Monday, May 21, 2012

That endless game

[Marci got this for me last week!] I am probably worse than some dogs with all of my tail chasing. I worked so hard this weekend, barely went out, because I felt I had gotten so little done this past week that I had to make up for it by playing catch up. It never works because there is always more work; it's as bad as Medusa.
But I am grateful for everything I have been learning. Things like this:

1. I am getting older, so my body doesn't bounce back like it used to. I played maybe 20 min of violin on Thursday and woke up Friday unable to move my head since my neck was all jacked up. I figured I should only play 30 min a day, tops, to start, but even then my right hand (the bow hand) started acting up, which it never had done before. Clearly, my body has changed. Not only from age, but from the papermaking and other techniques I've been using. So that is frightening.

2. No wonder I was such an emotional mess when I used to play music. It truly tugs at the heart, and there's no way around it. I've tried for many years to reverse all of that by chilling my heart or at least building a big wall of ice around it but I start playing (especially Bach) and everything opens up again. I marvel at my ability to read music, to decipher numbers (and they are only numbers from zero to four), for all of these symbols to hold so much meaning that translate into very specific sound. I feel so lucky that I had this so early in my life.

3. Curling up in bed to read a book is always a good way to spend time. I wish I remembered that before I spent a day beating myself up for not "working" because I felt so scattered by my broken-feeling body.

4. No matter how hard I try, I will always get tired at night and have to close up the computer and the book and my eyes and go to sleep, leaving work unfinished. And it will go like that until the day I die.

2 comments:

Velma Bolyard said...

1. frightening? just real. time to learn a mature body, embrace it with great love, and honor it, too.
2. you have power in sorting out those four numbers (really? only four?) and making music. it's a holy thing. there are people, like me, who cannot.
3. even curled up in bed reading you are doing something.
4. imagine having nothing to do the next day--
1+2+3+4=very you

aimee said...

i like that! a mature body. more helpful way of considering it. and the numbers are zero for no fingers, 1 for your index, 2 for middle, 3 for ring, 4 for pinky. *sometimes* i might write 5 for super stretched-out pinky.

it IS holy! i am finally understanding that now.