Und so.

Nur der Vollständigkeit halber:

...Morgen ist nicht wirklich Montag, oder?

So auch.

Ratet, was gestern gewonnen hat! Ich meine, man soll ja die Feste feiern, wie sie fallen und außerdem muss ich ja die paar Wochen ausnutzen, bevor der Heuschnupfen ausbricht und ich beim Anblick der schönsten Wiese Paranoia kriege und überhaupt, nicht wahr....



So. Schnell ein bisschen Gewissensberuhigung und dann wieder raus!

So geht's.

Tja, und hier haben wir's wieder, das alte Dilemma: Eigentlich muss ich dieses Wochenende ganz dringend Klavier üben, Klavier üben und noch mehr Klavier üben, um all das nachzuholen, was ich in der Woche nicht schaffe. Außerdem wären da noch die Hausaufgaben für Musiktheorie und das Portfolio über Janusz Korczak zu schreiben, das seit mindestens einem Monat fällig ist. Und das polyphone Morley-Stück vorzubereiten, das ich nächsten Donnerstag einstudieren und vordirigieren darf (Pause für hysterisches Gekicher). Dann vielleicht ein bisschen Gitarre zu üben und der Abwasch der letzten zwei Wochen in Angriff zu nehmen. Und eventuell ein paar Gedanken an die Schule zu verschwenden.

Aber wie kann ich in der Wohnung hocken und all das tun, wenn ich draußen das hier haben kann?!?

Ah, die guten, alten Kondensstreifen! Wie haben wir sie vermisst!

P.S. Seit fast 6 Tagen "drogen"frei - na, wenn das mal nicht die Stimmung hebt...

Think pink.

Old Town has put on her prettiest spring dress.

You open your front door and actually have to allow for a few seconds of squinting until your eyes have adjusted to all that pink.

I know it's hopelessly cheesy, but it so does feel like walking through fairyland.

Make sure not to wear pastels. They'd never find you.

Being. Home.

I've been lazy these last two weeks, but I can tell you, apart from the old tooth trouble I've loved every minute of it. I guess I'm not quite "normal" that way, seeing as there seems to be this silent consensus that spending more than two days with your family inevitably brings out the worst in everyone and exposure should be limited at all costs.
But the thing is: I love being home. I love the house and the garden, hanging around the big table with the whole family forever after meals, lazy TV nights in with my parents, baking countless cakes with my nephews in the sandbox, the familiar sounds of doors, drawers and light switches, the shapes of animals and witches I used to (in fact, still do) see in the old, green bathroom tiles, sitting in the rocking chair in the garden, watching the buds and blossoms change from day to day and trying to match the birdsong I hear with the right bird...
You see, not very gripping stuff but...well, it's home.

Good things.

For this past week or so I have felt so... alive!
I don't know what it was - springtime suddenly jumping wildly up and down in front of us like a kid that's been stuck indoors for too long, spending a lot of time with a lot of special people, going places, getting first-row places at a concert, listening to heart-warming, inspiring, hitherto-unknown-to-me music, the prospect of two weeks of real holidays - or a combination of all the above.
Well, nevermind what it was, but it felt good.
Then of course, in a not quite so great way, pain has a way of making you feel very alive, too.
I guess once I'll manage to truly convince myself of its profound beneficial effects, I'll be halfway there (...in the loony bin).
So let's not go there today.
Instead, more music!

A theory of relativity or: drago dormiens nunquam titillandus.

On the subject of pain...
(In case this is beginning to bore you, I completely and totally couldn't agree more.)
There's a couple of insights I gained during the last weeks with regard to pain, so let's see if my doped, muddled brain can get them straight:

• Pain is relative. You might get into the habit of rating it on a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the worst pain imaginable, just in case someone, like your dentist, asks you to describe it. Doctors seem to think that assigning a number to a feeling gives the whole thing objectivity. The problem is, however, you might go around for a week or two rating your pain with an "8 out of 10" because you decided for yourself that a "5" would be the point when the pain is too strong to be ignored, let alone to fall asleep and that right now you are way beyond that point, you simply can't imagine it getting much worse and you are definitely taking a pain killer (in fact, should have taken it an hour ago, damn it!) because otherwise you might bang your head against the wall. But see, there's the hitch. You can't imagine it getting much worse. Until you are taught otherwise. Until you realize what a sissy apparently you have been before to go round dealing out "8's out of ten" like there's no tomorrow. That yesterdays "8" today would barely qualify for a "5".
  
• So pain is highly subjective. If I can't even trust my own frame of reference to be of any value, I can hardly expect anyone else to be able to understand what and how I feel. Their frame of reference is bound to be based upon totally different experiences.
  
• Which means pain makes you lonely. There's nobody to deal with it for you. There's just you. You might even resort to methods you have always looked down upon, like visualizing the pain in a certain way in order to deal with it mentally. (And it even worked for a couple of days. I honestly felt the pain ease off a little when I pictured this certain image I had dreamt about. But that was before I had to readjust my 1-10 scale.)
  
• So pain makes you almost certainly go mental. Or at least very, very self-centred. Until you hear about your good friend's health drama that suddenly got into full swing while you looked the other way for only an instance. That horrible, nightmare-inducing life-and-death situation of hospitals and surgery and waiting for test results and praying and more waiting. Which gives you all the time in the world to berate yourself for being so selfish. That is, up to the point when you own pain takes up all your attention again. It's very hard to concentrate on someone else's drama when your head wants to burst. But I'm still learning.
  
• So, I guess, at the end of the day pain teaches humility. In a good and in a bad way. The good way is when the pain eases off (either with or, even more magically, without the aid of pain killers). That moment when you feel it beginning to go away. That relief, that gratitude. The bad way is when the pain does not go away at all and you realize that you are completely at the mercy of its whims and moods, or at the mercy of some doctor or other to find a way to make it stop, that you have no control whatsoever over your own body and mind. Rather disconcerting that. (pause) So, um, I'm getting the feeling I should probably conclude on a slightly happier note.
• Pain can stop. Yes, it's been heard of. And I'm pretty sure this one will, too. Any day now.