in another's words

I keep mentally and emotionally running into things. Evidently my psyche needs glasses.

~ JMK

a change in perspective

somehow when i'm sad i always end up reading Psalms. i read songs David wrote when he was running for his life when he was hiding when he was guilt-ridden down-trodden and broken-hearted. but God was his rock, and so he kept going. and so he kept singing. God is my rock, and so must i do.

last night i heard that my friend from school's boyfriend was shot and killed overseas in Iraq. in praying and grieving for her, i noticed i haven't thought about myself all day.

well i'm sick

yesterday i woke up at 5 and left at 6 to babysit and i used nearly a whole box of tissues in just that hour. which wasn't just allergies like i thought. it hurt like anything to talk by breakfast time which was wonderful for when you're watching children you have to tell everything to twice. i tried to explain that Miss Tina didn't want to have to repeat herself anymore because she didn't feel very good today, and then i asked now Michael what did i just say and he proudly said i don't hit sissy! so during naptime which was a long one, thank the Lord, i curled up on the couch and drank water water water and ate zoo animal fruit snacks made with real fruit and watched infomercials for the Slap Chop and Titan Peeler and the Patch Genie all of which at the time looked like brilliant contraptions sent from heaven to save the world. then i spent the rest of the day trying to nanny from across the room so i didn't get any kids sick. on further reflection, i have decided it was them that got me sick so i feel no more remorse. but TGIT. when i got home i had a fever and dropped on the couch. since then i've used up another box of Puffs, broken a thermometer from overuse, drank about 6 gallons of water, ingested everything that says fever reducer or decongestant or even has the letter C on the label, and peed 37 times. fever's gone and now i only feel a little miserable. there's been an NCIS marathon on today and i never thought i could get sick of NCIS until i watched 6 episodes straight. and then i realized i just didn't want to see any more cadavers. i just didn't. so i watched The Temptations which was the most depressing movie i have ever seen and i cried all over my pillow and wanted to die since everyone else was and for now i think i should just stick with Disney movies which are at least disheartening in a completely un-morbid way.

anniversaries

my uncle's daughter had her second child, Noah, on May 20 of last year. my uncle is an alcoholic, and for being chronically depressed he is one of the funniest people you will ever meet. before he stopped calling we used to talk about baseball and the stars. his son Matthew's birthday is also May 20th. and my uncle's father, my grandfather, was born on May 20th. i never got to know my grandfather. he died in 1985, on the 20th of May. my mother once told me his favorite piece of music was Ravel's Bolero, and this is all just to say i have been listening to it in my head all day.

you GO girl

oh waldstein

sometimes the Beethoven just endlessly races around my head like before i sleep and while i eat and when i wash my hair m dadada Da dadada Da dadada da da da da Da deedlela.... and so on. and on and on and on and on. the Preakness is not helping at all. horses horses horses. horses are all i see these days.

last night i got frustrated because i don't know how to deal with feelings. i don't know what they're for and i guess i just don't know what to do with them. they all want to be created into something and not just be inside or trapped or jealous. but i am afraid and young, forgotten and old? my heart is all stone and tender and can't decide what is safer or right or why or which. i don't know. i really don't know.

anyway none of that's important. what i really wanted to say before i go bake something (again) was that the little boy came today. and he practiced even the hard song with the F sharps every day this week and he got stickers on every thing. we were both very happy. and after we learned a new warm-up and the key of F with Bb's, he said christina? and i said yes, and he said you're so nice at this. and i asked him at what, and he said at piano lessons. and that meant something. it made me smile. i'm still smiling.

well this is about music

and the thing about the barber is that it's so unlike everything, and so i want to learn it because to me it is like car-horns in a big capital New York letter city where morning starts before you open your eyes and things that happen so fast you can't tell when you're breathing or not, and interruptions that are only rude because they don't know better. i like it in a fascinated way and so differently than the way i love Beethoven, which is all about the silence --the shot and go!the duns and sorrel dust nostrils flare to the speeding air and twisting hair no nothing matters but this against hoofbeats thunder a whirling roar dervish paces Gulda and Kempff cheer the theme a racing dream running for the roses, those horses horses horses



or something like that

ATTENTION PLEASE

let it be known in the blogosphere that today is the annual Spinet Appreciation Day; a day which is revered as a sacred and most joyous holiday in Christinaland; a day when the Ancient Faced Amazing O Piano Tuner Man comes back after many months of untuned drought and musical famine; a day which we celebrate by wearing lucky black bucket hats and practicing everything nonstop and hardly blog at all unless it's about music.

practicing this today

Pianist: Israela Margalit

sigh

well, today we played fun new games starting with Splish Splash Taking A Bath Hey It's No Fair That We Have To Be Wet And You Don't So HERE. very soon after, that was followed by I Dump Whole Containers of Nesquik Powder On My Still Wet Head And The Floor For Fun. but i'm sure i can't blame anyone on that one. who knew those things completely exploded when shaken violently? who knew we were supposed to listen to Miss Tina on such little matters as don't touch this, don't violently shake that? ah. i love children. and i'm not joking. and i love the one minute in our day when one was curled in my lap and one was leaning on my knee and we were reading a book about Piglet. it lasted for one minute, but it lasted.

and now i'm off for the rest of the week, and maybe things will happen. by things i mean stuff. by stuff i mean things. all i know is more sleep will happen. it most certainly will.

i know what you're thinking, or what i would be thinking if were you, or at least what i am thinking right now:is that really how you spell foosball?

as a matter of fact it is. isn't it fantastic? like an aristocratic way to say fuzzball. like what the spanish call soccer except different. like a word you get strangely fascinated with when your mind has been sucked out by the evil PBS aliens and replaced with tv flavored sweet and rotten city goo.

i haven't written anything at all

i've been nannying three little kids every morning through afternoon for two whole days in a row which seems to be going well so far. yesterday we played Punch Each Other In the Eye With the Foosball Table Rods, before going out to play in the windy yard and playing Don't Tell Christina I Have Allergies So Later It Looks Like She Punched Me In The Face. starting fresh today, after breakfast we watched Sesame Street and there was this girl who was apparently a main character person, and she had a big ring through her nose and then they were all speaking in spanish which, don't mistake me, i am all for as long as you know proper english first which probably about 99.9% of the US population doesn't and at least 66% of my fellow viewers didn't. i sighed. and then we played Punch Christina In the Leg With the Foosball Table Rods before going outside while all allergic kids took naps inside, and we ate peanut butter sandwiches outside by the swing until a bee that could only have been grown in the devil's Giganteur Bee Laboratory droned up to our table like the Goodyear Blimp and we screamed and ran inside to watch a movie about a French rat that wanted to be a chef. now i am home and i am going outside to watch the flowers grow.

May 10

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one.  It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

            (suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)



- e.e. cummings

pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

the little boy is visiting his grandma and didn't come for piano lessons today.
so i baked, and cooked, and sang.
the Cardinals are tied in Cincinnatti, 5th inning.
i practiced the Beethoven sonata. through and through.
my back aches.
i can spell everything in the world but Cincinnatti.... Cincinnati... Cinderella...

anyway, none of that's important. except the Beethoven, the Beethoven's important.

if you haven't noticed, i don't know what to do here.

you see, i lost my manual or
i lost my mind
or i lost my manateeeeee. . .

i wrote some poems though. don't ask me to show you them because i'm not going to.

i could update you on my life. i would rather rant about Beethoven. i don't use capital letters much anymore but Beethoven needs one, yes He does. i cleaned up a little around here. it's shiny now. and spacious, like mozart.

it rained every day for a week when i came back home. then the rain worked its way into my head and made things sprout. it's all right one day, all wrong the next. but writing's like that. and moving around is like that. home. away. home. adjustment is so off-kilter. but we manage. because to manage is what we do. yes, we are always managing. what a fun word.

so past tomorrow i don't know. i have ideas for this long infinite space called summer and they all have to do with Beethoven... and Chopin and Barber and Bach, yes Bach and poems and colors, and circuses and puppies, and just practically nothing practical at all.

but tomorrow, tomorrow is for mommas. today i was thinking how my mother reminds me of Jesus, because she loves me more than i give in return, she helps when i think i don't need help, she makes me do stuff that is good for me like drink organic things and plant tomatoes, and she's beautiful. she's just beautiful.

one sweet day

today i made two kinds of cookies.
i danced around and Frank Sinatra sang Summer Wind.
creatures of all kinds watched through the windows.

lessons learned

1) music music music music
2) i can
3) "i can", "i should", "i'd better", and "i'd better not" are importantly different
4) being perfect doesn't always happen
5) spontaneity
6) peanut butter m&ms + barbecue chips
7) some people you feel feelings for, but for some people you would do anything
8) don't trust the one who doesn't trust anybody
9) home is different places
10) the same sky is everywhere

waking up at 9:30am, i am prompted to share my thoughts on sleep after a year in college:

my thoughts on sleep after a year in college are that sleep is good.

so it's harder than it looks

coming back to anywhere, when you've been away for a while.

but, just in case it's worth anything:

i'm here. . .

~c