All photos are by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, the walking ones on June 29 and July 1, and the ones on Alvord Lake on July 3
Upon a night this week I saw one whom I had deeply loved once in a dream ... as charming and kind of manner to me as he had ever been, and as handsome though much aged since I had seen him last ... all the old feeling of pain had flowed away, and as we walked and talked I saw at last the burden he had been carrying in detail that had prevented him from being able to love me as I needed.
Still later in the dream, he overtook me at a future event that I am exploring putting together also in Golden Gate Park with some mutual musician friends of ours. He, for the moment unburdened, joined us in blessing the people with music ... but, at a certain point he had to leave, and gently closed his hands over mine as if to say he was leaving all the blessings we once had done together in my hands. Thus in the brightness of love's course then completed, he disappeared.
To be able to look back with nothing but love ... that is above the goal I had for my life when my sister took a liking to the band Oasis ... yet "Don't Look Back in Anger" is a good goal for someone with a fiery temper, in a summertime in bloom, long ago:
This song also grew with the years ... from the story of a woman named Sally who looked back on her life and decided to release anger about it all the way to the hymn of defiance in a city attacked by terrorists and refusing to stoop to that level in 2022... it is certainly a song worthy of its own biography!
But what struck me about that most famous line -- "Don't look back in anger, I heard you say" -- is Who I heard say it first. Oasis is by no means a Christian band, but that last line was an ECHO. "In your anger, SIN NOT" and "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath" -- came back to mind, along with "But I say to you: love your enemies, and do good to those who wrongly use you," balanced by "Vengeance is Mine; I WILL REPAY." With that I had also already grasped three other pieces of practical wisdom:
- Let go and let God (general wisdom)
- Watch, fight, and pray (general African American elder wisdom that tells you where the strategy and power lie, two-thirds of the time)
- Don't look back: you will find and create what you need in front of you (my beloved piano teacher, Linda Anne Kotcher)
I could not clearly think all that out in my teens, but I started walking anyway ...
... and eventually I would meet Schumann who explained why there was no reason to complain ... once you understand the weakness of human nature and how inwardly everyone has to deal with what gnaws at their hearts, you can see, even broken-hearted, how to grant grace to others and go on without bitterness (and the eye candy with the vocal beauty from Jonas Kaufmann doesn't hurt either) ...
... but past what one is NOT to do, one needs to know what to do, for the unconscious mind will not be dictated to in terms of looking back. But that left Brahms with an exact quotation to provide me as an echo... for one walks forward in faith and hope, but love, the greatest of those three, shines both ways.
Aber die Liebe ist die Grösseste unter ihnen; die Liebe ist die Grösseste unter ihnen.
[But] the greatest of these is love ... the last thought in I Corinthians 13, and the last words Brahms ever wrote in his very last song in his last set, the Four Serious Songs, looking back at the death of Clara Schumann and realizing his own departure from the world was near at hand ... for love shines both ways ... and OF COURSE, there is but one voice in the entire universe that could have been entrusted with that great exact echo, a season before I would really need it ... I first heard Kurt Möll singing the Four Serious Songs in the fall of 2021, and the timestamp for the fourth song is 13:15 (but you are welcome to the best 18 minutes of my musical day, listening to all of it).
So then, to have achieved looking backwards in both conscious and unconscious thought and there be nothing but love -- to have been so graced, and gifted -- that also suggests the certainty of the other half of what I was told last week:
I have said to you recently that you understand the side of loving deeply, Frau Mathews, but you have yet to fully understand the side of being deeply loved. Know for certain that as you attend faithfully to what you do thoroughly understand, you are permitted and shall be fitted to understand, thoroughly, what is not yet clear to you.
In considering that more, I realized that also was an echo of a very deep matter ... from my side, my capacity to love is finite, for I am finite. I have only been here 43 years, and, if the world does not end before I do, there will be much time afterward in which I will not be here to love anyone. I am also not perfect; I have not always looked back in love, or even forward or to the side. I am a fully mortal human. There but for the grace of God go I into every shade of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" within my conception as a highly intelligent, skilled, and imaginative person.
But to have even said "there but for the grace of God go I" and not as a cliche of a former age is also to say that there is a Love greater than my finite limits, enough to secure me when I otherwise would have failed ... and therefore that is the upper bound upon being deeply loved. Love finite rescued by Love Infinite -- but just how long would it take any finite being to explore the infinite of anything? One has to presume an eternity to spend, for that is what is needed, and so for all intents and purposes, that means there is no upper bound, should one be called to that journey. I will never fully understand the side of being deeply loved, in the face of Love Infinite ... but I can be fitted and permitted to have an ever more thorough understanding, from here through eternity.
However, that is a long series of finitely measured steps, and a whole lot of them have to be taken as a human along eight billion other humans, most of which have absolutely no idea of what I am talking about.
I have been single for seven years and walked alone relative to fully mortal companions for three for a very good reason ... but again, it came to me: there was no need to look back in anger upon those that simply had not at that time been called as I was called OR were but were not at the same level of understanding OR, in the case of my grand old soldier, fully understanding, so much so that he knew love required him to take the lead in putting down the parameters of what can never be. To have, but not to hold: that takes a man who indeed is filled with love greater than this world can offer to overcome his own desires to possess and have for his personal enjoyment.
My grand old soldier is really why my heart goes out to King Marke, when he realizes that Isolde must be with Tristan because of what had happened with the potion, and is willing to give her up because of his love for the them both. From my view, that takes a man deeply in touch with more than mortal love to pull off ... I have seen that in action.
"You see, Frau Mathews, why I had to be who I was to even spectrally be in your presence on the Fourth of July? But you might consider relaxing the bar lower than three-quarters of a century for qualifications ... just a little lower!"
The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past arrived through the portal of imagination at about where he apparently thought the age bar should be -- somewhere between 45 and 60, for he had gone white-haired early, and thus it was not always easy to tell where he was in his middle years. He had me laughing already, and I gave it right back to him -- "Look, you and my grand old soldier are both basso profundos -- has it perhaps occurred to you that I am not interested in the bar getting any lower because it can't go lower?"
He laughed, but then his face became perfectly serious.
"Ah, Frau Mathews, now, at last, you have said it aloud -- half the day's mission accomplished."
He was right on every level. An ear and heart tuned for bass in a woman has eliminated a lot of men from even getting an initial hearing -- in a world of four billion males, only three billion are grown men, and of them, only ten percent are true basses. Only three percent are singing basses -- so already, in a world of three billion men, that number is knocked all the way back to ninety million men. And then, even within singing basses, basso profundo is only about ten percent of them -- so now, the number for that is down to a vanishingly small 9-10 million men, globally. Work that out for the United States, and then work that suitability of age and readiness!
"But singing contraltos are rare too, Frau Mathews. Or, I shall put this another way: you are simply aware of the reality that in a world of so many people, if lifelong monogamous marriage is what is commanded for you and also what will be enabled and supported by Love Infinite, the number is impossibly small by the world's standards: exactly one at any one time, in eight billion people.
"The grand thing is, given that final number, there are plenty of basses and even basso profundos available even here in the United States! You just need one! The other grand thing is that if you are called to be a wife, your husband will be called to find you, in due time. As you have rested in love about why that did not happen in the past, you may rest from all concern about it in the future as well."
"I suppose now that 2022 and 2023 are resolved, I am healing more deeply regarding matters further back," I said.
"And that, Frau Mathews, is changing your view on the future as well. I have said to you, 'There is no bridge.' I shall now extend the statement: there is no bridge to the matters of the past, and there never was. You did well that those high tenors in Oasis were not despised by you in your tender youth, Frau Mathews, because they spoke truth: the admonition to not look back in anger and resentment and bitterness is eternal wisdom. Likewise, Frau Kotcher likewise taught you well in teaching you how to forget those things which are behind on a practical creative basis that matches well with what is written in Scripture concerning you in Christ ... there is a mark and a high calling to reach, upon which there is no upper bound."
"Somewhere in the book of Hebrews -- in the 11th or 12th chapter," I said.
"So you know, 'forgetting those things that are behind,' you are to 'press toward the mark,' and if there is no upper bound, perhaps, Frau Mathews, we may consider this is the reverse of Schubert's 'Der Wegweiser' -- the opposite of a road on which the signpost is marked 'death' would of course be a road where, ever in front of the eyes of your faith, the road is marked 'eternal life.'"
"You know," I said, "that is not a bad analogy at all. The challenge now is that my brain wants to rewrite 'Der Wegweiser' in a major mode!"
"Well, have at it, Frau Mathews -- your whole mortal and immortal life to come is there for you to explore how that might be done! That's the point! It is Independence Day in your nation -- you are now free!"
Of course he started out on a deep bass rendering of the melody of "Stars and Stripes Forever"!
If one imagines Sousa had an emergency and had to score a bass trombone for the melody, and somehow it still worked ... quite the impressive and utterly hilarious feat of singing! He had me rolling laughing ... and he was right. In a very deep and personal way, I have achieved independence and freedom, this summer.
At last we came to where I had thought to go ... the summer had transformed it -- my personal "oasis," Alvord Lake ...
"Breathe, Frau Mathews, breathe!"
It was a good reminder ...
... for Alvord Lake in summer green under a blue sky was just that magnificent!
"As lovely as it has been, there is no upper bound," my companion said to me, "for as long as you and it may have a day together, it may always strike your eye and heart differently, and as you are thankful for every occasion and the memories of being here accumulate in gratitude in die Erinnerung ... no, Frau Mathews, there is no upper bound!"
At that moment, a vista opened to me ... if one might remember in any moment to turn from anger and complaint ... if one might remember in any moment -- if circumstances were dark, that love and the possibility of gratitude were still there somewhere, and if circumstances were bright, that love and the possibility of gratitude were there both deeper and higher in that brightness -- if one could at any moment remember such moments, and add another ... and then have a string of them in all circumstances ... and then have them become the conscious majority of how one approached all of life's moments, by choice ...
"Ach, Frau Mathews ... deine Augen sind jetzt geöffnet ..."
Your eyes are now opened ... he could not get it out in English at the moment, for his own joy had overpowered him just that quick ... that anyone, still fully mortal in the world might for a moment have that much of a view of Heaven's own joys, where at every moment love and gratitude were meeting and anger and complaint were forever absent ... and that anyone, still fully mortal in the world, might have grasped even for a moment how to live in Heaven's own joys while still in the world and might choose to do so, as much as possible ... in the next moment he placed his immense hands over mine as my old love had done at the end of my dream, but this was not a signification of loss, of departure ... this was a sign of me receiving what was mine to share with those who also knew forever what I had just realized.
I do not know how long he and I stood there on the bank of the lake, all things brighter and deeper around us than others could see unless they knew what we knew... all that's best of dark and bright, with love shining both ways ... a blue, bright midnight smiling into a blue morning, and both on the banks of the lake at once...
... but at some length, he remembered something I had forgotten ...
"I must get you home, Frau Mathews, for you must still live in this world and it has not been long since you injured that left foot. I am concerned that your standing too long on it after a walk may set back its healing."
"I am glad in this moment to meet your caring love with gratitude -- danke schoen. It is enough for today; of course we will turn back."
Alvord Lake had been my destination for the day, so I was content, and knew it would not be wise for me to walk any further because of the distance to get back ... and oh, the reward of wisdom ... what love meeting with contented gratitude did in his face, and his smile, and his eyes ... Herr Altesrouge, Old Blush himself, showed up and showed out, aging backwards on me to the appearance of about age 45, in the prime of his life and strength.
"I deeply desire that you permit me to protect that foot, Frau Mathews, to the utmost of my ability."
"I trust you; do as you desire."
He picked me up like I was some kind of delicate lily, and folks just stared ... oh, there was going to be trouble now, because as I was slowly beginning to experience in 2024 elsewhere, people think they know you and your limits in terms of how far you can get past their idea of both achievement and circle of friends, colleagues, and potential lovers, and if you are quiet and just go about your business and keep climbing, eventually such people look up and are surprised and dismayed to realize how you got to places and people they could not even imagine you getting to -- for while for some there is no upper bound, for others there is no bridge, and they only realize it when they at last look up ...
My companion, his heart overwhelmed with joy, had begun humming that last song of Brahms as he was carrying me along. For my delight and his I improvised a complete alto harmony for the Brahms, and was tickled when he looked down a few times in surprise because African American pentatonic harmony from Brahms' own time can blend right in ... and then he smiled as we went right on. I registered, of course, that people were being stopped in their tracks by the combined sight and sound of our passing. There was going to be commentary when word got back to the types I had been thinking of (or at least, when they get dragged in effigy into Q-Inspired to be made an example of) ... but in the meantime, my attitude was "Well, it will be a story worth telling!" for there was at that time no upper bound to our joy.
