Tuesday 27 February 2007

Fast enough for me.

Hey.

Musical entries for a musical week.

It's a sick day, collectively, though Jacob has one meeting this afternoon. I'm spending my day in wool tights and a skirt and one of Jacob's giant sweaters and a bun that isn't going to last long because wisps are escaping all over the place like rats jumping from a sinking ship.

I hate to get dressed some days but I never know half the time who will show up on my doorstep so I'll never be the kind of girl who hangs out in yoga pants and a dirty shirt. Though I would love too, some days.

Today I'm working on a story for children. One about princesses and dreams. Oh, the ironies. For inspiration I was gazing at pictures of Kylemore Abbey, Lichtenstein, Burg Eltz and Neuschwanstein. All of my favorite castles from when I was growing up and I dreamed of places I had never been in this life and so my father took me to the library where I would spend hours pouring over books about Castles, traveling in Europe and medieval history until I had tracked down everything I may have seen in my sleep.

Princesses aren't made, they are born. Sometimes in the wrong lifetimes, perhaps. Sometimes in many lifetimes in a row. Sometimes they don't even know.

And sometimes they know all along.

This morning Jacob picked up his guitar and sang while the kids finished their toast. He played three notes and I recognized them instantly and I looked at him curiously and he stopped and put the guitar down again. Then he said the hell with it and he took it back up and played the whole damned thing and sang the words and I actually didn't implode or anything remotely frightening.

    It's time I sling the baskets off this overburdened horse
    Sink my toes into the ground and set a different course
    Cause if I were here and you were there
    I'd meet you in between
    And not until my dying day, confess what I have seen.

He was playing Horse. Then he played four other songs off Rift and very slowly the pain crept in around the edges of my heart and ached like a dull knife lodged in bone. Then very quietly he said one thing, and then went out and slammed the door and lifted it right off the hinges in the process, once again. He was back five minutes later with the box of CDs that he had put away last May.

My entire Phish collection, bless his heart.

Curse his fair and good intentions.

(Shhh. Not out loud.)

Dead people aren't going to decide what I want to hear, Bridget.