Dissonance

My body and mind are buzzing, sorta vibrating with a lot of static.  Much energy.  Little focus.   This mind-body feeling-sound harbors dissonance.

Dissonance is defined as a noun at dictionary.com:
1.  inharmonious or harsh sound; discord; cacophony.
2.  (music) a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion.
3.  (music) an unresolved, discordant chord or interval.
4.  disagreement or incongruity. 

Why the discord?  Some of it is yoga teaching me to find ease in my postures (moving on the mat and moving through life, right?).  Some of it is feeling irritated by responsibilities.  Some is just habit.  Mixing in me are the vinegar and oil of what I think I have to do and what I think I want to do.  Also in the shake are the spices of what my life is, what I thought it would be and what I predict it might become plus my ever-chugging mind.  These ingredients flavor my life. 

I question, “What if the incongruity is that my idea of what will make me happy is not a correct one?  Not MY actual truth?  What if I have been trained by my past to think certain things are important but am finding it not to be so now?”  This is cognitive dissonance, anxiety resulting from simultaneously having two contradictory attitudes.  I must wash the dinner dishes before bed AND I don’t care if the dishes are done before bed.  Reading is essential AND I don’t have time to read.  I thrive if I get up fifteen minutes early to sit in stillness AND I don’t want to get up early.  Somehow the buzz must find resolution.

There are truths I have discovered to be authentic to me.  Low energy, junk foods leave me and my family feeling low energy and junky.  Early bedtime is essential for a happy mommy and happy kids even if it takes a lot of personal oomph to make it happen.  I have also discovered throughout days of living, moments arrive that aren’t expected - somehow not the thing anticipated wherein I must look for the truth.  An unresolved state of unrest may be what introduces us to the present as it is, not as we thought it would be.

                                Dissonance

                                Tonal life notes offered as child tales

                                told, hopes mold anticipated

                                rising a whole step at a time, unless

                                seated sometimes in stillness

                                slowly opened spine colors show

                                what you thought is not real

                                lee, ta da dee dee, C.   Then D. 

                                All choices happening seem certain

                                unfolding as expected, up

                                appropriate scale with each hand

                                ranking satisfaction higher

                                flowing prescribed path proffered

                                until perhaps no one can be real

                                lee, ta da dee dee, now E.  

                                That the mount might actually fail

                                to follow prediction, a grade

                                unpleasing to the heart

                                tips the balance toward individual

                                truth, test before the fifth chakra

                                for telling what is you real

                                lee, ta da dee dee.  F sharp.

Freedom

Freedom keeps beeping on my radar.  The word freedom popped up over the last week in several things I am reading, the news, my middle school daughter’s laments, serious adult conversations, and television commercials.  It is an emotionally charged word, much desired, and filled with promise.  Yet freedom seems a hard noun to pin down to specifics.

Freedom is defined by the Collins English Dictionary 10^th Edition online.
     1.  Personal liberty, as from slavery, bondage, serfdom, etc.
     2.  liberation or deliverance, as from confinement or bondage
     3.  the quality or state of being free, esp. to enjoy political and civil liberties
     4.  the state of being without something unpleasant or bad; exemption or
           immunity
     5.  the right or privilege of unrestricted use or access
     6.  autonomy, self-government, or independence
     7.  the power or liberty to order one’s own actions
     8.  (philosophy) the quality, esp. of the will or the individual, of not being totally
          constrained; able to choose between alternative actions in identical
          circumstances
     9.  ease or frankness of manner; candor
     10.  excessive familiarity of manner; boldness
     11.  ease and grace, as of movement; lack of effort

Hard to pin down indeed!  Eleven entries – and I intentionally chose this source because it was the most brief.  Apparently freedom does mean many things.  Freedom for each person differs, I suppose, in the thing by which they are trapped.  It can be a physical state.  It can be a political state.  It can be a mental state. 

Our very nature beckons us to be liberated from confinement.  Certainly slavery and bondage inflicted upon people by other people is deeply unjust.  But, alas, can we not also be our own captors?  The restriction I seem to be mulling today is that in which we might keep our own selves.  Acting without forethought reduces access to certain rights or privileges.  Addiction to bad habits may keep today the same locked paddock of yesterday as we repeat stale, rote actions hoping for different results.  Living stuck in yesterday or paralyzed in fear of tomorrow removes the liberation of today.  Mistaking personal freedom for the right to go willy-nilly through the world with no thought of others is a trap we lay for ourselves - shared destruction will not lead to increased freedom. 

Certainly, physical deliverance from captivity is paramount as are civil and political freedom.   But after that, who holds us back?  Who tells us we are not free to choose between available alternative actions?  Who defines our freedom? 

Her Freedom

Her freedom is not leaving and is not going

            not running, somehow knowing

she belongs to herself.

To stay or go daily is choice, ultimately a time

                will arrive when no one needs

her to simply survive.

She will recognize Pantanjali’s truth:  freedom

                rests in living so presently that

she sees no regrets.

Dream

Every year when we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I like to listen again to his famous speech first offered August 28, 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  During the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom he offered words that many thought became a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.  Great power reverberates through his repetition of statements beginning “I have a dream.”  

Dream is defined at dictionary.com as
1.  a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep.
2.  the sleeping state in which this occurs.
3.  a object seen in a dream.
4.  an involuntary vision occurring to a person when awake.
5.  a vision voluntarily indulged in while awake; daydream; reverie.

In a sentence that touches me deeply, King states, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  Perhaps this is because I have three young children of my own.  Perhaps it is because I believe deeply that every person is worthy of fair opportunities and judgments without discrimination.  Maybe it is because some sources indicate that at this point in his speech Dr. King veered from his scripted talk and went a little free-form with his passionate words.  Maybe it is because judging others on the merits of their character is the highest goal to which I strive both by encouraging strength of character and looking for it in others.  I also think it is because hope for change always gazes toward the lives of children, the future of the dream.

                                Freedom’s King

                                Oh, that King hadn’t died!  Stolen from us, shot open

                                among unkind, strewn beneath magnolias and pines

                                pursed lip lines holding to hatred that had no place

                                for seeing sweet brown face children yearning to read

                                to share spaces living with neighboring white faces

                                the rock of brotherhood, self-evident true siblings


                                sipping the cup of dignity and discipline, soul force

                                the same red blood course through passionate veins

                                amidst Bible verse and gospel strains chanted long

                                as days served for planting and growing and knowing

                                all people the image and likeness of God, one nation

                                under façade of happiness until each person’s quest

                                for quenching waters of justice, only satisfying stream

                                light dispelling hatred.  Beloved world, be the dream.

Decrescendo

In musical composition and performance big, loud, amazing moments can inspire and move us, overwhelm our senses and emotions with grandeur.  However, too much prolonged big and loud can end up feeling disquieting and unsatisfactory.  The gradual decline into a familiar volume is part of what makes the momentous moment awesome.  The contrast is part of the joy.  In the playing and listening of life perhaps it is the same.  All the December holiday hoopla is awesome but who could endure comfortably twelve relentless months of it?  The majority of life follows the decrescendo from whoopee-de-doo wonderful into sustainable levels.

Decrescendo is defined at dictionary.com.
     1.  gradually reducing force or loudness; diminuendo (opposed to crescendo)
     2.  a gradual reduction in force or loudness
Decrescendo is further explained by its origin in early 19th century Italian meaning literally "decreasing."

Churches that follow the Roman Rite Christian Liturgical Calendar call these current weeks Ordinary Time.  Holy, common space in which to live through the year total - according to their count - 33 or 34 weeks.  We live in ordinary most of the time.  But it is special time, time after the hoorah to grow and rest and enjoy the effect of decrescendo. 

While I embrace the gradual reduction in force and loudness of life, I am also aware of the lasting gift of the big and bold.  We get to keep some of the magic of the momentous in the new music of life ahead.  Gifts offered and received remain.  Photos taken and shared enchant our eyes.  New aspects are part of the transformed ordinary that keeps some of the sparkle.

Later today I will do something I have never done before.  Amidst the ordinary of my life I will celebrate a local reading for my first book of poetry.  This is something that started in the bigness of December when my book, Garden, launched December 1 and now remains a part of my new normal.  My sustainable ordinary has grown richer.  Each of us can carry something forward that keeps the normal both comfortable and a bit new as the energy of life makes its decrescendo into regular routines. 

                 Return through Forte

                 Dancing or dreaming or decorating with lights and bows

                 Christ knows something coming and the climb joyfully

                 louder and louder until the top where we stay until

                 resolution of new ears hearing the start of phrase

                 tune gradually rising and falling on notes sent

                 breath rolls we through a melody making

                 the way clear of stellar amazing

                 our strong suit sport

                 normal urn holds

                 ordinary time

                 soft.

Possibilities

January 2012 offers new goals.  Some aims will stick; some won’t make it to Valentine’s Day.  I elected five years ago to choose a theme for my year and let the promises arise as less of a punitive act.  Monday Morning Musing is a promise from January 2011 that I kept.   Intended to flex my writing muscles and start each week with written words the blog has become a habit.  I am hoping to add even more writing habits to my daily life in 2012 as I say goodbye to 2011, the year of fabulous (see post January 2011), and hello to my 2012 theme, possibilities.

Merriam Webster online shows the following definitions for possibility.

1.       The condition of being possible

2.       (archaic) one’s utmost power, capacity or ability

3.       Something that is possible

4.       Potential or prospective value – usually used in plural

2012 has some unsteady variables for many of us.  Our finances may be changing, technology is most certainly changing, where we live may be changing, the work we do may need to differ, the way we use resources needs to change.  And let’s not forget messages about the end of the world.

I have not ability to predict the future.  I know we cannot know what is ahead with certainty at any time.  But I do discern the reality of imagining possibilities.  This phrase came into my thinking spot from a workshop I attended in December.  We played a sort of game with a path.  At certain junctions along the route of the game we were presented with statements and were to choose which most accurately described us or appealed to us at that moment.  Eventually the winding lane of choices led to an ending phrase or thought.  There was no way of losing - every player won!  But, there also was no skipping onto the path not chosen.  Once a direction was picked then the path NOT chosen was, well, off limits.  Players only picked from choices on their path followed.

And isn’t that the way life is?  Ask Robert Frost in The Road Not Taken.  In life moments we decide with whatever resources are available to us – mentally, emotionally and otherwise.  That just has to be okay.  It is an inherent part of possibilities.  Possibilities rest in where we are.  They are not in the past.  They live in today.  Today offers choices.  And then tomorrow becomes today and we look again at the prospects.  Possibilities may be difficult or easy, pleasant or unpleasant but I imagine them as limitless.

Prospects

Dare see boundless measure

breathing, bending, reaching.

Teaching work that is then becomes

beyond to what might, found or lost

eaten or passed, odds

owe only the chance

ends, frog kissing, signs missing.

Capacity untouched heart beating

a dead horse with a whip

given long ago and only

released grows a new miner

ambling into town wielding words

rhymes trickling through

the first expression of possibilities.