This weekend was a full one. First the wonderful workshop of Tatu on Sexual Shibari, and then a small but lovely thing happened yesterday.
It’s Spring here in Atlanta. Time for planning gardens, even putting in some plants, though the soil isn’t warm enough for beans and peas yet. There is still a possibility of another late frost, but I doubt it.
It seems the season is gathering energies for a full out jump into the heated part of the year. We’ve had a lot of rain and this bodes well. There has been a contineous drought for years and water in land locked Atlanta is expensive. Right now, the trees are opening with the palest of watercolor washes, and it evokes a tenderness in those conscious of the sentiment. We tend to rush through spring, but as I grow older, I try to linger in this gentle environment knowing the heat of the summer will sap any strength to be outside. So, Spring is the ticket and my husband and I like to link arms and walk our neighborhood and look at the newborn signs of the season.
The birds are one harbinger of Spring. The robins, the red cardinals, the mimic mockingbirds, the blue jays and the winter wrens are some of the daily birds we live with. Our brown thrushes, not the most colorful of birds, are rustling through the leaf litter, and yesterday my husband saw a oriole. A Baltimore oriole actually, and probably on its way back to Baltimore. The nuthatches and the tuffed titmouses are running amock here.
So we go to Home Depot and I leave the Jeep early just to walk to it, and pass Whole Foods on the way. It’s a gray day and I’m not thinking of much, but this incredible music floats on the air. It’s wind chimes, and the music is so tender and ethereal I stop and am stunned. There is a rack outside Whole Foods and there are the wind chimes all toiling away. I am so struck by the music that I am weepy, and at the same time elated. I am struck hard. I go and play with the windchimes and find the one that is the sounding the greatest part of this music. It’s an alto Gregorian Chimes, made by Woodstock Chimes. I have to have it, and track down my husband at the door of Home Depot. He sees me coming and since I have just passed PetSmart, he thinks I have seen a cat or kitten there. We just lost our Spanky this last Thursday, my favorite cat, to leukemia. But no, it’s the wind chimes I am after and there is also a beautiful, full fragrant maroon rosebush I am passing.
I have a very tolerant and sweet husband. We have been married for many years and he is the sole breadwinner for our small family. This wind chime is expensive, almost the amount of a week’s worth of groceries. A few things bought further at Whole Foods and it’s two weeks worth of groceries. He decides to throw in the beautiful rosebush, just to sweeten the deal, and we come home.
I am in another world. I place the windchimes in a couple of places outside, but it’s really still winter, because the windows are closed, and who can hear the chimes with that? So I bring them inside and my husband suggests hanging them on the pot rack that hangs over the an prep island in the kitchen. (He threatens to suspend me in Shibari rope bondage over the food processor on this rack.) This pot rack is really the headboard of a very old and delicate iron bed. The kitchen is large, thanks to the construction of my husband, and the rack is large enough for just about anything. The bow in the top of the bedstead is perfect for the wind chime. However, there is no wind inside the kitchen, but I can reach up and ‘play’ the chimes while making meals or just being there.
I can’t express how beautiful this music is. It goes straight to my heart and heals the spirit. It ‘does’ something to me that I haven’t experienced in a long while. What that is I don’t really know, and perhaps we analyize things too much, but it’s healing and elating at the same time.
As I mentioned, it’s an alto chime, plays an octave from middle c to c. It is so symphonic in of itself, but I wonder how it would sound, with the harmonizing of the four other Woodstock Gregorian Chimes: the Soprano, Tenor, Baritone and the ‘little’ Gregorian Chime?
Enough for now, just this Alto chime, but it’s something to think about for the future….
This morning at 6am I was making breakfast for my husband, something I have come to treasure in the doing because it’s the first and only time of the day we have alone. I feel better knowing he has breakfast (or as he says, “something to fill the hole”) and I reached up and played the windchimes as I was packing his lunch. I saw the smile on his face, and we both sat and grinned at each other over our coffee. Words weren’t necessary, just the grins were enough.
That wind chime set the tone of the day for me this morning. I am here at my computer, and am thinking of some place to place it upstairs so I can pass by and ring it, just to continue its marvelous effect on my psyche. Now I know that it defeats the point of a ‘wind’ chime, but I can pick out some ‘songs’ by the gentle moving of the wind catcher.
Lady Nyo
I lean on my elbow
and look at him asleep,
his bosom rising and falling.
It is enough to feed eternity
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2009
April 3, 2009 at 9:33 pm
It is such a blessing to wake to the smells of fresh eggs, bacon, and toast. I am so fortunate to have such a devoted wife/soulmate. We have become much closer in the last three months than in the last twenty four years.
The ethereal sound of the bells along with breakfast makes me feel like a god. Of course I’ve had my share of “burnt offerings”. LOL
April 3, 2009 at 10:03 pm
And you will continue to have burnt offerings….breakfast at 6am with cats underfoot is a chore…..and that new kitchen is BIG! A lotta steps back and forth…but I am thankful for your talents here and your abilities building.
With Spring, the hens are laying fast, neh? And you deserve the efforts…better than Total and a banana…I can do that with my eyes closed.
We have become closer because we have seen the good and the bad, the false and the true and we have summed up we are doing better than most, especially those that hold themselves out as ‘experts’.
That tantric sex stuff we have been practicing since Jimmy Tatu’s workshop is good for the marriage. We should have been doing that instead of the chaos of D/s. Of course, we have made our own path there, but damn, Husband…..perhaps it’s the spring or the pollen, or something like this, but you sure are my Hero!
Your loving wife. And thank you for the new wind chimes…Who knew??