Accordion

Maybe it's the Mayan Calendar thing, but this month has had a feeling of lift off or crash- or both at the same time. Tragedy, global weirding with no snow still on the ground, a restless desire for change, for a collective wake up and along side those- deep gratitude, love for humanity and the peace of quiet time with family. Hope is like an accordian that spans the gap of little wishes: that 2013 will be the year of kim chi and big ones: that semi automatic weapons will finally be outlawed in this country and that women around the world will have more rights, more dignity, more of a voice to shape culture and politics.
I play, I play and as Al Zolynas says- through all the cliches, may our spirits sing clearly.

Considering the Accordion by Al Zolynas

 "The idea of it is distasteful at best. Awkward box of wind, diminutive, misplaced piano on one side, raised Braille buttons on the other. The bellows, like some parody of breathing, like some medical apparatus from a Victorian sick-ward. A grotesque poem in three dimensions, a rococo thing-a-me-bob. I once strapped an accordion on my chest and right away I had to lean back on my heels, my chin in the air, my back arched like a bullfighter or flamenco dancer. I became an unheard of contradiction: a gypsy in graduate school. Ah, but for all that, we find evidence of the soul in the most unlikely places. Once in a Czech restaurant in Long Beach, an ancient accordionist came to our table and played the old favorites: "Lady of Spain," " The Saber Dance," "Dark Eyes," and through all the clichÈs his spirit sang clearly. It seemed like the accordion floated in air, and he swayed weightlessly behind it, eyes closed, back in Prague or some lost village of his childhood. For a moment we all floated--the whole restaurant: the patrons, the knives and forks, the wine, the sacrificed fish on plates. Everything was pure and eternal, fragiley suspended like a stained-glass window in the one remaining wall of a bombed out church."