My poor little blog! I hadn't realized I had abandoned her for three weeks! Things are progressing about on schedule though, but I need to make sure I force myself to do at least three hours of piano. Mondays are easy, since it's easy to be scheduled and organized but by Friday it's much harder to stay motivated!

Otherwise, swing dancing is going well I think and I'm enjoying it very much. :) Oh! and my Shakespeare class is really starting to mesh. It isn't easy to have comprehension among 6 people, for as my Biola Wheatstone mentor pointed out this summer, we can all be using the same words but do we mean the same things by them? That is the danger of using words that aren't precisly the right size for the idea. Great discussions are not analogous with a one-size-fits-all clothing department but rather with a tailor. Such a beautiful fit is not without cost though. Of course if you settle for average, you don't have to pay as much.

So ending question: What do we sacrafice for great discussions/communities? Is the cost always worth it, or are there instances where one should invest only an average amount?

Listening to Nat King Cole,

(in the rain)

is something one only does in the movies.

The heroine of the above pictured vignette would certainly be wearing a beautiful dress with a

very full skirt,

and black heels which she can somehow wear without tripping,

in the rain.

(don't ask me, maybe she got a stunt double.)

I imagine her strolling the boulevards as the camera features subtle colours, grey-blues, blacks- all the colours that the rain provides a grateful audience.

Our heroine is certainly alone, dreamily eyeing the trees and the concrete;

[weathered and smoothed to the scene as the script called for.]

At this point the rain starts to pour, and so Attractive Man In Suit is allowed to come to the rescue with Black Umbrella. Please proceed to nonsensical waltzing in the empty streets- followed by lady losing the heel off one of her shoes.

End scene as Charming Man waves for a Bus.

[Music dies out slowly]

Sunday afternoon walks.

Walking in the wind, in the autumn,

so undilutedly lovely.

My hair being blown back, soft and fine, unworried.

I never worry while I walk, in my soft red sweater, jeans, white tennis shoes.

I breathe in,

pushing out, stretching deliberately, slowly.

I enjoy the luxury of being barely lost, ambling through streets which are dressed in concrete, through a neighborhood I know because I always go here when I want to go somewhere I don't know. Dear, straight trees, white skinned, so fragile and elongated, these I understand.

I like singing, very carefully expanding my tiny, little voice with its tiny range, and I am exuberantly content. Of course, I have an equally minute memory, so I must be content to sing snippets of songs I love, switching rapidly as I can only remember the sounds of the words, and not the words themselves.

I breathe in...

'Cause Boy asked me to,

I figure what goes around comes around, no? ;)

<3,

MKR

Progress!

After being a generally unfocused piano student, I am finally getting back into the swing of things! :)

Yesterday and today each got three hours of practice and my playing is really starting to show improvement for it. For awhile I had just been doing an hour a day, but it was not really going anywhere, which was frusterating. I think that has to do with levels, if, as a beginning student you do an hour a day, you are in great shape. As a slightly more advanced student though, I just wasn't getting enough time in to make progress. However, after a lesson, I decided I just needed to risk a wrist injury and get in the time. The thing is, if I play it safe, than I certainly won't make it. At least this way I have a shot at it. Of course, the way I am practicing is very careful, it's just the amount that might be a problem. Two days are through though, and I think I'm okay?

For the first time, I think I have a shot at making auditions if I keep working like this; here's hoping! :)

This is a long post. You have my full permission to skip it now. ;)

*These are about three years of thoughts on the subject of home. I must apologize, both for the length, and for the inevitable borrowing of ideas that occurs in this process. Any borrowing without crediting the author is unintentional. :P

"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

[...]

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time" (T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, part V).

The concept of home is rooted so deeply within the soul that no human innovation can escape its siren-like call. A prevalent example of this occurs in music theory. With rare exceptions, the piece beings on the tonic chord from where it will progress to sub-dominant, dominant and finally tonic again. Following this pattern is inherently natural, hearing an unresolved chord begs for the resolution. It is unnatural to not return to where you began.

The paradox though, is that though in one sense the tonic chord, home, is the same, in another sense home is utterly transformed to the listener. Has the actual beginning changed? No. What has changed is our perception and understanding of the beginning. The richness of the experience has caused us to know what we first heard, but to find the richness, we must journey away from the place of our we began, the place of our birth.

This has been a concept I have struggled with before and I am sure, will continue with which to struggle my whole life. One experience that helped me understand the nature of home came from trying to come to terms with my personality. When I was young, I was so happy, chatty and outgoing. As I grew older though, I had to deal with depression, something that seemingly essentially changed who I was. I wanted so very much just to go back to what I had been, but there is no way to return to home the same way that we leave it.

The solution? I am not sure what the solution is. I know though, that the happiness I had when I was small was limited. Not bad, but limited, so while I experienced very little serious pain, I never understood beauty so well that it drew tears from my eyes. Somehow, when I return home, I will be more essentially me, not less, but deeper and fuller, more able to experience and understand the place into which I was born.

So much sadness though occurs when we try to deny our beginning home. None of us chose the place we were born into, and yet we must cope with the circumstances and results of it. Either we reject or accept our home. If we reject it, we are trapped into being defined by our home as a result of negation, always acting against what we hate, but never free from its shadow. Or, we can accept home and if we do that, we must accept the ugly as well as the beautiful. Must we be satisfied with the ugly? No, but the ugly will have to be corrected and faced. This will inevitably lead to terrible pain. If we endure the pain though we will finally see what we always knew, but we shall see more truly. We shall, "arrive where we started/

And know the place for the first time" (Elliot).

It's that time again....

Alright sports fans, let us examine the situation.

The Red Sox, thanks to a lovely outing by the newly returned Dice-K, are 5.5 games up on the wild card. I'm going to say that they probably won't win the division, though I suppose it's still vaguely possible.

Now that means that most likely the AL playoffs will be Angels-Red Sox and Yankees-Detroit. (shades of 2004, anyone? I wish :D)

This would be kind of interesting because this line-up could yield a very familiar ALCS. If the Red Sox beat the Angels as they have frequently in recent play-off history and the Yankees beat Detroit, then we have the doomsday match up of Yankees-Red Sox. Not only would that be stressful with the rivalry but the media would go crazy and heavens knows we don't want that. :P

On the other hand, if Detroit beats the Yankees, which would be ideal on just about every level and the Red Sox win against the Angels, THEN I WILL BE CONFLICTED! I mean in the end I will of course want the Red Sox to win, but it would be slightly bitter-sweet. :P I prefer undiluted ownage, when at all possible.

Or we could have the Angels-Yankees, which would be shades of 2002. In which case we want the Angels to win. Or if it's Angels-Detroit, then I think probably we want Detroit to win as vengeance for the Red Sox.

There. I think I have hashed out every possible situation. Unless Texas becomes awesome, or... I don't know, half the AL East gets kicked out for steroid abuse. :P

Baseball, how I love thee. :D