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.

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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.

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



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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.


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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.