Photo Finish!

A photo finish was just what we needed yesterday, or at least just what I needed. A chance to lose the self in the moment, the moment being the "most exciting two minutes in sports," the Kentucky Derby. 

In this case, those two minutes were followed by several more minutes of uncertainty as judges studied a photograph of the race's conclusion, the first time since 1996 that such a move has been necessary. When the ruling came down — Mystik Dan by a nose — the crowd erupted. The 18-1 shot had bested Sierra Leone (9-2) and Forever Young (7-1). 

To see those three thoroughbreds thundering to the finish line, looking for all the world like a single unit, was to see grace in motion ... and it lifted the spirts.

(A 1953 photo finish of the first triple dead heat in harness racing. Photo: Wikipedia)

Perfect Sense

I've never quite gotten used to the suburban irony of driving to walk. Sometimes I fight it; I once spent weeks figuring out how to traipse through the woods  to reach my favorite Reston trail.

This was fun but impractical. Yes, I could hike to the trail, but it took more than an hour to reach it and quickly became a three- to four-hour foray. Good exercise, but who has that many hours in the day?

Most of the time then, I resign myself to the practice. I jump in the car and burn precious fossil fuels just to amble on trails rather than streets. It's a strange way to live when viewed in the arc of human history, but to us modern folk, it makes perfect sense.

Taking Comfort

What do you write about when one of your oldest, dearest friends lies full of cancer in a hospital bed? The same thing you write about when your parents are dying, when you’re sick or confused or worn out. You write about the world around you.

It’s the second day of May. Roses are budding, birds are nesting, clematis is blooming. Last night, the first hummingbird of the season made its appearance. It’s a perfect spring morning.

Not perfect for everyone, of course, but at this moment, I feel its perfection. And I take comfort in describing it, parsing it, moving it from the real world onto the page.

Noise or Music?

I'd been itching to watch the movie "Amadeus" ever since I heard Mozart's Requiem in Kentucky. Last night I had the chance.

Though the score is the star of the show (mostly Mozart), one passage of dialogue stood out, when Mozart convinces the emperor to show an opera based on the play "The Marriage of Figaro."

“In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it's just noise, no one can understand a word. But with opera, with music... with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it's not noise, it's perfect harmony!”

Simultaneous conversations that produce beauty not cacophony. Perhaps we should be singing out all our national disagreements. A strange thought ... but maybe an interesting experiment?


(Photo: Wikipedia)

Poetry in Prose

A salute in prose to National Poetry Month, 30 days devoted to verse, to words dense and encapsulated. It ends today. 

There is, as far as I know, no National Essay Month, no time set aside for the genre I know best, the one which at its root means "to try."

The essay is the right genre for me, earnest scribbler that I am, and it is, I think, good for many of us. At the very least it's a genre most of us know. Who hasn't written a letter or report? Or proofread a college essay?

And so, on this last day of National Poetry Month,  I'm thinking of one of my favorite essays. Read it if you have time — it only takes three minutes — and tell me, is it not poetry in prose?

Suddenly Summer

We've gone from cool and rainy to humid and hot. Suddenly it is summer in Virginia. I don't mind. I love heat and humidity. But the body struggles to adjust. 

Yesterday I walked in the late afternoon, and my feet were dragging. Today I left early, strolling through the last vestiges of pre-dawn coolness that were lingering in the shady spots of my route. 

Back home now I can feel the heat starting to bear down. But the dappled shade of deck and yard promise several hours of al fresco pleasure. 

The Stacks

I read on today's Writers Almanac this quotation from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird: "Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search the library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it."

The library stacks ... I remember them well. Mine were at the old University of Kentucky library, where I went to research "bureaucracy, the fourth branch of government," my paper topic for a high school class, Advanced Government and International Relations, taught by Colonel Coleman.

He was an inspiring teacher, and I plunged into the research for that paper as if it were cool water on a hot summer day. It was refreshing, liberating. Hours flew by as I took notes on index cards. 

I made many trips to the library, then wrote the paper longhand and typed it up the old-fashioned way — on a typewriter with White Out at my side. It was more than 40 pages, and my friends never stopped ribbing me for the comment, in red ink, at the end: "A scholarly study," Colonel Coleman had scribbled. 

"Oh yeah, it was scholarly all right. It put him to sleep!" they laughed. 

Maybe it did. But it woke me up. 

Weight of our Words

Last night a few of us gathered to stuff folders for an upcoming writers conference. Though so much is done digitally these days, there often comes a point where the written word has a weight. Not just the weight of the words' meaning, but an actual, tangible poundage. 

I felt this keenly when I was a magazine writer and editor, and I feel it still whenever I look through my publications, purging some, labeling and storing others. 

Last night we sorted leaflets and tucked them into folders, created name tags and tent cards. By the end of the evening, we had a tidy set of printed materials — and some heavy boxes to lift.

Treasures from the Vault

I returned from Lexington with something I absolutely need no more of, and that would be books. 

But who could resist the Annie Dillard compilation (even though I have these books in other forms), the Bread Loaf anthology or This Trembling Land, by a Kentucky author whose father owned the farm where I rode horses as a young girl?

There's also a workbook (covered in a brown paper from a grocery bag) that dates back to my first-grade class. These are the kind of goodies that can still be found in what was once my parents' and is now my brother's home. I think of them as treasures from the vault.

Purple Pathway

A walk yesterday when I didn't feel like walking. A walk that healed and restored. It began at a trailhead I haven't frequented in months, meandered down a dirt trail, over a bridge, then passed a field of lavender flowers. 

I thought I knew all the patches of fetching spring blooms, but these had escaped my notice. They may have been weeds (wild grape hyacinth?), but who cares? They were shining in the late day sun, a purple pathway.

The flowers and the movement invigorated. The world looked brighter when I returned home.

Long River

This morning I'm thinking of friendship, especially friendship of long standing. People who go back years and how much they become a part of your life. 

I had time to contemplate this on the drive home yesterday, which was up into the mountains where it barely looked like spring, then down into the alleys where spring is in full flower.

Longtime friendship is like that, too, seasons and altitudes, peaks and valleys. Through them all, a long river of connection. 

Grounding

When I try to name it I come up short. Is it depth that I feel here in my hometown? Is it community? 

In so many ways, I don't know this place. Like any healthy city, it keeps growing and changing. And for most of my life, I've done my growing and changing somewhere else. 

But when I visit Lexington, when I stroll down Central Avenue or Ashland or South Hanover, I'm walking through layers of personal and family history.

If I lived here, these layers might weigh me down. But since I don't, they ground me. 

Sold Out at Singletary

In Kentucky for the weekend, I take in a sold-out concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts, including a spirited performance of the Mozart Requiem. The stage was packed with the orchestra and combined choirs of the University of Kentucky. 

The last time I was at this venue I was on the stage. Last night I was (gratefully) in the audience. And what an audience it was: attentive, respectful, spirited, just what the excellent music deserved. When the final notes sounded, the audience leapt to its feet for a standing ovation.

Though I love attending musical events in the D.C. area, I especially enjoyed last night's performance. There was a communal feeling to it, a sense of togetherness among musicians and listeners, as we all fell under the spell of the Lacrimosa, said to contain the last eight bars of music Mozart wrote. 

Capturing Birds

Once upon a time, I wrote a book for parents, encouraging them to avoid the trap I'd fallen into, double-thinking my words and actions until I'd turned what used to be a joyous and natural activity — raising kids — into a highly fraught, expert-dominated procedure.

In one chapter I talk about what children bring to adults when they're allowed to remain children, not miniaturized adults, how they remind us of the way the world looks when we're just coming alive to it. 

I was reminded of this the other day when Isaiah asked his mother why his grandparents "capture birds."

We keep parakeets in a birdcage, you see, but to Isaiah, we are stalking the Northern Virginia landscape in search of parakeets. Every time I think of this, I smile. 

It's the child's mind trying to make sense of what he sees around him — and it's a joy to observe. 

(Two of our "inmates.")