music

this is when i normally cry - when i am very pissed. which is a problem when somebody sees that and thinks it's because i'm having a soft moment - i'm not

but now all kinds of things trigger the waterworks - people asking how i'm doing - what comes out of my mouth is "i'm okay" (this is what people want to hear in any case), but my eyes know that this is bullshit. eyes as lie detectors. hazel lie detectors.

music can unstop the stoppers. i was stuck in traffic just now,listening to a DMB download that the band recorded right after leroi died. and i actually hear pain in rashawn's trumpet. and in dave matthew's voice breaking - take me back, take me back. what is there in music that can find its way in like that and move your heart? the opposite is true, too, of course - it's hard to be blue when "cornbread" is playing - but honestly, mostly i'm playing "dreaming tree" over and over just for that emotional hit. Tibetan chant can do the same thing:

http://www.healingsounds.com/CATALOG/prodView.asp?idProduct=971

it is deep and profound and if one listens to it very carefully, all the way to the source of the sound, it is everything in the universe - the whole enchilada.

grief (life) is experienced by all the senses. grief (life) can be magik'ed up; grief (life) can be made tolerable (intolerable) by sound, sight, taste, touch (lack of touch), smell .... ooooh smell - another post altogether.

peace
christine

January 2, 2009 - what have i to say about loss?

how to start? my mother died in april of 2008. it has been the hardest almost 9 months of my entire life. & i can feel myself evolving, changing - for the better? i really don't know - who's to say. what i know for sure is that the pain i have felt over this year, & continue to feel, can literally take my breath away & bring me to my knees with grief. it has shaken what i feel about some very elemental things in my life - love, faith, luck, love's permanence, good, bad, holding on, letting go.

the first thing i feel has changed is the idea that because it's my parent, someone who was supposed to go before me, it shouldn't hurt this bad. something that is normal and expected, it shouldn't tear your heart out of your chest. but some days it does.

and the second thing - which is also still tied to thing #1 - if there is a god who is there at all times for me - & his eye is on me, the sparrow - why can't i feel his comfort? and it might come down to what joan didion wrote: there is no eye on the sparrow. if i'm supposed to learn something by this pain, then that something comes at much too high a price. if god is the cosmic bandaid, then now, almost 10 months into this thing, i feel no healing by god's presence. only a void where i used to think he lived and watched.

i will see where this year takes me. but today, on the second day of this new year, it really does not feel like any place i want to go.