This quiet isn't absolute.

This quiet isn't absolute.

The soft snoring in the next room sends puddle-ripples through the air, around the corners of the walls.  I consider the familiar view.  In the summer months, I would sneak out in the early morning, greet the treetops as I lay on the swing, and try to pigeonhole the swarming colors in the east.  But when the mornings grew cold, I compromised and sat before the windows in this room, straining vainly for the same experience.  Of course, my eyes saw colors, but it was never the same.  It couldn't be the same, not while I was in this insulated house with the snoring next door.

This quiet isn't absolute.

The house is creaky.  It complains, although no one has spoken for a few hours, at least.  No one runs about asking if he may please have an Oreo because he's been really, really good today.  No one sings with gay abandon from the shower upstairs, thinking the water will muffle the sound enough.  No one bounds down the carpeted stairs, eager to root around in the fridge for munchies.  Still, the house whines about the fire and brimstone beneath its foundation.

This quiet isn't absolute.

Oh, my baby, I didn't mean it.  I didn't mean to lash.  (It's such an ugly word, so reminiscent of a whip.  But you'll learn that when you read some Melville and learn about how awful people can really be.)  All you need to know for today is that sometimes, big kids do things they don't mean, say things they want to take back as soon as you've heard them.  I was wrong on all counts, love, and you're so good at following the rules.  Of course you can have an Oreo...but don't tell Mum this time.  I don't think she'd be too happy if she knew I gave you one before dinner.  Our secret.  And remember, secrets are only okay if I say they're okay.  Normally, you shouldn't keep secrets.  Sometimes, a secret can hurt worse than the truth.

This quiet isn't absolute.

In fact, there is no quiet.  There is only crashing silence, crippling loudness as the quiet screeches, metal scraping against metal.  I'm told I should get some rest.  I guess it takes something special to be able to sleep through a trainwreck.

What happens without fact?

What happens when you can't rely on fact?  Fact is comfortable.  Fact is comforting.  You fall back on fact when all else fails, so what's the back-up plan?  Where do you turn when Logic slips out the back door when we're not watching, leaving us with its divorcees Ambiguity and Indecision?  What happens then?

I'll tell you what happens.

Holes appear, gaping holes in the ground, and you burrow down, down, dark, damp dirt and the moles can smell your desperation to find a magical clearing of trees while you're under the surface.  And it starts to rain.  Not a stabbing, cold rain, but sheets of water that slice through the air, collide with the ground above you, below you, around you.  And the soil is saturated so you're swimming in mud, quicksand, and despite what everyone tells you about relaxing so you can escape it you can't relax because the trains are coming and they're coming quickly.

You'd better find fact to bring you back to solid ground.  Go watch TV, or rewrite a song, or touch his cheek so you know something is real.  Anchor yourself to the ground.  Breathe.  You know what might happen if you don't.

The beginning.

She has long since stopped doing this, but I remember a time when my mother used to ask me why I stopped writing poetry.  When I was younger, I used to fill books upon books with poems.  To my bewilderment, I even won a contest here and there.  There was a day, though, when my focus shifted.  Where I used to hear poetry, I learned to hear melody...and I liked what I heard.  It filled me, smoothed over the cracks and set a protective hand on my chest so I could fall asleep.  This shift happened when I was perhaps eight, but I didn't understand it until much later. 

I had just finished watching an episode of "Sailor Moon" (a cartoon that hasn't been on television for years), and I was...satisfied.  The show had concluded with an image of a pure night sky, and I loved it.  I loved the stars.  I still love stars.  Stars smile knowingly, quietly, at our souls, and murmur sweet nothings to our hearts.  Their romance has been known to draw me outside just so I can drink the starlight and dream of a quiet walk on a softly lit pathway, with someone special...one day.  One day.

With this in mind, I gathered my supplies: one (1) freshly-sharpened pencil, one (1) pink eraser that still smelled like the box from whence it came, and one (1) half-used legal pad.  After edging myself to the exact center of the piano bench, I drew and redrew my staves and my clefs until they were perfect, and a blank piece of manuscript paper materialized before me.  I set this aside and turned to the ivories, a new and ambitious student.  I began to play, stream-of-consciousness-style, toying with notes, fraternizing with chord progressions, and flirting with cadences. 

But as accompaniment begot melody, I paused in slight alarm.  If I continue like this, I may come up with something cool and then forget it by the time I've finished playing!  I doubled back, going measure by measure.  I decomposed and notated each musical idea, leaving space for lyrics between the staves.  Each notehead had to be perfect, lest it be suffer erasure and reformation.  Double-bar.  Finally.  I carefully wrote my name in the top right-hand corner, and sighed like a proud mama hen.  Finished.  No - a title!  I'm missing a title.  I grabbed the pencil again, thought for a minute, and then wrote the words "O Starry Night" at the top of the paper.  Now, I'm done.  It was an eight-year-old's conception of love's conception underneath a starry night sky. 

I stayed at that baby grand all evening, playing and singing the piece over and over, pretending the two of us were at Carnegie Hall.  I experimented with bows and stylish flourishes.  Would it be professionally acceptable to curtsy?  Oh, I hope so.  I hoped it with all my heart.  I really wanted to curtsy.  I was eight, for goodness' sake.

Nostalgia

Today was exhausting.  I've put off work I should have done tonight because it's taking an unusual amount of energy to hold my eyelids up.  And I've discovered that lethargy very easily begets nostalgia, even if it is nostalgia for just last week...

I crept up on the little one to say good-bye as his tiny chest rose and fell.  It would have been harder had he been awake.  I found myself wishing we were fused somehow, so I would never have to leave him.  I marveled inwardly at how painfully paralyzing it is to love someone so much. 

I crept up on the little one to say good-bye in the quiet of the early morning.  I placed one hand on his head and hoped that he would always want to hold this hand as we crossed a street...and that even if one day, he shoved my hand away, that he would know I loved him all the more for it.

I crept up on the little one to say good-bye and it was so humid that he'd slept shirtless.  As I leaned over to breathe him in before tearing myself away, my cheek grazed his bare skin.  It was...immaculate, as if he'd been born just yesterday.  And despite myself, one tear did escape, just one.  It suddenly occurred to me that this child loved a kiss on the tummy when he was smaller, and so I gave him one.  Wrong move.  He didn't open his eyes, but it was clear that I'd woken him.  The baby smiled sleepily and wrapped his arms around my neck until I relaxed against his innocent, now-tear-stained tummy.  "You're not going anywhere," he said.  "I'm not letting you go."

Every week, this child manages to snatch a piece of my heart and shred it to slivers that fly away with the wind.

And so, I begin.

Why join this mainstream trend of keeping a weblog?  I always have been wary of the idea of broadcasting one's thoughts in such a public forum as the Internet.  It has always seemed unnecessary, and frankly, foolish, to voluntarily relinquish one's privacy like that.  I mean, if you really need to write, send an e-mail.

I was given the chance to modify this regrettably one-sided perspective when I met a blogger - yes, a living, breathing blogger - at college.  In fact, both she and her equally adorable sister engage in this...activity.  Now, let it be said that these two are intellectuals whose opinions I learned to value before I knew that they blogged.  So when I found out, I was baffled - and wildly curious.  What on earth, I asked them, is the allure of using the Internet as a sounding board?

The "loss of privacy" issue is apparently a non-issue.  In fact, you're entirely in control with respect to privacy.  You can be as anonymous or as open with information as you'd like, and your audience will be none the wiser.  One sister emphasized that she blogs because it allows her to hone her craft and to present a polished product in each post.  The other distinguished a blog from a well-written e-mail by pointing out that a blog post is not directed at one recipient, but at an anonymous, faceless audience.  That's not to imply that I fear critique - I welcome it, actually; the purpose of that comment was just to further address my concern about privacy.

Above all else, this blog is a highly personal experiment conducted for a highly personal reason.  But I also venture into this unfamiliar territory because I sincerely enjoy writing.  These days, all I seem to have time for are compositions for Music Theory and lab reports for science classes.  Don't get me wrong; I love writing music.  I'm a singer-songwriter, and if I could, I would adopt that profession and spend my life following that passion, that dream.  And however much I complain about lab reports, I actually don't mind writing them.  But I miss writing for the sake of writing.  I miss the experience of teasing words until they fit just right, molding sentences into contoured, sculpted ideas...and for no reason other than it makes me a very, very happy little girl.

In my daily life, I am heavily driven by logic, rationality, and empirical observation.  My writing often reflects that.  It's easiest for me to start with what I observe and then to branch off into the abstract, the philosophical, the intangible.  At the same time, I expect that there will be times when I can't resist writing about music (mine or anyone else's), and my brother (who is, incidentally, the center of my universe).  But I suppose we shall see.