So I've decided to start up another blog. Zumbieyogini1, 2, and 3 are also me but I forget the password. I'm basically over blogging about the everyday goings on of my life unless I feel some point to it, but so then what to blog about? Thing is, folks. I love... everything, except when I... hate everything. But usually I like a lot of stuff.
I'm a Spanish graduate student. Theoretically, I'm leaving the country in twelve days to spend nine months in Spain. But that's pending a visa. I've got my fingers, eyeballs, toes, and tongue crossed. 'Cause if that doesn't come, well, I've just quit my latest three jobs- Spanish teaching assistant, barista/music seller at Barnes and Noble, and Zumba/fitness instructor all over the Morgantown area to hang out in a trailer park for a year, halfway through my master's degree. But sometimes you've just got to take a chance and throw it all to the wind. I'm hoping the universe will be good to me again.
So... I may write about any number of things in these posts. I may write about piano, which I love to play, although poorly. (And no, I'm not being modest. I really don't play well naturally. I can practice a piece and get it going, but I can't sit down and just whip something out.) I might write about playing drums, because I used to be on drumline and still play djembe and bongos with the Morgantown Drum Circle. I may post some poetry, because I've been doing that since... a long time. Most of what I write these days is too personal to share, which is saying something because everything I've ever written is personal. I'm into fitness. I might write about lifting. I will say things like "super sets" and "circuits" and "pre-exhaustion." I might have something to say about Zumba... someday when I get that going again. I'm pretty into reading books in Spanish and English, and sometimes I can write an hour's worth of crap on a book I've read. I also reserve the right to burst into Spanish as I feel moved. Basically, I may write about anything on here.
For today... Joe occupied the futon last night. We got up this am and headed down to High Street where we found Tammy sitting all cute and lonely in her little white hat. We played some drums outside in the sweltering heat. I love drumming. Of all the things from high school (sorry to those I did theater with...), the thing I miss the most is drum line and djembe ensemble. I felt such a part of some great, moving animal that was outside and in us all cumulatively. And I get to taste that again at drum circle. Plus, it's just cool to go off the beaten path... to create the music instead of interpret it. What I mean is, in a band a lot of times you aren't really creating. You're reading something that's been already written, interpreting, and then recreating. With drum circle it's all very spontaneous, and the rhythm may be tired or it may be ragingly fast, but it can change. And you have to be so tuned into each other's rhythms due to that, ready to change on a whim. But you can choose to change or stay the same, or you can be the one to initiate the change. We had four of us today. I stayed pretty exclusively on my djembe. Joe stuck mostly with bongos. Tammy changed from djembe to dumbek (sp?... it's an Egyptian drum) to shakers, and a girl I just met and whose name I can't remember because I'm a spaz played djembe as well.
Came home and decided to have some iced coffee because I'm exhausted. While drinking that I played piano. I'm working on about nine songs right now, nothing new, but just stuff I want to have mastered when I leave in twelve days. I just want to record it and have it there so I don't forget when I get back that that's part of who and what I am. Because... I do forget. As much as I get out of playing the piano, I get busy during the academic year with reading, and writing, and grading, and lesson planning that I just... forget about it. And in those days I think... I'm an academic. But that's only half the story, and we've got to remember our stories. Plus, I'd like to post a few videos for my friend with whom I've always played piano. She's been gone from life for awhile, and mostly I miss playing piano together. Heart and Soul, this Hurry Scurry bit where we just race to see who can finish fastest, and so I'll stick the videos up online and she can have them. I'm working on "Only Time," "Everything I Do," "Colors of the Wind," "Poems, Prayers and Promises," "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The "Colors of the Wind" song is beautiful. I struggle with the difficulty, but the sounds are so rich and the movement is tangible. Certain chords make my heart hurt. Unfortunately, I am missing the last page of the song, and can't find the arrangement anywhere. I've checked a lot of online sources, and I know I seem really high maintenance and particular about this... but I have to have this arrangement. I feel too strongly about the way it sounds to go with another version. So I'll have to see if Liz (Mom's friend who originally lent me the book with the song in it several years ago) still has the book this weekend when I go in for Labor Day. The other one I really love is "Poems, Prayers, and Promises." God, that song makes me lonely for the people I used to read and write poetry with, for everyone I have ever had a soulful conversation with. I feel that these days it's all nuts and bolts and talking about anything invisible is just a little too fruity. I want someone to read me a poem, their poem, tell me their prayers or what would be their prayers if they were a praying person. Wish I coulda been alive for a John Denver concert. Love his music. I'm also playing "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and I reminisce every time to that one back to the summer I was thirteen and at camp, and we were riding on big wagons covered with hay bails behind a big tractor. I was trying to memorize the shadows on the mountain and being a generally weepy, weird little thing. Because who knows when any of us will be back again. And it was so beautiful at that particular time, so happy, carefree and safe with all those loving souls around me.
So it's been a music and friendship-filled morning and early afternoon. This coffee hasn't helped too much yet, but I'm off to the gym now to lift. I am trying to put on as much muscle as possible before I leave so that I have time to find a fitness center in Spain before I start to atrophy. And then, of course, I'll bitch about clothing companies not cutting the arm and legholes big enough, but that's my prerogative.
Tonight John and I will be Virginia bound. For the first time, I am actually going to get to see his field site where he's been doing research for the past two years. I'm rather excited.
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