Songs for Daylight, Rain, and Other Occasions

I am full of music. My little sister had taken my guitar for a few months of lessons, at the end of which she was able to play Old McDonald Had A Farm with moderate success. It has now been returned and I can play enough chords to play some songs. Playing reminds me that all I really want to do is sing. I love to sing, am filled by the notes, even if they are not all on key.

Ingrid Michaelson's "A Bird's Song" has been a favorite of mine today, and then, tonight as I searched for more, The Weepies "Painting By Chagall" and The Lucksmiths "Guess How Much I Love You."

"It's a mean town, but I don't care. Try to steal this. Can't steal happiness."
That's from Happiness, also by The Weepies, and so much how I'm feeling. In this cluttered place, flipping itself over in its determination to figure out if it is safe or hostile, I am feeling really happy for the first time in a long time. Making plans for my return to school, to friends. Leaving this behind.

I would stay up all night singing if I could, walk the streets, sing out my window. Music may be all the space I need for myself right now. Recordings of the rain that fell so heavily today, drowned out by Tegan and Sara and air conditioners. A spider wove a web outside my window in the downpour, beneath the ledge of roof, a wall of rain closing him in. I watched the spider skirt its way seemingly through midair. Everywhere around me are springing up silken safety nets. If I fall - and I will - those will be my landing place.

Good morning, evening.

Good morning, evening. I drift sleepily through my days with the sticky hands of childhood, the gloss of glue and ice cream. On the edge of my second year of college, things are changing. I am changing in some strange forward-backwards process. I see an old self inside of a new self, a laughing girl inside of a confident young woman, but even more, a twirling ballerina inside of a determined writer, a wonder-eyed child inside of an analytical, metaphorical growing self.

I am glad to move into this new writing space, even as I work determinedly to fill notebooks by hand. The Sunrise Blog is a place for noticing, for being alive. It is a place for asking questions. I read that if you can ask a question, you can also answer it. This does not demand accuracy, but rather the willingness to let you mind imagine a possibility to fill that blank. I also read this quote this summer, from Robin Hemley's memoir Nola:

"... not knowing is an answer, just as much as knowing is an answer, the way we say the words of a prayer, and sometimes we don't understand the words of the prayer of its true meaning, but we know what to say at the end of the prayer. We say amen."

And we do. Over and over we say amen, agree, call out in reply to the world that whispers the words to that prayer in our ears.

Good morning, evening. It's time to settle into night and tomorrow I can watch the world change again, like the sky turning itself a shock of gray this afternoon, gusting, but clear in spots, and suddenly opening into rain. I am opening into these days with the patience of Job, which is perhaps not patience at all, but the willingness to remain faithful in my impatience.