Taking the long way around.

It's Saturday night and instead of trying desperately to find someone to go out with, I took another singing lesson from my sister. Last night I also sang, and played the piano for over an hour. Being at that goddamned office stresses me out so much for absolutely no reason, it healing to sit down at the piano and count out the measures, reading the same sonata that used to come so easy to me 11 years ago (can I just say, I'm fucking OLD? thanks...). Right now, it's the best meditation that I've found for myself. Guitar doesn't give one the same sense of discipline as the piano, at least it didn't to me. This was perfect for college of course, because discipline was exactly what I wanted to avoid and I achieved great success at that, though my grades suffered accordingly.

With singing, it's very grounding to feel organs in your own body that you never even knew could be physically sensed. I can feel air traveling from my lungs, through my wind tunnel and hitting my soft palate to create the correct sound (or at least as correct as I can make it at the moment).

I've been flossing my teeth every night for the past 2 weeks. It's the longest I've ever gone and on the first day that I did it I decided to treat flossing my teeth like a reverse AA meeting. Hello, my name is Rena and I never floss. Today is my 14th night flossing my teeth. It could all crash down tomorrow, I don't know, but I'm taking it day by day.

Now, I'm not saying all of this to toot some sort of a horn for being such a great and responsible person. Though I am. But you all know that already. Hah. But really, lately I've been feeling the weight of life more and more, the finality of it all and the inevitable fatality of myself and wanting to make the best of it. I feel my body becoming less resilient to minor illnesses, scars, bruises and I'm only 23 and it scares me. I watch my grandmother lying at the nursing home not even being able to keep her back straight when she sits up and I don't want that for myself. I hear my mom talk about my other grandmother's body just slowly giving up in her Moscow apartment. I know she's dying and my mom knows it too, and I see this mixture of pain and fear on my mom's face when she thinks about the pain that her mother is going through every day and the pain that is possibly in the future for her since my mom not at all in great health. I want to take care of myself now, before it's too late, and if I die in pain, at least I won't be thinking that I didn't do simple things that may have prevented it, I'll know that it is something that I couldn't prevent. I am more afraid of physical pain than anything else. I guess that's a pretty obvious statement, which is why torture techniques are so effective, but I'm pretty sure that when we were talking about the Spanish Inquisition in history class in Cordoba, I was the only person in the class with her hands actually over her mouth, eyes wide open in horror as Antonio told us about the different torture methods they used before finally killing some supposed heretic. Here I go veering off towards Spain again. So, back to health. I know flossing isn't going to prevent me from dying in pain, but I see it as a first step towards general health and wellbeing. I love Radiohead, but the song Fitter Happier has always bothered me in some ways. Yes, it points out some qualities of that stable life that I don't ever want to encounter in my own life, but is it really so wrong not to eat microwave dinners and saturated fats anymore? or get regular exercise and not drink too much? "No chance of escape", says Thom, but isn't it so much better to escape and be ready for it completely, body and soul? Oh right, it's better to be depressed and unhealthy, that's how your really achieve freedom from this mundane life. But yes, I'd still like to be in love when I'm older, not be powerless, be ok with crying in public, do more than just kiss with saliva, and I never ever want to be too comfortable. Maybe I'm not understanding something in this song, but I wish the lyrics were a bit different. As if there aren't enough better examples of a robotic life than just eating well.


Music: Dixie Chicks - Taking the Long Way