Sarah’s quartet

I went to Sarahs’ quartet concert last Friday night. I had spoken to her a couple of times about it beforehand but hadn’t made any big promises about coming. She indicated the program was daunting and implied they weren’t ready for performance.

None of that really registered to me. I go to her concerts when I can and don’t worry about what’s on the program. In my mind it’s not about what they are playing, I’m just supporting my daughter.

It’s not that I expect it to be terrible, just the opposite. I know Sarah has the highest standards and the people in her quartet are all quality players. (Actually I don’t know if it fair to refer to it as ‘her’ quartet. She plays first violin but I believe it is a cooperative venture.)

So the program was all about David Ryther’s transcription of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for string quartet. ‘The Sound and the Fury’ The first piece was a Debussy quartet that was nice but rather dark. I remember thinking that with the Stravinsky on the second half, it was already a pretty heavy program.

At intermission, David and Omid brought out some percussion stuff including a kick drum! Oddly, although I had heard the Rite of Spring a couple of times live and had at least one recording of it, I didn’t feel like I had familiarity with it.

In fact, it was like hearing it for the first time. And in the back of my head, I must have retained the feeling I got from Sarah that they were not completely secure with it. The combination had me on the edge of my seat and they ripped it up. Just grabbed it by the throat and ran with it. It was awesome! Omid on the kick drum! David on the tam tam!

For all that, my main reaction was not to the music per se. I kept thinking about how all the people in the quartet were friends with Zach. My feeling of pride in Sarah got all tied up with that and I choked up a couple of times. It wasn’t until afterwards when I saw Lynn Oakley that I really lost it. Lynn was Sarah’s first teacher back when Sarah was 4 years old. She taught Zach too, for many years.

Not many know, outside the Villa circle, that Zach was a really good violinist. He started, like Sarah, at a very young age. He played with Villa Sinfonia many times and went on at least one tour with them. I believe he had perfect pitch. I also believe that the violin came to symbolize his mother and he refused to play any more after he was about 14. I always hoped he would come back to it later in life.

Afterward the concert I held Sarah and said, somewhat hopefully, into her ear. ‘Didn’t I cry at your concerts before?’ She said, ‘Not as much.’

the guy downstairs

Ah, apartment living! No lawn to mow, no leaks to fix. Just jerks downstairs that bash and crash in the kitchen then turn their TV up loud in the middle of the night.

Rather than get in an altercation that could result in ugliness, my usual M. O. is to turn over and remain calm so I can get back to sleep. Tonight was worse than usual so now I’m up with my blog after I wrote the landlady an email about it. Three hours from now I have to be leaving for work. I’m going to try again to get to sleep.

Clark

Zach’s middle name is Clark. It’s the name of his maternal grandfather, Clark Ewing.

Clark Ewing ran a YMCA camp in Jackson, Michigan for many years. Actually, it is at Stony Lake near Napoleon. Both Jeremy and Zach spent almost every summer there as youths but more importantly, they were counselors there as teenagers. Clark’s influence spread throughout the whole world of YMCA camping so there are many people who were improved by him but for Zach he was Grandpa Clark too. He learned at the feet of the master.

I’m told that when the news of Zach’s death was given to Clark, he was silent for about a minute then he said, “Zach is gone and what he would have accomplished will not happen so the rest of us need to pick up the slack for Zach.”

I’ve been thinking of Clark today because next week is his 90th birthday and I wrote him a card. There’ll be a party amongst the Ewings and others in Michigan. I can’t be there so I thought it would be nice to give him a shout out in this space as well.

Happy Birthday Clark! You are a giant among men.

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Zach speaks

Three posts in one day, wow! Well this isn’t really me, except for this intro. Jeremy called this afternoon and we had a nice Skype session. Rosalie was in high spirits, twirling around half undressed after a chocolate treat. At one point he mentioned the pictures in my first post of today and expanded on the North Carolina story. It struck me that the date was within the time frame of Zach’s diaries. After we finished our conversation, I looked up the September 2012 file and found this description of their holiday:

September 16, peaceful detachment

Yes, it has been a little while since I’ve been here but this time, I have a decent reason.  Last weekend, I took my vacation to visit Jeremy, and it feels very very long ago.  But I’m going to recap as best I can:
Thursday I got up very early and drove to the ATL.  The only real highlight of the trip was taking the wrong exit and going through NOLA instead of bypassing the city.  When I got there Thurs Jeremy and I played catch out front, watched TV, and then went up to Ted’s where he works and had extreme milkshakes.  Basically, we just sat at the bar and discussed different milkshakes and booze combinations and then asked the bartender to blend them for us.  They were fantastic and although I don’t think the booze added much, it was still pretty damn good.  I would make the argument that they tasted so good because of the heavy cream included, LOL.
Friday, we got up and drove up about an hour and a half towards the South Carolina/GA border and rafted Section IV of the Chattooga; the river had been running pretty low and it was billed to have some class V rapids along with a lot of III and IV rapids.  It was pretty damn fun, although the lack of water made it so that it wasn’t as heart pounding pulse thumping as it could have been.  Jeremy made a good point that enjoyed big water more than technical rapids and I have to agree with him.  But, with that in mind, it was a banner day: brilliant weather, water that felt good, hardly any actual paddling, and it was just me and him and couple guides in the boat so the conversation was much better than it would have been if we had any gringos.  So that was nice.  After rafting, we got back on the road for Greenville, with plans to meet Greg for dinner and to crash at his place.  As we were driving, we realized we had some time to kill and we were driving right through Clemson, so we stopped for a little while and checked out the campus.  It was gorgeous; a small town pretty much with nothing else except the university going on and it just felt peaceful, even with the buzz of a football game that was scheduled for the next day.  I immediately loved it.  After Clemson, we got into Greenville, met Greg, went out to Thai food and then pretty much passed out.
We got up the next morning (Saturday) with plans to meet Kevin Lausch and go to camp and Brevard.  We ate at the Golden Corral breakfast buffet (heavy) and then drove up to Kevin’s camp, which is outside Traveler’s Rest.  It was fantastic to see him and randomly Turbo was there as well, so it was a mini-camp reunion.  Randomly, Katie Sidman texted me the night before, which was the first time we had talked in probably 2-3 years.  After chatting with Kevin for a bit, we hugged him goodbye and went up to camp, where we spent a little while at Pretty Place paying our respects.  When we were there, it was overcast so the views weren’t exactly tremendous but it was still a powerful experience to revisit a place that is so deeply entrenched in my heart.  After Pretty Place, we drove down into Brevard and had lunch at Pescados, which Jeremy loves but I find pretty average.  After Pescados, we drove out into Pisgah to Big East fork, where, for the first time in over five years, we hiked the same trail that I took campers backpacking on during that magical summer.  We did the same exact route too and got up onto Shining Rock Ledge where the views are enormous and powerful.  The mountain forest is as beautiful as ever.  It was an intense hike when it was all said and done: about 7 miles and around 3,000 feet in elevation gain; I was sore.  After Pisgah, we were trying to connect with Kelley Clifford and we didn’t really have any definite plans.  We elected to go back into Brevard (rather than go towards Asheville) and made the decisions to buffet at Twin Dragons, since we were both ravenous after the hike.  At this point, our day had pretty much gone according to plan and I was quite pleased.  Then, Kelley decided to meet us in Brevard and got us an in to sleep at the Dill’s in Hendersonville, which was a huge upgrade over our plans to camp somewhere on the side of the road.  So we crushed some Twin Dragons (as epic as ever) and then met Kelley at Dollies (a slightly overrated ice cream place but still deep in my heart) and then went out to the Dill’s, where Kelley also was staying.  At the Dill’s we stayed up late and drank good IPA’s that Jeremy had brought and had big conversations with Mike Dill and Kelley.  I was exhausted and looking forward to the big bed they had prepared but we still stayed up late and loved the conversation.  As I write this now, I recall something else: when talking with Mike and Kelley: a feeling of kinship.  I found myself saying the words: what we all do professionally, thus implying that we have similar missions.  And we do!  We are in the business of making people’s lives better.  It was a cool moment and it made me realize the inter-connectedness of my camp connections and my rec sports connections.
Saturday was heavy and Sunday we got up, Kelley cooked us breakfast, and then we were on our way to Gorges State Park and Turtleback falls.  We found it with a little difficulty, hiked the 1.5 miles down to the falls, and then spent a little while sunning ourselves on the rocks before taking some time to do the water slide over the falls.  I hadn’t been there in over 4 years, when Jeremy and Ashley and I had all met there for a 4th of July weekend (that was transcendent in its own right.  Also was the last time I had seen Kelley).  Anyways, the sun was out, we were the ONLY ones there and it felt very special, as though were an exalted being for enjoying the majesty of those hidden waterfalls.  After doing the slide 5 or 6 times, we hiked back out and got back to the car, where we then drove back to Atlanta.  At this point, Jeremy and I were doggone tired but we had planned another Epic Mealtime fest for that evening, involving Tequila and mexican food.  The problem, however, was that it didn’t flow as nicely as it did when we did it at xmas and Jeremy invited a bunch of really annoying work friends over and they pretty quickly put me out…so after he and I cooked, I basically hid away from the party and chatted with Ashley, who was also pretty annoyed.  So it didn’t exactly go as epically as the first time but was still pretty damn fun, overall.  It helped that the giants were on TV that night and beat the dodgers, so my mood was improved.  I slept in the next morning and then left ATL around 930 and drove back to BR, where reality awaited.
It was an intense 4 days, which is how I like it.  Although taking vacations like that don’t exactly make you rested, it was crammed full of good memories and happiness and we didn’t waste much time sleeping.  My axiom of the short but crammed vacation still proves true.
One thing about this trip, perhaps above all else: the beauty of that region is still amazing.  Although Jeremy is a big proponent of the West, where everything is bigger and more savage and in many cases, just as beautiful, there is something so magical to me about the forests and the waterfalls and the feeling that I’m in the middle of the jungle.  And the air!  The cold crisp mountain air, even at the beginning of September, just felt right.

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Jeremy and Zach

Writing the last post started me thinking more about Jeremy and Zach together. I was originally thinking about the photo from Michigan along with the North Carolina one. I was a little surprised to find that it dated from 2002 because I the process got me thinking about our trip to London in 2000.

Neither boy was very happy about being in London where we spent way too much time going to museums. They were troopers, though, and didn’t complain much. They took solace in each other, I think. My enduring memory is of the two of them walking down the street ramming shoulders into each other. I don’t have any pictures of that but I do have this one:

2

At the end of the two weeks in London, Jeremy got on a plane for Michigan and his senior year in high school while the rest of us went back to California.

a special bond

While looking for the picture of Rosalie on my phone yesterday, I came across this one. It had no title or other indication of when and where it was taken. I emailed Jeremy and he filled me in.

He said: ‘Picture was taken in the Shining Rock Wilderness in NC. Zach and I went up to the mountains to go rafting, visit Greg McKee and some of our haunts in the Brevard area. September 2012.’

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I sense some pain in Jeremy’s response. He and Zach had a special bond as brothers. Now there is a special kind of pain to think about times past with Zach. While they did all the usual things brothers do growing up, I don’t think I really recognized the special bond they had until I saw this picture, taken on the shore of Stony Lake in 2002:

jeremy-zach.

Jeremy was almost 19 and Zach was 13. It was the first indication to me of the adult relationship they had developed. As with the North Carolina picture, they are relaxed and happy to be in each others presence.

It’s kind of not my place to represent the relationship between Jeremy and Zach so I will stop here. I just wanted to share these pictures.

priceless

Last Monday was Labor Day and as I was in Alameda for a haircut I stopped into the Labor Day picnic there afterwards. The Rosie the Riveter Museum had a table there with stuff to buy. I remembered hearing that Rosalie had gone there in July. I hadn’t heard or seen about any souvenirs so I bought a small ‘We Can Do It!’ shopping bag and a refrigerator magnet and sent them to Rosalie.

Also in the back of my mind was a comment that Ashley had posted on FB to the effect that Rosalie noticed there were no women in the pharmacy and wondered why.

It all became priceless when she sent me this picture:

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thoughts

Thoughts. Running through my brain all the time. Much of the time nowadays they are in the form of posts on this blog but in truth they aren’t much different from the kind of thoughts I’ve had for years.

My visit with Mom & Dad last Sunday. Labor Day in Alameda. Crappy drivers. Weird goings on at the Symphony. How I’m thinking these days about Zach. What I’m thinking these days about Jeremy and Sarah. Rosalie. Teresa wrote me a long response to my last post and I haven’t been able to digest it yet. Jane responded here. I want to respond to both of those. There’s more . . .

Any one of these could be an interesting post. Right at the moment I still have laundry running so I’m distracted. I decided I would just dash off this quick one and hope I can do a better one later. I have to work tonight so that deadline is looming. Unlike blog posts or exercise, that can’t be put off.

loss

My sister wrote me an email today with a quote in it from a book she’s been reading. She said it made her think of me ‘and others close to me that have lost loved ones’.

She stood quite still. Late people do not altogether leave us, she thought; they are still with us in memories such as that, wherever we are, no matter what time of day it was or how we were feeling, they were there, still shining the light of their love upon us.

     — Alexander McCall Smith  in The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine

 

I believe my sister is without guile. She loves me and I love her unconditionally. So it troubled me that this quote does not move me. It has troubled me that most of my family does not seem to be affected by the death of Zach. This of course is grossly unfair. They did not see me weeping, as I did a few minutes ago, alone in my apartment. How do I know they do not grieve similarly? And what right do I have to determine how they, or anyone else, grieves Zach?

Well I wanted to write a response that is respectful of her feelings yet also representative of mine so I thought of the Ursula LeGuin book The Lathe of Heaven. It has quotes at the beginning of each chapter that have to do with time and permanence. Actually it was this book that began my interest in Chinese philosophy, in particular the writing of Chuang Tzu.

Sadly, no quotes seemed appropriate for my goal. Thumbing through the book, however, I remembered the story of the man who dreamed changes in the world. He has a wife he loves but loses her in the dream changes. At the end he finds her again and when I read that I started crying.

It’s a book I’ve kept in my library for years through many winnowings, partly through sentiment because of the introduction it provided to what is now my core philosophy. It’s a good book, not a great one. Arguably it’s a sentimental ending.

So why cry over the ending? It made me think of the last time I cried like that. A couple of weeks ago, the promo track for the Broadway show ‘Jersey Boys’ came up on my MP3 player in the car. It has snippets of the hits from the ’60s by the Four Seasons. Good, not great, I suppose, would apply as well. But there I was, driving on the freeway, crying my eyes out.

Zach had no connection that I know about to either the book or the tunes. I wasn’t thinking of Zach before I started crying. Thus the mystery of grief.

To go back to Teresa’s quote, I do not have any feelings of Zach watching over me. Indeed, one of the confusing things about the last couple of months has been a lack of feeling of Zach as presence. I’ve set aside his phone and ipad and given up on converting his texts. With one exception I haven’t read in his journals for quite a while now. I suppose you could call my arrangement on my dresser a kind of a shrine. (See the post ‘reaction’ at http://thezachproject.us/index.php/2016/07/20/reaction/ for a picture.) I do look at that every day and sometimes I just can’t connect to the idea of Zach as a living person. It puzzles me and perhaps that is contributing to my depressed state.

Here is a bit of Chuang Tzu via Thomas Merton’s ‘The Way of Chuang Tzu’:

“The Master came at the right time
Into the world. When his time was up,
He left it again.
He who awaits his time, who submits
When his work is done,
In his life there is no room
For sorrow and rejoicing.
Here is how the ancients said all this
In four words:
‘God cuts the thread.’

“We have seen a fire of sticks
Burn out. The fire now
Burns in some other place. Where?
Who knows? These brands are burnt out.”

feelings

I think originally this was going to be a post about being depressed. When I described how I felt to my therapist after the weekend in July that’s what she said it was. That led to some good conversation but minimal improvement until this week.

Actually it was a couple of weeks ago that I started to improve. I got a guitar lesson and did better with my exercises (PT). I look at my posts over the time before that and I see ‘reaction’, ‘more reaction’, ‘killed’, ‘reality’, ‘legacy’, ‘work’ – pretty bleak.

And that’s just what I actually wrote. It’s a lot less than I wanted to write and it’s not as bleak as what I was thinking.

Anyway, last week I took my guitar to the Fall Semester’s first meeting of the Skyline Jazz Band. There were many familiar faces and they were all glad to see me. That felt good. I was able to follow the charts reasonably well so I decided I would try to stick with it.

Now tonight is the first night I have at home this week and I had great plans but I happened to look at my work email and discovered some things that could not be ignored. Aargh! Now I’m all pissy again.

I whined and got tomorrow off so hopefully I can recover. I have work Friday and Saturday days only then two days off. Next week is the Gala opening for the Symphony so there is much chaos at Davies Symphony Hall.

I’ll try to post something more coherent tomorrow.

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