The beautiful supper

I had one of the happiest nights last night, since a long time. Nothing tectonic: just a dinner party. But the dear simple pleasure of good company, lovingly prepared food, and a cozy house in the winter.

In the small town of Moscow Idaho, in the empty moonscape of endless wheat fields. After biking out of town around these fields earlier that day, it put into light how dear it was to be cozy humanity together.


This made me celebrate the path my connection with these people had taken. Originally, they were just Mr. Baritone (and Mrs. Artist) and Mr. Tenor (and Mrs. Austria) from my Episcopal choir when I used to play here. I could have been "just their organist" and left it at that. But now I was returning to visit after a time away, never imagining what dear friends and inspiring models these people would be.

I thoroughly enjoy being around people who've had more time living than I have: to be inspired by their wisdom and histories, to see that brightness and happiness continues onward. We were scientists and an artist and a professor and the conversations meandered interestingly. And as model couples, both of them--man and woman--it's like watching the successful epilogue of a romantic movie, seeing them together. I was glowing to have Mr. India with me there (we failed our break-up, a break-up due to circumstance, not hearts), and for these moments I pretended I could have this too.

The creative energy and beautiful presentation that Mrs. Artist brought to this meal inspired me to want to grow up and host a dinner party myself. Candles, Spanish wine, jazzy music, and food served in courses: pear walnut salad, gallette, kale-sausage stew, and rich vanilla icecream with huckleberries.

There is something about music that is a glowing frosting for a gathering. I sat nested in the middle of them all, everyone squinting at a small hymnal, and hammered out Christmas carols on a cranky, yet obliging piano. Then we set out on a group foray--inspired by an application on Mr. India's phone which can "hear" and then name a song--to find the words and chords for the charming and little known Cherry Tree Carol. We tripped through this a few times but then eventually sounded pretty good and congratulated ourselves. And even I was inspired to sing--and that takes a lot for me.

I can't stay here. But I have learned what to strive for when I live in a place.

A tale of two churches

"And know you always have a home here", the priest at the small Episcopal church in Tacoma said up to me in the organ loft during the church service. "I know", I responded in my announcement back voice, "that's why I invited myself back today" and everyone laughed.

This was the church where I served as organist during my grad student tenure. My Sunday morning routine often was to wake up off some friend's couch in Seattle (wearing last night's dress), scoot along on my bicycle to the bus stop, fill my wee going mug with delicious Seattle coffee, disinter a misshapen muffin from my bike panier, then sup and dine on the bus for the 50 minutes to Tacoma. Once at the church I'd sneak upstairs to my stash of church appropriate clothing there and play some hymns.

This was a small and diminishing congregation, with many health struggles shared during gratitudes and concerns. But there were always donuts and hugs during coffee hour, and so much love and enthusiasm. I was in the epoch of my tall colored socks and tropical bird hair and I think once they accustomed to this and my incessant biking, they got a bit of a kick out of me.

On a little trip back to the Pacific Northwest (balmy in comparison to central NY state), I played again for them--after having been gone a year-- as organist last Sunday. They had no money to pay me, but if I had a dollar for every time someone said, "it is SO great to have you BACK!" I would be rich. Regardless, I was rich, just from the glow of how much everyone appreciated hearing the organ again.

And in true form of that congregation,  I did receive three new pairs of tall socks. :)

Sliding onto that organ bench again, I found a little sticky note with a list of hymns in my handwriting, as messy as a six-year old's left-handed scrawl in the back of a swerving vehicle. Dated July 2013! I also found a paper sticky tab marking a hymn page: it had written on it, also in my handwriting, "Nutrient Spiralling." The thing must have migrated from my soil science soil fertility notes to my organ music. I wonder if the organists
following after me wondered what that could have been about.

In addition to the Sunday morning service, I gave an informal little recital on piano and pipe organ the day before on Saturday. A few handfuls of people gathered in the sanctuary on a fiercely dreary afternoon of pouring rain, and I got to play my favorite pieces for them. I wore a mostly black outfit for this--wanting to seem appropriate as a performer. But the comments I received, "Where are your socks?", "Where is your color?", "Why is your hair not purple?", made me realize that I still had a role to provide whimsy and playfulness.

One church lady joked that everyone should have agreed to show up with purple hair to hear me play.

Before the recital began I hadn't realized there had been a slightly heated discussion about whether the lights on the Christmas tree behind the alter should be lit: Father Priest wanted to save them for Christmas eve but Mrs Red Green Earrings argued they should be lit now for the recital to increase the festivities. So they approached me, one on either side, and asked my opinion and without knowing the import of my tie-breaker response said, "sure turn them on!"  Mrs. Earrings clapped her hands looking victorious and Father Priest stalked over dutifully and lit them. It was indeed more festive. As I stood up to play my recital I thanked everyone for coming, and then made up a little story how Father Priest graciously agreed to turn on the tree lights to compensate for my uncharacteristically boring outfit and that I would wear some colors for church tomorrow.

The next morning, because I couldn't choose among all the new pairs they'd given me, I wore two different socks to be church organist.

And now I am in Idaho, preparing Christmas music for services at my other "out west" Episcopal church. I found the worship bulletins from Easter left on the bench still, in addition to a long-lost music book of mine. No organists had played that instrument since I was guest for them this Easter. I am indeed happy to be their Guest Christmas Organist now.

I love traveling around and visiting friends and playing for the old churches.

The joys of soil sampling

I just had the best little 4-minute bicycle ride to Rite Aid. And the best day at work even-while-fighting-a-cold.

I think it is because I had full maneuverability over my fingers and did not bemoan the existence of ears--basically: because I was not cold today! Thank you, Weather.

One of the last work days on the research farm today; I was sent out to sample soil for pH. I worked alone all day, no music, no company, but was quite incorrigibly at peace. The skies were like a theatre, the blasting wind shifting scene changes by the minute, the sun an intriguing spotlight on it all. There were moments I just had to spread my arms wide and gaze in happy awe at all the sky's activities. Piles of clouds. Swatches of blue. There was nothing homogeneous about looking up at all today. A double rainbow, so bright the colors were smartly distinguishable, stretched in a complete arc. I could even see the farm house from across the lake, where the end of it touched to earth.

Oh but I do love working outside.

It was so windy though--from the south--that I needed rubber bands around my clipboard to keep all that in place, and my plastic mixing cup skittered in circles; the pencil blew out of reach, my coat flapped in my face. I felt like I was working in outer space, where you set objects down and they just won't stay where they were.

I had the RTV to drive around the field, bearing me and my equipment zippily. This brought back memories of my soil sampling days as a graduate student--which were in sharp contrast to anything zippy. I'd schlep my Field Bike out to the plots, somehow balancing all my equipment along too. Then I would tread from plot to plot, juggling buckets, soil probe, clipboard, water bottle, screwdriver: clanking along like a one-man band.

At least my soil sampling style has increased a bit... 

Ergg, Traugg, and Swoob

"Seasonal worker" was the job title I adopted during my tenure at the Vegetable Trial and Demonstration farm. Although I never called myself that--I felt too much like a migrant worker that way; I chose to call it my Seasonal Field Experience--yesterday my coworker remarked dryly that we sure were experiencing all seasons in this job.

We were stamping around a stubbly wasteland of a cornfield, hefting around iron tamping bars and shovels, in the blurry gray slant of incoming snow.

Iron bars are unforgivingly cold on wet snowy hands.

But I had one of those moments, where I could grow a little taller on a platform of perspective, gazing snowily out over that corn stubble, and hold for a moment all the time and all the seasons I had spent at this farm. There was the spring: the rain, my personal turmoils of leaving a mountain and a man out west, the seeding, the minuscule hopes of minuscule plant babies sliding tremulously through the roofs of their tiny potting soil rooms. Then was Summer I: the rich long days of light, the exuberant growth of teenage plants, the laughably insurmountable task of fighting back weeds. The expectant first tomato eaten with a happy hop, the squash blossoms like so many suns, eagerly anticipating the onslaught of food to come. And then later Summer II, the glut of too many zucchini, parties at the farm, the joyful aroma of basil, hoeing, watering, sweating, eating melons in the field. I wanted to have tee-shirts made, complements of the sunshine, all the vegetables consumed, and the constant physical work: "We Are Not Fat and Pale Here." Then Fall I, the golden glow of trees turning, harvesting pumpkin seeds, needing a scarf to bicycle to work, the abundant freedom to harvest anything and everything because everybody was ready. And now, Fall II, which is beginning to think it is winter: pulling out dead plants, scraping rotten tomatoes out of the beds, putting away the decorate planters.

So I stood there damply in the blowing snow and surprised myself by not feeling resentful of it (I have a history of dreading winter and the dark and cold and sickness) and was grateful for the beautiful diversity of all the earth had shown me over my time here.

Someday I will stay in one place longer than 8 months and will truly feel the cyclical nature of it, in a way that has not been possible recently. I've only had a single full winter in the snowy north since 2008, all of the others I escaped to Australia, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Seattle, and Thailand. We'll see about this coming one.

Back to the iron bars and snowy stubble. Why? What could we possibly be doing out there?

Putting in a hop yard, of course.

Hops, a member of the same family as marijuana (I have my probably unlikely theory as to why an IPA gives you an extra delicious buzz), are becoming increasingly in demand in NY state due to the emphasis on local beer from local ingredients, and the farm decided to jump on the band-wheelbarrow (as it were). The hops enjoy climbing--really climbing--and so a hop yard is really a climbing gym for them: a series of phone poles in the ground with cables strung across their tops.

Installing a hop yard is serious work: the sort of work requiring a crew of strapping Mexicans, tractors with augers, and tasteful grunting and swearing. Our work with the iron tamping bars was to fill in the holes after the phone poles had been inserted (that's where the strapping Mexicans come in). It felt a little bizarre and diminishing to be out there in a barren field with all those poles looming above us, panting slightly as we shoveled soil into the holes around their bases and used the heavy iron bars to pack it in.

Not all jobs can be done with tractors and I realized we were working like humans have been working since soil was new, how the pyramids and ancient temples were constructed. With the power of arms and backs.

"This feels rather prehistoric" I said to Coworker Eric as we whacked and tamped iron bars into the dirt, then added after our implements accidentally knocked together, sending a shock wave of sound and vibrations through my arms: "sorry about that, would you like to come over to my cave for some mastodon later?" Then I decided that Coworkers Eric and Traci both needed prehistoric names. "Ergg" I decided for Eric, and Traci became "Traugg."  Ergg then decided I would be dubbed "Swoob." 

Looking up at the looming wood above us, I added: "I'm Pole-ish."

Here's Things From My Journal

The end of Daylight Savings Time. The period of evening light up until this point fading gradually, a loved one dying of a terminal illness. But today and pushing those clocks back: quick death by guillotine. Oh light, oh summer, how I miss you.

Now comes the time of Fat and Pale, of Unsociable and Sleepy.

(don't worry, not really)

So to combat this I went bicycling (and then made hot chocolate and pumpkin-raspberry-chocolate-chip muffins). At least it was sunny, although still sharply cold, all prickly from the wind. I put on ear-warmers, arm-warmers, a neck-warmer, a torso-warmer, and feet-only-luke-warmers. I flapped off into the wind, the colors, the slanted golden sun. Biking 17 miles in the cold feels about as wearying as bicycling 50 miles in the delicious heat. Oh well.

So now from my ensconce of blankets I shall write a bit, entitled perhaps: Here's Things From My Journal.


Family Road Trip
A visit to Little Sister living in Virginia. Last week my parents and I climbed into my Dad's spotless car and drove south through Pennsylvania (gee, even width-wise that state is massive), Maryland (just the fingernail of it), and into Virginia.

We drove through a backdrop of golden and orange trees, rolling hills, white picket fences. Then we were 5 with my sister and boyfriend, all us tall people folding ourselves into the car to visit Monticello, Jefferson's home. "Well. If there were a carpool lane we'd qualify for it," my Dad observed. We were squished in the backseat like paper dolls folder too many times to fit in their envelope.

Lunch in the car: Dad is driving and eating a sandwich. He hands it, half-consumed and rather ragged, to my mother. "Dear. Will you rearrange this for me?"

~~~

I think one of the sweetest moments of this little family trip occurred on the Monticello lawn (see backdrop of colored trees and sweeping views), when we'd finished the Standing For a Long Time Tour rather wearied and I'd asked if anyone was carrying any snacks. Nope: snacks were all in the car.

In just a few minutes, though, Dad appears on the horizon with a bag of nuts, not inexpensive nuts either, that he'd charged off and bought at the Monticello gift shop. My parents, as a general rule, all calculated and moderate, do not buy food not from the bulk order or the cheapest price-per-pound. "You remember when you were a little girl and in the middle of the night, Daddy I'm hungry, and I'd take pity on you and get up and fix you a fried egg sandwich?" he said.  Now overpriced gift shop nuts. I was indeed touched. And they were actually really delicious nuts too.



On Being Kale
I haven't had a happy Halloween in many years. I was either being miserable with an illness, attending an academic conference, or wearied by too many college Sexy Bunnies or Slutty Kitties or Hoebag Weevils or whatever.

But this Halloween was an excellent one. I went as: Kale.

I brought a kale plant home from the farm, and fashioned myself a pair of leaf earrings and two breast-plates from leaves woven into my shirt. I wore neon green pants, a leaf-like shirt, and--predictable--sprayed my hair green as well. I played the piano at the local brew-pub that night (made a wad of cash), perched on the bench all greenly, with a bouquet of kale lying on the case.

Most everyone else, in their store-bought costumes, the cowboys, the nuns, the Elvis, regarded me dubiously as they walked in the door and saw what was playing the piano. "DUDE," I overheard one construction worker say to a cowboy, "that girl is covered in lettuce."  The rock-star ladies had a cuter way of putting it, "Well, gee! You're so healthy!"  The owner of the pub strode in bright-eyed, "Of course," he said (he knows my penchant for vegetables), "just let me get the salad dressing."

Ha.

Later, after the piano time, I can attest that kale is most excellent to shake on the dance floor. And also to simply dance waving around a leaf of it. Although I did keep dropping earring leaves. I threw a leaf at the DJ and hit him square in the face with a leafy thwap; he threw it back at me all grinny, but on it's repeat return flight it hit a guy in the wig.

I was happy when people would yell "Kale!" across the place and I could be the one to answer.

Bartender 101

"You're on the schedule as Vegetable Girl," Miss Head Bartender said when I walked in at 5pm. I'd freshly showered, plucked the tag off my black Salvation Army shirt, dusted the soil from my jeans, and had biked to the Brew & Stew.

It was my first night bartending.



How about that for things your young self never thought you'd be doing. The young self so introverted the social interaction of checking out library books was challenging. Or even the Just Moved Here self who'd come to this pub for the first time this May, to sit in a corner and garner free wifi.

I hadn't applied for this position, and there wasn't even a help wanted sign on the door.

Since that night of the lonely wifi I'd been coming routinely for Buy One Get One Wednesday Nights, and each time I came in--not just to sit and drink a beer alone--a conversation or connection so remarkable would happen that I'd walk out the door making my happy noise. I am fascinated by strangers--it might have been all those people-watching lessons with my father as a little girl--and coming there alone I somehow effortlessly inserted myself into people's conversations. Wanting to engage with people, talk to someone else besides my four-leaf clovers, make people laugh, and listen and learn about them. I also enjoy their faces if I get to share about playing the pipe organ or bicycling across Cambodia.

There were the two entomologists (I'd heard them say "soil science" and I basically pounced on them; then we talked about ovipositors for some time), the two Navy divers who told me about working in life-edge situations everyday (who then followed me out the door and insisted on buying me dinner), the entire club soft-ball team, a British couple (discussing the difference between pubs in the US and UK), and the very friendly and flirty gay men who were all about Halloween.

I'd bring in my own homemade popcorn (Mr. Flirty and Friendly came up with the name for my curry-honey variety, "Curry Up, Honey.") for nibbling and sharing, and then vegetables from the farm when there was surplus. "Wait, I thought you were the Popcorn Girl", one server asked me once, when Miss Head Bartender explained, "We call her the Vegetable Girl."  A bouquet of cilantro for the cook, an eggplant with a nose for the owner, tomatoes for the servers, purple peppers for my bar-neighbors. Eventually it became not Buy One Get One night for me, but Get One Get One night.

So after all those conversations with strangers, and popcorn, and vegetables, Mr. Owner asked me if I wanted a shift or two.



So this first night was allegedly training. But it wasn't so much training as, "Here's the computer system and here's the glasses and Oh! we have customers, go!" But Miss Head Bartender was patient with all questions arising in the moment. Where are the wine glasses? Is the Miller Lite in this cooler? Sure, I can bring you more ice! Yeah I can get you a water. A local beer recommendation? Certainly!

Bartending is about double tasking (filling a beer, washing Mt Glassmore, checking for the food order, remembering the face that goes with that tab), being efficient and quick in movements, and basically playing a tenser and more public version of The Memory Game--a board game to remember pictures on little pink over-turned cards--but instead finding the Samuel Adams in that huge cooler of bottles. All of this very briskly at times, with the awareness that your movements are very public.

Bartending is also light flirting on the clock. "Yeah, when we first met you we thought, 'She's on the wrong side of the bar'", said Miss Softball Team tonight when I was finally behind the bar. 


Have you ever watched a server enter an order into the restaurant computer system, deftly and instantly tapping the burger-no-mayo-side-of-fries and house-chardonnay into the screen? The ever shifting menus of colored buttons. The lengthy list of sandwiches. The perplexing options of sides. They go: taptaptaptapTAPtaptap, and a perfect order is effortlessly flourished off to the kitchen.

I was: tap    tap tap       tap     um  tap OOPS NOT HORSERADISH.

My learning this system was a study in quick learning, in picking up patterns, in watching my brain struggle to find the mayonnaise button. But soon I watched myself learn and remember that the wine button needed scrolling to be found and the condiments button was in yellow.  I was reminded of the process of learning a new piece on the pipe organ; Conscious Effort: C# in left hand here in tenor! And then eventually and imperceptibly it happens without the clenched focus.

There was a pleasure to be had pour a beer all full and rich-colored, carrying it over, setting it in front of a face, looking the face in the eye, and wishing Cheers! The night went very quickly; I consumed a Mistake Sandwich from under the heater in the kitchen, feeling like I was on a time trial but happy for it. I left with my back pocket a-flame with $84 in cash tips.

Inner life of a traveling pipe organist

This morning I played pipe organ for my sixth different church of the summer.

(So far the list is: P-ville Reformed, Lyons Episcopal, Newark Episcopal, United Church of Phelps, Rochester Christian Science Church, Canandagua Episcopal) 

Each church and instrument is like learning a new language: how much intro people expect for the hymns, which sounds are available on that organ, which stops to avoid (the shrieking 2-foot, for example). There is nothing apologetic about playing the pipe organ: what you do is heard by all, should support all, and can bog down or enlighten a worship service.

I'd never been to this church before--the Episcopals in Henrietta--and arrived a full hour early to introduce myself to the instrument, play through Praise My Soul The King of Heaven (that thing is like hiking a few mountains across the pedal board), and certainly enjoy the quiet empty sacred space before it fills with other humans. That empty space I appreciate so I can settle in and test drive some of the organ stops, which can be a rowdy, if not down-right disenchanting, listening experience. Much better in private.


But this morning I climbed the steps to the organ loft and found a collection of choir members milling about up there. Nobody told me they'd gather at 9am to rehearse! So instead of spacious emptiness, I had choir faces peering at me, with no small amount of curiosity, over the organ console. But I decided to accept the spontaneity of the situation and managed not to deafen anyone as we rehearsed. "Shall we play through the sanctus number--" I began and was interrupted by a dear Linda who, as if she had just seen me, crowed, "Ohh! Your hair is so cute! Should we do that with our hair Sheryl? Oh to be young...." 

Having the choir up there in the loft with me, behind the organ--nay, resting on the organ console itself--meant they could cue me as needed, as they were facing the sanctuary and I wasn't. During the end of the communion hymn I had to stifle a laugh, because I look up and there is a set of three bobble-head choir members on my dashboard, all doing the International Play Another Verse Symbol, which is rotating one's finger about.


Situated outside the disquieting strip-malls and intersections that is Henrietta, the church was airy and woody inside, giving it a summer-camp and approachable feeling. And a large window in the back without stained glass meant I could sit at the organ and stare at the trees.  The passing of the peace was a veritable coffee-hour minus the coffee, which is a heart-warming thing to witness in a church. The people were so sweet, especially that original Linda, who saw me walking down the hall after the service (not sitting on the bench) and exclaimed "And you're so tall too! Tall AND adorable." I was also blown away by how much everyone said they enjoyed my playing. I could feel it, actually, that I was in a soulful and joyful space and this must have been coming through the music, too: enjoying the hymns and working with the stops and.... those trees out the window.


I had tested preset 5 and did know that it was so blasty and all proclaimy, full of horns and deep bass--brazen in fact--and wasn't planning on using it.  But my subconscious must have bested me because just before the Gloria (S-278, by the way Mother Robin, delicious fun! My first time playing it!) my thumb shoots to 5 and with surprise I hear what I have done but I can't change this and I don't want to and then realize we're raising the roof and every foot is like a fog horn and then we end on that huge final chord and I get a little shiver.  Mmmmm THIS is why I wake up Sundays.


~~~~


"Are you an Eastman student?" asked everyone.  "Nope," I would respond, and for helpful clarity on my music background I added, "I work on a farm." 

Long morning full of thoughts

Before I started this season at this trial and demonstration farm I wondered how it would be, in my brain, to do labor from my body all day. I wondered which vegetables I would actually get to eat. I wondered if my bicycling and running would get tiredly set aside after 8 hours of moving around in the soil already.

Well. I learned that I still have a voracity for bicycling (and to a needing-motivation-extent: running) and could bomb off for a little jaunt even after a work day (this got easier as the season progressed: I learned activity can beget more activity, once one has accustomed to it). I also learned that Monday asserts itself as A Hungry Day, especially after a Sunday bicycling back from the city.

I found I got to eat all of it. And learned how it feels to have a bountiful endless supply of an astounding variety of vegetables--overwhelming and undeniably thrilling--and that I do not have nearly enough stomach or time for all the fennel, tomatoes, eggplant, garlic chives, thai basil, and sweetheart cabbage. And I learned what tronchuda and escarole are, and that white beets exist, and that there is a surprising variety in eggplant size and shape, and that red beets can be sliced in the field and applied as lipstick.

I am studying my brain while my body works. Some days I dribble off into a pool of blues or bluegrass from my headphones. Some days I figure yoga positions into my work (today I sat in legs-wide-open-pose to stretch some thighs while weeding some chard) or challenge myself to prune with my left hand.

When I first started I was in a walled-in grump place that I didn't have an output for creativity or analysis or writing in this temporary job.

Well: that's what being an organist is for, and writing, and discussing meristems with coworkers. Or simply working with one's hands and letting the brain paddle about on an ocean of thinking. Or not thinking.

Today I had thoughts: I didn't listen to more than an NPR podcast all day, and the good Lord knows I talked to nobody besides one four-leaf clover (and that was only in greeting), and I astounded myself that I got through the day in a pleasant and accepting mindset with no more stimulation than my dirt-working hands and my thought-stirring brain.

A long morning full of thoughts. And the cadence of that phrase brought me back to reciting a certain prayer during my short and shy tenure as a Catholic school girl.....

Long morning, full of thoughts
The sun is on thee
Ripped are thy arms among women, and
Blessed is the fruit of thy work, veggies
Long morning, full of thoughts
Bless you my future
Now and at the coming of the winter

But actually I just wanted to describe that diner food

I'm feeling Bill Brysony and like narrating my weekend of experiences. The 315-er experiences and bicycling in the finger lakes experiences.

This weekend I lived a dream I'd had of moving here, a dream called Seeing My Old Loved Ones and Bicycling To Get There. I managed to be both in Syracuse, Phelps (for church organ), and Parent's Lake House all without having to sit bored and lonely in my car.  The magic of a bicycle is that it can be shoved into the back of a conveniently-passing-by-Geneva aunt's or uncle's vehicle for one direction, and pedaled back on its own for the other direction. Or vice versa. And I'd much rather spend time enjoying the company of others while driving.

Uncle Aggressive, who maneuvers both cars and bicycles with utmost precision and utmost impatience, hefted my bicycle into the back of his car, "This thing is heavy as *$&#^" he said, and then later as we're buzzing along the thru-way: "what's that noise?" "My bicycle," I responded. And Aunt Accommodating: "It is settling." It has been rare for me to spend time with relatives without the churning holiday backdrop of other relatives, and I thoroughly enjoyed being with them just as them. They'd kindly taken a modified snow-plow to the floor of Cousin Just Moved Off To College's room and made the bed for me and I gratefully tip-toed in there at an unmentionable hour after a blast of a night out in the city. Best of both worlds: time with family and going out.

I need to explain the giddiness of my Going Out with the context of spending a lot of time with plants. The other weekend, my dear Buddy Holly (also a gardener) and I were at a happy hour and I spread my arms in an expanse all pleased, "Look! PEOPLE!" And she responded, so knowingly, "I know, right, not plants."  

Although I do love my plants. Early Friday morning the kale was all perky and puffy and glistening, shrouded evenly in glistening water droplets. I had to stop and lean on my hoe for a minute and just take that in. These moments! These stoppings during the day, to stretch up to the clouds, to listen into the birds, to gaze lovingly at the kale. Even just short moments but they add nuggets to a day on the farm.

Friday was Syracuse, Saturday was bicycling back from Syracuse, Sunday was bicycling to church, bicycling to the lake, enjoying a lake birthday bash, and then being ferried back with Aunt Charismatic, talking about organs and hymns.

A hundred mile weekend, all for Destinations and Transportation, no loops for me! But biking alone for 60 miles under gray clouds and the brain needs to occupy itself with something. (although recently I have been blessed to have two new bicycling buddies for conversing along powered by endorphins, making for some enthusiastic blasts of conversations) These are some of my occupying thoughts. Oh look a gas station, gas is cheaper there! How nice. OH WAIT tra-la I don't need to buy gas tra-la! And also some rendition of the following, Stanton Village. Stanton is a variety of fresh market cabbage! This is thanks to the fact that I've been working long enough on a demonstration vegetable farm which grows 140 different varieties of vegetables--all of which have names--and so I begin seeing them around. Batavia Broccoli. Rally leeks. Roxanne onions ("ROX-anne....Put on the red light").

Bicycling through Auburn, I saw the Hunter's Diner-ant, one of those classic grey-sided train-car shaped things out of the 50's. I'd seen it portrayed in an exhibit of Gorgeous and Nostalgic Fingerlakes Photographs and decided that made it sufficiently a thing so that I should go in and have breakfast at 4pm or too many hashbrowns or a tuna-fish sandwich. I tend to believe that I am wholly charmed by diners (from the Americana attachment, the cheap menu options, the classic goodness of grilled plastic cheese cut on the diagonal and served with a pickle) only until after I have eaten at one. I eat at them so infrequently that this disenchanted refractory period has long since dissipated and I've forgotten my disgust and go back in all eagerly again.

Hunter's Diner-ant was a stellar example of this; in fact, I might even nominate this experience as The Worst Food I Have Ever Purchased And Consumed (the qualifier there being "purchased" because I myself occasionally create offending food, but then I feel Responsible and eat it out of guilt anyway).  I did what one sensibly does in a diner at 4pm, and ordered Breakfast. 2 eggs and a piece of toast. I asked for the eggs scrambled and with a good portion of mozzarella cheese in there for some excitement.

My plate came with a garnish (I believe an inner leaf of a curly variety of kale--oh GOOD, also thanks to this vegetable job I'm identifying garnishes....), two pieces of bread yet to mature into toast (it is only toast if the unidentified white fatty substance spread atop melts; but I suppose this was teenage toast because they were slightly warm), and a deposit of yellow and white egg-like substance in a stretch across the plate.

The sort of stretch reminiscent of something a cat would discharge while retching and harking itself backwards across your carpet.

This discharge tasted nothing of eggs nor mozzarella and had a consistency I was at a loss to identify; and also of course they were only marginally warm. I thought briefly of asking Waitress Peggy if actually they were eggs but decided I didn't really want to know this anyway. Although this "meal" didn't assuage my hunger, it did neuter my appetite and I bicycled onward only $4.32 the worse for wear, dreaming about my own homemade spicy kale I would eat for dinner and, as a sort of retort, coming up with terrible descriptors for the obese man eating laboriously in the booth next door.


Besides that though...the weekend included:
A concert on a sloped and slidey floor of the Westcott Theatre, the artists singing their 315 (area code) pride, their 'cuse pride. This was the first time I'd seen genuine 315-er pride; I'd only heard 315 as derogatory in the trailor-park liquor store four-wheeler type. I took it in and people-watched and knew it was right to be there and danced and felt the energy from the band--and watched that marvelous condition of a feedback loop where the band feeds the crowd and the crowd responds to feed the band and oh my this is hot raw human celebration and expression right there.

Also:
Making Dense N Chocolaty zucchini muffins for my hosts, biking so many roads in foggy and sunny and cloudy bliss, my mother's truly impressive chocolate birthday cake with my Dad and all his siblings, spraying along in the rain on bicycle to the Syracuse farmers market. Meandering this farmers market with that particularly tall and particularly eye-catching young man, eating all the carbohydrates I ever wanted because I was soon to be bicycling a distance. Now that is just about the top of the tower right there: exploring the colorful and delicious onslaught of a farmers market with a very attractive person.

To wrap up:
A church gentleman made me an inquiry while I warmed up on the organ, "Is that your bike outside?" he asked, and then added, "I thought so. I could tell it wasn't just anyone's bike. But someone very serious about biking."

Very true. And the core of this good life.

Burning candles and growing up: realizations had while weeding

Realization 1.
I suppose this little realization is ordinary and understood by many, but for me it came as rather a surprise. Maybe because I have been living for only a little while, and only really thoroughly living with presence for much less than that. I am still thrilled by the recent novelty of talking to people, playing with color, feeling confidence and a little boldness.

My realization was about Transferability. When I was living near Seattle my time was cultivating new experience and pushing myself to get the most of Being Far From Home, packing my weekends full of dancing, meeting people, bicycle rides on the islands, and then Sunday serenely playing pipe organ usually after sleeping in a slightly compromised situation (friend's couch or church basement) but taking energy from that and powering onward. My Mom calls this Burning the Candle at Both Ends, and I call it All The More Flame Thank You.

I thought this rich living of a life for me was Seattle itself: the public transportation to anywhere, the outgoing people, the mountains, the celebration of expression and strangeness. But I learned the other weekend that it might not be Seattle, but that it might be something actually transferable.

In Rochester: Dancing, bicycle riding, IPA-ing, crashing a party, then sleeping in a corner of what was essentially a construction site (the house of a friend dear enough I could ask to crash there, even though it was undergoing remodeling so thorough the inside was unrecognizable). The next morning brushing off residual wood dust and setting out for my church organ job and stopping for coffee--not at one of the dozens of Seattle local roasters, but at the Square One Diner in rural NY ignoring the questionable slick of sheen on the coffee--driving my car--not dozing off over a New Yorker in a choice bus seat. But unlike Novelty Distant Washington, here, thanks to the gift of proximity, my parents filed in as pew audience. As did Mr. New Bicycle Boy. I didn't invite anybody; they just showed up on their own agenda and this pleased me in that warming and dearly supportive way. Even here I still feel like the, no doubt strange, "purple haired lady" (according to Little Mr. Four-year-old at my Tacoma church), eating a second breakfast out in the church yard, poking focusedly about for 4-leaf clovers.

Realization 2.
Another realization I had--this came while weeding around some cabbages--was about Growing Up. I've been pondering lately, When Is One Grown-up? I've almost 27 now and I haven't felt the phase change I was expecting and by now it has been most certainly due. "Grown-up" I thought was where you are very good to remember to take out the trash, you make measurably more money than you did as a teenager, you understand things like taxes and car insurance, that maybe even you are a little dull and predictable. Or maybe it meant having a dog, having more than one piece of furniture to call your own, being settled with a partner.

But maybe not. I realized within the past couple years ago I began to have a sense of style (personal style mind you, not conforming to a magazine's proven aesthetic one, but simply my own), that I was beginning to know how to easily talk to people, how to make a decision balanced and carefully, how to express complicated thoughts, how to make people laugh, and how to take care of myself to be happy and healthy. This feels not so much the caricature of the "grown up" responsible and dowdy, but more like a Growing Into. Splitting at the seams of potential--growing into them--and feeling pretty good about it. 

So I think I'm growing into now. And it's pretty great.

Life in the vegetables

Mr. Next Seat at my favorite pub this evening gave me an uninhibited stare as I rooted about in my bicycle pannier and drew out two squash. Two yellow squash shaped like geese; I nestled them spooning together next to my IPA. "If you'd like these...." I said to Miss Bartender, "they stir-fry up great!"  Mr. Next Seat said to me, "well! I was wondering what those were for...if you were going to put them in your beer or something."

It's beginning to be the time of vegetables, and because I work not on a "real" farm which sells things but on one for demonstration, I have been giving away some produce whenever I can think of it. I brought a cabbage for Mrs. Church who came to let me play the pipe organ earlier.

So here is a post on life in the vegetables.

The tomatoes. The terrible tall twining tussling tumult of tumbling tomatoes, turning me green. Each tomato plant has as much growth and vegetation as its own personal rainforest. The buggers have outgrown their stakes now, the growing tips foundering off into space, all blind and hopeful. There are hundreds of these plants. The company's breeders have crossed a lot of expectant parents with a lot of other expectant parents and they'll see what hybrid tomato goodness results.

The tomatillos are just as tall but are gangly, like a set of light fixtures, with lamp shades: those little fruits in paper husks. 

The zucchini astound and appall me: so much production. I paw through the helmet-sized leaves and arm-spiking stems, weaving my head around, trying to get a glimpse into the thicket only to be blocked by a leaf-in-the-face, to save the younglings. Lest a youngling zucchini Become Forgotten, pumping itself into an obscenety of vegetative pornography. "WHY" I say for the 5th time out there, and also, "More?!", and also: "Noooooo....."

I have been eating zucchini for lunch for the past 2 weeks. I eat with the crops: I can't wait for the storm of Kale. But zucchini pan-toasted with pesto, cut raw into sticks and dipped in amazing mustard, sliced onto salad, in zucchini-pineapple muffins....

Basil beguiling, bopping up bush-fully, begging to be rubbed in palms and inhaled. The aroma of the Thai Basil just about makes me curl my toes with glee: how is it that a simple smell can be so utterly captivating.

My office friends see this job glorified and sometimes I point out the repetitive non-creativity of it, the waste of grown vegetables, the endless weeding. And other times instead I am swept up in the romance of it: of standing to stretch my back and gaze out over the sweep to the lake, of watching a bumble bee greedily bustle about a squash blossom, of seeing everybody grow and flower, of the good sleeps and the endless hunger from outdoors work.

Yesterday, because of this rain, I was indoors flustering with labels on the computer. A screen: all day. It has been months since I've done that. At the end of the 8 hours I limped over to wish Bossman a good evening, and added--with spinning eyes and fogged head--how hard it was to focus on computer tasks. And I used to do it for weeks on end as a graduate student. "Yeah," he said knowingly, "working indoors is just hard after you're used to outside." 

I am a chameleon changing color with the seasons: in the winter I am white like the offices, in the summer I am brown as the soil. Or browner: I noticed the other day the dirt on my body was lighter than my skin.

I am loving this summer.

Stolen

There is no good way to begin this post. But I must write this.


Yesterday my bicycle was stolen.

I'd been curious, before sometimes when I'd lock up my bicycle and walk away from it (in a sort of dark wondering) what it would feel like to come back and find it gone. 

Well. It feels disbelieving, panicked, shocking, grief. I'd cable-locked it outside the Rochester Public Market for all of 30 minutes in the sunny morning, skipping inside to buy blackberries and a scone. And then upon return: that sinking sight of empty fence.

That bicycle was my greatest single source of happiness: my freedom, my frugality, my defiant expression, my grace. It was speed and endorphins and making friends on wheels and blowing off steam. It was manifestation of memories of ferries in Washington State, dirt roads in Cambodia, grocery-carrying in rural NY.  I'd laughed, cried, sung, and sweated on it.

This is a very fascinating study in Attachment. Who knew an object could represent so much?

I did the responsible, pointlessly hopeful, and only thing I could do of contacting the police and filing a report. I felt sickened, surreal. There is little hope in recovering stolen bicycles: they become entangled in pawnshops, drug deals, passed from person to person, broken up for parts. And the logistics of being bike-less were dawning on me: how would I get around now (I had bicycled to the city from Geneva--48 miles)? How would I do that Bicycle MS Ride I'd been fundraising for?

After the paperwork I asked for a cup of water, gathered all I had left in the city (my phone, wallet, and a scone--everything else was on the bike) into a plastic bag, and walked away from the market, feeling amputated and bereaved. I made it as far as the Memorial Art Gallery lawn, looking for a sanctuary. I sat under a tree there, set my cup of water down, and cried.

To maintain some structure to what once had been a joyfully beautiful day (full of hopes of coffeeing and letter writing, and later riding with a new bicycle boy) I decided to continue with my plan of going for a Very Wonderful Latte, at one of the few "best" coffee shops in Rochester. I walked and it took me some time and I grieved and pouted and wondered about stealing and attachment.

"Nice hair," said a police officer, having a smoke outside the coffee shop. I was passing him as he told a self-depricating story about his recent bicycle accident. He was neither old nor unattractive, and was quite engaging, and so I shared that I'd wished I'd had a bicycle accident but I just had mine stolen. He was working a 16 hour shift and needed a rest and I had no bicycle to ride now, so we sat and drank coffee and shared woes and listened. I learned about his beats, about the frustrations of the police hierarchy, about how the fruits of his labors are often unseen and thankless. I told him about how this bike had gone 14,000 miles, how it had been a graduation present from my grandparents; I showed him its picture--all neon green handlebars--in Cambodia, a crowd of dusty kids encircling it enquisitively.

And I don't know what possessed me to do it, maybe it was flipping through my things to get the bicycle photo--but I took from my notebook one of my four-leaf clovers and gave it to him. He seemed genuinely pleased; nobody had given him one before, and he tucked it away somewhere. "Really great to chat with you" he said as he drove off. I agreed, and added in silly hope added: "If you happen to see a bike with neon-green handlebars...."

Then Mr. New Bike Boy fetched me, all consolingly, from the coffee shop and listened to my grievances and we went thrifting and walking in the sun in Rochester. I still felt terrible, but no longer as shocked.

.................................
 
As the sun began to set my phone rang. Mr. New Bike and I were driving and I scrabbled to answer.

It was Officer Coffee. "Can you describe your bicycle to me again?" he asked. I went through the rack, the mirror, the 2 water bottle cages. He sounded unconvinced. Then I described the neon green handlebars and the green stripe in the seat. "I think I've found your bike" he said, and Mr. New Bike Boy told me later I kicked his dashboard in my excitement (I didn't even realize it at the time). It's that moment when Hope becomes a feeling, a fire pulsing through your blood, taking over your physical being.

We waited a 10-minute-long 5 hours--giddily hopeful but without full validity yet--for Officer Coffee to meet us and when that white police car rolled up and I saw those green handlebars gleeming from the trunk I bolted alongside the car hollering and Officer Coffee opened his door and--tazer, bullet-proof vest, handcuffs and all--I jumped directly into his arms.

This was one of the top three hugs of my life and I will relish it for some time. I was giddy and laughing and pounding him on the back and he nearly lifted my feet off the ground.

He told his story. "I left you after coffee and there wasn't much going on....and I realized from that photo with the Cambodian kids, this wasn't just a bike. This was someone's memories. So I drove in radiating circles beginning at the Public Market until I got to Route 104. Then I drove down Clinton Ave." And there, on one of the top heroine corners in Rochester, he saw a group of kids with bicycles. And one with green handlebars. He approached them, "nice bikes," he observed, " 'specially this one.  You could ride pretty fast on this one." Then when he asked whose it was, everyone started looking at their boots and shuffling away. He had it.

They'd stripped my handlebar bag, back-rack, and water bottle cage off it. And the computer recorded that the thief had been about 6 miles in distance and had hit 30 mph (?!). But it was my bike. Returned. Incredibly intact.

I was elated and grateful far beyond normalcy. "How can I EVER thank you?!?" I asked Officer Coffee. "Well. You gave me a hug," he said, obviously pleased. We were all grinning like our faces might split. And then he added that it was one of the best jobs he'd had in weeks: that he got to make some girl's day, that he saw the tangible fruits of his work.

And then he reached into his pocket and opened his RPD badge: right there besides his photograph was my four-leaf clover. "It might have been because of this," he said.

Wow.

Wow.

What if he hadn't commented on my hair? What he had been called to a more diverting homicide that afternoon? What if I'd given up on coffee and instead went home? What if neither of us had listened? What if I wasn't always finding 4-leaf clovers and carrying them around with me?


The magic of that four-leaf clover comes not from some Irish superstition, but from what it represents. A little gift, two people listening to each other, someone being particularly compassionate and generous with his time, human connection and beautiful coincidence.

Brown Summer of Blues

On Nesting and Ephemera
A day not working! But lest I go 24 hours without bending over and cramming dirt under my fingernails, I went out to "my" front yard and planted some ornamental grasses. I have been Setting Up House, you see. I've moved into a more permanent location in Geneva, a simple farm house which will eventually contain a total of 5 occupants. As for now here, it is just me and an ambitious and nervous Chinese boy. (There might not be much oxygen to go around when all 5 of us are here, and I can't even imagine sharing a fridge. But I shall fuss about that one when I actually have to.)

After living out of boxes since December (leaving the much-adored grad student house, squatting at home for a bit, bicycling 'round SE Asia, floating in Washington and Idaho for a few moments, and then crossing the states back to central NY) I have invincible callings to have all my clothes again on hangers, my spice jars labeled and awaiting, and generally feel nesty and territorial.

Except this needs to be a practice of dis-attachment for me, because this is by no means "my" place. This is a lesson in sharing. Wanting to claim and cozy-up in all expansive solitude, instead I need to share counter space with Mr. China's drying brownies and be careful not to startle him as I enter the kitchen. Likewise, he has to deal with my Chenopodium album weeds taking up space in the fridge.

Furthermore, at this point I have no inclination to stay in Geneva past the Time of Colored Leaves. So hanging photos on the wall, stringing Christmas lights, and digging ornamental grasses into the ground feels like a great effort for something only temporary. But what really isn't temporary? I might as well put my full heart into setting a nook for myself in this town, even if it's just for a bit.

A great blessing about this housing situation has been that Mrs. Landperson has allowed me to expedition to her neighboring half-empty student houses, to search and rescue furniture, plug strips, and dish drainers. I've spent essentially no money to settle in here, for which I am grateful, because I am certainly not making a "grown-up's" salary. But I may adopt as many plants as I want from work.


On Writing
Mornings are precious to me, a quiet freshness and expectancy hangs over a new day--before anyone starts their lawnmower--and I've spent this one conducting pancake trials and reading a novel. And also hoping the wind is from the east, as I'm bicycling to Rochester soon (powered by said pancake trials). 

And writing. It has been so long! I come back from my days of planting cabbages, weeding, and setting irrigation and I don't find myself inclined to write. I was wondering what this is about: that I feel that which I'd write about has become repetitive (worked really hard bent over in the sun, went biking, made food, played organ) or that I can't find a nice ribbon to tie around my anecdotes to be a theme or take-home message or little perky inspiration.

Some writing came upon me as I was just arriving at work yesterday by bicycle. Writing in my head. It was the most inconvenient time, yet charmingly composed sentences were rolling forth and diving wastefully off my handlebars into the ditch. I enjoyed them, but they were ephemeral and could not be kept. I wonder if there is merit in that though, the head writing? To just in the moment enjoy what one's brain is creating? I call them Word Birds.

A random anecdote:
I woke in the middle of the night, one of those rather hot nights. I was pulling my sheets neat and smoothing my quilt: I was making my bed in my sleep. I eventually became cognizant enough, wondered why I was doing this, and got back in it. All freshly made.


A Title
I have characterized this time in my life. I like doing this; I like to look back and title the chapters of my past. And if I do it currently I believe it may help me with Pre-Nostalgia, with the "We Now", the living fully in the present regardless of what past gold I may be pining for. Last summer was the Summer of (India) Love. The summer previous was one of Big City and Becoming Bold, in Seattle. I reveled completely in these times; they may indeed have been the zenith of me so far.

This summer is the Brown Summer of Blues. Because I am working in the brown soil, I have become brown myself: and the blues have been the soundtrack to this. The sweat, the sun, the soil: the basic goodness of physical work outdoors. Mr. Bossman donated to me his old iPod (my first "device!"), and is lending me CDs of blues, jazz, and bluegrass--and this raw expressive type of music seems fitting to this place. The beauty of the finger lakes, the rocks in even the prime soil here, the unpredictable tirades of thunderstorms, the people satisfied with bad cover bands behind the Ramada and chicken barbeques. Generally, this is not the sleek, New-Yorker reading, commuter-train riding, coffee-shops-open-on-Sundays place of Seattle.

So bluegrass and blues it is. The blues are about love and not having love. About working hard. These are very applicable to me right now. But in a bigger way the blues are about Expression, participating in the human experience actively, not just moping in depression. Standing up and singing about it. Feeling and contributing.

Organist on the double and other stories

Organist On The Double

This Sunday I lived a dream.

Having had multiple churches ask me for services as organist, I’ve wished that everyone could just organize themselves with staggered services so I could play for them all. Well, this Sunday I played for two churches. An Episcopal Church and then a Methodist. I played the hymn ‘Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy’, which is to say, I played ‘Holy Holy Holy’ at both of them.

The first service was at 9am, and then I non-dawdledly drove to the second service beginning at 10:50. The first church was Our Lady of the Polyester Robe, and I got to feel all dramatic and important—like I was rushing between scene changes—as I flew down the back steps behind the alter after one service before the next, flaring off my choir robe as I went. The playing at both churches went smoothly, which pleased me.  Nine people in attendance at the first church, and more than I could count at the second.

After the churches it was sunny and I didn’t have to do any bending over (unlike my weekdays) and I had that anticipatory pre-bicycle ride frenzy of indecision: It’s-a-beautiful-day-where-should-I-go-biking?!? After flapping through some maps and not finding anything quite obvious, I decided rather arbitrarily to head south down Seneca Lake. This ended up being a very fortuitous decision because I not only had the Lake Gazing Happies but also found a sign with an arrow indicated Arts Fest in Penn Yann. So I turned up bucolic roads to that and there I tapped along to bluegrass music, admired jewelry I felt too cheap to buy, happily wondered why there was suddenly so much art made with recycled forks, and chatted with two not unattractive blokes at a craft brewery tasting table. They ended up giving me more tastes because I hung out so long. I very much enjoy making new acquantances. The ride back was effortless, skimming along in a sky of expansive farms, green fields, flowering weeds.

Summer

My favorite part of the work day today was planting parsley, all baby ones frilly and frail, the bed looking sweet when we were finished, featuring rows of this curly light green. I carefully pulled some purslane from the edge of the bed and Mrs. Greenhouse observed, “there’s Sandra getting tomorrow’s lunch!”  Yup. Have reputation. Will travel. The fact that the other day Mr. Bossman not only excused me for a few minutes to harvest my favorite weed (Chenopodium album) at the edge of the field we’d just arrived at to plant, but also offered me a bag from his truck, gave me a certain sense of belonging. Although I’m certainly the only one around here wearing Teva sandals as work boots, sporting teal hair, finding endless four-leaf clovers, and eating weeds, but at least nobody is giving me too much trouble about it. 

I love that the evenings are light until 9pm, that the summer solstice is approaching. However, the summer solstice for me is bittersweet, because after that the days begin shrinking and the darkness stretching. The daily change is minute at this point (and we can live in ignorant bliss until about September), but once the middle of October is here I am faced with a mildly stabbing sense of loss as each day begins to be 3 minutes darker than the one previous. So the time just before the summer solstice is the sweetest: before the great shrinking back of the light begins. Yet another reminder to be Here Now and present.  (Or another motive to take a bicycle trip in the tropics….Being cold and with a beloved, in a cozy pleasing house, with a motivating job is one thing. But being cold and alone is decidedly another matter).

Fame

My father, the famous and incorrigible Bill Wayman, (who wasn’t even there) had his retirement mentioned from the pulpit at Church Number 1. And it wasn’t me who said anything either. How did this come to pass? 

It was before the service and I was tiddling through a hymn. The substituting priest woman approached me, noting, “From back there I saw you had gray hair—which is very attractive by the way—and I couldn’t tell if it was Mrs. Normal organist or someone else.” Mother Substitute had a face that flipped a switch from my memory….. I told her she looked familiar and then we both commenced that strange foray into history, to find the ven diagram of our past. She asked my full name. “WAYMAN?” She said all recognition. “Bill Wayman’s DAUGHTER?”

Famous by association, hm.

A co-worker of my father’s (Cathy Lewis), who would have last seen me as a timid child in a flowered turtle-neck, prepping enough courage to ask her about her horses. “You rode!” she confirmed now. “Yes,” I clarified, “horses. I ride bicycles now.”  She stated emphatically she would not have recognized me, that it was fabulous to see me again, and regards to my parents. I’d known her as the very smart sciencey woman who kept horses back then, and now here she was priesting.

And so the two of us, once horse woman and once horse girl, led the service as rector and organist. And she was so pleased about all of this she bubbled to the congregation about our connection, including my Dad’s upcoming retirement.

So this is what can happen, stomping again around the grounds where one grows up: one encounters figures from history.

Playing organ and tying tomatoes.

On Organist-ing

The church (Episcopal) was built in 1831, dark wood, a tall steeple, heavy doors. I sat on the organ bench and during the sermon I looked out through the congregation, out the open front door, and into the chirping sunny June outside. That is one of those timeless moments, sitting there in an intentional space, all of you there in community, looking out the church doors into anticipation of a sunny Sunday.

But I had the rather blue polyester experience of wearing a choir robe for the first time as an organist. You’d think I would have encountered this earlier (at one of my seven other churches) but previously congregations had to deal with my miscellaneous sense of style—loud pants, striped socks, colorful scarves. But this Sunday I was standardized. Balanced at the organ, I was my own personal microclimate of contained evapotranspiration inside that thing. Boy was I happy to get some ventilation and get it off.  

The organ was one of the oldest ones I’ve played (early/mid of previous century I think) and it was like pedaling a bicycle with no gears. Meaning that when I pulled out more stops for increased volume, the keys required more force to be pushed down. I enjoyed the historic feeling of this and the sound was airy and full. However, organ instruments have as much variety as tractors, and being able to drive one does not seamlessly translate into being able to drive another. The foot pedals on this organ had a different spacing, and the keyboard was shorter, which made me struggle a bit. I think I stepped on a few aural toes down there. Next week I’ll bring a little lamp to illuminate the foot pedals and see a little better (“a light unto my feet and a lamp unto my path”) because otherwise it’s a lot of flailing around in the dark down there. 

The congregation was small, welcoming, and the priest young and enthusiastic, with bouncy hair. I shook a lot of hands and received a lot of thanks for filling in. Mrs. Regular Organist was taking a trip around the arctic circle (!?!) and had been playing at that church for twice the length of time that I have been on this earth.

But I committed an inadvertent misdemeanor. Called: not playing all the pages of a hymn. (ahhh!) Most hymns have an expected 2 pages, however, “Hail This Festival Day” (or, as I was singing it later to become mentally prepared for the upcoming cabbage planting: “Hail This Vegetable Day”) had three, and a page turn. Which I did not discover, until after the hymn and that strange feeling, caused by longer breaths in the congregational singing and stumbling on words, that something was probably slightly amiss. But I just couldn’t place what. Later I prostrated myself before them in apology, but everyone dismissed it, “Oh it’s a hard hymn—you did great!,” “It was fine! We were flexible!”

On the Seed Job

There is a new girl at work; she showed up a little bit ago, sitting down for our morning planning meeting with her I-9 paperwork and documents. “Nice passport!”, I said, “what’s your name?” Teacher Taylor, she is another graduated master’s student (yay!), and is taking this summer job in between school semesters. She’s smiley, laughy, and wholesome, and I appreciate her company for talking (coming to terms with repetitive tasks, discussing the NPR we listen to during said repetitive tasks) and laughing (the names of vegetable varieties, silly quotidian things like this).

I was writing stakes for leeks that I was repotting (variety name: ‘Striker’). The leeks all contained in the same tray anyway so the stake labeling was simply extraneous identification. Striker, Striker, Striker, Striker, I wrote. And then I just couldn’t help it: Stinker.

One way I’ve found to deal with the repetitive tasks is to treat them like yoga or a hand-eye coordination excursive. For instance, bending for an endless stretch of tomato planting can become a great hamstring stretch, and I’ve been trying to do tasks with my non-dominant hand. This can be a surprisingly challenging teaser for the brain. At first putting the tool in that hand feels insurmountable, how to even hold it? As un-natural like doing something in the mirror. But then slowly. Like practicing a piece on the organ for the first time: feels impossible and laborious but eventually smooths out. I even wrote out some label stakes with my left hand.

Senior Native Plants, who I tried to accumulate wisdom from in Puerto Rico, described farming as an opportunity for yoga. Try and do every movement, every task, so that it is balanced on the body. Some times hoeing on the left side, sometimes hoeing on the right. Can I tie tomatoes with fluid grace? Can I make it look like a dance? Can I find a rhythm in planting peppers? 

On Nostalgia

I want to practice something called Pre-Nostalgia. See, we get nostalgia, this poignant feeling of wanting a certain past time back or having extraordinarily fond memories of a time. Ecstatically riding the commuter train to Seattle, bicycling towards the mountain, dancing with Mr. India…..but these things are over now.

With Nostalgia sometimes the passing of time can massage troubling things into a more attractive perspective, or condense feelings and experiences into a graspable nugget, or simply further glorify that which was already glorious. But that feeling of nostalgia can be quite strong, the yearning for something unattainable. A wise photographer once told me, a little cryptically,  “with nostalgia, the having is in the wanting.”  Basically, the feeling of wanting a certain time back is richer than trying to relive or visit or recreate a time that has past. Because it won’t be the same.

I was thinking about this while bicycling into work this morning, into the wind, in the gray rain, my raincoat flapping wetly around my arms. And I was thinking how then I would farm for 8 hours—caring for tomatoes, stomping about in the soil—then come home and be whisked by my parents out to dinner with my grandparents. This time of working hard, eating well, and being around my family. I realized that some day I will look back at this time with Nostalgia, and I should do my best to appreciate it now. That is the Pre-Nostalgia.

Place, space, time, and hearts

On Place

I have moved my place of existence and focus from western Washington to central New York. I am fascinated by what Place is. What makes somewhere in this country feel different than somewhere else? How do we all experience Place: in generally different or generally similar ways to each other? I have no essay on these things, but I am still wondering myself.

I miss the mountain—Mt. Rainier—in a way I had never believed possible. It’s only a land form….but I’ve realized I experienced that mountain in almost a spiritual way. My knees would get a little weak if I were to see that looming white and, at sunset, purple massiveness….so rare for the clouds to part for her. I would always check east for the mountain, and even now, here in upstate NY I’ll look east and if there happens to be a cloud in just the right place I’ll do a little double-take in silly hope.

But there are no mountains. Instead we have the finger lakes. And lots of little rolling hills, the Wayne Drumlins. Or, as I called them on my bicycle today while riding them, the Wayne Dumplings.

In western Washington there are drive-through coffee shacks and no ice cream huts, and central NY is all about the ice cream huts, totally lacking in coffee shacks. How interesting! Why? How do we get our quick buzzes? Sugar and fat or caffeine?

In central NY there are countless equidistant towns of similar size, rather than a series of towns along the main vein of commuter spread-out, like near Seattle.

And here there are more pickup trucks.

On New Living Arrangements

I may be working an unglamorous job with a lowly hourly wage, but I have just come into a substantial fortune.

But the sort of fortune that needs some uninterring.

The Hobart and William Smith College tenants where I’m living, The Little Room in the Messy House, have vacated. And they have left a fine array of products. But of course these products aren’t on beautiful display like in a grocery store; instead they are on dusty shelves, forgotten behind the book shelf, left dripping in the bathroom.

I suppose some people might be reticent and a little disgusted to eat some stranger’s half box of granola, or adopt their old hand cream. But you’d use your friend’s? So I just reason that these folks would’ve become friends after some time so it’s no different anyway.

Plus I was thoroughly conditioned by sleeping various places in Cambodia to face all sorts of dust, grime, and ick to Search, Find, and Rescue these goodies from this house.

Last week I organized and cleaned, feeling very purposeful and humid. The shelves and cabinets were totally disorganized, with Nutellas in two different places. I found this wholly satisfying, the simple task of moving about and grouping Grains together, the Teas, the Pastas….

Leaving Burt’s Bees Milk-N-Honey hand cream is inconceivable to me (that stuff is not cheap!), although I imagine someone being in a rush to leave, or having enough money where you’ll just buy another bottle later. But still, I cannot understand seeing what are to me “treat” products, as such disposable things. It’s been an interesting peak into the residuals of others’ different ways of life.  

Some of my favorites were the crate-sized container of Wegman’s Organic Animal Crackers, the German bottle of liquor I have-no-idea-what-it-is but it looks expensive, the Teavana tea, the Farro grain, and the chia seeds. I’m fortunate these people weren't all into just ramen or cake mixes, but the sort of Splurge Food I’d want for myself but never feel worthy enough to buy. What a blessing!

Yeah…..Chia seeds. Which I should write a bit about. Those minuscule seeds all recently famous for their high protein, fiber, and good energy content. When soaked in water they form a little coat of gel around themselves, interestingly, to their hydration benefit. Healthy and satisfying (satisfying in the knowledge of how healthy they allegedly are), however, disconcerting when—some time after breakfast—you take a swig of water, and a chia seed, now all engorged with its little gel coat, is felt above your tongue. It hadn’t arrived there with the water; it had been lurking in there, somewhere, and lord help you if it had been in one of the visible front row seats. Grabby little buggers.

Thoughts on being alone and on being

My current existence is markedly different from what I had grown accustomed to recently. In southeast Asia Lady Elise and I ate (pho) together, slept (in hairy beds) together, pedaled (seaside climbs) together—in that foreign place we had to be our everything for each other. And then upon return, my time was with Mr. India, in that way where daily quotidian items are bring lights because you’re with a beloved one. And now, I am entirely alone. Except for weekends, which are rich with friends and family who have known me since I was young and awkward.

I was curious how it would be, bicycling home to an empty house, to cook and then eat alone, and then spend my evenings. But I am not at all bored: working on a manuscript from my master’s work, cleaning and organizing my newly adopted jars of Nutella (ha), playing the organ in preparation for Sunday services.

I had realized something, standing there next to the alter, head craned towards the intricate ceiling. That I really enjoy being in empty churches alone. I put my finger on it; it’s not just the organ playing, it’s having such an intentional space that normally is filled with people, all to yourself. The holiness becomes especially resonant in the stillness and silence.

On heartbreak revisited

I had erroneously thought that even Short-term Time would make heartbreak lessen, that it would get painted over by other things. 

This is not happening. 

Granted, it has changed over time, but only the immediacy of it has faded. But I am learning that sorrow can exist intertwined with the joys of a bluebird, the laughter of friends, the endorphins of a bicycle ride. I miss him intensely, and it comes in unexpected little waves, just when I think I might be disengaging myself from it. I woke up on a gray day earlier this week, a little spinny from the alarm, bleakened from the low skies. “I miss you Anurag” I said out loud first thing, heavy from it in the gray, “but let’s go make tea.” I try to be good to myself, as Mother Wisdom had once said, “take care of yourself like you would your dearest friend.” 

Pastor Articulate also had something very wise to say about this, “it is like a death…you don’t forget it or leave it behind; instead you learn to assimilate it.”

I think I am learning a lot from the wise ones around me, because of this.

I’m also learning that there is a strong present-ness in sadness. Sometimes so much in the moment, so aware of my being and others around me, simply even what people are saying, what I am seeing….life and existence become heightened, if just for a moment. Like I’m on some strange chemical and perceptions are altered.

Aloneness is not loneliness. I am experiencing both at the moment.

Loneliness happens most intensely in public places, at Wegman’s or walking in the park, where I see couples holding hands and talking in low voices to each other. I feel like saying to them, “you don’t know how good you’ve got it: you get to keep each other.”

Aloneness can be a celebration and rich, in this personal way, almost in that way a child relishes a secret—All Mine. I go and play the pipe organ, shamelessly loud, bold in knowledge of no other ears, and relish there being just me. You can be extra bold without expectations of others around you.

Reeds and Seeds

Here is something that makes me extraordinarily happy:

I am within walking distance of a church containing a pipe organ.

Back in Washington I had to bicycle (up hill both ways, of course) to reach an instrument. And now, I can cross the road, dart through a side-yard, and find myself under the auspices of a huge stone church.

I'd emailed them out of the blue and asked if I might practice there. The administrative assistant forwarded my name to the organist and I was blessed by goodwill and trust and just tonight I met him and was introduced to the instruments. Yes, instruments, because there is a second organ from 1830! Oh history! A wee thing with keys smaller than customary and a surprisingly good sound. And all sorts of grand pianos around, too.

The main pipe organ has three manuals (eeeee!) and 32-foot pipes for the feet (meaning: deep and resonant). There is a reed stop (think celebratory marching army) that is particularly lovely as well.

The church is stone, looming and venerable, and inside endless colored glass windows glow the sanctuary with goldenrod light. Tall ceilings stretch expansively--I felt the reverence and appreciation like being inside a castle--and the sanctuary smelled mystically and deliciously of smoke. Incense? I asked of Mr. Organist. No, actually. He explained the church had burned in 1930, and had been rebuilt. And on humid days you can still smell the walls breathing out smokey residuals from 80 years ago. History's aroma.

I was ecstatic to play in a space like this, like playing in the very center of God.

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Since Monday, I have been residing in the Little Room in the Messy House, a big old student place just near down-town Geneva. The graduated seniors are in the process of moving out and I'm doing my best to settle in amongst boxes, sticky floors, and old kegs. I keep turning off lights they leave on, but they've been generous to share with me a heap of left-over Weggie's sandwiches from their graduation party. I've pretty much been eating them every day (and today for two meals) because the fridge is so burgeoning that the thought of amassing my own ingredients and cooking is rather wearisome. I do pick up strange eating habits when I live alone (when there is no beautiful Indian man any more, cooking beautiful curries). 

My mother's colorful quilt soothes this little room--my nest and sanctuary--into a place of being, and I went from the first night here of Lonely and Dismal to remembering how many other little rooms I have inhabited, with that very same quilt saving the space, and have since then perked up and feel comfort coming in here.

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Spending hours poking cabbage, kale, and endive embryos into trays is much less disagreeable when I bicycle to work (rather than sitting an hour in the car). Mr. Bossman, first thing in the morning yesterday, observed to the two Base-ball Cap Boys their lack of energy, but then regarded me and noted I was all high on endorphins. True. My bicycle route has only a single stop-light and the rest is nicely painted houses with intentional gardens, and views over apple orchards. I rode White Springs Lane, passed White Springs Drive, crossed White Springs Road, and also there were White Springs Manor and White Springs Farm. (I guess people like to fit in around those there white springs)

There is not much glamorous about agriculture. As a master's student, while studying soil and managing a project sounds cool, really, when you unravel it, all I was doing was Counting Stuff. Counting weeds, counting how much mass was in things, counting samples. Counting labels, counting bags.

And working in industry, at this seed company, what I am doing now is: Moving Stuff. Moving trays into the greenhouse, out of the greenhouse, moving plants into the soil, moving water onto the plants.

Lady Elise was very wise yesterday, during our giddy little skype conversation. "Agriculture just IS repetitive", she noted. But there are nuggets of good learning and experience amongst all the repeating. She also noted that sometimes we need a more simple era of time in our lives, giving us air to look up and around and consider. Especially after such a blur of activity, of bicycling southeast Asia, of blasting all over Seattle, of a cross-country road trip, of a beautiful tragedy and losing this heart, of defending a thesis.

There is a time for reaping and a time for sowing.