent loss of yet another friend who’s succumbed to cancer haunts me while I work. Today as I send the last of the green tomatoes tumbling into the grass and the earth, the fate of the tomato plants weaves allegories in my head. I think about love affairs and friendships that never ripened, though their transition from flower to fruit was full of the joy of quickening life. I think of dreams and plans that had to be let go because the environment would not support them; because hostile conditions replaced possibility.

Our neighbor, Keith, yanks up old corn stalks and purple morning glories from his side garden, tells me to help myself to the Tommy Toes -- tiny, pungent tomatoes clustered in bright bunches along a snaky, seemingly infinite vine. They are in the process of giving up their lusciousness to the earth. Soon what remains above ground will tumble into the compost barrel Keith keeps behind his house. He shows me how he’ll turn the handle every week or two, so the compost will become rich and mixed. The October sky is bright blue; shards of dried stalks shiffle and scud across rows of soil. Already Keith is talking about next year’s garden, making plans while he hauls and shovels-under.

Moving Mountains

2008-09-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

When we moved to Spruce Pine from Chapel Hill in 2007, I had to put all my cute sandals aside and wear sneakers 24/7. On top of that blow to my inner Barbie, I developed really bad plantar fasciitis (the doc called it plan-tar fash- itis) in my right foot, which because I had no time to rest during the frenzy of moving, became so inflamed I could barely walk. When my husband Pat and I would go for evening strolls by the Toe River, I felt like I was using a new, unruly set of feet; they behaved unpredictably. I had to think about each footfall.

Hadn’t I asked to learn to live in the present; wasn’t this the goal of my most earnest prayers and meditations? Yes, but I had forgotten that most life lessons are orchestrated by that wise teacher, pain. What happened to me? I slowed down, because I had to. I started looking around. Where was I? In the Blue Ridge Mountains. Surprise, Surprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say. Not an Old Navy or a Starbucks in sight. The only chain store in our sleepy town is a Walmart, and it is a hub of homey activity: bake sales outside the doors on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, kind senior citizens who serve as greeters at the doors.

While my foot was healing I ducked into a store to look for some sensible supportive sandals. I’d been suffering from plantar fasciitis, I told the salesgirl, who furrowed her forehead. “I had somethin’ like that,” she said. “But it was called Planetary Faskee-eyeteez.” We stared at each other. She laughed. “I guess that’s the mountain way of callin’ it,” she said.

I have loads more to learn about the mountain way. It means dropping the notion that a Masters Degree from Chapel Hill is anything more than a certificate proving I have experience in only one domain of life. There are mountain schools of mystery about which I know nothing: like the names of the early and late spring cycles, the signs of a cold winter, the unlikelihood that plants will grow under a black walnut tree, the dangers of eating a mushroom that’s grown on a hemlock.

Who is Cotta McCotta?

2008-09-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

McCotta is not my given name. Cotta McCotta is the name I gave to the person in me who regularly loses car keys, misplaces my glasses, gets into the wrong car in the parking lot because it looks a lot like mine. “Oh,” I tell my annoyed spouse, child, or friend. “That Cotta McCotta, she’s up to her tricks again.” She is like a retarded sister personality that lives in my body. But lately I’m learning that Cotta McCotta is a kind of divine being. All that dreaminess, all that sense of being unable to cope with the details of the real world – it’s like a protean soup where everything beautiful, everything creative in my life incubates; formless, nameless, like plankton floating in the sea. Cotta McCotta is that entity, that singing-in-the-blood feeling. She might be that important thing people call a “soul.”

My first memory of being is when I was very small, maybe two or three years old. I was out in the back yard of my family’s first house in Cranston, RI, on a hill, on a street called Woodstock Lane. My mother was hanging freshly washed sheets on the line. The sheets billowed and roared, smelled of soap and sunshine. I was lying on my back in the grass, feeling the warmth of the earth below me. I inhaled the smells of spring loam and freshly cut grass, heard the subtle shifting of the blades as ants and beetles passed through. There was no judgment, no analysis; only feeling. The sky was clear blue. I was watching the silver, winking progress of an airplane across the heavens when I noticed things floating in my vision. They were strange shapes: some like translucent tiny straws; others were things I learned to call Paisleys when I got older and learned about fabrics and design.

So, okay, the shapes were debris in the outer layer of my eyeball, in the gelatinous fluid there. I’m educated now, so I know. But on that day back in 1950, those floating shapes, needed no scientific explanation. They were just part of life. Part of the strangeness of living in a human body on this beautiful, sensual planet.

Cotta McCotta lives this way – floating in mystery, while I, on the other hand, try to function in society, deal with ideas, opinions, desires, obligations, emotions. I’ll be 60 in November, and I’m tired of the struggle between who I’m supposed to be, as opposed to who I really truly am.

I want to dedicate my blog to Cotta McCotta, this primal entity that is me. She cannot lie, because she has no one to convince. She simply is, and I’m beginning to see that she is the wisest, as well as the most exasperating part of me.