lily-of-the-valley

I walk past you, early each morning.

You wouldn't notice---early, each morning, I stop and glance your way.

Since last Tuesday, a few of the lower buds have opened. Tiny, crisp, perfect white petals revealed.
But only a few have opened, the rest remain tightly furled, hiding away their secret crispness,
perfection.

I'll keep stopping. Waiting. Wondering.

When will the day come?


I wait, to pick only one of you.
Perhaps then, I could give you as my gift.
The sole offering.
Sweetness and fragrance, a
tiny
reminder of morning.
(Quiet walks in the morning.
With thoughts in one world alone)
You, little flower, are all I could conceive of to give.
(Asking nothing

in return.)

life post-wellesley

Today is the start of the last week of undergraduate classes. ever.

In the next two weeks, I have 4 papers and one take-home final ahead of me. Then my birthday, Berlin, graduation, and barbecues up the wazoo.

Naturally, I'm procrastinating the work and just dreaming about what life will be like, in under a month.

I've got some ideas.

Post-graduate Priorities (in no particular order):

• Hike. As in, at least a couple times a month in the summer, I want to do a real hike. Grab some friends, a tent, pack supplies, and do two day hikes in Vermont, NH, and Maine.
• Read. I'm 100 pages into Game of Thrones. One of five. I've also got a whole list of Russian novels to delve into, after I finish my Russian ideology and novel course. We didn't cover any Tolstoy, so I've got plenty of material.
• Coffee and tea. Outside. Barefoot. Sweaters. Sitting on the dock in Michigan. Sitting on the grass at my grandma's. Cafes in Boston. Anywhere, really.
• Cook outs. Complete with burgers, beer, and friends.
• Jam. Make so much music with people I like. Continue the morphological sillies project with Ellen (check it out on my youtube page)
• Spend time with family. Crafting with my sister. Chilling with my brother-in-law. Driving around and being crazy with my little bro. Walking the dogs with my mom. Getting coffee with my dad. Cooking for my grandmother and bringing her new wines to try. Listening to my other grandmother's stories. I actually am even starting to like my cousins more.
• Tan. I love my summer skin. 
• Beach trips. With girlfriends, frisbies, magazines. Fried food, corona.
• Nap. I love sleeping outside.
• Star watch. Northern Michigan, on the dock, in my sleeping bag. It's a symphony of shooting stars and Northern lights. All to myself.
• Sail. This summer, I want to really learn how to maneuver the sunfish on my own.
• Canoe. I'm the only one who really takes my grandfather's wooden canoe out on the lake. I can't wait for early morning and sunset canoe trips around the bay.
• Guitar and piano. I'm going to spend this summer learning only popular music on these instruments. Maybe I'll be able to play and sing a couple new piano tunes by the fall. Ben folds, Ingrid Michaelson, Regina Spektor---
• Quiet. Have time for writing, thinking, and praying. A lot has happened this year, this semester, this month. I feel like I should write a book.

Check out my pinterest page for some pretty pictures to go along with these dreams: click me

-lab

a recital, or two

yesterday, at 12:55 as I was walking down the hazard stairs from the quad towards the music building, in my concert dress, shoes, jewlery and with my hair done, i stopped. looked at the blue sky. breathed in the fresh air. and thought this:


i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes


and then the last two lines of my favorite poem:


(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


I had spent the morning in quiet preparation for my marathon recital (really, it was a monster program, I'm a crazy person). Waking up around 7:30 despite having gone to bed quite late, I finished the program and program notes, ate breakfast, and started to slowly get ready. I decided to wear my dress all day, because it was new and I wanted to feel comfortable in it. Then I headed to Jewett to warm up, to print everything out, and to put up signs. 


My favorite part of the morning was after I finished warming up. I thought to myself....time for 1)second breakfast and 2)curling my hair. I've written about doing hair before, but in the context of women all doing each other's hair, and how it's a special thing for us to be together. I have other associations with hair as well. It is always my time in preparation of something, to be alone. To relax, and be quiet. I took care of everything else, and then could go home, and spend 35 minutes just making my hair look beautiful and clearing my mind. After so many years of theatrical performances and concerts, the step where I get to to do my hair and makeup is always what soothes me and really gets me mentally prepared for the concert. 

A recital is unique. All of the pressure is on the soloist. The pianist, sure, has some pressure, but really the soloist is the one being showcased, and usually, judged by a music faculty. If the pianist messes up, it's not really a huge deal. In most every other kind of concert, music is created by a group of people working together. Chamber music, choral music, orchestral, ballet music, operatic. The load is shared, and each individual has to play its role within it to function properly. You can be assured that the audience isn't going to be just focusing on you the whole time. (Unless if you're Elizabeth Rowe of the BSO, then yes, I am NOT taking my eyes off you!). 

A recital is a mental and physical journey for the performer. The audience stares at you, and with the length usually around an hour, the program typically travels through a range of time periods, contexts, and emotional backgrounds. Like acting, it can be dangerous to put too much of yourself into the expression in the sense that, if it hits too real, it can distract you from the next section. And after each piece, you have to be mentally prepared for what is still to come.

Yesterday I spent the whole day in quiet preparation. The last 15 minutes I had to myself, I spent sitting outside on the curb (yes, in my dress...) listening to my ipod and waiting for my mom to arrive with the food. I have these new headphones that I'm obsessed with. They're actual big ones, they keep my ears warm, and they have great sound quality. The next step from these is the $150 ones that I wasn't willing to splurge for just yet. Those will be first on the wish list if I get a full-time job. I put on Brahms intermezzi and a Chopin nocturne and just sat there in meditation on the music, really thinking about the journey I was about to embark on with my flute music. The Reinecke Sonata and the Prokofiev Sonata have seen such troubled times in my life this year, I feel like they are as much my friends and companions as my a cappella group. I wanted to be sure to present them as honestly and accurately as possible, but to do so in my own unique way. I thought, how wonderful! To be given a beautiful day for such beautiful music. And a beautiful new dress, too.

That is what I love about classical music. It's old news---but every musician, even a little kid, can take it, live it with, and present it to you as something new. Something they've poured themselves into.

When you watch someone perform a recital, I think you learn a lot about them. You experience their endurance and their transformation from your friend in class to an artist with a whole secret life. My brother got it right in the introduction to his program for his violin recital a few weeks ago, when he said that violin was one part of his life he felt most of his friends didn't know. But it is a very important part of the jigsaw puzzle, maybe even one of the corners. I hope everyone who came yesterday feels like maybe they know me a little better. Wellesley folks hardly ever get to see me play flute (especially because I practice at all kinds of odd hours of the day). A few parts of each piece I feel like are...well, me in a nutshell. A bit fanciful and dreamy, but then very real, even harsh in that respect.

I guess this started about one topic and turned into another---

maybe I've just been listening to too much Mahler (the whole C# minor to D major symphony, wtf?!?)

-lab

a metaphor

On the phone with my dad the other day, I mentioned how I think someday maybe I'll try to be a writer.

I think about things in metaphors, phrases of speech, and vivid descriptive images. Is that normal?

So, the other day, Wednesday perhaps, my dad happened to buzz me right as I was figuring out a new metaphor for life. A replacement for the box of chocolates idea.

Life, to me, is more---a game of hearts.

Growing up, we always used to play hearts at my grandma's. Allow me to introduce the players:

Player 1: My father, James, the typical musician type, who forgets the rules in between every time we play, gets easily frustrated, and makes satisfying reactions when you do something bad to him.

Player 2: My Unlce Terry. Three words to describe him as a hearts player: quiet, calculating, stealthy.
He is kind and calm during play, but not to be trusted. Not even with a thirty or more year age difference between the players.

Player 3: My sister Alice, a confident and opinionated opponent, with a sturdy head on her shoulders. She'll burn you if she played her hand right, and she won't hesitate to double cross.

Player 4: Me, little Lucy. I was the youngest of the players, but once I learned to shuffle (during boring Easter Sunday the year before when I spent the entire day sitting at the dining room table practicing) my deal became aggressive and lethal, and I take after my uncle in the quiet stealth tactic.

We played altogether, at every family gathering once everyone else retreated to the television or the comfort of their beds. During play we would tell stories, laugh, and raid the fridge for more snacks. I can't remember anything with more fondness---

Allow me to return to my metaphor. Life, is just like this game we used to play. You come in, as you are, and you try to use your skills and abilities to your best advantage. But, you're dealt a random hand. Some rounds, you get the best hand, and you use it to your massive success. Other hands, you're given nothing in particular, and you reap just that, nothing in particular. You just carry on to the next hand, hoping for a change in fortune.

But the tricks are also inherent in the game---I've experienced being dealt the best possible hand, but then having one trick from an opponent ruin it all. It is the worst of blows; setting yourself up for a wonderful, lasting victory, only to release that one hitch in the plan foiled the whole thing. You're left in wonder; how could this possibly have gone wrong?

Yet, there is also the reverse miracle---being given the worst hand, and then without even meaning to, shooting the moon. Have you ever done that? I did....when I was 12.

I hope someday, I will do it again.

At the end of the game, it doesn't even seem to matter whether you blew everyone to smithereens or lost miserably. It's just the joy of having played and spent the time with people you love that seems to stay in your memory.

-lab

wednesday musings

You reach a point where it doesn't really matter anymore, what's happening or not.

I'm so sure; it's so real; it's only getting moreso, and my own self-assurance is all I need.

There is so much in this world that I can't control, but I can be the master of my own heart and mind, and that I can trust. I have this wonderful secret, the secret that changes everything, and daily I ask Him into my heart and into my mind. And we sit quietly and figure me out.

And then, well, for everyone else and everything external, I can look with peace and think, well, if it'll happen, it'll happen sooner or later. In my life, trusting God's plan for me has always been the best decision. At every turn, and with no regrets. Yes, I will be faced with decisions, but for now they aren't mine to make. I am a person of action, but I owe it to myself not to take any until it's the right time. And now, is certainly not.

So I wait. I know what I know, I feel what I feel, and I choose to walk outside on rainy days listening to music that makes me grin instead of making me cry.

That is how I would rather live life; skipping down streets and beaming back at the bright sun.

peace&love
lab

red&black

My final Tupelos Spring Concert---and the release of our new cd In the Red....I cannot find the words to express how proud and loved I feel.

If you care to share this love, please take a minute to watch part or all of the concert from Saturday night. It was magical for me and my best performance of four years singing with my best friends.

Here is my arrangement of "More Than Words", but click below to hear the rest:

click here to hear the full concert

-lab

rainy morning monday

After a weekend of perhaps 6 hours of sleep total, I let myself go to bed at 10 pm last night.

I woke up at 7 am to the most lovely sound one can wake up to---rain outside my window. It was only the second time this happened this semester. I remember the last time--perfectly.

Walking to work for my 8:15 am shift at the library, a wave a homesickness overtook me. It wasn't for Westford or Vienna, but for Michigan. For the cottage. For the nights when it rains and we go to the movie theater in Cheboygan, and driving home mom would always slow down on the back road. She couldn't bear to drive over any frogs hopping around the muddy, pot-holed dirt road that lead to our cottage. Alice and I would be forced out of the car to get the little guys out of the road. At first it drove me crazy, but when I became the one who had to drive, I found myself slowing down and waiting as well.

When it rains at the cottage, the normal pattern of each day gets interrupted. Life becomes a massive Michigan Rummy marathon, or a reappearance of the classic board game "Dweebs, Geeks, and Weirdos". Other times I would be coerced into a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of sailboats with my mom. Cookies are baked, tea is drunk by the gallon, and we're bundled up together in socks and sweatshirts to finish chapters of novels if we can escape the sweet lulling of naptime.

I remember a few mornings sleeping out on the dock in my sleeping bag (I hardly ever sleep inside if I can avoid it) when I woke up to the softest of rains caressing my cheeks. It was like a puppy nudging my face to be taken out, or a lover trying to let you sleep, but wanting so badly for you to open your eyes and reassure them that your existence is more than a dream. I eventually opened my eyes, made a pot of coffee, and went back outside to sit and be lulled and caressed by the sweet rain. At this point in my life, I sweetened my coffee with maple syrup--something I picked up from my crazy New Yorker friend at Interlochen.

....I think I'm ready for a vacation. I'm ready to have my week in Michigan with my family, and to be so happy. Last summer was the first summer I was sad in Michigan, and once is enough.

Rain, rain, please don't go away. Keep on coming down today. Only 18 days for the flowers to grow until my birthday.

-lab

birthday ideas

I read online about a woman who did 33 random acts of kindness on her 33rd birthday. I'm feeling inspired to make some plans for my own, since I don't have any plans yet. Ideas?

Here's the post, it's super sweet: http://mixmingleglow.com/blog/?p=1358

-lab

two poems for today

the first---

let it go--- the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise--- let it go it
was sworn to
                      go

let them go--- the truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers--- you must let them go they
were born
                 to go

let all go--- the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things--- let all go
dear
        so comes love

and the second---

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps fraction of a flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

-e.e. cummings, my favorite

lab

Sunday morning

Sometimes you don't realize how long you've gone without a break.

After a solid week of hitting the bed exhausted by 10 pm almost every night, I finally checked myself. Stopping to take stock of what's been going on, where my time has been spent, and what is wrong. Starting with my insane spring break of working 30 hours at the Helpdesk instead of relaxing at my grandma's, it only got worse. The next week was lost to recital preparation, the following week in a crazy mix of emotional turmoil and food poisoning, and this past in a daze of homework and exhaustion. I literally haven't blogged or written in my journal for two months, my room is a mess, and I've realized I don't even know where my favorite journal is anyway. Hopefully I can find it whenever I get around to cleaning my room.

But the worst part, is that I let myself get completely ahead of myself. I've jumped into something that I thought was right all along and suddenly I've realized it's not. Now I get to attempt to retrace my steps, wich means climbing back up the cliff I jumped onto. And the effect it could have on some people around me may be similar to what would happen if they were the one holding the rope, straining to pull me up. I'm upset at myself, because I'm going to disappoint some people I really care about.

Yesterday I decided that I needed to get out of Wellesley. I have Johnny's car for two weeks while he's in France and I looked up a few spots and asked a friend for suggestions. We both had the exact same thought, and I asked my more intense hiking friend to go, since it sounded like it would be a little difficult. We headed bright and early (10 AM haha) to the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, only a half hour South of Wellesley, and we both returned completely new. The trek was rough, very steep up and down, but the views of Boston, the clear blue sky, and the fresh smell of spring made it worth the effort.

And the best part, is that getting through that trail and abandoning myself to nature I was able to confront everything I've been too busy to think about for the last few weeks. I was hurt, it did suck, and I decided to just chill, but then got swept up in something new. But, truly, my heart did not heal. And did not move on. And, well, right now it doesn't have to. It can stay right here for a while. Here feels really, really good.

How wonderful, to explore somewhere new in the outside in the world, but also in the inside. How funny, that I could convince myself so strongly that my heart had changed. I ought to know myself better than that.

-lab