day 96: teatime

july 19.

jet lag kicks in and this girl feels lazy. i think i (may have) stayed in my jammies all day. sidepoint, when i think of staying in my jammies the whole day, i smile. because you know you don't have to deal with rude customers at work, busy hurrying about, or putting on one of those fake polite smiles that people come to expect of those with sunny dispositions. sometimes, we all just need a day to kick back, jammafy ourselves, and drink tea (because deep down, we know we miss our english teatimes).

day 18: music

first of all, completely unrelated to this post is the fact that you should never go to the grocery store at 10 p.m. because there are all sorts of "interesting" people hanging out in the parking lot, and second, you should never open the milk door at the supermarket tired. you just might almost hit yourself in the face, and flinch like an idiot, then look around to make sure no one saw.

okay. so now that i've got that all said and done. to today's post! i hope everyone had a wonderful friday! mine was quite long and i am happily home in my comfy snowman jammies now. that's right. i have snowman jammies. they are even fleece. i bet you're jealous. you should be. i am and i am the person wearing them.

anyhow, when i got home from work at ten fifteen, i really didn't want to go through the whole rigmarole of pulling the rebel out, thinking of a subject, booting up the computer, and sitting down to write an extremely boring blog post.

so i instead poured myself some nice sangria and stared for a while at the bulleted list i have pinned to my bulletin board (hey! maybe that's why they call it a bulletin board! random thoughts, by audrey). then i finally came up with the theme "music." easy enough. i love music so much. my computer houses about 7600 songs. and i used to play the piano. though before tonight i hadn't played since i was probably 19. i miss it, to tell you the truth. i started taking lessons when i was about eight, although my parents pulled me out after a few lessons, and i taught myself for about a year (i don't remember, who remembers at eight??) and then had lessons for a few years, until i would say, about 12 or 13. then i resumed the whole teach yourself thing.

so getting back to tonight. i thought that i would pull out the old sheet music and take a picture of my favorite song of all time (besides tuxedo junction, because that might be tied). fur elise. beethoven. he always amazed me. can you imagine, he was deaf and still composed these breathtaking songs? i can't. true talent. you don't find much of that these days, in my opinion.

i taught myself to play fur elise and practiced and practiced and practiced until my fingers ached to perfection. i had it down, and i could play some of the song from memory. i was proud of that.

then, when i was about 19, i stopped playing. life just....happened. and then, once in a while, i would sit down and attempt to hammer out a melody, though, by that time, the piano had become untuned and it was painful to play, because the notes from my memory were different and my fingers had developed musical dyslexia.

i haven't played in probably a year in a half. tonight i pulled the dusty book off the shelf, fully intending to prop it on the piano, shoot a picture, upload it, and go to sleep.

but then, i opened the book, and the familiar old, musty (not gross musty, familiar, comfortable musty. is there such a thing? i think so) smell wafted into my nostrils, and i was compelled to pull out the piano's bench, prop up the book, and begin playing.

i thought it would be a horrible disaster, that the notes would come out all wrong, and that i would give up after the first familiar chords.

but, no.

it didn't happen. i somehow made it through the whole song, just (well, not just, but similar) to old times. sure, the piano was out of tune, and my fingers stumbled a little to find the right positions on the fingerboard. but the music came.

tonight's picture is my favorite part of fur elise to play. well, i love the whole song. it is, you could say, hauntingly beautiful.

day 15: unfocused

I'll be the first to admit sometimes I lose my focus pretty easily. This doesn't usually happen with the shutter button on my camera, thankfully. But today, it happened. I was fully intentional on making day 15's theme "glass" but instead, I thought, hey, wouldn't it be neat to just unfocus the picture and see what happens? And I ended up kind of liking it! So here's the result.

What do you think? Feel free to comment below, or, if you'd like a little anonymity, just rate the picture below it. Thanks for the feedback!

Let's Talk About...

old times. Whenever I go to Portland Head Light, in Cape Elizabeth, ME, I think back to a time a long time ago. I think I was about six or seven. I don't remember, and that's not important. I remember visiting the famous light house with my family, right at sundown, in summer, when the golden light hits, just so. Maybe it's my memory that has turned it golden, maybe it was actually that color, who knows. I remember the green grass and Frisbee. I remember envying the kid in front of me, with light up sneakers (you remember those? When you stepped a bunch of red lights flickered. I never got a pair, but I was so jealous of the kids that got them. But then again, my pink Velcro sneakers were pretty awesome). Ahhh....the things you remember. Anyhow. I thought I would pay a visit there soon. Until then, here's a photo I snapped the time before last that I was there, in December 2010. I was going through some old pictures and was struck with nostalgia for the place.