Good Things

Great, good, simple things:

• Croissants, sharp cheddar, and green tea for dinner
• The feel of loud, deep bass through car seats
• Clean white dogs snoring
• The feeling of being clean right after a hot shower
• A yard covered in a blanket of gold ginkgo leaves
• Knowing that a whole week off waits ahead of me

Things of Nothing

I've done an astonishing amount of nothing today.  Vast quantities of it.  Heaping piles of it.  It has been a happy blend of dogs, couches, crocheted afghans, and televised costume melodrama.

Crazy, brilliant, blue-eyed, deeply-tormented, and carrying a sword.  Yeah.  You know that sounds like something I'd like..  O_o

Mostly, I've been immersed in the Roku.  I watched most of a series called Borgia and now I'm getting into Camelot.  What can I tell you?  I'm a sucker for a period drama.  Blame it on the pretty people.   No, really, though.  The guy playing Cesare in the Borgias was sort of...hypnotically gorgeous.  You can see him over to the right (or wherever the photo actually appears for you) as he finishes up a season-long bout of soul torturing and sort of says forget it, kills a bunch of people, and has a bit of what I call an "I AM BEOWULF" moment in the middle of the papal audience chamber.  He's quite mad and quite lovely.  I have to say that like Henry Cavill as Charles Brandon in The Tudors, a great deal of the reason I kept watching was for the pretty smart man with the blue eyes....  Tragically, I am almost always drawn to the monsters and the psychos.  Sigh. (Well, Brandon wasn't one.  Don't look so grumpy pretty Charles.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.)

Pretty man is puzzled by his own prettiness....

Anyway, I needed the rest and pure facetiousness of today.  It's been a real backside-kicker of a week, and I just wanted some distraction.  So far, so good, I guess.  In the absence of any sort of actual international travel, it's as much escapism as I'm going to get.

My Children

Today, apropos of nothing, one of my students said, "Ms. _____, you need to have a baby."  This alone was almost like someone sliding a piece of redhot wire into me slowly, but I knew there was a logic in that statement somewhere.  It was not intended to cause me pain, and there was no way she could know.  I dragged up a smile from somewhere, and said, "Umm-hmm.  Um.  Why?"

"Because you'd make a good mama.  Your kid would be interesting.  You would make sure they would read and learn stuff.  They'd be really smart."

I grinned. (I was dying a little inside. God, how can something be so funny and painful and sweet all at the same time?  One soul should not be asked to bend in that many directions at one time.  It hurts.)

"I think you're overestimating me..."

"No.  I'd want her to, like, be my friend."

"Okay.  Fine by me."

"Can I give her a name?"

"Sure."

"I'm going to call her Sarah.  She's my imaginary friend.  We'd hang out and stuff.  We'd be friends."

Stab.  Stab.  Stab.  My heart has so many damn wounds these days, it's almost all scar tissue.

They ask me all the time why I don't have kids, tell me that I need children.  God.  Soon, I might have that most definitive of all the answers for them for that question, and then what am I going to do with myself?  I feel like I'm ready to be balled up and thrown away.....

Didn't I, My Dear

But it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really fucked it up this time
Didn't I, my dear?

~"Little Lion Man" - Mumford & Sons

___________________

I'm afraid that I've hurt some people I care about, and I don't know how to undo it.  I think I took something the wrong way yesterday and made a major assumption about something that may not be true at all.  I have not been able to be good or kind, sweet or gentle in the past few days.  Yesterday was bad.  Very.   And when I am bad, I make all the devils in hell look like amateurs.....

Regardless of what the original intention of the other person was, what came out of me next should not have.  And today was just as bad.  I could not put it all aside. I should have. I needed to.  I wanted to, badly.  I was going to.  But then, suddenly, when the moment came, everything inside me somehow froze up, and I couldn't.  The smile that was needed to crack the ice wouldn't come.  The one gesture that would have made it all good had to be made at the right time, and today, just right now, there is something inside me so bruised and bloody and tired.  It could not get up and do the right thing.  It simply lay there with hopeless eyes and powerless limbs as the chance to fix the situation died.

And I'm so sorry for it.  I'm sure it bothers me much more than it bothers anybody else involved in the situation... 

I'm sure tomorrow is another day and all that, but I'm growing afraid of tomorrows.  They are not always better.  I am not always better.  Sometimes, I am so much worse.  Sometimes, I don't like who I am at all in my tomorrows....

Four Days Left

And I want to shut out the whole world.  I wish I could fast-forward time just to get it over with.  I think I'm losing my mind with the waiting.  All I can think about is four days from now, even though I know that it may come to nothing or may only be the start of a longer process.  First, physical weakness earlier in the week, and now, the inescapable jackboots of this thing I've been avoiding stomping ever-closer.  If you want to know why I'm not writing, you'd do better to ask how I'm still standing at all.

Invocation

Today, I'd give quite a lot to see you.  I've been a little sick, and just now, just this moment with rain spitting from a sullen sky, I'm a little sad.  In a perfect world, I'd look up and you'd be there like an antidote to all the badness that slowly creeps through my veins.  If I had any magic in me, any power to call forth, I would be tempted to use it.  But that's a selfishness, I suppose, an indulgence.  I'm sure you're hip-deep in your own battles.  Still, I can't help but glance toward the door once in awhile and wish....

I Cannot Brain Today....

"I cannot brain today...I has the dumb."  ~ hashtag seen on Tumblr post
_________________________

This says it all.  I have been fighting stupidity and ick all day.  It feels like a migraine, but the pain won't come down.  I staggered through a day, came home at 4:00, and I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow, I'll take another turn on the big merry-go-round, I guess....

Wide-Eyed Blind

The prelude was fine.  I played "In the Garden" fine.  I felt a little flutter when the music director wasn't out on time, but that's nothing new, really.  He's usually in the back working on one last run through on something, and so I take it around one more time, glance at the little clock I keep on the organ console to see if I need to stretch the piece I'm playing or if I have enough time to shift to a different one.  Nothing prepared me for the sheer nightmare that was coming.

It happened during the first congregational hymn which was always going to be tricky anyway since it was one we hadn't done in a long, long time.  The music just...went away.  The notes were there on the page, but they were practically meaningless, especially those for my right hand.  I could only stare in them in panic, reach for bass chords.  I felt my face flush, my fair complexion betraying my distress.

"It's just this song," I kept telling myself.  "Pull it together.  Chord it.  Get through, and the next one will be better."  I hit the ending notes, sometimes the only ones that matter because if you can at least end on the right notes at least it doesn't sound horrible at the end, and I took a deep breath during the prayer.  It had to be better during the next song.  I knew that one.

But it wasn't.  It really wasn't.

The third, the offertory, was an old favorite, and by that point I was actually shaking.  Fortunately, my musical ear and my brain just bypassed my dead eyes at that point and took over.  I played it with minimal error, and it sounded like I knew what I was doing.  But I can guarantee you whatever I was doing and however it was being done, whatever mechanism was active, ghostly possession by Ms. Sarah, my music teacher who passed away while I was in college; innate rote repetition of that song; divine mercy; whatever, it wasn't sight reading.

I was up for the offertory solo tonight, my pianist friend and I rotating that duty week-to-week.  I wanted to laugh, cry, or run away during the prayer beforehand, but I stayed on the bench, set the stops on the organ, slid the music onto the stand, and tried to remember what chords those stupid little blotches represented.  I have been playing the piano since I was seven, the organ since I was ten.  The piece I was playing was not an elaborate variation.  It was an old hymn in the key of C major.  It was like I was suddenly made so illiterate that I could not read a child's storybook.  I honestly had a moment where I thought I would not be able to play it at all, and then that automatic something went click and my hands moved for me and music came out...more or less.

After the sermon came the invitational, a song I've played probably a million times.  It went better, but I could feel the first twinges of a migraine beginning.  It's still rumbling like distant thunder on the horizon.  I am trying to get all my work done so if it does come down like I think it is planning to, I can take a phenergan and make myself unconscious.

This....this scares me.  When it does things like this to me, I don't know if it is the Topamax, the migraines, or something else.  Why am I like this?  It doesn't make any sense.  And why does it take the music?  It takes my spoken words, too, sometimes, but as I look at this page, I can read every single line.  Will it one day take this from me, too?  It's a terrible thing to be afraid of your own mind.  I wish I understood what was happening to me better.  It makes me feel like I'm trapped in a room with Boo Radley.  I never know from day to day if he's going to save me or stab me in the leg with that damn pair of scissors.

"To Darkness"

"To Darkness / Kripa"

Take my eye

and my whole heart

in your hands

in your hands

and board the yacht

as it departs

leave me on the shore

but I will hunt no more

Hold my sin above my head

and take me home instead

take me home instead

I will not speak of your sin

there is a way out for him

the mirror shows that

your values are ocean

The door, my heart was floored

I knew my weakness, oh hold,

my hand can sign me not to darkness

You know, my heart was floored

I knew my weakness, oh hold,

my hand can sign me not to darkness

~ Mumford and Sons, on Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, and the Dharohar Project

_________________________________

So I was cruising through Amazon this morning, and this album came up in my recommendations.  I was intrigued by the fact that it was a blend of Indian music (which makes me happy) and Mumford & Sons (which I like because of the lyrics).  There are only four songs in this collaboration, and I instantly loved two of them, "To Darkness" and "Mehendi Rachi."   The latter has lyrics like "Perhaps I'll be a bird one day/ if I'm good enough," which you know speaks right to my feathered soul.  It's great.  

This one, though, I am almost positive that this one is sneaking Faustus in.  It feels Fausty.  It may well be that I have just finished teaching the play and watching the downfall and everything feels Fausty right now, but somebody else take a look at this and tell me if the allusion works for you, too.  I know M&S do the whole literary thing, and I think there's a mirror that's important in the Gounod opera (or perhaps even in the Goethe version) of the story.  


(I've searched everywhere to make sure I've got the right lyrics here.  There are several alternate versions of them floating about.  Some of them are clearly wrong.  There are still a couple of words here I'm not quite sure about....  The words "can sign" could just as easily be "consign" ...)

Or maybe I'm just seeing Mephistopheles in every corner now....  That's probably not good, is it?  I'm going to be super-thrilled if I've found this gem tucked into a corner, though.

Pride Blind

"Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them." ~ Robertson Davies

True enough, I guess.  This directly relates to a conversation I had with someone the other day.  Maybe he needs this quote.

40

(No.  Not me.  Not yet....  That particular milestone is still a few years down the road.)

This week Led Zeppelin's IV turned 40.  I guess I heard a clip on the radio about it when I was on my morning high speed  interstate rally  drive to work.  I don't know why it hit me like it did.  I mean I did know the album is older than I am, right?  Even when I was in high school and everyone was dividing into the two or three musical camps all teenagers seem to wind up in as they are exploring their musical tastes, those of us who leaned toward stuff with the guitars did know that Zep was older.  It is just weird somehow to hear a number put on it, I guess, because to me this is music that should exist without them.

Some music dates achingly fast.  It's the stuff that the DJ pulls out at a high school reunion, some of it novelty songs from the your school years, some of it just not very good. You laugh with your friends over it like the old snapshots of you and your friends in bad hairdos or ridiculous clothing trends, and you sort of shudder and think, "My GOD.  What were they thinking when they came up with that crap?"  Other music never, ever sounds like it belongs to any particular age.  It is always good, always fresh.  It is an archetype.  It sets the pattern, is the mold that everything else tries to follow.   It's like an empire-waist gown, I suppose, always in fashion.  (And you can tell my mind is rambly this morning because I suspect I've just compared Led Zeppelin to an empire-waist gown... HA!  I will leave that there, too, because it makes me laugh....)

This entire album is special to me for another reason as well.  This music is my dad's music.  So much of my taste in music is his.  His album collection would make a classic rock vinyl collector tremble.  He's the reason I listen to the Stones, the Beatles, Zep, CCR, and so many others.  Riding around with him in his truck to basketball practices, to visit my relatives, or whathaveyou, he'd tell me about this group or that one.  There were always stories related to his life that went with them or that started because of them, and so I grew to love the music we were listening to.  He would give me his old cassette tapes of them or I would buy them myself.  That's how it started.

All these years later, I am still in the process of replacing all my old analog copies with digital ones.  "Stairway to Heaven," the most heavily-publicized song on IV (although probably not my favorite song on the album) is rolling through my iTunes right now.  I guess as formats change that is going to be a lifelong process of keeping a current library of my favorites.  I have to say, though, when I consider how much more than just mere music this is, it's worth it.

Art

The White Orchard

I am a bit too distracted tonight to read.  My mind just won't focus enough to allow me to buckle down for serious homework or grading.  I am bored with TV and movies.  I am restless, restless, longing to be elsewhere or doing something meaningful or frivolous with somebody who matters.  Maybe it's the moon hiding up there behind that layer of clouds....

In my random search for something to do that would not involve getting in my car and roaming the night-dark countryside aimlessly or spending cash I don't have, I glanced over the icons on my Chrome dash.  No.  Not Twitter.  Not up to paring my thoughts down to 140 tonight.  Also don't want to sort through the clutter of the streaming feeds which are bound to be full of the stupidity and depressing non-choice of politics.  Not a mind-killing game like Angry Birds, either.

What to do?  The trip out to the car and the unrolling dirt roads and dodging of poaching rednecks is starting to sound better and better....

Then I saw the unassuming icon for the Google Art Project.  Yes.  This.  I clicked it, and I was taken to an image of a painting from the National Gallery in London called The Ambassadors.  It was from the time of Henry VIII and was by Holbein.  I looked at it,  pulled up its history, read about it, and moved on to other works that gallery had put online.  I could feel that thing that howls inside me demanding that I take it out of here, show it something other, let it out to dance and learn and frolic start to grumble less and pay attention more.

I moved from gallery to gallery, ending up as I have before in the Van Gogh Museum.  The image above is one of my favorites they have of his.  There is something about these trees that makes me think of Their Eyes Were Watching God and springtime and lying under the cherry blossoms in Japan on a day when it is still just a little too cool to be outside but everything is so full of glory that your heart wants to explode with it.

Soon, I guess I'll try to go to bed.  I don't sleep well on moon-sodden nights; I never have and I have no idea why.  Maybe there's something inside me that needs to be out dancing in it (ha).  For a little while, anyway, I have managed to make the unquiet thing peaceful by feeding it art.  No small accomplishment.

(if you are running Chrome, I highly recommend the Art Project app.  if you are not running Chrome....why the heck not?)

Foiled Again

I'm too poor right now actually to go anywhere, so despite having gotten up with Gypsy Feet itching, I am having an at-home day.  It's just as well, probably.  Last week was rough.

Thank God for the internet.  I've played on Tumblr for an extended period, something I haven't done much of lately.  I love all the things I find there.  There are a couple of amazing teachers on Tumblr, and they are constantly showing me new and amusing education things.  In fact, I found out about TGC on Tumblr.  There are also so many other interesting odds and ends tailored to my interests, book geekery, music, and so on.  I can get lost there for happy hours.

I'm now watching the last part of the miniseries Tin Man on the Roku.  If you haven't seen Tin Man and you like the Wizard of Oz (either the whole shiny Hollywood epic or the original book), I highly recommend this SyFy (or however they're spelling it these days) retell.  It's dark and they've steampunked it up just a bit, but I like what they've added to they original storyline.  The actors are some of my favorites (Alan Cummings is always grand), and I think you won't be disappointed.

Books, music, Etsy...I need to go to Wal-Mart, but I probably won't...laundry, a little light decrapifying of the house, homework...this is what I see my afternoon becoming.  It's not a grand adventure with the camera, but at least it's peaceful life.

Puppy Life

This picture is old, but I love it.  He's LOTS bigger now.

Chewie, my Great Pyrenees puppy, is a challenge.  I love him, but some days I sort of want to drop-kick him. That sort of challenge.  Case in point:  I just had to stop writing to yell, "What the hell have you got," run over and take something plastic/electronic and inappropriate away from him.  He's now barking at one of the cats again, a habit I'm breaking him of with the use of an aluminum pie pan.  (Just.  Don't.  Ask.)

This is Puppy Life.  It's been so long since I've had a puppy or even a young dog around that I have forgotten what it's like.  It's a constant circus of clean up, run around, take away, hide, and throw out because it's destroyed.  Even more so than with a normal puppy with him because he's so freaking SMART.  It's not like he's a dumb animal; he's a terribly, terribly clever one.  If he sees something he wants, you can't even hide it from him.  He watches, notes where you put it, and then goes and gets it for himself later when you're out of the picture with a song in his heart and a cheerful, toothy little grin on his snow-white face.

There's also the fact that he is physically large.  He's only about five months old right now, and he's already about thirty pounds.  He's almost as tall as my pit bull.  He's on his way to being three feet tall and one hundred pounds when he hits maturity.  He's built like a football player, all shoulders and chest, lean muscle.  His favorite tactic is to walk up to things and smack them with his giant feet, objects, doors, other dogs, my cats (who loathe him), me...  He thinks this game is AWESOME.  The things he paw-punches, usually not so much.  Even Roux, my pit, sort of looks at him with a thinning patience sometimes, and she's the queen of Rock and Roll playing.

It's good that she's here, though, because the two of them do throw each other on the floor with such violence that stuff rattles on the shelves.  There's a neverending stream of snarling nonsense when they get going.  The cats sit on the backs of chairs and couches and watch, and I keep thinking that for them, this must be some form of modern day feline gladiatorial game.  I am almost certain they're silently saying, "One of you just KILL, KILL, KILL."  They always look disappointed when there's no bloodshed....

Chewie can be exceptionally sweet, though.  He follows me from room to room.  I can't decide whether he is herding me or protecting me, but I'll take it either way.  His breed is known for its guarding traits, and where I live and since I live alone, that's kind of nice.  Even when we're outside and all the other dogs have abandoned me, Chewie stays.  I'm hoping with continued instruction, his intelligence and sweetness will be the things that outlive this puppy phase.  I do not think I can handle one hundred pounds of frothing white insanity knocking me down every morning and then grinning at the resultant chaos, and I'm almost sure that the feline ninja association will take matters into their hands to prevent that as well.

Music Is a Moral Law

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
~ Plato

_______________
This rolled through my Tumblr this morning, and I'm taking just a second to post it before I go to school because it's fantastic.  Music is the thing that keeps me moving most days.  Whether I am playing it or listening to it, it is the clockwork keeping the machine going.  When I feel terrible, it either helps me work through it or lifts me out of it.  When I am rejoicing, it celebrates with me.  When I grieve, it pulls the sorrow out of me. I have seen many other quotes about music, and I have some other good ones tucked back, but this one is seems to wrap it all up so well.   

Holding On

Less than four hours of sleep, and I'm clinging to functionality by sheer stubbornness.  I'm shaking like a leaf inside.  I feel like there's an electric current running under my skin.  It's horrible.  If everybody wouldn't think I was a basketcase (which, basically, I guess I am, but in my foolish pride I don't want them to think it), I would sit in the floor and cry.  My heart feels like it is about to pound right out of my chest, and I'm so cold, like I won't ever be warm again.

This is the side of Topamax that they don't tell you about when you go in to take it for the first time:  it's a demanding taskmaster.  If you don't manage the dose and your sleep schedule exactly right, it will beat you into a whimpering and useless mass.  I knew today would be like this when I looked at the clock last night and it was past 12:30 when I was going to bed.  I should have called in for a sub today.  The only way I've been able to manage is to stay constantly moving.  This and the fact that the students are taking tests, meaning that I don't have to be mentally on top of my game, are the only things that are letting me get through.  If I can just get to the end of the day...  If... If...

I am sure this period in my life is serving a purpose other than just pointless misery.  I just wish I knew what the hell it is.

And It Just Doesn't WORK

I'm trying for about the eleventh time to get a video converted from wmv to mp4 so I can (perhaps) upload it to the finicky BlackBoard system.  I hate this.  HATE THIS.  Nobody told me there was a size limit for uploads on BlackBoard.  I'm sure this was supposed to be a part of "learning by experience" ho-ho-ho.  Instead, what it is doing is PISSING ME OFF.  The video will not convert (I'm using VLC, and it is, for the first time ever, failing me.) The only version I've been able to extract is choppy video with no sound.  If I try to get better quality than that, it pretends to make it but doesn't.  I'm exhausted and I need to sleep, but I have to turn this assignment in.  I was so pleased with the video I'd made.  Now I just want to throw the laptop across the room because I can't turn it in.  I'm borderline migraine. I do not need this from something that is not even a job.

Sharp Edges

A list.  I'm tired and this is what you get when I'm tired.  I'd like the following, please:

• People to be nice or get the hell out.  I'm tired of hate and hatefulness.  It seems like that's all I hear from every mouth right now....cut downs, mockery, verbal abuse, spite, outright malice, fake smiles that try to hide daggers and fail miserably, actual rejoicing in the pain of others, indifference, intolerance, jokes that carry a coating of crushed glass on them looking for the tender belly to slice.  Doesn't anyone care about the other person at all?  Isn't there any recognition that that being across from you has feelings any more?  I feel a little sick, a little nauseous, a little bruised.  Look around you, for the love of God.  See what your actions cause.  Everything matters.  Everything.  There are no throwaway moments.
• Thought instead of blind obedience.  Doesn't anybody think anymore?  I'm so disappointed.
• Clarity, the path made visible.  Actually, I'd like the path lit up like an airport runway and a brass band playing at the end.  I'd like a guy standing at the door with a sign with my name on it saying, "Ma'am?  Right this way."  I'd like flashing neon and air-raid sirens.  I would like there to be no other turning possible.

I'm sure there is more I have to say, but sleep is slamming an iron fist against the door, and I am going to have to comply.  I'm exhausted.

Something Simple

I was walking the dogs tonight when I got home since Roux is still quite sick and cannot be let out to run free.  The weather was cool but not cold, and the sky was the most gorgeous shade of cobalt as the last of the day faded.  The almost-full moon was already up and the first few stars were out, just enough of a handful to wish on.  A single gauzy ribbon of cloud threaded all the way across the sky.  Around my yard, the little glass orbs of my solar lights were glowing softly like earth-bound baby moons echoing the larger satellite above.  It was lovely, really lovely.  Even though I was tired from the day and ready to be in and off my feet, it was a good place to be.  Something simple, something good.  These pockets of beauty that hide quite literally in the back yard are something for which I never cease to be grateful.

"You Thought I Was That Type" - Anna Akhmatova

You thought I was that type:

That you could forget me,
And that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

Or that I'd ask the sorcerers
For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift:
My precious perfumed handkerchief.

Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.

And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.

__________________________

I found this in an anthology of poems I have, and I thought I'd share it here.  I like the sentiment.  It's a good "break-up" poem if you should happen to be in need of one.