Things I am thankful for, today and in general

Waking up under warm sheets and blankets in an intimately familiar room, even if it is a repository of artifacts of Meredith, Age 16, complete with smudgy blu-tack marks on the ceiling from the posters I put there when I was younger. You never really do go home again, but I'm glad that I haven't lost all of where I came from, and I'm glad that I can recover some of it from time to time.

Having a wide range of options for the next few years, even if sometimes it looks like there are too many options, and even if attractive options sometimes conflict with one another. I forget, sometimes, just how big the world is and how many interesting ideas and people there are in it -- I get so distracted with the interesting ideas and people in my small corner of it -- and while it can be startling at first, the brain adapts and I'm better off for it. Depth and breadth and complexity and patterns. The world is a beautiful place and I am glad to be in it.

enochsmiles and yoctohedron. I am the luckiest girl alive. Thank you for being.

The fact that there's still unexplored territory out there, millions of ideas waiting to be investigated, and billions more waiting to be carved out as extensions of things we have yet to discover. But even more than that, the fact that there are people, friends, to share those ideas with -- to nurture them, help them grow, and strengthen and deepen our friendships in the process. Thank you, everyone who's ever worked with me, kicked around a design or a problem with me, brainstormed into the night, listened, sketched, explained, or even just gone off to a 24-hour diner with me afterward. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for building. All the ideas in the world mean nothing without people to enjoy them, and all the people in the world are shells without the spark of creativity and communication. Thank you for making the world a better place, even if you don't realise that's what you're doing.

Kittens. That should require no explanation. (There are five in the house right now.)

Days like this one, which suggest to us that it's a good thing to take stock of and remember the pleasant and beneficial things in one's life. I should really do that more often.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Fumble-fingers

I've completely forgotten how to sight read for my left hand. I used to play the piano, and I loved it when I was in elementary school. I had a wonderful teacher who taught me both theory and technique, and had great insight into how to teach music to an obstinate tomboy. She'd keep track of pieces I especially loved to play -- sadly, the spiral-bound notebook I used for theory exercises which had the several-page list of "Meredith's Favourites" handwritten at the end is no longer in the piano bench, and I don't know where it's gone -- and would let me play one at the start of each lesson, then use the promise of getting to play more of them as carrots to keep me concentrating. (I don't believe I ever had that privilege taken away, but I did take it pretty seriously.) I was such a sucker for classical music. I remember banging out "Für Elise", "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and Pachelbel's Canon in D over and over again, sometimes studiously and precisely, more often with little care for the dynamics involved. It was more fun to surround myself with huge, crashing, glorious BOOM BOOM BOOM chords and arpeggios, loud enough to rattle the walls in the dining room. (I was probably nine years old. That's my excuse.)

Then, when I was eleven, we moved to Kingwood and I couldn't study with that teacher anymore. I tried to go it alone for a while, and eventually started taking lessons from the choir director at our church. He was a nice enough guy, but he made me play all kinds of pentatonic things that I didn't like very much, and after a while I quit going. I kept on playing the pieces I loved, but after I went off to college I didn't have convenient access to a piano anymore, and now it's all fallen out of my head. I went digging in the piano bench this evening and found three of the four pages of the Canon. I managed to fumble my way through them eventually, but while the treble staff is still easy to read, I find myself having to translate the bass in realtime, which makes it halting and awkward.

I think it would all come back with practice, but that raises the question of where I would practice. I really should get an electric piano once I move.