Back in the Saddle

Last night, I blew the dust off my trumpet case for the first time since my dental adventures began and I hauled my carcass to a rehearsal. This rehearsal was filled with actual musicians with actual musical abilities and the sounds that they made were emphatically, undeniably musical.

Me, not so much.

However! I kept the horn on my face the whole time and some of the notes I played pricked my memory and waggled their little fingers at me: "Don't you remember? We used to do this all the time. We were a team, and sometimes when the moon was full, we were good. Together, we were the music."

Regardless of what actually came out of the bell, my mind swished around the old notes, the ones from before that were sweet and full and brilliant. Before long, I was drunk with it, swept right back into the way it used to be when my horn and I spent every day together, back when we were the music.


It got me thinking about some of the people who have experienced homelessness that I have had the privilege of working with over the last few years. Some of them survived on the streets like stray animals for decades, longer than the scant three I've been on the earth, and they did it without fanfare, without certificates and trophies emblazoned with "Best at Staying Alive", without so much as a blink from passersby. I'm willing to bet that every single day of that time, at least one stray thought took them back to before, when they didn't have to ask permission to do the simplest, unavoidable things, like go to the bathroom (and be turned down). No doubt they thought about the times when they were called "sir" or "ma'am" by store clerks instead of "shoplifter" or "suspicious" just for how they happened to be dressed (which, again, they don't have a whole lot of choice in). For some of them, they could look down at their hands or rumble up a hum in their throats to remember a time when they were the music, too.

I salute everyone who has ever taken a dive over the side of their horse for one reason or another, and had the guts to put their foot back in the stirrup, swing over their leg, and settle back in that saddle.

None of us would get very far without a few second chances and a little patience from the good hearts of the other musicians in the room, the ones who know that we've been where they are, and that tables (as tables are apt to do) could turn at any moment.

Inspiration Monday: Goodbye, Sweet Winter

Goodbye, winter! Hello, spring!

If you couldn't tell, I'm pretty excited that today was a nice day. Nice enough that I tossed my jacket into the trunk of my car and didn't think twice about it all day. Nice enough that I stood in a parking lot leaning on my dirty car, pockets heavy with post-it notes and lists, and I closed my eyes. I pretended for a second that the cars passing by were really the whoosh of waves, and the coolness in the breeze had been born on the sea. My feet were cozy in their shoes and couldn't tell the difference between sand and pavement, so I lied to them. I told them that soon I would dig them into their favorite place, the wet, mushy place where surf and shore are the same thing.

I wasn't really sure what to make of the sirens in the distance or the uniquely oily blacktop smell, but whatever.

My little vacation did what it needed to. I got back into my car and followed the post-it-notes where they led me, but I did it looking in the rear-view mirror at Old Man Winter waving bye-bye for three long seasons more.

I'm a nut for spring--it's my favorite season by far--but I found myself a little nostalgic for the lonely beauty that only winter brings. Winter is all about the insides: trees shiver in their bare bones and the chill runs us all indoors where the frost on the windows takes the rest of the world away.

I've got to respect a season that turns us inward on some level, even if just to get a satisfying bellyful of hot chocolate and to daydream about the beach. Winter gives us a chance to appreciate what we've taken for granted beneath the beautiful, temporary snowflakes.

Now that spring is here and winter is fading into the distance, spare a few creative thoughts to give its due. It is the one season that asks us all to slow down just a bit, and though I despise being cold and scraping ice off my poor, dirty car almost as much as going to the dentist (where I am always cold), I think that's a trait worthy of praise.

Inspiration Monday: First Meal

People give a lot of lip service to what they would eat if they were about to have their last meal. Since I've been MIA due to some dental adventures lately, if you would ask me this question, my answer would probably vary from, "Anything solid, please!" to "Jell-O. Why break precedent?"

Who needs rose-colored glasses when there are Strawberry Jell-O ones?

If you get tired of eating it, build a toothpick fort. It reminds me of Orgrimmar from World of Warcraft.

Today at work, I had the more unique opportunity to be inspired to think about what I would choose for my first meal. Of course I don't mean the first meal of life. Babies don't really get much of an option, and let's be honest. If they did, they'd pick Jell-O.

My morning was spent with two gentlemen who have recently become housed for the first time after decades on the streets. They've managed to survive for years eating what they can when they can and not asking a whole lot of questions about who prepared it, how many calories were in it, or how many antioxidants they were getting in their diets.

Today, we went grocery shopping. Now they both have their very own refrigerators and pantries. They have cabinets and counters, stoves and sinks. They now have a place for that random jar of olives that everyone always buys and sticks in the fridge door, but no one ever eats. (Except me, when I have teeth. Nom.) They got to wander up and down the aisles in a way I have never experienced--with an eye for what I would cook in my own home if I was about to cook a meal for myself for the first time in eighteen years.

There could be a lot of thought that goes into that process. Or maybe not very much thought at all. It would be hard to say unless you were actually there pushing the grocery cart. Maybe you really want to bake some ribs, but you don't have a baking pan. Maybe you want fried eggs, but you don't have a frying pan. Maybe you just want ice cream. ALL the ice cream.

If you are so inclined, write or art or compose or dance a little scene about someone planning this first meal. Include internal cues about what this person would be thinking. Mention what foods this person would choose and why he or she would choose them. Why is this a first meal for this person?

If you're a good cook, go out there and plan your own first meal. Think of a scenario in which you are turning over a new leaf in one way or another. Food is life, so find foods that connect to this new chapter in the book of You and cook a meal that signifies it. 

Remember: There's always room for Jell-O.

How I Learned to Eat Like a Boa Constrictor

I hate snakes.

Nobody abhors them like me. I don't care what form they're in--pictures, pixels, or boots, I have no use for the things.

I mean, I have a heart about it. I don't wish them death...well, at least not all of them. I just want them to stay away from me forever and always forever and forever amen. Always.

For the record, I don't like them.
I don't like them in purses, or wallets, or belts.
I don't like them in zoos, in paintings, or pelts.
Not in a traffic jam, not at the Hoover Dam, not with a giant clam.
I do not like them, Sam-I-Am, not even with green eggs and ham.

However.

Lately, I have been having some dental...adventures. 

Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic, but I am just about as phobic of dentists as I am of snakes, and as a result, I ended up with a couple of broken teeth inconveniently placed on either side of my mouth. This left me with nowhere to chew and a diet that looks like this:

Now, I like Jell-O as much as the next girl. It wiggles. It jiggles. It's fun to throw at my dog. However, after a couple of weeks of it, even the most stubborn among us (ahem), will get thee to a dentist. I did actually manage this with only a handful of half-hearted threats to run to Canada (and one really serious threat to run to Nashville). One would think that I would be saved after spending 10 hours in a dental chair. (No. I'm not exaggerating, however, it was probably the nicest dentist office with the nicest dentist and nicest staff that ever lived in all of Toothville, so it could have been worse.)

I thought that I was saved. I thought that the Jell-O and the yogurt and the Jell-O and the pudding and the Jell-O and the applesauce and the Jell-O and the broth were all over. No more tossing back those kind of slimy yogurt drink things like cheap tequila shots just to get something in my stomach without assaulting my poor mouth. No more jealously watching my husband chew and chew and chew--pizza, salad, chips, his fingernails. Surely the liquid nightmare would end after I, of all people, made myself go to the nice dentist. Surely.

I had somehow forgotten why it was that I feared dentists. When they're through with you, even the nice ones, you hurt. A lot. Too much to chew. Too much to open your mouth to squeeze in the pain pills.

I have another dental visit to go, which means more hurting, and more Jell-O. I think about eating solid food. I think about it a lot, the way a recovering alcoholic craves that drink. Then my jaw throbs and I give up the dream. Getting a bite of food from spoon to stomach is kind of like trying to swallow the Rocky Mountains.

As I said, I have been desperate for sustenance. That is when I remembered that my arch nemeses, the sssslithery sssnakes who are forced to gulp down their meals just like me. Suddenly, I find myself feeling a kinship to the boa constrictor, who must first catch his prey, squeeze it to death, and then swallow it whole. I'm not too keen on that whole squeezing things to death thing--I prefer to hunt my prey at the supermarket, but the swallowing whole thing has become compelling to me.

My new hero is the boa constrictor in The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. This guy knew how to do it. He managed to get an elephant down, and he looks a little smug about it. (For some reason the elephant looks a little smug too, but that's neither here nor there.)

 

This guy is giving me something to shoot for. He is now the official coolest snake ever to exist. It doesn't hurt that he is in the official coolest book ever to exist either, but hey. I'm learning to appreciate the nuances.

This ordeal has inspired me to conquer my phobias and learn to appreciate two things that I have spent my life outright running away from. If you were to get creative about it, what kinds of things could you find in your life that might have a little more to them than you give them credit for?

Probably not Jell-O, though. It just kind of is what it is.