Saturnday

Here I am again reminding myself that there is indeed still summer that it is guaranteed as long as I stay alive that my skin and hair and toes will return to their natural order that my elbows and wrists and hands will thaw the garden will be fecund and loamy moss will return to the trees roses and greeny green grass will magically reappear I will inhale lilac and hyacinth deer will turn tawny summer dresses and sandals will emerge from my closet and my knees will emerge and become their scabby spectacular selves I need to remind myself almost daily of the summer promise during terrible flat frozen winter I say it all the time I am and will always be a summer girl a Leo a water baby and to my very soul
Amin Amin Amin

this morning the wind is crawling up again so far it’s at an easy going 20 mph I’m still in bed with two cats rereading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential because I wanted to have his voice in my head I have not forgotten what a great writer he was before his television shows and that’s how I knew him first

“I’ve asked a lot what the best thing about cooking for a living is. And it’s this: to be a part of a subculture. To be part of a historical continuum, a secret society with its own language and customs. To enjoy the instant gratification of making something good with one’s hands—using all one’s senses.”

This is very much how I feel about being a musician that I am in a secret society a strange little aquarium of skilled obsessives closed to the outside world that the sound of rehearsals the guts of the music library their stacks ceiling high and valuable the after hour parties the competition and the ache that hours of practice brings the sharp emotional pain of having a student you’ve taught for eleven years go away to school the smell of rosin in a cold church on a Saturday morning are things that the world at large cannot gain admittance to not even the internet with its weird prying snake eyes can take it away I don’t feel that way about being a poet I never have perhaps because you can fake being a poet but you cannot fake playing a Mozart violin concerto but to be honest it’s probably because I’ve never felt like I belonged to poetryworld where having an MFA attached to your name or at least a college education is what allows you access to the top tier journals and conferences no matter the quality of your work no matter that I have published five books no matter that one of those books was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize I will never feel part of  but plop me down in any size group of musicians then I feel it always and immediately ahhhhh yes this is it this is home and I am so grateful for that strange eccentric family that accepts me for exactly how well I can play and nothing more