I was going to write about the capacity to be uncomfortable as a necessary skill. Well, as I am driving to Young's Market on the Arlington to quickly pick up some chicken thighs, chocolate and crackers, I turn on the radio and switch to the classical station – and there is Mozart’s Requiem. The “Lacrimosa,” achingly beautiful. (Lacrymosa dies illa, this sorrowful day). I find an easy parking spot, but I am nailed to my car seat, how could I possibly get out and leave this music. I decide that I have enough time to just sit here for another 30 minutes, listen and get still home in time for a friend’s visit.
Eyes closed, immersed in memories and sound, I listen and swim in the ocean of chorus, orchestra, and soloists’ voices. Knowing the piece so well – I grew up with it – I can’t help but hum and sing along. I feel my late mother’s presence – me having switched the radio station – as if she is sending me this Mozart music just now. The tragedy, edginess, sublime sweetness and gravitas of the piece, all fit our family’s struggle back in the fifties in Germany. My mother’s hardships of surviving the war as a teenager, the post-war ruins, being displaced, poverty, hunger, and spiritual devastation, she needed Bach and Mozart to make it through the week, alone with three little kids, scarce money and food, and a hard working husband mostly away from home. She could feel herself fully alive by listening to this music, she needed it desperately. And as a kid I knew instinctively music is God, it is all there is – it is redemption, solace, joy, healing.
For a split second I realize how ridiculous the scene is: me in the parked car, windows half open, the radio loud, my eyes closed and tears streaming down over hot cheeks. I need the music, too. We all need it. I can tell this is an old recording, don’t know whose, but it is good, and the singers’ voices in the “Benedictus” interweave in sublime tenderness. By the end of the Requiem I am bathed in overwhelming gratitude for all that has been given to me, by my mother, father, heritage, by life, fate and destiny, and all who have been and are my teachers and friends. My heart raw, I feel deeply cleansed…
Danke schön....
Comments
Karina, these words make me laugh when you write about realizing how ridiculous the scene is. I can relate. Today I practiced some of what you have been teaching me and I can remember how I slid down into the most spacious place in my body, the womb that is not a womb for someone else but for myself. The path was dark and the womb was expansive, uncontrollable, as if I sank to the edge and then got taken in and joined the great current that runs through all things. I screamed. How could I not? I feel the terror and the pleasure of letting go - and of becoming the wind - all at once. I try this while walking through my neighborhood and receive enough odd looks to make me question my sanity... It is so strange to live in a culture where experiencing deep joy is considered an inappropriate thing to do in public. -Aysha