serenity

I have been splitting my time between the rain and the rehearsal stage. I always say yes when I'm asked to play in a pit orchestra, and for a time I regret it as it drudges and fills my evenings and then suddenly a spike of 'this is why! this is why!' will come through when the end of the four hour rehearsal is approaching and then is passed and we're still playing and still laughing. I don't know, it just always feels good to be who I am then. For this musical I am being built into the set, and I am falling in love with the way I feel when I'm sustaining a low Eb, when I'm watching, over and over, seduction and resolution, stone angels marking my place.
And then after tonight's rehearsal I walked out into the rain to find my parents had been by and had left a bag of fresh apples in my car, and because of how the evening felt and where I was going, this is the most natural thing in the world.

in faith

I showed restraint today because I could have said, 'if you don't bring this back to me I will elbow drop you,' but instead I just let it go.

busy

This morning I cleaned out the pencil holder that's been on my desk since before the desk was mine and I threw out five dead pens and two stubby pencils and I think this should be enough. I think these piles of papers all over my desk are irrelevant.

Saturday

Today was buckets and buckets of apples crushed and ground together and pressed into cider--long brown streams pouring down, bees aside. And it was barbeque chicken and sticky juice and thick grains. It was a long, long, long bath and drying off on the porch in the hot autumn sunlight. The fever of fall is hitting me and I am--as always--filled with a deep sort of euphoria. I think it's the air. And today was also Jasper Fforde and it was 30 Rock and driving back over for dinner and for chocolate cake, and a sky filled with starlings and with light clouds layering under dark ones until the moon came out. And today was loving. It was seeing the ring on my finger in the wedding pictures of the generation before me. It was running my hands up and down the back and sides of that man who is so good to me, so gentle and patient. Funny, too, and possessing of an incredibly sexy mouth. All of this day I was into the being of it and full of fall and apples and at the end of it, ready to wind down in a game and a third and forth and fifth 'woah, I love you' and the stereo cranked as I drove home.

majuscule

Sometimes it's hard to know when to use capital letters. I mean THIS. I MEAN this. I. do.

the valorization of sadness

The title is nothing, it's just what's on my desk right now and I appreciate the feel of those words together. It's poetry in a book of psychiatry ethics.

I'm not all that valorous. And I'm not sad. I had a moment last night when I was on my way home from a rehearsal, driving (in car 2.0) down a steep hill in the dark and I had the windows open and I was CONTENT. And then I came home by way of an ice cream stop, and I took a hot shower and cuddled up with my man and I kept smiling, because I still was.

I think what helps is giving into temptation, and also denial. Oh and yes, it does make a difference to have a working car again. It is a weight off my shoulders. Regardless of how offended I am at the gods of Car for letting my little silver one die, I am incredibly grateful now to have a replacement.

Now my biggest task is facing and not just denying my worries about finances and careers and cancers. Tomorrow.

where I'd rather be at noon on a Tuesday

I want to go home and transpose music down a fifth and melt cheese over a bowl of chili and leave my pants crumpled on the floor.

end of the road

I think there should be a new axiom, sort of along the lines of 'Don't drink and drive.'
It should be 'Don't PMS and sell for junk the darling little silver car which was first car you've ever owned, which had never let you down during the six years you've driven it, and has over this period of time become the inanimate object to which you have felt the greatest degree of attachment.'

Because, really, folks, it is NOT a good combination.Trust me.

Waaah.

oh slow down

After I broke the second mirror in two months it begins to occur to me that I may need to impose martial law in this place. I may need to do-or-die on the careful, on the oh slow down for god's sake and the you're better than this, or at least, you could be.

I am a heavy heart to carry

I am toxic. I don't know how I turned a poor night of sleep and a long morning in the sun into an aching shared misery, but I did. I am the alchemist who made a slight trip off balance into a fight. I am the jackass who reacted to my inability to synthesize and express my needs by hitting my thighs in anger and bursting into tears and letting you drive away.

I remain needy but unintelligible until the door shuts and then I am a waterworks of frustration and regret and Oh, I just want to run to you, but I can't--I am still without a car for another few days. And I want to call you, but I can't--I know enough to recognize that a goodbye like that needs to be burned off by time and will only be made more painful by incoherent semi-declarations into a phone. I will only be saying 'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry' and this does not change the fact that I opened my mouth in the first place.

My bike's locked up at work and I am afraid I've messed today up beyond salvage, but maybe the way to give myself a fighting chance would be to walk across town to get my bike and then pound back up and down the hills until I'm home and a little tireder and a little less fixated on my self-inflicted emotional bruises and a little more fixated on the tension and release in the muscles of my legs.

I think the problem is that my mind and spirit can't always hold up under the weight I place on my body, and I am so, so, so sorry that sometimes when I'm panicked and flailing, my flying fears bruise you, too.

I keep saying I will be ok. I will be. I am a whole barrel of resilience. That's not the issue, though.
That's not an excuse.