On Getting Called Up to Where There Is No Bridge, after Finding two "Waldsteins" and a Happy Wanderer (Fantasy)

All photos taken by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, April 30, 2024

There is nothing "ordinary" about the beauty of spring ... it is such a blessing... and yet, the beauty on the level that everyone can reach with minimal effort is just the beginning ... which reminded me of Beethoven's Opus 53 piano sonata ... the "Waldstein" is in "ordinary" C major, but then again, so is the second movement of Opus 111, and both of them have in common that Beethoven starts in an "ordinary" place as a launchpad.

Alfred Brendel is the first concert pianist I ever went to see live, and he will forever have that special place in my heart ... the one thing he alerted me to, in Beethoven, is that Beethoven doubles down A LOT. The first movement of the "Waldstein" is a stunner for its day, marching and running squarely along in C only to end up in E for a gracious second subject ... a light that can be a surprise as a modulation even in 2024 ... and THEN making an "Introduction" instead of a second movement that would have made a perfectly beautiful adagio, but instead bringing us to an Allegretto second movement that is absolutely out of this world.

I used to play that first portion of the Allegretto far too early in my piano student days for me to have the technique right ... but I forced my way through, because it to me is the bright side of the first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata ... from darkness upon the waters, to light... and nowadays I enjoy listening to Herr Brendel do it perfectly!

Herr Brendel also loves Schubert, and he also recorded Schubert's other take on the life of the Wanderer -- the colossal "Wanderer" Fantasy. The journey here, with each movement beginning with a variation on the main theme of "Der Wanderer," is remarkable ... and we know Schubert must have heard the "Waldstein" somewhere, because if you listen to the first movements and their progressions, they are similar for a little while -- but then Schubert is off to realms that even Beethoven had not thought of on his journeys, for this "Wanderer" is never lost (except perhaps in wonder in springtime), sometimes passing through sorrow and struggle, but never lost!

So then I was passing through my beautiful "C major" type of day, delighted in it and not asking for anything else ...

... but then I encountered a Waldstein ... in the sense of "forest-stone" ...

... and then looked up the trail ...

... once or twice, my grand old soldier and I had walked part of it, seeking to avoid crowds during the heart of the pandemic, but I had never been all the way up through the northern Oak Woodlands that were there before California was even settled ... the little oak stands that actually define the full width of the park.

This is also another approach to climbing half of Lone Mountain, onto which Golden Gate Park actually comes down into the valleys below to the east, west, and south ... but I was already about a quarter of the way up, and although with everything that was going on I did not intend to do this hike ...

"Come up here, my daughter."

It came down just as clearly, with gentle but unmistakable authority ... and that was the kind of moment in which one's life might pass before one's eyes ... for half a second I thought my alto seat in the heavenly choir had opened up, but then, given that the portal of imagination was open, my mind caught up with the fact that I had roughly translated the words from German, which is a bit more precise:

"Wandere hinauf, meine Tochter."

It turns out that the German for "hike" is "die Wanderung," or, the Wandering -- so, Schubert's big piano view of the theme does make brighter sense! And, the German meant I knew the voice, but that it was not THE VOICE to Whose call I shall instantly leave this earth ... like the brighter-themed take on Dickens's famous ghosts that he is, the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past was providing me an object lesson, standing in so that I might have a bit of a review of the life I had lived in the previous six months ... the awesome climb of those six months since launching my fifth book.

So, from a "waldstein" to the Wandering ... because called up ... so, I started up ... and again, there is nothing ordinary about even the ordinary beauties of spring...

... before I truly was on the climb ...

... where the light came down golden amidst the young leaves of all the trees ...

... and illumined an amazing single tree along my path, a thousand points of green and gold seemingly held in its thrall ...

... while above me, the golden-green of oaks in their spring made for me a roof with a big skylight in it ...

... and the top came into view!

This was by no means the hill -- or really, the flank of Lone Mountain -- I intended to climb ... in reality, I would have been content to go down through the fuchsia dell, and maybe go as far as the lily pond ...

"But instead, on the actual day you took these amazing photos, you were called up, Frau Mathews. I just filled in for Q-Inspired on Mid-Spring Day, May 2!"

The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past was waiting for me at the top of the hill as I officially hit the top of the Oak Woodlands Trail ...

... with Sutro Tower peeping over the tops of the oaks as we rounded the top of that flank ...

... and started down ... one trail led to the nearest main road...

... but, we were not thinking about taking the nearest convergence to the everyday world, and so took the path less traveled by ...

... and soon we were again in stunning vistas ...

... and walking through them to the next crossroads ...

"I intended to present you a mini-recital today to celebrate Mid-Spring Day," my companion said, "but I see you have found the actual music you needed in this week of completions. Congratulations to you, Frau Mathews, on the six-month relaunch of your book, the completion and imminent release of your course based on that book, and the imminent release of your keynote speech!"

Get your free ticket here -- I'll be speaking at 10:0am Eastern on Friday, May 3 -- TOMORROW!

"Danke schön," I said. "I am just relieved to have a few hours to do this in the midst of all that is going on ... I needed this, so much."

"It is a fine day for it all, Frau Mathews ... thank you for having me in California's golden spring! What a remarkable habitat these Oak Woodlands are!"

Presently we found the official sign ...

... and then walked on some more in this wondrous place, slowly circling back down to where the Phil Arnold Trail met the Oak Woodlands Trail further west.

In looping around we found a place time had almost forgotten: the old Horseshoe Courts just below the Oak Woodlands ...

... and there also a reminder that winter, and its wrecks, were still only half a season away ...

... but that was far enough to get some necessary perspective ... though the memories of 2022 and 2023 were still painful, there was no denying the peace and beauty to which I had come in the spring, at last ... if there were a scar, at least all around it was thriving ...

... and so there we took a little while to rest, and my companion gently entered into the non-object lesson portion of my lesson for the day. I should have known it was going to be a doozy, because between the exertion of the hike, the sweet peace of the sunshine, and his big purring voice, he let me get as relaxed as I could before starting his journey to a startling concept...

"I am truly delighted to have seen you choose your joy, Frau Mathews, your way of celebrating this six-month milestone for you. As it was on October 30 and November 1, so too, here we are, and I am glad to see you now purposefully doing what you were instinctively doing last year.

"I have also been deeply impressed with your workflow, Frau Mathews -- last summer you just had a book, and now you have a book and a course and a newsletter, and that course is EXTENSIVE. You got tired outlining it, because until then you did not realize what you have done in just three weeks!"

"I know Jerome Hines was laughing when my mom went to the Knockout Zone for the first time in that last week too because I had you on, and was complaining when it was over!" I said.

"Oh, he had a good time about my newest fan," he said with a chuckle, "but then said that is what you strive to do, Frau Mathews: if you know about it, and it is good, you want to share, and it speaks well of you. You have gone the limit to make sure those you love do not miss out on this bull run -- you are inspired by love, and I commend you ... surely we understand each other deeply in this respect.

"I notice, however, that aside from Hive, you are going slower on your many international opportunities."

"I gotta get my folks across the bridge too -- that's why you see me hitting so many different points of contact," I said. "Literally, with all that is going on: these opportunities in crypto will not come again until 2028, and for many, that's going to be late. I gotta make sure the community can get across these on-ramps and participate and benefit."

"I see you doing free and lower-cost starter options to re-launch the book and launch the course," he said. "You are consistent, Frau Mathews. It is a remarkable record."

He paused, and left me in both the natural sunshine and the warmth of his sincere admiration for quite some time before continuing.

"Yet I wonder if you know why we are here instead again at Blue Heron Lake," he said. "Last week, I smiled as you pulled an entire English idiom about things past and done, into German: 'Alles Wasser unter der Brücke,' or, 'all water under the bridge,' and of course, the bridges and their approaches in Blue Heron Lake are stunning. It was an apt adaptation, and of course I worked with that: indeed, du hast übergangen, and have passed over into a spring of joy and healing."

Again, he paused, and let me sit in the warmth a long time before the reminder that winter was not that far back, for that last week's walk had been on a cold day ...

"However, Frau Mathews," he said, "it is a good thing I am past the stage of my existence in which I have trouble with impulse control. Now, it is no trouble for me to always be on time as I am ordered, but I had a very strong memory of how I would have reacted as a man in the flesh to that from you."

That was my first hint ...

"Because your heart is tender, and because I know you have taken a long time in healing, I could not say to you even down to last week what I will now. I know that in your mind, Frau Mathews, you are still looking across the proverbial bridge and laying rail after rail so that people can follow you over ... deepening it, broadening it, planting flowers, putting out maps and guides -- if you marry, a groundskeeper in Golden Gate Park will love you for your mind, for it is the same mind!"

"Now, I have thought about that, Herr Möll," I said. "Not for a while, but it had crossed my mind, because it is the mind of the steward of great resources for the good of all."

"Great public resources," he said. "That is how you think because you are steward of a large non-profit that your church built, and you are a Christian, so you know the Gospel is for everyone. Again, Frau Mathews, you are stunningly consistent ... but why are you here, today? Why do you even know this area even exists? ACTUALLY on April 30, and in Q-Inspired terms today, why are you here, now?"

This confused me for a long moment.

"You were called up here, Frau Mathews. You would never have known all this was here. Even your beloved grand old soldier did not know this. You were called up here, and you were ready to answer because of seven years of diligently learning to walk again, not being content to remain disabled but doing all the work for full recovery and beyond. On April 1, 2017, you were in a wheelchair; on May 1, 2017 you were struggling with a walker ... but you fought your way back to readiness to be here, all the way to the top of Buena Vista Hill, Lone Mountain, and Strawberry Hill! So, there was preparation, and then, the invitation -- I will even add, by invitation only."

"So then, Frau Mathews, you who know you have entered a new phase in your life, you with the international opportunities but still looking with love and longing to the shore you think you have left, still hoping all those you love will know what you know and have what you have, I must break your heart, today, for Mid-Spring Day is long enough to entertain delusion. Not one day more, meine Töchterlein, though I know how this will hurt you. To your Alles Wasser unter der Bruecke, I answer: Frau Mathews, welche Brücke?"

I had a moment's reprieve: he said it in German first, and I had to translate it -- and then the blow hit me in full.

Frau Mathews, what bridge?

I then understood why I had been called to a place of such beauty, with no bridges.

I understood what he was saying instantly. It was just a question of needing time to get all the scattered pieces of my hopes and dreams back together -- but instead, he made his great voice like a low but steady wind, and scattered those pieces into the dust of the path.

"At the risk of sounding like that movie -- what was it, The Matrix? -- there is no bridge, Frau Mathews. There is no bridge. How can there be? A bridge is built between things of relatively equal height -- so how is it that you think that people who could not stop following their will-of-the-wisp's in the ordinary valleys of life in order to walk with you are ever getting to where you are? You may fall and wander down under some temptation and to your sorrow, but they are not going to be of the mind they are now, and ever come up! There is no bridge to the peak of any mountain, from the valley!

"There is no bridge, Frau Mathews, because even in a park of public access, you are where you are by invitation only, after years of preparation. How then do you think it is going to be in the rest of your life? Consider just this six months -- so you think you are going to do a book, a newsletter, and a course, and make it as accessible as possible, and people are just going to waltz across to achieve your results?

"Even on Hive -- how long have you been telling people about it, and how many of them have the discipline and systematic thinking necessary to do half as well as you have? How many of them can even stand the months of no rewards that you endured before beginning to make progress?

"There is no bridge, and I am not the first teacher to tell you this although I intend to be the last -- for Frau Linda Anne Kotcher, your piano teacher, explained this to you 29 years ago. You were a child, and you could not receive it then, but it is time to put away childish things, for even then, to find minds that could reciprocate your ability in art, your peers offered you nothing, so, to the music of your ancestors and mine you had to go. If there is a bridge, there is the possibility of reciprocation, of passing back and forth -- but I say to you, Frau Mathews, as though your life depends on it because it does: there is no bridge between you and those you have left behind. They will have to climb and be invited up as you were, and some of them are starting very late -- but there is no other way to get here!"

I was silent ... every word hurt me to the bottom of my soul, but there was no gainsaying any of it.

"Ach, meine Töchterlein, I see your heart breaking before me -- if there were any other way but this, you know that I would have spared you, but I cannot! I cannot!"

His voice broke in his passion of paternal love, and beneath us, the ground quivered ... good thing we were on Lone Mountain and its bedrock! Yet he took a few moments for both himself and me, and after we had breathed in more of the beauty of the day, he began again more calmly ... yet I could hear the thrumming of powerful emotion deep down in his voice ... he had not yet reached the deepest meaning of his lesson.

"Tell me this, Frau Mathews," he said. "If you consider just the past four years, of course we have to account for the pandemic, but of all the things you were doing even then, where did the reciprocation come from?"

"Hive," I said.

"And is Hive a local, national, or international community?"

"Mostly international -- oh, ich sehe, Herr Möll, ich sehe."

"I'm not telling you anything you do not already know," he said. "I'm not telling you anything Frau Kotcher, being my peer, did not see and tell you of. I will come to it from a different perspective, one you can more easily receive: I too am the survivor of a community destroyed, and I wanted to be an industrialist and rebuild it. So I understand what is in your heart, Frau Mathews."

"But you see, meine Töchterlein, humans are the same everywhere. You know the facts from biographical information about me: I wanted to be an industrialist, and also play cello -- on the side, if you will -- and no one objected to that, because people in a mode of great loss tend to look at things and people as to how those things can ease the difficulties. That is human nature. My being an industrialist and cellist on the side would not have disturbed those ideas.

"At some point, someone noticed me singing the melodies I was learning to play on the cello, and someone thought my voice might compare for beauty and depth if only I developed it ... so then, I decided to sing, and the rest is history ... except that again, I had not yet disturbed the usual human expectations around me. An industrialist who sings on the side ... or even a budding 'star' who might draw attention and money to the region ... both would have been fine. The problem was, that was not what I was called to.

"Now, Germany is not like the United States, where moving for opportunity is a core of the country's dream. In Germany, there are people whose families have local roots they can trace back to the time of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire. We are connected to the land in a way it would be hard for you to completely understand except that you live in a 'community' that is 50 million people, and you are expected a Black woman to not make a move without considering the needs of a community just that large."

I thought about this, and might have attempted to contradict it, but ... no. Gentrification in San Francisco meant there was no longer anything like a real Black community. There was only this remote sense that he spoke of ... and although it was not quite the same as the centuries of tradition and history he inherited as a young German villager, the existential weight was comparable.

"The existential weight," he said, "and all the expectations that all of us in the community have to uphold it."

"So this is why, decades later," I said, "it was important for Herr August Everding to have talk about your early years in Cologne's region, and how you were educated there, and to have you give honor where honor was due to give context to your great escape -- how you and Frau Möll let folks know you had moved to Munich to pursue your career and y'all's lives by sending them all a picture of your new house there!"

"And I persist in saying nothing against those I loved in my own village and the region of Cologne, Frau Mathews -- my love, my respect, my admiration is forever undiminished for them. Without the ways that they overcame the disasters of World War II, and the sacrifices they made for my generation, I would have had no foundation to stand upon."

"But then, human nature being what it is," I said, "few people are willing to understand when they have been outgrown. Most people assume that if they are investing in something, all the benefits are to be enjoyed by always and only them -- few have a vision that allows them to see a peer, or a child, as someone who might be on a bigger mission, especially in a community under duress."

"Most people are provincial, as Linda Anne Kotcher put it to you 29 years ago. They see the needs of their province, and nothing else, so, not only will they not understand a community member needs to pursue wider fields, but some members will attempt to exhaust what they do see and understand on the province's needs, and some members will passively and sometimes actively seek to thwart that community member's growth and reach."

"'All that we put into that boy, and he wants to go to Munich to sing -- who does he think he is?' compares pretty well with, She's gotten real uppity -- over there with them white folks and thinks she's too good for us now.'"

"Human nature, Frau Mathews, under duress, is the same everywhere. Let me give you another sidelight to that: there were people in my generation and my locale that, had they been able to put in half the work I did, would have easily filled those spots in other cities, for I started from behind in a thousand different ways, and basso profundo stabilizes late and not always the most beautifully. But because they could not because their family had been more disadvantaged than mine, or they would not for any of a thousand reasons, I out-worked them all, and then my voice caught up -- and that, Frau Mathews, was the gift of God. I did not choose my voice: I chose to prepare it, and then the invitation came -- but, for everyone else, Frau Mathews, there was no bridge. There never was.

"As humans, if we fail individually, we like to think our collective will shall prevail ... but no. I bore personal witness, from 1938 to 1945, that this is not so. All such thinking is delusion. There is One Who sits upon a throne higher than all those of earth, and He chooses Who He will call, and empower, and set on course to higher ground. The climb must be made. The struggles must be met and overcome. There are no shortcuts. There is no lifeline that can be thrown down for which the climbing of it would be almost as difficult as the pure climb. There is no bridge, Frau Mathews. You are looking at a mirage, and in looking at it are delaying your progress to what you must do.

"Hear me, my daughter! I come entirely into your first language to say what must be said -- I who thrilled at the voices of Marian Anderson, Reri Grist, Kathleen Battle, Barbara Reynolds, Jessye Norman -- I who, if born twenty years earlier would have had to risk it all to get them out of Germany, but was born when he was and saw them finding their support in Germany and the international community! Hear me, my daughter, you shoot from the fertile ground of African women's genius through the ages, you living in a country that is flirting openly with the evil that destroyed Germany -- hear me, for I know of what I speak! Right now, you need more international connection and community, not less! You have no time to be looking after mirages! It is now the time to climb or perish!

"Frau Kotcher warned you. Your people's ancient music and Germany's ancient music, both beloved around the world, held up a light -- and Hive is a floodlight! So then, let it be my voice, of Germany's past brought to Hive, to echo the One Who has been lighting your path to here, all the way -- go through every door He opens! Do not stay another moment looking for what can never be!"

Everything in the vicinity was shaking; even the shade deepened as the sun began to move over the hill -- the old basso profundo still had his stage timing down when he needed to make a point!

But although I was deeply shaken -- at close range, even with him holding back the full power of his voice, there was no way not to be -- I was not, in the end, surprised. He had gone to the depths of the matter (of course he excelled at that, with that voice) and surfaced it, but ...

"I know, Herr Möll. I did not think of it in the terms you have laid out, but I know what you are saying is true. I can say or hold nothing against the truth, and however imperfectly I walk in accord with it, because I am only human, I will keep walking in the truth, forward."

"I know that you will, Frau Mathews," my companion said, and placed his immense yet tender hand on my shoulder. "Few come as far as you have, and you have followed the truth to where it has led you. If you must look back at times and wish things might be different, indeed you are only human. But do not linger, Frau Mathews. That is the danger. Do not linger."

I lowered my head for a long moment, but then raised it, though in tears.

"It is not just lingering, Herr Möll. Your caution is warranted there ... but it is more than that."

"I too am still only human, and I do not know everything, Frau Mathews. I am listening."

"There's a joke about the type of woman that will leave her husband a good meal in the stove and a clean house along with the note that explains why she's never coming back -- she loves him but she's done."

"That sounds like the prelude to Strauss's Der Einsame to me!" he said. "In 1999, when I recorded it, that was the kind of nightmare for me as a husband that I had in mind! You sit down and you realize you are eating your last meal. The house will never be that beautiful and bright again, and you have to live with the fact that if she was good enough to do all that before leaving, it's your fault. Many a man has had the abyss open at his feet on an evening like that!"

"Bill Withers explained that too: 'ain't no sunshine when she's gone,'" I said.

"A nightmare for every husband!" my companion said. "When you are left with no love, no hope, and no excuses -- for many of us, that is the end!"

"But there's another reason that happens," I said. "As a woman, I am that nightmare for everything and everyone I've ever left, but not because I wanted people to not sleep. Before Strauss's 'Der Einsame,' no one had ever communicated the depth of that loss to me as viscerally as you did, so then I had to go back to Bill Withers and understand that better, and then I knew. But that was never my intent ... it's deeper than that."

"I am listening, Frau Mathews."

"You know who I am and Whose I am, and it was said of Him, even considering that Judas Iscariot was still present at that moment in the book of John, 'Having loved His own, He loved them unto the end.'"

He considered that for a long moment, and then sighed.

"I also can say or do nothing against the truth, Frau Mathews. That indeed is a different perspective on the matter."

"I'm not a romantic, and I'm not given much to mirages, Herr Möll. To use my own analogy -- for you know that I do not think so highly of myself as to be so removed to others, and I am stubborn -- ."

"Yes, Frau Mathews, I certainly do know," he said, with a smile.

"Suppose there is a bridge, Herr Möll? Do I not most certainly know that if the majority of the people I know were coming across to where I am, they would have come by now? Do I not most certainly know that I am alone upon the shore, and was alone crossing, and was alone on most of the journey to the bridge?

"But if there is to be a bridge, someone must build it. If there is a hill to climb, someone must trek it, and go back and leave a map in reach -- someone else will come, and be called to climb, and their way be made easier.

"I've put out a map, Herr Möll, and guides and extra light, to Hive and this projected next crypto bull run, because I see who is not there, but also, who is not there yet. I know that He Who has called me is merciful, and that friends old and new will find their way. I know this not least because of you ... retired and permanently retired before I even knew you had ever lived ... but the lifelines in music you left, I found, and pulled on them, and found them good, and kept climbing. Those who come after me must have the same chance."

He considered this a long time in silence before saying, "You are a contralto for a good reason, Frau Mathews ... there is great depth to your mind and heart, and to your love ... and I do think it is written, 'love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things.' "

"I Corinthians 13," I said. "The fourth of Brahms's Four Serious Songs takes much of that chapter as its text ... and you know, there is this one basso profundo who sings that so well that I knew he would know the reference!"

"At least with access to your imagination and thus your memory," he said, with a smile. "You are a very stubborn woman, Frau Mathews ... but how can I chide with you for being stubborn in love, while wise enough to keep climbing?"

I grinned.

"I keep telling you when you try to bluster with that voice that there's just no way with me, but you don't listen... ."

He broke out laughing and came back with the quickness -- "I'm stubborn as well, Frau Mathews -- you think some stout German villager is going to give up easily?"

"I suppose not!" I said. "My father is country boy stock of your same generation, though, so just know, I was born ready!"

"Apparently, Frau Mathews!"

Thus we began our descent in earnest, our moods at last back in tune with the beauty of the day as the signpost designating where the Oak Woodlands and Phil Arnold Trails met came again into view ...

... and back into the deep spring green that concealed so much of the climb beyond from view...

... and at last returned to where I had begun my unexpected climb of the day, now looking down another trail that would await another spring adventure.

But it had been a bit of an earth-shaking discussion in addition to quite the hike ... so while new trails beckoned and the Fuchsia Dell in its valley shone like peridot in the distance ...

... all I desired was the quiet meadow ahead, and to look from there at the line of oaks amidst which I had climbed, having not known there was so much there ... but having been called up, and not forbidden to leave a lifeline behind me.

"And there we shall leave it in peace, Frau Mathews, for we have no quarrel," my companion said. "Truth and love and understanding have met together!"

"We wandered a little there in the sense of die Wanderung -- but were never lost!" I said.

Of course in that brightness, under that sky, the "Waldstein" and the Wanderer Fantasy would ring out again to make the point ... Beethoven to Schubert, and both to Möll, and right on down to Mathews ... an unbroken series of lifelines of beauty and art and love, right on down to Hive as well.

"See, what I should have said to you was, there is no bridge but perhaps there is an elevator, or at least a good rope ladder," I said.

He looked at me and then just lay down on the grass and became San Francisco's Laughing Big One again while waving his handkerchief in the air.

"I'm done with you for today, Frau Mathews. I'm done!"

Oh, he was so tickled ... the seismologists of the city had no clue what was going on but were smiling, and the bell at USF at the top of the mountain rang the hour more sweetly because its harmonics were being so caressed ... perfect timing.