Sue

Picasso- two women at a bar

 My doorbell rang today. I figured it had something to do with a church, because it usually does.

 It was my next door neighbor Sue, an older black woman who lives alone. We don't know each other very well, but every time she sees me she yells, "Hey Baby!" from her porch. Every now and then she'll tell me stories about living in Chicago or remind me that women who don't learn how to cook will never get husbands. Which may be true.

I opened the door and before I even had a chance to say hello, Sue walked in and put a flyer on my kitchen table. Without having a chance to read it, all I really noticed was the word "Revival" in big, bold letters, a photo of a serious guy in a suit, and a little border of flames.. which I'm assuming was supposed to represent hell.

She pulled out a little envelope and said, "This young man is preachin tonight in the church across the street. Can you donate anything to help him get back to New York? I can put both of our names on the envelope."

I tried to quickly think of an excuse to avoid giving away my money. I mean, it all seemed like nonsense. But I like Sue and I like Sue liking me, so I decided to just go along with it.

"Just a second." I told her.

She followed me and I whipped $5 bill out of my wallet. I couldn't help but notice she was wearing a leather jacket on top of a nightgown and flip flops with pink socks. She seemed relieved when I handed her the money and gasped out, "Baby, thank you so much!" I told her it was no problem.

She lingered for a moment and told me, "I've been so sad. I have so much pain in my heart. You know I'm from Chicago? Well, I don't know if I told you this but my only son and my mother burned in a fire at our church in Chicago." She started crying in the middle of my kitchen. I gave her a long hug.

"I'm really sorry," I told her. "You know, you can come over and visit me any time"

She told me again, "I've got so much pain in my heart. Just keep me in your prayers."

I promised her I would, and I actually meant it. I don't really know how to pray and I've never really done it, but I could try.

She headed out the door and asked me if I wanted to come along to the service. I hesitated and told her I had a lot of homework.

"But tell the preacher I said hey," I added.

She laughed and walked away.

My future great-grandchildren don't give a damn.

I just had the best summer of my life. I'm afraid that someday I'll just forget it all. What if Facebook suddenly crashes and all my photos and little stories disappear? I'm realizing now that I am relying on the internet to keep my records so that I can occasionally glance back and tell myself that yes, it all really happened.

When I was still young, my Grandmother began developing some form of dementia that grew progressively worse until she didn't even recognize her own family. I promised myself that I would try my absolute best to remember everything that ever happened to me. I began writing more, taking more pictures, and visualizing the few memories I still had of my early childhood. When I spent time around my Grandmother when she was at her worse, I often wondered, "If you completely lose memory of a person or event, isn't it like it never really happened in the first place?" I wondered if the time we spent talking to her and telling her stories and encouraging her really counted for anything, when we knew it would disappear for her in five minutes. And I realized that it wasn't much different than losing a memory in five years or a decade. Eventually, we'll all lose out memories. If not from dementia, death will do it. And because I'm young and have a big ego to take care of, I'm afraid my stories will just gradually disappear when I grow old and die, until the last trace of me is some great-grandchild growing old and muttering something like, "My Grandmother's mother... what was her name again?" And that will be it. My body will just be bits of carbon floating around and my last remaining photos will be tucked away in an attic underneath piles of photos of my own dead children. Finally, somebody will come across these photos and try to figure out who all these people are, and finally give up and get back to important business, like living. I mean, who really has time to look at old photos of mysterious, dead relatives?

Something I don't want to forget.. dear future great grandchildren: KEEP THIS ONE!

making sounds

Subway musicians in Paris

I think a lot about what it means to be a musician. For many, being a musician is about serving God. For godless, mortal music slaves like me, meaning and motivation don't always come so easily. Like anything, learning an instrument isn't necessarily a big deal in the beginning. But eventually, the only way to continue is to decide that it's important. It's too difficult to drag yourself into an early morning rehearsal or carry your instrument through the rain (letting your umbrella cover the instrument instead of yourself, of course) without deciding that what you're doing is worthwhile. Every now and then, I step back and ask myself why this is what I want. Am I just afraid of quitting? Do I like the occasional ego boost? Am I afraid that I'm not capable of doing anything else successfully? To some extent, I could answer yes to all of these questions. But my biggest reason for continuing to play cello is that I believe with my whole heart that it's the most beautiful sounding thing in the world. I believe that people want to hear it and that they should get a chance to. And I believe that both the process and end result of trying to create something beautiful is one of the most important things that a human can experience and share with others.
    All week now, I've been around middle school and high school kids who are exceptionally motivated to play music. Most of them haven't yet decided yet that they will dedicate their lives and careers to music, but for whatever reason, they show up and play cello all day and practice and pay attention to the classes. And it's OK that they haven't figured it all out yet: sometimes you have to go through the motions and and do some real work before you can find meaning in what you're doing. I impulsively joined the cross country team in High School with the intention of getting skinny and looking good. It wasn't till after the season that I really appreciated the actual experience. The same thing happened with cello: through a series of emotional and physical struggles, I eventually figured out that I loved it. And this week, I've loved being around younger kids who are starting to realize that they love it too. I played in a masterclass this afternoon and immediately after thought of about a million things that could have gone better. As I walked off the stage to put my cello away, one of the girls from the camp approached me and said, "That moved me. I started crying it was so beautiful." I almost said something like, "Thanks, but it wasn't that great" but I stopped myself when I realized that she really meant it. How could I even consider dismissing such a heartfelt response to something I worked so hard to create? Making music is about affecting somebody, and even if everybody else in the auditorium though the performance was terrible, knowing that I evoked something that powerful, especially in a young cellist, meant the world to me. I hope that one day when she's older and starts wondering whether it's even worth it, a little wide-eyed girl will help her remember why she's worked so hard for such a long time. And then everything will be ok.

Sometimes doctors are dumb.

I watched a documentary this afternoon called Food Matters. It focuses the role (or lack of role) of nutrition in the health care industry. Some of the information is common sense: our food is overprocessed and we consume a lot of weird shit that we probably shouldn't. But what's mind blowing to me is that doctors receive very little training in nutrition. Eating is the most important thing we do to keep our bodies functioning, and doctors rarely discuss nutrition with patients. From my experience, they rarely look for simple and obvious solutions to problems. Instead, they often go straight for the drugs because that's what they're trained to do and that's how they (and the drug companies) make money. When I first developed arm problems, I went straight to the orthopedic clinic. The doctor hardly asked me any questions before quickly prescribing an anti-inflammatory. For months I took this drug and felt more and more nauseated, until I could hardly keep food down. If I had used a little common sense, I would have realized that I wasn't going to heal by depriving my body of nutrients. When I went back to the orthopedic clinic, the doctor said, "Oh you're still in pain? I'll give you a cortisone shot." He quickly disappeared from the room and a nurse returned to dig around for the stuff they needed to inject me. "So... what's wrong with me? Is this tendonitis? Or carpal tunnel?" I asked. She continued to fish around the cabinet and said, "Uhm... .yeah something like that." Then they gave me the shot and I left. A few days later, I suddenly felt better and played for a few hours, but next day I was in pain again because I played too much. I wasn't feeling the pain that I should have been feeling.

I finally got help from people who actually took time to talk to me and ask questions, but I still can't believe that these doctors never stopped to ask me questions about the way I move when I play cello and how that may contribute to the problem. They never asked me about my lifestyle and diet. I'm not saying that modern medicine is a joke, but I've realized through this process that there are so many sides to health. I don't want to be preachy, but this is all I have to say: Before you drive to the pharmacy for whatever issue you're facing, take a step back and look at  what's causing the problem. Are you eating well? Exercising? Stressed out? Popping pills is easy, but it's important to take your health into your own hands. As much as you can anyway. Sometimes we need pills or surgery, but it shouldn't be the first thing we go for. We want to be able to trust the doctors in the white lab coats, but it's important to remember that they have their own agendas and they're probably thinking more about what they're eating for dinner than about your problems. If this sounds cynical, it's because so far, doctors have only prolonged my problems by giving me drugs rather than actually helping me solve them.

this is what it feels like, I guess

I feel like my heart is breaking over and over again. I'm starting to forget how the cello feels cradled in my arms and all I want to do is rescue it from my locker and run away with it... going somewhere far away to lock myself in a room and play for days with nobody around to point out that I am not supposed to be playing because I have a mysterious injury. School is pretty much over, and I'm sitting in my room looking at the artifacts from my past life as a musician: sheet music, a practice mute, rosin....

I miss practicing in melrose with the window open and seeing faces turn in my direction as they wonder where all the noise is coming from. When I'm not making loud sounds, I feel like nobody hears me and nobody sees me. Not only am I not making money from gigs, I'm spending all my college money on physical therapy. When the radio station cruelly decides to play some beautiful cello concerto, I have to turn the station to something really boring and terrible. I have a lump in my throat that does not go away. Even though I know the universe is not out to get me, it's certainly not paying attention. This must be what unrequited love feels like.

Sarah Jordan

The first time I saw Sarah Jordan, she was weaving through crowds of people in between classes, looking like she had important business to attend to. She was taller than the other girls and her neck was long. For weeks, I had been hearing her name.

Sarah Jordan
Sarah Jordan
Sarah Jordan

And wondering about her name. And wondering why nobody just called her "Sarah."

 A girl from orchestra was nice enough to invite me to her party one day and I sat quietly watching everybody talking and laughing, I noticed that Sarah Jordan's laugh stood out among every other laugh. Full of breath and pitch. I wondered if she noticed me. She looked like the kind of girl who would never notice me. Who would never invite me along to go see a movie.

She complimented my sunglasses and grabbed them out of my hand. She looked at them like she had actually fallen in love with them, then put them on and showed them off. Everybody looked at her as she made movie star poses and I suddenly felt shy with my cheap tank top and long, unruly hair. I wanted to be like her but it seemed impossible.

At the end of that semester freshman year of high school, Sarah Jordan had a big party in the middle of the afternoon. We decided to race razor scooters. I started turning towards the right to go up the hill, but Sarah Jordan quickly turned to the left and began rolling downhill. I knew it was a bad idea.. racing scooters down a hill... but she seemed so confident and I quickly switched directions. We rolled faster and faster. I could feel the tiny wheels underneath me becoming more and more unsure of themselves but  it was too late to stop. I heard a gasp and suddenly saw Sarah Jordan fly off her scooter. I screamed and slammed the brake down, causing me to fly off my scooter too. I looked over at Sarah Jordan and back at myself. We had bits of gravel stuck to our bloody legs and we just stayed there lying on the street for a moment. We finally pulled ourselves up and hobbled back up to the house. Though the yard, into the house, and up the stairs we marched as our friends stared at us. Sarah Jordan's mother instructed her to get into the bathtub so she could wash off the blood and gravel. I sat on the seat of the toilet holding a cloth up to my chin.

"I am so sorry" I whimpered.

Sarah Jordan looked up at me from the bathtub, "This is all my fault." Her voice cracked and her eyes began to fill with tears.

We started crying as we sat slouched over and holding washcloths to our wounds.

This girl I thought was so beautiful and confident and everything I wanted to be had transformed into a bleeding, crying human being. And I was just the same.

I looked at her with her messy hair, dirty clothes, and bloody legs just sitting there in the bathtub. I decided then and there that I loved her.

She's not as popular as she seems, and doesn't even shop at Abercrombie any more. She drinks too much milk and sometimes uses her friends' toothbrushes. She never walks in straight lines, but instead winds around and looks in all directions and always finds something interesting to look at and then finds the perfect words to describe it. Men think she's hot but she's actually just beautiful. Sarah Jordan is my best friend and I'm proud of the scars she's caused me. I would follow her down any hill, any time.

really, we can't help it

art by david shrigley

With every photo and remark I post online, I step back and ask how it will shape my identity. I can scroll down and click a few buttons to trace back conversations and pictures that would never have been remembered. And if one decided to go back far enough to uncover this fragmented version of myself, a screwy story would unfold. So I continue to add to this story bit by bit and occasionally ask myself how it fits in to the larger narrative. Every now and then, a comment or photo makes no sense in my story and with one click, it can disappear forever. Sometimes, I go far back in my emails or facebook messages to remember an interaction from years ago. It feels wrong, but it's so easy.

The internet lets me escape the physical world. I spend so much time learning to play a big, awkward instrument. When I finally get in front of people and it's time to perform, my hands might get sweaty or my heart might beat to fast or my fingers might be too cold because some jerk left a window open. There's no getting around the realness of it all. But I get on the computer and I create and destroy with so little effort. I can pause and plan and delete sentences and friends and pictures. It's a high.

Because it's Knoxville, I run into old friends constantly. I'm always surprised when one of these friends says something like "How's your arm?" or "So you're dating Steven?" I shouldn't be surprised- that's how the internet (especially facebook) works. But I forget sometimes the hundreds of people who can so easily keep track of these little bits of my life. And I've caught glimpses of so many lives myself. It feels like I'm looking in the medicine cabinets of everyone I know. And I'm not saying that anything is wrong with all of this, but if you're one of those people who says things like "That guy is facebook stalking me" or "It's so creepy- she comments on all of my pictures," just remember that you signed up for this. And if you think the girl who comments on everything you do is creepy, think about all the people who are afraid to comment because they feel somehow ashamed or undeserving about having full access to so much of your life. What's creepy is that so many of us are in denial about how excited we are to have this power to drop in and check up on somebody's life. And we're in denial about how excited we are to have the power to create our our own stories about our own lives, whether they are comedies or tragedies or just plain boring and cute.

Don't feel creepy if you're reading this right now. I think that.... I love being caught up in this for now. I've created a version of "myself" that I feel pretty satisfied with, and I'm starting to believe that "myself" is more important to the world than myself.

made this in high school. thought it was cooler than it was. but it fits.

getting better

If you're looking for something witty and amusing, this is probably not what you want to read. Also, I'm pretty aware the the following paragraphs are very self-centered, but they are as honest as I know how to be, although I know it's full of cliches and mushy gushy rhetoric. If for some reason you can relate to this stuff or get anything out of it, please let me know because I'm not so sure that a blog is the best format for writing diary-like thoughts like these.

-----------------

I'm learning how to learn. Despite being injured, my cello lessons have been amazingly constructive lately. It's difficult for me to admit, but I've often closed myself off in the past and approached new information with negativity and defeatism. For the first time, and probably out of desperation, I have decided to let go of the fear of losing control and admitting that I have so so far to go in learning music. Last semester, I desperately attempted to force my body to complete tasks it did not want to complete. I marched up three flights of stairs each day and locked myself in the practice room until it was time for me to go home to sleep, then I came back to school as soon as I woke up. I took pills that allowed me to ignore pain and I rubbed menthol gel on my arm that distorted my senses. I became angry at my own body for disobeying me when my recital was a month away.

And now, because I have to, I respect my body and the work it does. I see myself as an animal now, and not a machine. Six weeks of physical therapy and alexander technique have made me truly aware of my body for the first time. I've also realized how comforting it is just to be touched by another person. As a twenty one year old, I've almost forgotten what it feels like to be held by a parent. But after falling apart, I actually enjoy needing to be touched whether it's a massage in physical therapy or having my neck gently cradled in my alexander technique lesson. I'm letting people take care of me, and I've learned how to stop feeling guilty about needing help and needing to basically be held and loved like a child again

And nobody wants to hear a love story, so I won't tell mine. But I am with somebody who treats me (and everybody else) with so much respect and love that... I feel like I might explode with happiness.

So these days, I don't give myself guilt trips about things I can't control. I try to listen to my body instead of manipulating it. I don't allow myself to spend time with people who make me insecure and weak. I let people help me because I know I need it. I remind myself that I must define success for myself, and it can happen within my own time frame. And I allow myself to fall in love because I know I'm worth loving back.

More than anything, I hope that someday I can become strong enough that I can return some of the love that's getting thrown my way.

The crude sounds that you are inspired to create will never escape this room. I sealed the windows and doors shut before the concert. You will never meet the pretty girl down the hallway because she refuses to strain her neck so that she may hear the faint sound of something that may or may not be the radio.

When you pour your heart out, it splashes around on the floor and lingers and stinks. I'm walking carefully around it on my way out of this place. Others will slip as they run towards you smiling, and maybe a few will slide right into your arms.
What a mess.

hazel

We all want to talk to dead people, and we all try to do it in our own special and screwed up ways. If I ever had a daughter, I think I'd like to name her Hazel after my great grandmother, who I never met. There's no real reason for me to do something like this. My Dad tells me that she had a low, raspy voice and made lots of pies, and his eyes tear up when he tells me how much he wishes I could have met her. He tells me about his mother, Mildred, who died of stomach cancer when she was just fourty something. She worked at a women's clothing shop. My great grandfather once saved a bus full of people from getting hit by a train. These are the people I come from on my Dad's side, and this is all I know. I want these details to help explain who I am, my motivations, my body, and my fears. They probably never will, but that wish is all that keeps these people.... well... less dead. And why do I want them to be less dead? Because death is terrible, I think.

Touch a quilt. Write a Reqiem. Host a seance. You can talk to the dead, even if they don't listen.

I loved, I think

A few weeks ago, I tracked down a friend from my childhood. I haven't completely stopped thinking about him since I was eight, which is when my family moved away from West Virginia. I was really young, maybe six, when I felt that I had fallen in love with him. He went to the same babysitter (check out my post about JEAN) It started off like this: all the kids would be sitting around watching cartoons. I would whisper in his ear "let's do the secret thing" and we would disappear into the other room. Then he would kiss me on my cheek and I would kiss him back. But of course, real love isn't just physical-- I remember feeling like I had a special secret that nobody in the world could possibly understand. When we weren't together, he was always in the back of my mind. When my parents told me we were moving to Tennessee, I immediately thought about him and realized that I might never see him again.

People think children are not capable of forming complex or romantic relationships, but they're wrong. I think I was in love, and I think I had a pretty complex understanding of what he meant to me and what would be gone when I left town. I told Zoe about him a few weeks ago and she insisted that I track him down again. I didn't know how to spell his name (a very unusual name) and I didn't know his last name or where he currently lived, but after a few google searches and some creative respellings, I found him on facebook. I immediately recognized his face. The story is kind of anticlimactic from there, but I was relieved to know that he remembered me. When I mentioned the fact that he was pretty much my childhood boyfriend, he didn't reply. He probably doesn't remember it the way I do (he probably doesn't remember it at all), but this has been real in my head for such a long time that even if my recollection is hazy, I can remember exactly how it felt to be loved by someone who wasn't required by law to love me. I can remember having my cheek kissed in that cramped little room while the other kids our age were fixated on Tom and Jerry.

There's a chance he will read this, and another chance that it will make him so uncomfortable that he will never talk to me again. But it doesn't matter, because this memory, even if filled with half-truths and hyperboles, is real to me and the person he is now is not a character in my story. When we remember a story, we also create it. I'm happy with what I've come up with.

Here I was, daydreaming about him....

to move like a child

The Tennessee Cello Workshop is happening all weekend. Hundreds of cellists have gathered at the Alumni Memorial Building to participate in masterclasses, lectures, ensembles, and recitals. I and most of the UT cello students are required to run errands, show people where to go, arrange chairs, clean....

I helped out with a suzuki class today. Many of the kids were just 5 or 6 years old, and it was fascinating to watch them with their tiny hands holding tiny instruments. They are too young to feel self conscious about making music, so they squirm in their seats and jerk the bow quickly and look around the room as they play. I wish I could recapture the ability to move my body without thinking about how attractive I am to men in the room or how professional I am behaving or how tall I am or how I just want to get out of these tight jeans and wear something more comfortable. I want to move like a child again.... unaware of what I am or am not capable of doing with my body.

My arm is not getting better. I played last night with all my heart. Now I'm suffering.

I ran into a violinist friend today at the workshop. "I had tendonitis and I stopped playing for a year. It was hard, but it seemed to work," she told me. Someone piped in "Go to Europe for a year!" Suddenly, I realized that I could actually drop out of school for a year and do something completely out of the ordinary. So now this fantasy is growing inside of me. I'll run away from Knoxville, find some exotic place to live, learn a foreign language, eat strange food..... The problem is, I would be forever haunted by the sounds of cello reminding me of what I left behind. My mom told me that when she was pregnant with me and playing in the West Virginia Symphony, I would kick hard and fast in the middle of the most intense music. When I was very young, I remember looking up at my mother while she played cello. I stared at her as she played, and she just stared into space as she wrestled with this huge instrument to create sounds that filled up the entire house, and probably the entire neighborhood. I don't think those sounds will ever escape me, and I don't think my desire to create those sounds will ever escape me.

look at them

These are my fashion icons. and friends.

Yasameen Hoffman

Zoe Ruth Erwin

Aunt Karen and Uncle Andy

 

Grandad

Sarah Jordan Stout

Florian Garnier

prairie dogs

Grandad bought a couple huskies a long time ago. Those huskies fell in love and pretty soon, those two dogs turned into an entire dog sled team. They weren't so happy about being stuck in the middle of Kansas and at night, they dreamed of living somewhere colder and whiter. A few years ago, my cousins and I went fishing around in the garage and found the dog sled my grandfather had made about twenty years earlier. This was no ordinary dog sled. He had replaced the runners  with wheels. Although the huskies were all gone, we decided to try running with the sled, hopping on, and rolling down the hill (the only damn hill anywhere near Salina, Kansas). As we rolled down the steep, gravel driveway overlooking the wheat fields, I tried to imagine Grandad getting pulled along the prairie by a pack of huskies. He was probably wearing his red jumpsuit and looking out at what a lot of people would call absolutely nothing, but he would call endless sky and exactly the place he wanted to be forever. He sang "Home on the Range" nearly every morning and told us again and again, "You know, nobody would even know that song if it weren't for my father. Did I tell you that he fought to make it the state song?" Of course, he had told us. A million times. I didn't really see what the big deal was, but he looked so proud. He would always go back to singing, then we'd roll our eyes but I was secretly jealous. I wanted to be that kind of matchmaker, matching up a state with a song or a dog with a sled or a story with a meaning.

Jean

Jean was terrible. My parents took us there every time they had a gig or wanted to go on a date, which seemed to be all the time. Max and I would fight over the middle seat and ride in the Volvo up a windy hill though the woods. The houses seemed to get smaller and uglier the further up we went. Her house seemed so so small and so so ugly, and as a six year old, I wondered why she wouldn't want to live in a big, brick house on the river just like my family. She would answer the door and yell, "Hi CeeCee and Max!" Jean always wore cutoff sweatpants and a sweatshirt with the arms cut off, which exposed her wrinkly bony arms. I couldn't understand why she wouldn't want to wear dresses and nice jeans like my mom. I could never figure out how old she was, but I imagined she wasn't nearly as old as she looked. There were usually a few other kids there. We would wander to the back room and play with them (or get bullied by them) while Jean stayed on her couch smoking one cigarette after another with her eyes glued to the television, mostly watching shows like Jerry Springer and Maury. Eventually, I would wander into the living room either to see what Jean was doing or to tattle on somebody. I would catch a quick glimpse of flying fists on the TV and a enjoy a quick inhalation of secondhand cigarette smoke before she quickly sent me away. At some point she would yell from the couch "SUPPPPPPERRRR." Each of us would carry a little plastic yellow chair into the living room and set them around the coffee table. Jean would bring us paper plates with raw sliced hotdog, little squares of cheese (the kind that comes in plastic), a puddle of catchup, and green beans from the can. We loved it. Max and I would go home and beg our parents, "Make us dinner like Jean does!"
One Christmas, Jean bought me a Barbie that came with a little motorcycle. She got the same thing for Allison, a girl my age who went to Jean's house every day and who somehow scared the crap out of me. Jean got the impression that I wasn't very excited about my Barbie and said, "What's wrong? Why don't you like your Barbie? Allison loves hers. She plays with it all the time." I felt guilty and I wasn't sure why. I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, but I had a feeling she was really sad and lonely all the time. I mean, the woman yelled at babies when they cried. By the time my parents picked us up, we were like little walking ashtrays. Then we went back to our nice riverfront house and gradually the smell of tobacco and american cheese would fade away.
I don't even know if Jean is alive now. I can hardly picture her face but I can vividly picture her bony fingers clutching her remote in one hand and a cigarette in the other with "Achy Breaky Heart" blasting from the record player. I think I want her to stay that way.

more than a pile of atoms

Warm weather comes and I turn into a mess. I become nostalgic and my heart beats a little faster and I start remembering everything and everyone that has ever happened to me. It's been 56 degrees 307 times in my life and I remember each one.

All the characters of my life live in a cozy, little corner in the back of my brain. My third grade teacher, my grandmother, the guy I kissed in middle school, this other guy, that one guy who was a jerk, and my cross country buddy, and this other guy... they're all in there and will never leave. I revisit them every now and then and fantasize about the dialogue that might unfold. Many of these people have spent much more time existing in my imagination than in the flesh, and I have carefully crafted and re-crafted them in a way that makes more sense in a larger narrative. I'm sad when I remember that my concept of a person is not a person but it all makes sense this way and the gaps get filled in beautifully when I do a little mental housekeeping.

I feel and I hurt and I feel and I hurt over and over again. My close friend and I talked about relationships a few days ago. She told me that for now, she just doesn't see a point. She believes that it's impossible to really get inside somebody's head, and it results in pain 100% of the time. I've experienced that pain, but I continually chase after something that I can't even define. The feelings rising up in me make me feel so alive and overwhelmed and happy and terrified at the same time. Maybe I'm simply addicted to the physiological response of being around someone I'm interested in and attracted to. But I can't allow myself to think only in biological terms though because despite being pretty comfortable with the lack of god in my life and the lack of belief that I have some sort of destiny, I need that magic that I feel when I look into someone's eyes and feel like we have a secret that nobody else will ever know and that we will never know ourselves. Maybe one day I'll look back on this sentiment and laugh at how naive I was at 20.

I agree with my friend: we are basically alone. I don't have many beliefs with easy labels, but I do believe that he process of trying to affect somebody and allowing them to affect you matters a whole lot. I am chasing after a person and an idea and a feeling. I don't know exactly when to stop running towards it, maybe when I finally get there, I will feel more than just the wind in my hair.

ARM

I went to physical therapy for the first time today. After asking me questions about my habits and pain, the woman hooked me up to a bunch of little patches that were attached to a machine. I was told to just lay there with the little hot patches on my arm, neck, and back. I felt waves of warmth shoot up and down my arm and neck, and my muscles went back and forth between spasms and relaxation. Kind of an arm orgasm. She left me there for twenty minutes and I began to think about all the work my arm has done for me in twenty years of being alive. I've climbed trees, written stories, made friendship bracelets, hung Christmas lights, learned to play musical instruments, and given hugs. It's been pretty good to me, but after ten years of playing cello it's letting me down. As soon as I was feeling confident and finally getting some compliments as a musician, my body said "fuck you." I said "fuck you" back but it won.

All I've done for the past ten years is try to overcome the physical difficulties of playing my instrument so that I can... inspire crowds of people. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Tonight at the KSO concert, I watched Midori fly around the violin as if she had motors in her fingers and for a second, the sounds coming out of the instrument weren't nearly as beautiful as the muscles bulging from her neck and the way she took deep, intense breaths after difficult passages or the way her feet seemed to be bolted to the floor.  Every cell in her body cooperated. Mastering an instrument is the wrong way to describe it. She has mastered her body and the instrument is just there. As I always do when I see musicians perform, I thought about the hours spent practicing... which requires a pot of coffee, ibuprofen, and maybe ignoring the crying baby for a little while longer. We often work hard to ignore our bodies so that we can concentrate on.... on.... something more magical and meaningful? I've had dreams in which I'm sitting down playing Rachmaninoff painlessly and beautifully. Then I wake up and I decide that the beauty can wait- for now I just want to feel the strings digging into my fingertips and the weight of the instrument on my chest  and I want to make loud, offensive, powerful sounds. Would Midori approve?

Single(ish)

As I was biking down Western this afternoon, I found a way to completely enjoy the feeling of vulnerability within the traffic and the cold wind and the solitude. My alone time is saving me. I read and watch TV and write music and cook and study, and most of what I do just comes and goes without me ever reporting the details to anyone. Maybe that's the most significant part of being single- at the end of the day, nobody really cares that I read three chapters of my musicology text book or that I got lost on the way to feed my friend's cat or that I dropped a glass container of juice at the store and it made a huge embarrassing sound and mess. And as single life rolls on, I'm starting to love keeping my mundane secrets to myself. But then sometimes I try to convince the people that surround me that my boring shit is important. It's not.

I can't even look at your face
without wanting to shove my tongue down your throat
or rip your eyes right out of their sockets.
I can't decide which one, so I'll sit here.
But anyway, how is your day going?
Mine is fine too, but I forgot how you feel
Our fucking vacation photos are slowly replacing
the smell of your armpits and sound of your breath
You look so warm and alive
but how can I be sure when you're five feet away?
I want to call you terrible names
I want to shove you into the wall
I want to taste you and spit you out.
You need to go?
It was nice running into you here.
Let's catch up sometime soon.
Great.