The party's over, and it feels great. Not that we didn't enjoy it (we did!), but getting one's home ready to welcome others is a bigger deal than it should be, especially for those of us who let our homes get messy — "lived in" to put it euphemistically — and have to resort to stuffing stuff in closets and under beds to make it suitable for company. On top of that, a party (even a little one, for some of Darling Daughter's college friends and their families) becomes a reason/excuse/deadline for tackling projects on the home front, doesn't it?? Projects you/I/we have been meaning to do for ages?? Years?? Gee, um, in the interest of getting things done, maybe Mr. Betty and I should have more parties. Anyway, as soon as last night's little-party-that-became-a-big-deal was over, we took a walk down the hill to catch the tail end of the Indigo Girls' concert at the Yachting Center. Correction: I walked while Mr. Betty rode the scooter ... an old one ... which stalled ... and was potentially out-of-gas ... and Mr. Betty exerted more energy into getting it started again than it would have taken to walk in the first place. But we made it. And, just as we got there, with every intention of listening from outside (as we often do), two friends were leaving who handed us their tickets. So in we went, though I hatehatehate to admit that, as it's against the rules. We'd seen the Indigo Girls before, just the girls, but this was a larger band including a few boys (!!) and a sign-language interpreter whose presence I found totally compelling if a tiny bit confusing. I mean, if one can't hear, why attend a concert?? Can one hear the music?? I imagine, without knowing, that the answer is yes. There are degrees of hearing (right??). It's a scale; not either/or. And, no matter what, there's always the beat, which is felt as much as heard, right in the breastbone (under which the heart lies??), especially when the music is LOUD. And this was LOUD. And everyone, girl or boy, throughout the audience, was singing along, asking the same question: "How long 'til my soul gets it right??" Then the crowd got really worked up, nearly screaming with fist-pumping pleasure and all manner of swaying and dancing and bobbing of heads, for the recurring chorus of the concluding number: "There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line. The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine." Now maybe it was my own simple relief that the party was over, but I found arriving just-in-time for the last two or three numbers of a concert we never planned on attending, then hearing (0r maybe listening to) the words I've heard so many times before in a different context, to be one of those rare, shared moments — musical or otherwise — that suddenly appears, out of the blue/black (indigo??) sky, and everything seems perfectly clear. Even though it isn't clear at all. And that's okay. Everyone's in the same boat. Sort of. Like when the sun sets over Ida Lewis from King Park in a curious way, such that the natural elements and the man-made elements work together to create some sort of new, weird, weirdly-benevolent element. Or like the moon rising the other night over Sachuest Point, but the scene was so dark and my ability to stand still enough long enough to capture it (without a tripod) was lacking, so the hot breeze wafting up from Surfers' End above which I stood combined with the beating of my heart translated into sufficient motion by the time it reached my hands to make the image unsteady. In other words, the camera had a wiggle. So the peachy moon became a peachy smear, at which point I started playing with it, so it became a peachy heart (or maybe a jelly-bean??), a peachy squiggle ...
