And so spring has returned. I think of other springs in other worlds, the smell, the release, green shoots pushing up through the bleached brown wreckage of last summer, the earth shaking itself off like a wet dog—with the same Walt Whitman enthusiasm, everything swelling and rising and ready to burst. In Alaska, April is a stunned, slushy month, like a punched out boxer lying on the canvas trying to clear his head and taking the long count, the corner men yelling, “Get up, get up!” In Costa Rica, the summer season is ending and the rainy, or as the locals call it—the green season is starting. In the northeastern United States, spring is the daffodil blighted, beginning of everything. In Salt Lake City, it is a sublime awakening. I packed up my memories and set out to explore a brand new spring day, sixty-nine degrees F, sky clear, breeze like a blind man gently touching your face, the Yellow River on the rise with Tibetan snowmelt, the waking willows softened with tendrils of green, obscuring the river with bowing branches opaque with emerging green. I was thinking that an early spring after a mild winter feels somehow like cheating. As if we got off easy. Ever since early February I’ve been waiting for winter to regain its howl and huff and puff and blow down the door, but it never happened. Spring came in like a thief. Surprised everyone but the trees that had already pushed out their buds early. Now, there were lilacs and forsythia and blossoms exploding over an oblivious man brooding over his cell phone. Then I passed an example of bad public art—weld some stainless steel together, prop it up at an intersection, call it Divided Joy, infer it has meaning, take the rest of the day off. Wandering through what I call Musician’s Park, I stumbled into heaven. In an oriental gazebo rising up out of a pond, a man played an old mellow saxophone, a woman sung in a kind of Chinese jazz scat, while another man accompanied them on an ancient instrument called an erhu. Stone children danced around a forsythia bush. Further on, in an open amphitheater, a woman sang, accompanied by three erhus, as well as a striking string instrument that sounded sort of like a harpsichord and a two-man percussion section. I was intrigued and squatted down among the crowd to listen. A smiling woman appeared, brandishing a rough wooden stool and motioned for me to sit, which I did. [more Yellow River Spring Photos]
This was eerie and interesting music and as I was leaning back to get a better photo, I tumbled backwards off the stool. Immediately a dozen pair of hands were lifting me up, brushing me off, and I smiled like a helpless child, put my hand on my heart and bowed. Then the woman was back with a better stool and after I was seated, frowned at the rough wooden stool like it was a misbehaving child and put it out of sight. For some reason, the erhus reminded me of Irish fiddles, and I was thinking how all our music sprang out of leafy glens and savannas and desert caves and jungles, lightening the burden of being a thinking ape with a heart that could break, with a mouth that could sing or talk or roar with laughter, feet that could dance, a brain that could create myths handed down from generation to generation, and that we are so alike in the songs we sing, no matter what instruments we play or the language in which we sing them. Suddenly, I heard English; a man was speaking to me. He asked did I know what I was listening to? I told him it was music. I heard tragedy and triumph and long ago time. He smiled and told me it was an ancient form of opera over 4,000 years old. The striking string instrument was called a yangqin. I wanted to ask him so many questions but, out of respect, didn’t want to interrupt the performance. Different singers got up and sang, the band played, spectators came and went, dead ancestors smiled. When I got up to change perspective, the same woman carried the stool over and motioned me to sit. I felt like an honored guest, truly at home. These were musicians, singers, storytellers, my tribe, my people. Then, one of the old men who had dusted me off when I fell off the stool gathered himself and got up to sing. Time stopped. I saw palaces before they crumbled to dust, armies poised on the brink of destruction, desert winds carrying smoke, betrayal, ambition, loss—I was blown away. While he was singing, he was the voice of timeless time, a throaty roar of despair, an enticing sweetness, surging into a plea, a summoning, a surrender, and when he stopped we all just stared, dumbstruck, then collectively remembered ourselves and burst into applause. I passed a very pleasant afternoon as the locals took great delight in me tapping my feet and slapping my thighs to the beat, my solo standing ovations (which became a joke that people mimicked), my hand over my heart bowing thanks to the singers and the musicians and to the smiling woman wielding the turquoise stool. At the edge of the park I saw a great example of public art: a sculpture that rose up as if from the desert sand commemorating the stubborn travelers who braved the Silk Road. Back along the river, kite flyers rode the winds with spools of string as large as dinner plates. The floating barge teahouse taverns were open with lounge chairs lining the riverbank. For the price of tea or a beer, you could sit and watch the river flow. Life was in bloom. Some part of me escaped. Some forgotten wounded part of me mended, somehow. All of me shivered with delight. I was training myself to view the plants and trees as Michael S. Schneider wrote, "not as ‘things’ but as patterns of moving energy.” I was fixated on a passage that he wrote and here is the quote, "Have you ever noticed how a plant grows over a period of days and weeks or how a flower opens, or the way new leaves unfurl on a vine? They spiral into existence, resembling whirlpools. Plants are not ‘things’ but energy events." Spring was surging. I absorbed it as the sun died and a fat moon rose over China, to the music of chopsticks clacking in restaurants, fingers tapping Smartphones, winter clothes being packed away, small fires being lit for the ancient ones, burning on every block, my stowaway heart riding all the opening-opening-opening whirlpools of energy, as the night wrote pungent lilac poems to the sleeping earth and dissolved into tomorrow.
4 Comments
Mary
4/25/2013 07:44:57 am
EE So glad to have you back!! What a beautiful story about Spring and Ancient Opera! It had all of me shivered with delight just reading it.. I cannot even begin to imagine how you felt.. what a perfect delight I really love the stories coming from Muscian's park. as quoted by Wordsworth -- "I gazed – and gazed – but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought. ..And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils." This reminds me of spring and if you miss one day of the unfolding event you miss the best part of spring each day and each bud a different picture and if missed you have to wait a whole year....so as you do so do I enjoy each unfolding masterpiece....mother nature in her best so many are so busy to notice the extrodinary free masterpiece called nature...enjoy spring!!! Love, Mary
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Mary
4/29/2013 12:14:53 am
Great pictures thanks for adding them makes the story even better!!
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5/7/2013 05:16:04 am
Hey My Man, Just enjoyed some of your writing, truly. Nicely told story.
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Sparky
8/4/2013 07:22:19 am
Beautiful, absolutely beautiful
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