Yesterday morning, I let myself sleep in as a 'reward' for my a cappella debut with Rapid Transit the night before in what was, hopefully, a pretty successful concert. Sam filmed some footage that he wanted me to watch, but I just couldn't. At least in my memory, I can pretend that it was perfect, I was on key, and I stood up there with confidence and panache. I thought it best if I sat in a safe and secluded room when I go to watch (and listen to) the actual version of events.
So I sat at the kitchen counter and had breakfast, read through my various news sites and blogs, responded to some e-mails, and woke up. Then Sam cleaned the house and swept up enough dog hair from the floor to make at least one more Grr out of it, possibly even two, while I played the piano, found sheet music for Christina Perri's "Jar of Hearts," and accompanied myself while singing it, dying a little on the inside--I find the lyrics clunky ("You're gonna catch a cold / from the ice inside your soul". . .) at best, but the melody is catchy.
Then we took Grr out to our little walking trail up in Bernal Heights, came across a three-legged dog who had been hit by a car as a puppy. I wondered if he knew that his life was that much harder than the lives of other dogs, or if he was just as happy traversing over the slopes and dunes of Bernal with his three legs as Grr is with his four. Do dogs have the cognitive ability (curse?) to compare themselves to others?
By the time we got home and had lunch, it was well into the afternoon, and though I felt like the day had gotten away from me, I looked around--the pup was exhausted, the house cleaned, and I had played the piano for about an hour altogether. That's something, right?
After lunch, I sat down and finished playing through the second installment of God of War, in which players assume the character of Kratos, betrayed by the Greek gods of Olympus and now on a rampage to kill Zeus himself. I rarely ever finish video games. Most of the time, I either get bored or the difficulties of the game become insurmountable. But God of War, with its (relative) sophisticated storyline, easy-to-grasp controls, and a main character drawn to resemble any one of the muscle-bound soldiers of 300, never lost my interest.
Evening then rolled through, and we took Grr around the block in our neighborhood. Though he is still convinced that trash cans will suddenly up and chase him down, and he keeps a wary eye on plastic bags that float in the wind, his confidence has improved significantly from a few months ago, when he could barely make it out of the front door without tucking his tail between his legs and trembling against a wall.
To round out our day, Sam and I watched Insidious, a haunted-house story with possibly the best sound engineering I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing in a horror movie. Even the silence, when compared to the piercing shrieks of violins that made me jump several times, felt equally terrifying, filled with impending dread. At the end of the movie, I was exhausted from the prolonged stress the movie induced, yet I had some trouble falling and staying asleep afterwards.
Throughout yesterday, I semi-consciously (or semi-subconsciously, depending on how you look at it) decided not to write. No reason or justification; I just could not imagine stopping at any point in the day, holing up in the closet, and writing. So I let each hour pass, watched the light change from bright to dim, filled my day with activity, either purposeful or mindless, and did not once burden myself with this responsibility.
And it felt so good.
No comments:
Post a Comment