# 219: Steps in Time
Thoughts of gratitude along the way.
Steps in Time
A friend from the digital world just had a double amputation and writes, I hope that someday I can bake again. Another struggling with yet another round of chemotherapy writes, No phone calls or visits please, but cards and good thoughts are welcome. I’ve always been a fixer, but there’s nothing I can do to fix them.
Wasn’t it just yesterday I was sixteen, feeling the joy and excitement of driving alone on the first day I got my license only to come home and find an ambulance parked in our driveway, my father on the way to the hospital and his passing a few hours later. Or when my daughter suddenly died at age thirty-six. Her steps as a differently-abled person were never easy but always taken with a smile.
Today I read that the average lifespan of our species is sixty-five. I’m five years past that milestone now but still consider myself young. There is so much to discover, to learn, to give. Every day is a gift and I am so grateful for this one, here and now.
What I’m Reading
I hadn’t thought about this book for decades but it came up in a conversation just this week past and I remembered seeing him speak at Hunter College in 1973. I was going to music school in NYC and my boyfriend from California had come for a visit. He said, We must go. We joined a crowd of people sitting cross-legged in a big chairless room. There was a soft but excited hum in the room as we waited. Ram Dass arrived. He wore a flowing white robe and sat down on a slightly raised dias in the middle of us. There was om-ing. There was laughter. There was silence. I don’t remember specifically what he said to us that night, but I do remember the sense of peace, happiness and humor that surrounded him.
What I’m Listening To
Thoughts of Baba Ram Das reminded me of Inside the Taj Mahal, a recording from 1968 by Paul Horn. Horn stood under the Taj Mahal's great dome and played. “The building's astonishing 28-second delay created a fantastically spacious, endlessly echoing sound that, back then, just wasn't possible to recreate in any studio in existence.”1 I still have my LP recording. It hasn’t aged.
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More about the recording here. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/jul/03/101-strangest-spotify-paul-horn
I've recently lost two retired historian colleagues, but they lived full lives, and it was the news of the death of a former student of mine, only in her mid-thirties, that hit hardest. Life is cruel and beautiful. Thank you for reminding us of the beauty in the everyday, Kate.
At our age memories are both bittersweet and precious and oh, how wonderful you are here, walking the earth