(no subject)

[2eclipse]

I have been really busy lately. It feels good to be really busy again. It feels like I have regained a piece of myself that I had lost.
It’s funny that we always talk about being less busy as a goal, taking some time to breathe. Job searching isn’t really breathing. It doesn’t count as vacation. It’s too stressful. I get so much more done when I am working and have a lot to do. Having nothing to do and no schedule makes me feel transluscent.
Wednesday evening I went to the grocery store after work and got some chores done, yesterday I biked back to work and back(14.4 miles) to see how long it would take me (45 minutes to get there, 1.5 hrs total). The hills are a lot steeper than the hills I am used to tackling around lake phalen, I think that’s why it took me so long. If I give myself an hour and a half before I want to start work, I should be able to do this.
After biking I inhaled some tabouli and went over to corrin’s. we chatted and dug up some raspberries instead of knitting. Some of those raspberry bushes are in my garden now, competing with the creeping charlie for space. I will have to weed to make sure they grow. Tomorrow I will go kayaking with susan and hopefully begin reading the new harry potter book.
I realize that I miss school. I miss the provocation to think about things deeply. Sure there are plenty of things in the news that could take you to abstract places, but that is so practical!@. I’m not very good at practical. I like to go straight for the abstract thought and the global perspective….and then I’m bored once I get there because I am familiar with my positions on things. They don’t excite me as much as conversation with other ideas. I look forward to taking a class again this fall. I need to get my butt going to make arrangements for that. Right now I am leaning toward an introductory preaching class in hopes that public speaking practice will cross-over into being good for me in the long run. Also it is 4 credits and in the evening and I think dean birch will accept it.
i also miss having more music in my life. i haven't been practicing my instruments much. when i was unemployed and had lots of time, i was too depressed to play. now that i have much less time? of course i want to play.

Comments

[keisolo.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think that busy makes you realize the time you have outside of it. Also keeps you moving, so that you remember to move.

Job searching is evil.

Raspberries? Ever made trifle or tarts out of them? (Generally, not speaking of those specific plants.)

I miss school. For some similar reasons, and some different. But I never managed to delve into the entirety of the concept as deeply as you did. I've never gotten along particularly well with bureaucracy and political authoritative structures.

What do you play, when you allow it to yourself and can touch it?
Though I get the emotions sometimes actually managing to cut you off from it - although that happened for the first time for me a week or so ago. The noise and ick in my head was so knotted up that everything I improvised sounded like the worst of Bartok. *twitches*

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

i think you are right about moving and time. there is something to be said for positive inertia.
i like making tarts. i have copious amounts of rhubarb in my garden and i make pie the lazy way (with store-bought crust) so there is always enough crust stuff left over that i make a small one with the left overs. i also have made tarts with jam.
and have made my own jam for that matter. my friend, thistle is teaching me to pickle at the end of the summer.
so you have a picture of me as getting along with beaurocracy? LOL. i suppose i can get along with it pretty well, but it is not part of my picture of myself. i've also gone to schools that were willing to work with me; the first one because i was a full-tuition student and the second because it was part of their christian ethic. the dean of student life listened to me very patiently while i bitched about the inclusive language policy and declared that it encouraged dishonesty.

primarily i sing. i've been singing since before i could talk and had lots of choir, choir camp, state competitions, voice lessons and a capella group practice. but i also play the bagpipes (and can play recorder because if you play bagpipes you can also play recorder). i can play piano a little, but my sight-reading is awful and i have two guitars that i pretend to learn how to play every few years. i would like to learn to play the bodhran. i would dearly like to be in an a capella group and a bagpipe band again. if i practice up, i can probably do the latter, but the former is harder to find for people out of college.

ross is even more musical. he is the master audio engineer at the guthrie. he got into juliard for piano, but didn't go. he plays guitar a bit and plays and builds his own drums. supposedly he can play hammer dulcimer as well (and build them) but i haven't seen him do it yet.

[keisolo.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Jam. We did apricot butter and plum conserve few weeks back, and I did some tomatos this week. Hopefully manage to pull enough cucumbers together for pickles sometime nearer this fall. It's a hot messy business, and this place is hot enough without the addition.

I don't have a picture neccesarily, of you getting on with the bureaucracy, more you having a better relationship with it than I do. I've always felt like I have a big neon sign on my forehead, informing them to do everything within their power to screw with me. That and I have a horrid relationship with paperwork. People always seem to not have it anymore within a year or two.
Though it does sound like you had some luck with individuals, too, and that is always nice.

The more you say about you and music, the more I'd like to muck about and see if we could do anything.
muttersigh. See prior comment. Grrr.

I turned down both Juliard and Oberlin, and I feel like an idiot for it now - though my reasons seemed sound to me at the time. Why did he not go? And if he knows drums at all, maybe you could ask him a question for me? C has a set, that she plays VERY desultorily, but she always asks me to tune it for her. I find it a torturous and evil experience - all around the sides and to the center - and I've never been taught how to by anyone with expertise I actually trust... so I'm hoping there's some trick I'm missing that would abuse my pitch sense less.

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

i'll ask.

yes, it is too bad we live far apart. i'd like to meet you. i've never been to new mexico.

[keisolo.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Same.

And it really is a beautiful place. But there are far too many people here for the land, and I really really do much prefer rain with more frequency. Although monsoons here are so lovely it almost makes up for the rest of the year's lack.

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

as to why he didn't go. i believe it had to do with 2 things a) disliking what he heard about the ultra-competitive atmosphere at juliard and b) wanting to explore the more technical side of audio. he wound up with almost 3 years at north dakota state university's audio engineering program and 2 years an north carolina institute for the arts.

i have a friend who went to oberlin conservatory for opera. i wish he'd stuck with it. he wound up in southern va singing and playing bass in a punk band. i don't think they're very good.

[keisolo.livejournal.com]

I can understand that dislike. That was part of what kept me from the "typically accepted" schools. The other part was the cookie cutter mentality that rules some of them.

Punk, surprisingly, is hard to do right. It's either really good, if you can appreciate the rawness, or just awful. In an awe-inspiring way. "You actually think that's music... Yeargh..."