The 9th Comes Alive

Dear Maestro. Zimmermann:

I attended the University of Texas symphony performance last Saturday at the invitation of a student, and I was not sure what to expect. I have not always been moved by classical performances. Too often, they seem distant, removed; inapplicable to me here, now. And knowing it was a student performance gave me pause. But I have committed to appreciating all this city has to offer, and the talent at UT is an important part of that.

Recently, I moved back to Austin leaving behind some very dear friends, friends who added much to my life, some who taught me to open myself to new experiences. One friend, Jim, who graduated Yale with degrees in accounting and piano, reintroduced me to the symphony. I was reluctant at first, telling him that I usually wanted to leave at half-time.

“Intermission,” he smiled/grimaced.

I told him that I didn’t understand the point of classical music, the context, the setting. It seemed detached from the real world and anything having to do with my experience.
Our first performance together included a Rachmaninoff piece, and at dinner beforehand, Jim took the time to introduce me to Rachmaninoff--the history of that time and what was going on with the composer personally when he wrote the piece. I cannot recall what concerto or symphony it was, but I remember how the music came alive for me that night, touched me in a way classical music never had before.

This is all a fairly long-winded way of saying thank you.

Before the performance, I took time to read about the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and what was happening with the composer at the time he wrote the piece—his recent rather public divorce, depression, certain personal questions about who he was and where he was headed, and of course the early rejection of the piece and then its later recognition as a masterpiece and a true test of a violinist. It helped me appreciate the performance in a way I could not have otherwise.

But I did not have time, or take the time to do that with the Beethoven. Maybe I took it for granted that I knew all there was to know about the piece. Maybe, like you said, I was somewhat numbed to it after all its commercialization. But when you took the time to place it in context for me, to explain what was going on with Beethoven at the time, to introduce the nuances of the movements and how they fit together, I was anxious to hear the piece in a way I never have been before. What you gave us was a wonderful gift of context and purpose and intention that, for me, made the concert-- an impressive performance in my admittedly inexperienced view--come alive. And the passion with which you gave your introduction and conducted the performance was refreshing and inspiring.

And all of it reminded me of Jim and the gratitude I feel toward him for showing me a way of looking at music in a new light, understanding the world from a different perspective, with a different soundtrack .

Anyway, I did not intend to go on like this. I really just wanted to say thank you. The performance was moving and enjoyable.

Ed

This Boy

This boy,
Sitting across the dinner table,
telling me his life,
This 23 year-old, lanky boy,
With his swimmer’s build, chiseled face,
and perfect, sparkling-white teeth,
This boy who has lived so much so far,
Is smiling.

This boy,
Who never got the Barbie he always wanted,
Who chose his Easy Bake Oven over baseball,
and his art classes over soccer,
Still smiles.

This boy,
On anti-depressants at age 12,
With a physical tick-- a twitching of his head--until age 15,
Who counted dashes on the highway where ever they drove, for as long as they drove,
This boy somehow is smiling.

But his eyes still hold the pain,
still fear it all returning,
The depression,
The tick,
The checking,
The helpless rage.

This boy smiles,
But not yet with his eyes.


Copyright Ed Ishmael 2009

Turtles

So here’s the deal. My life has been turned upside down, and so far, I have survived. Oh sure, it’s a bitch at times, and there are aspects of how my life was before that I wouldn’t mind having again, but all in all, it’s not as bad as I feared. I’ve set off on a different and unknown path, and I have no idea where it’s leading. And for some reason, that's okay.

We have this tank on our property in the Texas Hill Country. When it’s full, it covers about 2 acres, but it leaks. So in the summer, it drains away to almost nothing, and this last summer/winter, it dried up completely. You can tell when a tank is about to go dry, when even with all your hoping and praying, rain isn’t coming any time soon. How? The turtles.

As you can imagine, it’s not an easy thing for a turtle to relocate. The decision to do so is a serious one, fraught with peril and requiring Herculean effort. Out of the water, they are awkward and exposed, not just to predators, but to the elements, the sun, the dry air. And it’s not like they have a map, or GPS. Guided by instinct alone, they head out clawing their way over this hill or that. It’s arduous, glacially slow going. And if they’ve miscalculated, you’ll find their hollowed, dried shell in the middle of the pasture.

So if the turtles leave the pond it’s because they know there’s nothing left there for them. And if you see them leaving, you can bank on the fact that the pond will go dry, or be reduced to little more than mud.

This last year, around the end of November, as I was walking to my parent’s house, my dogs were on the road ahead of me when all of a sudden they started barking, heads down, lunging at something on the road. I knew it was too late in the season for snakes, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell what it was, until I walked closer. There, in one of the gravel ruts, were two turtles, facing up hill, facing away from the tank. The dogs were beside themselves. They had no idea what these were, or what they should be doing with them, or waht it meant that all of sudden they appeared here on this hill.

But I knew. I knew that the drought would continue and the inevitable would occur. And sure enough, by the first of January the pond was nothing but mud, and by the end of January the mud had dried and cracked.

So the turtles chose wisely. They knew they could not stay, and even though leaving meant danger and hard, slow progress, they set out into the unknown searching for something better.

I have no idea if they made it. I hope they did.

The pond is back up now, the result of a 4 inch rain a few weeks back, but so far, no turtles in sight. But they will find it again. They always do.

Lost In The Fog

“I just want to go for two weeks with no major changes in my life.” That’s what I told a friend recently as we sipped wine outside on my back deck. In the last few weeks, my business partnership split, my boyfriend broke up with me, my bank account went nearly dry, and I was sick in bed for almost an entire week, longer than I can ever remember being sick before. To say that life has been merely difficult would be … inane. Life has, in fact, sucked.

And I don’t see it markedly improving anytime soon.

So how have I dealt with the stress? Probably not well. I did start working out again, and I’ve meditated once or twice. But frankly there isn’t much that can be done right now to change things.

I’m left with making my way through it knowing that the end is not yet in sight, knowing that tomorrow when I wake up these issues will still be here and will likely stay here for some time.

When I was in college, I raised money for my tuition by trapping. Back then, raccoon pelts brought $35 and tuition at UT was only $8 an hour. So if I had a good run during Christmas break, I was generally able to cover my tuition and most of my book costs. In addition to trapping, I would spotlight for raccoons after dark. Most mamals eyes reflect light, so a bright enough light is shown on them, the eyes can be seen from a hundred yards or more away. Once you spot the eyes, you give chase, run the recoon up a tree, and then shoot it. I know, gruesome, right? But back then it didn't seem so.

One night the air was warmer than usual and damp, and while I was out walking with my light and rifle a heavy fog moved in. Before I knew it, I was engulfed in the thick, quickly moving cloud and completely lost my way. The ground was only visible a few feet ahead as I tried to make my way home, but before long I truly had no idea which direction I was headed.

A 21 year old, a few hundred yards for his home, probably has no reason to fear even in disorienting fog, but I was afraid. I couldn’t find my way. None of the paths, or rocks, or trees looked familiar. I was lost, and I had no idea how to get home.

So eventually I just stopped, sat down, and calmed myself as best I could. The house could not be far away. I had not been gone that long. I had walked up the hill away from the house, and was walking back down now. All I needed was a glimpse of something familiar, and until I saw it, there was nothing to do except sit and wait.

Fortunately, it did not take long. The wind rose, and the fog began to move and as the cloud blew passed it grew thinner and then I saw it, in the distance, a hundred yards away, the light on our barn. I set my bearings and off I went, and even though the thick fog rolled back in, I was able to focus on just the next step, again and again, until at last I made the barn and home.

Chains

His head was lowered and his arms were crossed, resting on the table in front of him. Michael, 23, was just out of Syracuse, and working as an entry-level research assistant at a prestigious Dallas advertising firm. I first met him the summer before when he was interning. Back then, he was bright-eyed, excited to be graduating, and eager to enter the work force. But since joining the firm in May, he had endured back-to-back 70 hour work weeks for months. His eyes, still blue, no longer sparkled as focused on the place mat before him.

“I was happier bartending,” he said, still looking down. “It’s not at all what I thought it would be.”

I felt for him and wanted to say something helpful, but everything that came to mind seemed hollow and empty and useless.

In 1987, I graduated from Texas Tech law school and took a job with a downtown Dallas law firm. The money was great and, other than the head attorney of our section, the people I worked with were friendly and helpful. But I quickly realized that I was hired as a workhorse and not much else. My sole function was to bill hours, the more the better, and to fill my quota I would be working very late most nights. I hated it almost immediately. Just how much I hated it became obvious the day I returned from my first vacation after taking the job.

About six months after graduation, a friend in the Air Force was moving from Enid, Oklahoma to Phoenix and asked if I would drive with him. I was gone a week, and the morning I returned and sat at my desk my hands started shaking and my chest tightened. That physical revulsion was not lost on me--I saw it, noted it, knew what it meant. This life I had arranged for myself was not healthy. It was life draining, not life enhancing, but even knowing that, it took me 12 more years before I took the first small steps in getting out. And now, some 10 years later, I am faced with another chance to finally do what I’ve always wanted to do, to finally be what it is I have always truly been.

I thought about all this as I sat there watching Michael.

I know one of his bosses. I considered calling him and asking him if he knew what his company was doing to these kids, if they truly intended to suck the life out them and leave them as shells of their former selves. I saw in my mind a giant spider wrapping these kids in its web, then sucking them dry. Was it really worth it just so the partners could live in Highland Park in their big fancy houses with their big fancy cars?

But I also knew it would do no good. The chains that held me to the job I hated all those years, the same chains Michael wears, the same worn by his boss, are all self-imposed. No one can free us but ourselves. And realizing that takes time. No amount of advice can rush the process, and some of us never break free.

I hope Michael does. I hope the sparkle returns to his mediterean blue eyes, and his brilliant smile finds its way home.

And I hope I do too.

$75 Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder

A few months ago, I went to a fancy bird store in Highland Park, the wealthy part of Dallas. It's the kind that sells gourmet bird seed and bird mansions instead of bird houses. Everything in the store was ridiculously expensive, but I found a bird feed that I liked that seemed reasonably priced. It was a tube on end with a little dish attached at the bottom and four half-oval holes cut in the tube with a little peg sticking out of each hole for the bird to stand on while eating. It also had a round hood, that looked like a half globe, resting on top. I couldn’t tell what the hood was for, but I decided to buy the bird house anyway. The only price tag on the feeder said $15, about $50 less than anything else in the store.

My little house in the country has an abundance of song birds, and I feed them. In fact, it's one of the first things I do when I arrive--adjust the HVAC, give the dogs food and water, fill the bird feeders. For the longest time, I only had one feeder. This new one would make two.

By the time I made my way to the register, there were four other customers behind and one person at the counter next to me. As the attendant rang up my purchase he looked at me and said, “That’s $75.” My mind raced. Seventy-five dollars? Is he talking to me?

“You have a squirrel problem, heh?” he asked.

“A what?” I answered.

“A squirrel problem. You’re buying a squirrel proof feeder. I just assumed….”

“Oh, a squirrel problem,” I said a little too forcefully. “ Yes, yes. Got a watch those pesky little buggers.” But in my head I was putting it all together. The squirrle-proof bail was $15, the whole contraption was $75, although not marked anywhere.

I could have stopped right there, and told him the truth, that I had made a mistake, that I had never seen a single squirrel at our country house, and that there was no way in hell I was paying $75 for a bird feeder. But this was snooty Highland Park, and suddenly I felt very cheap, so I just kept my mouth shut, paid the money, and walked out.

For the first few visits to the country house, I saw no birds on the new "$75 squirrel-proof bird feeder." I even told my partner that I hung the $75 squirrel-proof bird feeder and no birds were coming. I called my mom and asked her if there was anything I was doing wrong with my $75 squirrel-proof bird feeder, and she said no. Everyone in our life started jokingly calling it the $75 squirrel-proof bird feeder. But I secretly resented it every time I saw it in the cedar tree, out the French doors, just ont he other side of the deck.

Finally, on about my fifth visit, I noticed seed missing from the feeder, and finally, I saw cardinals and Spanish dove and red finches gorging themselves at the $75 squirrel proof bird feeder.

Then one day I saw a squirrel, the first squirrel I had ever seen on the property, and it was on the limb one over from the limb on which was hanging my $75 squirrel-proof bird feeder. I watched as he sat there eyeing the seeds, and I suddenly felt insightful and smart having purchased this $75 squirrel-proof bird feeder. WHo knew? I was confident he could not possible reach the seed, but just in case, I decided to cut the limb off on which the squirrel rested. I thought that was the end of it. Even though I now knew there were indeed squirrels on the property, I had my $75 squirrel-proof bird feeder, and I was set.









I was wrong.












Yes, this is one of the more exciting things that has happened to me on Sabbatical.

Buying Cattle

"You can now tell people you're a cattleman," Ozzie told me as we drove back to Goldthwaite from Comanche.

It was Saturday and we had just left the Comanche Livestock Exchange after loading Ozzie's purchase into his trailor. My parents own 100 acres in the Hill Country and the rain has been so generous this year that the grass is plentiful. At dinner one night Ozzie mentioned that we could run a few more head on our place and later that evening I told my Dad I'd like to buy a cow. So with Ozzie's help we set out to buy some cattle.

Ozzie and his wife Maurine moved to Goldthwaite in 1991 and purchased 500 acres for $425 an acre. That same property now is likely worth $3000 an acre. The story is the same all over the Hill Country. Ranchers who until 5 years ago had little monetarliy to show for their lifetime of labor on the land, are now finding themselves holding properties worth millions. The demand was initially driven by retirees from Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston, but the extraordinary escalation in value over the last few years resuilted from Californian's cashing out on the West Coast and relocating here.

Most of the counties in Texas have a livestock commission, a company that sells livestock on commission for the farmers and ranchers. The various commissions have their sales on different days, mostly to avoid competition. My parent's place is in Mills County and the five adjacent counties are San Saba, Brown, Comanche, and Lampassas. Dinner with Ozzie and his wife was Saturday night and he said the next auction would be San Saba on Thursday.

"If you are interested in going," Ozzie told us, "I would enjoy taking you." So we agreed to meet Thursday morning and head to the auction. But before Thursday arrived, Mom got a call from Maurine saying that a cow had died while calving and was partially in one of their ponds, a relatively inaccessible one, and she wondered if my Dad had a wench or could bring his Four-wheeler over to help pull the cow out of the water.

So Wednesday morning, Dad and I loaded the four-wheeler in the pick-up and headed over to help out. We backed the pickup against the damn and drove the four-wheeler off the bed. From the rim of the damn we could see the cow, front end bloated, rear deflated by the vultures feasting. Even from across the pond, the smell was strong. I started breathing through my nose. The hill on the backside of the pond was thich with scrub oak. No pickup could even get close. I threaded my way on the four-wheeler over bolders and around mesquites and oaks. The once or twice I forgot and breated through my nose, the smell almost gagged me.

Ozzie took one of my Dads cargo straps and looped over the cow's front leg. Even though her rear was closer to us, it was already decaying so badly that if we'd tried dragging her there, the leg would have seperated. We hooked the other end to the four-0wheeler hitch and Dad pulled the cow 15 feet up the hill and out of the water.

When I finally let myself breath through my nose again, I actually tasted the strench in my mouth. It was rank and nauseating.

Ozzie was grateful and as we drove away he said he would be at our house the next morning at 8:30 to drive us to the auction.

The sale in San Saba, about 30 minutes from Goldthwait, is at the Jordan Cattle Auction, an upscale facility with abundant pens and state-of-the-art equipment. Most commissions have similar layouts. the office, where new buyers sign in before the sale and all buyers payout after, is in the front of the building. the lobby has doors opening into the auction area, and the auction area has large metal doors that open in from the holding pens and back out to them.

Ozzie took me up to the office window and introduced me.

"This is Eddie Ishmael and he is a new buyer. Can you get him signed up?"

The lady on the other side of the slilding window said, "Well, of course. All I need is a driver's license and a copy of your check."

And that was it.

"What name to you want them to use in there?" the lady asked.

"I guess Ishmael," I said hesitantly.

She nodded and we moved on.

We entered the auction are about 45 minutes bfore the sale and reserved three seats with name cards, then we walked through a metal door out into the pens.

The pens are made of welded metal pipe and they are covered with a tall tin roof. The sounds were nearly deafening. Cows mooing, calves bawling, metal gates slamming shut, cowboys yelling at the cows and at each other. At first it was a bit overwhelmeing.

We went up on the cat walk and tried to identify some pairs--cows with calves--but the cat walk was fairly high in the air and the cows and calves had been already separated. Supposedly, the cows are easier to handle that way and there is less likelihood that the calves will get injured by the much larger cows.

Ozzie was a great teacher, very knowledgeable and very patient. Cattle for sale at auction generally consist of fertile bulls, nonfertile bulls, bred cows, nonbred or open cows, pairs (a mtoher and calf), three-ways (a pregnant mother and calf), hefers, steers and yearlings.

Each auction house has its own markign system for telling buyers about the cows. These marks are generally sprayed on with paint. If the cow has an X on its back, it has been pregnancy tested. A "O" on its back hip, which stands for "Open," means it is not bred and will likely be sold by the pound for meat. If it is pregnant, there will be a number on its hip telling you how many months pregnant the cow is. A pregnant cow, depending on how many months, is either short bred (1-3 months), medium bred (4-6 months) or long bred (7 to 8 months). Obviously, the shorter period before birth, the quicker the rancher can make money off the cow and the less he will have to hold her as non-productive.

There is a vet on site at the sales and his job is to check the cows for pregnancy. At the Jordan auction, the vet was at the back of the roofed space. He wore a white medical overcoat with the right sleeve rolled up and a clear polastic glove that went all the way to his bicept. That arm and his whole side were covered in cow shit. He checked them by shoving his whole arm up inside them and feeling the size of the calf.

I ended up not buying at the Jordan auction so Ozzie volunteered to take us to the Comanche auction the upcoming Saturday.