All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

TWO OF CUPS:

Venus in Cancer

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PENDULUM DREAMS

Subtle Storms

Words and Music By Jim Robbins

Like butterflies whose flight causes a squall in some other part of the world,
We cause storms of love in the hearts and souls of others.
Everywhere we go, we cause storms of love.

Yes, we are tuned to each other, like wine glasses that vibrate
To a sound at the same frequency, and our hearts resonate
With love, compassion, kindness, and joy.
Our hearts cause subtle storms everywhere we go.
We set off cyclones of sympathy. We cause gales of joy,
Gusts of tenderness. We stir sprinklings of kindness
And downpours of divine love.
Our love can open a heart like the words of a magic spell
Chanted at just the right vibration. I’m sure our resonance
Causes some to fall in love, some to wake filled with joy,
Some to give or forgive, some to shift towards peace.
Our hearts make subtle storms everywhere we go.
We set off cyclones of sympathy. We cause gales of joy,
Gusts of tenderness. We stir sprinklings of kindness
And downpours of divine love.
Yes, we are tuned to each other, like wine glasses that vibrate
To a sound at the same frequency, and our hearts resonate
With love, compassion, kindness, and joy.
Our hearts cause subtle storms everywhere we go.

Drops falling on a still pond cause ripples. Everywhere we go, we cause storms of love.

Entangled:

Part One

 

   Once, long ago, a carpenter was working in a castle, and he took his son Simon to work with him so that his son could learn the trade. That is how Simon happened to meet Princess Ariadne. Simon and the Princess became fast friends and seemed almost inseparable. They were in fact twin flames who were nearly the same in just about everything.

   Since Simon was the son of a carpenter and Ariadne was a princess, the young friends soon realized that they had to hide their affection, which grew into love, but they were so happy together that for a long time their social differences seemed only a minor obstacle. 

    As they grew older, Simon and Princess Ariadne would escape the castle now and then and stroll through the streets of the town. Eventually Simon and the Princess were so in love that they subtly affected the hearts and souls of others, causing the townspeople to feel sympathy, kindness, compassion, joy and love as the two of them passed by.

   The queen, who was Ariadne’s stepmother, one day sensed their love for each other from her tower in the castle. The queen had suffered many years through a loveless marriage, and she was jealous of her stepdaughter’s youth and beauty. She wanted to crush their love, so she cast a terrible spell from her high tower.

   Little did Simon and Princess Ariadne know what terrible storm was about to rain down upon them.

   As you might have already guessed, I am telling two stories, one a fairy tale and one not nearly as enchanted. As I was writing the fairy tale, a storm was about to thunder through my daughter’s brain, caused by an AVM, or arteriovenous malformation. My daughter Katie had been born with a tangle of veins, which ordinarily would have been a smooth web, connected to an artery in her brain. Two aneurysms had formed in the tangled veins due to the pressure from the blood flowing from the artery. When she was only 29, an aneurysm burst.

   John, her husband, and I finally found Katie in the ICU, but we weren't allowed to see her because the doctors and nurses were stabilizing her. Around four-thirty in the morning, I finally got about ten minutes of sleep in a broken-down recliner in the hospital waiting room. In my dream, I mixed up Katie’s ordeal with the musical I was writing. With an evil spell, a witch takes away the ability of people to see a young girl’s physical beauty; instead, they can only see golden spiritual symbols that represent her inner beauty: a crown, an equal-armed cross, and cups and plates on a brilliant white tablecloth. Katie, of course, is not the princess, but some aspects of the story oddly seemed to me at the time to correspond to Katie's ordeal in several ways, possibly due to my growing disorientation. Every day in the hospital, as I grew more worn out, I continued to recognize those spiritual qualities within Katie even though her body remained severely disabled, and I struggled to imagine her as happy and healthy with as much positive emotion as I could muster. 

icu update

She’s having vasospasms, capillaries 

constricting due to blood on the brain.

Arteries narrowing. It is life threatening.

   Spoiler alert: In the musical, the princess’s suitor, a common man, recognizes his spiritual connection to the princess. He does not abandon her through their ordeal; instead, he does everything he can to break the spell. It seems to me even now that themes in “Entangled” and other songs oddly parallel aspects of our life at the time. One song suggests the inability of the princess, who was invisible to those around her, to express her vivacious soul; because her body was missing, the hero could only see symbols that reveal the magnificence, harmony and abundance of her spirit. Katie was unconscious most of the time, and for 72 hours after the craniotomy, she was unable to feel anything on the entire left side of her body, nor could she move any part of it, a state that doctors and nurses feared might be permanent. 

   John and I were finally allowed to see Katie that first morning; she seemed only half-asleep, though heavily sedated. I tried to comfort her and to tell her that I love her, but the more conscious she became, the more she grimaced and struggled to remove the breathing tube from her throat. I also noticed that her blood pressure went sky high every time she started to wake up because of the irritation caused by the breathing tube. The nurse said they had to restrain her and keep her sedated so that she wouldn’t pull out the tube. I realized then that it was dangerous to try to comfort her or even talk to her. All we could do was wait next to her bed as machines beeped and whirred and nurses and doctors shuffled in and out.