Rhythms

As I have noted before, I live in the percussion section. Even as I type this entry, I can hear Warren in the basement, playing snare drum patterns. A week ago, watching him before the Put-In-Bay concert, I saw him reach into his pants pocket and pull out…the key to the equipment truck? A note of last minute items for board members to do?

No, a pair of drumsticks. Only a percussionist would reach into a pocket and extract a pair of sticks the way someone else would take out a phone or some lip balm.

Living so closely in the world of rhythm and beat as I do, I find it all the more ironic that lately I feel out of step and off the beat.

"I Got Rhythm?" Not right now, that's for sure.

I don't know what it is about this summer. I look back at recent posts and see that I write again and again about being rushed, about not feeling like I am keeping up (with what exactly I am not sure), about being harried and hurried and, well, out of step.

My friend Cindy and I have been exchanging emails back and forth about this sensation, which she too is feeling. We speculate: is it age? Hormones? The heat (which finally, blessedly, broke today)? I'm okay - just not where I want to be in my head or my attitude or my days.

Cindy's mantra is "this too shall pass" and it dots her emails frequently this summer. Mine, the only "takeaway" I really ever took from Al-Anon many years ago, is a familiar saying to anyone who has spent time in or around a 12 step program: "Let go and let God."

Some nights saying that is the only thing that lets me fall asleep.

We leave for Montana and Ben and Alise's wedding three weeks from this weekend. Despite all that stands between me and that trip, it is starting to become real. I am eager to see Ben and Alise again. This will be a happy, joyful event.

I am also looking to getting out of town and seeing parts of this country I haven't seen in over a quarter of a century. There is always magic in a road trip, and Warren and I have spent a lot of magical times on the road during the time we have been together. I look forward to sharing Montana - one of my very favorite places - with him. I look forward to the time away for both of us.

And maybe, just maybe, somewhere out there on the edge of the Great Plains, I will get my sense of pace and self back.

When Warren plays a keyboard instru- ment, he typically plays with four mallets, two in each hand. Watching him play, when he is really locked in, is to see poetry in motion.

It is that poetry that I am looking for in my own mind right now. It is that smooth rhythm that I am searching for in my daily life.

It is the ease of reaching into a pocket and pulling out not the claptrap of everyday life, but the wonder of music.

Or, in my case, the wonder of words.