Modes of Aspection

On Monday Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D (the celebrated 1955 recording: Jascha Heifetz with the Boston Symphony Orchestra) peeked out of our mailbox, and since then I've given the first movement a listen every day. Generally, I've held Cleo and strolled about our living room for the roughly 20-minute piece. But while we're in pretty much the same position, more or less, every day (she in a zebra muslin blanket, head in the crook of my left elbow), I nevertheless end up noticing new things in the music each time. On Tuesday I was impressed by a series of chords that somehow evoked ropes, twisted; on Friday the piece seemed a meditation on the tension between the collective authority of the orchestra and the individual voice of the violin; yesterday a second of silence about halfway through seemed especially pregnant.

Perhaps, you're thinking, that's just another way of saying that the violin concerto is great art: it rewards in different ways on different days. Perhaps. But as I walk Cleo around our house, and around my little vegetable garden, I'm learning that you could say the same thing about almost anything. Viewed closely, my tomato plants prove incredibly interesting: each day they extend forks whose logic is not immediately visible, and the small fruits have appeared without warning overnight. The vines differ in scale; the flowers range from full to thin; the plant toys with the trellis, always flirting with, but only occasionally touching, the wire mesh.

And then, of course, there's Cleo. Viewed simply, she's a baby, and can barely hold her head up for more than a second or two. She cries; she sleeps. But look closely, over a series of days, and you begin to see - at least we've begun to see, and I assume the same's true of all new parents - all kinds of exquisite details. Her long toes. The freckle just off her left hip. Dimples in the backs of her hands; floppy earlobes; belly like a little globe.

Concerti, veggies, bellies: how daunting to remember that these complexities are always all around us. Or, more so, that they are always willing to be noticed, if we can only find the time.