Plastic Flute

On January 3, 2021, I got the first dose of Moderna’s COVID vaccine. I arrived 40 minutes early—I was paranoid about being late and losing my spot. I thought they were going to say, “We’re practicing social distancing. Please stand outside until your appointment time,” but they invited me right in. The process was very smooth. They were only doing first doses at this location, with the second dose to be given elsewhere.

After I got the shot, I got a card documenting it, and a sticker for my work badge, and I had to sit down for 15 minutes to make sure I felt fine. About five minutes into the 15 minutes, I began to feel a slight pressure in my chest. This occurs from time to time, and so my heart has been checked over and over, and I also spent an entire night in the hospital about ten years ago plus several hours in the ED a couple of years ago for this same symptom, with no problem ever being found. On the other hand, this time it occurred five minutes after getting the COVID vaccine, so I mentioned it to the young lady who had given me the vaccine, and this was taken very seriously, though I made a point of telling everybody I discussed it with that I am a known hypochondriac.

I sat for a second 15 minutes, and then a nurse came from the ED and said they would like me to be treated in the ED. I was pretty sure this would mean six hours of hanging around in the ED (right near lots of COVID patients), followed by a long bike ride home in the dark wet, and possibly a large bill—with no finding of any heart problem—so I hinted that I was feeling better, though I really sort of wasn’t, and agreed that I would sit for a third 15 minutes and then start walking home with a friend of mine who was also there getting her vaccination, and this proposal was accepted.

My friend and I walked for several blocks, and then her husband picked her up in their car, and I rode home. By then, I was starting to feel some twinges in my shoulder near where the shot had been placed, and I still felt the pressure in my chest, and I also felt so fatigued that I got into bed as soon as I got home. The pain in my shoulder worsened steadily all evening and made it impossible to lie on that side that night. The fatigue abated after an hour or two. The pressure in my chest stayed all evening but seemed basically gone the next morning.

The next day, I didn’t notice the chest tightness or fatigue; my shoulder continued to hurt for a day or two.

And then it was January 6, 2021, and I was sitting in front of my computer watching the horrendous events instigated by our own President—I remember wondering what was taking the National Guard so long—and my eye fell on a thing in the New York Times: five minutes that will make you love the flute. I listened for a minute or two and still didn’t love the flute, but I remembered that sometimes I’m getting a massage, and the person plays music that sounds like rain dripping in a forest, with a haunting wooden flute sound which I like very much. Is this the Japanese wooden flute? (Much later, I found out it was more likely a Native American wooden flute. Which is much easier to play than what I now do play.) I Duck Ducked that, and next thing I knew, I was signed up for shakuhachi lessons with a really nice fellow in Berkeley.

The shakuhachi is a bamboo flute, and once upon a time, only samurai were allowed to play it, as part of their Zen training, but now any schlub can have at it. My new teacher recommended beginning with a more affordable epoxy version of this instrument, called the Yuu. (Available you know where.)

My plastic shakuhachi arrived and I found that I could not get a sound out of it. It’s basically just a tube with holes in it. As my teacher says, “This is a very primitive instrument. Body is the main instrument.”

I also found sound elusive at my first online lesson, though I immediately liked my teacher a lot. He advised that I should knock on the door of the spirits and God would make the sound. I did not succeed in making any sound during that whole first hour-long lesson, but later that night, while looking in the bathroom mirror, I made a sound! I made a little five-second video to send to my teacher and a few others. My teacher wrote back immediately and enthusiastically. At my second lesson, five days later, he declared that my sound was “ten times better.”

I made arrangements around then with two people to mentor me for my next try at board certification as a chaplain. One of them was a former CPE supervisor of mine whom I’m very fond of. I was put in touch with the other by my friend Sam, and she proved to be a dynamo. Her advice was superb, and she responded almost immediately to any piece of writing I sent her.

Marvin leapt one day onto the breakfast table, sloshing tea out of both cups. I was on the phone with my father and yelled, “God—excuse my language—fucking damn it!” A moment later, I said, “Sorry about my language. That was very annoying.”

My father said, “That’s okay. I’ve heard the word ‘annoying’ before.”