The fall in California gives rise to the most wonderful sunrises and sunsets, at least where I live, up above the fog (mostly) in the hills. This morning the first sight that met my eyes was dawn with streaks of pink along the horizon. They were gone in a moment or so.
So much to talk about, so little time. I'm off to L.A. in the morning, with much to do, and the yawns are already coming thick and fast.
I must report that my exercise in Huna decisiveness was completely successful. With Diana and I setting our wedding date, I expected that the universe would start manifesting decisiveness. And it did, in spades!
Let me digress here, and talk a bit about this Huna belief that I've alluded to. The idea is that if you see some quality in the world around you that bothers you--the world is full of angry people, or pitiful people, or people who are violating your boundaries--you should look within yourself and see where you are doing the same thing (not necessarily in the same area)--where are you angry, pitiful, or violating someone else's boundaries? Then you clean up your stuff. And the Huna belief (which is not far from Jung and NLP) is that the world will then clean up too.
So by last Friday I was pissed at how indecisive the world was being--people were not making their minds up about anything. For a while, I thought it was Sept. 11, or the bombing. Then the idea struck--where was I being indecisive? Sure enough, I was being totally indecisive about my wedding plans, and by now all the cards were on the table--we just needed to decide. So last weekend, between operas, we did.
What happened was enough to make me believe in magic. People started calling on Monday, having gotten off the fence they had been on for weeks or months. I unstuck one thing that had been stuck since April! In some cases I initiated the action, often by doing something that I hadn't thought of doing before that completely unstuck the situation . The really creepy cases were where people I hadn't called or communicated with in any way called or emailed me--the client I hadn't heard from for a month, for example, who wrote and was ready to do business.
In some cases, the decisiveness was not real pleasant. The company on the East Coast who had been flirting with me for months finally said they want me to come out and interview, but for a job that would be in Boston. Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.
So Diana and I did a lot more thinking and deciding. She's a California native, and her elderly parents are still living in the area. Her kids are in high school. She is three years from early retirement with a generous state pension. I gave her a veto, and she chose not to use it. As we talked, the thought of starting over sounded really attractive. So tonight we broached it with her kids. They were amazingly positive--they saw the pros and cons, but the idea of starting over sounded neat to them too. So I'm going ahead with the interview. We'll see what comes of it.
My weekly meditation group was discussing forgiveness last week--this week is courage. A good and worthy quality in these difficult times. And Die Meistersinger was even better than I anticipated. This is an opera that, also, has much to say about forgiveness. The fundamental tension in all art, between form and expression, passion and order, is its deepest theme. And if we are one side of this dichotomy (and the main character, Hans Sachs, definitely is on both sides at different times), our tendency is to demonize the other side. The rule breakers are lazy upstarts who have no depth, while the rule keepers are anal twits who care so much about the rules that they kill the heart. Of course, there is some truth here, but the message of the opera is that we need both, and that those who are sitting on the other pole are good people who are doing the best they can. The opera ends with deep forgiveness, which leads (as it so often does) to rejoicing. Such truth! It's one of the best opera plots ever (opera is not known for the quality of its plot lines!), and one of the richest and deepest characters, Hans Sachs. The bass who sang Hans was James Morris, who showed that singing Wotan, king of the Gods, for two decades was superb training to play this most complex and wonderful shoemaker.
Three operas in four days (reminds me of Virgil Thompson's Four Saints in Three Acts, but that's another story)! The good news is that I think I've got Diana good and hooked on Opera. The bad news is that, last time I looked, the opera in Boston was sadly lacking...
Thank you for reading.
Copyright © 2001 Pete Stevens. All rights reserved.
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