Unknowable sums

I stepped out for a walk today on the edge of an anger that had no merit. We’d gotten out of the house, enjoyed some safely distanced social time, procured delicious bagels, and received a surprise gift in the mail. The weather was cool in the shade, but warm in the sun, with a breeze that swirled the first small batch of crunchy leaves across the pavement. The sky was the kind of blue you could see straight through, clear and deep, and unapologetically endless.

I’m sure I was grouchy because I hadn’t had any working time yet, or because my house was messy again (always), or because the toddler thinks its funny to swipe me across the face when I least expect it. In his defense, his timing is excellent. I was certainly angry at the young men in the bagel shop, making excuses for the behavior of our president while they waited for their black Russian bagels with strawberry cream cheese, and thereby ruining civil discourse and my current carbohydrate of choice all in the same day. No wonder something was bubbling.

Big Fry was about to jump on a work call, Small Fry had earned some iPad game time, and Tiny Fry wasn’t yet ready for a nap. Medium Fry texted some friends to see whether anyone was interested in a venting sesh, wrestled the stroller out the door, and popped in her earbuds. No venting buddy emerged, much to my chagrin, and my benefit.

I’ve been going on prayer walks lately, in addition to phone call walks, and masked friend walks, and scavenger hunt walks, and podcast walks, and audiobook walks. The trail near our home weaves over and around a creek, past playgrounds and tennis courts and our favorite hide-and-seek grove of trees. It’s great for people watching. But I was too grumpy to people-watch productively. I was too unsettled to pray well. My favorite podcasters felt too cheery and jarring to my current mood, which already clashed so deeply with the objectively glorious day.

I remembered that I still (still) haven’t cancelled my accidental subscription to Apple Music and was annoyed, but then grateful once I realized that I also still (still) hadn’t loaded any music onto my new (read: 7 month old) phone. I searched for a piece of music that might bring my spirit more into alignment with the day: the symphonic band piece “October” by Eric Whitacre.

It drew me, as it typically does, out of the echo chamber of grouchiness, almost immediately. Art is amazing. I forget because these days, art is drawing bright pink “fall trees!” in swirls of crayon, or full-page orange ovals (pumpkins!) with a single green colored pencil line for the stem. I adore this art almost more than I can say, and while it, too, works on my spirit, it is not the same as a the swirling melancholy of suspensions that build above unexpected harmonies and reflect the layeredness of what it means to have the feelings of a human person.

By the end of the short piece, I had risen above my anger but wasn’t free of it. Boldly, I selected Whitacre’s newest recording, which I had been fascinated by but avoiding for months. I was overwhelmed by the unexpected desire not to hover above this feeling I was having, but to break its surface tension and dive down.

Whitacre’s newest recording is “The Sacred Veil.” It’s a 53 minute-long collaboration with Charles Anthony Silvestri, a poet and lyricist who lost his young wife, mother of two, to cancer in 2005. It’s a witness to love and the fear of loss and loss and grief, and our beautiful flailings in the face of these things. Of course I was afraid of it.

Sophisticated and poetic reviews of this music exist in the world and I encourage you to seek them out, but here I can merely offer a witness to how it shook me out of a kind of self-indulgent put-upon-ness amidst the dappled light and autumn breeze on our oft traveled path. It is achingly beautiful and deeply specific and journeys deep into the love and life and pain that is equally individual and universal. I pushed my giggling child who dutifully pointed out every truck we passed and his favorite trees (he applies a mysterious rubric), and listened to a reminder of what being human is. It is the dive into the abyss, the fragility, the unknowableness of things, that so often draws me close to gratitude.

This thing I am living? This thing that’s happening in this weird moment that keeps getting longer and weirder and sadder at every turn? This thing is still my life.

Like so many people, I am numbed out from this unrelenting year. I’m getting used to an ever higher threshold of frustration and anger and grief and it is too exhausting to feel it all the time. It pops up sometimes, and rarely where I expect, like a game of emotional whack-a-mole. Was that unjustified snapping at my daughter misplaced grief over the latest death of an icon, overwhelming sorrow at the human cost of coronavirus, rage at the trend of selfish idiots who refuse to value the welfare of others, or fear about the upcoming election? There are too many dust bunnies to vacuum up and snacks to provide to find the origin every time it happens. And so I sink into merely bearing my life, resenting things that are really not so important, and forgetting that my choices count for something too.

I pushed Simon on the swing during the final movement of this music while I cried, his enthusiastic joy perfectly juxtaposed to the text set to a gentle melody “Child of wonder, Child of sky, Time to end your voyage, Time to die…Weary waters beckon, Dark and deep, Child of soft surrender, Child of sleep.”

It is a privilege to be here, amongst the grieving and the giggling. It is a privilege to ache for justice, burn with anger, and assert this small Self upon the world in a million small ways that will add up to an unknowable sum. It is a privilege to walk, to notice, to feel, and to confirm the sighting of the 57th truck to a small enraptured human soul.

I will not always remember this, but I am grateful to know it in this moment.