Thinking Through Winter

I have a strong affection for winter, for its short days and low sun. I do not like the Central California summer, which is relentless.

During the week this time of year, I am at the office well before sunrise. The building is quiet, and if the lights are still on from the day before, I switch off all that I can before sitting in my cubicle.

A couple of weeks ago I spent two nights in a tent in Yosemite Valley's Camp 4. I set my tent on the snow, rigged up a warm mattress constructed of an old sleeping bag and a leaky Thermarest. For a couple of days I hiked around the Valley and enjoyed fresh air, tired legs, and the post-Christmas respite from all things ordinary. I got to see a wild bobcat for the first time, as well as a healthy coyote and several deer. The last time I was in Yosemite was in September, when I sometimes enjoyed a strenuous backpacking trip that, a few days in, found me unable to either eat or sleep enough to maintain a normal level of energy.

The day before yesterday I drove up to the mountains and spent several hours of skiing in the backcountry. I encountered nobody, and I had the trees to myself. At several points I stopped to enjoy the falling snow. 

For about the last month I have had my evenings and weekends to do pretty much as I please: no classes to teach or take, no students to call, no papers to grade. In a couple of weeks I once again start teaching: two nights a week, two hours a night. I am trying to gird my mental self for the increased activity, but the thought of 30 students staring up from their seats causes me no small amount of anxiety.

I will also be taking a guitar class, basically the same course I took last semester but am allowed to repeat at least a few times. I am not a good guitar player, nor will I ever be. But I am better than I once was, and being a student again will help me (I hope) be a better teacher. Many of my students are afraid of writing, really, just as I am afraid of playing my guitar in class. I am hopeful that I am developing a bit of empathy for those who truly do fear having to write. For one Christmas when I was a kid, I asked for a guitar, and what showed up on Christmas morning was a cheap plastic thing that I treasured. Mike, an older neighbor who would end up having quite the dark side, once offered to sell me his electric guitar for $100. I balked, one of many decisions that I have regretted. If I'd started playing then, even with this fat, meaty hands I'd be a much better player than I am.

For Christmas this year I asked for and received a box of Blackwing 602 pencils and a new Rhodia notebook, requests that befuddled more than one person. With these pencils and in this notebook I have begun writing the newest tome (mentioned in in a not-so-old blog post), an exercise in futility and creativity that I'm hopeful to make habitual.

I have told my students for many years that they, too, must practice their writing, that it will get easier and they will get better if they just stick with it, no matter how fat and meaty their hands are.

Thanks, Dave

In a part of town that allowed for such a thing, I dropped into first one music store and then another, letting my fingers and hands fondle and caress the smooth wood of new guitars. In the second store, which I have come to consider a playground of sorts, I once again strummed and picked at musical instruments far beyond my ability as a musician.

I am proud, however, that the weekly guitar lessons and the hours of practicing have left the fingertips on my left hand calloused. Now, if I could just get my stiff and perhaps arthritic left wrist flexible again, I would be even more proud.

The "good" acoustic guitars at his store are housed, like good wine, in a climate-controlled room. In that room I have become enamored of the figure and feel of a particular Martin guitar. On this day as I touched this instrument and that, a man obviously (but not much) younger than myself came into the room carrying his own guitar. Dressed nicely and with a bandanna wrapped around his head, and with a hat (not a cap) fitted over both head and bandanna, he sat on one of the chairs and strummed his guitar. Just as I started out the door, he spoke. Of course he did.

"Do you play?" he asked.

"I'm learning," I said.

"Here. Why don't you take my four-thousand-dollar guitar that I got in Ireland, and play for me so I can hear what it sounds like compared to some of these other guitars."

Because to refuse would have been rude, I sat across from him, held his guitar, and played some stuff--because "stuff" is all I know how to play. I still have yet to memorize an entire song, which is my goal for this year. Oh, that guitar was nice! We talked about its construction--how the neck was built just one-sixteenth of an inch wider than most guitars. In fact, to prove as much, he pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and measured the neck on one of the Martins.

"Play the low strings hard," he said, so I did. He picked up a few guitars and kind of plucked at them, but he didn't really seem interested in comparing the sound of his guitar to anything at all.

I told him that I am too old to learn how to play well, and he said that, in his experience, he rarely sees adults over the age of 35 actually stick with the guitar after picking it up. "I use guitars in the mental health field," he said. And he told me that he uses music to help his patients get up on the stage and play music, recite poetry, act.

"It's music therapy," I said, and he said that, yes, that's exactly what it is.

"I've been in the mental health field for a long time," he said. "First as a patient. For a long time. The first thing I do with my students is ask them two things: If they have their own guitar, and are they willing to practice. What's your name?"

I told him my name, and he told me his: Dave. We shook hands.

So, once again in my life, I wondered why someone was sharing something like this with me. If I were to, say, go into or come out of therapy (and don't think I don't need it), the last thing I would do is admit it to a complete stranger. Maybe he's the stronger man because of it.

"Do you come here a lot?" I asked.

"Often," he said. "I just broke up with my girlfriend, the fifth time in a year, and there's a lot of shit happening right now."

"This is your therapy, then," I said.

"It definitely is! I want to get back with her, but she's got a lot of baggage."

We talked a bit more about guitars: the different sounds each brand has, which wood is used, the quality of tone between old strings and new. Then, it was time for me to leave. We shook hands again; we said goodbye. I wandered around the rest of the store for awhile before heading out into the rain and the drive home. And later, holding my entry level guitar in my lap, I missed Dave's guitar. I even missed Dave, and I thought to how he'd mentioned his "students"--and whether I should've asked him if he gives lessons. I should've asked.