The First Unfairness...

"Sunshine" 

Chen is almost 10 and twirls her hair round the end of a pen. Then she asks me: 
"Do you have your own apartment?" 

I'm playing a role, making her a tuna salad sandwich like a mother might. 
"Yes, well along with roommates." 

She was adopted from China. She is raised by an Italian chef with rosemary poking out of his uniform pocket and a Jewish journalist who makes lists and checks them off with certain alacrity.

Once Chen was playing with blocks. "Bet you don't know what I'm building." 

I knew, but I played along at first. I'm not sure why I knew, I just did. 
"A bridge?" 

She seems to enjoy being mysterious, the most taciturn child I've every met. 
"No." 

I tended to my own block creation a moment or two, then offered a second guess.
"The Great Wall of China?" 

I don't know how I knew. 
Her almond eyes looked up at mine, the glance saying an uninspired "yes".

"Have you ever been there--the Wall of China?" 
It was a silly question for me to ask.

"Yes." She started to take the wall down. She left the walls around her heart untouched. Perhaps she didn't even know they existed.

"Well, not there exactly." she quickly continued. "But I was born there." 

"I know." 

I notice a book on her shelf about being adopted. Her awareness of the fact seems pretty integrated into daily life. The child takes three language lessons a week outside 2nd grade--Italian, Hebrew, and Chinese. 

She can't forget that she has one origin yet four separate identities. The walls of her parent's living room hold Asian art, the kitchen is filled with pasta and parsley, a wide array of jazz standard collections swing out of the stereo system, and there is a menorah collecting dust on top of the china cabinet. 

"Would you like to go there someday, Chen?"

Her wall had become a pyramid of sorts.
"That would be a dream that won't come true." 

We never forget ourselves. As J.M. Barrie said of all humans except his eternal lost boy: "No one ever gets over the first unfairness." 

Back in the kitchen making her a tuna sandwich, we talk of her sudden interest in my apartment. 

"Does your room have windows?"
"Yes." 
"Is there sunlight?"
"Oh, lots. It faces the morning sun." 

Chen's building is like a brick peninsula, with three other buildings towering above it on three sides. Their apartment is at the backside, so despite windows, only indirect light can come through. As such, Chen goes to sleep and wakes up in the same sort of dull, grey light as the day before. 

"Wow...lucky." 

She smiles in a rueful way, then goes back to swirling her silky hair around a pen. 

One Book, One Special Book...

I realized why I want to write just one book....one book that can translate across the world one single idea. Like Harper Lee in "To Kill a Mocking Bird." Step in someone's shoes, feel the stretch of their skin and the rhythm of their heartbeat before judging them. We all have a Boo, a May-Ella, and a Tom Robinson in our lives--let's step in before we step out. 

Harper Lee only needed one moment to voice it all and those pages speak forever--resounding as an echo. 

I want to echo in some corridor of someone's heart. 

I've spent a lot of time feeling misunderstood. I doubt my instincts in a moment, wishing I'd spoken one way or another. The next step is discovering what needs to be said. So much being covered and re-covered before, like a family heirloom that sits in the same corner, yet is transformed every other decade to save face. 

Though I don't want to be self-indulgent. Daily I seek to find the truth, speaking through my voice, without being blind to it's sound. I've known mostly good things in my life thus far; others know and see the worst that life can afford. How will the stories I tell be relevant to many? 

These are the questions I face, yet they don't deter me from writing. Although, I sing and never regret a moment of it, writing is an art form I cannot shake. I'm discovering that I can live for a day, a week, or even a month without singing...but the minute I realize I've not written a thought down in the course of a day, I start mindlessly searching at the bottom of my Mary Poppin's carpet bag for a spare page and pen. Life becomes a haze until I've relinquished the thoughts swirling in my mind like one of those home made tornado machines from grade school. 

I write and then I sing, because I have again reconnected with the voice that used to only speak through my singing. Now, they can flow as one and the same. There is a strange juxtaposition and reliance upon the other--like the love affair between the moon and the sun. Singing was my platform of self expression from early childhood to today, 2009. Writing was a revelation that has taken several seasons and growth spurts to reach working status. Now it is a catalyst and I am thankful for it. 

I want to echo in some corridor of someone's heart. 

UWS Slide

Hear that melancholy slide                                                                                                       of a jazz clarinet on the UWS? 

Endless books sold here for a dollar

titles thought unworthy of bother. 

Autumn whistles, wrestles lost leaves; 

foreheads wrinkle, people roll down sleeves. 

The player has talent; As Time Goes By.

Throw him a coin for an evening's lullaby.

A cap in his lap, but his name won't fly

like sparkles across a marque wide.

Hear that melancholy slide 

                  of a jazz clarinet on the UWS?

They've all got wishes to hide

behind day job desks, shirts well pressed,

walls of steal & loss of jest. 

Like the memory of a well lit flame,

eyes yearn for the familiar warmth of fame.

Who knows from where this idea came?

Keys to success, yet who guards the lock?

For now, meander a forgotten block.

Folk or funk or love will be playing

the price of Art, though no body's paying. 

Hear that melancholy slide 

                  of a jazz clarinet on the UWS?