I ruined my piano

I spilled (well, a cat spilled) a large amount of liquid onto the right-hand side of my piano, and now the high keys are stuck.

Honestly, I haven’t been playing. I haven’t played anything in months, and haven’t done serious practicing in years. Shamefully enough, the piano bench is being used as a TV stand right now.

When I was a kid, my mother played the piano occasionally. I always fussed at her, demanding she teach me to play, but when she’d try to start at the beginning, I’d get impatient and refuse to learn. I didn’t want to learn to play the piano, I wanted to learn to play music.

She gave up after a half a dozen attempts to teach me. When I interrupted her yet again, this time while she was playing Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” she handed me the music, jabbed at the starting key, and told me to teach myself.

I did.

It was a bad lesson to learn at age 5 or thereabouts, and it has had repercussions throughout my life. I don’t learn things from the beginning. I don’t set a foundation of good habits and the basics.

It’s a failure of imagination. I can’t see how the building blocks eventually make a building.

I haven’t been playing. My sheet music of “Clair de Lune” had dust on it, and not a tiny sprinkling of it, either, so I get to have the embarrassment of poor housekeeping on top of failure to practice.

So, I can either look at my history and say, “Too bad I didn’t put the building blocks into place,” or I can say, “Good thing I didn’t let a few scales and finger exercises get in my way of playing Beethoven.”

In the mail

A few days ago, I got a letter from a man who can walk now, thanks to Steve’s organ and tissue donation.

A while back, I got a letter from a woman whose sight was restored.

Being an organ donor was really important to Steve. He believed in medicine, had a trust in it that I could never manage. I can recognize the advances without really feeling like most of the people in the field we ever encountered had much of a clue.

Today, I got the explanation of benefits from the Medicare coverage Steve had at his death. The bill was fourteen hundred dollars to start with. After insurance, it comes to about 80.

It’s hard to find the will to pay it when I knew he was dead before the ambulance arrived. I didn’t want to know it, but I knew it. Then I drove myself to the hospital in the wake of the ambulance and kept thinking, “I hope he’s dead. I hope he’s dead.” He had been gone for so long that any resuscitation would have been a nightmare, not a miracle.

Steve healing the blind, healing the lame and the halt, that’s my miracle. With all my ambivalence about doctors, thank you for that miracle. Thank you for turning my loss into joy. I’m claiming a little of that joy as my due.

The Penguin that Hated the Cold

As a kid, one of my favorite books was The Penguin that Hated the Cold, the story of, strangely enough, a penguin who hated the cold.

In the conditions where other penguins thrived, Pablo the penguin was miserable.

I was reading Mary’s blog the other day where she says “Like many creative sorts I am at my best when I’m suffering from some kind of angst.”

Like Pablo, I fail to thrive where the others of my kind do. Angst makes what talent I have shrivel up like a flea exposed to diatomaceous earth.

I need something resembling peace when I write. I need something resembling joy.

Last night, I had dinner with my brother-in-law’s dad who called me his favorite poet. Never has that word felt less apt than now.

Strangely, I had finally gotten to the point where I was comfortable saying “I am a poet.”

Ooh, that smell

One of my bedspreads is too big for my washer. I didn’t discover this until after buying it and washing it and the result not being too hot, so I was stuck with it.

I decided at 10 tonight that I was really bored and I’d take the bedspread to the laundromat the next town over. I had my book. I had some detergent. I had dollar bills.

When I got out of the Jeep, it hit me. That smell. The smell of laundromats.

It’s one of my favorite smells. Maybe it’s because I don’t tend to use detergents with scent or fabric softeners. Maybe it’s because I’m so often cold. Maybe it’s just some weird quirk in my brain. Whatever the cause, the smell of a laundromat is ambrosial.

It took about an hour. It cost three dollars and fifty cents. The bedspread is now clean. But the bedspread is beside the point. The bedspread may from now on just be my laundry beard, as I disguise my sick, perverted love of laundromat aroma in practicalities.

Julie Carter. Dream job? Laundromat attendant.

It’s a big world. I can’t be the strangest thing in it, right?

Being denied my name

I stuck a toe back in the water of poetry boards with “Bitten.” I got good feedback and I also got someone complaining that my username on that board was “jcarter.”

I considered the source–someone I sincerely despise–and moved on. But now, a week later, I find that I’m suddenly pissed off. Why?

I’ve earned this name. This name is what I’ve gained and what I’ve lost and what I’ve risked and what I’ve sacrificed.

It’s mine.

It’s me.

Now, I hope I can stop dedicating even the limited head space I’ve given this annoying thought in the past few days.

I might be a bully

I’ve posted pictures of some of my sister’s crochet work. When a new store opened in town that sells the work of local artisans, I suggested she should go and see if they would carry her stuff. She was a bit hesitant, so I said I would go and go I went.

They’re interested.

I really am not sure that my sister had any intention of following through, so this might be me being bossy. Sorry, sis.