Tip of the Iceberg · Monday December 12, 2011 by Julie
It was a cold blustery Sunday. In the afternoon, I took Java to the beach on the North side, hoping for some wave drama. It was indeed dramatic, with brilliantly lit whitecaps, the taste of spray in my nose, a wind that burrowed through the knit in my jacket, and the roar of water and thump of driftwood hitting the pebbles.
After a bit of romping around together, Java and I went our separate ways, she to rush madly about, and me to sit on a damp hummock that was somewhat sheltered from the direct wind and write a fiddle tune.
Some days, composing is easy, other days, well, it’s fun even if it isn’t effective. So, after having fun, I noticed that the sun was orange and setting at the northernmost tip of an island off to the west. Time to go home. I gave a violent shudder, zipped my jacket up to my chin, put my gloves back on, and called the dog.
I spent a half-hour wandering around in the mossy dunes behind the berm, looking for the damn dog, calling and calling (no point in whistling in a wind like that).
I was struck by how foreign my own voice sounded. Earlier, in the solitary zone of musicianship, how I looked and how I sounded was of no interest at all. My consciousness was of my interior life, and of the exterior life around me, and they were one. The shell of my body, which divides one from the other, vanished from importance.
Walking home (BTW, I did find the dog, quite close by to where I had been musicking, but with her head in a bush and understandably unable to hear my call), I thought about the memorial for my mother-in-law which is coming up.
She had a strong personality, impacting each of us in different but very distinctive and compelling ways. Perhaps if we compared notes, we might come up with a convincing description of her personality, a way that she “was.”
I wonder, though, how she experienced herself? Did she have many moments like the one I just experienced, where subject and object merged and she did not think of herself as self? Does what we will remember at the memorial service represent only the tip of the iceberg (rhetorical question – the answer is “yes”)? And how did the bulk of the iceberg feel to her? Who was she?
Who are you?
