hockey.sticks.

I’ve been delving into the 665 new songs on my iPod by putting the “Recently Added” playlist on shuffle.

A song called “Hockey Skates” came on. I started imagining that I could learn it and play it at the next rooftop shindig. The line, “I am tired of playing defense, & I don’t even have hockey skates…” caught my ear. I thought that if I were a real musician with stage presence who could talk and play and offer funny ramblings as interludes, I would say something like, “That’s a lie because I do have skates, but they’re just roller blades that I got for $5 at a flea market in California…”

Then I started thinking I left my hockey stick in Pennsylvania. Where is it? In the basement? In the barn? I’ve never actually played hockey. My dad made the hockey stick for me out of the sheets of tight-layered wood that he picked up from the dumpster at an old job. He’d bring home truckloads of it, and we used it to make anything and everything, including a hockey stick and the floor my tortoise’s mansion.

With two daughters, a hockey stick seems like an unlikely thing for a father to make. But we had bunnies that we kept in little habitats at the bottom of the hill. Their homemade plywood & chicken wire cages sat between the barn and the old school bus that we used as a storage shed. The barn had a cement patio in front of it about 7x10 square feet that would freeze over in winter’s ice.

My sister and I would trek down the hill with a bucket of hot water that we would pour over the bunny’s water bowls that had frozen solid. We’d then find the best sticks from the edge of the woods. We’d take the frozen water blocks and use them as pucks and hit the ice block across our tiny cement arena. It wasn’t hard to get a goal, but in a one-on-one, the small play space suited our ‘teams’ well.

We’d play until our noses ran so fast we couldn’t keep up or until the ice blocks were so bulked in snow that they wouldn’t move or until the ice blocks were nothing but a few chips or until the dark swallowed our surroundings and left us there under the barn light. I had to anticipate when Katlin would start running—she would always beat me up the hill, sometimes holding the door shut behind her when she made it inside, so that I was in the cold dark alone, just long enough for me to cry or start hollering up at the living room window for our parents so she would let me in.

We’d hang our snow clothes or wet clothes and boots in front of the wood burner, and heat two of the race began: up the stairs out of the basement. Only she couldn’t hold that door shut, with our parents right there, so she would just slam it behind her.

We were a funny pair: her the good older sister, doing anything to get away from me, the whiny little.

So all of this, just from the line of a song.

We’ve since grown much, and for the most part, reconciled. I bought the skates while visiting her. We were out for our first rare chance at sister time since she married last November.

Now that the cold is making its way into Seattle and Katlin is back in Pennsylvania, well, winter is just different. The dark is different. Seattle hardly even sees snow, if at all. The bus is now gone from our yard, and both tom-boyish daughters are gone from the house. The bunnies are gone too—we let them go into the wild after eight years of up and down the hill to feed them.

My mom is home for the next few weeks, staying off her feet after surgery. My aunt lives just up the road (as does most of my mother’s family), but she has been going over every morning and helping Mom around the house and caring for her.

Growing up, I thought my sister and I would fight forever, that we’d always be rivals. In college, I thought we’d always be best friends. Now, I don’t know what we are: we’re both just getting by and loving and hating each other from afar and trying to figure out where we land on this big spinning sphere. For now, I’m West, and she’s East, but I like to think that someday, we’ll be able to see each other’s homes through the naked trees in winter, and we’ll take care of each other and drink tea and play cards and laugh about being kids who played hockey with ice blocks and sticks. 

Like a Wagon Wheel

I was walking to pick up my car from the shop. I had my headphones in and flicked my thumb up the small screen of my iPod. What to listen to...I paused on Old Crow Medicine Show. Why not?

Of course, I was naturally inclined to scroll  downdowndown to Wagon Wheel. Play.

_______________________________________

I am sitting in the Beehive, listening to Dylan August play at a fundraiser coffeehouse. Dr. Amy sits next to me and makes a small joke about the song. I nod my head, and Jonnell hums in smiles.


I am driving from Pennsylvania. I lightly hum along with the car stereo. It is near midnight on Christmas day, and the dark hills of Kentucky swallow me in their climbing curves. Katlin is sleeping in the backseat as my mother sits next to me, trying to keep her eyes open.


I am walking around the house. Sam is walking around the house. We are getting ready to go hiking. As we pass each other, our bare feet on cold tiles, we don't even look at one another; I hear him murmuring the words as I let the melody hold in my throat.


I am sitting in a bright, familiar dining room. Martin plays guitar. I thwack terribly on a pair of spoons. Elias pops a shaker in the air. We don't all agree, but we are smiling. Kim and Julia join harmonies. We can feel the summer clouds pumping humidity into the windows.


I am sitting around a campfire in Northern California, singing with my sister and now brother-in-law. We try our best to harmonize, but the notes seem as far away as the stars that peek through the trees: smoke, fire, song.

_______________________________________

Funny how 3 minutes and 51 seconds can go so far away. I can feel the road's curves, the solid tile, the coming rain, the scent of campfire. Where are we all now?

East to Southwest. East to Northwest. North to South.
People out here measure location quite specifically with the cardinal directions. The streets are lined with signs reading, "No Parking West of Here" as if it were so clear which way that was. My friends here say they can always tell where they are because of the Sound. The Sound is always West.

Arizona, Pennsylvania, California, Washington.
Sometimes I wonder what is in-between. I've driving along the main roads there and back and back again. I've flown over the wrinkled hills and cookie-cutter fields. I know the in-between is there.

Sometimes that in-between has a way of disappearing. I have been grounded in Washington for a bit now, and some days, it's hard to remember that there is a small town called Waynesburg or that there is a big blue house tucked in the woods on the top of a hill in Westmoreland County. It's hard to realize that on that hill, the vine-coated and rusting "Handicap Pedestrian" signs no longer apply. It's hard to let it sink in that in the cleft of the road's bend, a young man in a wheelchair no longer lives. And a tall, skinny girl with short, straight hair, wandering eyes, and itchy feet has grown and fled to a foreign life.

On top of my new hill, Queen Anne, I see mountain and water. The peaks and crevasses never seem the same, yet they are somehow, day and day again. I spend my time going up and down the hill. The wave of my life, undulating in tides of hills: Mamont, Waynesburg, Seattle. Each is bigger than the last, and I wonder when the soft white cap will form a breaker. Which soggy patch of sand will swallow me in high tide?

And those 3 minutes and 51 seconds have taken me farther and closer and re-circling through the patterns of here and there.

I was walking to pick up my car from the shop, and suddenly, the whole world didn't seem so far away.

Thinking About Contentment In Creativity

A big personal goal for this new year is to be content.

From Wikipedia: "Contentment is 'acknowledgement and satisfaction of reaching capacity'"

One of my favorite parts about college was the opportunity to do everything that I loved all at once. I got to write and make art and lead. Of course, beneath each of those is a series of sub-groups.

Write:

• Poems
• Essays
• Long nonfiction
• Blogs
• Journals

Art:

• Paint: acrylic & watercolor
• Sketch: charcoal & pencil
• Throw Clay
• Knit
• Play guitar & bass
• Sing

Lead:

• Organize
• Schedule
• Manage

My new job takes care of leadership quite easily. My current role is a project manager: it's really my thing--a quality that I've always seen as a bit of a contrast to my want for creativity (though my personal vision of creativity is quite structured as well). I love to gather ideas and make them happen. Sure, I get some art and some writing at work: visual acuity is a must in PowerPoint (which is actually really fun) and I write a lot of technical stuff (emails, slides, notes, etc.), but none of that fully satisfies my thirst to create.

I can't quite figure out what it was about college that made the days feel longer. I could accomplish so much it seemed. I could go to bed at 11 or 12 and sleep in until 9 and still have enough time in the day to go to class, read like mad, write, do homework, and on and on down the list. 

As it is, I seem to spend every moment engaged in activity. I read on the bus commute to work. I have focused work all day (which passes so quickly; I think the second-hand is broken). I read on the commute home. When I get home, I sift through a variety of options. During the winter/holiday knitting season, I spent much time on that. 

It all just comes in waves: sometimes I'll feel really musical and learn several new songs for guitar, but then I might not play again for a week or two. 

Sometimes I'll just want to be outside and go hiking and not be able to sit in my room with a book. 

Sometimes, I can't do anything until I paint--it might even be a part of a painting, just enough to get through the surge. 

Sometimes I can't even sleep until I write.

I've learned that all of these things brew. I may not do a painting for several months, but during that absence of the act, I think about it in the back of my mind; I mentally paint the same thing over and over until it finally pushes out onto paper or canvas. I write constantly in my mind, but such a small percentage makes it to the page. It's all very fluid.

It's great; it's really great. I feel super blessed to have such wide-spread interests and activities that I whole-heartedly enjoy, to have such a lifestyle that can support these things. I do not know the meaning of "boredom."

Nevertheless, it's so frustrating. I want to do everything at once, be everywhere at once. The result: I dabble into pieces of everything in small quantities. My writing life has suffered because I have wanted to knit. My music has suffered because I've wanted to read. It all swirls in a pitcher of creativity. When you pour a glass, you never know what you'll get.

The glass is full. The flavors are luscious. 

I am constantly in fear that what I do is not enough. Nothing ever seems enough to let me be content. I don't know who I'm trying to please. I just want to feel full and happy and be satisfied with the life I have chosen. I feel so submerged in that right now that it makes me worried that something terrible will come of it. Can such a general good feeling really exist?

I hope so. 

Rediscovering my Voice

During my days of sneaking around here at my apartment, I realized that I haven't sung in a really long time. I play guitar sometimes in my room, but even then, I don't fully sing. I don't even sing in the shower here! I do the quiet, shy singing like I did until I finally discovered in college that I do have a voice that can be loud, and it feels great!

So I've been timidly humming about my apartment. I usually sing a lot in my car, but I've hardly driven anywhere lately; why would I when I can walk everywhere? (That's another concept that I'm still getting used to here!) And there was the solution--walking.

I went to a job interview today, but it was in the afternoon, so I had to take a different bus than in the morning, and this bus didn't go as far as the morning bus, so I had a good trek ahead of me. (The bus schedules are ever-changing and confusing.) I plugged my headphones into my ears and put a catchy playlist on my iPod--there was a lot of Regina Spektor because I get really into her songs.

At first, I was in the bulk of downtown. There were people everywhere, and the nervous part of me said, "What if they hear you and you sound terrible?!" I started timidly humming along. Every once in a while I would throw in some words, but I definitely made sure to hum parts that could be misunderstood to passersby: all the "love"s and "die"s and heavy words that could mean a lot and be a little awkward to hear someone chanting in passing.

I had a fast pace going, stepping with the beat, swaying a little, yet still maintaining my quiet façade. At a street crossing, a man caught up to me; he also had headphones in and was bouncing to his own private beat. Then the words caught up with his music, and he started swinging his arms and loudly rapping along. He looked straight ahead and didn't care that all of these people on the street were looking at him funny; didn't care if he messed up a few words that ran together; didn't care that his volume was awful loud for a streetwalker. Seeing him, I smiled--that's how I want to be.

I decided that it would be easier to do on the walk back because the walk started in a less-populated area before making its way to the heart of downtown. By then, I would be groovin' and too into it to care what people thought...right.

I bopped my head from side-to-side and swung my arms a little, and I let myself get into it. Regina Spektor again, with each line building on the last: "This is how it works: you're young until you're not; you love until you don't; you try until you can't; you laugh until you cry; you cry until you laugh, and everyone must breathe until their dying breath. No this is how it works: you peer inside yourself; you take the things you like and try to love the things you took, then you take that love you made and stick into some-someone else's heart, pumpin' someone else's blood..." It's my favorite part of the song, and I always get into it, so much so that I even sing the "uh oh!"s in the last chorus. How fun!

As much as I would like to say that I maintained my voice well into downtown, I am not as bold as I like to think. I'm nervous, jittery. I care what other people think even if they aren't thinking anything at all! It's selfish, really, but it's something that I'm working on. I can't help but notice the funny glances in my direction though. (Is it so bad to be weird?!) But I always shake and forget what I'm supposed to be doing when I start to perform. That's why singing and walking feels like such a solution--I can turn what I love into a part of me instead of constantly feeling like I have to do it right and impress people. Maybe it's been that way all along, and I'm just now starting to see it through a brighter lens.

However, walking and singing does have its setbacks. For example, the uneven sidewalks of Seattle are not kind. They are not flat or even or without cracks and dips. As I stepped in-time and let my eyes look straight ahead, I failed to see the bursting pavement from tree roots and did a little two-step trip forward before swaying back to catch myself--one of those, no one saw that, right? trips where I didn't quite fall so much as lose balance.

Who can have it all together? I'm not totally composed, but I glad to have rediscovered my voice and to be consciously working on it and to be letting it out. I'm not one who can live happily quietly.

Blackbird

Because my dad likes when I play this song...

Song: Blackbird (cover, unedited)

Original Artist: The Beatles