“Open your eyes/ Leave it all
behind.”
-Van Halen, “Light Up The Sky”
For the past week, I’ve been obsessed
with Van Halen II. As its name suggests, it is the band Van Halen’s second album, released in 1979, when I was five
years old. I own it on cassette, but it is buried in a storage room at my
condo, which is currently undergoing repairs. I am on the other side of the
city staying at my sister‘s house where she
lives with her husband and two boys.
In any case, I can’t get seem to get
Van Halen II out of my head. The *ting* of
the bell of Alex Van Halen’s ride cymbal
before the guitar solo on Outta Love Again. David Lee Roth joyously celebrating the charms of Beautiful Girls. The falsetto “Oooooh….baby,baby” on Dance The Night
Away.
My brain jumps from one song to another over the course of the day
polishing them over and over in my head. Regardless of the song though, the
conclusion is the same: Van Halen II, I have decided, is the most perfect
collection of music ever recorded. I want to marry this album. I want to buy a
house with Van Halen II and bear its children. I want us to travel and grow old
together. I want to lie in a hospital bed bathed in the golden light of the
setting sun with a cracked cassette copy of Van Halen II holding my hand from a
bedside chair.
Oh, and in other news, I’ve also decided to
move to the mountains to become a monk.
Not that THAT has anything to do with anything. I only mention it
because my Van Halen II love affair began the morning after I let the visiting
prior of our group know my intentions.
It wasn‘t a graceful moment. Reverend
Master was leaving for Vancouver early the next morning, so I was on a
deadline. Except that because he was leaving the next morning people from our
group were hustling and bustling about saying goodbyes and asking him last
minute questions and wrapping up final travel arrangements for him.
I lingered for a while, and when no perfect moment arrived, I settled
for the one I had. I ended up half muttering to him in the hallway outside the
upstairs kitchen, “I think I want to
be a monk.”
I’m not sure why, but after I
said it, I felt afraid. I was overcome by a embarrassment, like I had admitted
to wanting that was above my station. I felt like a child putting on his doctor
father’s white coat and stethoscope
and asking if he could come to work and perform open heart surgery.
I’m not sure how I expected the
monk to respond. I thought he would say something like “are you sure?” or “Give me a call and we’ll talk about it” or even “hmmm.”
Instead, he did something I did not expect. He hugged me. Then he said “Okay” a bunch of times,
not so much like he was approving a request but like he was a trying to calm a
skittish horse.
He told me to hold my desire to become a monk lightly, and then we all
tromped out the door. The last thing he told me was to get in touch.
Another monk, several weeks later, told me a similar story about his own
experience expressing his monastic intentions. Like me, he blurted it out and
didn‘t know what to say next or how
the master would react. He described a similar sense of shock at hearing
himself say the words, like he had just opened up a box and presented the world
a gift so offer it . The next day, he told me, he and the Reverend Master went
for ice cream.
I did not go out for ice cream. Instead returned to the guest bedroom in
my sister’s basement. There I lay awake listening to a frantic little man
inside my head throwing open filing cabinets, scrutinizing fine print, and
scattering documents around the inside of my skull, looking for a reasons why I
had made a bad decision.
He found nothing. I don‘t know how big or small a gift to the world my
becoming a monk is, but I know it‘s something an
offering I‘m willing to make completely
and wholeheartedly. My brain is anxious, but my heart is at peace, and nothing
can change that.
Sometime later in the night, I wake up to the sound of my youngest
nephew crying.
There is something about the sound of a baby crying in the night. My
heart wants to lever itself out of my ribcage, climb to the ceiling via
grappling hook, and shimmy like an action movie star through the heating vents
separating the basement guestroom from my nephew’s room upstairs. It wants to find its way into his crib and burrow in
next to him, heating him with its warmth while beating a comforting rhythm. All
is well. I’m here. All is well. I’m here.
When I come upstairs in the morning, my nephew is sitting in his high
chair triumphantly waving his spoon. He is sporting a beard of yogurt and there
is cereal in the wispy halo of his hair. His delight when he sees me lights the
room like a tiny sun. We made it! We both survived the night! Terrible Dark
Lonely Scary Tine is over!
When breakfast ends, I check my email to see if there has been any
progress on my condo, which is currently serving as the rope in a three way
tug-of-war between contractor, condo board, and insurance board that has slowed
my condo repairs. I play Dinosaur Hotel with my four year old oldest nephew in
a box that once contained a washing machine. Half an hour later, the boys are
packed up and gone with their family and I’m by myself in the
house thinking of impermanence.
I’m not thinking of impermanence
because I want to be a monk. I’m thinking of it
because children--with every whiplash mood change, spilled plastic cup, or
unexpected interruption--are a living reminder that impermanence is all there
is.
My sister’s house is not like my
condo and not just because her bathroom
ceiling is water-free and not in need of replacement. My condo is mostly bare
and no one but me ever goes there. My sister’s house is filled
to the brim with things and also with life.
Now, with everyone gone, well, the house remains a mess, but with the
kids gone, it’s a strangely still mess.
Dinosaur Hotel, its cardboard walls marred with slashes of crayon stands
crookedly in a patch of sunlight. Toys are scattered across the living room
like stones in a Zen rock garden. Even the used tissue on the table assumes the
quiet dignity of a fulfilled purpose. It’s chaos, and
everything is in its place.
I’m filling the sink to do the
dishes when a fragment of song breaks loose from some forgotten place in my
memory and bobs to the surface of my mind: “I‘m a spark on the horizon.”
It takes me a few moments to identify the song: “DOA” from Van Halen’s Van Halen II. A crack in the cement dam in my
unconscious.
The dam bursts and the rest of the album pours through.
* * *
It doesn’t last forever. It goes on for
nearly a week, but…well, impermanence,
remember?
But Van Halen II isn’t alone. No sooner
has it faded than another music or movie obsession arises to take its place.
Sometimes it lasts for moments. Other times each piece holds me in its grip for
hours or days.
Gretchen Goes To Nebraska by King’s X. Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid Maad City. I spend an entire afternoon
deciding I’m going to watch The Big
Lebowski every day until it‘s branded into my
brain. That way, when I‘m at the monastery,
I can secretly watch the movie in my head whenever I need an escape.
My obsession right now is the Dixie Chicks album Home. My brother-in-law
was playing it while I was sitting at the table with the four year old helping
him cut paper and when Travellin’ Soldier on, I grew
suddenly misty eyed.
Forget all that other music. Home is the most perfect album ever
recorded.
I’m still thinking that ten
songs later. I’m sitting in the chair by the
front window. The baby is standing in the middle of the living room in his
green one-piece fuzzy pyjamas with his hands in the air while he turns in
circles to make himself dizzy.
I don’t need to go to the monastery.
I don’t want to go back to my condo.
I don’t want anything but to watch
this boy turn in circles forever while Godspeed (Sweet
Dreams) plays in the background.
Sorry, Van Halen. I was wrong. It
was the Dixie Chicks all along.
This is all I want. This is all I need…to sit in this chair and listen to the sounds of home.
No comments:
Post a Comment