Enduring Friendships

Introduction The interconnectedness of the Arts enabled me to put these words on paper: movement, expression, tone, color, structure, source, power to touch the emotive aspect, underpinnings common to all artistic work, the references in time, measuring of distances, endurance, flexibility, balance benefit to cost or merit. I thought of the years, some long, others cut short, of lifeline connections and chose this title. Most recently, a listener interpreted the word Enduring to mean undergoing hardships leading to endurance; the effort of puzzling through unsteady times to arrive at closeness. Well! A lasting resonant friendship includes embracing fair weather friends, healthy, sick, and passed away friends, misery loves company friends, colleagues by profession, mere acquaintances (read the sad remainders of marginal politeness), and military comrades in arms. Admitting this bald truth, I needed this title, without reservation. I sought terms naming what is familiar for human endeavor, young or old. No one chooses for themselves the country, culture, intellectual or material climate we are born to. Sustaining a self is bounded by others, nature, nurture, acceptance of torture; asserting the indescribable commonality of the mystery of being. My ability to perform was swept away by increasing otherness. When I read “Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every form of freedom” by Benjamin N. Cardozo, the idea evoked my feeling of freedom: Enduring Friendships. ----- The Violin The furthest reaching sonnets of our love must vibrate and cannot always. Your back the curly maple and my top the straight spruce: together a violin shattering kaleidoscopes of geometry, tearing through the everyday known physics of E=MC2, born into ecstasy. Flinging off velvet covers open out glistening varnish, holographically flashing as we turn, melting, singing, washing away the plain, for a moment. Once married we took on the value of a good antique. The curious purfling and seekers wished for places closest to the music. We had to be together for this. We felt the abrasion of life's taut time-hair and quivered obediently. Out came cries and approbations, sweet tumescence, luxuriant linear lifts and suspensions, and a deep diving. Holy perfect sound of sensual expression, glued together by fear and propinquity, need and choice, and a quiet acknowledgment. You recognized a simple triplet, my breathing and knew I was at peace. We play a special song, a Sonata for the Spring, so that endometrium will be atrium white doves will flap their mighty wings piercing the circle of genes, this side of the soundpost, that outpost of fertility, that the Song might live, radiantly, the way the waves go. ----- Away Slips an Ocean My heart lightened, And in full fulgor spilled, When tide-cycles you breathed On waters so stilled. Crest wave, roll me asunder! Rest wave, bring me to slumber! Once more to rise up, To fall and to bend, Away slips an ocean, You, my dear friend.   ----- Chop Suey Moment There, 20 paces back seven paces to the right is where you can imagine Edward Hopper inconspicuous sketching within a dim booth. This is where one must be to see as the artist saw. The colors meet the angles of the street, of the window what is left of the daylight focused over two diners in Manhattan’s mid- winter. One to listen, one to share the two women wear their cloche hats and sweaters huddling hands closing over the comfort of tea. Another man too deeper in shadow keeps on his fedora. Perhaps here it is warmer by the steam of chop suey where the two women may be concerned about love, or work, or someone not well at all, or certainly gone missing. They may well be huddling like two politicians wondering how this depression will end the same way they share a recipe to make the most soup from a chicken with lemon and cornstarch. Light is still light whatever the year casting geometry and thereby defining the frame for whom young women are still jewels evocatively sacred. ----- My Desire I am drawn to a tree of indiscriminate shape, intrigued by her multitude of leaves. Their shapes another multitude, appear to me as coeur et écouter. I too wish to hang leaves from her branches, to never leave her, to draw closer, to touch her bark, and to be protected beneath her majestic canopy. As if I could fill my desire to do the same for her, her leaves a covering of kindness, spread by wind, showering me with infinity, and showing me, I who wish to protect her, who she really is. ----- My Suitcase Being half blind and half crippled, the suitcase helps me carry what I have and go where I want to go. I would tip over without it. I can't really lift things anymore. I go faster with wheels. My hands hurt less. Small fireballs and supernovas are difficult to carry around. There might be something special in this suitcase, you know poems, a laptop or a spacesuit. It cases my bag of tricks the way I can manage them. Just like you. If I painted my cane white I could also be blind. Just like you. If I held the railing like reason or a religion I would have my support. Just like you. No, the airport is not where I just came from but it is relatively close – like death. Trusty things, suitcases and death. Can you feel the pressure the weight - the questions that death is asking? Would you like my suitcase? You keep offering to carry it, and I am trying to be nice. You know, it might cost you an arm, a leg, an eye, or a musical instrument You might have to stand in line for it. ----- The Universe Provides The Universe provides: bell curves, sine waves, ocean curls, elements, prisms, centuries, swirls, fractals, gravity, anti-matter, menageries, laundry, dried paint, cracks, steel, monasteries, islands, auditions, a little genius, going a long way, the right man, beautiful boys, beautiful pianos, violins, french horns, beautiful freesias, mountains, beaches, love, wonder, questions, answers, juncos, swifts, albatrosses, hummingbirds, torpor, withdrawal, outreach, reflection, rock, Fauré, Debussy, Verdi, Joplin, Ballet, Sculpture, Icons, Trios, celestial navigation, sprezzatura, clichés, trends, tuning, bookshelves, binoculars, cameras, appliances beeping, woven baskets, blankets, chocolate, coffee, cocaine, mushrooms, rice, millet, wheat, corn, indigenous rights, wrongs, winds, explosions, Tests. ----- For Nadya Fantastic voices call and coo to linger in fragments and insist the truth apart, rising to exquisite things: love, growth, circles. Blessing my soul to make it giving my body a gift, reasoning my mind to more decent things, away from discontent. Thank you once again, for there is no redundancy when pieces of gratitude match each for every and all for all of these fine voices.