relief

cute face
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Mabel is fine. The lump is a common type called lipoma and is harmless. I just have to keep an eye on it to see if it gets bigger, in which case at some point it would probably be removed. I am relieved. I was worried today, although I did my best to stay unworried by thinking positively.

where oh where

Oh where oh where can they be?

I wish I knew...(listen?)

decisions

Such a monumental decision seems to lie in front of me, challenging me to make up my mind.

waking

The thing about sleep that is both wondrous and cruel: you can forget troubles and enter the world of dreams, yet upon waking, those same troubles that drifted away will come settling back on your shoulders. That is precisely what happened to me. It is like some sort of cruel joke. You wake up feeling good and carefree, and then memory plays its trick.

worried

Actually I am very worried about Mabel, but I am trying not to freak out since I don't know anything and it might turn out to be nothing to worry about.

Mabel

Mabel before, Mabel before, and Mabel after her haircut. She looks so cute.

I found a small lump in her abdomen. I am worried. I hope it is nothing. I will take her to the vet tomorrow. I think it is not anything bad, but it is best to be sure.

Sunday

Notice how my eyebrow extends in tendrils. I may end up as one of the old men with incredulous antenna-like eyebrows. With that in mind, I trimmed them this morning.

It has been, so far, an interesting weekend, mostly because of the situation I described in my last post, which has set my mind working rather intensely as I think through things.

I wish I could say more but discretion forbids me.

I will post Mabel pictures soon.

dilemma

My eye is better. Mabel's haircut is amazing. I will post pictures later.

I am in the midst of an exciting dilemma, but I can disclose very little of the details right now. It involves a teaching position, one which I did not seek out but which has sought me out.

It is a pleasant dilemma to have. I will need some good advice.

friday

My eye is much better today.

Today I will take Mabel for her first spring haircut. Her hair is longer than it has ever been and she looks elegant but by the end of the day she will be unbelievably cute as she is after a haircut. No one who sees her can keep from smiling (except for the very most dour, who probably never smile at anything) and most people stop to pat her on the head at the very least. Some lose all decorum and kneel down on the sidewalk to have a closer Mabel experience. I will take pictures.

smiling

You should check out these photographs. BQ's pictures are amazing.

semi-

traces of light
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

I spend most of the day in a state of semi-blindness. Interesting in many ways, but also very frustrating. Not much to do but sleep. And listen.

strange

It is very strange using my right eye. It is very frustrating as well. I can't read, I can't watch television (not that I usually do anyway). I can play piano, but I can't read from a score. So now I am cheating by using both eyes. When I was a boy, in first or second grade, I don't remember quite so well, I had to wear a patch over my left eye, because the theory was that it would strengthen the bad eye. So for a full year I could barely see. It was awful. I used to cheat and look over top of my glasses so they replaced the patch, which was attached to the lens, with one over my eye, like a pirate. I think I have blocked out most of that time, because it was no doubt torturous, as I am finding today when I keep my eye covered. But it feels better today and I think in a day or so I will be able to use it. Ok, now I put the patch back on and I will listen to Keith Jarrett and maybe be inspired to practice some more...

eye

My left eye, which is the one that I see out of mostly, is infected. But sometimes I am a self-pitying fool and so I have deleted the rest of this post, which I actually wrote earlier...

hiding

Another blog disappeared. Poof! and it is gone. I wonder how I would feel if I deleted my blog. Gone. There would be no record, any longer, of several months of days. Online, we are ephemeral. I will miss the missing blog. I enjoyed reading it. I liked the photographs. It is a form of formalized socializing, I think. As if, instead of conversation, we made presentations to one another, yet without the restraints of manners that characterize "real time" presentations. I don't think I could delete my blog. Since I started, in late December, I think that not a day has gone by without me posting something--which means that either I have no life, and also means I have not been away in too long--or else that I am very dedicated. Perhaps both. But I do have a life, obviously. Keeping the blog helps me make sense of it. On the other hand, I could hide among the intricate patterns of this plant. I used to hide among our yew bushes when I was a boy. Crawling inside, I would become invisible.

trying/not trying

I spend a lot of my time trying to understand things. People, ideas, images, structures: I contemplate and dissect and question and review. But maybe this is a largely foolish way to spend my time. Maybe I should let time pass by, and let my mind rest and become "automatic." Cy Twombly used to sketch in the dark. Paul Bowles used what he called "automatic writing," a technique of turning off the conscious brain (although I am not quite sure how that is accomplished) and writing from the subconscious. Buddhism suggests a kind of existential neutrality. I am fascinated by this idea, but it does not seem at all practical. Maybe I just don't know enough about it. Any suggestions?

walls/newness

Last night Yoshi looked sad. I asked him if he was ok and he said "I am sad."

I asked him if he was sad about anything in particular. He said no. "Sometimes I just get sad."

That I understand, because it often happens to me. But I felt bad. I don't want him to feel sad. I told him, "I don't want you to be sad. Is there anything I can do? Do you want to talk?"

He said "I will be ok. It's ok."

This morning he was still sad. His face told me. I wanted to make his sadness stop, but I felt powerless. I hugged him. Then I realized: it is ok for him to be sad. It is ok when I am sad. Sadness is all around us. It is only fair that everyone should remember that. And I can't stop his sadness any more than he can stop mine. I love him when he is sad, I love him when he is happy, I love him when he is grumpy. It is all ok. And if you try to keep sadness at bay, if you try to put a wall around yourself for protection, those walls will just imprison you.

But I hope his sadness will pass, because sadness is hard. I hope he doesn't feel like I sometimes do, like the walls are closing in.

daylight

Last night, after returning from a post-concert dinner with some of my colleagues, I listened to the recording of the concert, and I was not so pleased. I felt like my playing, which had some bright spots, was uninspired. And so, dulled by my two single-malt scotches, I was feeling down and like I can't really play the piano.

But this morning, I decided to have another try, and I listened again. This time I realized that I was being ridiculously over-critical; actually the performance went well. There were some balance issues (drums a bit loud) but the interplay between the three of us was actually really cool and interesting, and so I no longer feel like I can't play the piano. But I was lucky this time. I had not been practicing much in the last few months, and that is not good. I should try to practice all the time, even if my mind is occupied more with writing. At least practicing is mechanical, in large degree, and can be therapeutic.

So now I feel like there is a little bright light, after last night's gloom.

up up (and away?)

I am feeling quite up today. Quite up. This manic energy, which is what it is, will be useful tonight as long as I can sustain it without crashing. I am sure I can do that for one day at least. I just have to watch my mouth.

sun

I enjoyed the day today. I liked the sun.

I decided not to play "Soon" tomorrow. I will just do three tunes: "I Wish I Knew," "Old Folks," and "It Might As Well Be Spring." The caps in the song titles start to look silly, don't they?

I decided not to play "Soon" because I am not doing anything interesting with it, and it is boring me and then I get frustrated. So better just toss it.

This was how the sun looked hitting the plant hanging between the two big windows in Nani's apartment, in Fort Greene.

sun

The sun was shining so beautifully in the windows of Nani's apartment in Fort Greene. After visiting I went with Yoshi to the Target store, but I felt like I was not in New York City, and the air was so still, I got too anxious and had to leave. Once I was outside I was fine. I don't think I can ever go there again. Yikes. What was I thinking?

cynic

Actually I am much more of a cynic than my blog here would have anyone realize.

I read my posts, which sometimes are so sincere that they make me queasy. I am feeling queasy right now, for no identifiable reason otherwise.

But I believe that cynicism comes from idealism. It's just the reaction of a bruised idealist.

mysteries

God knows how I adore life
When the wind turns on the shore lies another day
I cannot ask for more
And when the timebell blows my heart
and I have scored a better day
Well nobody made this war of mine

And the moments that I enjoy
a place of love and mystery
I'll be there anytime

-Beth Gibbons (one of the greatest singers I have heard)

for Nghiem

Today I understand more than I did yesterday.

Pomona

pomona green eye
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

As Yoshi and I joke, Pomona is very nice but she can be very mean. But she is really nice.

sometimes they nail it

Dear Jonathan,
Here is your horoscope
for Saturday, March 12:

Your mouth is still operating at a speed that's amazing even you. So before you go off on someone you love because they can't keep up, or just aren't on the same page, stop. Wait. Think.

Just substitute "brain" for mouth and this is perfect.

happy

tuna face
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Tuna makes me happy. I am lucky to have him.

how?

How did I get to be so messed up?

My mother used to tell that when I was a baby I did not like to be held. Typically, a baby is happy to be held by its mother. I resisted such confinement. She told a story of how she and my father were sitting downstairs in our house, having put my brother and I to bed, when they heard a loud "thump." Alarmed, they ran up the stairs to find me lying on the floor; I had climbed over the railing of my crib and over the side, falling to the floor. They made sure that I was ok and put me back in the crib. They went back downstairs. And not too much time passed when they heard "thump" again.

In second grade each classroom had a door leading outside to the schoolyard. During recess, I told my friends to please not tell the teacher, and I snuck inside, got my coat, and walked out the front door of the school and proceeded to walk home, about a one-mile walk. This was in midday. When I was about half-way home, I heard someone calling me, and it was the school secretary, running after me. She dragged me, protesting, back to school. I don't remember the aftermath, although most certainly I was punished.

fool

I feel like a fool. I was in a state of complete disarray last night, too sensitive, and I was stupid.

B, I am sorry.

dissatisfied

I just got home from my rehearsal. Well, I met Matt for coffee after I finished, so it's not just after my rehearsal really. But I was not happy. I felt like my playing sucked, like I was tense, and I was having trouble hearing. Partly that is due to the acoustics in the space, and partly because the piano I was playing, a nine-foot Kawai concert grand, has a tinny harsh sound in the upper register, and it was making me recoil. The only good thing about that piano is that it has ivory keys, and a nine-foot-concert-grand has great bass notes. But a bad rehearsal usually means a good performance, and vice-versa. So I should be happy that I thought it was bad. I guess...

scars

I just returned from swimming. I beat myself to a pulp, figuratively speaking.

While I was swimming, I contemplated the effect that the past has on my present. Since I am so often thinking about the past, analyzing, dissecting, I thought that I might formulate some personal theory, a theory of my past, that could help me in the future.

I realized that my past loves--not flings, but real loves--have each left a scar on me. I realized that I am susceptible to this. I think that many people, even if scarred, can shed their skin, like a snake does, and thus the scars disappear, and they become a blank slate, unmarred, and can face the future with the confidence of newness.

I do not think it works like that for me. In fact, I am sure that it does not. And thus a new question emerges: have I left scars on my past loves? I think not...

As my homeboy Todd Rundgren once sang:

"The wound you left is healing and then
it starts itching and I scratch it open again..."

topic for today

up up (and away?)

One of the objectively positive (as opposed to subjectively self-indulgent) aspects of this navel-grazing blogging is that I can use it to keep track of the cycles of my up-and-down mood, my bipolar self. So I will now report that I am climbing up. Perhaps this is due to the lack of sleep this week, my upcoming concert, the work I have to do before then, maybe other things too. So my emotions are on a short fuse; I am feeling twitchy (not visibly so, although my right hand is shaking quite a bit) and it is hard to slow down my thoughts enough to get a grip on them. Oh well. I will just go through my day, and brutal swimming session is coming soon, which might take me down a notch or two.

peace

I am sitting at my computer reading the NYTIMES online, and I have just read this article about the upcoming mayoral race. C. Virginia Fields and Fernando Ferrer have made a pact to have a campaign free of attacks and the usual mud-slinging. Reading the article, about Fields's childhood in Alabama, her participation in Dr. Martin Luther King's marches, and her efforts to keep the campaign honorable actually made me feel like I was about to cry. At first I thought that I must be completely unhinged. Then I realized that I have a similar response almost every time I witness some example of honorable, generous behavior, one person to another. Maybe because it is a sign that despite the chaos and loss of compassion and civility that seems to have become an essential part of our lives, there are still noble people.

And now it is snowing, and the bridge is invisible from my window.

mad

This morning I sat talking to one of my classes. It is a wonderful class, even if they are sometimes slackers. I like all the students in this class, and I have to pretend, sometimes, to be mad at them or else I would let them get away with murder. So we were discussing my expectations of them. And I mentioned that I recently heard of one of my students who claimed to be terrified of me. They were surprised. "You don't get mad," they told me. "I mean, you get mad, but not scary mad." This from one of the most charming ones. So it got me thinking.

I do get mad. I don't get mad at students, because they don't really have the power to hurt me. The only time I get truly mad is when I have been hurt. And only a person to whom I make myself vulnerable can hurt me. And due to my reserved nature, and what most people consider my aloofness, there are not so many people in that category.

I was talking to my colleagues, and one remarked how I always seemed so calm and cool, and rarely was ruffled. "Oh, it's all an illusion," I said. "In reality, I am a quivering mess."

evening

Is it evening if the sun is still in the sky?

Still so much to do, and I practiced so much today that the dry skin on my hands--hazard of winter--actually cracked and now the little finger of my right hand has a bleeding crevasse which hurts when I play. Pianists use this stuff called "New Skin" which you paint on a cut. It stings like hell but it keeps the thing from getting worse when you have no choice but to practice. I am trying to work out new material for some of the tunes I am playing, because they are standards and there is no point playing standards in 2005 unless you do something new with them. Anyway, I work best when I am under the pressure of an imminent deadline, but I hope tomorrow is more even and does not throw me off balance.

I have to be careful though, because when I get into this kind of energetic mode I usually become manic and tend to fly off the handle easily and get way ahead of myself; my thoughts race so fast and I have difficulty speaking because the words can't make it out of my mouth quickly enough. So I try to breathe and relax, which has some effect, but not enough to bring me to a normal state. That is why I am typing so fast now, I think. So I need to breathe, rest, lie on the floor, do some yoga, close my eyes, breathe, rest, lie on the floor, do some yoga, close my eyes, breathe, rest, lie on the floor...

frantic

I feel frantic today. Too much to do and not enough time.

absence, continued

One of the things I truly miss from the past is a certain feeling that accompanied the aimless, comfortable "hanging out" that I used to enjoy with my friends in college and in the short years after college before our lives became less wrapped up in each other and more with new concerns: jobs and school, marriage for some, children, etc. And people moved away: to DC, to LA, to Chicago. And what did we do? Sit around, drink, smoke, and talk talk talk talk. I miss that. I am somewhat of a hermit now, and so much of my work is solitary. So if any of you Vassarettes ever happen upon this (and I know at least one of you does, Mr. ATS) realize that I do miss you all. I miss those days. In some strange indescribable way, I was so much happier then than now. Or is this just some kind of warped nostalgia, my real perceptions faded away over time, replaced by sweetened ones?

absence

It is odd how I have felt the absence of my blogging friends these past days; against my inclination I have felt like these oblique exchanges formed, for me at least, a kind of socializing that I look forward to most days. And while I was aware of, and wary of, the tenuous connections that are forged over the internet, actually meeting Thierry, and knowing Bao for a number of years, and then establishing a real connection with Nghiem, has convinced me that it is not the medium that creates or negates the validity of a relationship, but the persons themselves. So I am not worried; I know that they will return. Or, if they do not, it will not be a disappearance, which I define as an absence unexplained.

still

steps
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

still climbing

stone

granite
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

care-power-desire

When someone I care for experiences pain, or sadness, or grief, or fear, or loneliness, I wish that I could provide an antidote, or better yet, some sort of inoculation, to prevent them from having to experience these feelings. When Yoshi was in Japan, watching his mother get sicker and sicker, I found it almost unbearable (having been through an almost identical experience) to think of how he was feeling and I wanted more than anything to take away his pain, to take away his family's pain. When my brother recently had a health scare, and I knew he was worried, I wished so badly that I could fix it all, make his worries dissolve so completely that he would forget they ever existed. When a friend writes of his loneliness, I wish that I could find a way so that he would never feel that kind of emptiness. Yet I know that this is all impossible, and even more, that I am powerless in this way. But maybe I get some kind of power, good power, from my desire, much as we all grow stronger from the bad experiences in our lives, if we can withstand them.

eye

My left eye, which is my good eye, hurts incredibly today, and it is difficult to keep it open. This is a drag, to say the least, since I can't really see anything now. And I have to move the car (you know how it is, parking your car on the street in NYC), which is going to be difficult if I can't see. Hmmm.

concrete and barbed wire...

I love Lucinda Williams' song "Concrete and Barbed Wire" from her album CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD. Check it out, if you don't know it.

one day...

One day, maybe, we can sit down, and we can talk about the past. And we can tell the truth: our respective truths, and we will not be afraid, and we will be completely honest, and we will know that whatever pain results is not from malice or anger or the wish to hurt, but from the simple fact of how life is, and how fate may or may not determine our actions, and how wishing for something is not wrong, and how...

a letter I have written but never sent--

(you know, I wrote it, and I read it, and I saved it, and I will never send it)

to be honest

To be truly honest, you must take the risk of pissing people off, or making them uncomfortable. This is something I learned a long time ago.

balance

Today is one of the rare days where I feel balanced. Emotionally and in mood, I feel like both of my feet are firmly on the ground. I am so happy for these days, and I hope that they become the norm rather than the exception. Perhaps it is due, at least in part, to the thirty minutes of yoga that I did early this morning. I certainly felt energized and more tranquil after that.

focus

hands at work
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

I have a concert Monday evening. At my school we have a faculty concert series, and I will be playing with my trio--me on piano, Dom Richardson on bass, Greg Gonzales on drums--a thirty-minute set. I have still not decided what pieces I will play, but I know two: "Samba do Aviao", by Jobim, and "It Might As Well Be Spring." Or maybe "One Note Samba." I want to play "I Wish I Knew" but I don't want to do two ballads, and I definitely am going to play "Old Folks", another ballad. But here is the bigger dilemma: when I am in the thick of composing, as I have been lately, I don't practice. And when I get into practicing, I can't compose. So now I have to put composing aside for the rest of the week to practice and come up with the other two tunes and do the arranging and rehearse. The concert is at 129 Pierrepont Street (at Clinton) in Brooklyn Heights, Monday evening at 6 pm. There will be some pieces by Brahms on the first half of the program. If you want to come, please do. It's free.

steps

steps
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

climbing

for Nghiem

bark
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

GertrudeStein is my hero

"March the eighth, jumping and picking up the purse, jumping up and picking up the purse."

wall

(for you)

do I need too much
do I ask too much
do I talk too much
do I ask too much
do I think too much
do i ask too much
do I worry too much
do i ask too much
do I fall too often
do i ask too much
do I know anything at all

Clark Street at Hicks Street, Brooklyn

If you don't look down, you will miss it.

Clark Street at Hicks Street, Brooklyn

If you don't look up, you will miss it.

what I see walking

I walked Mabel in the surprisingly warm afternoon sun, and I carried my camera with me. I like to look closely at things, to see shapes and patterns in ordinary places.

apology

To my blogging friends: it is my own insecurity which makes me worry. So please, slap me next time. I mean it (grinning).

worry

Because I worry so much, I wonder how my blogging friends are. If I don't read new posts, I worry: is ____ ok? Has he disappeared forever? Can he just delete himself, the way one can delete a blog at the press of a key on the keyboard? Is this the truth about the ephemeral nature of this "blogging"? This is my fear, that these ties are really unreal, dependent as they are on exchanges that do not occur in real time, lacking the face-to-face quality of intimacy or friendship.

So then I think that I should not worry so much about past and future, and do as I am so often told, live "in the moment." I wonder about why this is so difficult for me. And in thinking this over, I have concluded something, a theory impossible to prove or disprove, but one that might explain. Because in my work, as a musician, I must be in the moment in order to do what I do, my other time cannot be spent in the moment, because balance is necessary for one to function. So when I am not practicing, or composing, or painting, I must describe the past for myself, or think about what lies ahead, so that I will have the necessary energy and focus to be "in the moment" the next time I practice, or compose, or paint.

March the Seventh

March the seventh patently, patently see, patently saw, she saw he saw patently see to see. He would be.

--Gertrude Stein

Child

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with colors and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate--
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

-Sylvia Plath, from WINTER TREES

from my window

If you look in a certain direction, about 1:00 and down slightly, you can't see the sky or the bridge or anything but these brick walls. And if you narrow your vision, you see this. Just blank walls broken only by blank windows.

stupid

I did something stupid. Last night, very tired but feeling agitated, I tried to sleep but could not, although I took 200 mg of my trazodone, more than my normal dosage. So after two hours of frustration, I gave in and took a valium. But that was too much, and I have felt in a fog all day. And now, the thing that I always forget about valium is coming back to haunt me. Valium stays in the system for a long time and makes me feel more depressed. And so here I sit, at six-fifteen, feeling bleak and tired, wishing I could make time disappear, wishing that I would float away.

chimney

chimney
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

From my bedroom window

tuna

tuna
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

My Tuna. He spends all his time on the bed sleeping, or going to the table to eat, or going into the kitchen for water. He is fifteen-and-a-half years old. He is one of the sweetest cats I have ever known.

challenge

I wrote a long and anguished post yesterday afternoon. I posted it. An hour later, I read it again, and I deleted it. This is a kind of self-censorship. While what I wrote was true, very true, I felt embarassed for myself when I read it objectively. And so I edit what I've written, or delete it entirely. Despite my attempts to be totally honest, what I write here is filtered through a detached sensibility coupled with self-consciousness. The challenge is to turn off the self-consciousness and have the courage to leave my thoughts expressed at any given time as a reflection of what I was thinking THEN, not NOW. But I suppose we all have some cowardice, or fear of how our words might hurt others, or fear of being discovered as something we do not want to be.

reading

Elizabeth Bishop: THE COMPLETE POEMS
Ryu Murakami: ALMOST TRANSPARENT BLUE
Baas and Jacob: THE BUDDHA MIND IN CONTEMPORARY ART
The Yale Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein: THREE LIVES
JT LeRoy: HAROLD'S END
Susan Sontag: ILLNESS AS METAPHOR
Susan Sontag: AIDS AND ITS METAPHORS
Dwight A. McBride: WHY I HATE ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH-ESSAYS ON RACE AND SEXUALITY

harassed

Today I am harassed by the old familiar yet threatening thoughts, deeply disturbing and enervating. I feel exhausted and I am struggling. Last night I could not sleep and awoke so early and all day I vacillate between feeling "normal" and then suddenly I am gripped by thoughts of harming myself so alarming that I have to just stop what I am doing and try to breathe deeply and shut my eyes and stand still until the feeling passes. Tonight I am having dinner guests and I am just hoping that I will be able to be a gracious host. Yoshi will cook, sparing me that, although I wish now that I were going to because it would give me something to do. Maybe I will play the piano, if my guests don't mind. It might help. I hate feeling like this and I wish so badly that it would just stop. The past is coming back to me in waves, waves that I don't wish to see or hear or feel ever again. I want oblivion. The sand as sea...the deep swallowing ocean...and this is my hand. It looks almost dead, no? Though the skin would be more of a blue color...

social phobia

I suffer from social phobia. This prevents me from doing things I should do, and even that I want to do, and I am sure it is harmful to my career. For example, the other night I was invited to a party for my friend and neighbor Elizabeth Gaffney's new novel, METROPOLIS, which has gotten some excellent reviews. Elizabeth and I went to college together, though she is a few years behind me, and we have many mutual acquaintances and friends who undoubtedly were going to be there. I was sent an invitation weeks ago, and upon receiving it I RSVP'd with enthusiasm. But as the party grew near, I realized I was not going to go. I couldn't face the thought of negotiating my way through a cocktail party. Elizabeth was an editor at the PARIS REVIEW and has gone to Yaddo and MacDowell numerous times (as I have) and it would have been a good networking opportunity. Yet I was frozen, unable to go despite my desire to do it. While my social phobia is better than it once was (thanks to modern medicine) it still is crippling. Obviously this is an odd affliction for a musician, one who performs before audiences large and small. But on a stage I am not afraid. But don't ask me to go mill about in the audience afterwards. I am ok with one-on-one or small groups, but a large event is more than I can handle.

I have been reading an article in a recent NEW YORKER about the late writer E.B. White, written by his stepson, Roger Angell. White suffered from such acute social phobia that he avoided even family weddings, birthday parties and such. I am glad to read of others who have this problem. It makes me feel understood.

flaws

I tend to always fear the worst.
I have social phobia.
I am overly critical.
I am impatient.
I am a hypochondriac, although this has improved in recent years.
I have an addictive personality.
I am unfocused.
I feel slighted too easily.
I am thin-skinned.
I am not funny.
I do things that are bad for me, even though I know I shouldn't.
I spend money I don't have.
I often prefer the company of animals to people.
I am terrified of loneliness.

(There are many more)

Please, Pleas (for Surangama)

Please be careful of your head.
Please take your medication. Please don't take chances with it.
Please call your doctor if you can.
Please know that I am thinking of you.

blindness

Last evening at dinner one of my brother's friends, and a potential business partner of my father's, remarked that I looked like my father (it is true). She then said that my brother must look like my mother. I said that he did, and added that my sister (who lives in Pennsylvania and was not at dinner) looks even more like my mother. "In fact," I added, "there have been times, seeing her, when I actually did a double-take, she looks so much like my mom. "I don't see it at all," my father said.

answer

I am tired of that question. I think the answer is this: what I consider "sad" is just "normal." So if I am not sad, I am just not in my normal mood.

question

And why, why, why do I feel so terribly sad today?

love

I have been in love five times.
One of them: my love was torn apart.
One of them: I was too scared to say it.
One of them: my love left me.
One of them: my love was left to struggle like a fish out of water.
One of them...

march 4, long ago in another city

"Every so often a day arrives when everything comes crashing down, walls close in, it becomes a struggle to keep up and moving. This was one. My energy gone, my patience nil, my heart cold. C. cries in the kitchen, chopping carrots too noisily and recklessly, while I, cold and feigning indifference, sit at my drafting table, copying my piece with mechanical precision.

I hate myself when I behave in such a way. It is not something I wish to do, yet I cannot stop it."

for Thierry

"Time present and time past
are present perhaps in time future,
and time future contained in time past."

(T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton" from FOUR QUARTETS)

words

For me it is the absence of words that can hurt me more than words themselves.

posting

I just wrote a long post, and hit some key inadvertantly on my keyboard, and the post disappeared.

dread

This evening I will have dinner with my father, who is coming to NYC on business, and my brother, and one of my father's associates from his law firm, and some other lawyers who are friends of my brother. I will be the only person there who is not a lawyer. I dread this evening. I get quite agitated when I am with my father and brother, for many reasons, none too pleasant. But if I take my medication, and if I have a drink, and if they talk about something other than law, it might not be too bad. We will go to Chinatown, because my father's associate is a Chinese woman. She has recently returned from a long trip to China, and my brother tells me that she has brought me CDs of Chinese opera. I am very excited about that, and touched that my father told her about me.

let down

With my iPod, I can listen to Radiohead as loud as I want at any time without fear of disturbing the neighbors. So now "Let Down" is blasting in my ears, in all likelihood destroying my hearing, if it isn't already from years of playing in loud bands in my younger days. Next I will listen to "Creep." Then "Metal Firecracker" by Lucinda Williams.

This morning I googled the psychiatrist who first started me on antidepressants. She had left that hospital (Payne Whitney) for a while, which is why I stopped seeing her. But I am not doing so well with my current doctor, and I wonder if I could go back to her. I feel like she saved my life. I remember when I started taking zoloft and I was walking outside on a cool April day and I noticed that the sky was so blue, the air so gentle, and for the first time in many years I felt that there were things, ordinary things, that were safe and comforting. And I felt so relieved, that maybe I would be ok.

Of course all good things come to an end, and after a year and a half the medication stopped working and so I switched again. And that one, I think it was buproprion, worked for a few years and then stopped. Along the way there have been some disasters, like valproic acid. When I was taking it (for bipolar disorder) I felt like I was being poisoned. It was a feeling from deep inside, and it was horrible. And the worst of all was another antidepressant, remeron. I thought I would lose my mind. And I gained ten pounds in two weeks, although I was not eating any more than usual. I had concerts in Washington and Baltimore that one weekend, and I remember driving down there and feeling like at any moment I was just going to lose my grip. It was horrible, but I kept taking it because the doctor said "you have to give the medication time to work." Well, I didn't give that one time. I stopped taking it, because I didn't believe the doctor this time.

for Thierry

For years, ever since I was in high school, I have kept a journal. Most of the time I wrote every day. I still have all of these journals. I try always to find some kind of interesting book to write in, to signify the importance of writing for myself. The writing is not only therapeutic. It becomes my personal history. Going back to read past journals, something I do from time to time, is illuminating. Sometimes I am embarassed for what I wrote. But I never want to change it. It is my own recherche de temps perdu.

Then in the last few years, I lost my good habit. I would write from time to time; scattered thoughts, recording events, but the frequency, or lack of it, frustrates me now, because chunks of the past are unaccounted for. I have a very good memory for some things, and yet the absence of detail, so many missing and important days, creates a sense of time moving in leaps rather than in a record of my evolution. And I wish I had written so diligently as I used to. For I have evolved; we all do, and while we might have hindsight to guide us to understand our path, it is sad that experiences vanish from consciousness.

Then, in December, Thierry inspired Bao to start a blog. It was something I had thought of doing ever since I heard of it, but was not sure how to, and besides, with my own website to keep up (professional use, though, not personal) I did not ever start one. Then Bao sent me a message and directed me to his blog. While reading Bao's early entries sent me into a tailspin, they inspired me too. And reading Thierry's words, which had inspired Bao, further inspired me. And so my blog become my journal, so much so that I worry about the ephemeral nature of it--it could all be deleted in an instant--and so have begun to copy my entries and print them, to bind them in a new kind of journal.

Writing this blog has brought me closer again to Bao, which is a wonderful thing. It has introduced me to Thierry and Nghiem, both of whom share so many complexities with me, and I feel the energy of new acquaintance, one that feels so comfortable and natural. And I read Robert's blog eagerly, for not only was the writing elegant, but his ideas and insights are valuable and teach me something. So my blog, as I told Bao recently, has in some ways taken me over; but it has also energized my other work, my composing and painting.

So Thierry, this picture, from a painting of mine, is a promise; that light will come out of knowledge, that darkness in our lives must be balanced by brilliant color, and that mourning is a kind of discovery of ourselves. I no longer wish, for myself at least, to be free from pain. I only wish to understand it.

New York City

When I moved to New York City, leaving Chicago in the middle of the night a few days after defending my doctoral dissertation (successfully, thank the gods) I was so excited that I drove all night in my borrowed VW bus, almost pushed off the road by huge trucks which flew by me as I struggled, in a that overloaded vehicle, up the fog-drenched mountains of western Pennsylvania. I remember driving toward the Holland tunnel as the sun came up, illuminating Manhattan which waited before me. Ever since I was a young boy and we would come here to visit my grandparents in Astoria, the city excited me in some mysterious way. It had long been my wish to live in a city that was so vital, so bizarre, a place as different from the small place where I grew up as almost any I could find. And I have loved living here, where one can be one's self without self-consciousness, where I hear so many different languages every day, where the friends I have made come from all over the world. And as a musician and artist there is no better place--although I miss the country and my beloved trees and forests--because here people know what artists do, and I do not have to explain myself. Back in Pennsylvania, when I got a scholarship to Vassar and decided to study music, everyone asked "what are you going to do with that?" Most people had not heard of Vassar, and those that had were perplexed that I would study something that, to them, had no value.

However, reading a column in the Village Voice this morning, I realized that I am very sad and worried about what is happening here in NYC. The article was about Dumbo, the part of Brooklyn's tip that abuts Brooklyn Heights. For years friends, artists mostly, of mine lived as pioneers in a place where the streets at night were deserted, where there were no restaurants or stores or cafés or trendy shops. The writer of the column described Dumbo now as looking like the set of some kind of yuppie movie, where baby strollers swarm the sidewalks. In what seems like an instant this old crumbling place, where artists could find cheap lofts, where the energy of creativity crackled in the dark, is now as bland and sterile as so many other places in the city. It would be almost impossible to move to New York City now as a poor ex-student and aspiring artist; things are too expensive, there is no room left, it seems, for anyone who does not have deep pockets, which excludes most people like me. This makes me sad. The city will definitely lose something if this horrible situation continues. Bring back a little crime; bring back some seediness. Take the East Village back to the way it was when I lived there. Erase Dumbo; turn the shiny condos back into crumbling old warehouses. Please. Because what would New York City be without the creative class? And I don't mean the wealthy creative class, who are more about business than creativity. I mean the young creative people who dream, as I did, of being free in a place where creativity is celebrated over money.

haunted

snow in trees, cont'd
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

I have never before been haunted by a photograph that I have taken. What is it? Echoes of something, but I can not identify them.

red

My red painting stands in the corner, on the easel near the window, and defies me.

"Just leave it. Paint another one." Yoshi tells me.

march

"March the second wedding march march or rain, and do march, march marble, marbles march."

(Gertrude Stein)

wild

Even though this was taken on Hicks Street in Brooklyn, it looks like it might have come from some forest somewhere that I roamed as a kid on a cold grey day like this one.

snow in trees

snow in trees
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

When I went outside early this morning, the trees on my street were beautiful, their branches traced in delicate white outlines. I did not have my camera because I was walking Mabel, and it had not occurred to me to bring the camera with me. But later I went out again, and took the camera. But by then the snow was beginning to melt, and had formed odd clumps on the branches.

stress

Today has been extremely stressful. So much so that my equilibrium is threatened. Stress is bad for anyone, of course. For me, with my difficulties in mood, it has a dangerous affect. I will try to balance. I went to swim, but halfway through my planned workout the pool people turned on the water, ice cold, to fill it I suppose, which made it a little unpleasant. Nonetheless, I persevered, and at least for that time my mind was empty. Cold, but empty.

stress

Today has been one of the most stressful days in recent memory. This kind of stress is hazardous to my delicate equilibrium. Let's see...

doleur

Now at mid-day I am sitting, staring out the window--the snow has stopped--and badly wishing for a cigarette.

mabel

mabel
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Here is Mabel. It is harder for me to stay mad when I hang out with her. She's my stalwart, bossy companion.

march madness

"March at one march at once march at one march for once."

(Gertrude Stein: A BIRTHDAY BOOK)

Well, the weather forecast promised enough snow to close the schools. But unfortunately, my school is open. Tuesday is one of my two busy teaching days--I have classes four days a week, but only Tuesday and Wednesday are "full days", meaning I teach for about three hours Tuesday and four on Wednesday--and I was hoping that I would have the day to work on this piece that was supposed to be finished months ago.

And I am still mad but I am trying to relax. This situation is due to a houseguest who has been here a week. Anyone who lives in NYC probably has known a similar situation. If I had a bigger apartment it would be less of a problem, because I might have proper room for guests. Since I work at home much of the time it is difficult to have this situation, since the guest is here for large portions of the day. I need privacy and quiet to work, and thus I have been frustrated. I am particularly frustrated in the morning since that is the time when I do much of my composing and practicing, which is not possible when someone is asleep in the room where my piano lives. There are other circumstances which exacerbate my frustration, but I don't wish to list them, for doing so just incites my madness even more. So I am looking out the window at the falling snow and trying to let go of this feeling of frustration.