OPEN WINDOWS
November 6, 2009
My first harp: A gold leaf Style 23 pedal harp
This might be as good a time as any to tell you the story of my very first acoustic harp — A pedal harp.
I bought it, literally, with my own blood — by living off the money I made by selling my blood plasma, and adding to my savings by banking the social security checks I got as a result of my mother dying from the swine flu shot debacle of 1976. We never sued, but 300 of the 40,000 people who died or became ill did. I just did a quick search and was unable to verify that 40,000 number (the government doesn’t like that number floating around), but that is the number I recall.
Anyway, obviously, this harp was very important to me. It was valued at $25,000.
One day, my boyfriend and I were carrying it down four flights of stairs, because the elevator was broken.
“How much is this thing worth, anyway?” he asked, hefting the harp up by its base and taking a step backwards.
“$25,000,” I answered.
Just then, he lost his footing and the crown of the harp swung over and smacked against the stairwell cornice.
“$23,000,” Peter said.
Well, it was funny. Not really true, but funny. The harp was fine.
What wasn’t fine or funny was finding out, many years later, that a tragedy had befallen my harp. The value of my harp had decreased from $25,000, to something like $2,500, through my own ignorance and carelessness. I had inadvertently destroyed my harp by not having proper humidity levels in my home, causing irreparable warping. “Ouch” doesn’t begin to describe the feeling.
At some point in everyone’s life, a devastating loss is experienced. When you are knocked to the ground, you are put before a great Gate. It’s the great moment of Choice. Do we grovel around on the ground, looking for the key under the doormat, or do we look up? There might be an open window up there. But the purpose of the window isn’t to “escape…” Rather, it’s a mode of entry into self-examination; and most people would rather give a public speech than engage in inner inquiry.
To avoid self inquiry, we distract ourselves by laughing and smoking cigarettes, or playing the harp, and delaying the inevitable. Or we can enter into inquiry, and learn the depths of what it is to be human; find out who we really are, how connected we really are to others, and how pain builds compassion; begin a search for our own truth and ultimately, a Truth that we would not otherwise have sought.
This is the one area of my life where the harp is actually a symbol of “heaven” to me, much as I have protested this idea in the past. When I play the harp, I “go there” — not to the idealized image of “heaven” with happy clouds and angels, but in being connected to something greater and more powerful than myself alone, partaking of a rich spiritual and emotional realm like no other.
One doesn’t like to think of losses equaling gains in life, but there does seem to be some validity to the old saying, “when a door closes, a window opens,” and that bats don’t necessarily fly in through the open window as occurred in my house one night.
In this sense, I think of that open window as being on the “other side” of pain. After you go through it, there’s an opportunity for something new. I lost my pedal harp, but now I have an electric harp that has enabled me to do more of the kind of music I really love. New possibilities. Enormous satisfaction.
Stated with oversimplification, I believe that although we must mourn our losses and give them their proper due, to get on with this game of faith we call life, it is more important to focus on what we have, instead of what we have lost or don’t have. They say that “loss” is an illusion anyway, because you always have everything… you are still connected to the “whole” experience of Being, just now you have a different view of it; you are one slice of a Whole that has divided itself up to have many different experiences simultaneously. It is perhaps ironic that only by truly knowing full, unshakeable connection can one know what “loss” really is; and conversely, only by not having had something can one fully appreciate its presence when it does arrive… This is that old “duality” game we humans are so fond of… constantly creating “contrast” lest boredom settle in like an old dog by the fire.
I’m an odd one, I know, but I’m really not much different than anyone else. I just want to feel happy and avoid pain. Sweet harp in the foyer, you beckon me.
