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

there was no possibility of taking a walk that day

-

So

not even the photo is sad to me. I have been trying to depress myself all day and it's not working. This means probably that we have reached the point in winter where winter becomes normal. We can't remember fall, Spring is a fancy. The cold? can't feel it, the grey? don't notice. It seems this may have even worse effects than the sadness as I am becoming severely scatterbrained slightly clumsy and obnoxiously happy at times. Lately I have been hearing the phone ring when it really isn't. It's happened three times in one day. The looks I receive by insisting "Would you get that!" out of nowhere have become so odd I've stopped asking. If there's an imaginary phone there must be an imaginary message machine, anyway. I also keep forgetting where I've put things five minutes after I put them somewhere, and dropping everything I pick up and yesterday I almost walked straight through a door and I don't mean through the doorway I mean the door. It was remarkably clean and humiliating. Thankfully the only person to witness this who was not related to me, i.e. not wholly used to my varying atrocities against sanity, was a dear understanding man I have known for a long time; he nearly perished laughing. You didn't see that, I told him. Not a word, said he and there were three seconds of silence and we went to pieces.

You looked just like a Windex commercial

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.

We have fires every night now in both the stoves, and during the short days I write or read on the floor in my room next to the heat vent, stopping every few words to thaw my hands. a long time ago I wrenched off the cover and I can stick my arm into the warm air almost up to my elbow. I still shiver and almost all the time my hands are ice; each of us here are either one of the ones who are too thin for this weather, or one of the ones who tell the other ones that they are too thin for this weather. The cold is stiffening and the eagles are flocking to the River. The metal taste of snow is all the way to Caroline yet Kenya is filled with smoke, no word from rafiki.
It's all cabin fever, I miss my world
and I was wondering
if there were no winters, would there still come Spring?

Lady sings the blues

No dreams of snow and wolves no dreams of fear. Vividly in my sleep I saw all the dearest people and was happy in dreaming when 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, thank you 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.

walk thoughts

Too many, can't even stop to take off my coat, though I didn't go far, too cold for any further than the Hill to see the winter west, back through the field to the pond, and the pond made me stop my step; so perfectly clear of a glass and so still I thought I could stand on it and would have tried if not spell-bound, but once the lull was wrinkled with the echoes of a single surfacing without knowing it I started slow tilting my head and looking at it all upside down marveled at how vast the water grew and how dwarfed the Sky, until the mirror fogged I forgot which way was down and up and if I hadn't caught myself I would have fallen in.

*

And then what happened

It rained almost all night too and the pond is full for the first time since a year and it is cold again. If 40° had come a week ago we would have bowed in gratefulness at her frosty feet but after the warmth that was, she seems hostile. The slight wind is biting and everything is grey and trembling even dear Flash who I must remember to let inside after I write

In other news

Class meets again tonight, back from happy holidays and all that - to be ready I am trying to recall every one's names and doing super so far. I remember Chrissie because the last night we met she gave me 2 hugs and that was nice even if it was just for letting her stop doing division for the night, and then there's Clint, funny Clint who is funny because he's not funny, and then there's the latest addition Brandon fresh out of prison, and then there's Rich who was the only one who spoke first to me I'm Rich and I thought well yeah but what's your name? but of course I didn't go there because I am all about not making stupid cracks until at least the second sentence. Rich has holes in all his t-shirts and always wears the same baseball cap he lays lovingly on the seat next to him as he works. He wants to own a roofing business and he wants to learn and he made me laugh when he asked if I'd gone to C----- High School and I said no, I was homeschooled and he said oh really, genuinely interested, where at?

In still other news

You know all that organization I did a few days ago, well I feel like dumping everything out of all those crates because it is all so sedate and sturdy not like me at all, which was the whole point of doing it really to keep to my '08 resolution of being an entirely different person which by the way so far is a bust. I pulled out the Rach prelude today the gentle ethereal one I played the first 4 bars and felt like the music would break if I touched it anymore it was so fragile, and I put it back. Usually when I stop playing something I will push it to the side of the Spinet or stick it in the catchall bench but now to not put everything back in its place seems like an iniquity. The Chopin was not right for today either and certainly not the Kuhlau sonatinas so what what what am I wanting to play, I wondered? Storms empires feeling strength the color 97 and wild lions came to me. I'm hungry. For lunch and colours mostly. Wouldn't it be nice to find one flower in the fields that miraculously surfaced in those miracle days of warmth and is saturated with colour I don't even care which colour although I prefer yellow just now but any just as long as it has not faded yet. Wouldn't it be nice if I had a baked potato the size of Gibraltar. Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up in the morning when the day is new, oh my

oh my oh my

that is what I need

a Beach Boys album

mornin'

it stormed all night.

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 crazy and stayed out despite the weatherman's Warning and the advancing black sky and the wind howling and the 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.

he will not see me stopping here

Wind was roaring this day and I was gone, up the hill and down the roads and over the fence by the field with the aged barn to the trees. It is so easy to pretend this place is wild. I found the Circle in the east woods again, the Circle I found one exploring summer a clear hollow surrounded by trees and a path as if a pond used to live there but now is long gone and only a carpet of leaves and ferns is left and, as I found this time a litter of fallen broken branches. I stayed there an hour pulling out all the limbs to make it clear again for whoever dances there which will be me next summer and it was all play and work. No one will notice the great pile of branches I made except the quiet cattle. The property belongs to the farmer family but nobody loves it but me. I walked back through the tall swaying woods touching all the winter scars of the trees, long pale clean yellow scars. they all just need to be kissed and it will be alright. Now the clouds are back suddenly we are under Tornado Watches and I feel giddy as springtime. Tomorrow it may be 40° again but now the wind is at a complete stop now and the air is holding its breath.

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.

Warm winds

I can't remember a January day of 70 degrees and you know if it there had been one I would have remembered it. But today today beautiful today, I love thee. Just now a wasp stumbled across the window screen all confused at his early waking and the lady friends that found refuge here all seek escape from the suddenly stifling house. The wind is up, I am awake. Gone to the hills away - yesterday seems so far.

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.