= Best day ever

I. am. WHOA! so caffeinated.

To catch up: a passim

At the house where I live there is a Momma and a Poppafamilias, a white dog, a Spinet, bare feet and gardens, and six other variations of me.

At the house where I stay there lives a good Doctor, his wife and his pipe, two princess puppies, one of the prettiest pianos in the world, and a quiet blue pool outside.

I don't get to be where I live very much. The house where I stay is not home. And I am getting used to this, which is one of the six or seven feelings one year ago I never thought I would feel.

*

Last night we went to the St. Louis Symphony, some of us because it counted as credit and some because we hadn't been since we were very little which was when we were allowed to be very little and to care more than the music, that we got to sit next to a lady we loved. Last night I heard Yefim Bronfman play the Rachmaninoff 3rd piano concerto and it was more beautiful than anything in the world and by now I know better than to think it was silly of me but I sat there in the dimness of the hall with my face bathed in tears because it was everything I wanted. It was everything I wanted.
When it was very late and I got back to the house where I stay, I was filled up with music and I couldn't fall asleep for hours because the soul of that night had made mine so gentle and awake, like candles.

-
In other news:
Fall left for a while and is coming back next week. 60s. I love my scarves.

-

I haven't written because so many things are coming up on me. October is going to be half gone before I see it. Recital this, concert that, Competition. I have a teacher now. I have practiced so much my hands ache to practice some more. I've been discouraged and afraid and hopeful and the closest to confident yet, in that order. I have a teacher now. I felt very stupid at first and quiet and then very small and trusting at the piano next to hers, all of which I need to feel to grow.

*

Well, I have written actually. Stuff. Like PAPERS. I hate papers. I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now. I'm not good at writing papers. I can't write papers on a schedule because I get hung up. I get hung up on one word, every time, because usually it seems to me that the choice between that word and another word make all the difference.

Besides, I always think of things I'm supposed to say here in the morning when I'm looking at my face in the mirror. By the time I get to school and I do have something to write, I have to do it in the library and I try to avoid actually having do something serious in the library because I can never concentrate properly between all The Jamaicans that think the library is an appropriate place to ask me out. The Jamaicans are long story, one of the ones that it would take longer than a while to actually catch up on. What's happening? 500 things, I feel the same and way, way different. Presently I am needing to find a balance to my schedule. Let me illustrate

:

College.

1) Good grades
2) Social life
3) Sleep

Someone very wise told me I have to pick two.

But, lest we forget, coffee.

TBC

Hello

Right now I am sitting barefoot on a tall chair in the school library. Before I was here I was sitting barefoot on the school swing under the school trees and before that I was walking barefoot on a few crunchy school leaves along a row of school trees and for the first time was feeling like I do at home. Because this is my homeweather* (see Important Neologistical Footnote). Almost always when September comes I like to land and breathe, and almost always also observe curiously a poignant gentle sadness and joy/longing that seems to be reserved in my head for this period of time between today and the cold. It's fall, now. The whole meaning of the air is autumn. You have to have felt what I feel to know what I mean, but it is the first day when you can look out a window and tell it's here. Something in the light; brighter, crisper? You have to have seen what I see to know what I'm saying, that the light of a season is distinct to itself, its very own colour and idea. Autumn light is clear, and thin and sharp like the first bite of an apple.

I thought I should also say that maybe sometime soon I'll write things. A million shapes have changed, inside and around me but a million more haven't. The weather still starts turning after summer and I still go all crazy happy and want to tell someone about it. People ask me what I want to do and I still say music, because I still think that explains everything.


-

* Important Neologistical Footnote:

Homeweather is kind of like homeboy/girl/fry/slice, only slightly more atmospherical

christina

_
Chain Stir
An Itch, Sir
Sat Rich In
His Tin Car
I Hint Scar
Char in Its
Inch Star, I
Can Hit, Sir
Rich Saint
Is Arc Thin


_


well
what's in your name?

how the air must feel in the space between words

Today is one week before my first classes. I don't know what to do with it yet. I've been scared then excited then jittery then smart then doubtful then flighty then shy then everything then nothing and at this point time better just go by quick because I'm starting around the circle all over again. Today is only three days before I go and stay away from my family for the first time for the first time for the first time in a long time or ever. Now that you feel sorry for me it's just for one night. Small steps. I think I should stop writing so much about myself. It must be bad for the environment. Unfortunately it's pretty much all I do here. That's why I like this place. It's got a lot of me and somehow I still like it. And now that I have to get all bizzy bizzy, I don't know what will happen to it. Will someone take over for me? All you have to do is say I a lot and put some verbs nouns and lots of lovely adjectives in front of it and throw in a few pictures of a white dog and bam you're a SUB BLOGGER, poorly paid but strangely pleased. Anybody? You probably know more about it than I do. Which is hard to believe, I know.

Naptime

*

To each their own.

Ever since the slumber party 3 year olds spent the morning pounding their sticky fists on it, my Spinet sounds lightheaded and on the verge of falling out of tune again. The fifth octave especially is beginning to sound super jangly. These are the moments I think I will only have 12 kids instead of thirteen and absolutely none of them will ever be three years old, because that is the age when you don't even think about stopping them when they're ruining your beautiful instrument because they're cute, just so evil and cute. I have been practicing Debussy on it anyway, for a long time, la fille aux cheveaux de lin - The Girl with the Flaxen hair, which has always been my favorite that I forget about, until I play it and hear it and it reminds me once again of someone that I can never quite put my finger on and I'm not sure but I think it's the someone I want to be.

When something is wrong with my baby, oh
something is wrong with me

Isaac Hayes

I don't feel like watching the Olympics

Honestly, I'm not sure it wouldn't be a brilliant idea to have the Opening Ceremony at the end of everything or at least somewhere in the middle. Seriously. Would you broadcast four hours of pure distilled amazingness and then tell people now get really excited because we are going to watch volleyball? No, you wouldn't. We are only human beings and it is boring. You'd think someone would catch this.
I thought I should whine that all today my eyes burn and I don't want to clean up other people's messes or take vitamins or do much of anything even that I want to do. A little while ago I tried to nap and I slept for about eleven minutes and had about that many dreams right after each other until one when I was stepping where there was no step and my whole body fell right down le gasp onto my very own bed and I woke up and realized a few things. Namely, that a) there was a blue HOT WHEELS® car sticking me right in the back and my pillow smelled quite certainly of diapers, b)I was cold, and c) the handyman in the bathroom across the hall was talking to himself again. The first two items are explained easily enough by the fact that a bunch of three year olds had a sleepover party in my bed last night, a party apparently complete with mini car races sticky fingers and poop, while I curled up in the basement and got a chill and four hours of sleep. The third is different. Besides the fact that the handyman is not very handy, nobody trusts him much. People's history follows them in this house. I'm undecided. He doesn't make me nervous but the fact that I can't figure him out, does. He did admit the night I torched the trash to being fascinated by fire, which gives him tentative points in my little book of observed people. Most of the day he mutters and hammers and sometimes screws something up and says OH FFFF....iddlesticks... and at least all the three year olds aren't around anymore to hear such shocking language and I don't mind a lot. Not like my bathroom hasn't been my rehab center before. Which sounds weird. In other news, it's gold outside.

Today I feel like this

And I just don't want to talk about it.

Nothing happened

So now I go running the dirt roads every morning I can, and I walk with Kiddy around and under the hanging peach trees and then we stop at the barn and I make him stand while I brush his white smooth coat from his nose to his tail and he likes it and I say, I will be here to run with you.

I haven't thought much about writing. Nothing happened. It rained and filled up the ground. Our uncle drank himself to the hospital. We waded barefoot down the wide shale creek. The sun came and it got hot. I listened to baseball. I missed a lot. I couldn't help it.

So now I sit at my piano and feel covered in my perfect music shaped bubble because I don't have to hear or tell or remember anything but this. And I wish I wish I wish you could feel exactly what it is, this golden ageless pain that shines right on my inside that is all mine and yet not about me, because I can't say it. You I guess would have to be me to feel it and for my part I don't wish that on anyone for too long.

I got angry and bored and made my heart too nervous to write. Nothing happened. I created some drama until it was real. It was a part of me and I didn't know much without it. I broke with the wind and the concern was crippling. I looked down and up. I decided I wouldn't grow up without God.

So now I don't want to be any farther from home than the runaway trails or the river because from there I could always come back. I can still always come back. But they were home too. This, is not. Though human beings, they adapt. But we who aren't always make big deals out of things that aren't. You can see why I have to tell my head shut up just to get any sleep.

I thought I should say

The regular compyooter has been dead for quite a while. The Paterfamilias is Home Depot shopping and I am borrowing his, in this small neatly cluttered office that is hidden below the floorboards and forbidden to all but the reckless. The Princess Goddess Divine is on the floor next to me staring disdainfully at a blue chew bone which apparently is not what served as her entertainment in the great pens from whence she cometh. Now she is sitting with her back to the door and blinking meditatively in my direction. Even more recently she has taken up sighing, as if to say quite gleefully if I pee there'll be hell you know. Dogs should never be given names that are longer than Tolstoy's War and Peace and if they are they shouldn't find out about it. I've always held that's why Flash is so lovely and simple. Today it was about 140 degrees with unbreathing humidity hanging over the fields and I found him retreated into the lilac bush so I took him to the pond. We like the pond. I let a highway turtle go into the pond a few days ago. Before that I'd told Mum, Mum, I've got a turtle here in a box I'm bringing home and she said oh Christina you don't need a turtle, you're going to college apparently not comprehending I did not intend on keeping him and for the love of God what does that have to do with anything anyway. I laughed and cried. I never thought I would be frightened of August and feel propelled forward by every day and thrown into every tomorrow. I'm not afraid but I'm scared and I don't want to. Be anything or go anywhere else I mean. Not yet.

Just stopping in

Because I had forgotten to introduce:

The Princess Goddess Divine Lucia, also known in the nearerthanyouthink land of Pell-Mell which is inhabited mostly by creeps and geniuses who think they are one and the same, as Noir Dixie Susan the Black Eyed Happy Smudge of Tara in the Night Sky with Diamonds

Puppy, for short.

I straightened up with flowers in both my hands when I realized, I am happy.

It is a watermelon day and the sun is unhurried. It is an ice cream day. It is a wildflower day. Most importantly it is. I've found out something about myself which is amazing which is that I am not afraid. And I am not sad. Not careless. But not sad.
I think whenever I need to wherever I am I can come back here, to right here where I have been firmly planted, with the trees by the water.
It is healthy they say to get feelings out. Right now I feel like a rocking chair which is nice. So I'll only let a little of that out and keep the rest. I am only writing because I am aware. The Paterfamilias just got his new generator and is carrying it back and forth with the tractor like Kiddy does with his toy when you give him a toy and he's not sure what to do with it. Flash is Kiddy. Kiddy is jealous of Puppy. Puppy is sprawled sleeping. So far we are calling Puppy, Puppy. Names for her are hovering - what do you think?

Look who I got to meet

Yesterday when I got home.

The daisy follows soft the sun,

and when his golden walk is done,

sits shyly at his feet.

He, waking, finds the flower near.

"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"

"Because, sir, love is sweet!"

...

Emily Dickinson

of wildflowers

The daisies are from my field, the west one: that fills up with them every year,
that the sun loves, Kiddy plays in and I walk
through, while precious things catch my fingers:

my favorite flower.
They remind me of innocence. Winsome.

We are the flower, Thou the sun
Forgive us, if - as days decline -
we nearer steal to Thee
Enamoured of the parting west
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night's possibility.

E.D.

T of the Beautiful Piano's house

I told her I didn't come to her house only for the piano. Which was true and mostly not true, because heaven almighty, I would rather stay there in the center of that tall room at those perfect keys than be anywhere else on earth. There was a boy there too who knew everything, not as in morethanyouandlikestoshowit but he knew his music and what he could do which was everything and every thing, and was the sort that would ease through it all breezily amazingly and then ask you to play. It took me some time to remember I could at all, but I could of course I could and then we played together which was best. The boy who could play anything loved the Beautiful Piano too. He said it just gives back to your hands and it does, it sends the music right back into you and it swirls and grows and makes more and more until you can't ever get away or want to. Later I tiptoed back in when there was no one anymore, like I just wanted it to be and I played the pieces that I always imagine in Beautiful Piano notes because they deserve them, like the Chopin oh my soul the Chopin and I played Satie and I played Schubert and I played Alicia Keys and sang until I could have cried to have to leave mmm sometimes I feel like I don't belong, anywhere. Today I haven't played at all. And I won't until I will; it seems like every time I go from there, for a while my head and hands are left behind.


*

Blogging from work

if the weather gets better we should get together

spend a little time and we can do whatever

and if we get together we'll be twice as clever

so staple it together and call it bad weather


mm hmmm


Jack Johnson

Anything in this godalmighty world

I was peering up through the wire of the fence I was holding a piece of music just large enough for me.. I was asking why, I was shy in my way, I was feeling clear clean and all tainted with love.


-

Right now it's so 90°.

Right now the sun has not stopped being out for seven million or two days and the Cardinals are winning just because I am happy even if they're not really winning but scoreless it's all just as fine

The Young Man we were all supposed to marry is leaving the countryside and I am baking today away to celebrate / the air is swirling with vanilla cakes and kissy frostings and salty sweet macaroons /I'll sell my confectionery candied dreams and never leave my kitchen windows, never be done dancing on this the barest floor. Shouldn't we make divinity? But I don't know how to make divinity and all granddaughters should as all grandmothers did, in the Christmases in big houses. My hands since childhood have been sere like theirs, I suppose. and turn and twirl breathing in spice tastes and you

such an active imagination

You get used to things since it's been like this every time, a sickness like speeding and a simplicity like singing lullabies to yourself and what it all means is I don't know but really
who do I think I am trying to be just me when the field is daisy wild and you and I yeah we were it so baby let me follow you down baby let me follow you down oh I'll do anything in this godalmighty world if you'll just let me follow you down

The little boy

When he came yesterday I was out taking the mismatched blues and pink and smooth white of the linen off the line, and Miss Susie told me he said there's Christina! as they came down the drive. I never realized before that he knows my name. He always just says, hey. He said hey when he jumped out of the car before it hardly stopped. He said hey when he paused his lesson to tell me about his stuffed animals and all their names. There is a dog named Fido and something named Jack and they all live at the end of his bed. He has about as many stuffed animals as I have pillows, and he loves them. I didn't know how to say to him I understood but sure as heaven and sure as hell, I did.

danza

Today everything is hoppin'. The weekend is beginning really early and SEVERE EMERGENCY MODE has begun here in preparation for The Other Reunion. Yesterday didn't happen because tomorrow is so engrossing. So there's a lot of buzzing but I'm hardly involved in any of it. I myself have been walking about in the sun barefootedly and I looked at the garden for a while doing mental weeding and then I picked up the gladiolas the storm had blown down and brought them inside. They are in a vase on the dining table now and I can't stop looking at them. They are so fabulous and bold and tall and content. They make me delighted.

I am considering in my mind a complete overhaul of the Spinet. I was considering in my mind chopping it all to splinters with the Paterfamilias's machete and making a resolution to give up every other luxury I would ever want to use money for like education and food, and taking all the money I have and buying a sleek black grand piano, a Steinway I think, a really really really big one. But then, I thought, where would I put it. Plan B is overhaul. First I'm going to dust it off lovingly. This is what we call small steps.
My dear little piano. We are both so poor and beautiful.
I am very untroubled and silent, only being Now and only thinking about the little boy coming today in four hours. When I was looking at the spinet earlier doing all that considering, I noticed that it has slowly and surely changed since he began to come play it. There are sheets of smiley faced stickers where all my Beethoven used to be and there's a glass full of colored markers on my pile of staff paper and little scraps we've practiced drawing treble clefs on and the metronome is sitting open and askew in a prominent place because all of the sudden it is fun? Whence cometh this? My piano is becoming a teacher piano. It's a mommy piano. This is terrible and different and so OK.

When it rains

Sometimes you can hear the sound of the creek, even if you're not near it.


*

























*

And somehow everything seems good, even if it's not.

All quiet

When I was back from work the house seemed calm and whisperful, while it thundered outside, and I found some people who had locked themselves behind doors away from each other and us because sometimes when you are a mother you cry trying to remember what started it all and sometimes when you are a boy you just want to hurt everyone like you are hurt. For me, I see why some people who I could never understand before want to pull over themselves work and offices and things that are so importantly gray and silent, I think it must be because it is simple compared to the enterprise of families and fathers, because your heart can fall asleep. My heart has been still all day since it started hurting at noon but I am OK in an odd way and the second thing I did here was I walked in the rain and now, inside, the bottoms of my jeans are cold and muddy and I remember I am home whatever kind of place home is, and I remember that since I came in the door I have needed my piano my horribly untuned unregulated choppy piano that I beat my fists on more than I play and I don't care I don't care I don't care because even when I don't love anything music still loves me.

Only today

When I woke up I was perfectly surrounded by my pillows and I was holding one comfortably in my arms with my head on it, and the morning was gentle and my hair was brushed away from my face and I didn't never ever want to get up from that. Monday is my day to straighten myself out, and I put my dreams in order first. There was 1)about a fast food place and meals called things like Visa Combo and MasterCard Platter, which made me laugh when I remembered because at my fabulous office job I just started running the credit cards and apparently I can't get work out of my head even if I don't ever think I'm thinking about it and 2)another about a deer who ate all the good things from our garden but no one thought of being angry, she was so fawn coloured in the sun. When To Do's are done today, I think I should sing and I probably will, because I feel alright after not feeling so alright and I didn't dream about the things I had for three nights previous and it is summer. It is still and hot outside. REALLY HOT. I like it. L of the quarry cliffs just came back from Colorado where it is, I am told, not humid at all. I'm not sure how people there remember to start dreaming of sprinklers and fairs if there's no oppressive and suffocating mugginess to remind them what season it is but anyway what I meant to say was she came to see me twice in the past week because friends help friends do hard things, like kicking habits. L's a good kicker. Last night when she was here we sat across my bed and talked about the things that are happening for each of us and how they are different yet so the same and she asked me are you sad and I smiled and said no, a little sadly but not a lot.

Yesterday evening I went on the smallest walk, on the road in front of the house back and forth never leaving its sight because I didn't want to be far but I did want to be with the fireflies, and twilight and thumbnail moon. The dirt road is smooth as paper. I was just now wondering why I am writing any of this but it is obviously important and sometimes if you're smart you just stop that wondering and haul yourself out of bed, and have a day.

K

Dreamer of horses and the county fair.

The best thing

About being gone

is knowing somebody misses you.


Kinda.

Being Bobby's girl

The best thing to do was be away, seven hundred miles of highway away; to see family, to wonder about home and why it means more to me than anywhere in the world.


Mississippi is more loving by far than the flat land we had been through. I may love that place if only for the trees. I could touch a window and say pine forest at every one that passed, and smile. Everything reminded me of dreaming.

Reunions are probably grand were you ever unioned in the first place. No one really knows anything or one. Nice, quiet on & off, for me. Strange to be shy around family, to have the sameness and yet want to be different (yet want to be same). I realized this half of my crazy clan could split again, when reintroductions faded, and the grey and older ones talked under tall trees, being those who know the purpose from before and speak in remembrances, being walls removed from the insiders who speak the streets, who know bass and music loud enough to start your heart, who, if you aren't careful, will make you dance.

What I liked was that to everyone I was uncomplicated. She's Bobby's girl, and being this daughter and not so much else, I didn't mind me.

-

Been there,

came back.

Summertime moon

Sharp silver sleepless moon

&

Today against my better judgment we learned p and f, playing quietly and LOUDLY. We are still very much into notereading and I was afraid of any other distraction before, before but I thought, he won't last long with so much same, so I showed him the letters and what they meant. Right after this I was terrified not knowing how to explain how they meant what they meant, how do you entrust just like that the words forte or pianissimo to someone so unlarge. But I didn't have to, and should have known.
P, he said before I could explain, is peace.
And Forte means to play loudly. This one took a moment until he brightened and he said, funny! Like laughing really LOUD! And then he did.

-

Now I promise, I promise I will quit talking about him for an entire whole week.

(No Subject)

At 10am the little boy was here and we had a lesson. He was playing the gray goose song for me when he interrupted himself with his usual hey, and then said to me yesterday was really bad and my grandpa talked to me and we sat on my bed and I ripped up a lot of paper to get anger out of my heart because I was so angry because of my parents and he smiled like it was all ok and continued his song.

When he was running outside, his Mom who is not his mom sat next to my chair and told me about his yesterday, how his father who never called, called and how the little boy played all four of his songs for him then and how afterward he didn't want his grandparents he wanted them and couldn't know couldn't find why they didn't come and never sat on his bed with him and why and why and why.
Through the window I saw him playing in the tree branches and felt this pain again.

When everyone was gone I went out in the sun, sat on my knees in the garden for half of an hour weeding and thinking, words standing still in my head: I had so much anger in my heart - the question of how it reconciles with a smile that's six years old.

-


Later I fed the hummingbirds. And then I played Joplin, and then I played a duet.



-

On the community crisis end of things

The National Guard people things are sleeping at the high school down the road. It is so cool to see the black heavy trucks passing and the camo-clad saviours, everyone reckons. I don't like them much because they never wave.
Walls and sands.
What happened is the water grew. Really really. When John the Eldest was here for PaterFamilias Day I took him down to look and we saw the River from the road (on the road, over the road) from the tracks (reaching the tracks) and from the cemetery on the hill (safe place and untouchable). I have the pictures from then but then changes every day. I am OK with the rising. I am not OK. But I am close, somehow, to this.

Also when John was here he took his car and I took not my car and we raced each other down a highway I had been missing for a while, why, because we are crazy showoffs because we intend to die insanely funly not drown in the drowsy flood water. Or mostly because there is a long hard turn in the road about seven miles down and if you take it at an exact and certain breakneck speed, it feels just like floating.

Things I have that not everyone does

a brand spankin new freckle
a paranoid fear of drive-throughs
a father who used to have more hair than I will ever possess

simple treasure

The little boy was at a wedding I went to today. I saw him at the reception, he looked tiny and he looked sharp in his shirt and vest and clustering with other little boys with his hands full of potato chips and his six years old missing teeth grin and I didn't expect him to see me. So I looked into my punch and looked up again and he was standing in front of my chair. He said, hey. I smiled hey and all of the sudden he hugged me, just threw his arms around my shoulders then ran back to the other boys. And ever since, my mind has been all shapes and I don't know how to think in anything but smiles.

Reason To Give Up on Boys #4,382

Christina: Is it Friday the Thirteenth?

Con: Oh... you're right, it is!

W: Really? Let's do something unlucky! quick, where's a crack!

Con: Behind you!

Con: Get it? Behind you!

W: (hysterics)

Con: (hysterics)

I dreamed last night I was in some place with some people, a formal event or a funeral or I don't know what but everyone was wearing black and after whatever it was we were all in a hall, and there was a beautiful old woman sitting there and all she was doing was looking at me. The most silent and grieved gaze through a sea of people in black that I knew or did not know, it didn't matter. I knew her. I knew I knew her, she was so familiar but where or when or why. She had tears running down her face and I went to her quietly and finally I said did you teach me Music. Then there was nothing more than an unspoken yes.

I sometimes dream in golden and about finding and lions. Lions are important to me. I don't remember why.

I'm listening to the rain on the roof and thinking of walking, thinking of laundry and Hanon and breakfast and the North. There is so awful much to think of on a Friday. I think I want to be a brown horse and have all the fields, I think I want to see you approaching down the path my feet are on, I think I could feel gentle and glad.

tiny steps

We ran over a bird on the dusty road today. Mum was driving me home we saw him and every thought in my mind was fly.. fly oh fly fly fly but it didn't even try. I saw him flutter on the road behind us and Mum said well I couldn't help and I didn't hear because I was shedding thirteen years of my age and took off my shoes and ran back when we'd reached home and saw broken legs and that it was only a baby. It blinked at me and its mouth was open and because my shadow was too thin I took off one of my shirts to shelter it from the sun and waited for them to bring the gun. When someone came I went away but I heard it cry and heard its parents cry and heard me cry because I could never handle anything and why didn't he try to fly away.

My mother told me once, you were always sensitive, and quiet so quiet.


-

For some reason I was told recently by a dearest friend who will remain namel(auren)ess that lately I have seemed depressed and that the things I think are terribly low, and why do I always look at the past, and that she does not like it when I am not happy. It made feel responsible when she said that. It is true that my books are all heavy with my brain now and sometimes my heart hurts. And I may have mentioned this before but I am almost getting somewhere. I had an idea to have a place to keep the pretty things, like a dusted front parlor for all company that wants to stay, practically a world away from the room in the back that is dim and full of music, where Christina is hard at work tapping away the mess in her mind.

On the rise

Rain again tomorrow. I'm seeing on the news the place where my mother was born and how it's under water. I'm remembering to '93 when we were so very little and how vaguely I know the way the river looked then. I'm told that maybe very soon we'll all have a second chance to see it.

I've been recently informed

The river's moving in again.

At the little boy's last lesson we had our first meeting with the Metro-gnome. He loved it tremendously although the concept isn't exactly internalized. I'm not sure if he knows yet that I'm trying to sneak a concept on him. And if he is God save him anything like me I give him a week after he realizes it to go into sabotage the clicking thing destroy it DESTROY IT mode, but for now it made me smile into my hand to watch him sporadically clap to it jumping to keep up then slowing to stay there, trying, trying. He is beautiful sometimes. He's discovered he can amuse me and likes to interrupt me mid-concept-sneaking with WATCH THIS because he knows I'll laugh and forget what I was saying, which yes I did at the last lesson. I couldn't help it when he went into peals of amazing laughter because of Flash's face in the doorway. I don't know if he ever really learns a thing at all, but my hands afterward are never quite empty.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

After a recent Googling, I am crestfallen to realize that I am not the very first person ever to think of the neologism Metro-gnome, in fact someone has not only thought of it but also gave it a clever and humorous definition, "Small, pointy-hatted creature who has been forced to live in big cities due to loss of wooded habitat", which makes me even more obviously plagiaristic and inferior. I'm going to eat a lot of chocolate now.

You get wise or warts

I poked around in the garden for an hour when I came back from walking. Somewhere between the strawberry and lettuce beds, I met a little friend. He had a British accent and a slightly uppity air but I liked him right away. He had been paused in the search for his misplaced top hat by my mumbled talking to myself and when I paused he looked up and said kindly, Do be careful, my dear, the gardens have ears. He made a move to go before adding, and I say, it's hardly a cakewalk being a toad either, you know, and he hopped on.

roundaboutagain

This morning I went walking down the north side of the great hill, and walking down the treelane, and turned to go walking down the long road where there is nothing but field and bright emptiness. Down, down, to wind and silence and birds. I originally meant to have some things out with God but I got distracted because there were just all sorts of birds. There was a sweet cardinal's song and a gaggle of redwinged blackbirds and their wives that flew over my head into the tree next to me and chattered and squawked like old ladies and when I stood still I heard an insistent bird in the woods across the field. Over and over, clear calling. It was like F natural, F natural, C! but not quite that. I can't get it exactly. I think when birds sing they can somehow hold every single note, or at least multiple notes, in each of their one. I think it was a bobwhite. W the naturalist child would know but I don't want to ask because I know I would probably get that Look. I mean if I told him all that F natural business. It would be the same Look I got when I used to work at the warehouse and a pump alarm would go off and I'd hum and buzz a bit and say hmm C major, i'd guess, which was around the point when I realized I was slightly alone in the world and that I was odd and liked it.

colorless green ideas

Since coming home from my fabulous office job today I've been playing the horRiblyoUtofTunE Spinet which sounds just like that jangled up and down soft and loud here and there practically a stinky man bar piano from one hundred and ten years ago. I love it. I love my piano and I love being a barefoot crazy haired girl person too poverty-stricken to call the ancient faced amazing piano tuner man to come to my listener's rescue. I actually don't but I pretend pretty good and the crazy haired part and being a girl person is kinda cool. I was playing Hanon's exercises today and all the angels in heaven were running to the windows to gasp at me. They made bets on whether or not I was really myself. I don't know what they were doing in the other place. My current picture of hell is a really cold space where you have to listen to Hanon all the time so they probably didn't notice. I found a bunch of change under some cushions and bought Volume Three of the exercises at the tiny music store today. It had been a year at least since I had been there and when I stepped inside I realized it is the most comfortable space I have ever been indoors. And I was picking up a note speller for the little boy when I suddenly decided to become good again, myself. So, like I was saying about the squirrels. Oh no I was playing Hanon's exercises and I thought Ah Blogosphere of Mine how I have abandoned thee and so on. Sorry I haven't been babbling here if you've missed it all. There's plenty to run my mouth about. I feel happy now because I am wicked and wicked because I feel happy. I write a bunch of nice things that don't make sense. It's turned all summery exquisitely hot. There are turtles on the roads everywhere. I started diagnosing myself again with all sorts of interesting crap. The hobo river stick has mysteriously vanished, suspect: the victimized hobo. All my dreams have been so bloody fascinating. I've gotten locked out of my house at least thirty seven times at ungodly late hours, it being my custom to run around outside at night when the moon is pretty and my family's custom to turn off lights and forget I exist. Flash ran off on a rainy day to join the wolf pack and came back wearing eyeliner and keeps telling me to listen to his latest freestyle rap. It's all quite queer.

Today

I went down to the river again because time isn't passing, just while it is, so fast. There have been very many words to say. I keep forgetting a lot. I was walking the railroad tracks and found a piece of wood that fit my hand and stood to my shoulder, smooth and bare and worn at the ends. It is a river stick. I brought it home with me. It is a very friendly river stick and my touch was not first. It's on the front step now, tall, light. Now the sun is here for the very first time and the little boy is coming for his lesson in an hour. Today will be bass clef note names all cows eat grass and every good bird, that's not coming out quite right, but you know what I mean or don't. Dolly Dear, Sandman's Near. We will soon be sleeping. C B A. C B A. BC BC A. A. When I teach songs I learned at nine years old I feel ancient and new and lost. He picks things up very quickly when he wants, he is bright though he looks every which way. But we are our own child counting together and tapping to a chant KWORTER KWORTER HA'F note, 1-2 THREE! Dolly Dear, Sandman's Near. We will soon be better.

The stormy weather

nothing but

Don't panic

I was not sleeping. There was this lightning that was darting in and through and around the whole house and wouldn't stop. It was a tremble-lip child lightning, frightened and pale and thunderless, a baby giant's tantrum sky. And when the sounds and winds and rain came I curled up small on the floor under my blanket, looking at all of our faces and listening. We were all there in the basement, hearing one a.m. and windows and crackling radio. The voice of forecasters of talkshowhosts of Democrats all droning into one voice. It is all uncertain and I hardly remember stumbling into sleep. I dreamed at least two dreams and in one an aged worn man I have known a little while was going away and I said, when will you come back and I hugged him and knew he wasn't and I would not let go. I don't know why I dreamed about him. There was always something about his eyes that I trusted. The storms of spring have been immense. Now, it is fallen calm and I wish I was not stolen in all directions and being so aware of my feet, left standing on nothing but road when the newness fell through. I couldn't answer. See, my breathing wrenched. It is just cut and break, so when you please you might lift my head from the floor. If you would walk across the wide brown land, you could climb up next to me. I'm sitting on this wall looking for horizon stars. Looking for you looking for me.

Keep a good head and always carry a lightbulb

There was something I was forgetting.

Spiraling

if you just spent 25
minutes in one aisle
agonizing over which color notebook
is the right one you've probably
completely
lost it

Rainy day

So it started normal but I feel something now, complete and unclear in my head. I am so restless I might have a fit and so fatigued it might do me in. I want something certainly. to release. make. create. hatch. I am going to make something I can pour into, to let out some of it or all of it, everything inside that is not quiet. There is something that must be said. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is.

I don't get it

I ate the whole thing, and I still miss him.

I use three boxes of Puffs Plus a day and have started coughing like a horse but I feel better now. Still stopped up in that spot right behind my forehead, a little unclear. I've been poking around in the garden most of the morning, in the mud and strawberries, in my hat and wellingtons. It is raining again. Again. Here in the Midwest we are trying to make up for seven years of drought in one go apparently. But the strawberries like it. I picked half a bucket today and yesterday and ate most of them. In other news my nose is peeling off. I'm slightly concerned I won't have one at all by the time I'm fully recovered but at least feeling better will be some consolation. Oh vanity vanity. Since I skipped on work again I am considering driving to Wal Mart now for no reason at all. It's just such a thing-to-do. I might wear my hat and muddy boots and a faded purple tie-dye t-shirt and jean cutoff shorts that are too big for me. I probably won't do that but the thing that's grand about Wal Mart is no one would notice if I did. And it would keep me from sitting. I start to feel miserable when I sit because I think an awful lot. I might buy another notebook while I'm at it. My whole mind is pouring out my hands lately, though not here. Not here. I don't really want to write here anymore. Plus I forget everything I was going to say when I come here. And that may be one reason I like this place.


So here are the strawberries.

Well this was fun

There have been some ripping storms here. We drove 40 miles in one last night, the Pater familias decreeing Sunday night to be the best time for a family trip to Home Depot®. This was a great idea because we love bonding. We love car rides when the A/C is broke. And we really really love Home Depot®. But I could tell this was going to be good. I had been watching the sky. True to that violent blue, it was the worst weather we've ever been on the road in. It was brilliant and shaking and then there was hail and all the while the pounding rain. I'm 93% sure we drove half the trip in a zigzaggy pattern through some fields and creeks and things as the highway got more and more elusive but no one could see to tell. I was in love with it. Mum was in hate with it. The kids in the back were taking sides and saying woah a lot. The Pater familias, stoic. We all couldn't stop watching, even though we were ordered from the front to stop breathing because the windshield was fogged over. There are bad times for your A/C and defroster to break and then there are bad times. I was thinking too, about how even though I question most of his decisions I have never been afraid while my father's hand was on the wheel. Home Depot® was closed by the way. Betting on any decent establishment being open at 9pm on a Sunday while a tornado was forming one county away might have been yet another questionable decision, but you didn't hear it from me. There have been some certain times living with my dotty, unbalanced family of W's that I wouldn't have liked to miss.


The best thing was being silent and sitting in the lumberyard entrance with the windows down, watching water gust under the streetlights, and hearing faintly the wail of storm sirens. I hadn't heard that sound since I was very small.

Well this was fun Part Two

Or, the Forty Miles that Took Like Five Hours

I forgot to mention that there was a flash flood and water over the highway on the return voyage. We had to wait in a long line of headlights for a long time. It's funny how people feel closer to you when you are all waiting for the same thing. To pass, to move. To get to home. People were walking around and talking through open windows. Aaron Copeland's Rodeo on the classical station. I was thinking again, laying on the seat while K hugged my knees to her as her pillow, mostly about what is precious to me, a lot about why it is such a useful thing to have a bladder of steel, and about the difference between the storms in my family and the ones surrounding us, and about being safe and about beef it's what's for dinner and about the silhouette of my Daddy's face against the headlights in my sleepy brown eyes and

promise

I just slept for an hour, or more than an hour disorienting sleep losing track of the world. Curled up tightly under my blue blanket. I felt my mother come in. She covered my cold feet. I woke up at 4:07 and I was breathing in time with a piano. Mozart. Salzburg concerto C Major, Amadeus. Theophilus, Gottlieb.

Aperto. My heart is open and full.

You know you love me

If not you probably wouldn't put up with my pity parties or bother to read my whining.
I love you too so I'll be funnier.
I've gotten dressed finally and wrapped my pathetic self up in the blue felty illness blanket. I am listening to the classical station and becoming slightly delusional and eating some quaggy carroty mushy soup. I won't say exactly what it looks like. And it tastes like rot too. If I sipped between the pulpy orange bits there supposedly is some sort of tolerable liquid I daren't call it broth, but I don't have the will for it and hardly the appetite. I think quaggy is a word. When the sun comes out I'll delete all this anyway. I promise. I wonder if there is a hospice like service that sends someone to your house to love you when you're miserable and have only got one can of quaggy carrot mush soup rot to eat. One that doesn't necessarily require you to die after it's all said and done, though I suppose I could if it came down to it. Mum used to take care of me at times like these, but presently she is 1)Too busy and 2)too susceptible. Actually this morning when I announced my condition from my pillow she said something along the lines of oh shnike I can't get sick and ran off to search for a gas mask, now she's my shadow with the can of disinfectant. I laugh so I don't have to cry. I think shnike is a word.

When the sun comes out I'll delete all this anyway. And it will, the sun.

-

I wouldn't mind rainbows.

Raining still

At this point I feel terrible and I wish it had something to do with my being sick.

Sick day

My throat was burning when I woke up. I'm still in what I wore to sleep which is most of what I wore yesterday too, so from my head to my toes I look like trash. I'm not leaving the house so I can't care much. It doesn't matter if my eyes are redrimmed from pollen or tears. They both come suddenly, artless and natural this time of year. It rained half the night. It's raining now. I know because a minute ago I stood out on the grass in my bare feet watching the west. I forgot for a while that I feel awful, it is so incredible to be outside on a morning when all you can smell are blossoms and thunder.

A mystery for nicodemus

Thirteen years ago on May 21, something amazing happened.

Doggie Evil's to-do list

1) Run away
2) Chase neighbor cows
3) Come back
4) Get grounded
5) Feign contrition
6) Get ungrounded
7) Repeat steps 1-7

How to have fun at the movies

Suspense. Crucial battle scene. Touching deaths of minor characters. So naturally, I wrote PRINCE CASPIAN IS HAWT on a piece of paper, underlined it three times and passed it down the row.

5 more minutes

It seems I can't sleep past 7:30 anymore, but there's nothing that says I have to get up.

And goodnight, moon