Playing music to our future selves

We are so young in this room, regardless of my salt and pepper hair,

They are all grey, balding, bent over, but .....there, in their chairs,

Waiting for to listen to our music.  

They were all there, alert and attentive, our future selves

In a few years, when it's not so easy to bike home

From an evening out with friends.

(Like I did tonight after watching The Rebel with A Clause)

I'm not ready yet to be their age, but I expose myself a bit at a time

Because one day I may be in that chair listening to some younger

People come play music for me, when I can no longer ride my 

Bike out for an evening with friends.

I'm not ready yet.

 

Open: A sign at the restaurant at the beach in Tulum

The top left part of the symbol on the left is a

Gate, the gate that opens your heart if you let it,

If the waves on the open sea stretching towards an infinite horizon

Cannot do it, perhaps the silky sand under your feet, 

Or the beauty of the carefully prepared fish on your plate,

The heavens loaded in stars and galaxies just waiting for your gaze 

To turn towards them, even unnamed, they are beautiful

And remember that we are all made of star dust.  

The small Japanese book sits at home, on the pink dinette

Where I have watched so many small birds pecking at the feeder,

The book that taught me the symbol for gate, the three alphabets

Necessary to understand Japanese, the words that I will never 

Learn, but will always revel in their magic.

 

Will I ever play like this

I was telling my teacher about the cereal aisle at Safeway 

But that one does have a beginning and an end, and what if it were infinite

And I have to choose a box of cereal, the colors and flavors, the promises of knowledge

And experiences shimmer in front of my eyes, I am paralyzed

By possibility, and so is this my way in life, in music, in French, in

Every step I take forward, or back, yet a paralysis of the boredom from 

The anguish of not/or/and choosing the right notes to go with that backing track.

I could not read his gaze but it scared me.

Oh, the cereal aisle - my daughter insists on GrapeNuts when she visits,

That will do or maybe, or maybe

Or maybe, oh, that one, 

As I dutifully wrote the three exercises for piano that I would dutifully execute

Every day, the Hanon finger exercises and then the CGC sequence in the left hand

At the same time and I won't allow myself that freedom/that curse to decide in each moment

What to do and my nervous system will thank me until I am stronger and 

Then I'll be able to walk some of the cereal aisle of life, feeling the strength of my legs,

The clarity of my eyesight and be secure in this dazzling life

Maybe for the first time.