A Fine Recipe: 1/4 Cup of Yearning

Thanks to author Kathleen Dean Moore, I now have a name for it, that mournful musical note that is, itself, the very essence of yearning.

The augmented fourth.

How can it be that a name--even a drab, rigid one like "augmented fourth"--can somehow replicate the magic of what it represents?

And yet. . . .

"Augmented" takes its time rolling off my tongue. It is not an easy word to say. Even a bit sad, somehow, almost ending in defeat. "Awg'-ment-ed." Like the single note in all those minor-chord songs that I play over and over again, each time washing over me with surprising emotional vigor.

Should I be surprised to learn that no songs in the early Christian church had augmented fourths in them, so alluring are their effects? But to call them diobolus in musica--the devil's chord? I think the early church fathers got it wrong.

In my yearning, I am connected to everything, both seen and unseen. It is that yearning that compels me to "forget" something at the store, just so I can catch a glimpse of my son--my tall, gentle, loving son--in one of his natural environments. It is that yearning that leads me to clang a few pans midmorning on a Saturday, in hopes that I'll rouse Allison and be invited to slip under her covers, curling up next to her warm body while she sloughs the sleep from her body.

It is the bittersweet power of the augmented fourth that makes me fall in love with the natural world every time I step outside.

In a way, I suppose, yearning is always about stepping outside--either physically or symbolically.

In fact, I think that yearning may be the thread that connects all things. It makes us kinder, softer, more aware of our surroundings. It makes me ache at the recent nakedness of our tall Locust tree, yet also stand in awe as I watch it transformed into something magical, with all the stars of the sky stapled to it, in the inky blackness of an early winter morning. It is the mournful song of a wolf or loon, looking for a mate.

Yearning pops our arrogant human balloons, reminding us that, as much as anything else, we are here to look out for each other--for the plants and the animals, as much as for the bumbling humans that fill our days.

Such is the power of augmented fourths.

My thanks to author/naturalist/philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore for naming those strummed vibrations that run up and down my spine. Her books "Wild Comforts" and "The Pine Island Paradox" are well worth your time.