Spring Giddiness
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.
Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.
-- Jalaluddin Rumi
Ah, welcome spring!!
It's been over a year since my words have splashed out here. Today, on this first day of spring 2008, it feels like the blessedly ripe time to stop in for a visit again. These days of solstice and equinox are, after all, some of my favorites in the year.
Rumi's Spring Giddiness has been my mantra in the last few weeks. A little over two years ago I wrote a song from these words. Called Don't Go Back to Sleep, once I made a rough scratch recording it seemed to fade back in my mind. I was perusing the contents of my little hand-held digital recorder which I use to capture my song ideas or works-in-process. When I stumbled upon the very first strains of this song my breath caught. It was just what I needed to hear that day. And apparently every day since. Over and over the refrain comes to me: "The door is round and open, the door is round and open." The song has begun to sing me.
This is a different phenomenon than getting a song annoyingly stuck in the groove of my brain. Roseanne Cash has been quoted as saying, "I've always found that songs can be postcards from your future." When I first heard this quote about a decade ago I totally got that haunting quality to art of any medium. To me, as with Roseanne, it comes in the form of song and I find it everywhere in my works. Even considering the new rush of energy and enjoyment of a fresh baby song, in some ways it's more fun to look back at a song when I can feel it through the seasons of my life. Rumi and his poem and my ensuing song have embodied this haunting future-past quality. Something in me wrote the song two years ago, but it's real impact hasn't been noticeable until now. Perhaps some mysterious future self sent this song back to me a couple of years ago so that I could partake of it in this season by simply enjoying my earlier fruits. Or maybe my subconscious was just way ahead of my conscious. Either way, it's a cool thing.
Being the equinox, we Bruxvoort-Colligan's will be celebrating with our traditional Equinox Pizza. I'll be sitting in some quiet space with a candle and my journal for some reflection and looking forward. And my beloved and I will find space together on our couch (Viola - who will be making an appearance in the sheep pasture on our upcoming duet CD), sipping red wine and sharing the holinesses-made-manifest from our own lives this Holy Week.
And you: have a happy equinox and may you drink in the loveliness of this grand day,
Trish