17 III 2002 - 17:15 - ater1

so, it's st. patrick's day, and i'm not wearing green, and so i deserve to be pinched. i invite you to do so - the contact is welcome, and perhaps it'll startle me into reality. life has been seeming sort of fuzzy around the edges recently, somewhat unreal. that may, however, be merely the rain on my glasses.

it was pouring this morning when i got up to go to the pre-concert rehearsal. i had a bad moment when my father hit the brakes in the car and my cello case flew into the seats and made a loud noise. it turns out the noise was only fiberglass on plastic, not wood snapping. but that was a bad moment. i didn't think the st. patrick's day parade was going to be all that wonderful.

then i got into rehearsal and things didn't seem so bad. i could sort of play my part (except for a sudden inability to count in 12/8) and the soloist was good. except, i was still unhappy with the way we sounded as a whole. the pieces had no cohesion, no real sense of direction or music. it's depressing because i saw the way it was last year.

it seems that many of the people who sit behind me have no conception of what it is to follow the beat of the conductor's baton. not all of that is their fault; i don't think his ictus is all that pronounced. but what was coming out of the f-holes was simply appalling.

so then i was going to go out to lunch with al. i always go to the "european deli," which incidentally is owned by armenians, which is tucked behind the opera plaza theater - where "trembling before g-d" is playing now, incidentally. but she had a spot of crisis in that her reeds stopped working, so she had to fix that. we got there and back in a good amount of time. stephen the tuba player came with us. he seems nice, although he talked much more to al than he did to me. i don't really know the brass or wind players.

the rain stopped before we had to go out and the good weather held.

the concert itself was sort of bleah. my buttons were buzzing against my cello during the entire schumann, but the person who sits directly in front of me said that he couldn't hear it, so it couldn't have been that bad. i came up with some really atrocious impromptu fingerings. again, no one noticed. fourth stand outside doesn't count for much.

the rachmaninoff was our best piece, i think. we stayed more or less with the soloist, whose technique was amazing. it sounded a good deal flatter and less emotional than it had when it was in rehearsal, but he was still very impressive. so congratulations are owed to him.

next was the takemitsu (all sorts of horrible - atonal slush that might have been nice if we'd had any conception of sound effects) and then came the debussy. the debussy is what worried me; it seemed pretty good, but it also seemed as if the orchestra had no direction. the loud endings had not much basis in what went before. i don't know. i think we really could have done better - but again, we have new players and a new conductor, so everything is up for grabs.

the best part, i think, was after the concert. mike, superbassman, was there, as were alasdair and dave r. it was nice to see them again and to see that alasdair remembered my name. olivia and elizabeth were there, too. actually, a lot of last year's cello section was there. i suppose "nice" sums it up pretty well, even if the most acknowledgment i got from anyone other than alasdair was the nod i got from mike.

sometimes i don't like it that i'm invisible. it happened this morning, too, when kina asked blake for the concert order. he looked confused, so i told her it was "schumann, rachmaninoff, takemitsu, debussy." she continued asking as if she hadn't heard me. blake got sort of annoyed - at least he heard me - and said that i'd just said it, then repeated it. i don't know if it's me, or the tone of my voice, or that i don't project enough. i can certainly be loud enough when i want to be.

it wasn't a grebanier concert, it turns out. actually, there was some problem with the ticket. when he suffers my presence i begin to tremble like a shivering rhesus monkey. something is wrong with me here. i need help. anna told me today that were i catholic i would have had to do so many penances by now - and she knows, of course, because she's jewish? not that she can't know, i just find it amusing. i find many things amusing. on occasion, it amuses me that i take myself as seriously as i do. i should begin to dismiss myself. why not? a part of the persons who matter to me does. it'd be a neat falling-in with the accepted order. neat, tidy, orderly. just as i'd like my life to be. emotions are such messy creatures. i can't help feeling bad, even though i want to. i don't mean to be hurt by your words, or anything. i don't mean anything by being snappy. sometimes i get irritated, too. i have a temper which flares too easily and which i try to control.

but in my house any sign of temper is a sign of disobedience and is met no longer with punishment, a lecture, but with quiet disappointment - only a few words at most.

sometimes that's the worst.

so i'm sorry if i'm not very demonstrative, if i prefer to retreat to a room to cry, if i've become unused to the mechanics of sympathy. i have a hand in my development, too; this is what i've done to soften the blows a bit.

but i do feel, as much as i want to deny it. i am at heart a creature of emotion, not reason. know that.

know that i can be cloying because, for me, that search for approval, that cosmic affirmation of "you're right," that's not completely left me yet. i don't think it's even begun to.

i tell myself i have something to offer the world, to offer that someone: but on days like this, it's hard to believe in any goodness of mine, in any purity in this imperfect vessel that i am. i tell myself i could be good, i am worth something, i can make someone smile, and then what feels like the world lashes against me and i forget the offering i have in my hands, its ribbon trails the ground, forgotten. i tell myself i will not be overly melodramatic - but look at the last few paragraphs for a refutation of that.

i'm sorry the entries are becoming like this. i start out happy and then a cloud descends over me and here i come, right where i've started. i hold my hands most days as if i'm not sure what i can do with them, or even that they know any skill at all. the finest boor's hands you ever saw. i will not change the world but i have some hope that i will do some good in someone's life and it seems i am only destructive.

look at al. we're like an addiction, each for the other. my tongue is exceeding sharp around her and i cannot bear it because she. comes. back. remember heathcliff and isabella in wuthering heights? for both of our sakes i hope the death-wedge for our friendship will not be too hard. she doesn't trust me. i mock her. i can understand it and yet i continue to mock her. i am a terrible, terrible person, vile and cruel and wicked.

and in glowing terms like that, it's no damn wonder no one can see past the lattice i've erected around myself as a hiding-spot because i don't think i or they particularly care to run around it.

self-execration is fun. let's continue. my increasingly odd relationship with tiff. which has degenerated this year and not just because i seem to be more of a bitch. we both see to the other's vulnerabilities and make the other feel terrible. it's different than it is with al because with al, it's always inadvertent when we hit upon each other's weaknesses, it's superficial mockery. tiff and i can see in large part what hurts the other because we're motivated by many of the same forces. what was a reason for closeness last year has turned into a deadly weapon pointed straight at our hearts. i can tell her everything but i fear the reaction "why don't you just change it?" maybe i really do want it at some subconscious level but maybe i didn't want to hear about that just yet. i cannot bear everything at once.

i have no screens with her. that is fatal; it would seem that my reserve is all or nothing and i wish there were gradations because i do not intend to wound her. (it can be said i do not intend to wound anyone. however i am a spiteful person with low tolerance with those i perceive to be fools, including myself at times, and i do often try to hook those with a barb.) i say things without thinking and then i wish i could take them back except once it's been said, the damage has been done.

i have entirely too much tolerance for myself at times. it might be easier if i completely loathed myself; however there is some of the old self-love left and that allows me to console myself, allows me to sit back without doing much to change. that's something else i don't like very much about myself.

there is a hint that the world revolves around me; i try to ignore it because i know it is not true, but something tells me i am not applying it well to my life, to my conversations, to everything i do.

god damn me. except, i think that's taken care of whether i tell him to or not.

so my sister walks by and tells me to unbutton the top button of my shirt because i "look so anal-retentive." that's as may be, but i am incredibly anal-retentive about some things and part of that is from what you told me as a child. please don't complain now because i'm not relaxed. i tried to and it was killing me.

my GOD mother i did NOT just mean to snap at you like that but when you say everything is a chat i want to hit myself against the wall. actually, i want to hit myself against the wall on many occasions. things seem much realer then, when my body knows them. it's a way for me to get this frustration with myself and my anger at what seems to be everything and everyone just out before it poisons me.

on the whole i don't think the anger or the self-mortification is healthy. but if it's a choice between the two i'll take the latter. it comes from the latin which in its literal sense means "to make death." how singularly appropriate. things i touch carry my venom with them.

it's been an hour and i don't feel any better about myself or the world. i think i'll go now.

the body-reality connection - overall not too healthy but it also means i'm easy to please. days when it's going well i will press against friends who understand (the need for touch if not the reason) in order that i might impress upon my skin's memory that day.

it doesn't work but i continue in the hope that it will.

touch can be incredibly friendly, too. threatening and maybe that's why some boys cross to the other side of the hallway when i pass, arms around each other. you've seen it. you see it on the television after football games when they pat each other on the ass. i'm just isolated.

maybe someday it'll work. maybe someday through my devotions and through some penance i might make myself whole.

maybe.

ater, atra, atrum 1st/2nd declension adjective gloomy, dark