Letter from Home

I came to America on January 14th, 1989. My flight arrived around 5pm that afternoon, by which time it was already dark and very cold. I lost the sensation in my toes almost as soon as I stepped out of the airport terminal. Initially unable to comprehend the cold, I reasoned (irrationally) that there must be air conditioning outside. I was reuniting with my mother, father, younger brother, and my future husband, all of whom already lived here, but that didn't stop me from being homesick. My dissatisfaction started small: first, I hated the oranges. They were too yellow and too sweet. The bananas tasted like straw, they were too firm and too tart. The papayas were entirely hopeless.
Then I hated the weather. I missed the quality of light that we'd get at ten degrees north, I missed thundershowers, and being able to drive my car a few hundred yards ahead of one, or to drive into one as into a car wash.Worse - there were no hills, no natural landmarks. It is fair to say that I grieved for the land that I'd left. Not the country, but the land. There wasn't enough light in the house, or in the day. Or in my mind for that matter. I couldn't yet appreciate the beauty of winter. I didn't notice the almost lace-like outline of the naked branches against the sky, and just how many branch patterns there were among the different tree species. I really wasn't seeing.

This was the setting in which I heard Pat Metheny's music for the first time. The album was called, appropriately enough, "Letter from Home".
The first song released off the album was "Have You Heard". No, I hadn't. It blew my mind. The sound was so new and yet had something of the familiar in it. I loved the wordless vocals Pat used on that and other tracks. There were gentle optimistic tunes like "Better Days Ahead", and "Spring Ain't Here"; the infectious, almost calypso-sounding "Beat 70"; and the heartbreaking title song "Letter from Home". This album 'settled' me in some way and became the soundtrack for my life those first few months. Pat's from Missouri, but before I knew that I had already associated his music with the 'big-sky'. Yet there was an incredible intimacy, too. Spring came and I opened my eyes.There were crocuses and daffodils, and there was light.

More on Pat Metheny...

See play-list for "Have You Heard"  or check out the You Tube video bar.

From top: 
Pigeon Point sunset -2007
Pigeon Point jetty - 2007
National flag of Trinidad and Tobago
Pat Metheny's album - Letter from Home 

Milestones

I don't know my mother. A shocking statement, since she lives with me and we have lived together practically all my life. But I really don't know her. In contrast there are people with whom I have spent such little time that it doesn't seem plausible that the space they occupy in my heart is so large. 

Of course I love my mother, and I probably say I don't know her because I can't quite tell where she ends and I begin. That's the cause of a lot of conflict between us because I am constantly - sometimes subtly, and sometimes quite desperately trying to make that distinction. She turns 67 in 2 days, leaves the house at 6 am each morning and, for the past 7 years has skewed her work schedule so that she can pick up my son from after-school at 5.

Sometime last month, my 12 year old son declared his independence. There was a minor skirmish, some hastily drawn lines in the sand, and a tiny flag was raised. He announced that he wanted to walk home rather than stay in the after-school program which was 'boring'. And, just like that, my mother no longer has to pick up my son. He walks home and that spot next to him is empty - or is filled by a school friend who lives nearby. You could say that there has been some erasure of my mother from the landscape of my life. As it happens, I don't know how I feel about that just yet.

Photo: Exploring the jailhouse at Fort King George, Tobago - 2007

The End, from the start

I've always struggled with two competing views of the world. Are we just floating along hitting all the outposts of a predetermined route, or are we making it up as we go along? I've always felt that certain things in my life were 'set'. OK - I have a sneaky feeling that almost everything that matters in my life is set. I've come to that conclusion because my attempts to overthrow them have come to naught. My uncle Robby, were he still alive, would call that 'farting against thunder' - which was his way of describing any kind of futile action.

Uncle Robby was a weather-beaten seaman, with leather-like skin, deep smile lines and mischievous blue eyes. He once plugged a hole in his boat with his index finger - which was as husky as the rest of him. We were on the high seas fishing for grouper with the engine cut. He sat there with his finger in the hole, and a grin on his face as he weighed his options. I have no doubt that he believed he had many, even at that moment.

I admire people like him for whom life is an ongoing adventure which they have the power to direct or at least affect, but it seems the full fruition of an alternate choice, like a slippery fish, always escapes me. I've been in one or two tight spots in my life and I've started down some roads that I thought would take me elsewhere. That sense of unpredictability - even danger, is heady. I felt very alive even while (in one or two cases) I was facing what looked like death. However, I've always been shunted out of these situations and back into calmer waters. On the positive side, many good things have come effortlessly to me with very little doing. When I sit still, stuff happens. When I plan and try to execute, my Cosmic Partner pirouettes me right back to where I started.

I can get metaphysical - and drive myself crazy trying to figure out if my beliefs about my powerlessness are actually making me experience powerlessness. However, that thought conjures up a vignette of me struggling in quicksand and, did I mention I'm claustrophobic? Besides, every so very often, mostly in the morning as I open my eyes, the realization of the inescapable bottom line washes over me. So, what I do mostly is watch the show. I often say to myself (especially when I'm in one of  the above-mentioned tight spots) 'I want to see how this turns out'. But actually, I already know.

 

Photos: 

Top: Self-portrait 2009

Bottom: Le Modele Rouge by René Magritte.

Alone

Very early on, I realized I was alone. I was three. My mother was hanging the washing on the line on a brilliant blue day. There was a transistor radio on the ground near to the bucket of half-wrung clothes and it was blaring something as bright as the day. I was bursting happy and it had to do with the sky, the music, the dancing clothesline and this lady - all of which I recognized as mine and existing just for me, but clearly apart from me.

There is a theory floating around out there that we are all one. Sounds like a plan, but I'm not on board. And not for a lack of trying - six years as a student of 'A Course in Miracles'. Another six years as a student and sometimes teacher of yoga. I hear ye and I hear ye - but I have not seen the light. Not yet.
I came close. Once, in the middle of the Arizona desert I saw something, felt something, but it slipped away. A snapshot of a moment that I dared not try to chase.