Revise, and Improvise

It would be very, very boring if I were to make today's entry (which, at least, exists) an exercise in self-flagellation, about how annoyed I am at by myself, by the self-pitying excuses (cough, cough; it's Mother's Day; fatigue; Ralph Waldo?) I have come up with in the last few weeks for the entries I have missed. I DO NOT want you to write on here or to me in private and tell me it's okay, that I've done so well so far, that I need to give myself a break. Believe me: I do not have a problem giving myself a break, and if I didn't do it so readily when times are easy, I'd be kinder to myself about doing it when times are hard. I'm already bored. Let's write.

A sentence occurred to me this morning on the subway, as I was sitting there, slumped a little into the hard seatback, looking at a man holding a banana in a strange way, sort of cradling it to his side. The sentence was: This business of being human is all about revision. I'm not sure where it came from, exactly, but it keeps repeating itself in my head, and it's not because I've been writing so much, because I don't mean revision in the context of writing at all.

I guess I have been thinking--or accumulating unconscious thoughts--about the ways in which we need to keep revising as we live: our expectations, our goals, our beliefs, our selves. What we think or assume to be true at one moment in time may not seem so the next; Do we give up? Surrender? Throw our arms into the air in despair? Sometimes, I guess, but mostly we revise.

I thought she was so perceptive. I thought this place was so beautiful. I thought I wanted that more than anything. Wrong, not anymore, nope: So we revise.

This process of revision is actually quite beautiful, I think. It is testimony to the fact that we are so adaptable, so flexible, so willing and able as a species to roll with the punches when we need to, to survive. I am not talking about inconsistency, about a lack of core. But sometimes, even our most deeply held ideals reveal themselves to be off-kilter, for any number of reasons--we may stand still but all around us is in constant motion--and we revise them for the better, so again they work, hold true.

I am being vague, deliberately so, I guess. Maybe I will come back to this, if the sentence, the idea, keeps worrying at me; maybe I will not. But I want to end on a different if related note.

One afternoon earlier this week I was having a bad day. I can't even remember the specifics, just the feeling, and when I emerged from the dirty, crowded subway station into the dirty, crowded street at the horrible little section of town my daughter's school moved to this year, I felt even worse. As I stomped toward the school for afternoon pick-up, actually stomped, such was my mood, I started hearing music. And when I got to the corner across the street from the school, there was a skinny man in a gray blazer and skinny jeans, silver hair, sunglasses, playing the saxophone. It was 3 in the afternoon in a genuinely unpleasant, busy, touristy part of town, people were pushing past each other in every direction, and as the light turned red, then green again, then red again, I stood there, just listening.

And when I finally crossed, I looked up as I was walking, the long rich mournful notes growing slightly fainter with each step, and the sky was blue and clean, and the air felt cool on my face, and I was in the middle of an intersection in New York City and a guy was just standing on the street corner playing the sax.

Improvisation. Also important for humans.