february blues...

For my birthday in 2020 my Brooklyn family gave me a beautiful bracelet of wooden beads. The brass clasp adds a unique flair as it is hollow in order to hold a small paper wish. For about 20 years I have been enamored with bracelets: colorful cloth friendship bracelets, wooden beads, metal jewelry as well as strands of woven leather. At one point I wore about 25 from all over the world. Right now it's down to 13. Last fall I shared my wish out loud with my daughter: I wished we might be together at Christmas. There was a moment in September when it looked like it might come true. But then reality set in and the contagion spiked everywhere. This morning I read that Dr. Fauci thinks that maybe we can start to ease up on PPE in late autumn. Late autumn. I know it is a moving target, but that's truth is staggering to me: late autumn before we'll be able to visit loved ones and friends again in anything approaching normalcy.

Speaking with friends in Ottawa over the weekend I learned that they are facing a time table even more grim than our own. Given the fact that the US holds a near monopoly on the production of vaccinations - and has been unusually stingy to our neighbor which must import their meds from Europe - it will be early summer before many of their most vulnerable folk are inoculated. Later still for the wider population. Once upon a time, Di and I thought that our 25th anniversary magical mystery tour to Nova Scotia might take place a mere year after our original plan: May 2020. Not likely any more - perhaps May 2022 - and it will certainly be Christmas 2021 before we get back to celebrating live jazz at Diese Onze in Montreal. We fantasize about doing a slow car trip to see our loved ones this fall, moving across country to see other friends, too before winding up in Tucson.

Obviously, my thoughts are turned to travel today - and longing - while I watch yet another snow storm fall vigorously all around us. We may pick up another 6" before it quits. From the warmth of my study window, it looks calming and serene. I've noted before that these types of storms not only encase the Berkshires in silence, but enshroud us in beauty. The contrast of greys and browns against the white ground and hills highlights the hints of red that still linger in the wetlands behind our home. Last week I trekked out to my favorite tree in knee high drifts just to take in its majesty. Even while naked, it is a wonder to behold that brings a measure of comfort when so much of the rest of the world looks bleak. I think the poet, Bill Christopherson, grasped some of this season's dilemma when he crafted "February." 

The cold grows colder, even as the days
grow longer, February's mercury vapor light
buffing but not defrosting the bone-white
ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot.
This is the time of year that's apt to put
a hammerlock on a healthy appetite,
old anxieties back into the night,
insomnia and nightmares into play;
when things in need of doing go undone
and things that can't be undone come to call,
muttering recriminations at the door,
and buried ambitions rise up through the floor
and pin your wriggling shoulders to the wall;
and hope's a reptile waiting for the sun.

In 15 minutes the second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump will begin a mere month after his attempted coup. Indeed, "the cold grows colder, even as the days grow longer..." I am hearing Langston Hughes in my heart: "hold fast to dreams, for when dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." 

An old friend, Don Wooten, long gone to his eternal resting place, wrote a musical interpretation of the Hughes poem back in our Cleveland days. Don was a white public school teacher in a majority Black system: he taught music, coached girls' sports and held an all-city youth orchestra in the church basement on Saturday mornings. He turned me on to the Christmas jazz standard, "A Child Is Born" by Thad Jones, that still haunts my memory on Christmas Eve. We used to play it at the late Christmas Eve  liturgy with me on bass while he sang. And then he, for as long as felt right, Don would play the sweetest, most soulful violin improvisations over the top.

It is just one of those days...