Mmmmm, two entries in a day. Wow, I haven't done that in a long time.

Anyway... a friend asked me a question tonight. We were talking about fireworks, this being the Fourth of July and all... I said that I'd never lit off fireworks. He said he was sorry for me. *grins*

I'd replied that I was always really nervous about messing up my hands. Since I played piano, guitar and wrote and such, I was really nervous about losing my hands, or blowing a finger off or something.

He said, "You play piano?"

*chuckles*

I used to.

I stopped, about 10 years ago. I used to play all the time. My favorite brand of piano is the K Kawai grand. The sound is pure and mellow. It has a warm, gentle, soothing sound that speaks to my soul. I've not found that warmth in any other brand of piano.

Many people think that Stienway is the best. *shakes her head* It's not.

Every different piano brand has a different sound. Uprights sound different compared to Grands... baby Grands have a slightly different timbre... etc.

Stienway is a great piano. And they make beautiful instruments... but there just is no comparison for the K Kawai. None whatsoever.

Regardless... that's not the point of this entry. I told him that I'd tell him why I stopped playing in this diary entry. Cause I'm lazy and I don't want to type it out a million times.

As I've mentioned a few times, I sing. I know how to play guitar (mostly a know a few chords, enough to play the songs I write). I know how to play piano. Hell, when I was taking lessons at about age... *thinks* 14 or so, I wrote a piece, a piano composition, that my piano teacher turned in to some commitee.

I got a second place award for that piece. Of course, it was a junior division and all... so it wasn't that fabulous a piece, but it was good for a 14 year old.

When I got to Cornish (Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle Washington) I discovered what a REAL piano sounds like. They had two K Kawai pianoes. One was a grand, the other was a baby grand.

Since I worked with the head of security at Cornish, I was allowed, some nights, to stay after hours, after everyone else had gone home. I would go into that piano room around 9 or 10 pm (the College closed up tight at 10 pm), walk around that baby grand; I'd run my fingers lightly along the black body, prop the lid open to its fullest; then I'd sit down on the adjustable bench and look at the white keys. They were glowing dully in the shadowy moonlight. I kept the lights off.

I would position my fingers where I wanted them, then close my eyes and sit there for a moment, my back straight, my right foot resting atop the pedal. That moment before I depressed the first key was often filled with so much anticipation.

And then, I would listen as my soul told my fingers what to do. I would be mezmerized by the sound pouring out of this instrument. I know, full well, I wasn't doing that.

I was alone in all that blackness. It was dark. And the moon beams that floated in the window sometimes seemed drawn by the sounds which came out of that beatiful piano. I swear I wasn't making the music. It came from somewhere else. It just.....

so, I would sit there in the dark, my fingers dancing along the keys as if they had a life of their own. My eyes closed. Everything silent. And I would see mountains and streams and horses.... wild, running horses, tails held high with pride. I would see rivers racing to some far off place. Some place I could never quite reach.

I swear I was under some spell.

For a year and a half I got to play that incredible piano. Whatever came out of my fingers was what "I" played. But I wasn't consciously playing. === I guess that's why I type so much now. It's my fingers moving of their own volition. Often what comes out goes straight from brain to the fingers to the screen. No actual thought involved. ===

I had a piano in my apartment. It's the same piano that we have downstairs. But it's an upright. And I don't like it. It's offkey and sounds... wrong somehow.

Anyway... I was getting more and more depressed. My life was quickly going downhill. I'm sure that I've talked about my time at Cornish and all the shit that went along with that. But to sum up... I moved to Capitol Hill in Seattle for my first time away from home (besides summer camp and such) and my folks moved 60 miles South. I was the sweet, innocent, highly sheltered child. I'd been homeschooled and had a daily social group, from sixth grade til Cornish, of my brother, my dog, my neighbor's horse and my folks.

Most of my time was spent riding the horse by myself. Just Ramari and me riding trails and such. I had a "social group" as the 4-H club, but I didn't like the kids... they seemed so... *frowns* juvinile. All the girls were chatty and talking about shopping and doing their hair and all that. The guys were interested in the girls, but not me. *shrugs* So, I pretty much ignored them. I was in the 4-H club by myself, so to speak.

Anyway, I would talk to the parents, not the kids. *chuckles softly* This is what a typical conversation would have been like...

4-H kid: So, are you ready for the drill rehersal?

Me: Yeah

4-H kid: *looks around nervously, not sure what to say... then nods as some other 4-H kid calls him/her over*

Me: *chuckles, turning to the 4-H parent* What do we need to work on for this drill rehersal? And, what's my weakest point?

*chuckles quietly* I was never good with small talk, and I never was interested in juvinile conversation. Until I hit about 24. *laughs* Then I got into the juvinile side. *grins*

However... The whole point is, I was really quite antagonistic toward most of the interests of kids my age. And, I was even more antagonistic toward the people of my age. I wasn't keen on the kids in my youth group at church either.

So, I was basically really inept socially. My Mother was my best friend. My Dog was my second-best friend... but only because she was a dog and my Mom was... well, my Mom. And I spent most of my time living a life within my imagination. Riding through the trails and such, pretending that I was riding fences at my ranch.... things like that.

=== damn this is longer than I thought it would be ===

So... bottom line... when I got to Cornish, I felt abandoned. I had virtually no social skills, and I pretty much detested my peers. I'm sure that was fairly obvious in my expression and attitude.

I was defensive and tried to be tough. And, when Jonny did his... well... when he pulled his stunt which garnered him a boot down the stairs, I felt even more alone and out of control. I felt helpless.

I spent all my time... or rather, most of my time, in the Cornish South building, which is now called Kerry Hall. it was right across the street from my apartment. My life was very solitary. I didn't talk to too many people. When I did, it was mostly to teachers. My best friend, the one I felt closest too, was the deli woman... she was about 50 or so and smoked like a chimney. Literally. sometimes she had two cigarettes lit at the same time. *chuckles*

So, the longer I stayed there, in the city, with gunshots going off around me at night, with nasty things crawling around the backroads, with people I didn't feel safe with, with my only, real peace being those solitary nights with the K Kawai, I really began to pull in REALLY bad grades.

hell, I graduated High School with a 3.9 and finished three semesters at cornish with a 2.5 or something like that. I had a really, really bad roommate at one time. She was suicidal... and she would burn herself, cut herself and generally do really nasty things to her body.

Then, I had another roommate who was even messier than I was, and that is REALLY hard to find. But she wasn't just messy, she was bitchy about it. She would bitch at me continuously about what an absolute mess the apartment was. I would clean up my stuff and do the fluff'n'stuff method of housecleaning (thanks to Jeff Foxworthy for that one) with my things. And she would bitch and scream at me because the apartment still wasn't clean.

She came home drunk one night... completely blitzed. She'd been out with her boss, the 40-something owner of the Greek restaurant four doors away. She came back smashed off her ass and I cared for her. And she continued to bitch and complain and such...

She is the only person I ever, really, honestly, wanted to kill. I don't mean something clean and removed, but I mean, my bare hands ripping her MFing throat from her body, tearing it to shreds, then stomping on her corpse until I'd pounded it through the floor into the apartment below.

And I'm serous about that. In all my years, she is the only person I've ever actually come close to losing control with. I left the apartment that morning. We shared the same class and had a final exam the next morning, but she was bitchin and bitchin and bitchin about how rotten I was and all that shit.

I left the apartment, slammed the door, and walked around Capitol Hill for about an hour. I came back, figured I'd finish studying then grab a two hour nap and go to class. But she was still up. And as soon as I walked in that door she started in on me again. I told her that I wanted to hit her. That she was pissing me off and she had better shut up before I did hit her.

She told me that I'd better make it good or when she got back up she was gonna tear into me.

*shakes her head* I roared. I actually, physically roared.

I called her a motherfucking bitch, grabbed my notebook and left, slamming the door so hard that pictures fell off the walls.

I stalked Capitol Hill. I stalked the streets for about an hour. It was now about 4 in the morning or so. The entire time I was muttering under my breath, "Don't let me kill her. Just don't let me kill her. Please. Don't let me kill her." Over and over again. I saw visions of my fists pounding into her face so many times that her face was a pile of broken bone and body mush.

*shakes her head*

I went up to Cornish North (bout half a mile North of the other building... Cornish is a very small college. 500 students, from all over the Western part of the country. The ratio of students to teacher is about 3 to 1. or so.) and walked around the building. Then, I sat on the back steps, my fists clenched, begging God to keep me from killing her.

I sat there from about 5 am til 8 when the class started. She wasn't there.

Later in the day, I had another class which was a kind of free-expression class. We went to the park. The idea was to watch the reactions of others, based on what we were doing.

The only thing I felt, during that hour and a half "class", was an alternating hunter/huntee kind of feeling. For the first 20 minutes, I just stood within the trees. completely unaware of anyone and everything, while being so sharply atuned to everyone and everything else that I swear I could hear birds breathing.

For the final hour and ten minutes of the "class", I ran. I ran through woods, across hills, between trees. Not full out running, but kind of like that lope that you see in old nature flicks... the wolven lope... that endless, paceless, tireless gait where you know that wolf is never gonna stop running.

And I felt as if I were a tiger, both hunting something... knowing I was close, but not quite able to put my paws on it... and being hunted by something I couldn't see, hear or feel. I just, instinctively knew I was being hunted.

So, I ran. for an hour and ten minutes. Which, even then, was about an hour and nine minutes longer than I would dare to run.

When I'd stopped, I was standing at the top of this little rise, looking down at the people gathered there. The next thing I knew, I was staring up at the sky, flat on my back, my eyes open, but no words coming from my mouth. I don't know if I was breathing. I sure as hell couldn't hear my own heartbeat.

I remember knowing that there was a kid standing kinda close to me, tapping me with a stick. I didn't feel it.

Then, my teacher was kneeling beside me, staring into my eyes. And I was sort of... looking through her. It was kind of like I could see the sky through her face. Which was weird.

But she was moving her mouth. I couldn't hear her. I couldn't read her lips. I wasn't even aware of who else was there. I don't know how I "came to" or when. All I know is that she told me, after the fact, that I had been laying there, motionless, without breathing, without blinking, for about 10 minutes. And, then I just got up.

*shrugs* I dont' remember.

Woah... I never, ever intended to write all that. This might turn into a four part story. *chuckles* Wow... I kinda forgot about that. Amazing where my mind will take me sometimes. *smiles softly*

Um.... I'm going to pause here and then continue this in a new post. Whoooff. Well, I've started this. it's all my friend's fault. Blame him. Even tho that's his character diary.

Anyway... more soon