Bolero

The blues and grays of daybreak are smeared messily across the sky, clouds gathered low on the horizon. There is a bus idling at the bus stop on the highway, near the parking lot, where I am sitting waiting for the sunrise. No one gets on or off at this relatively remote stop at this very early hour. Eventually the bus pulls away, leaving behind only the quiet of morning.

I finally made waffles in the new waffle iron yesterday. They were… good? Not great. A new waffle iron means learning how to make waffles all over again. It’s definitely a better waffle iron and I plan to make waffles again this morning, to take advantage of what I learned yesterday and “get the process down”. Yummy yummy learning. lol

Yesterday was a beautiful Spring day. I got into the garden, weeded a flower bed, planted four new roses, and tidied up the lawn in preparation for it to be mowed later in the day (picking up sticks, cleaning up any cat poop, and digging up a dandelion or two before they could go to seed).

Both processes serve well as living metaphors and useful practices. Metaphors because they stand so well as analogies for other experiences in life, and practices because the things I learn from each of these experiences is incredibly useful in more than the obvious ways – but also require persistence and repetition to extract all that can be learned.

I sit with my thoughts about waffles and gardening for awhile, watching daybreak becoming a new day. The great vast flock of Canada geese on the marsh begin to take flight, rising up from the delicate mist that is cringing to the marsh and meadow. They pass noisily overhead. The sky is bluer now, and the clouds on the horizon seem much darker. Still waiting for the park gate to open, I step out of the car, stretching and breathing the chilly fresh morning air deeply before changing from sneakers to hiking boots. It won’t be long now, and it looks like I’ll have the trail to myself this morning. The thought delights me.

…The park gate opens with a quiet clang. I move the car and hit the trail…

Wherever I am standing is a good place to begin.

I return to the car feeling the morning chill. Hands cold in spite of mostly being in my pockets, I chuckle to myself; I’ve got gloves in the car and could have worn them. i didn’t. Cold fingers struggle with boot laces. It’s chillier this morning than most recent mornings have been. I start the car and warm up a bit. I take time to finish this bit of writing. I’m eager to head home and make waffles, but there’s no rush. I haven’t yet heard from my Traveling Partner, and he’s likely still sleeping. These quiet early morning moments I so thoroughly enjoy are also a way of giving my partner a chance to get more rest without me clattering about the house clumsily, so there’s definitely no rush, and I consider the short walk across the parking lot to the marsh viewpoint, a favorite spot for getting pictures of nesting birds, and playful nutria. I’ve still got the park all to myself, too…

I think about the new roses in my garden. One new rose yet to arrive, a celebration of love and a reminder of the deep connection I share with my Traveling Partner; “Bolero“. I am excited to add this one to the garden. It’s entirely new to me, and celebrates a strange drive home from camping last year; I had a piece of music stuck in my head that later turned out to be music my partner was actually listening to, unbeknownst to me, in that very moment. I am still a bit astonished by the depth of connection the experience represents, and this is why Bolero has ended up in the garden.

…I’m so excited to see all the roses in bloom…

Love and memories. Practices and metaphors. It’s a good morning to be present and to enjoy this quiet moment of reflection. Soon it’ll be time to begin again, with waffles and with love. It’s a good day for beginnings.

Let me share an interesting story of coincidence, love, and – just maybe – one of life’s mysterious details. It begins (and, mostly, ends) with an ear worm on a long drive. I was driving home from my camping trip, with a snippet of music stuck in my head. It was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time… like a piece of music I’d surely heard at some point, but can’t say I’m particularly familiar with, don’t listen to really at all, hadn’t heard recently anywhere… nonetheless, I kept humming it, kept trying to “figure it out” with da-da-dah’s, and dum-dee-dums… could not place it, at all. Kept humming it, kept trying to sing it, kept driving…

I finally arrived home, and soon after I made a point of mentioning the song stuck in my head to my Traveling Partner, and how mysterious it was to have this unfamiliar (and, I suspected, possibly “classical”) music stuck in my head (still). He rather matter-of-factly asked me to sing it for him – a request that in many years past I would have been purely unable to accommodate for anyone, and would have frozen me completely with dread and anxiety (I promise you, I’m no singer). Still, with love and trust in my heart, I went for it… carefully trying to capture the phrasing of the tune, and hopefully not be too terribly off key… it began quite slowly with a soft prolonged note… then a cascade of notes with a very distinctive cadence. It was what I could recall, and as I’d been singing it to myself for literal hours, that bit was pretty firmly fixed in my recollection. I was inclined to simply repeat it many times, though I felt certain there was “more to it than that…”, and said so. My partner had a most peculiar look on his face, and muttered something about how unlikely…

…He turned to his keyboard, and pulled up a piece of music… “That’s it!” I exclaimed. “Is this it?” he asked almost at the same time. He told me he’d been listening to it that very day… and we compared the time and timing… I was “listening to it” at the same time he’d been listening to it… though he’d never shared it with me, or said anything about it. Classical music isn’t really “my thing” generally… Bolero. Huh. Now when I hear it (and I’ve listened to several versions since that day), I entirely associate it with him, with us, and with this love we share. How strange is love? How strange is this odd coincidence?

I’ll say now that I tend to be a rather practically minded woman, day-to-day, largely because without the secure “guardrails” of rational thought, I could easily stray into the surreal, the unfounded, the ridiculous, and even the conspiratorial…but… I don’t know everything. None of us know “everything”. There’s a lot out there yet to be known, by anyone at all. There are mysteries still unsolved, unexplained. I put pretty much everything “ESP” or “psychically” connected into that category. No proof, really, so… I just don’t know. I refuse to stake a claim to knowledge or adopt an attitude of certainty. I recognize a coincidence when I experience one. I’m familiar with the bizarre and unusual. Like I said, there’s much I don’t know. I’m okay with uncertainty and with not knowing.

…I do know that I now love the music of Bolero, and this human being who listened to it on the day it was stuck in my head, when we were separated by distance and connected by love…

Does it need to be anything more than what it is? Does it need an explanation at all? I don’t think so. It’s enough just as it is. Mysterious and fond. Like love. 🙂

Waffles

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