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.
9.30.2010
9.29.2010
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.
9.28.2010
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.
9.25.2010
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.
9.24.2010
9.23.2010
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.
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.
9.21.2010
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.
9.20.2010
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.
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.
9.19.2010
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.
9.18.2010
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.
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.
9.17.2010
9.16.2010
halfway
I think it was a spring and a half ago that I once woke in the middle of the night in a sweat, in a terror that I was going to become irrelevant.
My identity is so firmly stuck down the middle of my oboe. Being asked to play and respected for the results has been for so long the thing I hold up as what-makes-me-worth-being. The idea that I might not be able to stay a first choice or that the world might not always see me as An Oboist used to sink me, because it was me.
I am saying this in an easy sort of tone because I have suddenly made it halfway to irrelevant, just like that, and in the process have discovered that I am ok! and that there are a whole lot more things I have found to like about myself! and whole lot more reasons to look y'all in the eye than just my attachment to a worn down box of double reeds.
My identity is so firmly stuck down the middle of my oboe. Being asked to play and respected for the results has been for so long the thing I hold up as what-makes-me-worth-being. The idea that I might not be able to stay a first choice or that the world might not always see me as An Oboist used to sink me, because it was me.
I am saying this in an easy sort of tone because I have suddenly made it halfway to irrelevant, just like that, and in the process have discovered that I am ok! and that there are a whole lot more things I have found to like about myself! and whole lot more reasons to look y'all in the eye than just my attachment to a worn down box of double reeds.
butterfingers
I have been in such a hurry to catch things before they hit the ground, but maybe it's just as easy to let them fall.
9.14.2010
HOW TO BE ALONE
by Tanya Davis
If you are at first lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.
Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and Silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself.
Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after a while nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
(and here it is again)
If you are at first lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.
Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and Silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself.
Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after a while nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
(and here it is again)
9.13.2010
to my lover after a week in your ocean arms
I am sorry—it’s not fair that I kept swimming out in the ocean until the water was higher than my head and only stopping when you’d call me back to earth. It’s not fair that I do let my emotions run away with me until I run away myself because I know you’ll follow me and bring me back. You always do. I realize this is who you are—you were dealt the protective nature and have honed it over years of being the watcher, the caretaker, the one who stifles your own wants and impulses in order to help your family. I am already coming too close to taking advantage of these instincts in you by leaving myself out in the open and unguarded. You are right—my self-preservation instinct is not always strong. I am so certain of you. And I do become so easily tempted to just let myself float away now that I know you have a watchful eye in my direction and will reach out to pull me back before I get too far. This is a theft. I need to be my own watchdog and not let the burden of caring for yet another human fall solely to you. Not to not ever fall needy. Just, as a general rule to answer my own cries of alarm myself. With, all the time, the sheltering certainty that if I do ever get out of my own control, I won’t hit the bottom before I’m caught up in your arms.
And I, you.
And I, you.
Monday
I am having the thickest layer of work-dread I've had in quite some time this morning. Because I know it'll be much bigger than my apathy is asking after a week away. It just seems so thick.
9.11.2010
home plate
I AM a blunderbuss. I guess, though, if I was drinking orange juice in bed, I was asking for it. It is laundry day.
I've been away for eight days, and I come back to hammers at my front door as the deck is torn up and replaced, and I come home clumsy and content and with wide open windows in my bedroom and a grateful sense of calm. I am stranded for the day, but I'm pleased to be so. I have so much of life and love added up in this last week, and it's nice to be home again and withdrawing carefully into my juice-sticky cocoon to think it all through.
Oh, I have loved this week.
I have been here:
with this guy:
and I have been very, very blessed.
I've been away for eight days, and I come back to hammers at my front door as the deck is torn up and replaced, and I come home clumsy and content and with wide open windows in my bedroom and a grateful sense of calm. I am stranded for the day, but I'm pleased to be so. I have so much of life and love added up in this last week, and it's nice to be home again and withdrawing carefully into my juice-sticky cocoon to think it all through.
Oh, I have loved this week.
I have been here:
with this guy:
and I have been very, very blessed.
9.02.2010
prep
I am trying to keep my head on straight and feeling a sense of empathy for the vegetarian subjected to stories of lobster death.
I probably need to stop watching weather forecasts and making lists and just get through the stack of papers under my right elbow--before I leave, before I leave, before I leave.
I am escaping to the beach. I am escaping to the beach for an entire week. I am escaping to the beach for an entire week with my fiance and his family.
I heard something on the radio the other day about the phenomenon of vacation-relaxation and how it sometimes takes three days to set in. Well, I will have three days.
I am going to feel a lot. Sometimes I don't--sometimes I go for weeks at a time in a state of imperviousness. But this time, this trip, is going to be very real and I am going to taste and touch and see and feel it. All. That is my plan. That, and a stack of books.
I probably need to stop watching weather forecasts and making lists and just get through the stack of papers under my right elbow--before I leave, before I leave, before I leave.
I am escaping to the beach. I am escaping to the beach for an entire week. I am escaping to the beach for an entire week with my fiance and his family.
I heard something on the radio the other day about the phenomenon of vacation-relaxation and how it sometimes takes three days to set in. Well, I will have three days.
I am going to feel a lot. Sometimes I don't--sometimes I go for weeks at a time in a state of imperviousness. But this time, this trip, is going to be very real and I am going to taste and touch and see and feel it. All. That is my plan. That, and a stack of books.
9.01.2010
in spite of
Well, my mom's in surgery, a hurricane is barreling toward my vacation destination, my car's undriveable, and I've got a head cold. But what the hell, I've got a perk in my ribcage and a bounce in my step. The skies are really very blue.
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