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.