Night's Musings

Life and schedules and engagements keep people on their toes, but it also distracts some of us from what we really love to do: art. My art is in my writing, a sort of visualization of one's heart. A way to express this was in the flow of rhyme. Work, studies, parties, days spent with friends, etc. ate up my time and left me none to be creative. Once I finally get a break from the day's activities, I flip off the light and go to sleep, only to wake up again six hours later.

There are those rare moments though, when time stops, when nothing else may demand my time like an impatient child, when I may indulge myself in one of the most fun - if not in correct iambic pentameter or even pertinent in most cases - forms of art I've discovered. Well, besides pointellism *grin*.

Fingers moving lightly
Tracing patterns in the tapestry
Find a threadbare hole,
All color and fabric time stole.
Sun streams down to make pastel
All fabric to the tassel.
Moving heavy draperies aside,
It breaks a heart once fill'd with pride.
For beneath decades of dust and varnish,
Lived a memory that too will tarnish.
Ivory keys edged with ugly grout,
Once jumped at the prod of fingers stout.
But now it sighs without a sound
While the bench before becomes unbound,
And as constant as the light of day
It continues to fade away.

I can make rhymes anytime, anytime I can make a rhyme. It stirs my soul like when pokers jab a heap of coal. No, it's not perfect, not meant for any writer's sect, but it's my favorite method of expression by far, even if it is below par.

All right, I'll stop now. The actual, kinda-sorta thoughtful rhyme scheme though was the product of a somewhat foreign inspiration. I had a dream of a piano and a teacher who hadn't played in years. Her pupils were grown and had moved away, and she was bedridden, but one day she rolled her wheelchair downstairs and surveyed all that had once been beautiful. The only good stories are those which involve an emotional reaction, something wistful, something lost, or something never achieved. Even in death, there is a mournful beauty.

Just for the heck of it, have you ever done... oh, what do you call it?... where you pick a word out of your head, and then write down everything that connects to it?

Like this... butterfly, star, Bo, Jamima Puddleduck, VCR, wine glasses, shaving, beards, boyfriends, Dave + Mary Helen, blonde jokes, Ethridge, gravel, kittens, tornadoes, raincoats, crying, hidden room, safe, passport, Europe, car, no car, underwear, etc.

Now, you're probably thinking, "How do you make those connections?!?" And I'll explain. I picked the world butterfly from a song I was listening to, then a star because I always used to draw butterflies with stars, then Bo is a little boy I know in FL, which reminded me of growing up in FL, and I used to watch Beatrix Potter's "Jemima Puddleduck," and around that time I tried to "clean" the VCR and killed it. That story was in one of our Christmas newsletters along with the two stories of my brother when he stacked the wine glasses from my parents' wedding and when he decided he wanted to try shaving his legs. Well when I think of shaving, I think of beards, which reminds me of Dave, who is Mary Helen's boyfriend, who just shaved his facial hair. Mary Helen is a blonde, hence the blonde jokes reference, and I've always had blonde best friends, one of them who used to live just down my road in Ethridge. On Sugarland Road, they finally laid gravel. One of my friends owned kittens. Then the memory of being awakened in the middle of the night to dress in raincoats and boots to march out in the blinding rain to take shelter from the tornadoes. I cried the entire time. There was a hidden room in our garage (which was separate from our house) where we stored Y2K food and hunkered down in bad weather. In this hidden room was large grey safe, which was the reason for it's being a hidden room. In this safe now is my passport to freedom, which I had issued for my trip to Europe in 2005, and on this trip my grandparents promised me their car when I came of age to have a license. However, I apparently didn't have pleasing conduct on the ten day trip, and lost the car. Since then, my grandma has been terse with me and the last visit she came up from AL, she brought all the children trinkets from their latest trip to Australia. All except me. I was the child who received the underwear which didn't fit her.

Europe. That was an interesting experience. I can look back on it now and discern the good from the bad, but while I was aboard the River Symphony, I had the time of my life. On my tour from Switzerland to France to Germany to the Netherlands, I experienced a taste of many different cultures, and foods, and had the most amazing Swiss chocolate that nothing I've had since can ever compare. It was late November, snow burdened the branches of the pines in the Black Forest and thin ice sprawled in web-like fashion over the chilled ponds and dormant fountains. The smell of the Christmas Markets with its roasted chestnuts, and booth tenders who hawked their wares in a different tongue than my own. Because of this barrier, I was felt embarressed and ended up buying a pair of garnet earrings for 13 euros. To this day I still wear them. The poor shopkeeper, I only walked in, and he spoke in German to me, but I explained I was English. When his parter asked him if he knew my language, he chuckled a little nervously and said, "Oh, a little."

Or that time when my new-found friend Sarah and I walked into the sleazy internet cafe in Speyer, Germany and paid for our time while the youth over at the counter smoked and drank. "Are you American?" we heard in a thick accent. "Do what?" Sarah inquired, but the response was only a ripple of giggles. Needless to say, we finished up as soon as possible. I'd say that if Sarah and I weren't under circumstances where the average age of passengers aboard was 73, we probably wouldn't have gotten together at all. She was four years my senior, but we hit it off a lot better than I would've with the woman complaining of rheumatism at my grandparents' breakfast table. That was the first strike against me: asking if I could sit with Sarah and her mom at a few meals.

Then ... there was Zwicki. Paul Zwicki, age 35, lived in Chicago as a postmaster, and still lived with his parents. He followed me everywhere. He declared I piqued his interest that one so young could grasp anything of Presbyterianism/Luthernism. Truth be told, I'm not sure I knew that much, just what I'd heard at dinnertime conversations and what I'd learned in history. Anyway, he figured out who my grandparents were and decided to be a frequent guest at my dinner table. For this reason, I asked to be excused to sit with Sarah. Another strike against me: not wanting to sit with my grandma and her new friends, including Paul.

There was this one couple however, whom I will never forget, Red and his wife Rosemarie. I don't remember what Red's real name was, but he was hysterical. He had white hair, and loved telling stories and cracking jokes. One night, the Christmas dinner, he reached for the bread basket without asking and spilled his red wine all over Rosemarie. In his haste to retrieve a napkin for her, he knocked over a water glass on her too. "Red, this suit is dry clean only!" Then the infamous dispute over the pronunciation of Basil, Switzerland. "It's Bay-zil, I tell you!" "Red, he already said over the intercom that it was Bah-zil, not Basil like the seasoning." "Well he got it wrong!"

Somehow word got around that I'd written a River Symphony rendition of Jingle Bells, and the hotel manager, Wolfgang was his name, demanded that I sing it in the lounge that night. I staunchly refused, but everyone else guilted me into it. So that night, I met with the musicians and prepared myself to sing - and try not to puke - in front of about 175 people. My heart was in my throat as the keyboard began and my voice came out in a rush of adrenaline. That is, until I glanced up between verses at all the people. The second verse got off to a rough start as the nausea swept over me and my voice failed. But at an encouraging smile from Sarah's mom, I proceeded to the end. When I had finished I felt dizzy and red. That is when Gunther, our Belgian tour guide, said, "Here, this always cheers a soul, drink up!" And he handed me a shot glass with some undeterminable white liquid. I later found it was whiskey. "All right, little lady, only virgin drinks the rest of the night, but it's all on me." I loved him. Never did hear the story of his Spanish lover though... Oh, and Gunther was the one who paraded around the ship in a makeshift Lorelei mermaid costume when the ship rounded the Lorelei rock; that fabled rock from which it is said the sirens sang to the sailors and lured them to their deaths upon the rocky coastline.

And how could anyone forget Kathy. The most obnoxious north easterner I have ever met, who limped everywhere she went, with a cane which had bells attached to the bottom. Funny thing is, I think she forgot which leg was "lame" and occasionally saw her switch from left to right limp. That one night she got drunk though... dancing with a younger man, hoisting that irritating cane and stabbing the air above her head in a vigorous manner, no limp evident at all. "Whichever of you girls can get that bell off her cane, I'll give you five bucks!" Sarah's mom was cool too.

Far too many places and people to remember, and wearisome to recount, so I'll close this before I make it longer :)