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