through which it sings
It is nine in the morning.
With those first words, I have given you the freshness, the low rays of the sun, the clear skies of so many mornings. It is Saturday: I have given you some stillness and freedom from Purpose. There is the faintest breeze, in fact, which plays around the drying field grasses and late-summer flowers, and an untainted blue sky. My daughter is whistling in the living room. Outside, the crickets – who love the fact that I haven’t mowed the upper field in weeks – have set up a cadence, a syncopated cricket-waltz, three to a second; or perhaps their syncopation is a studied lack of rhythm, dancers who don’t know the steps, and so hes…itatethenstep then hes…itate and another until Schubert or Brahms would measure them incompetent, or brilliant, failed student or master…
In the tall, unmowed field they are the masters.
So my piece of the world turns in the direction of the sun again.
There is a… buzz…? or a humming from inside me, from within the house of my bones, like the sound of departing dreams; as though, if I stopped my ears and the sounds of the woken world were held away, I would hear a door open, footsteps within me, or echoing voices, and everything moving through water, the ebbing waters of night, taking on a gentle, aquatic distortion. Sometimes, waking late on a Saturday, the colors and textures of that dream space are almost tangible, almost, so when the manifested world begins to pour in, you reach after the dissolving words and faces, stretching to hear or to see: what did you say…? what was it you said!
I remember one night, a few years ago, I dreamed of a classroom - or was it a crowded street? - and there was a circle of people with me and around me. Among them, one figure of importance or recognized authority: a teacher - or was it an Elder?
We each offered something to the group, mostly spoken words. And I remember, when it came my turn, I wished to share a song. Into the silence they made, I sang it, and like the best of songs, it was one that I hadn’t made, rather had been fortunate enough to be its Voice. The best musicians practice, practice, practice until their bodies and their voices become the instrument; those who are really masters have learned how to get out of the way as well, that the greater Musician might pluck their strings.
I sang, or it sang through me, and it was so achingly beautiful, the words, and that melody, we all were warmed and softened by it, the circle of students, or circle of pedestrians, the teacher. As the song expanded the stillness seemed to deepen, and the was a glow that came to our faces, it had the quality of sunlight reflected from the waves of a summer lake. And it wound to its completion, the last words then the last word, the final sustain and the thread of light becoming smaller, attenuated… until at last it broke with the almost perceptible sound of silence. As the last note dissolved, I awoke.
And the world, this manifested world began to pour in! A flood to drown my small city, to wash away these gathered people and my song! It was unwinding the threads of music, and I grasped and ran after it – oh, what was it? I can’t remember the words… neither can I find them, looking everywhere, while the sun undoes what was done… and now the melody… fading like mist in the sun, no! Gone like mist in the sun…!
I stood at the edge of the day with a faint hum which began inside my body, within the house of my bones, that played in me for a few hours, until even its faint shadows and light were overtaken by the midday sun.
The ten o’clock sun is at my window now, and outside I can follow the bees as they drone their apparently random ways between faded clover and late-summer blossoms. The crickets have unstrung their bows, but a few cicadas have come to take their place. Each one singing after that one song… or perhaps in living, being it.
The sun is getting high. I must remember to mow the upper field today.