The Climate Inside and Out

Rain, today, and at last. It’s been the second driest June in history—day after day of unrelenting heat, and milky blue clouds (the result of Saharan dust in the upper atmosphere.)

It’s a relief. After cold and rain in both Wisconsin and London, I was ready for hot and dry. Well, it’s the old story: the gods punish us by giving us what we want….

The inner climate has turned as well. I revisited the piece of music—and the writing that went with it—that haunted me in the first week of March.

The d minorPiano Concerto of Brahms. 

It was—like Winterreise and the late quartets of Beethoven—music that I’d been waiting to get into. And like the other works, it’s not conventionally pretty music. 

Nor was my experience with it pretty. I willed myself to go back to that moment of madness—my first panic attack in December of 2011.

Why? Is it rational to revisit the irrational? Wouldn’t a sane person do anything to avoid a return to the world of utter insanity?

Can’t say. I could tell you that I had to go back to see it from the other side—the other side being sanity. Or I could say I had to master my fear that the madness would return by tempting the gods, daring them to fling me into the whirlpool again. I could say I had no choice.

Possibly true, all of the above. None of them feels right.

I only knew, that first week of March (also the first week of Lent) that I was operating on blind faith—and the love and faith of a sister in Tobago. And Raf, who worried silently all throughout the period.

OK—site and setting. El Morro, the oldest of the four remaining fortifications the Spaniards built. It’s built—as is its sister in Havana—at the mouth of the harbor. It’s huge. It is not—by design—inviting. It was early morning—seven, perhaps—and raining / overcast.

And yes, for the fifty minutes that Brahms takes to finish his struggle I took to finish mine. I went back—I was on the same road (though technically not) as I had been. True, there were no cars speeding past me.

There were lashes.

I was being scourged, whipped…and purified.

I came home and wrote the experience as I’ve not written anything in my life. Actually, I didn’t write. I took dictation.

A week of exhausting struggle followed. I relearned everything. How to do the dishes. How to do a copy and paste. How to book a reservation on Expedia.

I practiced a mindfulness in that week that was excruciating.

“And how are you doing,” said my doctor, a week or two later.

“How many movements of the fingers does it take for you to log in and see your email?” I asked.

She was baffled.

“It takes me three. I type a ‘g’ in the address bar and the computer suggests ‘gmail.’ I click on that, and it takes me to the gmail page. As it’s loading, I move the cursor to the area where ‘sign in’ will appear. I type ‘m’ into the username and the computer remembers marcnewhouse333. The cursor is in place—I click on that. The computer remembers my password. I press ‘enter.’ That’s how I get my email….”

It was like being a stroke victim—relearning the things we do automatically every day. And it took an immense will.

I failed, mostly. That’s fine—that’s what Buddhists do. 

I learned some things.

There is no time. Someone always pulls me back—away from the speeding cars or the abyss of pure insanity. That I’m here to serve. That my talents have value.

I’ve lost most of that, now. (If you could see my apartment, you’d know….) But enough remains.