Love Triangle: Me, Me & Whomever

This is me at Modigliani's grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris (October 2005). It was taken by a journalist from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who had lived in Paris for 13 years at that point (& abroad for 25). I just happened across him (hah! like we believe in that!) & we shared some good conversation & a couple meals. I even wrote him a poem, about learning to speak other languages--he taught himself 4, beginning in 4th grade, with the Berlitz Self Teacher series. So, bonjour to Rick in Paris.

I just received a message from my dear new cello friend in Arizona, bemoaning the fact that it has been a long while (nigh onto a month!) since he wrote me. He's been very busy--

check out the new videoblog:

http://www.piano-and-cello-and-friends.com/videoblog/

& the computer has been commandeered by his father & brother doing taxes & blog stuff

--& he was feeling sad that we'd had this hiatus. I assured him there was no scarcity in the supply of Laurel or good energy or anything he needs. I think it's important for us to spend as little time as possible missing people.

I know, this flies in the face of most theories of friendship & connection, but I'm pretty darn sure that the better each of us connects with our own inner being & the more love we lavish on that relationship, the more we will have to share with others, without that feeling of guilt for not having called or written or whatever. When we do connect then, it will be with a sense of pure unadulterated joy. Love thy neighbor as thyself--well, the more you love yourself, the more you can love your neighbor. Who's the most important in the love triangle of you, your inner being & any other person? (I'm hoping any other person is a distant third. After all, you & your inner being are the only ones you can count on being around 24/7/365.) Be assured that I do love you--almost as much as I love me. & whoo, you know that's a whole lot. Grin.

Blog alternative:
126. Make a date with your inner being. Make sure to take into account those inner preferences. Art museum? Rodeo? Hot dog stand? Tanning salon? Buddhist retreat?

To angels, bees, snowmen, race cars, plastic...

Happy Birthday to ME
& the Earth.
To daisies, roses, shooting stars, stars in general & the sun in particular. To butterflies, quantum physics, sudoku, blank pages, geometry, clouds. To photosynthesis, cotton dresses, le Pens, organic sweet baby pecan tarts, cockroaches, purple shoe laces, digital cameras, shadows, everything that shows us what we would prefer, bridges, mail. To writers, editors, & agents. To tea, candles, sex, Leonardo da Vinci, helicopters. To punctuation (even poorly-used). To lemonade, messy hair, mountains, hot air balloons, rainbows, cell phones, architects, hunger, the cello. To chocolate, dancing, Thoreau, making mistakes. To spring, chickens, opinions, windows, the word residue, massages, blue. To laptop computers, sandwiches, walking, babies, noisy motorcycles, full moons. To butter, debates, thunderstorms, sidewalk chalk, nitrous oxide, chaos theory, cartooning. To Marines, light bulbs, jade, spinach, philosophy, cream. To beginning to know who you are. To the journey. To you.

Blog alternative:
125. Make a list of things. Things you like & things you thought about while you were thinking about things you like. & add a butterfly.

Inspired moments of inertia

my (current) journal,
being the journal du jour
& the journal of the flow

& one of the beings which flowed onto the pages
with the help of Le Pens

I'm at the (another) coffee shop again.
This time doing taxes.
(hence the blog. grin.)

It's April in the mountains, which means spring is fitzing & startzing, waxing & waning, mooning us & wooing us, cooling & warming. It was around 80 a day or 2 ago & it was 53 when I drove here this afternoon. I love spring. & fall. The transition seasons. Also winter & summer here, which, because of this wonderful combination of latitude & elevation, have those quirky, unseasonable days. New year's day 2007 it was 70 degrees, & sometimes summer gives us a blustery, shivery day to help us appreciate the heat.

Umm, you say, didn't you tell me you were doing your taxes?

Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. Okay, see ya later.

Blog alternative:
124. Creatively procrastinate. Use the moment of inertia of a stalled or unstarted task to inspire you to some other great work. (Or trivial pursuit of happiness.)

Concrete imaginary menagerie--or Schrodinger's Grecian Urn

This is my son Nick--an abbreviated version--& a leaf--a concretized version.

I'm sitting at a coffee & tea shop, drinking green tea. There's a little girl, attire echoing the pink & gray of the above photo, in chair limbo. Is she getting up or down? One knee rests on the seat of said chair. Her other leg is outstretched, pink & gray sneaker suspended a few inches from the floor. Up? Or down? In the nonce, there is neither. What is the half-life of her indecision? Like Schrodinger's famous cat, in the box with its radioactive companion, unless I tell you what she did, she is suspended there forever, a still unravish'd bride of quietness, a foster-child of silence and slow time. (I know, I've gone from the cat box to Keats. What is the probability of that? The half-life?)

Now time for the confession. The half-life of her indecision--& indeed her entire trip to the coffee shop with mother & grandmother, none of the 3 smiling--was less than the time for me to compose the paragraph about it. Before I'd posed the first question, she'd pulled that second knee up to rest beside its companion. By the time I'd thought of adding Keats, they were gone, unsmiling, half-lifed. C'est la vie/2.

Okay, so I've played with words & emailed until I'm starvicating. The green tea is not cutting it. There's a restaurant that has the best ribs just a ways up the road, so that's where I'm going.

Blog alternative:
123. Mix some poetry & physics. Or biology & stamp-collecting. Or ? & ?.

Me & my shadow

This is my mom & I on the trail through the gorge of the Stillwater River. Vicki Genfan is doing a mother's day song, requesting images from her fans. I submitted this one, so it will probably be on her song. I'll give you the details whence I have them.

Can't blog long, as I didn't bring a cord & the computer is running low on battery. I'll just tell you that the other morning, in the bathtub, I was feeling like a million dollars & I laughed out loud & thought, "Well, I suppose a girl can go on discount every once in a while." A mere million dollars! Hah!

Life is proceeding swimmingly. Battery is at 16%.

Hence, blog alternative:
122. Give yourself a very generous appraisal of value--oh, you can include bank accounts & IRAs if you want, but I think you should start with your smile or your hula hooping ability...

Modigliani vs. Mozart

This is a photograph--all swirly--of some of my beautifully-musical relatives at a family reunion Memorial Day weekend 2006.


I have acquired an A string for the cello.

They're expensive! But I guess you can't play cello without them. Or you could, but it would be a different sound.

I've been thinking about the cello & about practicing & about why I have it. I love the sound, but I can get that by listening to cds. Not in the same way, certainly. Not feeling that live resonance of an instrument nestled against ones chest. I do want that. I do want a feeling of accomplishment, of skills gained.

I don't want a burden or duty or drudgery. So I've been going slowly, feeling my way into this. After all, I've been not playing cello for almost 49 years--a few more days or weeks of that is inconsequential.

I suspect once I get going it will feed my soul in a way that infuses my entire life, much as starting to play with polymer clay & then to paint & draw did 11 years ago this spring. I was in a bit of a burn-out state with my writing & my daily life at that point, & art revitalized me. It made me a better writer, a better parent, a better person. It was never a case of all right, get in there & paint, whether you want to or not.

Perhaps it was because I had a natural knack for art. I'm no Modigliani, but I'm a heck of a lot closer to Modigliani than I am to Mozart. I'm not saying I'm not musical, but it isn't as natural for me as for many of my relatives, who are fiddle champions & Juilliard grads & such. They trade instruments at whim. Fiddle for mandolin for guitar. No prob. I have one uncle who could play string instruments & then happened upon a clarinet. A couple exploratory blows & then he could just play it. That's natural genius. I'm hoping for a bit of affinity. I'll go at this at my own pace.

In the meantime, though, the cello has already done things for my creativity. I dusted off my guitar the other day. I got out my watercolors. I started a story that has--what a surprise--a cello as a major plot point. (This is not that unusual, as I have no less than 2 novels--one drafted & one half done--in which the cello also figures prominently. Both begun long before the cello was acquired.)

Anyway, I'm leisurely loving on the idea of the cello. Will it be a big part of my life? We shall see.

In case I was not clear about it, the picture from the previous blog was created by me myself, using my tablet computer & the Paint program.

In other news--I've come to a revelation about the IRS. They're my employees! I'll try to be a good, kind, motivating boss, expecting the best from them. They've got a tough job, after all, with not much appreciation flowing their way.

Blog alternative:
121. Think kindly of the IRS. (Or, if not kindly, at least more kindly than you have been...)