Brazilian Experience

July 2004 I was part of a group of nine Somatic Experiencing Practitioners which went to stay in a Spiritual Community near Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Here are a few “snap-shots” of my experiences which continue to show up in my professional practice and are of great comfort and foundational understanding in my personal life.

We arrived at the mountain Center in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm that took out the electricity for two days. We bonded with the community living there by candle light, lightning flash, warm hugs and scent of hearty soup. We were immediately welcomed, warmed and reassured. This was our “home away from home”; a safe haven for our 11 day visit.

Henrique, who is pai (spiritual father) to the community, met with each of us individually, throwing the buzios (cowrie shells used for divination). Through our translator’s tireless efforts we were able to write down his vision of where we’d come from, where we were in our current life circumstances and where we were headed. To say Henrique was accurate beyond belief is an understatement. He told me things about my family members and about my own path which have been so helpful in the last seven years. Because I have a broader view of what’s going on; what each person’s struggle is guiding him/her to do, it has been easier to be with the process. His vision gave me higher perspective.

Ceremony supports healing. Community holds the shattered bits of our soul so tenderly that the pieces come whole again in joy and celebration. We were witness to what some would call the miraculous. One person came with hearing loss in one ear and left with it restored. Another came with wildly fluctuating blood pressure and left on a much more even keel. Still another was in the midst of profound loss and grief when she arrived, but during the course of the stay was given real solace, real healing, and real perspective which is a balm to the soul. I left with a certainty about my path, and a healed right leg with which I can step forward confidently on that path.

Using his understanding of Candomble, the religion brought by the slaves from Western Africa, and Umbanda,  the indigenous rituals of Brazilian tribes, Henrique weaves healing in which to wrap us. Not surprisingly, he uses titration, pendulation and resourcing - key principles of Somatic Experiencing whose founder, Dr.  Peter Levine, suggested that we go and study with Henrique. Dr. Levine declared, "He is a bonafide Shaman.Go see how healing happens while community holds the container."

Sometimes our ceremonies went on until the wee hours of the morning, yet the community was with us every moment. The drummers drummed all night long.  Henrique pulled from the Source and graciously gave sustenance to all participants… singing and singing… in a rich velvet baritone, in Portuguese and in Latin. He incorporated what was happening in the moment!  “Ah, the rooster is crowing! The sun rises”

We all left behind cherished friends in that community who were unconditionally loving and so generous with their time and energy and devotion to our healing… it was a tearful departure. Each meal was prepared with such love and artistry it nourished us to the bone and essence of our being.   I was so taken with the whole experience I made repeat journeys there in 2005 and in 2009. There’s yet another trip to Belo Horizonte in my future… I don’t need Henrique to tell me that, I feel it in my bones!                         

Caught

(from a prompt given us by Andrea Beard of Creative Life Writing 6-15-11

She caught my heartstrings on her words this morning. Mom is often a chatterbox in the early hours. Perhaps enough rest eases the swelling in her post stroke brain so her words flow more freely. But usually the words make no sense.

I caught her warm hand in my cool one arranging myself as comfortably as I could while bending over the hospital bed rail with my head at her eye level and my feet on the floor. Some urgent beckoning in her eyes marked a shift in her demeanor. 

She said, “I don’t know who I am now. I don’t know where I live.”

 “That could feel frightening… not to know these things, Ma. You’ll always be my wonderful mama… Barbara Freeman Stern Maxwell Kovner. You’re living with Mark and me and beautiful Ellen who cares for you so elegantly. You used to live with Ritchie. Now you live here with us. We’re so glad you are here!”

She squeezed my hand and searched my face with her good left eye.

“I don’t know how to help.”

“The way you’re helping is by taking each moment to savor what’s good… what makes you feel good. You’ve helped so many people in your lifetime now you can spend your time sifting and sorting the events of your rich and long 92 years!”

“I don’t know what my mouth is doing.” 

There were tears in her eyes.

“Yes, Mom…  I hear your words. You had an electrical storm in your brain seven and a half years ago. It caught you by surprise and hurt your speech center and left your right side un-moveable. It must be hard for a poet to have no words now; hard for a concert pianist not to play. We, your family, understand much of what you say because you’re so expressive with your face and that good left hand and because we want to understand because we love you!”

Another squeeze of my hand.

“We know we are loved by the squeeze of a hand, by the vibration of dancing (I rock her bed rhythmically with my hip) and by the sound of singing and music. Remember when Nik, Alex, Andrew and Brenden (her grandsons) played for you Saturday? That’s pure love.”

She closes her eyes, still squeezing my hand and brings both our hands to her mouth.

“There’s nothing you have to do, mom, except maybe eat breakfast – because I can tell by the sound of the blender stopping that Ellen has it ready for you.”

I was caught by surprise by mom’s sudden lucidity… a fleeting moment. 

I catch hold of the deliciousness of real connection and tuck it into my heart pocket. I am filled so full my eyes overflow.

Singing with Barbara

This little ditty is sung to the tune of "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes."

"Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu
(Yes, adieu)
I can no longer stay with you
(Stay with you)
I will hang my heart on a weeping willow tree
And may the world go well with thee...
(Well with thee)

Fare thee well for I must leave thee
Do not let this parting grieve thee
And remember that the best of friends must part.
(Must part)"

The song must be very old. Friday it came surging through my ninety-one year old mom and I struggled to write down all the words before she ran out of steam.


Glimmers of memory like dust motes in the deep dark forest of my brain tell me I've heard it before from my formerly quick-witted mother who had perfect-pitch and still has a keen sense of rhythm.

Nearly eight years ago mom's brain had an electrical storm which took out her speech center and paralyzed her right side. Since rehab restored very little of her pre-stroke poetic, musicianly, writerly, scholarly self, we, her loving family, have come to accept her as she is. Some days Barbara is out-going and talkative (even if what she says makes little or no sense). She can make us laugh with funny faces or, like on Friday, astound me with the intact lyrics of an old song. Other days she's like a koala bear which sleeps eighteen hours a day… only she’s less fluffy and eats only pureed foods instead of Eucalyptus leaves.

What Barbara has going for her is that right-brain expanded state of consciousness for which many folks shell-out big bucks to learn how to achieve through meditation. Her left brain is Swiss cheese. Her innate sense of melody and beat (right-brain skills) are intact.

I discovered, very soon after her life-altering event, that music is mom’s primal language… but, picking up a thread from last week’s blog, the more intimately she feels the music, the more capacity it has to move her emotionally. Her neurologist told us that anything which causes her to feel emotion is good for her brain. Laughter and tears help to create new synapses.

Once in a while mom’s brother comes to play guitar for her but she rarely sings with him. I sense that her left ear and eye are the stronger ones of each pair and that she has very little acuity of sight or sound perception remaining on the right. So, when Uncle Larry sits in a chair half-way across the room where she has little to zero sensory awareness of his presence she is not moved in the same way she’s moved by my lying next to her in her hospital bed and resting her old guitar against her bony thigh so she can feel the vibration as we sing the old folk songs. Either it’s the proximity that moves her to tears or my inferior playing that makes her cry.

A couple of years ago mom could still sing in English, Hebrew, French and Spanish. She could still remember all the words, melodies and harmonies. Recently the harmonies have begun to fade; likewise her melodic voice and desire to sing at all are dropping away. There is progressive retreating. More Koala Bear traits are coming on. Sometimes we can coax her to sing by starting a line and waiting for her to finish it. Lately, more often than not, she remains silent. While this progression seems natural and inevitable, it makes even more poignant for me the realization that we probably won’t have a whole lot of tomorrows with her.

On Friday, when I was singing “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with her and she broke into these alternate lyrics I had a rare glimpse into the mysterious workings of her brain. Stimuli are received and unpredictable responses are triggered. What treasures still lie untapped in her cranium? I want to mine all possible veins while she’s at all present. Each day is a gift.
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Saturday, our older daughter and our just-turned-two-year-old-grand-daughter arrived for a four-day visit from Oakland. Monitoring little Devlyn’s comfort level with Barbara’s obvious debility I observed the little one’s initial wariness, exhibited by some clinging to me, some averting of her eyes and she was speechless. This is perhaps their sixth meeting but the first since Devlyn has become so precociously and completely articulate. She speaks clearly in paragraphs, to every one's astonishment. I certainly didn’t push Devlyn to stay in her great-grandmother’s room, but my mom was gripping one of my hands tightly while my other hand was supporting Devlyn on my hip. Is THIS what is meant by “middle age” - caring for the generation on either side of one’s own? (Only in this case it was one generation up, two down as my daughter was not in the room at that moment.) I acknowledged to Devlyn that "Bubelah Barbara" (as my mom is known to all of her grand-children and great-grand-children) needs help with many things.It's hard for her to see and hear, but she likes to be touched. Mercifully, Barbara obliged us with some "doodley-doos" when we sang "Down by the Bay." Devlyn smiled and I could feel her relax in my arms.

In the twenty four intervening hours Devlyn has shown increasing ease with, concern for and curiosity about her great-grandmother. Sunday night, after dinner, Miss Devlyn saw me moving mom’s empty wheelchair back to my office and asked, “Where is Bubelah Barbara sitting?” I told her that Ellen (mom’s amazingly wonderful care-giver) and I had helped Bubelah Barbara back to bed. Devlyn marched right in to see for herself that her great-grandmother was, indeed, there in her electric bed in the old dining room which has become my mom’s room. Miss D likes to push the buttons that raise and lower Bubelah Barbara’s bed. She sits on mom’s bed and touches her leathery skin with inquisitive and supple fingers.

I miss my mom’s pre-stroke personality. I miss conversations with her and singing with her. I wish little Devlyn could have known the animated version of her great-grandma. I'm grateful they got to sing a couple of songs together. I know I’m guilty of reading more between the lines in Friday’s out-pouring of “Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu…” than may be there, but memories of my mother’s intelligence lead me to believe that she has knowledge of her precarious state and that the song is a cryptic message.

So, I’ll try to “remember that the best of friends must part.”
(Must part)

Once Burned, Twice Pensive

Aki Aleong and his Licorice Twisters were probably fine people who, in the 1960’s simply enjoyed rock ‘n’ roll, or at worst, were out to make a buck. But in my mind they are forever the poster people of sham, hoax and conning innocent children… which means, of course, that I’m pointing one finger at someone else while three fingers are curled back pointing to me because I was so gullible, naïve and clueless about how the world of opportunism works.

Across the street from Karl’s shoes on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park in 1960 was a small record shop where I bought my very first Rock ‘n’ Roll Record for a dollar–“Alley-Ooop”  - a 45 rpm Single Hit. At age 13 it brought me hours of enjoyment. I don’t remember what was on the “B” side, but I probably wore through the “Alley Ooop” side by playing it over and over again. There’s a man in the funny papers we all know… Alley Ooop, ooop, ooop, ooop, ooop. He lived way back a long time ago…  Alley Ooop, ooop, ooop, ooop, ooop. The record had a large hole in it which needed a special plastic doo-hickey pressed into the hole so it could fit on the record player spindle. I didn’t have a special plastic doo-hickey, so I got good at centering the record precisely on the turntable – much like a potter centers clay on her wheel. When it was slightly off-center, the record would  “w-a-o-w, w-a-o-w” which added to its charm. 

With the success of that purchase under my belt, I went back to the record store and saw “Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Greatest Hits” -almost every song of which I wanted to have for my very own to listen on the big brown and white leatherette box record player – complete with carrying handle - which Mom and Papa Leo (her brand-new husband) bought me for my birthday.

Wow, all these neat songs on one thirty-three-and-a-third album! I plunked down my five bucks and an extra twenty-five cents for one of those plastic doo-hickeys to play forty-fives more reliably. I shelled out more than two weeks’ allowance for the whole package. I was puzzled by the photograph of Aki Aleong and his Licorice Twisters on the cover, but I figured they were just dancing to these popular tunes which I assumed were sung by the original artists. I was not into reading the fine print. I'd made up my mind this was a great purchase!

Before I could play it at home we went  to visit my Aunt Nora and Uncle Bob. Imagine the depth of this 13 year old’s disappointment when my Cousin Debby and I listened at her house on the big stereo in Redondo Beach and heard these dreadful renditions that sounded nothing like the familiar originals! After the initial upsest drained from my stomach, Cousin Debby and I began to giggle over the situation. Laughter was our well-worn path to healing from yucky encounters with Life. We held our hands palm down out in front of us just like Aki and his Licorice Twisters (how chauvinist is that?!) and did our impression of their lame “Twist.” Fifty years later, when Debby and I are together, this hand gesture can still bring on the giggles.

In addition to being the poster people of hype, Aki and his back-up singers give me a reference point for how to discern music I really like. Original songs sung by the song-writer and jazz improve top my list of preferred music. Anything where the sound is immediate, intimate, the musicians are playing to me; singing to me rings my chimes. No wonder then that I do not like imitative, filtered, homogenized or digitized muzak.

*****************************************************************

 My beloved and I spend a lot of time on Interstate Five between our home in the L.A. area and the homes of our two daughters and their families in the Bay Area. Mark has gotten adept with technology and has always been generous with his time, so he’s put some recorded music on an ipod. (BTW… have you seen the new logo on T-shirts for newborns? “ipood.”) We’ve enjoyed listening to Broadway Show Tunes, Folk, Celtic and Pop songs on our five hour commute. On this recent trip, while I was driving and he was doing a crossword puzzle, I really listened to the Broadway tunes. It was Aki Aleong all over again! If that sounds like a contradiction because I “enjoyed listening to the Broadway Show Tunes,” it IS a contradiction to this extent: In the same way a photograph can give us a Gestalt of an experience or a fragrance can instantly throw our memory back to fetch and bring forward a very particular bit of personal history, so too can even a bad rendition of a favorite song conjure the memory of having enjoyed that melody  before- including whom we were with when it was playing and maybe even what we were wearing the first time we heard it. I enjoyed the songs because they’re good songs – not because of how they sounded... which wasn't great.

Two things struck me as I listened to these over-produced (meaning too many tracks of canned orchestral frills) pieces. First, the singers, who were from England and were doing their best to sound “Amurican”, were imitating well known singers from the United States. One singer had nailed Streisand’s phrasing and volume. What went missing in the digitized rendition were the goose-bumps that Barbra’s version of “People” never fails to give me. 

Driving alongside the golden hills dotted with sheep I thought about what makes a performance great. Again, for me it’s the intimacy, the immediacy and certain intensity that occurs when I hear something authentic. What makes Streisand great is that she embodies what she’s singing about and sings from somewhere below her feet - deep in the earth. It’s not “safe” or watered down or half-way. It’s all out, risky and takes guts to bring it off. You can smell the cologne of folks in the front row, the make-up and flop-sweat of her fellow cast members. When Barbra sings you know you’re privileged to be hearing a great singer. While the song in the mouth of even a brilliant imitator is… well, an imitation.

The second thing I thought about was the act of digitizing and how it steals nuance from an analog recording. A sweet curving line of ascending notes from a violin hooks our hearts and takes them soaring along on a continuous, coherent journey skyward. When that sweet curving line is digitized it forms a stair-step approximation of a curving line. The journey ends at the same place, but while soaring is breathtaking in a good way, climbing the stairs just gives us labored breathing. It is arduous and much less magical. Nuance goes missing. You can’t smell that front-row perfume or the pheromones. It sounds hollow.

The Robert Goulet imitator on the Broadway album was not convincing either. “If Ever I Would Leave You…” made me wish I could leave him… but no matter how fast I was driving, I couldn’t get away from this wanna-be Lancelot. 

I turned off the ipod and enjoyed the quiet while I chanted one of my yoga chants softly and Mark finished his puzzle. The sheep continued grazing. We got to our daughter's house and were thrilled to see everyone.

Yesterday, during the Birthday Party for our now TWO YEAR OLD(!!!) granddaughter up north, one of the guests’ moms picked up my guitar and began a blues progression and sang a song from her old rock ‘n’  roll days. She had a five year old whining to take her outside and a two and a half year old wanting a plate full of fruit, but for the few minutes she allowed herself to be her rock singer self it was authentic and goose bumpy for me as I sat there on the floor and listened. She sort of reconstituted herself in that moment as a woman beyond just “mom.” Music has the power to reconstitute all of us and I believe it is best heard as close to the original source as we can find the well from which to drink it. 

I wish I still had that old Aki Aleong album. While it’s true that he’s had a long and brilliant run as an actor with many credits to his name, I think even he may be embarrassed by that album with the Licorice Twisters. I would like to write across the shirt on his twisting torso, “ipood.”