Obbligato

Archaeologists excavating the Bronze Age palace of Tel Kabri in Israel say the site's Canaanite rulers used a system of obligation to rule their kingdom.(Archaeology Magazine) 

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to
succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”—Abraham Lincoln

I’ve been thinking about obligation, since I read about that ancient kingdom ruled by it.  It has that sense of higher good, of choice colored by noble intention, lit by the inner light Lincoln mentions—not just the reek of duty and compulsion which (I hate to say) rules my days now.

ob·bli·ga·to

ˌäbləˈgätō/

noun

noun: obbligato; plural noun: obbligati; plural noun: obbligatos; noun: obligato; plural noun: obligati; plural noun: obligatos

1.   
an instrumental part, typically distinctive in effect, that is integral to a piece of music and should not be omitted in performance.

What are the distinctive—obbligato—necessary—lit parts of my life?  Loving a classicist, being the caretaker of his spirit; writing my amuse-bouches and not-quite-serious mysteries; traveling to Italy, England, Mallorca, Quebec city; retreats into silence; explorations of the past; stone struck with sun; spices and herbs; drenched colors; a large community of friends; affinity with dogs both met and glimpsed; a kind of pantheism that includes music and trees and the burning of candlelight in gold and glass.  My obligation to these things rules me, elevates me (like the voices in a choir; like the cottonwood cathedrals on the upper Alameda in a Santa Fe spring).

My obligation is to find that quiet (yet fierce) sort of joy in life.

image:  right-hand lute technique, Nieznany

When Allowed to Drift

I'm looking back fondly on this Mallorcan farmstead (the color of the stone, I think, is part of the appeal), and knowing that I would have started my day with coffee and bread and cheeses and tomato, little pears or the melon with its almost-white flesh, sitting with pen and notepad in a courtyard with balcony and fountain.

I haven't yet reclaimed it in my writing; here has been much too demanding lately.  But there is where my thoughts are, when allowed to drift and find their own course.



image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Mallorcan Farmstead

How Well I've Failed

and if you fail,
think of how well you've failed

—Joyce Sutphen (These Few Precepts) 

I fail, daily and hourly, to be my own person, when under siege.

I remember out of the blue a house in Oakland with a tangled garden where I (just out of college and far lost from my way forward) shut myself in my room and hid, not wanting to be overwhelmed by my overweening roommate who knew herself already—her tastes, her style—unerringly.

But I have blundered very well into some semblance of a self, even here in this centrifugal force-field.  Squirreling one piece of me away, and then another, and a third.  The little stone Buddha, Jonas Kaufmann’s Verdi, a sunstruck bench at one of the missions, a red bocci ball and wood grain at Tassajara, my French press for Ethiopian coffee, the small kaleidoscope, a postcard of the Seine, an angelfish, the paper birds, white mint tea, roast tomatoes, beaded bags with semiprecious stones for keys and ID cards, this and that piled against the onslaught.

Mixed metaphors, I know—but that too is a fine failing, and very me.

image: She Who Is

51

I was momentarily saddened as I walked around the cemetery just outside the city walls of medieval Alcudia to see a couple of graves marked this way, just with numbers.  The nameless dead—somebody loved, surely, before forgetting and oblivion set in, before all those who kept the name in their hearts were, in turn, no longer there to remember.

Against the back wall overlooking the Mallorcan valley I also saw stacks of headstones waiting for their inscriptions.  A kind of eerie hovering of death, much like the Kite we saw this morning on the way to work, circling the grassy hill, waiting for prey.

But there is the memory of love, there, all around, and in the end I’m not saddened by cemeteries.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, 51

Random Favorite Things

Random favorite things about the trip:

• Central Park, saxophone lullaby
• New York dogs
• Mozart at the Met
• six a.m. decaf Americano at Pret a Manger, Heathrow
• sparrows in the fondly remembered breakfast courtyard at Hotel Born, Palma
• candle lanterns strung up in an olive tree
• peppers at the Sunday market
• lavender- and lemon-scented sea salt
• grilled Mediterranean vegetables and fish
• green door splattered with sun
• alluring country roads
• fieldstone farmhouses
• buying Cypriot Halloumi raviolis, used books, mint
• the tropical bird in the medieval plaza as the night came on

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Green Door, Alcudia, Mallorca

Fall Color

The beautiful drenched colors that come to the eye (with everything else paling) these days.







image:  Christie B. Cochrell

Gone to Mallorca

Yes, I should be in Mallorca by now.  (Doing research on the Roman theatre outside Alcudia.)






image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Deia, Mallorca

Still Life

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Still Life

Giving a Fig

No words are necessary (I'm hoping).






image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Figs

The Path Away

Away from summer, away from home, a way of going forwards.

(Off on vacation for two weeks; will leave things to look at in my absence, changing every few days.)






image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Disused Train Track