Are You Passionate?

That is the title of the last Neil Young album I bought. And I was all excited about it because I had simply adored Silver & Gold; in fact, there might not be a better song than "Razor Love," and I listened to the entire CD so many times that I had it memorized, front to back, to the point where you are already anticipating the intro to the next song during the blank space in-between just because you have heard all the songs so many times.

I listened to Are You Passionate? exactly one time and then officially kicked it to the curb. Yeah, I still have it, lodged somewhere between the other two Neil Young CDs in my collection (Harvest Moon is the other one I have, mainly for the title song; I latched onto a Decade cassette tape that had belonged to my very first girlfriend, back in the 1980s, but have no idea where it is at the moment).

I have a difficult time discarding music.

And I am not really thinking about whether I am passionate. I know that I am, about some stuff: Music and films, and certain TV shows. Books I love. Characters I love from certain books and films and shows. Lyrics and sounds from different songs. People who have affected me, in some way; yeah, sometimes the passion fades, but there is always a residual ... something, always, from/for anyone I have ever felt anything passionate about, for me, anyway. Certain foods. Certain sports moments, from my own life and ones I have spectated, from the local through the international levels.

What I am wondering is, am I emotional?

I do not consider myself to be. Then again, I do not consider myself to be moody, and yet, I can go to work in the morning feeling as if I am in a "good mood," only to find that my mood changes once people start coming into the office.

If I happen to be in a bitchy mood, does that imply moodiness?

And if I happen not to be moody, but someone else thinks I am, does that mean I might also be emotional, even though I do not particularly think that I am?

I have no trouble crying. I try not to do it in front of people at seemingly inappropriate times, primarily because if you cry, people usually assume something is wrong. And that is not always the case, at least not with me.

Sometimes, life is so beautiful, it makes me cry.

(I have a feeling I need to watch American Beauty, again, sometime soon.)

I suppose I am thinking about my emotions from the perspective of how I feel when I am on the verge of getting very angry. Thankfully, this does not happen all that often with me ... and no, I am not generally one of those people who keep everything bottled up inside. I tend to react to situations and then get on with my life.

Yeah, I could be a worrier. My dad got an ulcer from worrying, and my grandma ended up with the shakes from worrying. I do not wish to bring on physical problems from worrying, so, several years ago when I was feeling particularly stressed out about something at work, I told myself, late one night when I was unable to sleep, "OK, you now have 10 minutes to worry yourself into a complete frenzy, and then you have to let it go." And so for the next 10 minutes, I worried ... and it was kinda funny, too, because I actually found myself saying, "Worry, worry, worry! There ya go: Worry, worry, worry! You better get it out of your system now because your 10 minutes are about up!"

And then I was done worrying.

(It really does work. Pretty much, anyway. Sometimes, I need more than 10 minutes.)

: )

Someone made me angry the other night. And it was not even a deeply felt kind of anger or a hurt kind of anger, just an irritating and annoying kind of anger that had me on the verge of getting REALLY angry and perhaps even saying something I regretted. Which would have been incredibly stoopid (of me) because later, I would have been the only one feeling bad about it. And I would have felt responsible to make amends, or maybe I just would have written off the person for a suitable period of time, or perhaps we would have ceased being friends.

I dunno. I did not think about any of that at the time.

What I did, when I realized I was getting angry, was walk away.

Am I emotional? I do not think so.

Not inordinately so, anyway.

All My Little Words, Part 1

You are a splendid butterfly ...

Yes, that is where that phrase comes from, the song by the Magnetic Fields that names this particular post and this online journal of sorts. And I know nothing about the group other than I love that song, but still, I purchased their newest CD a few weeks ago when I saw it at Best Buy.

(Is it criminal that I have not yet listened to it?)

I feel as if I am on the cusp of some kind of breakthrough. Or perhaps that is breakdown??! Ah, who knows.

I am missing someone very much right now. Not for any reason other than I love talking to her.

Choices, though. We all make them, and then we have to live with them. And sometimes the choices we make bring about an end to the things that we love. And then we learn to adjust to life. And adapt. And grow. And flourish, in spite of ourselves.

: )

I shot these today, and I am not quite certain how I managed to take 2 nearly identical pictures, but I did, only one is with flash and the other is without. And I cannot decide which I like better.

There she is ...

Maybe McEnroe is right: Tennis players should go back to using wooden racquets.

By the way: Wimbledon starts Monday. Which means that 5 years ago today, I was somewhere in London. Sleeping, no doubt, at this exact moment.

: )

This is how a car window looks, from the inside, on a warm day after it has (apparently) been hit by a rock while someone was not-so-carefully mowing the lawn next to where the car was parked:



A few second after I took this picture, I softly closed the car door, and the glass all went tinkling (heh) down, inside the car and on the pavement and grass outside. The pieces of glass have sharp edges but are not too dangerous; however, I managed to cut my thumb and parts of my left calf (!!?) on some of the slivers.

: (

I am a fan of maple leafs. Which, of course, should be maple leaves, but ... since Toronto uses that word, I shall, too.



: )

In unrelated news: I cannot find a comfortable chair to put with the desk in my newly redecorated spare bedroom/studio ANYWHERE. I was seriously considering a bean bag chair but could not find one tall enough.

Oh, and I did some gardening today. Repotted 2 plants. Hope they survive the move!

Wilson Lady Advantage

I just got lost in memories for about half an hour. Which is not all that long to be lost, actually, except all I went back to my spare bedroom (which I have decided is now my studio but in reality pretty much resembles a bedroom, still) to do was vaccuum, but instead I decided to clean up one of the tennis racquets I had run across last weekend during the still-ongoing cleaning jag.

I wrote "racquets" even though I almost always write "rackets" because the former seems a bit too formal or pretentious or French or something. However, I have always thought of my Wilson Lady Advantage as a tennis racquet. Something more than a mere racket, somehow.

I have had this racquet since I was in ninth grade. I believe, if memory serves me correctly, that I actually received it as a Christmas gift, which means it came long after the tennis season had ended, but I had coveted this racquet for months.

The No. 1 and 2 players on the Shelbyville Rams girls' tennis team had Lady Advantage racquets. Mindy, a senior, and Robyn, a junior. Me, a lowly freshman with a knock-off Chris Evert-wannabe racket. Yeah: racket. And I was not even one of the top six players, but I did end up getting a JV letter and Most Improved, which I thought was very cool.

My racquet is beautiful, and if it were not nighttime, I would go outside and take a picture of it, in the grass (just like Wimbledon, which is coming up in a couple of weeks). So I shall do that, tomorrow.

Sportin' a Woody

Good day at work today until a particular thorn in my side called to ask if we were going to have THIS in the paper (yes) and if we were going to have THAT in the paper (yes), and then to make some reference to two reporters we used to have. By the end of the phone call, my teeth were on edge.

(What does that mean, exactly? "My teeth were on edge." Sounds really stoopid. Glad I used that phrase, just to add to my annoyance.)

: )

Anyhoo, then I came home and saw a woodpecker doing his (her?) thing on the edge of my roof.

That, however, did NOT set my teeth on edge.

I tried to take a shot from my car with the Olympus, so as not to disturb old Woody whilst he was peck-peck-pecking away, but ... dead battery. So I snuck around the house to get the Kodak, but of course, by the time I slipped back into the backyard, he was gone.

He came back, though.

I dunno, having a bird pecking at my roof or eve or whatever it is (there is supposed to be a gutter there, actually) seems somewhat destructive, but I thought it was pretty cool. Especially when I magnified the photos and realized how the little guy (gal?) was hanging on and contorting in order to be able to peck.

: )

Feeling sad/let down. Found out a former student of mine, probably the best writer I have ever had in class, was indicted in federal court on methamphetamine charges. Not too long after her father was sentenced to umpteen years in prison on similar charges.

This girl is bright and funny and cute and smart and talented, and I really like her.

I do not want her to have done this.

I want her to have made better choices than this.