I love God

On Saturday an e-mail came from Nairobi, and every day since Saturday the remembrance that they are alright has whelmed me with gratefulness and I have to smile to know that even if all things in my world are not well
4 of them are at least, daniel and his wife and the babies.

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Amadè Mozart, I am sorry

I was so busy playing your music on Sunday, I forgot completely that it was your birthday.

here is the last straw

A few days ago I read something where a man in Salfords, Surrey built a castle on his land and because the borough council had repeatedly turned down his application to build a home on his farm he hid it, a little dream castle complete with ramparts and turrets and conservatory and bridges and cannon, hid it behind walls of hundreds of hay bales and under a tarpaulin, for about seven years

Now the council wants it torn down because of no planning permissions

Perhaps this is what the cannon is for?

They lived there for four years his wife little son and he, and their son had just turned one and soon friendly birds came and hid there too, in the hay bank nesting and hatching - and he says, a very uninteresting view out our windows turned to a fascinating garden and all sorts of visitors

Bravo, man in Salfords

Ringed with the azure world

I haven't written here as much as I want to and I really mean as much as I should because this is my thinking grounds my broad log and friendly tree in the winter, I clear my throat grandly here and sometimes all that comes after are whispers again but that's ok. The photos were last Saturday, the Mississippi was curded white and frozen behind the dam but as far South as could be seen was cold clear blue and I took the little ones with me and the wind bit through us until our hands burned with cold but we saw them, great swooping majesties come to the water to live. They were watching and diving cleanly brushing the surface and we stayed with them until dark and as soon as my face turned the other way I missed it all and tomorrow I will go again. I would go to the River every day if I could. I would probably not leave either, watching from the floating dock the barge moving vaguely through, the last eagle skimming the moon from the water.

It is so cold now I nearly skate on what I spill watering the horses in the mornings. Snowflakes float around constantly never really landing. I don't go walking.

e-mails and such things that are owed will materialize soon, ish. Most of my time is somehow taken up with thinking.

Arriving at lock 24

They always brighten January.

For jessie

fly west.

Lady sings the blues

No dreams of snow and wolves no dreams of fear. Vividly in my sleep I saw all the dearest people in my life and was happy in dreaming, until I saw one walk away and a door shut and I saw my own eyes hurt. I asked why and I woke up fighting the waking, wanting to know.

Dusting of morning snow, the 12 year old and the I on our knees on the couch watching through the window and I said I've never seen snow that small before, it's like powdered sugar. He said Oh God's eating breakfast and I told him God doesn't eat powdered sugar for breakfast, and he said yeah. He eats sinners. I don't know why but I thought He would eat Raisin Bran, if He eats at all which I am told He doesn't.

Company comin' - dust the Spinet, make the tea, smooth our hair down, you then me. Snow melts while grownups talk. Nanny the loud children with sweet red haired Hattie beside, jimmy the bedroom door for the little boy that locks himself in places alone. Wish them well, thanks for coming by, your children are lovely, thank you, goodbye. Quiet now in faint diaper scented air, supper sounds, Regina Spektor singing take a look around no regrets no regrets, weekend coming, more cold on the way.

Off to class.

Tonight

If I have another dream like I had last night, I will never go out walking alone again.

Pieces

I think I need shambles.
I think I need to be surrounded by a disarray that will drive me to derangement, to despise myself for the confusion I've made and to love what it is becoming; because somehow without all of this I won't play I can't write and I don't dream, and no it doesn't make sense to me either, but I think that is the point. It just might be that without the clutter I am bored. very dangerously bored.
It simply will not do to have tidiness anymore, even if it was ever possible. Which it wasn't, as you could tell by looking in on my spinetarium. You would see there's music all over the place again, a metronome hanging askance, a faithful pencil, a holy mess. And I am happy, when I am fenced in it and working and playing, when I can't remember if I ate or drank and that doesn't matter, when it follows me to my pillow and my thoughts before sleeping are not sad but are beautifully troubled with d minor sonatas seventeen beethoven beethoven beethoven.

There are three of his sonatas on my piano now, the Pathetique the Moonlight and since last night the Tempest. I got the third movement in my hands and sat and played it all the way through and then again and then again. Before last night I hadn't played in days. This was the piece I heard Wilhelm Kempff play, when I had just heard of him and saw a recording of him for the first time. I remember I sat in unbreathing stillness and wondered at his haunted eyes, what they saw and if I had ever seen it. Still I don't know if I know, but it will be always just enough if there is only to believe music, and to know that some music this music fits in my hands and gives at least the smallest voice to a toneless ache. Why do you keep falling in love with them one after the other? Because I am.

Good news

today
will
be
one
minute
and
twenty
five
seconds
longer
than
yesterday.

too dog tired

but I will blog tomorrow.
or the next day or
the next day.
...

Walking

There comes a tender fearful awe with each step, when I begin to imagine every place is mine and the golden sky, too.

Post #300

in bowling, a perfect snore.

mornin'

it stormed all night.

Column on column comes the drenching rain

I took this about an hour ago, outside in a blow as I always am and watching and running and laughing as I always am because I can't help it - storms make me crazy, and this was the first one in months so I was ten times as crazy and stayed out despite the weatherman's Warning and the advancing black sky and the wind howling and Mum howling Christina get in here damn you! I apologized later for being a foolish and irresponsible person that doesn't act her age but, well, I got the photo. The way I told her as she was dragging us all into the basement was there are going to be dangerous things, Mum, but if it's beautiful somebody has to PHOTO IT.
Not you she almost cried. Then I was sorry and wished I didn't break her heart so much. She accepted my apology. And she swears she didn't swear at me but I have witnesses.

What hast thou done

After 4 days of work


-
It's all so nice and neat now I don't want to touch it - I think rather that I should let it sit and look immaculate for a while, until all that music can't take it anymore, jumps out of the fastidious folders and tries to swallow me whole; then we'll have a hurrah.

So tired

So very very tired

every morning it seems I have to wake up before I'm done sleeping

All getting weary inside too and I say not yet the year is only just begun, but I wish to rest if just for one minute if only in a song if only for now.
On thursday the oldest woman I ever knew died, ninety seven years and somehow we always thought she would live a hundred more. I didn't cry until today.

Surely we must be strong and courageous.

kenya

The man in the photo is Daniel
family and foreign at the same time to us as kids, the black tall man who was afraid of the littlest snake we laughed at him and loved him we loved him and he loved us. love with racing chasing screaming running on our new ground to the new woods where we were safe for sure; he would never ever step in the woods - the woods meant snakes. And when we were inside he would ask for Fur Elise, always for the Beethoven and I would giggle and say I don't know the whole thing yet and play it anyway on the little keys in those the pre Spinet days.
I remember so much. now I fear.
We emailed him four days ago: still there has been nothing and I tell myself all the reasons he can't write he can't check it he is in a safe place, my mind says over and over failing to relieve my hands that play Fur Elise every night and heart that wants so much to tell him I learned it, I learned the whole thing after he left and if only he someday promises to come back I would play it a thousand times.

every headline's grief

For him I need Kenya to be alright.

In the field again

Day 2 of Operation Clean Up has been postponed, due to unforeseen sunshine and temperatures in the blessed double digits.

Resolute

Day 1 of Operation Clean Up is nearly over. I've succeeded in picking up all my music every last sheet of it off the Spinet, the floor and the catchall bench. Now all that music every last sheet of it is on my bed, bedroom floor and shelves. But it's in piles. Semi neat, hopeful piles, which must mean something. Mostly it means I didn't get any farther than that because I got so distracted and entranced wandering through old old songs and solos with beautifully faded color covers and sheets with tattered edges that could almost crumble in my hands. Bach Rubinstein Brahms, folk songs and pop songs and classical and sacred and every three minutes I was running out to the piano with a new one that I couldn't hear completely in my head.

Most of my music came from my Gran who got it from her libraries and bookstores and her widow's oil jar of a basement and always brought it in stacks for me when she came to visit. And it ended up on the Spinet, the floor and the catchall bench.

Seeing it every day, the inundation of having all this music has been driving me crazy for years now and I realized a long protracted time ago that I and my inherited ataxophobia must at least try to have order in my world if I would have order in my mind. those piles on my floor are beautiful. Tomorrow is beautiful too, day 2, combining, binding, perusing. So far I'm feeling rather good about all this.

5 degrees morning

Too cold for walks today.