Times

Spoiler alert: This won't exactly be the cheeriest post. Apologies. Things seem to get easy, then tough again, switching back and forth between the two which might sound like good balance but which is in actuality really hard to navigate. I don't want to dwell on the weekend - Gale was here and was a good listener, and we encountered others who were also helpful and distracting for me while Craig went and had his explosive exciting Las Vegas weekend. I think I did alright finding my way around sans head chief Craig, which made me proud. But again, this post isn't about that. And it isn't about anything particular, in general. We just had a really rotten evening - one bad conversation followed by a mail bomb (um, not literally - I mean, more financial strain) and I didn't cook because instead, I came home kind of early from work and waited for Craig to come home to talk and decided to lift the old dusty guitar from its case. Such simpler times, being a high school guitar student, driving my beater car to the strip mall where my then-instructor Kara would transcribe my favorite Kristin Hersh songs by ear for me (in tab) and subsequently teach me how to better play them. So I played the only song I remember, "Country Feedback" by REM (easy chords) and listened to myself sing the words in my head and felt really, really cursing pains in my finger pads from the strings (!!!) and then noticed an old newspaper article about Kristin Hersh in the bottom of my guitar case. The article was called "Hook in Her Head" (titled after a song title of hers) and it was all about the devastating beauty that is Kristin Hersh, and it was labeled September 2001 and she was, then, 34. So now it's a few years later and she's a few years older, but is still contributing to my life in such large ways while not even knowing she is. And I think of how much she got out of her head, how many hooks, between late teens and 34 and now, and I remember the simplicity (and complexity) of sitting on the lawn (it always smelled like fresh grass) at Collins Living Learning Center in Bloomington, Indiana, strumming my guitar with my friends Matt and Jen, singing, having other musicians join us and contribute, and how simple (and complex) were those times. And I never claimed musicianhood. Not seriously. I could play okay and I could shake a mean fist at a fast rhythm guitar riff, and sing along, but all of that faded pretty quickly when real life started. But tonight, yes, it was fun to briefly cradle the guitar and to think far, far back to when things like bad economies, dumb mail containing financial aggravation, little tiny dish washers in tiny Manhattan kitchens that don't wash dishes as well as giant advanced suburban...hmmm, remembering how much I love living in Manhattan!...and strains on life in general that just feel chronic. But there are good things, too. Tonight, those just seem to feel far away.

*very very first song i ever learned on guitar. again, easy chords.

Sorry to be morose. There are just those times sometimes.