Sing Us a Song, Piano Man

I look forward to workdays that close with a walk to a coffee place near the school. During the walk, the day dwindles into a soft conclusion, and even my thoughts quieten a little bit in recognition of this ceremony. This afternoon, I had Billy Joel’s Piano Man on repeat on my music player, and by the time I reached the coffee place, I had listened to the song four and a half times, and my heart was weighed down twice over.

I think, in this world, I would never hear a lonelier song refrain. This one belies the jazzy piano solo—and then the famous harmonica instrumental—at the beginning of the song. The rhythm almost readies us for a love song, but it goes on, first, like a beautiful irony for the story it tells, and then later, like the melody that was meant to echo the words in the first place. Each time, I allow myself to experience this shift, and I imagine an impish playmate, who could convince me that the idea he put in my head had always been mine, never his.

The song doesn’t rush. It takes its time in introducing the regular Saturday crowd in one bar, who “shuffles in” to “forget about life for a while”. We are brought to the place by the Piano Man, and through his eyes we see tired people nursing their drinks only as much they are nursing their broken spirits. Through his music, we, too, “share [in the] drink they call loneliness”.

On the bar, we see an old man “making love to his tonic and gin” who calls out to the Piano Man, “Son, can you play us a memory/ I’m not very sure how it goes/ But it’s sad and it’s sweet and I knew it complete/ When I wore a younger man’s clothes.” It is not difficult to imagine this old man’s sadness, as that which Shakespeare describes is for the memory of things past. 

I wonder what stories this old man has. What things must he have seen? How much of himself has he poured out into the world? How much remains?

On the other side of the bar, is the Piano Man’s friend, John, the jovial bartender, who confesses that he would have made it big somewhere else, if only he “could get out of this place”. I keep thinking about the “smile that ran away from his face”, and about how lonely a thing that must be to witness. Elsewhere in the room, there is Paul, a novelist who “never had time for a wife”; Davy, who will, for the rest of his life, be a navy man; a waitress “practicing politics”, and businessmen who are slowly getting stoned.

Sing us a song, you’re the Piano Man! Sing us a song tonight!

To this, the Piano Man sings his sad refrain, Oh la la-la, la-di-da, la-la, la-di-da, da-da...

Wordless, the refrain is a resignation, an answer that is really a non-answer, like every resignation is. Like an answer, it offers comfort and an assurance; but unlike an answer, it calms the soul only until it wonders again.

I used to equate resignation with cowardice, but I have long since learned how horribly wrong I was. I now know that the courage necessary to decide to let go/give up pales in comparison to the courage necessary to renew that decision, every time the heart second-guesses itself.

I have a special empathy for people who have had to reshape their dreams and who hold on to whatever shape remains, in order to be where the people they love need them to be. Isn’t this reshaping a resignation? And isn’t this resignation admirable? Do we not do this because we had to step up too soon, or perhaps because we had to make right that we did not do so soon enough?

Later in the song, the crowd, who comes to the little bar mostly for the Piano Man, asks him, “Man, what are you doing here?”, to which he replies his sad refrain, Oh, la, la-la, la-di-da, la-la, la-di-da, da-da…

Too often, like the Piano Man, we become painfully aware of how much more we could be, if we were less constrained. And when we think of this, we find ourselves embarrassed by such selfish thoughts. For later, when we think about the people who need us where we are, we are reminded that our pain is also our privilege, and that if only so they may hold on to their dreams whole, we would quietly lay ours down.

Oh, la, la-la, la-di-da, la-la, la-di-da, da-da…

Right Opinions

Written on February 9, 2011, when everybody had an opinion about Angelo Reyes’s suicide

It disgusts me— the way we always have something to say to explain other people’s actions or inactions; the way we encapsulate a lifetime into a sentence; the way we reduce a person into a Right Opinion.

Today, I do not care about Right Opinions.

I am saddened by Angelo Reyes’s suicide. I do not care if he was guilty or not. I do not care about the politics that backdrops his death. All I care about is that he belonged to someone. All I care to imagine is the pain that his death is causing the people to whom he belonged. Damn everything else.

I remember a similar feeling I had almost six months ago with Rolando Mendoza, the hostage-taker in the infamous bus hostage crisis. I still remember how the media cornered his poor father and how they feasted on his reactions. Damn those insensitive bastards.

I cried for Mendoza’s father that night. His reaction to his son’s terrible death was unforgivingly captured by the media that brought the news. That moment was in the midst of so many things to be said, of so many facts that would happily back up opinions, of so many justifiable opportunities to reduce, to trivialize, to mock.

However, that moment should not have been like all the rest. It should have been a moment for pause, for feeling. And because it was so delicate a moment, it needed to be seized—to be felt—right then. At that fleeting moment, all we should have cared about was the poor old man in his flimsy shirt, wailing like a heart-broken child, for the son who belonged to him. Damn everything else.

In the next morning, that moment will have drowned in a sea of Right Opinions. In the next morning, it will not have been a Right Opinion to feel sad for Mendoza or for his father.

Sometimes I fear that we couldn't stop long enough to second-guess ourselves. We are all so proud—and so right—all the time. Couldn't we just sit down and feel? For a while? Couldn't we allow ourselves to just be sad, for a moment, because something is sad?

I do not care so much about Right Opinions today. I only care that my heart is in the Right Place. Damn everything else.

The Murakami Experience

I remember how I struggled with Murakami the first time I picked up "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman". I complained about the unresolved conflicts, the denouements that never came and the non-concluding conclusions. He has a way of building up his plot until he reaches a certain height and then he stops. All of a sudden, I was reading the conclusion. Before I realized I was there, I had missed the ending.

There has always been something I felt I was missing when I read him—something that kept me from making sense of the stories he told. It was easy to feel like an outsider from Murakami’s world. I felt unwelcome and as a result, I was always lost.

Strangely, though, the stories manage to make me feel comfortable with my confusion. At some point after I put the book down, the frustration and the confusion will have left, and what lingers, surprisingly, is the impression of an experience. What remains are memories of the loneliness of spaghetti, of chocolates melting in the sun, of a moving kidney-shaped stone, of a sole firefly against the vastness of a black sky. I remember them, and the emotions they carry, as if they were my own memories.

As for Murakami, I could only attempt to make sense of him in the single way that I know how. I became aware that I was—and still am—constrained by a Way of Seeing that requires me to label, to consult, to anticipate. Because of this, I necessarily live in a world that refuses to perceive what it does not recognize.

And still, in a peculiar Murakami-esque way, it is only when I give up trying to comprehend the Strange Things, that I begin to appreciate what I could not understand. Just as in magic, there are things we see only when we don't.



This un-seeing, I have come to realize, is a Way of Seeing.

A Piece of the Divine

May 29, 2014. Maya Angelou died today.

She also thought there is a place in our souls we have to struggle to keep from getting corrupted. I've been calling it A Piece of the Divine--the place that allows us--despite ourselves--to forgive, to sympathize, to walk away, to hold on, to build again, to dream anew.

Maya Angelou says it is what we protect when we say, "Back off. You are not allowed to hurt me beyond this point." She says it is also where we retreat to reconnect with everything divine. I, myself, believe it is where the rawest sense of what is right resides--stripped off of any social impositions or personal entitlement.

The courage one is able to summon in order to protect it has never ceased to surprise me, just as it has never ceased to fascinate me how much of that strength stems from its very fragility.

To discover someone else in this world describe it in precisely the way I reckon it had been a comfort. Today, with her passing, it feels like I am suffering a personal loss, and I grieve with those who, like me, have once been comforted.

When Friends are Silent

There are only a handful of hurts that would compare to that of a friend's silence. Martin Luther King was right: it is not the words of our enemies we remember but the silence of our friends. When a friend is being hurt in front of our eyes, no matter the reason, and we refuse to say anything, are we not saying that we are permitting the hurting to happen?  Whether he deserved it or not is beside the point; this is our friend to whom it is being done, and our silence shouts, Go ahead, this is okay with me. And to us, to whom the hurting was being done, there is little memory of the incident at all--it is the silence we remember. And every time we do, it is always like it had been the first time: the betrayal crashes like a wave against us, and it becomes painful to breathe.

God forbid I become the kind of person who denies her voice for a friend.

Growing up I have learned that all we get are chances, opportunities for offering ourselves to a task, to a difficult situation, to a grieving friend. I have been taught that to wait to be asked for help was to deny help; that to wait was to be arrogant. Doesn’t the Bible remind us that it is horrible: if you see that your neighbour needs help, do not wait for him to come to you; and when he does, do not tell him to come back the next day, for you will be responsible for the sorrow in his heart? I seem to have learned this too well, so much so that at the most inconvenient of times, I am unable to deny help even when it is I who badly need helping.

I know that eventually, the crisis will sort itself out, and when it does, it is I who will have been denied the opportunity to participate, to contribute, to help. One day, the crisis will be over, my friend’s heart will have healed, and I will not have been around for her.    

                But we do forgive, even despite ourselves. And it is during these moments when I am certain that we are made with a piece of the divine in our souls—moments when we have resolved with all our hearts that we will never forgive the people who fail us, and yet we do. Despite ourselves, we do.

I used to refuse any version of forgiveness that falls short of giving the Forgiven a perfect second chance. I don’t know if I believe this still, and I do not know whether this doubt is wisdom unperfected or the beginning of the corruption of a heart. Whatever it is, I have been learning lately that forgiving is a conscious decision that we commit to day after day after day, until we can look the other person in the eye and not look away anymore when we remember that his silence was not because we have pushed him away, like he says, but because he gave up too soon.   

            God forbid I become the friend who gives up too soon.

 

It is a tricky thing, forgiveness. It eases itself in with the acceptance of the other person’s limitations just as much as the acceptance of our own—our tendencies to assume falsely, to assume too much, and to assume too soon. About people, I’ve been learning one shouldn’t assume at all.

While we wrestle with the forgiving of a silent friend and more importantly, of ourselves, we tread around slowly, careful that we are neither pushing them away, nor letting them in once again. One day, we might have a change of heart, but right now we know we cannot let them in anymore. They will have to keep to the side lines this time, where they chose to stand when we needed them the most.

Yet, like a paradox, people whom we thought stood only in the side lines, become the ones who look out for us, and like an answered prayer, they become the ones who see us through. If only for them, I would want to be better, so I can one day get the divine chance to be the same to someone, as selflessly as these people have been to me.     

Disappointing Expectations, Expecting Disappointments

To pull our expectations down because of the belief that less expectations create less disappointments--that is to unfairly devalue our human tendencies.

It is not right to keep ourselves from trusting people enough to believe that they can deliver.

Sure, we hear stories.

But, until how long would we attribute somebody’s hurt to an irrational expectation? Up to how low do we allow ourselves to pull our expectations down? Wouldn’t that result to an irreversible degradation of our standards, of our value? We will be less disappointed, sure, but we also will have dragged our value down so low, the things we uphold--and even our own selves--would not be worth anything anymore. All for what? For keeping away a little disappointment?

What is so terrible about disappointment anyway?

Isn’t it proof, at least, that we believed there was an Ideal that can be had? That at some point, before we learned of infidelities and betrayals of trust, it was unthinkable that we could possibly be let down; that it was unthinkable that love will not suffice.

If disappointment is proof of that, then shouldn't disappointment be valued?

If it isn't, shouldn't it be valued still if it jolts us awake from the false reality we may foolishly be creating around us?

Disappointment keeps in check what we think our place is in each other’s lives; it keeps us aware of our own participation in the connections we struggle to create, every day. It is a blunt reminder that life nudges us with, every once in a while: “Look where you’re heading…” So, we look up and heed the disappointment, no matter the cost.

Believing that less expectations yield less disappointments is taking the passive, quieter route and I don’t think we should always choose to be less passionate, especially when it comes to nurturing relationships.

Shouldn’t we create room for expectation, our own, and the other person’s, even though we make ourselves vulnerable to disappointment? Shouldn’t we say, “I am your friend and your expectations of me validate my place in your life.”?

The absence of expectations should be depressing and frightening.  

It is not wise at all to believe that we should create less expectations. Rather, it is a shameful scapegoat we find convenient at the moment when we should be asking for more. Believing that having no expectation saves us from hurting, is a tempting nook we discover when we are inconvenienced by love, into which we curl like a coward and where we wait until it is safe to emerge, so that we can walk away and pretend we are unscathed. 

I say we raise the expectations, and if they must, let the disappointments come, because we cannot always yield to the fear of being hurt, and settle for less than we ourselves dare to give.  

Can, Cannot and Everything in Between

Tonight, after rereading conversations and messages, I re-realized, for I have forgotten horribly, that we are always more than we are at any single point in our lives. We are more than our lousiest mistake or our most brilliant achievement. Our anger is not who we are; neither is our hurt, our grief or our pride. To be reminded of these, I have to pay dearly, but if only to acquire this wisdom, which cannot be hurried, I will be grateful. 

Tonight I am thinking about the capacity of our human soul. I am thinking not along the categories of Can and Cannot, but of the infinite possibilities that may fall in between—

Our capacity to endure

To wait, to hope, to accept, to let go

To destroy, to hoard, to deceive

To regret, to grieve, to hurt

To forgive

To stop

To try again, to remember, to forget, to imagine, to create

To give, to fight, to dream, to celebrate

To love

            To be happy, to be whole, to Become

            To Be.