The Conductors Language

Last night I went to the Utah Symphony with my roommate. I have been to the performances of my college symphony, but I haven't been to a professional symphony before. I enjoyed myself immensely. It was held in Abravanel Hall. The crystals on the large crystal chandeliers captured the light and refracted tiny rainbows over our heads. The musicians all in black and white formally sat on the stage. On the right side, three rows back a violinist pinned a small purple clip to her hair. The small splash of color kept drawing my eye, as if she was saying, "I'm here too even thought I'm in the third row. I want you to see me."
My favorite part of the evening was watching the conductor. The language of conducting is a mystery to me. Sometimes I can match the movement of the conductors arms with the resulting music, but most of the time I'm baffled by it. Like all communication you have the ones conveying the message and the listeners responding. In this case the conductor commands  with his baton and the musicians respond by increasing or decreasing tempo as well as other commands. Thierry Fischer conducted last nights performance. He has guest conducted for orchestras and philharmonics all over the world. He began performing as Principal Flute at the Zurich Opera in Hamburg.Through out the years has played and conducted all over the world. The Utah Symphony is privileged to have Fischer as a conductor for the last two years.
I have seen a variety of conductors and to me most of them look like they are waving their arms around. Fischer on the other hand looked like he was performing magic. His movements were crisp sometimes slashing other times jabbing. To slow down or soften the music he employed delicate intricate flourishes with his baton. My favorite movement, which I still don't know what it signaled, was when he pointed his baton towards the ground and pointed down with the other hand as well. He thrust his arms up and down, almost like he was dancing. His whole body held rigid and from his profile all the muscles in his face clenched tight in concentration. Instead of birds fluttering out of his baton or sparks of light; music, purposeful and obedient jumped, sang and mourned following his baton. In a language that most of the audience doesn't understand Thierry Fischer directed the symphony to spill forth music that anyone can interpret and understand, making black note figures translate into grace and beauty.

Old McDonald Had a Farm

I made a trip to Western New York and had the opportunity to visit a good friend of mine. She and I were roommates our Junior and Senior years in college. After college I moved across the country and she stayed at home and began working as an accountant. Since college she has become my travel buddy and we have met in Vietnam and Costa Rica. This time around I got to spend the night with her at her aunts house. We spent the afternoon and evening catching up and eating. On Saturday morning I woke up at 8 and walked over to their barn to witness milking of the cows. I surprised my friend, Aimee, and her dad as they didn't expect me to actually make it out of bed yet. I arrived just in time for milking the final round of cows. I put on a too large pair of rubber boots and walked out on the milking floor. Aimee handed me a bottle of iodine and told me to sterilize one of the cows teats. I crouched by my cow and dipped her and then used a towel to clean off the iodine.

She then showed me how to milk by hand. It really isn't so difficult. You don't pull, it's more of a squeeze. When we go swimming my dad is fond of bringing out his friend Charlie. You see Charlie is a clam and he squirts water at people. I eventually learned how to introduce Charlie to others, all you do is close your pinkie first followed by the rest of your fingers and the water squirts up into someones place. Milking a cow is just the same except you do it in reverse. Then you attach the milkers which are like four mini vacuums and the machine does all the work. When we finished with the cows we cleaned the milkers and moved on to caring for the calves.

I scooped poopy straw with a pitchfork and threw it out the small window. Then I put out new straw and helped feed the calves. We cleaned up the barn and then headed back to the house to clean up ourselves. I really enjoyed learning a little bit about cows and seeing how many people live.

Ties That Bind

We all have cords coming from our hearts. Some ends attach to people and others to places. Dreams and memories anchor other cords. These cords wary in thickness, strength and healthiness. When we leave a place or people we love, the cords stretch tugging painfully on the heart. In cases of unexpected, unprepared leavings the cords may snap leaving us a little less anchored and a little more torn. Over time the strained cords of the heart may stretch until they break. Some unravel slowly until the person or place slips from our awareness. Some people's cords are thin and snap easily causing aches but no great pains and no great joys. Others form strong thick cords that function like an artery to the heart. When severed these wounds can cause a person to bleed out unwilling, unable to live without that connection. At times snapped or frayed cords can be tied back together but the knots slip and unravel easily.
The heart strings trained or broken by distance and time are different from those severed by death, loos or tragedy. The cords broken by time thin out over the years. The strength supplied by them fades. The memory of the person or place grows fuzzy around the edges. It is harder to dredge up memories of his face or the sound of her voice. One day the bond breaks sometimes unnoticed for quite some time. The cords pulled taut by distance tug painfully at the heart as the road slips behind us and familiar places flash by. The discomfort grows until waving relatives blurr into the scenery, the town dwindles, and the plane takes off.
Countless times I have left people and places behind. I have watched friends leave more times than I care to remember. I hold the strings of my heart loosely. They are strong able to bear up under great distances and many years. I don't let them grow too big or provide too much emotional sustenance so that when they break the pain is minimal. As I write this I'm sitting in the Buffalo airport waiting to board my flight to Atlanta and from Atlanta back home to Salt Lake City. My ties holding me there start to slacken. I will sleep in my bed, yell at my roommate's cats, and tell of my vacation. The ties binding me to Western New York tighten, tugging at my heart. I see these cords thinning. Several will break soon. I see it. I dread it. It makes the goodbye harder this time around. Good friends of mine are retiring and moving closer to grand kids. Those ties will shift to a new location removing another tie I have to a place. The house they live in is my home. The place I could count on a bed, excellent dinner and tea while watching HGTV. That house is a refuge to me a place of love and acceptance. I said good bye to that house, consciously weakening the rope attached to it. I probably will not be able to call it home again. The places I know so intimately will change over time. Old buildings will be torn down and new ones built. The Subway becomes a Burger King and all the familiar faces disappear. My attachment begins to break until one day the cord anchoring me to Western New York is that of memory, a bittersweet remembrance of what was.
One decision is left for you and I when our ties that bind break, snap, fray, dissolve. Do we grow a new vein and invest in new people and places or do we wrap the broken ties of our life around us, cocooning ourselves from the pain and attachments of life? The choice lies before us risk pain to gain affection, strength, support, belonging- life or insulate, ignore and hide with all our cords attached to broken dreams and fading memories until our hearts wither from lack of affection. Which will you choose?

Home is Where the Heart is.

Home is where the heart is. This adage is so well known that it seems to lose its meaning. It is thrown out casually in conversation, it implies depth, but seems to mean very little. The concept of home is abstract and means different things to different people. For me home is a fluid thing. I travel a lot and have lived in many places. Home can be the apartment I live in. Maybe the place I grew up is home. The place I went to college is my first home apart from my family. I call any hotel, room, or tent my home when I sleep and have my stuff there. My heart is many places that are not home to me. I have friends who live all across the United States and scattered over the world. Part of my heart is with them, but my home sure isn't.
Yesterday I took two flights and drove an hour and half to arrive in Houghton, New York. Through out my journey my excitement grew. Memories of the time I spent in college played through my mind. I thought about where I call home. I have three homes. My first home is the house and city where I spent nine of my developing years. Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico is my childhood home. My parents still live there. I dream about going back to my house and walking through it, looking at the familiar books and paintings. Sometimes I long to sit in the side yard and read a book or bounce a basket ball. I remember what it was like to walk to the corner and take the bus downtown where I met my friends. We would spend the morning walking around, have coffee at a little cafe and lunch on the town square. I think of my school which is partly in a basement and partly on the top floors of buildings, with the bright blue pillars in the auditorium. My heart yearns to be back, to remember. Oaxaca is my home. 
My second home is Houghton, New York. I arrived at the Buffalo airport where two strangers met me, helped me use the pay phone and drove me out in the middle of no where to a beautiful campus. They dropped me off at my dorm. I went home for Christmas and did a study abroad in Fiji. Sometimes my friends invited me to their homes on breaks, but for the next four years I lived in Houghton. I spent all my summers working at a camp. I grew close to several families in the area. Sometimes I spent breaks with them, often times I showed up for dinner hoping to be fed. Besides academic learning, I began differentiating myself from my parents. I began discovering who Kristin is and what she likes. None of my friends knew my family. It was just me. I learned to do things for myself and paid some bills. I did my homework without my parents having to ask me and sometimes I studied for test. Houghton is a peaceful place. A place where I can think clearer and relax more, it is my home.
I currently live in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have lived here now for four years and I've lived four different apartments and have had five roommates. I'm working for my eighth company and a year and half into my Masters degree. I have an active group of friends in my church. This is where I live. When I leave to go some place I experience the satisfied feeling of arriving home. I like walking through my house and looking at everything. I breathe deeply of the dry air. This place, too, is home.
Where is my home? I don't know it all depends on your definition and what the intent of the question is. I don't really belong in any of my homes. There is one place I know I belong, it also is my home, but I have never been there. Heaven is my ultimate home and sometimes my heart yearns to go there. What a strange thing home is. It can mean so many different things. I think instead of home being where the heart is; I think home is where your heart finds peace.