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27 June ~ 2007

I sort of had the blues this week, just going through the motions - wake up, take the dogs for a walk, work, sleep. Allergies from all the pollen we have flying around here might be partly too blame. In some places on the green belt the bromegrass is chest high. It blooms in midJune.

Last night I went to a book signing at the Lodo Tattered Cover by William Debuys, a very talented author who wrote a book called 'The Walk.' He read the most beautiful section from his book, about loss and renewal:

"A friend of mine, a scientist, lost his teenage son to a freak accident, and only days later, with sorrow etched in every line of his face, he eulogized his child in a high school gym packed with classmates, friends, and family. I remember that he seemed the most composed of all the people there, and in precise, clear terms he presented an analysis of death. Things die, he said, so that creation can continue. And their death is not just a matter of making room. For creation, not siimply replication, to continue, newness must continually arise. Which means randomness must be a condition of life, and so some things just happen, and some effects have no particular cause. In certain instances random change might produce a flower of surpassing beauty, genetic resistance to disease, or a fortuitous meeting. But randomness, being morally neutral, just as easily sends a sledding boy into a steel pylon, or brings on the devastation of drought or the riotous growth of tumors. These things make a whole, he said, and render inseparable the twins of pain and beauty, loss and re-creation."

That is a good way to look at it - randomness can bring about pain or beauty, loss or re-creation. You have to put up with one to receive the gift of the other.

In my quiet house I have clear recollections of happiness - my daughter's laughter, our dogs barking and chasing them and me. It was a certainty my children would grow up, that beloved dogs would get old and die. It may be that the pleasant memories of our life then within these walls are made more vivid by the serenity and silence that is the nature of my home now. Is that near what Debuys was saying, that to appreciate joy and happiness you need to accept the contrast of it's absence, all of it making a whole.?

I was broken-hearted when my wife turned away, but if it weren't for that I may not have seen those hawks circling down in front of the Warrior peaks of the Cirque of the Towers, or found that trailless timberline valley that I just returned from last week. I might not have done as many nature programs for schoolgroups, or discovered how rewarding it is to tell stories in the Spellbinders program, where a room full of schoolchildren listens to my every word, and their hearts are moved by the nature or animal story the same as mine was the first time I read it. If my wife hadn't bought a new house, she might not have gotten Ben as a puppy, then found she couldn't handle him and gave him to me. Would I want things to have turned out differently? I don't know, Ben and I are pretty good Bud's.

I know one thing for certain - if I had not found myself alone yet still loving to dance, I wouldn't have gone out and learned to dance with different partners, or taken lessons to learn to lindy swing, going on three years now.

And that is where I went after the book signing, to the evening swing dance a few blocks away on the other side of downtown. I walked up to the dance hall on the second floor, and sat down in the the seats up by the sound board, and watched for a while. A pleasant summer breeze came in from the open windows behind me. A couple of weeks ago I sat in those same seats and listened to 93 year-old Frankie Manning tell his story of what turned him towards a lifetime of dancing.

He said when he was a young boy in New York his mother took him to dances. Little Frankie was put in a bedroom to sleep when it got late, but he creeped to the door, and listened to the music and watched the adults dancing. What impressed him was the joy - the simple and pure happiness that overtook the adults while dancing.

It only took a few songs before I was caught up in the same joy that Frankie Manning described - the positive emotional energy of the Mercury on Tuesday Lindy Swing Night. After three years of practice, I am a newbie compared to the skilled dancers there, but I am good enough to keep the beat, do the steps, and enjoy the passion and joy of it all. It thrills me to no end to be out there dancing, let me tell you, to be a part of the strong dance community in this city.

I keep trying to write about how great dance is, but I don't know if I am getting there. It's like trying to describe how music touches our hearts, or how spiritual and mysterious wilderness nights are. You just have to experience it.

When I left a couple of hours later my blues and early week doldrums were a distant memory.