July 13, 2005—Wednesday
Stand up and be true!
Wow, nothing awakens my mind, my soul, like some good, rockin’ Medieval music. I’m listening right now to a band from Germany called Cultus Ferox. They play medieval music with bagpipes, drums, and a whole lotta testosterone—a little like Medieval gone Goth (if that’s not too redundant. Gothic, of course, in the modern cultish sense, not the historical sense). And they are so good. Puts my recorder playing to shame, and makes it seem like insignificant little toodling.
***
An acquaintance of mine is an excellent medieval/renaissance musician and a transsexual. She has a website that addresses different facets of herself: music, interests, group memberships, and her trans-bi lifestyle. On that website is a link that leads to another website that publishes the high school photos of people since 1930 who are gay, lesbian, bi, trans (GLBT), organized according to graduation year. People volunteer to have their photos posted here with captions of their current occupations, names excluded, as a way of embracing an important truth of their being. Paging through the photographs, I was utterly fascinated. The most interesting thing was, the later the graduation year, the more photos were displayed. It was wonderful to see so many young faces from this decade who were secure enough to post their faces on this website. It was also interesting to note that, even as our societies have become more global and more open to the differences between gender, race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, what have you, that even people from my own graduation class (1987) appear still to maintain a hesitancy to expose themselves. I wonder how well-known this website is among the GLBT subset. I, personally, would like to see more faces up there, and I would value it highly to see the pictures of some of my own friends there, as well.
***
The cool rainy weather has passed. Back again is the heat and sun of summer. Today is the first day of a heat wave that is expected to intensify over the next few days. That’s what the weather frogs in southwest Germany say, at any rate. I find that the best weather forecast for our area is to keep an eye on Chicago, and to expect the same within a week or so. The weather forecasters in this country are so wrong much of the time, I wonder that they haven’t yet figured out that trick. If you fellow Americans roll your eyes at the inaccuracy of your own forecasters, try paying attention to the ones here! Chicago has been suffering a heat wave, and by that measure, so will we.
Before the heat wave really hits us full force, however, there is a wonderful cool breeze to counter the nasty ol’ sun. I’m fair-skinned, burn easily, and my eyes are sensitive to the bright light. I could easily do without the heat and the sun. To the consternation of friends, family and acquaintances, I much prefer the cool dreary weather of fall and early spring.
So, I’m sitting in our kitchen, with the windows open to the hills and pines of the Black Forest, a wonderful breeze pushing a course through the upper half of our house. Lots of huge fluffy clouds dot the bright blue sky. They remind me of that great big painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, the one that’s just of clouds and blue sky, and I seem to remember it hanging over a staircase. Although I adore pastoral scenery and waxing poetic about the beauty of my surroundings, I’m not one to compare clouds to cotton balls, to search for hidden figures within their shapes, or to imagine myself bouncing along the tops.
But there is a first time for everything. Today, I had my first cloud reverie.
As I walked to my son’s Kindergarten, I looked into the sky and marveled at the abundance of those giant white balls of cotton wool--which was exactly what they looked like--and the clarity of the blue sky behind them. As the strong breeze literally caressed my skin, cooling it from the intensity of the sun on that treeless stretch of hillside, I didn’t so much imagine myself bouncing along the cloud tops, but rather wishing I could swim through them. What would it be like, I wondered. Would it be like walking through a heavy fog, damp and chill and mysterious? I prefer to imagine it as walking through a breath of air, the whiteness just the ghost of a whisper along my skin. It would smell cool and clean as the air along the surface of ice. It would have breathy weight and density, lighter than water, yet suspending me as I moved through it—backstroke, sidestroke, frog, butterfly…
The reverie wasn’t long, but it was enough to energize me. By the time I reached the Kindergarten, I felt very refreshed, in spite of the relentless summer sun burning along my neck and arms.
