And here's to you....

This goes out to everyone else who never found Garfield funny.

Guys, I'm killing myself laughing.

http://garfieldlostintranslation.blogspot.com/

All Things Become Clear.

I love my teacher's new piano. It's a stunning golden-brown Steinway Model A with crystalline tonality and incredibly sensitive reaction. Playing on that instrument, a musician can lay bare the foundations of a work, and build the colour up from the core of the sound. The hammers on the strings ring out bell-like, pellucid; there are no layers of sonic varnish to distort the pristine notes. It's his third piano since I started there in the ninth grade, and even though the first one may technically have been the highest-quality specimen, my heart belongs completely to this new companion.

My teacher has been warming to it too. Tonight at my playthrough (audience of three, Jenna included), he pointed out the characteristics I have mentioned. His friend, probably a musician himself, agreed.

"It's a beautiful piano. And you -- (looks at me) -- belong there."

Gyahhh.

Does he know -- he can't know -- how long it's been since I felt sure of that? Does he sense, perhaps, how uncertain I've become of my place lately? Witness this speedwritten notebook excerpt, from just three days ago:

it sits
before me a great landscape of sound
silver beams of light drawn into eternity
and I watch the clatter of the
mountains rising, falling back,
white waves in the great black ocean.
An arm reaches toward the ceiling;
my hands are timid, uncertain.

I am not yet ready
to fly atop this darkling spirit.
I trip and stumble through the paces
up and down the monochrome path;
the notes false, still,
after so much bloodshed.

Now, though, I can regain lost confidence. And I can devote myself to being whatever I am...not for any practical purpose, but only out of love -- pure and unadulterated as the sound of the piano itself -- for the beauty at the heart of all things. That is where I belong.

but there will come a day
when together I and the beast
spread wings, lift,
and teach ourselves to trace
glorious radiant patterns through the stars.
On that day and after,
the universe belongs not to us,
but to those who look and dream
and listen.

There will be more and more for all of us.

Reminiscence and Expectation

Q. Why is Wistful like an octopus?
A. Both express frustration with ink.

It might be a little more appropriate if I was in the habit, lately, of expressing much of anything. Nevertheless, I wanted to slip that joke into a post at some point, and time is sort of running out for RFS and me.

I did think I'd hit 400 posts by the end of high school, and then could close down with pomp and fireworks. I haven't, and I'm still not sure about when or if I'm going to finish. And what exactly should finishing entail -- the end of new posts, or the complete disappearance of WistfulSparrow?

It makes sense to stop by the end of the summer. After all, it's clearly a high school blog I've been writing here. Alongside the occasional humourous anecdote and interesting piece of information, a casual search would reveal much unwanted baggage from the earlier years -- archives of trivialities from the eighth grade. I know, because I've been through everything recently, backing up important parts to prepare for any eventualities. Furthermore, I question whether Blogspot is any longer an appropriate outlet for me, as my presence on the internet is more subtle than it was three years ago, and will hopefully continue to evolve in the future.

I don't know where I'll be in a year. Maybe still exactly here in this room. Maybe halfway across the globe. Whatever the circumstances, I'm sure you anticipated the probability that I will not want to be tied to an older incarnation of my being. That said, I'm not sure I'll erase the archives immediately. They will likely hang around on the web for a few months before I unpublish them all. I may also keep the domain name, as a memento, or to prevent anyone else from adopting the name I once made my own.

There will be more about these decisions later. For now, maybe I should be honest about some things.

I don't constantly talk about this, so it may surprise some (though probably not any of my beloved readers) that I've decided to study music in university. I haven't decided to only study music in university; that is, knowing my tendencies, I may attempt to further my education in multiple fields. I'm not so sure about english literature because I don't find I enjoy or benefit from academic analysis: poetry is about what you feel it and not what this word and this word put together means in some dictionary. Perhaps this will change in the next two years.

But so much for school. I honestly don't know if I'll even last through CEGEP (where I will not be studying music) without taking off someplace, so this is a little...vaguely outlined. Higher education is somewhat less affordable outside of the province, which could be a problem (very unlikely to win scholarships in music). Obviously, I'm not implying that I absolutely need to leave Quebec, what with McGill and all; I'm just suggesting that it might possibly have a small chance of working out that way, given the particularities of my character.

It doesn't really matter though, in the end. I like to learn things, but from a practical/financial point of view, I don't think the number of years I spend in school will have much of a correlation with my eventual earnings.

Certainly, these are the naive perceptions of a pampered seventeen-year-old, but I'll never know the world until I see it. Certainly, the idea that I might not spend much time in university might surprise many of my teachers, but I wouldn't underestimate my own ability to make stupid decisions in the space of an instant.

We'll all see where the wind takes us.