THE FAMILY ALBUM Page Two: "Of Love"

Longer ago than she'd like to admit, our scribe began her study of music theory wondering how she'd ever be able get her homework done without a keyboard to do it on.  She didn't worry long.

Just a few days later, her telephone rang.  She answered it to find her friend Gaia on the other end of the line. 

Gaia and Maurie, her husband, were alternative healers.  They habitually double-teamed while still charging only for the work of one, did the work when it was needed and waited for their remuneration, introduced the works of great thinkers and generally oversaw her birth into New Age awareness.  Our scribe added the experiences, observations and skills learned in this way to her catalog of medicinal, magical, spiritual and societal practices worldwide and history-long. 

When she'd learned that her dear friends were holding a yard sale to gather money for a planned move to Sedona she hadn't welcomed the news.  But, being a woman, she had shown up at the yard sale.

Gaia'd taken her inside the house to give her a few outfits saved especially as gifts.  And though she stood a good foot shorter and considerably wider around than did our scribe (anybody weighing more than a piece of fluff would have), strange to say, all of the clothing she was given, once she'd tried it on, turned out to fit her quite well...

Gaia had held a white eyelet blouse and red peasant skirt up to the light.  "I see you performing in this..." she said, "... on Valentine's Day..."  So, although the set wasn't among her usual panorama of styles, our scribe put it in the back of her closet and left it there.  For about five years.

Our story must back up now, though, to the telephone call received from Gaia in the midst of yard-sale weekend (the evening after our scribe's visit to it & the bestowal of the red and white outfit).

"I was just wondering," Gaia began, "whether you have room at your place for a piano."

The piano had been the centerpiece of their yard-sale, and our scribe was well aware that a bulk of her friends' traveling budget was planned to materialize from its proceeds.

"Yes we do," she replied.  "Why -- would you like us to store it for you for a while?"

"No..." came the reply.  "Actually, I've received a psychic command to... give it to you."

Understandably flabbergasted (and momentarily forgetting all about her musical theory predicament in her concern for two good friends) our scribe protested that Gaia could hardly follow that inner command and still expect to make budget.

"I was going to wait till Maurie came home and talk with him about it," Gaia explained, "but then it came again -- and it was so strong, I just had to call you right now and give it to you.  Do you want it?"

The Johannsens did, in spite of their smiling sacrifice, make budget for their journey, and our scribe spent the next years composing and rehearsing upon a piano which remained, though constructed in the 30's or 40's in a now-defunct German factory, state-of-the art, featuring a sliding 'drop action' which allowed her to preserve her failing strength during long hours of practice.

At the same time there materialized a new member of the extended artistic clan which moved in and out of our scribe's household (in which, you will remember from Page One, Neruda's translator was also an inhabitant). 

This new clan member wasn't just a piano tuner, he was a piano tuner absolutement extroardinaire, oui, oui!  He could take a piano completely apart singlehandedly (an undertaking whose danger should not be underestimated) and then reconstruct it again the same way, actually having to "turn off" his tuning ears in order to enjoy piano music.  To watch him handle the instrument was to know the touch of love. 

For all the years in which that piano remained a part of the household he kept it in perfect repair without ever charging for either his labor or the parts required, feeling these to be his unique contributions to a worthwhile whole.

One of the places at which the classical and counterpoint creations composed upon this miracle gift piano were eventually performed was the Crocker Art Museum; oldest of its kind in the Western United States and housed in a perfectly preserved hundred-year-old mansion.

This performance was announced, once again, by a ringing of our scribe's telephone. 

The museum, said its representative, had heard of her through her Commission nomination that year for 'Most Valuable Contributer to the Arts,' and were aware as well that one of her favorite poetic forms was the Elizabethan sonnet (generally agreed to be the most demanding in composition of all English-language based forms). 

The Crocker was interested in commissioning a series of new sonnets for an upcoming event, along with an exchange of her existing original love sonnets against those of William Shakespeare's (read by a male actor) at tables during the dining portion of the evening and an hour as well of original piano music played on the ballroom's Steinway while the guests took their stroll apres-diner through the museum's artistic environs before the jazz band took over for dancing.

"We are holding the event," continued the Crocker's representative before ringing off, "...on Valentine's Day.  We'd like you to be dressed in red and white, please -- and not to look like a guest..."

The original commission listed a request for a six-sonnet series, however as one of the six became misplaced during the writing process a replacement was penned, resulting, upon the rediscovery of the one gone astray, in a seven-sonnet series instead.  Rather than being compiled of love sonnets as such, the new series was to focus uniquely upon various aspects and powers of love itself.

Unconditional love is acknowledged by virtually every current and historic religio-magico-spiritual source of guidance to be the greatest power in the universe. 

It makes an individual, as the Tao T'i Ching describes it, "able to walk abroad without fear."  For, "In him the lion has no place to put its tooth, the tiger no place to catch its claw..." 

Any vision of a viable and fulfilling future societal structure, then, must be based securely on prioritization of the creation, encouragement, maintenance and reward of love's continuing manifestations among its members and as a whole. 

It is in this understanding that we offer the seven-sonnet series commissioned for Crocker Art Museum's Red and White Ball:


CCIV

The pow'rs of love be many manifest
And sung of by the bards throughout all time
Superior to all it it confessed
By half the words that ever went in rhyme

More sonnets there to sweet love written be
Than to all other subjects grouped beside
How many young hearts, yearning to love free
Their elders' sternest council have defied!

How many paeons, odes, how many notes
Of music have to this capricious sprite
Been dedicate? E'en doth the painter dote
Upon fair Woman, giver of delight

O love, which none may hope to understand:
Nor youth nor wealth nor fame may force its hand!


CCV

How healing be the gentle touch of love
For who can such sweet, melting looks receive
And feel not deep the stimulus thereof
In their self-worth to once again believe?

Nay, who may hear their name sae soft pronounced
And think not, after, kindly of that name;
Their ev'ry virtue passionate pronounced
And take no satisfaction from the same?

Where, where may we such sweet massage procure
Which, tireless, stimulates each healing node
With perfect pressure; such a timeless cure
As doth for the receiver wellness bode?

A nurse more gentle than the gentlest
A doctor, better than the very best


CCVI

Who hath not seen love's transformation
Of those it brings beneath its lambent sway,
Accomplished not with information
But by the ancient therapy of play?

Who hath not seen the frozen features of
Th' aloof and disillusioned, full of pain
Unbend and soften at command of love
And teach the bearer how to smile again?

The criminal, to social service bent
The lazy man, alive and vigorous
The stingy, whom to love his fortune lent
The flighty one, now calm and serious

We so transformed by sweet love may be
That old acquaintance cannot tell 'tis we!


CCVII

O this be love, wherein one single frown
Unkind allusion, or a darkened brow
Do all the lover's hopes bring crashing down
Nor any gleam of happiness allow

O this be love, which waits upon a smile
As on the outcome of a worldwide war
For whom one glance may eas'ly reconcile
Any divergence which hath gone before

O this be love, when hell and heaven wait
Upon the pleasure of the best belov'd
Who, ransomeless, the heart holds confiscate
In iron hand, all softly velvet glolv'd

Ay, this is love: the best, and eke the worst
Of earthly dramas here below rehearst...


CCVIII

How many awesome men have pad love's price?
How many selflessnesses have there been?
Think on each large and little sacrifice
And all the gifts these two extremes between....

'Tis millions, tens of millions, throughout time!
So diff'rent each, in one way just the same:
They shared the stimulus of love sublime
Which more important than mere hurt became

The love of these for higher energy
Or animal, or planet, or of race
Of but one being, or a family
Cause they we duller creatures to outpace

Until by love's pow'r we ourselves are blessed
And find our ecstasy at its behest


CCIX

When we know love, the colors of the day
Are brighter, and the world doth seem to glow
Upon all that's beheld new lights do play
We fonder of our fellow creatures grow

This is the vision which the poet knows
The sculptor, and the actor; any art
When once that art hath got thee in its throes
A reborn lover of the world thou art!

Why else would we so faithful reproduce
Our times, with all their splendor and their gloom?
We do not want to let such beauty loose!
So go true artists -- sensitives, to whom

It seems all blessed things are caused by love
And every cursed one by lack thereof


CCXXV

'Tis love which makes the painter's brush to go
In such lasciv'ious writhings of delight
Tis love which meditating poets know
It brings to e'en the purest heart its light

Love's brightness doth not dim: Advancing age
Doth nothing to arrest its turgid flow
For infants, e'en as for the graying sage
Love is the keenest pleasure we can know

O how we seek it in our brethrens' eye!
And if we find it not, how dread the loss!
To be outcast is worse than just to die
'Tis on a storm of loveless waves to toss!

Nay, love is more important than 'tis said:
E'en as essential as our daily bread...