in three somewhat unrelated contexts, the topic of resilience has come up over the last few days. today i was listening to a podcast (whenever i say this, my husband mockingly asks, “really?!”) in which anna konnikova was talking to debbie millman about the quality of resilience and how dependent it is on both nature and nurture. then i took this picture of a queen anne’s lace plant that must have endured some fairly extreme hardship and somehow ended up, however crookedly, facing the sun. then tonight steve played me a couple of you tube piano pieces by a fellow named georges cziffra, a hungarian who played the piano so fast and beautifully that it seemed beyond human, until you noticed the leather wristband he always wore to support the tendons of his wrist, after being tortured for his political views in a hungarian prison. his captors knew he was a pianist so they beat his hands and made him carry heavy stones, which so stretched his wrist ligaments that he had no power left in his hands when he was released. the pieces i watched him play tonight were performed sometime after that. i don’t know. is that resilience? or is that something else, that you and i won’t ever understand?

queen anne’s lace in winter

lake johanna, saint paul, minnesota