Nov 19: Birthday

It's my father's birthday.

These days I feel like I am constantly one beat away from tears.  Like my life is a thin film slicked over a snot-nosed, red-faced howl.

Cliche

You wake up one morning and realize that all the cliches about time are knifingly, crucifyingly true.  It all goes so fast.  Youth is wasted on the young.  You're going to miss this.

It's one of the multitude of life's petty cruelties, that when you need to hear them -those hoary drumbeats about the value of your time, the consequences of your choices, the glory of now- you can't.  And after they've clarified for you, sharpened for you, pinned you-

You're going to miss this.  Parts of this.  Imperfectly.  Go.

Nov. 14

Sometimes the return of joy is a betrayal: your skin smothering your heart.

Volcano

I never took volcanoes seriously.  It's because were never merely themselves but were always a conduit to something else: props in movies, hinges in stories, the sausage meat stuffed into a symbol's  skin.

But they are also their very own extruding, fiery, caustic selves, and those selves are -no bones about it- miraculous.  It's the earth's version of immaculate conception, rock calving itself. It merely (and flagrantly) is.

I saw a volcano.  I am largely unchanged.  The volcano is unequivocally unchanged.  But nevertheless, something small has shifted.  If only a slight stirring of my sense that I do not know everything, can never, do not want to.

BWV 106

It's impossible to tell if I love the piece because it is familiar, or if the piece has nosed itself into familiarity because of my love.

Backtracking: familiar might be the wrong word.  Familiar smacks of transparency, comfort.   My knowledge of the piece is grittier, smuttier, stained by performance after performance.  At school, fumbling through the notes.  That time in Cincinnati with the garret hotel and the wrought iron bed, playing with the man who would later go blind.  Playing with my teacher.  Playing with my student.  Playing with one colleague or another, each of us with our petty tragedies and vain hopes and shaky certainties and brief moments of grace.
 

42?

The meaning of life is to share joy.  I legitimately believe this.  It is a bit startling to find, within myself, after all these years, legitimate belief.  It's like opening up the fridge and discovering that it is full of worms.  Or some other metaphor, with fewer worms. 

Run.

I'd forgotten how much I like running a 5K. I like the people cheering me on and the strength of the morning sun against the chill of the air and the sweat of it, the hills and the go go go.  This was the first race I've run in years, and so it was the first race in which my family stood at the finish line to cheer me on- and I liked that, too.

Most of all. I like accomplishing something in an arena in which I cannot, and do not, want to compete at any kind of legitimate level.  I made it over the finish line in under 33 minutes! Which is pretty slow!  And I was incredibly proud.