it's like falling in love

Huh? What? God...she's getting mushy and cheesy and all things bad!! Someone hit her on the head!! Make her shut up! NO!!! Don't even let her start!! Oh no...there she goes...

Yeah...so real thoughts...you up for it? Oh god, I'm blogging real thoughts. I need a pill, maybe.

I was just thinking how my relationship with the piano IS like falling in love. I don't know why I can't touch the thing these days. You know, like how some days that person you couldn't get enough of, couldn't get your hands off, is unbearable to be around. You know what I mean?

When I was in first year, this guy named Greg asked why I don't just go ahead and audition for performance. He had the audacity to tell me that I'm just afraid of failure. He made me so angry. What the hell did he know about me anyway? PLUS, it was frosh week. What is he? Some visionary sage? But his comment haunts me to this day. It doesn't make me practice, though.

For a long time now, I've thought that I'm simply afraid to fail at the one thing that has been with me for as long as I can remember. When I don't want to be around people, that has always been there. I used to get completely lost in it.

At the same time, I felt like it took me away from my friends, especially when I was way younger. Kids played outside and I practiced inside. Part of my inability to commit had to do with knowing that I could become isolated and I think I needed to learn how to balance that. I had a loving piano teacher in Gr. 8 who actually suggested that I quit school and just do music. HA!

Then, of course, when I headed off to university, I realized I would be leaving it behind. And, somehow knowing that long-distance relationships are hard to keep up and that many don't work, I just couldn't leave it behind.

[Oh man, I suddenly have a sharp pain on the right side of my head. Blogging thoughts like these don't agree with me.]

Still, I wasn't ready. I played the piano more than I read philosophy, than I did calculus, than I worked on computer programs, than I worked on French. Then, I adjusted to being on my own and I left the piano behind for a bit. I'm so hot and cold that way.

Then, I fell for someone else and got side-tracked. Wait a second, this whole analogy makes me a two-timer! Eeeeek! I was having an affair!!! How silly of me!

But it waits for me patiently. It calls to me gently. It breaks my heart to ignore its faux ivory smile. I feel myself slowly going back to it. But it's really, really scary. One more shot...that's all I've got. When I try again, it'll have to be with everything I have. I guess if it doesn't work, I just don't want to hate it. I don't want it to hurt when I think of it caressed and coaxed into tenderly passionate supplication in someone else's hands. Those tiny pricks I feel now whenever I hear classical piano would become violent stabs.

I mean, what if it doesn't work? Can we ever be friends? At least this way, it just kind of pinches, but I can still visit for hours and enjoy myself.

So...I will read this another time, and if I absolutely cringe. I will pull this post.

I do intend to dive in eventually, though. I'm working my way there. I realize that it's stupid to wait until everything feels right because that never seems to happen. Time just slips away. So...when I'm not so tired and sleepy from this fucking commuting [I swore!!]... Shit!... [oopsies], I will make up a practice schedule.

I think I'll go throw up now. I can't stand this diary-type blogging thing. No more! No more, I tell ya!

the last gleam

At approximately 4:30 pm today, I watched as the last embers of black liquid crystal fire were gradually extinguished on its once-joyful face. I recalled the many conversations that were its blood; conversations that connected souls...some meaningful, some forced. It was the instrument of emotion---anger withheld, pain-in-your-tummy laughter, sympathetic tears, nervous anticipation, expectant silences.

Part of me wants to keep it somewhere where I will come across it---a jolt of memory---in an unforseeable number of years. I will look at it and remember what that phone meant to me in the two and a half years or so that its irritable ring linked me with those important to me, and with those whom I didn't know but may very well lock eyes with on the street.

If I don't keep it, at least its photograph will remain here forever.