Even though I'm not Russian

Here is one of those writings where I've finished a lovely time, and I feel like describing coats and clovers and cheese and cappuccinos and whatever else, and it is just rather self-indulgent.

I may have started in Ithaca, where I now call home, and I may have arrived in Rochester, where I've been stamping around since I was a child. But riding a bus there made me feel the fresh edge of the travel, as if I were almost across seas and unable to speak the language. Just me and a backpack, observing the world, eating figs from my pocket. The power of associations, huh!

Waiting for the bus in the cold, I wore my Grannie's long dark furry coat (this coat my new prized possession, we think it may be as old as my father, my last name stitched into the lining), like a portable nest that fits on my body, and my bah-sheep ear-flap hat. A young man looked at me pointedly and asked me something I couldn't understand. He clarified and I realized I was just asked if I were Russian, in Russian. "Thought maybe you could have been one of my relatives from Russia" he said, a little abashed, but this tickled me so much that we both laughed pleasedly over it. For me, little exchanges like this are just one of the perks of not having a car.

I got off the bus among the tall buildings and cold blowing trash of Rochester, and walked the few blocks to that fortuitous coffee shop, where the most remarkable four leaf clover and stolen bike story was staged (see the entry dated July 5th or 6th, 2014), and amazingly on the way there found two four leaf clovers. There'd been a little abandoned plot of land that someone had thoughtfully covercropped with clovers, and I thought, how brilliant it would be to find a four-leaf clover there. I usually don't find them when I fervently want one, they show up more readily when I'm a little mellowed out, but I still wished I could.  And with no further ado I found two immediately and carried them to the coffee shop and gave one to Mr Barrista who remembered me, and he smelled the clover in a sweet display as if it were a flower, and wouldn't let me pay for my cappuccino. A cappuccino so light and perfectly amalgamated, lofty foam entwined with buttery espresso.

It was the first time in a long time I had walked into a coffee shop and knew no one. That doesn't happen much anymore in Ithaca, even though I've only been there 9 months now.

I met my mother for a ramble about the public market and was squealing over persimmons ($3 EACH in the Ithaca Weggies, but here $2.50 for 5) and buying zatar and soon hefting around no small load to import back into the pricey land of Ithaca.

The traditional Italian cheese shop was one of my favorites; I could almost pretend I was not in America anymore. All the cheeses were unceremoniously set out on the counter--who needs refrigeration--and the lack of prices and sufficient labels was like being back in a hut shop somewhere foreign. I had no idea how to engage with these cheeses, or how to even begin to choose a cheese. So I asked, hopefully, "What's your stinkiest cheese?", and was taken on a fascinating tour of four different types, little flaccid white slabs passed to me by an eager gloved hand. The first was like eating a soft foot fresh from a muggy work boot, with an Italian name I was all good intentions to remember but have since forgotten; the third was the winner...a nose of fresh grass, a little lemony somehow at first, then ending in rich bitter bliss.

The rest of the weekend was being ferried around in the cars of old friends I love dearly, people who have known me over half my life, going from concert to house party, farm house sleepover to cookie making project, cookie party to Thai food dinner....the weekend warming and woven together by food and friends.

What wonder that the magic of travel and feeling somewhere freshly could be combined with the comforting standard of old friends.

Dancing Through Winter. A study in form and function.

These days of flat gray cold leave me feeling flimsily susceptible to weather-influenced soul grayness. I don't reckon I have Seasonal Affected Disorder full blown, but I get that unsettling neutralizing of energy, with gray fading to darkness at 5pm.

I want to live a life of NOT soul-grayness.

I think I will dance my way through winter.

We go about talking and analyzing, and very often this is the default of how we process and move through life. And maybe we do yoga, slow delicious ways of shaping and stretching our physical capsules and processing living.  But dancing, especially the free form type, or adding spontaneous twirls into a contra dance set form, is a completely unrelated and often untouched way of being a human brain and body. Its like a vigorous self-applied massage. Joy in the human experience expressed. Or an attraction and connection with another expressed. The best kind of dance for me--not always accessible but wonderful when it happens-- is when thought and judgement drop away and it becomes an exuberant meditation. Body moving and warm, unstuck and open.

I've been dancing a lot lately. Swing and blues, dance club beats, organized and coordinated contra. God bless you, Ithaca and your venues.

(Or just my kitchen, solo, the Dishes Dancing Blues.)

I can go to these things with or without a partner. I've been here just long enough I can show up on a dance floor Friday night and know people and have dance friends.

Or dancing alone. This was happening Friday for a while on the beating blinking pumping floor and then I overheard somewhere, "You should dance with the hot 80s girl", and wondered who looked like an 80s girl. Then my friend Big Ben, who, amazingly went to college with me back when I had less color and no talking and no style, and he said "I was just told to dance with you". Ha! (Big Ben loves telling people how unrecognizable from my current self I was when he knew me in college.)

Contra dancing was last night.

Contra is a fascinating form, because its the sort of dance that relies less on self expression and more on a moderated structure. Which means it draws all sorts of characters, especially those who may feel a little self-consciousness about the inner spontaneous movement sense, attractive to people who love mathematics and engineering. I say this because I ask my partners what they do, and its very often engineering or complex biological sciences or the like. The swings and do-see-dos that repeat and move the room of bodies along in a pleasing pattern, all to 8-beat lines of bright music. I love it.

Contra is also an amazing study in types of dancers. The following is only a partial compendium, but I wish to share with you a few profiles.

Sweating Ecstatic Men. These are ones so thrilled to be part of this music and movement, they add aerobic embellishments to their dance, working themselves into a joyous frothing frenzy. One asked me to dance and I said yes; "and since I have many shirts I'm going to go get a new shirt," he said and charged off. He changed shirts between every dance he was sweating that much. Stomping like a clogger at every opportunity, hooting "Yeah!" and "Yes!" as the music made a turn to a new phrase. By the end of the night his eyes were wide, his hair like wet ropes on his face; he was so huge and warm and sticky that after going from him to my partner I assuredly transferred moisture. He shouted "YES!" now with a loud quaver in his voice, as if he were transformed with overpowering contra orgasms.

Then you have The Bosses. Old solid men who've likely been doing this for twice my life time. They will spin you in a controlled tight circle, perfectly on beat, never cracking their gravity for a smile, pushing or pulling you to every move so you needn't think. You never mess anything in those dances, floating and propelled in perfect time.

And finally The Young Grinners. College boys, anything from skinny and limp with petrified eager grins, to smooth moving boys who already have shoulders from working out. You both grin with the novelty of all of this, spinning about a room coordinated with all these people and the music.

Ok gray winter: music and endoprhins and Humanity, here I come.

Unexpected Minneapolis

I am in Minneapolis.

Cornell sent me here to join thousands of other plaid-wearing scientists to talk about plants and soil for four days. A conference! And I will be giving my first Big Girl talk at it, all smart gray suit and carefully crafted PowerPoint slides.

Minneapolis is a city, hip and busy, tall glinting buildings, taxis in lines, Saturday night swarms of carefully dressed beautiful people Going Out. I haven't been in a proper city since San Juan, Puerto Rico. And the local folks here don't even consider Minneapolis that substantial. But to me, with the skyways linking downtown buildings warmfully, and the web of bus routes, this place is a metropolis.

Although I had a four hour meeting yesterday, with a team of people who care about cover crop traits and breeding trials, the conference proper hasn't really started yet and thus I have had some gift time to explore.

And, wowza, I love exploring a city.

Fortified with a bus schedule, a map, and a container of water, I set out south of downtown yesterday. I found myself in a city that could have been in Costa Rica or Cambodia. I wandered into Mexican grocery stores, bought a beautiful scarf at a thrift store with no other white people in it, and unintentionally caused a man to brake on his bicycle to ask if I was a model (it's these leather Frye boots, I suppose). Posters of soccer stars, hair places advertising dreadlocks, Super Mercados, a little African store selling thumb tacks next to bulk spices next to cell phone cards. A panaderia where the smell of plump yeasty breads brought me back to my favorite Latin American places. I bought a puffy twist of a bun for my coffee later, likely a third of the price of the pretentious glassed-off baked goods I would find on offer at my gourmet coffee location.  Halal meats. Saddle shops. (Saddle shops? They were the only indication I was in the Midwest)

Then I made it onto a bus and rode into another part of Minneapolis. Leaving Unexpected Diversity Land and arriving in Standard Hip Urbane Area. With the gourmet cooking stores, the North face shop, the hipster coffee, the young people on their sweet bicycles. The kids can ride fixies here because its flat as my chest. I tried on a fur coat in an H&M shop but bought a dress instead. I sat and enjoyed a very good coffee (thanks Seattle for ruining me) and listened to a gray haired couple and friend talk about food additives and complain about the tofu having been fried at a supposedly health-conscious restaurant. "I signed up for a knife skills class..." one said in passing.  Later, talking about travel: "I'm huge in Paris but tiny in Wisconsin", said their decently sized friend. Outside the shop a tiny Honda's license plate read "BIKE_NOIR". 

This morning I woke early, and joined the good Catholics for the last bit of the 7:30 mass at the stunningly grand basilica of St Someone. I went there for the pipe organ. My breath caught in my chest as I entered the space, the ceilings soaring, the windows, the pillars, the organ practically shimmering gold, with the trumpet pipes pointing out towards the sanctuary like guns out a ship's gunnels. My entire skin had an electric current over it when I heard the thick sound fill such the space. Being a Catholic church, only three people sang, but the cantor doggedly put her cheerful voice above the grand beast. I walked upstream against the flow of Catholics leaving during the postlude (a Mendelssohn Fugue), and stood adoringly in front of the organ as it roared. I will always love this.

I spoke with the Organist afterward, he was thrilled to learn I too was one, and the world became tiny when he said he was from Buffalo NY and studied in part in the SUNY system. I asked him his favorite stops ("oh heavens! There are so many!") and he played the 16 foot diapason, rich like hot chocolate; I asked him his best advice: "learn as much as you can about style and always practice technique."

There is sunshine. I wandered around a wee lake in the city, the water rushes expanding the sunshine around them, and am now contentedly thumbing these words out from behind a plant in a busy coffee shop.

Hooky

I played hooky this afternoon. 70 degrees and sunny, the world just hues of gold and burnt gold and golden gold. I flipped down my laptop in the windowless office, climbed into my bike shorts, consumed the last icecream cone of the year, and set off on my bike.

I went east, towards the lands of Hammond Hill State Forrest, the golden corn set against the auburn hills. Glacier carved hills so prominent and jutting in these parts, and heaving up and around them, I could say the same for my legs after a season biking around here: carved by glaciers. For miles it was just me and crunchy floating leaves; the peace of empty roads with no lines down their middles. My favorite is to see a steep bugger ahead, "oh arg", but there's a decline before it, and I can pedal frenzied enough to coast half-way up the other side. Being out here is leaving the bike lanes and the Priuses of Ithaca, entering instead into space and forest punctuated by diesel trucks, baseball hats, and the occasional horrifically tacky lawn display. In East Nowhere I stopped at a farm store and bought cheese curds, $4 said the sharpie-written cardboard sign, all homespun looking with a quaint clip-art on the label of their zip lock baggie and tasting inarguably of Barn. Delicious. The big man behind the counter was so friendly and refilled my water bottles and gave me free apples.

I biked into the woods a bit, just listening to the trees and the wind. I sat on an outcropping of moss tuft and had thoughts. Just to sit in peace and solitude in a forest is a wonderful thing. I highly recommend leaving work and sitting on moss in the woods for a while sometime.

I thought I'd have some nice profound thoughts while I was there in the peace, but all I could come up with was how incredibly good my life is, and how indescribably blessed and fortunate I am. Also, simply looking at a forest floor, with all the colored leaves, weed species, slanting shadows, illuminated by bright sun: the visual information is almost overwhelming, the shapes and colors...especially contrasted with our constructed simplified creations of indoor walls and office desks.

Being in the warmth, in a forest, on new roads: this was like going on vacation, just not with all the logistics of where the next hotel would be. Pedaling and observing the passing-by of it all.

This is what I love best.

I came home at the same time as I would have if I'd been coming out of the office. Back into the students and the traffic. But instead 31 miles later and with the heady knowledge that there is so much else out there.

Lipstick and Pipe Organ

Something happened last night that has never before happened in my adult life. I did not have to explain my Halloween costume.

In past years I'd been Kale ("why do you have lettuce for your earrings?"), or a Tillandsia species ("an ...air plant? What?"), or a Mad Scientist ("so you have sparkly hair and a lab coat, what show are you from?"), or Green Algae ("LG? Who's that?").

Last night I was Cruella Deville. (101 Dalmations childhood Disney classic) My hair was half black and half white; I had long red gloves, red tights, the bitchy black dress, heels. And my beloved Granny's decadent long furry coat (a true vintage gem). I carried a surprisingly convincing cigarette holder ("can you actually smoke that?"), which was actually part of a coat hanger with a bit of paper at the end. I was sweeping and tall and people would come over all knowing and chatty, "are you Cruella Deville, right!".

A childhood of Troubadour costumes, a crayon costume, pioneer dress that my mom sewed for me (now that is devotion)....I had never been a villain before, and tho I look like an earthquake in heels and didn't know how to apply lipstick, I had a blast of a time.

Not that I don't also love dressing as an obscure air plant, but last night I could feel a little of that attraction of Halloween that people rave about. The creativity and the play of putting together a costume, the imagination and experience of playing a part, the recognition and attention if it works.

Also Cruella Deville played the pipe organ in a concert of spooky music given by Ithaca organists and other musicians. Firstly, I was thrilled and honored to be included in "Ithaca organists good enough to perform in a concert", and secondly, I get a buzz of endorphins every time I play that toccata from suite gothique.  And to share it with  others pumped a whole drunken concoction of the best neurochemicals into my veins. The pride, the nervousness, the landed success of the last bombastic chord, the concentration to stay adhered to the bench when both feet were racing. Also to strut up there in red and black costume, cigarette holder at jaunty gesticulating angle, it was just like playing dress up and exploring the novelty of being something else...but just in front of a few hundred people.

I had help from a new friend, a particular yoga goddess in town who happens to have my birthday; we are sisters in the boldness hair and whenever I feel too loud or too colorful I can turn to her and feel comparably and refreshingly small. We clacked around my apartment, practicing villain-heel-walking, laughing like hyenas because my inability to walk in heels was abundantly apparent. I also didn't know how to apply lipstick. I snapped open the little stick and held it up, all important and red, and hovered at a loss over my face. Yoga Goddess explained the nuances of outlining the upper lip and then pressing into the lower one. Ta-da. Life skills to be gained at any time in life. 

The Everybody

That moment where I darken the lights in the kitchen, coax up the music, shoot an integral friend a specific look through the crowd, and soon there are all my friends dancing. A moment of YES, and I'd rather be nowhere else in the world, there among my pots and pans with the table pushed aside. It was all spontaneous and downstairs the curtains buzzed from the bouncing. The man from Sweden, my new grad student, the architecture history woman of soul, the indefatigable pal of southeast Asia, all those dear ones with whom I was 14 once. All of these dancing together. And I brought out hats, the red bowler, the white bro hat, and they were rotating around as dance props.

I was throwing an Everybody Party.

I have amazing friends and I am beyond blessed for all of them. And all my amazing friends were saying throughout the night that my other amazing friends were amazing. "SEE, right!"

I love being at parties, being among the buzz and the energy, but even better I love doing at parties. Meaning: the hostessing, the mixing of drinks, introducing people ("Annie, this is Ben; he knew me when I had long hair and was way less fun"). I always had a reason to thread through the crowd, allegedly to refill drinks, but it meant mingling with intention and seeing to everybody.

I had made a menu, The Annie (ginger, cider, whisky), The Holly (nutmeg whisky clove), etc, etc, all these friends and their cocktail spirit animals. I left out a pen and invited others to add themselves. We all stood around drinking Hollies at first, people rather intimidated perhaps by the black pepper lemon vodka sassy Mariahs. No solo cups for us, I was proud to bring out Grandma June's gold rimmed glasses on a tray (the tray, in fact, was a flat from the greenhouse for plant starts, but whatever).

It was all sort of a big experiment, all these mixing of circles (from my work team, to the beautiful yoga goddess I met randomly who happens to have my birthday, to the famous Big Ben I went to college with), and all these bizarre yet hopefully delicious cocktail ingredients. Cardamom, ginger, rosemary, cider, lemon, nutmeg, clove, lemon verbena. I love mixing.

Now is not the time of a shared house where parties would be a burden, not the time of living out too far where nobody can walk over. I love my apartment. It's third-floor height and tree-house-ness, that its two blocks from anything, that it can become Hotel Mansard for visitors. I write this in the early morning light of post-party glow, both couches and papasan chair holding my sleeping friends.

Smelling a Time Capsule

The biggest feeling as I rolled my aunt's car through town, the withered rustbelt dead end town--happening to hold my alma mater Allegheny College-- with the lights of the chain restaurants and the empty streets of downtown was this: "I am so glad I don't live here." Which surprised me; I was expecting something like "weeee I feel College again!" or "how different it looks!" I wasnt expecting a sweep of relief.

I was back for "homecoming", though I attended no sports games and reunioned with few class mates, I was there to do my own thing... which was really no different from when I attended school there. I had not been back in 5 years.

Five years in one's twenties is a critical growth stage, producing more leaves, fruiting maybe for some, certainly strengthening of core stem. Going back was like opening a time capsule, preserved in its original state of Old Sandra. The Sandra who was SAaaaandra, with normal hair, and too much timidity to deal boldly with the world, anxiety over little things.

So I was back to visit with myself, the self who couldn't imagine a life after college. Somehow, being back again, I felt taller now. Or that everything was slightly smaller. How much difference can be made by travel, biking, jobs, broken hearts, stolen bikes, music...

I wheeled downtown the first night, turning heads, purple hair on a bike, at night, waat?, had a beer in the one place I ever went out there, and reveled around in memories and reflections. I typed a bit of the following... 

This place has so many dive bars. Ithaca has maybe two, which may intend and work towards being dive bars. Here, it's by default.

But the very first thing when I rolled on campus was play the pipe organ I studied on here.  I was the only organ student for four years, the only organ student who studied for four years, and my lessons and practice time were sacred to me.

Opening the door into the chapel, and a big whoosh of memories was upon me. The new carpet smell in there flushed me back, my memories linked to new carpet smell unfortunately, smells being the strongest associations of the senses. And the memory was more of a  feeling, the feeling of safety and peace. Because I would come in after classes, and after trying to be social, awkwardly, and enter this space and then fill it with big music. I knew it was a special place, but smelling the memory 5 years later, I realized how critical that organ music and peace space was for my soul then.

So I approached the instrument like going back to an old lover, but found I had grown and changed, and that organ which had once been all-powerful and overwhelming now seemed smaller and obedient, compared with the gorgeous beast I play now at the first Presbyterian in Ithaca.

And wow, I love Ithaca. In Ithaca there's no smoking in bars and spitting (I even witnessed a small boy, no more then 10, spit on the street corner; he's learning from Pa? Getting started early for the snuff?).

I had a fascinating discussion with Professor Bread about this. About living in Ithaca, which is almost too precious with all its bike lanes and multiple co-op locations and community gardens. It's pretty well improved and is thriving with community.  Compare this with living in Meadville, where there is little community and so much work to be done. I could be living there, being the ONE girl on a bike going for groceries, supporting the farmers market, being an example. But I am not; I'm enjoying a really special place to live, and at least now I can fully see that.

How that such a mundane thing of going into buildings can be a charged and peculiar and meaningful experience. Again, it was the smelling. I went into the old dining hall (which smelled like Resignation: I never really enjoyed eating in the slamming and rushed environment there), I went into the student center (smelled like Opportunity: to meet people, and more importantly, to  "rescue food" from catered events), I went into my old senior year house (smelled like Coming Back After A Day, but not like Coming Home). I wandered the campus feeling flushed of memories and thoughtful and present. It was like a giant meditation on time changes and sense of self.

In this small rust belt town I never went out, except for here, "the penny bar". My friends were the ones who'd track me down, or give up on me since I lacked a phone. And now, I've been out all over Ithaca, and I'm the one bugging my friends to come spend time with me. Something happened to my social self since leaving this place, and I am pleased with it indeed.

After the beer I went for a slice of pizza, which they didn't have, but they made a pizza so I could have a slice of it, if I didn't mind waiting, so i hung around soaking up small town PA. Listened to them talking about "jeee-roes" (gyros) and making me cringe, talking with a man with a few teeth mourning his cat who had died.

Since I wasn't at the sports games or ribbon cuttings of homecoming, I had time to fill, and how splendidly serendipitous it was that there was a pipe organ workshop by one of my favorite composers! I joined the organists group of northwestern PA, decidedly an outlier (for being both female AND young; I've met only a few young organists but they have all been male), and felt like a little green alien who had finally touched down on a planet that spoke my language. Organists are an insular bunch, because we're all at our respective churches separately Sunday morning, and never play in ensembles (a pipe organ kind of IS an ensemble already), and there's few of us anyway. So to find all these people, all doing that same magical thing I do, was super exciting. I was talking to anyone I could, asking about hymns and congregations and the Worst Mistake You've Ever Made. I learned some gems of organist technique and the composer gave me a book of his music (!), looked me in the eye, and told me to keep practicing. I kind of have no choice; I love it too much. I caught up with my original organ professor, and we padded around the campus together (I found her a four-leaf clover by the path), running into the other organists not leaving campus either, all of us unable to not launch again into enthusiastic music nerd conversations. 

Then I had beers with my dearest Professor Advisor, realizing I had followed his footsteps and was also now a soil scientist, and that we picked up like I had never graduated, laughing about his terrible handwriting on my papers and talking about leaf decomposition. I rode the old bicycle trail I used to take as a student back when 12 miles was a long ride, I played organ for the college chapel service, a good closing of the loop.

I had visited my favorites, visited a self of mine, talked Organist, and went smelling. I'm so glad I visited.  But I drove back into Ithaca, in its newly-recognized preciousness, and there felt a sense of homecoming. 

Survival guide for the pipe organ

"That's a work out!" observed an alto about the organ part for the anthem this week. "Someone should bring her a bagel!" "Or some Gatorade." It was true, I had to swing my legs south to the low notes, alternating with reaching for the volume pedal, then stretching feet way up north to land on unexpected notes again. I must have some specially evolved bench gripping muscles in my butt, because sometimes I don't know how I stay on.

This is piece by John Rutter, that moves at the speed of light, has enough notes to break a wheelbarrow, an organ part that goes north and south while the singers go east and west, and charges helpfully into 7/8s time signature at one point.

I feel like I'm jumping out of an airplane when I begin the intro. Into the mess! Heave ho! Faster louder harder!

Double tasking at its most insurmountable. Watch conductor (somehow, out of my third eye that's not blocked by the massive organ console?), play both feet, play both hands, modulate volume with feet, turn pages with hands, stay adhered to bench. All at breakneck speed.

Somehow our conductor is the nicest man alive and does not fault me for the 35 additional unexpected notes I offered during rehearsal.

I asked him for survival advice, and the best way to live through battle was to not worry so much about the exact notes, but stay in the rhythm and feeling of the thing. Better to leave a few notes out than to try for every one and gain ugly addendum notes in the process.

I practiced this piece doggedly all week, starting with a shapeless lump of clay, and working with it to create some art. The clay starts cold and unapproachable, difficult to mold, and I can watch the process of learning and adapting take place as it becomes something recognizable.

"Phil.   ...   Phil.   Phil!    Phil!"  Its Sunday morning before church and I'm clinging to the bench and paddling away at the pedals and then realize there is a gentleman staring at me. And his wife is trying to get his attention. I'm practicing the finale of the choir piece. "Its just so exciting!" he gushes and then his wife comes over and we three realize we have similarities of gardening and places we've been before. I do love living here.

All this work for 3 minutes of glory Sunday morning. Or at least 3 minutes of adrenaline-pumped energizing praise. We do not over-rehearse in this choir, aiming not to exhaust the singers over too many details. Efficiency and preparedness instead. Everyone's still excited about the piece this way, a little raw, like that energy of a first kiss. I draw on that which I cultivated as a horse girl--Forced Calm--where the horse can feel what you're experiencing and magnifies it. Such on the pipe organ.

They sang. I expressed notes. I landed the final tower of a chord and that was glorious; the director made the International Relief Sign at me (brow wipe) and that was that.

After the smoke cleared I realized my sparkly scarf was shimmering with movement, my heart beating so bigly that the scarf picked it up. I'm rarely nervous anymore (history knows this has not always been the case, one of the unexpected boons of having "grown up"), on the pipe organ or elsewhere, so its kind of a novelty for me. I just wish I could work to be more present at these times when all I see is flames. But the afterward felt really grand.

The Beatles In Pennsylvania

Well here we are again folks, as my dad would say. Its 4:50 in the morning, and that's what one says when one has been lugged roughly into it from the bliss of sleep.

It feels like I should go to the airport now.

But instead I am driving to Pennsylvania.

Life of a research technician in crops and soils. I don't actually mind my task today, it is one of helping and following directions and not making my own decisions. My own project and grant writing and telling others what to do can wait--and this is why I like this job so much for its diversity--and instead my role is as Helper. Graduate Student #5 in our lab, or The Clever Irreverent One, has a beetle diversity project in two different locations, one being the foreign and incorrigible land of Pennsylvania. We're looking at how different densities of organic corn and soybeans influence beetle population and weed seed predation. All week I've been focusing on this project with Clever, as its Northeast Bug Week or whatever, and I've spent much of every day setting out little round plates of appealing weed seed snacks for beetles to browse. Then we, or rather, some other unfortunate research assistant, will count what's left to determine what was eaten.

One of my favorite little portions of this job, which I didn't expect, is serving a support role, a little bit being the mom of the lab. I've been a consoling ear to overwhelmed and upset grad students, I've made people eat my backup banana chips when I've noticed them get stoic and silent and hungry during field work. I've helped with all things logistical.  "How do I get the biomass samples taken and get the seeds counted all before my class at 2pm?" It's logistics. "It's not a crisis: it's a puzzle," I'll say and we calm down and accomplish things.

So Clever and I are driving south through thick morning fog, talking about artificial intelligence, listening to the BBC or Sirius radio. The light is growing imperceptibly up through the fog, even a thick gray fog seems bright in comparison with the black early morning.

Clever groans about Pennsylvania; "careful yuh don't git spit on", he'll say, as everyone seems to be chewing tobacco, 
or roll his eyes about the hunting shops and diesel mud-spattered pickups idling in the gas station parking lot, the occupants eating massive sandwiches.

But for all the redneckosity and the mines, and granted this is not all of Pennsylvania of course, there are some beautiful bucolic vistas, low mountains rolling and crossing, views down into valleys green with crops.

The research site in Pennsylvania is a testament to the power of organic weed management, ie, tine weeding, because it had none. I'm walking through the corn plots, the lambsquarters and pigweed as tall as I am, pornographic terrible trees these things are, leaning aggravatingly into the rows. I'd traverse through, flapping blindly through the corn leaves, pulling myself thru these grabbing weeds, like combing dreadlocked hair. I'd put out my little plate of seeds for the beetles, then turn around and exit that plot and comb everyone the opposite direction again.

Clever and I arrive in the dewy morning, a large research cornfield of work in front of us. "It's sunny and beautiful!, put on your rain gear everyone!" calls out Clever. This is because the dew here is insurmountable, as if every leaf were supporting a thin flat pond; walking through the plots would soak us. So we kit up and slosh through the plots. My feet carry a sludge of mud, water, and weed seeds. We're itchy from the grabbing weeds and work stoicly, hours on end of going into every single one of the hundreds of plots, doing the same little task systemically and carefully.  Champions of Science.

When we finish, Clever and I are hooting and cheering, and there's muddy high-fives and yah! how happy are we to have finished this experiment. A latte, shower, rest, lunch, whatever, becomes immeasurably more satisfying after something like this.

100 miles of rain musings

I write this sitting in my bed, listening to the rain. This is an appropriate way to appreciate the rain right now, in a distant non-interactive format. Because I bicycled 100 miles in it today, circling Cayuga Lake, for the AIDS fundraiser ride.

My socks became as sponges in my sandals (laugh you may, but my feet must breathe); the fenders which had for the first 10 minutes been my pride and pleasure now guttered drainage directly into my feet. The raincoat wicked water over my arms, clammy extensions that they were, though blessedly my torso stayed dry. Water beads conglomerated at the rim of my helmet and slid smoothly to and fro, primary glinting things in my vision.

And I was really quite happy. I settled into the rain and it eroded out of my priority. I was drinking electrolytes, which I've not treated myself to before (astonishingly!) and now I know why they are called sports drinks. That sugar and salt plumbed itself directly where it needed to go and my legs churned on.  Gone now are those days of finishing a long ride feeling starved but also pregnant, the equivalent of 7 meals sitting heavily and unactualized in my gut.  Liquid calories! I must have consumed thousands upon thousands of them today, and I felt fierce and fine. I was a hummingbird.

Humming along, i had lots of time to think and gaze out over the still misty lake, and so I decided that for me, biking in the rain is a little like learning to live with a heart break or sadness. And it has been a year of falling for and trying to get over unattainable people, so I've had plenty of fodder. Both rain and heart sadness can be startling at first, and uncomfortable and you resist it. But then, eventually, however long it may take, you come slowly to accept it. Then you look out and notice the farm houses and the misty lake views. But you're still wet, though it may not overtake all your thoughts, its still a backdrop.  Sometimes it may pour, others it may only drizzle. Disappointment or sadness may in fact make the rest of the experiences more compelling or poignant in comparison. Who knows, I'm still working on this.

I was quite happy with my 5:30am decision to don myself in a sparkly sequins shirt under my raincoat, appearing ready for a dance party, and one green bicycle tall sock and one block bicycle tall sock. "Hey sparkle lady" one rider called out, and an older man, upon seeing me, cracked this huge smile: "your outfit! This totally makes my day! Thank you so much." Also, lots of: "love the SOCKS" as people passed or I passed them. I realized these non-standard wardrobe choices are a way of interacting with the world, and I was enjoying this easy excuse to look up from the pavement or away from the corn to connect, however briefly, with some other riders.

7 hours and 51 minutes in the damp saddle, and somehow the time never dragged. I celebrated reaching the top of the lake, I noticed the switch from quaint cottages to farm houses and double-wide trailers as we rowed around the Seneca falls inland area. I enjoyed the company of my indefatigable uncle, where we talk or not talk. But a lot of the ride was in solo silence, not really having thoughts concretely or intentionally ("and now I shall think about THIS") but instead sitting with my life. 

I sat with how blessed I am to have so many FRIENDS, really sat with this and was warmed in the rain. And also how supportive everyone has been with their donations to this ride. Thank you! And also how this lake and Ithaca have always actually been a section in my life: as a child coming here to float whimsically around on my grandparent's sailboat, the child's imagination burgeoning of pirates or pilgrims or Columbus. Ithaca itself meant the science center, feeding the ducks, Lego's and spaceships with my highly novel boy cousins. Being shuttled around by parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, to enjoy the time with other family members.

And now I am here as myself, forging ahead with a "grown-up" job, making friends, tending my apartment, going out and walking the commons at night if I want.

Its amazing that two very different versions of myself have existed here. I thought about that in the rain too. 

Thoughts from the Mom Van

Science needs to happen! Cover crops to cut and bag. Soil to core. Weed-free plots to make weed-free. Soybeans to count. Ah, studying sustainable agriculture. And for all this to happen our lab has hired a number of undergraduate research assistants this summer.

Which means I am now a supervisor.  (!)

I have never really served this role before, and had you told me that I’d be doing such even a few years ago, I’d be mighty surprised.  Myself and Master Chris, (lab manager and brilliant with any farm implement), work together to make science happen. “Champions of Science!” Co-worker Brian called us one day, and I’m kind of adopting the moniker for our lab team, in a way laughing how us Champions of Science spend our days ingloriously hand-weeding, counting soybeans, and identifying various grasses to species.  Not flashy work, but the quiet pumps behind the goal of making agriculture as sustainable and efficient as possible.  

It’s no small task to help coordinate the field work that needs to happen in a number of experiments, helping the grad students if they need it, partitioning the research assistants out to different projects.

When we first had out group of new assistants on board, and I was realizing that I would be Supervisor, I wasn’t sure at all how to deal with this. These first weeks were wearied confusion, as I wondered about authority and strictness. Should I be maintaining distance and mystery like a classic field boss? But it was too tiring moderating myself all the time, wondering what was the Correct and Conservative way to be.

And then I decided this was stupid. I was going to be myself.  (how trite, right, a Disney movie take-home message, but sometimes in this life—thanks to mores and all—surprisingly difficult)  I played loud beatsy happy music in the van while I drove people to and from the field site, pumping the brakes to the beat while approaching a stop sign. I teased people playfully and joined in jokes. I brought chocolate to share. I shared stories of embarrassment, hilarity, or heartbreak from my own life. And others did too.  Instead of quietly keeping my four-leaf clover finds to myself I victoriously crowed out and gave them to people, not caring if I seemed eccentric.

I enjoyed our field days so much more now, and I think our group did too.  People were bringing ice-cream and watermelon to share. We left the key in the van and listened to music while we worked in the field. We had long discussions about relationships and travel and personalities. “I love this lab!”, “I’m going to miss this so much when the season is over!” the research assistants shared. Our field work sometimes felt like hanging with a group of friends (just friends who I frequently reminded to be more efficient). I’m going to miss our group too.

Some funny faces in the field.

It makes me wonder about group dynamics. What makes for a “good group”? A certain pivotal member of good humor? An underlying subculture of spirit and pride? Everyone realizing that everyone else is participating with dedication and that becomes the norm?

But in all this fun I still am the one who paces about the field, suggesting ways to be more efficient (“you know, having one dedicated bag-labeler instead of everyone reaching for the sharpie might be a good way to go”) and encouraging people to drink plenty of water.  I also recommend people pee in the non-research corn field (“go sidedress the corn!”) rather than driving all the way back to the field house for bathrooms. “Just pretend you’re camping!” 

When I was a child, we had an imaginary town called Beanville, where we each had a play-family of Lego-people and farms and played commerce and trains and town meetings. Because our game moved through time, we decided to have Night and Day occur at the same time for all of our play-families.  Somehow, little Sandra became The Night Mayor (this word-play delighted us) and would strut around, arbitrarily calling out when it was day and night and we all had to scurry our little Lego people to bed or out to milk their little plastic cows in the morning.

And now, relating to time, I noticed that lunch-break would continue endlessly because nobody was mindful of the time. So I took upon myself the responsibility of getting everyone back into the van after lunch. A Lunch Mayor of sorts. “With great responsibility comes great power” one of the grad students pointed out to me. “Five minute warning!” I’d herd everybody.

For all these people we have both a big aggressive 4-wheel drive research truck and a white maternal van for going to and from the field, lugging soil probes, bags of samples, and people. “Which vehicle would you like to drive?” Lab Master Chris (my compatriot supervisor). “I don’t care,” I replied, “I can be a badass or a mom.”

And most of the time I am the mom, whizzing around in the van with music blasting and kids in the back singing and dancing. I joke about soccer practice and ballet lessons. The assistants told me, “we’ve decided we’re like a big family: you’re the mom, and Lab Master Chris is the dad.”  “What about our professor?” I asked (who is mostly writing and thinking about cover crops from his office, rather than playing in the field). “Oh, he’s the Wizard” they responded.  

There was no room in the mom-van, so Mom rode in the back.

Southeast Asia, Unplugged

It’s raining. I have an unfortunate and fettering cold. I haven’t bicycled in 4 days.  Blug.  

So, to divert myself I went back and read the battered yellow journal I carried with me on my bicycle adventure around Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam last year. Sometimes, installed in this world of stationary apartment, with cat and academia job and a wardrobe, with the ability to drink the tap water and read the road signs, my time in Southeast Asia feels very far away indeed.  But it IS my handwriting.

I feel like sharing with you some bits from in there. Just to relive them. This was my personal journal, not the glossy carefully-preened blog I kept, and so I wrote with no objective. I often just made lists of what I was eating. Or risible quotes of hilarity between traveling partner Lady Elise and myself. Or just stream of conscious end of day downloading.  (in no particular order)

On Breakfasts, uninspiring

Feb 2. Thailand.

Started with too sweet yogurt and “Muesli” which was all dumb corn flakes and 3 oats. But riding quieter roads, dipping around potholes. Lunch was unidentifiable fish and rice. The morning had some cloudy-ish patches and that was nice.

On snacks

Feb 1. Thailand.

I have so many snacks! They make me eager, pleased, and resourceful. [then there was an exhaustive list of everything I had gleefully purchased in the Thai market]

On environmental awareness

Feb 1. Thailand.

New things! I pooped into a squat toilet this morning. Which went straight into the sea. I remember reading about raw sewage into the water, but half dismissed it somehow, too far away, too horrid to be possible, too astonishing? But when I hear it splash down there, it’s true.

On wardrobes

Jan 31. Thailand.

I’m wearing color blotch shirt with floral pants: appalling combination. But I really do not care. The young people don’t, but older ladies wear all sorts of arguing prints.

About clearing our guest house rooms of mosquitoes

Jan 30. Thailand.

After mosquitoes. Could be a game on the Wei. Jumping, reaching into air, then diving to all-fours, slapping across the tile floor. You hear a solid slam! on the wall and then a victorious HA!... “what are those people doing?” [someone might think upon hearing us]

On rainy days for the poorly equipped

Mar. 21. Vietnam.

We have camped here in the clean-floored lobby of the “Something Long” Hotel. The weather is so miserable that you can only revel in the misery and irritation it brings you (the cold froth in the sandals, the damp hair, arms clutched ineffectively about your person) especially when we are lacking boots and proper coats. This town has little more than lots of Everything Else Shops (“everything else you don’t want”) and the beguiling lights flashing on the bridge and that eerie skeletal cathedral.

On luxury earned for the weary

Mar. 15. Vietnam.

Ok so maybe it’s not named the Imperial Hotel, but this hotel sure feels luxurious and I am thoroughly enjoying it. This day: had no idea how it would work itself because in the beginning there was diarrhea and rain. But Bahn Mi [sandwich] was so delicious for my wearied self. I love the process of eating them. Mine was so good because it was so hot and there was so much egg. … Falling asleep with pen in hand here, because of the wine and HOT BATH and smoothy yummy scent oil. Mmm.

On ingredient lists, inclusive

Mar. 12. Vietnam.

Ingredients on the Vietnamese packaged fruit chips I got (delicious!): “Some kinds of fruits and vegetable oil.”

On hotel beds, the unexpected

Mar. 8. Vietnam.

Just pulled a hopefully clean pair of panties from the fitted sheet in this bed! Ha!

On food choices

Mar 4. Vietnam.

Been pregnant with farts all windy evening since I ate that puffy white Chinese style bun with pork and two whole boiled quails eggs in it. Was eyeing up Elise’s Pho with all the greens jabbed into it…ends up being quite healthy.

This is funny because bathroom = shower stall

Feb 26. Cambodia.

Sandra, after a Cambodian shower: “Sorry Elise, I made such a mess! I got water all over the bathroom floor.”

A probably typical Cambodia day

Feb 15. Cambodia.

Road was very jostly and jangly. Dusty, honky, pummeled with traffic. Was afraid of full boredom in this place once we got here but painted nails, did yoga, went for a janky massage. That was hilarious though. Only 10,000 riel, not at all like the Bangkok massage. Mostly a bunch of kneading. Like they were little girls playing Town and they decided to be Massage. But nice.  …  Had a green mochi-like thing that had an odd, slight, flavorless-ness so was probably “melon.”  And then some Chocolate Orange Filled cookies simply because they were marked with a price and that pleased me.

On hotel room habits

Feb 6. Cambodia.

[Note on our post-ride routine: Elise would wash out her riding outfit every day and hang it out to dry; Sandra would empty her panniers and set out her belongings]

Sandra: “Where would we be without your clothing to decorate the rooms?”

Elise: “Yeah, well, YOU make the place look like a market. Sometime I’ll just put price tags on all your stuff.”

Laughing at our expat selves

Feb. 13. Cambodia.

After our rope-heaving hike we stopped at lovely little restaurant with strings of lights and colored stars. We had $3 cocktails and my first fresh spring rolls (the sweet sour garlic-chunk sauce so good I drank it) and some chicken. A little loopy, quite content, decidedly beat. I sat there, holding my fistful of foreign money, picking my teeth. And Elise nearly forgot her bra she’d hung on a chair. [ok, so it was very very hot there and any item to be removed from the body was a relief] Imagine the servers running after her, “Madame! Madame! You forgot something!” I laughed so hard I was nearly in tears. ….I was basting in this on the beach, looking at the islands: that I like being in Cambodia and I love traveling.

The Descent of Woman, Or: Oh Holey Butt

(This is unfortunate. Here is an entry that should have been finished and posted last month: that bicycle ride from Wayne County back to Ithaca. But better late than never.)

May 25 2015.

Destination Bicycling is much more of an involved way to get back home. 

Involved in a way that is sensual, meaning senses participating more than just holding a steering wheel while under a seat belt. Instead sensations become perceptible thanks to the meditation of spinning along endlessly in the air.

To feel the air temperature change, dipping into a stream valley, like passing through a curtain and feeling the cold fabric of it brush against your body. The smells of a Laundromat, the honey suckle, the cows. 

To really know the wind. To have emotion for the wind, impeding my progress so thickly. In our houses and offices we can be removed. Look out the window and see the wind in the trees and know a storm is coming….completely different than grinding into it.

I wanted to bicycle back to Ithaca under my own power, to have awesome novel thoughts all the hours in the saddle, see my edge. To earn views and earn chocolate cake.

The ride started out powerfully, churning along at 14 mph (fast for me, #allsteel), from Canandaigua to Geneva. I lived in Geneva last summer, and returning there it felt recognizable but not familiar. It did not feel like I had embodied it as a home place. But I relished espresso and a second breakfast and rejoiced I was continuing on to my new home of Ithaca.

Midday, full sun, the adhesive air of pre-thunderstorm humidity. And the southern wind. I pointed directly into it, watching the leaves exposing their undersides in the flapping as I rode. The grain fields bending in huge synchronized dance numbers, the Memorial Day American flags waving vigorously. My pace slowed to grappling along at barely 9 miles an hour.

I was out of water.

I’ve stopped at places before, noticing someone outside and pleading for a water bottle refill. People have gone out of their way to get me ice. (With a bit of common sense, and excluding the hyper violence on the news, I choose to believe in a mostly nonthreatening world. Most of the time I get by excellently.)

There was a woman out gardening in front of her trailer home, and I pulled into her driveway hopefully. I called out my plea and she saw me and looked slightly perplexed, then started gesturing. Before I could stand my wits at attention, a throng of 17,000 terrible, gray, enormous, pregnant dogs rampaged from the side yard at me. The ugly kind of gray, bred for grumpiness, snarling and roaring and charging. I was on their rural plot of territory. I must die. The woman came to my aid--bless her; she was barking at them to get away and swinging her shovel, "they're breeders!" she explained to me. My bike became a shield and I spun with it, dancing in horror and fending off the dogs. But my butt—the only part of me offering a real purchase, padded in bike shorts and jutting out juicily--was too easy a target and I was chomped.  

Bitten in the butt by a dog.

That's a first. Well at least I've had my rabies shots. 

(after beating them with her shovel she finally dismissed them and did fetch me some plastic bottles of water, although a little wordlessly and, I assume, begrudgingly) 

I think next time I'm thirsty I'll avoid rural trailer homes.

Later: after the adrenaline receded. 

I pulled up at my aunt and uncle's place, surprising them in their afternoon projects. They fed and watered me, and we sat at the kitchen table as I consumed melon, and CHEESE, and bread, and peanut butter. I LOVE THESE PEOPLE I kept thinking inside, and want to tell them things! And share anecdotes. But all I could properly do was eat food.

Riding 70 miles in heat and unforgiving wind was a study in discomfort and also presence. I’ve done way more than 70 miles before, but usually in a group of others, where everyone is bonding together and encouraging each other on. The best way to go about it alone was to notice this house, to see that tree, to laugh at that road name. Not so helpful is to think, “so that was 2 miles…I just need to do that 10 times more.” 

The point where I’d reached the zenith between the lakes, where the ride into the southern wind was over, where I was just gravitating down towards the road running along Cayuga Lake…with the yellow road signs with the truck pointing down a triangle… the DESCENT. Flowing and flowing and not pedaling….I started to have normal thoughts again, cooling off enough that I could have thoughts. And then seeing the Ithaca 2 Miles sign….the arrival would have been more epic had I not been so tired.

But I can store it up and reflect on it later, drawing a little epic pride perhaps for when I need it.

To do something other than pedal, like to shower and eat sausage, was a change of pace after such single-minded focus. How fortunate that I could push my self this way on this day under my own volition….because for many people having to push is not a choice.

The earned lake views.

The earned, if very unattractive, chocolate cake. Note: best NOT to carry and serve in a.... bag.

Road.

Uncle's bike and niece's bike.

Pearls & Rain Pants (and Ithaca Fest!)

This weekend has been Ithaca Festival, perhaps one of the most notable weekends all year in this little city.  Blocks of downtown have been blocked off, a number of different music stages set up. Blues, folk, eastern belly dance, hip-hop….these fill the streets. Food trucks sell Cambodian pancakes, deep south grilled chicken, Mac N Cheese.

My Mansard roof is just one block from all this; from my window I can hear even the words to the music clearly, and see the food tents. I am positively gleeful to be living inside such a fantastic festival. Instead of waiting in line for a compromised blue plastic porta-potty, I can trot back to my very own bathroom. I brought friends up too, for ice water in this mugginess. I took breaks to make popcorn, to snuggle with Cat, to bake gingerbread, to nap.  And then down my stairs and out into the music again!

Saturday of the festival was thick with heat and humidity and I danced in the park, bare feet in the grass, until the rains came and I retreated up to my apartment.

I was in the parade Thursday, riding with the AIDS Ride For Life bicycle fundraiser ride. We wore matching blue tee-shirts and pedaled along following the bagpipers (which was a lot of fun). The other bicyclers and I looped circles around the banner, like a small smiling swarm of bees, avoiding getting run over by the following fire-truck. My chest got all swollen with happiness to see the faces of this city lining the sidewalks cheering on the parade. Glowing, eager faces. A high population of vegan faces, faces with many higher educational degrees, faces of professors, faces of professor children wearing paint.  

Unlike the wee town of Ontario parades I’ve accompanied my father’s cars in, this parade had no tractors but instead Planned Parenthood all marching in pink tee-shirts, and Save Seneca Lake! anti-oil group waving banners, and the local solar company.  Ithaca sure is a unique place.  And I’m happy to be living here.

I’ve spent the entire weekend padding about the festival, eating Lemongrass Meat On A Stick, running into just about everyone I know, and happily soaking up the music.  Sunday I finished out the festival with a high of newly-discovered band love. The gun poets. Can’t-hold-still hip-hop with poetry lyrics. Not jaded. Instead about life and appreciating and community and all to a fiercely grooving beat. I don’t know how anyone could be nearby and not be moving. For me it was involuntary, and I danced that glorious celebratory dance of existence. Dancing alone and not caring, but dancing with everyone too. Where the band knows they’re getting to people, and they have their souls on their instruments, and it’s this feedback loop of crowd upping band upping crowd. Little children wearing huge ear-muffs, highschoolers, the bottle-picking vagrant population, parents, students, everyone. Everyone moving and grooving together. All a heightened state of humanity.

Sunday morning I escaped the food tents and the crowds to be organist at a church for whom I’ve never played before. The United Methodist Church in Lansing, which wasn’t exactly convenient in time or location.  (#carfree) Their service began at the, erm, sprightly hour of 9am and choir rehearsal was before that as well. Nine miles away and up a hill….mercifully I discovered a bus that ran at 7am going partly in the right direction.

It was raining that morning. And cold. All the July sunny mugginess of Saturday had phase-changed into November.  Gray froth hung wetly over the land, and steam churned about the falls. The roads were dark with puddles. What could make bicycling in 7:30am cold rain worse? But wind. So I bicycled into a stiff north wind.

I’ve bicycled in miserable conditions before. I suppose that’s a thing to be grateful for having been such an incorrigible bicycler and traveler: that even if it’s a bit miserable now, it still won’t top the previous winners of misery.  So the pearls and the rain pants powered forth. I realized I was decidedly inward focused, because instead of watching much of the world go by, I was considering a drop of water sliding back and forth across the brim of my helmet. Right there in front of my face. Sliding to and fro with my left-right rocking action of driving into the wind. To and fro. It was like a hypnotist’s watch. Somehow this was incredibly irritating. My feet were cold, my hands were stiff and wet, I was pushing hard. But that droplet.  Grrrr.  I flicked it off.  Soon another formed.  I flicked that one off too.

And then. The smile once I turned downhill and out of the wind. The church in sight. Cruising…15 mph, 20 mph. YES. Oh, how earned that feeling was.

A country church. I arrived and cracked my cold hands from their handlebar grip and amazingly they warmed to play the pipe organ. A straightforward little instrument it was, two manuals, nothing fancy, but my feet connected effortlessly with the pedal board.  And within half an hour of warming up we were one.

Pastor asked if I could play “a little somethin-somethin-somethin” while people sat down before the prelude. What I call “filler” music, or “emergency backup” music. I hadn’t brought any, but was able to forage through the sliding piles of books around the organ and find something appropriate. “Noodle music”, as Mr. First Presbyterian Choir Director would call it.  I noodled away and watched the church fill.  And fill.

Every pew filled. The children brimmed all over the front steps for children’s time and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a congregation with so many brightly flowered dresses or bow-ties or suit-jackets in such a long time. I do enjoy the Methodists. And with my experience playing for Methodists before, I know they especially resonate with the happy and “boom-chunk” music.  I had fun. I had so much fun in church this morning.  I charged the hymns right along and people sang lustily.

“We’re so glad you’re not doing only soil!” said one of the choir members, when they learned of my actual day-job.

I played Emperor’s Fanfare for the postlude, all big chords and trills and DAH DAH DAH deep pedal notes. This piece takes no small amount of concentration and it is a blast, in all senses of the word. I landed the final chord, and surfaced back into the world, and heard something I’ve never heard in church before. The people weren’t only clapping, they were cheering. Cheering and hooting. I was blown away. I loved all those Methodists even more.

Mrs. Alto was standing at my elbow all smiles: “You PUMP IT, girl!”

A Portrait of the Organist as a Young Woman

I was guest organist at the First Presbyterian Church this past Sunday.  Currently, I am fortunate enough to have organist gigs booked at various churches until the end of August. I am usually pretty brimming when I finish a Sunday service—little descriptions and observations and feelings rising up wanting to be written—but there’s something extra brimming about this church.

Maybe because I’d come there as a wee granddaughter object, holding the hands of my grandparents. 

Or maybe because it is a tremendous echoing edifice, all bell towers and stony outcrops (I don’t have architecture terms for those things), and inside there are PILLARS. I’ve not played in churches with pillars very much. Tremendous marble pillars.

Or maybe because the instrument itself is over a million-dollar affair, with five manuals, and more buttons, levers, and stops than I actually know how to process. I’m waiting to push something and have a small genie come out and tell me off. I did push something the other day and a continuous tinkling of bells sounded, like an angel assemblage, and I realized the zimbelstern was in decidedly good working order.  

So I feel a little compelled to write about this church and my organ-izing within it.  

I slide onto the bench in this empty huge place before the people come in, flip the magic switch, and a huge beast breathes to life. You can hear the blower of its lungs taking a rich inhale, then the air moving through the entire length of its body, the little clunks and audible shudders and twitches that happen with this.

I realized I’ve built a mental association (just like my cat: an approach to the lower cupboard means food).  The sound of over a hundred people sitting down—slightly rustly and with subtle groans of the pews, maybe a few deep inhales after the singing—this to me is the sound of triumphant success and relief.  In a smaller space with a smaller crowd, this is much less magnified. But in this huge space it is echoey and majestic. It means I just finished a hymn, held the last resounding chord for as long as necessary for the weight to plumb deep, and then let off the keys to a wash of relief at having gotten through the thing, and these Sounds of Sitting.  

You see, this is not an unapologetic instrument, and I do not spurn the loudly encompassing foot pedal stops. But that means that if I do make a mistake, it is undeniable.   

The anthem for the choir this week was no insignificant affair, even on the piano, a lyrical rendition of Be Thou My Vision in 4 sharps (and then the occasional A-sharp thrown in for befuddlement). I had only a few days to learn it, and I had to work. I was marking sharps, practicing page turns, writing “aim!” over the unmanageable chords, singing lines to try and get them into my head. There were triplets, there were large hand-stretching chords.

But I did it. Having the perfectionist gene (or at least a similar one) means that this work is not always a choice for me.  (I guess I could get better at Faking Things and have more time for other pursuits…)

And then: Sunday morning, the choir sounded sublime, I didn’t burn my triplets, I remembered my sharps, I aimed my “aims”. And the final chord hung beautifully in the air…. and the thing was done. Over. Never to be played again.  The manifestation of all my work had 3 minutes of existence and no more. 

I think about it like its making a Mandala. Creating a thing with insistent carefulness for the sake of creating it, all those fine grains of sand in place, a practice, a focus on being present for a task. Others enjoy it for a bit, and then wipe-wipe-wipe its over.

And then the next Sunday you work for something else.

After the service I skittered downstairs to eat cookies (playing makes me undeniably hungry) and drink church-basement coffee.  Before I could escape the organ bench a few people approached, thanking me for playing, asking what year I was at the Ithaca College music school (“uhm, nope, I am a soil scientist at Cornell….”) and a Mrs. Norma Stevenson to send her regards to my grandparents. 

But I didn’t get a chance to chat with the pastor of this formidable church (a positively charismatic young woman, much beloved, incredibly positive and thoughtful). I had listened intently to her sermon about change. How change HAPPENS for us as people; we can become someone perhaps even nearly unrecognizable to whom we had been before. And this is natural and ok.

But later this week I was playing late at night in the pitch of the black space, just the organ overhead light on. I heard movement but could see nothing, blinded in my little orb of organ light. Then, like a radiant specter, she appeared by the bench and I could see it was Pastor. “I just wanted to say, I love it when you play,” she said. “It is so expansive. You obviously are not afraid of the instrument.”  This raised me about 3 feet off the bench, and I blustered a blushing thank you….and explained that once I had been afraid of it. Which is kind of why I felt I should learn how to play it.

After some thinking, I realized I have three levels of Organist within me. The first level is Faking It But Making It. These are the mornings where perhaps the night before was a little longer than probably proper, or where the week was busy and I didn’t have practice time. I can play hymns, I keep everyone in tempo, but perhaps I hit a few off-pedal notes. Perhaps I miss an entrance. My first few years of being a church organist were this level, whether I liked it or not.

The second level is Yes Right. Things aimed are landed accurately, music sounds good, it’s right. After a few years this was the standard. I focus and effectively make tidy neat music.

Now I’m realizing there’s a third level. It is called With Soul. This has been happening more and more lately. Where I am playing, and am able to take in and hear the music, not just play it. Where I can play a piece I’ve played 49 times before and suddenly here a phrase in a new way. With Soul is more likely to happen on sunny days, after beautiful bicycle rides or a special human interaction. I tend to play this content into my music. That phrase is the sunset view; this next phrase is being in love. I’m more liquid when I play this way; I can hear the congregation getting quiet for the prelude, or maybe singing more lustily on a hymn. If I sense this beginning to happen I get even more in it and thus begins a positive feedback loop. The Leo in me would argue I’m blissed out on the power of my own power. The humanist would say I’m grateful to be contributing something beautiful to the universe. Who knows.  I love it.  It’s also rare and I want to be wary of trying to control it. 

Biking With....

Biking with…..

(reflections on the strange loads I’ve carried on bicycle)

A fish tank. I was in Pennsylvania, the early college years. It was a small fish tank, plastic with purple top, found sitting roadside after someone’s cleanup venture. I’m not sure why I thought it necessary to collect it while on my bicycle ride, maybe because It Was There and I was stretching my newly-left-home wings and displaying feathers of my father. Growing up he’d routinely pull over in his...Mercedes to pluck through a beckoning roadside pile.

I remember balancing the fish tank between handlebars and seat post, hugging it occasionally with a spare leg. It was mostly downhill. I think I really enjoyed the stacked feeling of collecting resources in a resourceful manner.

Dessert plates. Pedaling out one night for pipe organning, and someone must have purged a kitchen. Sweet dainty china pieces in a dusty box, none of them matching, their intricate roses and gold trim and little stamps on the bottom (“made in England” or “made in occupied Japan”) appealed to me all Victorian.  So after rummaging around and making an attractive mismatched selection, I stacked them ill-fittingly in the corner of my wire bike basket (I was on the van) and pedaled sedately off.

I don’t think I’ve EVER heard anything so loud coming from my bike before. Clanks and crashes, miniature China cymbals, vibrations of the road magnified by the plates’ odd sizes, resonating off the houses. This was horrifying. How could plates make so much noise? I scooped them up to mediate this nonsense. Thus I continued through downtown Ithaca cradling a palmfull of plates.  (I’m eating chocolate off one of them now, as I write this. They really are very charming.)

Kitty litter AND potting soil. They were both at the bargain store and I couldn’t pass them up.  The heaviest saggiest bags of weighty material possible. And since I am now car-free, I hefted one bag into the front basket and wheedled the other under the back rack-strap. The suspension gave a visible uff and I laughed and mounted the rig. Stopping was a delayed and thick experience and turning could be magnified into a giant sudden swing of direction due to the weight in front. But no matter, I treated all with care and great awareness. (maybe one thing I especially love about biking, and also Biking With Items, the amount of focus and awareness necessary. Its almost a sort of balance meditation) I took empty back streets, plowing along like the Queen Mary. The laws of physics—namely inertia: that an object in motion stays in motion, no matter how massive.

Then: OH GOOD what impeccable timing to meet my sophisticated and attractive Downstairs Boys neighbors as I roll weightily home on this ridiculous rig. I couldn't really stop properly or turn around for a sufficient greeting, so I just yelled out something idiotic and incomprehensible as an explaination.

Bread. Why it is nice to have friends at the bakery, for day-old giveaways. Again, from the college days. Talk about voluminous though; bread is certainly, erm, spacious. Both back panniers full and a big poof of a bag strapped to the back rack. I then distributed to friends and neighbors.

Compost. This makes me feel very Ithacatious, biking my compost up THE HILL to the greenhouse compost collector. Especially if I’m wearing plaid and a vest.

Vegetables. Cabbages, kale, carrots, flower bouquets, garlic, and tomatoes. All at once.

Also are all those things so routine they’re barely worth mentioning: a clanky six-pack, a houseplant, half a batch of muffins, waaaay too much organ music, a tall curvy mirror, hefty much boots, a left-over sheet-cake. This number was in a clear plastic container on my back rack left over from church. All colored frosting right at child’s-eye level.  I pass a mother and daughter. “CAKE!” observes the little girl, all wistful and recognizing, as it rolls through her world-view.

I take an undue pleasure in all this. I don’t know where this pride in being resourceful and slightly unorthodox comes from, but I think I might cite my father. I’m grateful that I can see this transport of objects as an amusing challenge, rather than an inconvenience and reason to pine for a car.