I seem not to have made any notes about visiting my parents in June of this year, for the first time since COVID. Well, I did do that and it was wonderful to be with them, as always. I saw Ginny and Amy, as always. I had lunch with Uncle Rick. Sally and I took a walk in the peony garden at the foot of the Nichols Arboretum. The arboretum and peony garden were designed by the person, an Italian count, Aubrey Tealdi, who was the first chair of the landscape architecture department at the University of Michigan. He lived in my childhood home and designed its stunning gardens, which featured pathways filled with gravel imported from Italy. Our lilacs were originally planted by Count Tealdi.
Last week at my flute lesson, my teacher asked if I like sushi, which I do, and asked me to imagine I’d eaten too much wasabi, as one can from time to time. He said imagining that explosive feeling is helpful for playing the flute, and for the rest of the lesson, he called it the too-much-wasabi feeling. The following day at work, a patient told me that someone had brought him sushi from outside the hospital the day before (the day of my flute lesson) and he had ingested too much wasabi and become acutely ill.
Marvin has lately been trying to get out the front door of our apartment, so finally I let him run free. He immediately went everywhere, and was wild and wailing after being carried back indoors. I’ve had to go back to putting him in the bathroom every time I exit my apartment or have to bring my bike in, as I did for several months after adopting him and Duckworth. There is no such problem with Duckworth currently. I can throw the front door open and leave it that way indefinitely (with Marvin in the bathroom) and he will not venture out.
Yesterday I had a sewing lesson in Berkeley, where it was a lovely autumn afternoon. Afterward, I took a walk with a friend up and down the Ohlone Greenway.
At my flute lesson today, my teacher reminded me to blow to the back of the nasal cavity. He said it takes most people twenty years to learn to do this, but that I’ll be able to do it in five. Shamelessly fishing for a compliment, I asked why that was. He said it’s because I’m smart, and added, “Most people don’t have question like you have question.”
I’m obviously never going to be a fantastic shakuhachi player, and so it often seems like a waste of time, though lately it occurred to me that, besides the very detailed awareness of the body it requires, maybe it’s mainly about my relationship with my teacher. Once a week, I spend an hour on Zoom with this very congenial person; the flute is what connects us.
I also have this idea that maybe all this work will translate to amazing trumpet playing some day. I thought my teacher might get a kick out of hearing me play one of the little shakuhachi tunes on the trumpet, so I dug the trumpet out of the closet after my lesson today and discovered that the main thing that is true about the trumpet right now is that I’m very, very rusty. (My chops are way, way down.) I’d have to practice for a while to see if there is anything I can apply from the Japanese wooden flute. For now, I reburied it in the closet.
Another good reason to persist with the shakuhachi is that any kind of creative endeavor is excellent self-care, which my work requires. Making things. I make soup, I make sentences, I (soon will) make shirts (and then a simpler work top, and a tablecloth, and a housedress), I make sounds.
Also, the shakuhachi could not be more low-tech.
And that is what happened today, as in today today. I’m caught up!
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