wherever you stand be the soul of that place.

today was finally what my summer should have been like all along. too bad it seems increasingly fleeting. but the tale i must impart.

i woke up this morning planning on be productive. claire and i ran errands for the house, including applying for a job at plaza art materials. claire then told me that she and ben were going to the american visionary art museum in federal hill to watch, as part of an installment, monks make a sand mandala. for those of you who don't know what that is, it looks like this:



it is created painstakingly by monks tapping out colored sand. it teaches the beauty of impermanence and non-attachment in that after the mandala, which takes hours/days to create, is finished, it is blown away like so much sand on a beach. so of course, i had to go. claire proposed that i take a cab since they were riding their bikes. at the last minute i decided to walk all two miles from my house to federal hill. it was not really that bad and it was a beautiful day. the exhibit, "all faiths beautiful" was beautiful and beyond inspiring and watching the monks awakened something inside me long dormant. my commitment to study and practice buddhism (as much as anyone can actually do those things) has waned as of late and i felt reinspired. (my tweets also mention honeybees. i've been reading so much on our current honeybee plight and i feel this becoming a cause) so after the museum, i walked to the harbor, got some italian ice and dinner and just looked out on the water. it felt good.

four miles later, my body is hurting but it's the good kind. i'm so glad that i've really stuck to exercising. i think i'm starting to see the results which is happy. don't get me wrong, i'm still bored out of my mind and sad that all of my friends have gone away but at least i'm content with my life. that's saying quite a lot.

it really says something about lovers leaping like gazelles

so it seems that i may have jinxed myself, you be the judge.

shortly after i wrote my last post, i found out that the savage mountain arts chamber music institute, to which my trio and i were to be a part, canceled this summer, due to low enrollment. this was a crushing blow, let me tell you. i had been looking forward to this since last fall. however, these things happen, especially to smaller camps. i've seen similar during my time at nyu. it just seems that all of my fabulous plans for the summer imploded on themselves (arabian nights, summer opera theatre, savage mountain) which leaves me at home to practice and prepare for the fall, which would be great except for the fact that i have carpal tunnel in both hands, the reason why i couldn't do some of these things in the first place. so this turns into another one of those summers where i'm at home, nursing my broken and feeble body. don't worry, it's nothing new.

so i guess part of me is counteracting that by working out. hard. i mean i worked out a lot last summer with my father after my unsightly (and unexpected) weight gain due to massive traveling on the part of grad school auditions. and i did lose weight and get myself back. but this summer it's all about getting stronger...

we can rebuild her, make her stronger, faster.

...and losing some of that baby fat that refuses to go away. that and the fact that i'm bored as hell and working out every day helps me to relieve my every day stress. my injuries feel better, too, but that's not rocket science. (i'm actually typing this after i finished about 40 minutes of yoga). hopefully, something will come to show of it.

as you know, i've shown some real disdain for baltimore this summer due to my incessant boredom. but something has come along to make me proud to be a resident of charm city. thanks to alex ross for bringing this to my attention. baltimore's own, hybrid groove project have just put out "hgp anthem" dissing the likes of peabody faves alarm will sound and so percussion not to mention bang on a can, james levine and many more. this might be the best battle rap i've heard in a while. okay, maybe not but it's pretty badass. read about it here and, well, big ups to mobtown.

there were a lot of no's in that sentence

there's something very cathartic about cleaning. it lets you get your physical space together as well as your mental one. since i have, virtually, nothing to do, i've been cleaning quite a bit. washing everything in sight, sweeping a whole house of wood floors, watering plants, folding clothes, you name it. it helps keep me at peace and let me sleep at night. because let me tell you, the terrors and fears are never too far behind.

today i got an email from PK. it was really sweet. he asked me about my trip to the caribbean. he also told me that he thought the playing in my jury was the best he had heard from me. that really meant a lot. he discussed a summer plan for me to really get me moving this fall and i was just so grateful that he took the time to do that. it wasn't degrading or anything like that. just a teacher being helpful. i really took it to heart. if i had a ridiculous ego and no shame i would have taken it as an offense. good thing that's not me at all. unfortunately, i have to email him and let him know about the CTS. i'm sure that will invariably change his plans for me.

like the line in one of my favorite movies, "we never seem to get a break."

so june has been pretty pointless for the most part even though i had to miss one of my very dear friend's wedding and the senior recital of one of my favorite people. you know, tied to a very nonsense job that leaves even my co-workers confused. next week, however, i will be up in NYC for a bridal shower (its the summer of weddings!) so that will be an experience. i'm really just counting down to july. i miss my trio and i can't wait for the time we'll have up in frostburg.

i'm reminded of father's day. my own father and other fathers. i feel like maybe dads get the short end of the stick sometimes. i'll be the first person to say that the relationship between my father and i is much different from that between me and my mother. don't get me wrong, i love them more than life itself and i couldn't get along without them. but i'm a girl and have always been attached to my mother. but i'm not going to leave it to one day to express the love i have for my father. he and i have been through a lot and he's number one in my heart. i was deeply saddened by the passing of tim russert on friday, moreso than by any other "celebrity" figure i can think of, especially upon hearing the touching stories of him, his father and his son. too little do we hear stories about great fathers. maybe because we don't think they deserve the credit, or "that's their job" (a phrase i loathe) i know for a fact that i would not be where i am without my father and i grieve for the russerts in this loss of their father, son and husband.

i'd really rather not end this on such a sad and poignant note so i'll have to come up with something...i don't know, thoughts escape me. i guess i'll just wish everyone a very happy father's day! (love you daddy!)

i heard it in the wind last night, sounded like applause.

music is a funny thing.

this weekend was one for which i wasn't really prepared. it involves music and, i guess, the past. my two great loves. part of my vacation was to be part of two alumni concerts, one at my high school and the other involving my youth orchestra. and it seems like everything that occurred around those two events showed me how much the passing of time can either romanticize things or harden our hearts.

the first thing that i noticed was the litany of phone calls i received in a few short days. people with whom (unfortunately) i had not spoken to in years, called me. and immediately, it was like restarting a conversation that had been cut off. it was so easy and natural and surprising in that way. being the sentimentalist that i am, i welcomed it. they are all people that i love and had missed dearly. not to mention that in that wave of phone calls came others from people in my present that i also love dearly. it had a profound impact on me.

the next thing was the concerts themselves. and here comes the divide. i had a lot of problems in high school. sometimes, my band program and i were not on the best of terms and that is most definitely not how i left. i carried around a lot of resentment because being in that program became my whole life. certain people left me feeling jilted and after so many years of believing in them, that's a hard feeling to stomach. but the thing about all of that is, underneath all of that pain lay a deep love which i have always wanted to rekindle. and the moment that i walked into the building and set my eyes upon a man that i had not talked to in almost eight years, and those last words were an argument between us, all of the hurt inside me melted away. i had missed him. what i didn't realize was that while i had thought i still felt the initial pain from my past, time had worn it away and only left the feelings with which i had started. it felt good. i felt good. yes, being at my high school, playing on that stage is mildly unnerving, considering. but i definitely left feeling that the whole thing had been worth doing. i even left with a few tears in my eyes. now today was the youth orchestra alumni concert and i will just say that it was the complete and total opposite, the antithesis, really of what had happened before. the anger that i felt came welling back to the surface (i will make an EXTREMELY long story short by saying that we were never on good terms) and what it turned into was a complete reversion --- i turned into the 17 year old troublemaker. and it felt kind of good, i'll be honest. i made wisecrack remarks in the back, making everyone around me laugh and tossed everything to the wind. here, i felt like nothing had changed and i hated that. it even seemed like things had gotten worse over the years rather than better. i think people wonder how i remember such small things with such veracity. they just made such an impact on me...but what i realized was that i don't care anymore the way i used to. i cared then because i had to care, had to believe that i was committed to something and was going to make it work. i am now free of those shackles, thanks to time and the advancement of age. i think i understand that some things will never change but i have to. doing this makes that tangible.

funny how music can bring everyone back...back together, back to life. i saw people i haven't seen in years and worried that i would never see again. a lot of them are working in the real world (it's the real world to me, my own world seems quite imaginary), starting families and creating new lives for themselves. if anything, i envy them because they've made so much change in their life. i'm still the girl behind the bassoon. but in any case, i respect them and they respect me. we sit down together and just make music. it couldn't be any more simple. and i honestly wish that it could always be that way. i know, however, that that is not the case. i am happy that these past couple of days have allowed me to regenerate new connections. those ties that we make to people never really break. i think in the end, that's how our lives will be measured, by the connections that we make. i hope that people will come to remember and think well of me.

yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!

my vacation to the cayman islands was strange, in some regards.

i found myself sitting on my patio at 1:30 in the morning, reading milan kundera's the unbearable lightness of being and listening to ian bostridge sing grainger's brigg fair on constant repeat, feeling the breeze from the night sea, crying on the inside.

it reminded me of things and people whose names are not as important as the impact they have had on me recently. i've felt this indescribable feeling of emptiness. when i say empty, i mean poured out from a vase. not lacking but there was something there, something of which i am conscious but not clear. my alone time was pretty much spent that way for the entire trip. while wrapped up in the intoxicating prose of kundera and hearing (what i believe to be) the utterly quixotic and sensual sound of this song from the english countryside, i thought about my own spirit and what it would be like to complete someone. how devastating, painful and beautiful that would be. i know that doesn't really make any sense. it's so damn hard to explain.

but i promise, it wasn't depressing. it was transcendent. it was like i didn't feel anything at all, i just existed. and in that existence, i relived memories that really touched me. there is more but i can and will not say at this time, if ever. i have learned over the years (the hard way, unfortunately) that some things are best kept private.

aside from those moments, grand cayman was wonderful. i snorkeled with cute little fish, spoke italian, got hit on by many an island man and bought the best rum cake EVER. jealous, eh? i know, i know. but we can't all vacation forever...

if you want someone to write about jazz, then you do it.

self-hatred and self-doubt is an ugly thing. it took me a long time to realize that it was external doubt that was fueling my inner demons. right now, i'm still trying to get over something said about me by someone i love who i am just starting to see never really understood me. i have never fit into anyone's plan as a musician. and no one seems to get it, my father doesn't even seem to get it. i have such big plans for myself and this career. whether or not i'll achieve them is another story but just because i don't fall into your idea of what my future should be doesn't make me any less of a musician. i don't like to compared to other people cause i'm not them. they're not me, it's very simple.

and let me make it clear, it's not vanity. i just feel very clearly about what i'm supposed to do with my life. and i hurt because i feel alone because i live in a world of other people's standards. that's not uncommon, i know but the uncertainty it caused in me...it makes me resentful. or made me resentful, shall i say. i guess it just hurts more than anything.

luckily for me, i've finally found a reason to be proud of myself. and i don't think anyone can take it away no matter what's said. i had to get that off of my chest before i left for vacation. it's been a big hump this year. i allowed myself to live with a certain amount of pain and i don't think i'll let myself do it again. on more important terms, my mother's birthday is today (or i guess, yesterday) and i'm so proud of her. she's going through a lot (she quit smoking) and she means the world to me. a very close friend of mine just lost a parent and i grieve for her, immensely. i don't really know what to say to her because i can't fathom what she's dealing with but i just want to put my arms around her. family, i think, can give us purpose. i've had my own problems with my family over the years but these things really make you reevaluate your relationships.

i am a rock in a sea of chaos.

in a lot of ways, i am a very lucky girl.

i have thought about this recently when it comes to relationships. and by relationships, i mean, connections between one person and another. on the whole, i have found people with whom i can make lasting and meaningful connections. every now and then there is an aberration of sorts but not every person is a person you want to know. but here's the thing. we go through a lot of adversity in our lives, some of it private and solitary and some of it public. there are people in my life with whom i've had serious problems that had to be overcome. and somehow, in spite of that, we've remained close. mainly because there was a foundation there upon which to build.

i never thought that my friendship would mean so much to people. i never thought that someone would trust me with their private lives, their secrets and feelings. the fact that someone confides in me and cares about my feelings, even after traversing through dangerous ground is pretty mind-blowing. i was reminded of this very recently and i'm still kind of awestruck by it. and what amazes me is the fact that over the course of my life, i'm able to find these people and connect with them.

if that's not luck, i don't know what is. :)

i am listening to messaien's des canyons aux étoiles right now. i figured it would get me in the right frame of mind before my trip. i don't know if i was right on that accord but hey, a little messaien never did anyone any harm, now did it?