happy new year

I've found a lot of times that the more tired I am, the harder it is to sleep - so if it holds true tonight, I will be awake until morning.

Last night I read my Letter - a girl mostly secure and happy still wrote it to me at 16; a girl still a girl and loving laughter and family and excited and confused in a different and new thing she did not know was love too, beginning to realize the loss of growing, and laughing to push away the thought and pull a little blanket of a world closer.
I am not her. And I am her still.
I think she was not me, either, but she got a feeling of what may be and then knew to write the simplest words to break her own heart.
Know that there are times when all is right and well, and times that are not so.
Oh God is still good then.

Sometime around 2 AM I will write another letter for next December. I have been writing these since I was 14 or 15 and am told it's a bit of a childish thing, but still I get half drunk with sleepiness every new year's eve and sprawl out on the floor to write a 15 or so page missive to myself before passing out with my forehead on my paper, and the next day I seal it up and open it again a year from then and it helps me to listen to myself and remember who I was and maybe you can't see why but I need that more than grown up things.

*

There will be a frightening lot of People coming here tonight, but oddly I'm not frightened, there's something about a party, and I don't even feel like hiding, I feel breathless and happy and like loving everyone, and tonight there will be time passing and people smiling and the first breath of a new day, and probably a balanced combo of alcohol, speeches and crying. What a grand thing is living.

Here being overcome with sentimentality and one silvery premature tear I have to say to all of you that read this, you are completely beautiful, you and you and you and you and you and you and if I forgot a you I love you too, and I wish that each is warm and glad and merry new year to all and every one in the whole wide world.

A year in hindsight

At the end of each year, my dear mother embarks on the task of completing an absolutely monstrous circular that details in excruciating facts the events and adventures of each member of the clan, and sends it off to every soul who ever stood close enough to a W to spit at. Since December is almost passed and she's showed no signs of commencing, I observed casually to her yesterday that she hasn't even started on The New Year Letter and we're going to be expatriated from fine society if the round robin isn't flying by the 1st of January. She appreciated the gravity of the situation, as I suspected she might, and to offset the hysterics I had induced and because I am a dutiful and self sacrificial sort of person, I told her I had recently prepared my own paragraph and she didn't have a thing to worry about except the other 9. This is it, I worked on it all night and really could use some sleep and/or compliments.
*
CHRISTINA, the third eldest and most immature W is not very old so far. She knew everything by age 6 but for the sake of the other children's self-esteem waited until this year to graduate school, which she did with grace beauty and an immense amount of chocolate binging the week before, enduring a painfully long ceremony, giving a grand performance of Debussy and having a lovely day capped off with a compliment by a man who introduced himself as having an uncle named Antonin Dvorak, a shining moment she will drag tattered to her pauper's grave and probably even pull out and present before the Judgment Seat declaring petulantly "but Dvorak's nephew said I was good!" If you, reading this, have perchance visited our home in the past year and didn't see the 17 year old W for a single moment of your stay, it was because she was in the woods hiding from you on purpose. Christina is Christina. She loves God and dislikes mostly everyone else. She has made some intriguing discoveries about her heritage this year; finding out that her great grandmother on one side was n/nths Cherokee and her great great grandfather on the other side was probably a Hatfield or McCoy, she's not sure which but hears that he done got shot off a mule one time and that can't just count for peanuts. This has been Christina's eighth year playing the piano and she's given up on it at least 365 times and resolved to never give up on it about as many. Baseball is still the best and from October to April she is especially grumpy and morose - so, generally herself. She currently does nothing at all but blogs, practices, walks, and practices and walks and if it's a Tuesday or Thursday night she goes to the local GED class to tutor a great crowd of fascinating addicts. Her plans for the new year are classified but are suspected to have to do with self improvement and world betterification.

Have a lady friend to dinner

They are polite, quiet, a bit shy, like to amuse themselves before supper in flying tight circles accompanied by the ceiling fan blades, and at mealtime may decline your prepared spread in favor of the houseplant aphids but are very cordial about it.

I'm going to tell me one more time

You really need to clean your mess up.

Last night at 1 AM I decided to quit playing the piano forever.

*

For not the first time I thank God that decisions made at 1 AM rarely last the night.

minor key

All I see now when I play piano in my mind as I fall asleep are faults. One of my hands is weak, not strong enough, not quick enough and it drives me half crazy. The remaining half is made up by a single look at my spinet surrounded by piles and piles of music, unfinished and forgotten. I loved each one and then went into a fit and abandoned all of them. I know I am missing the feeling and the heart of it all now but I can't get it back, going from day to day now with this ceaseless perfectionism. I am not good enough. This is the most discouraging feeling in the world, to know I have no teacher and cannot lead myself. But I will not give up. I will never give up and I will be more than I am. Everyone would like to know where I am going and the question now makes me want to weep; still my answer is the same as it has always been -
What do you want to do, Christina?
I don't know, Sir, only that it has to do with the Piano.

Exhausted from the night, my mind unbidden remembered words from a Song, and quiet came to me as a thing that comes from somewhere never seen but always close.

I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

On my bed I remember you
I think of you through the watches of the night.

Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.

My soul clings to you
your right hand upholds me.

Around 2 AM last night I fell asleep thinking about my father's voice and a golden place.

silver dark

I close all the shades and curtains and still it creeps in the edges and steals across the dark. That moon. You are so full of tears I can't sleep. The writing serves to distract in a little way. The peripheral shadows on the wall started to terrify me, I threw them off onto the floor just now and don't know why. It comes in swells mostly. There is one long corridor in my life and portraits keep changing and changing. When I close my eyes it is better somehow and I am still and calm and I hear my father's singing in my head so clearly my cherie amour, lovely as a summer's day. My name was once Tina and I never believed I was pretty but always thought maybe just maybe I could be beautiful. The house is so quiet. The world is so quiet. I must be very strong to be resisting this urge to scream against this empty selfish fluff of a cheap generation that I hate you and want none of your world. I don't want it and I don't want to open my eyes. On a silver dark night I only want someone to stroke my hair and sing and say they know even if they don't.

On this merry day

They tell me to not bitter on Christmas, so fine. The Dog and I wish a cheerful bah humbug to you all.

So I haven't blogged

Because for the 14, 367th time I had been considering deleting this blog until I took into consideration that there are only 7 more days till New Year's and if I wait until then I can make it a resolution. Probably by that time I will be in a slightly better humor because the days from here on out, thank God, are only getting longer. And I will resolve to answer e-mails, and to write more but not so much about myself, and not be sad, and most of all to eat a lot.

John is home for the holiday we don't speak of. The men and boys are on ladders and tractors and trailers cutting and carrying the dead limbs from the silver maples and the ash trees. I would like to go out but I can't watch that. I would probably cry and Dad wouldn't like it but I couldn't help it because I didn't get enough sleep to keep myself together, though I dreamed. I love my dreams. Hardly ever the sleeping ones but the ones that are mine when I am lulling tired and have music all around, dreamy dreams of colours and warmth in whispers and soft dreams and silly dreams and music dreams. There is some music that always wants to break me inside, something core deep under my ribs and behind my heart, a heavy bewildering thing that could break into a million shimmers of feeling if only I will let it.

merely i observe

lonely fog has been creeping in this morning outside my brother is working doing the things his Dad told him to do and Mum
calls him frantically to come inside,
she worries he has not been well
for a week and they will be late
for the doctor, she worries
about him even though
today she is unwell
herself, she worries
much too much Dad said to me as she
was on the phone to Gran what
would your Mum do if nobody

ever got sick, there wouldn't
be a thing to talk about

You will only feel a slight puff of air

*

A woman pushing her mother in a wheelchair came while I was waiting for my eye exam this morning, just when I was yawning and giving up on anything happening today. The mother held her toddler grandson while the daughter went to get the forms, and he had great blue wondering eyes that looked at everything and everything looked at. Paw Paw! he said excitedly pointing at the elderly man who sat next to me. No that's not Poppa, Poppa's at home, his mother told him. Paw Paw? he said, looking at me now. I smiled thinking: "Good heavens do I really look like a grandpa? No of course I don't... but then again who says Good Heavens besides grandpas", and immediately started developing a complex. He thinks everything is Poppa, she assured me. The little boy seemed content to have found two Poppas so far and was quiet for a while until he noticed the TV on the wall. PAW PAW!!! In the meantime the daughter was filling out the form for her mother. She read out loud "Check which con-dish-uns apply to you", and she listed them off: Blurry Distance Vision, Check, Blurry Near Vision, Check, Eye Strain, Check, Light Sensitivity, Check, and it turned out this woman thought she had everything, burning eyes, itchy eyes, watery eyes and dry eyes - perhaps one of each, I thought generously - and THEN they moved on to the Family History section: retinal disease? yes, glaucoma? yes, heart disease? yes, high blood pressure? yes, diabetes? yes, macular degeneration? yes, blindness? yes, and so and on and on and on until the "yes" had become a constant nod and everyone listening had become incredibly depressed. Then she came to "Other ____", and the mother thought for 4 minutes about it and then said a reluctant "No". The whole room had a silent cheer. You should have heard it. I think waiting rooms are strange and wonderful places.

**

Yesterday morning right after the Writer's Almanac on NPR I heard the gentle second movement of the Pathetique come on, and as I leaned my head on the speaker to listen, it shifted into Adeste Fidelis, O Come All Ye Faithful, joyful and triumphant, o come o come o come come come! It was surprising. it was joyeux. I am loving my piano today. Late last night before I went to bed I started to play a Rachmaninoff prelude, the last of the Ten Preludes of opus 23 and I know I always think when I first begin to play something that it is so beautiful, but the Rachmaninoff prelude is so beautiful. And my piano is my home again.

~

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the daedal earth,
And of heaven, and the giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth

Sorry, Sam

Sonatina Management would like to humbly and sincerely extend its apologies to Sam the barn cat, upon learning that he is, in fact, a her.

If not for Flash

I would have several more items of clothing than I do now
I would never play in the snow
I would not smile half as much

OK then

I dreamed last night. I dreamed about one dream for every night I haven't dreamed. That's a lot of dreams in case you wanted to know. One millionth of the time I dreamed I was on What Not To Wear with co-hosts Clinton Kelly and Stacy London but Clinton wasn't there only Stacy was and what I call there wasn't NYC but some lovely green place overspread with trees and with a quiet pond a little ways off and in this place we were shopping. Stacy was finding all these clothes for me and I didn't ask where but just tried them on in the dressing room which was a curtained place lit by oil lamps. I tried on some grey pants and Stacy said OK let's see them! so I stepped out and she exclaimed Oh these are fantastic look how they slim you and make you look taller and I gasped But Stacy I can't breathe in them and besides I'm only 115 pounds and already too tall but she didn't even hear me, and simply hummed deliriously running her hand over the fabric, so I changed tactics and hitched up one leg of the pants from behind and said Look one of the legs is shorter than the other! Horrified, she jerked her hand away and backing up said I'll go find you a different one and she turned tail and ran and I frantically packed up my stuff and fled

right into another dream; it was night and a thunderstorm raged outside my house which was full of strange people. I only knew a few of them. It was Bob Dylan in the kitchen at the stand mixer which was on the highest speed beating something he kept adding eggs to while he sang Thunder On The Mountain, and it was Alicia Keys singing it with him. He would sing a verse and she would sing the next and so on but I never actually SAW Alicia Keys because every time I looked around for her she wasn't there and it was me singing. There was someone very sick in the house. We knew we had to go bring a doctor but it seemed no one had brought a car and the only thing we had was the Spirit of St. Louis which was parked under the first maple tree, inexplicably in full moonlight. An old weathered black man had flown her here and told us he was Charles Lindbergh which seemed completely natural at the time. He had since disappeared so the rest of us were deciding who would fly to get the doctor when we heard the plane taking off. Hurrah! we shouted for our brave Charles Lindbergh who was being such a hero, until Charles Lindbergh shouted for us all to keep it down because he was trying to sleep. We stared at each other and realized my 16 year old sister Sophie was the only one missing. But Sophie doesn't know how to drive a plane! I moaned, sick with worry. How to pilot a plane, corrected the black Charles Lindbergh. I think you're a fake, I accused him. I think you're afraid, he said and fell back asleep. Before I could answer, we heard the hum of the plane coming back. Oh thank God she made it! someone shouted and woke the false Lindbergh up again who immediately said ominously That's not my plane. That's not a plane at all. And all the singing stopped again and we quietly listened to that hum getting louder and louder until it was hovering right outside the window and as someone's arm reached to open the blinds I woke up.

I think my dreams are really epic and obviously full of meaningful symbolism.

Yeah.

*

and all the pink rubbed off his nose

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day... "does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you"

*

Lunch today is orange juice and strawberry cake with buttercream frosting, which is leftover yesterday's birthday cake. No, there is no significance to that at all - how should I know if Ludwig van Beethoven liked strawberry cake or any cake at all? If you want to know it was the only Duncan Hines box cake in the cupboard and some Sundays you don't feel like messing with flour and butter and eggs and ovens, even if it is the anniversary of the birth of one of the most dynamic beautiful and extraordinary composers of all time. You don't feel like doing much at all.

I cried half the night and woke up this morning with my hands agonizedly tangled in my hair, which doesn't make much sense because I didn't have a nightmare because I didn't dream because I haven't dreamed in weeks. But it mostly means I am becoming a rubbery flubbery mess again and the weather this time has only a little to do with it - the sun has after all stayed out two days though it's very cold and snowy which makes it hard to run away and I think I really really need to run away. Home has become a close stiff place I don't know how to breathe here and walls don't seem to understand a Profound Emotional Disturbance like a tree does. Apparently someone is looking after me because when I woke up I found a note on my dresser that bubbled optimistically "Hello Christina I dicided it was time for youy check-up you seem to be doing good so I'm going to let you pas the check-up test well I bid you adoo toodles Your's Truly, Check-up fairy", which was so disturbing and obviously false I am going to hunt this fairy down and demand a second opinion. I would like to know why I keep falling to pieces, and after that she can tell me why my hand eczema which I thought stopped eleven years ago has come back but only on the back of my left pinky, and why I only chew on the fingers of my left hand, and then why I can eat nothing for a week and the next am starving every second.
And why for some days now I haven't stopped clenching my fists long enough to play the piano.

I would like someone to teach me to be good now.

***


Of course the tree falling in the woods makes a sound. I have never understood that question, it sounds like one of those stupid things David Henry Thoreau would say.

Henry David Thoreau, Dad.

lvb

Es muss sein.
Ludwig van Beethoven

Happy Birthday, Ludwig

Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 170. Although his birth date is not known for certain, his family celebrated his birthday on December 16.

Snow dog

He likes this weather.

Blue sky

such a beautiful
beautiful
beautiful thing

Frazzled are the peacemakers

K: Chriiis, would you PLEASE make Birdie get off the piano, I'm TRYING to do my school!

C: K, I can't tell her that, she has every right to be practicing now; if it's really bothering you, why don't you try asking her nicely?

K: Because nicely never works!

It's thawing

And all the sounds now are drip's and drop's and trickle's and clink's as the cold melts and mellows, and the Sun - the Sun! - is making a mighty effort and for 26 straight minutes he's shone clear onto this gleaming world and oh oh oh my word, for the first time in a month
I feel like going outside.

Now I am ready for Winter

The damages

From venturing out, Tuesday.

Present Day
The regular electricity has been back on since 1 am, a few hours after the Generator finally started to work. fiiigures. But Hallelujah. Everyone is happier and already the experience of manually flushing toilets is starting to fade from memory. All hail electric companies and their dedicated workers. Actually I take it back, don't hail please, that is the last thing we need. We may get to town today finally, if The Vehicle can haul itself up the still icy road and we must pray it does because all the forecasters say is it may get worse now, and I'm running desperately low on Chap Stick. Help.

From Iceworld

On Saturday December 8th a strong, cold high pressure system moved from Canada into the Great Plains. This high pressure system brought some very cold air streaming into the Midwest and Great Plains regions. At 200 PM on Saturday December 8th, temperatures ranged from the mid 30s in Southeast Missouri to the upper teens in Northeast Missouri. As this cold air was settling in across the Bi-State region, a low pressure system developed over the southern plains which drew copious amounts of Gulf moisture up and over the cold air which was locked in at the surface. Sub-freezing temperatures across the northern 2/3s of the Bi-State Region combined with this overrunning warm and moist air provided the perfect setup for freezing rain.

From here. It means the weather stinks. John the Weather Man sent me the link. He said he saw it and thought HEY! I RECOGNIZE THAT TREE and sure enough I look and two of my photos ended up on the NOAA website, thanks to my beloved snoopy Mum.

If you've read this already, or this, or this, you know why I haven't written. In case you haven't, do, and for your negligence I have also composed a brief narration of recent events. Run away.

Tuesday

Tuesday December 11, 10:07 am
Outside walls everything was cold silence yesterday. Today is even more terrible, and different. We are in a cloud. Frozen fog, and all around are shadows of trees, and the sounds of hunters and the cracking of their guns. It is not hunters. The trees are breaking. A second doesn't go by without one falling. The ash trees are split, my trees. I climbed and dreamed in them all summer. The west one cracked finally while we were sleeping. I heard it then but didn't sob at all until I had to see it, and all of them as I stood in the field and listened. Is it strange I am grieving for Trees. But they hang their heads so. I was angry too but I've stopped now. Have no strength for it. There's been no sun for 11 days. Ready for this to end. Still no power.

2:34 pm
It is very wearisome today to have no water and no lights. La of the Quarry Cliffs keeps calling on the cell to say that she's great and everything's on and she is just about to shower and watch TV. I don't care much. I'm sure she has also e-mailed me 1,548 times saying Why don't you E-mail me? Well, the first thing I will do when the Internet's back up is send her an e-mail, and it will say,

Here is an E-mail.

BE HAPPY.

9:04 pm
We are tripping over our own glee. Since about 40 minutes ago, Dad's somehow finally got the Generator running; and somehow got it hooked to run the well pump, and so we've all showered now and feel we could always be good if we never had another thing besides clean skin and blankets. To smell good is lovely. To have a fireplace, to have candles, to have pillows and a Da downstairs.

Monday

Monday December 10, 12:47 pm

Phones have been down all day. Here at the W's the electricity is still on; no one knows why. There is no power at Jeff and Naomi's up the road, or at Gran K and Don's. Wondering if they woke up very cold, we pray a little harder for March, and huddle around fireplaces and gaze and think about what we love. To be warm is what we need. The day is frozen soundless and everyone must be close and comforted together to survive, in our own Ark with flickering flames and some laughter. Winter makes us lonely, at the same time it forces us together. We are warm and cold.

4:17 pm
The power went out shortly after 1. Pretty lamps and candles lit all over the house. Mum is in Efficiency Mode, we must do this, we must do it now, we must seize Fate by the throat, or was that Beethoven. Happy birthday, Beethoven.

8:05 pm
Dad has made an entry, we all have eaten by oil-lamplight, and he has dragged off the boys and they are at work on the finicky Generator. The rest of us all have had the best time singing at the Piano and playing Chinese Checkers in the flickering Darkness, but now half are getting grumpy and insist on Showers, and TV, and say they can't even tell which color Checker is theirs without the stupid lights on when will they get the stupid lights on and I REALLY NEED A SHOWER. It seems rusticity also loses its charm.

Is this a bad time

it didn't snow it didn't snow it didn't snow it didn't snow.........

yes it did.

Now listen. Don't say oh for a White Christmas, don't say you envy me, and don't you ever say it's pretty, it's not pretty not when it's like this half melting and sticky and shrouding like it is. But enough of that. Actually you may say what you wish, I just want to sleep. For days I've slept and wanted to sleep and half fallen asleep watching a marathon of birthing shows on TLC thinking Oh my God how awful maybe I'll only have 12 instead of 13 and then I wake back up and the tv family is home with a little soft baby in a little soft blanket and he fits right into their chests between their ribs and on their hearts and I think oh only one would be enough and I drift off a little and I think: and then 12 more.

Here I would like to apologize to all I owe e-mail to. I will still probably owe you e-mails weeks from now. Now don't worry, it's not you it's me blah blah blah but seriously; I am very ill, you should know. The great thing is I've found loads of great and informative websites where I can jolly diagnose myself all day long let's see so far I've definitely got Seasonal Affective Disorder and of course ADD with Hyperactivity plus I tend to suffer from chronic stress and and perfectionism (who knew that was a disease) and dysthymia and hypomania which means probably also cyclothymia and then there's the A Word. If you don't understand what all this means, here it is simply: you really don't want me to e-mail you.

That's all.







Oh and happy 1/31 of Beethoven's Birthday.






Oh..... and have a holly jolly rotten Christmas.

My piano

My Spinet has lived with me for about 1,022 mornings; but even now there is nothing so new as seeing the first light of a day and the way it falls on the wood and keys.

Peachy

(From K's grammar yesterday)

Use three adjectives to describe the noun:

peach

1) succulent peach
2) good peach
3) happy peach

Title:

I swore last night that this day I would walk, I must walk, I don't care how cold the dawn was going to be, I would get out. But it didn't even dawn. It rained and then it snowed and it stopped and melted and cried, wait no that was me. I miss everything so much. I miss the light.

But! I'm all better now, you see. I tell myself that. I had cookies and cocoa and am thinking of playing the piano because I haven't for days and days. The Pathetique still sits there glaring, it would kill me to put it away and it would kill me to play it - but at least for now I know I need something else, I need lively and up and cheery and pretty or I will go even more crazy than I am. And I think I know just the thing.

flower

Words don't come

Haven't lately been able to shake what follows me through the day, and wakes me up at night, and never wants me to eat and makes me act all funny. Something is bothering me and I don't know what it is. Maybe it is being immured in walls, too too cold to venture out, maybe it is having too much to do and never ever finishing, maybe it is the layers and layers of grey - maybe it is something else.

But it is something.

I want to learn to live with this heart.

I want to leave the cold behind.

Only a fool

Once I did try to count all the colors in a sunset.

Sweet Sam

Sam is the littlest one of the barn cats at the alpaca farm.

Every time I was there I wanted to take him home with me.

Very like a whale

Or, The Humorous Effects of Sleep Deprivation
*

K hops around doing animal impersonations.

C: Hmmm... you are... you are... oh you're an... umm... okapi?

K: I'm a FROG.

O: An okapi, what is that, like a cross between a mountain goat and something, isn't it?

C: Well, no, I think it's sort of an African gazelle-zebra-ish thing...

O: Oh, so it's like a cantaloupe?

silence

C: Yeah.

**

Happy Beethoven's Birthday Month