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 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

  1. Alex KSeptember 18, 2021 at 5:55 PM

    How moving and beautiful what you describe. In reading it , I feel how vital it is to experience the intimacy with self/Self. How it feeds and replenishes us. I feel the permission for the fullness of myself in your writing. Thank you.

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  2. UnknownOctober 9, 2021 at 7:42 PM

    ^^Alex! We met a couple years ago at Karina's and I have thought of you often since, your words touched me deeply at a time when I really needed a touch of reality from older, wiser people like yourself and Karina. I am happy to see your name here, and not surprised that the same post that spoke to you would speak to me...

    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

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    Replies
    1. KarinaOctober 10, 2021 at 7:18 PM

      Thank you for sharing YOUR ridiculous scene :) may we all touch deep joy in our wombs and let it erupt into the world... is it not more ridiculous or rather "insane" to see and hear all the people walking around with earplugs and their phones talking loudly while exercising paying no attention to the hawks, crows, squirrels and cats who are all shaking their heads at so much insanity :) chuckling and gossiping with each other about humans' difficulty to be fully alive....

      Delete

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