Sebastian

Yesterday our cat began tipping over.  His back legs did not have the strength to help turn him toward his feed bowl and water.  He would stand for a bit and then slowly lay on the floor.  This cat has been a gift from the FUR PEOPLE GODS.  

He does not use a litter box.  Kitty litter damn near kills me as well as pet dander.  Sebastian goes outdoors to use the potty.  He is a most unusual cat because he does not meeeee oooowww and squeak like most cats.  He has a very strong baritone voice and makes all kinds of garbled sounds like foreign words.  This house has two levels.  He never steps down to the rooms on the ground level.  Of late he has been walking down the stairs and at night sleeping on the bed with us.  He needed to be near humans that loved him... 

We knew he was ill when we offered to care for him.  He radiated a certain energy that I could not reject.  HE NEEDED US!  

(one the most influential people in my life told my that the worst thing in life is to NOT TO BE NEEDED!)  I believe her with all my heart.

Well, dear old Sebastian needed us.  We needed Sebastian.  He loved affection as well as his privacy.

(kinda reminds me of myself?)

Yesterday morning I washed his food and water bowls.  He was growling at the back door wanting OUT SIDE, telling me he had to REALLY PEE.  

Fine, he hit the green grass and I noticed the strawberry patch was glowing with buckets of ripe red berries!  I told Sebastian to soak in the morning light and I began harvesting the gorgeous berries.

When I glanced over my shoulder to where the cat was,  VACANCY!  GONE!  THAT DAMN CAT HAD EVAPORATED OFF THE EARTH!  I literally nearly dropped the bucket of berries!

Our dear neighbor Clare was walking her dog Minn's on the upper bench.  I told her what had occurred.  She went searching in one direction I went another all the time whispering Sebastian where are?  Come out, come out, where ever in hell you are... or else I will  kill you!"  

People that follow my blog have read the story about Michael's mother Anne disappearing one morning while I was taking a shower!  That was NOT a good day!

Our neighbor Ann called Clare and told her Sebastian was not able to walk and was on her property.

Clare rescued the cat.  She delivered him to his home with us and he gobbled a cup of wet cat food and a bowl of water!   Michael found the comfy blanket Dennis and Gail had purchased him in November.  We made a warm nest for him in the lounge.  He cuddled into a blissful sleep.

Last night I rubbed his head, shoulders and bony spine until I retired round 11:PM  Michael stayed up reading and sitting with Sebastian.

This morning was a "replay" of two years ago...  I wake up, walk to the upper level of the house into the kitchen.  Push the "ON" button of the coffee maker.  Notice a note written in Clinger's hand.

"Good morning,

Sebastian died at 12:15 AM.  His journey is over at last.  We will bury him after breakfast... love, Michael."

WTF?????  I raced to the lounge, nothing of the cat remains.  I walk outside, nothing...  I decide to sit quietly and wait for the details.  Michael comes upstairs tells me:

Sebastian was resting then raised his head and coughed as if to release a fur ball.  He then laid his head down and stopped breathing.  I then did something I did when mother passed away:  I opened all the windows.  I gathered Sebastian up in my arms with his blanket.  Took him to the garage and cut the blanket to fit his body.  Pinned it with safety pins so it would not fall to pieces.  I will dig a grave beside the apricot tree amid the Columbine and we will bury him.  He will protect the property and all that dwell here.

The night Anne died Michael's mother, I closed the restaurant, walked home.  Always went to her bedside and checked on her.  I always spent time rubbing her hands and arms.  They were so small and delicate.  She would smile and lay back at peace.  When she was finally soundly asleep I would  get ready for bed.  Oct. 23rd I did this very thing and the next morning I walked into the bathroom in order to prepare for work at 6:30 -  7 AM.  There was  a note from Clinger laying on the counter:

"Mother died at 12:15 this morning.  This long, long journey is over.  Love Michael."  I literally ran into her room.  She was laid out on the bed like a queen.  PERFECT HAIR, MAKE UP, DRESSED IN VELVET PLUM COLORED CLOTHING...

Michael told me that when he found his mother had died the first thing he did was open all the windows in her room.  He did the same thing when Sebastian died!  He washed and dressed her and did the same for Sebastian.

Today we buried this dear FUR PERSON near the apricot tree.  We covered his body with rose petals and rose blossoms.  Laid the new Xmas toys he was given on top of his corpse.  I have been to near death the past year.  I am learning a very intense and serious lesson:  DEATH IS A BLESSED PART OF LIVING AND THE TWO ARE INSEPARABLE.  I have had to accept some very ugly truths in my life and I have not denied their reality.  I accept everything life presents me with except for ONE TRUTH stupidity.  

Sebastian had a life he lived according to HIS DICTATES.  I know far too many people who's lives are guided by the media, politics, religion, guru's, and DOGMA!  They live in FEAR and HATE of every possible thing!  

The most amazing journey you can ever take is being ALL ALONE and WITH NOTHING BUT YOURSELF as a GUIDE.  One either goes insane or learns who and what they are as compared to what OTHERS think and WANT to MAKE them INTO BEING!  No one person is born with hate or bigotry.  THEY LEARN IT!   Most humans can and will not live the truth.  Truth involves only YOU!  

Pets on the other hand unless they are so abused beyond imagination, they follow their hearts.  They know, sense, and react to emotions and vibrations.  Dogs love Beethoven.  Cats love New Age type music.  I had a cat that would simply become another cat if I played piano... my own improvisations!  Wheee Enough.   Could write a book about music, light and animals!

Mystical Mentors in Our Lives

When I was a Performance Piano Major at the University of Utah, I know my Face Book states I studied music at WSC in Ogden Utah which I did.  In 1965 they had an amazing faculty.  Years later I attended the University of Utah.

My piano teacher at the time I was a student at the UofU was Lowell Farr.  He introduced me to so many pieces in the piano literature beyond the standard works I learned from Childhood.  Schubert, Hayden, lots of Bach and Beethoven then the love of my life:  Claude A. Debussy.  Lowell claimed the Preludes Book 1 and 11 by Debussy were as sacred as Bach's Preludes and Fugues Books 1 and 11.  He showed me so many amazing intricate mathematical equations and phrases within the lines and spaces Debussy sat upon the canvas of a musical manuscript!

Plato said, "music penetrates to the center of the soul and gains possession of it in the most energetic fashion"

Isaac the Syrian:  "He who has SEEN HIMSELF is greater than the one who has seen ANGLES!"

I love the Syrian's quote.  Anyone that practices music night and day endure freighting experiences of SEEING WHO THEY ARE!  They discover all of their weakest parts, plus their STRONGEST and most durable parts.  Next comes the FEARS!  the forever ANGST when performing in front of anything.  It can be a live audience, a microphone, playing knowing someone in the next room is listening...  the worst situation for me years ago:  a lapse of memory!  the most terrifying feeling in the world.  I had an amazing ability to capture musical pieces and hold them firmly inside my musical mind!  There have been times when something did not CONNECT and I was floundering like a fish out of water... these are times one thanks GOD for musical theory.  "OMG!  I am in the key of E flat.  The melody is within my reach..."  you grasp and improvise like magic to recover when in the hell you "snapped".

The daily practice of music teaches you how to FORGIVE and MOVE ON and leave your mistakes by the wayside!

When I practice and read Debussy I see myself in a different light.

Music, with It's powerful ability to deduce, contains a delicate element of the INVISIBLE WORLD!

It penetrates one's being through "suggestion".  It is not a fable that in antiquity music was considered a gift from the gods and that ancients played music fervently.

Like a woman's perfume, music is a very powerful element.  Most masculine musicians will shun and try not to surrender their beliefs in science, technology and ability to REASON when it comes to the chemical that overcomes a musician when feeling complete EMOTION!

Remember David and his Lyre and Harp?  His flute and gift for dance?  The Songs of Solomon?  In my childhood I converted to a RELIGION not many people would regard as divine and pure.  I felt and knew the TRUTH within MUSIC.

I have never and still do not understand how the OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW TESTAMENT OF THE BIBLES BELONG TOGETHER??????  I have read the Bible 13 times from cover to cover not skipping a word.  The God of murder, blood sacrifice, concubines, etc. in the Old Testament then the LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU IN THE N.T.  Most all wars are have deep religious origins!  

Give me Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmanninoff, even CCWR, Beatles, Oscar Peterson and list is endless.  Debussy and yes ALL GENRES of sound.

I will forever need to live near mountains and waters.  The sea is never too far away from any river.  A river is a living vessel of living water.

Legato, rubato, are curves like a snake's slow incandescent undulations within green grass.  The snake and river are strong, winding and full of rebellious life flowing into something hidden...

I live across from the Snake River.  I watch this river move like a beacon through my past 30 years.

I have witnessed this river in drought.  Extremely LOW water levels and at intense HIGH levels.  I have cried when my eyes watch darts of light dance on this water at sunset.  I have seen rocks, fish, soil and plant life that only live near the music of rivers.

Debussy said:  MUSIC IS THE EXPRESSION OF THE MOVEMENT OF THE WATERS, THE PLAY OF CURVES DESCRIBED BY CHANGING BREEZES.

The haunting words are play of curves changing the breezes!  Deja vu often comes to me in my every moment of breathing and observing nature.

Debussy belonged to some very strange and esoteric groups of thinkers and artists.  I like this fact!  He was NOT controlled by dogmas.   His music forever reveals to me who and what I am.  What secret gift beyond imagination!

Hands

I never look at a person's face or eyes...

I LOOK AT THEIR HANDS.  The hands tell me everything I want or need to know!

Hands breathe, they see, they sense things beyond imagination.

The first hand I ever touched was my mothers hands.  My mother did not have beautiful hands.  She had hands that could do many things. Working hands!

As a very little boy when my mother's hands gently massaged my head and chest... I was HEALED!  Her hands held me in crowds of people.  Her hands fed me food made with her hands... her hands could do magic things when I was a little boy!

I love my hands.  At 68 they tell many stories about my life.  They display bleached spots where I have been burned from cooking on a grill to a bonfire.
Scares from cuts I have endured with chef knives, broken bottles, opening cans that slipped against the tin can...   I have marks from dogs that have gouged me, cats that have scratched me, and some unexplainable scares from??????

My hands have touched the most beautiful things possible!  They have held onto cliffs too high for me to explain.  They have never ever failed me.  They have been my source of making music!!!

OH MY HANDS!  I do not just love you because I am a chef and pianist.  Fingers are only conduits for internal energy.  When one plays piano you use your entire body!  Back, shoulders, arms but the hands need these sacred parts in order to perform all they are capable of making possible.

Hands are one of the many blessings a body has within itself to manifest so many joys and sensuous comforts beyond the expression of words.

There are nights I lift my hands toward the moon (luna) and receive energy and light.  Moonlight is silver sunlight is gold dust... for some unexplainable reason I LOVE THE MOON AND STARS!

One must always discover the parts of the body, mind, other people try so desperately to write about as well as explain all the reasons and reason for having bodies and life on earth.  NO ONE CAN TELL YOU  THE ANSWER!

I have known friends that only look upon people's beautify or ugliness!  Others that only sense something through another one's speaking voice.  Some simply "FEEL" that certain something that vibrates negative or positive...

I learned a most important lesson regarding my own self:  FEEL and TOUCH and SMELL, and HEAR and then LOOK!  What have I always looked at?  hands!

Hands FEEL they touch and they hear as well as can look and smell many things the conscious man cannot experienceI

Love your hands.  They are a mirror of who and what you are.

They speak in a language beyond the stars and heaven.  They are your BLUEPRINT,
NO FINGERPRINT IS THE SAME,  your fingers can reveal all things about you including your spiritual life!

I love to kneed bread dough.  WHY?

I love the feel of piano keys.  WHY?

I love to touch leaves, the petals of flowers, vegetables, fruits, flesh, hair, and rock, sand and water!  I love the touch of silk, wool, cotton, meat, the list is endless...

Hands of time and time of Hands....  hands are sacred gifts!