Flowers in my hands. . .

I remember a funeral. My great-grandfather’s when I was ten, maybe eleven years old. I close my eyes and all I can see in my mind is the vibrant, almost violent burst of flowers. They bloom in the small church’s sanctuary which groans in agony as its simple white walls are filled mercilessly with those paying their respects. They come to pay their dues. They are obligated to weep so that in time someone will come and weep for them, turning the soil over, returning dust to dust and dirt to dirt.

I don’t mean to invoke cynicism or sarcasm. It’s just that’s purely how it is. The mind is driven by utterly human impulses, one of them the simple fear of death. This fear becomes a great web of heart-breaking gravity that catches us all and forces us to come stare at the dead. It forces us to break our backs and submit ourselves, unwillingly, to the bleak, stoic certain unknown that is blocked by a veil of superstition and faith. Only with our own passing will that veil be dropped, revealing the hidden secrets of the universe.

And so they come unwillingly. No one wants to confront death.

Even there as a child, I could tell the difference between those truthfully mourning and those only pretending to mourn because it was expected. They may have wanted to shout and laugh, be outside in the sunlight but their inexplicable reverence kept them silent. Their fear of death snipped their tongues from saying what they truly felt. They sat poised, hanging on every word of the eulogy, trying to do something to compensate for their apathy. As a child I was one of them, and only now as an adult can I say what I truly felt that day.

But back to the memory…

The sweet odor of late August heat and the unmistakable scent of lilies boiling in the afternoon sun is all I can smell. I think it is poetic, if not expected, that there is life bursting everywhere in a celebration of death. The flowers are nauseating, but for the life of me I cannot tear away their beauty. I cannot stop thinking that in a matter of time, they like all of us, will wilt and die.

Only a child could think of something so absolute.

My great-grandfather had died from complications of a stroke. It wasn’t a quick, seamless death, but one that was long and degrading; spanning what I think was 6 months. The type of death that was much more painful for those watching than the actual dying. The horrible, terrible sickening death of watching your husband, your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather become someone else, someone foreign until finally he gives way to the final euphoric release of mortality.

Heavy, heavy shit, that no eleven year old wants to think about.

Pardon me

I've been rather neglecting of this little blog; be prepared for about 5 posts today...

I've also been extremely nostalgic and writing down every memory I can...well...remember.

the rain in spain stays mainly in the plain

I love the rain. It is the best type of precipitation. Heck, it’s my favorite weather period. I think I should move to someplace like Seattle where it rains all the time. The only catch is that would require me leaving Virginia, and good god, I love Virginia. We basically kick ass. We were the first colony. We’re named after Elizabeth the first. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Monroe, Woodrow Wilson, and a lot of other really important Americans were Virginians. We also have the best dialect, hands down. It’s southern, but not ignorant sounding. It’s very smooth and elitist, rounded and drawn out like honey. It’s much better than that flat crap they speak further south. I don’t have that strong Virginian accent any more though; eight years of theater and studying Romantic vowels has pretty much killed any of the natural ease with which I used to speak. Now I speak in an almost untraceable Mid-Western, linear and proper like a newscaster with just the slightest hint of something British.

My father though, still speaks with that old Virginian, at least amongst certain circles. He has the uncanny ability to unconsciously change his dialect to match whomever he’s speaking to. I wish he wouldn’t do that. I want him to speak his Virginian all the time.

But again, my linguistic inklings distract me. . .

Where was I? Oh, the rain.

I love the rain. So many poignant things have happened to me while being in it. I’ve found God and love in the rain (and yes, both DO exist, of that I’m sure). There’s something so primal and spiritual about the rain. It’s something that you really can’t experience in anything else: the feel of the water on your skin, the frigid but gentle beating of each drop as it rolls down your cheek and the backs of your hands, washing away everything, making you feel invisible as if you had become part of the rain and for that brief, wet moment you were something more than just flesh and blood. It’s like you’ve become fully human, you’ve crossed out of the roaring, screaming chaos that is this existence into the harmonic, perpetual peace of nature that like everything good, is so illusive and fickle with us.

Yeah, rain is great. . .

uh-oh

Tomorrow is off-book day for Crucible, basically I'm going to be murdered by my director...

Thatcherisms

In my last post I refered to Margaret Thatcher in the past tense. Obviously, I realize she is still alive. I was refering to her administration, not her personally.

Thanks, and (like always) covering my ass!
Jake

a Schroeder you are not...

We all have our own bêtes noires petites, non? Our pet peeves, we all have those little things that drive us up the wall of our wits for rather irrational reasons. Well, I have a few of my own, each as weird as the other like the incorrect use of the subjunctive "were" or Jude Law's accent in Cold Mountain (well,what the hell, Jude Law in general is as annoying as a Hardee's commercial).

But perhaps the most poignant, most vexing peeve of all, is when someone who clearly has no musical training whats-so-ever, tries to play the piano. I detest it. I despise it; and nothing else can make me as mad or as jittery or as nervous as having to sit there and listen to it. I hate for someone to just blindly bang away at the keys incessantly, and yes, I am talking about you, Justin Schultz.

I cannot stand it; I really don't know why, Justin. Perhaps it is because my mother plays the piano quite well and I was raised in a household listening to her humbly immaculate command of the ivory. She programed into me at an early age that there is no sin worse than to "bang on a piano". I cannot play the piano but I still hate for someone to bang on it. I don't do it and I think it should be illegal for anyone else to.

So, Justin, please listen to my plight. You're a great guy but you've got to stop letting your fingers play a game of drunk rugby on the fucking keyboard before I rip my hair out. I promise it's not you. Margaret Thatcher could sit there and do it and I would still become infuriated, bite my nails and turn my ipod up so loudly my ears bleed. And we all now that I adore Margaret Thatcher, that saucy fox, even if she was a dirty conservative.

So, Justin (and Zack Jones, because you too have been known to do it ) please take from this blog that I really really REALLY hate it when you engage your hands into painful musical entropy on the piano. In fact, don't even touch the piano anymore. Next rehearsal I'm making the piano COMPLETELY OFF LIMITS. I can't take it anymore.

Unless of course, you're Natalie George, you play beautifully, and may do so as much as you like.

Bread and Circi (cause I know my proper Latin plurals)

Today at Rustburg, which is steadily becoming a thorn in my side, we had a pep rally.

I used to love pep rallies, and if this one would have been in more capable hands, I probably would have liked it too. Unfortunately a group of rather useless individuals was in charge of this said rally and it went nowhere and I was again reminded of the idiocy of my generation.

A side note: I hate the word rally. There's something too Nuremburg about it.

Back to the post...

I don't want to imply arrogance, I really don't. I just hate those that refuse to live up to their potential. Half the people in that gym watching that rally have no idea or plan for the future, which is imminent for us seniors. We are going to be graduating in four months and the majority of students in my class yet to have formulated some type of post-secondary education or job plan. It seems sad to me that they really have no idea as to what they're planning on doing.

It makes me want to help them, but I know that I couldn't say anything that hasn't already been said or avised. But, my god, there they are, standing on the brink of something great, something new, something utterly maelable to those who would just put their hands down in it, and yet they still hee and haw like a great multitude of Caesarian asses, only for them there is no bread and circuses.

I feel helpless for my fellow second-semester seniors. I have no place to pity or judge them, but still I cannot help but feel the utmost sincere helplessness for them. I just want to help them, but I don't think I can.