My grandma passed away a few hours ago in Moscow, almost at the same time as my mom was getting on the plane to fly there. My mom is in the air right now and though completely ready for it, I'm sure is still expecting to see her mom alive at least one last time. Alive, though most would disagree, is a flexible term. When someone is delusional from pain, when most of their organs are working at about 5%, and when they can't even recognize you anymore, are they really alive and are they really the same person?
I didn't really cry when I heard the news, but if let myself, I would - not for my grandma, but for my mom. She now doesn't have her parents. Either of them. My living situation has greatly increased my attachment to my family and I cannot... no, I actually almost can imagine the sense of disorientation that losing my parents would bring. I know that it's different when you're 55 and your parents are 80-something. I'm sure they live every day prepared for it, at least in a small way. And yet, I've heard my mom say that sometimes, she just needs her mom. Simple as that. So many times I'll come up to my mom and just put my head on her shoulder because I need my mom, and one day I'm not going to have that for the rest of my life from that point on. Cherish it while you can.
Happy Mother's Day.

more useless info about my life

I have been completely obsessed with Cecilia Bartoli as of late. I'm listening to her right now and it's making me want to cry. Her CD Opera Proibita is just magic. I'm not being very eloquent right now, but there really are no words, you just have to listen to it. It's an album of sacred music from the 1700s when opera was prohibited by the church, so all of these amazing composers concentrated on sacred music. The songs are amazing and her voice makes them go straight through your body. I'm a very secure atheist, but the things that religion brings out in people are so inspired that I would never want to take that away because it doesn't make scientific sense. When I listen to some of these songs I get the same feeling as I do when I walk into gothic cathedrals. I start to understand religion and this drive for something higher and unearthly, some sort of escape. I feel my soul, I guess. I don't believe in a soul, but in moments like this I get as close as I probably ever will.
I haven't really listened to mainstream music in probably a month. The exceptions to that are when I make myself turn on the radio in the car just for a change, or if someone else is in my car and I feel like they probably don't want to be listening to opera or some symphony orchestra. Cecilia was the turning point of it. My sister bought a DVD of a documentary they did on her when she was younger and was just starting to get famous. I listened to her sing and it did something that no other opera singer or classical piece has ever done. I honestly don't feel a desire to listen to other "normal" music. I don't mind it, it's fine, but since then, mainstream just doesn't do it for me. I'm sure I'll slowly get back to it, at least to some things, especially when my environment changes.
It's been a very calm couple of months and I truly hope that it will be a calm couple of years. I don't want a boyfriend, I don't want emotional turmoil. I'm too concentrated on other, truly personal parts of my life right now, and it feels nice. Whenever I have been with someone I've found that it's hard for me to decipher which feelings are coming from within me and which ones are caused, at least in part, by my significant other. I never liked that feeling of confusion and I think that it was caused by constant insecurity. Whether it was insecurity with the other person, or uncertainty in the quality or quantity of my own feelings, it felt completely disorienting. Now, when I'm feeling down, I own the feeling, totally and completely. I'm not even sure if I've written about this before, and I'm sorry if I have, but the idea has been on my mind a lot lately. I don't know when I'll be ready to really share my life with someone, but it will probably be sometime after I'm out of LA. I've given myself the deadline of January 2009 to quit my job and know what I'm doing next. Whether it's back to Spain, up to San Francisco or maybe the East Coast, I am, as Shakespeare would say, blowing this taco stand by 01/09.

I'm going to be changing the address of this blog to something else in a week or so, so all readers (all, like, 5 of you) beware. I will post the new address in a note on Facebook.

alma oppressa

I've had weird metaphors of this promotion running through my head over the past two days while observing people at work. Ever since everyone saw me come out of that meeting with the two advisors I'll be working for, they've been giving me these knowing looks along with a small, but sly smile. I feel so dirty, as if I'm prostituting myself. We had a nice chat, they felt me out to see if I'm able and reliable, figured out where they'll put me up (in a cubicle in the back of the office...), like a whore in some dingy apartment outside the city. There I will await them as they put a thick stack of business into my inbox every day before lunch. Graphic enough for you yet? This has nothing to do with how they're treating me, in any sexual harassment sense. It's all in my head and all completely metaphorical, yet I feel dirty and exposed. Prostitution is business, plain and simple. And business is prostitution. Besides that everyone's been super-nice. Yes, super.
There is an administrative position open at the LA opera and I was going to apply for it today, but didn't end up doing it. I don't even know if I want to anymore. It might be more interesting, but it absolutly will be more time consuming with the commute. I don't think that I'm willing to give up the things that fill up the hours between work and sleep for a mildly engaging job that will probably pay less, have worse benefits, etc. The LA Opera is not going anywhere and this isn't he last administrative position that they'll have open. Once I move away from the front desk, I think life will be calmer and definitely Linda-less at the office and I might just learn a thing or two about retirement planning and mutual funds.
I keep feeling like I'm running out of time, like in a year I'll be 45 and wondering where my life went. No. In a year I'll be 24 and I'll be able to think about where else I can and/or want to go in life. It's my job that's doing it to me. I'm becoming more and more certain that I don't want to live in the US unless extreme circumstance calls for it, which is why I don't want to attach myself to anyone here, unless they either have a very strong desire to move to Europe as well, or are from there and have EU citizenship.

yay?

So, I went and got myself promoted after 2 months. I was lucky too, but I definitely can't say that I don't deserve it. There is no pay increase for now, but at least I won't be making coffee anymore and I definitely won't be hearing Trudy cackle every 5 minutes. I have extremely mixed feelings about this because on one hand, I will be getting paid more (in a few months) and therefore can be free of student loans much faster, and on the other I'm starting a more personal/business relationship with two advisors which means giving a 2 weeks notice is not going to be as easy as, well, giving a 2 weeks notice. Given that I only started 2 months ago, I'm going to try and assume that I've been looking for a job this whole time and then this came along, because if that really was what happened I wouldn't think of it as a personal committment and even if I was, that wouldn't stop me from taking it. Make any sense? Didn't think so. In short, I'm now married to the job and I'll probably be here for the next two years... So, probably no Spain for me right now... and no SF either. Of course this all can change in a week, but I think 2 years isn't too bad. Plus it gives me enought time to figure out if my other plans will come to pass or not. Right now I can, but won't say what those plans are, but time will tell.
In other office news, the hot guy got hired. =)
Here comes trouble.

Oh yes! And I bought a piano! An electronic one but it still sounds pretty amazing.

La-la-la

This past weekend I flew up to Portland to visit Timi and fell in love with it again. I'm having a hard time separating the feelings I have for Portland as a city, the feelings I have for Timi as a friend, my dislike of having an unstimulating 9-5 job and how the combination of the three is affecting my memories of the past weekend.
So, about Portland. The only thing lacking from that city is a decent museum, but if I were to be honest, I would say that that's mostly my sister talking. Though I like having a museum nearby, I don't remember the last time that I've gone to LACMA or the Getty. That needs to be remedied soon. So, uh, back to Portland. I think I was lucky to be there on an incredible weekend because the whole city was in bloom and the contrast between that and ugly, strip-mall infested Torrance was a bit shocking. Also, Portland residents seem more normal than self-conscious LA types. I'm certainly no authority on that since I barely leave my house to even look at LA people.
About Timi. I've been getting these day-mares where I think that something might've happened to her, like an accident of some sort and I get horrified at the prospect of a life without her. I've been getting those day-mares about my family also, but I feel like I expect to see my parents die one day, but I don't really think about losing someone my age so it's more shocking when I lose myself in these terrible thoughts.
About my job. Well, what about my job? I honestly can't even say that I hate it. It lacks any sort of a despicable angle to hate, so even when I try, I can't to direct these feelings at a specific point. Linda, my cackling co-worker, is pretty annoying, but she provides me with some small amusement as I safely roll my eyes behind the perfectly positioned computer screen.

Do I want to move and change jobs? Oh yes, but right now this is too convenient and fresh to give up. I don't want to look like I skip and jump between jobs, so I'll stay at dear Waddell & Reed for a few more months. I've been thinking that maybe a good strategy for finding what I want to do with my life is to take note of activities that keep my attention in the few hours between work and sleep. Over the past month that has been music. Classical music to be exact. We'll see if this is a fad or something that will last. I was trying to think of why I've turned to classical lately, and I think that being at work makes me feel so dead inside, so ordinary, that when I come home I want something different, something that's not earthly, and classical music is just that. When I listen to pop/rock, I listen with my head, but classical, especially vocal and opera I hear somewhere inside my chest. It's like I can feel it resonating throughout my body. So I'm thinking that I might want to work with creative people. Some sort of managing of artists and venues. I'm thinking of volunteering at the LA Opera in the evenings to get some experience, but I'm scared to take the first step because I feel like I will get disillusioned quickly and it will just be a burden that I don't need.
On top of that I have all these small things to do that I'm not doing. Make doctors appointments, call people that I want to talk to but keep forgetting to physically dial, nail a hook to the wall by my closet, clean off my desk, organize my mp3s, sell stuff on craigslist...
As Brooke would say, "Oh life...". Oh, ordinary, mundane, boring life.

hmm

It seems like my last post gave off an "I hate being home" vibe (at least to one person). I'm not sure how that happened, but I guess it could be subconscious and I'm just not realising that I hate being home, I don't know. What I do know is that I don't really hate being home at all. When I first got back, I went through a social-phobia stage where I just didn't want to leave my house and its comforts. Then I moved on to being freaked out that I seem to have no social life and tried hard to hang out with people. I feel like now I'm in a more balanced phase where I don't mind hanging out with people, but I have a great time at home doing stuff and just hanging out with my family. I guess for me, fun used to equal going out, and slowly it's changing. Going out is fun in any case, but I think that a capability to have fun while at home, with family or by yourself is an important one to develop, especially for me, because if I do end up without a partner later in life, and if I happen to choose not to have children (that one is improbable though) it will be nice not to have to panic at the prospect of spending many nights at home. This isn't some scheme to reduce panic in the future, I'm simply saying, I'm happy where I am now.

In other news, Larkin is/was in LA and didn't call me. The truth is I would've liked to see him, and I feel like it wouldn't necessarily have been hostile, though it absolutely would've been awkward. I guess the question then is, why would I want to put myself in an awkward situation like that? I think that something positive could've come out of it, such as talking terms, though I don't know if there's even any point. I'd like to know how he is, where he got into, see how he's changed, etc. and it would be nice to know these things from talking to him in person and not just reading his blog every few days. This is a very self-conscious paragraph since I'm fairly certain he will read it.
So, uh, hi.

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