Dearest, so many snatches of music running through my mind as I sit here in the aerie thinking what to write... the opening strains of Saint Matthews Passion, some dramatic aria from an Italian opera -- oh my spelling -- "nessan darmo" is what I think it sounds like --

I spent time at the church today, organizing myself and practicing for the coming Sunday. I feel really good about it. I have created a form for myself, in which I've plugged in all the hymns...

I had the church to myself, and thought about all these crazy connections I have -- with you, with -- , with a Mr or Ms iPhone in Catskill, with a poster on CL --

It's not Nessun Dorma, it's an aria, I'm pretty sure, from Madame Butterfly, that I heard a Bard opera student aspiringly sing at an afternoon recital in town ...

dearest - do you know? I feel myself to be at a great crossroads... the blogging won't be going so smoothly I don't think... I really do have to work out how I'm going to make things work for myself for whatever I have left for the next half-century. No trivial consideration, since my mother died at age 58, only a few years older than myself. And I am nothing like her (or am I?) --- oh those difficult ponderings are very difficult to think about. She gave birth to four children, and reared them. I have done none of the above. But she seemed trapped and buried and miserable. I have this horrible visual memory of her walking up our little ell of an end of a road -- maybe I was in a schoolbus, or a friend's car? I don't remember. But I saw my mother walking, along the ridged high stone wall, in a tight illfitting wig - synthetic hair, done up in waves, or more curls, it was a short 'do' - and the wig was too tight for her, and my mother was grimfaced, as she marched up the road, lost in her own thoughts -- and I didn't understand -- and I still don't -- I was a girl -- and she was still -- well "young" -- but lost, and unrecovered

I'm sorry that I witnessed my mother that way
she had somehow thought that a wig from Bloomingdale's might help
but what it did more so was to bind her forehead
make her head hurt
she was prone to migraines
spent many many afternoons in the darkened "sunroom", lying down

I love my mother, I feel bad for her
she had this belief -- borne from the war
that all sorts of specious stuff might save her -
makeup, 'better living through chemistry', synthetic wigs,
volumes of Joseph Campbell

I'm not her
and I'm older now than she was, in that memory I have of her
I'm not "pretty" -- that's a very particular word, it seems to me
---- ah if you want that ---- game over --- I'm not that
but I have other charms, & I feel good about that

I'm older than her now
and my hair is full & thick
and I have --- oh all sorts of happy gardens
growing in my mind my heart my soul
and my fingers as I hope to credibly play
during the coming Sunday's healing service