The Gamut of Emotions

Isn't amazing how many different emotions and emotional states a person can go through in a very short amount of time? I went from happy to angry to relaxed to anxious to even more relaxed to happy to ready to sad. All today! Those last few were in the course of thirty minutes! No joke!

So first thing's first. I have another confession to make. I went to the store yesterday to get some soy milk and I was so consumed with getting delicious tasting soy milk that I got chocolate Silk light, not realizing that it was chocolate and therefore not part of my regimen. Woops! So now I have a half gallon of chocolate soy milk and I don't know what to do with it. Drink it anyway? Remembering my sinful nature *wink*? Only drink it on Sundays? That seems a waste of a perfectly good Sunday of break! But then again, is that the consequence of sin? No, because we've been redeemed! Ach! What to do? And it's only soy milk!

So I was really feeling good about writing and then I checked my email and got the response from my Louisville audition which was ... terrible. Nothing short of. And I wasn't just crazy, it was really bad. To the point that the email said the committee determined I was not "'qualified'". I kid you not. The "qualified" was in quotation marks. Oh dear. So many things. I'm not really that upset, except that I know it was not an accurate depiction of my playing. I know I actually AM qualified for a sub list, but ... man. I just didn't do it that day. Watching the olympics, I guess I realize that it happens to everyone. Thanks, sports, for making me feel somehow a little less bad. But I still want to cry a little bit just sitting in my parents living room.

But to end on a positive note ... what I WAS excited about. You know, from my first Lent post, that one of the things I want to be praying about is what to do in the fall, where to be, etc. And I keep getting the sense that Chicago is not where I need to be in the fall. As much as I love the city and want to be there so badly, now is not yet the time. I am getting the feeling that a time will come for me to live in Chicago. Maybe even next year, but for now, not. I'm still going to hope for good news from Civic, and if that works out, then Chicago here I come! But. If not, that's okay.

Now, I am thinking more and more seriously about Cleveland. I've said over and over that I do not want to move to Cleveland, but it does make the most sense. If moving to Cleveland gets me 1. out of the house 2. closer to the job 3. still making money, maybe even more since I can work during the week of the Erie gigs instead of taking the week off. I do have community there. I know they'd like for me to move there. It seems to make sense. I just don't care of the city. But for a little while, it could work. We'll just have to see what comes of auditions, etc.

But I feel a little bit of peace about it.

Also, I think I need to get a pet. Not a fish. Fish don't count. Wherever I move, I'd like to live by myself, but that means I'm going to need another warm body in the apartment. I'd really like to have a dog, but those are 1. more work and 2. more money. So I may be a cat person for a little while. Two things I don't particularly care for 1. cats and 2. Cleveland. So maybe I'll become a different person for a little while. That's okay.

Absence

It doesn't take much for me to miss a place. I have a tendency to never be "here" wherever that is. This is a problem. Some old friends of mine are moving and it was very sudden, but it's to a place that will seem to suit them well. Another friend of mine and I were talking it over and we said that if we had to describe the moving friend in one word, it would "discontent." That has stuck with me since then, because even though I was at that moment applying it to someone else, I began to wonder if it could be applied to me. I wouldn't want it to be, and at first I thought "No! I'm happy just about anywhere!" But the more I've thought about it the more I think it could.

My parents threw a stinger at me when they told me, in jest - but it was true, that I want to move to wherever I've most recently been. I think I've mentioned that before. And it's true. Except with China.

But last night, I was driving home at about midnight after doing a little recording and I started thinking about a snowman holding his snow head in his stick arm/hand. I don't know why I was thinking about that. Then I tried to think of where that image came from and for what purpose. My thought process went something like this:

Did I see it on a woot shirt? Should I see it on a woot shirt? What could it mean? How could it apply? Have I seen it with another holiday figure? Like Halloween? Ichabod Crane and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow perhaps? Nightmare Before Christmas? Remember watching Nightmare Before Christmas in Graz with Christian's friends? That was a great time. I wonder how they're doing. Man. I really miss that. Things were almost easy then. Goofy internally but easy.

And that's how I came to miss Austria yesterday and today.

Then also today, I was on Facebook, of course. And was looking around at pictures of a kid I knew a long long long time ago. I mean. Really long ago. Not the longest, but pretty far back. And he had up pictures of Ireland. And that made me miss Ireland. And I wanted to go back to Ireland.

Then I was practicing and I was thinking about whether I actually am a good oboist or if my friends just think I am because we get along and that does influence how you hear someone. So I thought about taking lessons with other teachers, who don't know me (which I am about to do) and playing in places where I don't already have a reputation. And it made me think about Hungary and an oboist there who insisted he hear me play, but I never did play for him. And I thought about how I didn't invest in that relationship. And it actually made me miss Hungary a little bit and want to have a chance again to invest in those relationships that I missed out on last time.

All this to say. I am very rarely present. A few Lents ago, I had decided I would leave "absence" for "presence". Rob Bell at Mars Hill Bible Church had labeled that year's Lent season as a time for leaving Egypt for Jerusalem. So the challenge was to think of something you were leaving behind in pursuit of something better and more freeing. I think this leaving absence for presence is maybe going to be my lifelong challenge.

Lent brings Freedom

I realized today, as I was eating my sun-dried tomato and basil hummus, that my world, at least dietary speaking, is going to be opened wide by the end of this Lent season. Sure, Lent is not actually all that related to your literal diet, but it got me thinking about the irony of Lent being a time to OPEN my world. Don't we normally think of Lent as limiting? We limit what we eat. We limit what we watch. We limit what we think about. We limit what we listen to. And yet, but putting those limits on my diet, I'm actually expanding my palate by force. But not really by force, because it's completely voluntary. I just really like that ironic twist to Lent -- you deny yourself to free yourself. We die to live. Jesus talks about this. Appropriate. Everything is related.

My iPod was on shuffle today, on the playlist of "Kid tested, Lenten approved" music. And Shostakovich Symphony No. 5, Third movement came on. It's a haunting piece. You should check it out. It's not automatically easily accessible, I realize. But it is haunting. That's the most appropriate word I can think of.