Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Thanksgiving



There are many woes in the world. There is war and violence, sickness, starvation, love lost or mislaid. Here is what passes for woe in my world: I lack the discipline to park my fanny on a piano bench long enough to learn the music I love. "I wish I could get into some kind of routine, like I had when I was still taking lessons," I pouted to Dave, who nodded, while he flipped the contents of a saute pan. He is a saute-pan artiste.

Dave gave it some thought. "I have an idea," he said. "Why don't you sit down at the piano every night while I'm making your dinner?" Two things sprang to mind. One, this would totally work. Two, I may be the luckiest person in the whole world.

Over the next week, a kinship began to develop between Schumann and garlic frying in butter. It is the smell and soundtrack of rapture. It's no great thing that I feel gratitude a dozen times a day. It would disgrace me if I didn't. Fortune has billowed over me my whole life, none of it earned. It's not that I don't deserve it. It's that no one ever does.

I should, with good health, be able to devote myself to learning the entire Schumann canon, in the time given to me by a respectable pension from the Postal Service. There are those who would say that I earned that time with my thirty-two years of work, and in a small, unimportant way, I have. But the world is full of people who have worked harder and done greater things who will never have the particular freedom I've been afforded.

Garlic in butter. They say the sense of smell hangs right next to our memories in a closet in the brain. There is someone who was dear to my heart who never caught a decent break in her life. She lived the whole of it with pain and struggled to remain hopeful, and scavenged all her luck from an abundance of both hardship and friendship, never failing to find the flecks of gold in her pan of black sand. She did not deserve her luck any more than I do mine.

When I paint a landscape, sometimes I pull out a thin line of violet behind my backlit tree or glowing rock formation. It grates against the warmth of the subject and vibrates life into it. My violet line is as thin and sharp as grief, and grief is what shines behind something wonderful that was given and is now gone. I feel that edge of violet shimmering behind me sometimes and am thankful for
how much I've had and lost. I have done nothing to earn the abundance in my life, and the only thing I can say in my defense is that I am grateful, all the time.

23 comments:

  1. Beautifully put. Happy Thanksgiving.

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  2. You paint a landscape with words. I'm with Susan. Happy Thanksgiving.

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  3. Wonderful. You make me more grateful just reading you.

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  4. Well. Thank you for this, Murr. I'm going to send you a poem by email that will speak to you.
    xoxox
    jz

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  5. Gratefulness is contagious. Thanks, Murr.

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    Mary

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  6. Beautifully said. I've been embarassingly blessed my whole life. I wish everyone was.
    Speaking of things to be grateful for: Murr's Murmmerrs!

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  7. So lovely and touching. Thank you Murr! Happy Thanksgiving. xoBeth, Thomas, Zadie and Lucie.

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  8. So often we forget that we really haven't earned it, and thus how incredibly lucky we are, every day.

    Thanks. I needed that.

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  9. You've made me weep, Murr, and I'm grateful -- for your heart, and your gift for expressing what's in it.

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  10. Beautiful, heartfelt & so real, so ... you. Thanks, Murr. Much holiday love to you & Dave.

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  11. Well said. I am so glad my wife told me about your blog.

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  12. Don and I have been blessed by your wit for writing for years. Happy Day Murr and Dave! Love, The Carmody's

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  13. Her heart was like the tiny clown car at the circus - more came out of it than seemed possible. Especially at Thanksgiving, we miss her. Jon

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  14. Now I'm giving thanks for that image, Jon.

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  15. Beautiful. I must say I LOVE those pictures. And I wish I was there smelling dinner-making while listening to the piano. And doing something to contribute and add to the sense-tingling environment, like putting pillows under everyone or giving out back rubs. OK, maybe those would interfere more than contribute, so let me think about it.

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  16. Hey! My daughter just told me about your blog... Re the being-blessed-more-than-you-deserve thing, I,too, suffer from that. So it seems only right that I punish myself by constantly wondering when the big tragedy is going to happen...

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  17. I like turkey and dressing with lots of gravy for Thanksgiving. And pumpkin pie.

    Oh, screw it!

    I'm focusing on insignificant details to avoid saying what I'm feeling: That this is wonderful, Murr. You should have been a writer. ;-)

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  18. Her heart was like the tiny clown car at the circus - more came out of it than seemed possible. Especially at Thanksgiving, we miss her. Jon

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  19. Don and I have been blessed by your wit for writing for years. Happy Day Murr and Dave! Love, The Carmody's

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  20. Well said. I am so glad my wife told me about your blog.

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