Will practice for self-esteem.

I’m at Starbucks to get some extremely last minute projects done (two projects: one started but requires a partner's input, and the other started but in serious rough draft mode), and I'm pissed because they are:

• Out of sparkling mineral water

• Out of chai tea

• Unable to make any "refresher" beverages

So I am drinking an iced coffee.

The good news is, they're also not playing any shitty music. The bad news is I've spent more time writing this than I have on actual schoolwork. Schoolwork that is due tomorrow. TOMORROW.

It is entirely possible that I dig these holes for myself because I know that I almost always crawl out, if not victorious, than at least covered in a small amount of dirt and worms.

I thought about this, seriously, the other day. My dear sweet friend Sarah is getting married later this year, and she has asked me to play something at the wedding. On the flute. On the flute I haven’t played since last August.

That SAME DAY (because I am not stupid) I got my flute out and blew some notes.

It was terrible. Fuzzy. Cracking. Stiff fingers. Bad lip.

But then I got it out the next day (just for fifteen minutes. My friend at work thinks that’s crazy: “What can you accomplish in fifteen minutes!?” The answer, of course, is nothing. However, it’s also not long enough to get discouraged by my shitty tone. See? I know what I’m doing, here.), and then the next day, and then the next. I may have taken a day off. Then I had a flute lesson, and for the first time, was face to face with a tuner. I expected that exercise to be horrible, but it wasn’t. And so I am starting to sound better, losing the the squawking and cracking, my tone is getting smoother (not glassy enough for my taste but that’s OK for now), and my fingers are remembering what it is that they’re supposed to do.

And the thought I had was, what if I let all that time go by because I wasn’t feeling challenged or interested much by music so I had to let it go until it was almost gone (maybe not almost gone, but almost almost gone) so that I could get it back again?

And maybe do something different with it? Maybe I could dirty up my super pretty tone and add some more colors to my sound? I’ve always had trouble with this: given a choice, I would rather sound like ME than sound like whatever the music calls for (i.e., I want you to always know you’re listening to me. But doesn’t that get boring? It DOES, don’t answer). I KNOW it’s boring. I know it’s superficial. I know it’s scary to try something different.

I’d also like to try (whispering) some improvising, or just more fooling around. I need some creativity that isn’t just interpretation. I could do that, maybe?

Anyway, a thought.

But the main point is, I don’t want to suck for my friend’s wedding. I was honored to be asked. So: have gig will practice, which has always been my way.

It has also always been my way when it comes to getting schoolwork done. Which I should probably do, now.

Someone tell me why I have "I Love L.A." in my head right now.

Well, you may be asking yourself (hello, you!) where I’ve been, since October.

Everywhere, and nowhere, my friend.

No, I’m kidding. I don’t know, just doing stuff. Some of it important, most of it not.

But today! Do you know what day it is? Today is the first day of my second semester as a Weekend College student at Mount St. Mary’s University!

I reported to my first class (the first class on the first day of my second semester…) at 10:10 a.m., and was thrilled that out of the 8 people registered for that class, all of them were from last semester (this is a two-semester course, and this is, you guessed it: the second semester) except for one. And one of course, was me. My math may be faulty here. Anyway, I was glad to see these people again, especially glad to see our wonderful professor again, and happy that I remembered all their names. Mine, included.

That class ended at noon, and my next doesn’t start until 2:50, so I’ve had a nice long break. I’m sitting in the back room of the cafeteria (it rained, hard, earlier. It’s sunny outside now, but too chilly for me). I ordered a “light” lunch (a sandwich, a diet coke, and a small bag of Sun Chips. I don’t think I’ve had Sun Chips in ages. Maybe even decades. Aren’t they something you eat on a field trip to the zoo, or something?

I’ve been reading syllabi (yes? Plural for syllabus?) for the two classes I’m taking this semester (okay, also the New York Times and the Wikipedia page for the air crash that occurred in 1986 over the city of Cerritos… it’s one of those topics I revisit sometimes, like circus fires or Philippe Petit or the Crown Jewels), charging my laptop, and texting a friend visiting from Minnesota.

There’s something about this campus that makes me want junkfood. Is it my inner co-ed? I GAINED MY FRESHMAN 15 LAST YEAR.

Anyway, dudes, time to wrap it up. My next class is English 1-B. All I know is we have to memorize a poem for next weekend. Wish me luck. I’m old.

The words that got away

I had written a whole nice thing here about midterms and my poor performance on a math quiz and Lady Gaga and writing and getting shit done in Starbucks and the buzzing speaker and Britney Spears and Judy Garland’s version of “The Man That Got Away,” but it would appear that I have deleted it.

(Not the Britney and Judy version, let’s be clear. That would be a thing to hear.)

So here. Let Judy yell at you for a while.

https://youtu.be/G0OpD29vKLk

Some of my favorite songs have "dream" in the title. This post is not about any of them.

The other night I had a dream.

This is not unusual or really cause for noting it, but it was a weird one, and I thought if I wrote it down it would help me figure out what, if anything, it means. I sent it to a friend in an email, and I think I even posted it on Facebook, and no one had much of anything to say about it except, “Weird, man,” so maybe that’s all there is to it, but since I’ve got this space here, you know, for my ramblings and other bullshit, let’s fill it in.

I woke up September 15th at 1:30 a.m. Here’s what I wrote then (punctuation or lack thereof as included in the original, sleepy version. Also, I should probably read up on the anatomy of birds):

“Just woke up from a dream wherein a man possibly my father was explaining to me that birds that eat other birds (is there such a thing) will not eat a bird if it has been shot in the heart incorrectly because then the dead bird’s heart droops into the body and the blood pools in the cavity and if the heart is submerged in blood the other bird won’t eat it. And my dad was waving around a dead bird with half its dried up heart rattling around inside it’s ribcage like an avocado pit and do birds even have ribcages.

My brother was cooking dinner nearby and I was trying to get a stain out of some very thick carpet with a stiff brush, and a little boy, maybe the one from Starbucks I told you about*, was playing with a small racetrack where you had to pull the cars backward to make them go and I was singing, loudly and clearly, an old Soundgarden song, while I scrubbed the carpet.

My mother was there too but I don’t know what she was doing.”

Explanation for those of you not lucky enough to receive weird-ass emails from me at 1 in the morning:

That night I had visited Starbucks with my laptop and my books and got some homework done. While I was there, a very tiny, incredibly adorable little Asian boy came in with his mother. While she was paying, he was sitting at the table in front of me, singing a song and playing with something, maybe a business card or thick piece of paper. Mom was pretty easy with having her back to him (at this age I was either holding Jules’ hand whenever out in public or hyper-aware of his whereabouts. I’ve calmed down a little but I would hate to lose my kid due to my own inattention. And isn’t that always when they get hurt?), and so he seemed pretty cool with sitting there by himself, playing with his little piece of paper. As she was paying, and I guess when I looked down at my work - See? No one was watching him and he escaped! - he crawled down from the chair and snuck out the back door to the patio. The Starbucks employee saw this and said something to mom, who calmly finished paying and gestured to him through the window, “Come back inside.” He didn’t. He walked until he was directly in front of the window to my right (I was also between him and his mother; I don’t think he had come that way to be in my eyesight) and he stood there, gently slapping his palms against the window, singing his little songs. It was one of the sweetest, cutest things I’ve seen in a long time, and maybe writing about this dumb dream was just a way to get to this little kid, because I’m glad I remembered him.

The Soundgarden song was “Down on the Upside,” which I’ve been singing quite a bit in the car. I forgot how great it is.