my long-lost love

I'd kind of forgotten this year how much I love reading poetry, but I brought one of my Demetria Martinez books on the train the other day (because the book I'm "really" reading is kind of heavy and large) and it's been a pleasant reawakening. This poem was making me feel happy today.

"Not by the Gun but by the Grant Application"
Not by the gun but by the grant application,
Which was due at midnight.
You stare at your screen as if through
A windshield at a body mangled beyond recognition.
You are not amused when I say that Che
Would have hired a computer tutor.
Go ahead, blame me for dawdling
Over your shoulder, a ballpoint poet
Who should stick with her day job.
Blame the full moon for popping
And gumming up the works
Like a modern-day Luddite,
Go ahead, rage against the machine.
I will write the goddamn grant in sand.
Winds will overnight it to the Ford Foundation.
Fire ants will assemble each grain in plaintext
On the desk of a stunned bureaucrat who will
Write a check, only too happy to divest himself
Of dollars that this plague might pass over.
Peace will spread like shade over Tucson
Where we will sell horchata on the sidewalk,
Those quarters in the coffeecan, the keys
That turn the water back on, the lights back on.
Come the monsoon the sky will spit diamonds
On the repaired roofs of your clients.
For this grant cycle at least, the letter
And the spirit of the law will be one.
Even the judges will disrobe.
There will be dancing in the halls of justice.

what to do?

I'm on the verge of heading out to school, but I also just threw up in the bathroom a little bit. I've been feeling mildly gross (headachey, just kind of blah) since I wok up at 6, but I think the throwing up was actually induced by taking some of my gross-smelling multivitamins. This leads me to several questions: Should I call out of my first class on account of vomit? Is it going to happen again? If your vitamins make you throw up, should you continue taking them?
At any rate, I'm going to sit here for a few minutes and see if I feel better.

speechless

Busy busy busy.
That's really all I have to say right now, but I feel like it's been too long since I posted. Perhaps I'll be unbusy enough to have energy to write sometime soon.

resolve and resistance

I didn't make any new years resolutions, but spring feels more like the new year to me than January does so I'm going to make some happy warm spring resolutions instead.
-eat more fruits and veggies and less oily foods
-get a nicer bike so I can ride for more than two or three miles before getting tired
-ride more than two or three miles on a semi-regular basis (I'll do this more often once it's summer, probably)
-start doing yoga again, even if it's only on my own
-get more comfortable with myself dancing
-donate and replace some of my old clothes that i've had for 10+ years with "new" thrift store acquisitions
-start actually doing work for the underground library
-talk more with my sister
-do something fun with my hair (dye? shaved? mohawk? all of the above?)
-buy and not kill some houseplants
-practice not for any specific goal but only for my own benefit, and actually try to be responsible about it
(Oooh, two more added in later: drink more water and (this is hypocritical because a lot of my goals seem to involve acquisition) buy less extraneous stuff that I absolutely don't need.)
Okay, that's all I can think of. I am so manic these last few days because spring has really hit now. It's warm and sunny and it smells like flowers and dirt outside, and I absolutely adore it. As much as I like fall as a season, it can't compare with the extreme emotional rush of the return of warmth and life to the outside world. I feel like I'm on drugs half of the time.

whirligig

I feel lately like I'm suffering from one of those fake ailments that people use to describe strange or transitory states of mind. I think I'm perhaps somewhere between "spring fever" and "senioritis" right now. Every time I think about school, it goes something like this:
"Well, tomorrow I have to leave by 9 to get to my 10 AM quartet rehearsal, which gets out at 12, and then I have to go to the post office and hopefully I'll have time to eat, and then I have orchestra and orchestra rep respectively from 2:10 until maybe 6:45 and then I'll be home by 7:45." That's a short day because I get home before 11. And I think about how maybe this summer it won't be like that because even though I'll have a job it probably won't consume 11 or more hours of every single day, and I feel so excited and happy. I get graduation stuff in the mail and I think about how glad I am that I won't have to sacrifice my freaking soul to this school anymore.

and... returned

Hey, thanks to all the people who wished me well on this ill-fated audition trip! Actually, it wasn't that bad, just it wasn't that good, either. I was late to my audition, in part because my friend gave me somewhat incorrect (not entirely wrong, just missing one step and with a west and east mixed up on one of the interstate merges) directions and in part because it was way early in the morning and I failed to correct mistakes even when looking at my map. Probably the crowning moment was when I pulled my friend's jeep over at a gas station to ask for directions and realized I had no idea how to get the key out of the ignition. I had to call her after several fruitless minutes of struggle.
Anyway, so eventually I got there about a half hour late. No biggie, as it turned out, except I missed the placement drawing so I automatically got scheduled last out of 23 people who showed up. You would think that if you had 23 people showing up for an audition, you would schedule them to show up throughout the day, wouldn't you? Or not. I got there at 9 and ended up playing at 1. Apparently this is kind of how it goes, as other people had stories of spending more than twelve hours at auditions! Blah. So by the time I played, I had pretty much exhausted my patience with the probably 2 1/2 pages of music that I would be playing, and then played them poorly anyway. It was kind of a letdown after all that waiting. And then I spent all day Tuesday reading on my friend's couch.
But now I'm back, and Anna's mom is coming into town tomorrow, so that should be fun. I should go to bed and recover from all the travel and such.

byebye

I'm off to Buffalo! Somewhere I've never been before, so hopefully my audition won't go horribly and my trip won't be tainted by rejection too much :-) That sounds so bitter and pessimistic, doesn't it? Honestly, at this point, I feel like it will be okay but not stellar, which I'm fine with and which is about all I can really hope for given that I slacked off a lot. I'm using this mostly as preparation for other more likely auditions later this month and next, and I think it will fulfill its purpose admirably.