The Long Forgotten Chords

Heeding the call into chaos and love.

Hallelujah, spring has sprung. I don’t remember the last time I had such a visceral need for this acknowledgment. Things will green again. The air will sweeten. The night won’t always be so long.

Somehow, suddenly the world is humming with hope. Bees and birds and the breeze in the trees—it all sings—Life continues.

And so, like the other growing things, I continue. And, I find myself wanting to share a little bit about what is lighting my fire in the cave these days. I would like to let you in on this little life of mine in list form.

So, in no particular order, the kindling:

• Reading Eros and Chaos by Veronica Goodchild in the bathtub— and various other locations. It is a book full of rememberings. I weep to remember. Sometimes it is hard to make out the words through my saltwater reply. I have to pause and just let my cells do their synchronized swimming. My body already knows what fear and doubt insist I forget. My body hasn’t forgotten true north. And it alerts me to my own disorientation with various transmissions we call pain. I am invited through sensation to return to the home of my wholeness.

The breakdown of our prevailing worldview might be seen then as an invitation into chaos, and into love, those fateful places that undo us so, into those cracks between the worlds where new life emerges. The call into chaos and into love is the call into that place where spirit and matter seek expression through us, and unite and dissolve into an ungraspable mystery, allowing us to approach more intimately the wholeness of ourselves and things.

—Veronica Goodchild

• Castor oil packs— the Muggle mind might be too quick to dismiss it as “quackery.” But the ancient Egyptians were convinced by its technology. And so am I. At a minimum, I find it to be deeply relaxing (which in and of itself is healing.) And I believe in the magic some people call science. I mean, the Egyptians were doing this thousands of years ago and here I am, on my couch in the 21st century, feeling how it reduces inflammation, aids detoxification, and increases circulation. What’s not to love? Sure, it can be a bit messy, but as my friend Kate once said, There’s magic in the messiness.

• Mozart in the Jungle — I am rewatching this because I like Gael García Bernal’s teeth so very much. Their honesty. Their rebellion. I mean, I love everything about him in this role. His wild and playful nature. His deep aliveness. His stubborn determination to cut the red tape and his constant reminder to “Play with the blood,” which is love. And of course the storyline, of a young woman finding her voice and her vision in the midst of so many shadows. It’s giving me just the right amount of stimulation and reassurance. I appreciate the creative endeavor it was to make this thing exist. Much talent and heart mixed into the batter.

• Picking up my guitar for the first time in many, many moons— and having to cut my fingernails so I could play the long forgotten chords. It is a miracle several decades in the making to not mind so much how imperfectly I am playing. I am tickled that I remember any of it. Gently coaxing my hands to treat the neck of the guitar more like a neck, and less like a poisonous snake. Singing, even past the limitations. Opening to the anguish of a lost capacity and singing through the loss. The loss has its own sound worthy of being heard. I am meeting my voice where it is now—more unsure even though we are told we should become the opposite in time.

  To make something sound is to restore it to wholeness. When we make sound we are re-pairing ourselves with the world. This is a sweet reminder that your first sound was crying out the song of your aliveness. You were born to sing. Singing is how we announce our belonging. I am learning to welcome my quivering voice. I atone. I make a tone. I am at one.