Month: January 2018

Cousin Talk

Our conversation just now:

“I went and put cold water on it – I just leaned over and stuck it under the shower real quickly and stood back up, but then the water rolled down my back and went into my underwear… but oh, well… Anyway, I put cold water on it, and it almost instantly started getting better.  There are parts of it that are already back to normal color..”

“Wow.  That’s just… crazy that it did that,” he laughs quietly.

“Yeah, the vibrations irritate it and make it react, I think.  Like I said, I think I’ve had it happen before with some other massage thing or something, so I’m not worried…  But it’s getting better, so…”  and I shrug.

I continue after a few moments of observation of his resumed task, “What are you doing?”

I repeat.

Concentrating on making a fold that doesn’t want to fold, he replies, “I… uh… I’m… making a sheath.”

“Out of paper?  See if Allison has some leather you can use for it… Wait.  You have leather.  Make a real one out of leather.”

“I don’t have any that’s sturdy enough.”

“Oh,” I sigh.  “Okay.”

 

That’s how all people’s 2:30 in the morning looks, right?  ðŸ˜›

Post-a-day 2018

 

Bedtime perfection

Tonight, sitting in a chair that traditionally belongs in an office, at a desk, and not in a living room with a blanket on it, I paused in my book reading to focus on the music that surrounded me.  My cousin was playing at the piano.  He had gone through many pieces throughout the evening, and even in his current sitting.  I had last paid close attention when he switched to “Für Elise” – not that I have anything against it, but I’ve heard it so many times, that I don’t often enjoy focusing on it anymore… plus, I was sitting in this same room as this same cousin learned to play this piece over a decade ago; I wasn’t in a mood to listen to him figure it out all over again.

But the current piece, now it was something different.  It struck me as perfection in the moment.  I was in a dimmed room, wearing my pajamas, reading while sitting in a comfortable chair, listening to perfect, full, live piano music.  It was as though I were in a novel of Jane Austen’s, or something quite similar (only we don’t marry our first cousins these days, and I think they did back then…).

Once I had paused to take note of the piece, I couldn’t go back to my book; I had to sit and enjoy the piece fully.  It was perfection in a scenario and in the music for that sort of moment.  I felt filled with the understanding that anything is possible in my life, and comfortable with all that had happened in my day, as though this were a perfect completion and letting go of it all.

And then, I couldn’t help but document it somehow – this is how I want my life to be.  This is the bedtime scenario I want more than once in a blue moon.  Man, where are you?  Or, at least, housemate, where are you?  Come to me soon, please, and stay with me.  I want this in my regular life.  God, ready me as I need to be ready to have this in my (at least) weekly life, please.

Tonight was magic turned reality, and I loved it.  I hope to dream this just-created, extended piano version of “La la lu” tonight.

The Brief Documentation

Music is magic, when used properly.  Remember that.

Post-a-day 2018

The answering machine commands

Tonight, as my cousin and I had a pause in our music-making, we heard our grandma’s voice on the answering machine, telling us to pick up the phone.  My uncle rushed into the kitchen and picked up the phone, and then spoke with her for a little while, while my cousin and I moved to and sat quietly at the warming fire.

Not one of us had had any idea that the phone was even ringing.  We were simply playing the opening song from Jesus Christ Superstar on the piano (well, my cousin was playing that part), and singing along to it with the odd word discrepancy here and there (It’s amazing how well I can remember the words, despite having not heard it in possibly years.).  With that song, as you must know if you have ever heard it, it is impossible not to sing and play passionately and, well, loudly.  So, it’s no wonder, really, that we hadn’t heard the phone ringing, even though the phone is actually quite loud when it rings…  If you don’t know the song, look it up and listen to it.  Imagine playing and singing that in your living room for some evening time fun.  (Hint: It’s a blast.)  ;D

Post-a-day 2018

Speaking of mountains…

I brought my Mt. Fuji hiking stick to show my cousin (who’s in town(ish) briefly) and aunt and uncle, because I knew they could and would appreciate not only the accomplishment it represents, but also just how cool the stick itself is.

In showing my cousin the stick tonight, we got into questions about hiking mountains and the experiences tied to them.  The absolutely silly part of that particular mountain experience was the fact that, while at the top of the mountain, finally resting, we were told that we needed to rush off the mountain, because a typhoon (hurricane) was coming.  Cool.  So, that made for a hurried departure from the top, and inadequate preparations for the painful and long, bathroom-less and water-less descent.

On a similar note, my cousin had a time on a sacred mountain in India (that part is important), where he had his own troubles with water.  Because the mountain is sacred, you see, it is said that no shoes may go on the mountain – it must be hiked barefoot.  My cousin respected this declaration, though his companions did not.  He also discovered afterward that it apparently is rather common even for native Indians to wear shoes for the trek.  Oh, well… Anyway, so this mountain is rocky, and there isn’t exactly a clear and clean path to follow.  By the time they reached the summit, his feet were scorched, and needed a rest.  He had brought plenty of water (carrying at least two two-liter bottles in his pack, plus his regular water bottle, I believe.), so they were in no specific hurry to get back down the mountain.  So, he and his companions set down their gear to give their backs a rest, and walked around the summit a little bit.  When they returned to their bags, what did they find?  Well, they found monkeys… stealing, you guessed it, the waters.  Did the monkeys take other things, like food or small things?  No.  They took the water.  Kind of makes you want to laugh hysterically and punch a monkey at the same time, doesn’t it?  ðŸ˜›

Just know: I really do love monkeys.  I just would want to punch almost anybody who stole all of my water in a situation like that, be it person, monkey, or zebra.  Fight or flight leans to fight in that circumstance for me, it seems.  ðŸ˜›

Anyway, fun mountain stories, huh?

Post-a-day 2018

ukulele and hula

I started ukulele lessons today.  It also included a reunion and a brief lesson on Hawaiian, the language, which were both a fabulous bonus.

I’ve always had a sort of passive affinity for Hawaiian culture – that wonderful island life, about which I knew almost nothing.  I was almost afraid to go to HawaiÊ»i, for fear of finding that the wonderful world I’d imagined was no longer in existence.  After living in Japan, even being in the countryside, I have learned the sort of balance that likely exists in the culture today.  It is like cowboys in Texas.  We have our big buildings and fancy cars and billboards, but you can still find, here and there, the true tradition.  Sometimes, it is only seen in ceremonies.  And sometimes it is part of someone’s everyday life.

My brother, though he rides and owns no horses, spends his days working on his land.  Physical labor in jeans and surrounded by grass, trees, and animals is his life most days.  And he grew up in the city.  There are plenty of others who grew up living his kind of life, and who still do the ranching on horseback.  Inside our city limits, no one would guess that that kind of life is just beyond our little area.  The average person wouldn’t even cross it knowingly, if he went driving outside the city, either.  You have to know how to find it.  And that’s just how Japan was… When I think of HawaiÊ»i now, that’s how I imagine it must be to a certain degree.

Anyway, ukulele is fun.  I started it back in Japan, because I was lonely and didn’t have music in my life.  Plus, Hawaiian culture seemed to be prominent in Japan (the reasons for which I hadn’t understood at first), so ukulele seemed an appropriate way to bring music into my life while in Japan.  I even took a few hula lessons.  (Yes, they were awesome.)

Actually, what really spawned my desire to learn hula and ukulele – not just the casual interest with which I first bought the ukulele, but the real desire that got me into lessons for hula and then, finally, for ukulele now – was a film.  It was based in HawaiÊ»i, and the caucasian daughter, maybe about 14 years old (I forget), did hula.  The way she moved her arms in the dance had me gazing, melting, it was just so beautiful to me.  Watching her dance, I had something happen within me.  I guess, because she was not Japanese or Hawaiian, but like me went through me head… I was able to see hula differently.  It was, at last, something that it was acceptable for me to do.

I had seen Japanese friends perform wonderfully, and plenty of other Japanese women I don’t even know, too.  But their close ties to HawaiÊ»i made it okay for them to do it.  It was regular and standard for them to be doing hula.  But what – it isn’t “right”, but something like that, “reason” perhaps – reason does a German-heritage girl from Texas have for doing hula, without an extreme, intense love for it?

Maybe this is just my own brain that had me stuck in this thought process, but it just didn’t make enough sense to me to feel comfortable with pursuing hula.  It felt to me like visiting a religious building for a region to which one does not belong and about which one knows very little.  It isn’t that the person is not allowed.  Not at all.  It is just that the person can feel a little lost and uncertain when visiting, and so it can be difficult to visit in the first place, without having a sort of invitation.  That’s kind of how I felt about hula.

And that movie helped alter that for me.  I started attending hula classes whenever I could, and began somewhat seeking out a ukulele teacher.

Eventually, nude in a hot spring bath in the mountains, I found one.  And now, almost a year later, we finally are in the same country and with the same currency (that was the issue before), so we can do lessons.  We aren’t anywhere near one another, of course, because I’m in Texas and she’s in HawaiÊ»i, but it’s going well so far.  Playing together is a bit weird, because of the lag, but I’ve worked with it for years with other things, so I’m somewhat accustomed to being slightly ahead of the beat and to hearing the clash of notes and timing, so that it sounds good on the other side.  All-in-all, it was fun, and I look forward to the next lesson next week.  ðŸ˜€

So, go listen to a ukulele song today, and think of me, yeah?  ðŸ˜‰

P.S.  Icicles were crashing outside my window during our lesson today.  And this is Houston.  How cool is that?!  Or warming, I guess…

IMG_2640

Post-a-day 2018

Siri just won’t listen

My Siri stopped “listening” to me this past weekend.

She responds to “Hey, Siri,” but then doesn’t wait for me to say anything else.

When I hold the home button, the same thing happens, where Siri comes on, but then doesn’t give me a chance to say anything – just goes straight to the ‘Recommendations for what to ask Siri’ page.

No one at Apple really understands how this could have happened.

Do you think the world is commenting on my life at present?

The funny part, is that I haven’t been speaking up much lately at all.  Not that I’ve avoided speaking or anything – I just haven’t had anything I feel like putting into conversations with the people around me who aren’t close friends or family, so I haven’t spoken, and they haven’t listened.

Post-a-day 2018

‘How was your weekend?’

You know that feeling when things really don’t go the way you’d anticipated them going, – any of the many scenarios you’d imagined – yet they still worked out okay in the end?  I’m in the middle of it right now.

It’s such an odd feeling, really.  It isn’t that I hadn’t imagined it going anywhere from horribly to wonderfully.  I think it’s just that I’d expected more of a solid, clear result from this weekend’s events.  I thought that I’d know for certain how I felt about it by the end of it.  And yet, here I am, wondering how to describe it all.  Parts totally sucked, parts were totally blah, parts were good, and parts were wonderful.  It was all in there, I guess – practically every scenario I’d imagined had at least a little piece of itself presented during the weekend.  And that made for an overall okay weekend.  (I’m still secretly waiting for some kind of panic attack to ensue, or something ridiculous, it feels.)

I guess it was kind of like my diet has been recently, actually.

… and that brings me back to what I was sharing just the other day… no wonder my weekend went as it did, when my food and thoughts have been kind of like that recently, going all over the place, but averaging out to a reasonably contented middle ground, without being my desired stupendous.  Hm.

Post-a-day 2018