Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Emanuel Ax, Steinway

Wed. Jan. 27, 2010. Beauty takes many forms in Schumann’s Adagio and Allergro, Op. 70. Not the least of which is a sole note singing large under the wood at Disney Hall, LA. There is clarity in a single note. Cello. Piano. And the bow. Schumann. Lieberson: Remembering Schumann. Chopin’s Polonaise brilliante. Op. 3, and Sonata in G minor, Op. 65. How excusiste to be able to hear the mull of a single pull of the bow over Ma’s Seventeeth Century wood. Every note so distinguishable from the next even when lapped and trilled, run, and paced. As I sit and listen, I hear five instruments: the hall, cellist, pianist, the cello and piano) and one instigating source. So much energy equal to mass times movement with mass equal to infinite mass and motion equal to infinte motion. It’s all physics. As are we. Complicated notes.

Thought for the day: Carl Jung

To paraphrase Carl Jung: “…When employers cannot see themselves in the mirror of their employees faces and feel what they feel, the business world has indeed lost its humanity.”

Always thought I would write great american novel.

Well, I always thought I would write an important work, the great american now global novel. Realize now that I’ve not yet accomplished that goal. Instead, however, I have lived it. And have much to write.

Michael Jackson: “This is It”

From whatever bright star Michael Jackson is now astride, he can hold his head high. The consummate Michael film, it is also about the kind of fame that causes you to burn ever more brilliantly until there is nothing left.

It is as much about us: those who danced to Michael’s songs, sang his lyrics, watched the boy fame build, become the man he never wanted to be. We see glimmers of him in adult life. This is the first legitimate film made about who he was and is, and, should always be to us. The Peter Pan in all of us which just hides more than with Michael.

Mere words will have to suffice here. No words will ever capture the immersive experience in which you find yourself. No comparison can ever do this homage justice. It carries the dignity of “Chorus Line,” the youth of “FAME,” and the best of the “Making Of” documentaries. The film glistens with interviews of youth, hope, exuberance, pure joy and everything that must have been learned by working with Michael. The best dancers of the world were personally chosen to share Michael’s stage. The best choreographers, lighting designers, costumers, musicians. From frame one, you know this is it: Michael’s world.

Everything in this respectful ode is bigger than life. Everyone is extraordinarily respectful to the King of Pop and rightfully so. His being burns so brightly that he is the stage, audience, lighting, costumes, special effects. Immediately the audience is taken with the sense that Michael is actually the energy of a rising star somehow contained within a single human form, trapped in mere bones and skin.

As Michael says about a movement, “It’s got to sizzle.” In “I’ll Be There,” we see atoms dancing, spinning about their electrons. MJ simmers and explodes. We get a sense of the ephemeral and effervescent being pulled to infinity.

Perhaps no one really was allowed to know who this phantom was his fans came to expect in lieu of the little boy we first met. Which is why when we see him totally in control, fully, supremely in command of this “other” world from the first moment the edit cuts to Michael to the last, we know him best or at least as close as we will ever come.

Michael Jackson: “This Is It” Burns Brightly

Michael Jackson: “This Is It” Burns Brightly

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Who are the most powerful women in the world?

Answer: All of us.
Click now. Wow. Pow-erful.

http://www.californiawomen.org/the-womens-conference-2009/

On Being Newly Unemployed in This Job Market

As now one of the officially unemployed, I must consider all my options.
Here’s a tech writer/training position posted today for Time Warner Cable.

KNOWLEDGE SKILLS AND ABILITIES: This position requires the completion of a High School education, or equivalent.
3 years Cable TV experience (installation and trouble shooting)
HSO, DP and BCP Installation & troubleshooting
Network experience is a plus (HFC, taps, nodes, fiber optic, etc)
A minimum of three (3) to five (5) years of customer contact experience preferred. Presentation, instructional systems design experience are a plus.
Writing skills, technical knowledge and computer competencies (e. g. Microsoft Word and PowerPoint).
Ability to prioritize projects, workloads and effectively handle multiple assignments with minimal supervision.
Good analytical and organizational skills.
Ability to work in a team environment is essential.
Excellent oral and written communication skills and outstanding delivery skills are needed.
Lift 85 pounds, carry and utilize a 32′ span ladder.
Drive a company vehicle.
Climb poles to 20 feet utilizing ladders, poles and gaffs.
Use various hand and power tools to conduct field tests for training purposes.
Working Conditions:
Subject to inside and outside environment conditions;Occasionally assisting external customers; Evening and weekend hours may be required; On feet up to 10 hours/day in training.

Adrienne’s Sunday morning contemplation:
I can write, but can I climb 20 foot poles? Yes I suppose I can climb 20 foot poles but do I want to climb them? And what kind of poles? Metal poles with ladders built in? Or Telephone like poles in which I would have to perhaps wear “cleats”? Continentally imported?

Just what do they mean by requiring a Technical Writer to have “3 years experience in Cable TV installation and troubleshooting?” Not sure if I can lift 85 pounds (at least on a regular basis), and carry and utilize a 32′ span ladder. Do they mean simultaneously? Or sequentially? Would they care if I asked some twenty-year old stud who may be standing around doing nothing to run up the 20 foot pole for me? Probably not. Guess I’ll have to pass on this one. :- ) I do know the alphabet, can write in whole sentences when required, can parse construction and other technical hieroglyphs into ISD-quality training material. Have two Masters Degrees (my father always told me to learn to type — that was more valuable than any degree. He might have been correct).

Lingering question? Can I climb poles?

Mr. Ehnes, the Bow Man of Aug. 18th at the Hollywood Bowl

Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009 –James Ehnes, Violin. Conductor: Bramwell Tovey, that rare Brit with a genuine American sense of humor and the ability to share composition history from a personal perspective.

Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide: Overture,” touched on the Oompa, liveliness, and hurried pace. It echoed soft footsteps picking up pace with the timpan drums.

Then, Samuel Barber’s “Violin Concerto, Op. 14,” Allegro, Andante, Presto in moto petuo. And Mr. Ehnes. Upon the very first note played, the music of James Ehnes, bow man, violinist, and the LA Philharmonic Orchestra was symphonic. Lively, quirky, albeit accompanied by short bleats of a hapless automobile anti-theft alarm quickly extinguished.

Mr. Ehnes, a thirty-something reminds me of my dentist, strides on stage in his formal white jacket, black pants, shoes, and black bow tie looking all the world like he should be stooped over a drafting table somewhere in Iowa. Testing his strings, consternation flickers. He has forgotten to unbutton his jacket. Snap. Quickly he is lost in the tentative bowing and act of listening known as warming up.

From his first strings, sweetness flows. We of the audience don’t yet know how lucky we are to have our Section H seats located just under the soft white flood-lit cross that beams over head.. There are no bad views.

His music slips forth playing with us, our ears. Violin tucked so one half the bow tie sticks out, he is impish. Serious. Earnest. Ardor of youth brightens his face, magnifies his aura. The Orchestra surges. Then again Mr. Ehnes has his say. Gliding, pouncing, bowing. He saws sweet sounds out of nothing. A long slow draw. Lightness. Strings made to sing for us. The Orchestra follows bravely, made to follow a genius Mover of Strings, the Bow Man.

Questions for audience: How do we describe beauty? Musical odes to passion? Why is that we, the lucky Bowl-ers, hear these questions, ruminate in key seeking answers. How full our ears and spectacular the sounds. Chords and notes written decades ago prick our senses. We sit, the lot of us, spellbound.

Post-Intermission, Barber’s short bridge to the next piece. Bernstein’s “On the Waterfront” Symphonic Suite. In fairness, it was not the best compliment to rapturous violin and Mr. Ehnes. In fact, there probably was not right choice. Leonard Bernstein’s compositions have become familiar to us all in musical scores for film and TV. Decided strains from “West Side Story” masked the ears ability to “hear” the rumble on the docks.
That said, the Orchestra played Bernstein’s composition well. Strapping music. Brando at 20. Heaviness simmers. If you lick your lips, you taste from the harbour. I thought I saw Karl Malden standing on the grassy promontory behind the Bowl. Head held high, back erect. The music was fussy, agitated, shaken, and twice stirred. An after dinner drink to Mr. Ehnes, Tovey, Brando, and Malden.
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Sharing Thoughts of Cleo and Me

What I’ve come to realize is that Cleo is in such a better place… doggie heaven. She, at least in my mind, received the greatest gift I could give her. Me at her side for her last morning on earth. Is that too presumptuous of me? I hope she took it in the spirit meant — that as her human companion, I would have my hand on her back, lean down and whisper that I loved her in her ear as the vet shaved the front of her paw for the big injection. She was my big, oversized, double-coated blond Golden Retriever best friend for six years. I would have liked to have had the first five years of her life, too. Selfishly, I think she would have preferred to have had my company for those first five, too.

I hope this doesn’t sound morose but I found a sense of personal albeit stoic comfort and satisfaction from (once I made up my mind that it had to be done), taking her next door to Paul and Pandora’s backyard for a last romp in the grass she loved. There she quickly found a prickly dwarf lemon tree to “hide” under. And from which it would have been a thorny time getting her out, had she not come out from under when I asked. That’s how much she trusted me. Of course, she probably would have been perfectly happy to die there as it was cool against the cinderblock wall with the smell of Meyer lemons and Pandora’s beefsteak tomato plants. Note: Paul and Pandora are thankfully out of town, but would have approved of this use of their big backyard.

When I led Cleo home from next door, I did not put the leash on her. I wanted her to move under her own steam without the old “rudder” than typically connected us on our outside walks.

Her coat looked a little mussed. I brushed her beautiful fur one last time — as I didn’t want the vet to think we had not been taking good care of her. But, of course, also because I wanted to remember the moment, the feel of her fur, how thin it had become, how so “not” like her body she had become. When I pulled her fur out of the brush and placed it in the trash can, I knew that it would be for the last time — and remembered all the “good times” we done “brushin’” as we called it. She loved to be brushed. And brushed. And brushed. She would lean into as if to say “You can just brush me forever and ever.” This last time she could have cared less. She was tolerating my whim — making me whole right to the end.

I checked inside her ears and saw they needed cleaning. So I wiped them out — so, I guess when she went to “meet her maker” she would have clean ears. By then, a piece of “schmutz” as we called it had formed in her left eye. As if (yes, I know this is anthropomorphizing. Who cares?) she had cried. As if she knew this would be the last of everything and that she had to start memorizing everything about her life with us to carry it with her to doggie heaven.

Often I have thought that dogs don’t like to go to the vets because they can “sniff” the death of one of their kin.

So I made up my mind that I wanted her to be able to smell “me” in her last moments. I put on a bit of the lavender scent that I’ve worn the whole time we shared her life, and dabbed a bit on her, too. I made sure that I put it on my legs and arms so that when I sat on the vet’s cold linoleum office floor next to her, she would be sure to smell the lavender. And not the antiseptic, other sick dogs, the other stuff.

I think she knew that I would have done anything for her — to make her passing more comfortable for her As I had made her life as whole and well and healthy as it could be.

This memory reminds me somewhat of what I did for my father.
In his last hours, I washed his face, tried to clean his hands and fingernails (the hospital certainly didn’t do it), and bought a small bottle of his favorite long-time after shave (Mennen’s) and dabbed some on his cheeks. He loved that manly scent. I don’t know if he was able to smell it, but maybe he did. It was as if this act of Mennen After Shave would create some bond between us, which, of course, it had long, long ago. As if I knew this would be the last of everything that I saw of him. That I had to start memorizing everything about my father as he lay dying in his sweaty hospital gown. That I would have to carry all the memories like logs, including these, to remember him by. I wanted to remember it all. The good. The bad. Everything in between.

So I guess we all create some kind of rituals for death and dying.

Having just realized the similarity between Cleo’s passing and that of my father’s, I guess these acts of goodbye are what we create for ourselves to carry on. Memories we will hold on to like perfect nuggets of gold or ice. They are what make our final interactions meaningful to us… the living.
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We went to see a dog today

We went to see a dog today.
She needed a home.
A sweet girl, beautiful really, found running Rialto streets, confiscated by the PD, turned into the kill-dog pound, rescued by Liz White’s “Retriever & Friends” a rescue group. The ad on the web said Sara was well fed.
Some manners. She could sit.
Not enough.
Our Casey is well fed.

Kenneled Sage, a tiny Shep mix, shook. Flinched. Afraid.  Clinging. Startled. She calls herself Grandma Doggie and tells Sage’s age old story.
Her friend had lost her job.
Soon lost her house.
Committed suiciide.
How many stories are there like this?
Owners of houses foreclosed through no fault of their own, loss of car, tv, job.
They cling to their dogs. Mutts, purebreds, hybrids.
Doesn’t matter. They are unconditional love.
The very personification of life.
Dog is God spelled backwards.
The last thing to lose before they kill themselves.