Telemetry means heart, I think

Samuel works on the telemetry floor in a hospital, which is the heart floor. He came home the other day and told me that they admitted someone who has "broken-heart syndrome". This is a true medical disorder. A person with no previous heart problems can experience sudden heart issues (palipatations, murmers, failure) after the loss of a loved one (be it death, divorce or break up). I stood gaping for minutes upon hearing this. In all the old books, they always say, mysteriously "...and then she died of a broken heart". And now we've learned that they could have!

Salmon Le Sac

We went camping yesterday. Camping means staying in a hotel with my mom while my dad and brothers strive (and fail) to find empty campsites, and end up staying in a hotel down the road. It is hot and dusty on the other side of the mountains. After having breakfast at a cafe close to our hotels we went down to the river and watched people float by on inner tubes. I found little whirling eddies to dip Max's feet in. The sun had baked the rocks warm and the water was cold enough to turn your legs red.

I think about the Ciaconne. How it's spelled Ciacona and sometimes Chaconne. How I haven't practiced it the last two days. It lays inside me though, gathering momentum. Someone told me once that even if you don't physically pick up your instrument to practice, if you go through your music in your minds-eye, hearing and picturing all the movements that accompany practice, that your brain doesn't know that you actually are not doing it. And you will improve.

This sounds like an excuse to me.

I do it anyhow and let it assuage my guilt.

All day Max leaps with joy in my arms, delighted at the prospect of life. I whisper encouragement in his little Dopey ears. His exuberance is contagious.

Mirikatani

Samuel and I watched a documentary about Jimmy Mirikatani. A Japanese artist, born in America, who lost his citizenship during the internment camps of WWII. It made my heart feel swollen. He is a little 80 year old man, who staunchly informs everyone that he is a "Great Master Artist". Jimmy-san. He is famous for his paintings and drawings of cats.
Also, I started Ciaconne practice. But not at the beginning. Some things are best not started at the beginning.

My goal

I have decided to learn the Bach Ciaconne for violin. I have wanted to learn this piece for years. In my mind it is the greatest piece ever written for violin, it is a musical novel depicting the whole of humanity, especially its: longing, hope, tenderness, nostalgia, fear, determination, long trials of the soul, epiphanies, loss of hope, ecstacy, joy and sorrow. To name a few, though it seems very trite to talk such about something so expansive and varied as the workings of the human heart. I harbor a strange hope that there is an answer in this piece somewhere. Bach, being a man of untouched and unparalleled genius, must have known something that very few people know, to have written a work of this epic proportion. His music seems revealed, not jostled up of his own imagination. I have a copy of his 6 Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo, and the second half of the book is actually a copy of his original notation. The front page says, in large, scripted and beautiful writing,

Sei Solo a

Violino

Libro Primo

His handwriting is like art and it soothes you. I once heard that if you added up all the time Bach spent notating his vast repatoire, strictly dipping his quill in ink and putting it to page, it would work out to 23 years. That doesn't count any time he spent daydreaming out the window, or trying to work out a particular harmony, or making decisions about the harpsichord arrangement. In his original notation of the Ciaconne, the piece is 4 1/2 pages long. Transcribed into modern, more legible notation, the work is 13 pages.

It has been rearranged a multitude of times for other instruments, but more often than not, the arrangement calls for more than one instrument. It has been re-written for quartet and though not a single note was added, all four players are busy with parts. One can't begin to imagine how Bach visualized this for one, relatively small, four stringed instrument: it can be played by a full orchestra! He attains this multi-texture by employing "double-stops", a technique which requires the violinist to play more than one string at a time. In fact, the Ciaconne starts with a chord of double-stops played on all four strings. At once.

I shall start at the beginning. This week I will spend determining the best outline for my time of practice.

Cure for the headache

My thoughts feel heavy and like my brain is crunching on them. Causing this headache. Crunchy thoughts. Chewy tight brain. I want someone to gently remove my head and pour purified, fresh, stream water that is warm from the sun through all the cracks and crusty crevices in my head. Swab with care behind my eyeballs. Let them air dry in a tropical location then tenderly replace them. Maybe, while they're at it, they could remove my neck muscles and beat them with a meat cleaver till they are limp and inoffensive. Then slick my neck skin back over the muscles, drip the last of the clean water from my brain, screw my eyes back in, and respectfully replace my head.
My headache-free head.

I had a dream last night that I was fleeing the city with a midget, who had to jump start our escape van, and a really courteous downs syndrome man. I asked them to stop at my apartment so I could get Cheechee, my lion. Then I spent way too much time, while they were waiting in the van all ready to flee, trying to find the right pair of jeans, because my favorite ones smelled of mildew. This last part is true in real life.
Today Max wears a bright orange sleeper. He looks amazingly handsome in it, considering its the color of a bleached road cone. He looks handsome in most things in fact, though I refuse to let him know this, lest it go to his little big head. I know he is already vain, because he changes his outfits at least five times a day. Or rather, he has me change his outfits by "accidantly" peeing on them. Or throwing up on them. He chews on his hands non-stop now, and its just one step further to gag himself. I catch him at it all the time. He has another new skill as well, rolling from back to belly. His does this with an earnest compulsion that suggests he can't not roll, even if he wanted to.
Anna has called, and Max and I are off to coffee with her. Max has been clamoring for a hot chocolate all morning, the little hedonist.

Hormones

This is what I think of hormones: if they were a person I would never invite them to a party. If I saw them on the street I would kick them in the shins. On a particularly bad day I would run over them with a caterpillar tractor.

They are sneaky evil-doers who make you think you are crazy, and they actually do make you crazy and you say mean horrible things and you shake over spilled coffee and cry when you misplace your keys and have waves of rage wash over you for no reason whatsoever and I just know they are watching and laughing maniacally, the horrid little beasts.

I really wish they were a person. I want to smack them in the face.

Ferries

I took the ferry from Port Orchard to Seattle yesterday. It was sunset and had been warm all day. Max was sleeping in the sling, his head was damp like a just-born-chicken. Or a baby mouse. We stood on the deck at the back of the ferry, admiring the sun setting behind terse mountain peaks and drooling gold on the water. While we were out admiring, I heard the slow-rising pitch of a person singing with passion on the covered part of the ferry deck behind me. A lady with a mullet was kind of yodeling. Slow yodeling. She kept laying back on the benches in front of the windows, so that from the deck all I could see were her knees and feet waving about lazily. And her earnest voice rising and wailing into the sunset. She would occasionally right herself, and drift around, changing her notes, brushing at her bright red dress slightly preoccupied. Never breaking up her music. Never once looking around to see if anyone could hear, or was paying attention. Then down on the bench she went, wailing passionately to herself. I like people like that. Max does too. It felt like we were in an indie movie, the soundtrack being one single, a capella voice...

Oh no inspiration

I hate the feeling of being empty. Uninspired. Like my friend Jenn says, "I feel like an empty husk." Except she is referring to the lack of energy she feels in her muscles. I frantically flip through "Home and Garden magazines. Simple Living. Body and Soul." I will become zen. I will throw out all my clutter. I will burn and purge. I will become organized. I should take more walks. I will take more walks. I will eat more kale. I will rise with the sun. "Savour, Seattle Metropolitan, Oprah , Coastal Living..." I will find a little spark to ignite me in these pictures and meaty quips of articles! I will fan it into a flame!! I will be interesting, I will be interested! I will create! A song as good as Tom Waits, a poem that rivals cummings, I want to write a Fairy Tale!!

*I examine myself sceptically* And my lesser side comes out instead and entices me to eat ice cream.
The moon is not right for you.

I feel like an empty husk.

Seattle Summer

...finally! I feel like Seattlites deserve summer more than other people. We've all suffered together for nine long months. Rain on July 4th?! We are the laughing-stock of Mexico and Hawaii. And California. Those states wouldn't even associate with a state like ours, and they shoot withering glances whenever Seattle walks into the room. Seattle's like a mean miser. A crochety old miser man who refuses to give. My greatest feeling is absolute indignation. How dare it.
But today: I sweat. I glisten with sunscreen. The sidewalk burns my feet. Ahhh....
I've spent all day spraying Max and myself with a squirtbottle. He gets to lie around naked on a towel. We got him a little tub so he can splash his feet. He sits in it and beams at Samuel.
Also: my friend Jenn turns me inside out. Her faith in me makes me rapturous. I wish I had two huge bouncy balls so I could give one to her. We could glisten our bouncy way into the sunset.

Fourth of July

We are off to museum to see the Japanese woodblock prints. Max asked to go before the exhibit ends. Then we celebrate Independence Day. We have fireworks. I hope no one loses a hand or their sight today.

Feeding the blog

Yesterday:

We slept a lot. In his waking hours, Max was quite subdued and pensive, avoiding my eyes. I'm afraid he's mentally composing a letter of complaint to the management. His stay has lasted nine weeks, which is a good sign, but I have no experience raising another earthling, and can only imagine the exasperation he feels over my incompetance. I know he is sometimes embarrassed to be seen with me by the way he falls asleep as soon as we leave the house. How am I to tell if he is only pretending? I imagine that while I'm walking him along in the stroller, maybe admiring the lack of a summer that Seattle seems to be having, his tightly shut little eyes slowly open to see if I'm watching. If I look down at him he quickly shuts them and blows a soft adorable snore. Today his embaressment hinges on the fact it took me till midmorning to realize my shirt was on inside out, which still failed to hide the salad dressing stain smack dab in the middle of his feeding area. It is to my advantage that he has the memory of a chicken (which, in case you didn't know, is four seconds).
He has spent the afternoon playing thumb war with an invisible friend.

My little pet blog

Rule one: no second guessing.

Today I went to buy crickets for our gecko. You buy crickets like you would order drip coffee or fries, "small, medium or large". I order medium today and the pet store owner scoops them up, bare-handed and with relish, into a warm, plastic bag where they wait to be fed to a monster with no teeth. I buy medium because you can't see their eyes as well as the large ones. And I know, undoubtedly, that all their little buggy eyes are trained on me with looks of infinite reproach. Mashed and swallowed...
I know I'm having a "too-much-feeling" day when I start to attribute feelings to insects and inanimate objects. Earlier, while washing dishes, a spoon leaped from my hand back into the soapy water and my first thought was "oh, it is too cold for it out here" accompanied by a distinct feeling of anxiety. It would be nice if this attention to the small things seeped into the rest of my life, like knowing off the top of my head what month it is. Someone asked me for the date the other day, and I paused, mentally searching my for any point of reference. All I came up with was, "its June, I think".
I blame this appalling lack of attention to detail on Max, my 9-week old son. Max hasn't learned the difference between day and night yet. And he seems to be in no great hurry to, either. He is trying to make it seems like mere oversight on his part, but I think it is pure laziness. I know it is not for lack of intelligence, for just today he discovered his right hand. Granted, it startled the bejeezes out of him, but he and Right Hand have been studying each other all afternoon. It floats in front of his face and he watches suspiciously, thinking "go ahead and try, I've got my eye on you". Sometimes Right Hand will tease him and smack him in the face, just as quickly disappearing. I've told Max as soon as he learns to get along with both his hands and control them properly, he and I will go out for tacos and tequila to celebrate.