Despite her busyness, in the summer she makes sunlight tea.
Tea the slow way.
In a clear gallon jar filled with cold water, she hangs small bags of tea and spices. Early in the morning, just before she leaves for work, the jar is placed out on the deck on a white metal table. Leaving the sun to make tea.
When she returns in the late afternoon, she pours out a glass of sunlight tea, adds ice, a lemon wedge, and mint from her garden. She sits down in a chair in the shade of an umbrella to enjoy summer in a glass.
We’ve never talked about this.
Sometimes I am home during the day in summer, working out on my deck. I keep an eye on her tea project. I note the color change from light yellow to deep amber. I think about all the energy being poured into the liquid. I think about the acknowledgment of time and energy. It calms me, slows me down, diminishes the haste of my life.
I confess that on more than one occasion I have gone over and helped myself to a glass, carefully topping off the jar with fresh water. Once I left dandelion flowers in the tea, but she never said a word. Some very fine parts of friendship don’t have to be discussed.
Recently, I tried making moonlight tea.
It worked!
Now I’m thinking about winter starlight tea and tea from an eclipse.
The light from a meteor shower or a comet ought to make a great brew.
My wife says I get carried away by these things.
Exactly.
It’s funny the tricks the mind plays. The longer I have mine, the less I understand how it works. Driving home from the office one night in June, I began humming the “Ode to Joy” theme from the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. What triggers these sudden musical interludes?
I was also surprised that I didn’t start thinking about my conducting experience in Minneapolis. What did come to mind was what happened the next week. It’s a kind of coda—a separate passage that brings a larger composition to a close.
Even though the orchestra was not going to repeat the Ninth after the World Theater performances, I was so reluctant to part company with its members that I went along on a bus tour with them the next week. They were to combine a performance with a teaching session in a town way out on the flat western prairie of Minnesota.
We arrived in Marshall, Minnesota, on a cold afternoon in February, with light snow falling. The session was held in a junior high school orchestra room. If you closed your eyes and relied on your nose and ears, you would know you were in a junior high school. The slightly rancid smell of sweaty puberty and the sound of voices in transition from soprano to alto would give you the clues, and one glance at the string section alone would confirm where you were. Skinny little boys coping with cellos that outweighed them, and tall, gangly girl violinists adjusting hairdos during rests in the music.
The professional musicians sat side by side with the students in each section of the orchestra. Together they played a simple piece of music the students had been working on for weeks. As the snow and wind blew outside the window, an unbelievably poignant sound filled the room. Combining the true notes of those who devote their lives to making beautiful music with the wavering, dissonant notes made by those who were nervous almost beyond bearing to be sitting beside someone who could really play and would notice their inadequacy.
The students need not have worried. The professionals had been there in the beginner chairs themselves. They knew—they remembered. Now, they could help.
The joy of being an accomplished musician and playing in a professional orchestra is not found only during black-tie nights on the concert stage. Their patient, hand-holding persistence carried the students on when they faltered. The music rose and fell in waves of success and failure. Whatever the music lacked, it was played from the heart.
That night at the performance hall, I didn’t have any responsibilities. So I spent backstage time being part music student and part orchestra chaplain—asking about instruments and listening to people talk. When it was time to go onstage, it seemed natural to me to go along. I just picked up a chair and walked out with them, sitting in the symphony without an instrument while they played. I had finally become what I most wanted to be—part of the orchestra. I played me.
On the long way back home in the bus, we sang and drank far too much beer, and they told orchestra jokes. We confessed all that had gone before our coming together to do the Ninth—the fear, the confusion, and the embarrassment. We toasted the dreams of those who reach for a piece of the glory—Beethoven, the junior high students of Marshall, Minnesota, and all of us, as well.
I told them my cup runneth over. I asked them please not to forget me, as I would not forget them. I asked them to keep me and my kind of mind when they played. And to never forget that music is much too important to be left entirely in the hands of professionals.
If you ever could attend a performance of the Minneapolis Chamber Symphony when it plays out in the small towns of rural Minnesota, you might notice an empty chair just to the right of the double bass player and just behind the violas. The orchestra voted to put it there permanently. The chair is for those who always wanted to be part of the symphony—not just as listeners, but among those upon whom the making of music depends. It is the chair in honor of all those who, however competently, embrace the impossible. Sit in that chair someday.
Here I was in Atlantic City. At Mr. Trump’s Taj Mahal. Largest gambling casino in the world. Please understand I came to speak to a convention, not to gamble. Being a rational man, it is clear to me that gambling is ultimately a losing proposition—my interest is one of intellectual curiosity—about the sociological, anthropological, and economic dimensions of risk strategy and its consequences.
Do you believe that? Don’t.
While I am walking around the casino floor—just looking around—the Devil is talking in my ear: “Take a chance—could be your lucky day—somebody wins, why not you?”
Right. Why not me? I’ve had conversations with the Devil on this subject before. Usually at racetracks. And it’s always the same. Some fools win—why not me? I’d sure as hell like to know why not me.
The Devil continues. “Come on—just drop one dollar, one lousy dollar, in this machine right here—the one dollar they gave you compliments of the house—what can you lose?”
OK. One dollar.
Chinkety, chinkety, chinkety, chink. KAFOOM! Flashing lights, bells, sirens, and $264 is mine. And I am in league with the Devil again.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, like winning. Nothing like feeling lucky. Yes!
The roaming cashier rushes up to pay me, shouting “HERE’S A WINNER!”
And the people playing slot machines all around me flash envious smiles.
It’s my lucky day.
Just then a man walks up to me and says he’s a gambler—a craps shooter—and he thinks luck rubs off on people, and he’s seen me hit the jackpot on this machine, and would I come over and just stand by him while he shoots craps, and if I do and he wins, he’ll give me 10 percent of his take, and if he loses, it’s no hard feelings, all right—all I have to do is to blow on his hand when he’s holding the dice just before he throws, OK?
Of course it’s OK. He’s talking to Mr. Lucky now.
So he shakes ’em. I blows on ’em. He throws ’em, screaming “COME ON, BABY! COME ON, BABY!”
And BAM! He hits.
Shake, blow, throw, and BAM!—shake, blow, throw, and BAM!—he hits and hits. Nine, count ’em, nine, straight times he gets his point.
By now a crowd has collected, betting on this guy’s unbearably sweet luck, making side bets, yelling, whooping, screaming “COME ON, BABY!” because this guy never takes his winnings off the table—everything rides—and he’s beating the odds to pieces. Sic ’em, dawg!
Tall blond lady next to me is rhythmically chanting softly to herself, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.”
What exquisite madness it is to be around this kind of success—this
defiance of the laws of luck. It can’t be done, and this guy is doing it. Out on the high wire of fate, thumbing his nose at the groundsuck of gambling gravity. “COME ON, BABY!
The guy pauses. “Nine is my lucky number,” he says. And scooping up his chips, filling his pockets, he bows to the croupier and walks off a winner—to the cheers and applause of the limply ecstatic crowd. Whooha, in spades! What a guy!
What holds this story fast in my mind is not the excitement or the luck or all the money or the fact that he won. If he’d lost, he would have laughed it off.
I privately believe that any fool can be a good loser.
But that he quit when he was that far ahead—that I’ll never forget.
To be a winner is great. To be a great winner—that’s strong work.
Money talks, but it doesn’t sing—luck does.
And only a few who dance with Lady Luck have all the moves.
P.S. Yes, he did give me my 10 percent. He did have all the moves.
Within my secret life, there are touchstones. Ideas, phrases, facts, and notions I refer to time and time again—as often as I would consult a map when traveling. Among these treasures is a story from the world of chess.
I’m told that during an international competition many years ago, a man named Frank Marshall made what is often called the most beautiful move ever made on a chessboard. In a crucial game in which he was evenly matched with a Russian master player, Marshall found his queen under serious attack. There were several avenues of escape, and since the queen is the most important offensive player, the spectators assumed Marshall would observe convention and move his queen to safety.
Deep in thought, Marshall used all the time available to him to consider the board conditions. He picked up his queen—paused—and placed it down on the most illogical square of all—a square from which the queen could be captured by any one of three hostile pieces.
Marshall had sacrificed his queen—an unthinkable move, to be made only in the most desperate of circumstances.
The spectators and Marshall’s opponent were dismayed.
Then the Russian and the crowd realized that Marshall had actually made a brilliant move. It was clear that no matter how the queen was taken, his opponent would soon be in a losing position. Seeing the inevitable defeat, the Russian conceded the game.
When the spectators recovered from the shock of Marshall’s daring, they showered the chessboard with money. Marshall had achieved victory in a rare and daring fashion—he had won by sacrificing his queen.
To me it’s not important that he won.
Not even important that he actually made the queen-sacrifice move.
What counts is that Marshall had suspended standard thinking long enough even to entertain the possibility of such a move.
Marshall had looked outside the traditional and orthodox patterns of play and had been willing to consider an imaginative risk on the basis of his judgment and his judgment alone. No matter how the game ended, Marshall was the ultimate winner.
I’ve told that story countless times.
And on the checklist of operating instructions for my life, this phrase appears:
“Time to sacrifice the queen?”
It turns up in unexpected situations.
Now hold that thought while I pull out a childhood reference from my touchstone collection. Remember Tinkertoys? Interconnecting wooden parts—spools and rods—that came in tall canisters. Still do, but the parts are all plastic now.
When I taught art, I used Tinkertoys in a test at the beginning of a term. I wanted to know something about the creative instincts of my students. On a Monday, I would put out a small set of Tinkertoys in front of each student. And give a deliberately brief and ambiguous assignment: “Make something out of the Tinkertoys—you have forty-five minutes today and forty-five minutes each day for the rest of the week.”
A few students were derailed at first. They were hesitant to plunge in. The task seemed frivolous. They wanted to know more about what I wanted and waited to see what the rest of the class would do.
Several others checked the instructions in the can and made something according to one of the sample model plans provided.
Another group built something out of their own imaginations or worked at finding how high or how long a construction they could devise.
Almost always at least one student would break free of the constraints of the set and incorporate pencils, paper clips, string, notebook paper, and any other object lying around the art studio—sometimes even leaving the class for a time to gather up soda straws from the cafeteria or small dry branches and sticks from the schoolyard. And once I had a student who worked experimentally with Tinkertoys whenever he had free time. His constructions filled a storeroom in the art studio and a good part of his basement at home.
I rejoiced at the presence of such a student.
Here was an exceptionally creative mind at work.
He had something to teach me.
His presence meant that I had an unexpected teaching assistant in class whose creativity would infect other students. I thought of him and other such students as “queen sacrificers.” They had “Q-S.”
This “Q-S” trait applies to almost any situation—even trivial ones. I came across one such student who had volunteered in the school alumni office to help with the mailing of a fund-raising appeal to major donors. His job was to place stamps on the envelopes. In true form, he was not licking the stamps and pasting them to the envelopes. He was licking the envelopes at just the right spot, then sticking a stamp on that spot. Pounding the stamp once with his fist, he moved on.
He explained that the adhesive on the stamps tasted awful. The envelopes, on the other hand, had an interesting cinnamon taste. And besides, the stamps stuck better this way.
Affirming this kind of thinking had a downside.
I ran the risk of losing those students who had a different style of thinking.
Without fail one would declare, “But I’m just not creative.”
“Do you dream at night when you’re asleep?”
“Oh, sure.”
“So tell me one of your most interesting dreams.”
Invariably the student would spin out something wildly imaginative.
Flying or on another planet or in a time machine or growing three heads.
“That’s pretty creative. Who does that for you?”
“Nobody. I do it.”
“Really—at night, when you’re asleep?”
“Sure.”
“Try doing it in the daytime, in class, OK?”
One more touchstone now and this puzzle will fit together.
On a hot summer’s day, late in August, I sought shade and a cool drink under the canvas awning of a waterfront café in the old harbor of the town of Chania, on the Greek island of Crete. More than 100 degrees in still air. Crowded. Tempers of both the tourists and waiters had risen to meet the circumstances, creating a tensely quarrelsome environment.
At the table next to mine sat an attractive young couple. Well dressed in summer fashions of rumpled linen and fine leather sandals. The man: stocky, olive-complexioned, black hair, and mustache. The woman: lanky, fair, blond. Waiting for service, they held hands, whispered affections, kissed, giggled, and laughed.
Suddenly, they stood, picked up their metal table, and, carrying it with them, stepped together off the edge of the quay to place the table in the shallow water of the harbor. The man waded back for the two chairs. He gallantly seated his lady in the waist-high water and sat down himself.
The onlookers laughed, applauded, and cheered.
A sour-faced waiter appeared. He paused for the briefest moment. Raised his eyebrows. Picked up a tablecloth, napkins, and silverware. Waded into the water to set the table and take their order. Waded back ashore to the ongoing cheers and applause of the rest of his customers. Minutes later he returned with a tray carrying a bucket of iced champagne and two glasses. Without pausing, he waded once
more into the water to serve the champagne. The couple toasted each other, the waiter, and the crowd. And the crowd replied by cheering and throwing flowers from the table decorations.
Three other tables joined in to have lunch in the sea.
The atmosphere shifted from frustration to festival.
One does not wade into the water in one’s best summer outfit. Why not?
Customers are not served in the sea. Why not?
Sometimes one should consider crossing the line of convention.
One need not be in a classroom or playing chess.
Whenever life becomes Tinkertoys, the queen may be sacrificed.
A friend from Algeria will not eat pork. He grew up in an Islamic culture where pork was considered unclean. Though he has lived in the United States for several years, and though he no longer practices the religion of his childhood, he still does not eat pork in any form. In part of his mind, he knows about the history of food taboos, and he knows that millions of people eat pork all the time with no harmful effects. Still, for him, for reasons he cannot articulate, pork is unclean.
To give me some perspective on how he feels, he sent me a newspaper article stating that “200,000 Taiwanese are drinking their own urine daily. Their purpose is to cure disease, improve health, and achieve longevity.”
The story concerned a man named Chen Ching Chuan, who was applying for a new identity card in Taiwan a couple of years ago. The police thought he was lying to them because he looked about thirty-five or forty years old, though he was actually sixty-four. When he attributed his youthful appearance to the fact that he had been drinking his own urine, the story was picked up by the reporter covering the police station and became international news. Upon investigation, reporters found that Mr. Chen Ching Chuan does indeed drink three cups of his own urine every day. Moreover, he says that morning urine is best.
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