NO FLECK OF TIME

 91 of #100daychallenge

It just may be that I finally accepting or understanding my mother's frailty. For the past few days, I have been able to be more patient and to just do things for her, like get her more coffee or help her find things in the refrigerator. I really don't know how she manages to play dominoes, as one of her colleagues is notoriously short-tempered (more so than moi) and doesn't want others to help her even. So, as usual, we are running late and I need to get her going to get dressed.

Sigh. Another morning trying to get Janet out of the house. Evidently, she is having some trouble, from time to time, controlling her bowels and thus makes a mess on herself etc. This is not a happy trend for me. Good thing I am easing towards patience.

Later.

It's at that too-hot point of the day wherein making progress on anything is twice as challenging. I have so much housework to do. I am making baby steps of progress, but being overwhelmed can lead one into procrastination and that heat doesn't help.

I was driving over to Christina's yesterday to work on the dress (which we finished ... yay Cuz! could not have done it without her). I was ridiculously stressed out, leading to some anxiety depression. I couldn't find my distance glasses, I spilled a bag of shredded paper, and then at Costco, I couldn't find my car and was sure it was stolen. There I was parading up and down the parking aisles in the crushing heat, cars following me to get a parking space. I didn't even have my 'phone with me. I found it, though, and after an hour or so of working on the dress and hanging out with Christina, I forgot my anxiety. Progress on something was being made. 

But the reason I write this is because on my iPhone shuffle, the first Grateful Dead song I ever loved, when I was 15, came on. Dark Star. It is so beautiful, I was moved to tears more than once listening to it, driving through suburbia. It's like the So What of rock and roll. I would argue it isn't rock and roll. It's more jazz than anything else. Since then, I have listened to it another five times (It's not a short song) trying to parse out who is playing what when, how beautifully players drop in and out, the tightness between Garcia and Weir. Heaven sent. (Here's the single version.)

I think it is amazing that 52 years on, it is like listening the second time ... not the first because now I am anticipating when particular movements start or when the drums come in. Too bad the Dead couldn't stay in that ethereal vein, taking flight.

Okay, now to dishes, yoga books, and nap while it is hot.

ARIA

Music lifting and falling,

Waiting itself below;

The bowl at the base of a fountain

Spilling the overflow

In streams of silk and silver

To runnels underground

The music is more like water

In pattern than in sound.

Moreover, hear this music

And see this water rise

In light almost more brilliant

Than that of Paradise,

Light beyond light, revealing

No fleck of time, no trace

Of cloud, no bar of shadow

To mark the dial’s face.

The double rush and cadence

Of intricate delight,

Music lifting and falling,

Like water, pure and bright,

And light, beyond all radiance,

Intense, complete, profound,

No cloud on the golden mountain,

No shade on the golden ground.

— Rolfe Humphries, The New Yorker, August 26, 1944