Countdown

7 days.

Mom came to school today and shadowed me.  She got to see how our school day works and all the moving pieces of my specific classes.  It's one of the last things I have to do before the big day.

I keep going back and forth between a sort of gnawing sadness and a need for relief.  I've been exhausted.  I've been hurting.  Yesterday, I had a hard time drawing a deep breath.  Physically, I need this to be over.  Emotionally....  Well.  You can't have everything, right?

On a different note, I just ordered a bright blue TARDIS bathrobe from ThinkGeek.  It's a "happy" from my parents.  I added a pair of matching house shoes myself, so I guess I will be shuffling down the halls in style.  I probably won't care, but at least I'll look geektastic.

Sigh.

7 days.

Up and Down

I have my surgery date.  Let's just say the week of Thanksgiving won't be much fun for me.

I am going up and down with this.  Mostly, I just stay as busy as possible.  That's easy to do with as much as there is to get done before the surgery.  There are school things.  House things.  Shopping things.  Pet things.  Every time I sit down and look at one of my "to do" lists, it seems I'm adding as much as I'm crossing out. I'm hoping that I'll hit a tipping point with it soon.

But what if I do?  Then I'll have time to...think....

Since the doctor ruled out cancer, some of the worst of my nightmares have abated, but I am still an emotional mess if I don't run myself ragged and fall down at the end of it.  Stupid commercials make me cry.  Facebook statuses make me cry.  Yesterday, a freaking doughnut made me cry.

If you don't know me, you might not understand the depths of my hatred for this lack of control.  I always keep it locked down.  Always.  Lately, I just can't.

I keep thinking about life post-surgery.  There's dread for the whole process of having to learn how to walk upright - AGAIN.  There's that nauseous anticipation of the day of with the needles and the waking up after in pain and sick from the anesthesia.  There's all that time out of class.

And then there are the things I can't write about, can't talk about, don't even want to think about, all the things that...won't be.

(turning away from that path right now)

Tonight, though, it's still ahead of me.  I had some awesomely spicy turkey chili, and my Dad brought me a doughnut (which did not make me cry this time).  My dear old cat Yoda is curled up behind me in her little purple sweater, and I'm curled up under the afghan my grandmother made so long ago.  I'm almost warm for the first time today since I woke up, and in just a short time, I'll go let unconsciousness sweep over me.

Tomorrow, I will get up running, fortify myself with coffee, shield myself with busyness, and do what has to be done.

What else is there?

Thoughts Right Before Sleep

If I'm honest, this could just be the bone-shattering fatigue or the total sugar crash or too much or not enough caffeine or the sad, scary day or a random flutter of a dozen other things. That qualifier in place, it must be said that I miss you. 

I don't know how this happened. 

Well.... That's probably a lie. 

I was actually waiting for it to happen, but I was hoping to be proven wrong just once. 

I'm too tired to do much navel-gazing. I'll strip it down to the bones. You're gone, and I wish you weren't. 

The End. 

Again. 

Waiting

I took my Xanax and rolled up into the scary machine Thursday.  It wasn't as bad as last time.  Since they were doing the MRI on my abdomen, they used the "short bore" machine, and as tall as I am, my head was mostly out the other end of the machine.  I could see light, anyway, and between that and the super-pill, I was okay even when they put the IV in for the dye contrast.

Now I'm waiting.  If I don't hear from them tomorrow, I'll call.  I need to know a date.  The C word, we just won't mention.

Anyway, while I'm waiting, I have all this ridiculous energy, and I've been cleaning like a fiend.  This weekend alone, I washed all my slipcovers, bought new sheets, washed them and put them on, folded about three weeks' worth of laundry and put it away, bought new towels and reorganized my bathroom cabinets, took down my Halloween decorations and put up the few things I use for Thanksgiving, bought major groceries, and vacuumed up about three large white dogs from my carpets.  At least things are getting done.

Today, I was out for an appointment with another doctor, a theme I could live without, and tomorrow I'll be back in my classroom.  I am sure enough work waits for me there to keep me occupied with no effort at all.

Philosophising Early in the Morning

Ideas will come in the shower it seems.  Maybe it's all that stimulation of the scalp when one is washing the hair....

In any case, I was thinking about what's coming and about the last few weeks or so of my life.  There's been the obvious crap, but there have also been some unexpected revelations and refocusing.  Call it a readjustment of perspective, perhaps.

Since all this has begun, I've realized that some things are not as important as I was making them out to be.  The world will keep spinning whether these things are okay or not.  They're externals.  I won't go so far as to say they're trivial, but they aren't the heart of who I am or what I have to have to go on.  It's been a great relief to realize this, to be able to open my hand and let them go.

The same thing can be said of people.  Maybe this is one thing that times of hardship are supposed to do, make us re-evaluate the great tide of individuals with whom we tend to surround ourselves and really look, really look, at our relationships with them.  I think I am guilty of self-deception sometimes as to what that relationship really is.  Maybe we all are.

All I can say with certainty is this:  I am grateful beyond all I can express for my friends and family who have "stepped up" to help hold me up.  It might have been a phone call or an instant message.  It might have been a goofy story, a pin on Pinterest, or something geeky on FB that made me laugh.  It might have been one sentence, truly meant, telling me they're praying.  It might just have been distracting me from this gristmill of scariness grinding away in my head all the time.  Whatever it was, those people are helping me carry this thing, whether it turns out to be the worst-case scenario or just the lesser horror I already know is coming.

As for the rest...

Well...

Maybe it's time to clear the game board of them.  It's not that they're not wonderful in their own way, but life sometimes needs to be stripped back to the essentials.  I think somehow I cluttered mine up with things that were shiny on the outside but completely hollow within. Maybe they started out real and living, and it's time and the way we all change that has robbed the relationship of its connection.  Reality checks like this are hard to swallow; I can't deny it.  Better to wake up finally, though, and acknowledge something is broken and used up, to get rid of it for something meaningful before I put my hand out expecting support and fall right through the saw-dust illusion of it instead.

Random Bits

Today, BBC America had lots of Doctor Who with Ten in it on.  I sort of got sucked into that, and once again, I was astonished by just how good David Tennant was in that role.  Sure, there were moments that were WAAAAAY over-the-top.  The remote-controlled spinning Christmas trees of death come immediately to mind.  Even those were lots of fun, though.    The show swung back and forth between humor and absolute heartbreak.  I can't watch those last episodes, really starting with The Waters of Mars.  They are so terribly sad....  

I've spent the weekend holed up, reading mostly, watching tv, sleeping.  I finished a reread of Wicked, and I remember now why I never bothered to read the rest of those books.  I think it is one of the most depressing books I have ever read.  The Broadway show is such a perky, cheerful, and heart-lifting thing.  I cannot see how they ever drew it out of the original, to be honest.  I kept telling myself I was going to stop reading it, but I hate to abandon a book.  There's a certain feeling of accomplishment that comes from finishing something, especially something that becomes an endurance race.

I'm trying to get mentally ready for the week to come.  Friday was...a tough day.  I had to give more than I had in me.  There were several times when I just wanted to go down the hall to our little breakroom and lock the door behind me.  

Obviously, I didn't, but the thought was there.  I don't much like that.

So, I'll keep distracting myself with random bits.  Right now, it's Sherlock reruns.  Soon, it will be bedtime.  Then tomorrow will be on me full-force.  Maybe all the random bits will be enough to help me through it.

Shaky

I guess I'll take a minute to update the 1.5 individuals who read this on my life.  My surgery hasn't been scheduled yet.  To determine whether or not it will be done by my doctor or the GYN oncologist (there needs to be an acronym just for this, I think), I will have an MRI next Thursday.  After that, the final question should be answered.

And I need that.  I desperately need all the little slivers of hell to fall into an orderly procession.  Why it is better if I know when things are happening is a mystery.  Actually, it probably has to do with the illusion of control.  Being able to put it into my iPhone calendar makes me feel like I'm doing something as opposed to something happening to me, I guess.

Stupid, isn't it?

I'm not doing well with this.  I'm shaky.  I drive in to work, hear a song on the radio, and I'm in tears.  I hate that.  I hate not being able to maintain.  It feels like failure.  Every day that I'm able to get in my classroom and get teaching done, I feel like I've accomplished something major.

I suppose I should just be grateful that I the rest of this year has been what it has been... Venice.  Istanbul.  Good things and places that I can retreat to in my mind while my body goes through whatever winds up being next.  I don't know what else to do.  There's no running away anymore.

And Then There Were None

It's been a long day, and I'm not going to belabour this.  I'm not up to it.

I will have a hysterectomy, probably sometime around Thanksgiving.  They're still not sure about endometrial cancer; other tests will have to be done.

The other shoe, the one that's been hanging in the air since I first walked into the student health center at IU so long ago, has finally dropped.

And I just can't talk about it anymore.

And Then There Was One

Tomorrow's the day.

There is such a tremendous relief in being able to say that.  If nothing else good can be said about it, at least tomorrow the waiting ends.

I don't know if I'll know anything more than I know right now, but at least I'll be moving forward again.

All this stress is making me react badly to everything.  For example, right now, I:

• have a migraine trying to attack me
• want to get in my car and drive to Jackson for Target
• have found myself shopping for a pair of vegan-friendly Doc Martens
• simultaneously crave salt-and-vinegar chips, Greek food, Thai curry, and another lime popsicle
• teared up at a commercial that wasn't sad

Maybe some part of my poor, stupid, confused, lost mind will come back when this is done.

The Day That Was Instead

Today was supposed to be the day I had both procedures.  If you have been paying attention, you know that got screwed up. Instead of hospital gowns and invasive procedures, I had a different day.

I slept fairly late and took the dogs outside for their morning walk still wearing my pajamas.  The air was incredible.  Fall is here, at least for a few days, and it was chilly enough that I was wishing for a jacket or my flannel pj bottoms.

I came in, started some laundry, took a long hot shower, opened up all the windows, turned on the attic fan, and sat down with some of the Krispy Kremes my wonderful Mom got me the other day.  I spent the day lazing around, tinkering with bits of things online and watching TV.  There were lime popsicles and Shin Ramyun for lunch.

It was wonderful.

The dogs are thrilled.  Roux has been stuck to me all day, and Chewie and Yelldo have been out and around playing in the cool air and sunshine.  I was able to put clothes out on the line.  It's hard to believe that only yesterday there was rain.

I am currently avoiding sleep because I don't want to fight the dreams.  TopGear is working admirably for this.  Tomorrow will be full of meetings and work.   I'm glad to have had this brief moment.  Maybe it can take me through to the day that will be.

Lime Popsicles

I've been holding it together with the idea that Monday would be the end of it.  Wouldn't it be nice if just for once these things went as planned?

I got a call this morning saying that one of the two things happening Monday has to be rescheduled.  I'll have to take a day.  I'll have to reset that horrible little countdown.  

I'm going to go eat another lime popsicle.  Right now, the lime popsicles are all that's keeping me going.

11 days......

5 Days

Five days left, and I can't stop thinking about it.

I dream about it.  My brain may not be much up to creative endeavour lately, but oh great God, is it ever still up for the nightly horror movie show.  I need peace and flight and places with dark woods and that blue-eyed boy who shows up every so often but instead, I get hospital corridors, people who are long gone, ashes, dust, and no-win situations.

Five days left, and all I want to be able to do is sing along with Lana Del Ray, want to say that "nothing scares me anymore" and mean it.  But I can't.  Because it does.  It scares the ever-living crap out of me.  Instead, I'm so much more stuck in a place where the best lyric of hers for me is "don't make me sad/ don't make me cry/ sometimes life is not enough and the road gets rough / I don't know why...."

I swear I'm trying.  I don't want to be weak or silly or hypochondriacal.  (Is that a word?  I think that's a word....)  Instead I'm striving for beatific stillness, but to be honest some part of me, some little non-productive part of me, is pulling a Heinlein.  You know what I mean.  When in panic or in doubt....

I have had both of these procedures before.  Neither of them is something a person just goes into joyfully.   One of them hurts like a son-of-a-....  You fill in with a word you like.   It's some of the worst pain I've had from something medical without a person actually cutting me open and me having to heal from that.  That includes having my knee rebuilt.  I think it was better not knowing what was coming last time.  Now, I keep thinking about how much it's going to hurt, how there's not really anything I can do about that pain, and sometimes I can't turn that stupid voice off.  It makes me want to roll into a ball underneath my bed and not come out.  It makes me wish I really could go live in a shoebox under my beautiful pianist's grand the way I always joked that I would and let the music wash over me until everything is okay.

On top of all of this, I have to go about my day-to-day life like a normal person. I have to teach and deal with the needs and behaviors of my students and the demands of my job and pretend that I'm fine.  I have to tell people that I'm just tired.  What I want to do is scream and run, scream and run, because there is some strange comfort in movement as long as it doesn't stop.  Instead, I am trying to focus on turning fear into kindness, into concern for other people.  Maybe if I can do that, I can do some good instead of just running in endless circles like Mom and Dad's kitten chasing her long fluffy tail.

It's been on the tip of my tongue, the tip of my fingers so many times to tell a couple of people special to me, but I can't do it.  It all, after all, may be nothing.  Even though it looms before me like the Reaper raising a bony beckoning hand, it may all be nothing.  I couldn't stand it if I worried them for nothing.  I couldn't stand it if they saw me be so weak and afraid if it turns out there are only shadows, no monsters at all.

I have to pretend everything is fine, that I'm like someone who didn't find herself walking off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote.  You know what I admire most about him right now?  The fact that he's always able to keep going, even when he's on nothing but thin air, as long as he doesn't look down.  Maybe that's the secret.  Maybe if you keep moving and don't look down everything is always going to be okay.

And I know I'm babbling in print.  I know what it looks like, sounds like, fingers moving across keys too quickly, images as frantic and random as the inside of my head is right now.  It's a little release of the tension that gave me a crucifying disorienting migraine three days ago.  If it bothers you, you can merry well quit reading, after all. You can walk away from it.  Again, maybe that perpetual motion will keep you safe from it as well.  In the meantime, I'm just going to go to bed and try not to have nightmares.  Five more days.  Five.  More.  Days.

Yeah, So Maybe It's Not Going As Well As I'd Planned

Today as I was standing bus duty, my principal came up to me and told me that I looked unhappy.  He was checking in, concerned about me.  I was startled.  I wasn't particularly aware of feeling bad, but I guess maybe I'm not hiding things as well as I thought I was.

I know my patience isn't at its highest point.  I've made an effort to avoid things that might stretch it past its snapping point.  In short, I'm doing the best I can.

I think it may not be quite enough.  I had a dream last night that I just didn't go somewhere I was supposed to.  I started out to go there, but suddenly I noticed a huge rip in the leg of my pants, so I turned around and came home.  From there, the dream flashed to a junktique where I was shopping for something about Abraham Lincoln.

Maybe it's not stress.  Maybe like Scrooge I had something that disagreed with me for dinner....

11 more days.....

Wordless

I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing here.  I stopped awhile back, and I'm not sure exactly why.  All the places and types of things I used to like to write just shut down.  It's like the flow of words I have always relied on just dried up.

I suspect I know why.  Before the semi-cataclysmic events of last Wednesday, I had reached a place of such worry and such stress that I basically shut down every system that wasn't essential.  Does a person do that?  Is that possible?  It feels possible.  Nothing was resolved Wednesday.  In fact, a great many things might get very much worse now.  However, two of the biggest issues in my life came to a moment of crisis, and at least now I'm not running from them.  Sometimes I think I was using up all my energy and effort with the running.  Maybe there's a mercy in the dropping of some of the old juggling balls after all....

There's also the fact that during the most fruitful period of this blog, I was writing with the idea that someone out there was reading it, someone specific.  I won't go into all that, but it's not the same now, and I've found it hard to come back here when I know that one-sided conversation is at an end.  That's just stupid of me.  It never should have been about a single person other than myself.  Knowing that it was stupid has also prevented me from coming back.  Will I fall into those same old patterns?

I miss the writing, though.  At certain times in Turkey, I saw something, and a fragment of a poem or an essay would start to form, and then it's like a hand swept away a cloud of incense, leaving me with the frustrating feeling of having glimpsed the finished work while being totally unable to capture it.  I found something  in a random notebook I  had tried to write about the Hagia Sofia, and I was astonished by how really terrible an effort it was.

I took out my book of poems the other day, the ones I have typed up and mostly in a final form, and it seemed as though another person had written them.  Maybe there's truth to that.  We do grow and change constantly, or at least we're supposed to.  It's not supposed to be a bad thing.  I just can't stand the thought that this new person, this current incarnation of me, is wordless.

Sufis

For some reason, just tonight, that evening in Istanbul when we saw the Sufi performance is stuck in my head.  It's almost like I'm there in that domelike converted bath chamber seeing and hearing it again.

I remember seeing all of them, being interested in the diversity of ages and expressions on the men as they stepped into the circle for the performance.  One looked so young and somehow nervous.  One was stately and older.  One had the face of an angel.

I remember the way their dance began, the way their arms slowly unfurled to their dancing positions as though it were something as natural as a plant's leaves slowly growing under the sun.  I remember the way they seemed to switch off the act of leading until everyone had started the pattern.  It was soothing and compelling.  It made me wonder what it would be like to be one of them, to spin and spin and accept and let go at the same time....

Once I knew the symbolism of what they were doing, something I found out later, it was even more powerful, and it continues to be even now that they are spinning only in my mind.  I'm stealing this from Wikipedia because it's faster than my telling it all myself.  Semazen is another word for sufi:

In the symbolism of the Sema ritual, the semazen's camel's hair hat (sikke) represents the tombstone of the ego; his wide, white skirt (tennure) represents the ego's shroud. By removing his black cloak (hırka), he is spiritually reborn to the truth. At the beginning of the Sema, by holding his arms crosswise, the semazen appears to represent the number one, thus testifying to God's unity. While whirling, his arms are open: his right arm is directed to the sky, ready to receive God's beneficence; his left hand, upon which his eyes are fastened, is turned toward the earth. The semazen conveys God's spiritual gift to those who are witnessing the Sema. Revolving from right to left around the heart, the semazen embraces all humanity with love. The human being has been created with love in order to love. Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi says, "All loves are a bridge to Divine love. Yet, those who have not had a taste of it do not know!"

The Sufis have been turned into big-time tourist capital by Turkey.  Almost any product you can imagine can be found with their image on it. Every country has something like that, some symbol from their past they've turned into a cultural shorthand for commercial endeavours.  I sort of think it's a shame that this really deeply personal thing has been used for that.

On the other hand, maybe it's all good.  Maybe the symbolism and the beauty of it can reach out through all the tshirts and spinning glass dolls somehow.  Maybe when people use the Iznik trivet with the brightly painted dancers on its surface, some of the original intention is passed along.  I am not wise enough to know.  All I can say with any certainty is that, along with the Hagia Sophia's golden dome, the slow wheel of Sufis rests permanently in my mind.

The Big C (again)

I put it off for a year.  My first inclination when dealing with things that distress me, for better or for worse, is flight.  When the thing you fear is actually something you carry around with you, getting away is more than a little hard.

My doctor tells me that some of the symptoms I've been having lately could be indicators of cancer.  He's the sweetest person in the world, and the very last to wave a panic flag.  However, I have known for some time that my condition was changing and not for the better.  It wasn't exactly a surprise that something bad might be lurking.

It's an odd thought, though.  It's like my own body has turned enemy.  Why is that even possible?  Shouldn't all the bits and pieces play together nicely?

Now begins the long run of tests, scans, and procedures.  And the waiting.  The glorious, terrible, soul-eating waiting.

There will be waiting in doctors' offices.  There will be waiting in labs for needles which will withdraw vials of blood.  There will be waiting on padded tables covered with crinkly paper.  There will be waiting in loosely-tied, mostly too-small cotton gowns, feeling that terrible mix of being exposed and being vulnerable.  There will be waiting for procedures.  There will be waiting for test results.

Even though I know all of this is ahead of me and that there's a chance that much worse may follow, I am calm, maybe calmer than I've been in a long time.  Maybe that's because I'm not running from it anymore.  There is a peace that has come from turning to face the demon.  I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned in that, one that I may need in the days to come.

Thoughts on Women

I needed some quotes for something I'm writing, so I headed over to my best resource for that, QuoteGarden.com.  I love them, have been using them for years for research and general entertainment since I love quotes.

Tonight, I was looking for something interesting about strong women for a story I'm doing, and, while these aren't quite ones that fit the thing I'm working on, they are good ones nonetheless.

There is no such thing as an ugly woman.  ~Vincent Van Gogh
Oh, Vincent.  Just one more reason to love, love, love you.  As if I needed another....

Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman's toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.  ~Marianne Williamson, "A Woman's Worth"
Exactly.  I don't think that needs commentary from me other than that.

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.  ~Author Unknown

Hmm.  Maybe.  Definitely the last part is true.  I am not sure about the first.  I have brains but no beauty (although Vincent thinks otherwise), and I don't think I'd trade.

Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

I have this one on my desk.  I've always thought that guys who don't like girls with brains are really just looking for a mirror or a toy....

They may talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or some such bagatelle; but to me a modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.  ~Oliver Goldsmith

Oh, Goldsmith.  You old flirt.  I like the idea that he liked the idea of a woman being modest.  That quality certainly doesn't seem to be in high appreciation today.

That's probably enough.  I do have something else I'm doing, after all.  

Not Kyoto

- Written while listening to the soundtrack Suleyman the Magnificent, which you can find here.

For years, when the deepest longing to be somewhere else has struck me, Kyoto or Nara has always been the destination.  The little place in my heart that stores up treasures would tune its shamisen and play me memories of Todaiji, of the Philosopher's Path.

Tonight, I'm longing for the other end of the Silk Road, and it's not the crowded, graceful, grey-tiled roofs and reserved buddha-gazes of those ancient places that I want.  Another imperial city calls to me instead.

Ah, God, to be in Istanbul with the light fading from the sky, to see the Bosphorus changing from blue-green to watered silver silk under the light of a waxing moon.  To be able to look up and see the minarets piercing the growing night like needles occupied with stitching the heavens to the earth.  To be able to hear the muezzins of Sultanahmet and Ayasofya calling the azan, that incredible moment when the accidental harmonies inevitably occur, stopping the breath and the heart with only sound.

To stumble over rough cobblestones in cool air to a place where a meal as simple or as complicated as the palate can stand is waiting.  To be with friends who complement, contrast, embrace without questions, even if you've only known them for days that have somehow become lifetimes.

To feel History (very much with a capital H) surround you like an embroidered garment of many silken layers that flutter in the wind, showing now this embellishment, now this flaw in the pattern.  To be surrounded constantly by faded empires, to see the still-glorious monuments of world-rulers now returned to dust.

I yearn for Byzantium, for Constantinople, for Istanbul. Tonight I will sleep and walk there again, feel the cold marble of Ayasofya trail beneath my dreaming fingers, watch the crowds surge like the steady tides.  No distance can keep all of it from me.  One tiny corner I have managed to carry away for myself for the times - like now - when I have the most need.

The Gap

Have you ever been somewhere you just don't fit?  Maybe it used to be a place that made sense for you or maybe you used to be different.  Now, though, just the thought of having to be there makes you uneasy.

I have one of those places, and the dread of encountering it on a regular basis gets worse as time goes by.

When I'm at work or when I'm with my friends, I'm comfortable.  I feel like the people I am around know me on at least some type of basic functional level.  I am an individual with some sort of value.  Maybe they love me.  Maybe they hate my guts.  Whatever it is, they are basing those decisions on current knowledge of me as a person, not the offspring of so-and-so, not the assumption that all people everywhere do the same things in the same ways.

When I'm at this other place, I feel like people neither know who I really am nor very much care.  They know I'm not like them, and that's good enough.  I haven't followed the paths they have.  For a lot of reasons, I have wound up doing some fundamentally different things from most of them.   I didn't go to school here.  I don't work around here.  I am not married.  I'm not dating.  I don't have small children.  I like to travel mostly alone to places most of them consider bizarre, and I would love to live in most of those places as well.  I'm not passing any kind of value judgement here, that my way or their way is better.  I'm just saying they're not the same, and it causes problems.  Sometimes, I think maybe they might not know what to say to me.  And I suppose that's fair enough, since mostly I can say that's true from my side, too.  There is no commonality, and they're content to watch me from the corners of their eyes.

For my part, I endure and run.

It's all well and good to say, "Well, if it makes you that uncomfortable, why don't you stop going there?"  Reality tends to be a great deal less clear-cut and precise.  There are ties that bind, ties that become bonds in the strongest sense of that word.  I don't know how to get out of them.  I just know that every time I am there, I want to be away a little more and a little faster.

Variation on a Theme

In the past two days, I have found myself enthusing over Chris Thile's new Bach album (more about that later) and the YouTube video series Thug Notes.  My first reaction to these in juxtaposition was that they were very different things.  After a little thought, though, I'm not so sure.

What I appreciate about both of them is that they're taking things I traditionally enjoy (Bach, literature) and putting a distinctive personal touch on them (mandolin, thugness).  You have to be very clever and very good at what you do to pull reinterpretation of a masterwork off correctly.  You can take do pale imitations all day long, but to make a genuine new version of something already great means you have to understand the work in question thoroughly.

I think of it like Picasso's art.  Everyone associates him with Cubism and abstraction.  How many people remember that before he found his own new style that he made sure he was a master of traditional techniques?  He admonished people to "[l]earn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist."  It's not that he couldn't paint in the more traditional way; it's that he had mastered and surpassed it.

Even though it may seem odd to put a YouTube series in the same category with Thile and maybe both of them with Picasso to some people, I can't help but see their relationship to one another.  True interpretation leads to a new invention all of its own.