I Don't Know What to do with my Hands...

Sister, regarding your painting-bells, I wanted to find you some images I have written in my notebooklets. I'm not going to be able to doodle it tonight, though... I'm sorry-bells... I am going to do it tomorrow, but I know that's when you have to start, so I'm sorry if that's too late... Otherwise, things that have struck me lately are the glory of the morning light, the powerful and delicate beauty of dandelion seeds (light enough to ride the wind, but strong enough to carry the heavy weight of wishes), and this silly idea I had recently:

I had an idea an hour or two ago. It's stupid, really, but I thought I would tell you anyway. Have you heard that quote about acting? "I don't know what to do with my hands..." Being in OAP this year, I've heard it a lot, usually as a joke referring to the common problem first-time actors encounter on stage. "They get on stage and suddenly their hands become these huge obstacles and they just don't know what to do with them," some clinician described it to us in similar words. For whatever reason, an image came to my mind of these two open hands in the foreground, palm-up, in a gesture of confusion, and before them the earth, somewhere on the picture the caption "I don't know what to do with my hands..." Because "all the world's a stage," and I wonder if maybe we all just don't know what to do with our hands and that's why we do such ridiculous or awful things.

Kind of stupid. Anyway, I'm going to be going through my notebooklets looking for quotes regarding Magi, and as I go I'm going to keep an eye out for images that you might use in your painting-bells, sister, and when I find them I'll post them on here for you.

Overwhelmed.

That is the nearest word for how I feel. Or actually, how I would feel if now was the time for feeling. I've turned myself into a sort of computer lately, as if I can file away my emotions according to urgency. All these emotions hover on the edges of my consciousness, waiting for a break in the binary, a crack through which they can seep. What I felt a couple of hours ago was a massive wave, looming frozen in front of me, waiting to crash over me. I filed it, of course. Quite the waiting list, it is.

Tonight I had my last normal private lesson with Mrs. Goranson. I wasn't prepared for that. I don't know why. She says she'll keep emailing Mom and I and I can come in for a lesson if I work something up that I want to play for her, but otherwise this time has ended. I should have seen this coming. The year is almost over. But I wasn't prepared for it.

I haven't had time for anything but bare minimum, just making myself remember how to play the flute, just playing my church and silly OAP music... so I didn't have anything specific to ask her to help me with in the lesson. Instead we talked about the future, how I could get ready for college... she told me a couple of Celtic bands to look up and referred me to a couple of her old students who go to Tech... she gave me advice on being a college freshman... she gave me a book of Celtic flute duets and asked me to promise to practice them. She wrote a note to me in the front, saying if I kept my flute with me I would always have a song in my heart. She told me to go with her blessing.

I kept thinking "Never a lender nor a borrower be," or whatever that Polonius quote is.

I smiled and nodded, but I wanted to cry. I tried to thank her. I told her how much her lessons on improvisation helped in OAP, and I thanked her for that. But I wanted to thank her for everything, for how I usually leave the music building with an untameable smile on my face. Tonight I left the music building trying to keep my heart from falling out.

I'm still going to see her for flute choir at least a couple more times. It wasn't a final goodbye. It's just that it was the end of something that I forgot was ending. High school band at Cooper High School might suck now, and I know it would have been awful to be in it this last year, but I still hated quitting and I still miss it. In a way, keeping up lessons like that let me pretend that I wasn't letting go of that part of my life yet. But I can see that I have.

"Go with my blessing,"

I'm not ready to go out into the world.

Sometime last week, I realized that my two comrades and I have officially become CalculaTORs. We're not going to use our books anymore. We're just preparing for the test. We've been told everything we need to know. We've become capable in the highest level of math available to us. I gape at the board sometimes, at the mass of symbols sprawling across the wall, but I'm amazed not because of all those symbols and obscure numbers, but because I understand them.

I'm not ready to go out into the world.

I'm going to graduate high school soon. Six weeks. In a few months, I'm going to go to college and have to be old. I don't want to prolong high school--of course I don't want that. It's just hard for me to grasp that this time is over... that I can no longer be a jack of all trades. I feel there was so much more I wanted to learn... but I've run out of time.

I'm just not ready to go out into the world.

I'm not even explaining this well. This is the looming wave. This is the part where I realize that I'm supposed to know everything, where I want to say "Wait! Tell me one more time!" but I have to jump.

I realized something as I was standing in flute choir. I thought to myself:

I am everywhere a foreigner.

I am a foreigner standing in a circle of flutists.

I am a foreigner sitting in Calculus.

I am a foreigner crossing a stage.

I am a foreigner walking the halls of a high school.

I speak with broken words in the accent of an outsider. I stumble through their comfortable customs. I always look nervous because I am always being brave, always standing just on the outside, watching, observing, taking notes.

Someday, I would like to go to my own country. I like to think I would not be a foreigner if I sat with a group of writers. Perhaps I still would. But I would like to be naturalized into that circle. I would like to speak a language in which I am fluent. I would like to be somewhere that I belong to be.

What silly things to think. Such a feeling cannot be explored right now. So it's been filed away for later. I have two huge contests this week and a massive English project due next week.

I'm probably a fool for trying to write about Magi for this project. This is going to be very, very difficult. Or at least right now it looks very daunting. I've never incorporated something so real and close to my heart for school before. And wisely so, as it's extremely dangerous. But I couldn't ignore the magician capering around in my mind... and he seems to be enjoying himself so far. It's such an incredibly difficult thing to come up with a 'finished' product. His story is obviously a novel in my mind--it couldn't be anything else. So I have to find a piece of the novel that is complete enough to give to Mrs. Thornton, just a piece. I have to think of this 'finished' story as a chapter. I wish I had a couple of years to write the novel instead, do all the research, all the exploring, all the oddly-timed conversations with Magi... but I have to do this by next week. Hopefully next Friday instead of Tuesday.

Mostly, I need to go to sleep... I hope you are well, and I wish you a merry hour, whichever part of the day you are in.