On White Lies To Preserve Sanity

I hate it when I’m caught between two choices and both make me feel awful.

It’s orchestra night, and I’m still having so much trouble with the Handel and those fricking legato sixteenth note passages in the Mendelssohn. I’d have slunk in and played air cello for those particular bits, except that last week our second cellist made note of the fact that he wanted a cello sectional rehearsal sometime tonight. That means the five of us sit in a room alone and battle out passages.

Sure, sounds like a terrific idea if you’re having trouble. Except that I’ve been having trouble for weeks, and I’m no better. And I’m so upset about it that playing it badly all by myself over and over, with two or three people telling me how to do it and getting impatient because I can’t, is the very last thing I need tonight.

So I called the secretary and told him I was working late on a project and couldn’t get away. He was completely understanding, and I feel dreadful. A different kind of dreadful than I’d feel if I went to orchestra, though. There I’d be fighting back tears, and the urge to throw my bow across the room.

I’m so upset about this music that I absolutely cannot get, no matter what I try, that I’m tempted to back out of the December concert. Yes, it’s that bad. I don’t enjoy this music in the least; I get no thrill out of it; I can’t settle into it musically, let alone technically. If I can’t offer even a passable product, why am I wasting everyone’s time for this concert? Oh, I’d go back afterwards when new music is introduced; I don’t want to drop orchestra completely. And by not going to rehearsal I’m not scuttling away from challenge. There’s big difference. If I was scuttling away from challenge, I’d have quit last September after three rehearsals. The phrase “It will be all right on the night; how? It’s a mystery”, while it appears to apply to most theatre, doesn’t apply in the same way to orchestral performance, I have discovered after three concerts. I haven’t decided yet, anyway; it’s a possibility I’m turning over and over in my mind. For now I’ll just grit my teeth and practice those gods-damned passages till I hate them even more – I’ll be able to play them, but I’ll hate them.

When my husband walked in I asked him not to talk to me for a while, and he hovered for a bit before asking what was wrong. I blew up at him – with reason, I think, since I had already indicated politely that I was not in the mood to talk and when I was, I would. We’ve always been straightforward about this sort of thing, and have respected such requests, so why he broke the rule this time completely escapes me: it just made it worse. Terrific; now we’re both scowly and anti-social. Evidently we’re in for a wonderful night.

Ups and Downs

Seeing the end of October creep up on me, and knowing that the last time I sat down to work on the Great Canadian Novel was about two and a half weeks ago, I threw some Tori Amos in the CD changer yesterday and sat down on the living room floor with my laptop. I wrote three pages and felt really good about myself. I’d stopped being as curious as I had been about my GCN world, and deliberately immersing myself in it again was good – it felt comfortable. I also felt a bit worried, what with NaNoWriMo looming. Having two novels on the go is a bit like having a new child and having to soothe the elder sibling: no, I still love you, I haven’t forgotten you, this new baby just needs so much attention…

Then I amazed myself by getting up and making a wonderful dinner that included baked chicken, and brussels sprouts done in cheese, onions, and lemon butter. (“What are these?” asks my husband. “Baby cabbages,” I answer, unconcerned, as I begin to eat. “Oh,” he says, munches on one, and begins to rave about it. “I didn’t expect you to like brussels sprouts so much,” I remark calmly, reaching for my water glass. He faltered for only an instant, brave man.) After dinner, he asked what he’d done to deserve a big dinner, and I told him that as of Friday, I wouldn’t be able to do things like this, so I thought I’d get one in before I sacrificed my life to NaNoWriMo.

Yesterday was pretty good. Then this morning…

Argh.

I spent two hours setting up Eudora as my mail program, importing my Outlook Express stuff, and generally fumbling around until I can at least use the ruddy thing. I have experience with Eudora; we used it at work once or twice a week to mail out newsletters and such, so it’s not like I’ve never seen it before. Still, I get as frustrated as the next busy human when I can’t grasp things immediately. I also went through a bunch of old e-mail to delete it from OE before I exported stuff to Eudora, simply to save room, and it always takes longer than I expect – click, scan, click to delete; rinse, repeat. Boring. Like housework. Tidy, polish, sweep, dust.

Gods, it’s all so exciting, I think I’ll have to take a break and go lie down.

Halloween Recap

Okay, everyone else has mentioned the costumes, but for those who don’t frequent other local web logs, here you go:

I promise better photos with more detail of my costume anon, when we’ve developed our film from the Hallowe’en party. No, you can’t see the Evenstar that Ceri was so impressed with… you’ll just have to wait for a close-up full-front shot to appear somewhere. In the meantime, if you want to play around with enlarging these ones for a better look, you can check them out here. (Many thanks, Scott!) My husband and Ceri‘s husband were two of The Endless from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman universe, Destruction and Destiny; here’s Destruction’s source art:

See, we told you he was an archetype…

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Strange how the world can juxtapose beauty and anger.

I spent Sunday night and Monday with a close friend whose life self-destructed when her significant other walked out on her, out of the blue. And yesterday, I couldn�t help but appreciate the beauty of the world around me, and in other people. I drove my husband to work for seven-thirty in the morning and I took the river road all the way home from the West Island, and it was glorious. I really don�t think it was relief that my problems paled in comparison to hers. Something was alight in my heart, though, and I loved everything and everyone I saw. Even spending time in traffic was enjoyable, somehow. It was good to be alive.

I love my circle of friends for their united support, their immediate defence of the wronged soul. You can almost see the ranks closing around her, bristling with righteous anger, keeping the world at bay until she has recovered her equilibrium. We may find it difficult to get together to kick back and relax, but in a crisis, see how priorities are rescheduled, how friends rise to the top. We drop everything to help one another. It�s been a while since something like this has happened (which is a good thing, I suppose), and I�ve almost forgotten how fierce we can be.

I�ve touched base today with a couple of people, including our wounded comrade, who is shaky but slowly rooting herself in reality once again. We�re all going out on limbs, taking leaps of faith, knowing that we�re a support group, a web of encouragement and love and laughter and shoulders to cry on. I woke up this morning and thought about how much I was looking forward to writing again. I played with my kitten. I�ve curled up in the sun and read half a book.

Today, too, it is good to be alive.

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Someone has created a string quartet tribute to Sarah McLachlan.

Two of my favourite things, like chocolate and peanut butter. Who’d have ever thought?

Oh look – there’s one for Tori Amos, too…

And The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has recorded a disc of REM tunes. I absolutely have to hear “What’s the Frequency Kenneth?” done by full orchestra. And “The One I Love”. And an expansion of the string work in “Nightswimming”.

Argh!

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I walked into the office this morning, and our little black kitten was nowhere to be found. I searched everywhere – behind desks, in drawers, under radiators…

Finally there was a tiny sneeze from the corner of the room. I walked over to the altar and peeped behind it. We have a triangular plant stand in that corner, behind the angled table that serves as our altar, and it has a tiny shelf about five inches off the floor that’s nigh-impossible to see and is never used.

Nix was all curled up on that shelf, perfectly content. Nice, safe, quiet spot.

Adorable. Break, my heart.