Improvisation

Creation takes a lot longer than destruction

Debra Farrington

By the time I was sixteen I had been having piano lessons for ten years. I could learn and play pieces well enough to let my fingers just run over the keys. My teacher - Miss Nash - would often whip the music manuscript away half way through a piece to stop me relying on the written notes. I could play a piece note-perfectly from beginning to end and as I stopped there often would be a silence; I'd look over at Miss Nash sitting at the end of the upright piano giving me a look and she'd say "Now play it again and mean it - think about what you're playing". This was, to me, a mysterious power that she had, and I could fool a lot of people but I never fooled her.

There are so many areas of my life I have lived note-perfectly without meaning it, choosing between other people's versions of me. Knowing that is one thing (and not a small thing at that); recognizing what I have to replace it with when Someone whips the manuscript away, is another thing entirely. Nonetheless, I'm like that little African violet leaf, remembering how to grow.

And I mean it this time.

Weather Report: March 25

Mud and new grass push up through melting snow. Lilacs in bud by my front door, bent low by last week's ice storm, begin to rise again in today's cold rain. Thin clouds scatter in a loud wind.

Suddenly, fir trees seem like tired old women stooped under winter coats. I want to be light, to cast off impediments, and push like a tulip through a muddy smear of snow. I want to take the rain to heart, let it move like possibility, the idea of change.

Kathleen Norris ~ Dakota: a spiritual geography