Message from a Cornet Case

In some of my favorite types of fantasy stories, a person is able to bend the constraints of time and space and communicate to their future or past self. I find this notion endlessly fascinating—what would I say to the Kirie of 20 years ago? What would she have to tell me? Would she look at the 40-year-old Kirie with skepticism, or admiration, or worse—shame? Just imagining the possibility to encounter my future or past self sets me aflutter with excitement. I hope that’s something I have in common with the Kirie of 1989. Enthusiasm seems to be a common thread in all the times of my life, and it’s my aim to buoy that feeling forever.

Over the past few months, I’ve revisited an old enthusiasm of mine—a love of music. As things happen, we recently got a piano, and both Ada and I immediately started lessons. Ah, wonderful thing, that piano! Ada and I literally debate about who will get the next turn to play, and by my best guess, is that at minimum, we are playing an hour a day, every day. Ada is playing with equal parts precision and passion, and it is a pleasure to listen to her play. Esme has given the music a try, too, but she is still a little small to play the keys. Her contribution is mostly singing with gusto, and dancing with abandon to our songs.

I have never formally played piano before, but I have been an avid admirer of those who can. When I was a teenager, I loved to sing and to act and (try) to dance, and I was often around amazingly talented peers who could do all three with skills beyond their years. One girl in particular was especially gifted not only with a hauntingly lovely voice, but an innate sense of music that allowed her to play and compose rich, beautiful songs that seemed to come from some special place that only she could access. Vickie was so talented that when she would perform or practice, I literally felt chills run down my back. I was in awe of her then, and it pleases me no end to think that she still is composing and singing today.

When I started lessons on the piano, some element of myself felt as though I had stepped back in time, to that space when self-made music was such a part of me. How much I had wished I could play piano so that a real song would come forth, something I could sing to, and carry in my head all day. As soon as I started working with our piano teacher, Ellen, I had the sense that that long-closed door had opened wide for me again.

Ellen understood immediately why I was looking to learn piano. Certainly, my interest has nothing to do with performing recitals or padding a resume or impressing anyone. Rather, it’s that I want to find another way to let some beauty into my life. Music is its own language, and while it’s been awhile since I’ve used it, I’ve been longing to return to it for years.

Ellen’s teaching approach has been to work with me to learn the basics of piano, but also to let me push ahead, to play with composing and improvisation and things a beginning student normally wouldn’t do. It is thrilling! At night I am dreaming of music, and in the day, my fingers are playing the notes on imaginary keyboards, somewhat obsessively. And it is such a pleasure. I’ve been working out very simplified versions of songs I love to sing, and I found out that I can play a few songs from basic beginning songbooks. It is so fun to sing and play with the girls—and this after only a month of lessons!

Ada, too, is learning the basics, as I said, with precision. But Ellen also has her feeling the passion that goes with writing music on her own. With Ellen’s help, Ada has written—with notes and time signatures!—small songs about flowers, and butterflies, and our cat. And in the process, Ada’s learning is progressing exponentially. She’s not only reading the words, playing the song, the rhythm, and singing—she is able to read the notes as well. I was bursting with pride when, after her third lesson, she was able to effortlessly identify each note on the treble clef scale by name. She is a quick study, and she is falling in love with the music, too. I couldn’t be more pleased.

And, as things so often do, the music has multiplied. We’ve been playing rhythm instruments like wood blocks, maracas, the triangle. And I’ve pulled out my old cornet, a two-toned beauty that I played for six years when I was a young girl. I surprised myself, when I could immediately play songs for the girls, and I was able to teach them how to “buzz” on the mouthpiece and get some nice blares out of the instrument. Imagine the sound of an elephant’s cry, and you’ve heard Esme’s playing. Not bad for a two year old.

It was with the cornet that the message arrived. On Sunday, as I opened my battered cornet case, I found the most amazing communiqué from my past self. On a 4 x 6 note card, scrawled in green ink, was a to-do-list that was so typical of me that it might have been written last week. But the date on the top of the card was Thursday, August 7, 1992.

In August 1992, I was on the very brink of a life change, but I didn’t know it. Those days full of routines marched me closer to a series of important days arriving only months later: The day when I would leave an abusive relationship, the day I would meet the man I would marry, the day I would graduate from college. And all those days flowed toward lovely today…but what was I to know of that future as I contemplated what needed doing on Thursday, the 7^th of August, 1992?

On Sunday, August 23, 2009, I sat on the floor of my studio with my open cornet case and I mused about the oddities on the old list: 5 loads of laundry? And this before being married with children. And tanning? What was I trying to do to myself? Nylons?

Mostly I wondered why this list was there, nestled carefully in with the mouthpiece. I flipped the card over, and some childlike attempts at musical notation answered my question. It was a song—I had been writing down the notes of a song, clearly something I could play on my b-flat cornet.

So I picked up the cornet, and played with some surprising ease the song I’d tried to capture in late 1992. And as I did so, a bouncy, 22-year-old Kirie materialized along with the ending verse of Chet Baker’s “How Deep Is the Ocean.” --The verse? "And if I ever lost you/how much would I cry? How deep is the ocean/How high is the sky?"

Yes, that fits. Message received. I think about that Kirie who comes back to me with those ringing notes, and I smile to think about how intense I was! How dreamy! I loved that song then, and hearing it fresh from the bell of my horn, I love it still. And that younger Kirie, as clear as the ringing notes, tells me to play the music, to hold onto that childish dreaminess. If I could send a message back to her, it would be: Thank you for visiting me! Please know that I hear you, and thank goodness I remain as enthusiastic, dreamy, and intense as ever. Thanks for the memo, sweet girl. Hang in there—your dreams are going to come true, and some wonderful amazing things await you.

As for how to deliver that message—I leave that to playing the music and seeing where it takes me.

Mid-July update, and Esme's first faces

As with all summers, this one is flying by faster than I had imagined it would. I've only a moment in between projects, so I'm making this my shortest post ever.

I'm still in home improvement mode, working my way around from room to room, refinishing, re-organizing, repainting. It's pretty gratifying. I've been doing a little (very little) writing, some painting (on canvases), and I'm in the throes of finishing a quilt for Esme. Ada's baby's quilt was done on time. Esme's has been delayed for two years already! Time to get it done. Plus, it's just so inspiring to work with the fabric.

Of course, I am still making little things for an Etsy shop-in-the-works, and things look good on that front. Next week, I will be listing my first paintings for sale.

Esme and Ada are little artists themselves. Esme has been practicing circles for a few months now, and just recently started adding features to make faces. Here are two of her latest beauties. She asked me to put one on the wall, which I was proud to do. We keep looking at it and smiling!

More to come from the blogfront soon. Hope your summer is full of happy moments, too.

General Guidelines for Girls and Lipstick

When you choose a lipstick shade, make it one or two shades more intense than your natural lip color. Or, for a more dramatic look, choose a brighter color.

If you aren't used to wearing makeup, get some help from your best friend. She will give you an honest opinion of how it looks.

Be aware that you may have admirers, and you should treat them with kindness. After all, your beauty is irresistible!

If you are having someone paint your nails, it is a good idea to have something good to read while you wait.

Your smile will always be your best beauty accessory.

A Small List

1. Rainy weather is good weather. A cool front has settled over our island, and the weather has been extraordinarily cool and rainy for weeks on end. I love it. I'm not in good company, though. Each trip into town, I invariably run into someone who moans and groans about how awful the summer is so far. I hold my tongue and make sympathic-sounding noises, but really, I want to say: "Ah, but don't you love how cool and green the mornings are? Look how much money we are saving on air-conditioning! Isn't it better to have this than a drought?"

I keep my silence because I could go on and on, enough to alarm my fellow islander. In fact, I am surprised myself at how much I love the weather. I especially love the strange feeling of mystery that comes along with the unseasonable foggy days. There is none of the melancholy that comes with the autumn fogs, no whisper of fading or death that the fall inevitably brings. Instead, there is just this pure, green, freshness in the fog, and it's exciting in some way, like something powerful and interesting and new is right around the corner.

I've also caught myself spending more time at the window, especially when it rains. My favorite thing to watch is the quick moving storm that drops rain so thickly that sometimes it looks like a curtain, and then, just as suddenly, it fades to an airy, lacy spray. On those afternoons, as soon as the sun smudges yellow against the clouds, the girls and I shout "Rainbow weather!" and run out into the yard to find one.

I have been walking in the mornings, and the air is heavy with the smell of honeysuckle and mimosa. The humid air doesn't discriminate about which scents it carries, and it's an olfactory map of our neighborhood. I like to imagine that if I close my eyes, I could tell by the faintly sick and musty smell of the turtles that I am near the pond to or by the wave of the smell of horses, that I am near the little rise in the road. On clear days, the water of the pond flashes blue and bright, and the leaves are silvery in the sun, and that is lovely too. But as I said, there is something special about the dense feel of the air and the light on a misty day. I think it makes me want to walk around in it more, and that can only be a good thing.

2. We are in a fix-it mode, as our house is about to celebrate its 4th birthday. It's clear that we need to attend to the little things projects now in small increments, or suffer the house needing more extensive work later on. Among our projects are cleaning out the garage, painting the outside trim on the doors and northern windows, cleaning the windows themselves, hanging blinds, repainting trim and doors inside, and repainting any areas that have excessive wear. The list keeps growing, but I must admit that doesn't detract from my happiness when I cross off an item I've completed.

The biggest and most intimidating is the painting. I might enjoy painting a canvas, but I am really poor at painting a wall, on which you are supposed to eliminate brushstrokes. I'm practicing and hoping to get better as we work our way around the house. My husband is much better at making it look neat, so he gets to do the second coats. It's slow work, and the rain makes me space out the steps--prep, tape, paint, paint again, touch up. In between each of these is the cleaning up, and the waiting for the paint to dry or the rain to stop or in some cases, both. It's paying off, though. The laundry room is done, and bright and happy in an orangey shade called Nasturtium (honestly, though I hate the vagueness of paint names, I love the names themselves. Regardless of how it actually looks on the wall, nasturtium has sweet ring to it, doesn't it?). I did the laundry room first because I spend enough time there, and it may as well be cheery and clean. Plus, it's a good testing ground. If I ruin it, I'm the only one who would really notice. I'm glad to say that it came out perfectly. Yay me. Now to get the stuff in there folded, ironed, and put away.

The front door was a more obvious place to begin, and we've been working on it in little phases. As of this morning, it's done! I just put the finishing touches on the front porch by polishing the aluminum threshold. I put away the polish, and felt the good gratification of a job well done when I stepped back and saw our red door and clean white trim. I think I'll keep walking back over there to give myself a mental "pep talk" when I feel like quitting...

3. In all of this, I have been writing in the lucid way that comes when you are writing in your head. The repetitive motions of moving the paint brush, wiping window sills, or pushing an iron are all equally monotonous, and in that, they are equally freeing. Ideas, phrases, and sometimes fully-fleshed out paragraphs come to me while I'm engaged in non-writing activities. And it is writing. I've always believed it so. When I was teaching, I even took the risk of telling my students that "writing in your head" counted. It does count, because even when it's in your head, it's clearly writing, differentiated from regular thinking because it's formed with expression and structure and-- and this is the the biggest difference--an inescapable desire to save it onto paper. Of course, when you're writing in your head, you are the only reader, but it's important to remember that the self is a worthy audience, perhaps the most valuable audience you have.

Now don't go imagining that I gave credit for "writing in your head" when I was teaching. As I would point out to my students, while writing in your head counts, writing counts even more once you put it into text and share it with someone. It was my hope that giving them permission to ponder and listen to their own writing voice would improve their confidence. I like to think it did. When I read my students' work, it was obvious to me which students allowed themselves the space to form their writing before they actually wrote it. Their writing was that much stronger, their "voice" that much clearer.

My voice is coming clearly to me these days, as I wind around the pond. I'm eager to share some of it with you in the next few weeks.

Open Heart Letter 4: to my Mom

Because there is not enough space and time, this is a short take. For all the love I have for you, Mom, it would eat the bandwidth of the internet...

To my mom:
As I write this, the kitchen is filled with the scent of peonies, and I cannot walk into the room without imagining you are here visiting me. How I wish you lived closer to us so we could spend time doing just the very basic ordinary things of life. We could pick the flowers in the garden together, fill the vases, wash the dishes, knead the bread. These are simple things, but I know how much you appreciate them and the space to enjoy them. It is one of my dearest wishes that you have that opportunity to take a breath and just be in the now, relaxed and free.

I know that when I was a very little girl, you spent many hours in the now, keeping house, baking bread, trying new recipes. You sewed my Halloween costumes and bedspread (and matching Holly Hobbie curtains!), dusted and vacuumed and helped me make lemonade for selling in a tiny stand at the end of the driveway. My mind was a fertile place of imaginings, and you kept me safe and cozy and let me wander in my own little world. In the process, I know you inspired my love of a homelife, and it continues today.

Of course, in those intervening years, you lost your own time to do those things. The business you own with Daddy actually owns you. It is a harsh master, and you have been in its service at the cost of your own desires. For all the good and opportunities it has brought you (and many, many others), it costs you a little bit of your dream each day. I ache to think of it.

What I admire is that in everything you have done for others, in all you have sacrificed, you remain sunny, bright and lovely. You did not have the best start in life, you have been handed a fair share of meanness in a variety of settings. But you rise above it all, and shine. It's funny: you are not unlike the peony in the garden, flourishing unexpectedly in the sand. You are quietly strong, filling the space around you with beauty, generous with yourself. You are unforgettable, and once someone meets you, they instantly love you.

I am constantly astounded by how many people flock to you. Each sings your praises, and makes a point of reminding me of how special my mother is. "I know!" I say, and I do. I think it is wonderful how you shine so clearly. "I am so lucky," I tell them, and I mean it. What a great gift I have in life to have you as my mother. I don't fail to think of it every single day.

Amidst all of it, you remain unsure of your own value. Humble as always, you doubt your own worth. You fear you haven't done enough. You, who is always, always doing things for others. I will be quick to remind you that you are so very much more than you do, you are extraordinary. And if you didn't do those things, you would still be extraordinary you. You are bright, and dedicated, and enthusiastic. Your optimism is contagious. Your energy is sometimes intimidating! You are lovely, and funny. You have many obvious talents, and just as many undiscovered! (While you doubt it, I know you have a great eye for color and an aptitude for art if you would let yourself try!) I wish you could see yourself the way others see you. I will not tire of reminding you that you are very, very special. Oh, how we all love you so very much!

It's a great coincidence that your given names describe you so well: Bonnie, of course, the beautiful. And Angela, the angel. You're those things, and so, so much more. I love you. I can't tell you that enough. But that won't stop me from trying.

I love you.
love,
Kirie

Coming Along

I am a good cheerleader for myself. When I'm working on a painting, you might hear me talking to myself softly, saying, "Well, he's coming along."

The he in question here is Zeus, a lovely dog who belongs to my friend Dana. And while I don't know Zeus well, he is pretty strongly set into my thoughts these days. He comes along with me wherever I go; you might see me staring out into space sometimes lately while I try to figure out how to capture the brindled colors of the fur near his right eye. The photo above is a not-quite finished version. But it's close. This morning I've been puzzling over the details of his snout, Dana's hands, and those tags...If I am lucky, I will grab another hour this afternoon, and he will be done! What fun it has been getting to know him.

I must say that it amazes me that he even looks like a dog. I am not an artist by training, but I am one by will. This year marks 10 years of my practice with drawing and painting, and I feel as though I have more projects in my mind than ever. And lucky me, a few of them are close to completion! Zeus shares my thoughtspace and studio with 3 other paintings that are also "coming along." It is a quiet thrill that I carry them in my head as I go through my day...

UPDATE
Esme's naptime gave me chance to put the finishing touches, et voila!

Here is Zeus, just waiting to be signed and put in the frame. It feels great to finish a project.



UPDATE Again! Okay, I'm obsessed. Here he is, done, framed, signed. Whee! The last step is to get some nice giclee prints done so I have some copies. Now to get the skin tones blocked in on the beach painting.....

Not sparing myself the humiliation

Is it not normal that I love embarrassing moments? Regardless, I do. I love them especially if they happen to me. That’s not jinxing myself, I hope, because I don’t need a ton of them. What I’m saying is that I just really value the collection I have. I love having those memories because they make me laugh at myself. I think there is something wonderfully freeing about re-envisioning yourself doing something ridiculous. And I love laughing. Give me a good and funny story, and I will laugh about it for weeks.

Today my friend La Belette Rouge posted a hilarious account of a recent embarrassing moment, and so I’m taking her cue and posting an account of one of my own moments of humiliation. I have quite a few, but this one is near the top of my list. It happened in 1993, and it has been worth years of laughter for me:

A little background first. I did not grow up a sporty kid. I wasn’t completely a klutz, but I have never been on a team sport; I don’t have that natural grace of someone who is a practiced athlete. But I do love trying new things, so over the years I’ve enjoyed a few attempts at more or less adventurous activities like rock climbing, or kayaking, or skiing. It bears mentioning that I didn’t try any of these until I was into my 20s, when any hopes of being a “natural” had long dried up…

Anyway, I had an amazing opportunity to visit the Olympic sites in Norway in late 1993, just weeks before the opening ceremonies. My parents took us to Oslo with them, and then, in the interest of skiing, my brother and I made a trip to a town just north of Oslo, a place called Oyer, in Lillehammer, Norway.



In preparation for the trip, I had gotten an adorable little ski jacket and snowpants, great goggles, ski-cap, etc. I was prepared to be cute if not good at skiing. I danced around in my little size 4 outfit and dreamed big--who knew? Maybe I would be good at this sport!

We stayed in a strange little hotel that had giant keys for doorknobs and a stagnant pool that felt like the set to the horror film. I couldn’t help but conjure images of trolls with big hands turning those key-shaped handles and languishing in the scummy pool. But I digress.
Bizarreness aside, there was an air of magic to the whole trip, and I felt like I was about to discover something special on my first skiing experience. Yes, that’s right. My first skiing experience was to be on the same hill where there would soon be Olympians competing….what an honor! What a thrill!

The grand plan was for me to get a lesson from an expert Norwegian and learn the right way from the beginning. Ah, plans. The first problem was that we arrived an hour early for the lesson. I figured I would play around on the bunny hill, just getting used to the feeling of skis on my feet. My brother, of course, was an excellent skier already. He had been on the high school ski team for years, and he didn’t want to waste any time waiting for my lesson. So off he went.

I put on my skis in the warm little ski hut, shuffled outside, and found out that skis are HEAVY. Or these skis were. I had been expecting to “shhh” across the perfect snow, but I felt myself fighting just to move forward. I really needed some practice, so I headed over to the tow-rope that went up the bunny hill.

The bunny hill here was actually a bunny hill. It was small, and seemed accessible, and it was populated by at least 20 little kids who flew down the hill effortlessly. Some of them had to have been younger than 3 years old, and most of them had no poles at all. These were clearly the future ski instructors of the area. I was intimidated, but I pressed on to the tow-rope.

This tow-rope was a pretty simple contraption—a continuous rope that was punctuated by little buoy-shaped pieces that you were supposed to grab, slip between your knees, and rest on. The strong motor in the wheel-house did the rest.

The little skiers grabbed the rope as easily as they cruised down the hill. I watched them for a few minutes to see their technique, and then I made my first attempt.

I got in line, grabbed the rope, sat, and ….tipped over to the right. No go. Maybe I didn’t have that buoy-seat right. Try again. And again. Same thing.

By the fourth time, I was getting some good advice from a few of the kids. "Let your skis pull you.” “Keep hanging on.”

All good advice. No go for tries 5, 6, and 7. Now a little crowd gathered. The wheel house guy made a point to stop the rope completely when it was my turn now, and made it go very, very slowly. Still, I fell off. Great. My cheeks may have already been red from the 10 degree temperature, but I can assure you they were warm with my blushing by that time.

Mr. Wheelhouse stopped the rope, came over to me, and explained, in very slow and deliberate English, the method the kids had shown me a few attempts earlier. He went back to the wheelhouse, turned on the rope, et voila: I fell off.

At this point, a weird American guy I had met earlier at our hotel showed up and tried to rescue me. He had registered very high on my creep-o-meter when I’d spoken to him before, that feeling just increased as I saw him him charging up the hill with a here-I-come-to-save-the-day grin on his face. My stomach curdled a bit.

Creepyguy had taken off his skis to get to me all the faster, and he was running. Before I knew it, he was standing next to me in line. When the time came for me to try yet again to get on that cursed tow rope, Creepyguy stepped up behind me and, without even asking, sort of bent down, leaned into my back, and tried to push me up the hill. (If he had asked, what would that have sounded like anyway--I cringe just to think of it.) Despite his best efforts to shove me, I didn't budge one inch up the hill.

I had been laughing and smiling, and even waving a few times to the growing group of gawkers, in that sort of self-effacing “got it under control” kind of palm salute. But I swear, this time I was close to tears-- you know the kind, the ones that start as a laugh but end in big sobs. So, with Creepyguy still at my backside, and with the rope tugging mightily at my knees, I started the big laugh-cry. Then I lost control again, and tipped, but this time, I fell onto my back and into the center ditch between the up-rope and the down-rope.

I lay there like a overturned beetle, my arms and ski-heavy legs flailing above me. That was it, I decided. I think there was pointing, and I know there was laughing. I was going to be done with this and I planned to beat a hasty retreat to the spooky hotel.
The only upside was that at least Creepyguy had stepped to the side. So I lay there, planning my escape for what felt like a long time like a sad ski-beetle, laughing those big tears down my face until Mr. Wheelhouse came to help me up. As he reached to grab for my arm, he got a good look at the bottom of my skis, and he smiled a big smile that showed all those lovely Norwegian teeth.

“Miss, it is your skis! They are iced.”

I had no clue what that meant, but within a minute or two, I had a ski instructor at my side, removing the skis to show me that the bottoms were indeed coated with a good inch or two of clumpy ice. Instructor Arne (to be pronounced AR-Nuh), was to be my very own instructor, and he quickly fixed me up with a freshly waxed pair of skis that were not warm enough to gather an icy coating, and what do you know?

I got up the tow-rope.

I put my humiliation out of mind for my hour-long lesson. During my lesson, I managed to get down the hill several times, too, without injury or incident. Arne, poleless as the two-year-olds whizzing around, skied in front of me, going backwards at high speeds, and insisted I grab for him if I felt myself falling. Arne, wherever you are, you were nice, but that is just not a position I want to get into, ever. I think the thought of plummeting down the hill in his embrace was enough to keep me upright.


The lesson ended in time for the sun to set at 3:30 pm, and my brother met me at the ski house as I was returning my skis. “How was it?” he asked.

On the scale of embarrassing moments? I give it a 10. And worth 16 years of laughs, at least.

Now your turn: What is one of your best embarrassing moments?