Escaping the Gravity Well

I have been paying attention to the wrong things.

Having been raised a Unitarian, a latter-day Transcendentalist and all-around do-gooder, I have been anxious about the state of the world since day one. We had conversations at our house about what we would do when the Big One (the bomb, not the earthquake) hit Portland. If it’s the weekend, start walking west and don’t stop until you smell the cows of the Tillamook Valley. If it’s a school day, run up the hill to Safeway, grab a few bottles of water and a handful of Cliff bars and hide in the underground office mall until the radiation goes down enough to start the hike.

Francis Moore Lappe, Rachel Carson, and Paul Ehrlich all had their way with me. Food shortages. The population explosion. Future shock. Monocultures, riots, mass extinctions, the ozone layer. I’ve been feeling responsible for things beyond my strength since, oh, 1968 when Dr. King was shot, way before it was popular to even notice things like global warming (I’m sorry, climate change) and peak oil.

Of course I protested the latest war, and the war before that, and the war before that (what was the war before that?). I’ve written letters and contributed dollars and helped to people phone banks and felt like a schmoe because I was too shy to argue with family and friends. Public school funding, vote by mail, gay rights, hijacked elections, you name it. My husband and I have been working on relieving the earth of as much of our footprint as possible, for about 20 years…do we really need two cars? (The answer, usually, is no.) We’ve insulated the house and replaced everything that uses energy with the most efficient model possible. We precycle and recycle just about everything. We garden and compost and always ask the question, “What’s the minimum we need to be safe, healthy, fairly comfortable and happy?” We’ve raised two children who live the same way. But still, some days I can feel my heart speeding up and I know what that’s about. Obviously, I haven’t done enough. The world isn’t saved yet!

I’ve been advised by really smart people to take breaks from reading the New York Times and watching the TV. So far, the TV break has lasted since 1975, so that’s all right. The New York Times, no way. (I can’t bear to read the Oregonian very often, it’s embarrassing.) Still, stuff leaks through, mainly through all the political action committee list-serves I’ve subscribed to.

I probably don’t get out enough. But a friend did get me and Ed to go to the symphony last Saturday. A nice filling of Chris Thile and the west coast premiere of his Mandolin Concerto, and Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer with their Triple Concerto for Banjo, Bass and Tabla, between two slices of Dvorak and Von Suppe. The concert was followed, improbably, by a jam session with the soloists. Now, I have never heard any of this music. Falling in love with music, for me, isn’t cheap. It’s like building a relationship with a person. I have to really get to know it before I can fall in love. It takes time.

Somehow, though, these men played melodies and harmonies I’ve heard in my heart since birth. The oldest, most beloved music, nestled so deeply within me that I had never heard it before.

There were times when I sat shaking my head, mouth open, watching these mammals do things with animal skins, wood, opposable thumbs, all neurons firing, and thought, all they are missing is the cape and the ability to fly. This is supernatural, what they do. There were the long moments where I felt enfolded, warm, safe, thinking, if I sit here listening for much longer, I’ll start to believe in a personal God.

I realize that we all do what we can to make the world better, either for ourselves, or for others, or for both. Some bring children into the world, some buy a larger and more comfortable car, some go to Africa to teach refugees, some plant tomatoes and others write books. We are acting on the world in concrete and understandable ways.

This was a different kind of action. Through their music, these men created beauty, wordless and inexplicable – a beauty beyond thought, beyond time, indescribable. They created an experience for their listeners that was beyond hope and beyond striving. They created a still point of rest, a place of strength in joy.

Yes, I came home and wrote another letter and put the carrot tops in the composter and walked to the store with my cart. Those are the daily gestures I give to the future. Those gestures are fueled by habit or concern, and sometimes (I’m not proud of this) a feeling of virtue. But the foundation from which I launch myself must be deeper, or I won’t make it. Keeping our spirits up has to be more than tugging against an anchor. I’m trying to escape the gravity well here. Is it possible to just float upward into the light?

Maybe. Maybe, in my toiling to be the change I want to see in the world, I’ve been paying attention to the wrong things, giving over the well-being of my volition to the heaviness of the impossible. Time to dive into the depths of music and human possibility, to find the gift of weightlessness.